by James Morcan
Footsteps behind Seventeen alerted her to the approach of the same junior nurse she had seen earlier.
“Excuse me, Sister,” the junior nurse said in French.
“Yes Nurse?” Seventeen answered brusquely as she looked up from a borrowed chart she’d been pretending to consult.
“It’s my break now. Is it okay if I take half an hour?”
“Certainly Nurse, but don’t be late.”
“No Sister.” The nurse smiled and marched off.
As soon as the nurse’s footsteps had faded, Seventeen closed the door to Twenty Three’s room then pulled a portable screen across so that it would hide her and the patient from anyone who paid an untimely visit to the room.
Seventeen then picked up a spare pillow from a bedside chair and stood looking down at the youngest of the Pedemont orphans. Memories of Twenty Three came flooding back to her – memories of events and moments she hadn’t thought of in years. Like the times their mentor, Tommy Kentbridge, had bullied the young boy during Teleiotes training sessions at the orphanage in an effort to toughen him up; and the time she had tipped hot soup over him after he’d teased her at the orphanage’s dinner table when they were both young teenagers.
For one awful moment, she wondered if she could do what she was about to do. Then she thought of Nine and Isabelle and their missing son.
The former operative placed the pillow over Twenty Three’s face and held it firmly down. Twenty Three’s fingers clawed at her face as he woke and tried to draw breath. He showed surprising strength for one so badly injured, but his struggles lasted for less than a minute.
Seventeen removed the pillow. She didn’t need to check Twenty Three’s pulse. He was clearly dead. The flatline graph on the bedside heart monitor confirmed that.
Two tubes had been dislodged from Twenty Three’s arm, so Seventeen quickly reattached them before returning the pillow to its original position on the chair and pulling the portable screen back.
Taking one last look around the room to ensure it was as she’d found it, Seventeen quickly left the ward, descended the stairs to the ground floor and entered the same ladies’ restroom she’d used earlier. Retrieving the bag she’d left hidden in one of the cubicles, she changed back into the guise of the Belgian anthropologist. Then she departed the building, bag in hand, and walked to her rental car.
Driving back to her hotel, Seventeen pulled up alongside a rubbish bin and threw her borrowed nursing outfit into it.
Later, as Seventeen reviewed the night’s events in the privacy of her hotel room, she hoped hospital staff would assume Twenty Three had died in his sleep.
However, she was in no doubt Omega would know Twenty Three had been the victim of foul play. Sooner or later, the deceased’s colleagues would learn of the presence of the mysterious nursing sister, and they would put two and two together.
Seventeen smiled at the thought. And so it begins. She was actually starting to enjoy herself.
The former operative hadn’t felt this stimulated in a long time. Not since her days as an active operative. It was what she’d always know she’d been born to do.
#
In her refuge at Pomareville, in the middle of Tahiti, Isabelle couldn’t sleep. She found the island’s humidity worse at night for some reason. And the nightmares she’d been experiencing since Francis’ abduction were becoming more frequent, so sleep was difficult at the best of times.
Added to that, the baby was suddenly very active. She could feel her moving in the womb. “Be patient, little one,” Isabelle murmured.
As if in response to her mother’s voice, the baby stopped moving. Isabelle smiled to herself, arose from her bed and wandered outside to get some air. Sitting down on a comfy chair just outside her dwelling, she began softly singing a French lullaby while fondling the ruby that hung from her necklace.
Singing to her unborn child brought her pleasure – as did the thought of giving birth to a baby sister for Francis.
Thinking of Francis reminded her of the dreadful position she and her small family had found itself in. As she did every waking minute of every day, she wondered how her son and husband were faring. Have you found him yet, Sebastian? She prayed that her boys would be returned to her soon.
70
After a quick visit to a suit hire firm in downtown Vegas, a smartly dressed Nine walked through the palatial entrance of Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, one of the hottest gaming facilities on the famed Strip, at the southern end of Las Vegas Boulevard.
