Desperate Ground

by L J Morris

  The whole restaurant fell silent when Bazarov banged his fist on the table. He looked up at the other diners, threw his napkin on his empty plate, stood up and stormed off. Sinclair was left on her own, the whole room looking at her. She put her hand over her mouth as she too stood up and hurried away from the stares, trying to hide her embarrassment. Garrison gulped down his glass of wine and followed her out.

  Sinclair stood outside the main entrance taking deep breaths and wiping her eyes. Garrison opened the door and approached her. ‘Are you okay?’

  This was another decision point for Sinclair. She could tip off Garrison, fill him in on the plan – tell him to run, but she couldn’t help thinking about Frank, Jo and the kids. She could always tell Bazarov that Garrison wasn’t interested in her and she couldn’t get him up to the room, but he wouldn’t believe that. Even if he did, he would get the admiral another way and she would’ve blown any chance of the others getting away. If she could buy time, Frank might escape and get in touch with Carter. She had to go through with this for now. She smiled at Garrison. ‘I’m fine thanks, just needed a little air.’

  ‘I couldn’t help seeing what happened, an argument with your husband?’ Garrison was fishing for information.

  ‘Oh, he’s not my husband, he’s my boss.’ She began to reel him in.

  ‘Walking out on a beautiful woman like you, he must be an asshole.’

  Sinclair laughed. ‘He’s a married asshole.’

  ‘Right, I get it. He’s not willing to leave his wife?’

  ‘Something like that. How stupid am I?’

  ‘He’s the stupid one. I’ll bet his wife doesn’t look as good as you.’

  Sinclair looked at her reflection in the window. ‘I’m nothing special.’

  ‘You’re the best-looking thing in here tonight.’ He gave her a wink.

  ‘You certainly know how to flatter a girl.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Alison.’

  Garrison took her hand and lifted it to his lips. ‘I’m James Garrison. Admiral James D. Garrison. Retired.’

  Sinclair did her best to look impressed. ‘An admiral, wow. I must admit,’ she looked around as if she was divulging a great secret, ‘I do like men in uniform.’

  Garrison could sense an opportunity here. ‘Would you like to have a drink, Alison, in the bar? You can tell me all about your problems. I’m a good listener.’

  She didn’t want to appear too keen. It might warn him that something wasn’t quite right. ‘Thank you, but I think I’d better just go up to my room. Anyway, he’ll be in the bar drinking himself into a coma.’

  ‘Well why don’t you show the loser you’re fine without him?’

  ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea, what if he causes a scene or gets violent?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’m well known here. He’ll be thrown out before I am and, if he gets violent, I can take care of myself.’

  She had him. He was doing everything he could think of to get her inside with him. All she had to do now was get him up to her room. ‘Okay, Admiral. Why not? Let’s show him.’

  Garrison’s charm had paid off. All he needed to do now was seal the deal over a drink. ‘Please, call me James.’ He opened the hotel door and offered his arm.

  Sinclair slid her arm into the crook of his elbow and they walked into the bar.

  Bazarov was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar looking, to everyone else, like a rejected lover. He stared at his vodka as he toyed with the glass, seemingly lost in his thoughts. It was all an act. He was alert to his surroundings, watching the reflections in the mirror that hung behind the bar. He emptied his glass and slid it across to the barman for a refill as Garrison and Sinclair came in, arm in arm.

  The couple made for a table as far away from Bazarov as they could get. Garrison pulled out a seat and Sinclair nodded to him as she sat down. ‘Thank you, James.’

  Garrison clicked his fingers towards a waitress. ‘A bottle of your best champagne.’

  The waitress wrote down the order on her pad. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And a large bourbon, on the rocks.’

  ‘Yes, sir, coming right up.’ She hurried away towards the bar.

  Garrison sat down and leaned forwards, towards Sinclair. ‘Now, Alison. Tell me how a beautiful woman like you got tied up with a guy like that.’

