Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  “Such devotion.” His words came mockingly. He spoke sharply to one of the other men, who retrieved the phone from the stall in which it had come to rest. Selena gave a heartfelt prayer that it would be broken, but from the look on his face, it was not. From the look on his face, it worked perfectly fine as he instructed it to redial the last call.

  Cole’s relief upon answering came audibly enough that Ashurbeyli moved the phone away from his ear in reaction. “Selena!”

  “No.” Ashurbeyli smiled tightly, his eyes holding Selena’s gaze as she started to tremble in reaction—to the danger, to the pain. Her arm throbbed so hard she thought she’d be better off if it exploded; at this rate, blood clots from deep bruising were as much a danger as the rifles still pointed her way. She tried to hide her puzzlement—what the hell was Ashurbeyli up to?

  In another moment, as he moved closer to her and tipped the phone so she might hear, his face so near hers as to once again seem intimate, she understood. Control. He was regaining the control she’d lost, and Cole would pay the emotional price. She already heard it in his voice—the strain in his words, the great effort it took to keep his voice calm. “Who is this?”

  “Exactly who you’re afraid it is.” Ashurbeyli reached over to smooth Selena’s crooked collar; he ran a finger—oh so gentle—over her bruised cheek, along the line of dried blood left over from her initial capture.

  “What can I do for you?” Desperately trying to keep it impersonal, to hide that he was her husband. Selena listened to his struggle with a sudden awe at how much this man loved her. Whatever he’d done in D.C., he loved her. She tried to turn her face away from Ashurbeyli, to hide the sudden sting of tears.

  Firmly, he took her chin and restored her former position, inches away. He couldn’t miss the shine of her eye; he certainly wouldn’t miss that sudden emotional tremble in her chin. She just damn well hoped he somehow missed her complete resolve to live through this, to destroy the Kemenis and their hopes of a takeover in Berzhaan. To see Cole again and figure out what had happened…to fix whatever had gone wrong. Somehow.

  Whatever he saw, he smiled again. Just for her. “If you want to see your lovely wife again, you can accomplish an immediate capitulation to my demands.” But it wasn’t why he’d called. Not really.

  “I’m not in a position to do that,” Cole said. There was a spate of rustling; Selena thought Ashurbeyli wasn’t the only one who had an audience listening in. “But I’d be glad to pass that word along.”

  “You do that.” Ashurbeyli paused, as much for drama as anything else. “But don’t worry overmuch about it. We both know Berzhaan’s ministers are too blind to do what’s best for their country, and the interfering Western world is too cowardly to stand behind the support it once gave us—or even to interfere with us now.”

  “Then—” Cole broke off his own words, puzzled.

  “I called because I wanted to talk to the man who commands such devotion from such a fierce warrior as your wife. Quite remarkable, isn’t she? She could almost be one of us.” Selena jerked in reaction; he raised an eyebrow of warning. “I wondered if you could possibly deserve such a woman. Where are you now? What do you do with yourself? Are you as strong as she is? Those are the questions that run through my mind as I watch her this moment, under gunpoint at the hands of my men. But most of all I wanted to make sure you know that you no longer have her. I do.”

  Selena barely heard Cole’s tight whisper, coming through in a moment of ironic perfect cell phone clarity. “You bastard.” But she heard the pain of the words, and she made a sudden snatch for the phone.

  Ashurbeyli expected it, of course. He shoved her back, gave an imperious gesture. The Kemenis swooped in and grabbed her up, snatching her arm so roughly she cried out at the explosion of agony, her knees giving way, her vision gone black as her world narrowed down to that single point of pain. Ashurbeyli said something she couldn’t make out, a satisfied sound, and snapped the cell phone shut.

  When they dragged her away, she quite gratefully passed out.

  “Selena? Selena!” Cole’s fingers clenched around his phone, his mind so full of tumult he couldn’t think, could barely breathe. He fought the hands which tried to take the phone away even as her pained cry echoed in his mind, over and over and—

  “Cole!” An unfamiliar voice, but one full of understanding along with the command. Diego Morel. “You’ll break it, man—we need to get that number!”

