But only if you can plug into the base.
Damn. The electronic lock pick wouldn’t work from the smooth back of the door. She’d been afraid of that. What else?
2. A burglar’s drill with a diamond bit.
She was fresh out of drills, much less diamond bits.
3. C-4. Blow the sucker.
Janna rolled her eyes. Out of the question. A blast would bring all of Roszca’s guards down on them. Without a way through the tunnel, they had to go with plan B — her plan.
She sent Houdini a thank-you message and then began preparing her equipment. Since this plan was riskier, she’d pack for all contingencies. She checked the surveillance monitors. Simon’s GPS button signal flashed his location strong and clear. On the video monitor, she saw Roszca and him seated on rattan chairs with their drinks among the potted palms in the courtyard. No guards. No threats. No problems.
She returned to collecting equipment.
As she was about to seal her waterproof pack, she heard a boat motor. Someone approaching the island’s dock. Was one of Roszca’s bidders arriving early? No added complications, please. Oh, please.
She dashed for the companionway binoculars.
One man climbed from the open outboard into the spot of a dock light. He sketched a military salute to the boat’s driver, who sped away.
The newcomer’s hair was longer. His chin bore salt-and-pepper stubble. He wore a rumpled polo shirt instead of a white dress shirt. He looked thinner, less muscular, but she recognized him.
Leo Wharton.
Her chest grated as though soot filled her lungs instead of air. She could barely draw a breath. The renegade colonel had escaped custody only yesterday. Somehow, he’d made his way unobserved to Isla Alta. She had to warn Simon.
Wharton turned away from his vanishing transportation and headed toward the house.
She had five minutes, tops.
Chapter 25
“I AM SORRY Janna could not join us,” Roszca’s mistress said, clutching her sherry glass in both hands.
Yelena had just joined the men in the courtyard. Simon could detect no new bruises or injuries. She looked pretty without stage makeup to camouflage and without a swollen lip. Apparently, keeping her prisoner in her suite of rooms suited Roszca nearly as well as physical domination.
Tamping down his increased disgust for his host, he said, “She regrets not being able to come say good-bye to you. Since we’re leaving later, she had preparations to make.” He shrugged and sent Roszca a smug just-between-us-men grin. “Female stuff. Who knows?”
“You will please give her my good wishes,” Yelena said.
“I will. And she sends you hers,” he responded. You can tell her in person in a few hours. One way or another.
At a barely perceptible nod from the master, she lowered her gaze to her lap. Simon reckoned that was the end of her participation in the conversation.
“Allow me to refresh your drink, Simon,” Roszca said, rising from his fan-style chair. He crossed over to the drink cart.
“No more rum for me, Viktor.” Simon set down his glass. “I’ll need a steady hand on the helm when the Horizon sets out later.”
“I understand.” His host poured himself a double shot of Russian vodka, his preference over the native drink. “A night run across the sea. That reminds me of the time…”
Damn. Roszca was off on another of his rambling tales. Simon surreptitiously glanced at his watch. Ten. At this rate, the household wouldn’t settle down until well after midnight.
A commotion in the foyer brought him back to attention. Male voices, one angry and insistent, the others protesting but less strident. A mix of English and Cleatian.
Viktor Roszca scowled at the interruption.
Yelena’s eyes widened. One hand flew to her throat.
Roszca set down his glass and stood. “You will excuse me, please. I must go see what is happening.”
“Simon,” Janna’s urgent voice said in his ear, “Leo Wharton’s on his way in. I’ll call Thorne. Get out of there fast.” Then a click and silence.
Wharton. Here. The implications raced through his mind. His heart smashed against his rib cage, knocked hard and dropped to his toes.
Janna! A monstrous fear for her gripped him in its jaws. He wanted to order her to get away. To race the Horizon to a safe distance at light speed.
But she wasn’t there. She’d broken transmission.
Adrenaline drummed his pulse and rushed white noise in his ears. Training kicked in and shoved panic into a back stall. The masquerade was over. Wharton would out him. He had no chance of escape.
