Code Name: Dove

by Leon, Judith

  A blond with a sharp nose, well-cut blue suit and horn-rimmed glasses spoke first. “CIA? Blair and Cardone?”

  “Right,” Cardone said. “Agent Joe Cardone. And this is my partner, Agent Nova Blair.”

  The blond shook hands, first with Cardone and then with her, and introduced himself. “David Stivsky, FBI. Been on the case from the get-go.”

  He introduced the two other men. The hefty man, Jacobson, was a Fairbanks’ police lieutenant whose reassuring smile offset several unattractive chins. The other was an Alyeska man, from the office in charge of pipeline security. He was a sandy-haired beanpole named Duncan, and his expression seemed stuck on grim. He flipped open the log, checked their ID’s, and entered their names in the record.

  “This is one helluva mess,” Stivsky said. He twirled one of the straight-backed chairs, sat and rested his arms over the back. “Three pumping stations and the terminal blasted to smithereens. Burning like they’re never gonna quit. I gather, since we were told to wait for you two, Langley has hard evidence these guys are foreigners.”

  “A reasonable assumption,” Cardone said in a serious tone.

  The men were getting into FBI-CIA turf issues and Nova had zero interest. Instead she asked, “Have you talked to either man yet?”

  Stivsky scowled. “No. They were brought in by helicopter about oh-five-hundred. Pumping Station 6 is just north of here. Unfortunately the terrorist is busted all to hell. Been sedated since before arriving here. When he was first brought in, Wiley, the pipeline employee, talked to the doc, but he’s also been under sedation since before I made the scene.” The scowl deepened. “We’ve waited to have a go at ’em till you two arrived since waiting also made the doc happy.”

  She nodded to Cardone. “Let’s see if the doctor is finished.”

  “Is Dr. Graywing free yet?” Nova asked at the nurses’ station.

  The nurse started to leave the desk. From a room along the opposite corridor, a slender Native American woman with glasses, salt-and-pepper hair and a doctor’s white coat entered the hall and bounded in their direction. The nurse pointed and said, “That’s her.”

  Dr. Graywing looked questioningly at Nova and Nova’s new partner but addressed her nurse. “So who do we have here?”

  After the doctor examined their credentials herself, Nova said, “We’d like to talk to you before we see your patients.”

  The doctor glanced at her watch. “The pipeline employee is sedated, but should be able to talk in, say, half an hour. I can’t let you see the one that’s presumed to be a terrorist. He’s in critical condition.”

  “I know that, but still, we have to see him.” Nova put a little bite into her words. “As you can imagine, it’s urgent.”

  “You simply can’t talk to the terrorist until he’s in better shape,” she said, lacing her words for the first time with a sharp edge.

  The nurse was absorbing their every word. Nova said, “Could we find a more private place?”

  Dr. Graywing briskly led them back toward the waiting room. She stopped in front of a door that led to a space hardly larger than a closet. The room held a desk and chair, charts and some posted work schedules. Graywing waved her arm for Nova and Cardone to enter, followed them in, and closed the door. She leaned back against the desk and looked at Cardone with the same charmed sparkle in her eyes that Nova had seen in the woman at the reception desk. “It’s a miracle either of these men is alive.”

  Nova fingered through her purse, extracted her minirecorder and started taping. Graywing saw the recorder and halted. “This won’t bother you, will it?” Nova asked.

  Graywing shifted position slightly. “Not at all.” Again looking at Cardone, she continued. “The presumed terrorist is, as I’ve explained, in critical condition. He fell down a shaft on the pumping station site. Broken neck. Broken right leg. A concussion. He was unconscious when he arrived and is only barely conscious now.” The doctor’s brow wrinkled in a sign of minor impatience. “Actually, I’ve told all of this to your three colleagues down the hall.”

  Cardone countered with an easy grin. “We appreciate you bringing us up to speed.”

  “Well…” Graywing took in a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Everyone seems to feel he was left behind because his colleagues couldn’t locate him before they took off. As I said, you’re not going to get anything out of him for some time. If ever.”

