Krivi’s face turned to stone.
“Shut the hell up, Harold.”
Harold turned back to the screen.
“Someday, Iyer, you will learn that you don’t have to be lonely and unforgiving.”
And before Krivi could retort that he was neither alone nor unforgiving, Ziya walked in, wearing the regulation clothing that everyone else wore on base, jeans and a tank top…yet, with her bright hair and her quiet eyes and the lovely bone structure of her face, she looked…different.
She looked alive in a way the rest of them weren’t.
It disquieted and alarmed Krivi when he thought of her losing that aliveness. Of being caught by The Woodpecker, or worse.
But, the ball had already been set in motion and now all they could do was watch as it gathered momentum before striking down the pins…straight into hell.
Thirty-Eight
Harold smiled warmly as Ziya walked into the big, spacious space with no windows and fifteen computers humming efficiently on wooden desks. Each had two twenty-five inch monitors, all showing different things, like maps and endless data scrolling on the screen and what looked like bank account numbers.
She was fascinated and repelled at the same time at the massive reach and penetration that spy agencies had in the lives of the common man.
People like her, who had never crossed the law, never even jaywalked if they could help it.
And, with a few clicks of a mouse and a few lines of code written by some demented genius somewhere, all their lives, their digital footprint was laid bare for those who were clever enough to look for it. And these people were, undoubtedly, the cleverest of the lot.
But, the thing that fascinated her the most was a huge glass wall, placed in the middle of the room world map stenciled on it. It glowed when all the lights were switched on and all these little green lights that denoted ‘active’ agents in the area, on the manhunt for The Woodpecker. This piece of technology repulsed and attracted her at the same time.
She smiled back at Harold who was waiting for her to acknowledge him. “Hey, Harold, is that coffee I smell?”
She didn’t acknowledge Krivi yet because she knew he wasn’t comfortable with that kind of affection or acknowledgment. Never mind that she was sharing his living quarters with him.
And if he couldn’t stand her confession of everlasting love, he sure as hell was not going to enjoy her kissing him every time they saw each other.
It sucked but Ziya had learned to live with it…for now. Since the fate of the world rested on his shoulders.
Harold pointed at the carafe kept in the far corner on a small side table. It held coffee and cups, sugar and creamer containers and looked strangely incongruous in this room where so much machinery hummed quietly.
“Help yourself, lovey.”
Ziya smiled in gratitude and wandered to the coffee station to pour a cup of coffee she didn’t need. She was strung out on nerves and adrenalin as it was. She doctored her own coffee and then, cursing herself for a fool, she asked casually, “You want some, Krivi?”
He didn’t even shake his head as he stared intently at the computer screen. “I’ll get my own, thank you.”
She swallowed all her hurt and walked to where the two men were watching a monitor which held a map of some beach terrain. It was moving at a rapid pace and the colors and graphics were stunningly accurate.
“Baja,” Harold murmured. “The big meet should be happening anytime now.”
Ziya knew vaguely about the details of Panetta’s deal with the good guys, because Krivi hadn’t volunteered much in the way of information and she hadn’t dared ask him too many questions, given how reluctant he sometimes was.
~~~~~
“Why isn’t he lo-jacked?” she asked, as she sipped on the fragrant brew. They might have their drugs and their wars, but no one did coffee like the South Americans.
“I beg your pardon?”
Ziya pointed at the computer screen. “You are using satellite imagery to track the man’s progress, and Harold you told me there was a ground team waiting for any kind of trouble in Baja. But, all this aside, why haven’t you lo-jacked Panetta? Wouldn’t it be easier to track his movements if you, you know, could track him all the time?”
Krivi smiled faintly over his shoulder, a gleam of laughter and respect in his devil-dark eyes.
Harold shook his head.
“What?” she demanded, of the two of them. “What did I say?”
Krivi snaked a hand around her waist and pulled her down to sit next to him in a lightning-fast movement.
Ziya kept her cool with difficulty, because it was the first time he had voluntarily touched her in a purely affectionate manner. And it was pathetic, how warm she felt inside because he had.
He then did something that surprised her even more. Krivi kissed her temple and looked at Harold with something close to indulgent pride.
“Ziya knows how to connect the dots, Harold.”
Harold shook his head again and raised his mug in a toast. “That you do, love.”
“Stop patronizing me and tell me what’s going on, please.”
Krivi shook his head and removed his arm from around her waist. “I wasn’t patronizing you. I was stating a fact. And you’ve actually brought up a very pertinent piece of inquiry that we were going to address, right now.”
“What’s that?”
“Lo-jacking,” he answered. “You, specifically,” he continued.
Ziya’s eyes widened in surprise, before the notion filtered into her highly analytical mind. “You want to keep track of me because at some point, you’re going to need to.”
He nodded, although something moved in his devil-dark eyes that could have been fear and uneasiness. But Ziya knew it was just a trick of the brightly lit room.
“How?” she was intrigued now.
Krivi looked at Harold; who shrugged and opened his hands. “We have our ways, my dear.”
“But why would you tag me and not Pedro Panetta?”
