Jet didn’t say anything as she adjusted her aim to the man’s crotch. Her lips curled into a smile. “A 9mm Parabellum in your manhood will slow you down, I’d think. You have five seconds before I start shooting. And yes…I know how to use it.” She paused as her statement registered. “You two with the rifles, set them down by your sides and back off, or your friend will get the first round and you’ll get the next ten.”
The car pulled up, blocking the alley, and Jet’s gaze flickered to the driver, who was staring at the scene in surprise. The momentary distraction was enough to embolden one of the gunmen to raise his rifle, and Jet pivoted instantly and shot him in the thigh, shattering the bone. He emitted a bloodcurdling scream and went down clutching his leg, the rifle clattering to the pavement. His partner with the rifle hesitated.
“You have two choices,” Jet said. “You can drag your man there to the car and get out of here, or you can all die. I’ll make the decision for you if you don’t, although I’d prefer not to waste ammo on the likes of you.”
The man with the knife looked to his companion with an unsure expression. The remaining gunman looked down at his wounded companion, blood spreading on his robe as he whimpered in pain, and slowly knelt and placed the Kalashnikov on the ground.
“You’re going to regret this,” he hissed.
“Really?” she countered. “So maybe I should just shoot you both for good measure?”
That didn’t elicit a response, so she motioned with the gun. “Get him out of here. If I see any of you again, I’ll put a bullet in your skulls before you can blink.”
“You have no idea who you’re crossing,” the knife wielder warned.
“Want to make it three dead men instead of one who’ll never walk again? I’m out of patience.”
The thugs hauled the wounded man to the car. The driver glowered at Jet, who stood framed in the alley, pistol leveled at him while slowly approaching to keep everyone in range as the men dragged the screaming man away. They got him into the back seat and the driver roared away, leaving Jet standing in the alley, beads of sweat on her forehead.
She collected the AKs and carried them to a garbage can, ejected the magazines, and dumped the guns. She stopped a block away and dropped the magazines into another trash container, and then continued to the hotel at a moderate pace, her mind churning over who had just attacked her and why. Best she could figure was either slave traders or human organ traffickers, both of which were well known to operate in the lawless reaches south of Tripoli. Whichever the case, she’d just made new enemies and could add them to the list of threats while stuck in Sebha. She’d have to be even more careful if she was instructed to retry the rendezvous the following day, because there was a fair chance that they’d be back to avenge both their fallen man and their honor.
“Just great,” she whispered to herself as the hotel swam into view, and she blinked away the perspiration and adjusted her scarf over her face in preparation for dealing with yet more Islamic fundamentalist nonsense there.
Chapter 14
Moscow, Russia
An anthracite Mercedes limousine rolled into an industrial park on the outskirts of Moscow, its powerful motor a growl. The limo was sandwiched between a pair of fully armored G-500 SUVs with windows tinted so dark they seemed opaque. All vehicles were equipped with run-flat tires, and the lead and tail trucks were filled with bodyguards and enough firepower to stop a battalion. The vehicles stopped in front of a three-story building with a mirrored glass façade, and the bodyguards spilled from the trucks to form a protective cordon for the limousine passengers.
The limo door opened and Nicolai Karev stepped from the car, followed immediately by his security chief, Sergei. The pair hurried into the building, where they were met by a thin man in an expensive black suit. He ushered them past a series of cubicles and into a computer lab, where three men were waiting in front of a wall of monitors, the tallest with his arms crossed and relaxed, the other two obviously ill at ease.
“Andrei, we’re here. What do you have for us?” Sergei asked the tall man, his manner typically brusque.
“Mr. Karev, Sergei, glad you could make it, and thank you for taking the time to come out,” Andrei said.
“No problem,” Nicolai said. “Why are we here?”
“Grigor? Would you do the honors?” Andrei asked.
One of the nervous pair leaned forward and keyed in a command, and a grainy image of a woman appeared on the monitors.
