by Seeley James
“And I trusted you!” Olivier pulled his jacket tight around him and twisted away.
Neither of the Sabels could respond. They looked at each other with pained expressions. The decision to withdraw protection for the Jallet family made sense at the time. Olivier had not pleaded for more and had hired his own. The death of his wife was not a Sabel problem. But pointing that out was a fruitless argument.
“You can’t beat them.” Olivier turned back to them, his face red, eyes bulging. “You think you’re safe, sitting in your American towers. It’s true you’re safe from terrorists and gangs and criminals. Have you ever taken on a government? There are layers upon layers. You can’t get to Popov until you’ve disposed of Strangelove and the GRU.”
Pia tried to inject a calm voice. “I took on the Chinese government—”
“Please.” Olivier’s shredded voice strained with contempt. “The pandas of international intrigue. You know nothing. You surround yourself with veterans because you can afford them. What was I to do? Do I have the same resources? Was the company you built with your hands ripped from your fingers? Did the woman you love bleed to death before you signed everything over to Santalum?”
The three of them sat in silence, each lost in their own contemplation.
Pia wondered what the scene was like for Olivier. His children would have been next if he didn’t agree. She knew the horror and powerlessness of an attack like that—and the seed of hatred it left behind. For Pia, it had been a driving force in her life. But she never had to worry about children. Certainly, Popov and Strangelove would have sent repeated reminders that his family was still vulnerable.
“I know who we’re up against.” Pia met Olivier’s gaze. “We believe Strangelove orchestrated #HuntersFail for political gain. I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“Easy to say.”
Pia tapped her finger on the table. “I’m going to take Popov down.”
“He will ruin you.” Olivier sneered. “He’s been wrecking lives for forty years.”
“Where do I find him?”
“You don’t. He lives behind a façade of embassies.”
“He must have a home somewhere.”
“If I knew, I would never tell you,” Olivier said.
She leaned back in her seat. Maybe Tania had the right idea; the ungrateful bastard should be tossed out the cargo door. She tried to hide her anger but could feel Dad watching her. He knew her too well.
He nosed up the aisle. Pia took his hint and met him three rows forward.
“Let him think about it for a while.” Alan sounded as frustrated as she felt. “I’ll work on him.”
“Popov and Strangelove tried to kill us, Dad. We don’t have the luxury of time. They could strike again any second.”
“You’re right.” Dad gave her an appreciative nod. “We’ll focus on Strangelove. No one’s going to vote for Chuck Roche. He just announced he’s going to give everyone the best healthcare. He’s making promises he can’t possibly deliver. The voters will never fall for his bullshit.”
He turned to leave, then stopped and stared at his phone. He tapped her shoulder. “Remember this?”
He held his phone between them. Displayed was an old picture taken in middle school. Her team carried young Pia on their shoulders. She looked a little uncertain about the stability of her ride. In the background, Dad held a massive trophy. She felt a strong fondness for those days in the warmth of a loving home and community. Alan Sabel—Dad—had been a critical supporter of her success. He spared no expense to find the best coaches in the world. Most important, he’d always been there. Every game. He’d done more than anyone could expect of a father.
She smiled at him. “Those were good times, Dad.”
She took the seat facing Tania. Her friend had taken to meditating. With her eyes closed, her earbuds in, she noticed nothing around her.
Emily and Sylvia chatted across the aisle. Sylvia had eagerly accepted Pia’s invitation to Washington after Pia donated ten times what Sylvia hoped to raise for her charity. Pia wanted to hear more about the foster kids in Monaco, sure. But she wanted to see Jacob happy as well, and Sylvia seemed genuinely interested in him. Which made Sylvia a rare woman.
Emily paused their conversation and turned to Pia. “Is there anything that will confirm Jacob’s claim that the Russians in Barcelona are working with Watson? Or anything that links Watson and Roche?”
Pia shook her head.
“Then I don’t have a story. Roche’s campaign manager denies any connection. They claim the Russians were probably scammers trying to shake down your dad for money.” She paused. “I’ll assume you don’t want Jacob’s adventures in Barcelona going to print?”