He rose to his feet, ready.
Before Roszca could walk to the foyer, Wharton shoved past the confused guards. He swaggered into the courtyard like a conqueror.
Roszca halted in mid-stride. “Glot nesmit!” He blurted out his surprise in his native tongue, but recovered and held out a hand in greeting. “Leo, I am so pleased you could join us. Your man Simon negotiated quite fiercely on your behalf.”
Wharton turned to his phony lieutenant.
The colonel had lost weight, but it made him look harder, more dangerous. His six-foot-three topped Simon by four inches. Ivan and the brawny twins, along with three other guards, hovered in the doorway, awaiting orders. All of them carried weapons.
No escape. He could only stall for time. Give Janna a chance. Maybe she was leaving already. His ears strained for the sound of a motor, but he heard nothing.
Wharton stood unsmiling, his remote, guarded expression yielding nothing. “We meet again. I trust you’ve enjoyed the amenities on my yacht because your piracy is at an end.”
“Colonel.” Simon met the man’s burning-coal gaze. His peripheral vision caught Roszca’s puzzled expression. “The Horizon’s a sweet craft. The galley needs a few items, though. I have some suggestions for—”
“Silence!” Wharton’s barked order had the authority of a military man who was used to instant obedience.
“What is going on?” Roszca came to stand between the two antagonists.
“You want to tell him, Wharton, or shall I?” Simon knew his smart-ass attitude could crash and burn him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
His needling succeeded in cracking the colonel’s military bearing. The man’s dark eyes radiated rage, and his brows drew together in a slash of impatience.
“Tell me what?” Roszca snapped fingers at his guards, who filed into the courtyard to encircle the others.
“I have no further interest in anything this man has to say,” Wharton said in clipped tones to his curious host. “He is no agent of mine. Simon Byrne is an officer of the Domestic Antiterrorism Risk Corps in U. S. Homeland Security.”
Roszca’s mouth thinned to white as Wharton’s revelation sank in. Yelena covered her mouth on a sharp intake of breath.
Roszca gave orders in guttural Cleatian, fury tightening his voice. Sergiy and Stepan grabbed Simon’s arms and yanked him closer to their employer.
Ivan escorted a tearful Yelena from the courtyard. Simon caught a glimpse of her ashen face as she was hustled away.
No escape for her, either. His throat stung.
“Is this true?” Roszca jabbed him in the chest with an index finger as the clean-head twins held him in their steel grasp. “DARK has sent you here undercover? You have abused my hospitality to spy on me?”
“Ah, Viktor, my friend, spy is such an ugly word,” Simon began. “I prefer—” Roszca’s fist slammed into his belly and bent him double. Gasping for breath against the pain, he struggled to stand erect.
“You’re done … Roszca,” he bit out. “Operatives intercepted the uranium. We have evidence that’ll hang you.”
A nod from the arms broker sent Sergiy’s fist slamming into Simon’s chin. Color exploded behind his eyelids. He crumpled to his knees, the guards’ manacle-like grips his only support.
Pain radiated thro
ugh his head. Blood welled in his mouth. Crimson oozed down his chin and dripped onto the tiles.
“Take him away. Make sure he is secured until we can … dispose of him,” Roszca ordered the guards.
Black spots swam before Simon’s eyes as the two men jerked him to his feet. Agony seared his belly and his chin. His legs wouldn’t hold him as they dragged him from the courtyard.
Behind him, Roszca’s voice rang in his ears. “The woman!”
“What woman?” Wharton asked.
“His companion. She is still on board.” His next words were in Cleatian, orders shouted to his men.
Simon didn’t need to speak Cleatian to know what those orders were. “Leave her alone!” His voice a frog’s croak, he wrenched around in his captors’ grasp. “She’s not part of this. She knows nothing.”
The guard slugged him in the back with his gun butt. Simon sagged and they hoisted him along.
The taste of blood, coppery and sharp, focused his mind. Did he buy Janna enough time to escape? Pain focused his heart, and now it might be too late.
