Arctic Ambush

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  The service stairs down to the basement, where the furnace and breaker panels would be located, was most likely accessed via the lobby. Nick moved through the dark, his hearing racked up to highest sensitivity. As he walked, he pulled out his pocket knife and extended the blade. His uncle, the brother of his Irish mother, had given it to him and it seemed fitting he use the knife now against Irish aggressors.

  There was a distinct chill in the air already. The warmth was seeping away faster than Nick had suspected it would. It was a smart move, to kill the furnace. Cold sapped energy, slowed movements and at extremes, could kill.

  Nick found the service stairs behind the front desk. There was no one in the lobby, either. As Will’s corporation had a majority share in the hotel, Will had been obeyed when he told everyone to go home for the night and stay warm.

  Nick eased the door open and listened. After ninety seconds, he heard a soft whisper. A brushing sound.

  Something was moving down there. Anyone in the basement would not be a friendly.

  He let the door swing shut behind him and moved down the stairs, hugging the wall where the stairs would not creak under his weight. A step at a time, then listen.

  The man-shape, a solid shadow in a room of shadows, was outlined by the glow of a cellphone, as he checked it.

  Fool.

  Nick flowed across the floor, bringing the knife up. He got within a foot before the man’s instincts tipped him. He dropped the phone and countered. It was too late. Nick got his knife up against the man’s neck, pricking the skin over the carotid enough for him to feel it.

  “Half a pound more pressure and you die,” Nick breathed.

  The man grew still, breathing hard.

  Nick moved around him. He wanted to see his face. He transferred his grip from the man’s shoulder, to the front of his throat, digging his fingers in. He kept the knife against his pulse.

  “Bend down and turn the phone over, so there’s light,” Nick told him.

  The man bent, slow and awkward. Nick followed him down, the knife not moving away from his skin.

  The phone turned over. After complete darkness, the glow from the cellphone was brighter than normal.

  The man stood once more.

  “Barclay,” Nick breathed. He pushed the point of the knife back against his neck, for his shock had let it move. “What did Will Niven ever do to you?”

  Barclay swallowed. “They’ve got my daughter.” His gaze dropped to the cellphone. “She’s dead if I don’t do this.”

  Extortion of the worst kind. Nick hardened himself against the flood of pity. There was no time to explain to Barclay the many options a man of his abilities might have chosen instead of giving in. “Tell me about them. How many?”

  “Just two. They’re good.” Barclay breathed heavily.

  “Your orders?”

  “Kill the lights, the heat. Wait for more orders.”

  The cellphone was for more than just staring at images of his bound daughter, then. “Extraction?” Nick demanded. “How are they leaving, in the middle of this blizzard?”

  “They’re not planning on leaving. Not until the storm has gone.” Barclay’s gaze met Nick’s.

  Nick’s gut tightened. They play for keeps. “All of us? They were going to take out all of us?” Killing everyone was the only way that would let them stay here in shelter until the storm was over.

  Barclay’s gaze dropped to the cellphone at their feet once more. “They don’t care about collateral damage.” His gaze met Nick’s once more. “Kill me. If I don’t turn up dead, then they’ll do what they promised.”

  Nick’s heart gave out a heavy beat. “I can’t do that—”

  Barclay moved fast. He gripped Nick’s wrist and shoved the knife into his artery, then yanked sideways. The artery spewed blood as Barclay sank to the floor.

  Nick jumped back out of the way, holding the drenched knife out from his side, his heart thudding. It didn’t take long. Barclay had made sure of it.

  Nick picked up his cellphone before the blood pool reached it. He glanced at the image of the terrified little girl on the screen, then pocketed it. It would help him find the other two.

  He patted Barclay down with careful touches. The gun he expected to find was in an ankle holster. It was a tiny caliber, only lethal within a few feet and only if the person using it could shoot straight. Nick didn’t doubt that Barclay had been good enough to use it.