  Graywing’s gaze shifted, met Nova’s briefly with a challenge, then went back to Cardone. Nova let the challenge pass—for the moment.

  “The pipeline employee—his name is John Wiley—he’s in better condition, but he’s been sedated. He’s the only survivor from any of the three pumping stations.” Graywing gave Cardone and then Nova a questioning look. When they said nothing, she continued. “I don’t know about the other two stations, but all of the personnel at Number 6 were shot in the head. Really nasty. The medic told me they were almost all in bed. It was as though they’d been put to sleep, then shot. Wiley’s alive only because he has a steel plate in his head. The bullet simply grazed it.”

  “That is a break,” said her partner.

  Dr. Graywing smiled at him. “I presume you’re going to question the man, and I want to warn you, he’s still very confused—”

  Nova cut in. “The FBI has the lead here, Doctor. They’ll be in charge of the questioning. We’re simply observers, and I’m sure they expect us to keep pretty much out of the way. But if we have questions, I’ll be the one asking.”

  Finally she had Graywing’s full and surprised attention. Agent Cardone’s lips pulled into a thin line. He crossed his arms and stared at the wall. A notion that the kid might be a bit touchy about his status in their relationship again crossed Nova’s mind.

  Dr. Graywing’s ears flushed pink. “I, yes…well,” she stammered. “I stand corrected. Please forgive me, Ms. Blair. Mmm. Let me say, I had a chance to talk to Wiley briefly. He said three things I thought might be of interest.” The doctor hesitated.

  “Yes,” Nova said.

  “First, even though it was nearly one in the morning, Wiley was awake, reading in bed in the company residence quarters, when he heard a noise. Then someone ran past the door to his room wearing a gas mask. So the first thing is, it looks like they did use some kind of chemical to incapacitate the workers, all eighteen of them, then took their time going to the rooms to dispatch them one by one before blowing up the place.”

  Graywing shook her head. Nova shared her feelings. Eighteen men dead at Number 6, shot like cattle. More at the other two stations.

  “The second thing Wiley mentioned was burned coffee. The smell was the last thing he remembered.”

  “That’s odd,” said Cardone.

  Nova said, “Maybe it has something to do with the chemical agent that was used on them.” That struck her as plausible and a piece of information possibly useful for forensics. She’d have to make sure they started looking for traces of drugs in Wiley’s blood and tissues immediately. “And what was the third thing?”

  The doctor opened her mouth. The sound of two gunshots penetrated the small room followed by blood-chilling shrieks.

  Chapter 4

  Nova beat her partner into the hall. Both guards were sprawled on the hospital’s white linoleum floor, blood and tissue splattered on the walls behind where they’d stood.

  Bile rushed upward, to burn the back of Nova’s throat. She swallowed it down. The acrid scent of gunpowder assaulted her. With their feet pounding in rhythm, she and Cardone reached the reception desk together. Stivsky and company were close behind. The nurse lay facedown over her records, unconscious or dead.

  The doors to the two hospital rooms gaped wide. Nova wanted to stop, to check the rooms—the witnesses were priceless—but high-pitched screams still warbled from the mouth of a young volunteer dressed in pink and white. The girl looked with horror into Nova’s eyes as she pointed toward the exit door next to the elevator.

  Nova was closer to the door than C
ardone. She yanked it open, peered inside the stair shaft to see if anyone was there, then burst onto the landing, Cardone at her heels. From below came hollow sounds of someone running down metal stairs. She and Cardone poked their heads over the handrail. She glimpsed the back of a dark-haired man dressed in white as he exited from the stairwell onto the next floor down.

  Wordlessly she and Cardone bolted down the steps, their headlong descent sending metallic echoes clanging up and down.

  She trailed Cardone through the fourth-floor door into the corridor and saw the man in white halfway to the double doors at the corridor’s end, walking fast. They gave pursuit. Nova guessed that Stivsky would be on his way to the first floor to secure the exits. The man in white heard her and Cardone. Without looking back, he sprinted for the doors, overturning a cart.

  “Watch out, idiot!” the surprised orderly yelled.

