One of her guards stepped out and took a phone call, but the Montalban woman ignored him and continued to focus on me. “How much is a little bit of money?”
“Two million Euros sound good to you?”
Katarina sat back a little bit, looking perplexed. “Is that all?”
“Lady, I’m pushing my luck enough just coming here, and I’m under no illusions that this Cruella de Vil bit is just an act. You have a reputation. It’d be stupid to get greedy. I figure you’re a billionaire, so this won’t be a big deal for you. It’s plenty for me to go retire someplace. I can’t go back to the States. Your buddy Anders’ old crew is still looking for me.”
“You know I could just make you tell me.”
“I know. But torturing people takes time. We both know Lorenzo won’t stay in one place for long. You hand me the cash, I give you his location, and nobody has to get their hands dirty or waste any time.” Underhill, where the hell are you? “In any case, if I don’t walk out of this hotel, alive, and with all my bits and pieces right where they’re supposed to be, my friends will tip off Lorenzo and you’ll never catch him. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
That actually made her smile. On some level, I think my brashness impressed her. “You have placed me in such a predicament, Michael! Honestly, at first I was just going to kill you. I could not stand Rafael, as he was always daddy’s favorite, and standing in my way, but it would be awful for me to let such an insult to my family name pass unchallenged. But giving me Lorenzo inclines me to like you.”
“Thanks?”
“The money means nothing to me. That’s done. Now . . .” The security man who’d taken the phone call approached. He whispered something in her ear about a problem outside. Underhill’s forces must have arrived. “I see.” She looked back at me with a glare that could freeze boiling water.
“What’s going on?”
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
The Calm pushed that all to the background. I had to fake looking scared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the Majestic strike team that is currently surrounding this hotel.” She got off the bed, kicked off her heels, opened the closet door, and went inside. “Inform the Americans that I’m inside, and that if they do not want an incident, they should pull back. The council will not stand for overt action.”
“Ma’am,” the guard said as he went to the window and peeked through the blinds, “we should get you to the garage—”
“In a moment.” She came out of the closet holding a really big knife with a wickedly curved blade, and she looked really comfortable with it. “Now where were we, Michael? Oh yes, you were about to tell me where Lorenzo is, and I was deciding how painful your death is going to be.”
“I thought we had a deal.”
“That was before you brought Majestic to my doors.”
Underhill was here, and Katarina was done screwing around, but so was I. “I know about Blue. What do you think you’re going to accomplish?”
“World domination.” She answered without exaggeration. “But that answers my question. Painful then.”
“Ma’am,” the man with the phone said. “They say they only want Valentine.”
“Did they specify if he needs to be in one piece? Because that is looking exceedingly unlikely right now. You know what, never mind. The Americans can go to hell. They can have him when I’m done. Where is Lor—”
Before she could finish, a window shattered, and a metal can spewing smoke landed on the floor. My eyes immediately began burning. Tear gas. I had guessed right about the Bloodhound. He wasn’t big on diplomacy.
The Calm helped me focus through the water in my eyes and fire in my lungs. It was a frustrating state, where I could think and process everything so much faster than my body could react, but everyone else seemed so much slower. They were coughing and partially blinded. Kat was too far, so I lunged at the closest security man. He wasn’t ready for it. I was on top of him in a flash, and I was bigger than he was. We both went down, rolling across the floor. He had a death grip on his pistol. So I bit down hard on his hand. The hot, coppery taste of blood filled my mouth as he thrashed. He shouted a warning as I got control of his pistol, stuck it under his chin, and pulled the trigger.
BLAM!
Blood and brains stained the carpet. I rolled off the dead man, and stuck the gun—a Steyr M9—out in both hands and shot the nearest of Kat’s guards four times before he could get a shot off. The other two bodyguards were dragging Katarina Montalban from the room. I turned and opened fire just as they shoved her through the door. I cut one of them down and wounded the other, but Katarina was gone.