  He pocketed his knife and carried the gun instead.

  The knowledge that there was only two of them left was priceless. Nick didn’t wonder if Barclay had lied. A man who chose death to protect his daughter wouldn’t have reason to lie.

  The first man was quartering the corridor upstairs. He tested each door before gliding onto the next one, a soundless silhouette with a silenced gun hanging from his right hand.

  Nick squeezed himself into the recess next to the ice machine and waited. When the man stepped into view, he aimed at his temple. It was almost point blank. The little gun coughed. It was small enough a silencer wasn’t needed.

  The man dropped, making more noise than the gun.

  Nick traded the little revolver for the silenced pistol. He put the revolver in his pocket, checked the load on the pistol and found one in the chamber. A professional, then. There was no safety. Glocks didn’t have them.

  One upstairs. That meant the other was most likely sweeping through the first floor, while Barclay had patrolled the basement.

  Nick glanced at the top of the curving staircase down to the first floor. By now, the second man would know no one was moving on the first floor. He would watch the stairs, waiting patiently for someone to descend from the second floor.

  Using the stairs, an expected route, would make Nick vulnerable.

  He turned and headed for the blank end of the corridor. The last door there was a fire escape.

  Nick shut the door and crept down the concrete stairs. Every sound in a fire escape well echoed and it was impossible to move silently. His heart slammed against his chest. If the second man found him in the stairwell, he would be just as exposed as he would have been on the main staircase. This stairwell was only useful because it was the unexpected route.

  He gripped the bottom door’s handle with gratitude, cracked it opened and peered around it.

  There was a potted palm in front of the door, hiding the utilitarian entrance from the rest of the dining room. The gray light from the storm outside lit the room. It was dazzling after the pitch black of the stairwell and the corridor on the floor above.

  The light picked out a man squatting down behind the table closest to the entrance. A Glock that matched the one Nick was carrying rested on the tabletop, to keep it steady and improve his aim. The gun was pointing at the lobby stairs, which were visible through the arch.

  He was waiting for someone to come down the stairs.

  Nick lifted the gun in his hand and pointed…then hesitated.

  They play for keeps.

  Yes, yes. It didn’t mean he had to, though. Keeping the bastard alive and questioning him would be useful.

  He lowered the gun and crept forward. He would have to get a lot closer to take the man out with anything other than a bullet. He wouldn’t come quietly. Better to land on him unexpectedly.

  Nick’s shoulder brushed the fan of spiky leaves on the palm tree. That was when he discovered that the palm was plastic. It was an excellent imitation, yet the stiff plastic didn’t give way like a normal palm would do, as the thousands of palms on Vistaria did.

  It squeaked.

  The man behind the table didn’t get up. He didn’t lurch with surprise. He spun on his feet, staying in the crouch, bringing the gun with him, the black eye pointing at Nick.

  Nick threw himself to one side. He brought the gun up and fired. It was a wild shot, for he had no chance to do anything other than aim in the man’s general direction.

  It made the man flinch, though, and that was all the time Nick needed. H
e let himself land on his shoulder, keeping the gun up and his eye on the man. There was a table cloth in the way. Nick could see his feet, though. He lifted the gun until it was pointing where the man’s head should be, and fired through the tablecloth.

  There was a soft grunting sound. The man dropped. Beneath the hem of the tablecloth, Nick saw him fall and lie in a still, huddled heap. Blood darkened the carpet around his head.

  There was a black hole in his face, just under his eye. Blood only trickled from the entry wound. Most of the blood was coming from the back of the man’s head.

  He was dead.

  Nick got to his feet, put the gun on the table next to him and bent over to grasp his knees and breathe through the shivering and trembling that always came at the end of an operation. When he could stand once more, he hurried into the kitchen and rapped on the cold room door. “It’s okay, you can come out. Everything’s fine,” he said, with his mouth close to the door.

  The pin was removed.

