by Cindy Dees
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t presume to know the mind of your government.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she quipped wryly. It was a line they’d used frequently on each other as kids. Disbelief at having just said that to one of the deadliest terrorists on the planet drifted through her mind. Stay in character. You’re just here to give him a friendly warning.
A ghost of a smile passed across his face. “What did your government tell you about me?”
Perfect. Now he was the one fishing for information. She took another step forward and pulled out the chair next to his. Sat down in it. He didn’t seem to mind the proximity. The back of her neck started to itch where the first burr was taped under her hair.
“They said some wild things about you. Accused you of terrible crimes. And they questioned the living heck out of me about you. I’m afraid I let it slip that you were crazy for Star Wars and wanted to be Luke Skywalker when you grew up.”
He let out a startled snort, but the humor left his eyes almost as fast as it appeared. That laser-sharp gaze of his took aim at her once more. “What else did they say?”
She looked at him candidly. “They said you’re planning an attack on the United States. A big one.”
He leaned back in his chair abruptly, staring at her as if he were dissecting her brain. Either he hadn’t expected her to know that or to admit it if she did. “What sort of attack?” he asked smoothly.
“With bombs. Maybe even nuclear. Is it true?”
“Did they send you to ask me that?”
She smiled without humor. “No. I’m not supposed to be outside the United States right now. And I’m quite certain they don’t want me talking to you.” It was most certainly true that Brian didn’t want her here, and she let that truth infuse her words.
“Then why did you come?”
“Your mother practically raised me. You were like a brother to me. I have always thought of you as family. And I was offended at being snatched off the street and detained for questioning by my own government. I’m a legal secretary now, by the way, and what they did to me was not only illegal, but a violation of my Constitutional rights. And that makes me mad.”
Freddie was utterly still.
Brian had taught her the interrogation technique. Create an uncomfortable silence and see what the subject babbles in his or her need to fill the gap. She schooled herself to patience and let the silence stretch out. Two could play that game.
He leaned forward in sudden decision. “Why should I believe you? In all these years you’ve never contacted me. Why now?”
“I knew where to find you and Grandma Sollem after the government questioned me. They told me where you live. Showed me pictures of this compound, in fact.”
That made him twitch.
“And I hadn’t been arrested and badgered before now.”
“Why should I believe you?”
She shrugged. “I have no reason to lie. I don’t know if you’re planning an attack or not. It’s none of my business, beyond the fact that I’m an American and I sincerely hope you’re not planning anything so vicious against innocent victims. But I thought it was the least I could do to let you know that Uncle Sam’s on to your plan.”
“Did they send you here to dissuade me from following through with the attack?”
She laughed. “If they wanted to do that, a bunch of bombs dropped on top of your head would be more their style, don’t you think?”
Sardonic amusement lit his eyes.
She was tempted to say more, but Brian’s voice whispered not to oversell her case.
Sollem demanded, “What else did you learn about me?”
“That you’re brilliant—although I already knew that. You were always the smartest kid in class. I learned that you’re supposedly a fanatic. And that my government is afraid of you. They want to kill you.”
“Why haven’t they if they know where I am?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. If I were you, I’d seriously consider moving someplace else, though. Soon. And may I just say it’s not very nice of you to put your family at risk by surrounding yourself with them like this?”
He stared straight into her eyes and said baldly, “I’m not a very nice person.”
“Why do you do it, Freddie? What do you hope to gain by killing so many innocent people?”
“How many of my people has the West killed? They were innocent of anything other than being born in this part of the world. And yet they had their homes ripped away from them, their livelihoods destroyed, their children slaughtered.”
He stood up and began to pace while he delivered a diatribe about the injustices of the West against his people. It was exactly the opportunity she needed. She reached up under her hair to itch the nape of her neck. With her fingernail, she peeled back the edge of the little bandage and scratched what felt like a grain of sand off the paper hidden there. It lodged under her fingernail.
He took a lap around the room then circled around the far end of the table, heading back toward her. As he swept past, ranting about the rape of the Middle East for oil and land, she held out her hand and let his robe brush her finger. She checked carefully under her fingernail. The burr was gone.
Mission accomplished.
“She did it!” Brian pumped his fist. “Sollem’s burr just separated from her signal.”
“Take a time hack,” Vanessa ordered.
Brian glanced down at his watch. 10:17 p.m.
The entire team clustered around the computer terminal to have a look at the twin signals flashing on the screen, Sophie’s green and Sollem’s red. The red signal was moving, circling around the green one.
“Looks like she’s stationary, maybe sitting down, while Sollem paces around her,” Isabella commented.
Vanessa nodded. “She’s got him thinking, then. The intel reports on Sollem said he doesn’t hem and haw over making decisions. If he’s pacing, he’s trying to figure out what’s up with her.”
“Hang in there, baby,” Brian muttered under his breath. “All you have to do now is walk out of there.”
