by Rick Chesler
“They catch prey…” The man with the gun seemed to ponder this.
“Yes. The venom they produce is quite powerful. And I think I can use it as a key ingredient in my STX antidote. But I need to get some of the anemones. About a dozen or so large, adult specimens should do.”
The gunman turned to his associates and spoke rapidly for a few seconds in Dutch. One of them said something back to him and he turned to Dante and Naomi.
“Is what she says true? You require the anem—” He fumbled over the pronunciation and started over. “You require this sea creature to complete work on the STX antidote?”
Both of the undercover OUTCAST operatives nodded. The Hofstad man seemed to study them for a moment. Then he jerked his head at his colleague to his left.
“Search these two.”
He indicated the closest man to his right. “Search her.”
The man eagerly stepped up to Jasmijn and thoroughly patted her down, enjoying the look of revulsion on her face. After groping her longer than was necessary under the guise of a pat-down, he stepped back and turned to the team leader.
“She’s clean.”
The two men searching Naomi and Dante each came away with a pistol and two extra clips at about the same time.
The leader raised his eyebrows in their direction. “Scientific instruments, these are?”
Dante shrugged. “We were excited about being invited to work with our esteemed colleague, Dr. Rotmensen, but at the same time concerned about some of the attention around her lab lately.”
“Which you can see was justified,” Nay added sourly.
The man who found the weapons handed them over to the inquisitor. He turned them over in his hands appreciatively. “These are nice weapons. Sophisticated. Well cared for.” He looked up at them as though he had asked a question.
“We both like to hit the shooting range in our spare time,” Dante said. A true statement. Though vastly out of context, it nevertheless gave him the confidence he needed to state it with conviction.
“If you were to obtain these…sea creatures,” the leader said, directing his attention back to Jasmijn, “how long would it take you from that point to complete the antidote?”
Jasmijn’s reply was immediate. “About three days. A couple of hours to complete the integration, then forty-eight hours to incubate, then the rest of the time to check results and run test procedures.”
“Then we will see to it that you get these animals.”
“You are divers?”
He turned to his associates, all three of whom shook their heads. He conferred with them in a loose huddle for a minute, speaking Danish in hushed tones such that Jasmijn could not hear. After seeming to reach some kind of decision, three of the men fanned back out into formation, with the leader turning to address Jasmijn.
“We will arrange for a boat and escort you — all three of you— to dive on the site.”
“I need a dive partner. It’s not safe to dive alone, and it makes the collecting work very difficult.”
“I’m certified, I’ll dive with you,” Dante said.
“Really, I didn’t know that!” Jasmijn was not lying, of course. She’d barely met Dante.
“I thought you work together, how could you not know such a thing?” the group leader demanded.
“Relax. We do lab work together, not field work. Usually when I need to collect specimens I go with a support team from the marine lab. They operate the boats, they have the equipment, experienced people to dive with me so that I can just stare at the bottom looking for my specimens.”
“Very well. You and he will dive to collect the sea creatures.”
TWENTY-SIX
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands
Stephen Shah did not last as long as he had in a spy career — indeed, even live as long as he did — without being able to pick himself up off the floor and give things another try. His false embassy shutdown orders had fallen flat. But as he walked onto the campus through a side entrance, he was ready to rejoin the fight. Even though his personal side-mission had not succeeded, he could still assist with the lab effort.
To this end, Shah had donned a shabby suit and carried a beat-up leather messenger bag, assuming his new identity of visiting professor from a prominent Iranian university. Before visiting the campus he had checked in with Tanner, who had filled him in on the events stateside, including the Hawaii attack. Tanner had expressed mild concern that he hadn’t been able to reach Naomi, Dante or Jasmijn, and was pleased to hear that Shah was heading over there.
As he approached the Sea Research Institute, Shah forced his mind to transition from thoughts of the overall OUTCAST mission to the kind of specialized tunnel vision he adopted when on an individual sortie. This kind of mental process had served him well over the years and he even found it sort of relaxing in a perverse kind of way. He was assuming another identity yet at the same time retaining the unusual abilities of his true self, the skills that allowed him to stay alive in the face of lurking danger presented by men and women a lot like him.
Shah smiled at a man and woman conversing softly, each holding a small stack of books, near the entrance to the research institute. They smiled at him politely and he nodded in return. He entered the building and was instantly on high alert.
He hadn’t seen any security detail yet. Wasn’t the university supposed to have beefed up its presence? He took the stairs to the second floor. As he moved down the hall at a casual pace, he saw a men’s room and went inside even though he didn’t have need of a bathroom. Decades of experience told him to check places like restrooms and supply closets whenever a situation was unfolding. He unlatched the safety catch on his holster and pushed his way into the restroom.
He took it in at a glance. Medium sized with three stalls on the left and two sinks next to those, three urinals on the right. No windows. Lights on, a couple of damp paper towels on the floor beneath an overflowing trash can. He walked to one of the sinks and turned it on, letting the water run while he backed up and bent low enough to peer beneath the stalls.
