“No,” Rafiq said finally. Viktor’s heart thudded against his sternum when he saw Rafiq rack the slide of his gun, aiming it at Maia’s head. “The codes, Mr. Baran, or I make sure Ms. Pierce will not have a miraculous second chance. A head shot is ninety-nine percent fatal.”
“Don’t give in, Viktor!” Maia yelled. “You swore to protect all Guar…”
One of Rafiq’s men backhanded Maia.
Fury clawed up his throat even as he grew aware of the scuffle in his peripheral vision. Keep their heads straight, yeah right. Nathan had joined Derek in keeping Jack from interfering.
“Damn you, Rafiq,” Viktor rasped. “I can’t give them to you.”
His eyes met Maia’s on the screen. “I’m sorry, Maia.” She nodded and smiled sadly. He wasn’t going to survive the consequences of this decision. He just knew it.
The image of a 12-year-old Katerina Luski flashed before him. A frightened red-haired girl emerging from under the table, trustingly wrapping her arms around Viktor’s neck as he ferried her away from the carnage of her home. Viktor’s right hand gripped the dashboard as he tried to keep his face resolute, but he was beset with the bitter irony that he had saved Maia that day only to sign her death warrant nineteen years later.
“Perhaps you don’t think I’m serious,” Rafiq said.
Viktor held his breath, not letting go of Maia’s gaze. He would face this with her and not turn away like a coward. He wouldn’t survive this, but he would own it.
Rafiq swung the gun away from Maia and shot Holly Nolan in the head.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Nooooo!” Jack’s anguished bellow reverberated through the alley. Viktor watched McCord sink to his knees, back hunched over, with his hands on the pavement. Thankfully, he had hit mute from their side.
“You’ve got half an hour to decide,” Rafiq said before ending the transmission.
Viktor slammed out of the car and stalked to the three men. He dragged Jack up to his feet.
“He didn’t shoot Maia,” he told Jack. Viktor didn’t feel any relief with his words. Someone was still dead from his decision. A young bright future snuffed out by the whims of a madman.
“Who—” Nathan started.
“Nolan.”
“Holly. Oh, God . . . no,” Nathan whispered.
“Jack, you know we can never give up the codes,” Viktor said, gripping the other man by the shoulders to stress his point. Jack’s tortured eyes stared back at him. “We do not negotiate with terrorists. Men and women will die if we do. People who have served the homeland and defended it with all they’ve got. ”
“I know,” Jack replied hoarsely. His eyes were glazed with unshed tears, face ravaged with agony. “Doesn’t make it cut and dry, Viktor. It would kill me if I lose her. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t have done differently if it were Marissa with a gun to her head?”
Now that was a fucked-up, but valid question.
“I don’t know,” Viktor said. “And I’m not about to sort my shit right now. We have thirty minutes.”
“Any plans?” Nathan asked.
Viktor turned around and made his way back to the AGS vehicle, grabbed the tablet and started fiddling around with the apps, bringing up the building layout.
His phone buzzed.
“I’m in position,” Marissa’s voice whispered. “The fucker killed Holly.”
“Saw that.”
“Are you okay, Viktor?” Her voice of concern was a soothing balm to the beast threatening to break free inside him.
Viktor closed his eyes for a moment to soak in the calm. “I am. Rafiq gave us thirty minutes before he shoots the next hostage. Can you take him out?”
“Yes. I’m within range. But his men will retaliate before I can take them all.”
“We have no choice. This ends now.”
“Viktor, she can’t do this alone,” Derek interjected.
“She won’t be alone,” Viktor said. “Is the Escalade bulletproof?”
Jack smiled grimly. “It is. What do you need?”
*****
Rafiq Shadid was furious. He walked the length of the datacenter, getting angrier by the minute as he surveyed the remaining hostages. Baran thought he was so tough. There was nothing Rafiq obsessed over more than making Viktor Baran feel what he had felt when the man killed his mother. The codes were secondary. He had nothing personal against Baran’s agents. They were just a means to an end, and that was to demolish the great Viktor Baran.
