-40 DEGREES

CHAPTER 3

The heat was the first thing. It wasn't the dry, radiated warmth of a penthouse heating system; it was the suffocating, particulate heat of Kandahar, Afghanistan in July.

Thwup-thwup-thwup.

The sound of the Pave Hawk rotors beat against the inside of Dr Carter Grant's skull. The dust tasted like copper and ancient pulverised stone.

He was running, boots slamming into the hardpack and kicking up clouds of talc. He wasn't wearing scrubs; he was wearing full rattle- thirty pounds of ceramic plating, ammo, and medical gear.

"Carter! Move! We're taking fire!"

The voice was distorted, tearing through the comms in his ear. But Carter didn't stop.

Thirty meters out was a pile of rubble that used to be a bakery and a child was in the centre of the killzone. Maybe six years old. Dust-caked face.

His lungs were burning as he reached out, his hand gloved in tactical Nomex. Just grab him. Grab him and tuck.

"Carter, get down!"

He lunged, fingertips brushing the boy's shirt but that's when it happened. The ground beneath the boy disintegrated as the missile exploded...

Carter jolted awake, inhaling a sharp, violent intake of oxygen that expanded his ribs until they ached.

He was sitting bolt upright on his bed. The penthouse was freezing, the thermostat set to a clinical sixty-five degrees, but his skin was slick with sweat. Despite the absolute silence of the apartment, he could still hear the roar of the fading rotors in his mind.

He looked down at his right hand. It was resting on the high-thread-count sheets, trembling. It was a microscopic, rhythmic shudder of the abductor pollicis muscle.

He stared at it with detached fascination. Psychosomatic response. Adrenaline dump. Cortisol spike.

He closed his eyes, inhaled for four seconds, held for four, exhaled for four. Tactical breathing.

He opened his eyes, made a fist and then like magic, the tremor stopped.

That's when the phone on the nightstand buzzed, vibrating against the glass surface like an angry insect.

Carter picked it up. "Grant."

"Bad news, Carter." It was Dr, Aris, Chief of Staff at the Foundation. He sounded like he was pacing. "The FAA just grounded everything. The charter is cancelled because of some 'Unprecedented atmospheric instability' over the Rockies. It's now a no-go zone, especially after the NASA prediction."

Carter stood up, the phone pressed to his ear. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, only wearing grey Nike sweatpants. Billings, Montana sprawled below him in a grid of amber and white lights shivering in the winter haze.

"Leo doesn't have time for instability," His voice sounded like gravel. "He's on ECMO. The donor heart is already in transit. If I'm not there on Christmas morning to harvest and transplant, the organ will expire and he will die."

"We know. We pulled every string the foundation has." Aris paused. "We booked a private transport to Union Station. You're on the Northern Star Express. It's the only thing moving west tonight. A courier is downstairs with the organ transport cooler and your gear. You have thirty minutes."

Thirty minutes?!

Normally, he would be angry. But his time in the military had instilled in him the ability to be always prepared, to follow orders without question. Besides, a life was at risk here.

"Carter?"

"I'm on my way," he said, and killed the line before sauntering off into the bathroom.

Thirteen minutes later he was inside the Foundation's town car which smelled of lemon polish and heated leather, sitting motionless in the back and next to the organ transport cooler. It was a heavy reinforced box labelled HUMAN TISSUE: HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE.

"Dr Carter?"

He shifted his gaze to Chloe, a junior trauma nurse from the foundation. She sat across from him, flushed, her pupils slightly dilated.

"We packed the prototype valve," she said, tapping a sterile case on her lap. "Just in case the donor heart has structural anomalies. Dr Aris insisted."

"Good," Carter said, turning back to the dossier in his hand which read:

Patient: Leo Rossi. Age: 6. Status: Critical.

He studied the boy's echo scans. He didn't see a tragedy: He saw a puzzle of plumbing and pressure gradients. The boy was a PR stunt for the Grant Foundation, a charity case to wash the corporate image clean, but to Carter, the politics were noise. The boy was a failing engine that needed a mechanic.

"It's amazing what you're doing," Chloe said, her voice dropping an octave. "Flying out on Christmas Eve. Most surgeons wouldn't go this length."

Carter didn't look up. "Most surgeons don't have a success rate that justifies the insurance premium."