His captors drag-walked him outside and past the guest cottages. He still had a chance. He would get to Janna. If she hadn’t made it. If the slimy arms dealers had her…
His gut ached. His jaw and lip throbbed. Fury burst within him like pyrotechnics and blasted away the pain.
He had to break free. He had to reach her.
Simon turned to look at one of the twins in time to see a gun butt crashing down on him. Pain exploded at the base of his head.
Then everything went black.
***
Janna crouched in the dark beneath a broad-leafed plant. Strands of a spider web feathered against her cheek. Hoping the arachnid had fled, she pushed her wet hair off her face. She tied her sneakers and hooked the swim fins to her pack.
She scooted farther back amid a thicket of ferns beneath a palm. A green parrot flapped away from the intruder. The scents of decayed leaves and wild orchids traced through the air as she awaited the inevitable reaction to Wharton’s arrival.
The grasses beneath her were soft and cool on her bare legs. The only sounds were the chorus of insects and frogs, the occasional skitter of a chameleon in the ground cover and the clatter of her frantic heart. Her skin prickled from the drying salt water. Mosquitoes and no-see-’ums discovered new blood and whined in for a feast. Fearful of drawing attention to herself, she clenched her jaw and resisted swatting at them as she watched the compound.
So far, the gate remained firmly closed.
Why didn’t they rush out to drag her from the yacht?
She’d have heard a shot, so Simon must still be alive. If she knew him, he was using attitude and wisecracks as delay tactics. To give her time. Which she’d used to her and Simon’s advantage. She hoped.
When she’d contacted the DARK boat on the satellite phone, Thorne reported that they were at least an hour away because they’d returned to Gitmo for fuel. He ordered her to get out, to head toward them. Thorne and company couldn’t arrive in time to save Simon. Roszca or Wharton or one of the guards would surely kill him before abandoning Isla Alta.
She could no more leave Simon there to die than she could fly to the moon on her laptop.
So she tossed a few additional items in her wet pack and went overboard. After arranging a surprise for the intruders, she’d swum to the island and hid at the end of the dock. The tropical nights were cooler than the days, but moisture that wasn’t saltwater trickled down her temples and between her breasts.
To make her promotion to tech officer, she’d gone through training at The FBI Academy, where she learned about tactics and hazardous materials, self-defense and weapons. She was a pretty fair shot with her compact Sig. The loaded 9mm sat in its holster at her waist. But the only test of her skills and knowledge had been with fellow officers, not in the field with real bad guys.
Bottom line — she was a technical expert, an electronics specialist, a geek, but not a field officer. What if she failed Simon? What if her strategies didn’t work? What if she couldn’t bring herself to follow through?
An image of the cook’s broken body at the bottom of the tunnel pit morphed into an image of Simon that twisted through her, piercing her chest, her stomach.
No. She swallowed down the reaction and willed away tears. She could do this. She would get Simon out. Yelena too.
Seeing no one outside the compound walls, she risked clicking on her headlamp. She fished the handheld GPS from her pack. The screen flickered to green and the signal blinked.
Simon was on the move. Out the back wing and toward the gardens. At the location of one of the garden sheds, he stopped. That was it. No more movement. Was he locked in the shed? Or was it the entrance to the tunnel? What had they done to him? She shut off her lamp and stowed the GPS. Her stomach tightened.
Now they would come after her.
The tactics instructor had said, “Impatience kills operations. Learn to wait.”
She prayed for patience. She also prayed to be invisible.
As though she’d conjured them, the four guards whose names she didn’t know jogged through the gate. All wore shoulder holsters with handguns that looked like Heckler & Koch 9mm semiautomatics. They passed by her without a look into the shadows and continued onto the dock. A moment later, Sergiy and Stepan followed at a lumbering pace.
Roszca’s yacht, the Prowler, remained tied on the dock’s left side and the four smaller craft on the right. The guards jumped into the two inflatable yacht tenders, two in each. The twins remained on the dock as the boats took off toward the Horizon.
