“Miss Naik, the place is shutting down for the night in five minutes,” he said hesitantly.
“I know. Which is why it’s absolutely imperative for you to let me into Minister De La Hoya’s office, right now. The building shuts down at 701 pm, doesn’t it?” She looked miserably at the guard, her brown eyes artfully made up to look larger than they were.
“Yes, but--”
“Three hundred seconds, Roberto,” she begged desperately, glancing dejectedly at Brand, who just shook his head and sighed. He was the shill; he had no part to play here.
“Darling, maybe we’d better not bother Roberto here. He has a job to do, and he could get fired for this.” Brand said thoughtfully.
Akira looked back at Roberto. Bit hard on the inside of her cheek and instantly a glimmer of tears were swimming in her beautiful brown eyes. “Mr. Roberto, I am going to get fired for sure if I don’t make copy on time.”
She reached out and tugged his hand and placed it on her chest. The man swallowed manfully and looked at Brand, who just shrugged again.
“Please, do this one favor. Be the guy who breaks the rules.”
“Miss Naik.”
“Please, Mr. Roberto,” she begged again, letting go of his hand.
His tongue was tangled up, and it was all he could do to not stare at where his hand had been. He looked at his fellow guards. One of them vigorously shook his head, while the other two smiled maliciously at him. Probably because he was the one Akira had allowed access to her boobs to.
“One file, you say.” He was naturally suspicious as he punched in a couple of buttons on the keyboard.
“Yes. Exactly. One file.” She nodded again, and beamed a huge, gratified smile at him.
“Alright, then. But we must hurry. The shutdown doesn’t wait for anyone. You know your way in?” he asked her.
“Yes, absolutely. Elissa is waiting for us inside. She’s been our liaison here, and not a better guide could I find.” She assured him, while they inched away. Then on impulse, she kissed the man on his cheek and declared, “You know if my boyfriend wasn’t the face-pounding type then I would have kissed you for real. Thank you, Roberto. Thanks a million. Maybe I’ll set you up with Elissa.”
“Sweetheart, we have to haul ass if we have to get out in four minutes.” Brand, smiling indulgently, took her arm none too gently.
She nodded and they left a bemused Roberto.
~~~~~
They ran in by the common entrance used by practically everybody else. This meant crossing the huge foyer that would lead them to the private entrance. Thankfully, it was guarded by the same men whom they’d seen that morning, which meant that they knew Akira and let them both pass without probing too deeply into what their business was.
In fact, Enrique, one of the guards, called out, “Hey, you two don’t have much time to get out, okay?”
Akira nodded and then they were taking off at a dead run, right past the ID room. There was a door about sixty feet away from it, marked “Power” (Portuguese and Spanish). Brand halted them here.
“Sync time,” he told her, while he grabbed her wrist and set the time on.
She huffed impatiently, but let him sync their times.
“You run,” he ordered. “Get to the Cave entrance,” referring to the reinforced door that led to the three directions of the Hall. “And you wait for darkness. You don’t try to get in; Geraldo’s office is the first one beyond the receptionist’s pit. Do not touch anything till I get there after cutting the power. I’ll join you in five minutes or less, okay?
She nodded. He’d already given these instructions to her about five hundred times before this.
“I mean it, Akira. You have to understand, your DNA will let you hang for international treason if it’s caught in that room. So please, don’t touch anything till I get there.”
“I get it Brandon. I am not four. So, please, let’s just get started.” She pulled out thin black gloves from her hip pocket and snapped them on. She bundled her sexy hair into a streaming ponytail and then looked at him expectantly.
“Five minutes,” he repeated.
“I know.” She was exasperated and excited. Grinning, she took off at the count of three.
Brand slipped into the alcove before the door marked Power. He knew the exact instant the camera would rotate away from him, having studied the schematics of this building for two months straight.
And the instant it did, he went to work on the electronic lock on the Power entrance.
Within a minute he was inside the arctic room, and looked straight for the source. The place was a fifty by fifty room full of cables and huge machines that also served as the servers for the place.
Stupid, to put the servers and the electricity in one place. First, he ambled over to the camera that was right above the door and dismantled it. In the next instant, he’d shut down servers one and two, simply by firing two tiny .22 rounds in them. And lastly, he got down to the end of the circuit breakers and shut them all down, one by one.
At exactly seven pm, the place plunged into total darkness.
Phase one was over, Brand told himself while he stepped out cautiously, knowing that the generator would take at least seven minutes to kick in.
He intended for the demented reporter to be away from here before then.