It was the morning after Nine’s tour of Nellis Air Force Base and he was now in the guise of a Hispanic playboy complete with greased hair, dark shades, fake moustache and genuine overnight stubble on his face. Gone was the heartburn of yesterday and his shoulder wound had ceased to trouble him. He was feeling more like his old self.
In keeping with his new guise, he’d checked out of his modest motel on the outskirts of town earlier that morning and checked in at the Paris Las Vegas, a swanky hotel and casino a few doors along from Planet Hollywood.
Excited tourists mingled with hardened gamblers inside and outside the casino that was synonymous with gaming, night life and good times in the city. Working girls and women on the prowl for a good time gave Nine the eye as they arrived for some early action.
Nine had spent the previous evening in his motel room researching the Air Force base online on a rented laptop. The five hours that had taken proved to be time well spent. Accessing archived media reports on the base, he’d quickly discovered references to rumors of the Mob’s involvement in construction activity on the base in recent years. One name kept cropping up: Al Madman Ricca, boss of the Las Vegas branch of the Chicago Syndicate, or the Outfit as it’s usually referred to.
Ricca, it seemed, had single-handedly taken control of much of Nevada’s construction activity since relocating from Chicago to Las Vegas in 2007. After acquiring a stake in half a dozen casinos on the Strip, he’d turned his attention to construction, acquiring a number of lucrative building contracts.
For Ricca, the move to construction was a logical one. He’d qualified as an engineer before finding himself involved with the Mafia in Chicago, so he was able to talk the talk when dealing with other engineers and builders. Nevada’s construction sector also offered huge opportunities – legitimate and otherwise.
It was the otherwise that appealed to Ricca.
When tenders were called to construct a multi-million dollar, high-tech, subterranean facility at Nellis Air Force Base, the anticipated large number of companies tendering for the hugely lucrative contract never eventuated. Several competitors announced their intention to tender, but they never followed through. Ricca’s company mysteriously ended up being the only one to officially tender for the job. Rumors of threats, stand-over tactics and heavy-handedness were rife, but never proven.
Before, during and after construction, various journalists speculated on what the subterranean facility was being used for, but this, too, was never clarified.
One press statement in particular caught Nine’s eye. It read: When asked to comment on the purpose of the new facility, construction boss Al Ricca said he didn’t know.“Even if I did know, I couldn’t say. My contract with the Air Force stipulates I can’t talk about the facility.”
Nine was sure Ricca would have a fair idea what the facility was being used for, and he was in no doubt the mobster would have intimate knowledge of its exact location, its layout and how to access it.
The former operative had made contact that night with Ricca’s underboss – an unsavory wiseguy known as Johnny The Rat Colosimo – at another casino the Outfit had connections with on the Strip, and had requested a meeting with Ricca for the following morning.
Knowing the people he was dealing with would check him out first to ensure he wasn’t with the Feds, Nine had adopted the guise of one Miguel Carrera, a New York heavy of Puerto Rican descent – a creation of Omega for one of Nine’s long-forgotten missions. He’d been c
onfident his guise would still stand up to a background check, and so it had proven.
Now, as Nine waited in the downstairs lobby of Planet Hollywood, he was feeling refreshingly confident. Since his wasted trip to the DRC, Thirteen’s dying words had been proven correct – in part at least. Nine had confirmed the likelihood of an underground lab at Nellis Air Force Base, and he thought it a reasonable assumption that Francis was being held there. Certainly Ten’s presence at the base confirmed something was up.
Across the lobby Colosimo, the wiseguy Nine had met the previous evening, caught his eye. Colosimo turned and began walking up a flight of stairs. The underboss was almost at the top of the stairs when Nine caught up to him. They walked in silence to the end of a long corridor where two hard-looking suits stood outside a closed door, doing their best not to appear conspicuous. They quickly and efficiently frisked Nine. The taller of the suits then opened the door and stood aside to let Nine and the underboss in to what turned out to be a conference room.
