Bodyguard Lockdown

by Donna Young

  After all, he had his orders. Lewis’s lips twisted. But very few carried as much satisfaction.

  “Let’s go,” Rayo yelled from the edge of the ravine, catching Lewis’s attention.

  The men prodded Booker and Sandra up into the helicopter. Lewis grabbed a set of handcuffs from a nearby bag, tossed them to the nearest guard. “Cuff her.”

  “What are the handcuffs for?” Jim demanded.

  “General Trygg’s direct orders, Colonel. He wants Doctor Haddad and McKnight restrained,” Lewis sneered. He glanced at the man nearest the doctor. “Do it.”

  Sandra winced when the handcuffs clamped around her wrists.

  “A waste of steel, right, Rayo?” Booker’s eyes narrowed as the guards handcuffed his wrists in front of him. “I won’t be finishing this ride, will I?”

  Jim looked at Lewis, who shrugged and turned back in his seat. “Take it up with the general, Colonel.”

  The pilot pulled back on the throttle.

  The floor jolted under Sandra’s feet, tossing her off balance. She grabbed for the nearest beam with both hands.

  Suddenly, bullets ripped across the windshield, over the outside of the helicopter.

  “Hold on!” the pilot yelled, then jerked the throttle, banked the helicopter around.

  Equipment flew against the walls, through the open door. Men scrambled against the tilt, slammed into the back of the helicopter.

  Booker shifted, catching himself on a hanging strap, his eyes on Lewis.

  Lewis grabbed the wall, raised his pistol.

  “No!” Sandra gripped the beam harder, swung her legs up and kicked Booker square in the back.

  “Grab McKnight!” Rayo yelled. But the warning came too late.

  Booker flew through the open doorway and dropped two stories to the desert below.

  “Make sure she doesn’t cause more trouble!” Lewis ordered.

  Sandra spun around saw the pistol gripped in one of the guards’ meaty fists.

  Pain exploded in her temple and then she fell.

  Into a deep, black void.

  * * *

  BOOKER BLINKED, FORCING his eyes to open against the glare of the sun, the sharp stabs of pain as his body woke.

  She shoved him out of the helicopter!

  Booker focused, spit out the grains of sand, then raised himself up on his hands. When he got ahold of the doc’s beautiful neck, he’d wring it.

  He took a quick inventory of his injuries. Sprained wrist, twisted shoulder. When he shifted to his knees, pain jabbed his side.

  Bruised ribs.

  “Well, well.” The voice drifted over him, prodded him between his shoulder blades with the barrel of a machine gun. “That was quite a free fall you took, McKnight.”

  “I told you he survived, Boba.”

  Booker turned over, took in the Contee brothers standing a few feet away. “You were the ones who fired on the helicopter, weren’t you?”

  “Guilty.” Madu Contee smiled lopsidedly through a fat bottom lip, revealing a fresh gap in his teeth. “Although, we were just trying to damage it enough to force a landing.”

  “We stopped when we saw you falling,” Boba added. “We weren’t allowed to shoot you.”

  “That was orders. This isn’t.” Without warning, Madu kicked him, catching him in the stomach.

  Pain ripped through Booker’s gut. He rolled over, sucking in oxygen.

  “That was for wiping out all my merchandise at the warehouse, McKnight.” He dragged Booker up by the collar, putting them almost nose to nose. “A half million dollars of weapons...gone.”

  “And a few of your teeth it seems.”

  “More than that,” Boba commented, his brow creased, his tone serious. “The office chair shot back and hit him in the crotch—”

  “Shut up, Boba,” Madu warned. He dropped Booker and advanced on his brother, his fists tight.

  “What did I say?” Boba put his hands up, confused. “You screamed loud. I heard you over the ringing in my ears—”

  “Damn it, Boba!” Madu slapped his brother upside his head. “You just never know when to stop talking—”

  “I don’t have time for family squabbles, boys.” Booker maneuvered himself to his knees, then stood. “Either kill me or take me to Minos.”

  * * *

  TAER’S HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL offices occupied one of the city’s tallest buildings. Twenty-four floors to be exact.

