Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She rushed down the stairs and through the kitchen and out into the yard where it was—shit!—dark, of course. Curfew had just begun.

  She could see the sky glowing in the distance—something was on fire, and occasionally still exploding. Which direction was that? She was all turned around.

  Okay, Bailey, slow it down. Don’t panic.

  First things first. She had to go to that abandoned church, get the communications system up and working. Once she could use her phone, she could try to call Jimmy.

  Please, don’t let him be dead.

  “You aren’t intending to go out, are you?” The slightly accented, deep male voice came out of the darkness.

  Startled, Tess looked over at the gate. Who was out there? She dropped the bag with the sat-dish and tried to kick it behind the wheel of Khalid’s battered wagon before an enormous flashlight clicked on and was shone right in her face.

  She squinted at the shadowy shape of a man. Shapes. Was there an entire police patrol right there at the edge of Rivka’s yard?

  “No, sir,” she said. “Of course not. I . . . heard the noise and came out to see . . . Do you know what’s burning? I have friends who were working—relief work—down near the Grande Hotel. I’m worried about them.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. I suppose it could be the hotel. Do you mind if we come in?” Whoever he was, he’d already opened the gate.

  Tess backed up. “Forgive my lack of hospitality, sir, but my husband—he’s with People First. He didn’t make it back before curfew. I’m afraid it would be considered improper—”

  “Oh, but you’re American. Surely you don’t follow such quaint customs in your own home?”

  As he moved closer to the house, the light from the kitchen door and windows fell on him. He was a large man with a full beard, dressed in a uniform that wasn’t police. He held that flashlight in one hand, and a cane to support himself in the other.

  And it wasn’t a police patrol that he had with him, but rather a veritable army—submachine guns held at ready by men with harshly featured faces and stone cold eyes.

  “As I said, sir,” Tess told him, forcing a smile. “This isn’t my home.”

  “No, it’s not, is it?” The man with the cane looked past her, toward the kitchen door. “Good evening to you, sir.”

  She turned to see Rivka standing there, astonishment on his broad face. He fell to his knees and spoke in the K-stani dialect that Tess had made up her mind to try to learn. It was such a lilting, pretty language. But she recognized only a few of the words that Rivka spoke—the title “great sir,” which could be translated to “lord” or even “king”—and then a name: Bashir.

  Oh, shit.

  As Sophia watched, the armored trucks rolled away.

  Padsha Bashir was returning to his palace, taking Tess with him.

  “This is bad,” Dave admitted. “This is very bad. Nash is going to freak.”

  They hadn’t made it back to Rivka’s before curfew—thank goodness. If they had, Sophia would be on her way to the palace, too. The thought made her stomach hurt and her mouth dry.

  Because of the curfew, they’d had to move slowly.

  Or rather, Dave—beautiful, wonderful Dave—had made sure they took the absolute safest routes, moving from one secure hiding place to another, taking their time. He hadn’t pushed her to hurry; instead he’d waited, again and again, while she’d caught her breath.

  They’d been hiding here in an old storage shed just down the street from Rivka’s when the trucks had pulled up.

  There had been a terrible explosion. Even Dave, who knew everything, didn’t know what that was. Even Dave was afraid that the Grande Hotel had finally come down.

  With Decker and Nash inside.

  Sure, why not? Sophia had learned that God could, indeed, be that cruel.

  Shocked by that explosion, stunned by the sight of Padsha Bashir standing in Rivka’s yard, Sophia had watched in silence as the warlord went into the kitchen.

  She’d sat in that kitchen, just hours earlier.

  Dave put his arm around her—not for comfort, but because she was shaking so hard he was afraid the shed would start rattling.

  Bashir was in there for quite some time, and there was nothing they could do. He had an army of men with him, some of them standing lookout in the street, not far from their hiding place.

  “Don’t let them take me,” Sophia had whispered.

  “I won’t,” Dave had promised, but she could see from his eyes that he didn’t really understand what she meant. Don’t let them take me alive.

