by A. M. Murray
“You going to die, slow and painful.”
Tomic inched in closer and shifted his weapon from Slade’s temple to point at his groin.
Slade knew he’d taken their sparring conversation as far as it could go and maybe too far. Ashton’s blabbering strongman had lost all self-control. His eyes could freeze a blast furnace, and his face was distorted with anger and determination. He pulled back the hammer on his single-action Beretta.
CHAPTER 50
(Thursday Evening—Dubrovnik)
The door flew open and smashed into the wall. Isa stepped into the room.
Slade’s training kicked in, and he took advantage of Tomic’s momentary distraction. He leaped up, pulled the Beretta from the man’s weakened grip, twisted it around, and fired with both hands clutching the handle.
The sound of the shot reverberated through the room and Tomic’s chest exploded in a spray of blood and flesh. He fell to the floor, lifeless.
“What’s your next move?” Slade said, the Beretta still in his hands, but now pointed at Isa.
“Shoot those cuffs off you and get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Give me the gun. We don’t have much time.”
Slade hesitated, assessing the risk. He needed his hands free, but that meant trusting Isa.
“Hurry up,” she said. “We won’t be alone here for long. Ashton and his men will have heard that shot. The security system is not armed yet, so we have a chance to get away undetected if we leave now.”
Slade went with his gut feeling and gave her Tomic’s weapon. He held his wrists as far apart and away from his torso as possible.
“I hope you can shoot,” he said.
“Probably better than you,” she replied. She squeezed the trigger, and his hands pulled apart. The cuff on his right wrist fell to the ground in several pieces, its locking mechanism fragmented while the other cuff still circled his left wrist intact like a bracelet.
“You cut the margin for error a bit fine.” He looked at a powder burn on his wrist. “A damn good shot, though.”
“You still have two hands and ten fingers, and you’re alive,” Isa said. “And your hands are now free and functional. Don’t complain.”
“Thank you. Much appreciated. Now, I’d like the gun back,” Slade said, his voice brittle.
“Okay. But only because when Ashton’s enforcers arrive here, which will be any moment now that you’ve wasted time waving that thing at me, I can claim you overpowered me.”
“You can claim whatever you like. And by the way, do you work for US authorities or are you just enjoying life here on the island as a member of Ashton’s circle of close friends?”
“Both. Now let’s move, and I’ll explain later.”
“How many versions of your story will it take to unravel the truth?” Slade asked, his face expressionless.
“There’s a reason for every tale, and the truth is merely what requires belief at the time of telling,” Isa said.
Slade shrugged. “I disagree. You’ve just described the guiding principle of a remorseless manipulator, a corrupt politician, a third-world dictator, an unfaithful spouse—”
“Now is not the time for a philosophical debate,” Isa said, cutting in. “Let’s get out of here and catch up with your team.”
“What makes you think I’m not alone?” Slade struggled to evaluate her intentions.
“You are not that foolhardy.”
“Nor, I would have thought, are you.”
“I’m not. I had a foolproof plan until you showed up. All you need to know for now is that the director of the CIA and the White House security advisor commissioned my official mission.”
“After the events of the last fifteen minutes, you expect me to believe that?”
“Come on. How many times do I have to tell you?” Isa motioned him to follow. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not if we don’t get out of here. Ashton has six enforcers, or five now you’ve disposed of this one.”
She stepped over Tomic’s lifeless body and walked into the security office from the storeroom. “We’ll have company here soon to see what’s up.”
With little choice but to trust her, Slade inhaled and bounded after her into the office. Isa opened the external door of the building, bringing them face-to-face with Ashton, backed up by Fox and another man. Slade raised the Beretta to the back of Isa’s head as Ashton and his men charged through the doorway.
“Back off or she’ll die,” Slade said as convincingly as he could manage, with his oscillating feelings for Isa now back in ascendance.
Slade and Ashton stared at each other. Ashton opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, a flicker of recognition momentarily thawing his icy expression.
