Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8)

  EMPIRE

  A Jack Sigler Thriller

  By Jeremy Robinson

  and Sean Ellis

  Description:

  WHEN PAST AND PRESENT COLLIDE...

  In 1959, nine hikers of the Dyatlov expedition perish while crossing a remote mountain range in the Soviet Union. More than sixty-five years later, the circumstances surrounding their deaths remains a mystery. In 1995, Julie Sigler is killed in an Air Force training exercise crash, but the circumstances of her death are never called into question...until she appears on TV, twenty years later, standing beside the current President of the United States.

  THE WORLD WILL BURN...

  Disavowed and on the run, the black ops Chess Team is in search of one of their own: Former President Tom Duncan. Held in a secret U.S. government detainment site after sacrificing his freedom to ensure the team’s, Duncan, callsign: Deep Blue, hasn’t been seen or heard from in a year. Meanwhile, the team’s leader, Jack Sigler, callsign: King, is on the trail of a woman who just might be his sister Julie—back from the dead and working for his enemies. Drawn into a labyrinth of intrigue, King discovers a scheme to topple the U.S. government and forge a new global empire.

  AND AN EMPIRE WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES.

  To stop a war that could destroy civilization, King and the Chess Team infiltrate the frozen Russian wilderness, battle the elements and inhuman abominations spawned in Cold War laboratories, and go head-to-head with a powerful enemy, ascending from the pages of history. Torn between loyalty to his family, his teammates and his country, King faces his most daunting challenge yet. The stakes have never been higher, or more personal.

  Jeremy Robinson and Sean Ellis, the international bestselling duo behind Herculean and Cannibal are back for the eighth novel in the pulse-pounding Jack Sigler Thriller series. With the ancient mystery of James Rollins and frenetic pacing of Matthew Reilly, and with an all too plausible civilization-ending scenario, Empire will please new readers and longtime Sigler fans alike.

  EMPIRE

  A Jack Sigler / Chess Team Thriller

  Jeremy Robinson

  & Sean Ellis

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Also by Jeremy Robinson

  Also by Sean Ellis

  Sean Ellis dedicates this novel to Dan and Elayne Mason…

  Thanks for being there.

  PROLOGUE

  DEAD MOUNTAIN

  The Ural Mountains (Sverdlovsk Oblast), U.S.S.R.

  February 1959

  Bent over her skis, head down and focused on ascending the slope, Zinaida Kolmogorova almost collided with her teammate, Rustem Slobodin. If they had been on flat ground or descending, she probably would not have had time to stop at all. Because they were climbing, and had been for hours now, she was just able to stop short when she glimpsed the back ends of his skis.

  She planted her ski poles in the snow and craned her head around to make sure that the rest of the party behind her was aware of the halt. Through the veil of falling snow, she could just make out Alexander Kolevatov. He was twenty feet behind her, methodically stepping with his skis in the herringbone pattern she and Slobodin had left.

  “Stopping!” she called out. Kolevatov raised his head in acknowledgement. She returned her attention forward and called out to Slobodin. “Why are we stopped?”

  “We are lost, I think,” Slobodin replied, his voice muffled by the heavy scarf covering his face. “Igor says that we are on the wrong mountain.”

  “This is not Otorten?”

  Slobodin shook his head. “He thinks we are on Kholat Syakhl.”

  Kolmogorova groaned in dismay. Given the restricted visibility, it was understandable that they might have wandered a few degrees off course, but to lose track of an entire mountain was unforgivable. She expected better from their leader, Igor.

  Beneath her face covering, Kolmogorova cracked a smile as she thought about what Dubinina would say. Lyudmila Dubinina, the only other female member of the team, would not let Igor off lightly. Her tongue was as sharp as a Cossack rider’s sword, and twice as quick. Kolmogorova almost felt sorry for the man.

  Kholat Syakhl.

  She recalled seeing the name on the map. It was not a Russian name, but Mansi—the language spoken by the native tribesmen who inhabited the region. They grazed their herds on the steppe below, when the days were longer and warmer. They avoided the mountains because nothing grew here, even in the favorable season. That was how this mountain had earned its name.

  Kholat Syakhl translated to ‘Dead Mountain.’

  It was an ominous name, but the Mansi, like most Russians, were prone to pessimism. Otorten, the name of the mountain the team had intended to traverse, was taken from a Mansi phrase that literally meant: ‘Don’t go there.’

  The Urals apparently had a sense of humor. Since the team had rejected that sage advice, the mountain had tricked them, sending them more than five miles off course.

  Don’t go there? she thought. More like ‘can’t get there.’

  Kolevatov caught up to her a moment later, by which time Igor and the others ahead of Slobodin backtracked to explain the mistake.

  Dubinina was surprisingly subdued in her reaction. “We are lost?”