It was unfortunate to have killed the young analyst, but Tim Burns was more important to keep alive.
“Are you happy now?” Pierce taunted him. “Holly was just an intern. Do you think Viktor cares that you killed her?”
“Shut up!” Rafiq screamed at her. “You’re next. Say your prayers to whatever God you worship.”
One of his henchmen rushed into the datacenter. “Ali is dead. I found his body in the medical facility. He was shot.”
“No,” Rafiq said as he whirled around and stalked toward Burns, butting the muzzle of his gun to his head, he said, “You said they were civilians. How could they get the jump on my man?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Rafiq cocked his pistol. “Bring up the footage of the medical bay from the past half-hour.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Don’t lie to me!” Rafiq screamed. The analyst flinched.
“Do it, Tim,” Pierce ordered.
Rafiq watched in disbelief at the video of Ali’s demise. “Cole.” His breathing fractured, his rage threatening to spiral out of control, and then he recognized the man on the bed. “Matsuda. You have Matsuda.” The codes became inconsequential. His enemies continued to win. He needed Baran’s pain right now.
“Dead,” he whispered. “You’re all dead. Call Baran. He can forget his thirty minutes.” He turned his burning gaze on Maia Pierce. “He can watch me execute you.” He raised his gun.
There was shouting, followed by shaking above ground, and then a plink of metal, followed by the loss of his faculties. Pain bloomed behind his head, his legs gave out, and darkness was pushing in. Everyone was scrambling, there were grunts of pain, and the exchange of gunfire was deafening. Rafiq Shadid realized that the warm, sticky liquid flowing out from him was his life slipping away.
*****
“Rafiq is losing it,” Marissa whispered urgently through her phone. “Move in. Now!”
The men were going to ram their vehicles into the entrance of AGS. Though it was a bit too theatrical and something one would see in movies, given what had happened so far to the nation’s capital, it was up to par.
“Copy that. Floor it, Stark,” Viktor ordered.
Marissa took aim at Rafiq. She figured she could squeeze off two shots before she got blasted by bullets. As the sound of screeching tires grew louder and louder, she tightened her stomach muscles, took a deep breath, aimed, and took the shot. Everyone, except Maia, was stunned. The redhead sprang into action and kicked one of Rafiq’s men in the balls. Marissa noted that it was a fair retaliation because Maia’s hands were tied.
Marissa missed her second target, striking one of the henchmen in the shoulder, instead of the head. The last sight she had of the datacenter was the hostages fighting back and an assault rifle pointed straight at her. She immediately crawled on all fours as fast as she could to the exit panel before the bullets raked her former location. The spray of lead followed her like an avenging angel. She was so juiced up on adrenalin, she almost didn’t feel the burn on her butt cheek. Great. Did I just get hit in the ass? She fell out of the ventilation system by the wall opposite the datacenter.
Damn. That was a bad fall. Suck it up, Cole, she told herself and heaved herself up. A booted foot connected with her gut and knocked her on her back. Then she was yanked up by her hair and came face to face with one of Rafiq’s mercenaries. And just her luck, he was one big motherfucker.
“Give it up,” Marissa rasped. “Your boss is dead.”
Ah, hell, her ass was getting kicked. Viktor was going to get pissed if she got fucked up, and that would mean endless sparring sessions in the future. If she survived this.
Marissa didn’t straighten after she had hunched over, instead, she gathered all her might and rammed her shoulder into the man’s solar plexus. He grunted, but barely budged. He grasped the neck of her shirt, and she took the opportunity to unsheathe her trusty KA-BAR from her boot. On her way up, she stabbed her aggressor in his abdomen. He roared with rage as his hands wrapped around her neck, but before he could snap it, she twisted the knife, pulled it up, and gutted him.
