“We need to move.”
Quinlan stood, too, and began walking in silent agreement that forward was their only possible direction.
“I want you to know something,” she began. “I’m not lying about wanting back in. It may seem contradictory to the actions in my past, but it’s the truth. I’m not going to waste a whole lot of breath trying to convince you. I know that you still have to figure it out for yourself. But there’s going to come a time when you’re going to have to trust me, and I need you to know when that time comes, I won’t let you down.”
He said nothing, but he did nod to acknowledge her words.
They walked alongside each other for a time, neither saying anything. The crunch of leaf corpses falling victim under their feet serenaded them. Then because she couldn’t stand the silence anymore Sabrina, as always, broke first.
“Come on, though, you have to admit…that was one hell of a shot back there. Off the tree, into the face, nothing but net.”
“Sabrina.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
Chapter 11
Twelve years ago
Quinlan glanced down at his trainee who was currently staring with rapt attention at the gun in his hand. He lifted the weapon to Sabrina’s eye level, wishing he was more certain that she was ready for this. He wasn’t. But it was time.
“This weapon is-”
“A semiautomatic.40 caliber Glock 22. Full-size with controllable recoil, a barrel length of 4 and 5/8 inches and weight of approximately 25.67 ounces,” Sabrina interrupted him. “I sort of memorized all the major gun models used by most government agents. Want me to tell you about the SIG-Sauer-”
“This weapon is-” he continued undaunted.
“Lightweight. Manageable. And takes a standard ten-round magazine. I know. But let me ask you this. What with us being CIA agents-”
“You’re not an agent yet,” Quinlan corrected her.
“Whatever. I’m just saying. In keeping with the spirit of things, don’t you think we should be buying American?”
“I think you, on your first day of small arms weapon training, should shut up.”
“Touchy, touchy,” she tisked.
Quinlan breathed deeply trying to find some patience. He had no doubt he was going to need it. “That might be because I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. One guess as to why.”
“Madonna?”
“Is that who that was?” he wondered.
“She’s going through this transitional phase. It’s really powerful. Sometimes you’ve just got to crank it. You know?”
He didn’t bother to question that, fearing it would make him seem older than he truly was. Instead, he pulled her hand toward his and placed the gun in her flattened palm.
“Let’s start with basic target practice. There is a target twenty feet out directly in front of you. Can you see it?”
They were standing together in a single cube of an indoor shooting range that was part of the Langley complex. Targets were at various different distances for each cube. They each wore safety goggles along with a set of ear protectors that would muffle the report of the gun while still allowing them to hear each other when they spoke. Muffled sounds of guns going off came from the far right of them, but there were at least three empty cubes on either side of them.
Quinlan hadn’t wanted her to be intimidated by the other agents’ accuracy.
“Yep. Only it’s twenty feet, four and a half inches.”
“Freak,” he accused, but with no acidity so she didn’t flinch. He’d called her that so often by now she’d grown used to the title. It was practically an endearment.
“Sorry,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. Though he knew she wasn’t. Not really.
“There is an outline of a head and chest. For now I want you to concentrate only on getting the shot inside the outlined figure. Here’s what you want to do.”
Quinlan stepped behind her and paused. Then he pushed forward, forcing himself to go through the motions he would have taken with any other student.
He moved behind her, placed his arms over hers, his hands gripping each of her wrists. To brace her for the impact that was to come, he pushed his whole body against her back, his knees just brushing the back of her knees. He heard her breathing pick up. He felt her body tense. Enough that he felt compelled to ask, “Nervous?”
She exhaled between her lips before she answered, “No.”
A few tendrils of hair escaped from the headset she wore and brushed against his cheek, distracting him. “Next time pull your hair back.”
She nodded, but it only caused her hair to caress his cheek even more. Focusing on the lesson, he gritted his teeth against the softness and the smell. Lavender.
“You don’t want to pull or jerk the trigger. You want to squeeze it in your hand, absorbing the recoil as it happens. You’re not going to be prepared for the power of the…”
The shot went off before he finished his instruction and he bit back a curse. “This is becoming a problem, Sabrina.”
She turned her head, lifting her safety goggles up over her eyes, and giving him a cheeky smile. “Premature firing? No one has ever complained before.”
His steady gaze conveyed his displeasure. Her tendency to jump the gun, literally, was beginning to become an issue. And this wasn’t the first time he’d addressed it.
“Whatever,” she harrumphed in response to his non-reply. “I bet the money you lost to me the other night that I got him right between the eyes.”
Quinlan hit a button on the side of the cube, drawing the paper figure closer to see exactly where she landed the shot.
It wasn’t quite between the eyes, but it was close.
“I didn’t account enough for the reverberation in my hands after the explosion,” she said glancing at the target. “Don’t hold me this time. Let me try it on my own.”
“I wasn’t holding you. I was steadying you,” he retorted. But he stayed to the left of her and hit the button to send the target back.