Inside, Nine found himself face to face with Ricca. A big, jowlish individual, he sat conversing with his accountant, a nervous, pasty-faced, fortysomething man.
Ricca dismissed the accountant as soon as he saw Nine. “Mister Carrera, please join me,” he said, motioning for Nine to sit down. The big man nodded to Colosimo who closed the door behind him and took a seat next to his boss.
“Call me Miguel,” Nine said as he sat down facing the two men.
“Okay Miguel and you can call me Mister Ricca.” Ricca and his underboss chuckled. “I hear you have a deal I won’t be able to refuse.”
Realizing Ricca didn’t believe in small talk, Nine got straight to it. “I want information about the subterranean facility you built at Nellis Air Force base.”
“What sort of information are we talking about?” Ricca asked.
“A copy of the architectural plans would be a good start along with security specs, the location of access and egress points, details of personnel numbers, that sort of thing. Oh, and your best guesstimate of what the facility is being used for.”
“And in return?”
“One hundred grand. Cash.”
Ricca sneered. “You’re joking, right? My stake in this casino alone returns me a hundred grand every day. I’d need five hundred grand minimum for information like that.”
Nine wasn’t fazed. He’d expected resistance. “Okay I can go to a hundred and fifty.”
“Like I said, five hundred minimum.”
Nine stood up as if to go. “I was prepared to go to two hundred grand, but I can see I’m wasting my time.” He left the room without saying goodbye. Retracing his steps down the long corridor toward the stairwell, he hoped he hadn’t blown it. A shout from the meeting room door behind him told him he hadn’t.
“Carrera!”
Nine turned to see Colosimo motioning to him to return to the meeting room. It seemed the negotiations were still live.
Walking back to the room, Nine wasn’t unduly surprised he’d been called back. It was no secret the construction sector was battling in the present economy and he’d heard whispers that Ricca’s business interests had suffered setbacks of late. The mobster had obviously decided that two hundred grand for a little information wasn’t to be sneezed at.
Nine’s earlier confidence had returned. Hang on Francis. It won’t be long now.
71
Seventeen wasn’t surprised to see Seven turn up at Papeete’s main public hospital the day after she had fast-tracked Twenty Three’s passing, though she had hoped the muscular African-American operative would be accompanied by his Omegan colleagues. That would have given her the opportunity to terminate all three remaining operatives in one hit. Now she’d have to content herself with crossing just one more off her list for the moment.
As she’d done when she visited the casualty ward the previous night, Seventeen had dispensed with her Belgian disguise. She was now in the guise of a hospital grounds person – complete with green cap and overalls, which she’d uplifted from an unlocked storage shed – and, in keeping with her new persona, was picking up rubbish in the hospital’s outdoor car park.
Seventeen had spotted the late model Renault rental car as soon as it entered the hospital grounds. From beneath the peak of her cap, she watched as Seven parked the Renault in between two other cars in the middle of the car park. The operative climbed from the car and strode toward the hospital’s main entrance.
As soon as Seven entered the hospital, Seventeen walked over to the Renault, picking up discarded papers as she went and placing them in a rubbish bag she carried. The car park was half full, but apart from a visitor parking his car some distance away and a skateboarder weaving around the stationery vehicles she had it pretty much to herself.
Seventeen quickly checked that no-one was looking then drew a small tool from her rubbish bag and deftly used it to access the vehicle’s front passenger door. Satisfied she hadn’t been observed, she slipped inside the car, closing the door softly after her.
Sitting as low as she could inside the vehicle, Seventeen retrieved more items from her bag. Among them was a small but powerful car bomb, which she’d been up half the night assembling. The former operative placed the device beneath the driver’s seat then tied the fuse to the driver’s door handle.
Moving cautiously so as not to prematurely detonate the bomb, she opened the front passenger door and climbed out, closing the door gently behind her. She then strolled casually over to a rubbish bin on the far side of the car park and emptied the contents of her bag into it.