  Although she clutched her littlest gun, she knew she didn’t have the ability to turn it on herself. A few days ago, she would’ve, but now—even now, even after Decker had told her they couldn’t risk smuggling her out of K-stan, even after she’d heard that explosion that well may have taken the lives of both Decker and his friend, Nash . . . she couldn’t do it.

  Because she’d had a taste of goodness, a reminder that truth and light were out there, counterbalancing the world’s ugliness and evil.

  And it sparked something to life inside of her, something that had been waiting, lying silently dormant.

  But once awakened, it grew ferociously, filling her with . . .

  Hope.

  She didn’t just not want to die—she wanted to live.

  Sophia sat with Dave in that tumbledown shed, and watched as Bashir left with Tess. He’d left some of his troops behind. Hidden. In the house. In the barn.

  Waiting for the rest of them to come home.

  “First thing to do is to get you someplace where you’ll feel safe,” Dave said now.

  “No,” Sophia said. “The first thing is to make sure Decker doesn’t walk into an ambush.” Assuming, of course, that he was still able to walk.

  “Shh,” Dave said almost silently, his finger against her lips.

  Outside the shed, a shadow moved.

  A voice whispered, “Dave, sir? Is that you?”

  “Khalid?” Dave pushed open the door and hauled the boy inside. They had to squeeze tightly together to stay hidden, but Sophia didn’t mind. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was in the house, sir, but they didn’t see me when they came in. Did you know . . . ? That was Padsha Bashir!”

  “Shh,” Dave said. “We know.”

  “I went out the window, but I stayed close and listened. He asked Mrs. Nash about that man—her friend, Will. And he asked her all kinds of questions about a computer, and she said she didn’t know what they were talking about, but then Rivka told Bashir everything.”

  Dave swore, and Sophia realized that before this, she’d never heard him utter such words.

  “He told him Tess had a computer upstairs,” Khalid continued, “and that she and Mr. Nash and Mr. Decker and you, too, sir, didn’t seem to spend all that much time on the relief effort. He told him you had telephones that worked, and that Murphy had died, but no one was sad and still talked of him as if he were alive. He said he thought you were spies for the American government, always whispering together out in the barn.” The boy looked at Sophia. “Rivka told him about you, too, miss.”

  She couldn’t help it, she drew in a breath. Dave’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

  “He said he believed you were Mr. Decker’s girlfriend, even though he already had a wife. He said he was tired of that shameless behavior going on in his house and he was planning on telling you to leave—but I know he didn’t mean that because just earlier today he told me how sad he would be when you had to go back home.”

  “Did Bashir ask a lot of questions?” Dave asked. “Tell us everything—as much as you can remember.”

  “There were lots of questions,” Khalid told them. “What is this girlfriend’s name? Julie Something. Rivka said he didn’t know—didn’t care to know—her last name. Had he seen her passport? Yes, yes, of course . . .”

  Sophia looked at Dave. What? Rivka hadn’t seen her passport because
she had no passport.

  “What does she look like?” Khalid paused. “Begging your pardon, miss, but he said you were scrawny and plain. He said he’d walked in on you in the bathroom, while you were washing up and . . . he said . . .” He leaned close to Dave and whispered in his ear.

  Dave laughed softly. He looked at Sophia. “Rivka was protecting you. I think he probably knew he couldn’t lie about everything. If they searched the house—and they were going to search, that was a given—they’d find Tess’s computer setup. They’d see all our equipment and know we aren’t your average relief workers. But he did lie about you. He told Bashir that you were, uh, built like a boy. He used, um, slightly different language. He also said you had a pierced, uh, well, nipple. Which, in his opinion, was the equivalent of decorating a hovel with gold paint and lanterns in hopes that people would be blinded by the glitter and not notice the disrepair.” He laughed again. “I do love Rivka.”

  “After that,” Khalid said, “Bashir had no more questions about you.”

  Rivka had managed to protect Sophia.

