Silver

by Brian January

  He crept forward. When he came to the window, he pushed it open wider with the barrel of his rifle, then carefully thrust his head through the opening.

  Before he could react, hands grabbed his collar, yanking hard, and he went sailing out into open space with a scream that was abruptly cut short by a sickening thud.

  A second later April crashed into the hall, sweeping the dead man’s HK416 in a wide arc, spraying a stream of bullets.

  The tall man’s body danced spasmodically and slammed against the floor, his chest riddled with red-rimmed holes.

  Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she grabbed two grenades from the man’s vest, then climbed back through the window and out onto the roof. Pulling the pins, she lobbed the grenades into the corridor and ducked. The twin explosions banged and the window above her head shattered as shrapnel peppered it. Black smoke poured out of the jagged hole.

  Quickly she moved out along the crumbling parapet that perimetered the roof. From here she could see the other buildings that made up the monastery, all jutting from the mountainside like they’d grown there naturally, and all with flat roofs like the one she was on. And on the other side, at the top of a slope thick with cypress trees, the Eurocopter waited, its pilot sitting behind the canopy.

  Hunkering down, she grabbed a solid section of the parapet and swung her legs over the side, her hand reaching down to grab the rough extrusion of one of the quarried stones that made up the building, her foot finding the lip of another stone below. Spidering her way downward, she reached the bottom in less than a minute.

  Then behind her back a boot crunched on loose rock.

  She whipped around, seeing Krell leveling his rifle at her, his face as impassive as a block of concrete, his leaden eyes cold and flat.

  Without a word he tightened his finger on the trigger.

  ___

  Reaching the top of the staircase, Skarda found the access door that Vasiliou had told him about and pushed it open, his eyes slitting at the blast of sunlight that struck his face. He glanced around to orient himself. He was standing on a flat roof strewn with scatterings of small rocks, surmounted by a low parapet of limestone that ran around the perimeter of the building.

  Crossing the open space in a low crouch, he slid down onto his belly and looked out, seeing a grove of cypress and juniper trees beyond a sharp-peaked chapel wall, and past the shoulder of the mountainside, a line of low-lying hills in the distance.

  And the helicopter.

  It was a dark gray Eurocopter AS-350, squatting on a flat table of rock next to a tall oak. Through the sloping canopy he could see the head and shoulders of the pilot.

  With deliberate, steady motion he eased the Garand’s barrel over the parapet, then willed his muscles to relax as he waited for April to make her move.

  ___

  April’s black eyes were fathomless as she looked at the man who was about to kill her. His face was set in hard, sharp angles, as though a surgeon had stretched knife-edged sections of flesh over his skull and sewn them in place. He regarded her without triumph, without curiosity, without pity—without any kind of emotion at all.

  Just ruthless efficiency.

  “On your knees,” Krell ordered. “Hands behind your head.”

  April sank down, her gaze locked firmly onto his.

  “The people with you?” he asked.

  “Dead. Grenades.”

  He spoke into his throat mic. “Go inside and do a body count.”

  At the Eurocopter, the pilot climbed out of the cockpit and yelled out. “Greek Army chopper in the area.”

  Krell opened his mic again. “Get back here. We’re moving out—“

  In a blur of motion April arced her right arm in a pendulum sweep, knocking the barrel of the rifle aside and grabbing it as she launched herself forward, her leg whipping around like a battering ram at his groin.

  But the man was fast.

  Impossibly fast.

  Wrenching himself aside, he stepped past the kick, raising his arm and ramming the point of his elbow into her chin.

  She flopped backwards, hitting the ground hard, dazed. Blood leaked from her mouth, spattering the ground with droplets of red.

  Krell stood over her, lifting the ugly snout of the HK416, aiming at the space between her eyes.

  She stared at him, unflinching.

  His index finger whitened on the trigger—

  But then he relaxed, fractionally lowering the rifle. Decision set his face.

  April looked at him with eyes as black and empty as the frigid gulfs of space. “Better for you if you kill me now.”

  He gave a matter-of-fact shake to his head. “You have dark hair.”

  Then he unclipped a Taser from his belt and fired twin electrodes into her rib cage.