Sophie took a deep breath. Now for the hard part. Talking her way out of here.
Freddie turned to face her. Challenged, “What have you to say for yourself?”
“I’m not the president of the United States or Congress. I’m just one person. I didn’t come here to argue politics with you, Freddie. I just came to warn you that the Americans have found you and know what you’re up to.”
“You realize that I cannot let you go, don’t you?”
She blinked, genuinely stunned. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your government is exactly right. In a very short time, I am, indeed, going to launch an attack against your country that will make 9/11 look like child’s play. I cannot let you return to America and confirm that to your government.”
“They don’t need my confirmation, Freddie.”
“Stop calling me that!” he flared up. “That boy is dead. I am Fouad Sollem, the Sword of God!”
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to provoke him into that sectarian rant. He radiated fury now, and it was frightening.
She said reasonably, “You haven’t told me anything my government doesn’t already know. And now that you know America has located this place, you’ll move anyway. I don’t know anything that will harm you or your plans.”
“Ahh, but you have seen my face, Sophie.”
“A lot of people know what you look like.”
“Not who will share that information with your government.”
“Look, I’m mad as heck at what the U.S. government did to me, and I came half-way around the world to warn you. Why would I turn around and betray you to them?”
He shrugged. “They will find a way to make you talk. They are infidels with no morals. I cannot risk having you fall into their clutches.”
She retorted, “I’m not going to argue with you about who’s acting immorally, here. There is one thing I kno
w for sure, though. The United States has technology you haven’t even dreamed of. Keeping me here won’t protect you from them. You’re up against a formidable foe. They won’t leave quietly into the night if you go through with this attack. They’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.”
“Their record with finding sons of God at the end of the earth is far from perfect.”
She looked around scornfully. “This hole in the ground will look as luxurious as Versailles before they’re done with you. If you relish living in a cave, eating camel jerky and drinking sour goat milk, be my guest. It’s not my idea of a life.”
“And that is why you and your kind will lose. You are soft. Spoiled. Married to your material goods. Americans’ love affair with toys will be the death of them.”
“Some of those toys may be the death of you, too,” she said softly.
He whirled and said savagely, “Is that a threat?”
“No,” she replied evenly. “It’s a statement of fact. You’re one man trying to take on the greatest military and intelligence machine the world has ever seen.”
He smiled wolfishly. “And I am the virus in that machine. Tiny. Insignificant. My people creep through the forgotten corners of the machine, planting the seeds of destruction. And the machine cannot see its own weakness.”
“You and I are going to have to agree to disagree. I came here because I owed you and your family a debt of gratitude. I’ve passed along my warning, and now we are even. A taxi should be here shortly to pick me up. Have a nice life, Freddie—or Fouad, if you prefer. I wish you peace.”
“Peace?” he snorted. “I think not. The path to Heaven lies in violence.”
“Your Heaven. Not mine.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned over the table and pressed a button on the telephone sitting there. In rapid Bhoukari, he told someone to come in.
“Take her to a cell and lock her up.”
“Freddie! I can’t hurt you. Let me go!”
His eyes were stone cold as he stared down at her. “You may yet be of some use to me as a hostage, or perhaps as a spokesperson. I will not kill you just yet. I don’t know why you came here, Sophie Giovanni, but you are lying to me. Make your prayers to your god, for you will not leave here alive.”
Shocked, she stared at his back as he swept from the room. She didn’t bother to resist as the two men who’d brought her here dragged her to her feet and goose-stepped her almost to the end of the long hall. They tossed her through a doorway into a black space and slammed the door shut behind her.
The darkness was complete except for a slit of light coming under the door. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she made out a tiny box of a room. A chair sat in one corner, a bucket in another. A light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling. She made a couple of circuits of the room. If nothing else, it would tell Brian and company that she was inside a small room at this spot.
If she was lucky, she was far enough from Freddie’s signal that the air strike was being called in at this very moment. She took a glance at her watch. 10:22 p.m. It would take about twenty minutes after Freddie moved far enough away from her for the jets to launch and fly here. She sat down on the chair to wait.
But when eleven o’clock came and went, panic began to set in. The strike should have happened by now. Freddie must be too close to her. Damn. She had to get out of this room and move away from him before the Medusas had no choice but to call in the attack.
Except she had no idea where to go to get away from the terrorist. One problem at a time. Get free, then worry about where Freddie is. Brian’s voice in her head soothed her and focused her thoughts. Time to put some of that fancy training he’d poured into her to use.
Brian paced back and forth below the ridgeline, his panic running wild. “We’ve got to do something. She’s obviously imprisoned, and can’t get out of there.”
“We’ve still got a little time,” Vanessa said calmly enough. But her eyes were dark with worry, too.
“Let me go in. It’ll take me a half-hour to hump over to the compound. That’ll give me an hour to get inside and find her and a half-hour to get out.”
