Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  In seconds, the tide of battle had shifted. But it wasn’t over yet. And he didn’t know if Sam was alive or dead.

  Quinn flattened himself against the pilot’s cabin and drew a pistol from his shoulder holster. Fear thundered through him, rattling his spine and clenching his teeth. He didn’t know where the hell the armed men had come from. The sea had just seemed to vomit them up.

  Dead men littered the yacht’s deck.

  “Beck,” Quinn yelled over the headset. He searched the sky for the helicopter.

  The aircraft came in like a bullet. Beck and the men hanging onto the helicopter’s sides unleashed a torrent of fire that strafed the powerboat that Sam St. John had arrived in.

  When fire was returned from the two military-style boats closing in rapidly on top of the water, the helicopter pilot pulled up abruptly, breaking off the attack.

  Cursing Beck’s cowardice, Quinn leaped to the yacht’s controls and threw the throttles forward. The yacht settled down into the sea for a moment, then lunged, uncoiling explosively.

  A few of the men in the strange boats made an attempt to shoot Quinn. Their bullets whined upward, missing him by inches while he stayed hunkered down.

  When he looked back, he saw that he was leaving them behind him. They bobbed on the wake he left and tried to turn their craft in pursuit.

  Quinn smiled, certain that he was home free. Then he noticed the small, delicate hand clutching the stern railing.

  No! he thought. It can’t be!

  But it was. In the confusion, Samantha St. John had somehow grabbed the stern of his boat. He raised his weapon and took aim.

  STRUGGLING TO HOLD ONTO the stern of Quinn’s yacht, Sam pulled herself up. Her feet and lower legs hammered the water. Another foot or two and she would have been caught by the water propulsion jets and torn free.

  Vaulting aboard this boat is definitely not one of the better ideas I’ve had, she told herself. But she’d intended to land astern, not barely make the grab on the railing. Taking a fresh hold, she pulled herself up, then saw Quinn taking aim with his pistol.

  She ducked back down just as a bullet slammed through the space where her head had been.

  DIZZY FROM THE NARCOTIC playing havoc with his central nervous system, Joachim forced himself to stay awake. Maneuvering on the yacht’s bouncing deck would have been hard enough without the disorientation created by the drug.

  He looked at the dead men beside him. One of them was nearly headless, his face smashed by a high-velocity, heavy-caliber round. Blood ran scarlet across the yacht’s deck.

  Pushing himself to his knees, swaying drunkenly, Joachim stripped a pistol from the headless man’s hip holster. Working the slide, Joachim made certain there was a live round under the hammer.

  He leaned against the pilot cabin and went forward, catching movement from the periphery of his vision. Taking a fresh grip on the weapon, he waited, seeing Quinn alive back there with a pistol in his hands.

  Then he heard someone moving in front of him. He turned, lifting the pistol in both hands as one of Quinn’s men took aim with an assault rifle.

  LYING IN HER SNIPER’S NEST, Elle watched as Quinn’s yacht roared south toward the open sea. Compared to the heavy diesels aboard the yacht, the Zodiac boats would only be fast also-rans.

  She took aim at the pilot’s area, catching brief glimpses of Quinn and Sam. Then she saw Joachim stagger up from the deck with a pistol clasped between his cuffed hands.

  Alive! The thought sang within her.

  Then bullets danced through the rigging and ricocheted off the mast. By the time she realized the helicopter had circled around her position and men were now firing at her, the sound of the first shots crashed into her hearing, sharper than the reports coming in across the waves.

  The helicopter hovered a hundred feet away, looking like a huge dragonfly. Elle brought the Barrett around, cursing the weapon’s length and weight. Five feet long, it was hard to maneuver quickly. If not for the bullpup design that allowed her to shift the weight over her shoulder, she wouldn’t have managed it at all.

  Peering through the open sights, no longer having or needing the telescope at this distance, Elle took aim at the pilot’s side of the helicopter. She was just tightening her finger on the trigger when Beck worked the action on the M203 grenade launcher mounted beneath his assault rifle.

