He raced after her, and the staircase went two ways, either up to the roof, or down to the lower floors of the hospital. He chose the roof, taking the stairs two at a time. He emerged on the roof, his gun sweeping around for a target. It took him precious minutes to search everywhere, but she wasn't there. Then he heard the roof door crash shut behind him, and wherever she'd been hiding, she'd vanished, and this time she was descending the staircase.

  He went after her. She didn't stop on the first floor, as he expected, but descended to the basement. He understood what she was doing immediately. A cavernous warren below ground, a darkened space where she could wait in ambush for him. Kill him, and then go and finish Maria.

  Fuck you, lady.

  He dove through the door into the basement, and a gun flash pierced the darkness. He returned fire toward the source of the shot, but there was no answering scream of pain. He'd missed. He began crawling across the floor, listening for any sign of her, but there was silence. He prowled around the basement, looking past empty, rusting filing cabinets, redundant medical machinery, and upturned disused beds. Nothing.

  When he’d checked every inch, he realized the truth, and he knew where she’d gone. Somehow, she'd sneaked past him. Back to the ER room, and she’d find Maria in the operating theater and kill her. He ran back up the stairs and heard gunshots.

  No!

  He emerged on the first floor and raced along the corridor to the operating theater. This time no one stopped him. Yuri was standing inside the door, blood pouring from his body, but he was clutching his gun.

  "Where is she? Did she get inside?"

  Grimly, he shook his head. "No way. I saw her coming, and popped a couple of shots at the bitch. One of them hit flesh, and she ran away. Look."

  The trail of blood led along the floor, tiny spots of bright red. It was enough for him.

  "Are you okay, Yuri?"

  He grinned. "I’ll be fine. After all, I'm in the right place. So don't worry about me. Go after her and kill the bitch."

  "I'll do my best."

  Cris ran out through the door, but there was no sign of her. To the side of the building lay the parking lot, and he ran inside. He checked the first floor, found it clear, and on went up to the upper floors. Ahead of him, he heard footsteps pounding up the concrete staircase, and more spots of blood had splashed to show her passing. He increased speed, his legs pumping, determined to intercept her before she got away again. The blood spots led out onto the third-floor parking garage, and he crashed through the door. He nearly died. She was waiting for him, and when he appeared, she fired several shots. He fired back, but she ducked behind the cover of a red truck. He didn't stop to take cover, but ran toward her, aiming his gun where he’d last seen her, ready to fire.

  She appeared for a brief second, and he fired a shot. It tore into her lower side, and she grimaced in pain. He was taking up the trigger pressure for a final shot when his foot slipped on a patch of grease, and he tumbled to the hard concrete. His gun skidded away from him. He attempted to rise and stopped. She was standing over him. She'd overcome the pain of her gunshot wounds, enough to stare at him in triumph.

  "You killed my brothers."

  "I did, and you’re next, lady. You’re about to be reunited with them,” Her brow furrowed, “In hell.”

  She drew her lips back in a feral glare. "You’re forgetting something, Mr. Rhodes. I have a gun, and you don't. When you reach hell, they’ll be waiting for you.”

  She winced as a wave of pain coursed through her body, but the gun barrel never wavered. He had his eyes fixed on it, ready to make his move if it pointed away from him for the merest second, but it never did. She was Kareena Karpov, and wherever she went, death followed close behind. She came closer, and his last chance had gone. She was standing three feet away, too near for him to do anything. He bunched up ready to make a final desperate attempt to tackle her, knowing the odds were a thousand to one against. But even as he felt the adrenaline fight or flight reaction surge through his body, he heard the roar of the gun.

  Incredibly, he felt nothing. And then he saw Kareena start to spin around, her mouth open in astonishment. As she showed her back to him, he saw the huge wound where someone had shot her. A man was sitting in the driver's seat of the red truck, and he gasped in astonishment.

  He was looking at Peter Schiller, still holding the smoking pistol. The pilot who helped them escape the Siberian gulags, and flown them out of Russia. The man who’d been a staunch ally, and who’d died during the attack on the cabin in Glen Arbor.