  Sinclair took him through the back story that she and Bazarov had cooked up on the way to the resort. She was a young nurse who’d come to America looking for a new start. Bazarov played the consultant living in a loveless marriage, although she now knew that was a lie. Garrison listened just enough to look like he cared, throwing Sinclair compliments occasionally, before steering the conversation back to his favourite subject. Himself.

  The waitress appeared with more drinks and Garrison downed yet another glass. If he drank any more Sinclair would have to carry him upstairs. It would save them having to drug him but wouldn’t fit with the plan. She finished her wine, put her hand on Garrison’s forearm, and winked at him. ‘I think it’s time I was in bed.’ She nodded to Bazarov and headed for the lift.

  Garrison couldn’t believe his luck. He threw his last bourbon down his throat and got quickly to his feet, almost overbalancing. He steadied himself and set off in pursuit of Sinclair, focusing on the sway of her hips as he followed her to the lift.

  The lift doors opened with a swish and they both got in, Garrison making sure he held on to the handrail to stop himself falling over. He’d drunk a little too much but he could hold his liquor. As long as he stayed upright she’d never notice. He didn’t want to ruin his chances by looking like a drunken idiot.

  Sinclair watched him holding on, he could barely stand up. At this rate she was going to have to hold him up just to get him to the room. The man was nothing more than a drunken waster, convinced he had a way with women. She didn’t want to imagine what he’d done to some of the women he’d tricked or forced into his bed. Drugging and kidnapping this guy didn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.

  The lift doors opened on the third floor and Sinclair took Garrison’s arm, guiding him down the corridor towards her room. He, of course, was convinced it was the other way round – he was a strong man with a beautiful woman on his arm; she was powerless to resist his advances, putty in his hands.

  They arrived at her room and Sinclair opened the door. Garrison grabbed her from behind, manhandling her into the room. He kicked the door shut and forced her up against the wall, his hands all over her. She pushed him off and gave his face a hard slap. She really wanted to punch him, but a swollen eye wouldn’t suit the story. Garrison took two steps backwards, trying to hold his balance. ‘So, you like it a little rough, do you? Well, that’s fine by me.’ He unfastened his belt and dropped his trousers to his ankles, just as Sinclair reached out and injected the drugs into his flabby neck.

  Garrison put a hand up to his neck. ‘What the fuck?’ His voice was slurred, a combination of too much bourbon and the fast-acting tranquiliser that was rushing through his bloodstream. His ears began to buzz and the room was spinning. He blinked to clear his blurred vision. He stepped towards Sinclair and tried to grab her but, with his trousers around his ankles, he could only waddle across the room like a toddler taking its first steps. He lost his balance, fell forwards, and landed, unconscious, only half on the bed.

  Sinclair lifted Garrison’s legs and heaved them onto the bed. Working quickly, she removed the rest of his clothes and laid him on his back. The room had to be staged for the plan to work smoothly. She took off her dress and put on a bathrobe, messed up her hair and smeared her lipstick. It needed to look like Garrison had had a kind of seizure, or heart attack, while they were in bed together. Something that would cause a scandal for the hotel, something they would want hushed up. She picked up the phone and dialled zero.

  The receptionist rushed into the bar and straight over to Bazarov. ‘Doctor, there’s a telephone call for you, it sounds urgent.’

 
; Bazarov followed her to reception and took the call. ‘Hello, this is Doctor Belov.’

  ‘It’s done. Now it’s your turn. Sell the story and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Don’t panic. Monitor his vitals and I’ll be right there.’ He put down the phone and turned to the receptionist. ‘I need your help, Christine. It seems that Admiral Garrison may have had a heart attack upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll call 911 straight away.’

  Bazarov held up his hand. ‘No. Listen, you don’t really want people knowing about this, do you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t want flashing blue lights outside while the other guests watch Garrison being loaded into the ambulance.’

