He was nonplussed when his hand encountered nothing—no wall, no door, nothing but open air . . . and the hint of a breeze.
A shaft for the satphone’s cable? Or an escape tunnel?
He didn’t think it through—there was no time for that. He stepped behind the curtain and stilled its movement behind him.
Idiot! It’s too dark in here to see anything.
He felt for a wall, found one, and followed it. About two feet along, it curved left. Almost immediately he encountered a dead end, and his hands brushed up against a cable. He followed the cable up until it disappeared into a shaft only inches in diameter.
As I thought, this cable leads up to the surface, to an antenna. No exit here.
He continued to “walk” one hand along the wall, thinking to make a complete circumference of the alcove and return to the curtain—until his hand fell through an opening in the wall and he nearly fell in after it.
An opening in the wall, three feet off the rock floor.
Cossack felt around the opening’s edge then spanned the opening with his arm, estimating the tunnel a little more than two feet across. A tight squeeze, except . . . He reached his arm inside and felt for the “roof.” He stretched himself, following the roof and then encountered a vertical shaft. It, too, was roughly the same distance across. Cossack laid on his back, scooted into the tunnel opening until he reached the shaft. He raised his arm and encountered a metal handhold or step pounded into the shaft’s rock wall. He also found the source of the slight breeze.
This is Sayed’s exit. It goes up to the surface. I can leave right now.
He began climbing, the handholds and footholds alternating right and left. It was utterly dark in the shaft, and he wondered how far he had to climb. When he tired, he leaned back into the opposite wall to rest. It was during his first rest that he began to reconsider.
If I leave now, how long will it be before my beacon results in a rescue? Will my rescuers know to bring troops? Doubtful. Will they walk into an ambush? Possibly. And will Sayed have killed her before I return?
I might never have the opportunity . . .
He was already climbing down.
He reached the bottom of the shaft and slid out into the alcove. He listened at the curtain and heard the murmurs of Sayed’s guests, a sizable number still lingering over the food and drink. He slipped out from behind the tapestry and walked directly to a table without looking around. After helping himself from the platters of fruit, he turned, scanning as he did.
Sayed was still engaged with his departing guests.
Timed that just under the wire, Cossack realized.
He was already making plans to find her, break her out, and flee Sayed’s stronghold via the escape shaft. All three objectives would prove difficult, perhaps impossible. Getting caught would confirm Sayed’s suspicions about him. Would certainly get him killed.
He no longer cared.
Chapter 30
THAT NIGHT IN HIS SLEEPING niche, Cossack put out his light and pretended to go to sleep. He prepared to wait for the night guard Usama had posted outside his sleeping niche to go relieve himself. Instead, he discovered something useful—the guard had become lax since Cossack’s arrival. Once the guard felt assured that Cossack had retired for the night and was asleep, he left Cossack’s doorway.
As the guard’s steps shuffled away, Cossack drew back the curtain. Several moments later, he heard the soft greetings of two other guards far down the tunnel, toward the exit to the mining cars. Cossack slipped from his niche and turned in the opposite direction. He thought he knew, generally, where the kafir women were kept. To get there, he’d have to pass through the intersection of tunnels at the cavern without encountering anyone.
The farther from his niche Cossack got, the more authoritatively he carried himself. If someone challenged him at this point, he would need to bluff his way through.
He crossed the intersection, passed the cavern, and kept walking straight ahead. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed that the tunnel had narrowed and the lighting had dimmed. Then he hit the first branch off the tunnel, a left. He turned into the branch and stopped to listen.
He heard no sounds.
When he had waited five minutes and nothing had caught his attention, Cossack advanced slowly, taking his time. He was surprised when the tunnel abruptly widened and ended. The lighting increased some here, enough to make out a barred grate across the tunnel and, behind the grate, what looked like a natural cave, stretching away into darkness.
Checking carefully to ensure he hadn’t overlooked a guard curled up and sleeping in a corner, he went up to the grate. Far back within the cave, he spotted the banked embers of a campfire. Farther to the right, he saw the coals of a second fire.
If anyone behind the grate had noticed him, they remained quiet.
This has to be the place, but they are all sleeping. I need . . . I need to be careful.
He rolled a few ideas around and chose one.
He called out softly, “Magda.”
No answer. No reaction or response.
He called out again. “Magda. Magda!”
LAYNIE STIRRED. HER face hurt so abominably! And her arm ached where Sayed had burned her days before. She found it impossible to lay in any position long before the blood pooling around her injuries pounded her to wakefulness, forcing her to turn over. After she shifted position she snatched bits of sleep, but her unconscious mind troubled her with fretful dreams and kept her from the healing sleep she needed.
Far away, she thought she heard a voice calling to her.
No . . . not me. That’s not my name . . . not anymore.
Ksenia jiggled her. “Mader, a man is standing at the bars. I do not know what he says. The same thing, over and over.”
Laynie groaned as she sat up. She reached for her jug of water, took a sip, and swished it through her sore, raw mouth.
“Magda. Do you hear me?”
The voice spoke English.
