Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  Even Georg might do better now. Any variable that could give her another fighting chance, Val had to throw into the mix right now while he still could. While she was alive. He punched “call.”

  It rang eight times. Someone picked up, and there was a waiting silence on the other end, though he could tell the line was open.

  Val tried to speak, but doubt had seized his voice.

  Georg got tired of the waiting game. “My curiosity cannot resist a telephone call from a dead man,” he said in English. “Do I speak with the spirits from beyond?”

  Val cleared his throat with a cough. “No,” he said. “Janos here.”

  “Oh. You.” Georg switched to Hungarian. “I am going to kill you when I see you. You know that, eh?”

  “Fine. Whenever you like,” Val said dully. “I just want to give you some information first. About Tamara Steele.”

  “Ah. Yes?”

  One last moment of frantic wondering, if he was giving her another chance or condemning her to a living death.

  No. His Tamar would never languish in a cage for long. Not his man-eating tigress. Not her.

  “I am waiting, Janos,” Georg prompted. “I am not a patient man. What about her? Let me speak with her.”

  Val shut his eyes and threw the dice. “I can’t,” he said. “Novak has her now. András abducted her. Less than an hour ago.”

  Georg sucked in an audible breath. “You fucking idiot,” he hissed. “How could you have allowed this to happen?”

  “She exposed herself when she ran from me,” he said dully. “She was trying to get back to you. She . . . she wanted you.”

  Georg was silent.

  “She will be in Novak’s hands within eight hours,” Val added after another minute ticked by. “Dead within twenty-four hours of that, almost certainly. If not sooner.”

  “If this happens, you do know what will happen to you, Janos?”

  Val stared bleakly at the horizon. “Yes,” he whispered. God help him. He did.

  “Pain,” Georg said softly. “For as long as I can inflict it. Pain you cannot imagine. Think about it.”

  Val broke the connection. There was no point in thinking about it. The threat barely touched him.

  If Novak killed Tamar and Rachel, anything Georg did to him afterward would be supremely redundant. He doubted he would even notice.

  In fact, he would make a point of being already dead.

  Georg clicked the phone closed with a hand that tingled with excitement. His heart thudded with lust and fury.

  She wanted him. She had always wanted him. He had known in his deepest heart that they were destined to be together. He was the only one who could accept or understand her dark side, her secret, shameful desires, and she was the only one who could comprehend his.

  He would reward her for her loyalty and save her from that blood-drinking monster, Novak. And she would owe him her life. He liked that.

  But he had to be quick and lucid. And ruthless.

  He walked down the small spiral staircase into the common room of the luxury apartment he had rented in San Vito. His eyes slid over the five men who were there. Someone had betrayed him. Sold him out to Novak, telling the old man about Tamara’s continued existence and Georg’s search for her. It was one of the men in this room.

  It galled him to harbor a traitor, but that same man could be used to feed false information back to Novak.

  The traitor would subsequently die a slow and horrible death, once he was identified.

  “We’re going back to Budapest at once,” he announced. “Novak has openly challenged me. Tomorrow at midnight, we mount our attack.” He turned to Ferenc. “Call the others. We will conduct a strategy meeting. We must videoconference. Hurry. There is a great deal of planning to do.”

  Ferenc pulled out his phone and got to work.

  Georg strolled out to the terrace of the luxury villa, which was perched right over the roiling sea. He turned up the volume on his telephone. The crashing of the sea served nicely as white noise to cover his voice. He punched in the code to scramble the call, and dialed the PSS man he dealt with now. The defunct Hegel’s second in command.

  “Yes?” the man asked.

  “It happens tomorrow,” Georg said without preamble.

  There was a startled pause. “Tomorrow? So soon?”

  “My men cannot know,” Georg said. “They’re baiting the trap. Your team will mount the attack. I will call you in two hours and explain the details. You will need an eight-man team in Budapest by tomorrow.”

  Georg hung up the phone and stared at the heaving waves. There was a great deal of planning to do. Most of his men would probably be dead by tomorrow. He would have to sacrifice them to unmask the traitor, and he would be hard put to replace them. This was going to be expensive.