“I know you from somewhere.” Ashton paused, dredging the back corners of his memory. “You’re based in Washington, DC. FBI. You’re one of the fleas sucking on Bill Deacon’s blood. I’ve seen you sit behind him in joint agency meetings.”
Ashton’s ability to retain unimportant details from the distant past in active memory surprised Slade. No one pays attention to backbenchers shuffling papers and keeping their bosses afloat and contributory at high-level meetings. Memory was obviously the attribute Ashton relied upon most.
Ashton turned to the tougher-looking of the two musclemen. “Novak, take his gun. He’s just a government pen-pusher. He’s not going to shoot her.”
Slade looked at Novak and remembered him from the fight in the BVI.
At the same instant, his adversary stiffened when he recognized the man he’d left for dead in the fire. Novak grabbed the gun, his trigger finger ready to kill, while Fox pulled Slade’s arms behind his back.
Novak pushed the gun against the side of Slade’s head, unable to reel in his anger. “You won’t escape this time. I can promise you that,” he said.
“Wait,” yelled Ashton, “we need to question him. Put the gun down.”
Novak lowered the weapon, but Slade saw his hands trembling with rage.
“Come over here, my dear,” Ashton yanked Isa away from Slade to stand behind him, his voice as comforting as fingernails scraping a blackboard.
He faced Slade again. “How did you end up here on my island? Is Deacon with you?”
“No. I’m alone. Deacon instructed me to come here and find Ms. Kato,” he said with a deadpan expression. “The FBI tracked her travel from Japan to Pescara and onto your yacht. She’s a person of interest in her sister’s murder in Tokyo. Her sister had ties to the FBI, and they are investigating the circumstances of her death. I know Ms. Kato from Tokyo, so Deacon thought I could persuade her to accompany me back to Washington, DC for questioning,” Slade said, inventing the story as he went. “Unfortunately, she did not comply, and I stepped up the pressure a notch.” He nodded at the gun now in Novak’s possession.
“I can assure you,” Ashton said, “you will not leave this island with anyone, least of all my friend Isabella. She accepted my invitation to spend precious time here and get to know me on a more intimate basis.”
His voice took on a rasping edge. “Let me be clear. I have an endemic aversion to low-level non-achievers like you. Your story is pure fiction. Isabella has not harmed anyone, least of all her sister. You affront my intelligence and insult her with insinuations about involvement in a heinous crime. I know you chased her to Europe and now here. A man like you is driven by one thing alone—lust. You’re not acting on any orders from the FBI.”
Slade watched Ashton with keen interest. The man’s eyes gleamed with a deep, unhinged emotion.
Novak opened his mouth to speak but shut it when he saw a dismissive look from Ashton, who appeared to believe Slade’s claim of operating solo. Inured to reality by jealousy and his environmental fanaticism verging on dementia, he’d irrationally concluded that Slade was on an amorous mission to spirit Isa away.
A shout from Fox, who’d walked over to the open storeroom door and looked inside, cut across Slade’s thoughts.
“To
mic’s dead. He’s been shot.”
“You’ve killed one of my trusted employees, insulted my friend, and threatened her with a weapon. You’ll pay the ultimate price for that.” Ashton’s expression turned several degrees more glacial.
“Take him down to the marina for a ride in the launch. Use the back track and not the main path so the domestic staff can’t see you. Kill him far enough out at sea so the yacht’s crew won’t know what you’re doing, and dump his body where the currents will sweep it miles away from here.”
“You’re on borrowed time, Ashton,” Slade said.
Ashton didn’t bother answering. He simply pivoted and slithered out of the room with Isa in tow.
CHAPTER 51
(Thursday Evening—Dubrovnik)
Slade glanced back. He saw Ashton grab Isa roughly by her arm and charge toward the castle. Gripped by two heavyweights and dragged in the opposite direction, he was in no position to help her.
One hundred yards from the security wing, the paved back path deteriorated into an uneven dirt track that meandered downward through wooded terrain in the direction of the shore.
