by Misty Evans
Dmitri's eyes danced and he rubbed his hands together. “You, Agent Morgan. You have just been elected to become a weapon of mass destruction."
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Chapter Thirty-Six
Director Flynn was silent for so long, Lawson was sure the man had either fallen back asleep or the connection had gone dead.
Interrupting the DO's sleep was a bad idea, especially since he was already on his shit list, but Lawson didn't have any choice. He had to have help. He'd roused Flynn out of his slumber and spilled the entire story about Zara's kidnapping in less than thirty seconds. Now he waited for Flynn's response.
Silence didn't bode well. Lawson paced the library floor. “Director?"
"Way to screw up, Vaughn.” Lawson could see him swinging his legs over the bed and sitting up. “What's your plan?"
"I'm heading out to do surveillance on the estate where Dmitri's at as we speak, but I can't proceed past that until I have backup. There are approximately thirty well-armed guards and a very sophisticated security system in place. I want my Team here as fast as I can get them."
Another pause which seemed to Lawson to last an hour. “Even if Stone is willing to send your team, it'll be hours before they arrive. What do you plan to do in the meantime?"
"I need at least one more man on the ground who can help me with surveillance until Pegasus arrives. Two or three would be better. If this group breaks camp or if any of the major players leave the compound, I've got no way to follow them. Do you have any Agency-trained operatives in this region?"
"Of a sort,” Flynn answered.
The spot between Lawson's shoulder blades twitched. “What sort?"
"Bernier."
This time it was Lawson's turn to let silence hang between them. “Come again."
"Your host at the Villa."
Like a kaleidoscope, images and snippets of conversations with Christian blended and refocused into a different picture in front of Lawson's eyes. Christian's knowledge of weapons. His detailed background checks and knowledge-gathering of people he didn't know. His extensive wardrobe.
"Holy hell,” Lawson said. “You've got to be joking. Zara's ballet teacher is a freakin’ spook?"
Flynn cleared his throat. “We've used him occasionally. He's proven to be a good access agent, getting information for us, and his villa's been a safe house for some of our people over the years in exchange for protection of his extensive art collection."
Lawson glanced at the doorway to make sure it was clear and then he lowered his voice. “I don't know squat about art, but shouldn't those pieces be in museums or something?"
"Even the Louvre has had major works of art stolen right off its walls in the middle of the day. Few museums are safer than Bernier's estate."
"Does he have any actual field experience?"
"Of a sort."
"Jesus.” Lawson laughed without humor. “You've got to give me more than that."
"I can give you one of the best spies in the business,” Flynn said. “Myself. I'll bring my goons from security, and another expert on terrorists who's at my disposal.” Lawson thought he heard a moan—a woman's moan—in the background. No wonder Flynn was extra pissed at him. “We'll meet up with you in approximately one hour. While you're waiting, develop a viable op plan for us."
This could not be happening. “You are coming into the field with me to rescue Zara."
"Hell yes,” Flynn said, sounding irritated. “Got a problem with that?"
A freakin’ ballet teacher and his boss were about to become his back-up team. He wasn't sure how the night could get any worse. “Just as long as you understand I'm in charge of the mission. Sir,” he added.
Several heartbeats passed and Lawson could have sworn Flynn was smiling. “We'll discuss that when I get there."
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Chapter Thirty-Seven
A small circle of orange glowed across from Zara, Dmitri's cigarette seeming to move by invisible hands. They sat in darkness, the bathroom clouding slowly with smoke.
Her hands were still cuffed, this time circling pipes attached to the sink next to her head. The bathroom floor was hard under her butt and she listened to Lucie's steady breathing coming from the corner.
Her tormentor sat comfortably a few feet away, and Zara knew this was her last opportunity to get him to answer the questions circling her brain. “Why didn't you shoot me that night at the farmhouse?"
The tip of the cigarette burned brighter for a few seconds, and then moved to dangle over his knee. “Does it matter?"
"It matters a great deal to me."