  Nick pulled the door open. Will and Molly looked at him expectantly.

  “It’s done,” he told them. “There’s a lot of clean up you’ll have to take care of. Complicated stuff.”

  “I’m sure,” Will said. He drew Molly out of the room, and glanced around.

  “You said you were an engineer?” Nick said.

  “M.I.T. Yes. Why?”

  “Figure you can get the lights and heat back on?”

  Will laughed. It was a short, dry and tense sound. “Finally, I have a use.”

  Nick caught his arm as he stepped past. “You’ll see something down there…we’ll talk about it when you get back.”

  Will gave him a startled glance. “A body?” he asked.

  “The body is out there, by the front table. This is something more. Don’t let it faze you.”

  Will left.

  Molly sniffed. “Gracious, is that coffee I can smell?” The mention of a body had not bothered her in the slightest. Her mental toughness was something Nick had almost forgotten.

  “I made it just before you arrived,” Nick told her. That moment felt like it had happened years ago.

  “Mmm…” She hurried over to the coffee machine and patted her hand on the shelves beneath to find a cup.

  Nick moved to the stand-alone fridge and felt inside it until he found something that was the shape of a milk carton and took it over to the coffee machine. “There’s more light out in the dining room, with all the windows,” he told her. “Bring the pot with you.”

  “Good idea.”

  They moved out to the dining room. Nick guided her over to the table in the far corner away from the body. There, Molly poured herself coffee and added the cream and drank deeply, the coat held tight around her. It was perceptively cold in the room, now.

  The lights came on with the same suddenness they had turned off. Simultaneously, the vent under the window whispered as hot air emerged. Nick stood over it gratefully, his hands held out. He’d never got used to the winter in Ireland, either.

  “Oh!” Molly said, putting down her coffee with a small thud. She was looking toward the door.

  Nick whirled. “Sorry. I should put something over him…”

  “No, that’s not what I was surprised by. He doesn’t look Irish. Not at all.”

  “Not everyone in Ireland is a Black Celt,” Nick pointed out.

  “Maybe, but he’s…why, isn’t he Latino, Nick?”

  Nick looked at the ruined face. The thick black hair and the shadowed chin. Black eyes staring sightlessly. The tanned olive skin.

  His heart squeezed. He moved around the big puddle of blood soaking into the carpet and leaned over to search inside the man’s clothes. There was no wallet, none of the usual identification documents a man might carry. If he was a foreigner, though, for sure there would be a passport somewhere, hidden away. He found it in a secret pocket behind the standard breast pocket, and slid it out.

  The red cover, instead of the usual dark blue, made his heart sink.

  Molly came closer. “That’s a Vistarian passport, isn’t it?”

  “It’s standard issue for all Vistarian military personnel,” Nick said bitterly, tossing it on the table. “They weren’t here for you at all. They were here for me.”

  Chapter Four

  When Will came back from the basement, his expression sour and his temper roused by the discovery of Barclay’s body, he had poured himself a glass full of scotch and drank most of it in two big swallows, then moved to another corner of the room to talk into his phone.

  The staccato conversations and short orders were more what Nick would expect an international corporation owner to sound like.

  Molly watched Will speaking for a while, then sighed and looked at Nick. “He’ll get this cleared up, so there’s no comeback on you, Nick.”

  “I have diplomatic immunity. They can’t do anything,” he pointed out. He fished Barclay’s phone out of his pocket and dropped it on the table in front of her. “Will would be better off using his resources to track down the assholes holding Barclay’s daughter and getting her back.”

  “We will, Nick,” Molly assured him.

  Will came back to the table, putting his phone away. He bent over the cellphone and scowled. “That’s how they got to him, isn’t it? Marie is only six. Jesus….” He cracked his knuckles. “These people wanted you, Nick? Why? I don’t understand. Why here and now?”

  “They wanted all of us,” Nick told him.

  Molly’s brows lifted. “All of us?”