Before swimming away from the yacht, she’d attached a clump of C-4 explosives to the gas tank, along with a remote-activated detonator. Her preparations should succeed as long as no one used a phone that would interfere with her signal.
Tears tightened her throat at the thought of what she must do. Her chest and throat burned, and her temples throbbed. She hissed in a breath. She saw no other choice. She gripped the remote control device with both hands to stop the trembling.
Patience. Wait for the opportune moment.
The boats tied up on either side of the stern. Guns drawn, three of the guards climbed onto the swim platform.
Janna pushed the remote control button.
She visualized the electronic signal zinging toward the detonator.
One. Two. Three.
A sharp bang split the night. Smoke rose from the yacht’s stern by the fuel tank. Through her binoculars, she saw the three men on board and the fourth in the inflatable wave their arms and move their mouths.
In the next moment, a fireball erupted from the deck. A thunderous blast reverberated through the cove. The yacht blew apart. Bodies flew through the air. Shards of fiberglass and wood fell like hailstones.
Janna could no longer see the guards or their speedboats. Their grisly deaths were too hideous for anyone, no matter what crimes those men had committed. Blood roared in her ears, and her heart was a lead weight in her chest. She forced herself to breathe, to block out the shock. She couldn’t fall apart. Simon needed her help.
More people streamed from the house. Roszca and Wharton ran to the dock.
She counted. The four nameless guards — now dead. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled. She wouldn’t think about that. Left were the Mr. Clean twins. Roszca and Wharton.
And Yelena and Simon.
And one other. The last guard and yacht captain. Where could Ivan be? At the computer, calling for help? Doubtful. Guarding Yelena? Or Simon?
She had no time to waste wondering. Crouching low, she edged through the trees and vines toward the gate. It closed automatically behind the last to exit.
In case Ivan was monitoring the cameras, she turned on her palm-sized video disrupter. Electricity on these islands was irregular, so interference happened often. For the moment or two needed to access the gate code, a watcher shouldn’t be suspicious. Th
e cameras’ rotation stopped.
Then she extracted her digital lock pick and attached the keypad decoder wire to the gate lock. She sweated the wait.
Come on. Come on!
Long seconds later, the five-digit code slid into place on the readout, and the gate swung open.
She hurried into the compound. The gate closed behind her. Once against the house and out of camera range, she shut off the disrupter. Shouts and the roars of flames and motors came to her from outside. Good. Her diversion still occupied them.
Off to the right was Simon. The front door stood wide open. Yelena was inside. Closer. Who was Ivan guarding?
Gripping her Sig, Janna crept along the wall toward the shed where Simon was being held.
Chapter 26
SIMON’S LIMBS FELT too heavy to move. Pressure like a steel band clamped his neck, his shoulders. A boom and then a roaring sound like fire came from far away. He must be dreaming. Darkness like a thick, black morass pressed him down, but he hadn’t lost consciousness. He’d turned in time to receive only a glancing blow. No concussion. But—
Janna.
Would he ever see her again? She was brave and beautiful and too brainy for the likes of him, but being with her made him a better man. She was such an adorable geek and too earnest. Who else would laugh at his awful jokes? Would he die without telling her that he loved her? He’d wasted so much time fearing love, but it sneaked up on him anyway.
Yeah, oh, yeah — she was the yin to his yang, the only woman who made alone seem lonely. Hell of a time to figure all that out.
He opened his eyes. Even his eyelids hurt. Use the pain to focus. Get free. Find her.
He struggled to roll over, but couldn’t lift his arms, his feet. Ah, all were tied behind him with rope, heavy sisal judging from the rough texture. Made sense.
The good-time boys had stashed him in a garden shed. And in a garden shed, there must be tools. Sharp tools.
Thin rays of light — likely from the security lighting around the garden — threaded in through cracks in the boards. On the wall to the left of the plank door hung rakes and shovels. And hedge clippers. A light beam winked on the blades. Come to Papa.
Dark Rules (The DARK Files Book 3) Page 20