  Side by side she and Cardone streaked after the suspect, avoiding the cart and people hugging the walls. They barged through the double doors. The corridor diverged.

  “Split,” they said simultaneously.

  Cardone took off to the left. She sprinted right and burst through the second set of double doors, nearly flattening a pregnant woman against the wall. Rooms lined the hallway on both sides, but it was unlikely the man would hide. He wanted out.

  Halfway down the hall she passed another stairwell. The door was just closing. The assailant would be heading for a first-floor exit. An elevator stood four strides beyond the stairwell. The door yawned, revealing a skinny, bearded kid. Jeans. Plaid shirt. He moved with glacial slowness toward the opening. Nova leaped inside, shoving the kid out the door with one hand and hitting the first-floor button with the other.

  “What the hell!” he protested.

  She could have cooked a five-course gourmet dinner in the time it took the door to crawl shut.

  Her mind said that if this elevator moved like the one they’d taken up, chances were good, very good, she would descend faster than the bastard could run. She flexed the fingers of her right hand, wishing her gun was nestled in it. Unfortunately the Walther was at home, snugly tucked under her mattress.

  At last. A final moan from the elevator and a slight bounce. The doors retracted with agonizing slowness. She bounded into the hall and from inside the stairwell heard a clanging of running feet. Good! She was ahead of him.

  The stairwell door flew open. The man in white bolted into the hall twelve feet away and headed right for her. His hands were empty: apparently he’d holstered his gun. He looked as big as a pro linebacker. I’ve thrown bigger many times, she told herself.

  Upstairs he hadn’t seen her. He’d probably think she was just a civilian in his way. She set her feet, bent her knees. He swept past. She grabbed his right wrist, twisted it out and back, letting his momentum add to the force that should bring him to the floor in a hammerlock.

  He pivoted on his right foot with the direction of her movement and with his left fist, delivered a forward punch. She dodged it, but his arm wrenched free.

  Now he faced her—stubby black hair, amazed dark eyes, thick lips open. She was clearly an unexpected obstacle in his path to the exit. He followed up with a smooth, left-footed roundhouse kick. Right at her face.

  She blocked it—barely. His foot slid off her shoulder. Cold prickles raced up her back. He was equally skilled—and much stronger. Sure, he was bigger, but there was something abnormal in his strength.

  Before he could set his left foot squarely, Nova lunged and grabbed his left wrist. She wouldn’t get another chance. Kicking out at his right foot, she prayed he’d go down.

  The unstoppable bulk anticipated her. He finessed her kick and used his weight as leverage to twist his wrist free. He planted his left foot, swiveled his back to her and, with his right foot, back-kicked her in the solar plexus. She felt as if she’d been hit by a rocket. Breath whooshed out from her lips. Pain streaking through her belly, arms flailing, she lifted astonishingly, unnaturally, high off the floor as if in a Kung Fu movie, and flew backward toward the wall.

  Chapter 5

  Heart pounding like a jackhammer, Joe rammed open the double doors. The fourth-floor corridor was empty: no terrorist, no civilians. Logic argued that his new partner had drawn the full house and was this instant on the hot trail.

  Still, there must be exits leading outside that had to be checked. And sure enough, three-quarters of the way to the hallway end he found a stairwell and an elevator—coming up. He sucked in his breath, flattened against the wall, slammed the stairwell door open. Nothing in sight. No sounds. He pounded his fist against the wall.

  He swiveled to backtrack and Jacobson crashed into him. Stabilizing the Fairbanks’ detective, Joe muttered, “Bastard went out the other wing.”

  Still furious he’d been dealt a busted flush, he sprinted to where he and his new partner had split up, Jacobson lumbering behind him. At the other wing’s stairwell they galloped down, two and three steps at a time. Agent Nova Blair lay stretched flat on her back on the ground-floor corridor, those big eyes closed. As he’d feared, no sign of a terrorist.

  Three panicked civilians and Duncan, the Alyeska man from pipeline security, clustered around her. God, she looked so fragile. A halo of red blood framed a fan of black hair spread over ivory linoleum.