The man released her neck, grabbing her shoulders, his eyes bore into hers with extreme enmity before taking her down with him, pinning Marissa under two-hundred-fifty pounds of muscle.
She didn’t know how long she’d lain there. The smell of blood and guts surrounded her while her mind tried to focus, the cool fluorescent lights above her appeared to dim and flicker. She was suffocating.
She heard her name through the roaring in her ears.
“Marissa!”
Viktor?
The sound of footfalls and then, “Jesus Christ! Iz!”
Viktor’s face, as she had never seen it before, appeared in her line of vision, broken and scared. “Let’s get him off her, Stark.”
The pressing weight of the dead mercenary lifted and her chest expanded as she welcomed a deep breath.
“Where are you hurt, kitten? Tell me, sweetheart.”
“It’s not my blood,” Marissa croaked. “Well, maybe some of it.”
“Anything broken?”
How would I know? Marissa wanted to scream. She felt six ways broken to Sunday.
“Damn it, Marissa, talk to me.”
“My butt.”
Viktor’s brows furrowed. “You broke your butt?”
“No, you ass. Someone shot me in the butt.”
Now that she could breathe better, Marissa felt more like herself. “Help me up.”
Viktor gave her a hand up, and when she had straightened fully, she caught the quirk of his mouth and scowled. “It’s not funny.”
“This is becoming a habit, Ms. Cole.”
“What? You picking me up from the floor?”
“And you getting blood all over my property.”
“Well, sue me,” Marissa retorted. “Did we lose anyone else?”
“No. Maia and the others are fine,” Viktor said softly. “You did well, Ms. Cole.”
“Team effort.” Her tone turned somber. “I’m sorry about Holly.”
The planes of his face hardened. “So am I.”
*****
Keeping things under the radar when two SUVs had plowed into a building was a tricky situation to handle. Especially with a body sandwiched between the wall and the bumper of an Escalade and another planted under the tire of the Explorer. However, the “cleaners” that AGS used were the same ones the CIA employed to tidy up some of their messier affairs.
A tarp was immediately erected to cover the missing walls and gates. These would be sealed off later by expandable metal barriers until repairs could be made.
Viktor tried to erase the image of finding Marissa pinned under a behemoth, not knowing whose blood and guts were spilling out between them. For a second, he couldn’t breathe, his ears roared with denial at the gruesome tableau before him. He thought for sure she was dead, eviscerated and crushed, and he’d been too late to save her.
But Marissa had proven once more that she had the ability to hack it as well as the best of them. The attacker was more than twice her weight. It certainly could have been luck that pulled her through, but he didn’t give a fuck. Luck only got you so far. Skills were what kept you alive again and again and again.
The coroners were busy processing the bodies. Yeager was holed up in one of the briefing rooms with agents from the FBI and DHS to discuss jurisdiction. The case spanned international and local boundaries and Viktor had a hunch that it would fall under the FBI with the CIA working the background as always.
Tim was tapped out. Viktor could see it in the way his analyst would stare blankly at his screen, suddenly snap out of it, and then zone out again. Tim wasn’t a warrior, and though he had watched several missions go down, he had never seen someone’s head shot in front of him. And the idea that a place as fortified as AGS was penetrable to their enemies took away any sense of security.
Derek had offered to help, having worked in the datacenter before, and was assisting Tim in offloading remaining information into a cloud-based database that was used for disaster recovery to continue providing seamless support for their field agents.
Viktor walked over to Tim and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t even ask if you’re fine. But if you need a break, let me know. I can take over.”
“Not going to let those terrorists win,” Tim whispered before choking with emotion. “I’m just…she was just a kid.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “I should be asking you if you’re all right, Viktor. The choices you make—” Tim broke off.
“Are choices someone needs to make,” a voice spoke behind them. Maia.
A bruise was forming on her cheek where Rafiq’s man had struck her.
“Katerina—” Viktor said softly.