She won’t get far. Gunfire erupted from the lobby. The Montalban guards were in a firefight with Underhill’s men. It was only a matter of time before somebody won, and whoever won would kill me. I didn’t have a lot of time. I ran after Katarina.
The wounded bodyguard was waiting for me. I came out of the smoke shooting, and dropped him. But where had Kat—
She crashed into me, trying to stab me in the chest. Rather than fleeing, she had moved to the side to ambush me. I narrowly avoided the blade as I twisted my gun toward her body. Her blade struck the pistol and traveled toward my hand. I lost my weapon but managed to keep my fingers. Though partially blinded, Kat swung hard for my throat. I dodged it by an inch and she embedded the knife deep into the door frame.
I tripped over the dead man in the doorway and fell to the floor. She was on me in an instant, enraged, seemingly oblivious to the gun battle going on downstairs and the room full of tear gas. She kicked me on the side of the head. The impact of her bare heel almost made me black out. She went to kick me again, but I grabbed her ankle. She fell on top of me, fighting like a wild animal. Her nails tore down my cheeks, then she jammed her thumbs into my throat, trying to crush my windpipe.
“You can’t stop me! It’s mine! It’s all supposed to be mine!”
Katarina was vicious, but I was a whole lot bigger than she was. She was losing her mind with rage, and I was Calm. She was frothing, snot leaking from her nose, spittle shooting from between clenched teeth as she tried to choke the life out of me. I slugged her.
She let go, dazed. I hurled her off me so hard she bounced off the wall. I didn’t give her any time to recover. This time, my hands clamped around her pretty throat, and I squeezed. She thrashed, and kicked, and tried to scratch my eyes out, but I squeezed and squeezed. She turned red. Her eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head. Everything started to go dark around me as I focused on choking the life out of this horrible woman. I saw Dr. Silvers’ face for a moment, but this time I didn’t let up. I shook off the image and squeezed. Katarina Montalban was going to die.
Then someone kicked me off of her, pulled a bag over my head, and dragged me away.
When they pulled the bag off of my head, I wondered if it was because my captors wanted to gloat, but Underhill didn’t even look smug. This was just another day at work for him. We sat facing each other in the back of a big panel van, speeding along, just the two of us. His face was unreadable. He was an unassuming man in his sixties. His hair had thinned out, and his face had the hard lines of someone who drank too much. He had a thick neck and muscular features, staying in shape despite his age. His wide chin and cold eyes made him look like a TV show’s idea of a mafia hit man, except he was dressed in a blue windbreaker and slacks. He could have been somebody’s grandpa.
There were empty bench seats along each side of the back. I was handcuffed, my wrists were chained to my ankles, and my ankles were chained to the floor. I certainly wasn’t going anywhere.
“Took you long enough.”
Underhill was silent.
I was undeterred. “Did you kill Katarina Montalban?”
He just stared at me.
“Damn it.” My plan had failed. I was a fool. “I was hoping you’d kill her. Either that or that she’d kill
you. If you’d have waited one more goddamn minute, I’d have choked the life out of that psychotic bitch and saved us all a lot of trouble.”
He finally spoke, in that same rough voice I remembered from our phone conversations. “I couldn’t let you do that once I was involved. It’s against the rules.”
The Calm was gone, and my temper flared. “Man, fuck your rules! Do you know what that woman is going to do? She’s going to use a nuclear weapon! She’s the one who is going to execute Project Blue, the thing you assholes have been so worried about for the past two years, and you let her get away! Do you have any idea how royally, how totally, you screwed this up? Jesus Christ, Anders is working for her! I know damned well you’re looking for him, too!”
Underhill raised an eyebrow at the mention of Anders’ name. “I’ll be sure to pass that on. The rest of it is not my problem. My orders are to bring you in, not start a war. The rhyme and reason aren’t for me to decide.”
“You stupid asshole! Project Blue is the reason! It’s the reason you people tortured me for months! It’s the reason you’re looking for me!”
