by Fiona Quinn
“Snap a picture. Walk away. Exploit. That’s how you make your money.”
“Please, let’s talk about this in the hallway.” When neither janitor moved, Remi added, “I report what I see, so the aid workers know there’s a crisis. We all have our roles to play. Mine is to be the eyes and ears for the world. To carry the information with me.”
“What’s it like to end up being part of the story yourself?” the tall janitor asked.
Remi looked up to catch his eye. “What does that mean?”
He pointed toward the fliers in Diamond’s hands then started laughing.
“Calm down. Nothing’s happening. We’re just trying to get the senator’s attention, is all.” The short guy lifted the top off the ammonia bottle.
Was this a death wish? If they filled the elevator with gas, these men would be breathing it in, too.
Remi followed the shorter janitor’s gaze down to the bucket, where she saw two sets of gas masks crammed between the bucket and the push handle.
This event had just turned that much more lethal.
Remi’s mind whizzed through choices. She had a smoke hood in her belt. But no, it could be pulled away easily. They wouldn’t allow her to keep it.
She could fight, but by the time she used any of her tools or tricks in this confined space—confined space—no, she couldn't take on these men in here. She had to get those doors open. It was the only way.
Emotions were like a daredevil’s trick, revving the motors and powering up the ramp, flying out into the empty air, then came the descent. That’s the point Remi was at now. She could either work the dynamic, or she would crash and burn.
Suddenly, fully formed, came the memory of the National Security Council meeting that she’d covered in Helsinki. A government official thought that a discussion with Russia was going off the rails. The woman told reporters that she had considered feigning a medical crisis by screaming toward the media to bring the event to a quick end.
While the woman had decided against following through, Remi was game.
“I have to get off. I think I’m having a heart attack.” Her hand stretched almost to the panel where the key dangled from the insertion hole. But tall guy swatted her hand down.
Real-world, Remi’s body was betraying her. She gasped and clutched at her chest. She leaned over, putting her hands on her knees, looking around wild-eyed and panting.
Her face slicked with an oily residue. The arm pits of her tunic and along her back were moist with sweat. She could feel dampness forming under her breasts and between her thighs. Heck, maybe she’d just peed herself.
Get control.
Diamond huddled soundlessly in the corner, watching.
The flier clutched in Diamond’s hands said, “Oil is choking us to death.”
A political statement with a deadly message. Yup, finding a journo and a senator’s aid dead in a gas-filled elevator would do the trick, grabbing the world’s attention.
But Remi would have to comply and die.
That wasn’t going to happen.
“Air,” Remi gasped. “Air.” Banging into the wall to make a distracting noise, her hand shot out, quick like her childhood trick of snatching up flies. She failed to wrest the ammonia from the man’s hands, but she did knock it to the ground.
The fumes comingling in the air might still be toxic, but they had to be less so than if the two fluids mixed, right?
The men both looked down at the puddle, and Remi took advantage by turning the elevator key back to the on position, dragging it from the hole, and tossing it into the bucket while simultaneously jamming her finger into the lit circle on the next floor’s button.
Within seconds the door dinged. The men turned, exited the elevator, and bolted down the corridor.
Remi dragged her scarf over her nose and mouth even though she was holding her breath.
Reaching behind her, she hauled Diamond out into the fresh air. “Are you okay?”
Diamond opened her mouth and exhaled, then coughed. “Who knew I could hold my breath that long. That was crazy!” She stared after the men. “They’re just plum crazy.”
Remi lugged Diamond along behind her as they made their way to the far staircase that Remi wished so hard she had just taken in the first place. When it came to cramped spaces, Remi couldn't distinguish between her intuition giving her good counsel and her phobia.
With her phone out, Remi dialed the UK emergency number 9-9-9 to let them know of the chemical spill.
Surely, it was toxic smelling enough that no one would dare get on the elevator.
But where did those men go?
Chapter Sixteen
T-Rex
Thursday, Oxford, England
Remi finally arrived alongside T-Rex, where he stood in the wings of the stage.
There was a long pause in the senator’s speech as the audience laughed at her latest punch line.
T-Rex sent Remi a scowl. She should be down in the audience, not here engaging him.
Remi was a big distraction on a personal level, and T-Rex hadn’t gotten his head around his reactions to her. Both his mind and body had trouble turning away. For the first time in years, he was hungry to know a woman in all her dimensions. She was taking up brain space when he needed to be focused.
He didn’t like it. Not here. Not now.
Maybe once things had wrapped up? That thought wriggled itself into his conscious, again, with a face bright with hope.
T-Rex pressed that possibility away. There was nothing for them. He was a Delta Force operator; she was a war correspondent. Not only would a relationship with Remi trigger a look at his security credentials—like Ty and D-Day had gone through. Beyond that, Remi and T-Rex’s lifestyles and schedules weren’t constructed to support an intimate relationship. Those thoughts came and disappeared in a flash. He’d been through them so many times since he first saw Remi that it had become a repeated riff.