"Look no further than the seven deadly sins, my dear.” He laughed indifferently. “Greed is my usual motivator. You claimed you knew where my weapons were and I almost believed you. It was worth a chance. Besides, I knew who you were—the daughter of a millionaire. Knew you'd been asking around about me. Taking you hostage was extraordinarily enticing even if you didn't know about my weapons."
Zara straightened her feet out in front of her. “You're lying. You didn't plan to kidnap me for ransom money."
Dmitri laughed under his breath. “All right, I suppose not. But it is still worth contemplating. How much do you think I would have gotten?"
"Enough to make you happy for life."
"Ah, but there is never enough money to make me happy."
"Why did you think Tim Owens knew where your weapons were?"
A pause. “He did."
"He wasn't working your case. He didn't know."
"Is that what he told you?” The cigarette moved to his face, the tip of it illuminating his lips as he took another drag. The orange glow grew darker, retreated. “God, you're gullible. You think I'd trick him into coming to that old farmhouse if he didn't know about my inventory?” He snickered.
For a moment, Zara considered his words. A trickle of renewed anger burned in her stomach. “Why trick Owens to come to the farmhouse then instead of your compound?"
"Do you know who was waiting for me at my camp? Mahmoud Saleh, Prince Abkhahar's second in command. The Prince wanted his missiles and if I didn't show up with them, Mahmoud was prepared to execute me."
Leaning her head against the sink, Zara shut her eyes.
Dmitri continued. “Owens was my last hope of finding those damned weapons. Running was out of the question. Mahmoud and his army would have tracked me down within a couple of days, cut my balls off and left me to bleed to death. I dare say, even now, prison sounds more attractive."
He pulled on his cigarette, blew the smoke out. “And then you showed up, willing to give me what Owens refused to. You were far more interesting than him, and I saw instantly you would be more fun to torture as well."
Zara stayed still, willed herself not to be baited. “How did you get my necklace?"
The lighted cigarette moved in the darkness again. Zara could tell he was fingering her chain. “I pulled it off your neck when we struggled. A little souvenir."
At her silence, he chuckled. “Now my question. Did you know where my missiles were?"
"Yes,” Zara lied, already calculating how she'd get her chain back. “What about Annette? How did you get her to help you? Something about her sister?"
The cigarette was almost gone. “Ah, the beautiful Amy. Rogan Janvrin discovered her at Harvard when he was teaching there. Intelligent, witty, she was perfect for Varina's prostitution ring. Janvrin invited her to Italy under the guise of a romantic weekend and Stefano pressed her into work for him. He can be very persuasive, you know. Janvrin routinely seduces young girls like Amy away from the States and gives them to Stefano."
Dmitri threw the butt of the cigarette down between them. “Your FBI friend was able to figure out what had happened to her sister, but could never uncover enough hard evidence to open an official investigation. When she became aware of the link between myself and Stefano, she offered to be of service."
"She put Lawson and me on your trail here i
n Switzerland so she could kidnap us."
"It's too bad she didn't fulfill her part of our agreement and bring in Vaughn with you."
Zara figured that meant Annette was dead. That's why she hadn't seen her. Waves of sadness mixed with her anger. “This won't work, you know ... me being the carrier for Vos Loo's supervirus. Your Islamic buyers won't touch me. In fact, they'll probably be offended you're offering something so appalling as a Western woman in the form of a bonus."
"You read too much of your own country's propaganda,” Dmitri scoffed. “The fanatics who participate in jihad are excluded by bin Laden from many of the strict Islamic followings. They smoke Turkish cigarettes, gamble in Las Vegas and dream of raping virgins in Heaven. One look at your pretty blonde hair and blue eyes and they'll be salivating. You'll be the recipient of all their hatred as well as their lust."
He cracked his knuckles. “Besides, even if they don't want to beat and rape you just for fun, they'll still take you. When I tell them you're worth millions in ransom money, they will no doubt ask Allah to bless me tenfold. Even a few thousand dollars can buy them a ship full of weapons."