  But his mind was too occupied for planning. Filled with filthy, sweating fantasies that made his crotch ache with eagerness.

  Fantasies of fucking Tamara, over and over. While the whole world watched.

  Andrea first noticed the curly-headed toddler curled up, thumb in her mouth and sleeping like an angel next to her dad, while passing out the ear phones in the first class cabin. She was the same size as Andrea’s two-year-old Liliana back home, currently being spoiled rotten by Grandma. These long runs out and back to Frankfurt were hard. By the time Andrea got back, she was longing for her Lili.

  Funny, that the little cutie was already sacked out even before they took off. Usually, the noise and bustle of boarding revved kids up. If they calmed down at all, it was during that high altitude drone of midflight over the Pole. Portland-Frankfurt was a long flight for a toddler, but Andrea had tricks for the kids, over and beyond the usual crayons the airline provided. She’d be ready when this one woke up.

  She beamed at the little girl and smiled at her father, a big, bearded dark man. “What a doll,” she enthused. “How old?”

  The guy blinked a few times before answering. “Two,” he said.

  “I have a two-year-old at home, too,” Andrea confided. “It’s a beautiful age. No matter what anybody says.”

  The man smiled briefly and accepted the beer she’d just poured for him, and looked away as he sipped. Not the chatty type.

  Andrea glanced at the kid every time she walked past 10A and 10B. She slept like a rock, in the exact same position, skinny legs curled up, thumb in mouth, arm flung over her head.

  Hours later, the little girl had not moved. Her father gazed into space or read a newspaper. Andrea served him his meal. He ate it, folded his hands, dozed without ever touching or looking at the child.

  Seven hours into the flight, Andrea served the man a drink and nodded at the little girl. “My, she certainly is a sound sleeper,” she commented. “You’re lucky, on such a long flight.”

  The man’s eyes flicked up to hers and away. “Guess so,” he said.

  “Let me know when she wakes up and I’ll get her some yogurt and juice,” she offered.

  He mumbled something and looked back down into his paper.

  After ten hours had gone by, Andrea began feeling nervous. She checked the passenger manifest, not even sure exactly why. John and Melissa Esposito. Well, of course, he was her father. What else?

  Maybe the little girl had been dosed with antihistamines so that she’d sleep. Some parents did that when they wanted a hassle-free flight, but she was awfully small for that. Maybe she was a heavy sleeper, and this was her full night stretch. Maybe she was jetlagged from a previous leg of their trip. Or maybe Andrea should just mind her own beeswax.

  Even so, an hour later when the man got up to stretch his legs and stroll to the bathroom, she slipped over to 10B, and took a peek.

  Same position. The kid did not look good. In fact, Andrea was unpleasantly reminded of that bout of rotavirus that had landed Lili in the children’s hospital last Thanksgiving, an IV in her tiny arm. That pinched, pale look, the pale, wrinkled skin, sunken eyes, the dry, colorless lips. Dehydration. Her c
heek was cold. Her hand felt like ice. Andrea smelled pee. She slid her hand down under the child’s body.

  Yep. Wet, as was the seat beneath her. No wonder she was cold. At least that meant the dehydration couldn’t have gotten to a critical point yet. Still, Andrea was tempted to check her pulse. Just to see if she had one.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The man’s low voice made her jump. Andrea spun around and faced him. “Ah. Sorry. I was just, ah, checking on your little girl—”

  “That’s not necessary,” the man said.

  “But she’s wet,” Andrea protested. “She’ll get chilled. And she—”

  “Her mother will change her when we get to Frankfurt.”

  To Frankfurt? Andrea stared at him. That was three hours from now. Four, by the time he disembarked, got through the lines and slogged through that enormous airport.

  She glanced down at that poor little girl and flagrantly broke airline regulations with her next words. “If you give me a diaper and fresh clothes, I’ll change her for you,” she offered.

  “No, thank you. Don’t worry about it,” the man growled.