  ___

  On the roof, Skarda watched the two men trudge purposefully over the rocky ground to the Eurocopter. From the dossier Candy Man had forwarded, he recognized the tall man as Krell. The shorter man was dragging April behind him with a rope looped under her armpits. Her hands were handcuffed behind her and her ankles were bound with multiple strips of duct tape. Her body bounced and twisted on the rocks, face-down, like she was a bag of trash he was carrying to a dumpster.

  Anger flared inside him.

  Pressing his body flat against the parapet, he fitted the Garand’s stock against his shoulder, drew back the bolt, letting the clip feed a round into the breech. In the crosshairs of the telescopic sight he centered on a spot between the shoulder blades of the man dragging April. With a quick inhale he held his breath as he guided his finger into the loop of the trigger guard and gently increased the pressure, slowly exhaling as he drew back the trigger.

  Then he saw her head move, from side to side, in an exaggerated, deliberate motion.

  It meant “Don’t shoot.”

  He jerked his finger out of the trigger guard, breathing hard. As he took in the scene, he understood why. The enemy group was clumped too closely together and he wasn’t a good enough shot not to risk hitting her. But he could still try to disable the helicopter. But as quickly as the thought came he decided against it. The Garand just wasn’t enough firepower and with April’s arms and legs restrained, she couldn’t give him any help if things went wrong.

  Drawing the rifle barrel out of sight, he kept his head down as he listened to the helicopter’s rotors thudding into life.

  The Eurocopter lifted into the air, banked around, and clattered away to the north.

  A dry constriction knotted up in his throat. The Bad Guys had caught April, but at least she was alive. And as long as she was alive, she had a chance to get away and turn the tables.

  But now he was on his own.

  And they were running out of time.

  SEVENTEEN

  Rethymno Harbor

  CATHERINE LAKE sat in front of a computer monitor in the situation room. Because she and Turner were expected to be in regular communication with Washington, they were allowed daily computer and phone access under the watchful eye of Makris.

  Now the gunman was leaning against a console to her left, with his line of sight cut off by the monitor. It made her guts churn to even think about taking another risk. Morgana terrified her, turned her muscles to jelly. But she had every reason to believe that the pirate was going to execute them, anyway, after she got her hands on the silver. And Turner wasn’t going to help. It seemed like he was all talk and bluff, but no action.

  So it was up to her.

  Even if it meant dying.

  Keeping her eyes on the screen, she slowly lifted her right foot, using the point of her shoe to ease open a drawer.

  Earlier she’d glimpsed an old flip-style cell phone under a sheaf of papers when one of Morgana’s men had opened the drawer. The battery would be long dead, but maybe it wouldn’t matter.

  If she got lucky, anyway.

  A muffled noise came from the dock, and Makris jerked his head up to look out one of the windows.


  With a quick drop of her shoulder she dipped low and scooped the phone into her hand.

  ___

  Locked inside her cabin she sat down in front of the computer provided for the Alkmene’s guests. It was a functioning machine, but Morgana had disabled Internet access. Prying off the back of the cell phone, she pulled out the battery and laid it on the desk. Then she unplugged a USB cable and twisted off the connector end, exposing four interior wires. The green and white wires she ignored, but she pulled out the black and red ones, using her fingernails to strip them down, exposing the bare metal strands. Then with dabs of toothpaste she attached the black wire to the negative input on the battery and the red to the positive.

  She plugged the cable back into the computer and let it boot up.

  Fifteen minutes later she disconnected the wires and inserted the battery back into the phone.

  It powered up.

  With rapid fingers she typed out a text message and hit “Send”.

  ___

  London

  Solomon stood at the window of his study, watching dark, heavy clouds scud across the horizon, their fat bellies pregnant with rain.

  From his desk his Vertu smartphone played a discreet chime and he crossed the room to access the incoming message: “held prisoner on yacht alkmene, rethymno harbor. take care of skarda and force first. turner must not get silver. use any means necessary.”

  Closing the screen, Solomon let a smile crawl across his lips. So the senator had gotten herself kidnapped. All the better. She’d used her Foreign Relations Committee contacts to make an under-the-table deal with the Chinese, but that meant nothing to him.