  Numbly, Cole tried to release the device; by then his fingers were cramped into place. The hand in question gently removed them as Josie Lockworth said, “Besides, she might try to call again. That’s the only contact number she’s got.”

  True. He blinked, floundering for coherent thought, and heard only Selena’s cry. Get it together. You can’t help her like this.

  Already, the others were thinking ahead. “Did she say anything the first time? Anything we can use? The damn building’s so stout we can’t get reliable infrared…even the SEALs are blind right now.”

  Which he knew. It was just a reminder, a way to pull him back to sensibility. He blinked, looked around…reoriented himself to the interior of the Quonset hut where Tory had dropped him off, staying only for quick introductions before heading back out to do her job. Cold, stark…one end of it filled with bunks, a single bathroom sans shower the only permanent structure other than the shabby office beside it. Beside that, a big chunk of Quonset wall was obscured by a ground control system set within a 30-foot trailer—a bank of machinery with pilot and sensor operator stations that might have been taken for an early Star Trek set. From there, Air Force Captain Josie Lockworth and independent contractor Diego Morel flew Josie’s newly modified Predator UAV, an unmanned surveillance craft with big bite in the form of Hellfire missiles.

  Cole had seen images of the Predator before, and now that it sat before him in person, it did nothing to change his impression of a big flying spoon. Twenty-seven feet of flying spoon…no bigger than a single-engine Cessna.

  But effective. Maybe even the chance that Selena needed. For this particular flying spoon incorporated Josie’s acoustic improvements, making it even stealthier than before. And since they didn’t have Berzhaani permission to run recon flights over the besieged capitol, they’d need all the stealth they could get.

  “What did she say?” Josie asked, even as Morel took possession of the cell phone—albeit only long enough to set it on one of the small round tables that served as the commissary, well within Cole’s reach. “She had time for a few words when she first called—she would have chosen the most important ones.”

  For an instant, Cole could only look at her, still numb. Brain definitely not functioning. He saw only concerned smoky hazel eyes, personable features under bobbed brown hair, flight suit cinching in her figure. He’d been flummoxed to find her here, knowing the Predator—even unmodified birds—took time to bring into play. Time to pack it up in its “coffin,” time to transport, time to set up. More than two days’ worth of time, and the hostage crisis was only a day in the making. She’d cleared up his confusion in a matter of words. “We were here already,” she’d said. “There’s been so much alarming intel coming out of this region that it was worth risking Berzhaan’s displeasure to bring the modified Predator in for its first operational flight. But it’s still a test article, so Diego Morel—” she’d nodded at a man who looked as out of place as Cole himself, a big, lean fellow in jeans and a worn leather jacket “—is along as the sensor operator.”

  All fine with Cole. Anything was fine with Cole, as long as it helped Selena. He’d taken Morel’s firm handshake in an absentminded way, but that had changed quickly enough as he caught the look in the other man’s dark eyes and realized, startled, that Morel understood. That in some way he’d been there, done that—and a quick doublecheck of the way he looked at Josie was enough to tell him with whom.

  And now the two exchanged a concerned glance, one full of unspoken words—is Selena’s husband goi
ng to pull it together?—and it was enough to shock Cole back into thinking mode. “She didn’t have time for much,” he said, finally answering Josie’s question. “She said we should check the outside of the building. She definitely had something in mind, but that’s when—” and he stopped, because he couldn’t bring himself to say the words and because they knew them anyway.

  “Check the outside of the building.” Josie nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Cole gave the white and gray craft a skeptical glance. “Does this thing see well enough to check things out in detail?”

  “If we risk a lower altitude—luckily for us, the cloud cover is on our side. It would be easier if we knew what we were looking for, but—”

  Morel finished Josie’s thought. “If she chose those particular words as the most important ones she could say, we’d damn well better not let them go to waste.”

