Cold Fear

by Toni Anderson

  He hadn’t hurt Todd, he’d just gotten rid of him. Shocking, but efficient.

  She had trouble breathing as she took in how deftly and quickly Hejan had wielded the vicious blade. If she’d stepped in, she could have been seriously injured, or at the very least, she’d have thrown off Hejan’s smooth timing.

  The arms that had held her were gone, and she twisted to face the man who’d stopped her, but there was no one behind her. She scanned the faces of several men who sat alone or in groups, wondering which one had stopped her, but no one met her gaze. All eyes were on Hejan as he crossed the lounge to her side.

  She almost wondered if she’d imagined it—the chokehold, the knife. It was crazy. “I’m sorry,” she said to Hejan, knowing how vastly inadequate the words were.

  The young Kurd shrugged like it was no big deal. The other patrons returned to their revelry. The world resumed spinning.

  She didn’t know what else to say. She reached for the table and pushed it back to line up with the others that ringed the dance floor. Hejan dropped into Suzanne’s vacated chair at the same time Cressida resumed her seat. “I’d offer to buy you a drink,” she said, “but you’re Muslim.”

  He smiled. “I’ll have a gazoz.” He signaled to the waitress and ordered the local soda. Task completed, his gaze flicked down Cressida’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low, raspy voice she could barely hear under the loud music. Todd had hurt him.

  “I’m fine,” she lied even as her hip throbbed.

  He reached into a thin satchel he wore slung across his chest, plucked out an envelope, and handed it to her. “A write-up of my translation and a digital recorder on which I recorded translations of the map in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi so you can hear the pronunciation. Each language is in a separate file directory so you can easily play the place names for locals when they don’t understand you.”

  “I’ve never considered using a digital recorder like that. I can see how that will be helpful. Thank you.” It was brilliant, actually, but she worried how much it would cost her. “I must owe you for the recorder. They aren’t cheap.”

  He waved her off. “The university provided it. You must return it when you come back next week, or they’ll bill you for it.”

  She let out a small sigh of relief. She’d return it first thing because free was the only price she could afford. “Perfect.”

  Next, he slid a small card across the table. “My brother’s phone number.”

  She tucked the card away, grateful for it. Hejan’s brother, Berzan, had agreed to act as her guide and translator for the week. A guide was vital for this trip because southeastern Turkey—which bordered Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and was far more conservative than the western part of the country—could be considered unsafe for almost any American, especially now, with ongoing fighting with ISIS along sections of the Syrian border. Add to that the fact that she couldn’t speak Kurdish, Turkish, or Arabic, was a woman traveling alone, and her trip was risky at best.

  She’d spent the better part of six months planning this excursion—made thankfully cheaper because she was already in the country for the underwater excavation—and had no choice but to make the trip alone. At one point she’d planned to ask Todd to join her, but that ship had crashed, burned, and sunk. Of course, once she’d learned that he was a thief with shady Jordanian connections, she had to wonder if he’d had ulterior motives for being interested in studying ancient illicit trade routes in Kurdish territory.

  * * *

  IAN COULDN’T BELIEVE it. The woman with the mean right hook was the next link in Hejan’s cell. He’d been ready to believe Hejan had only intervened because she needed help, but then Hejan handed her an envelope with a mark on the corner. The signal the envelope contained the microchip.

  Hejan hadn’t told Ian the courier would be unwitting, which meant this woman could well be a true conspirator who’d knowingly accepted the job of delivering the microchip to the leader of a Kurdish terrorist group. It rankled that he’d considered her attractive when it was possible she was a traitor.

  “Are you certain she’s American?” Zack asked through the earpiece.

  “Her accent is American.”

  “That can be faked.”

  Ian studied her again. Turkey had a wide range of ethnic groups with an equally diverse set of physical attributes. The woman’s dark hair, eyes, and deep tan could easily pass for Middle Eastern. She bore a strong resemblance to the actress Natalie Portman, who, if he remembered correctly, was Israeli. But the way the woman moved, the way she talked, even the way she punched… Her mannerisms were all American. “Not under stress like that. She wasn’t faking; she wanted to stop the fight. No way could she have hidden an accent.”

  Twenty feet away, the pretty traitor tucked the envelope into her purse. The packet stuck out of the small bag, easy picking for a brush drop.

  Ian spoke softly into his drink. “Can’t get a read on this. It’s so…blatant.”

  “Get her picture so it can be run through the known associates database.”

  Ian rolled his eyes. He’d been at this far longer than Zack and didn’t need to be told his job. Rookies. “Already sent it.”

  Hejan and the woman chatted for several more minutes, then she yawned and glanced at her watch. Hejan nodded and stood. She caught the eye of her blonde friend and waved.

  The blonde smiled and returned her attention to the American man she’d cozied up to. It was odd that the blonde hadn’t checked on the brunette after the fight.

  The brunette wore a short, midnight-blue dress with a snug top cut low enough to reveal that impressive cleavage. She draped her purse over her shoulder just as a man walked by and bumped into her. The bag slipped and dropped to the floor.