He watched her brace her legs apart to prepare herself for the impact. Then she tilted her head and studied the target for a moment. He wondered what she was seeing, how the world looked to a person who could accurately tell at a glance the distance between two objects, when suddenly she fired off three more rounds.
By the time the target reached them they could both see that she had created a significant hole in the location that would be between a man’s eyes. All three shots hit almost exactly the same spot.
“Cool,” she whispered. “I knew I would be good at this.”
“Why?”
She hesitated for a moment because he knew the probing irritated her. As a rule, she didn’t like to answer those types of questions. Using her abilities was fine. Being challenged to see how far she could push them didn’t bother her. But when she had to explain them, or dissect them, she invariably froze.
It reminded him that, although she may tolerate being called a freak, it didn’t mean she wasn’t sensitive about it. Too bad, he thought. She didn’t have those kinds of choices anymore. “Why?” he prodded. “It’s important Sabrina. We need to understand so we know exactly what you’re capable of.”
“It’s the spatial thing,” she answered finally. “And physics and geometry and I don’t know.” She lifted her hands up in a helpless gesture and Quinlan moved in to remove the weapon from her grip.
She grimaced; obviously realizing that she’d forgotten the gun was still in her hand.
“Go on,” he encouraged her.
“I can estimate the speed and the trajectory of the bullet coming out of the barrel based on the length of the barrel, the drag of the ballistics and everything else I remember from the textbooks about the science of shooting. I can see the exact distance between here and the target. Put it all together and I know exactly where the gun needs to be pointed in order to hit what I aim at. It’s just a question of keeping my hands still and, like yo
u said, absorbing the recoil. I have really steady hands.”
Quinlan nodded. “Since target practice is beyond you, we’ll try another exercise.” He hit another button next to the one that controlled the target’s distance and a raised platform came up from the floor. It basically looked like an oversize pinwheel, with pictures attached to each spoke.
“The target is going to spin,” he explained. “It will stop randomly on a picture. You’ve got to determine if the target is a threat and fire. If you hear this-” a buzzer sounded above their heads “-it means you took too long on a target that was a threat and you were shot. Ready?”
She nodded.
Quinlan hit the button again and set the target in motion. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Her processing powers were extraordinary as she methodically identified each target and either held her fire or took aim. After one reload the final target appeared and she lifted her weapon.
“It’s a grandma.”
Quinlan squinted a little and checked out the picture. It was a grandma. Not once had the buzzer sounded above their heads. When he checked the stats on the monitor above the control panel, he saw the result. Twenty out of twenty. She’d hit every target she was supposed to and missed every one she should have.
“Well?”
“Perfect,” he said, trying to recall the last time he’d seen any rookie come close. Not that there was any point in trying to remember something that hadn’t happened.
Sabrina set the gun down and removed the ear protectors. She raised her hands in the air and jerked her hips a little to the left and right. “I rock!”
Unable to help himself, he smiled.
“Quinlan. A moment.”
They both turned as they spotted a suit walking toward their cubicle. The man’s name was Geiger, one of the assistant directors of the counter-terrorist division at the agency. He was also in charge of the Youth Adoption Program and Quinlan’s superior.
Quinlan lifted his ear protectors off his head and removed the safety goggles. “You’ve got a few more magazines left,” he told Sabrina, indicating the ammunition in front of her. “Push the target back as far as it will go and see how you do.”
With that he left the cube and met the man in the walkway that ran behind the row of units. The man had about ten years on Quinlan, but remained in solid shape. The gray at his temples gave him a distinguished look, as did the expensive suit, but there was no mistaking the fact that this man was once an active agent. Hard-core.
He glanced over at where Sabrina was firing.
“She’s got good form.”
“She’s accurate,” Quinlan stated conservatively.
“I saw the readout on the judgment program upstairs.”
This was news. “You were checking up on us. Her.” Quinlan internally bristled at the idea, but gave no indication of that to his superior.
“I’m in charge of the YAP. Currently, she’s our only student. It’s my job to follow up. Yes, I’ve been checking up on her. She’s established quite a reputation in your absence. Most of the other trainers hate working with her because she’s too damn smart for her own good. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Does it bother you working with her?”
“No,” Quinlan said.
Geiger paused for a second as if waiting for Quinlan to continue. When he didn’t, Geiger pushed. “I’m looking for an assessment.”
“You have my early reports. The reports from the others.”
“I do. But I want to hear it from you. Will she make it?”
“She’s got a tremendous amount of potential,” Quinlan offered.
“Clearly. Perfect on the judgment test first time out. I’ve never seen that before,” Geiger noted.
“Neither have I.”
“How is that possible?”
“I believe, although you would have to ask her, that it’s probably a result of the speed at which her brain processes information that she sees. She’s able to spot the target and identify it as a threat or not almost instantaneously. It gives her an edge.”
Geiger acknowledged the information. “That’s fine. But the reports I’m getting back from some of the other trainers aren’t as favorable. They say she’s willful.”
