The Orphan Uprising (The Orphan Trilogy, #3)

by James Morcan

  That good news had been undone by the phone call Naylor received just as he was about to depart his office for home. Nineteen had called from Papeete to advise it seemed Twenty Three’s death was suspicious and, on top of that, Seven had been assassinated by a car bomber.

  The escalation of activity in Tahiti confirmed to Naylor’s mind that Seventeen was indeed in Tahiti. It also prompted him to suspect that Nine could have returned there to be with his wife and to help Seventeen protect her.

  Naylor was tempted to send still more operatives to Tahiti to squash the resistance once and for all. He decided against doing that for the moment. Recent events had seen Omega’s orphan-operatives reduced in number, leaving the agency under-resourced for the first time since its Pedemont orphans had graduated as fully fledged operatives. The remaining operatives were all engaged in vital missions around the globe and Naylor couldn’t pull them away without very good reason. He just hoped his two operatives still operational in Tahiti were good enough to resolve the problem on their own.

  #

  Sitting down for dinner with her extended Tahitian family on a rug on the floor of their home, Isabelle felt strangely at peace for the moment – strange because she was aware she should be up the wall with grief and worry over her abducted son and her missing husband.

  Despite the undeniable precariousness of the situation, the Frenchwoman had a strong feeling all would end well. She couldn’t explain the feeling, not even to herself, but it persisted.

  Looking around at the islanders who had taken her in without question and given her sanctuary, Isabelle was overflowing with goodwill toward them. The generosity they’d shown left her humbled. Though they were not wealthy in material terms, they wanted nothing from her in return.

  As at all mealtimes, the Pomare family home was overflowing with children of all ages. They were lovingly watched over by parents, uncles and aunts, and by two sets of grandparents. Official head of the busy household was Manoa Pomare, a physically strong man with a stern countenance. However, everyone in the settlement knew the real boss was Atea, his wife and the family matriarch.

  Larger than life – in every sense – Atea was the one who family members and villagers turned to when something needed doing. She was also the settlement’s most experienced midwife and in that capacity had formed a close relationship with Isabelle, fussing over her and ensuring that she was well and rested.

  Though the villagers spoke Tahitian te roa, their native tongue, when in each other’s company, out of respect to Isabelle they spoke French when she was around. In return, she made a conscious effort to master key words and phrases in their language. Her efforts bordered on hilarious, though the villagers never let on.

  Isabelle sensed the baby was coming even before the pains began. A warm sensation that began in her belly gradually spread to her extremities. That was followed by a tingling sensation and then her waters broke. “Atea,” she murmured.

  No-one heard her above the sound of laughing children.

  “Atea!” Isabelle shouted. The laughter stopped and all eyes were suddenly on the Frenchwoman. “Baby’s coming.”

  Atea’s big, round face creased into a smile. “Baby’s coming!” she shouted, echoing Isabelle.

  The matriarch swung into action, shushing the children and chaperoning Isabelle through to a bedroom at the rear of the dwelling. Two aunties accompanied Atea. The three Tahitian women knew what to do: between them they’d delivered at least a hundred babies over the years.

  73

  Seventeen wasn’t letting up in her mission to hunt down her fellow orphans. She felt she had momentum going her way now and wanted to maintain that momentum before they could get to Isabelle.

  The former operative had been observing the front of Hotel Tiare Tahiti from her rented Honda since dusk. Her plan was to somehow isolate Eight and Nineteen, and pick them off one at a time, as she’d done with the others.

  Seventeen, who was still in her Belgian guise, was under no illusions about what she was up against. Nor did she doubt how it would end. She’d been around Omega long enough to know it could only end one way: with her death. For every operative she incapacitated, Naylor would send two more in their place.

  Ultimately, her luck would run out. She knew that, but it was a price she was prepared to pay.