“I appreciate keeping that confidential. Thank you. But we’re meeting Roche when we get back. You can join us.”
Emily’s eyebrows rose. “Thanks! That would be a scoop.”
Emily and Sylvia resumed their conversation.
Pia took out her phone and looked up another trauma-injured family: Stefan and his adopted children Emma and Ethan.
The children’s biological father had smuggled a band of terrorists into the country before losing his life in a gun battle with Jacob. Stefan, choking down guilt for his father’s part in the plot, adopted the children as his way of paying for the sins of his father. An act much like Alan Sabel’s adoption of Pia after he unwittingly aided the killers of her parents. But where Alan built an international conglomerate for Pia, Stefan had given away nearly all of his family fortune to charity.
She opened Instagram and found Stefan’s profile. Hundreds of pictures rolled by. She started with the oldest snapshots. Stefan forced a smile at his camera with an arm wrapped tightly around two children in front of the Eiffel Tower. In the next, blank-faced kids slurped ice cream with the Rock of Gibraltar in the background. Several more pictures showed pained expressions of a family in front of iconic tourist destinations. Then something changed. One selfie was the dividing line between three awkward tourists and a family.
In the pivotal pic, Stefan, wrapped in a robe, cuddled two small, wet children in towels while reading a book. It looked familiar. She zoomed in and realized it was Falling Up by Shel Silverstein. In the next picture, the three of them stood in the rain looking at something. Pia zoomed in and discovered it was a graveyard. Emma held a small bouquet in her hand. Yet another showed them outside Stefan’s former family mansion, shuttered. They appeared to be throwing rocks.
They were saying goodbye to their past. Letting go of their tragedies and moving on.
The next series of snapshots showed Stefan, his lanky frame dwarfing the little ones, reading and singing and dancing and playing. In the most recent series of photos, they were laughing. Interspersed with the fun pictures were more pictures of quiet reflections: in the woods, at a monastery, in a meadow. You never let go of the worst moments, but you can give them air once in a while and continue living.
She missed him.
She missed having a family. She missed those days so long ago when she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. The great Alan Sabel, a self-made billionaire, would lie in bed with her, holding her firmly against his soft nightshirt. She could feel his heartbeat, soothing and calm. Back then, Dad could make the scary world feel safe.
She clicked hearts on all Stefan’s pictures and sent him a text. “I love you. I miss you.”
In a couple weeks, he would return from his journey of self-discovery, and they could reignite their romance.
She hoped.
That’s what Dad was fighting for, the right of Pia and Stefan to live and love in a free democracy. It’s what America stood for. Family values as any individual wanted to define them. The right to a free press, religious freedom, freedom from fear and oppression, freedom from want. Dad was right to pursue Strangelove’s intrusions into our free elections. He was right to risk their lives to connect with Olivier Jallet. Strangelove and Popov were a form of evil
whose connection to Roche threatened everything Americans cherished.
She glanced up at Olivier and his children. A handful of French citizens represented her future with Stefan in that moment. They had suffered at the hands of these beasts.
Families need someone to keep them safe from the monsters in the world. How many lives had Viktor Popov destroyed? And Strangelove?
Pia rose and walked back to where Alan and Olivier held a tense discussion. They looked up at her.
“I don’t think you understood me.” Her voice loud and strong. “I’m not going to bring Strangelove and Popov to justice. I’m going to kill them.”
CHAPTER 25
Miguel tried the glass door. It slid open easily. I wasn’t surprised. We were on the kind of remote Baltic island where locals never lock their doors. The few tourists had left with the last warm days of summer.
I ran around the front of the red-brick house and planted a wireless video camera. I checked the feed on my helmet visor: the small square in the upper right corner gave me a fair look at the front door, the yard behind the stone wall, and the village lane. I ran back to my cozy bush on the opposite side and let Miguel know I had him covered. He was free to check the place.
