If it was a navigational chart, the symbolic characters could represent landmarks. Set sail in the indicated direction until you reached a particular landmark, then change course and head to the next. Assuming the excavation site was the start, then a traveller following the chart would first go roughly southwest, southwest again on a slightly different bearing to the triangle/tree/whatever symbol, another short stint in a similar direction, then an abrupt change to head southeast for a long distance. She needed a map . . .
Movement at her door. She glanced up, expecting to see Lola.
Instead, she saw a man with a knife.
A bloodied knife.
Nina jumped from her chair and snatched up her phone to call for security. But the swarthy, black-haired intruder reached her desk before she punched in the first digit, his glistening blade slashing through the cord. The phone went dead.
She threw the receiver at him. The man easily batted it aside and rounded the desk, coming for her. She ran the other way and raced for the door - but he was faster, tackling her before she reached it.
‘Help!’ she screamed at the corridor beyond the doorway. No answer but silence. ‘Help me!’
He slammed her face first against the floor. Dazed, nose bleeding, Nina was unable to resist as he seized her by her ponytail and hauled her upright. He gripped her tightly round the waist from behind; a moment later, the black blade was at her throat.
He dragged her back across the room. She tried to pull the knife away, hacking at his shins with one heel. He twisted and smashed her head and shoulder against the window. The glass cracked. As Nina cried out, he kicked the chair aside and shoved her against the desk. ‘The computer,’ he hissed. She couldn’t place the accent. ‘Wipe the drive. Use a secure delete, blank it.’
‘Who are you?’ Nina whispered.
In response, the blade’s edge pushed deeper. ‘Wipe the computer! Trash everything!’
Terrified, she obeyed, then moved the cursor to the ‘Secure Empty Trash’ menu option. She hesitated; he jerked the knife to one side. A trickle of hot blood ran down her neck. ‘Do it!’
She did. A warning message popped up: was she sure? The knife slid back, a lethal prompt. Hand shaking, she tapped the return key. A progress bar slowly filled up as the files were overwritten. Gone for ever.
The pressure on her neck didn’t slacken. ‘The photos weren’t on the IHA servers,’ her attacker said. ‘How did you put them on your computer?’
Nina didn’t answer immediately, as much out of fear as reluctance. He shoved her harder against the desk, making the lamp shake. ‘Memory card,’ she told him.
‘Where?’
‘In my jacket.’ She gestured at the chair. Her jacket was hung over its back.
The man turned his head to look, the blade lifting slightly—
Nina snatched up the lamp and smashed the bulb in his face.
He lurched backwards, one elbow hitting the window and widening the cracks. Nina spun and struck again, trying to bash the lamp’s heavy base against his skull, but his other arm came up to deflect it. She jumped back as he slashed at her with the knife - and hacked straight through the power cord, its severed end sparking as it hit the floor. The black blade was carbon fibre, non-conductive. Invisible to the UN’s metal detectors.
Nina dropped the lamp and threw herself across her desk. Papers scattered, the laptop’s hinge cracking under her. Her sleeve ripped as the tip of the blade whistled past, cutting a shallow gash in her bicep before stabbing into the wooden desktop.
She lashed out with one foot, catching him hard in the chest and sending him staggering backwards. Rolling off the desk, she ran for the door. ‘Help! Anyone!’
Nobody in the corridor. She rushed down it, heading for reception and the elevators beyond. But the security doors between reception and the elevators, installed to safeguard the IHA’s classified materials, were closed. Locked, a red LED confirming that she was trapped.
And her keys were in her jacket.
Nina changed direction, going to Lola’s desk. She could call security, raise the alarm—
She recoiled as she saw Lola slumped behind the desk, arms clenched to her stomach.
Blood was pooled beneath her.
Nina fought down nausea to pick up the phone - only to find that the coiled cord had been cut, bloody fingerprints smeared over the plastic. Lola must have tried to call for help . . . and paid the price.
The man barrelled from her office and charged down the corridor towards her.
No way out, except—
Clutching her ID badge, Nina ran to the server room. She swiped the badge at the reader as she grabbed the handle. The door rattled against the frame.
Too fast. The lock hadn’t had time to disengage before she tried to open it. The killer was sprinting straight at her. Another swipe. Come on—
A click. The handle moved. Nina shoved the door open and threw herself inside, spinning round to slam it shut. Without an ID card, the man wouldn’t be able to get into the server room - if she could close the door in time . . .
The door banged. But not against its frame.
Nina shoved it again. It flexed, but still wouldn’t close. ‘Shit!’ She looked down. The toe of a combat boot was wedged in the gap.
She threw herself against the door, trying to force it shut. But she knew it was futile. He was much bigger than her, sheer weight and brute force in his favour—
A whump as he threw himself against the other side, knocking her backwards. She tried to push back, but the nearest server rack was slightly too far away for her to brace her feet against it. Another blow. Nina’s soles squeaked over the linoleum floor as she fought for grip, but she couldn’t hold her position. One more attack, and he would be through . . .