  Although Doctor Omar Haddad had worked on all twenty-four floors at one time or another, the basement was where he preferred. Where he found his solitude.

  Alone with his thoughts, his equipment and the dead for company.

  The vault was what most of those who worked with him called the coronor’s lab.

  A long, wide room of tiled white flooring and concrete walls covered half the length of the hospital wing. Its farthest wall was little more than a bank of mortuary refrigerators, large enough to house fifty bodies.

  Omar Haddad stood in the middle of the room, amidst the ten examining tables, all of which were empty except one.

  He stared down at the man on the table. Senator Keith Harper. Once a friend, a colleague—who turned on his country at the whim of his daughter and her greed.

  Senator Harper, a man in need of the love of his daughter. Until her need for money destroyed her, and in its aftermath, him, too.

  The other man groaned, and his eyes blinked open, clearing the haze of the drug away.

  “What the hell?” Harper focused on Omar. He struggled to rise. For the first time Omar saw fear and panic in his friend’s features.

  “You told the wrong person that you were coming after me.” Omar reached over to his surgical tray and grabbed surgical gloves. With deft fingers, he snapped the gloves over his hands. “Minos owed me a favor. He told me you were on your way. You are a creature of habit, my friend. Something you learn not to be when you work as a spy. It took very little effort to arrange for your hotel water to be drugged.”

  Harper looked down the length of the table, realized he’d been strapped in across the chest, arms and legs. Still, he struggled against the bindings.

  “Save your strength for what’s coming. You’re going to need it,” Omar ordered. “You aren’t going anywhere, Keith. Not until you tell me what I want to know.”

  “You killed my daughter,” Keith spat out. “What makes you think I’ll help you?”

  “Trygg killed your daughter before I could stop him,” Omar corrected. “I should have never told you the truth behind her death. If I’d let you believe she died by accident—”

  “But you didn’t,” Harper sneered. “And now you know how it feels to lose a child to Trygg.”

  “I’ve already lost a child, Keith. Years before I even knew you. I watched my little boy, Andon, die in front of my eyes, because I refused to kill a good friend of mine.” Omar picked up a thin scalpel. “I won’t make that mistake again. Sandra will not pay the price for the choices I’ve made in my past, like so many others in my family.”

  “If you know Minos, you have the coordinates to Trygg’s camp.”

  “He’s moved his airbus.”

  “Which means he has your daughter,” Keith taunted. “I’m not going to help you save her, you son of a bitch.”

  “Oh, I think you will. Pain is a great motivator, Keith.”

  “I’ll die first.”

  Omar’s face hardened. “No. You’ll just wish you had.”

  * * *

  THE TENT WAS RED. Bloodred. A beacon amidst the bland brown of the sand it sat upon.

  Arrogant.

  They’d traveled by jeep. Over two hours of listening to the brothers’ bickering. And when that got old, they enumerated the virtues of their new leader, Minos.

  Once they got to camp—a camp surprisingly clean, with families crowding the sand, watching—hundreds of eyes stared at the men from over red scarves.

  “One big happy family,” Booker murmured, then stretched the cramps out of h
is shoulders and arms. He slipped the shim back into his wristwatch, then strained against the unlocked handcuffs, applying just enough pressure so as not to raise the brothers’ suspicions.

  “My family,” Madu snapped, and raised his rifle butt. Pain exploded between Booker’s shoulder blades. He fell to his hands and knees, then gripped the sand, held the grains in his fist until the pain eased.

  “Get up.” Boba grabbed him by the arm, dragged him to his feet. “The boss is done waiting.”

  He shoved Booker through one of tents at the edge of the encampment.

  “McKnight.”

  Booker jerked around to the sound of laughter. His hands tightened around the sand still in his fist.

  Black eyes crinkled at the corners, the only feature visible over the red scarf.

  “Minos.” Booker’s spine went rigid. “I’m glad I amuse you.”

  The Al Asheera leader glanced from Booker to the brothers then back again. “I have to say when Madu called his find in, I was a little surprised. I didn’t expect you’d be so easy.”

