“Right.” Eric got that much. The CC, or Carlson’s Chip, as Carlson himself named it, had done away with local cell providers in every country nearly overnight in a brilliant coup that took even Wall Street by surprise. Hence the slogan: One Nation. One Network. One World.
To say the least, the man was pompous. He held an over-inflated opinion of himself and his abilities, so much that the bastard had outright told the United Nations he intended to take over the world, that his chip was just the beginning. Get out of his way. So far they had, but the chip had only been active six months. As far as Eric was concerned, that wasn’t long enough for an honest beta test of a toy gun, much less a reason to roll over and admit defeat to a tyrant with money.
Alex growled, “We won’t know the extent of his madness until we get Finn Powers and Gordie Mikkelson out of Amsterdam and into U.S. custody. The Secretary of Defense is willing to send his Seal Team operatives in, but Finn asked for you, Eric. By name. You’re lead. Jordan will accompany you. By the way, how the hell do you know this guy?”
Eric shrugged, as baffled as everyone else. The only connection to Finn was that last name. Powers, and it wasn’t much. “Never met him in my life, Boss. Where is this Finn person now, and how do you know all this?” he asked Mother.
She glanced over her shoulder at Ember. “Go on. Show him.”
Ember tapped her keyboard, bringing a final video to screen. It had to have been taken via Finn’s cellphone, and a cheap one at best. At least the bumbling oaf knew enough to set it down to take a steady video clip. An obese young man with Coke-bottle glasses peered into the screen. Unibrow. Crooked teeth. Big, wide nose. The guy was no looker. Typical geek type. Squinty-eyed. Unkempt. Probably used techno-speak like Mother and Ember. Too bad he didn’t look as good as they did.
Eric cringed when Finn stuck his face too close to the screen, magnifying a horrific boil on his chin that needed to be lanced. No way in hell was this guy related to Shea. She was perfect in every way. Flawless. A gorgeous brunette with starlight in her eyes—until the day she left.
Eric’s attention blinked back to the case at hand. Finn’s voice didn’t improve Eric’s first impression. He had a quavering, effeminate voice that pitched across the Sit Room, grating on Eric’s nerves. “Sasha. You know that boss of yours? The one you’re always talking about? I need him, like uber fast. Time’s scary short.” He looked over his shoulder as if checking to see if he’d been followed. “Tell him to check his dedicated savings account, the one he pays his personal taxes from. I transferred enough to get the job done. If that isn’t enough to get me out of the country, I can get more. Help me, Sasha. They’re coming. Tell your boss to send his best. Send Eric!”
Your best? Me? How the hell do you know me, ’cause I sure don’t know you. Eric’s throat couldn’t have gone any drier at that odd request.
“Three-million dollars was deposited in my bank account at midnight,” Alex said, those slender fingers of his, playing at his temple like drumsticks. “Ember tracked the transaction through a dozen Internet cafes and IP addresses across the globe. Finn or Mikkelson or whoever sent this video is a damned good hacker. Ember lost him somewhere in…” He glanced at her.
Ember scrunched her shoulders like a little girl. “Sorry, Alex. Dhaka, Bangladesh. That was where I lost the trail, and you’re right. He’s good.”
Alex blew out a long-suffering sigh. “S’ okay. The real question is where’d the money come from to begin with. Those three guys were on grants. They had to be living together to make it in Amsterdam.”
Eric lifted a palm to slow the information download. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve got two things going on here. Carlson wants the force field and Abdul-Mutaal wants Finn. I get Carlson. He’s a rich bastard who wants to rule the world, but what’s Abdul-Mutaal’s stake? How are the two connected?”
“At this point, I’m not sure they are.” Alex lowered his voice. “All we know now is that Finn needs our help, and we’re going to give it to him. According to the time stamp on the video, Berglund was murdered at sixteen hundred hours yesterday. That puts us inside a very tight forty-eight-hour window. An international flight will eat up most of what’s left. Eric. Jordan. Gear up. You’re going to Amsterdam.”