  “No,” Igor explained. “We just aren’t where we are supposed to be.”

  “Wonderful. We’ll be trekking half the night.”

  Igor shook his head. “It will be dark soon. We’ll make camp here.”

  “We passed some trees a ways back.” This came from Alexander Zolotaryov. The man, an instructor at the polytechnical college where the rest of them had met as students, was a voice of reason if not necessarily experience—he was older than any of them by more than a decade. “It is more sheltered there.”

  Igor rejected the suggestion. “I don’t want to have to make this climb twice. We’ll pitch the tent here. It’s good practice for camping in winter conditions.”

  “You call it ‘practice’?” Dubinina said with a snort. “How will this be different from what we’ve been doing every
night for the last week?”

  Igor did not reply but instead began delegating responsibilities. While Kolmogorova and several others began stamping out a flat ledge where they could erect the tent, he and the others began unpacking. The tent went up quickly, the moment preserved forever on film by Yuri Krivonischenko, who had dutifully kept a photographic record of the expedition with his beloved Zorki camera. Soon they were all ensconced within, stripping off their damp winter clothes to avoid becoming chilled. Despite the navigational error, the mood stayed light. Zolotaryov began brewing a pot of tea from melted snow, though only a few of the group expressed any interest in the warm beverage.

  It was too early to retire for the night. The sun, though obscured by scudding clouds, was just beginning to set, plunging them into a darker shade of twilight. At this latitude in February, sunset came at five o’clock in the evening. Nevertheless, Kolmogorova had learned from experience not to drink tea or anything more than a few sips of water before getting into her bedroll. Nothing ruined a good night’s sleep more than waking up with a full bladder in the dead of night. Easing the call of nature meant slipping past eight other sleepers and then venturing out into the frigid night to squat bare-assed in the snow. She was content to simply lie back on her sleeping mat and relax.

  She was not exhausted by any means. A full week of trekking and skiing had left her well-seasoned. Her muscles, which had been sore for the first two days, despite the fact that she was in excellent physical condition, were now supple and toned. At the beginning, she had dreaded going to bed. She had known that waking up would mean another day of endless misery, trudging hour after hour through the snow. Now she looked forward not only to sleeping but also to rising in the morning for another day’s activity. Even this minor misadventure was not enough to dampen her spirits. It would make for an amusing anecdote to tell at parties.

  After what felt like only a few minutes, she heard a strange humming sound and felt a blast of bitterly cold air on her face.

  She sat up and was surprised to see her teammates gathered around the open flap of the tent, staring out into the night.

  “What time is it?” she mumbled.

  “Almost nine,” Slobodin said without looking back.

  I must have dozed off, she thought.

  The incongruity of the persistent humming sound finally penetrated the fog of drowsiness. It sounded like an electrical transformer, but they were miles away from anything powered by electricity. In a leap of intuition, she grasped that the others must have been similarly curious about the noise, prompting them to open the tent to the frigid night. She rose and moved to join the group. “What’s going on?”

  Even as the words left her mouth, she saw the light. It hung in the sky above the distant treetops, brighter than any star. It was almost as bright as a full moon, though she knew that was more than three weeks away. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Slobodin admitted. “It just appeared.”

  “It is a flare,” another voice supplied. This comment came from Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, the engineer. “The army must be conducting an exercise nearby.”

  “It’s too bright,” Igor countered. “And a flare would not last so long. It is a searchlight from an aircraft.”

  That explanation was only slightly more plausible to Kolmogorova. The noise did not sound like a helicopter, but perhaps the snowfield was playing tricks on her ears. She shivered, but not because of the cold.

  “Searchlight or flare,” Thibeaux-Brignolles said, “it is of no consequence to us. Close the tent. You’re going to freeze us all.”

  “Let me get a photograph first,” Krivonischenko said, positioning his camera on its makeshift tripod. “Just a moment.” There was a click as the shutter snapped open and closed. “Got it.”

  Someone drew the flap, blocking out the light, but the noise immediately grew louder, more intense. The canvas structure acted like the body of a drum. Kolmogorova could feel the deep bass vibrating in her bones. She felt faintly ill.

  “What is that?” Dubinina complained. “Make it stop.”

  Kolmogorova opened her mouth to commiserate, but then the other woman clutched her head. Dubinina writhed in agony. Kolmogorova knew that what she was feeling was nothing compared to what Dubinina was experiencing.

  Thibeaux-Brignolles clapped his hands to his head and let out a harsh oath, which devolved into a tortured howl. Slobodin reached out to him, resting a concerned hand on the engineer’s shoulder, but Thibeaux-Brignolles rounded on Slobodin and gave him a shove that knocked the man off his feet. Slobodin’s head struck one of the backpacks piled near the center of the tent, rebounding off something solid inside with a crack like a shot from a starter’s pistol.