  “He’d been thrown out of a flying helicopter,” Boba responded, smirking. “Knocked him stupid.”

  “How did you know how to find the helicopter?” Booker asked.

  Minos shook his head. “First my questions.”

  Booker glanced around the tent, noted the bar, the leather recliner, the pillows and curtains and bed in the corner. “Terrorism seems to pay well these days.”

  “Yes, it does,” Minos replied evenly. He pulled out a 9mm Glock from his robes, pointed it at Booker’s chest.

  “I need to have a talk with our friend here, gentlemen.” Minos’s gaze locked with Madu’s. “Run that errand for me. The one we discussed earlier.”

  Booker watched the brothers leave. “So now that we are alone...” He turned back toward the other man. “You can lose the scarf, Sabra.”

  Aaron laughed, then tugged the cloth from his face. The gun stayed on Booker. “Quamar said you were smarter than you looked.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t say I was smarter than you?” Booker took a step closer, tightened his fist.

  “He might have, but don’t let it go to your head.”

  Without warning, Booker dropped the cuffs off his wrists, then heaved the sand at Aaron’s face.

  Aaron swore, lowered the gun, grasped his eyes.

  Booker grabbed the other man’s gun and slammed his fist into his jaw.

  Aaron hit the floor, stunned. He lay there for a few seconds, blood flowing from his lip. “Damn it. I should have seen that coming.”

  Before he could move, Booker shoved the pistol under the other man’s jaw and jammed it up until his head locked back. “I should kill you right now.”

  “First tell me how you figured it out.”

  “It wasn’t hard. The fact that you knew about Sandra’s flight out of Taer. And how much you care for the Al Asheera.” He nodded toward the chair. “The first recliner I’ve seen in a tent.”

  “Picked up on that, did you?”

  “I also picked up on the red tent. I bet it went a long way in establishing your authority with the Al Asheera. You thumbed your nose at discovery from your enemies. Defied anyone to stop you. Most would have been worried about satellites spotting your location. But Taer doesn’t own satellites and the United States—the only other country that would be interested in your activities—already knew of your location. In fact, they approved. Or should I say, the President approved.”

  “Impressive, McKnight.”

  “You’ve yet to see impressive.” Booker shoved the gun barrel a little harder. “I want to know how you found me and where Trygg took Sandra. Or a bullet will go through your head and the floor will match your tent.”

  * * *

  “WAKE UP, Doctor Haddad.”

  Sandra heard the voice, felt the thumb and finger clamp down on her chin.

  She opened her eyes, forced them to focus.

  Trygg smiled at her, leaned in and gave her a soft kiss on her lips.

  Sandra tried to shove him away, but didn’t have any feeling in her arms. She looked up, saw the handcuffs looped through the chain. Bile slapped at the back of her throat.

  “I see you remember being in this exact situation in Taer a few days ago.”

  “You ordered me to be restrained this way.” The words came out in a dull disbelief.

  “I guess I’m not the father figure type, after all.” Trygg stepped back and laughed. A dry, wicked laugh that left Sandra’s insides tight, nauseated.

  “You disgust me.”

  “Lucky me,” Trygg added. “Otherwise I might have found myself flying out of a helicopter. Isn’t that what you did to your last lover?”

  “McKnight isn’t my lover, General. My reaction was instinctive,” Sandra lied. Hoping to distance herself from Booker. “Pitman was going to shoot McKnight at point-blank range. On your orders.”

  “So you saved him, by kicking him out of a helicopter going forty miles an hour and a hundred feet in the air?”

  “I don’t like the sight of blood,” she quipped. This man deserved no more of her fear, only her contempt. “Except maybe yours.”

  “Not very doctorlike, Sandra.” Trygg’s own anger surfaced.

  “We both know what kind of doctor I am,” Sandra observed. “And what kind of man you are.”

  “And yet...” He pointed through the tent window. “We are on the precipice of my success.”

  The airplane sat in the flats of the Sahara. A makeshift runway, a long snake of asphalt, lay in its path. The white hull gleamed in the sun, its netting now piled in a mound nearby.

