The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  He opened his hand, looked at the flash drive, and tossed it over. I flipped the manifest onto the bed. Then I thought of one more question. “Do you know why Blackthorne would be tailing Rachel?”

  He had been reaching for the manifest. He stopped. “Rachel, the one who got the message from my computer?”

  “Well, technically, Roger’s computer, but yes. They tried to scoop her up last night. We just got away, and they weren’t nice.” I brushed away my bangs to show him my forehead. “What would they want with her?”

  “Shit.” He went back over to the window and peeked out. “Blackthorne is trying to kill me. They’ve been chasing me all over the world trying to get to me, and you’re just telling me this?”

  “Why is Blackthorne trying to kill you?”

  “Because my story is going to blow—”

  “Blow the doors off. You told me, but you won’t tell me why. It’s a little vague for me to really connect with. What I heard is that it’s a private military firm out of Virginia that contracts with the U.S. government and others to provide services up to and including combat. Also intelligence.”

  “That’s how it started, and that’s what it looks like, but that’s not what it is now. Blackthorne is the CIA on steroids. What the CIA would like to be if it weren’t for the Constitution and government oversight and diplomacy and international laws and political infighting and lots of ass-covering.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “All you need to know is they don’t want anyone to read what I’m writing, and the only reason they would be tailing her would be to get to me.”

  My backpack was getting heavy, so I sat down on the edge of the bed again to try to think that through. Something about it didn’t work. “If you’re the only thing that connects Rachel to Blackthorne, how would they have known about her? Until an hour ago, neither one of us knew who you were.”

  “The e-mail. That goddamn e-mail that I didn’t even send.” He was starting to move around the room with purpose now, collecting his dirty clothes from the floor and throwing them into a canvas bag. “I told you I was using translators? I had one who found out Thorne was looking for me. He copied a bunch of my files and sold them to him behind my back. That has to be it.” He tossed his kit bag into the larger canvas bag. “But it doesn’t matter. If they know about her, then they know about you, and if they know you’re in Paris, then I’m fucked.”

  Interesting wording. It was exactly what Lyle had said. So far, everyone I knew who was connected to Blackthorne was fucked. But I had to get back to an earlier point. “Did you just say that Thorne had copies of some of your files?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  I pulled the USB drive from my pocket. “From before or after you erased Rachel’s video?”

  “I don’t know. I guess…uh…” He leaned over to stuff one of the hotel’s fresh white towels into his bag, which was the only reason the round that crashed through the window, twitched the curtains, and flew past my ear missed his head and lodged instead in the cheap hotel wall behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Max Kraft was obviously used to being shot at. He hit the deck loudly and promptly.

  “Motherfucker.”

  I was right behind him. Another round came through the window and punched through the drywall, this time around bed height. The window must have been shatterproof, because it popped with the sound of each shot but didn’t break. With the heavy curtains drawn, whoever was out there had to have been firing blind, which was to our advantage.

  I reached instinctively for my Glock, which wasn’t there. I hadn’t even tried to bring a firearm through French customs. Kraft apparently hadn’t had the same issues. He was holding what looked like some kind of a compact Beretta, maybe nine-millimeter.

  “Can you shoot that?”

  “I can shoot.”

  “How many rounds do you have?”

  “Two clips,” he said. “Ten each. You know, don’t you, that that’s the only way out.” He pointed at the front door. The booming quality of his voice came out under stress, even when he was whispering. “I can’t believe you brought these people.”

  “I’m not the one in trouble with Blackthorne, so be quiet and let me think.” I pulled out my phone, but the phone in the room rang before I could dial. I picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “We’re not interested in you.” It was a man’s voice, soft and a little seductive. I looked at Kraft, who seemed alarmed that I was taking calls.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You can come out alone. Leave the reporter inside. If there are weapons in the room, bring them out with your hands in the air.”

  “Uh-huh. Then what happens?”

  “You can walk away. We’ll take it from there. I’ll hold fire for five minutes.”

  I checked my watch and marked the time. “Can I confer with my colleague and call you back?”

  “You have five minutes. If you don’t come out, we’ll come in.”

  The line went dead, and he didn’t leave his number. I had to count that as a no. I scrolled to the number I had preprogrammed into my cell and dialed it. As it was connecting, I looked at Kraft. “Get ready. We’re leaving right now. I’d stay low if I were you.”

  “Leaving? What? Who was that?” To his credit, he didn’t just ask questions. He started moving around in a low crabwalk and grabbing his stuff while he asked questions. “What’s going on?”

  I was busy with another phone call. “They’re here,” I said when Frank picked up. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  “I lived through a hijacking. This is nothing.”

  “Good.” I moved on my belly to the wall Kraft’s room shared with the next. I stood up long enough to grab the end of the dresser and swing it away from the wall and toward the door, the direction that would provide the most cover, at least as much as we would get in that flimsy room. I found a good spot low on the wall and knocked on it quietly. “Right here,” I said into the phone.

  “Stand back,” he said, and hung up.