Their pace slowed, and Slade dug his toes deep into the sandy soil in a desperate bid to retard their movement further. He had to break free of the viselike hold on both of his arms or end up as shark feed. And that meant escaping their clutches at the earliest opportunity before reaching the marina.
The back track offered Slade’s captors seclusion but weaved between groups of centuries-old boulders. At one point, it narrowed for approximately twenty yards, creating a high, naturally stone-walled passage that forced the group’s formation to change from three-abreast to single-file. Slade found the chance he needed.
Novak, in the lead, slackened his hold on Slade’s right armpit to step between the massive rocks. Slade jerked his arm free from the loosened grip. He grabbed the gun from Fox’s waistband just behind him and hit the side of his head with the weapon in a single swift movement.
Recoil from the blow combined with a flash of searing pain from the gash on his arm forced the gun from Slade’s hand. Dazed, Fox stumbled and tried to pick it up.
Slade wrapped one arm around Fox’s neck and used the other to propel him up and forward, slamming the top of his head into the temple of the other man, who’d turned to see what happened. The impact was so hard that a little more force might have shattered their skulls and killed them both. Both Fox and Novak fell to the ground unconscious. The entire incident was over in less than twenty seconds.
Slade picked up the gun, ready to set off northwest to Deacon’s rendezvous point, when he saw Fontaine sprinting along the path toward him, his blonde hair flying out behind him in the wind.
“Is that the best you can do?” Fontaine pulled out a roll of heavy-duty duct tape from his jacket. He slapped a strip of tape over the mouth of both men, now recovering. Next, he pulled out vinyl cord and bound their hands and feet.
“Always travel prepared,” he said, looking at Slade’s expression. “Give me a hand to dump them where their buddies won’t find them anytime soon.”
When Ashton’s men resisted, Fontaine pulled out a stun gun and sent a million volts into each of them. Fontaine and Slade dragged their immobilized captives off the path and deposited them behind a cluster of boulders shrouded by undergrowth and trees.
“Deacon sent me to look for you,” Fontaine said. “Mission accomplished. Now we have to get back, debrief you, and work out what to do next.”
Fifteen minutes later, they reached Deacon’s team, and Slade described what had gone down.
“Ashton thinks he’s eliminated a solo intruder. He believes two of his enforcers are on their way out to sea with me, and I’m history.” Slade rubbed his injured arm. “It’s the perfect time to extract the computer, while he feels secure. Isa says he has a security force of six men, and we know that three are now out of action. We can handle the others between us.”
“Is the security system armed?” asked Deacon.
“Not according to Isa.” Slade swallowed. “Ashton’s men are still in the process of setting it up. I don’t know about the surveillance system, but I assume you guys disabled his cameras.” He took a deep breath, impatient to extract Isa from Ashton’s questionable hospitality. “Ashton viewed Isa as an ally and romantic interest, but finding her with me has changed the rules of the game. He seems to be rowing with only one oar in the water, so there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”
“Agreed,” Deacon said, “But don’t worry about Kato. She can handle herself. While you were gone, Mason buzzed me via sat phone. Last night, he contacted one of his CIA sources, kicked ass, and learned she’s a top-level Agency operative. Her sniper skills are legendary among her inner circle of colleagues. A lethal asset.” Deacon bent to tighten a strap on his boot.
“She’s a solo black-ops agent undercover on Ashton’s case for the top brass of the CIA,” he said. “The Agency’s been on to him for a while. They weren’t sure what he’s been up to and sent Kato to infiltrate his ranks and find out. The source said he became infatuated and when he discovered her connection in Seattle to the daughter of a deceased colleague—who we assume was Chloe Harris’s father—infatuation morphed into an obsession.”
“So the CIA is leveraging Ashton’s preoccupation with Isa to bring him down,” Slade said.
“Looks like it.”