“We were able to recover these from the CCTV cameras on the boat. It was difficult, given the level of damage they’d sustained, which is why it took so long. Apologies, but this would have been impossible to do five years ago. It’s only recently–”
Sergei cut him off. “Right. So this is the woman?” he asked Nicolai.
Nicolai’s brow furrowed. “Absolutely. I’d recognize her anywhere.” He paused. “Although she’s more stunning in person. Her eyes are luminous and green. Truly remarkable. The image doesn’t capture that.”
Sergei cleared his throat. “Now what?”
“We’re going to manipulate the footage and get the best grabs we can, and then we’ll enhance them and process them with a new proprietary algorithm we’ve developed that will create digital fingerprints from the images.”
“Which we can then send to whomever we need to?” Sergei asked.
“Yes. Although, as you’re aware, we have the most extensive database of CCTV images from around the world. Anything we don’t have stored, we can get.” Andrei paused. “I presume from our discussions that you want to find her.”
“That’s right,” Nikolai said.
“Any way to narrow down where we’ll be looking? It’s a big planet.”
Nikolai looked to Sergei, who frowned.
“Yes, actually. We believe that she’s affiliated with, or works for, the Mossad. So we’d start with Israel.”
Andrei’s eyebrows arched. “Mossad? That introduces an additional level of difficulty. They’re the best, and they don’t exactly publish lists of their employees. You’re sure?”
Nicolai nodded. “Absolutely. I was held by them. They were Mossad, all right. I recognized the accent. Although oddly, she didn’t have one…” He hesitated. “Regardless of how good they are, everybody has to live somewhere. This digital fingerprint – can you use it to compare it to traffic cam footage? Airport CCTV? That sort of thing?”
“That’s the entire point of it. Eventually we’ll be able to do a cross-section match exactly like we now do with fingerprints. Although the technology is still in its infancy.”
Grigor cleared his throat. “Correct. But we can run the characteristics through an AI front end, which will match based on hundreds of data points, and then–”
Nicolai turned to Sergei. “I’m sure it’s fascinating. How long will it take?”
Andrei stepped forward. “We can have the images ready in a day or so. Then it’s a matter of running the last month or two’s data from the camera archives through the…through the computers…and waiting for matches to appear. It’s an enormous amount of data, but with our systems…shouldn’t be too long.”
“That doesn’t sound like a hard answer.”
“Correct. It’s unknowable. But we’ll throw everything we have at it.”
Sergei nodded. “Do so. Round the clock. Anything you need, anything at all, call me and I’ll clear it with Nicolai.”
“Very well. And budget?”
Nicolai eyed Jet’s image and a muscle in his jaw flexed. He leveled a hard stare at the computer jockeys. “Whatever it takes.”
Andrei looked at Sergei, who nodded again. “This is our top priority,” Sergei said. “Make it yours.”
“Of course.”
“I want daily reports.”
“Then you’ll have them.”
“Very well,” Nicolai said, and looked to Sergei. “Are we done here?”
“Yes.”
Nicolai spun and marched back toward th
e lab doors, leaving Sergei to catch up. When they were gone, Andrei exhaled heavily and turned to Grigor. “You heard the man. No limits. And when he says none, he really means it.”
Andrei followed Nicolai and Sergei out, leaving Grigor and his partner staring at the screens.
“How’d you like to have that guy pissed off at you?” his partner asked.
“I don’t know. The way he was talking about her, I’m not sure anger’s his primary motivator.”
“Really?”
“Call it a hunch. He sounds conflicted. Like he either wants to kill her or spend a month in a dacha with her.”
“Maybe both. The order would be the only negotiating point.”
They laughed nervously, and Grigor stabbed the monitors off and turned to his companion. “Call a staff meeting in fifteen. This is going to be a bear. You and I know that. But it will also be a jackpot if we can pull it off.”
His companion squared his shoulders. “Will do.”