  The second I clapped my phone shut, the banging erupted, and it was loud. Kraft stared at the wall. He was still staring when the sight of the ax blade coming through the wallpaper knocked him backward into a graceless sprawl. “Holy mother of God. They’re coming through the fucking walls?”

  “He’s with me,” I said. “I lied about coming alone. Give me your jacket.”

  “What?”

  Kraft had on a lightweight olive-green jacket, the top half of the running suit he was wearing. “Give it to me, now.”

  He unzipped it and pulled it off. I put it on, then reached into my backpack for my Red Sox cap. By the time I had it on, Frank had broken through, making a passable hole at the base of the wall. When the banging stopped, his face appeared through the drywall dust, then his hand. I put my backpack in it, and he pulled it through by the straps. Kraft still hadn’t moved. I grabbed his big canvas bag and shoved it through, but when I reached for his laptop case, he wouldn’t let it go.

  “Give it to me, Kraft.”

  “No.”

  It wasn’t a big hole. I was pretty sure I could squeeze through, but Kraft was stouter than I was, and it would be a tight fit for him, even without a laptop clutched to his chest. “Then hand it through to Frank.”

  “Who’s Frank?”

  “A concerned citizen who wanted to help.” Had insisted on helping, in fact. He had overheard me asking Tim about Kraft and then followed me out to the curb. He had wanted to meet Kraft and set the record straight on Salanna 809 and Hoffmeyer. He was about to get his chance. On the way over, he’d told me he was a volunteer firefighter back in Norfolk, and we had formed a plan in case there was trouble.

  “Come on,” Frank said. “What the hell’s going on in there? Get your ass moving, Kraft.”

  Kraft looked at me, and he looked at the front door. Then he crawled to the opening.

  “Give me
your gun,” I said. He handed it over, then, still holding his computer, dove through headfirst. Frank must have grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled, because Kraft’s top half disappeared into the wall. Then he got jammed.

  “Dammit, Kraft, are you willing to die for what’s on that laptop?”

  “Yes, frankly, I am.”

  “I’m not.” I reached up and grabbed the case with both hands. I had the better angle and could brace my foot against the wall. He was breathing hard, so I waited for him to inhale and gave it a big yank. When it came loose, I fell flat on my back with the case in my arms. But I knew Kraft had slipped through. I could hear him yowling.

  Sounds coming from just outside the front door told me they were setting up to come in. I checked my watch. Ninety seconds. That’s when I noticed the sirens, the wailing kind that you hear in Europe when the police are on the way. Frank might have called them, or someone might have summoned them when they heard the shots. Either way, it was probably a good development for us.

  I spun around, shoved the laptop through the hole, and followed it. From inside the neighboring room, I reached back through the opening, grabbed the leg of the dresser, and pulled. It was not a lightweight piece of furniture—I had to struggle to move it—but I knew it would cover the hole. It wouldn’t fool a professional army for long, but it might give us the edge we needed.

  I stood up and wiped the drywall dust from my eyes. I looked for Frank and Kraft, but they were already through a door that led to still another room. I hadn’t even known the room adjoining Kraft’s was a connector. Frank had worked it all out on his own. I followed them through, Frank closed that door behind me and locked it. That put us another room removed from our pursuers.

  The sirens were getting loud. If we didn’t want to get picked up, we had to move fast. I started toward the front window to check the scene, but Frank grabbed my arm.

  “Back here.” He led me to the bathroom. I joined him there in time to see Kraft disappear through a window above the toilet seat.

  “This one has a window?”

  He smiled. “Deluxe suite.”

  “Cool.”

  Frank climbed up onto the toilet seat and dove out after Kraft. I was right behind him. I pushed my backpack through and jumped out after it. When I hit the pavement six feet below, Frank was across the alley, banging on an old and rusty slab of a back door to what looked and smelled like a restaurant.

  The sirens were upon us now. I expected police cars to come barreling up each end of the alley any second. It was hard to talk and hard to hear and harder to think. Frank and I decided to split up. We shook hands quickly as Kraft looked on, stunned, confused, and angry. Frank would take Kraft. I would be the decoy.

  Shouting came from inside the hotel and then what sounded like gunfire. Kraft took off, but Frank tracked him down, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him back to the iron door. Frank stared at it as if it might open magically for him. He was about to bang on it again when it did. The big door swung out wide enough to let the two of them slip inside. Before it closed, a man with a chef’s hat stuck his head out and looked up and down the alley. Frank had turned out to be a very resourceful guy to have on my side.

  I heard a police car coming from one end of the alley, so I took off in the other direction. I covered the half-block easily to the street, made a left turn away from the hotel, and ran almost directly into a woman standing on the sidewalk. Something about her was familiar. She had on a light raincoat. She was the woman Frank had spotted at the reunion. Without thinking about it, I turned and headed the other way, directly into the path of a van that veered up on the sidewalk in front of me.

  It screeched to a stop. The side door cracked open, and at least four men came rushing out like a black tide. There was a lot of yelling in French and heavy boots on the ground and the sound of gear moving. Also the sound of weaponry—metal against metal. When the assault rifles came out, I dropped my backpack and threw my hands in the air. Someone came up from behind and grabbed my arms. Someone else grabbed my feet, and then I was flat on my belly on the wet ground with my hands behind me, wrists cuffed, and a boot on my neck.

