Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  She was a target.

  Dangerous.

  And she could lead anyone to The Woodpecker, just because she possessed the same eye color and height and was a sibling match..

  Ninety percent probability.

  Such a huge number…Too huge a number.

  A threatening number for a threatening woman. Ziya Maarten.

  Wood kicked morosely at the broken screen of the laptop. It stared forlornly back.

  “Yeah,” Wood said. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  Wood sighed, and thought about the hissy fit Tom was going to pitch when he found that Wood was without a laptop all of a sudden. And even more, when he found that Wood was going to steal the hydrogen bomb right out of the auction in a few short days.

  Wood knew, for sure, that Tom would most certainly not approve of what Wood was going to do to Ziya Maarten.

  Wood’s sister.

  Wood was going to kill her.

  Because, if Wood didn’t, someone else would in order to find Wood and they might succeed and that was a chance Wood was unwilling to take. Absolutely unwilling to take; no matter how much it hurt to contemplate killing family.

  “Sorry, Ziya,” Wood said out loud, the sanity of the truly insane ringing in the walls around the room of the resort.

  “You’re going to have to go if I have to live.”

  And that, as far as Wood was concerned, was pretty much that.

  One had to die, in order for the other to not.

  And better Ziya Maarten than Wood.

  ~~~~~

  “Focus on your breathing, Zee,” Miles instructed her as she sighted the .22 Walther PPK in a two-handed grip, her eyes protected by clear glass goggles with padded head phones that were supposed to keep the bullet sounds from echoing in her head.

  Ziya’s breath hitched as Miles unknowingly raked open a scar that still bled. Every single day.

  Noor was the only who had ever called her Zee.

  Her name was short enough as it was, but Noor, with her love and her madness and her open-armed affection had made Ziya feel like a sister by calling her Zee and pestering her and loving her until she…

  “She’s called Ziya, Miles,” Krivi said mildly, as he came into the gun range.

  They were not outside in the open, on the shooting range, where Julia spent hours pounding on paper targets with perfect eight-shaped holes up and down their paper bodies: the head, the heart, the crotch, the knees, one and two, and then back up on the crotch and then center of the right pectoral exactly where the heart was located on a man on the other side and then all the way back up for something Miles called a ‘double tap’.

  The only way to make sure that a man stayed dead was to double tap him.

  Triple taps, one to the chest and two to the head: that meant vendetta. That was personal. That was what the mafiosos employed for taking out their enemies and nothing any civilized soldier would do.

  Ziya sighted the gun again.

  She squinted one eye, eased her finger on the trigger, perfected her stance, allowing for some give, and looked at the paper target hanging at the very end.

  She imagined The Woodpecker’s head and heart there. Hanging right in front of her, there for her to shoot through like so much rubble.

  Her fingers trembled as her breathing jerked unevenly.

  A warm, reassuring hand came to cover hers. A solid presence stood at her back, breathing evenly, breathing all right.

  ~~~~~

  Krivi.

  He covered both her arms under his, so she was swallowed by him, enveloped in his warmth and scent and comforting animal heat.

  His chest was so there against her back, so perfectly sheltering her that Ziya felt strength return to her limbs at his mere presence. His legs against hers grounded her, put starch in her knees so she stood infinitesimally straighter.

  She was both ashamed and grateful that he was here, helping her in that way he had. Silent and present.

  Always.

  He murmured close to her ear, “Breathe in. Just breathe in. And imagine that bastard’s brains on the floor.”

  Ziya gripped the gun harder, leaving her elbows looser as instructed by Miles, her firepower teacher. And she squinted at the target, breathing in.

  “Now let it go and just…squeeze.”

  He stepped back just as she breathed out, a light shallow breath and then squeezed on the trigger.

  Once.

  Twice. And then again. And again. Emptying the clip into the target.

  Her hands shook when she lowered the weapon down and she looked at Krivi, who was calmly standing, hands in the pockets of his jeans, while Miles grinned.

  “Bingo,” he announced as he walked forward and pressed the lever that would bring the target closer to them, so they could look at how Ziya had done.

  Ziya kept the gun down, removed the protective gloves Miles had given her and looked at her shaking fingers.

  She’d held a gun, handled a gun. Had touched a killing instrument and done so while imagining a faceless murderer standing in front of her. As she poured metal and gunpowder into his heart and brain, watching the blood and life leach out of him. Like Noor’s and Sam’s…

  Her vision swam and Krivi steadied her in a lightning-quick movement.

  She clutched at his bicep and took a steadying breath.

  “It’s okay,” he said, removing the ear muff and smoothing back her hair, his rough fingers lingering at the copper-toned ends. There was empathy and a strange kind of expression on his inexpressive face.

  With a punchy kind of shock Ziya realized it was gentleness.

  Tenderness.

  “You don’t have to do this right now, Ziya.”

  She deliberately made her legs move away from his, her fingers uncurled from his shoulder and took a single step back. She held her hand out for the head phones, the warrior light of blood lust and the single-minded determination to see it through, glinting in her eyes.

