She moved through the lobby to the stairs. Even if the elevators worked — and they rarely had — she didn’t want to risk being stuck in one. Plus, she needed the exercise. It didn’t take her long to climb the six flights of stairs, although it did leave her out of breath and sweating inside the lambswool coat. She made a mental note to ramp up her physical training when she returned to the library.
The corridor walls were scrawled with graffiti in several languages. Sophia reached the door for her parents’ flat. None of this seemed familiar. But she knew it should. She felt sick in her stomach. She didn’t know what to expect.
She knocked, then counted to twenty. Once she reached twenty she would—
The door opened, the door chain still attached. An elderly woman peered through the gap. ‘Máte prání?’ Her voice smelled slightly sweet, like stewed apple with raw sugar.
‘Mrs. Novotný?’ Sophia said.
‘You have wrong place.’ Another voice, male. Strong and confronting, like burnt coffee.
Sophia looked over her shoulder to find the person who had spoken English. A waif-thin elderly man stood twenty feet away, oversized knuckles clutching a spindly walking stick. He seemed perfectly able to stand without it.
‘Josef and his wife,’ he said, ‘they were robbed years before.’
Her first operation had been made to look like a robbery. She’d stopped a cell of Al-Qaeda terrorists from preparing a dirty bomb in an apartment just like this. She had killed them all. The sick feeling in her stomach dispersed into the rest of her body.
‘Where are they now?’ she said.
‘Bless them. They were killed in the robbery. And their children too.’
All feeling drained from Sophia. She focused on an empty plastic bag in front of her. It drifted aimlessly across the floor. She turned and headed for the stairwell.
‘It wasn’t a robbery,’ she said.
Chapter Fifteen
Sophia returned to Volterra the same way she had come. Two buses and two trains. This time, the trip seemed longer. She slept the last leg of the train even though it ran through the day.
When she arrived back in Volterra she was exhausted and hungry. And empty. She shut the large wooden doors behind her, locked them, then proceeded through the glass and iron-barred doors that separated the lobby from the library proper. She prepared in her head what to say to Leoncjusz as she walked into the Pacciani Room. But when she saw him, she forgot all about it.
He was lying in a pool of blood.
She inhaled sharply, fought the urge to vomit. Her attention was transfixed on his body. Several gunshots to the chest. The blood didn’t look fresh. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t wearing his vest. He was supposed to wear his vest but he wasn’t. It looked like he hadn’t been breathing for quite some time. She couldn’t think. Her breathing was sharp and erratic. She forced herself to take deep breaths. She leaned forward, hands on knees.
Focus. Think. Focus. Breathe. Breathe. Carpet. Black and red dye. Breathe. Shot in the chest. She wasn’t here to save him. She fucking wasn’t here to save him.
She stopped breathing, her senses tuned to the silence.
She wasn’t alone.
Emerging from the front, to her left and right were — how many of them were there? — Blue Berets. Their MP5s with suppressors aimed at her head.
If they find you, they will kill you.
One of them, likely the sergeant although he wore no rank insignia, yelled, ‘Hands on your head!’
Sophia slowly raised her hands to the back of her head. She blocked out Leoncjusz as best she could and analyzed their movements, their location, their weapons, her weapons. Everything. She processed everything.
They moved carefully to form an asymmetrical circle around her. There was movement on the balcony above. A figure appeared, leaned against the railing to watch her. Denton. Her captor. She imagined putting two rounds into the bridge of his nose.
‘You told me my family died in a terrorist attack,’ she said as she slipped her little finger into the cuff of her other sleeve.
Denton smiled. A calculatingly gradual smile. It seemed rehearsed. ‘Considering our specialty is fabricating terrorist attacks, I actually told you the truth.’
Her little finger explored the cuff, touched the ring of the flashbang.
The lights from the high ceiling cast a white silhouette over Denton’s shaven head and imprinted a heavy shadow over his gaunt face. His cheekbones looked razor sharp and the shadow of his slightly hooked nose formed a black arrow from his nostrils down to his thin lips.