  Nick pointed to the body lying under the tablecloth, at the front of the room. “I remember him, now. If I go upstairs and look at the other one, I’m pretty sure I’ll know his face, too. They were both on the plane with me two days ago. Travelling separately, most likely. They were trailing me up here.” He reached for the scotch bottle and poured himself a drink, too. He would have preferred the rye. This was closer.

  “In particular, they wanted Molly dead,” Nick told them both. “That’s why they scared her into running out of the house and up here.”

  “Why her?” Will demanded.

  “If you thought Vistarians had killed your wife, you would have yanked the deal,” Nick said. “Whoever these two jokers are working for, or are with, or belong to…whoever they are, they don’t want the mine to go ahead.”

  Molly caught his arm. “Nick, do you hear yourself? Do you know what you are saying?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Your own people are working against you,” Will said.

  Nick glanced at the body by the door. “They had the same guns, standard Vistarian Army issue. They used the tactics I would have used, and I’ve done all the same army training. They were organized, effective and ready to adapt to changing circumstances. They wanted to draw Molly out of the house. They didn’t count on her keeping her head and getting herself out of the country so fast. They didn’t know about her past, that she has already been in tighter situations than they’ve ever dreamed of. But yes, these were my people.” Nick grimaced. “I just don’t know if I can call them my people, anymore.”

  “What would you call them?” Will asked.

  Nick’s heart squeezed. “Rebels,” he said, the word making his mouth taste sour.

  * * * * *

  A cadre of Will’s people—more security types with heavy shoulders and silent movements—arrived at the hotel two hours later and began the job of cleaning up. Will went with them to point out the bodies, while Molly and Nick shared a pot of tea at the table in the corner of the restaurant and watched the snow blat against the big windows.

  Nick found it mesmerizing, the way the flakes kept flying at the windows endlessly.

  “You’re pissed at me for not telling you I was alive, aren’t you?” Molly said.

  Nick stirred. “For a moment, yes. That moment has passed.”

  “The stoic returns. You don’t fool me, Nick.”

  He swirled the dregs of tea in the bottom of his cup. She had found loose l
eaf tea in the kitchen—a minor miracle in a country obsessed with coffee. “You couldn’t tell anyone. I get it.”

  “Why would I tell you?” she said gently. “You had a life. A reason to live and it wasn’t me.”

  Nick met her gaze. “Did I? I watched you die. I thought the English had killed you. I returned to Vistaria, determined that the colonial yoke would never happen to my country—never again, not like Northern Island, where brothers fought brothers, and sons betrayed fathers. I worked my whole life to make sure that could not happen in Vistaria.” He sighed. “And I’ve failed. Tonight, you saw the start of it. It’s only going to get worse.”

  Molly shook her head. “Leaning on other people is how life works. You can’t do it any other way. A tiny country like Vistaria needs allies.”

  Will came into the dining room and moved over to their table. “She’s right. It staggers me that Vistaria has remained independent for as long as it has. I don’t think you have even a formal trade agreement in place with anyone, do you?”

  “We have an understanding with Mexico,” Nick said, and sighed. “Vistaria has been occupied over and over, throughout history. The Portuguese. The Dutch. The English. The Spanish. Even Mexico tried to stake a claim in the nineteenth century and they were supposed to be helping Vistaria. Any allies Vistaria has ever counted on eventually turned on us.” He shook his head. “We’re better off alone.”

  “Are you?” Will asked, his tone lacking any amusement. “If you’re right about tonight, then you’re going back to face open rebellion by your own people. That’s not something you can squash by yourself. Every rebellion in the history of the known world required the cooperation of large groups to end it. It took an alliance of twelve countries to beat back the Germans. Both times.”

  Nick sighed. “We’re not Germany.”

  “Your rebels are brown shirts,” Will replied. “The brown shirts became the Nazi, because no one stood up to them.”

  Nick winced.