A freezing gale hit Chase. He braced himself.

Engine screaming, the Mercedes plowed up the ramp. Eduardo was trapped in the doorway, nowhere to go-

The car rammed into him, folding him over the hood as the Mercedes hit the doors and crashed into the interior of the cable car station.

Chase stamped on the brake, but the car was already swerving uncontrollably towards a wall-

It hit at an angle, the left front fender crushed to scrap in an instant. Eduardo flew from the hood and bounced off the wall in a spray of blood.

The air bags all inflated simultaneously with rifleshot bangs of expanding gas. Chase felt as though he’d been punched in the face by the Michelin Man. Even over the crunch of the collision, he heard cartilage crackle inside his nose.

The car spun to a standstill. The air bag deflated and Chase sat up. His nose throbbed. It wasn’t a break-he knew that painful sensation all too well-but it felt like a hairline split that would be sore for some time.

But if he didn’t get out of the car fast, an aching nose would be the least of his worries. The pursuing guards would be here in thirty seconds, less…

He snatched up his gun and scrambled from the wrecked Mercedes. The white-painted interior of the cable car station was bland and functional, the only color a literal splash of red where Eduardo’s body had been flung against the wall. No sign of Sophia-or the bomb-but a flight of stairs led upwards.

Chase ran up them, emerging in a large and chilly open-ended room-the terminus for the cable cars. It was technically a “gondola lift” rather than a traditional cable car system, the gondolas able to detach from the line so passengers could board and disembark while other cars on the cable kept moving. Two boxy enclosed gondolas sat stationary, waiting to rejoin the line.

A third was in motion.

Sophia stood at its rear window. She smiled at Chase, waving as the gondola swept from the brightly lit terminus and out into the moonlit night.

Chase whipped up his gun, aiming it at her head. She didn’t move.

And neither did he. He couldn’t pull the trigger. Whatever she’d done, whatever she was planning to do, she had still once been his lover, his wife-

“Shit!” Chase snarled, angry as much at himself as at her. The gondola ascended, Sophia now just a silhouette in the window. The moving cable sang over the rumble of the machinery driving it.

The SUV squealed to a stop outside. Chase jumped into the first of the waiting gondolas and found a control panel by the front window. A large red button was marked “Starten.”

He hit it.

Chains and gears rattled. The gondola lurched along its track around the huge horizontal wheel at the end of the cable, then jolted as it slipped back onto the line. Ratchets clunked above him, and the gondola locked onto the steel cable to begin its ascent.

Sophia’s car was about a hundred feet ahead. They would reach the top station at most twenty seconds apart-meaning Sophia would barely have time to get clear of the gondola before he arrived, never mind transfer the bomb to another vehicle.

She looked back at Chase. He gave her a wave that was considerably less cheery than the one she’d given him. Sophia cocked her head in a once familiar expression of annoyance. Then she raised a hand, not waving this time but pointing at something in his gondola.

Or, he realized, behind it.

Chase rushed to the rear window. Another gondola had just mounted the cable. He could see three security guards aboard.

Armed guards.

And not just armed with handguns. They were carrying Steyr AUG A3 carbines-and were already opening the windows of their car, preparing to fire up the cable at him and turn his own gondola into Swiss cheese!

Chase knew from its weight alone that his own gun only had one bullet left. The grenade was a hard, cold bulge in his jacket pocket, but even if he lobbed it perfectly through the other car’s open window they would still have time to cut him to pieces.

He checked the view ahead. His car was about a quarter of the way along the cable, ascending quickly. It would only take another two minutes to reach the top.

Whether he could survive for two minutes was another matter entirely…

The gondola had room for about twelve people, padded bench seats running around the interior. The bench beneath the rear window acted as a lid cover for a compartment containing rescue equipment.

Chase smashed the overhead fluorescent light with the butt of his pistol to mask himself in darkness, then seized the top of the rear seat and ripped it loose. He dropped it on its long edge against the front of the compartment and threw himself onto the floor beside it-

The rear windows blew apart as streams of bullets spat through them, the guards firing their AUGs on full auto. The rapid-fire clank-clank-clank of more shots puncturing the sheet-steel skin of the gondola sounded like a hailstorm.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Chase yelled, arms raised to protect his face from the blizzard of glass as the other windows were smashed by the onslaught. Behind him, the contents of the emergency compartment were ripped to pieces by gunfire, the bullets smacking through the metal side of the box and the padding of the bench seat-before embedding in the sturdy wood of the bench itself.

The seat kicked with each impact, but Chase knew that the chances of an AUG bullet passing through five layers of protection-the skin of the gondola, the coils of rope and chain escape ladders, the side of the emergency compartment, the seat padding and the wooden bench-were low enough to give him a hope of survival.

A slim hope-but he would take whatever he could get.

His attackers sprayed the gondola with burst after burst. Every window was already destroyed, holes erupting in the walls, the ceiling, even the floor. A lump of wood blew off the corner of the bench inches from his head. The makeshift barricade wouldn’t last much longer.

A brief pause in the barrage. The guards were reloading. But that would only take a few seconds. And there wasn’t much he could do in that time.

Except-

Chase jumped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the emergency ladder running along the gondola’s ceiling, swinging it down. He dropped back to the floor just as the firing began again.

The entire car suddenly jolted, swinging like a pendulum from the cable. Tortured metal groaned and creaked.

Chase risked opening his eyes as shrapnel sprayed through the gondola. His vision was adjusting to the darkness, the interior lit by the unearthly blue-white glow of the moon-and in the half-light he saw the perforated ceiling flex, crumple lines radiating out from the center like strained kitchen foil.

The gondola was tearing loose from its support arm!

The metal was giving way, the bullet holes weakening it so much that it could no longer support its own weight-

And more holes appeared every second.

Chase looked at the emergency ladder. He hadn’t intended to go into the open to jump from the car until the last possible moment-but if he didn’t do so within the next few seconds, the only direction he would go was several hundred feet straight down.

Wood splintered behind him, broken pieces hitting his legs.

Metal screeched, and the back end of the gondola dropped a few inches. There was a rip in the ceiling, a gash torn across it behind the base of the suspension arm.

It was going to fall-

The firing stopped.

Reloading-

Chase raced up the ladder and flung open the top hatch. He jumped onto the roof, throwing himself against the bulky steel suspension arm.

With an almost human scream, the metal roof tore apart. The pockmarked gondola dropped away, tumbling towards the valley floor far below and smashing onto the rocks with a bang that echoed off the towering face of the dam.