CHAPTER TWO
Shea fingered the dirty linen curtain aside to view the rainy street. Everything looked so normal. Mundane. All except for the man in the black tweed hat on the corner. He might be watching the internet cafe, the way his eyes kept shifting in her direction. He might have seen her dash inside the front door.
The gray-haired guy in the ratty gray sweater looked suspicious, too. Even the young couple with their hands all over each other on the park bench across the street looked like they were putting on a show.
Who are they trying to kid? They’re all after me.
She bit the inside of her cheek and closed the curtain. She’d told Gordie to meet her here, that she’d bring Phoenix’s laptop, but now she wasn’t so sure it was a safe place. She was scared out of her mind, no longer able to distinguish good people from the evil ones, not after witnessing the barbaric death of Phoenix. That awful man in the black robe. He’d killed Phoenix right under her nose. She could still see the despair in Phoenix’s blue eyes.
Taking two full steps back from the curtain, she clutched his laptop to her chest, her stomach ready to heave. This murder had to be about the research he’d stored on this computer, the invention they’d all sworn to protect from prying eyes, and now a killer.
The café was quiet for a change, but the smell of espresso and lattes spiked her nausea. She’d never forget the despair in her friend’s eyes as long as she lived. Poor Phoenix. Why would anyone want to hurt him, a harmless, cute guy with shaggy blond hair that hung into his eyes? The kind of guy most girls wanted to take home and play house with.
Only he didn’t care for girls.
Phoenix had come to Amsterdam from Buffalo, New York, the same as Gordie Mikkelson, another wannabe scientist. Gordie was the athlete, the primper, and the weightlifter. He shaved from head to foot every single morning, said it made his body sleeker. The coconut scented oil he slicked himself down with every day didn’t hurt. It had surely made Phoenix take notice.
Lust hit them hard. Then destiny.
While uncomfortable at times, their openly gay relationship had allowed Shea to maintain her anonymity. Her friends were too caught up in each other and their energy displacement project to look beyond her dumpy clothes long enough to realize she wasn’t just another geeky man. She wasn’t a guy at all.
Finn, the fat suit she wore every day, was the person they thought they’d asked to room with them. She went along with it, content to be the third wheel to two fun loving geniuses who needed someone to cook for them. Better yet, a friend who knew how to midnight requisition a few extra dollars now and then. Never from honest, hardworking people though. That wouldn’t be right. She was very selective whose bank account she pilfered.
Living with Gordie and Phoenix had taught her a few lessons about life. Respect for personal borders. One hundred percent honesty. Compromise. Always compromise. Most importantly: Money could buy most things. Friends. Influence. Access to more money.
That was the reason Gordie and Phoenix were selected to participate in the solar energy project. Because of Finn’s dabbling, they were able to bring a certain level of capital with them. The cost to the university went down. They got the equipment and the lab they needed to continue their work.
All three of them had spent long hours at the university, not because they had to, but because they were onto something. Call it serendipity. Phoenix called it a gift from the universe. Even Professor Grover, their research mentor, named them his lucky stars the day Phoenix inadvertently stumbled on a way to bounce back expended energy, a paradox of sly Mother Nature.
At least that was what Phoenix said. He hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with how his force field worked, not that Shea would’ve understood i
t if he had. Dabbling she could do. Not science.
Professor Grover’s bright gray eyes had all but glowed with pride, but holy crap, did that discovery open up a new field of science no one saw coming. Einstein’s theory came to life in a big new way. Everyone already knew that matter consisted of energy, but mankind’s problem was always how to harness that energy without unleashing the power of the atom.
At least that was what Phoenix had said. He might not have discovered affordable solar energy, but he’d done the impossible. He’d discovered dynamic energy displacement, a natural bounce back effect that focused and reflected dissipated energy back onto the force expending it, neutralizing the point of origin in the process. By any other name a natural force field. One anyone could manipulate if they possessed the means to focus and amplify the initial source of energy.
