“Where is Nick, by the way?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Can’t you track his phone, too?”
“I can, but he wouldn’t be happy about it, and I like my job.”
“Great. All right, can you give me the coordinates where my phone died?”
“I’m texting them now. Whose phone is this you’re calling from?”
“Damian’s. I bought it for him, which means it doesn’t have any of Nick’s little trackers.”
Lilia sighed. “That little tracker saved your life more than once, missy. Including today.”
“Yeah, yeah. Send me that GPS, and we’ll pull up a map to see if we can figure out where he’s heading. Talk to you later.”
She hung up without waiting for a response, then handed Damian his phone, which almost immediately dinged with an incoming message from Lilia containing the last known location of Cassandra’s cell phone.
“Hold on to those,” she said and walked over to her duffel, which Damian had brought up last night. It was sitting on the floor next to the table, and she squatted down to dig into it, doing all sorts of interesting things to showcase her lovely ass. He tilted his head, appreciating the view, which was what Cassandra caught him doing when she glanced back at him.
“Stop ogling my ass,” she demanded, but the wide smile that accompanied it took away whatever snap her words might have contained. She returned to digging in her bag and emerged with her laptop in its hard case. “I’m pissed about my phone,” she said, half to herself, “but not nearly as much as I’d be if I lost this.” She extracted the computer from its case and walked over to the table.
Damian joined her as she pulled up a map of the Chicago area. He’d made a point of studying that map earlier, as well as the immediately surrounding states, but he didn’t know it anywhere near as well as he would have liked. Cassandra, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what she was looking for as she maneuvered around the digital map, zooming in on one section after another.
“There’s I-355,” she said absently. “Read me those GPS numbers that Lilia sent.”
He did, but it didn’t seem to help her much. “Where the hell is he going?” she muttered, drawing a line with her finger on the screen from O’Hare Airport to the 355. “There’s nothing there.”
“Maybe his target isn’t an airport,” he suggested.
“Is that consistent with what you know about Sotiris, though?” she asked. “Wouldn’t he want the biggest target he could find?” She zoomed the map in again. “Shit, what if he’s decided this area’s too hot with all of us hanging around? The 80’s right there,” she added, pointing at another big highway. “If he took that, he could be going anywhere.”
Damian studied the map. There were any number of smaller airports, in addition to O’Hare, but she was right. Sotiris wouldn’t bother with those. “What other facilities is this map showing?” he asked, noting that there were several structures blocked out in color that weren’t airports.
“I started out only looking at airports,” she explained, “because they’re the biggest, most obvious targets. But then it hit me. We’ve been assuming he’ll use the destructive power of the Talisman itself—the electromagnetic pulse effect that can knock out modern electronics. But what if he’s figured out a way to use it as a trigger for something else instead? Something like a bomb? So, I expanded the search to include government buildings and hospitals. Any of those could contain hundreds, if not thousands, of people.”
He frowned, considering her words, rejecting them in the end, though he didn’t say so. At this point in their investigation, it wasn’t wise to close off any possible avenue. But he tended to agree with her initial assumption that Sotiris would want something big and showy. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a large yellow shape on the map. It was near the highway where Sotiris had probably tossed Cassandra’s phone, but far enough away that it wasn’t obvious.
“I don’t know,” she said, then centered and zoomed in on it. “Shit.”
“What?”
“That’s the Air Traffic Control Center, the facility that guides all of the planes around both O’Hare and Midway airports. If he lets the Talisman’s power loose there, the center will go down without warning. Every plane in the air will be on its own. We could easily have midair crashes, and that’s just the ones that stay in the air. Depending on a plane’s altitude at the time, the Talisman might have a high-enough reach to scramble their electronics, too. They could literally fall from the sky. Shit!” She spun to stare at Damian.
“What’s the range of its power, do you know?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No idea. But Nick might. You should call him,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “He’ll probably take your call.”
He sighed. She’d clearly forgiven him for meeting Nico without telling her, but, oddly enough, she seemed angrier with Nico. She’d known him longer, of course, and Damian suspected Nico was the first man she’d ever really trusted, which would make his actions seem like more of a betrayal. But Nico was a good man. Hell, he was a great man. She didn’t know the wars he’d fought to protect his people from the excesses of monsters like Sotiris, and, unfortunately, there was no time now to educate her. He found Nico’s number on his call list and touched the screen. It rang several times before his brother’s voice came on, suggesting he leave a message.
He didn’t bother to identify himself. Nico would know his voice. “We have a likely target,” he said, and read off the name and address of the facility. “Cassandra and I are going there now. We’re planning to sweep the area, hoping she’ll pick up on the device. We need you there.” And that’s all he said. Cassandra might doubt, but Damian knew that Nico would come when he got the message.
“He’ll be there,” he told her, ignoring the skeptical rolling of her eyes.