Twenty-Eight
Brand ran flat out the length of the corridor, hoping to God that she’d made it to the cave entrance before the guards found her. He rounded the last bend, his watch providing the lowest illumination he could use in this situation.
He saw her, looking repeatedly at her watch, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Six minutes,” he said tersely, putting his hand to the titanium handle on the door.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled it downwards and it opened.
She grinned and high-fived him, while he shook his head and indicated his right pants pocket. She plunged her hand in, coming in contact with a muscled thigh, and came out with a tiny penlight. It was literally a pen, with a bare pinpoint of light at the end of the cap.
She gave it to him, and then he let her in.
He switched it on, and she grinned again.
“Nice,” she whispered.
He kneeled down and placed a tiny steel block at the edge of the door. If, by any event, they were in the Sanctum, and the door automatically closed when the generator kicked in, that block would ensure that the door would remain open for them.
Then he stood up, told her, “Five minutes and thirty seconds.”
She shook her head, “Spoilsport.”
And then they raced past the receptionist’s pit and straight ahead to the first office on the left. It was locked with a simple Yale lock.
Brand bent down and snicked it open in seven seconds flat.
Akira had to admire his B and E skills, even if a part of her brain was wondering what exactly was his profession, if he possessed such admirable but hard-to-come-by skills.
“Come on.” He gave her one impatient look that she could see very clearly, in the tiny penlight.
They slipped in silently and then Brand went to work on his fingers. He’d already worn thin, surgical gloves, but in today’s security jargon, fingerprints were the last place to start from. First was DNA. Saliva, sweat, hair, fiber. These things counted.
Her clothes were not so great on the fiber department, but at least she wasn’t wearing anything that would shed.
His own clothes were made from specially ordered material that resisted tearing until only a Swiss knife or sharper implement could cut through it. But his second pair of gloves made sure that not even a finger nail clipping could slip through.
She raised a brow at the second pair, which were black in color and molded to his hand till the wrist.
“Tear-resistant,” he said simply, holding the penlight aloft and went to the huge glass desk, which was neatly organized.
“Don’t touch anything,” Brand reiterated as he could see
her itching to get to the huge file- cabinet stacked against one wall. She went near it and stared longingly at it.
“Brand, I want those gloves,” Akira whispered, while he expertly went over the table’s surface. Took in the monthly planner under the glass with the minister’s appointments filled in beforehand.
He saw LRDLM under the nineteenth and nothing else on the page. He filed it away for future reference, because nothing came to mind right now as to what the anagram stood for.
“Stand back, Akira. Your spit could get you arrested for espionage,” Brand said absently, running his hands under the table.
He looked through the unlocked drawers. The computer terminal he left alone, because no matter how hard and quick he worked, activity would be traced. He wanted to be untraceable.
No untoward papers or files were found in the drawers.
There were stacks of documents from previous sessions, a private diary that he regretted not being able to copy. And two drawers were devoted to the various appointments and deals that Geraldo was making, or trying to make on behalf, of the country as befitted his portfolio.
He looked at his watch, saw he had about three minutes before people came after them, and quickly ambled over to the file cabinets. He pulled open all five of them, and started quickly going through files.
Akira jumped on the balls of her feet in her impatience to see what Brand was doing.
He gave her a mild look. “Bottom drawer’s our best bet. We have less than three minutes.”
He squatted down, taking care not to rest his knees on the floor. And so did she; resting her knees on the ground. And he sighed.
Fiber. He’d given her a strict lecture on fiber just before leaving their hotel rooms and she’d already broken the rule about fiber.
Brand pulled all three files out, each about five-inches thick, and knew they could never get anything from here. She leaned over him then, and nudged his elbow.
A piece of paper, a yellow memo fell from the last file. Disregarding procedure, she snatched it and squinted to see what it was.
“We found it,” Akira whispered, looking back at him, eyes shining.
“You’re eating that paper,” he muttered back to her, while he took the paper back and read the three-paragraphed memo.
It was from the CEO of the lumber company, dated two years ago. And it named Geraldo as one of the shareholders of the company with a twenty-three percent increase in profit, mentioning his dividends in dollars.
It also stated how the oil strike was going to benefit all of them, especially since production and supply was going to be controlled by NERVU.
“Holy Christ.” The pieces starting to fall together in Brand’s rapidly calculating brain.
He was also acting while he thought. He’d put the files back, except for the memo and was now quickly shutting the drawers closed. He pulled Akira up with him, who was holding that paper like it was the Holy Grail.
