by Cindy Dees
The elevator to their left dinged. Shit. The door began to slide open.
Whoosh. Their own elevator door opened in front of them. Taylor stepped in before the thing was half open, shielding Amanda from the guard’s view with his body. He saw a blur of gray uniform out of the corner of his eye. Keep walking, buddy. Don’t look. The door slid closed. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. The first hurdle passed.
They rode up a few floors and got off, punching a floor button that would send the elevator to the top of the building before it returned to the lobby. They moved quickly and quietly down a stairwell to the service area in the basement.
First things first. Set up their escape. Taylor checked his watch. They had about fifteen minutes before the security guard was due to return to his office beside the elevator bank in the basement. They had to be done with their business down here and gone well before then. And the punctual bastard had gone off schedule. Who knew when he’d actually be back now?
He murmured to Amanda as he pulled on surgical gloves, “Should we bag this for tonight? The guard’s running early.”
She shrugged. “Your call.”
Damn. He knew she was going to say that. Vividly aware that he was being graded, he cursed himself for showing a moment of weakness to her. “Let’s press ahead. If we back out now, we’ll have to develop a whole new approach to getting into the building, and that’ll take more time than I’m willing to spend on this op.”
She nodded. “That’s reasonable. If the objective were more important, we’d probably wait for another day.”
He pulled out tools and a spool of wire from his coat pockets and quickly rewired the security system on the emergency exit door, The system was designed to keep people outside from getting in and not the reverse, so it was a relatively simple task to run a parallel circuit from the inside that would fool the system into thinking the door was still closed. Amanda watched impassively, only observing as they’d agreed she’d do on this mission. He finished the job and glanced up at her for approval of his work.
She nodded crisply. “If you ever get tired of being a shrink, you’d make a fine electrician.”
He grinned. Hurdle two down. Seven minutes gone. Time to get out of here.
He stepped back and took a few precious seconds to make sure his wires ran tight against the door frame. Someone would have to look very carefully to notice the tampering with the system.
Now on to the primary objective. Butterflies erupted in his stomach. He could do this. He’d been trained by the best. Man, he could use a trip to the toilet right about now. He walked quickly to the stairs with Amanda right behind. She still looked as cool as a cucumber. More sweat trickled down his back. He definitely had to work on that Zen thing she did where she set aside all her emotions.
He was huffing when they reached the sixth floor, where their target lived. And it damn certain wasn’t because he was out of shape. Nerves, dammit. He took several deep breaths, bringing his pulse back almost to its resting rate before he proceeded. Calm. Think calm. Yeah, right. More like, don’t pee in your pants. Dry. Think dry….
Blessing the silent crepe treads Amanda had put on a pair of shoes for him, Taylor made his way to the target’s apartment. He signaled her to keep a lookout while he checked out the door. She nodded and turned to face down the hall. He knelt and peered under the doorjamb. No light.
Next, he ran a sensitive electronic device similar to the one Amanda had used to sweep for bugs around the edges of the entire frame. Nothing. No electromagnetic alarm.
He then inserted a hair-thin glass fiber between the door and the frame and ran it slowly and gently all around the door. The sensitive filament encountered nothing but the regular locks and the door hinges. No pressure alarm.
Last, he inserted a fiber-optic tube into the door frame and connected it to an electronic meter. No photoelectric beams around the door. No motion detectors.
This guy was either very confident or very stupid. The most conservative scenario was the former, which led Taylor to the premise that this guy was well protected from the other side of that door, probably armed and combat trained himself at a minimum.
Taylor adjusted his thinking on taking the guy down in a fight accordingly. He’d go in with his weapon drawn and the safety off. He checked his watch. They’d been inside twenty minutes. They had to get out of the building during the next cycle of the security guard away from his desk. That left them about thirty minutes to pull off the job and get back downstairs.
Taylor bent down and went to work on the locks. The regular lock in the doorknob was a breeze, but the security dead bolt was a bitch. He nearly gave up on the damned thing at least a half-dozen times, but each time at the very last second, he’d hear another tumbler click into place. The dull, metallic noise sounded painfully loud in the silent hallway.
Finally, he was done. Seventeen minutes. Christ. He’d seen Amanda do locks like that in a minute flat. At least she’d had the good grace not to fidget while he’d wrestled with it.
Taylor yanked his mind back to business. Now was the moment for total concentration. He took a calming breath and reached for the doorknob. It turned under his hand. Hurdle three. Amanda looked up and down the hallway one more time and nodded to him.
He pulled the silenced pistol out of his pocket and pushed open the door with a shaky hand. Lord, his adrenaline was pumping hard. He felt as if he could sprint up Mount Everest with energy to spare. He willed his pulse to slow. Amanda gestured for him to lead the way.
Taylor gestured back that he’d clear the front rooms first, and then they’d head for the bedrooms. She flashed him a thumbs-up and a quick smile. The unexpected encouragement from her gave him just the morale boost he needed. Damn, she was good. She knew exactly what he needed before he did. But then, she’d done this sort of thing before.