Grigor felt for a package of cigarettes in his breast pocket and grinned. “This could make our careers. Remember that. And remember it could ruin us if we fail.”
“We won’t.”
Chapter 15
Sebha, Libya
Salma awoke shivering, her arms and legs bruised from the bindings that had been used to transport her the prior night, her head splitting from the multiple blows. She blinked away tears of pain, resolved to deal with whatever came her way, and looked around the room.
She had been sleeping on a cold stone floor, the chamber barren except for a bucket to use as a toilet. The door was made of heavy wood of the type found in older homes, and locked from the outside, she presumed. All of her things had been taken, and she’d been left with only her makeshift pajamas. Her captors had at least had the presence of mind to untie her before they left her in the room, so she could move her fingers and toes, but only with considerable discomfort.
She forced herself to sit up and nearly passed out again from waves of nausea. The room seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship in rough seas, and she focused on controlling her breathing, fearful that she would hyperventilate, which would only make matters worse. A coil of anxiety burned in her gut, almost as severely as the blisters and raw patches on her feet, and if she didn’t get a grip on herself, she could tell that she would slip into despair.
How had Mounir found her? That was the question that she’d repeated in her head over and over much of the night. She’d left no trail to follow. It seemed impossible that he could have, but her captivity was inarguable proof that he had.
Once the dizziness had passed, she examined the room in the morning light streaming through grimy panes of glass high up the wall. She was in a small chamber, perhaps three meters by four, with limestone floors and walls of local brick. She debated screaming, but what good would it do her? It would only announce to her captors that she was conscious, and would no doubt annoy them. There was no way anyone was coming to help, she knew. Not in Sebha, where every imaginable atrocity was a daily occurrence. The city’s reputation was horrendous even in a country that was in complete breakdown.
She took a deep breath and struggled to stand, her feet protesting the weight, her head throbbing like the worst migraine she’d ever experienced. When she was upright, she hobbled to the door and tried the handle without hope. It turned, but the door didn’t budge. As she’d surmised, it was bolted from the outside.
Salma swore under her breath but refused to give in to the urge to cry. She’d signed up for the most dangerous duty the Mossad had, and this was an unenviable part of the job description. She remembered her training, the sessions of meditation where she’d been taught to escape in her mind to a place where nobody could hurt her, and she slid down the wall and sat again, this time with resolve.
She closed her eyes and focused more intensely on her breathing, inhaling through her nose and exhaling from her mouth, allowing her lungs to completely empty before drawing the next breath as she repeated a mantra until she had drifted away from her body, disassociated from the lump of neurons and muscles and bones that was only her physical manifestation.
Time seemed to stretch, and she stopped the breathing exercise, going deeper and deeper into the recesses of her mind until she felt a sensation of complete emptiness and tranquility that lasted until the scrape of the bolt on the door pulled her from her state and she opened her eyes.
Two of the men from the previous night entered the room and leered at her, followed by a third man, who held a pistol in his right hand and an iPhone in his left. His sneer was more alarming than those of the other men; his eyes were cold, his nose hooked, and the deep lines in his face signaled unbridled cruelty. A scar traced across one cheekbone to his left ear, which was mangled as though it had been chewed by a dog, and when he spoke, his voice was devoid of pity.
“She is a pretty one, isn’t she?” he asked no one in particular. The men laughed.
“I want her first,” one of them said, grabbing his groin in an obscene display lest Salma miss his meaning.
“You had the last one,” his companion complained. “It’s my turn.”
“What do you care? Not like you’ve ever been particular. She’s not a goat, like you’re used to.”
“I don’t know. I think she’ll fetch a better price untouched,” the first man said.
“Come on, Amir. She’s no virgin. Nobody will complain if she’s slightly more used than yesterday.” The man smacked his lips and looked to Salma. “Isn’t that right, princess?”