Watching a quiet building at three in the morning on a cloudy night is boring. Our part of the island didn’t even have a barking dog.
My thoughts turned to Sylvia. There was something eternally sexy about her. Is sexy a good basis for love? Sure. But I had bigger questions to ponder: who wears a bright red cocktail dress at lunchtime? And who shows up hours later, in the same outfit, at your hotel? And what did Mercury mean about the past-lives thing? The Romans didn’t believe in that stuff. As far as I knew. I never read any of the books he keeps making me buy.
Was he serious that I would kill such a beauty in however-many-lives ago it was? Impossible. I would never kill a woman. On the flip side, how could such a lovely young lady kill me? What was I in that past life anyway, some kind gutless powder puff? Or was I such a stud that she killed me out of jealousy? Yeah. Must have been jealousy. I was probably a king with a harem, and she wanted to be first wife.
Mercury’s hand waved in front of my face. What’re you smoking, Willis? If your soul moves on to a new body, you step up in the world. Since you ain’t no kind of king now, you can calculate the odds: you were no higher up than a DMV water boy handing out licenses to pimply-faced teens.
I said, But what about this love-thing with Sylvia?
Mercury said, Oh my brutha, is that what you think she is? Love?
He started laughing so hard, his head went back and his mouth opened wide. He covered his thin toga at the belly. Dawg, that’s a good one. I said she killed you and you think that means she loves you? See, that’s why humans are all sick.
But you said we knew each other in past lives.
Mercury bent over laughing with his hands on his thighs. Dude, when you’re young, love is all about sex. When you’re middle-age, love is all about family. When you’re old, love is all about partners. But some people mistake a power struggle for love. That’s where you and Sylvia come in. You’ve never been in love. You two are like those couples who are married for two years but take five years to get divorced and ten years after that, they still rant about each other. You two don’t love each other. You want to own, control, dominate, and destroy each other. You’re not in love with that girl—you’re in eternal bondage.
Why did his explanation have such a familiar feel to it?
Still, there was something really sexy about that woman. I pictured her in my mind.
The smile.
Those eyes.
That walk.
I looked around at the bushes and trees. Something was making an electronic squawk.
It was coming from my earbud.
“Jacob? You there?” Miguel’s voice was more urgent than usual.
“Roger.”
“A little help.”
The visual clues of the last few seconds replayed in my head. Dark figures had flitted between shadows, hopped the stone wall, and slid into the house.
I’d been distracted by a beautiful woman.
Again.
“Clearing the courtyard,” I lied. “There in a second.”
I ran into the yard, leapt the wall, opened the kitchen door and let off a three-round burst at the ceiling. The muzzle flash would blind anyone with regular night vision goggles while our Sabel visors muted bright light. I ducked back out and ran for the sliding glass door.
My first adversary was a seasoned veteran. As soon as I rolled inside, I felt one of three bullets glance off my body armor. It hurt like hell. I rose to one knee and found the guy peering over the kitchen counter. My first round knocked off his helmet. Before I could take advantage with a kill-shot, two of three rounds bounced off my ribs. My shots were knocked off target and clanked into the hanging copper pots. The window shattered. The guy behind the counter vanished.
I rolled and spun behind a couch. Stuffing exploded out of the furniture, and the sliding glass door collapsed in a waterfall of shards the size of daggers.
“I’m pinned in the living room.” My warning to Miguel that I would not be arriving anytime soon to save his ass.
“Nice. Three in here, pushing me up the lighthouse stairs.”
A scratching noise drew my attention to the corner of the room. With one big leap, I cleared the sofa’s back and landed on the seat. I sprayed lead at knee level across the room.
Most armies issue body armor that reaches from the family jewels to the neck. Top that with a helmet, and you’re as good as it gets in the twentieth century. But Sabel armor is twenty-first century stuff and made of liquid Kevlar. It’s more flexible and covers us from the turtleneck to elbows and knees. Even with such great coverage, a bullet in the neck chokes your breathing for several minutes.
