Hannah. Her sister.
Not her brother. But her sister.
A tear plopped out on the floor and Ziya sniffled it back.
She was not going to cry here.
She was not going to cry here, if it was the last thing she did.
~~~~~~
The door to the prison opened and Wood, Hannah, walked in. She held a large tray in her hands. They were large palmed, with blunt, square fingers and she was unshaved, as if to perpetuate the myth that she was indeed a man.
It didn’t matter.
Man or woman or a fucking unicorn, Hannah Jones, The Woodpecker was going to die.
Ziya knew Krivi would see to that. He would.
She didn’t think about what would happen to her before that. Or what would happen to Krivi after Hannah was dead.
“You must be familiar with torture techniques, since you spent time with that fucking spy, who is apparently very good at extracting intel.”
Ziya didn’t volunteer whether she was familiar with torture techniques or not.
Wood placed the tray on the floor next to the mattress.
“Do you know what happens to a piece of shrapnel that is trapped in an active bloodstream?”
Ziya swallowed. She knew.
“It eventually travels to the heart and pricks it. One good nick. And boom.” Wood made an exploding noise. “You’re dead.”
Wood removed a pair of scissors and started to cut through the thick denim of Ziya’s jeans. She tried to wrest out of Wood’s hold but Wood just held on tighter and cut through the cloth.
“You’re not a student of science, you studied economics. Your grade school biology sucked, so I know you won’t know that the femoral artery is the second largest artery that supplies blood to the body. The first being the jugular.” Wood pointed to her throat and tapped.
“Fuck you.”
“Anyway, so the femoral artery begins at the inner thigh.” Wood squeezed Ziya’s soft inner thigh and looked at all the blood rushing under the fragile skin.
“How long do you think it will take for these pieces of shrapnel to get back to your heart, Zee?”
She held up a small glass jar in which were tiny metal pieces. Shrapnel.
She smiled with something close to pride. “My various jobs. Twenty-one of them.” The smile dipped. “I couldn’t collect from Notting Hill because I had to catch my flight back home.”
She brightened. “Well, anyway. You’re living proof of that one. So I guess it’s only fitting that the rest of them end up in you too. Right, Zee?”
Ziya’s lips quivered at the utter sanity of the terrorist’s question. She really had no soul, no morality. Nothing inside of her except…vacuum.
“Right, Zee?”
Wood dug the point of the scissors into Ziya’s thigh so that blood poured out in a thin trickle.
“Right, Zee?”
“What are you doing, Hannah?” Tom asked, sharply from the door.
~~~~~
Wood whirled around, dropping the scissors in the first truly clumsy movement that Ziya had seen her make.
“Dad.”
“What the fuck are you doing to that girl?”
Tom was in shadow, so all Ziya heard was a voice. Deep, compelling, so like Krivi’s, she knew she was hallucinating, dying by inches and her brain was doing what it could to make her passing easier.
“Nothing, dad. I was just…” Hannah shrugged, strangely compliant. Nothing like the megalomaniac of a few seconds ago who wanted to cut Ziya open.
“Leave her be, for now. We can deal with her tomorrow. You need to sleep right now. We have an early day tomorrow, don’t we?”
Hannah smiled. A slow, dreamy smile that struck such terror in Ziya’s heart as to almost make it stop.
“Yeah, we have a big day tomorrow, dad.”
“Then let the girl be. Don’t bother her anymore tonight.”
Tom waited, while Hannah gathered her instruments of torture and left Ziya without a backward glance. The wound on her thigh continued to bleed as Ziya breathed the agonies of the damned, promising the gods anything thing to just make the pain stop.
And as if the gods had heard her pleas…a dark shadow came over her, squatted down in front of her.
Ziya looked into eyes that were uncannily like hers.
Quietly grey.
“Good night,” he murmured.
~~~~~
Tom pressed a nerve on her shoulder and her eyes rolled back into her head as she slumped into a dead faint.
Then Tom walked out of the cave along with his daughter, the terrorist known the world over as The Woodpecker.
The little girl he had raised as his own since she was five years old.
Hannah Jones.
Forty-Seven
Earlier
The same day…
Krivi went mad.
He stood there in the communications van and simply lost his mind.
Agent Maitland kept talking to him, telling him about the chip malfunctioning for a two-second delay and then coming back online, and all he could do was stare dumbly at the green dot on the computer screen that signified activity.
Since the van was constantly on the move, image-downloading and image-capturing took a little longer and, thus, they had no idea where Ziya actually was, when she was actually there. She had been in her hotel room at nine ten this morning, at the balcony, sipping coffee.
That was the last clear image available.
And now, almost two hours later, Krivi was staring at a blinking green dot on one of the back alleys of the Tibet Hotel.
The members of Alpha Company were scrambling around trying to find Ziya in the crowded breakfast lounge, reporting they had lost sight of the target for a full minute. The snipers didn’t see any unusual activity, no one came in waving a gun that even remotely fit The Woodpecker’s description and so couldn’t find anything or anyone to shoot at.