  Christine thought about it for a second. The important guests who came here did so for privacy, any emergency call would make it into the papers and shine a spotlight on them. ‘No, I’m sure the hotel management would prefer some discretion.’

  ‘I’m sure they would. There’s also the matter of a man with Garrison’s reputation being found in a room with a young woman he may have forced himself upon.’

  Christine didn’t like the sound of this. ‘But they were in the bar together.’

  ‘They were, but they left separately.’

  ‘Oh my god, what do I do?’

  ‘You don’t panic, Christine. My clinic has a helicopter. I’ll phone them and get it out here. We just have to get Garrison over to your helipad, it’s far enough from the hotel that no one will notice, they’ll just think it’s another guest arriving. He’ll be getting treatment at my cardiology clinic in no time.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea, Doctor, thank you.’

  ‘That’s quite alright, Christine. Now, do you have wheelchairs for the use of guests?’

  ‘Yes, we do, Doctor.’

  ‘That’s good. Go and get one and meet me up in the room.’

  ‘Okay, yes, right, I’ll do that.’ She disappeared through a door behind reception.

  Bazarov walked over to the lift and pressed the call button. When he reached the room, he knocked on the door and Sinclair let him in. ‘Are they going for it?’

  ‘So far. The girl in reception is panicking just enough, but not so much that she has called her bosses, yet.’

  ‘We’d better get this over with quickly.’

  Bazarov took his mobile phone out of his pocket and pressed the speed dial number. ‘Get here now. The helipad is behind the hotel. We’ll be there.’ He closed down the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

  There was a knock at the door. Bazarov answered it and Christine came in pushing a wheelchair. ‘Will this be okay?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Christine.’

  The receptionist looked over at Garrison, lying naked on the bed, and over to Sinclair. She didn’t look like she’d been forced into anything. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine.’ She waved her hand towards Garrison. ‘Let’s just get this guy to a hospital as quick as we can.’

  Bazarov was checking Garrison’s pulse. ‘Alison, you get dressed. I’ll need you in the helicopter with me.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’ She grabbed some clothes and went into the bathroom.

  ‘Christine, you give me a hand. We’ll get him dressed and into the chair.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the three of them were coming out of the freight elevator and out of the back entrance of the hotel, pushing the unconscious Garrison in the wheelchair. Bazarov stopped and put his hand on Christine’s arm. ‘Thank you for your help, Christine. You get back to reception. We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Maybe I should let my boss know what’s happening, just in case.’

  ‘I would wait until morning. We’ll call and let you know how Garrison is doing later on; then you can give them a full update.’ Bazarov set off towards the helipad with Sinclair pushing the wheelchair.

  The helicopter was coming in to land. The young receptionist watched as they loaded Garrison on board and took off again. She thought it was strange that an air ambulance would say QRL Global on the side. Maybe she should call her boss right away.

  Chapter 20

  Kurt Halloran stubbed out his cigarette and walked into the Lone Star Golf Resort. In the room behind reception, two other agents were trawling through hours of camera footage looking for Sinclair and Bazarov. Halloran stuck his head into the room. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing that tells us much, they only have cameras in the public areas.’ The agent pointed at the image on the screen. ‘This is definitely Sinclair but we’re not sure who the guy is yet.’

  ‘Stay on it, take a copy of everything.’

  Christine sat in the manager’s office next door, alone. Halloran had isolated her in there with a pad and pencil to write down everything she could remember about the previous night’s events. As he entered the room she looked up, frightened, a rabbit caught in the headlights. He tried to reassure her to help her relax. ‘It’s okay, Christine, you’re not in trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t know they weren’t who they said they were.’

  Halloran sat opposite her and turned the pad round so he could read it. ‘Is this everything you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I didn’t really see much of them. They came down for a meal and appeared to fall out, then Garrison appeared and he and the woman sat in the bar for a few hours until ... well, you know the rest.’ She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. ‘I should’ve noticed something.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Christine. It looks like we’re dealing with professionals here. They knew exactly what they were doing, don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Do you know who they are? What they want?’