  Miles said, “Dude. You nailed it. All eight rounds went it. Two through the heart. That’s at least a hundred points in darts, isn’t it?”

  Krivi smiled, acknowledging her skill and its result.

  Ziya only said, “I want my head phones back. I want to get it right every single time.”

  Krivi stared at her for an unfathomable moment more and then handed the head phones back to her.

  And then he went back to his position on the wall, while Ziya loaded up on a fresh clip, lifted her hands as she had been taught, sighted the target, breathed deep and shot off the next round.

  And the next round.

  And the next round.

  And the next round.

  Forty

  For the last few days, Ziya’s days and nights had taken on the rigidity of a prison schedule. Even Christmas had passed by in an exhausted, colorless blur.

  Wake up at daybreak, shower, breakfast on egg whites and granola bars, no coffee only plain full-cream milk, because they wanted her bulked up a little for her physical training.

  Then, it was a two mile run inside the compound. At first, the running made her heart burn and her lungs wheeze inside her chest. But now, she could pull it off in eight minutes flat, because she had found her rhythm.

  And, every day, Krivi ran with her, keeping pace, keeping true; his form elegant, his body soldier-hard. Every day she fell a little bit more as he showed her how much he cared in actions and not words.

  A quick shower after the run and back for some stretching exercises and yoga, limbering the body up for what was to come.

  A quick stop at the gun range, (she was getting proficient with the 22mm Walther PPK) and Miles evaluated her performance every day. He was even talking about teaching her how to assemble and dismantle a gun in under a minute.

  Krivi had nixed that suggestion right out of the water.

  After lunch, it was Counter Terrorism 101, where they taught her the basic things she needed to always know. For everything that ranged from information re
trieval to her very survival.

  Harold and Wanda taught her new techniques to immediately snapshot a room on entering, cataloging the entries and exits, if nothing else.

  They talked to her about the underground network of thieves and informants that made counter espionage possible, because everything in the free world hinged on the right kind of information. Having it, using it, and remembering to use it when it needed to be used.

  They taught her special numbers and codes she needed to memorize, so she could recite it in her sleep.

  Numbers that would put her in touch with the Indian Embassy, the British Embassy, Harold’s office in London and other places they wouldn’t tell her about, but were friendlies.

  Evenings were for physical combat training.

  Kick-boxing was the best form of self-defense for someone her size, so Krivi had taken it upon himself to make her hardier if not exactly invulnerable.

  So she threw punches, blocked them, kicked high and fast, for two hours till every muscle in her poor, abused body was weeping with exhaustion and pain.

  A relaxing shower, thirty minute massages with Gerhardt, the Swedish masseur and then it was dinner time with the rest of the boys.

  Krivi always showed up for dinner time, sitting next to her, and eating his meal as silently as the rest of them talked it up.

  Then, she went to bed reading about The Woodpecker.

  An egomaniac. A sociopath. A psychopath. A terrorist. A paranoid loner. Faceless. Any man. She read on his litany of crimes and it chilled her to the bone. The bomb that had killed Noor and Sam had been, literally, child’s play to someone with The Woodpecker’s capabilities. If he had wanted, he could have taken out the entire street and the entire neighborhood, with the blast yield.

  But no, he had focused only on Krivi’s car.

  His reach was enormous and extensive too, to have hacked into confidential, buried files and retrieve this kind of information.

  It filled Ziya with terrible fear that she was going up against someone who was so much more equipped to end her than she was him.

  But, it didn’t stop her.

  It couldn’t.

  She only had to think of Noor and Sam to know that this man, this monster was capable of great acts of cruelty and annihilation but life always triumphed against death, and it would this time too.

  Or she would die trying.

  They never made love anymore, because, for one, there was no time to schedule love-making in the rigid prison schedule she was under, for another, her body was not in the best possible shape to get intimate and sexy and lastly…

  Krivi didn’t come to her anymore.

  ~~~~~

  He was solicitous, he was concerned, he was even gentle on occasion but she had stopped seeing desire in his beautiful, wounded eyes.

  Maybe, it had ended the day she had told him she was in love with him.

  Maybe, he really was the kind of man who couldn’t live with someone real and alive loving him. Maybe all he had in him was the kind of casual, no-strings attached affair they’d both always indulged in before meeting each other.

  But with him, for him, she wanted so much more.

  She wanted happiness and warmth and time, just time to enjoy this wonderful gift of love she had found. In the most horrible place and time in her life…but that was life.

  The great balancer.

  She wanted to give him a measure of the feeling he had awakened in her, but all he did was help her perfect her kicking positions for maximum impact and ran next to her, his lithe body drool-worthy enough for even Julia to look at it impassively.

  Ziya didn’t know how to reach him, how to talk to him, because she didn’t want to hear him tell her he didn’t love her, once more.

  There were some things even she couldn’t hear and survive.

  ~~~~~~

  On New Year’s Eve, Harold Wozniacki drove into the city for a meeting with his informant.