  Cole nodded and wondered if he looked as lost as he felt. He’d been in the middle of so many operations just like this one—which is to say, grasping for information, lives on the line…sometimes even his own. But never had they involved Selena. He had no idea he’d struggle so hard to find his usual easy confidence.

  But he’d find it, because she was counting on him. “We have to trust her,” he said. “If we look hard enough, we’ll find it.”

  All too soon, Selena opened her eyes, waking to a world of discomfort spiked with pain. Her arms, twisted behind her and once again cuffed…ow, dammit. It wouldn’t be so bad if her badly bruised biceps hadn’t been twisted along with the rest of the arm. Or, if upon opening her eyes, she hadn’t seen just what they wanted her to see—the current guard sitting directly across from her. When he saw her eyes open he greeted her with a mongrel smile that was as much sneer as anything else.

  She sneered back.

  Okay, not the wisest thing to do. Wisest would have been to close her eyes again. But she wasn’t in Obi-Wan Kenobi mode just now. She was in the mood to quit playing games and kick ass all the way out of here.

  Like that’s going to happen.

  It might have happened already if it hadn’t been for the hostages. People she couldn’t leave, because they were the very reason she’d come in the first place. People who—

  Suddenly aware of whispers and rustling, of rank, fearful sweat in the air and the indefinable feel of bodies sharing the space nearby, she popped her eyelids up again, and this time turned her head. The gaze she met first was Ambassador Allori’s.

  “Charming expression, my dear,” he murmured, sitting on the edge of his chair with his elbows propped on his knees. His tie was long gone, but his suit coat remained against the chill. “Perhaps you should teach it to me so I can use it during my next negotiations. Which, I hope, will be far from here.”

  Her response—her recently formed conviction that none of the hostages were meant to leave this building alive regardless of the outcome for the Kemenis—stuck in her throat. Given their recent conversation, at the very least Ashurbeyli considered his chances of success to be remote and was fully prepared for that contingency. Because besides Allori, the students watched her closely, their faces a collage of emotions. Fear, awe, concern, fear, fear and fear.

  “Are you okay?” one of them asked, a girl of indefinable ethnic background. American by the accent, reasonably calm to judge by her voice. She added quite sensibly, “Because you look like crap.”

  Selena took a more careful assessment of her circumstances. She was with the others now, that much was obvious. But she was the only one cuffed, and she’d been placed closest to the guard who sat in the opening between this function room and the ballroom. One corner held neatly stacked litter from what scant food they’d been allowed; another still held their makeshift latrine, though they’d now thoughtfully been provided with a mop bucket. Even though they’d also been taken to the bathroom occasionally, the faint underlying odor of urine made it clear the bucket was in use. The air held the definite chill of an ancient and faltering heating system left to its own devices; the students all wore what coats they’d come with, and some of the girls huddled together for warmth. Many of the boys had stepped up to fill the role of comforter.

  Selena knew from experience that it was a great way to avoid feeling one’s own fear.

  That she was here, with the others…she didn’t take it as a good sign. Ashurbeyli had been truly offended by her attempt to contact Cole, and if it resulted in more limited access to the Kemenis, it meant she had less chance to find out what was going on. But at least the guard was letting them talk. And a glance at her low waistband showed no sign of blood, no telltales from the metal strip—nor any sign that it had been taken from her. As blurry as those last moments in the bathroom had been, it didn’t seem as though she’d missed anything important. The last thing she remembered, Ashurbeyli had hung up on Cole.

  Cole. She tried to imagine what he’d heard from his end of the phone. The initial interruption, Ashurbeyli’s baiting words, Selena’s own perfectly timed cry of pain before Ashurbeyli cut the connect.

  Big mistake. She should have left it alone. Even thinking about being on the other end of that phone—about how she’d feel if it was him in the hands of terrorists…

  You might have run from him, girl, but not nearly as far as you thought.

  Even though in the end it might be too far. Too many miles, too much danger between them.