  He isn’t dead. He’s here. Alive.

  Peter had the drop on him, and he waved the gun barrel, indicating for him to stay where he was, and not try to pick up his gun. He looked back at the Russian.

  "What gives, Peter? We thought you were dead."

  He gave a wry nod. "Yeah, that's the way it was supposed to look. But as you can see, I'm now here, and I'm not dead."

  "Was it her?" He nodded to Kareena, "Did you make a deal with the devil?"

  A shrug. "Something like that. Look, Rhodes, it's not that simple. That shootout back at the cabin, they were going to kill me. I persuaded them to let me live, and the deal was I’d deliberately leave the Navcom lying around. I knew it would be too much of a temptation, especially for Yuri. The plan was for him to pick it up so I could help them track you. It worked like a charm, didn't it?"

  "It worked, sure. So it was you who was helping them track us everywhere we went?"

  "Yeah, I tracked you. Those gadgets come in pairs, the one Yuri took and a pocket device I kept hold of. It enabled me to lock onto the signal from the Navcom. It’s pretty clever," he grinned, "I mean, that baby has built-in GPS tracking, and it can plot the position of the main device to within a few feet. By the way, what happened? It went off air a while ago.”

  "Maybe something broke. You’re helping them to kill us, you know that."

  "But they didn't kill you, did they? You’re here."

  "Schiller, do you know how many people they killed in Michigan. Scores, I've lost count. They left a trail of bodies all over the State. Militia, civilians, cops, and now she’s killed several people inside the hospital. Doctors and nurses, it's like a charnel house in there. All for what?"

  "For what? I'll tell you for what.” His face flushed with excitement, or was it embarrassment, “They promised me everything. When it was all over, Ushakov agreed to set me up in business again. A new airline, with a new aircraft, I could have had it all, don't you see? Everything I lost, and they were going to give it back to me. Everything.”

  "How could they give those people back their lives? All that blood, and all those deaths, so you could carry on flying some stupid crackpot airline across Russia! Don't you realize they'd have killed you when this was all over? There never was going to be any airline, or any aircraft. Just a shallow grave at best, courtesy of the Karpovs.”

  His enthusiasm collapsed like a balloon punctured with a pin.

  "Yeah, you're right, they would have killed me. I realize that now. When I saw her kill that nurse, I don’t know, it was like I’d had an epiphany. She popped her in cold blood, and I honestly couldn't take any more. That's why I shot Kareena."

  "So what now? You’re going to shoot me, too?"

  "I can't allow them to take me, you must understand that. They’d lock me up and throw away the key.”

  “No, they won’t do that. They’ll strap you to a gurney and pump you full of enough drugs to knock out an elephant. You’ll die helpless and screaming for you mother, for anyone. You're a total shit, Peter. A creep and an asshole, and you deserve everything they do to you, so fuck you."

  The Russian pilot aimed his gun, and Cris tensed. Feeling the adrenaline feed into his muscles, ready for the moment when he would make a last, desperate effort to avoid death. The gun barrel moved slightly, and then Schiller pushed it into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The roar of the gunshot echoed around the parking lot, and he was dead, his brains splashed over the dark red bodywork of the truck. Rhodes scooped up his gun and knelt to look at Kareena’s body. She was too dangerous to ignore, even in death. But she wasn’t dead. To his astonishment, and despite the bullets she'd taken, she was still breathing, still alive.

  He walked toward the door to get help, a cleanup squad, his work done. Before he reached it, it crashed open and a horde of cops rushed through. He held up his hands. "It's okay. The bad guy is down. I mean the bad girl."

  "Drop the gun, buddy. Then we’ll check out what you say."

  They were angry. No, more than angry. Furious there'd been such terrible carnage, such unwarranted loss of life in the hospital, and one of the cops went to Kareena. She was lying on her back, staring up at them, blood pooled beneath her. He used his boot to tip her over, as if touching her would infect him with her evil. Schiller’s bullet had blown the large hole in her back.