  Kolmogorova gaped in astonishment, but instead of signaling a climax, the sudden act of violence was like the opening of a floodgate. A shriek rose, not one voice, but three—Dubinina, Thibeaux-Brignolles and now Zolotaryov. All of them were writhing as if their very bones were on fire.

  “They’re mad,” someone shouted. “Get out before they kill us all.”

  The cry, even more than the screams, unleashed total pandemonium. Someone crashed into Kolmogorova, knocking her into the stunned Slobodin. She raised her head cautiously and saw Doroshenko tearing at the side of the tent. The heavy fabric yielded to his bare-handed attack, opening a gaping wound in the shelter. Icy air poured in. But the strange hum relented by a few degrees. Doroshenko plunged through the hole, tearing it even further, and then he was gone. His panic was infectious. Two others—barefoot and wearing nothing more than long undergarments—scrambled through the gash.

  Idiots, Kolmogorova thought. It’s twenty degrees below freezing. They’ll die out there.

  But then in the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the others. Hypothermia was the least of her worries.

  Something was happening to them. All three convulsed, as if their skeletons were about to explode. Dubinina’s head shook back and forth, her face a blur. The woman’s skull was changing shape, ballooning outward as if her brain was expanding.

  The shaking stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Dubinina’s face and head appeared normal again, but her eyes were ablaze with rabid fury and she was staring right at Kolmogorova. With hands curled into feral claws, the woman charged.

  Suddenly, Igor was there, intercepting Dubinina, deflecting her into the side of the tent. He whirled around to face Kolmogorova. “Get out!”

  When she remained rooted in place, he reached out, took her arm and propelled her through the hole. She caught her foot and went sprawling, face down in the snow. A moment later, Igor, supporting the dazed Slobodin with one hand, emerged from the tent and lifted her to her feet with his other.

  The strange light was still blazing in the sky above, and while the riddle of what caused it was now the last thing on Kolmogorova’s mind, it provided enough illumination for her to clearly see. The footprints of the others led away, down the slope toward the edge of the forest.

  Out in the open, the hum was much harder to hear, but she could still feel it shaking her bones. Dubinina and the others’ shrieking was still audible, but now a new noise joined the cacophony—the sound of tearing fabric.

  They’re shredding the tent!

  Kolmogorova could see the others who had fled—Doroshenko and someone else, Krivonischenko perhaps—far ahead, still running as if chased by ravenous wolves. The forest was almost a mile from their campsite, and each step away from the terror they had just escaped took them deeper into the throat of the storm.

  She took a few tentative steps after Igor, who was still helping Slobodin stay on his feet. The snow was infiltrating her socks, melting and refreezing around her toes. “Igor,” she shouted. “We cannot survive out here. We must…” She trailed off as her gaze was drawn once more to the light in the sky.

  Is someone up there, watching us? She thought about Dubinina and the others, driven mad by pain that seemed to have no apparent cause. But somet
hing did cause it, she thought. Poisonous gas? Or some kind of strange mind-control weapon? Is that why they are up there? Watching to see what will happen? Watching us die?

  Will we also go mad?

  Behind her, the tent came apart like a banana peel, revealing the four figures that had remained inside.

  Dubinina’s head was tilted back, like a wolf howling at the light blazing in the sky. Thibeaux-Brignolles and Zolotaryov were still tearing at fabric like insects caught in a spider’s web. The fourth person was Kolevatov, but unlike the others, he did not appear to have been possessed by the madness that had come over the others. Instead, he simply knelt in the midst of the ruined tent, weeping like a frightened child.

  Dubinina’s eyes found Kolmogorova again. The woman’s shoulders rose up, like a cat about to pounce. Then the broad cone of light in the sky tightened into a searing, bright circle no more than twenty feet across. It focused on the tent and the three afflicted skiers.

  All three flinched, hissing in pain. Then, as if driven by a single mind, they erupted out of the tent’s shredded remains and bolted out into the snow.

  The circle of light chased after them.

  The narrow beam, defined by snow flurries, led back to its source in the sky. Kolmogorva was certain now that it was a helicopter with a searchlight, but why it was there and whether its presence boded good or ill, were questions to which she feared she would never know the answer. The bright circle was now just a pinpoint of light, at least a hundred yards away. The three fleeing figures were just indistinct silhouettes dancing in and out of its glare. She did not see Kolevatov. She wondered if he, too, was out there, chasing after the others or perhaps chasing the light.

  “Zina,” Igor said, shouting to be heard over the wind. “Hurry. We must get to the woods. We’ll be safe there.”

  She turned to face him, wishing she could share his certainty. Perhaps he did not truly believe it himself, but the possibility of being affected—or infected—by the madness that had come over the others was a greater threat than the elements. He started down the hill, in the direction Doroshenko and Krivonischenko had gone, urging Slobodin to keep up.