She jumped away just as he lunged again. The door flew open, the intruder stumbling as he burst into the room - but Nina tripped too, the swinging door catching her and sending her tumbling into the server racks. She tried to pull herself up, her fingers finding purchase on the recessed handle of one of the drawer-like server blades above her.
The man was quicker to recover. He saw Nina on the floor and plunged the knife at her chest—
She yanked the server out of the rack. There was a splintering crack as the carbon fibre knife stabbed through the circuit board just above her head. The man tried to pull it out, but it was stuck, the server rattling in its frame.
Nina kicked at his knees, rolled to her feet and ran down the length of the server room. There was only one exit, the door through which she had entered. Even if she rounded the central island of workstations, her attacker would still reach it before her.
Unless he couldn’t see her.
There was a red fire alarm box on the back wall. She yanked its plastic handle, taking a deep breath. A whooping klaxon sounded, which would summon help - but it was the fire suppression system itself that could give her a chance to escape.
In a closed, windowless room inside a skyscraper, filled with banks of computers holding vital classified data, water was not an option as an extinguisher - it could potentially cause even more damage than a fire. Instead, valve heads in the ceiling spewed out powerful jets of halotron gas, a swirling white cloud rapidly filling the space.
And hiding Nina.
One hand over her nose and mouth, eyes half shut as the dense mist enveloped her, she ducked and moved as quickly as she could round the central workstations. The man coughed violently, caught unawares by the cold, choking vapours. He was still by the open server rack, trying to retrieve his knife. If she reached the door quickly enough, she could get out before he recovered.
If she could find the door. The fog was already so thick that she couldn’t even see an arm’s length ahead, the overhead lights just a faint, diffuse glow - and the red-lit exit sign above the door completely obscured. She groped blindly through the haze. The room wasn’t that big - surely it couldn’t be much further—
She bumped into a chair, whic
h knocked against one of the desks. Something fell over, plastic clattering.
The coughing stopped. He knew where she was.
Nina sprang upright, no longer caring about stealth as she ploughed forward. One shin barked against something hard-edged; she ignored the pain, staggering on until her hand closed round the corner of a desk. The door could only be a few feet away. She looked up and saw a faint red glow. The exit sign. She rushed to it, outstretched hands finding the door.
Where was the handle, the handle—
There!
She rushed through into suddenly clear air. The security doors were still sealed; the fire marshals hadn’t had enough time to respond. She slammed the door, muffling the hiss of the gas jets, and ran for her office. Her attacker would hopefully lose several precious seconds trying to reach the exit. If she could find her keys and get back to the security doors before he emerged, she could take the stairs until she met the first responders coming up them—
She heard the hiss of gas over the fire alarm as she reached her office. He had opened the door - and would be coming after her.
Could she barricade herself in her office’s private bathroom? Maybe, but the door had only a simple bolt - a couple of good kicks would break it, and then she would be trapped in an even more confined space.
Phone—
Not her desk phone, its cable severed, but her cell. It had been on her desk before the fight - where was it now? She searched for it amongst the scattered papers. There - below the windows. If she could hold him off in the bathroom even briefly, the knowledge that she had called for help might force him to retreat before the building’s exits were secured . . .
She grabbed the phone and turned to run for the bathroom—
He was in the office.
No way she could reach the door. She backed up as he advanced. He no longer had the knife, but his fists were raised, ready to beat her, grab her, choke her.
Nina pulled her chair between them in a last-ditch attempt to block him. The man kicked it forcefully back into her. She thumped against the desk - and he grabbed her by the throat, thumbs gouging hard into her windpipe as he forced her to the floor.
She tried to scratch at his eyes, but his arms were longer than hers, her nails falling just short. His grip tightened. She clawed at his arms, his chest, but to no avail. The pain rose as she struggled to breathe, hands flailing over the carpet, the spilled papers—
Electrical flex—
With the last of her strength, Nina jammed the severed power cord into his eye.
There was a harsh electrical spark inside his eye socket - and the man sprang upright, reeling back against the window. The cracked glass broke, wind gusting through the jagged hole. He clutched his face, smoke coiling out from beneath his hands.
Nina had felt some of the electric shock, but only a fraction of what the assassin had experienced. Still choking, she dragged herself up on the desk and looked round. He stared back - with only one eye, the other an oozing burnt hole. Agony was overcome by pure fury as he saw her—
With a yell of equal rage, Nina snatched up her battered laptop and swung it at his head.
Keys scattered as the machine smashed in his face, knocking him into the window . . .
Which gave way.
He toppled backwards over the sill and plunged screaming for over twenty storeys in a shower of glass - and hit the pointed top of a flagpole in the plaza below. The gilded wooden spike punched straight through his ribcage, his body slowly slithering down the pole on a trail of blood.
Bruised and bleeding, Nina staggered back to reception, where she held Lola until the fire marshals finally arrived.
10
Cuba
The American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was a freak of international diplomacy. The land on which it stood granted in perpetual lease to the United States by a treaty with the then US-FRIENDLY republic in 1903, the base became a huge thorn in the side of the Castro regime following the revolution of 1959. But Cuba lacked the firepower to retake it by force or the legal authority to evict the occupants under international treaty law, so eventually settled for surrounding the base with cacti and landmines and trying to ignore its very existence. This suited the United States just fine, so for decades the name ‘Guantánamo Bay’ remained nothing more than a curious footnote for military and political historians.