After the bullet hit me, I thought I would suffocate before my trachea reopened. The only bright side was the guy who fired the shot lay on the floor, bleeding out.
Miguel’s firefight streamed into my ear. Channeling the ancient ways of his people, Miguel had become a skinwalker, the ancient warrior-wizard who could change physical forms for battle. Miguel chose to become a bear, befitting his large frame and broad shoulders. The transformation from man to bear involved a war whoop of such volume and intensity that it alone destroyed most adversaries. At that moment, as it live-streamed through my earbud, his battle cry destroyed my ability to hear the bad guy from the kitchen launch his assault.
Only my standard tactic of never staying stationary in a firefight saved me. I was in the process of doing a summersault when he opened fire and shredded the couch. I saw his muzzle flash and aimed, but my rifle was off by thirty degrees when I pulled the trigger. Luckily, my errant aim had taken out a guy.
Mercury smiled and let go of the off-target barrel. Who’s got your six, brutha?
I said, Why didn’t you warn me they were coming?
Mercury said, Dude, I was warning you of the greater danger: Sylvia.
The guy behind the counter mistook the thud for me dying and poked his head up. I took his helmet off with a bullet again. While he scrambled to find it, I slid across the counter and fired Sabel Darts over the edge, hoping to hit exposed skin. It took four shots, but I heard the telltale exhale and slump.
Miguel yelled again, his voice echoing not only in my ear but through the building. The distinctive thump of a falling body followed.
“Clear,” he said in a calm tea-and-crumpets voice. “You?”
“Affirmative. Did you find the docs?”
“Naturally.” He appeared in the doorway. “Only five of these guys?”
“You don’t look like a bear.”
He shrugged and kicked one of the bodies. “Interesting. AK-105 with sound suppressors.”
He referred to the newer Kalashnikov, cousin of the famed AK-47 but lighter, stronger, with a folding stock and shorter barrel. With both sides using sound suppressors,
the only noises came from the things we destroyed. And there was enough of that to wake the nearby village.
Something flashed in my video feed from the front of the house. Three shadows swept around the lighthouse, fanning out to enter our little brick sanctuary.
“Three or more coming.”
Before I could explain directions, Miguel raised his MP5-SD under my nose and squeezed off a shot. A dark figure fell face-first outside the broken glass door. I turned to see what happened. Miguel turned the opposite direction. We pressed our backs against each other. We both lit up the night firing on full-auto in opposite directions.
I shot the man in the courtyard. He was wounded but still trying to work his rifle. I let him struggle while I checked the grounds for stragglers. In the trees beyond, two heat signatures emerged. They looked left and right, scanning the area. Their night vision couldn’t see us inside the dark house.
Miguel fired through the wall into the other room. Artwork and glass clattered and cracked and fell.
His muzzle flashes gave the guys outside a target. They raised their weapons. I took them out, finished off the guy on the ground, then swapped magazines. Miguel pushed off my back and jumped through the doorway to the other room.
I backed to the brick wall and checked outside. No one else. I ran to cover Miguel.
He aimed at a light flashing around outside but held his fire.
The light flashed on a body, then followed the trail of blood and destruction to the house.
“Locals,” Miguel said. “Let’s go.”
“I darted a guy.” I pointed to my catch behind the kitchen counter. “Carry him.”
Miguel huffed his displeasure at being my beast of burden but hoisted the body to his shoulder anyway. We set off across the courtyard, trying to sneak out before the cops came. It was doubtful the Danes would be fond of having a war erupt on their idyllic little island.
We slipped through the woods, heading for our boat. A glint of reflected light caught my eye. Something in the tree. I reached up and yanked a wireless video camera from its perch. There was a USB port on it, so I connected it to my phone and uploaded an image of the hardware to Bianca’s team. Most internet-connected devices keep a record of what they’re doing and for whom. We upload a copy of those records, called an image, to our techies. Bianca’s people could trace the signal to whoever had been watching the house. That might tell us where to find more Russians. Maybe another ambush, if we’re lucky.