Waggling her phone, T-Rex saw that Remi had a video queued up.
At first glance, he wanted to brush her off. She could show him her video later.
On second glance, the look on her face was similar to what he saw when she rounded into the hangar back in Washington after the vulture attack. It was an expression that he’d seen on many a fellow soldier’s face when they came in from a mission. A little bit shellshocked. A little exhaustion as the adrenaline left their systems. A little pale and clammy with eyes held too wide, searching for the next unknown.
He accepted one side of her earbuds she’d attached to her phone. She slid the other side into her own ear so they’d be hearing the video together.
Tapping the arrow to play the video, he quickly realized that this was a security breech. Diamond and Remi had been attacked.
Did this have wider ramifications to the senator’s security, or was this a one-off?
He paused the video. “Are you okay?” His eyes scanned over her front and back. She looked fine. Her skin color was paler than usual, but that was expected. She wasn’t having difficulty breathing…
“Yeah, I think so.”
Tapping the video, T-Rex watched Remi drag Diamond out of the elevator and get her into the stairwell, possibly saving Diamond’s life.
Remi went up. Diamond went down.
“Where’d she go?” T-Rex asked.
“To sit in the car with Ty and Rory. That’s what you told us, right? That when you guys got to the lecture hall, that he would go move the cars and stay there with Rory? She was too afraid to be in the building. She said she’ll work on the senator’s next speech there.”
“I’m trying to get a read on what happened. How did they know to target you and Diamond?”
“Exactly,” Remi said. “Security was with the senator. Diamond and I were alone. Was I targeted? I sincerely doubt it. They would have no idea that I’d be along. But certainly, the senator would travel with an aid.”
Seemed like the clusterfuck of birds attacking the photojournalist that st
arted them off on this assignment was going to color the whole mission. T-Rex wanted to stop that trajectory in its tracks. “Can I forward this to my team?”
“Sure.” Remi took a breath and adjusted her shoulders.
Yeah, there was stress there. T-Rex bet Remi could use a drink and a massage. His mind sent him a picture of her tangled in the sheets, sweaty and sleepy with a contented smile—and he cut that thought off immediately.
“That was a close call,” he whispered as he watched the scene unfurl a second time.
The video jostled as Remi jogged up the stairs toward the lecture hall. Along the way, she was dictating details and observations that wouldn’t have been captured by the video in the elevator. The chemicals and their possible effects. The size of the containers. Descriptions of the men. All of that was important. Keen observation skills developed over her years in the field.
Standing behind the blue velvet curtain, T-Rex split his attention between the senator and the intelligence Remi was sharing. “What was the flier about?”
Reaching into her cross-body pack, Remi tugged a hot pink flier from the netting and handed it over.
He gave it a quick scan before he folded it and slid it into his suit pocket.
“After that incident in the elevator, I think we need to consider that the man down in the garage wasn’t a security guard at all. He might have positioned himself there to split our forces and signal his colleagues.” She shrugged. “A possibility.”
T-Rex stood feet wide, arms crossed over his chest as he weighed her theory.
Remi scratched her thumb into her brow. “An aid, two aids, three? Didn’t matter.” She had gripped his bicep to balance herself on her toes as she whispered in his ear, brushing her breasts against him by proximity. The scent of floral shampoo filled his nostrils.
Focus, he had to admonish himself.
“The guy on the elevator basically spelled it out. Get the aid on the elevator, gas her. She’s dead or close to it as they make their escape. Asphyxiation is the crucial point. Based on the flier, they wanted to make sure that someone died of the very thing they were blaming on the senator. But it feels like a red herring. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here at all.”
The video finished downloading to Echo’s TOC. His fingers landed again on his tie as he pressed the button to open the communications. “Winner, you have incoming.”
“It’s downloading now,” came through his earpiece.
“Oil is choking the world.” He had read on the flier that Remi had handed him.
“A deadly political statement that was sure to be headlines across the world. If it bleeds, it leads thought process,” Remi explained.
T-Rex glowered. Diamond wasn’t on his security list, but he certainly felt responsible for her. And for Remi. He needed to get the senator from the building, into the car, and back to the hotel without incident. “Diamond headed toward the cars?” he clarified.
Remi lowered her heels back to the ground as she nodded, then swiped her hands over his sleeve, relieving the wrinkles she’d created.
T-Rex depressed the comms button. “Echo two.”
“Two. If you’re looking for Diamond, she’s jogging up the sidewalk toward the car, high heels and all.”
“Copy. Put her in the back seat. Let her work. Don’t let her talk and distract you. What are you seeing?”
“Nothing that’s caught my eye.”
“Out.” T-Rex turned back to Remi. “Ty can see Diamond.”
Remi scraped her teeth over her top lip.
“What are you thinking?” T-Rex noticed that she had stress splints on both her hands and wondered why.
“When we walked from the garage to the building, things felt off.”
“Off.” He repeated the word and let it dangle there so she’d fill in the blanks.