  He called it in on the radio, and a couple of medics came to collect the wounded mass killer on a gurney. They weren’t rushing, and when they carried her away, it didn't look like they were taking much trouble to keep her comfortable. She made no noise, and he assumed she was in a coma.

  They told him Maria was still in theater. Yuri was in the theater next door, and he watched them wheel Kareena Karpov into the theater on the other side. One part of him wanted her to die, and another wanted her to live, to suffer a lifetime of incarceration in a deep, dark cell, although it wasn't in his power to arrange such an outcome.

  A doctor threw him out of the operating theater, and he paced up and down, his mind whirling with a kaleidoscope of confused emotions. His chief concern, his overriding worry, was Maria. He wasn't a religious man, but he murmured a prayer that she’d live. He said another prayer that Kareena would die.

  He waited for four hours while they worked on her, drinking cup after cup of coffee from the machine. Pacing up and down like a caged tiger, until a doctor emerged from the theater, gray and haggard with exhaustion.

  He looked at Rhodes. “Are you the fiancé?"

  "I am. How is she?"

  "How is she?” He sucked in air through his teeth, “As well as can be expected. The good news is she’ll live, unless any complications set in at the last minute, and we're not expecting anything untoward. You’re a lucky man.”

  He nodded his thanks and slumped on a seat, feeling overwhelmed with emotion. He looked down the corridor. Someone brushed against the curtain of the operating theater, and it moved aside. They were working on Kareena, with an armed guard in the room. He had his gun out, and despite her grievous wounds, it was pointed at her chest. Her wrists were shackled to the bed, so they were taking no chances with someone who'd murdered so many people. He felt a deep sense of relief. She was someone else’s problem now.

  Two more hours went by, and Yuri emerged. He was covered in bandages, and his face pale, but at least he was alive.

  “They let you out?”

  He grimaced. "I couldn't stand another minute in that place. It's terrible in there. Too many sick people."

  He realized what he’d said and quickly added, "I don't mean Maria. You know all I want is for her to recover. And for that Karpov bitch to die."

  "You're not the only one. By the way, there’s something you should know."

  He explained about his encounter with Peter Schiller in the parking lot. How he’d tracked them through the Navcom, in return for a deal with the Karpovs to kill him. And a few other goodies, courtesy of the Kremlin, goodies never intended to appear.

  "What happened to him?"

  "He took off for his final flight, blew his brains out with his own gun."

  "Amen to that.” He nodded toward the OR, “Say, is there anything we can do for her?"

  "Nothing. Except pray, I guess."

  Yuri gave him a searching glance. "Are you a believer?"

  "I wasn't, but I'd sell my soul to anyone who’d guarantee her chances.”

  “Me, too.”

  * * *

  It was a month later, and Christmas and the New Year had been and gone. They met outside a hospital, but this one was very different. Fifteen foot-high stone walls topped with barbed wire. The shingle outside the gate announced to the world it was the State Hospital for the Serious Mentally Ill. In faded letters beneath, just visible, he could make out what they’d painted over, something about a secure mental institution for the criminally insane. He'd arrived with Maria, still very pale and weak after recovering from surgery, and Yuri, who’d recovered fast, and didn't look as if he'd suffered any wounds at all. There was another man present, and Cris shook hands with Deputy Roger Page.

  "It's good to meet you, Deputy. I guess you have your hands full recovering from the hurricane of death that hit your department."

  He grimaced. "You could say that. It's Sheriff Page now. They wiped out so many of our people, there aren't many of us left, and I was the most senior man able to take up the post. Listen, shall we do this right away? It's cold out here, and coming to this place, it feels even colder. Like…" He paused, thinking, "Like the wind that blows carries a breath of evil with it."

  He nodded. "Never a truer word. Let's take a look at the patient. It’ll help us all sleep better at night when we know she’s secure.”

  The guards admitted them through the gate and locked it securely after them. They walked across dark flagstones to the entrance of the main building. Everything was dark, as if the sun had deserted this place, and no light was allowed to penetrate.