“Because Pedro is not someone who is supposed to be tagged and we are not yet sure if we want you out there in the real world without whatever little protection we can give you. If we send out at all.”
“I told you, Harold,” Ziya began impatiently, placing her mug next to the wireless mouse. “I want to be there.”
“And I told you,” Krivi cut in quietly. “I am not going to lose you, Ziya. That is not up for discussion. So, if this means you get lo-jacked, hijacked or whatever other jack I can use on you, then you’ll suck it up and live with it.”
She opened her mouth and let out a puff of air.
“You should listen to him, my dear,” Harold advised kindly. “The man has a point.”
Ziya shrugged and looked intently at the computer screen, acutely aware of the big man next to her who was actually breathing a little hard.
More warmth spread inside of her at the notion of Krivi Iyer actually caring about her. Even if it was just her physical safety.
She, Ziya thought with a burst of clarity, was incredibly silly when it came to him.
Ziya asked softly, “What do you want me to do then?”
Krivi answered as solemnly, “Get a tattoo.”
~~~~~
Ziya looked doubtfully at the huge syringe-like instrument that Wanda Simpson, one of the techs was holding so competently.
Krivi stood next to Wanda, and Harold was talking with Benjamin, of his team members the one who was the absolute best when it came to planning out logistics.
The other member was Julia Milton, a female agent who spoke next to nothing and was a crack shot and MMA expert.
Lastly, there was Miles Young, a blond demi-god type, who was rumored to be very distantly related to the Royal Family. His specialty was backup in that he could kick and kill anything with startling efficiency when needed, and who had the IQ of a Mensa member too. He worked tech half the time, helping out with backup when needed.
Julia and Mile
s were in the surgical op-room where Ziya was lying sideways on a chair, much like what you found in dentist’s offices.
She wore papers scrubs instead of her tank top which had two ties for a back and felt strangely exposed in the company of these professionals.
“You guys,” she began tentatively.
“I’ll do her lower back,” Wanda said at the same time.
“I was thinking, the back of her neck, her nape.” Krivi reached out and placed one finger on her nape.
Ziya jumped because his hand was hot against the cold currents in the room. She glared at him from over her shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said absently.
Wanda shook her head. “Too obvious. If she had more hair, maybe it would make sense. But it’s the first place they would check. Besides, a lower back tattoo is more convincing than a nape one.”
“It’s a tramp stamp,” Ziya said conversationally, fully aware that her opinion did not matter here.
Krivi moved his hand down her exposed spine and Ziya fought the urge to squirm as his touch produced chills up and down her back. He paused at the very small of her back, where her spine ended and her butt began.
“It has possibilities. But the tattoo would have to be sexy. Intensely sexy,” he stressed. “Ziya would never go for something terribly ordinary or trampy over there. At the nape, maybe a spiritual symbol or something...but here.” He pressed two fingers against the very spot they were discussing.
Ziya forced herself to keep still, and breathe even. The wires that were on her chest were attached to an EKG monitor and would record the slightest change in her heartbeat and pulse rate.
Her toes twitched once before settling…while in her head, she went haywire with his touch.
“Here, it would be a statement of her sexuality. A celebration of her power as a woman. So, yeah, Wanda, you’ve got to factor that in.”
Wanda grinned and came around to Ziya’s side. She smiled kindly, her eyes were not as hard as Julia’s.
“This is a transponder-chip.” She pointed at the tiniest block of metal and plastic ensconced in the syringe like device. “I am going to shoot this into your spine, where it will lodge in place and when the GPS on the chip is activated, we will know where you are to within ten feet of your actual location.”
Ziya smiled wanly.“Not the bathroom, please.”
“Even the bathroom, Ziya,” Krivi was intentionally grave as he came over to her side of the chair. He took her hands in his and pressed once. “From now on, nowhere is safe.”
Her smile turned sad. “You don’t think I know that nowhere is safe anyway?” She turned back to Wanda, her decision made. “I’d like an Ohm. Tibetan style. Search for it, or you can find a picture in my phone. That’s what I want.”
She shot Krivi a cool, female, sexual smile. “Ohm means calmness and strength and serenity. Nothing more sexual than that. At least, for me.”
Krivi nodded, smiling faintly, acknowledging the gibe and murmured, without taking his dark eyes off her incredible face, “What she wants, Wanda.”
Miles coughed something that sounded suspiciously like ‘whipped’ but Ziya couldn’t care less. The heat and desire she found in her lover’s eyes was enough to melt the rest of her reservations away.
~~~~~
Later that night, he kissed the small but tasteful Tibetan Ohm on her back, which hid the transponder chip that had made her a green dot on the glass-screen at Mission Control.
And he said, “Sexy.”
Ziya hissed and arched her back into him. He kissed her on her shoulder, and drew her tee shirt off.
“Female.”
She turned into his embrace, and he linked his arms right where the tattoo was, the ink drawing warmth from her flesh, returning it and making her so much more desirable, that much more desirable than she already was. Until he couldn’t think straight anymore.
Couldn’t think at all.
“Powerful,” he murmured, before he kissed her and took her to a place where she was as mindless as him.