  For the first time ever, she felt she had a real purpose in life. She had her brother to thank for that. Nine had pulled her from the dark abyss she’d fallen into. Or was pushed into more like it! And she’d had a taste of what it was like to be part of a real family.

  Seventeen felt she was indebted to Nine, and if it meant sacrificing her life to protect his wife and baby to repay that debt, so be it.

  The former operative tensed as two familiar figures emerged from the hotel’s entrance and hailed a cab. She observed Nineteen open the cab’s rear door for Eight and jump in the front seat. Eight was about to climb into the cab when she received a call on her cell phone.

  Seventeen watched as the female operative motioned to Nineteen that he should go on without her. The cab drove off, leaving Eight alone on the sidewalk. Still talking on her phone, she re-entered the hotel.

  That was the opening Seventeen had been waiting for. She climbed from her car and hurried after Eight. The former operative stepped into the lobby just in time to see her target enter an empty escalator. She watched as the lift buttons signaled that Eight had an uninterrupted ride to the fifth floor – the hotel’s top floor.

  Seventeen crossed the lobby and caught another elevator. This one was near-full of Japanese tourists who had entered it in the basement. It soon became apparent they were staying in rooms on different floors.

  The journey to the fifth floor seemed to take an eternity. After four stops to permit the tourists to access their individual rooms, the elevator finally delivered Seventeen to her destination.

  Now, alone on the fifth floor, she wasn’t sure what to do. For a start, she hadn’t a clue which room her target was in.

  The answer came almost immediately when a door halfway along the corridor opened and Eight reappeared. She was still talking on her phone as she walked back to the elevator. Seventeen noted she was speaking in Russian, but the former operative was certain she had been speaking English when she’d first emerged from her room. It was obvious Eight didn’t want anyone to understand what she was saying.

  As Eight approached, Seventeen pressed the elevator’s Down button to make it appear she’d been waiting to descend. She prayed they’d have the elevator to themselves.

  The two women nodded to each other as they waited for the elevator door to open. When it opened, Seventeen waited for her unsuspecting companion to enter the elevator first then followed her inside and pressed the Down Button.

  Standing close to the door with her back to Eight as they began to descend, Seventeen listened as the operative continued her conversation in Russian.

  “Yes, sir,” Eight murmured. “I’m confident we can handle the situation.”

  Seventeen deduced Eight was talking to Naylor, or to an Omega superior at least. She wondered if the discussion was about sending more reinforcements to Tahiti.

  “No they still don’t know what type of explosive device was used,” Eight said. “The gendarmes are still looking into that.”

  Watching the operative with the Asian features talking behind her in the reflection of the shiny elevator door, Seventeen could see she was engrossed in her conversation. With her right hand Seventeen reached for the pistol she carried in her open shoulder bag while with her left forefinger she hit the Stop button. The elevator stopped with a jerk midway between floors three and two. Seventeen muttered her annoyance in French and pretended to push the Down button in an attempt to restart the elevator.

  “Hold on one second, sir,” Eight said into the phone. Switching to French and speaking to the back of Seventeen’s head, she asked, “What’s the problem, Madam?”

  “It seems to have stalled,” Sevent
een said.

  “Let me see- -”

  As Eight stepped forward to help, Seventeen spun around, pistol raised. It was just as well she turned when she did. A second later and she’d have been dead.

  Eight had become suspicious of the woman in front of her just before she stepped forward. By the time the former operative had spun around, Eight had drawn her own pistol and was preparing to use it.

  74

  Seventeen saw Eight’s pistol in time and reflexively grabbed the operative’s right wrist, pinning it to the elevator’s rear wall before a shot could be fired. Eight had reacted similarly, grabbing Seventeen’s wrist and holding it so the pistol was pointed away from her. As they’d been trained to do, the two flailed at each other, striking with their feet and knees.

  A savage knee to the stomach winded Seventeen, forcing her to double over, gasping for breath. At the same time, Eight smashed the former operative’s right wrist against the elevator wall, causing her to drop her pistol.