At least that was what Phoenix said.
Shea wondered now. She’d always detected an undercurrent of something she couldn’t pin down to his claims. Doubt niggled at the back of her mind. Was this discovery all he’d claimed or had he gotten himself killed for something else?
Gordie never appeared to notice, and that always quelled Shea’s touch of anxiety. He was the practical side to Phoenix’s hyper. She dabbled in hacking and came up with more funds. Phoenix and Gordie dabbled in science. It was the same thing. Kind of.
But why did that monster demand that Finn be turned over within forty-eight hours? For what? Another execution? Why me? I know nothing.
The only thing that came to mind was the dabbling she’d committed against one particular Mideasterner, Basheer Bagani. Shea shivered at the rash of goose flesh rippling over her shoulders, just thinking of waking up on his satin sheets. It still gave her a morgue-like chill. The man was a predator—for flesh. The female kind.
True, it was her fault for being in a drunken stupor when he’d found her, but it was his fault for tying her spread-eagled to his four-poster. Finn thanked God for whoever had interrupted Bagani’s evil plans that night.
Later, after she’d pulled herself out of her inebriated state, she’d Googled him. What do you know? Bagani was none other than a Saudi prince, one of many sons of a powerful wealthy sheik. The only difference between father and son? The father was decadently rich. Basheer was just decadent.
He’d been investigated in the whereabouts of two missing starlets. Shea had her suspicions where those two women were, especially if the lines of white powder on his coffee table were what she thought they were.
At first, she’d taken just enough out of his bank account to maintain get back on her feet and to maintain a decent lifestyle. Then, like a modern-day Robin Hood, she’d given some to Phoenix and Gordie to keep their research afloat and to get them to Amsterdam.
When confronted with the spectacle of cold-blooded murder, she’d infused a large amount into the bank account of one honorable Alex Stewart, the one he used to pay his taxes, judging by the quarterly allotments going to the State of Virginia and the Internal Revenue Service. He might not qualify as a charity or a research grant, but she needed his kind of assistance.
She knew if Mr. Stewart wanted to find someone, he could and would do it. He had a hard reputation in the covert ops world, but was known to work miracles when others could not. The man had phenomenal resources. He leased satellite time. He also employed her ex-husband.
Eric.
Shea’s heart fluttered with palpitations at the name that always stole her breath. Just thinking about the man she’d left behind reduced her to befuddled and—chilled. Never to be warm again. She’d hurt him in the cruelest way possible. She’d lost hope and faith in the darkest of times, when she should’ve been holding on tight to him. Trusting him. Instead, she’d deserted him without warning or an honest reason, like a captain deserting her sinking vessel without regard to her sole shipmate.
The day after Phoenix discovered dynamic energy displacement, their professor, Morell Grover, went missing. That was when their world had changed forever. They’d no more than heard that disconcerting news, when Gordie called her at the university’s research lab and told her some bad-assed dude was after her. She needed to run for her life. Hurry! No time to explain. Just run! Hide!
How he knew, he’d never said, but by then, that bad-assed dude was already in the hall. With nowhere to run, she’d forced her bulky fake body into the cabinet under the lab sink. Poor Phoenix had been cruelly tortured. He was barely able to walk. The black-robed assassin kept asking one question, “Where’s Finn?”
Phoenix kept crying, “I don’t know. I thought he was here. You’ve got to believe me.”
The killer’s question never changed. Neither did the answer. Only the level of terror in Phoenix’s sad voice.
Shea couldn’t close her eyes any more. She couldn’t sleep. Every time she tried, the sounds and smells and sights came back to her. Every detail of his brutal death had been carved into her mind. After his head had been severed from his body, his eyes had kept blinking while a pool of red poured from his neck. It spread under his cheek. His lips kept moving, but there were no words. Only gurgles. When he’d needed her most, she had cowered like a—coward. Shaking like a little girl. Like she was now...
