“Impossible. We’re too far back.”
“Target is stopping,” said the satellite controller. “He’s pulling over, still well short of the airport.”
Just as Raven described, the sedan slowed to a stop on the side of the highway. The killer jumped over the barrier and climbed a set of stairs to a footbridge next to the road. “Zoom out one, Raven,” ordered Nick, and the image blinked to a wider view. The footbridge led across the road and over a small field to a Metro station. Nick’s target was about to disappear. “Raven, go optical, now! Get me some details before we lose him.”
The crisp gray-scale image turned to dull black, broken only by a few orange lights on the street and on the train platform. The target ran beneath a dim lamp on the footbridge. He was barely a shadow.
The image flashed back to gray scale. “Negative, Nightmare. There’s not enough light. Sticking with infrared. Suspect is wearing a hoodie, dark in color. That’s all we got.”
The sedan came up fast, abandoned on the side of the road. Nick skidded to a stop behind it and threw open his door.
“Boss—” said Quinn, but Nick was already out of the car.
He ran across the short grass field underneath the footbridge and half-climbed, half-vaulted over the chain-link fence at the edge of the tracks. By the time he reached the platform, the train doors were closing. There were a number of passengers. Sunrise was approaching and the early commute had begun. As the train pulled out, Nick counted at least six dark hoodie sweatshirts among the passengers near the windows. He let out an angry shout and punched the schedule display. The Plexiglas cover cracked. The few remaining passengers on the platform stared and backed away.
Quinn appeared at Nick’s shoulder. “He’s gone, boss. We lost him.”
CHAPTER 16
He was there, at ground zero.”
Drake looked incredulous. “You sure about that?”
“Absolutely. I spoke to him. It was the same guy.” Nick stared out his cabin window. The sun was just breaking over the eastern horizon, spreading its light across a solid cloud deck far below the aircraft. The two older team members sat facing each other in club seats with a faux wooden table between them. Quinn was across the aisle, sound asleep. Their flight to Turkey would last another hour.
Nick and Quinn had returned to the killer’s car to find it completely clean—no papers, no prints, even the VIN had been scratched off. The license plates were stolen. Drake and Scott had fared little better at the apartment. Scott cracked the hacker’s laptop and disabled the booby traps on the servers, but the servers did not reveal the Emissary’s identity. All he found were some scraps of code that looked like a virus and a second e-mail that went out on the day of the DC bombing. That e-mail had prompted a robbery at Istanbul University, one that had already made the news. They had no other leads.
After a long silence, Nick pressed a switch on his armrest to darken all the cabin windows. Then he glanced across the table at Drake. “I know you did something to make Amanda mad. What was it?”
Drake had started playing with his phone. He kept his eyes on the screen. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Terri Belfacci invited me to coffee. I went.”
Nick nodded. That would do it. Terri was their primary contact at the CIA—striking, flamboyant, and quite open about her designs on Drake. She referred to Amanda as “the grease monkey,” even when Amanda was in the room.
“You’re an idiot.”
Drake dropped his hands to his lap and looked up. “I know.”
Before Nick could follow up with all the reasons why Drake was an idiot, the big operative changed the subject back to the Emissary. “So, has our new friend made any more chess moves?”
“He made another one while we were on our way to pick you up last night. So far, he’s given me two pawns, sending them up the edges of the board. I’m no chess master, but that’s a very unconventional opening.”
Drake shrugged. “So he’s just using the app as a conduit to get your attention. He doesn’t know a pawn from a pineapple.”
“Maybe.” Nick let his head settle back onto the leather cushion. “Or maybe he’s a grand master and he’s setting me up to take a beating.”
The door separating the main cabin from the aircraft’s aft comm station opened and Scott peeked out. He nodded to Nick. “The colonel’s on the line. He wants to speak to you.”
