But only two controls caught his attention. One was a large dial with the stylized symbol of a lightning bolt above it, the other a red button.

An electronic chime sounded.

The door burst open, security guards pouring into the room. Guns raised and ready. They saw him-

Chase grabbed the laser and swung it around, supporting it with his right arm as his left whirled the dial to full power and stabbed at the button.

There was a blue flash and a noise like a muffled gunshot. For a moment Chase thought the laser had overloaded… then every single one of the guards keeled over dead, smoke billowing from neat holes in their chests. The fully powered laser beam, invisible in the filtered air of the factory, had burned straight through the line of men in a millisecond, leaving a smoldering dark spot on the far wall behind them.

“Oh I like this!” Chase crowed, experiencing an incongruous moment of elation at his new toy before remembering what he had to do. He turned back around, taking aim at the protruding cabinet housing the laser of the farthest condenser chamber. Another touch of the button, and he saw the briefest flicker of intense blue light on the cabinet before the access hatch blew out with a huge bang and a cloud of smoke. Warning lights flashed red on the control panel.

One down. He lined up the laser on the next condenser and fired again, getting another satisfying explosion as the assembly blew apart. Two more shots took care of the remaining condensers.

Another chime, more distant. The door at the other end of the room had opened, and he could hear men shouting as they ran into the factory. Chase brought the laser around to take aim, but he couldn’t see them from his position, blocked by the furnace.

Time to leave.

He hunted for an escape route. The broken window of the conference room was too high to reach, and there was nothing nearby he could climb onto.

But there were pipes above it, conduits for the air-conditioning and filtration system…

He pushed the red button again, this time keeping his finger firmly on it as he swept the laser across the suspended pipes, the blue spot of the beam burning with supernova fury and slicing through the metal. The severed conduits swung down like a giant hinge and hit the floor with an echoing crash.

Chase threw down the laser to break it, and ran up the fallen pipe work. Momentum alone carried him most of the way up the steep slope before he started to lose his footing, the metal buckling beneath his feet.

More shouts, a gunshot-

He flung himself through the hole in the window as if performing a high jump, clearing the lower sill by an inch. He thumped onto the carpet and rolled to a stop, then sprang up to find the Glock that Philippe had dropped. He grabbed it, then rushed around the table to retrieve his possessions. The grenade he shoved into a pocket, then he hefted his pistol.

A gun in each hand, he turned to face the door.

Charging footsteps outside-

Chase whipped around towards the window overlooking the chip fabrication plant and raised both guns, squeezed the triggers, then ran-

The window shattered just before he reached it and leapt out. He arced towards one of the clean rooms, about to crash down onto its glass ceiling.

He fired again, guns aimed downwards. The ceiling exploded, a razor-edged monsoon cascading into the clean room below. Chase’s feet thudded bone-jarringly onto a workbench, the pain of his leg wound flaring back to life. He ignored it and threw himself into a forward roll, racks of fragile silicon wafers tumbling and crunching beneath him, and flew off the end of the bench to land on both feet.

His jacket was covered with the broken remains of glinting microprocessors. “Chips with everything,” he muttered as he got his bearings. He had landed near one side of the huge room, the door through which he’d originally entered in the center of the far wall. A warren of glass lay between himself and the exit.

Shouting from above-the guards had entered the conference room and realized where he had gone. And more were spilling through the entrance off to his left, with a clear line of fire up the central aisle.

But the shortest distance between two points was a straight line…

Both guns raised in front of him, Chase ran again, heading directly for the far exit. That the route was blocked by clean rooms didn’t stop him-he kept firing, glass walls bursting apart in his path as terrified technicians dived for cover. He sprinted through the transparent maze as it parted, shimmering fragments spraying around his pumping legs like breaking waves.

Philippe’s gun clicked empty. Without a moment of hesitation Chase dropped it, still firing with his own automatic at the last clean room. One bullet took out both walls-he ran faster through the debris, free hand pulling out the key card as he charged for the door.

Guards were running after him. He fired a single shot into the throng, as much to force them to seek cover as to kill. They scattered.

Swipe-

Green light. Chime. Go!

He ran through and immediately turned down the corridor leading to the lobby. A security guard stood in his path, but Chase blew him away with a single shot before the man even had time to take aim.

The lobby was an anonymous corporate space with murals of microcircuitry on the walls. No more guards. Chase turned again, running for the double doors. Yuen’s Mercedes was still parked outside, the driver now standing outside the car, waiting anxiously for his boss.

Chase didn’t waste the second it would have taken to open the doors. Instead he simply fired a shot both to shatter the glass and to warn the driver to get the hell out of his way, and vaulted through the empty frame to land by the car’s open door. The driver had taken the hint, already making good time towards Bern.

He jumped into the Mercedes, finding the engine running; the driver had been prepared to get his employer to safety as quickly as possible. But Chase didn’t intend to head for safety as he floored the accelerator, the car fishtailing away from the microchip factory in a trail of smoking rubber.

He had to stop Sophia from getting away with the nuke. No matter what.

Chase knew where Sophia was heading. To get the bomb to her plane, she would have to take the cable car up to the top of the dam.

The lower cable car station was at the facility’s northwestern corner. He made a screeching turn onto the road running parallel to the river and powered towards it. The station was a tower with a high sloping roof, easily distinguishable from the industrial units.

A white van was parked in front of it. Its rear doors gaped open, the interior empty. The nuke had already been transferred.

Chase’s gaze flicked to the cable stretching away to the upper station. There were no cars moving along it.

Sophia hadn’t set off yet. There was still a chance to stop her.

Headlights flashed behind him, an SUV skidding around a corner in pursuit. A few hundred yards back, but it wouldn’t take long to catch up once Chase stopped the Mercedes.

And now movement ahead-the second bodyguard, Eduardo, appeared in the station’s entrance.

Chase ducked as a shot smacked into the windshield, spiderweb cracks instantly obscuring his view. The bullet zipped past him and hit the backseat with a whump of tearing leather.

A second bullet blasted the rearview mirror from its stalk with a tinkle of broken glass. Seven years’ bad luck, thought Chase, but one of them would run out of luck in considerably less time, well under seven seconds-

He swerved the Mercedes, charging at the ramp up to the entrance.

Eduardo fired two more shots, one gouging a hole in the hood, the other shattering the windshield.