Thirty-Nine
Baja Peninsula,
Bahia
Four Days after Christmas
Wood looked distantly at the printout on the table and thought about the vagaries of fate and how twisted the bitch was. .
Today had started off as any other day.
Wood had gotten up at the crack of dawn - no need for alarms. When your childhood had been as deprived as Wood’s had been, you learnt to get up with the rooster and scrounge for the best portion of food you could find.
Wood had woken up, revved and charged because after so many months of fruitless, mind-numbing waiting, they were days closer to getting the one thing Wood had always wanted.
A MOAB: a manhandled mother of a bomb for The Woodpecker who only detonated IEDs.
The hydrogen hybrid had been developed all over the world, covertly because, of course, the manufacturing of bombs, even with defense contractors, was frowned upon.
So the ammonium nitrate and aluminum polystyrene combination - that acted as both agent and oxidizer when coming in contact with the atmosphere - was replaced with pure hydrogen. A concentrated mass of liquid hydrogen mixed with plutonium would give a blast yield of about three tons.
It was not much when you looked at the history of MOABs. But when you considered that the whole thing could fit into a mid-sized suitcase, placed on any flat surface in the world, and remote-detonated with an initiator system that had Wood salivating at the thought of handling it; was a pretty fucking big deal.
The suitcase was a special ordered polythene coated with titanium and would hold up under several metal scanners.
The system was self-propelling so all one really needed was a password to activate the bomb and the baby would explode on time, reducing most of a city into pure rubble in a mushroom pattern that would hang in the air like smog, like hellsmoke.
Like death.
A genius bomb meant for a genius bomber.
Detonating it was Wood’s dream, crowning glory and fucking Swan Song.
And there had not been a day in the last one year, when Wood had not thought of what would happen when this special beauty would make its debut at this year’s Narco-Terrorist’s Convention, as Wood fondly called the members of their little organization. When they would start a bidding war as to who would become master and owner of this little beauty and therefore master and owner of the free world as they knew it.
Because, of course, the threat of having a bomb of this magnificence and magnitude would not be lost on the free world.
They would panic, hunt out the bad guys and yet…
Yet…
One press of a button and the world would go KABOOM.
The sight alone would be worth the price of a ticket.
And Wood was going to steal the MOAB… it was Wood’s.
Wood had known it the first time Tom had spoken of it in passing almost a year ago to Raoul, who had stupidly blabbed about it to his stripper whore… and then had spilled his guts, among other bodily fluids, to Wood.
Wood had known then, right then, that this was the one thing that would leave a mark, a city-sized mark on the world.
And Wood wanted, as never before.
Wood behaved as never before, not even bothering to kill that stupid pizza boy back in May. Even shooting the pizza boy’s nose off had been less fun, fucking Helena had been less fun than thinking about the various places the little beauty could be used.
Chesapeake, Maryland.
New Delhi, India, because Wood didn’t like the name. New Delhi why? What happened to old Delhi?
Tokyo, Japan.
Or anywhere at all…any fucking where at all in the world.
It was all Wood could think of…till the unthinkable happened.
~~~~~~
The printer spewed more data on reams of paper. This time to Wood’s personal Alienware laptop that had been built to very particular specifications. Wood was a gaming aficionado and enjoyed
Halo 4 as much as building an IED from spare parts found in a suburban garage.
A kid, who grew up around the world without any real friends, quickly learnt that inanimate objects were his best friends.
But that was the thing, the glitch in the wheel, the freaking fly in the ointment that so stunned Wood. As the printout was read by Wood with increasing amazement and then mounting anger.
Wood threw the printer and the beloved computer on the floor with such force that Alienware was no more, and a cool thirty thousand dollars’ worth of valuable technology lay in parts on the floor.
Wood had a sister.
That was the gist of the damn email.
An encrypted email that was supposed to go only to Tom’s email account. But, since the Krivi Iyer incident, Wood had hacked and rerouted the emails to a dummy inbox that could be accessed by both Tom and Wood.
This way, Wood had reasoned; if there were any snafus, they would be taken care of at the very beginning before drastic action was required.
And, now, that account had come through.
Through channels that were considered back-door tombs in counter-intelligence jargon, a report had surfaced. A face and features report and a sibling match with the terrorist known as The Woodpecker, mother Tess Maarten. Wood’s mother’s name was Therese. Therese, Tess.
Coincidence.
Maybe.
But Wood had seen a picture of the woman. Ziya.
Ziya Maarten, born 17th July, 1984. Twenty nine years of age, and almost certainly, Wood’s sister. An orphan, just like Wood, and family.
Family.
And Tom would have kept this also from Wood, if he had come to know about it first.
Family.
Wood kicked at the printer cover so it flew into the corner of the wall and thudded there with a dull thump.
Sister.
There was someone else out there like Wood. Alone and lonely and wanting someone to take care of.
Wood was filled with a sense of so much love, it swamped, simply swamped the heart.
But right on the heels of the love; came the thought that there was a family. There was a sister and that the whole world knew about this woman.
Warrior Knight Page 25