—
Colonel Walker’s face was on the workstation’s live video feed, his eyes roving the peripheries of the monitor as if he were trapped in the box. The old man spared no expense when it came to the Triple Seven Chase’s technology, but he never fully adapted to any of it. He looked out of place using anything that wasn’t built before or during the Cold War.
“Go ahead, sir,” said Nick, dropping into a desk chair that was bolted to the aircraft floor.
Walker’s scowl abruptly centered on the screen. “Baron?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Yes. It’s me, sir. What did you want to tell me?”
“CJ got herself a warrant to tap into the chess application’s servers.”
“And?”
“And they pulled the IP addresses for the Emissary’s moves. He made one a couple of hours ago—”
“From a train in Budapest,” said Nick, finishing the colonel’s statement.
Walker squinted at him. “No. He made that move from the same place as all the others, from a wireless hot spot at a coffee shop on C Street, two blocks west of the DC bombing site.”
Nick’s eyes widened a touch. “That’s impossible. I saw the driver who ran down Grendel. The same guy was at ground zero right after the bombing, posing as a responder. He has to be the Emissary.”
“Not necessarily. Someone was at that coffee shop, and that someone is sending out the chess moves. He may be running the operative you saw in DC and Budapest, or he may be working for him.” Walker took a swig from a foam cup of coffee, savoring the bitter liquid for a moment before continuing. “We need more data. Keep playing the game. Keep the Emissary on the hook. CJ is setting up a surveillance van to see if her team can’t pinpoint which of the café’s patrons is sending the moves. You have anything else?”
“Only the tattoo on the driver’s arm,” said Nick, sitting back in his chair. “I sent a drawing to Molly.”
“Dead end. I saw your drawing. It looked common enough. I expected Molly to get a dozen matches, if not a hundred.” Walker shook his head. “She got nothing. There’s not a single person in the joint databases—good guy, bad guy, or otherwise—that bears that mark.”
He polished off his coffee and then frowned at the empty cup. “So far, this investigation has netted us little more than a dead hacker and some useless computer files. We’re no closer to figuring out who these people are than we were yesterday morning.”
Nick’s eyes drifted to the clock at the bottom of his screen. “And no closer to stopping their next attack.”
—
Luke Baron had never flown before. His little ears had never experienced the alarming compression that occurs when an airliner’s cabin pressure descends from eight thousand feet to five hundred in the space of twenty minutes. In Katy’s admittedly biased estimation, her toddler had endured the bumps and boredom of the grueling eight-hour flight with admirable calm, but the descent into Frankfurt was too much. Luke started to cry. Katy could feel the weighty glances of the passengers around her, all of whom surely regarded her as the worst mother on the face of the Earth.
Nick’s dad offered to take his grandson, but Katy shook her head and hugged Luke to her chest. She needed to hold him close right now. She was on the verge of tears herself.
Katy was used to Nick’s travels. She was used to worrying when he disappeared for days or even weeks without contact, but she never left home during his trips. Somehow that made this
one different. The house in Chapel Point—their home, their life together—sat empty and frozen in time while the two of them ventured off in different directions.
Between baggage claim and customs, it took Kurt and Katy a miserable hour and a half to get from the gate to the curb. Luke squirmed in his stroller the whole time, hungry and tired. Katy knew exactly how he felt. As they waited for the hotel van, she breathed in the crisp air and tried to put a better face on the situation. She was in Europe after all. That was fun. And in two days she would be in the Holy Land. Hadn’t she always wanted to see it? She glanced around at the other passengers. None of them looked happy either. Most hunched down into their coats and stared anxiously down the pickup lane.
As her eyes roved the faces, Katy caught one individual looking her way, a short stocky man with a dark complexion and graying black stubble covering the lower half of his face. When she saw him, he cast his eyes down at the curb.
Katy quickly realized that she was now the one staring. She turned and joined the rest in watching for the next van, trying to let the moment pass, but the back of her head burned. Was that man watching her? She had told her husband that he was paranoid, overreacting to this whole thing, but now she wondered. Had she become a target?
