Imagine (Black Raven Book 4)

by Stella Barcelona

  “You’re assuming we’re not dealing with people who are willing to commit suicide for their cause?”

  “Yep. Assume Quan Security is implicated,” he said. “Quan started this cruise with sixty operatives. Their ranks may have increased if they had undercover people among the staff or in Tier Two security. That’s way too large a number to believe suicide is acceptable to all.”

  “Agreed. Plus,” she said, “given the value of the hostages, money is the likely incentive. You can’t spend money from the grave. That means once the demand is made, the window of time for their escape commences. So, I agree with your assessment. They haven’t made the demand yet. Plus, as Skylar’s chatter on line sixteen just told us, they don’t have control of their hostages yet.”

  “It all adds fuel to our theory that we have an Entebbe-type situation of transporting hostages, with the twist of moving the operation to Follower. Plus, who’s to say the kidnappers need all of Imagine’s guests? Looking at the comparative net worth of the hostages who are on the loose, the Blackwells might be expendable. Chloe St. Laurent might also be expendable. Zack Abrams certainly is.” He glanced at her as he removed the fourth and final screw. “But the kidnappers definitely want Ling and May Wen. They’re not going to start Phase Two, the evacuation, until they have the Wens under their control. Which gives me a window for stopping them while you’re sending a Mayday to headquarters.”

  “Ideally, your action won’t immediately start an execution of hostages, which the hijackers would do to make you stop. Right?” she asked.

  “Correct. I can’t move easily while surveillance cams are up. So, while you’re disabling the surveillance system, I’ll take their hostage evacuation option off the table. I know that might trigger an alert.” He glanced at her. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was focused up, then down, covering the stairwell, exactly as she was supposed to be doing. “I’ll just have to disable anyone who comes my way.”

  “Okay. Risky, but worth it,” she said. “How do you plan to remove their evacuation option?”

  “Sabotage the hydraulic system. That’ll disable the lifeboats—”

  “But what if we need to evacuate the hostages later?”

  “I won’t permanently disable the hydraulics. I’ll do it in a way that enables me to fix it, if I need to. It’ll disable the system just enough to slow them down. Lifeboats can’t be launched without hydraulics. The water garage can’t open, either, because the door won’t open without hydraulics.”

  “Smart, but I’m not sure you’ll be able to succeed,” she said. “There are plenty of surveillance cameras around the engine room.”

  “Get ready to enter. I’ll go first.” He slid the panel aside and glanced down the long, narrow crawl space. Empty. No enemy. Good. No Black Raven Agents. Bad.

  The tunnel-like space was similar in design and function to the crawl space above their suite, except this one was longer. Wedged between the Clio Deck and the Euterpe Deck, the long crawl space dead-ended at the forward service stairwell, where they’d part ways. Leo would access the stairwell and get to the radio room, four decks above them. He’d go two decks below, to access the engine room, where the hydraulic system was located.

  “Hey. Stop ignoring my concern.” A slight scowl line bisected her eyebrows. “There are plenty of surveillance cams in the engine room.”

  “You know what you have to do—disable the surveillance system once you get to the radio room.”

  “I understand that,” she said. “But what’s the priority? Mayday, reestablishing comms with our agents, or disabling surveillance? Three discrete tasks, Evans. I’m only one person.”

  “You’re capable of multitasking.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and she shook her head. Then he remembered her comment in bed when he’d told her that he wanted to focus on her for a while.

  Oh. Fuck!

  “Hey. I wasn’t referring—

  She rolled her shoulders, holding his gaze for the briefest of seconds, then glancing away and scanning the stairway. No footsteps. “Drop it. It’s just that I can’t disable surveillance while I’m trying to figure out a way around a damn impressive communications logjam.”

  “We’ll work around it. Mayday is your priority. Inter-agent coms are next. Surveillance system is third. It will all come together. We’re a good team, Leo.” In more ways than one. “Not that I wouldn’t mind having a few more of our agents show up.”

  “Where the hell are they?”