  Now unarmed, Seventeen was fighting for her life. As they continued to flail at each other, a karate-style, stiff-fingered jab of Seventeen’s found its mark, striking Eight’s Adam’s apple. Momentarily unable to breathe, the operative dropped her pistol and tried in vain to suck in a breath of air.

  Seventeen swept Eight’s feet from under her and looped the strap of her shoulder bag around her opponent’s throat. Before the operative could recover, Seventeen crossed the strap over and pulled it tight.

  Eight, who still hadn’t recovered from the jab to her Adam’s apple, flailed her arms about in desperation as she sought to get air to her lungs. Her eyes bulged and her face turned bright red as Seventeen inexorably tightened the strap. Finally, the operative’s eyes glazed over and she became motionless.

  Seventeen maintained the pressure on her victim’s throat for another twenty seconds to ensure she was dead. Then, breathing hard, she released the strap and stepped away from the body. She thought she might faint and had to lean against one wall to recover.

  Studying her reflection in the elevator’s door, Seventeen almost didn’t recognize herself. Blood from scratches on her face had mingled with sweat, leaving streaks in her fake tan; she had a black eye and blood also oozed from a cut lip. As for her blouse, it was bloodied and torn, and her dress looked even more disheveled than her hair, which now resembled the Wreck of the Hesperus.

  Thinking quickly, the former operative tidied herself as best she could. She then retrieved both pistols – hers and Eight’s – and placed them in her shoulder bag.

  Eight’s discarded cellphone caught her eye. Wondering if the other party was still on the line, she picked the phone up and put it to her ear. There was no dial tone, which made her suspect someone was indeed still at the other end.

  Lightening her voice to mimic Eight’s as best she could, she said, “You don’t have to worry about the target any more, sir.” She gambled that the other party was Naylor and she hoped he’d believe the target she referred to was herself.

  There was a long silence. Finally, Seventeen heard a voice she recognized.

  “What is the status of the target?”

  It is Naylor! Seventeen smiled to herself. “The target has been retired, sir.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Permanently.”

  Seventeen heard Naylor breathe a sigh of relief. Anxious to avoid being found out, she said, “Someone is coming, sir.” She spoke with urgency. “I must go.”

  The former operative ended the call, cutting Naylor off. She hoped she had deceived him into believing he’d been talking to Eight. Of course, she knew he’d find out sooner or later that he had been tricked, but until then she prayed her former boss would delay sending reinforcements to Tahiti.

  #

  Seventeen had no way of knowing, but nearly six thousand miles away in the den of his mansion in Illinois, Naylor was quietly celebrating. The Omega boss had fallen hook, line and sinker for his former operative’s ruse and firmly believed Seventeen was dead.

  Even though he had his trick of the moment awaiting him naked in his bed upstairs, he indulged himself by pouring a stiff brandy from his liquor cabinet and raising his glass in a silent toast.

  The brandy combined surprisingly well with the Viagra he’d taken earlier. Suddenly excited and remembering what awaited him upstairs, Naylor drained the glass and hurried off to pleasure himself.

  #

  Fifteen hundred miles away, in his room in Paris Las Vegas, Nine was making final preparations to breach Omega’s secret lab at Nellis Air Force Base. The table he sat at was littered with the architectural plans and drawings he acquired that morning from Al Madman Ricca. He’d been studying the plans, taking particular note of the tunnels and pipes that would provide him with access to the underground lab.

  Nine considered the two hundred grand the plans had ended up costing him money well spent. They were extremely detailed – right down to the exact location of every nut and bolt – and they pointed to the facility being a series of interconnected labs and medical rooms.

  Ricca had confirmed the facility was a medical lab, though he claimed he never knew who its intended patients were. However, he did reveal he’d learnt that some specialist personnel were recruited from international drug company KaizerSimonsKovak to work in the new facility. That had caught Nine’s attention because he was aware KSK was an Omega-owned company.