  Duncan looked up at Joe from a kneeling position beside her with frightened eyes. He said, “Stivsky’s gone after him.”

  “Blair…?” Joe snapped. The rest of his question stuck in his suddenly dry throat.

  Duncan read his mind. “Just unconscious.”

  Relief muddled with fear and anger. Joe felt his jaw muscles tightening. He was going to be taking orders from a part-time agent. Whatever her talent might be, it wasn’t capturing terrorists.

  Duncan could take care of Nova Blair. Joe waved for Jacobson to follow. Together they bolted toward the exit.

  Outside, two hospital security men ran with guns drawn through what was now a light rain toward a part of the parking area hidden behind the hospital wing’s shoulder. A burst of gunfire erupted from the same direction. With Jacobson at his heels, Joe dashed after the guards. He skidded around the corner, heard another triple burst of fire.

  A couple hundred feet away, the FBI man, Stivsky, gun drawn, squatted behind a yellow school bus, peeking around its fender. Stivsky waved to the guards, indicating they should flank the target left and right. The terrorist fired again, another triple round. Joe took off to the left, Jacobson close behind him.

  Stivsky shouted, “Keep him pinned down. I radioed for backup. I located him behind the big blue van.”

  Cardone and Jacobson found cover at opposite ends of a black Cadillac. The lieutenant gave him a look of amazement. “Shit, man,” he muttered, “you’ve got no weapon.”

  “Afraid not. But our friend doesn’t know it. I can still draw fire. Let’s get closer.”

  Jacobson nodded. Together they raced another fifty feet fast and low. A quick burst from the terrorist’s automatic riddled the air. A bright green Plymouth provided cover. Joe clenched his teeth, wryly cursing his misfortune that IBM reps weren’t required by law to travel armed.

  He figured that by ducking and dodging in a 180-degree loop, he and Jacobson could get behind the mark. But why had the SOB stopped running? Stivsky had it right; he was holed up behind a big blue van. Where was his transportation or his pickup man?

  With Jacobson, Joe moved again. When they’d circled ninety degrees and only five cars separated them from the terrorist, Joe spotted the tops of heads and the gun hands of three men in plainclothes sticking out from behind an unmarked car.

  They were local police. Maybe FBI. Whoever. The SOB hadn’t fled because their car blocked the exit. Joe whipped out his ID folder, flopped it open. The fine, cold drizzle pearled drops on the plastic cover. Peeking over the Plymouth’s fender, he aimed the folder in the direction of the three plainclothes men, waved it in the air. “Police,” he bellowed.

  The ass
assin let loose another triple burst. A bullet zinged past Joe’s left ear just as he turtled his head behind the fender. The dampness on his brow wasn’t just rain; his underarms were hot and wet. He bellowed again, in the direction of the plainclothes types who’d squatted out of sight. “He’s one of the terrorists. Keep him pinned down.”

  The terrorist fired off a single round. Stivsky yelled, slowly and in clear words, “This is the FBI. You cannot get away. Throw out your weapon, raise your hands and walk out so we can see you.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t like it,” Joe muttered. “Let’s try drawing fire again.”

  Jacobson nodded.

  They rose and scuttled two cars closer to the bull’s-eye of their deadly little circle.

  Joe put his head against the ground, scanned under the blue van and found what he was expecting. The man was sprawled flat on the ground. It might be a trick. He sorely doubted it.

  Stivsky gave the order and they all rushed the van. With Stivsky’s gun trained on the prone man, Joe felt for a pulse at the base of the man’s neck. The guy was dead. But no bullet wound anywhere. The autopsy would probably find cyanide or some other quick way out. So much for an interrogation. The FBI lab boys could get information out of him in other ways. If he had a record. If the organization he belonged to wasn’t all that professional. All in all, however, not a good day for the good guys.

  A dark silence was receding; sound was filtering back to Nova. She trembled with terror. Please, don’t hurt me. Her eyes pinched tight to blot out the hated face, she struggled to pull into a fetal position. She should protect her stomach. Her stepfather, Candido, was very likely to kick again. The effort brought a wave of nausea.

  “You probably shouldn’t move.”