  But not Tess. Heaven help her.

  “Okay,” Dave said. “Let’s assume Decker and Nash are out there, they’re alive, and that they’re heading back here. They’re not going to go into the house. They’re not going to get close. Tess, bless her heart, managed to put out a warning.”

  What?

  He pointed toward Rivka’s gate. “We have a warning system. A short piece of rope, both on the front gate as well as the kitchen door. We set up two, because the side door’s not so easy to see from the street. If either piece of rope is not where it’s supposed to be, that means trouble. Tess managed to grab the rope from the gate, drop it into the street, and kick it beneath the truck without anyone seeing. Deck and Nash will check for the rope, see that it’s gone, and check this shed, actually, for messages. What we’ve got to do is figure where we can go—someplace safe to regroup and plan our next move. Which, I assume, is going to be getting Tess away from Bashir.”

  “I know where to go,” Sophia said.

  Tess tried to pay attention as she was led through a labyrinth of palace hallways. She tried to orient herself. Part of the palace’s roof had fallen in during the quake and was in the process of being repaired.

  If she were going to attempt an escape, the construction zone would be the route to take. She focused on visualizing where she was in relation to that front lobby.

  She tried not to think about what Padsha Bashir had told her shortly after they’d arrived at the palace, after she’d been led through the ornate doors and past the sentry’s station into that busy lobby. Even at this time of night it was hopping, with guards and other people coming and going, phones ringing.

  It appeared to double as both prisoner- and equipment-holding area. It was there that Bashir’s men had unloaded everything they’d taken from Rikva’s house, all the bags and boxes and packs.

  Including the one Tess had tried to kick behind the wheel of Khalid’s wagon—the one that held that sat-dish and power pack. It sat off to the side, with stacks of crates and bundles—loot Bashir’s army had taken from other unfortunates.

  “We’ll set up a trade with your husband,” Bashir had said. “You for him—and the laptop.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tess had stuck to her story, the way Jimmy told her to. She was a relief worker, recently married to a man she didn’t know all that well. It felt like a betrayal, but it was the cover Jimmy had told her to use if something like this happened. He could, he’d reassured her, take care of himself.

  She hoped so.

  The captain of the guard stood courteously to the side as Bashir took a phone call, only speaking when the warlord turned to acknowledge him. The two men spoke softly, and Tess realized they didn’t know she couldn’t speak their language.

  There was a lot they didn’t know about her.

  Whatever that phone call had been about, it hadn’t made Bashir very happy. He turned to leave, but then he turned back to Tess. “The Grande Hotel has fallen,” he told her.

  Her heart stopped beating.

  The son of a bitch was lying.

  Please let him be lying.

  It was possible that he was lying, because after he’d spoken, he’d then watched her closely for her reaction.

  Tess had channeled Jimmy and managed—she hoped—to look only slightly disappointed. “I guess it’s a good thing that area’s been evacuated,” she’d said, her voice even. Unconcerned.

  He’d laughed, and she was led away.

  On the stairs going down, she passed Will Schroeder, in handcuffs, being led up.

  He’d been badly beaten, and he peered at her through swollen eyes. “Tess, I’m so sorry,” he said. “This is all my fault.” He was shoved hard, and he fell to his knees.

  The guards who were leading Tess pulled her down the stone stairs much too quickly, and she stumbled and slipped, falling and sliding down six or seven steps on her rear and scraping her elbow all over again.

  “Don’t hurt her,” she could hear Will shouting as they were dragged in two different directions. “Don’t you bastards hurt her!”

  Jimmy followed Decker past the posted signs announcing intent to demolish, through a basement door, and into the boarded up old Hotel Français.

  H.F. was all that the message said, the message that was stuck to the inside wall of the shed. H.F. scribbled on a scrap of paper had meant nothing to Jimmy. All he’d known for sure—to his growing despair—was that Tess hadn’t written it.

  “This doesn’t mean she’s not okay,” Decker had said to him.