  Few, if any of the inmates ever emerged. They were there for a single reason, to protect the world from their special brand of vicious and homicidal insanity that almost seemed to seep through the unpainted stone walls as they passed. They walked through long, dark passages, and behind the doors of the cells, men and women screeched and wailed, locked not only in their cells, but also in their own personal hell. They went down a further flight of steps and through more locked doors.

  The guards were especially careful to lock the doors behind them, and every one of them looked nervous coming this deep into the institution. As if this place was a holding cell for demons, and leaving the doors unlocked could allow them to escape to inflict their peculiar brand of hell onto an innocent world.

  The guard leading them stopped at the end door in the passage and peered through a glass peephole. He gestured for Cris to do the same. She was sitting with her back resting against the opposite wall, facing the door. He felt as if she could see him, as if she recognized him, and he shivered. Her arms were fastened into a heavy canvas straitjacket, and when he asked why, the guard explained it was for the safety of the staff.

  "We feed her a cocktail of powerful tranquilizers and anti-psychotics every day, but still, if we release her from the jacket, she’ll try to attack anyone who comes near. It's like something is driving her, some burning demonic core deep inside. She’s determined to savage, to attack and destroy. We can't release her, not ever."

  "Can she get up?"

  “No, thank Christ. A chunk of her spine is missing, and she's paraplegic. No movement at all in her legs or lower body, and that's a blessing. Although she will try to drag herself along if she has the chance to attack one of the staff."

  "Someone to be pitied."

  The guard shook his head. "Even like that, drugged, paralyzed, and in a straitjacket, pity isn't a word I'd use. Someone to be feared more like. She'll even use her teeth, if you get near enough, so you have to stay well back."

  “We will."

  The guard opened the cell door, and her head jerked up. The expression was vacant, and a wisp of drool had trickled down her chin. But the eyes were anything but vacant. Red-hot coals, glaring, like the wild beast she'd once been. And always would be. She didn't speak, just glared, and they stayed no more than a minute. Outside the hospital, Sheriff Page shook his head in disbelief.

  “My God, I'm glad that someone like her is off the streets. She’s crazy, crazy as batshit. What drives these kind of people?"

  They didn't have any answers, and after Maria had commiserated with him for the loss of so many of his colleagues, they took their leave.

  A few miles from the hospital, they found a diner. They went inside for a lunch and to get out of the chill morning air. It wasn't just the temperature. Some of the cold from the mental hospital had seeped into their bodies, and they wanted to be with ordinary people, to eat good, wholesome, American food. To return to the land of normal people, to the land of the living, to those who weren't trying to slaughter their way like wild beasts to achieve their perverted ambitions.

  Maria was still affected by the visit to Kareena, and she nibbled at her food. Eventually, she put down her fork and looked directly at Cris.

  "Do you think it's really over?" She paused, "My contacts in the Kremlin tell me the President has said enough is enough. They also assured me this was an unofficial operation."

  “Sanctioned by Vladimir Ushakov," Cris pointed out.

  She dipped her head in agreement. "Sanctioned by Ushakov, and they say he will be disciplined. What is most important is they guarantee to make no further attempts on my life. What do you think? Can we believe them?”

  She reached out her hand and took his, desperate for reassurance. He still wasn't certain, although as far as anyone could tell, the attempts on her life had ended. After a lengthy pause, he said, "Yes, it's over. They won't come again."

  Her face relaxed, and she smiled with relief. Her relief would have been short-lived if she could have read his thoughts.

  It's over until they come again. And I don't trust these bastards. Not without a loaded gun in my hand, and a handy escape route at my back.

  "We can make plans," Maria said, her smile as if the sun had broken out and was overcoming the dark chill of that awful place.

  "Sure, we’ll make plans.”

  None of them finished the meal. They emerged from the cozy warmth of the diner into the cold, but sunny winter day, and climbed into their rental car. He drove away, and his spirits began to lift. Until they crested a hill overlooking the deep valley they’d just left. Five miles away, situated in an isolated position, as though it was some ancient leper colony, was the secure mental hospital. A container for dark secrets, for the horrors men and women had inflicted on others.