  Senses keyed nearly to overload, Elle saw the fat grenade leap from the launcher and scream toward her. An instant later, the explosive round detonated against the mast ten feet below her.

  A concussive wave picked her up like a giant hand and shook her, hammering her back against the yardarm. Thankfully, the grenade was an HE round. High-explosive beat the hell out of an antipersonnel round. She was left deaf and beaten nearly to death, but she was alive.

  Desperately, she tried to pull the Barrett back into play. Then the mast swung drunkenly and she fell.

  The yacht caught a trough wrong as it sped across the sea. Leaping wildly into the air for a moment, the craft came down hard.

  Sam lost her weapon when she nearly lost her grip as she struggled to hang on with both weapons. She slammed against the yacht’s stern with enough force to knock the wind from her.

  Evidently Quinn had seen or guessed what happened. The man rushed across the stern deck with a two-handed grip on his pistol. He shoved the pistol into her face.

  Knowing she had no choice, Sam swung her body, vaulting over the railing just as Quinn fired. Her feet struck him in the chest and drove him backward just as gunfire sounded from the yacht’s prow.

  JOACHIM AIMED AT THE CENTER of the man’s chest as the first rounds of the assault rifle chopped into the expensive teak deck. He backed away two quick steps, firing consistently as quickly as he could.

  He knew his rounds were striking the man. The guard shuddered with each impact and his aim even shifted. But the rapid-fire chopping across the deck continued.

  Joachim hit the wall behind him before he knew it. He was out of room to run. Even as he realized that, he shifted his aim for his opponent’s face and squeezed the trigger.

  Something red-hot struck his left leg, knocking it from under him. As he fell, Joachim rolled to take the impact on his shoulder and tried to keep the pistol pointed at the man, certain the next few rounds were going to shred him.

  Instead, the man dropped his weapon, fell to his knees, then flopped over face-first as the yacht hit another wave badly and floundered to keep from capsizing.

  Joachim caught the railing just before he went over and hung on, knowing the boat was badly out of control. He forced himself up and saw blood streaming down his leg from the bullet hole inside his left thigh. If the round had nicked the femoral artery, he knew he’d bleed out in minutes.

  He lurched for the pilot area.

  SAM ROLLED AND CAME UP before Quinn. She held her hands up in front of her in the ready position, then snap-kicked him in the face, driving him backward.

  Quinn came up at once and knotted his hands into fists. He wasn’t a fighter trained in martial arts, but he had years of experience in the street and knew how to make use of close quarters. He also towered over her and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds.

  Relying on instincts and training, Sam blocked his punches and gave ground. She had no choice. Footing was made even more difficult by the bouncing deck as the yacht careened across the sea.

  Seeing an opening, Sam twisted and lifted a roundhouse kick into Quinn’s face, popping his head back. She tried to press her advantage but he flailed out with a big hand and delivered a glancing blow to the side of her head.

  Dazed, her vision suddenly double, Sam stepped back again. He punched at her but she slapped the blow away, then stepped inside his arms. She slammed the Y of her hand into his throat, paralyzing his larynx. He grabbed his throat with both hands and hurked, trying desperately to catch his breath.

  Still on the move, Sam swept his feet from under him and face-planted him against the de
ck. He shivered and went still.

  Breathing hard, Sam glanced up and spotted Joachim struggling with the yacht’s wheel. His left leg was drenched in blood.

  She picked up a pistol that skidded across the deck and shoved it into her waistband, then crossed to the wheel.

  Joachim looked at her, then shook his head. “You’re not Elle.”

  “No,” Sam agreed. She spotted the first-aid kit clipped under the seat and retrieved it. Using a razor blade from the kit, she slit his pants leg. Two wounds showed on his leg, one in front where the bullet had entered and a larger one where it had exited. Both bled profusely.

  “Where’s Elle?” Joachim asked over the roar of the engines.

  Sam pulled at Joachim’s leg. “Be still. You’re going to bleed out.”

  “Where’s Elle?” he repeated.

