But when she didn’t speak either, Holly was left to wonder. Clarissa continued after a long pause.
“That was over twenty years ago. First time I’ve said that aloud—ever. Shit! Do me one goddamn favor in your lifetime, Harper, and don’t ask.”
“Okay.” Holly had never thought about why Clarissa Reese was always as mean as cat’s piss, but now maybe she didn’t need to.
“Thank you.” Another long pause.
Holly supposed it was her turn. “Mom’s been dead under a week. Drank herself to death. First time I’ve been home since I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen was when I bought my freedom.” When Clarissa had killed her father.
“Goodonya.” Her own father might as well have been dead after twenty years living with Mum. Holly supposed it was much the same for her. She’d killed her connection to her family. Once her brother was gone, there was no reason in the world not to.
“Thanks.” There was a tapping in the background, like Clarissa was fidgeting with a pen or something. Clarissa never showed her nerves.
“What’s going on?”
“You remember the guest you gave into my care?”
And in that instant, Holly knew.
It hadn’t been mere paranoia bothering her.
The destruction of the Airbus A330-900neo and the death of fifty-three people had been aimed at a single target.
Her.
The crash. The deaths. They were all her fault.
Russian Zaslon operative Elayne Kasprak had returned from the grave.
38
“Next person who makes a noise is going to die very painfully.”
Elayne stood over the three bodies of the Air Force roadblock.
Once out, it had only taken her minutes to figure out where in the world she’d been incarcerated. The bright moon had revealed the narrow strip of land and the extensive line of it around a great central lagoon. Bright lights on the far side of the lagoon revealed what must be a military base. She’d managed to confirm that only minutes later when a large four-engine propellor plane had departed. Definitely military in profile. A C-130 Hercules.
She was on the eastern arm of Diego Garcia base, halfway between Africa and India in the middle of the fucking ocean. There was no other base like it in the world.
The Brits and Yanks had purchased it outright—in a manner that both the International Court of Justice and the UN said was utter crap—and then kicked out all the natives in 1971. Dubbed the “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, fifty years of military operations had relied on the runway, submarine service docks, and a three-sixty-degree protected lagoon big enough to moor an entire carrier group of ships.
The atoll itself was a lumpy oval stretching eleven by twenty-one kilometers.
And she was on the wrong goddamn side.
It was all connected by a single dirt road that ran all sixty kilometers along the top of the narrow atoll.
So, of course, they were going to set up a roadblock.
A roadblock that had spanned one of the atoll’s narrowest locations—and been put on full alert by the curse of one of her four tagalongs.
She’d wanted a nice quiet takedown, no one the wiser.
Instead, it had become a goddamn firefight—a short one, because the Latino was almost as good a shooter as she was—but still.
In answer to her order for silence, she received nods and the flash of a smile, moonlit on the Latino’s face.
She’d never had a Latin lover. But after a year-long enforced dry spell, she’d want to take her time…and no witnesses.
For now?
The distant airbase remained quiet—no airborne helos rushing at them across the lagoon, no flash of headlights racing south along the atoll road.
At least they got a vehicle upgrade, from SUV to salt-eaten Humvee.
“Saddle up!” She’d watched far too many movies while locked up—all American, of course. Only John Wayne was worth watching.
They climbed aboard: the piece of Eurotrash who couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut—he’d be the first she’d throw in harm’s way—a slender Indian woman, and a husky Chinese woman who moved like a soldier. The Latino took the back center and stuck his head and shoulders up into the roof-top gun turret.
“No shooting unless the shit really hits the fan, comprendes?”
“Si, lovely señora,” he racked a round into the chamber, flicked off the safety, then offered her another of those smiles.
Definite possibilities.
39
“Did she get out?” Holly’s voice was dead cold. Completely unreadable. Whatever unexpected window they’d briefly ripped open into each other’s pasts had just slammed shut.
Clarissa paved over it quickly. “One hour ago. A pump failure caused the, ah, site where she was being held to flood. The automatic safety systems released her…and others. Maybe as many as seven. Information on the ground is still sketchy.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about them. Your site should have locked down hard and let it flood.”
“You think I don’t know that? I didn’t design the damn system!” Clarissa knew she was shouting at the wrong person. She tried a deep breath; it didn’t help.
Holly waited her out.
“I lost an entire team. And…” A message appeared on her screen. “Oh shit! Three minutes ago the Air Force discovered that one of their roadblocks had been terminated—with prejudice.”
“And?”
Clarissa sighed and forced herself to set down her fountain pen before she flipped it onto her skirt and stained everything blue.
“And?” Holly was no more patient than she herself would be. Clarissa hated having anything in common with Holly.
“We don’t know how she was getting messages out. But she must have been the source of the attack on your plane. She was in an isolated accommodation.”
“A what?”
“A fucking Black Site, okay, Harper? Solitary confinement. No other contacts.”
“For a year? She was already crackers back then. Must be full-on mental now.”
“We allow television in and she has a phone—a landline. It automatically dials me directly when it’s picked up. Fully encrypted.”