“If he’s not too late,” she said, then closed her computer and began packing up their few things. “Let’s take it all. One way or the other, we won’t be coming back this time.”
Chapter Ten
THEY CRUISED THE area around the FAA Air Traffic Control facility first. Cassandra let Damian drive. She’d never really doubted his driving ability; it had just been one small way she could establish control over an investigation that had felt like it was running away from her. But there was no time for dominance games anymore. She figured they had only hours before Sotiris would stage his little “demonstration.” He knew they were close on his trail, which meant he had a limited window. But he wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity. Not if he’d gone to any trouble to set things up, and especially not if he had potential buyers expecting a demonstration in a set timeframe.
This also happened to be a particularly good day and time if one wanted to do maximum damage. It was nearing the end of the work day and, since it was Friday, the end of the work week as well. There were lots of flights, with businessmen rushing home in both directions, and weekend getaways getting started. The timing was right for an attack, but there was more to it than that.
Cassandra was reasoning all of this out on the fly, but just as she didn’t know the range on the Talisman, she figured Sotiris might not know either. This was probably his first real-life test of the device. And not knowing exactly what it might do, he wouldn’t have wanted to risk triggering it earlier and drawing unwanted attention, not just from Nick, but from the human authorities whose notice might scare away his buyers, at least in the short term. But if this was his first test, he wouldn’t want to take a chance on the device failing, either. He’d want to be as close to his mark as possible, to both maximize the effect and minimize the risk. She only hoped she was right about his target. It was all based on guesswork, on clues that might very well have been planted to mislead them. She was going with instinct on this one.
When th
ey approached the FAA facility, she saw that it wasn’t exactly isolated. There was a big hospital complex nearby, and, damn, an elementary school, too. Though it didn’t really matter what was nearby. If planes started falling from the sky, no one for miles around would be truly safe.
They cruised the immediate streets around the FAA campus first, but no more than two blocks in any direction. She just didn’t think Sotiris would take a chance on anything farther than that. When she didn’t feel so much as a twinge of the Talisman’s presence, she directed Damian back to the FAA center itself, where they began a circuit of the entire facility. They drove deliberately, not moving too slowly, and not speeding either. They didn’t want to look like they were casing the parking lots, even though that’s exactly what they were doing. She assumed there would be closed circuit surveillance, although probably not actively eyeballed 24/7. As a precaution, however, they’d parked her Yukon at the airport and were driving a nondescript rental sedan. Nothing blended in better around here than that.
Damian was keeping a lookout for the black Escalade, even though neither of them thought Sotiris would be foolish enough to use the same vehicle. But it was the magic sensor in Cassandra’s head that was their secret weapon. No matter how much Sotiris tried to shield the Talisman, if they got close enough, she’d sense it. And if he tried using another spell to camouflage it, she’d simply detect that one instead. There was no hiding from her.
As they cruised around the corner of the main building and into the largest parking lot, she spied a cargo truck with double doors in the back. It was sitting almost dead center in the lot, with several smaller vehicles parked right next to it, even though the rest of the area was only sparsely filled. She’d noticed that the other lots were mostly empty, too, which had troubled her, until she realized that the facility would house more than just the Air Traffic Control Center, and that the people in all of those other offices would be clearing out for the weekend already. And she sure as hell didn’t mind the absence of an audience for what would probably be a very flashy confrontation.
“See that?” she murmured to Damian, nodding her head toward the white truck. “We need to get closer.”
He slowed to a stop and then pulled out a map, as if checking directions. “If we get too close, if he recognizes you, he’ll kill you point-blank this time,” he told her.
“Yeah, but he thinks I’m already dead, so he won’t be looking for me. Come on, Damian, this is what we’re here for. Just do a quick drive-by to see if I sniff anything funny.”
“I’d hardly call it funny,” he said unhappily, but he did as she asked, starting down the row where the white truck was parked, on a pass that would take them to within just a few feet of it.
It started as a tingle of awareness, an itchy sort of pressure that made her rub her scalp almost absently. But by the time they were ten feet from the truck, and then right on top of it, the itch had become a painful, squeezing pressure inside her head, like the worst headache she’d ever had . . . times ten. She sucked in a shocked breath. This was the Talisman, but so much stronger. Sotiris was boosting the power somehow. “Keep going,” she gasped at Damian’s concerned look. “Just . . . go.”
She had to give him credit. He didn’t panic, didn’t stomp on the gas pedal and announce their presence. He simply kept moving at the same deliberate pace, until they were out of the parking lot and moving away from the facility.
She leaned over, clutching her head, as Damian pulled into the hospital parking lot, and immediately jumped out of the car, coming around to her side and opening the door. Squatting in from of her, he rested one hand on her thigh, and covered her hand on her head with the other.