That wasn’t a surprise. “She has a difficult time following orders. Comes from being on her own and independent for so long. There was only her father, and he was more absent than present. She essentially raised herself. She can also be impatient, which I believe stems from a tremendous confidence in her abilities.”
“You’re saying she’s cocky,” Geiger interpreted.
Quinlan followed the man’s gaze to where Sabrina was dancing about in the cube as she studied the target that she’d decimated with shots to the head and heart.
In the center of the target, she’d shot, albeit a lopsided one, a smiley face.
“She’s…” Quinlan didn’t finish that thought before Geiger interrupted him.
“Ready for phase two,” Geiger stated.
Quinlan’s stomach pitched, but again his face remained expressionless. “She’s only seventeen.”
“She’ll be eighteen next month.”
“We’ve never put anyone through phase two training until-”
“Look,” Geiger interrupted again. “You said it yourself. She’s been on her own for a long time. She’s mature enough to handle what comes next. And frankly, phase two is the only way we’re going to find out if she has what it takes to succeed as a field-op. Otherwise, we’ll move her behind a desk decrypting code.”
“She doesn’t want that.”
“It’s not a matter of what she wants, it’s a matter of where she’s best suited. I’m hearing words like willful, cocky and impatient. It’s time to break her.”
Break her. The words lingered in his mind and Quinlan recalled telling her the same thing once when he first met her. He’d been trying to intimidate her then and it had worked. This, however, would be different. This would be for real. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon and everything inside him said she wasn’t prepared for it.
Phase one was about learning. Letting her expand her mind. Letting her use it like she’d never been able to before. It was about teaching her body how to defend itself and how to attack. It was about learning how to shoot a gun and making the right decisions. These were the things she’d been ready for.
Phase two training was brutal. Survival training, torture resistance, psychological manipulation. Every agent went through it. Those who survived mentally and physically moved forward, those who didn’t were cut from the program or retrained for another job. Quinlan had been twenty-five, a former army officer, a grown man, when he’d done it.
“Despite her abilities,” Quinlan countered, “in many ways she’s still just a…a kid. You push her too far too fast, and you’ll never get her back.”
“She’ll be eighteen next month,” Geiger repeated as if that made it all right. “We’ve got women in the armed forces, in battle situations, who are handling the pressure of enemy engagement. It’s time to see what she’s really made of.”
Quinlan opened his mouth to refute that even battle conditions couldn’t compare to some of the psychological games that a rookie agent was put through, but Geiger’s expression was closed. He was done listening to any further arguments.
Then the assistant director once more studied the topic of the conversation, assessing her with his eyes. “Phase two,” he said, apparently definite in his decision. “Starting tomorrow. You know the exercise.”
Quinlan did and for a brief moment he wondered if he was going to be sick.
“Up until now she’s been having a little too much fun,” Geiger noted. “Phase two should be enough to wipe the smile off her face.”
With that Geiger moved on and left Quinlan standing alone. He turned to where Sabrina was loading the gun and watched her as she turned around with her back to the target, her arms over her head, the gun ups
ide down. She fired and when she brought the target forward she saw that she missed the head only by an inch.
“Damn it,” she cursed. “Let me try again.”
Quinlan stood there and thought about what tomorrow would bring. He thought about how it would change things between them and why that made him sad.
Then he dismissed his feelings entirely. Sabrina Masters had a gift. That gift could be used to protect and serve her country. It was his job to get her ready to do that. And so he would.
Even if, when it was all said and done, she hated his guts.
Chapter 12
Present
“Please empty your pockets and step through the gate. Thank you. Please empty your pockets, you can use one of the buckets there, sir, and proceed through the gate. Thank you.”
The security guard at Shannon Airport in Ireland watched as each of the people in line followed procedure like docile sheep. He liked to think maybe once, just once, someone might step out of line and then he would have to tackle him to the ground, put his suspect in handcuffs, maybe even draw his weapon. He, Logan Hurley, would be a hero. Stopping terrorism at its origin.
And since the terminal he typically worked housed most of the planes heading to America, he’d be a hero over there, too. They might even want to have a parade for him. He could stay with his cousin Patty in Boston, then go on to New York…
It was the sheets, or what he figured were sheets, wrapped around the body of a woman that caught his attention and brought him back from his daydream of ticker tape parades. No doubt someone at the ticketing counter had already checked the woman’s passport, and again as she passed through customs, but still Logan was suspicious.
How could he not be when the woman was practically invisible to the world but for her eyes. He noted her exceptionally long lashes and thought that she was probably very pretty underneath all the robes and such. Not for the first time he wondered what inspired a woman to dress this way.
But people had their customs. His dear mother wouldn’t be caught out on the street without her rosary wrapped around her hand. He assumed it was much the same for this woman. Still, she had to accept that if she dressed like this she was going to elicit suspicion. And there was nothing in the rule book about not checking a passport twice.
Calculated Risk Page 11