“Can I talk to you?” Maia asked.
He nodded and they walked off to a quiet corner.
“We’ve talked about this scenario before.” Maia exhaled with a shudder. “But it actually happened today. It doesn’t matter if it was me or Holly that got shot, you still did the right thing. And if our situations were reversed, I would have done the same thing.”
“Thanks,” Viktor said wryly. “Jack brought up a good point earlier. If it was Jack’s life at stake, Maia, would you have made the decision I did?”
A chagrined expression came over Maia’s face. She looked down at her feet and shook her head. “Honestly? I don’t know. Doesn’t mean I love you less than Jack.”
“Bullshit.”
“That’s a damning question, Viktor. Why would you ask me that?”
“Because your husband asked me that if it were Marissa’s life on the line, if I would’ve withheld the codes.”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wait. Do you mean you love her more than me?” There was hurt in Maia’s voice. “You haven’t known her that long.”
Viktor blinked. “What?”
“Love.” Maia rolled her eyes. “You love her more than me.”
“I don’t love Marissa,” Viktor scoffed, then paused. Fuck. Did he love her? Was there any other explanation?
“Great. I’d be horrified if you did,” a voice said beside them.
Maia’s eyes widened like saucers, and Viktor cursed Marissa’s rotten timing. His eyes reluctantly met arctic green ones that could have frozen him in place.
“Yeager wants a word in the briefing room,” Marissa told him in a flat voice. Her features were composed, and, like Maia, a bruise was forming on one side of her face.
“Iz—”
“It’s Ms. Cole,” she corrected. “Let’s stay professional, shall we, Mr. Baran?”
“Damn it, listen to me—” Viktor grabbed her arm.
“If it has nothing to do with the crisis at hand, then no,” Marissa said with finality. “I’m not needed here any longer. I’ll be in touch when Matsuda wakes up.”
Viktor yanked her to him, but before he could say anything, she hissed, “Do not make a scene. I am done with you.”
She glared at him. He wanted to drag her off to a room and have it out with her, but he spied Yeager waiting impatiently near the hallway leading to the briefing room. He released her. “I’m not done
with you, sweetheart.” He stalked off to meet with the black ops director.
Maia ran after him. “That was a moronic thing to say.”
“Haven’t you said enough?” Viktor snapped.
“Well, just so you know, women like grovelling,” Maia semi-whispered in his ear before Jack fell into step with her and hugged her to him, which effectively stopped Maia from following Viktor.
He snuck a look at where he had left Marissa. She was gone.
Grovelling certainly looked to be in his future.
*****
His nephew had failed his mission and now he was dead. Strangely, Stuart Kwon didn’t feel any sadness when he received the news. He was disappointed. AGS not being out of commission presented a problem for his plans. But the distraction of the Al-Qaeda attacks and the AGS siege diverted all agencies toward the nation’s capital, leaving the port of Baltimore wide-open for his man, Owen Reed, to smuggle successfully in the components for the SK nerve gas.
But there was a pain in his chest that went deep. A betrayal that, although he had suspected, he had not wanted to believe. His long time major-domo was the leak in his organization. Ever since AGS found McCord, Kwon finally believed his security team that the traitor was someone close to him. So he allowed his major-domo’s belongings to be bugged and he was followed everywhere.
The traitor had been communicating with Jiro Matsuda—the man who gave up his father to the CIA.
Stuart lit up a cigar as he stared out the window. The man made one last plea for him to abandon his plans of unleashing the SK nerve gas on Washington DC.
“You are not your father,” the man who had raised him since he was ten, said. “There is good in you, Stuart. I have seen it.”
His major-domo was right. He was not his father. He had no desire to unite North and South Korea. He just used the NKUF as a facade, used their people to throw off the spooks. His dreams were not idealistic, they were realistic. Money was power.
And with emotion he had not felt since the death of his sister, he ordered the execution of the one man who wanted him to be good.
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