  Selena reoriented her thoughts with much determination. She shook her hair back and looked at the young woman who’d spoken and who’d probably given up on an answer. “I’m as okay as the rest of you. Is everyone all right?”

  Allori drew her attention to Razidae, a man who defined the very meaning of the word grim. “He does not feel his government will negotiate in any manner.”

  “I’ve already told Ashurbeyli they won’t. I’m not expecting any grand gestures from the States, either—Berzhaan is likely to tie their hands.”

  Allori shook his head. “I just can’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish. They’ve always been smarter than this.”

  “I think they are smarter than this.” Selena held his gaze long enough to give her words extra meaning…things she didn’t want to say out loud if Ashurbeyli listened in. Allori’s eyes widened slightly. He might not have even her vaguely guessed details, but he realized there were indeed layers to this operation.

  “What about that man?” the same girl asked. The others had moved a little closer, just as interested in the answers but letting her ask the questions. “The cook.”

  Surely they realized he was dead. Surely they’d heard the gunshot. A glance at Allori confirmed it, but on that group of young faces she saw nothing but naive hope. Selena sighed and tipped her head back against the wall against which she’d been sloppily positioned. “His name was Atif,” she said. “He was helping me. He’s dead now.”

  “Helping you?” The young man who’d stared in the lobby snorted, loudly enough to draw a quelling look from the guard. He immediately subsided. “They said he betrayed you.”

  She nodded. “That’s true. He did both. People aren’t always simple.”

  Keep that in mind.

  He met her words with a scowl, opened his mouth—and then glanced at the guard and shut it again.

  “My name is Selena,” she told them. “Tell me yours—all of you. Tell me where you’re from.”

  Still the scowl. “And how is that going to help?”

  “Get us out of here? It won’t. But it’s a way to pass the time.” And to get their minds off their possible—no, probable—fate. Unless Selena could do something to change it. Unless she could figure out exactly what the Kemenis had planned—and then stop them.

  The girl with the questions took up the introductions, pointing to them all. Selena, well versed in putting names to faces and remembering them, paid only partial attention, nodding in the right spots. The girl’s name was Rosa, said the Spanish way with a soft s. And the staring boy was Craig, and his gir
lfriend Marianne, and then there was Toby and Guy—very French, Gee—and Celina and Pam and Agatha….

  And others, which she’d remember when she needed them. She made small talk with them, asked how they’d come to be visiting here, and all the while kept catching Allori’s eye. She wanted his assessment of the situation.

  “Did you really call outside?” Rosa asked, quite suddenly. Everyone else stopped their quiet chatter, eager to hear that she had, that help was on the way.

  Selena shifted, trying to straighten out the cramp in her lower back. Maybe she really was getting her period. Just what she needed.

  Except its arrival would mean she could quit worrying about risking more than just her own life. Its arrival would take her off the hook with Cole, leaving things between them less complicated. Leaving her the space to stay with him for the sake of that relationship, and not to blur the decision with what might be best for a child.

  Then why did she feel that sudden flutter of disappointment? Absurd disappointment, under the circumstances. Crazy.

  Then crazy she was.

  She took a deep breath, glanced at the guard—did he even understand English?—and said, “I called someone who can help.”

  As one, they held their breath; hope leaped to every face. She shook her head. “He can’t overcome the mandates of the Berzhaani government. He’s not Superman. But he can make sure that those who are addressing this situation keep us in mind.” She looked at the guard again, and this time spoke right to him—just in case he knew a smattering of English after all. “Frankly, I’m surprised the Kemenis found it so upsetting. You’d think they’d want both governments in a frazzle about our welfare. Then the Kemenis will get what they want.”

  Ashurbeyli’s voice from the ballroom startled the students, but not Selena; she’d half expected it. “He doesn’t speak your language,” Ashurbeyli said, sounding bored. “But noise irritates him, so you might well want to keep it down. As time goes by—as we see no signs of concern or cooperation from Berzhaan—it will become harder to keep my men from taking their pleasures and frustrations out on you all. After all, if it does not matter to your people, why should it matter to mine?”