Vanessa replied, “Brian, she’s behind so many layers of security you’d never get to her in time, assuming you even managed to get past them all. It would be suicide for you and could trigger an order to kill her.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
Vanessa shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t allow it.”
Frantic, Brian barely managed to refrain from tearing his hair out. “But we’ve got to do something!”
Vanessa sighed. “Like what?”
“Stage an attack. Draw Sollem up to the compound’s walls,” he threw out desperately.
“It might have the exact opposite effect and cause him to hunker down even more tightly in that bunker next to her.”
“Then we wouldn’t be in any worse position than we’re in now. If those bunker busters get Freddie, they’re going to blast Sophie to smithereens, too.”
Vanessa gazed across the sea of sand at the Sollem compound. Glanced over at Jack. “What do you think?”
“We could position some people close to the compound. Then we wait till the last minute. If Sollem doesn’t move in the next hour or so, we start firing at the walls.”
“We don’t have a lot of go-boom to throw at the compound.”
Brian dived in hopefully. “It doesn’t have to be a lot of firepower. It only has to be loud. Just enough to make them think they’re under attack. Sophie’s arrival has to have put them all on edge anyway. Some American waltzing in and announcing that Uncle Sam knows where they are has got to make them nervous as hell.”
Vanessa nodded. “Isabella, you and I will pack up camp while the rest of you make your way to the compound. Once we start shooting, our cover will be blown and we’ll have to bug out. Adder and I will watch the monitors here and I’ll make the final call based on whether or not Freddie moves in the next hour.”
The group burst into motion. In a matter of minutes, the party was armed to the gills and loaded down with almost all their ammunition. Brian was so thankful to be doing something, he almost felt lightheaded.
As they prepared to head out under Jack’s command, Vanessa put a hand on Brian’s arm. “I know you’re torn up. But promise me you’ll follow Jack’s orders and not be a cowboy. We all want to get her out of there alive, and we’ll have a better chance if we work together.”
He exhaled hard. She was right, dammit. “I hear ya,” he grumbled.
She smiled. “If there’s anything humanly possible to be done to get her out, we’ll do it. She’ll be fine.”
“I sincerely hope you’re right.”
Sophie took apart the heels of both shoes and retrieved the various hidden supplies, shifting the tools into her purse where they would be readily available. She went to work on the old doorknob-and-lock assembly. She wasn’t all that great at picking locks and it took her forever to get it right. But eventually, the knob turned under her hand. She checked her watch. 12:02 p.m. One hour left before the Medusas would have to call in the airstrike. If she didn’t get away before then, she’d end up as dead as Freddie. And she’d never get to tell Brian how she felt about him. That she loved him and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Dammit, she had to get out of this bunker!
She dragged the chair into the middle of the room and stood on it. Quickly, she unscrewed the light bulb and, using her harder-than-steel ceramic knife, pried at the socket. In a moment sparks flew, stinging her cheeks. She dug some more, hooking and tearing at the wires. The strip of light seeping under the door flickered and went out. Yes.
She raced for the door and slipped out into the hall. An emergency generator could kick in any second. Frantically, she felt her way down a wall away from Freddie’s quarters, toward the door she recalled at the end of the hall.
Her hands encountered wood. She tried the knob. Locked. Voices shouted in the darkness and flash
lights sliced across the tunnel behind her. Pulling her black scarf across her face, she used her shapeless black garb to fade into the shadows.
A breath of cool air moved across her ankles from under this door. A large room then. Maybe with a hiding place or two. She’d never tried to pick a lock in the dark, but there weren’t any other options. She couldn’t very well stroll back toward the men running around at the far end of the hall. Her absence would be noted soon, and then they’d come looking for her. Panic climbed the back of her throat at the thought. She doubted Freddie would think she was worth the trouble of keeping alive if they found her.
She worked frantically, trying to picture the lock in her mind’s eye. A glance over her shoulder revealed a stream of men rushing into what must have been an armory and streaming out with weapons. They were heading for the stairs. Please, God, let them think the power failure was part of an attack from outside the compound.
Breathe, sweetheart. Be quick but don’t hurry.
Mentally, she sobbed back, I love you. She had to tell him that in person before she died! Why, oh why, had she been such a coward and never said it to him before?
After countless, endless minutes, the knob finally turned. Praise the Lord. She slipped inside the dark space. It felt big. If only she’d been able to smuggle in some sort of flashlight. She only had a half-dozen matches. She took one out, struck it on the rough strip installed on the bottom of one of her shoes and held up the light.
It was a storeroom with crates stacked all around. She moved toward a tall pile of boxes in the middle of the space. Her match guttered. She stopped moving, but it guttered again. A breeze of moving air, then.
She looked for some sort of air vent or fan, but didn’t see any in the walls or ceiling. Her fingers began to burn and she dropped the match, sticking her singed fingertips in her mouth. In the dark, she bent down and picked up the spent match. Brian had taught her under no circumstances to leave evidence of her passing.