After thirty seconds of pretending to look for the van, Katy couldn’t take it anymore. She knelt down on the pretext of tucking Luke’s blanket around him, and stole a glance behind her.
The short man had disappeared.
CHAPTER 17
Istanbul, Turkey
The spray of blood from the guard’s throat sent a chill through Nick’s body. Six hours after leaving Budapest, the three Triple Seven field operatives stood in the main security office of Istanbul University’s biochemical research facility, watching videos of the robbery over the shoulder of the university’s head of security. As far as the Turks were concerned, they were Interpol agents, thanks to a set of identities created by the techs at Romeo Seven. They watched the playback until the mysterious thief in the flowing hooded cloak disappeared from the frame.
“Holy cow,” said Drake. “You guys were hit by Darth Maul.”
Nick smacked his teammate’s arm with the back of his hand. The security officer looked up from his bank of monitors and glared at him.
“What? Too soon?”
The next video showed the same figure in a cold storage locker, sweeping vials of chemicals into a bag. Nick straightened up and let out a short, frustrated breath. “There’s not much of use here. He keeps his face well hidden, and despite the drama and the brutality, the whole thing looks like a run-of-the-mill robbery.”
The security man nodded, this time keeping his glare fixed on the cloaked figure on the screen in front of him. “It was. The thief took the lives of three guards and a highly respected department head, but to him, the murders were well worth it. Those chemicals will fetch a high price on the black market—tens of thousands of euros, maybe a hundred thousand.”
Nick watched as the cloaked figure lifted a box through the broken door of a glass cabinet, careful to avoid the remaining shards. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing gloves. “Did he leave fingerprints?”
“Yes, plenty. But they did us no good. We could not find a match in any database.” The security officer raised an eyebrow. “Even Interpol’s.”
“We need to know exactly what he took.”
“For that, you must talk to Dr. Osman, the new chairman of the facility.”
—
Dr. Osman dismissed the security officer as soon as he introduced his guests. “My heart is heavy with this tragedy,” he said, standing and shaking Nick’s hand over his desk, “and I am reticent to go over it all again.” He took his seat again. “I told the police everything I know. Can’t you get what you need from their records?”
“I’m sorry,” said Nick, “but we have our own interview procedures. It may be painful, but if you want your colleague’s murderer to come to justice, the best thing that you can do is help us.”
The doctor stared at Nick for a moment and then spread his hands. “Of course. What do you want to know?”
“A good start will be a list of the stolen chemicals.”
Osman scooted forward to his computer. “I’m not sure how much it will help. There seemed to be no method to it. Some of the most valuable chemicals fell to the floor. Others worth only a few euros went into the bag.”
The printer at the edge of the doctor’s desk whirred to life. Nick took the first page it spat out. He scanned down the list. None of the compounds stood out to him. “I’m curious,” he said, still scanning the page. “Your head of security told me the thief could make a hundred thousand euros on the black market, but you just said he left the valuable chemicals behind.”
Osman shook his head. “I told you he left some of the valuable chemicals behind. Our security chief is correct. The thief got lucky.” He stood and pulled the rest of the pages off the printer, thumbing through them. When he found the page he was looking for, he shifted it to the top, tapped the stack on his desk to straighten it, and handed the whole pile to Nick. “There,” he said, pointing to an item halfway down the top page. “That was the most valuable item in the room, by far.”
Nick read the entry out loud. “Lithium-six: three kilos.”
Osman nodded. “Worth a hundred thousand euros, maybe more.”
“Why so much?”
“Lithium-six is rare and it is highly controlled. Supply and demand. Basic economics.” The doctor sat down again and gestured at the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the unhappy task of taking over my late superior’s position.”
Nick stayed where he was. “Just one more question before we go. Let’s say for the sake of argument that your thief had a use for the lithium-six other than selling it. What might that be?”