‘Apologies for the intrusion,’ he said. ‘For each operative I bring out here, they need to babysit ten Blue Berets apiece. Hardly convenient.’
‘Neither is having a conscience.’ Sophia tugged at the ring. ‘But I suppose you wouldn’t know.’
Denton caressed the railing with both hands. ‘I’m not here to kill you, Sophia. In fact, I was hoping we could come to some sort of arrangement.’
The muscles working in his jaw were visible as he closed his mouth and clenched his teeth. A spaghetti-shaped vein quivered above his right eye.
Minimum of ten Blue Berets and one operative. She wondered where the operative was.
‘The decision is entirely yours,’ he said. ‘Of course, if you decide not to accept, then our contract will need to be terminated.’
The flashbang slipped from her jacket cuff and hit the ground behind her, the ring still in her hand. The grenade bounced towards a Blue Beret at her seven o’clock.
She planted her hands firmly over her ears and, through clenched teeth, said, ‘I couldn’t agree more.’
* * *
Jay stood on an Etruscan watchtower, the suppressor on his M110 SASS rifle leveled over Volterra’s moonlit rooftops. He’d heard the flashbang go off. Now all he could do was wait. And watch.
‘Oscar Five Delta to Tango Zero Juliet.’ Denton’s out-of-breath voice hissed into his earpiece. ‘Eyes on the rooftops. It’s the target’s only way out, over.’
‘Tango Zero Juliet to Oscar Five Delta,’ Jay said softly into his throat mike. ‘If she’s on the roof, she’s all mine, over.’
He allowed his vision to slip into the near-infrared range and watched for fiery red and orange shapes in the distance. He might’ve missed the intake for the Mark II shocktrooper program, but at least he’d scored the pentachromatic upgrade. Not only could he see ultraviolet like the other tetrachromatic operatives, he could see infrared as good as any pigeon or butterfly. Forget the night-vision and thermal goggles, he was a motherfucking butterfly now. And it made for a nice party trick.
He could make out Blue Beret snipers posted in two other locations, and a local middle-aged male about three blocks from the library. He leaned against a wall, drawing impatiently on a cigarette. Jay ignored him and focused on the hot zone.
‘This is Echo Four Whiskey,’ a Blue Beret said. ‘Target has vacated the building from the second floor. I repeat, target has vacated the building from the second floor, over.’
A red human-shaped blob slinked across a neighboring rooftop, rose to full height and then began running, head down low for balance.
He tracked her through his telescopic sight. He didn’t even need to line her height against the mil-dots that formed the center of his crosshair; he already knew she was a quarter of a mile away, having measured the distance from the rooftop earlier that night. A quarter of a mile meant a four inch drop. And that meant he needed to aim four inches above her head to acquire the headshot. He knew she’d be wearing armor.
Sophia ran across the rooftop. Jay exhaled, the ball of his finger over the trigger. Sophia crouched down, ready to jump to another rooftop. He aimed for her head. He inhaled slightly, by accident, and had to exhale again. He squeezed the trigger.
Sophia never made the jump.
* * *
Sophia fell headfirst. Right through the giant Christmas tree. Blood flowed warm over her cheeks. A thick, unforgiving
branch crunched against her shoulder. She slipped past it, plummeting further through the tree. At the risk of breaking her arms, she reached out, clawed desperately at branches to slow her fall. She could hardly breathe, the large-caliber round having knocked the wind from her. Bark scraped her neck. A branch smashed her wrist. Another caught her leg, slinging her entire body around. She was almost the right way up. She hooked a branch with her leg and swung upside down. Her bag hit her in the back of the neck. Blood rushed to her head. She’d stopped falling.
Opening her eyes, she found herself only twenty feet from the ground. There was nothing below but cobblestones and a stone carving of Jesus. She breathed. Hard. Her lungs burned but she didn’t care. She was alive. The Christmas tree had saved her.