Laynie shot from her mattress, disturbing the slumbering girls clustered around her. She struggled to catch her bearings in the dark and stumbled on unbelieving feet to the bars.
The man, a Chechen like the other soldiers, saw her. Stopped calling and waited for her.
She drew near him and took in what she could see in the low light—black, untrimmed beard and hair shot with gray, a face weathered by a life spent outdoors, one cheek horribly scarred, and glowing amber eyes that peered out from under hooded eyelids.
“Magda.”
At first Laynie couldn’t “see” him. She stared and stared—until he reached his hand through the bars to touch hers.
She knew then.
“Black?”
“Yes, Mags.”
“The scars on your cheek?”
“The result of being too close to an exploding Russian mortar.”
She watched as the man considered her, too. She was calm as he inventoried her bruised, beaten features, the scabs on her bald scalp, her thin, shivering body, the absence of any clothing except for her shift and a pair of socks. The severe lines around her eyes and mouth scored by pain.
She watched him struggle with fury.
“Sayed, that sadist pig! How long has he had you?”
Laynie tried to remember. “Maybe . . . three weeks? I was kept somewhere else for at least a week before being brought here.”
“What is that on your arm?” The days-old declaration burned into Laynie’s arm was an angry red, the swollen letters running together.
She met his outraged eyes. “You could say I’ve had a change of heart about many things. Mainly about God. It says, ‘I am not ashamed.’”
He looked away, trying to get a grip on his emotions.
“All right. We can talk about that later. First, we need to get out of this place, and I’ve found a way. Do you know where they keep the key to this cell?”
“It’s hanging on the nail over there. Wait—” she said as he turned to fetch it
. “We’re in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Winter. Snow on the ground. I don’t have boots . . . or clothes.”
“My cell phone has a personal locator beacon. As soon as we reach open air, I’ll activate it. Within an hour, my handler will receive my exact location. We’ll grab a few things on our way out to keep you warm until they arrive.”
“The way out. Can we take the other women, too?”
Cossack swore under his breath. “I didn’t come here to get them out. I came to get you, Mags.”
She pulled back from the grate. “I see. Perhaps, then, we should reconsider. You go and activate the beacon. When you’re picked up, contact Director Jack Wolfe. He’ll send an assault team for me and blow this evil place to kingdom come.”
Cossack drew back, startled. “You work directly for Wolfe?”
She nodded once. “And I’m guessing he’s your handler, too, right, Cossack? I’m not surprised. Wolfe holds his secrets closer than a poker pro holds his cards. Never mind. Can you tell me how you plan to get out?”
“Sayed has a personal escape route in his salon. It starts behind a tapestry hanging on the wall next to his bookshelves. The problem is getting into his salon. One or two soldiers guard the doorway around the clock.”
Laynie shuddered. “Not particularly looking forward to another visit to Sayed’s suite.”
“And I can’t guarantee that the escape route will be viable a second time if I were to use it.”
“Right. I . . . um, the thing is? I can’t leave without at least three of the girls coming with us.”
“You’ve formed attachments, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t sound like the professional I knew.”
“Like I said. I’ve . . . changed.”
Silence stretched between them for several long minutes until Black broke it. “I cannot tell you how much regret I have lived with over the years. I have always wondered—what if we had left Marstead back then? What if we’d run together? Gotten away to live a normal life?”
Laynie reached her fingers through the bars and stroked his scarred cheek. “I would never have recognized you, but your voice—I will remember it forever.”
Slowly she pulled her fingers back and answered him. “But you left without giving me that option, without letting me choose to run away with you. You turned yourself in to save my good standing with Marstead.”
“I suppose you’re right. I chose for you. After they had interrogated me for two weeks, I had them convinced that you’d broken off our relationship months before, but that I still loved you. That I had been, for lack of a better word, stalking you. When they finally believed I’d jeopardized my cover, your cover, and Marstead itself over ‘a petty love affair,’ they offered me an opportunity to redeem myself. It was a long-term, backwater assignment far from you. Somewhere my Russian proficiency would be useful.
“They sent me into Ukraine to integrate myself into the dissident tribal people, to become one of them and worm my way into the anti-Russian factions. To play the dissidents against Russia—except when helping Russia was more in Marstead’s interests.”
A phrase he’d used had shaken Laynie. Was it only a petty love affair, Black? It wasn’t to me.
He had to have heard her thoughts, and his voice roughened with emotion. “I told them what they needed to hear, but it was never a petty affair, Maggie. You were the love of my life.”
She sniffed and looked down. “I made myself forget you. I killed my love for you.”
“You had to. I understand. It’s in the past for both of us.”
She again nodded.
He asked, tentatively, “Do you . . . have anyone? Someone who loves you?”
“Yes. Quincy Tobin.”
Laynie closed her eyes. Oh, Quincy! I want to come back to you, I do!
He was quiet before murmuring, “Then I’m glad for you, Mags. You deserve to be happy.”