“I can’t imagine.” Osman returned his attention to his computer. “We use it here to track the transportation of submicroscopic agents between host cells.”
Nick cast a glance at his teammates. Drake shrugged. Quinn shook his head.
“Could you put that in layman’s terms, Doctor?”
Osman let out a sigh and looked up at his unwanted guests. “Viruses, gentlemen. Lithium-six is used in tracking and engineering viruses.”
—
“The Emissary is building a bioweapon,” said Nick. He held his phone to his ear as the team descended the marble stairs that led to the lobby of the research facility.
“You have evidence?” asked Walker.
“I have a pretty solid hunch. The terrorists stole a box of controlled material from Istanbul University, material used to modify viruses.”
“I can’t have the CDC act on your hunch alone, Baron. Maybe the Emissary is making a bioweapon, or maybe he’s planning to sell the material for cash to support another suicide bombing. Get me hard evidence. And if there is a virus, find out what it is and where it’s going. Actionable intelligence, Major. You know the drill.”
As Nick pushed through the building’s glass double doors, a glint of light caught his eye. Something atop the old tower gate that dominated the university park had flashed in the winter sun. He recognized the distinctive play of light.
“Down!”
He shoved Drake and Quinn to the pavement behind the rental car as the door they had just come through shattered behind them. Glass rained down on the sidewalk. A thunderous report ripped across the campus, followed by another.
The shooter gave them no rest. High-velocity rounds pounded the small SUV. Terrified students screamed and ran for cover. Suddenly Quinn let out a pained cry. Nick and Drake were protected behind the engine block, but the younger operative had taken cover behind the rear tire. It was not big enough. One of the rounds had passed through the rental’s thin frame and penetrated Quinn’s body armor. He sat back onto the pavement with his hands over h
is belly. When he pulled them away, they were covered in blood.
While Drake dragged their teammate to the relative safety of the vehicle’s front end, Nick searched for his phone. He found it within reach at the edge of the sidewalk, beneath a pile of glass. He could hear Walker shouting on the other end.
Nick interrupted the colonel. “Get me a medevac chopper! Quinn’s been hit!”
Beside him, Drake ripped off his outer shirt and pressed it to their young teammate’s abdomen.
“How bad?” asked Walker.
Nick watched as Quinn’s blood quickly soaked through the makeshift bandage. The kid’s eyes lost their focus.
“We need that chopper now, sir. He’s bleeding out.”
CHAPTER 18
Ten rounds, almost universal to clip-fed sniper rifles. Nick waited for the inevitable pause as the shooter reloaded. As soon as the impacts stopped, he crawled forward, opened the rear passenger door of the rental and pulled a black duffel from the backseat. The first round of the sniper’s second clip passed through the driver’s door right above his shoulder as he dragged the bag back to their cover position behind the engine block.
“Come up on comms. Stay with Quinn,” he ordered Drake, handing him one of the team’s H&K MP7A1s and a SATCOM earpiece. Then he put his own earpiece in and withdrew his Beretta Nano from the bag. “Cover me.”
After the second set of ten rounds, Drake popped over the hood and fired a volley at the shooter. Nick sprinted into the open. His objective was a good 150 meters away at the other end of a green park, a four-story tower gate bracketed by a pair of three-story turrets. He made it across the street and twenty meters into the sparse trees before the bullets started flying again. Heavy rounds splintered the trunk of an ancient cypress as he passed. “Any questions about what ‘cover me’ means?” he panted.
“Working on it,” replied Drake through the comm link. “I’m dealing with a wounded man here.”
As Drake spoke, Nick heard the rat-a-tat of his teammate’s MP7 over the comm link, followed an instant later by a matching report, echoing across the park. Drake kept the sniper’s head down until Nick reached the base of the structure. Then his clip ran out and the shooter opened up again. A slow steady rhythm of earsplitting cracks sounded from the top of the tower.
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