Read Online The Extinction Code by Dean Crawford - Free Book Online

stones to survive in general population even if MJ–12 weren’t gunning for him.’
    Wilms shuffled to stand before them, and Ethan looked down at the old man.
    ‘Last chance, Vic’,’ he said, mimicking Lopez’s talent for subtly irritating Wilms. ‘You talk now, or you spend what little will be left of your life waiting for a shiv in your kidneys.’
    Wilms visibly trembled, and not from the cold. Ethan could see the fear in his eyes, running like poison through his veins. The old man’s shoulders sagged, and he spoke softly with the voice of a broken man.
    ‘There was a new player,’ he whispered, ‘a man who had approached Majestic Twelve a short while before the Antarctic expedition with a proposal.’
    ‘What kind of proposal?’ Lopez demanded.
    ‘It was something to do with old bones,’ Wilms replied, clearly not sure on the details of a science he probably knew very little about. ‘I figured this guy was trying to resurrect extinct species in order to extract living samples of some kind of super–virus from them.’
    Ethan shot a glance at Lopez. ‘A link with Channing.’
    Lopez nodded.
    ‘What’s that got to do with Varginha, and who are they?’
    ‘It’s not a them ,’ Wilms said, ‘it’s a where. It’s in Brazil.’
    Ethan couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain that Wilms could be relied upon, but the figure that he cut in the dawn, thin and pale and beaten, suggested that Wilms was a spent force who had finally realized that spilling everything was the only way to ensure that he wasn’t murdered in some filthy prison shower by young thugs who would pull off the homicide for nothing more than a packet of cigarettes.
    ‘All right,’ he said finally, willing to show Wilms an act of kindness in the hopes that it would encourage him to say more. ‘You just bought yourself a reprieve, but we need a name. Who was this new player that approached Majestic Twelve?’
    Wilms looked up at Ethan and parted his lips to speak.
    There was no sound as Wilm’s head snapped suddenly to one side as the side of his skull splattered across the asphalt at their feet and his body dropped in free–fall, the light gone from his eyes.
    The sound of the shot boomed across the compound an instant later, even as Ethan and Lopez stood still and watched Wilms’s lifeless body collapse into a heap on the ground before them. It took Ethan a full second to whirl and look in the direction of the shot, scanning first the nearest watch tower even as he realized that the delay in hearing the shot must mean that the shooter was much further away.
    ‘Holy crap!’ Lopez uttered as she spun on her heel, one hand on her pistol.
    The guards around them scattered, weapons drawn as Ethan and Lopez dashed for cover behind the nearest towering walls surrounding the compound. Ethan ran and looked up as he did so, to see a low ridge of hills something over a mile away and silhouetted against the bright dawn sky.
    Lopez hit the wall and turned her back to it as she gasped.
    ‘Where the hell did that come from?!’
    Alarms began droning across the prison as Ethan checked his pistol’s magazine.
    ‘At least a mile to the north east,’ he replied and looked up at the sky. ‘Sniper rifle, maximum range, perfect conditions, no wind and minimal thermal interference. A professional hit.’
    ‘Mitchell,’ Lopez growled.
    ‘It’s a fair bet,’ Ethan confirmed, ‘either that or MJ–12 contracted somebody else to silence Wilms.’
    Ethan called across to a sergeant sheltering behind the thick wall of the nearest watch tower. ‘You guys got a helicopter here?’
    The guard shook his head. ‘Marshall’s office, or the local airfield, but they won’t be up here at short notice!’
    Ethan shoved his pistol back into its holster and dashed for the nearest of the prison trucks. Lopez rushed after him, and they climbed into the cab as Ethan started the engine and yelled out of the window.
    ‘Get the damned gate open or the