  Nine’s plan was to access the facility just before midnight. That was only two hours away, so he knew he needed to get moving.

  The former operative was under no illusions about the difficulties that lay ahead. Accessing an out-of-bounds facility that didn’t officially exist on heavily guarded Air Force property would be hard enough, but freeing a five-year-old boy – assuming he was even there – and secreting him out of the state and out of the country amounted to his most difficult assignment yet. And he knew it.

  Still, he clung to his mentor’s slogan: For every problem, there’s a solution. He was working on a solution at that very moment.

  On a brand new smart phone he had purchased that afternoon, he saved two emails he’d typed out. The first contained new instructions for his attorneys in Europe; the second contained detailed information about Omega and its illegal medical labs, and was addressed to American law enforcement agencies, high profile politicians and international news agencies. He planned to send the emails as soon as he found Francis, his rationale being that the inevitable furor they’d create would provide him with the smokescreen he needed to secret his son out of the country.

  Without warning, the heartburn Nine had experienced earlier returned. What began as a dull ache quickly progressed to sharp pains. He hurried to his bedroom to retrieve the container of heart pills he’d left there. Before he even got to it, he remembered he’d run out of pills. He’d intended to use his last repeat prescription to purchase more at a drugstore in the hotel’s retail arcade earlier, but hadn’t got around to it.

  Nine shook the container to check. Nothing! He cursed his forgetfulness.

  The pain wouldn’t subside. Nine feared he was having another heart attack. Frightened and unsure what to do, he staggered over to the telephone on his bedside table, picked it up and dialed reception.

  Nine momentarily blacked out. When he opened his eyes, he found himself on his hands and knees. The telephone was on the floor beside him. Somewhere through the fog in his brain, he could hear a concerned woman’s voice asking, “Hello? Are you alright, sir?”

  Nine picked the phone up. He gasped, “Send someone to room ten eleven plea- -” He collapsed face down on the carpet.

  “Hello? Hello?” The concerned receptionist got no answer.

  75

  The shrill ringing of the bedside telephone jarred both Naylor and the hooker lying next to him awake.

  “What is it?” the sleepy young woman asked.

  “Go back to sleep.” Naylor picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “Sir, this is Dan Abernath
y.”

  Recognizing the name as the codename Omega operative Number Nineteen was currently using, Naylor sat up in bed, suddenly alert. “Go on.”

  “I have some bad news,” Nineteen said. “Sue Lee was found dead in our hotel this evening.”

  Naylor thought he was hearing things. He recognized Sue Lee as Eight’s codename. Mindful that he’d been speaking to her only a few hours earlier, he asked, “How did she die?”

  “She was murdered. Strangled.”

  Naylor rubbed his temple as his all-too familiar headache returned. The realization that he’d been duped was starting to set in. “What was the time of death?”

  “Around seven forty-five pm, Tahiti time.”

  That confirmed it for Naylor. He had been duped. He recalled that the telephone discussion he’d assumed had been with Eight had been around that time. He could feel his blood pressure rising. “I don’t believe this!” he suddenly shouted. “I send five elite operatives to find one pregnant lady, and some slip of a woman terminates four of them!”

  The hooker lying next to him cowered beneath the sheet as her client vented his fury over the phone.

  The Omega director gradually calmed down. Controlling his anger, he said, “I’m sending more reinforcements. They’ll be there within twenty four hours.”

  Naylor ended the call then speed-dialed a number. He was calling Ten, one of four operatives he’d dispatched to watch out for Nine at Nellis Air Force Base.

  After a short delay, a sleepy voice came on the line. “This is Frederick Schlanger,” Ten answered using his current codename.

  “This is Naylor. I have new instructions for the two new arrivals.”

  Ten realized the Omega boss was referring to operatives Twenty One and Six who had arrived at the base only the previous day.

  “They are to leave immediately for Tahiti.”

  “Immediately, sir? They’re sleeping right now.”