Three minutes later, Chase-wearing the technician’s bunny suit, his face almost totally obscured by the mask and hood-stepped onto the factory floor. The key card snapped back to the reel as he released it.

There was nowhere to hide his gun in the suit, so he’d been forced to holster it under his jacket. It would take a few seconds to tear down the zip and draw it. He just hoped he wouldn’t need the weapon in a hurry.

He made his way through the huge room, trying to look purposeful without appearing too urgent. None of the technicians seemed to be paying any attention to him, just another figure in white. A casual glance up at the conference room to check on his target-

Shit!

The room was now dark, a cold glow from the far side revealing that it had windows on two walls, looking out across another section of the factory. Yuen had gone-and so had Sophia.

He increased his pace, no longer concerned about fitting in. He needed to catch Yuen and his companions when they were alone, away from any workers who might raise the alarm-

The door at the far end of the central aisle opened. Yuen stepped through, marching straight towards him.

Chase made a sharp turn to stand at the air lock of the nearest clean room. Yuen was accompanied by the suited, goatee-bearded man he’d been talking to in the conference room and a uniformed security guard. An armed security guard, a holstered pistol at his side. Of the man in the lab coat, the two bodyguards and Sophia there was no sign.

Yuen was approaching fast, eyes sweeping from side to side as he surveyed his domain. He glanced at Chase-and his gaze locked on to him.

Chase tensed, lifting a hand towards his suit’s zip…

But there was no shock of recognition in Yuen’s face, no barked orders to the guard. Chase realized why he had drawn his attention-Yuen was wondering why one of his employees was standing around rather than working.

Chase ran the card through the reader beside the air lock door, not even knowing if the man from whom he’d stolen it had access to this particular chamber. Green light. The door buzzed. Chase gratefully pulled it open and stepped inside, pretending to fumble with his card as Yuen walked past-

“You!”

Chase looked around at the shout, audible even through the glass walls. Yuen had stopped, and was pointing an accusing finger at him. His companions stopped as well, the security guard’s hand hovering over his gun.

Caught, knowing he could never draw his own gun fast enough to beat the guard, Chase did the only thing he could think of-act innocent. He pointed a gloved finger uncertainly at himself, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes, you!” Yuen repeated, looking irate. He glared at Chase for a long and uncomfortable moment, then indicated the matting on the floor. “Wipe your feet! Every time you track dust in there, it costs me half a million dollars in ruined silicon wafers!”

Chase offered an apologetic nod, then made a show of carefully wiping his covered feet on the mat. Yuen jerked his head in exasperation, then strode away, the two other men in tow.

Relieved, Chase watched until they turned from the central aisle and headed for an enclosed cabin at one side of the room, then swiped his card to leave the air lock. He resumed his course for the door at the far end of the factory. There was another card reader next to it; he slid his stolen ID through it-

Red light, and a harsh warning rasp. Access denied. The technician he was impersonating didn’t have clearance to enter this part of the facility.

He looked back at the nearby clean rooms, suddenly nervous. If any of the other workers wondered why he was trying to enter a restricted area, they could raise the alarm at any moment…

A chime. Chase whipped around to see that the light on the card reader had turned green, the door buzzing as it unlocked. He opened it and hurried through.

Instantly suspicious. There was no way the computer controlling the lock would deny him access, then change its mind without another swipe of the key card. Someone had let him in.

He was in a hallway. Directly ahead was another security door, leading into the next section of the factory. Corridors headed off to each side, but the stairs up to the next floor were his first priority. If he had to search for Sophia, it made sense to begin from where he’d last seen her. He pulled off the bunny suit and shoved the key card into a pocket, then drew his gun.

Chase ascended the stairs, rapidly swinging the Steyr in both directions at the top in case anybody was waiting for him, then jogged to the door of the conference room.

He burst through it, gun sweeping the darkened room. Empty. To his left was the window overlooking the huge chip fabrication room he’d just exited. Knowing Sophia wasn’t there, he instead went to the window on his right and looked at the industrial facility that lay below.

It wasn’t making microchips.

Chase recognized several barrels as being the same kind that he’d seen in the mine in Botswana. Barrels filled with uranium ore.

They were lined up on a conveyor belt that led into a very large and solid-looking machine. Some kind of furnace; even though it was fully enclosed, the air above it shimmered with heat haze, banks of air conditioners on the ceiling providing cooling. A heavy pipe led off to one side into a thick steel container, seemingly for waste; other pipes went into a second furnace. Although it was smaller than the first, the fact that it was practically buried inside cooling equipment suggested it was far hotter.

From there, more pipes-thick, carrying high-pressure gas-passed into several condenser chambers, light rapidly pulsing through little inspection portholes of six-inch-thick leaded glass. Laser light, the blue flashes pure and unvarying. At the front of each chamber was another steel compartment, where the end result of the process was collected.

Chase knew what the process was; what it made. He’d been briefed on it by the SAS as preparation for a secret mission in Iran, partly so that if he encountered it he could identify it… but mostly so that he could sabotage it.

It was an AVLIS system-Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation-and it had only one purpose: to take uranium ore, vaporize it, and pass the resulting superheated gas through a powerful laser beam of a very specific wavelength. The science had been way over Chase’s head-he was a soldier, not an atomic physicist-but he knew what the laser separated out inside the collection chambers. Enriched uranium, weapons-grade, produced faster, more safely and with greater purity than in traditional gas centrifuge systems.

And as Chase surveyed the rest of the factory, he saw the uranium’s destination.

An assembly line had been set up, a row of at least twenty gleaming stainless-steel cases in progressive stages of completion spaced out along it. Bomb cases.

“Buggeration and fuckery…” he whispered. What he saw below was advanced technology, beyond the capabilities of most nations seeking to join the nuclear club.

But Yuen had it-his own personal nuclear bomb factory, built in secret with the billions of dollars his hightech companies had brought him.

Everything had changed. This was no longer just a rescue mission, and Yuen’s dealings were now more than selling uranium on the black market. He was building-had built, Chase realized, as he saw the completed last bomb on the line-nuclear weapons. Whatever Yuen’s intentions, the factory had to be shut down. Now.

He looked over the plant again, looking for weak spots. According to his SAS briefing, the lasers were the key, the most complex and expensive part of the entire process. If they were destroyed, or even damaged, the whole system would be rendered utterly useless.