“Not the only reason. You made some bad choices. Now you got to answer for them.”
“Will you spare me your folksy homespun wisdom bullshit? I know who you are, and I know what you do. You shot an unarmed man down in cold blood.”
“Your pal, Hawk. Sure, I did. I’d do it again, if I had to. You’d have done the same thing in my place. You have. I read your file. You’re a killer, just like me. If you hadn’t been stupid, you’d be me in thirty years. None of us are clean, kid. It’s just a matter of who we work for.”
I jerked at the chains binding my wrists to my ankles. “Yeah, well, we all have to answer for our choices, don’t we? And believe me, you’re going to answer for yours, too.”
“No shit.” He shook his head slightly. “You think you got it all figured out, don’t you? Boy, you don’t know a goddamn thing about me. Your old friend Hunter? I was fighting communists with him before you were born, you jumped-up little shit. We protected our country so regular folks could live their pointless, mundane lives without worrying when the Soviet missiles were coming. The enemy changed, but we stuck around. We did the dirty work that kept most of the world clean.”
I stared back at him as the van rolled through the streets of Paris. “I’m sure that’s what they told you, old timer. You ever think that maybe they were lying to you? All they do is lie. They’ll tell you whatever they want you to hear to get you to do what they want. You were protecting America from Communists; well, guess what? The Berlin Wall came down and you assholes had nothing to do with it. The only thing you fought for was to keep your bosses in power.”
To my shock, Underhill actually laughed. A brief, sardonic chuckle, but before that I didn’t think the man could smile lest he crack his face. “Everything you know about the fall of Communism is the story we wanted you all to hear. People would accept that rah-rah-America bullshit, that optimism or patriotism, or economics, or whatever brought the Soviets down. You know what really brought them down? Us. Guys like me and Hunter. Years, decades of planning, of covert action, of infiltration, assassination, and sabotage. You know how many men we lost over the years? How many people we killed?”
“You’re taking credit for the CIA’s work now?”
“The CIA is a joke.” Underhill scowled. “After the sixties they lost their nerve, so we stopped working with them. Our leadership had no balls, but some of us kept on doing what we needed to do. Not every politician is a pussy. Those backed us in secret. We put together our own outfit behind the scenes, black budgets, all the best intel, no babysitters, and it grew from there. Since you didn’t grow up speaking Russian you should thank God every day we did what we had to do. Presidents come and go, administrations change, people are stupid, and voters are fickle, but we’re there behind the scenes no matter what, making sure the shit that needs to get done, gets done.”
“Thanks for the Majestic history lesson.”
“Majestic?” He snorted. “Whatever you want to call us, the world is fucked up, but we’re there to keep it on track. When we do our job right, nobody even knows we exist, and people go on living.”
Underhill sounded just like Romefeller. They were opposite sides of the same megalomaniacal coin. “Funny, I heard damn near the same exact thing from the guys Blue was designed to destroy. What’s your point?”
“The point is, kid, that nuclear war that all the expert analysts, all the supercomputers, all the data said was almost inevitable? Never happened. Red China, rising to be the next superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union? Never happened. Communism is dead. It’s preached in college campuses, but only four countries in the entire world claim to be communist. You think you know about us, about how we do business, about what we fight for? You don’t know a goddamn thing. You had your chance to be on this team and you threw it away. Now you’re going in a hole so deep you’ll never see the sun again.”
I laughed at him. “You tried that already.”
He shrugged, then leaned back in his seat. “Silvers was sloppy. Nobody’s going to make you a science project this time. Nobody will know what happened to you. Your survival now depends entirely on your cooperation.”
My chains jerked taut as anger pulsed through my body. “Cooperation? Motherfucker, I handed you the woman executing Project Blue, with the help of Anders, and you let her go! What the fuck else do you want from me?”
“Not for me to decide. Your statements regarding Project Blue, the Montalban woman, Anders, all of it, will be vetted and if they’re determined to be genuine, followed up on. You might be lying, or you might just be wrong. Ever consider that, that maybe you don’t have it all figured out, smart guy? Of course you didn’t. You’re a damned fool.”