“But she’s getting out messages.”
Clarissa hated to admit it. “Worse. They look as if they’re routed from my desk, through a long-lost Finnish back door onto a Russian server farm, then a lash through Syria.”
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving drongo.”
“Drongo?” Clarissa didn’t know that one.
“Raw recruit. It’s another word for an idiot who—”
“Bitch.”
Holly didn’t argue with the accusation. Well, at least they were back on their old terms. It had been an extremely uncomfortable feeling that she could actually like Holly Harper. Something that would never, ever, under any circumstances happen.
“We can trace the message origin to the island, but we can’t trace them any farther.”
“The island?”
Clarissa got up and paced across her office. Leaning her forehead against the glass, she stared down at the small executive parking lot on the north side of the New Headquarters Building. Looked down and saw Clark’s motorcade parked below. By the movement of the agents, she could tell that he’d just entered her building.
She checked her watch, four p.m. He’d been on the ground for barely the length of the drive from Andrews Air Force Base.
Leave it to Clark to come to the CIA first after returning from Alaska. He couldn’t just go to his office in the White House or home to the Vice President’s mansion at One Observatory Circle.
No, he was a sentimental slob who would make coming to see her his first stop. And then, of course, he’d want sex in her office, just as they’d started out when the office had still been his.
She spoke quickly. “Where are you? I’ll get a fast transport to pick you up and deliver you to her location. I’ve locked down al
l departing flights with full security on each plane. The Air Force is beyond livid, but there’s no other way out. They’re sending out hunt-kill squads but we both know she has the skills to just walk right around them—or rack up the body count if she’s in the mood.”
“A year in solitary? She’s definitely in the mood.”
“Yeah,” Clarissa would be too. “I’ll give you full authorization to do whatever you deem necessary.”
“I’d rather be licking a dingo’s balls.”
“You can enjoy yourself later, Harper. Where are you?”
Holly didn’t answer.
“Look, Harper. We need to capture this bitch. I’d like to just put her down, but we need to know what else she’s done, and who her inside contact was because there was no way for her to order the SOG team—that came from one of my directors. I hate to admit it, but you’re the only one who managed to capture a Russian Zaslon operative—ever. You’re the best qualified to catch her, and get the truth out of her.”
“Fuck me.”
“Not my department. Where?” There was a knock on her locked office door. Security really should have taken away Clark’s key to the executive elevator when he became VP. She didn’t have time for him right now.
“Tennant Creek, Australia,” Holly groaned out like she was in pain.
Clarissa did a quick search on her tablet, then made an arrangement to borrow a Falcon 7X passenger jet from the Royal Australian Air Force against—damn, she hated to do this—an open IOU. “They’ll be there in two hours and take you direct to Diego Garcia. Clearance will be there by the time you arrive.”
Again the silence stretched long before she answered.
“Yeah, that’d be right.” Holly’s tone was so resigned that Clarissa actually felt bad about sending her. Not that there was a better choice.
“Do you want me to mobilize an SOG team to assist you? I have one in Italy.”
Holly’s laugh was bitter and short enough to feel like a slap.
Then she hung up.
Clarissa sent the clearance for one Holly Harper to land at Diego Garcia and have access to any assets.
This whole disaster had to stay completely isolated inside the CIA—and Clark was Executive Branch since becoming Vice President. Well, she knew one sure-fire distraction.
After slipping off her underwear and making sure her skirt and blouse were in order, she hit the remote unlock on the door.
She met Clark halfway across the carpet.
He might be twenty years her senior, but he was still in excellent condition.
“Hi, honey.”
“Missed you,” he dragged her into a kiss, one hand tight around her, the other freeing her long hair from its perennial ponytail. Only Clark ever got to see her with her hair loose, and they both liked it that way.
His eagerness was already apparent as he pressed against her.
His fingers traced the curves of her ass muscles through the skirt’s material.
His smile shifted from happy to greedy.
“Ah, the old days,” he whispered as he leaned down to kiss her and dug his fingers into her butt more tightly.
She’d made a policy of never wearing underwear to the office after they’d become lovers. Their sex life had started as stolen moments against his cherrywood desk. Now that they were married and he was no longer her boss, it had taken some of the edge out of it.
On the plus side, Clark’s skills had continued to improve.
Rather than just diving in for the home run as he used to, he took his time about it. When he was finally done with her, all she wore was her Christian Louboutin pumps. Her body burned from a most pleasant ravaging.
And while she kept the CIA’s secrets from him, he didn’t see any need to withhold Executive Branch information from her. She lay against him while he played with her hair and recovered—and told her about everything that was new in Alaska and over at the White House.
When the news had run out—turnabout being fair play, and it was the end of the day after all—she turned the tables on him.
By the time they would be finished—both naked, prostrate, nursing rug burns in awkward places, and gasping desperately for air on the Director of the CIA’s carpet—Holly Harper would be airborne.
40
Holly stuffed the phone into her pocket.
“Bitch,” she whispered at her mother’s grave because she was well and truly trapped.
