Calculated Risk

by Stephanie Doyle

  “Do you even have a shot?”

  He wasn’t going to like her answer. But it was the best chance they had. “It’s sort of an angular shot.”

  “Jesus, Bri,” he groaned, knowing exactly what she meant by an angular shot. “Someday you’re going to learn that you’re not Annie Oakley, but today is not going to be that day.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “We can wait. I’ve got my cell, we can call for backup.”

  “Backup? That means we have to wait until they get there, then sit out the standoff. All that is going to take time. Time we don’t have if Kahsan is truly en route.”

  He paused, then asked, “Can we toss something out of the trunk, cause a distraction and make him give up his position?”

  “He’s too far away. All we’ll do is give up our position. What do we have to lose if I take a shot and miss?”

  “Your life. This guy took out Horner, who, trust me, was no slouch. If you miss and he gets a chance to return fire he won’t see who is doing the shooting.”

  Quinlan was right. But his prophecy of doom wasn’t going to change her mind.

  “If I miss, the surprise of the shot should at least buy me enough time to close the trunk. Then we’ll call for help.”

  Quinlan’s expression remained grim.

  “The more time we waste, the more time we lose to Kahsan. And I mean it… I really do have to pee.”

  “Don’t get cute on the shot,” he said, relinquishing the battle. “Take what you know you can hit.”

  Removing the Defender from the back of her jeans, she moved it in front of her head. Then she inched her way closer to the edge of the trunk so she could use the mirror to once again find her target. This time there was a forearm exposed. And part of a shoulder.

  His position now committed to memory, Sabrina pulled the mirror back inside and dropped it beside her. She turned again until she was on her back. In order to get off the shot that she wanted, she was going to need to open the trunk a little wider. Enough to get her hand over the side of the car. The position and the angle of the gun was key.

  She closed her eyes and saw the trees in front of the car exactly as they had existed seconds ago in her view through the mirror. She saw the target. Slightly to the left of the car. Behind an oak. His left forearm and left shoulder exposed.

  The fact that he’d exposed his left side meant it wasn’t his gun hand. So a shot at his shoulder, even if she hit him, wouldn’t-shouldn’t, depending on his training-stop him from returning fire.

  In the picture in her head, Sabrina saw the tree immediately to the target’s left. The bark on the tree looked thick and rough. A shot fired at the perfect angle, at the perfect height would ricochet sharp right. Exactly where the target’s head should be.

  Even if she missed, his natural instinct would be to duck. Giving her more than enough time to close the trunk or get off a second shot. The latter wouldn’t be likely, but she didn’t rule it out as an option.

  “I mean it, Sabrina. Don’t get cute.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. Strange, she thought. It wasn’t like him to say anything at this point when it would serve as nothing more than a distraction. It signaled to her just how worried he was. She wondered at the cause of it. Did he fear for her life, or was he more worried that with her death Arnold’s precious data would be lost forever?

  She didn’t think she really wanted to know the answer to that question and decided it didn’t matter. Her job was to stay focused on the task. The shot was there. She’d done it a hundred times in the woods out in the back of her house. All she needed to do was let it happen.

  After a calming breath, she sprang into action. Sabrina gently pushed on the trunk top, moving her gun hand out over the edge of the car’s frame as it lifted ever so slightly. She knew where the gun needed to be pointed, knew how high the shot needed to be. In anticipation of the kickback, she lifted the sight of the Defender three-quarters of an inch and squeezed the trigger.

  Because the position of the gun was close to her ear, the sound of the shot practically exploded inside her head. The resonating buzz echoed so loudly she almost missed it. But not quite.

  It was the brief high-pitched sound of her target howling in pain.

  Then there was only silence.

  Chapter 9

  Twelve years ago

  A loud knock on her door broke the silence and startled her.

  Sabrina didn’t get many visitors at the convent. Converted convent, she corrected herself, enjoying the irony of that phrase. The CIA had bought the building just outside of Langley near McLean, Virginia, from a group of Carmelite nuns who had seen their numbers dwindle to two. She’d been assured from several sources that the CIA had no part in their demise in an attempt to scoop up the property, but she wasn’t all that sure she believed it.

  The fourteen-room building consisted of a kitchen that Sabrina made little use of, preferring to order in; a common living area that had no TV so basically was always empty; a library; a chapel; several spartan dorm rooms; and an attic that had been converted into an apartment for visiting agents who didn’t have a permanent residence in the D.C. area.

  When Sabrina first arrived there had been only one other member of the Youth Adoption Program, a language whiz named Chet, in residence. Chet had left a few weeks after her arrival to begin his career. Since then she’d been the sole student. Apparently super genius teenagers weren’t that easy to come by.

  And there was Quinlan. He always claimed the attic apartment whenever he was back in the country from assignment. She liked to imagine it was so he could check up on her and, of course, fuss about the volume of her stereo. But the reality was, it was probably just convenient for him, rather than maintaining a separate residence when he was so often gone for long stretches at a time.

  This time he’d been gone for over six months.