The apartment was dark, except for a red glow to his right. A huge aquarium stood against the far wall of the living room and the color emanated from it. A dim red light bulb shone steadily in the back of the tank, no doubt from its heater. It made the tank look disturbingly like it was filled with blood.
Concentrate, dammit. The apartment building only had four floor layouts, and he identified the correct one while he gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark. Two bedrooms down the hall in front of him. The first bedroom door was open. He eased up to it and lunged inside, pistol in front of him, sweeping his gaze and his aim left and right. Empty.
Taylor approached the other bedroom door with Amanda on his heels. It was closed. Catlike, he approached it. Amanda’s hand touched his back, lightly, giving both of them a reference to the other one’s position in case a fight should break out. He’d swear he felt her fingers tremble the slightest bit. Adrenaline hitting her, too, was it? About damned time.
He eased the door open silently. Directly across from him was a large bed. It had white sheets, and the covers were in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed. The target was asleep, sprawled on his back, naked. Hairy bastard. A thick pillow propped up the target’s head, and Taylor saw the guy’s face clearly in the streetlight seeping through the curtains. There was no mistaking the dissipated, pugnacious features. The guy snored gently.
Timing his steps with the target’s noisy exhalations, Taylor glided up to the bed. With extraordinary care, he removed a six-inch-square piece of adhesive paper from his pocket. He’d prepared it earlier with a note made of letters cut from magazines. It read, “Stop dealing drugs, or next time this will be a bullet in your head.” Taylor peeled the protective coating off the back of the paper. The faint rustling of the waxed paper made him freeze. He counted to ten, but the guy’s snoring continued without interruption.
Taylor lowered the paper by infinitesimal degrees until it rested, featherlike, on the target’s hairy chest. The dry epoxy compound coating the back of the paper would hold it there securely until the target ripped it off. Painfully.
Taylor eased his hand away from the man’s
sleeping form. His gaze happened to fall on the clock on the guy’s nightstand. Six minutes until the security guard was due to make his rounds. And that assumed the guy was on time and not early again. Damn.
The snoring stopped.
Taylor froze. He stood still for what seemed like forever, but his silent count told him it was less than a minute. The target shifted slightly, then settled once more into heavy breathing. Amanda’s finger’s tugged lightly on his belt, and then he felt her ease backward. Taylor followed her, moving as slowly as he’d entered until he reached the doorway. He closed the door carefully behind him, then turned to follow Amanda stealthily through the apartment. But something caught his eye. The red light in the back of the aquarium was blinking.
Shit. A silent alarm. He knew it as surely as he was breathing. He broke for the door, snagging Amanda’s arm as he leaped past her. She picked up immediately that something was terribly wrong and sprinted for the door beside him. He paused only long enough to ease the door shut behind them and then uttered a single terse word. “Run.”
They took off down the hall toward the fire escape. It was a good hundred feet in front of them. The elevator dinged behind them, announcing its arrival. Crap. He put on an extra burst of speed he didn’t even know he had. Amanda dived for the door beside him and they slammed through it side by side. “Go ahead while I block it,” he panted. She hesitated and he bit out, “Go!”
He took out the spool of wire and stomped on one side of it hard. It squashed somewhat. He jumped on it again until it deformed into a rough wedge.
Excited male voices erupted in the hallway. Damn. They were headed this way. Fast.
Taylor jammed the makeshift doorstop in place, slamming it with his heel until it dug into the rubber floor mat in front of the door. The voices were almost opposite him now. He turned and took the first stairwell in a single leap. He fell, rolled and was on his feet again in one move. Another leap down the next stairwell and the next. He was punishing his ankles and knees, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need a firelight trapped in a stairwell with bullets ricocheting all over the damned place.
He heard scraping above him. The doorstop was giving way. Any second now he’d hear the metallic ping of lead on metal. One more flight to go. He burst through the door into the basement and skidded to a halt nose to nose with the bore of a pistol. It felt as if his heart stopped beating. He looked up. Amanda’s cold gaze met his. The pistol yanked up and away.
“Let’s go,” she bit out.
“You think?” he retorted.
He caught the fleeting grin that touched her face as they raced for the boiler room. Taylor threw his coat and hat into the trash incinerator and jumped for the exit while the fabric flared up behind him.
Amanda already had the outside exit open and waiting. He helped her finish frantically stripping the wires off the door. Since they were made, it was better to leave no evidence of any kind behind. He yanked out the last wire, and an earsplitting bell erupted over his head. Taylor jumped half out of his skin.
He sprinted after Amanda, tearing through the inky dark of the alley by feel and desperate instinct. He careened around the corner and saw her leaping into the driver’s seat of their getaway van—one of hundreds of plain white delivery vans that plied the streets of Mexico City.
While he flung himself into the passenger seat, Amanda started the engine and pulled out into the street sedately. No way would he have been able to restrain himself from flooring the damn thing.
He wiped off his makeup, and Amanda pulled off her wig. He bundled the remaining bits of their disguises and used gear into a plastic grocery bag. Amanda drove until they were well away from the area and then pulled over by a garbage can on a dark street. He tossed the grocery bag in the trash and got back in the car.
“Are we clear?” he asked as he climbed back into the van.
