Immortal by Dean Crawford Page B

even, people who know what he’s up to and want to get the jump on him. It would explain the need for these activists to hit
the computer servers as well as free the animals.’
    ‘Hired help,’ Ethan agreed. ‘Which means conspiracy, criminal damage, even attempted homicide. We need to find out if Saffron is working for anybody and put the screws into
them to see what they sing about.’
    ‘I got some descriptions from the scientists before the paramedics got to work on them,’ Lopez said. ‘It’s not much, but Zamora reckons he knows at least one of the
activists, a Colin Manx. Trouble is they’re hard to pin down. According to local police they live rough out in the badlands, never staying in one place for long.’
    Ethan surveyed the scene for a moment, thinking hard. Activists like Saffron and Colin Manx were opportunists, ordinary people who rarely had access to major weapons or possessed tactical
skills. The likelihood that they had achieved what amounted to a carefully planned strike on a difficult-to-access laboratory told Ethan that, somewhere along the line, there had to be money
involved and, more importantly, motive. Freeing monkeys was one thing, but deliberately destroying scientific evidence and endeavor out of sheer spite was another. Ethan had looked into the eyes of
Saffron, and whatever he had seen dwelling there did not match her actions. Aggressive? Yes. Desperate? Certainly. Spiteful? Definitely not. She could have killed someone during her attack but had
studiously avoided doing so.
    ‘What are you thinking?’ Lopez asked curiously.
    Ethan turned to her.
    ‘I’ll look into Hiram Conley at the town hall and see what I can find. Willis mentioned that there were other people suffering from the same infection as Conley, so I might even find
evidence of them there along with Conley’s aliases. I want you to start looking for Colin Manx and Tyler Willis. We need to find them before whoever organized this attack gets to
them.’

14

BREVIG MISSION
ALASKA
    Donald Wolfe looked out of the window of the Beech aircraft as it descended toward a runway that skirted the bleak waters of Lost River Shoal. To the west, vast mountain
ranges towered across the horizon, their lofty peaks swathed in snow, while to the east the slate-gray surface of the Bering Sea churned with flecks of white foam.
    The aircraft thumped down onto the gravel runway before taxiing to a holding area at the northern end of the field. There was no control tower or terminal, just grim-looking shacks and a small
town crouched low against the bitter Arctic winds.
    Wolfe opened the door of the aircraft and stepped out. His nose instantly became numb and frost encrusted his eyebrows as he pulled his hood up against the bitter wind. It wasn’t snowing,
but the ground underfoot was rock-solid permafrost, bitter tundra and clumps of wiry grass that stretched away as far as the eye could see.
    ‘Mister Wolfe?’
    A young man approached him from where he had been waiting beside a quad bike. In the distance, Wolfe could see people watching them, native Inuit families who lived in this remotest of outposts
far from even the most rudimentary of luxuries like electricity and drive-ins.
    ‘You are?’ Wolfe inquired.
    ‘Jason Moore, sir. It’s an honor to have you here and—’
    ‘Cut the bullshit,’ Wolfe snapped. ‘Where is it?’
    ‘The station is out on the tundra,’ Moore said quickly. ‘We’ll have to hurry. The light won’t last much longer and you’ll need it to fly out again as the
runway only has emergency lighting.’
    Wolfe nodded as they walked across to the quad bike. Moore started it and Wolfe took his place on the pillion seat. The ride out across the tundra took almost twenty minutes, but it felt like a
lifetime. The searing cold bit deep into Wolfe’s bones, creeping through his joints to chill the blood in his veins. By the time he’d first glimpsed through the misty air the tents
dwarfed by the