  She bent to retrieve it with reflexes that showed she hadn’t had much to drink. While she bent over, Hejan got a prime view of her ass while Ian got a glimpse straight down her top. He corrected his initial assessment of her cleavage from impressive to downright spectacular, but a quick glance at Hejan revealed the man’s gaze was fixed on the fallen purse, not the blatant display.

  Yeah. Hejan had definitely passed her the chip, and now he was worried.

  She slung the long purse strap across the opposite shoulder so it crossed her chest and wouldn’t be easy to dislodge again, then she swept her long hair off her neck and twisted it in a knot that somehow managed to stay up without a fastener.

  With her hair up, her high cheekbones became more prominent. She went from being simply pretty to…well, something more. Irrelevantly and involuntarily, he found himself wondering about her eye color.

  Focus, dammit. The microchip is now in play.

  Hejan and the woman headed for the exit, but not the main one, which emptied onto the busy Antalya street. No, they went through the hotel entrance. The woman had a hotel room?

  Shit.

  “Grab her drink and see if you can get a print,” Ian instructed Zack. “I’ll follow and get her room number.”

  She had a microchip that held information wanted by at least three countries and two terrorist networks. Ian couldn’t lose her. If she managed to pass it up the line, then a terrorist organization would have access to the funding they needed to plan and implement a major strike. Ian’s orders were clear: follow the chip, but if there was any chance he’d lose it, take out the carrier by whatever means necessary to stop the data from reaching the group leader.

  His primary goal was to intercept the chip, identifying the group leader was secondary.

  Hejan was playing a dangerous game, and unwitting or not, the woman was in it up to her beautiful unknown-color eyes.

  Find out more on Rachel Grant’s website: www.Rachel-Grant.net and the Covert Evidence page.

  Read the start of Toni Anderson’s Multi-Award Nominated Romantic Suspense/ Spy Thriller…

  THE KILLING GAME

  ©Toni Anderson

  IT LOOKED AND felt like the dominion of Gods.

 
; Special Air Service trooper Ty Dempsey had been catapulted from a rural English market town into the heart of a colossal mountain range full of pristine snow-capped peaks which glowed against a glassy blue sky. Many of the summits in the Hindu Kush were over five miles high. The utter peace and tranquility of this region was an illusion that hid death, danger and uncertainty beneath every elegant precipice. No place on Earth was more treacherous or more beautiful than the high mountains.

  He was an anomaly here.

  Life was an anomaly here.

  Thin sharp needles pierced his lungs every time he took a breath. But his prey was as hampered by the landscape as they were, and Ty Dempsey wasn’t going to let a former Russian Special Forces operative-turned-terrorist get the better of an elite modern-day military force. Especially a man who’d shockingly betrayed not only his country, but humanity itself.

  They needed to find him. They needed to stop the bastard from killing again.

  The only noise in this arena was boots punching through the crust of frozen snow, and the harshness of puny human lungs struggling to draw oxygen out of the fragile atmosphere. The shriek of a golden eagle pierced the vastness overhead, warning the world that there were strangers here and to beware. Dempsey raised his sunglasses to peer back over his shoulder at the snaking trail he and his squad had laid down. Any fool could follow that trail, but only a real fool would track them across the Roof of the World to a place so remote not even war lingered.

  But the world was full of fools.

  As part of the British SAS’s Sabre Squadron A’s Mountain Troop, Dempsey was familiar with the terrain. He knew the perils of mountains and altitude, understood the raw omnipotent power of nature. This was what he trained for. This was his job. This was his life. He’d climbed Everest and K2, though the latter had nearly killed him. He understood that there were places on Earth that were blisteringly hostile, that could obliterate you in a split second, but they held no malice, no evil. Unlike people…

  He relaxed his grip on his carbine and adjusted the weight of his bergen. None of the men said a word as they climbed ever higher, one by one disappearing over the crest of the ridge and dropping down into the snowy wilderness beyond. With an icy breath, Dempsey followed his men on the next impossible mission. Hunting a ghost.

  * * *

  THE SMALL PLANE taxied down the runway at Kurut in the Wakhan Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.

  Dr. Axelle Dehn stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her leopards, and she was determined to find out what.

  Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow leopards here in the Wakhan. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one signal completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a leopard called Sheba, one of only two female snow leopards they’d caught. Just ten days ago, for the first time ever, they’d captured photos from one of their remote camera traps of the same leopard moving two newborn cubs. If Sheba had been killed, the cubs were out there, hungry and defenseless. Emotion tried to crowd her mind, but she thrust it aside.

  The cats might be fine.

  The collar might have malfunctioned and dropped off before it was programmed to. Or maybe she hadn’t fastened it tight enough when they’d trapped Sheba, and the leopard had somehow slipped it off.

  But two collars in two days…?

  The plane came to a stop, and the pilot turned off the propellers. The glacier-fed river gushed silkily down the wide, flat valley. Goats grazed beside a couple of rough adobe houses where smoke drifted through the holes in the roof. Bactrian camels and small, sturdy horses were corralled nearby. A line of yaks packed with supplies waited patiently in a row. Yaks were the backbone of survival in this remote valley, especially once you headed east beyond the so-called road. People used them for everything from milk, food, transportation and even fuel in this frigid treeless moonscape.