  Flicking his head to the crawl space, he answered, “Not in here.”

  While he was still in the stairwell, he handed her the screws to the entry panel. “Practice sealing it from the inside. You’ll run into a few more of these panels when you’re alone. Turning around to face forward will be a bitch, but you’re smaller than me—you’ll be able to do it.” As he hoisted himself into the tunnel-like space, head first, he added, “It’s likely the others are headed to the radio room for a Mayday, just like us. Get in.”

  As she followed him in and started working on the entry panel, he started belly crawling. Inside the dim space, he smelled the coppery, bitter tinge of bloodshed and death.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked, as she worked at the entry panel.

  Even though he was a few yards from her, the helmet audio systems picked up her low whisper. “Yep.”

  With each shimmy forward, the air seemed to thicken with the stink. He knew what came with that odor, and he knew she did, as well. They’d both been trained not to have physical reactions to bloodshed, he as a Marine and she as a Black Raven agent.

  An instrumental version of “The Little Drummer Boy” seeped through the vents that were above the casino, providing an out-of-place reminder of the season. Ahead of Leo, Ace paused at the first vent that provided a view of the casino below them.

  Forget training. Forget field experience. His gut did a hard twist at the carnage that greeted him. When he felt her hand on his shin, he shifted to the side. He pressed himself against the wall, giving her room to slide in alongside him. “Brace yourself.”

  Chapter Ten

  1:20 a.m.

  As she crawled into position at Ace’s side, the grim tone in his voice chilled her. The Christmas carol’s repetitive rum-pum-pum-pum sounded, with a drumroll, as she inhaled a fresh blast of coppery death. Their overhead vantage point was within twenty feet of where she’d spent the better part of the late afternoon playing craps. The grating revealed gambling tables, chandeliers, Christmas trees…

  And bodies.

  “Oh. God.” Swallowing hard, she fought to maintain the cool control needed for job performance as she gazed into the once-frenetic space, where now all was still.

  Leo had been with Black Raven long enough to have firsthand knowledge of evil, and her personal history had introduced her to evil in one of the worse ways possible. Despite her experience and training, the killing field that unfolded below her sent her mind reeling, as her gaze crawled from one lifeless body to another.

  Like discarded dolls, people were strewn on the floor of the casino. Cocktail waitresses, dressed as Santa’s elves. Waiters, dressed as nutcrackers. Some with bullet wounds in their foreheads. Some with throats slashed. Dealers, in tuxedos. Security personnel, wearing tuxedos and red bow ties.

  “Eyes closed. No signs of resistance.” Ace’s whisper was bitter, but his words were calm and matter-of-fact. “Executed while in an ether-induced sleep.”

  She cleared her throat, trying to do her job. Observe. Analyze. Learn about the enemy from the trail they’d left. She focused on getting an estimate of the bodies, as “The Little Drummer Boy” faded out and the music shifted to the soft plucking of string instruments that marked the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

  Hell.

  The xylophone came in with the main melody of the tune, and she involuntarily gave in to roiling emotions triggered by the carnage below her. The depth of those emotions was exacerbated by the pai
nful memories inspired by the song.

  Going to the Nutcracker on Broadway had been an annual outing for she and her dad, from when she was old enough to sit still through the performance until he died. Her mom had always been too busy with work. Tickets for the December 15, 2001, performance, which they’d already purchased for the annual father-daughter date, were framed on her vanity.

  “Leo. You with me?”

  Ace knew that sorry slice of her history, because no matter how much she was resisting the idea of them being more than friends, the truth was he was the rare guy—the one and only, so far—who’d gotten close enough to her and taken the time to learn almost everything about her. That’s why he’d figured out that while she could calmly shoot to kill someone, the poignant sweetness of the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” inspired a haunting sadness that could bring her to her knees on even the best of days.

  Which clearly, this isn’t.