He wasn't trying to be rude. He was just conserving energy. Interactions required calibration, and he was currently calibrated for a twelve-hour solo operation, not small talk with lovesick nurses.

The car slowed, gliding to the curb at the Union Station.

Chloe reached out, her hand lingering on his forearm for a fraction of a second too long. "Good luck, Dr Grant. The world is watching."

Carter stepped into the biting wind, adjusting the grip of his heavy medical case.

"Let them watch," he muttered before moving through the chaotic Station, carrying the seventy-pound medical case as if it were a briefcase.

"Oh my god, is that him?"

A flash went off to his left.

"It is! It's the Saint of Surgery!"

Damn, they were too fast. A group of teenagers pointed their phones at him. Carter didn't break stride or wave. He simply angled his head away, pulling the collar of his coat up. The nickname made his teeth ache. Saint. If they knew the things his hands had done in Afghanistan, they wouldn't ask for autographs.

He reached the platform gate. The crowd was dense here, a bottleneck of bodies pushing toward the train.

Carter scanned the gap in the crowd and was about to move when he spotted something.

Twenty feet ahead, a stunning asian lady with a small frame and dark hair was clutching a laptop bag to her chest like a shield. Her cortical arousal was high. Jerky movements, rapid head turns. She was terrified.

Carter's gaze shifted instantly.

Ten feet behind her was a man in an expensive coat.

But he looked at the mechanics.

The man wasn't watching the departure board. He wasn't watching his footing, his eyes were locked on the nape of the woman's neck. His weight had also shifted onto the balls of his feet in predatory readiness with his right hand buried in his coat pocket, not for warmth but to conceal the outline of a grip.

He watched as the man tripped her from behind, causing the woman to slip on the ice. The man caught her and then they started talking.

His mind was already ringing alarm bells, but the conductor for his private sleeper was waving him down further along the platform. Protocol was clear: Do not engage. The mission is the boy.

The man and the woman moved towards the train and boarded right after.

It wasn't until five minutes later that he saw them again. They'd passed his car and were headed toward the vestibule connection.

The soldier in Carter woke up instantly and the surgeon went dormant. He adjusted his grip on the medical case and followed immediately.

The noise between the cars was a deafening, industrial roar. He opened the heavy steel door to the vestibule just as the train lurched forward, leaving the station.

The scene froze for a microsecond when he saw it.

The exterior latch was open. Wind and snow was whipping into the small space. The woman, Maya, was pinned against the doorframe, her feet dangling over the rushing tracks. The man had her by the throat.

Without a second thought, Carter moved, covering the six feet between them in two strides. The assassin released Maya and spun, drawing a serrated tactical knife from his coat in a blur of motion. He struck a downward s***h, aiming for the subclavian artery.

But he didn't retreat. He stepped into the blade, catching the assassin by the wrist with his left forearm and absorbing the impact on the radius bone. A hot, sharp line of pain flared instantly, but he ignored it. He trapped the arm, wrapping his limb over the assassin's elbow joint.

Leverage. Torque. Snap.

He drove his right knee into the assassin's liver. The man folded as the air knocked out of him in a wet gasp.

"f**k!" The man growled.

Carter didn't stop. He used the train's acceleration. He grabbed the man's lapels, pivoted on his heel and converted the assassin's forward momentum into a throw, releasing him as the man flew backward out the open the door. He tumbled onto the snowy embankment, limbs flailing as he disappeared into the darkness of the rail yard.

Then Carter grabbed the handle of the exterior door and slammed it shut, throwing the deadbolt and turning to a spooked-out Maya who was crumpled on the floor, clutching her throat, eyes wide and wet with shock. She looked at him, then at the door, then back at him.

"You okay?" Carter asked flatly, squatting towards her and leaning to check for airway obstruction.

Maya nodded, unable to speak. She swallowed hard and spoke in a raspy whisper. "Yeah."

THE PLATFORM. 11:55 PM

On the far end of the deserted platform, standing beneath a flickering halogen lamp, three uniformed Montana police officers watched the train disappear.

They had seen the struggle in the open doorway and they had seen the man thrown from the moving train. They didn't reach for their radios or run towards the body in the snow.

One of them tapped the earpiece coiled behind his ear.

"Command," he said softly. "Target A12 failed. The Asset is still on board and moving west."

He paused, listening to the voice on the other end.

"Understood," the Sergeant said. "Initiate Protocol Zero."