A sharp rap at the door brought Zara's head up. Light from the hallway poured into the room as a guard opened it. “Breaking camp."
Dmitri stood and brushed off his pants. “Good.” Zara flinched at the feel of his fingers on her wrists. “Time to go, Agent Morgan.” Over his shoulder, he nodded to the guard. “Get the other one."
The man moved toward Lucie, kicking her awake.
Zara's tingling hands fell weakly into her lap as Dmitri keyed open the cuffs. A surge of panic, strong and harsh, rose under her rib cage. If they moved, Lawson wouldn't be able to find them. “Go where?"
He hauled her to a standing position, jerking her arms behind her and snapping the cuffs back on. He pushed her toward the door. “Jon Vos Loo's father left him more than just the recipes for his biological nightmares. He also left him his lab. A compound about two hundred kilometers from here on the border of Germany. That's where we'll meet our buyers."
As they left the bathroom, Zara saw the men in black walking through the halls and rooms of the estate, wiping down doorknobs and handrails with focused efficiency. Behind a set of French doors, she heard a vacuum. She tried to slow Dmitri's rapid pace, but his pressing grip on her upper arm kept her moving. Lucie and her guard followed close behind.
At the front door, Dmitri placed a strip of duct tape over Zara's mouth. Lucie received the same treatment and then a black bag went over each of their heads. An iron arm—Dmitri's?—gripped Zara just under her lungs and lifted her feet off the ground. She was carried down several steps before being shoved into a running car. The hands pressed her down to the car's floorboard, and she kicked out with her feet and made contact, enough to bring a grunt from her handler. But it was wasted effort. A blow caught her in the ribs and made her gasp for air.
Seconds later, the car shot forward. Raw panic surged through her again, a shameless silent scream echoing in her head. Trying to control her emotions, she breathed deeply and evenly through her nose.
Lawson was out there somewhere. She closed her eyes and willed her mind to block out what was happening and think of him and his superhuman ability to track anyone and never get lost. As the car sped toward the Swiss-German border, Zara told herself to keep the faith. Lawson would find them, she was sure. In the meantime, she just had to keep Lucie alive.
* * * *
As the third black armor-plated Mercedes limousine rolled by in front of him, Lawson held his breath as well as his trigger finger. Lying in the weeds of the roadside, he was close enough to the car to read the imprint on the front tire. Close enough that one bullet from his gun could blow that tire out and stop the procession of Stefano Biaggio and Alexandrov Dmitri.
And bring the wrath of a dozen or more well-armed men down on him and his ragtag team of pseudo-commandos.
Flynn's solemn voice came through his digitally encrypted Motorola headset. “Don't do anything rash, Commander."
Lawson let out his breath and took his finger off the trigger as the car zoomed past him and another took its place. This was, without a doubt, his worst nightmare. A hostage situation where he couldn't control any of the variables, and the hostage, a woman whose life he had come to value more than his own, within reach but not within access.
Add to that, his boss, twenty-yards away, directing his every move. The other members of his team—Zara's ballet coach, an Air Force colonial who chauffeured Flynn around Europe in a helicopter, three bodyguards from the CIA's Office of Security, and Flynn's wife, a former CIA operative/analyst and now FBI agent who just happened be with Flynn in Paris—men and a woman he had never worked with before.
"Lead car's tracking system activated,” bodyguard Dom Spencer said.
One bright spot had come from Del Hoffman. The King of Techies had had the absentminded foresight to send new equipment with Flynn's bodyguards on the off chance they might find time to do a trial run.
Spencer was currently positioned a quarter mile northwest of Lawson and outfitted with a thirteen-inch long Rutger MK II. The sleek .22-caliber gun did not fire bullets from its silenced barrel. This one, CIA-certified and techie-approved, fired small GPS bugs instead that could attach themselves to almost any surface, including armor-plated cars, and like a chameleon, change colors to match the vehicle's paint.