“When a nuke goes off in some city somewhere, it’ll be on you. Your bosses will be looking for a scapegoat to hang, so I expect I’ll see you in the cell next door in whatever hole you’re sending me to.”
Underhill shrugged again. “We’ll see.”
I was at a loss for words. I slumped back in my seat, jingling my chains. “I have to piss.”
“Go ahead. I’m not the one who has to clean this thing.”
The driver of the van looked at me in the rearview mirror, but didn’t say anything. He turned his attention back to the road. I glared at Underhill, trying to read his face, but he was unflappable. He stared at me blankly. I hated him for killing Hawk. I wanted to wrap my chains around his neck and throttle him until his eyes popped out, but I could tell it really hadn’t been anything personal. It was like being mad at an attack dog for biting when commanded. He was a professional, and he was just doing what he was trained to do. He clearly felt no remorse, but I doubt he took any pleasure in it either. To a man like him, killing was just work to be done.
To men like us.
Was I really so different? Did I really have the right to hate someone for taking a life, at this point, or was I just a self-righteous hypocrite?
CRASH!
There was a spine-jarring impact. Metal crumpled and glass shattered. Underhill wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He seemed to float in space for a moment, looking slightly surprised, but that was it, and then the van was rolling over. We landed on our side, grinding to a halt.
I must have gone out for a moment. When I opened my eyes, the van was still and filled with dust. Hanging there from my chains, I was listening to the sound of metal twisting and squealing in protest. The back doors were being pried open.
Underhill was lying there, blinking, just out of my reach. He grimaced in pain as he sat up, and drew a government model .45 from under his windbreaker. He aimed it at my head and waited. Daylight flooded the sideways interior of the van as they broke the doors open. Men in tactical gear and masks stormed in, hunched over, weapons ready. Three laser dots appeared on Underhill’s chest, but he stayed where he was, his face as unreadable as before.
One of the masked men spo
ke. It was Tailor. “By order of the Council of the Thirteen Families, Michael Valentine is under our protection. He’s coming with us. Any interference on your part will be considered a hostile act and a violation of our organizations’ agreement.”
“You’re not taking him,” Underhill said calmly.
“Tailor, shoot him!” I screamed, still dangling, chained to the bench seat, Underhill’s .45 pointed at my face. “Shoot this asshole! He killed Hawk! Shoot him!”
“Shut up, Val,” Tailor said angrily. “Let me handle this.”
“This man is my prisoner,” Underhill stated plainly. “You can’t take him.”
“You’re in our territory now, buddy. You being here at all is a violation of the rules and you damned well know it. Now pack up your shit and get the hell out of Europe. You have no business here.”
Underhill’s finger was on the trigger and I was staring down the barrel of a .45. “Valentine is my business, and you Illuminati fucks aren’t taking him. Shoot me and there will be hell to pay.”
“Tailor, just fucking shoot him!” I screamed again.
“Val, shut your damned mouth!” he snapped back. Sirens wailed in the background. “Time’s running out, Underhill. My team? We’ve got proper Interpol Special Enforcement Operations IDs and the best lawyers in the country. My boss says one word and the French government says thank you very much. You guys are a bunch of trigger-happy Americans on temporary visas, with CIA creds, who just shot up a hotel in the capital of France. You wanna try me? Walk away right now, or rot in a French prison for the next thirty years. I guarantee your superiors will just disavow your ass, and have you shivved if you cut a deal. You know how they work better than I do.”
Underhill mulled that over for a moment. He was stuck. It was surrender or shoot me. Underhill wasn’t suicidal. He was a professional. The old killer took a deep breath, safetied his pistol, and put it down. “Fine. We’ll do it your way for now.” One of the Frenchmen grabbed Underhill by the sleeve and dragged him out. He gave me that same blank stare as he went past. It told me that he wasn’t done with me.
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 25