All appeared empty. He got up and turned the water off. Then he went to the door, saw the wedge used by the cleaning staff and crammed it underneath the door. He moved back to the sinks and climbed on top of the one nearest the stalls, allowing him to look down into the first one. It was unoccupied.
Like an oversized spider monkey belying its age, Shah crawled out onto the stall, hands on the front supports and legs on the side, until he could see into the second stall.
Clear.
He continued out along the middle stall in the same fashion until he could see down into the last one.
He suppressed a jolt of adrenaline at the sight of the dead body. Male, late twenties or early thirties, clad only in a pair of underwear. Quickly he dropped into the stall and felt for a pulse. None. A bullet hole on the right temple, no exit wound.
Shah rested the dead man’s head against the toilet tank and exited the stall. He went to the trash can and lifted some of the paper towels out of the way.
There.
Dark material, cloth.
He pulled a pair of pants and a shirt from the waste receptacle. No doubt this was what the Hofstad actor had been wearing before taking out the security guard in order to appropriate his uniform. He carefully searched the pockets but they came up empty.
But he had seen all he needed to. Shah pulled the wedge from the door and walked out into the hall. He had no doubt that if he was to check other nearby restrooms or perhaps supply closets or little used areas such as rooms housing electrical / HVAC infrastructure, that he would find more stripped bodies.
On high alert now, Shah focused on maintaining a normal breathing rate as he passed down the hall, which was now empty although he could hear voices from behind some of the closed doors he passed. The lab was all the way at the end and there was little he could do to conceal himself as he approached. He mentally reviewed his
cover story should he be confronted by anyone while he walked up to the lab.
I am Dr. Farid Soroush, professor of Ocean Sciences at the Tehran Institute for Marine Technology. I am here by invitation to work with Dr. Jasmijn Rotmensen…
But by the time he had reached the closed lab door, no one had approached him. He glanced down at the crack beneath the door and was careful to stand far enough back from it that he would not alter its light pattern. Old habits. Keeping his feet planted far back, he bent at the waist and placed an ear near the door where it met the jamb.
Voices.
He could only catch about every third or fourth word, but it was enough to tell him that they’d been compromised. He heard Jasmijn talking, something about scuba diving, and then who he assumed to be a Hofstad terrorist, speaking in Dutch. His hand reflexively dropped to his holstered weapon but he made no real move. From the sound of it there were at least three Hofstad operatives inside, perhaps more, and they had somehow gotten the upper hand over Dante and Naomi. Shah knew that in order to do that these foes must be substantially equipped, or else have had one hell of an element of surprise. Perhaps both.
Shah turned away from the door and padded softly down the hall. He knew the lab only had one entrance in or out, other than the windows. So they would have to leave by that door at some point. Better for him to surveil that exit than to walk into a possible firestorm, potentially putting his own operatives at risk.
He walked briskly down the hall away from the lab. He saw nowhere that offered a hiding place that would also allow him to see when the lab door opened, so he decided to hide in plain sight and hope that would suffice. If the lab team was in trouble, then he was most likely their only external hope of support.
About halfway down the hallway he saw an extensive bulletin board display featuring posterboard presentations of recent lab work. He stood facing one of them, something about predictability of El Niño oscillation cycles, and pretended to be absorbed by it.
He’d been staring at the exhibit for seven minutes when he heard the lab door open at the end of the hall.
He willed himself not to turn and look down the hall, but to keep staring at the information on the wall. As the footsteps grew louder and nearer, he registered people walking toward him in his peripheral vision. A large group, not one or two. He knew he would have but one chance to look their way such that it was disguised as a casual glance. More than that would arouse suspicions on the part of the captors, if in fact the lab team had been captured.
Shah told himself he was about to find out. He forced himself to wait a few more seconds until the approaching people were so close that it would almost seem strange not to turn and look at them. When he did, he saw Dante and Naomi walking side by side, with Jasmijn in front of them. The three of them were flanked on both sides by men wearing university security guard uniforms, as well as one in front and two in back, including the man with the broken arm.
Shah smiled curtly to the group as they passed, making ever-so-brief eye contact with Naomi, who opened her lips to silently mouth the word “Hofstad,” and acted as though they had distracted him from his engrossing reading material. He turned back to the bulletin board display as they passed by him.
When they had reached the far end of the hall and he heard them open the stairwell doorway, Shah started down the hallway after them.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands
When tailing a target who has already seen you, it is imperative to alter their perception of you before continuing. To this end, Shah ditched his jacket and briefcase (removing his Spydeco folding knife first and transferring it to a pants pocket). He also donned a pair of dark sunglasses and a baseball cap that had been in the case.