  Once he’d known the reason behind it, he hadn’t teased her. Now, she cleared her throat. Didn’t dare look in his eyes. She forced her gaze to stay on the casino floor. Clearing the emotion from the back of her throat, she tried like heck to shove some tough coolness into her voice. “Yes. Don’t worry about me. I’m with you, but I still hate that damn song. A hundred and twenty souls?”

  “More. Looks like most of the casino staff. Over to the starboard side, there are officer’s whites. I can’t make out faces from here.” He was in agent mode as he voiced his observations, while she was trying hard to reassemble her professionalism. “Son of a bitch. Look three bodies down from furthest craps table. Kamin?”

  She dragged her gaze to where Ace stated, looking for the dark-haired agent who was head of Omega team and undercover as one of the ship’s engineers. “Hard to tell from here. But…no. That’s not him.”

  “See any gamblers and their guests?”

  She forced her eyes to go from face to face, looking for the people whose faces she’d memorized. “No.”

  “Left of the trophy. Paul Stills.”

  The crystal vase depicting the nine muses was undisturbed on its pedestal, as sparkling as it had been when she’d been throwing dice at the craps table. On the carpet in the walkway near it, Agent Stills—the overall team leader—lay flat on his back, as though he’d fallen asleep.

  “Confirm.” She swallowed hard. “Looks like you’re team leader now.”

  “Copy that. Not the way I ever wanted to get here.”

  As her eyes bounced from person to person, she listened as Skylar talked intermittently to his operatives on channel sixteen. The man switched easily between Mandarin and English. She listened to the cool, controlled chatter of his men as they responded to him and talked amongst each other, while she craned to see through the grating, and around the gambling tables. Her gaze rested on two familiar faces.

  “Shit. That’s Jacks and McMillan.” Her pulse raced as she said names of Black Raven agents who’d been in Tier Two security, personal bodyguards to Ali and Samantha Bandel, of Zurich, Switzerland.

  “Where?”

  “Near the baccarat tables.”

  Ace shifted his body slightly for a better view. “Confirm. Andros and Payne.” As he pointed out the two agents who’d been personal bodyguards to Mark and Liz Bates, from Seattle, Washington, his tone remained steady, yet she could hear the anger building.

  “Where?”

  “Fifteen yards from Jacks and McMillan. Other side of the blackjack table.”

  “Confirm.” She forced herself to start over, using the furthest point in the room as the beginning. “Look towards the main entrance. Double doors.” Choking back emotion, she almost lost it. Again. “That’s a pile of…at least twenty. Tuxedos, with green bow ties.”

  “Got it. That’s Tier Two security. Looks like they were killed elsewhere. The casino must have been chosen as a dumping ground. Possibly for keeping inventory?”

  She lifted her eyes, meeting his gaze for a second. His eyes reflected her assessment of the carnage. Created by evil that needs to be stopped. No matter the cost. “Based on what’s below us, we’re still working with the assumption that Quan Security is behind this? And Skylar’s with them?”

  He looked down again. “See anyone down there with a red tie?”

  She scanned the floor, looking for the red bowtie that had marked the Quan Security operatives earlier in the day. “No.”

  “About twenty-five percent of the communications on channel sixteen are in Mandarin. Skylar, whose German accent is heavy enough for me to think that German is his native language, is also fluent in Mandarin. Wendt and Yang were carrying QBZ-95s. That’s the favored assault rifle of the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese triads, and Chinese private military contracting groups. With the notable absence of red bow ties down there, I’d say the assumption’s a pretty safe bet. Skylar and his operatives have to be from Quan’s ranks. Agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddammit to hell,” he said. “Talbot. On our side of the baccarat tables.”

  Agent Dirk Talbot. Former Marine. An elite agent who loved his Harley and his dog. Recently engaged. She’d met Talbot’s fiancée and liked her. “Confirm.”

  She forced her eyes to keep scrolling across the bodies until her gaze screeched to a decisive halt. A lump in her throat kept her from voicing aloud Agent Amy Ryan’s name, the brilliant, energetic agent who’d been Leo’s backup. When roles had been assigned, Ryan had grumbled, good-naturedly, about her cocktail waitress legend. She’d grumbled even more about the green-velvet micro shorts that went with her risqué Santa’s elf costume.