  She wrapped a pressure bandage around his leg and pulled tight, shutting down the blood flow. There was enough that she was seriously considering a tourniquet, but she hoped the bandage would hold long enough for real medical attention.

  “She’s on the fishing boat with her father,” Sam replied in answer to his question.

  Joachim looked around, then said, “You mean the one under attack by the helicopter?”

  Looking up, Sam watched as the helicopter continued the attack on the fishing boat. Before she could answer Joachim’s question, he steered the yacht in that direction as the mast where Elle had been sniping from exploded.

  Thrown free of the sniper’s nest, Elle plummeted for the deck thirty feet below. She barely had time to realize that the fall might not be survivable, then a second grenade struck the fishing boat’s deck and exploded, leaving a mass of whirling fire in its wake.

  Elle missed the deck by inches and tumbled through the fireball for one incredible scorching instant, and plunged into the sea. Dazed, her senses overloaded, she barely registered the fact that she was in the water. She had to stop herself from taking a breath.

  Desperately she looked around for her father. He was nowhere in sight. Don’t panic. Focus.

  At the end of her arm, the Barrett dragged her down like an anchor for a moment, then she started swimming, kicking her feet and using her free arm to stroke for the surface. She didn’t want to surrender the rifle. If the helicopter was still up there, it was the only weapon she had that could retaliate over the distance.

  Looking up through the water, she saw the flames chewing into the fishing boat’s deck and spreading across the rigging, feeding hungrily on the canvas sails. The anchor chain held the burning fishing boat idle in the water.

  Elle swam for the anchor chain, took hold with her feet and started pulling herself up one-handed. She dragged the sniper rifle after her.

  The helicopter swiveled around to face Quinn’s yacht. Weapons blazed as Beck and his men fired.

  Breaking the surface, Elle sucked in air greedily and held onto the anchor chain. The flames crackled and popped above her, gutting the fishing boat quickly.

  In the yacht’s stern, Sam held an assault rifle and fired steady three-round bursts. Joachim was steering. In the background, Riley and the SEAL team powered over the sea in the Zodiacs, but they were going to arrive too late.

  Beck and his men readied their weapons, breaking open the breaches of the grenade launchers and feeding thick rounds in.

  Grabbing a fresh hold on the anchor chain, Elle drained the water from the Barrett’s barrel, then settled the weapon into the crook of her arm as the helicopter slid sideways in the sky.

  Sam wasn’t going to be able to do enough damage with the assault rifle to bring the helicopter down, but Beck and his team with grenade launchers would make short work of the yacht, Sam and Joachim.

  Concentrating, Elle brought the rifle to her shoulder and opened both eyes wide. Mentally, she switched from her left eye to her right, choosing the field of vision she wanted dominate. She pulled the trigger time after time, steadily banging through the five rounds remaining in the clip.

  Crimson colored the Plexiglas nose of the helicopter and the pilot slumped over the yoke. Beck made a frantic grab for the controls, but he couldn’t get back inside fast enough.

  Out of control, the helicopter swooped toward the fishing boat and collided. Just before the impact, Elle dropped the Barrett and held onto the weapon as it pulled her beneath the sea.

  The explosion vibrated through the water, disorienting her. She felt her senses fading, drifting in and out. Flames and smoke suddenly spread over the sea surface.

  Releasing the Barrett to continue its descent to the ocean floor without her, Elle kicked out and swam for the surface. The headset was useless, ruined by the salt water on contact

  She came up near the yacht, which was listing badly and taking on water. But Sam and Joachim were peering over the side, preparing to dive in.

  “Here,” Elle called, throwing up an arm and waving.

  Sam steered the boat as Joachim shoved his hand out and caught Elle’s. Almost effortlessly, it seemed, he pulled her from the water and draped her against him.

  Elle wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight and kissing him till they were both breathless.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered, as if afraid to say it too loudly because just acknowledging the fact might somehow change things.

  “So are you,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you when the fishing boat blew up.”

  “Lost me?” she echoed, smiling hugely. “You haven’t got me yet.”

  He held her head between his big hands. “I will,” he said. “I can be a very determined guy.”