Until 2002, when it became infamous around the entire world.
Chase had been to Cuba before, albeit undercover, during his military career, and had even very briefly passed through the US naval base between legs of a long flight. But following the tedious journey from Dubai, it wasn’t to the base proper that he was taken by the grim, taciturn men who had intercepted him.
It was to the notorious military prison.
An escort of armed Marines met their unmarked plane when it landed. Chase and the three men were put aboard a bus and driven round the ragged-edged bay, passing through ring after ring of high fences and security checkpoints to an isolated group of buildings near the island’s southern coast.
It was the most secure, most secretive, and most feared part of the entire facility, remaining active even when the rest of the detention centre had been closed down. Its only official name was nondescript, uninformative, yet somehow chilling. Camp 7.
The bus stopped outside a windowless single-storey structure. More Marines were waiting, and Chase and the suited trio were again surrounded by armed men before being taken into the building. It seemed to be the camp’s administrative centre, the small reception area dominated by warning notices and security cameras. A soldier sat in a booth behind a sheet of armoured glass, a metal door beside it. One of the men with Chase held up an ID badge; the soldier nodded and pushed a button. The door slid open.
Chase was led through and marched down a corridor to a door. ‘Room 101, is it?’ he asked. None of the mirror-shaded agents got the joke. ‘Oh well. You want me to go in?’
He took it from the lack of an answer that they did; unsure what to expect, he turned the handle and stepped through.
The room beyond was a small office, as grimly bland as the rest of the building. There was another door in the back wall, but Chase was for now only interested in the man behind the desk beside it. Black, in his fifties, close-cropped hair greying at the temples. Like the Marines he wore a tan utility uniform with a digital camouflage pattern, but his rank insignia revealed him to be an officer: a colonel. The nametape on his chest read ‘Morris’.
The colonel didn’t bother glancing up from the document he was reading as Chase entered, which annoyed him. ‘Ay up,’ he said loudly. ‘Well, I’m here. You going to bother telling me why?’
Morris finally looked at him. ‘Mr Chase?’
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Edward Chase?’
Chase gave him a toothy grin. ‘You’d look a bit of a tit if I said “No, Edgar Chase”, wouldn’t you?’
‘Are you Edward J. Chase?’ Morris impatiently asked.
‘Yeah, you got me. So now what? Fitting for an orange jumpsuit?’
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mr Chase.’ Chase felt a jab of fear and worry. Had something happened to Nina? But that didn’t make sense - why would they bring him to Cuba?
But there was someone else he knew in Cuba - more specifically, in Guantánamo Bay . . .
Morris stood. ‘It’s about your ex-wife,’ he said, confirming Chase’s thought.
‘Sophia?’
‘Yes. I regret to inform you that Sophia Blackwood is dead.’
It took Chase a moment to respond, his feelings very mixed. ‘Can’t say I’m going to break down in floods of tears,’ he said, sarcastic callousness covering his other emotions. ‘She did try to kill me. And nuke New York.’
‘Which is why she was here. As the country’s biggest terror suspect since 9/11, she couldn’t be kept in the regular prison system. The other inmates would have killed her before the trial.’
‘So what h
appened?’
‘See for yourself.’ Morris went through the door at the office’s rear. Following him, Chase found himself in a small white-tiled morgue, stainless steel fixtures gleaming dully under the bright overhead lights.
On a table lay a body, covered by a sheet.
‘She tried to grab the sidearm from one of the Marine guards,’ said Morris, standing beside the head of the supine figure. ‘He was forced to fire to protect himself and others. The bullet hit her in the face at point-blank range.’ He took hold of one end of the sheet. ‘I should warn you that the damage was considerable.’
‘I’ve seen headshots before,’ Chase told him. But even he was caught off guard as Morris gently pulled back the sheet from her face - not so much at the carnage that was revealed, but by the knowledge that it had been inflicted upon someone he had once been very close to. Had loved.
Jaw tightening, he stepped closer. The entry wound was an inch below the outer corner of her right eye, the skin around the blood-encrusted hole discoloured and burned by muzzle flame at extremely close range. The right eye was missing, the eyelids sunken deep into the socket. The eyeball had probably been torn apart by splinters from the shattered cheekbone.
As for the other side of her face . . . most of it was gone.
He had seen similarly horrific wounds before. The bullet would have flattened and tumbled after the initial impact, breaking apart as it tore through the cheekbone and exploding outwards from the other side of her skull. Half the upper jaw was gone, the remains of the top lip hanging limply into a gaping dark space beneath. The left eye socket was nothing but a shredded mess.
He also knew from the bullet’s path, through her face rather than into her brain, that she had probably remained alive for several minutes afterwards.
‘Cover her,’ he said, voice flat. Morris lowered the sheet over the dark-haired figure. Chase regarded the slim shape for a long moment, then turned to the officer. ‘Why’d you bring me all the way here to see that? In fact, why’d you bring me here at all? We got divorced five years ago - I’m not her next of kin.’
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