  “It’s no trouble. She really should wake up anyway, just so she can take in some fluids,” Andrea said earnestly. “The air in here can really dry out a little—”

  “Miss?” The man leaned right up to her ear and murmured, “Why don’t you fuck off and leave us alone? That way, I won’t have to make a formal complaint to the airline about your inappropriate questions, and the fact that I found you touching my daughter’s private parts when I got back from the rest room. Hmm?”

  Andrea jerked away. Her heart thudded, her face reddened. She scurried away, tears of shock and hurt indignation clogging her throat.

  She conferred with her colleagues, but it was almost time to serve breakfast, it was a very full flight, everyone was waking up and stretching their legs, and none of the rest of the flight crew wanted to tangle with a crazy guy. Certainly not when they were all so close to landing the plane and letting the problem just walk away.

  The next two and a half hours crawled by. Andrea ignored him, but she felt his eyes on her. Hot, nasty little pinpricks, burning into her neck. The little girl did not move, even during the shudder and roar of landing. When the doors opened, John Esposito tossed the child over his shoulder so that her head and arms dangled limply down his back, and waited in line to exit, impassive. He held only a briefcase.

  A briefcase? He didn’t even have a baby bag. What kind of father took a two-year-old on a fifteen-hour flight with no bag? Not a book, not a toy, not a snack. No wet wipes, bottle, sippy cup, nose tissues. To say nothing of diapers, a change of clothing. Like, what the hell?

  Something was off. Something was really wrong with this picture.

  Her stomach fluttered. She stood with her colleagues as the passengers filed out, chirping “Buh-bye! Buh-bye!” like a trained parrot. She didn’t look at John Esposito as he walked by with his limp burden, but she peeked as he unfolded the stroller in the icy cold jetway and dropped the child in it. He did not fasten the little girl in. Or tuck any sort of cover over her.

  He turned, looked. He’d known she’d look. He was ready with a triumphant smile that said, I won, you cowardly, ineffectual bitch.

  “Buh-bye,” he taunted softly, with a waggle of his fingers.

  He disappeared down the jetway. Andrea wrenched her faltering smile back into alignment and longed for Lili so hard it hurt.

  She needed to grab her little girl. Hug her and snuggle her. Right now. But Lili was on the wrong side of the world. It was night back in Portland. She couldn’t even call. It would be hours before Lili woke up.

  Until then, Andrea was going to stare at the airport hotel room ceiling and wait. Feeling scared.

  She could already be dead.

  Val wrestled his mind back to blankness as he moored the small, inflatable motorboat to a huge vine that clung to the side of the ancient stonework bridge. The road that ran over it led to Novak’s crumbling eighteenth-century palace on the river. The McClouds had texted Rachel’s radio frequency to him, and her icon had come to rest here some hours before. Val had been unsurprised that the revenge orgy would take place at Novak’s favorite residence. The old man felt like an aristocrat here. It pumped up his vanity.

  He knew the place well. He’d spent lonely years here, in the old days, once it was discovered that he had a knack for computers and technological devices. He’d made it his business back then to learn every detail about the ancient palace, having nothing better to do in his leisure time. The grounds were honeycombed with dungeons, wells, cisterns and drains, and he’d spent long hours studying antique floor plans he’d found in the library, hand-drafted in elegant cursive script. He’d wriggled through miles of culverts, tunnels and various other lightless, dripping holes, just out of curiosity. And since knowledge was power, his policy was to share what he learned only when his colleagues or employer had a pressing need to know it.

  No one had ever asked.

  He could only hope that no one else had made such a thorough study of the estate since then. It was unlikely. Crawling through dank, rat-infested eighteenth-century sewer pipes was the kind of thing only unbalanced teenagers did voluntarily.

  And desperate, luckless bastards like himself, of course.

  He opened the computer and checked Rachel’s icon. It remained stationary. The satellite photograph on his screen showed a bird’s-eye view of the place, which he remembered well. The icon blinked in what looked like one of the outbuildings, garages that used to be the stables. He slid the computer into his pack and climbed carefully out of the boat.