Carefully, yet as quickly as possible, she climbed down the tree trunk. She landed quietly on her feet beside the Jesus statue. He stared blankly at her. She patted him on the head. ‘Thanks, Jesus.’
She found a dark crevasse of an alleyway and hid there for a moment, catching her breath. In the darkness, she let her night-vision adjust as she checked her body for injuries. Nothing broken, amazingly. But plenty of cuts and scrapes, most of them concealed. One very tender portion between her shoulder blades where the large-caliber round had struck just above her bag. She was wearing her vest and front and back plates, luckily. The sniper had hit her upper back, shattering the back plate, which had absorbed at least some of the blow. But it was going to be even more painful in the morning.
Whoever the operative was, they’d messed up the shot. She was lucky to be alive.
Denton’s Blue Berets might be incapacitated, but there would be more. And the operative was still out there. They’d be looking to recover her body. She had to get out of here right now.
She could hear the sound of guitars and singing up the road, along with the crackle of a bonfire. A cluster of people around what would be a very large heat source. Exactly what she needed to slip away undetected from Blue Berets, operatives and eyes in the sky.
Chapter Sixteen
‘ Ti sei fatto male?’ the woman behind the counter at the bookstore said. Are you hurt?
Sophia winced. She smiled and shook her head. ‘No, ero solo fare una corsa.’ No, I was just running.
She placed her purchases on the counter: a blank notepad, two pens, a pocket-sized Polish — English dictionary and an English Lonely Planet guide to Belize. She paid in exact cash and headed for the exit, focused on walking as naturally as possible despite the incredible bruise that tarnished her shoulder blades.
She had stolen a car from Volterra and driven to Florence. She’d left the car in an alleyway and changed her direction three times before approaching the bookstore. As she made her slow walk out of the store appear leisurely, she double-checked everyone walking in and out.
Above the store’s entrance, a television displayed a newsreader covering the long-term health effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which was now being blamed for everything from the catastrophic weather, destroyed crops, rising cost of food and doomsday hysteria. Sophia slowed to watch. After the newsreader’s bit was done, they crossed to a reporter for some breaking news. In the background, US soldiers and armored personnel carriers patrolled the city streets. The reporter gave her most informed opinion on the rumors of martial law for the United States.
As Sophia walked under the television, it cut back to the studio where the anchorman and woman nodded stiffly as the teleprompter fed them their next story. Something about a dangerous cult called the Alquimie, suspected of being responsible for the recent spate of violent protests in Washington. Denton had probably written the script for them. Did this Alquimie even exist? If it was real, it’d surely be carefully managed by the Fifth Column. Even the Akhana could be. She didn’t know. But she wanted to find out.
She walked out onto the cobblestoned street, her bag hugging her bruised back. She avoided a large middle-aged woman on a bicycle, then made her way past a fleet of parked Vespas and down the narrow sidewalk of an equally narrow one-way backstreet. The right-hand side was lined with Smart cars, Volkswagen Minis, Renaults and other conveniently compact cars. Even in the afternoon, the street was void of any foot traffic, with only the occasional scooter, van and a single black Porsche.
Florence had a lot in common with Volterra. The tall, arched wooden doors, the wrought-iron street lamps extruding from the buildings, the wooden shutters on the windows of the three-story buildings. She reached a small intersection with a theater on the left and a newsstand on the right. She continued ahead, cutting through a small park and past a church. In front of her was a large grassy traffic circle. Beyond it, the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station, which looked somewhat drab when compared to the Gothic architecture that surrounded it. She lined up at the automatic ticket machines to purchase a ticket.
As she’d expected for Christmas season, the station was swarming with families. She weaved through them, doing her best to smooth out her limp on the striped marble floors. Despite the ticket-machine lines, she reached her platform with twenty minutes to spare. The high-speed train would take her to Rome. Then a traditional train would take her to Naples, and then another high-speed to Palermo. From there, her best way out of Europe was by tanker ship to South America. It would take quite some time to reach her destination, but it was the safest option. It also meant she could keep the Glock.