  From my vantage point, I could see the end of the street. There was a lot going on and a lot of people racing around. I looked for the woman in the light raincoat. She was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A police lieutenant in Boston, who hated me anyway, once threw me in a holding cell, basically because I ticked him off. My first time behind bars had been a pretty frightening experience, mainly because I wasn’t in there alone. The second was in California, where the highway patrol picked me up on a warrant for check kiting, a charge that turned out to be totally false and a complete misunderstanding. The West Coast lockup was nicer, as were the officers. In neither case was I locked up for more than twenty-four hours, but it made being in jail not an entirely new experience for me. What was new was being tossed into a French jail.

  The guys who had grabbed me were some kind of flying SWAT team. Once they had pulled me up from the wet ground, I had seen Gendarmerie written across their backs. Someone had heard the shots in the hotel and called the police. They’d spotted me running away, and they’d caught me with Kraft’s gun in my pocket. I didn’t know much French, but I knew that was going to be a big problem.

  At the station house, I had asked a lot of questions, but my jailers kept telling me they had to find a translator before anyone could speak to me, which was bullshit. It wasn’t as if I were a code talker.

  I sat on the cot in my cell, isolated and waiting and trying to remember to breathe through my mouth. This jail had something in common with the other two I’d visited. It was my guess that jails all over the world had the same thing in common: the pungent smell of mold, greasy skin, body odor, and every variety of human discharge.

  After several hours, an officer came and opened my cage. He took me through a series of gates and doors and elevators until we arrived at an open office area, not unlike the bullpens I’ve seen in the many different police departments I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. He handcuffed me to a chair next to an empty desk and told me to wait. That’s what he said. One word in English: “Wait.”

  There was a lot of shouting going on behind the closed door of an office along one of the walls. It was muffled French that I couldn’t understand. What was easy to understand was the level of vitriol. When the arguing stopped, the door opened, and a man in a black raincoat came out. Right behind him was another man, somewhat younger, in shirtsleeves and tie. They stood in the bullpen speaking loudly and gesturing. When it was all over, the man in the black raincoat stalked out. The shirtsleeved man yelled at a uniform, pointed in my general direction, then retreated to his office and slammed the door. The officer came over and uncuffed me, then guided me through the procedure for release, talking to me the whole time in perfect English. He answered no questions about why I’d been released. I asked what would happen if I demanded an explanation. He advised against it.

  On the way out, they returned my personal belongings. I went out to catch a cab, thinking how nice it would be to take it straight to Orly. I could still catch the evening flight to Boston if I hurried. But I had to go back to the Hyatt and get my things.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need a cab. The man in the black raincoat was sitting in a car at the curb. He leaned over and popped open the passenger-side door.

  “Get in.”

  There was enough room between the car and the curb for me to step down. With one hand on the open door and one on the roof, I poked my head in so I could see his face. “Who are you?”

  “Cyrus Thorne.”

  Nothing screamed success like a private jet. Blackthorne’s looked rich without being ostentatious. The seats were big club chairs covered in glove-soft caramel-colored leather. There was carpet, subdued lighting, tables with polished wood-grain surfaces, and individual flip-up television monitors at every seat.

  Thorne had taken a right t
urn into the cockpit after we’d boarded. I was trying to figure out which seat to flop into when a flight attendant approached and asked if I wanted anything.

  “Water, please.”

  I took a big swiveling chair that gave me a good view out one of the porthole windows. Apparently, we were the only passengers expected, because the stairs were up, the door was closed, and we were starting to taxi.

  The flight attendant was back with a tall glass of ice, lime, and a bottle of San Pellegrino. She set the glass in front of me and poured. “I’m Tatiana. I’ll get you whatever you need.”

  “Thank you.”

  The pilot came on and asked everyone to strap in for takeoff. I looked out and saw we were at the end of the runway, about to blast off. He said our flying time to Boston’s Logan Airport would be approximately eight hours. At least I was going home.

  I drank deeply from the glass, not realizing until I had consumed almost the whole thing how thirsty I had been and not caring much that gulping sparkling water would give me hiccups. I drained the glass, and Tatiana came over to pour the rest of the bottle. That’s when I looked at her closely for the first time and recognized her.

  “I know you,” I said. “I saw you. You were at…you were…” She was the woman in the light raincoat from the ballroom and the sidewalk just before the cops had taken me down. “Who are you?”

  “Cyrus will explain everything when he comes back.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Flying the plane.”

  Of course. He not only owned the plane, he flew it. I watched Tatiana move around the cabin. She looked strong and toned, and something told me she was more than a flight attendant. A ninja flight attendant, perhaps, the kind of person we could have used more of back in my Majestic days.

  “Put your seat belt on,” she said. She could have used a little brushing up on her customer-service skills.

  As I buckled in, she threw a lever on the side of my chair and locked it so it wouldn’t swivel, which I assumed was required to keep the passengers from spinning like tops on liftoff. Then she strapped into the seat behind me.