  Keeping his mind focused on the task. Not letting it wander to what they might be doing to her right—

  No. He picked his way over moss-slimed rocks, blanked out his mind with manufactured white noise.

  In the flickering twilight dimness beneath the bridge, he shone the flashlight on the rusty iron grate bolted over the sewer hole in the wall. It dated back to the first World War, from the looks of it. He rattled the thing, examined the corroded bolts. He wouldn’t even need the welding equipment. A few wrenches with the crowbar—this one for Rachel, oof, this one for Tam—and ah, fuck. A fresh, hot wet spot in his shoulder. He’d ripped open the wound again. But the grate was loose.

  She could be dead. Or worse.

  He stepped savagely on the thought. Look straight ahead. Not productive, to think of it. Not useful to them.

  Yes, and neither are you, testa di cazzo. He’d been buzzing around this problem for almost twenty-four hours like a fly around a turd. Endless precious hours wasted in inefficient, infuriating means of travel. No time to equip, no time to assemble a team or plan something brilliant. András had certainly had the use of a private plane waiting at the Naples airport. He’d probably gotten to Budapest during the night, and to Novak’s estate by the small hours of the morning with his prize. Hours for them to play with her if they’d wanted to. If Novak had been in a hurry.

  Whereas Val himself had been forced to drive like a maniac to the Roma airport at Fiumicino and abandon the rental car in the taxi lane, door hanging open, keys in the ignition. He’d sprinted up to the ticketing area, waiting on line after line, trying desperately to find a seat on a commercial flight.

  He was spoiled, by all the high budget shortcuts of PSS and the obscenely rich corporations and military operations that they serviced. Cristo, how did normal people survive the nightmarish frustration?

  Normal people didn’t usually have their lovers chained under a torturer’s knife.

  One last wrench, one last blaze of agony to take his mind off his troubles, and the grate came loose from the mouth of the sewer pipe. Thud, clang, and it rolled into the water with a sullen splash.

  He clutched the flashlight in his teeth and scooped out armfuls of trash, twigs, leaves and sludge that had drifted down with the rainwater overflow for decades. It had lodged against the grate into a
sludgy wall, making the opening too small for a man to crawl through.

  He wished he had a team, but it took time to coordinate a team. The McClouds were fierce and competent and well meaning, but they were hours behind him, having to cross two continents and an ocean. He could not hope for help from them. By the time they followed their beacons to the source, whatever was going to happen would have long since happened. So be it.

  He tightened his teeth on the pen flashlight and launched himself headfirst into the dark, wet hole. It was like crawling into his own grave.

  Which did not bother him. He was not afraid of death. It was life without her that he could not face. The blankness of it, the dull, flat emptiness that he had mistaken for calm. Detachment.

  Cold, slimy mud squelched between his fingers. He should have thought of rubber gloves, but he’d been too frantic to do more than procure the most basic things that occurred to him: backpack, boat, crowbar, welding gear, guns, ammunition. His black clothing was now covered with stinking mud. At least he wasn’t immersed in icy water. But then again, the evening was still young.

  A couple hundred meters brought him to the main tunnel, a larger and still older one. Here he no longer had to crawl but only crouch, doubled over. He started to run, splashing through the dripping tunnel, the flashlight bobbing wildly between his teeth.

  The tunnel was long, with various forks and twists. Overflow from old rainwater cisterns at several points on the estate all found their way here, and he had to dig into his ironclad long-term memory, concentrate and count to remember which one led where he meant to go. He gave thanks for Imre’s rigorous training.

  He crawled, face first, through the last hundred meters of the overflow pipe. He barely fit inside it. His shoulders had not been quite as broad the last time he’d crawled through, years ago.

  The space before him suddenly opened up into a black void. He stuck his head carefully out and peered up. The cistern had been out of use for a hundred and fifty years or so, the area above ground having been turned into a conservatory at some point in the middle of the nineteenth century. The greenhouse above remained, but in Val’s time of servitude, it had been abandoned, used largely as a storage room and weapons dump. Gabor Novak was not a man with any interest in nurturing life, be it animal or vegetable.