She answered tersely, “If we’ve got a tail, they’re better than I am.”
He grinned. “Then I highly doubt we’re being followed.”
“Where to now, James?” she asked in a cheesy British accent thicker than her usual one.
“Home,” he said fervently.
“Do you mean the monastery or Indiana?”
Amanda’s question stung Taylor like the snap of a rubber band. He glared at her. “Do you honestly think that just because we had a close call back there I’m going to quit on you?”
She glanced over at him. “That was a dicey scene. It could have gone real bad real fast.”
“But it didn’t,” he retorted. “The training and skills you taught me saved my neck. Yeah, it was close. But it was also a success.”
“Barely,” she grumbled.
He sighed. “Save the postmortem until tomorrow, will you? I’m coming off the adrenaline rush and I feel like a ton of bricks just landed on me.”
Amanda nodded sagely. “I know the feeling well.”
Taylor rested his head against the back of the seat, torn by conflicting emotions. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach like the one time he’d ever shot a deer as a kid.
Yet, at the same time, he felt exhilarated. Amanda was right. It wasn’t that hard to actually do this kind of work with the proper training and frame of mind. Maybe the two of them weren’t so very different, after all. Maybe all people had a capacity for breaking rules lurking somewhere deep inside them, waiting to come out. He couldn’t very well condemn her for doing things that he, too, had done now. The sick feeling crept back, but he forced it down. The mission, dammit, the mission.
Amanda was grateful to turn over the driving to Taylor several hours later. It seemed that she’d just laid her head back when he touched her shoulder, both waking her up and informing her she’d fallen asleep. They switched seats, and she took over for the last leg of the trip back to the monastery. The sun was high in the morning sky, and the dry mountain air was heating up fast.
Amanda glanced over at Taylor. He’d handled himself well last night, all things considered. His catch of the blinking aquarium light was inspired. Her head ached faintly to think of what a fiasco the mission could have turned into had he not seen the silent alarm.
She slowed down, peering carefully along the margins of the road for the nearly invisible dirt track that led up to the monastery. She turned onto it. The grass was faintly crushed as if someone had been up here recently. The padre must have brought the food she’d asked for. Enough for another couple weeks. The time they’d need to plan their next move.
Amanda guided the Land Rover wearily up the mountain. Now that the night’s adrenaline was thoroughly burned off, all she felt was dog tired. She stepped out into the overgrown courtyard gratefully and stretched while Taylor did the same.
Funny. Something didn’t feel right.
She froze, her senses on high alert, trying to pinpoint what was wrong.
Silence. There were no birds. At all.
And that smell. Faint decay. Almost like rotting meat. The smell didn’t belong here. Any carcasses of wild animals would be consumed by the circling flocks of vultures long before they rotted. She looked up. Speaking of which, why were so many vultures cruising overhead and none of them landing, or at least perched on the roof of the chapel waiting for the humans to get away from their kill?
She eased to her left, sidling toward their living quarters. A big, silent shape eased off to the right. Taylor. Good man. He’d picked up on her intuition or maybe had the same reaction himself. He plastered himself beside the door to their makeshift gym for a moment and then disappeared inside low and fast.
She opened the door to their living quarters. There was an almost subliminal staleness to the air, but no actual scent that she could put her finger on. She raced on quiet feet to the bedrooms. Crouching, she eased the door of her room open. Nothing. Darting across the hall, she dived and rolled into Taylor’s room. Nothing. She stood up, and one by one, cleared all the old monk’s cells. Working her way methodically around the compound, she met T
aylor at the chapel after he cleared his side of the monastery.
“What the hell’s going on?” he murmured.
“You tell me,” she murmured back.
“It’s too damned quiet. And what’s that smell? Did we leave something out in the kitchen?”
She shook her head. “I buttoned it up myself. The only meat in there is dried or canned.”
“Well, the smell’s coming from somewhere in this immediate vicinity,” he announced.
Amanda nodded in agreement. She stepped a few feet forward and stopped to sniff the still air. “I think it’s coming from over that way.” She pointed toward the well in the center of the compound. She set off through the tall grass, stopping every few seconds to track the scent. And then she saw it.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, dropping to the ground and plastering herself on her belly.
Taylor dived to the ground at her side. “Threat?” he bit out.
“There.” She pointed in front of their noses. About three feet away, a fly landed on one glassy, dead eye of the irascible orange tomcat who’d been their reluctant roommate. The creature’s back arched in an unnatural death spasm, even his tail curled over his back, scorpion-like. All the cat’s claws were fully extended. Taylor reached out.
“Don’t touch it,” she warned sharply.
He jerked his hand back.
“Look at how he’s lying,” she said.
Taylor eased himself a few inches off the ground to get a better look. He dropped back flat beside her. “Jesus,” he breathed.
“How recent?” she asked tersely.
“The cat emptied his bowels in the seizure that preceded his death, and the pile’s not dry yet. I’d say a few hours at most,” he answered. “Maybe within the hour. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Taylor asked.
Amanda replied grimly. “I am if you’re thinking nerve gas. Sarin, maybe.”
“Damn,” he grunted, “I was hoping you’d say something else.”