  Actually, it was six months, one week, three days and well, she wasn’t going to count the hours even though she could. After he’d successfully, as he put it, settled her in and had healed completely from his earlier injuries, there had been no point in sticking around. His real skill was recruiting and cultivating assets in the field. It’s what he’d been trained to do.

  After almost a year of working with him day in and day out, he’d left her without so much as a goodbye.

  Not that she expected any different. Quinlan, she had ascertained during their association, wasn’t a man who formed connections. After all that time baiting him, teasing him, fighting with him, she still didn’t know his story. Because that was the way he wanted it.

  Jumping up from her short couch she made her way to the door. She didn’t think to ask who it was, or worry about an intruder. The CIA provided the security that surrounded the building. Granted, the guards who watched the place-most of them on this assignment as a form of punishment-liked to call themselves baby-sitters. Sabrina didn’t mind. They were good at keeping people out.

  Including her father the one time he bothered to check up on her. She had refused his visit, and the baby-sitters had done their job.

  She opened the door quickly and sucked in her breath just as quickly. “Q.”

  “Bri,” he returned.

  “Come in.”

  Quinlan walked into her room as he did any other room he ever entered: cautiously. He surveyed the small space then turned back to her. “You haven’t done much with it since I left.”

  Sabrina considered the bare white walls. There was a single bed, covered with a tan comforter and two pillows. She had a weathered oak desk, a pretty comfortable office chair and a state-of-the-art laptop with wireless Internet access. She had a TV, a lumpy green two-seater couch and a minifridge. It was basically the exact same room she’d walked into two years ago. Except for the minifridge. That had been her only addition.

  She supposed other teenage girls might have posters up or shoes and clothes pouring out of closets. Maybe there should be makeup scattered
over her desk, and silly pictures of her and friends taken in one of those booths at the fair. But she didn’t have friends. She didn’t go to fairs. She didn’t have money, except for a small monthly stipend that covered the cost of things like shampoo, toothpaste, tampons and the most basic of clothing necessities.

  No, the room wasn’t cluttered. Then again, neither was her life. Still, feeling as if she’d failed some kind of test, she asked, “Was I supposed to?”

  “No.”

  “Have a seat.” She felt like a grown-up for having said it. So much so, she added, “Can I get you something to drink?”

  His eyebrow arched in a way she recalled that meant he was assessing whether or not she was teasing. In this case she wasn’t. She opened the minifridge and pulled out two bottles of Coors Light. When he scowled, she merely shrugged. “Arnold smuggled them in for me on his last visit. He says alcohol helps relax the brain. Gives a genius a break and all that,” she defended and handed him one. “It’s no big deal.”

  “You’re underage.”

  “I can fire a grenade launcher, although they still won’t teach me how to shoot a gun. Which, by the way, I’m pretty sure I could kick some butt doing. I’m a master of several forms of hand-to-hand combat. I can fluently read four languages. I think I can handle a beer. A light one at that.”

  Seemingly resigned to that fact, Quinlan took the offered beverage and twisted off the top and tossed it across the room directly into the open trash can next to her desk. Then he moved to the couch and sat. Heavily, she thought. Almost wearily.

  On the cushion next to him was a game of solitaire in progress. She gathered up the cards, not before remembering exactly how they had been positioned, and sat next to him.

  “Why not just play on the computer?”

  “I like the feel of the cards in my hand,” she offered.

  He took a healthy sip of his beer and for a few seconds said nothing. She wanted to pounce with questions about where he’d been, what he’d been doing for the past six months and, more importantly, why he looked so tired, but she figured she’d give him a little breathing room. Not a lot. Just a little.

  “Your language teachers are concerned,” he said finally.

  “You spoke to them?” she asked, surprised he would even know what was going on with her day-to-day class load.

  He nodded. “They say you can read fine, but your comprehension is only average and your accent sucks…in everything.”

  Sabrina grimaced. Her accents did suck. Badly in French, Russian and Arabic. In Cantonese, forget it. “It’s not my strong suit. I can memorize an alphabet instantly, so reading words is no problem. But speaking a language and understanding it when it’s spoken…” She trailed off not wanting to finish that admission.

  “You’re just like everybody else,” Quinlan finished for her.

  Leave it to him to be back for five seconds and still find a way to hit her where it hurt. Maybe there had been a time when she wanted to be like everyone else, but not now. Not since he’d shown her how important it was simply to be who she was.

  “Auditory retention isn’t my thing. Everything I do, you know the freaky stuff, is visual.”

  “That means you might forget something you’ve heard,” he said.

  There was some surprise in that statement. Probably because he was one of the few people who understood the limitlessness of her memory. “I guess. I probably remember more than your average person, but I’ve got no real extraordinary talent in that area. Why? You want to tell me something that you hope I forget? Try me.”

  He smiled. “No, I just forgot that even you have limitations.”

  “Filled with them.”

  Another drag on his beer, another pause. Then, “They told me that your father came to see you.”