The tiny devices looked like some sort of futuristic insect and, when activated, sent out a clear, pulsing signal to satellites circling above the Earth. A signal that would be tracked from the heart of the enemy's camp into Langley, Virginia. The exact coordinates of an operational base could be passed onto Lawson and his team as well as Pegasus, whose members were now speeding over the Atlantic in a C-130.
Accompanying Pegasus was a SEAL team, because now it wasn't just enough to save one of the CIA's foreign counterintelligence officers. The American, British and French intelligence services had witnessed movement among a dozen different Islamic fundamentalist cells in the past forty-eight hours. Communications intercepted between them and suspected Mafia deputies pointed at a union between the two camps. It appeared the bad guys were joining forces and Lawson and Zara were smack dab in the middle of it.
Lawson didn't care. Not much anyway. Anarchy was brewing in Europe, but his sole focus was Zara. He would chase Alexandrov Dmitri and Jon Vos Loo and a group of Mafia hoods until the last breath left his body, but it wasn't in order to save anyone but her.
In the end, if his team kept Western Europe from some biological nightmare, great. He was all for it. And if he had the opportunity to put a bullet between Dmitri's eyes, he would gladly pull the trigger after he castrated the son of a bitch. No problem.
But the bottom line for Superman on this mission was to save Lois Lane.
Dom Spencer's low voice registered in his ear. “Rear car's tracking system activated."
The taillights of the last vehicle, a black, civilian-styled Hummer, disappeared into the night. “Copy that,” he said. “Move out, Team."
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Chapter Thirty-Eight
German-Swiss border
Zara had seen a lot of things in her life. The inside of a terrorist's compound was not one of them. While the mock version Flynn had trained her in was similar, she'd have to recommend a few changes when she got back.
If she got back.
Bare, sterile and completely windowless, the structure provided its occupants with the basic necessities of the criminal-designed life—bathrooms, a weapons arsenal and a fully stocked laboratory. Cameras and infrared detection devices had been added since Jon Vos Loo's father built it in the 1950s with funds provided by the German and Russian governments. Remote-controlled doors on the prison cells as well.
Zara pressed her ear against the metal door and listened to sounds echoing outside in the hallway. Footsteps, a toilet flushing, someone whistling. The tension, the urgency that had affected the group when lea
ving the estate was gone. In its place, a cocky air of success.
No barricades had stopped their caravan as it moved through the Swiss countryside. No international SWAT team had swooped down out of the mountains and hijacked them at sunrise. No one-man army had managed to sneak in amongst the host gang and save her.
She was on her own. Walking her eight-by-six sealed cubicle, she knew she had no choice but to save Lucie herself. She looked for anything she could use as a tool to help her escape. There was a mattress on the floor, a toilet, a sink. A single recessed light and a small air vent in the ceiling. Nothing that would aid her. She took inventory of what she was wearing. Turtleneck, jeans, her Prada jacket, a pair of ugly sneakers. No gun, no cell phone, not even a pack of matches or a tube of lip gloss.
She let out a sigh and sat on the mattress. Her mind was clearer now after several hours of sleep in the car, but MacGyver she was not. She couldn't work up one idea, not even a far-fetched one as to how to escape her prison cell.
Resting her elbows on her knees, she dropped her head into her hands. Her muscles and neck ached from the cramped position she had slept in and she was starving, but at least she was alive and relatively unhurt. It had to be getting close to midmorning, which meant, if she had heard Dmitri right, she had approximately eight hours before the meeting took place. Eight hours. She had to try something.
Even if she completed her part of the deal, Stefano would never let Lucie go. Lucie had seen his face and heard the plan to cleanse Europe and the world of the Muslim population. She could ID him and all of his men. No way would he or Dmitri let her live.
One of Zara's shoestrings was untied. She pulled the shoe off and threw it across the room in frustration. It bounced and landed on the floor. She kicked the other one off and stared at it. Do something, her mind demanded. Move.
"Okay, okay,” she whispered back. She stared at the shoe and drew in a deep breath. “Forget MacGyver. If I were Conrad Flynn, what would I do?"