  It was early spring—the fields were being tilled in preparation to plant barley in the short but vital growing season. A group of children ran toward the plane, the girls dressed in red dresses with pink headscarves, the boys wearing jewel-bright green and blue sweaters over dusty pants. Hospitality was legendary in this savagely poor region, but with the possibility of only a few hundred snow leopards left in Afghanistan’s wilderness, Axelle didn’t have time to squander.

  Her assistant, a Dane called Josef Vidler, gathered his things beside her. She adjusted her hat and scarf to cover her hair. The type of Islam practiced here was moderate and respectful.

  “Hello, Dr. Dehn,” the children chimed as the pilot opened the door. A mix of different colored irises and features reflected the diverse genetic makeup of this ancient spit of land.

  “As-Salaam Alaikum.” She gave them a tired smile. The children’s faces were gaunt but wreathed in happiness. Malnourishment was common in the Wakhan, and after a brutal winter most families were only a goat short of starvation.

  Despite the worry for her cats, it humbled her. These people, who struggled with survival every single day, were doing their best to live in harmony with the snow leopard. And a large part of this change in attitude toward one of the region’s top predators was due to the work of the Conservation Trust. It was a privilege to work for them, a privilege she didn’t intend to screw up. She dug into her day pack and pulled out two canisters of children’s multi-vitamins she’d found in Frankfurt Airport. She rattled one of the canisters and they all jumped back in surprise. She pointed to Keeta, a teenage girl whose eyes were as blue as Josef’s and whose English was excellent thanks to some recent schooling. “These are not candy so only eat one a day.” She held up a single finger. Then handed them over, and the children chorused a thank you before running back to their homes.

  Anji Waheed, their local guide and wildlife ranger-in-training, rattled toward them in their sturdy Russian van.

  “As-Salaam Alaikum, Mr. Josef, Doctor Axelle,” Anji called out as he pulled up beside them. The relief in the Wakhi man’s deep brown eyes reinforced the seriousness of the situation.

  “Wa-Alaikum Salaam.” They could all do with a little peace. The men patted each other on the back, and they began hauling their belongings out of the plane and into the van.

  Axelle took a deep breath. “Did you find any sign of the cubs?”

  Anji shook his head. “No, but as soon as I heard you were on your way, I took some men up to base camp to set up the yurts, then came back to get you.” Although only a few miles up the side valley, it was two bone-rattling hours of travel on a barely-there gravel road to their encampment. During winter, they did their tracking online from back home at Montana State University. In summer, they took a more hands-on approach.

  “Thanks.” Axelle stowed her frustration and smiled her gratitude. From their tracking data she had a good idea where Sheba might have denned up. Barring accidents or breakdowns they might get there before nightfall.

  She was praying for a collar malfunction even though that would put their million-dollar project way behind schedule. The alternative meant the cubs and their mother were probably dead. Her instinct told her losing two cats in a couple of days wasn’t coincidence, nor was it a local herder protecting livestock. A professional poacher was going after her animals for their fur and bones to feed China’s ravenous appetite for traditional medicine. It was imperative to find out exactly what was going on, and with the continuing conflict in Afghanistan it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Do the elders know anything about what might be happening?” she asked. Only twelve miles wide in places, the Wakhan Valley was a tiny finger of fl
at fertile ground separating some of the tallest mountains in the world—the magnificent and treacherous Hindu Kush to the south and the impenetrable Pamir Range to the north. Harsh winters trapped locals inside for seven months of the year. Wildlife was scarce and the region mercilessly inaccessible, but these people knew the land better than a visitor ever could.

  “No.” His eyes shot between her and Josef. “They are scared that if the snow leopards are dead, you will blame them and they will lose their clinic.”

  The Trust not only had an anti-poaching scheme, they also vaccinated local livestock once a year against common diseases, gratis. The program promoted healthier livestock and reduced the losses herders suffered to sickness, which in turn compensated for the occasional snow leopard kill. So far the scheme was working, except now they had two missing, possibly dead, leopards and two tiny cubs unaccounted for.

  The weight of responsibility sat like an elephant on her chest.

  “Josef, run over and reassure them while Anji and I finish loading.” She held his gaze when he looked like he’d argue. The village elders sometimes struggled to deal with a woman. She didn’t mind because she loathed politics. “Be quick. We don’t have time for tea—you’ll have to make your excuses.”

  It wasn’t how things were done here, and she didn’t want to offend these people, but the survival of a species trumped social niceties today. Ten more minutes, and they were finished packing. Anji tied the spare gasoline canisters onto the roof and made sure both big gas tanks were full. They honked, and Josef jogged over and jumped into the van.

  “Everything be okay.” Lines creased Anji’s leathery skin. “Inshallah.”

  God willing, indeed.

  She and Josef exchanged a look as Anji gunned the engine over the rough road marked only by a line of pale stones. Dust flew, stirred up by the tires, the land still soft from the thaw. They bounced over rivers, ruts, and alluvial fans. Axelle craned her neck to stare at the imposing mountains.