  Deck knew his way around the decrepit hotel without turning on his penlight. Apparently this was where he and Sophia had come that night that he . . . hadn’t done her taxes.

  They went up a flight of stairs, and then up another, and . . .

  Tess wasn’t here. Jimmy knew she wasn’t here. And yet, when they went into a dusty old ballroom and Sophia appeared from the shadows with another slightly taller, slender figure beside her, his heart had leapt.

  But it was only Khalid.

  “Thank goodness,” Sophia said, hands clasped tightly in front of her. “We heard the explosion, thought the hotel might’ve—”

  “We didn’t hear anything inside the hotel,” Decker told her. “But after we were on the street, we saw the fire. Where’s Dave and—”

  “Fuck Dave. Where’s Tess?” Jimmy asked.

  “Dave went out to get something,” Sophia told Decker. “I don’t know what. And Tess . . .”

  She looked at Jimmy, and even though he couldn’t see her face clearly in the pale moonlight, he knew. Something bad had happened. He just never imagined exactly how bad until Sophia put it into words: “Padsha Bashir came out to Rivka’s house. Somehow he knew you were looking for Sayid’s laptop. He took Tess.”

  Padsha Bashir.

  Took.

  Jimmy didn’t realize he needed support until Decker had his arm around him, until Deck helped him to the floor and pushed his head between his legs.

  Jesus Christ, when had he turned into a freaking little fainting girl?

  But God, oh God, Bashir had Tess. . . .

  Dave chose that moment to return with a clatter. But he gave Jimmy little more than a curious look as he set a large canvas bag on the floor.

  “Weapons Are Us,” he announced. “Murph told me where he kept something called his Worst-Case Scenario Bag. Anyone need some C4 or a grenade launcher?”

  Jimmy reached for the bag, ready to cowboy up and, with a 9mm room broom in one hand, and yes, thanks, an AK-47 with attached grenade launcher in the other, kick down the door to Bashir’s palace, shouting Tess’s name, like a bad mix of Rambo and Rocky.

  Decker, always able to read his mind with great accuracy, pulled the bag out of Jimmy’s reach.

  “We’ve got the laptop,” he told Dave and Sophia. “But we’re going to need to revise my extraction plan.”


  The guards laughed as Tess cowered, crying, in the corner of the tiny cell.

  Play the part, play the part, play the part. Jimmy’s voice echoed in her head.

  There were five of them.

  One or maybe two, she could’ve taken. But not five.

  It wasn’t hard to call forth the emotion that brought tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The Grande Hotel has fallen.

  The door—modern, compared to this ancient cell—closed with a clang that Tess welcomed, because along with locking her in, it locked those five guards out.

  She crouched there, crying, as she took a silent inventory of her latest injuries. Elbow—burned. Tailbone—bruised. Ankle—slightly twisted, but the pain was nothing she wouldn’t be able to work through.

  But it made her think of Jimmy and his dings, and her sobbing sounded even more authentic.

  I’ll do whatever it takes to find you.

  She didn’t doubt that for one second. The only thing that would keep Jimmy Nash from kicking in the palace doors was death.

  If he was still alive, he was already on his way over here. Tess knew that for a fact. She had to plan for that, be ready for him.

  But how?

  Step one, get out of this cell.

  The last of the guards finally got bored with watching her and went back down the hall.

  Coming in, Tess had seen a small table and—good news—a single chair at the entrance to this long row of cells. A stack of books, some papers, the remains of an unpleasant-looking dinner on a tray. There was some kind of light switch on the wall, along with a telephone.

  A telephone? A telephone.

  Her own phone had been confiscated, which was moot because their communications system was completely down. The last undamaged sat-dish was in Decker’s backpack, sitting on the tile floor of this palace lobby, with the other equipment Bashir’s men had taken from Rivka’s house.

  And yet, upstairs, Bashir had spoken to someone on a telephone.

  Yes, it was possible that phone was little more than a palace intercom system, confined to this building. But maybe . . .