  Harold had been trying to get an in with the organization that was suspected to finance most of The Woodpecker’s escapades, rumored to be based out of Atlanta, USA: a parkland consortium heavily into saving the environment.

  That lead turned out to be so much smoke up his arse, but the consortium yielded a couple of names on their roster that seemed worth following up on.

  One of these names was Harold’s informant.

  Harold had tracked the man down to a small hotel lodge in Winnipeg last summer, where he had been catching trout and had converted him in three days straight.

  The man broke down, confessing to being a mid-level management guy for people who did shady things for the sake of saving the world. Except, they really weren’t, and by the time he knew they weren’t, he was in too deep and he wanted out.

  Harold was the way out.

  Complete immunity and a new life for only him, since he didn’t have any family or, shudder, children. The informant had been willing to start supplying all sorts of information about the organization’s activities.

  Names, dates, a hierarchy list and most important, a sub-contractor list with the names of active agents.

  An alias of The Woodpecker had come up there.

  Again and again, enough for Harold to be convinced that it was really The Woodpecker.

  Enough, for Harold to bring in Krivi and start the hunt for the terrorist again.

  The first six months had been a drag and yielded nothing, but the fates had been unusually kind and given them a second chance. And they were closer than ever to catching the monster for hire.

  Harold couldn’t stand the idea that someone like that was not accountable for his sins. He just couldn’t.

  What they needed was someone, one person to identify the bastard and take him down.

  Harold was convinced that, with his informant, finally, they had found the man.

  All they needed was a time and a way for the informant, the good guys, and The Woodpecker to be all at one place.

  It was Harold’s most cherished dream, to be there at the moment when someone shot that bastard right between the eyes. Watched the life drain out of him in a slow and steady stream.

  No one, not one of his superiors, knew of Harold’s informant because the man was super-paranoid. And, for now, it served Harold’s best interests to keep him that way. Paranoia meant heightened caution and less chance of getting caught, and that was paramount. In their business, the crazier you were, the more chances you had of making it to retirement age.

  Harold walked into one of London’s classier hotels, the Washington Mayfair’s bar and located the informant.

  He made his way casually to the busy bar and ordered a margarita. Then he made eye contact with the informant and nodded to one of the back booths.

  The informant took his drink and looking neither left nor right, hustled it to the booth.

  Harold waited for his drink to arrive, took a couple of sips to savor it and to make sure the area was clean and then strolled to behind the palm fronds where the booth was.

  It was a security hassle, but there was a glass wall for Harold to keep watch, if he felt the need. And he always felt the need.

  Harold sat down on the wicker chair and regarded his informant over the rim of his margarita glass. The man had such incredibly cool eyes; it was difficult to imagine him being scared of anything.

  Yet, Harold knew he was. He was scared and therefore had been easy to turn.

  Fear, as he had taught, was the best motivator to get people to become assets. And to stay that way.

  He took another sip of his delicious drink. The informant didn’t follow.

  “Hello, Tom,” Harold said, pleasantly. “I hope you have some wonderful news for me.”

  “I do,” Tom Jones said, honestly, nervously. “I think there’s a way you can ID…him. Where I can help you ID him.”

  Harold sat straighter and almost sloshed his drink against his grey suit jacket.

  “Talk to me,” he ordered.

  Tom reached f
or his rum and coke, and took a sip to wet his throat. Collect his thoughts.

  Then he started talking.

  Forty-One

  The plan was simple, two-headed. With every angle figured out, every I dotted and every T crossed.

  The plan was this: Arouse The Woodpecker’s curiosity by dangling Ziya Maarten as probable sister as bait.

  And, at the same time, armed with the fresh information that Harold had come through via his informant, start preparing a task force with armed assault capabilities at a private hangar in Lhasa, Tibet, where a supposed high-level meeting of narco-terrorism bigwigs was supposed to take place.

  Most counterintel agents were aware of this meeting for a long time now, and mostly, turned a blind eye to such summit meetings, because there was no point in busting bad guys for congregating over khaosuey and martinis.

  But, Harold’s informant had given them a crucial piece of intel.

  This was no ordinary meeting.

  There were rumors of a bomb, hydrogen capacity, with a blast yield of three tons… which could be concealed in a suitcase, so manual activation was possible, for the first time ever. Such a bomb had been built. And its prototype was going on the auction block at this meet.

  All of which meant that there was a good chance The Woodpecker was going to make an appearance at the meet.

  Bombs and The Woodpecker were after all synonyms.

  But, this was plan B: the backup to the main plan.

  Or rather, a complement to the plan that was throwing Ziya out in the open. .

  Any high-functioning paranoid personality would not be able to resist a chance to meet his alleged biological match, his sibling. Especially, one who operated under the shadow cloak of secrecy that The Woodpecker did.

  If nothing else, than to at least put a face and personality to the name that was Ziya Maarten, his sister…a ninety percent probability. A ninety percent chance of having a family, someone else that shared his blood and traits. Someone who was family.

  Even a sociopath like The Woodpecker would be hard pressed to not be the least curious about this strange woman. This person on the planet who was his in a way that nobody else was.