“Cassandra?” he asked. His hands were like two spots of intense heat, sinking into her body, chasing away the cold of the Talisman. Was the cold part of its nature? Had it been created with ill intent? Or did it only reflect the intent of the user? If Nick took it in hand, would it feel the same? “Cassandra?” Damian repeated, more urgently this time.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, threading her fingers with his and placing them over her racing heart. “That’s definitely them,” she said, with a cynical laugh. “Damn it,” she swore, still trying to catch her breath.
“Take your time, sweetheart.” He reached into a bag on the floor of the backseat. “Here, drink this.” He offered her a bottle of a sports drink that contained lots of sugar, along with all the necessary electrolytes.
She didn’t usually drink the sugary stuff, but she made an exception this time, sucking it down as if it was the first food she’d had in days. She finished off the bottle and handed it to him, with a grimace of distaste. “I hate that stuff.”
“Really?” Damian asked, seeming honestly surprised. “I think it’s great. Good for a quick recharge.”
She shook her head. He was so single-minded. Everything came down to the battlefield, good or bad. Maybe that’s what made him such a great warrior. Well, that and magic. She couldn’t forget the fucking magic.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked. If one was going to consort with a warrior god, one might as well make good use of him.
“I think we wait for Nico.” He stood and walked back around the front of the car to the open driver’s door.
“I don’t know,” she said when he’d slid behind the wheel again. “That thing’s powering up for something big. It didn’t affect me like this earlier, when I followed them to the house. We might not have time to wait.” She glanced over at him. “We could probably take them. I mean, how many thugs could there be in that truck? And with you, it’s like having twenty guys at my back.”
“Don’t forget Sotiris,” he reminded her dryly, as he pulled their car around to a spot under some trees, where they could see the back of the truck, but hopefully wouldn’t be noticed themselves.
She tsked irritably. “Nick hasn’t answered any of our calls, not even yours. What if he’s not coming?”
“He’ll be here,” he said implacably.
“Yeah, right. He doesn’t even—” She broke off as the back doors of the truck abruptly swung open, and two guys hopped out. The angle wasn’t right for her to get much more than a flash of the interior cargo space, but there were definitely people in there, and she thought one of them might have been wearing a suit, just like Sotiris. The two men walked around to the cab and jumped inside. She waited for them to do something, like start the engine, maybe drive away. But they just sat there.
“What are they waiting for?” she asked, thinking out loud.
The back door of the sedan suddenly opened behind her. “You’re wondering what they’re waiting for,” Nick said, as he slid across the rear seat and closed the door behind him.
She stared at him, then shifted to glare at Damian. “You knew he was close.”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Okay, children,” Nick said. “Let’s bicker later. What’s the plan, Casey?”
“Shouldn’t that be your job?”
“Hell, no. I’m just the big gun. Tell her, Damian.”
Damian sighed. “There are five men in the back of the truck,” he said, as if reciting by rote. “Plus two more outside. Sotiris is one of those inside, and there is one man seated who appears to be restrained. The three others inside, as well as the two now sitting in the cab of the truck, are all carrying MP5s with standard 30-round magazines. The two in the cab—let’s call them guards—are definitely wearing ballistic vests; I would assume the three guards on the inside are similarly attired. Sotiris is, of course, unarmed, except for his considerable power.”
“But he won’t use that against you or Casey,” Nick chimed in. “He’ll want to conserve his power in case I show up.”
Damian nodded as if he was processing this bit of information. He glanced at Casey. “The Talisman
is definitely there?”
She nodded.
“Then it’s hidden. I saw nothing that matches its description—”
“You can’t possibly have seen all of that. I had the same view, for the same period of time, maybe at an even better angle, and—”
“But I did, Cassandra. You joke about it, but there is a good reason that some worshipped me as a god.”
“You four were the finest warriors the world had ever seen,” Nick interjected almost angrily. “You still are, Damian, for all that you’ve been sealed away from the world for centuries. Sotiris knows damned well that with you at my side, the balance is tipped in my favor.”
Damian turned to grin at Nick. “You won’t need my help, brother, but Cassandra will.”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded, and said, “Okay. So how do we do this?”
“First, the Talisman should be your first and only focus. You’re the only one who can do this, and we can’t afford for you to be distracted by anything else. Nico will deal with Sotiris, and I’ll take out the others and keep them off your back.”
“Wait, how do I know Nick can handle—”
“Give me a break, Casey,” Nick muttered, but it was Damian who made the convincing argument.
“Because he’s done it in the past,” he told her. “Because Sotiris has always feared him over any other enemy. Look how far he went to weaken him by taking us away from him.”
She shrugged in reluctant agreement. “What about you? I know I’ve said you’re like twenty fighters in one, but Sotiris’s people will put up a vicious defense. He’ll kill them if they don’t.”
Damian shrugged, unconcerned. “They’ll die either way. If they don’t fight, Sotiris will kill them. If they do . . . at least I’ll offer them a clean death. I doubt Sotiris can say—”
The Stone Warriors: Damian Page 33