Paralyzed with fear, her thoughts had flown across the Atlantic to that one man in a million who would’ve fought to rescue Phoenix if he had been there.
Eric.
That was the way he was made, to stand up to bullies. To take down despots and despicable men. To fight the world if need be.
The murderer had made one mistake. After he had killed Phoenix, he’d placed his head in a plastic gym bag, then walked across the expansive lab to wash his hands at the sink. In those precious few seconds of heart-pounding terror, Shea had summoned every last ounce of her courage and light-fingered the SD card from the assassin’s camera while he wasn’t looking.
While Phoenix’s body twitched, and although her fingers shook so much that she’d almost dropped the card, she’d still done it. Then she’d hid under the sink again, her trembling arms wrapped around her padded legs, praying she hadn’t been seen. That the murderer wouldn’t check his camera before he’d left.
Whoever he was, he had a good reason to want her dead now, but that was the mystery.
Unless he works for Bagani...
Even that didn’t make sense. Bagani couldn’t possibly know she’d transformed herself into an over-weight, bumbling man with bad hygiene. Could he?
Unless he followed you…
She eased the curtain aside and peered down at the street. Maybe it did make sense. Bagani had the resources. He could’ve had her followed.
Gordie had better hurry it up. They needed to talk and they needed to plan a quick getaway. Maybe it was time she came clean and admitted to him that she was nothing more than an American housewife on the run. A fool running from the man who loved her, maybe running from the only one who could save their lives.
Oh, hurry Gordie!
She almost sighed in relief, until those fake lovers on the park bench glanced directly at her draped window. A guy in a black turban had just crossed the street, coming her way. His gaze rolled to where she stood as if he too knew exactly which window to look at.
He’s found me.
CHAPTER THREE
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. We’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Again?
There was no need to return. Eric Reynolds never unbuckled once he’d lowered his butt to first-class seating and strapped in. Didn’t matter the airline. Didn’t matter the destination. Only when all wheels touched planet Earth would he consider unfastening that buckle, even to use the restroom. Screw physics. The science behind jet propulsion couldn’t compete with the cataclysmic force of attraction behind Newton’s law of gravity.
Look around. There were no service stations in the clouds, no place to land or park. A rock was still a rock, even if it flew thirty-five th
ousand feet above the planet. Didn’t matter what colorful eye-catching logo was splashed across the tail or under the belly of this jumbo bird, jets fell out of the sky more often than they should.
Could be acrophobia, the anxiety of great heights. Could be claustrophobia, that inexplicable sense of suffocating in restricted, tight places. Could even be plain old anxiety. Whatever!
Facts didn’t mean squat when a guy could, at any moment, drop twenty thousand feet—a minute, mind you—out of a clear blue sky with nothing to say about it but hold onto your ass. Splat and goodbye. Add pelting rain, thunder, and lightning to the mix, and Eric was as wired as he’d ever been.
Despite having flown in an odd assortment of military aircraft during his military career, Eric’s blood pressure spiked the moment he set foot in the terminal. Any terminal. Didn’t matter how many times he’d already done this. He hated every minute of it.
Screw physics and bring on the Dramamine. Or a Jack and Coke.
To make what was a godawful morning worse, this flight to Amsterdam from JFK had been one jolting bump after another. Up and down. Side to side, and every so often, he swore the jet shifted in all four directions at the same time until his stomach screamed to stop.
He steeled what was left of his ragged nerves and dug his fingers into the armrests just in time. The aerodynamically designed aircraft bucked like a wild mustang, and anyone not strapped in, hit the ceiling, and they deserved it, too. What were they thinking walking around like this was safe?
Black clouds taunted at every window. Lightning flashed, too close and personal. The atmosphere sounded like a warzone.
Regularly scheduled, my ass. Flying fifteen hours straight wasn’t part of his regular schedule, not by a long shot. He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth, bound for glory because, once more, his compassion got the best of him.
Eric (In the Company of Snipers Book 15) Page 2