She resisted the urge to spit in his face, processing with dawning awareness that as bad as her situation was, she hadn’t been taken prisoner by Mounir after all. No, these were slave traders, who sold women as sex slaves to deviants from all over Africa and the Middle East, as well as to bordellos in Tripoli and Morocco. Which meant there was the possibility of not only survival, but escape, given her skills. All she would have to do was bide her time.
She looked up at Amir, gauging what it would take to drive his nasal cartilage into his brain before the other two could react, but in her weakened state she didn’t trust herself to move quickly enough. If she miscalculated, his pistol would catch her in the stomach, and she’d die the most excruciating death imaginable, bleeding out on the floor as the men watched and, worse, probably raped her as she died.
Amir seemed to sense the inner debate and stepped back. “Remove her clothes. I want to get some photos of the merchandise. She’s fair skinned, so she’ll bring a decent price, even if she’s older than some.”
The two men moved to Salma, but she didn’t resist, knowing that all it would bring would be further abuse and possibly incapacitation she couldn’t recover from. As it was, other than her head and feet, she was exhausted and bruised and possibly concussed, but she wasn’t out of the game entirely. But that could change if one of them slammed her head against the stone floor or broke her jaw with a punch.
They pulled her pants and shirt off, and Amir whistled as they stepped away. “A nice price indeed,” he said, his expression ugly. “Lie still or I’ll break your ribs. Like that. Arms to the side, legs a little spread.”
The snick of the iPhone memorialized her humiliation, but she felt nothing, no protestation of ego, no insult or offended dignity. This was only her body, nothing more. Not her essence. They couldn’t reach that to hurt the true her. That was out of reach.
When Amir was done with the photos, he handed his weapon to the nearest man and proceeded to invasively examine her with filthy fingers. He licked his lips as he did so, and for the first time his eyes were animated.
He eventually stood and nodded. “I have a number of clients who would be interested, I think. You’re right that she’s no virgin, but I’ve sold worse, and she’s still got a few serviceable years in her. No children, so that’s a plus. All in all, a good find,” he pronounced.
“So…we don’t get her?” the shorter of the two thugs complained.
“Not unless w
e can’t find a buyer. No point in throwing away money, is there?”
The men tossed her clothes onto her prone form and left. When the bolt had locked back into place, she slowly pulled them on, willing away the memory of Amir’s molestation, telling herself that after years with Mounir, nothing could be worse. Once clothed, she considered her predicament – on the plus side, she hadn’t been gang-raped or mutilated…yet. On the minus side…everything else.
She curled into a ball, knees to her chest, and a single tear trickled from her eye and splashed on the dusty floor. She’d come so close to escaping the nightmare of the last three years, and it had all collapsed on her in the home stretch. Worse, now the data that she’d copied from Mounir – details of a plan so evil that her quick reading of it while copying the contents of the files had sent chills through her – would never make it to her superiors, and the fate of her country would be permanently altered for the worse. The unfairness of it was like acid in her throat, and she coughed reflexively, the spasm sending waves of pain through her skull.
Several hours went by, how many exactly she didn’t know, and the room transformed from a freezer to an oven. Sweat coursed down her spine as she sat motionless, the air leaden and sweltering, her breathing exercise now painful with each scorching inhalation.
The door opened at one point and a grimy hand rolled a two-liter bottle of water into the room before it slammed shut again, leaving her to slow cook as the temperature climbed beyond unbearable. She meted out the water after gulping down half, stretching it the best she could, aware that she was losing minerals she would need if she was going to be physically able to handle an escape attempt should the opportunity present itself.
Her only advantage was the slave traders’ lack of knowledge of her background and training. They assumed she was a typical civilian woman, and wouldn’t be expecting a seasoned, capable fighter, capable of doing extreme damage, even if unarmed, in the blink of an eye. As long as she continued to react like a broken husk instead of a calculating operative probing for weaknesses, she had an edge. Maybe not much of one, but the thought heartened her a little.
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