  “I,” Elle told him, “happen to like determined guys. Maybe we can work something out.” Holding onto him again, she saw Riley and the SEALs approaching in the Zodiac boats. Her father was behind them in the powerboat. “Hold that thought.”

  She crossed the deck to where Quinn was just stirring, returning to wakefulness. Grabbing him by the hair of the head, having to restrain herself from putting a bullet through his head because he had killed her parents and cost her so much time from her sister, she lifted him so she could stare into his bloody face.

  “Where is Lenin’s Lullaby?” she demanded in Russian.

  Quinn laughed at her.

  Elle drew the pistol from her hip holster, thumbed the hammer back and shoved it into his face. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to kill you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, and smiled. “You can’t just do something like that in cold blood.”

  Elle shoved her face closer to his, till they were only an inch apart. “I,” she declared in a cold, still voice, “am the daughter of Boris and Anya Leonov. Believe me when I tell you that I will kill you.”

  Quinn’s eyes widened in recognition then.

  “You killed my parents,” Elle said. “The only thing keeping you alive is the fact that you know where that bioweapon is. If you tell me, I won’t kill you.”

  “It’s in a safe-deposit box,” Quinn whispered in a shaking voice. “In a bank in Berlin.” He gave her the box number and told her where to find the key in his home.

  She released him as Riley and the SEALs scrambled on board. They put plastic handcuffs on him and took him into custody.

  “Elle?” Sam spoke in Russian.

  Turning to her sister, Elle waited.

  “What you said,” Sam said. “About our parents…”

  “It’s true,” Elle said.

  Sam stepped forward and took Elle into her arms. Elle felt her sister’s heart beating against hers. They weren’t in tune. Maybe they wouldn’t have been even if they’d grown up together, maybe other things would have pulled them in different directions.

  But for now, they beat close enough.

  Epilogue

  Deitrich Bank

  Berlin, Germany

  The bank was small but elegant, well off the beaten path in the heart of the city.

  Elle waited while her father opened the door of the Mercedes, then she got out. Dr
essed in a business suit with matching skirt, she accompanied him into the bank.

  A pleasant bank vice president met them at the door because they’d phoned to let him know they were coming over. All the necessary paperwork from Vasilios Quinn was exchanged, and they were guided back to the safe-deposit room.

  Inside the sterile viewing room they were shown to, the safe-deposit box was brought out. As though totally unconcerned, her father exchanged a few stories for a moment, then they were given privacy.

  Elle waited while her father fit the key she’d gotten from Quinn’s house into the box. It was possible, of course, that Quinn had been lying and that, instead of Lenin’s Lullaby, the box held a final booby trap that would leave them plastered in pieces on the wall.

  As she held her breath, her thoughts turned to her sister. Sam and her friends at Athena were busy tracking down leads from a computer folder that Quinn had also given them. Quinn was now in CIA custody. He didn’t knowmuch about the woman who had been blackmailing himover his past identity, but he did tell them that she was known in several circles as Arachne, the goddess of weaving and webs. The name, Sam had declared, fit the mysterious person. Whoever she proved to be.

  Joachim, during his debriefing, had revealed that a woman had negotiated the deal with Günter Stahlmann that had first sent him to Amsterdam after Tuenis Meijer. At first, they had believed the woman was Arachne, but that hadn’t made sense. The woman had sent Joachim in search of things Arachne would have already known.

  It was a mystery that would have to be resolved at a later date. The Athena Academy women—Athena Force, Sam called them—were currently still deep into their investigation.

  Elle was busy tying up loose ends as well. She exhaled and watched as her father inspected the box, then finally removed the top.

  Inside was a small, insulated box as big as both her fists put together. When her father opened it, six vials containing bilious dust and liquid sat on a cut out foam bed.

  There were also a number of computer discs and journals.

  Quietly, without a word, her father transferred everything to the metal briefcase he’d brought for that purpose. Crossing the border with the bioweapon would have been nearly impossible, so they’d made arrangements to destroy it at a lab outside Berlin that wouldn’t ask questions.