“That didn’t sound good, Holl.”
She’d forgotten Quint was there.
“I have to be at the airport in two hours.”
He squinted at her. “There are only two flights a day out of Tennant Creek. First one just heads down the Alice and it isn’t for another four hours. If you’re wanting Darwin, that’s not until midafternoon.”
“Special flight. The RAAF is sending a Falcon for me.” She kicked a boot at the dirt. Not really intending to, she sprayed a layer of red dust over her mother’s new grave marker. She did it again, hoping she could obliterate it. The additional dirt merely slid off the angled plaque.
“Shit, woman. I thought it was me that Eli was being nice to last night, flying us so far out of his way. You in all tight with the Queen or something?”
“Oh yeah, me and the Royals, we go way back. Only too bloody right, mate.” She studied the dirt.
“But you just got here. Didn’t you have things you wanted to…”
He must have seen the look on her face.
“Okay. You don’t want to be here at all. Got it. You’ve got two more hours in Tennant Creek. What do you have to do?”
“Sell the bloody mansion. I tried giving it to Harry and Meghan as a wedding present, but they didn’t want to show up the Queen with such a posh cubby.”
“That place wouldn’t pass for decent dunny when you’ve got the shits.” Then he turned a little red and mumbled a soft, “Sorry.”
“Not half as sorry as me, Quint. And only too true.”
“Don’t know as there are any estate agents up and about at six in the morning. But we can try.”
Holly closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the graves anymore. Didn’t want to witness how Quint was seeing her as a woman to pity. Didn’t want to see Tennant Creek.
“How about you sell it for me? If you get anything, put it in your pocket. Or donate it all to the Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation. Hell, just give the house to them. I’ll sign a paper for you to hand off. They still doing job training, food service, and all that?”
“They are. Some of the old crowd are there as well. Do you want to—”
Holly just shook her head. It had been her only freedom from the psychotic Harper household. Getting out into the deep bush. Toward the end, she’d gone far more often on her own than with the the usual crowd. Barely cared about water, not at all about food, only about…away. It was a miracle she hadn’t killed herself through being teen-stupid.
“I used to dream of going walkabout.”
“Shit, Holl. You evaporated half a lifetime ago. That wasn’t enough of a walk for you?”
“Out there,” she nodded toward the Barkly Tablelands. A person could live out there for a hundred years and maybe never see another soul.
“Seriously?”
She could only nod.
Quint turned to stare out at the bush with her.
The land was rough, not tall with mountains like southeast, but a vast trackless terrain filled with unexpected gullies, harsh precipices, and little fodder. Even at their densest, the low gum and Mulga trees were fifty or a hundred meters apart. The brush and grass between could only maintain a few cattle per acre—sometimes less. Cattle stations, ranches, were typically measured in hundreds of thousands of acres. Whole generations of cattle might never see a person.
“In God’s name why?”
“There’s water enough. And bush tucker.” She’d learned how to find them as a kid. Gotten even better at it during SASR survival training.
“St
ill.”
Holly kept staring, feeling the pull. “I was a wild pain in everyone’s behind back then.”
“You were incredible.”
She looked at him.
“Oh come on, Harper. Everyone—even Stevie—worshipped you, and not just because you were his kid sister. Most people in TC move through life at a good, steady pace. You were like a lightning bolt. Always on the move, always doing something exciting. The weekend trips out into the Tablelands?” He nodded toward the desert. “They pretty much died along with you. You know, back when we all thought that was you.” He had the decency to grimace as he waved toward the gravestone behind them. “They said you were the one who started them in the first place.”
“No. I…” But she had been. Pushing her friends to find out what the elders knew about survival. She’d spent more time at the Julalikari Council Community Center than a lot of the indigenous, asking endless streams of questions. Always looking for ways to turn the wilderness of the bush into school projects.
“It’s a cliché, Harper, but you were a force of nature in this sleepy small town. No wonder you left.”
“I loved it here.” The words hurt her throat. She nodded toward town. “Maybe not there so much, but…”
“Out there?” Quint’s disbelief was clear.
“It was like those endless stretches of the bush drew the wild out of me. It was the only place I could ever be myself. Might still be the closest I’ve ever come to that.” And she’d lost that—somewhere along the way.
“The road hasn’t been that hard, has it?”
She nodded at first, but could feel the wrongness of it and shook her head instead. No, it hadn’t.
Holly remembered laughing it up with her SASR demolition squad after a hard day’s dance with the ISIS or al-Qaeda sharpshooters in Kandahar, Lashkargah, or wherever the muck-up of the month had been.
There was the NTSB team. Sitting back on the office couch debating the failures in aircraft structures. Sharing a meal around the big table up on Miranda’s private island.
Mike. No, she wasn’t going to think about Mike.
And she’d never met anyone like Miranda Chase. Never had a friend like her. There was a real purity to Miranda. Not that she wasn’t a total mess as well, but there was a clarity and purpose to Miranda that just shone out of her. Holly had lost that too.
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