She took her phone back, queued up a video of her walking out of the garage and to the front door. She played it on silent and at high speed.
T-Rex watched. “I can forward this?”
She nodded. Her eyes were on the senator, and T-Rex took a moment to do a scan before he focused on sending the video on. “Winner, we have a problem. Did intelligence say there was any chatter around the senator’s speech?”
“Crickets.”
T-Rex watched it again with a critical, assessing eye. Fighting-aged men dressed in brimmed hats that shadowed their faces and clothing styles that could conceal their identities. Clothing too warm for the day that could protect their skin from, say, chemical irritants. Too observant. Too fixed on looking in a single direction.
At this point, the problem was securing the senator and getting her to the cars. He could take Blankenship out a different door, but from the looks of this tape, the only exit that didn’t have eyes and bodies was outside of the garage entrance.
“Winner. Do we have a real-time sky view of the building? Are the numbers still there?”
“I’m checking our satellite feed now. There’s a group of, say, twenty who are gathering near the front door with placards. They’ve divided their groups, and it looks like they are covering all the exits.”
The security guard this morning said the elevator to that exit wasn’t available to the public. Ty said that direction was still clear. “The signs, are they environmental?” T-Rex asked. “Any chance you can see?”
“They tip them every once in a while—no, I can’t really tell.”
“They weren’t about the environment,” Remi said.
T-Rex caught her eye.
“The men on the elevator—I was dealing with some issues I have about confined spaces. I was focused on surviving the moment, so I didn’t weigh all of the information. Reliving the situation through the videos, homing in on the accents, they sound Syrian.”
“You sure? Hundred percent?”
“A hundred percent?” She shook her head. “But to my ear, yes.”
T-Rex nodded. He’d kept his comms button pressed throughout this interview so TOC could hear what was going on, assess, and advise. “Winner?”
“On it.”
T-Rex focused down on Remi. “Guesses on what’s going on?”
“Uhm. Yeah. So the senator is heading to Lebanon to recommit to the United States’ friendship with Beirut. While prepping for this assignment, I spoke to my contacts in the area to get their take on the senator’s visit. In some pockets, there’s a great deal of relief. However, the opposition doesn’t want the senator to go to Lebanon to deliver the U.S.’s declaration of alliance.”
“This is England.”
“If they were to take out the senator or the senator’s aid in London under the guise of ‘big oil killing the planet,’ then no one in the Middle East would deal with the ensuing ramifications, England would.” She paused with a tip of her head. Her mind obviously whirring. “Do you remember that story out of Slovakia recently? There were all of those environmental scientists that were kidnapped. They were blaming it on that poor man with schizophrenia who thought the trees were talking to him. He needed to have been put in a hospital long before he was exploited. At least now he’s getting the help he needs.”
While he listened to Remi, T-Rex’s gaze scanned for trouble. “What has that kidnapping to do with our present situation?”
“The Norwegian oil executive—the company's president—planned the kidnapping and set it up with a fall guy. The president—I can’t remember his name right now, sorry—Ah! Got it. It’s Edvin Odegaard. Odegaard was supposed to go in and ‘save’ the kidnapped victims from the bad ‘eco-terrorists.” She put save and eco-terrorists in air quotes. “To be the hero. That would bring good publicity to him and his company. But instead, he was arrested by the Slovakians and tossed in jail. He’s awaiting his trial.”
“Okay, I remember that story on the news. I’m not following why you’re bringing it up here.” T-Rex furrowed his brow. With every word out of Remi’s mouth, this mission was ramping up the danger quotient.
“I’m
speculating that this might be yet another copycat. It’s imaginable that a group wants to preempt the senator from going to Lebanon by causing a major crisis here in England. They blame it on environmentalists. An easy target. Just like last summer when fires were set in America. That was blamed on certain groups. But it turned out that all of the people who were identified and arrested for the fires were agitators looking to spark unrest. Many of them were linked to the Taylor Knapp video games and books—the ones that were psychologically engineered to foment anger and distrust in America.”
T-Rex shot her a look, then turned back to his principal. Russia? That was who was behind the psyops with the video games. They were also behind an attack within Fort Bragg on his very own Echo team. Deadly dangerous. And yes, they liked to play mind games. That could very well be correct. It didn’t have to be Russia, though they had a stake in the Middle East. Like Remi said, some group could just use their tactics as a blueprint.
“It’s kabuki theater. The guy who split us at the elevator wasn’t British. Nor were the guys in the elevator. And the men outside just don’t look like tree huggers, if you know what I mean.”
“Echo Six?” T-Rex called Havoc.
“Six.” Havoc stood at the foot of the steps that would allow audience members up on the stage.
“When the clapping begins, we’ll be following protocol Mongoose.”
“Mongoose, copy.”
“Out.”
The speech was lasting an uncomfortably long time. The senator strayed from her prepared remarks to deliver her folksy stories that had the audience doubled over laughing. The senator was obviously thrilled by her reception. But every minute allowed the bad guys to get organized and in place.