“Yeah, I know. I am going to nail Geraldo De La Hoya,” she said quietly.
He swung the penlight at her, dragging her away from the office. The door shut behind them, quietly, and he relocked it and straightened.
“Let’s get out of here, Akira. I want you on a plane to the airport.” Brand was grim, as he prepared to make their escape under two minutes.
“I am sorry, Mr. Rice, but that is a distinct impossibility, given your current predicament.” A flat, Europe-accented voice said, a second before seven torch lights were swung in their faces.
~~~~~~
Brand pressed Akira against the door and said easily, “And what predicament would that be?”
In a murmur he prayed she heard, he said, “Eat it.”
And then he stepped out in front of her, making the lights swing at him.
The guns followed a second later. In the torchlight he could see seven guns aimed at him. As well as the man who’d made the threat.
“You,” he growled, while he took in the fact that rebel number two aboard The Sea Princess was once again holding an Uzi pointed at him.
The man smiled, nodded. “Yes, we meet again, Mr. Rice. And Miss Naik. You too.” He waved his torch behind Brand and onto Akira’s face.
Brand couldn’t turn around and see if she’d done as he’d asked, but he felt hope when she stepped next to him and asked the leader, “So? Are we supposed to put our hands up and surrender now or are you going to shoot us?”
The leader answered, “We aren’t shooting anyone, Miss Naik. At least not right now.”
Then he ordered his men to seize the two of them, and they didn’t make the mistake the guards at the Hall had. They patted Brand down thoroughly, extracted his Colt, the extra magazine, his penlight and the Bowie he kept at his ankle. His other pant pockets were empty, except for identification. Hers and his.
The leader pocketed them and barked in the local dialect, “Let’s move.”
The six men holding Akira and Brand instantly complied. They moved.
Twenty-Nine
In the end, Brand decided, it had been fairly easy for them to be taken. Fairly easy and, now trundling in a Jeep to God knows where, he thought with no real humor, fairly chaotic.
The Hall was in complete chaos, because of the power outage. Brand was reasonably confident that their break-in would be the last thing on anybody’s minds, as the guards and the security personnel went about trying to find out the cause of the mysterious blackout.
And Brand was in full-view till the camera swung the other way when he entered the Power room. He’d made sure of that.
His plan had been laughably simple.
Cut the power. Go in to the Sanctum and look through Geraldo’s office, and get out before the seven minutes were up. At the very least be out with the other panicked crowds so that they could be one of the masses who ran out when the power came back on.
After that, Akira would have gone on home to Mumbai and he could have gone away in peace.
If at all there’d been questions, he was more than certain she could have handled them.
It was a good plan. A solid, workable plan and, on such short notice, he’d thought he’d covered all his bases.
Then, how in hell was he supposed to explain away the fact that he was now stuck in a Jeep and being taken to the mountains of Santa Boronia, unless he missed his guess?
He might be blindfolded and powerless, what with his hand being tied behind his back with hers, and his legs tied together, but he hadn’t completely lost his sense of direction.
How easy, he mused, it had been for the leader and his gang to herd the two of them out and into the Jeep under cover of all the panic that was already in effect.
How easy and how terribly stupid of him to think that he could get away with playing with people’s lives, the way he was. The way he’d always done.
Brand knew Akira would have surmised the grimness of their situation.
For all intents and purposes, they’d also gotten out with the rest of the staff and the guards after the blackout. And Akira herself had said that there was a plane to catch. No one would go looking for her, because she was supposed to be out of the country.
And, as for him, he wasn’t supposed to be here at all.
He sighed, and then felt his shoulder blades being wrenched, when the vehicle rounded one more bend. Akira wrenched with him, and he jerked her wrists to give them both some balance.
Their kidnappers had been smart.
They’d put them both in the Jeep and tied their wrists together, back to back. So every time the Jeep lurched, so did Akira or Brand and as a result both of them got wrenched around a lot. It was deeply painful and, he suspected, a nice side benefit for Rebel Number Two.
“Hey, watch it with the hands,” she said now, grumpy and hitting the nape of his neck with her head.
“What about your damned hard head?” he shot back.
Before he could remind himself that she was in this predicament because of him. That he was supposed to protect
her, not have her murdered, which he knew she would have also surmised. But all his good intentions flew out the Jeep window the minute she started mouthing off to him.
“Take that back. I don’t have a hard head,” she was indignant now, and rolled her shoulders restlessly. He felt the movement ripple down his back.
“Quit moving. We are uncomfortable enough as it is.” He ordered through clenched teeth.
Guardian Knight Page 18