Seventeen knew she should depart the scene, but something made her stick around. She didn’t want the death or injury of some innocent bystander on her conscience. Though the bomb she’d rigged was only small, it was powerful enough to kill or maim anyone in the immediate vicinity should it explode.
The former operative had first-hand experience of the destructive powers of such improvised explosive devices. She’d become familiar with their assembly and use while working alongside CIA personnel during America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq prior to that.
Seventeen busied herself picking up rubbish when she saw Seven emerge from the hospital. As the operative walked toward his vehicle, the skateboarder Seventeen had observed earlier chose that moment to send his skateboard flying into one of the cars parked next to Seven’s Renault. It appeared the skateboard had scratched the door of the neighboring car.
The skateboarder, a pimply teenage boy, was inspecting the damage when Seven joined him. Though Seventeen couldn’t hear what was being said, she imagined the discussion had to do with the mishap. She watched, heart in mouth, as Seven handed the skateboarder a pen and a piece of paper for the boy to leave his name and address for the owner of the damaged car. The boy obliged, leaving the paper beneath one of the car’s windscreen wipers.
To Seventeen’s consternation, the skateboarder hung around as Seven approached the Renault. She daren’t wait any longer. “Hey!” she shouted.
Both Seven and the skateboarder turned and looked at her as she strode toward them.
“You!” she pointed straight at the skateboarder and spoke French in keeping with the nationality of most of Papeete’s workers. “This is not a skating rink. Now get out of here before I report you.” She made sure she kept her head down so her cap would hide most of her face from Seven.
The skateboarder stared at Seventeen insolently. For one terrible moment the former operative thought the boy was going to disobey her. To her everlasting relief, he thought better of it and skated off.
Seven caught Seventeen’s eye. “Teenagers,” he said sympathetically.
“Tell me about it,” Seventeen laughed as she turned and walked away. Just before she’d turned, she thought she caught a look of recognition in her fellow orphan’s eyes. She continued walking, but could feel Seven’s eyes boring a hole in her back.
Seven had a feeling he’d seen the grounds person before, but he wasn’t able to pla
ce her as he fumbled for his car key. He found his key and recognized the woman almost at the same instant. Almost but not quite. As Seven realized the grounds person he was looking at was Seventeen, he depressed the remote on the key.
Seventeen felt the blast of the explosion from where she was, and she was a good thirty yards away. She spun around and was relieved to see the skateboarder was unharmed, and thankfully no-one else appeared to be in the immediate vicinity.
At first she couldn’t see the Renault. It was hidden behind a cloud of smoke. The smoke cleared almost immediately and she saw Seven, or what was left of him, lying a few yards from the burning car. Both were unrecognizable. The operative had been reduced to a smoldering, charcoal carcass and the Renault had been reduced to a skeleton of white hot steel.
People converged on the car park seemingly out of nowhere. They included hospital staff and visitors. Several screamed when they realized they were looking at the charred remains of a body.
Seventeen took advantage of the sudden chaos to slip away. Her first port of call was a unisex restroom where she removed her green cap and uniform, leaving only the shirt and shorts she was already wearing. She still wore the same hikers’ boots, but they complemented her current outfit.
Now bearing no resemblance to the grounds person who had entered the restroom a few moments earlier, she emerged from it and walked to the rental car she’d left parked outside the front of the hospital. As she walked, her thoughts were already on the next operatives on her list.
72
Naylor’s day had not ended as well as it had begun. That morning, Ten had called him and advised there hadn’t been any sign of Nine anywhere near Nellis Air Force Base, nor anywhere in Nevada for that matter. It appeared the rogue operative hadn’t learned of the existence of Omega’s latest orphanage.
Shortly after that, the Omega boss had received another call from the base – this time from Doctor Andrews who reported that Francis was now fully recovered from his recent ailment and testing was about to begin.