Slade’s expectation of the worst about Isa tempered his surprise. He reined in the relief surging through him. Any release of tension could reduce the adrenaline pump into his blood vessels and diminish his performance in the next few hours. He’d been careless once today already when he’d barged into the security office to challenge Isa. The sight of her at the desk had propelled him to the point where certainty replaced suspicion that she played for the opposing team and impaired his judgment. Despite taking three of Ashton’s security team out of play, he’d come close to exposing Deacon’s group and putting both their own and Isa’s missions at risk.
Now he knew they were allies, but he still had to deal with the emotional challenge. Her lack of honesty hurt, and to Slade, that amounted to an alliance rooted in lies, no better than his parents’ problematic union, and a reason not to trust her in a relationship.
“You’re right,” Deacon went on. “His team’s cut in half, and he doesn’t know it yet, so it’s time to make our move. Hopefully, we managed to disable all of his cameras. When we reach the back of the castle, Slade and I will take the left flank and enter the building from the patio through this door here.” He pointed to the castle’s floor plan—it had taken Roche less than ten minutes to download it earlier in the day from the unprotected mainframe computer of Ashton’s local building contractor.
Deacon nodded at a canvas bag containing a stash of M4 carbines, 9-mm Beretta M9 pistols, .45 automatic Colt pistols, various Glock pistols, Remington 700-based tactical rifles, and Heckler & Koch PSG1 sniper rifles.
“Roche and Fontaine, equip yourselves with sniper rifles, follow us, and wait outside. Conceal yourselves, and cover us when we enter and leave the building.”
He waved his arm to brush both men aside before they complained. “I don’t have first-hand knowledge of your front-line offensive skills, and I need you for support. No argument.”
Deacon turned toward the three remaining agents in his team and showed them the floor plan. “The rest of you, collect your weapons and approach the building from the other side, and enter through this door here. Fan out through these corridors, make your way through the building, and if you find Ashton’s men, put them out of action as you go. Rendezvous with us at his study here. No fuck-ups.”
CHAPTER 52
(Thursday Evening—Dubrovnik)
Slade and Deacon powered through the French doors from the patio into Ashton’s study and came to an abrupt halt. Ashton stood behind his desk. His left hand held Isa’s wrist twisted behind her back in a vicious hammerlock, with her forearm at the point of dislocation. His righ
t hand held a gun to the back of her head.
A wall-mounted monitor showed that the surveillance camera in the immediate periphery of the castle was operational. He had been expecting them. Luckily, Roche and Fontaine had approached from a different direction out of the camera’s range, and Ashton was not aware of their presence outside.
Ironically, five piranhas gazed at them from a massive fish tank spanning the wall behind him. Ashton looked at the intruders for a moment, appearing to organize his thoughts before he spoke.
“Don’t even think of interfering with my plans.” He pulled upwards on Isa’s wrist. causing her to cry out in pain.
“The US could control the world’s food, water, and energy supplies and avoid the coming crisis. And what have our leaders asked of the military? Kill people in the trumped-up name of democracy. I’m all for deploying our military assets, but it must be for the right reasons,” Ashton said, steel in his voice, his facial muscles rigid.
He waved his right hand and the gun in a grandiose gesture. “The government should shore up global supplies of essential resources and boost US defenses to safeguard them. Yet all the DIA wants to do is spy on the rest of the world and reduce the size of our defense forces. You of all people, Deacon, know how I’ve campaigned for a strategy shift among the agencies for years. You’re smart. You understand the environmental catastrophe that’s hurtling our way like a freight train. You’ve been to all the interagency briefings on peak oil. I’ve seen you there. You know I’m right.” He lapsed into silence again, continuing to gaze at them before resuming his rant, his words coming fast.
“The government didn’t listen, so I exercised my rights as a global citizen and created my future on this island, away from the rest of the world. I have a team to protect me and my resources. I built a desalination plant, so I’ll never run short of water, and a biomass facility to generate energy. Soon, I’ll be self-sufficient for food. I own a self-contained yacht, so I can travel anywhere to get what I need. And I hoped I’d have the long-term company of a like-minded woman.”