Alpha Company called Jack Hagen who had received two phone calls from the desk of the Lhasa Hotel. First, from a receptionist working there, informing of Ms. Marten’s change of plans to meet him for lunch instead of brunch. And, then canceling altogether because she had to fly back home to Kashmir.
The hotel had no record of any such call being made from their lines.
In the five frenzied minutes it took for all of these facts to be made clear to Krivi, only one thought emerged from his thunderstruck, paralyzed brain.
“He has her,” Krivi said, after staring at the screen, letting all the information stream into his head and out of it like so much water.
He stared grimly at the blinking green dot. “That son of a bitch has my Ziya. And god knows what he is going to do to her.”
He leaped out of the comm link van, outfitted his ear with a microphone and dialed Harold on his satellite phone.
Harold picked up on the first ring.
“Yeah?”
“That bastard took her.”
“What?”
Krivi was arming himself with guns, ammo, even a throwing knife that he tucked into the ankle of his boots. He tucked in a couple of grenades into his belt and spoke again, in a deadly calm voice. “He has Ziya, Harold. The Woodpecker slipped in amongst the throng of people inhabiting this city and took my Ziya. I am going to get her back.”
“Krivi…”
“I called to let you know that the mission just changed,” he continued relentlessly. “It just got fucked. I want Ziya back, and I am willing to do what it takes to bring her back. I will bargain with The Woodpecker to bring her back.”
“Krivi, you’re not thinking clearly,” Harold argued passionately.
Krivi nodded at the agents of Alpha Company, who were all assembled near the van, conspicuous and obvious and he didn’t give a damn anymore. He was getting Ziya back.
It was all he cared about.
It was all he knew.
“I am thinking very clearly, Harold. I should have been thinking this clearly a month ago, and
sent her away. I listened to you and I listened to her and now she’s…she’s…” His vision went black with fear and anger and guilt so huge it almost swallowed him up.
The only reason why he wasn’t howling at the fates, just going down on his haunches on this street and howling like a grieving wolf was because he knew how precious every minute was on a trail like this. They had to act now, act fast, act immediately.
Everything else would have to wait.
Finer feelings and terror-filled, broken hearts.
Ziya, dear god, Ziya…not her…
“I am going to get her back from him, Harold and you can either help me or you can get the hell out of my way.”
“Krivi, tomorrow, think of tomorrow.”
“Fuck tomorrow. I’ll call you when I get a bead on the trail. You start combing, Harold. You comb like there is a tiny needle in the world’s largest haystack and you find me something to look into when I call you again. I mean it.”
“Krivi, take care.”
“I will take care. You just find me a name I can talk to. I need to break some bones before I burn this city down.”
The members of the Alpha Company looked in surprise and a little bit of shock at each other as they heard their respected team leader talk in such hyperbolic terms. Then the team leader whipped off his Wayfarers and the fires of hell itself could be seen in that endless, blazing black.
And they believed this man was capable of burning an entire city down.
He was entirely capable of anything because he was a man in love.
~~~~~~
The trail began at the refuse heap, where the members spent a considerable amount of time hunting for the GPS transponder-chip.
Several of them canvassed the crowd and the wait staff and got a definitely, maybe on a woman, five-five, wearing a red shirt seen entering the street in a guest car.
Then, the team got another piece of news. The driver of the rental company had a broken collarbone. He’d not showed up for work, even though he was logged in.
The Woodpecker had struck again.
Krivi understood right then that he had been playing with them all this time. Leading them on a merry chase, allowing them to expend time and energy and resources while he watched their fumbling attempts to catch him.
He had been one step ahead of them all this time.
Or, as the case was, one step behind.
There was no other way that Ziya could have been taken unless The Woodpecker had been close by and observed Ziya’s meeting with Jack Hagen and the promise to meet once more Maybe, the monster had been tailing her since she got into Lhasa.
No, Krivi dismissed that possibility immediately.
It had to be the hotel manifest.
Ziya had registered under her name, she’d had to. She didn’t have a hundred fake passports like Krivi and The Woodpecker did.
And that was how the bastard had found her.
By just looking for her.
The thought filled Krivi with cold, inexplicable rage that threatened to burst out of him and destroy everything in its wake. He controlled it by climbing into the refuse heap and looking for the plastic chip himself.
After three solid hours of looking, Agent Gregory finally found the tiny green-blinking light.
There was a banana peel on it, and slime coated its sides. But, Krivi knew where to look and he looked at the base and saw it. Red, and ugly… it made him weak in the knees.
Ziya’s blood.
The bastard had cut it out of her. And god knew what he had done to her to make her confess its location.
Krivi carefully placed the chip in the left pocket of his jacket, right next to his un-smoked cigarette and patted it.
Now, he had two things to live for.
~~~~~
“All right, gentleman,” he said, quietly. Knowing that screaming orders at his men was not going to accomplish anything. It wouldn’t even make him feel better. “We found the first piece of the trail. Let’s get to the rest of it before it goes dead. Transpo. The Woodpecker needed to have used some sort of vehicle to get a bleeding Ziya out of here.”