  “Yeah?” Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her chest, the bottle of beer hanging from her fingers. Then looking down and seeing what she had done, she uncrossed her arms and instead took a sip of her drink.

  “You didn’t see him.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Sabrina, the CIA is not going to move you into a field operative position with this kind of emotional baggage. You said yourself you didn’t want to be stuck in a room deciphering code for the rest of your life. That you wanted to be on the front line.”

  “I do. I just didn’t want to see my father. It’s no big deal. I went down to the Pentagon and asked him if he wanted to have lunch or something. He didn’t have time. So when he came by to see me, I didn’t have time. This is what we do. This is who we are. There’s no baggage.” There was an unhealthy level of competition between her and her father, but that was more his doing than it was hers.

  “Okay,” he replied, apparently willing to let it drop.

  “It’s been excessively dull here since you left. No one yells at me because the music is too loud. No one gets my jokes.”

  “Your jokes aren’t that funny.”

  Sabrina’s lips twitched. “And no one rips my self-confidence to shreds like you do.”

  “You need it,” he told her.

  She shrugged her shoulder in agreement. “Tell me where you were. Afghanistan?”

  His response was merely to shoot her a knowing glance that suggested she was foolish for even asking.

  “Come on? How secret could it be? I’m one of you now.”

  He smiled at that and tilted the bottle up, finishing the beer in a few swallows. He stood up, placed the empty on top of the fridge then reached inside for another. When he sat down again, she eyed the beer. “If you plan on drinking all of them-” which she suspected was his intent despite the fact that it was very un-Quinlan-like “-then you have to replace them.”

  “Sure.”

  He was lying. But she took a measure of satisfaction in knowing that she was on to him. He didn’t want her getting caught with the beer in her fridge, but rather than fight her on it, he’d simply eliminate the problem. In class they called it “OE”: obstacle elimination.

  “Rumor is that you were moving in on Kahsan,” she prompted.

  “What do you know about Kahsan?” he asked, his voice skeptical.

  “I know he’s public enemy number one,” she elaborated. “The bastard son of a prince from the United Arab Emirates. Financially secure, because all the money was on his mother’s side. Educated in England, first at Eton, then at Oxford. And for the past five years he’s been the mastermind behind several terrorist attacks. What makes him unusual is that he doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any one terrorist group or any fanatical position. Rather he’s more like a brain for hire for the bad guys. They say he’s brilliant.”

  “A highly overused adjective as far as I’m concerned.”

  The subtle dig made her laugh, but she didn’t back off. “Rumor also has it that you two tangled during a black-op in Kuwait.”

  “You know better than to listen to rumors.”

  “Yes, but if one is willing to look beyond the rumor one can often find the shards of a fact.”

  His lips twitched, probably because he recognized his own quote. “You are learning well, young grasshopper.”

  She smiled. Already she could see just from their short conversation, and probably the beer, that he was infinitely more relaxed than he had been when he first came in. She was good for him, she concluded.

  “It’s true isn’t it? It’s personal between you two.”

  He looked over at her, frowning but not scowling. “It’s not. It’s business. He’s an enemy of the United States, and my job is to take him out.”

  “He’s the one who shot you, wasn’t he? The one who gave you the scar?” She reached up and brushed a finger over the puckered scar that lined his forehead near his hairline. The one that had been fresh when they first met. He caught her hand in his, his hold almost painful, but she didn’t back down. It was a weird moment with the kind of silence that made both people feel uncomfortable, but neither was willing to end it.

 
; Finally, he pushed her hand back at her. “Don’t touch.”

  “Fine. Just tell me if you got him?”

  “I…we…didn’t.”

  “Next time,” she encouraged him, sorry to see that relaxed look she’d induced fade back to weariness.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to watch a movie or something?”

  “No, I only stopped by to see what was up with your father.”

  “And to bitch about my language grades.”

  “And that. Language skills are critical for field ops. Most of what we do is talking and listening. It’s not quite as action packed as I imagine you think it is. I’ve only used a grenade launcher once.”

  “Are you sticking around then? Maybe you can help me with my accents.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be sticking around for a while. After all, someone has to teach you how to shoot.”

  “Yes! Finally. Small arms.”

  “Should I be worried that you’re this excited about handling a gun?”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not on my list of people to take out,” she teased. “I was just wondering what was taking so long to get to it. But I guess I still have a year in the program before they turn me loose so there’s plenty of time.”

  “A year,” he muttered. Then he shook his head as if he was just recalling something unpleasant.

  She wasn’t sure what it was, but she sensed he was going to leave and she wasn’t ready for that yet. “What about a game of cards? Gin. Ten cents a point.”

  He stared down at the deck in her hand. To impress him she shuffled the cards.

  “Cards with a math genius?”

  “You just implied the description is overused.” She egged him on. “I know you’re not scared.”

  “Okay. What the hell?”

  They played for over three hours, drank all the beer and ended up moving on to Diet Coke. He ordered a pizza, pepperoni because they both liked it, and she took him for twenty-one dollars and thirty cents.

  For her it had been a really good night.

  Chapter 10