He didn’t speak again for another moment. When he did, his words were undergirded with steel. “We’ve got Sayed’s escape route. Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
Laynie sucked up her turbulent emotions. Let her game face slip into place. “Listen. The key to this cell is hanging on the wall just over there, but I want you to do something for me.” She gave him directions to her old cell. “There’s another key hanging on the wall outside that cell. From what I’ve glimpsed of the keys, they aren’t sophisticated. I think the same key may work in all the locks. If that cell is still unoccupied—”
“I will get the key from the unoccupied cell but leave the key to this cell where it is. They expect to see it hanging where it belongs. It’s presence will delay the guards finding out you’re gone.”
“Yes.” They still had that instant understanding between them, and she smiled.
“Right, then. I’ll return shortly.”
She stepped back from the grate until she was hidden in the shadows—in case Black was caught and the guards came to check on the women.
He returned safely after a few minutes.
“Take it, but we have to delay our plans. I need to go—right now. They’re looking for me. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
He shoved the key through the bars into her fingers.
“Black? I’ll be praying for you.”
Surprise, consternation, confusion flickered over his face. “Thank you—I guess.”
Then he was gone. Laynie slid her hand through the bars in the gate and angled the key into the lock. It turned easily. She relocked the gate and withdrew the key. Took it back to her mattress.
She forgot the pain of her injuries and began to hope.
Part 4:
Lazarus, Come Forth
Chapter 31
“LISTEN UP, PEOPLE.” Jaz had given them enough time to grab their coffee before she called them to order. “Listen up. We eked out a win two nights ago. Yes, we lost a terrible number of people, but not nearly as many as we could have.”
“That was you, Jaz,” Rusty pointed out.
“Yes, it was,” Vincent agreed. “Take a bow, Jaz. You got the warning out when the feds didn’t take us seriously.”
Amid the subdued cheers and whistles, she bowed. Then she reminded them, “Gestalt, remember? A win by one of us is a win for the team. And that wasn’t the extent of our win. Because we had warned the FBI prior to the attacks that AGFA was trying to drive a wedge between America and Russia, AGFA couldn’t pawn off their failure as an act of Russian aggression.
“New Year’s Eve was supposed to be big, remember? So big that it should have pushed US and Russian relations to a dangerous place. Well, they fumbled their strategic objective. As Rusty put it, AGFA laid a great big goose egg. That, me hearties, is the real win.”
A few half-hearted cheers and high fives.
Jaz laughed with them—but only for a moment. “Settle down, you scurvy crew. We still have AGFA’s third plan to scuttle.”
“Arrr, Captain,” Brian growled. “The Secret Treasure of the Carfentanil Ghost Ship be our mission.”
Soraya folded her arms. “Really? Are we really stuck with pirate talk all day? We’re talking serious stuff here.”
“We could go back to clowns,” Jubaila laughed.
“Gah!”
“Soraya’s right. Carfentanil is nasty. From what Tobin’s friend told him, anywhere AGFA dumps or disperses the carfentanil, people will die—and if the amount of chemicals tells us anything, it’s that AGFA made a lot of carfentanil.”
Tobin cleared his throat, signaling he was joining the conversation. “One thing my DEA geek friend said really stuck with me. He said that carfentanil dissolves easily in water.”
The team went silent as they considered Tobin’s revelation.
“That’s super bad news,” Rusty said first, “worse than the HF scenarios we ran because so little carfentanil can kill you. I mean, the possibilities? They might bottle and distribute it. Put it in soft drinks, juices, just about anything.�
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“Or,” Tobin said softly, “Just dump a ton of it into a city’s water supply. Remember, it’s easily absorbed through the skin. Wash your hands, take a shower, swim a couple of laps in the local pool? Dead in under five minutes.
“What if they dropped it into DC’s water supply? Or Seattle’s? Or Denver’s? They have thousands of cities to choose from. We have millions of lives at stake.”
He let his eyes drift over to Jaz, then addressed the team. “Let’s take a vote. Who here, rather than guess how and where AGFA plans to use the carfentanil, would rather ID the shipment and stop it from ever reaching port?”
All hands shot into the air.
“How do we do that, Tobin?” Jaz asked.
He nodded, a smile growing on his face. “Well, who, besides AGFA, knows where the shipment will land?”
“The mob,” Vincent declared.
“Yup. I wonder if they know how complicit they’ll be in what could be the largest terror attack the world has ever seen. Personally? I think it’s time Wolfe drops the hammer on them.”
Jaz jumped up. “C’mon. Let’s make the call, Tobin. The rest of you? It’s time we get serious about finding Bella. Get to it.”
By consensus, the task force members refused to talk about the jihadist video, but they couldn’t get the images out of their minds—Bella’s beaten, bruised face. Her defiant proclamation of faith. The heavy ashtray slamming into her jaw. Her unconscious body toppling to the floor.
Jaz didn’t add what they were all thinking—Find Bella. Before it’s too late.
WHEN TOBIN AND JAZ left the gym, the air sort of left with them. The remainder of the team watched Vincent record the latest developments as bullet points on the board, then opened their computers. And exhaled on a collective sigh.
“Man, it’s like one giant haystack after another,” Brian sighed, “with another buried needle to locate. Find Bella, she says.”
“We can’t give up,” Gwyneth murmured, “but I’m with you. I don’t know where to go next.”
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