Agent Maitland pointed at the traffic light camera on the next intersection.
“Maybe we can start by looking through that.”
Krivi didn’t even pause to consider it. He gave the order to call in favors with the local authorities and they were on the hunt again.
Every minute that he traced them, every minute that he thought of Ziya with that animal, his blood ran hot and cold until he was a mass of fear and anger.
Gigantic and towering and awesome. And willing to annihilate everyone in his path till he got what he wanted back.
Ziya, the woman he loved.
All it did was make his resolve strengthen that he would find her. Alive, if not exactly well.
That and looking into the eyes of the monster called The Woodpecker while he shot it right between the eyes.
~~~~~~
Krivi stood stock still in his room, in the early evening. In his hand was the last-wish cigarette he always kept in his jacket pocket, in case of exigencies.
He remembered the last time he had almost smoked it all up.
The day he had rescued Alina Gujjar from Kashmiri insurgents. That had been a good day. He had felt good that day.
And for a long time after that day, he hadn’t felt good at all. Because he had infiltrated Ziya’s life, a wonderful woman’s life, with the deliberate intention to hurt her. Because he had been a coward who couldn’t know the difference between a genuine article and gold dust.
Gemma had been gold dust. Ziya was pure diamond. She was good and decent and she had never done anything in her short life to deserve all the miserable cards she’d been dealt. But, she never complained. She never railed at the fates. She took charge, too control and took action.
It was the thing he loved the most about her.
This determination to simply see things through no matter what the cost or the consequences. More people should be like Ziya.
He knew he wasn’t like her, which was why he was so damnably attracted to her. She was everything he wasn’t.
The day had been a total bust.
From the dumpster, they had traced a bike to a departmental store off the highway and two people who were vaguely ID’d as resembling The Woodpecker and Ziya. But, the woman did not have distinguishing red hair or any features at all. She had been riding the bike, or maybe the man with her had been.
The store manager was not much help, because his in-store camera was on the fritz and he didn’t have the greatest memory when it came to faces.
The trail didn’t just grow cold there, it went Arctic.
Luck, it seemed, was on The Woodpecker’s side.
But, Krivi didn’t care about luck. He wanted Ziya back. And he was willing to post a goddamn video on social fucking media e for information on the bastard’s whereabouts.
His blood simply ran cold when he thought of what The Woodpecker was doing to Ziya right this minute. Every minute that she spent in that monster’s presence was a minute of slow-burning hell for Krivi.
Just the mere thought of Ziya never telling him she loved him again, of never seeing those silver-bright eyes light up with laughter or passion or, on occasion, shyness because she was so overwhelmed and dazed from what he had done to her, it was enough to make his breath shudder out of his lungs.
For his brain to go into shutdown mode, because all he could see were terrible visions. Where he was grieving and lost and Ziya was no more.
He didn’t know what to do to make it go away, so he stood and stared at his last-wish cigarette and contemplated the cruelty of a fate that would destroy him not once, but twice. Just totally destroy him.
He had to follow every last, flimsy lead there was and find her, however he found her. He had to end what she had started, so bravely, so valiantly.
He had to set the score right for her.
It was as simple as that.
> Krivi tucked the cigarette back into his jacket pocket, and retrieved his satellite phone.
He punched in Harold’s number.
Harold answered on the first ring. “Krivi, what the fuck are you doing involving the local authorities in our Op?” He demanded.
“I am getting Ziya back. That’s what I am doing.”
“And do you have her back yet, boy-o?”
Krivi was silent at the sarcastic question. But his fingers clutched the phone tighter, the knuckles and veins standing out in painful prominence.
“Krivi, I understand you want her back. I do,” Harold instantly softened on the hard-ass tone. “But, we have a plan in place already. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, mess it up. Tomorrow morning is the meet. The Woodpecker is going to be there and Tom will finger him and we will nail him. I promise you.”
“I want in on the meet.”
“What?” There was sincere shock in Harold’s precise upper crust accent.
“I want in on the meet,” he reiterated simply. “I am going in with Pedro and Tom and whichever other motherfucking asset you’re sending in as primary.”
“Krivi, that is extremely foolhardy and dangerous. I can’t allow that. You are too valuable an asset to be sent into that vipers nest on a routine assault and identify. Not happening.”
“I am packing my shit up and driving up to camp out at the airport, right now. You can’t stop me, Harold. I either go in covert with the guys or I go in guns blazing alone. Either way, I am going and I am going to find him and choke the living answer out of him about where he took my Ziya.”
“So, you finally figured out she is yours?”
Krivi was silent for a ripe moment. “I figured out I am hers.”
Harold’s sigh, rippled loud and clear through three bouncing satellites and reached Krivi’s unusually sharp ears.
“Hand over the reins to Mailtland or Swift. Give them precise instructions about combing the area for info. To not get too much into the faces of the local authorities. It wouldn’t look good on the report.”
Warrior Knight Page 31