Seven hours of travel time awaited her. The first two trips she planned to spend working out where this Akhana base might be, and on the last trip, the longest, she would plot exactly how she was going to get there.
* * *
The train jolted, banging Sophia’s head against the window and waking her. The carriage was almost empty. She remembered deciding to rest her eyes as the train entered the underwater tunnel. Now, she found herself looking out at the coastline. The population was sparse out here in the Sicilian countryside. A few houses overlooked a calm, pale blue ocean. Out the other side of the carriage, she could see rocky knolls and a main road buzzing with small cars.
Sophia blinked several times, pushed herself upright in her chair. Her bag was sitting on her lap, her hands still gripping it. She pulled her notes out. During her travels so far, she’d read Leoncjusz’s journal from when her name was first mentioned to the very end, checking every word she didn’t recognize in case it offered a hint to the location of the Akhana base. It had gradually become clear to her that even Leoncjusz didn’t know the exact location. It would’ve been smarter to find the Akhana liaison he’d met with, but that had been at least twenty-four hours ago.
With only an hour and a bit of her train ride remaining, she dug out the Lonely Planet guide to Belize. Despite it being a book for tourists, she thought it would offer enough about the terrain to help her figure out the most likely place for a secret resistance base. Or at least that was what she hoped to do.
She found a full map of the tropical country and sketched it out on her notepad. Then she returned to the first page and started from there. The first thing she noted was that forty percent of Belize was protected, mostly in the form of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and marine reserves. The second thing was that it had the lowest population density in the world. Page by page, she marked on her notebook all the places mentioned by Lonely Planet. By the time she was done, she had a map of every area where the base would not be. Now it was up to her to fill in the gaps.
She circled the Cayo District, affectionately known as the Wild West of Belize, and took note of the areas that were unmarked. There were a couple of forest reserves and national parks that looked promising, especially since the book warned that vehicles passing through were sometimes ambushed by bandits. She paused for a moment. It was dry season, but there would still be a great deal of rain, and in the south there’d be at least one downpour every day. That meant the base had to be on high ground so it wouldn’t get flooded out during the wet season.
Sophia crossed out her selections and instea
d circled the Maya Mountains, just south of where she’d been looking. Lonely Planet had mentioned limestone caves inside the mountains, once used as gateways to the underworld by the Mayans to give sacrifices to their gods. It made sense to utilize existing cave networks to fashion a base. All the more reason to suspect the Akhana headquarters might be hidden inside a Belizean mountain.
She circled all of the mountainous regions not frequented by tourists. One such region fell into two forest reserves that joined: the Columbia Forest Reserve and the Deep River Forest Reserve. According to the map, the Southern Highway ran straight through the middle of the Deep River Forest Reserve, so that immediate area was out. But further along she spotted an interesting cluster of mountainous terrain. There was the occasional camp listed, but that was it.
Rivers. It seemed likely the base was located within range of a river. They couldn’t get all their water from condensation or shipping. Unless they had their own underground well. She hoped not, and marked the one notable river that could supply them with good water: the Rio Grande.
She followed the river as it snaked north, deep into the forest reserve. She circled it twice. If she wanted to build a concealed base, she would build it there. She just hoped these Akhana folk thought the same way.
Chapter Seventeen
Every time, the dream was the same. He was six years old again. He looked up to see the twisted olive branches weaving into each other, creating a thick-latticed arch above that broke the crystal-blue sky into slivers. It was the longer way home from school but Damien liked it better than the gloomy alleyways. He was knee-high in soft emerald grass, his schoolbag slung over his right shoulder. A breeze tickled the grass. It reminded him of the way the fur moved on the back of his dog, Primo, when he shivered at the back door, wanting to be let inside. The shivering was just for show, but if no one was looking Damien would let him inside anyway.
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