Following Dante, Naomi, Jasmijn and their Hofstad escorts across the campus was child’s play for Shah. Lots of foot traffic out here, plenty of criss-crossing foothpaths winding this way and that, trees and shrubbery, campus maps on kiosks. He easily kept them in sight while staying far behind until they reached a parking lot and made for a blue van. That was when Shah realized he could be about to lose control of the situation very quickly.
His own vehicle was parked on a different lot all the way across campus. He could try to run to it and then catch up with the van, which he now noted sported the university logo. Hofstad must have taken it from one of the guards they killed. Or, he could approach within earshot and try to overhear a clue as to where they were going.
Another split second decision to make in the field. He’d been confronted with lots of them over the course of his career, and he never second guessed them, even when they turned out to be dead wrong, literally in some cases. In this line of work, inaction was often worse than a wrong decision. If he were to do nothing for the next thirty seconds, that blue van would be out of sight, and along with it his colleagues’ only hope for external support.
The neurons in his brain fired and he took off walking — not running, although he wanted to — toward the van. Just a guy walking across the parking lot. There were lots of vehicles here, not just the van, and there was no reason for anyone to suspect that something was wrong here. He only wanted to get to his car after a long day in the academic trenches, that’s all. But to get to it he’d pass right between the van and the black pickup truck parked next to it.
As he approached, he turned his head toward the left as though he were looking in that direction, but beneath his glasses his eyes shifted right. He caught the outline of a pistol barrel pressed against the pocket of one of the “security” personnel’s jackets. It was pointed first at Dante as he was ushered into one of the van’s rear seats, and then Jasmijn.
As Naomi stepped up to the van, she tripped — or appeared to, reaching down to adjust her shoe. Now passing the van, Shah heard the guy with the concealed gun utter something to Nay that meant, hurry it up, get in.
As she stood, she glanced left and looked right at Shah, who continued to watch her only out of his peripheral vision to avoid being seen making eye contact. Then she turned away from him and stepped up to the van. As she climbed in, she said something loud enough for Shah to hear as he passed between the van and the pickup.
“Will our boat be waiting for us at the wharf?”
Attagirl, Shah thought. Excellent work. All he had to do now was continue to walk slowly through the lot until they left in the van, and then he could retrieve his own vehicle and go to the wharf. At least he had an idea of where they were heading. If he was lucky he’d even be able to tail them on the way over there.
But as he pretended to make a beeline for a car that wasn’t his, Shah’s inner voice nagged at him.
Why were they being taken to the wharf? He shook off mental images of his team being tied to cinderblocks and pushed into the water.
He stopped at the driver side door of a metallic brown sedan and pretended to fumble around for his keys while the van rolled past toward the exit. If they did cast any kind of suspicion on him, with any luck they’d now be watching for a tail to come in the form of a sparkly brown four-door sedan. Once the van had left the lot Shah waited for thirsty seconds to make sure it wasn’t a ruse, that they would turn back in and spot him walking away from the brown car. But as he counted down…two Mississippi…one Mississippi…no van re-entered the lot.
Shah took off at a trot across the park-like environment toward his rental vehicle. Four minutes later he reached it, a subcompact SUV in white, the color chosen deliberately because it was the most common car color.
He drove slowly, within the posted limits until he had left campus property. There was no time to get pulled over now, and he could not afford to be chased when he needed to chase someone else. He took advantage of the slow speed to initialize his GPS and set up a route to the wharf. As soon as he reached a public surface street, however, he gunned the little vehicle until he was doing seven km/h over the speed limit.
Traffic was moderate, a
nd Shah stuck to the fast lane when he had a choice. There was no highway to take to the wharf, so he followed the route the computer had plotted as being the most direct. It put the drive time at twenty-five minutes, and after about half that, the OUTCAST operator felt that familiar rush of sighting his target again after becoming separated.
Don’t count your chickens — make sure, he told himself as he jockeyed for position around a pair of slow-moving work trucks. When he passed them he got a better look at the blue van. Same university logo.
Bingo!
He was back in visual contact.
Not too close.
Shah flashed back to his earlier days in the field when he was a true wheel artist, in command of vehicles designed for tactical use. These included headlights that could be individually controlled, blinking one out after a time to make it look as though a different car was there, brake lights that could be disabled with the flick of a switch, stall switches to simulate a vehicle breakdown in case he should reach a cheating command of the target and need to let them pass before starting up again as a “different” working car. Heavy-duty suspension, bumpers, batteries — various other modifications to increase the staying power during long follows.
But he had none of those advantages now, just a stock rental car by himself, no additional agents forming a box around the target. Still, he was highly trained to adapt to fluid situations and make do with what he had. Shah stayed four cars behind the van, one eye on the road and the other on his GPS. He was approaching what the map said was the exit for the wharf. Would the van take it?
He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the right turn signal start blinking on the van.
Shah waited in his lane until the last possible moment to exit, allowing two cars between him and the van. He watched the van take the expected turn according to the GPS if they were headed to the wharf. Again Naomi’s words haunted him.