  Swallowing, hard, Leo managed to say, “Furthest craps table. Ten feet to the left. Amy.”

  “Confirm.”

  Unaware of when she’d reached out for Ace, she realized she was gripping his hand, hard. She had to look away from Amy. She found solace in the cool, controlled rage that simmered in Ace’s eyes. There was also concern. Empathy, and yes, that dreaded emotion she’d called him out for earlier. Despite the cool exterior he showed to the world and the firm set of his jaw, in his steady gaze there was tenderness. Towards her.

  She was overcome with profound relief that Ace hadn’t left their suite when she’d been in her snit over the stuck zipper. He’d have been exposed when the ether was released, and he’d be on the floor of the casino.

  Dead.

  He closed his hand over hers and squeezed hard. She shut her eyes.

  Stop. Stop imagining the worst. Stop!

  “You okay?”

  No. I’m losing it.

  He squeezed her hand harder. She wanted to ask, ‘why do we do this?’ But she knew the answer. It was because hell had unleashed an evil on earth. As long as her soul burned with the fire that had started on September 11, 2001, she was going to fight it.

  “Leo?”

  “I’m fine.” She opened her eyes and locked gazes with her best friend. He gave her a slow nod of encouragement.

  Focusing on the strength to overcome that he was imparting to her with his grip on her hand and his solid gaze, she was able to channel the potentially debilitating force of her emotions into something workable.

  “It’s okay to be ups—”

  “I’m not upset,” she said, drawing upon defense mechanisms she’d learned as a child, when waves of dread and uncertainty had forced her to face the obvious—that her father hadn’t survived the terror attack. At the age of thirteen, she hadn’t been able to join the war against Osama Bin Laden, but she’d set herself on a mission to fight terrorism with her brainpower. Later, at Black Raven, she’d found a way to combine her brainpower with fighting skills.

  Get mad. Channel anger into cool, rational thought. Strive. Thrive. With every ounce of your being, find a target. Make it a goal. Hit it. Get even. Win. “I’m furious. I’m not stopping until I kill the person who is behind this.”

  He nodded. “We. We will kill the fucker.”

  As he let go of her hand, she glanced through the vent as the
casino doors opened. Four men entered the casino, each wearing camo gear, similar to the outfits worn by the two guards that they’d just killed in the stairwell. QBZ-95s were slung over their shoulders. Pistols were holstered at their hips. Between the four of them, on stretchers, they carried two bodies, dressed in tuxedos and green ties. Tier two bodyguards. Glancing at the faces of the men on the stretchers, she recognized one of Wen’s bodyguards. In Mandarin, the men kept a running stream of chatter going over “White Christmas.”

  Through the earbud in her ear, line sixteen, which had been silent for a while, crackled to life. “Childs. Calling Skylar.”

  She glanced at Ace. Keeping her voice low, she asked, “You hear this?”

  He nodded while keeping his eyes on the men on the casino floor, two of whom were laughing at something one of the others said.

  “Go ahead,” Skylar responded.

  “Trail’s gone cold for the Blackwells,” Childs said.

  “Where are you?” Skylar asked.

  “Erato Deck. Library,” Childs said. “We know the Blackwells entered it from the crawl space. The vent was open. Don’t know where else they could have gone from here. Unless they’ve accessed the aft service stairwell.”

  “Copy. Skylar, calling Wendt.”

  Ace gave her a here goes nod.

  He touched the green button on his watch, unmuting the comm system. “Wendt to Skylar.”

  Pronouncing his W like a V, Ace gave his response in English, with a slight German accent. She gave Ace a thumb’s up, hoping like hell that Ace had guessed correctly that Wendt, from Frankfurt, would not have answered Skylar in Mandarin.

  “Wendt. Need you and Yang to provide an assist to Childs. Aft service stairwell, then library. Over.”