  ‘We have an idea.’ He ripped the page off the pad and stood up. ‘Thanks for this, it’ll really help.’ He smiled at her. ‘You did as much as you could. If you hadn’t gone along with them they would have killed you.’

  Halloran stood beside his car and lit another cigarette. He pressed the call button on his phone and rang his boss. ‘It’s definitely her, we need to know who the guy is ... They took off in a QRL chopper, so Quinn is caught up in this somehow ... Right, I’ll hang on here and see if anything else comes to light.’ He took another lungful of smoke from his cigarette, immediately coughing it out again in several rasping, hacking coughs. He really needed to stop, but now was definitely not the time.

  Special Agent in Charge Thomas Johnson put down his phone and summoned Robert Tyler to his office. The analyst knocked on Johnson’s door and opened it. ‘You want me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Robert. Close the door and take a seat.’

  Tyler did as he was asked. ‘Is this about the Quinn ranch?’

  ‘It’s all tied up together. Kurt is sending some pictures from the hotel. I want you to identify the guy with Sinclair. First the ranch and now a kidnapping, he must be on our database somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll get the facial recognition software on it. It shouldn’t take long if he’s known to us.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as you have his name. I’m going to speak to an old friend at the CIA, maybe he can find something out. Some of this has deniable op written all over it. There’s no way the British would lose track of an asset like Sinclair, even in prison.’

  ‘You think she’s gone rogue and they know?’

  ‘Maybe she’s still working for them. Escaped convict would make one hell of a cover story.’

  * * *

  Danny Kinsella clicked on the folder icon on his screen and checked the log of his network search. His applications were systematically trawling through the networks of US law enforcement organisations and news agencies for a mention of Lone Star. Among the spurious hits that came to nothing, a story jumped out at him. An emergency call had been made from the Lone Star Golf Resort to local police, reporting the possible kidnapping of a guest. It was the name that attracted his attention. He grabbed the survivors list he had printed out for the Apocalypse Protocol. There, halfway down, was former
member of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral James D. Garrison.

  Kinsella went into his spare bedroom and switched on the bedside lamp. Carter was lying on the bed fully clothed. Kinsella had convinced him to lie down and get some sleep a couple of hours earlier. The long nights scanning the net for information and the constant worry about McGill and Sinclair had taken their toll. Carter was looking old. Kinsella bent down and shook him gently. ‘Simeon. Simeon, you need to see this.’

  Carter opened his eyes and blinked at the light. ‘What is it, Danny?’

  Kinsella handed him the printout of the kidnapping report. ‘Things just got a whole lot worse.’

  Carter put on his glasses and read the report. He recognised the names. They’d been trying to find out what Lone Star referred to since Sinclair had found the documents at the ranch. Garrison was on the Joint Chiefs when the Kraken and the Apocalypse Protocol were being developed. In those days he was on the survivors list, one of the men with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

  Kinsella handed him the list. ‘I’ve now got the full list. Garrison is halfway down. Look at the name at the bottom.’

  Carter checked the list. At the bottom was Josephine Quinn. ‘Jesus, what is she doing on it?’

  ‘Like I said before, this was put together to test the control systems for the Kraken. It isn’t the actual list. Quinn was a young engineer at the time. She helped develop it.’

  ‘So Bazarov now has Quinn and Garrison and he could launch a nuclear attack?’

  Kinsella nodded. ‘All he has to do is get them both in front of a control terminal and he can use their bio data to take over the system.’

  ‘I have to tell Edward. He has to get the Americans to lock them out.’

  ‘It can’t be done, Simeon. The Apocalypse Protocol is a backdoor. It was designed specifically to ensure that control of the missiles didn’t fall into enemy hands after an invasion. It can’t be locked out.’