  No camouflage meant Trygg was no longer hiding. “I won’t help you kill innocent people,” Sandra insisted.

  “Jim Rayo gave Lewis Pitman the cylinders,” Trygg replied. “And the doctor has had five years to study up on CIRCADIAN.”

  “It would take him five lifetimes to understand my equations,” Sandra scoffed.

  “He barely has one lifetime, actually,” Trygg responded dryly.

  She understood then. “You’re going to kill Lewis, too, aren’t you?”

  “Like I said, I have the cylinders. And there are many greedy research doctors in the world.”

  Instinctively, she pulled against the handcuffs, strained away from the pole.

  “You’re hurting yourself for no reason.”

  Harsh red rivulets trailed down her arms. The pain was minimal, her arms numb.

  “I thought you were smarter than that.” Trygg grabbed her arm, smeared the blood with his thumb. “How would the nanites react to your organs, Doctor Haddad?”

  Sandra jerked her arm away. “I’m smart enough to know you won’t get away with this, Trygg. Booker will stop you—”

  “Not before I kill your family and your friends.” The glint in his eye, the insanity of it, made her sick with fear. “You see, I don’t fear death, Doctor Haddad. I’ve been at war long enough to understand that I might end up a casualty.”

  “This isn’t about the serum, is it?”

  Trygg put his thumb and finger together, leaving a small space between. “It is a little bit.”

  “This is about me. And revenge.”

  “You betrayed me.” The evil filled his features, slanted them into ugly fury before sliding into a wicked smile. “You and your father. I cannot let that go unpunished.”

  “My father?”

  “Your father was my associate. He arranged for you to work with me on the project. He helped Senator Harper obtain the supplies and equipment for Lewis Pitman.”

  “No, he would not have—”

  “You have no idea what your father is capable of,” Trygg mused. “Right now, I find it more satisfying not to enlighten you. Maybe later.”

  “I’ll make sure you never live that long,” Sandra promised through tight teeth. “So help me, God.”

  “You forget, I pretty much am God,” Trygg reminded her. “You and Booker McKnight will never change tha
t fact.”

  “I don’t need him to stop you.”

  “Brave words,” Trygg mused. “Of course, McKnight could have died falling out of that helicopter. So you might be on your own. Not something you’re unfamiliar with, correct, Sandra?”

  “He’ll be here.” The jab hit deep, like it was meant to. “It would take more than that...or you...to kill him.”

  “I hope so, Doctor Haddad.” Trygg’s smile cut across his face in a vicious twist. He took out his knife and grabbed her hair. “I hope it takes the whole Sahara Desert.”

  “What do you mean?” She pulled away until he tightened her hold, made her cry out.

  “I think it’s time to play a little hide-and-seek with your boyfriend.” He jerked her head forward, then dug the tip of his knife in at the base of her scalp.

  Sandra bit her lip, refusing to cry out at the hot, searing pain.

  “This tracking device will help.” Trygg held up the bloody microchip. “You might be surprised to learn that I found a similar tracking device in my plane. Of course, I left it at my old camp.”

  Trygg’s gaze narrowed on hers. “I don’t suppose you know who planted it there, do you?”

  “Pitman,” Sandra lied. “He wants the glory. I’m guessing he made a deal with the Al Asheera.”

  Trygg’s mouth twisted into a vicious grin. “Clever, Doctor Haddad. But you and I both know Lewis doesn’t have the courage or intelligence to take me on.” He placed the microchip in his pocket. “It doesn’t matter. Right now, I’m jamming both signals.”

  “Booker will come, Trygg.”

  “But will he find you or the plane?” He tipped her chin, his gaze locked with hers. “My bet’s on you.”

  * * *

  “I WANT TO know how you found us, Sabra.” Booker stepped back and motioned with the pistol for Aaron to stand.

  “So you can go after Sandra half-cocked and get yourself killed?” Aaron rubbed his jaw and got to his feet. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in your survival, McKnight.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Read this.” Aaron grabbed a file from the bar and tossed it at Booker’s feet. “Then decide if you want to do this on your own.”