  Because she’d already made partial payment to him to secure the silver.

  And he wanted it for himself.

  After it was found, it would be easy to have Krell make her disappear. But maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about that—maybe the kidnappers would take care of that for him.

  All the better.

  EIGHTEEN

  Southwest Of Sitia

  SKARDA found Nathaniel and Vasiliou crouching behind a pile of tumbled rocks in the tunnel that branched off from the monastery’s wine cellar. Long ago the roof had fallen in, blocking the passage.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

  Nathaniel saw something in his face and abrupt terror flooded his eyes. “Something happened to April?”

  “She was kidnapped.”

  “We have to find her.” His face had gone stark white. “We have to help her.”

  Skarda’s voice took on a hard edge. “She’ll be fine.” He shifted his gaze to the older man. “Dr. Vasiliou, I need to get you out of here. Whatever you need to take with you, please get it together now.”

  But the archaeologist shook his head. “I’m staying. This is where my work is.”

  For a few moments Skarda thought about it. There was a possibility that Krell would come back, but it was remote. It had appeared that he’d left in a hurry, but it was logical to assume that he thought all the opposition had been killed.

  He came to a decision. “All right. Fair enough. But the Garand stays with you, just in case. I’ll leave a contact number with you, so if you decide to leave later, just call and someone will pick you up and get you to a safe place.”

  ___

  Southwest of Sitia

  In the driver’s seat of the Q5, Skarda sweated despite the air conditioning. The late morning sun was beating through the windshield, causing trickles of sweat to mat the hair of his temples.

  But more than that, it was up to him to drive now and he hated it. Despised it. It seemed unnatural to him, like a kid learning to dance, all elbows and knees.

  Chasing the thoughts away, he glanced over at Nathaniel in the passenger seat. As usual, the scholar had his nose close to the laptop screen, his body bouncing in rhythm to the Audi’s jolts along the rocky road. But his face was still pulled tight by a stricken expression. Clearly he was worried about April.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Skarda said. “No one on this planet is better able to handle herself in a tough situation.”

  For a moment, Nathaniel appeared not to have heard him, but then he slowly turned his face up. “We had sex, you know.” His voice had a tone as if he were expecting to be chastised for doing something wrong.

  “I know.”

  Some time drifted past while the SUV bounced toward a range of cliffs that rose gradually toward the mountains bordering the sea. Huge dolomite boulders peppered the landscape, interspersed with sharp-edged outcroppings of limestone.

  “Does it bother you?”

  Skarda looked over at him, holding his gaze for a few seconds. “We work together. That’s it. What she does in her free time is her own business.”

  The scholar seemed relieved. His green eyes were liquid as he lowered them back to the laptop. “Are you sure she’ll be okay?”

  Skarda grinned. “She’ll be okay.” Then his face grew stern. “Look, it’s important that we find that silver. I’m going to need your help, okay?”

  Nathaniel raised his eyes to him and nodded slowly.

  But Skarda could see fear and uncertainty brimming within them.

  This was not going to be easy.

  A distant clatter made his head jerk northward. In the far distance the dark shape of a helicopter was arrowing toward them. A knot of tension stiffened the back of his neck.

  Krell.

  Coming back to finish the job.

  “I think we’re in for some more trouble,” he said heavily.

  Glancing to the south, he saw a notch in the low cliffs at the far end of a rocky plateau. Jamming on the accelerator, he yanked the wheel and the Q5 screeched off the road. A quick look told him the helicopter was gaining fast.

  He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Nathaniel he wasn’t worried about April’s safety.

  But he wished she were here now.

  Loose rocks scattered under the onslaught of the Audi’s tires, flying up and battering the chassis with metallic bangs. The distant cliffs rushed closer, the nearest of them rapidly solidifying into a slab-like limestone wall. Since Nathaniel had no experience with guns, there was no choice but to reach the safety of the cliff wall before the chopper shot them to bits.

  And now, with the plateau jutting with bigger and bigger rocks, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  The stutter of the rotors grew louder in his ears. He glanced up, confirming it was the Eurocopter. And in the open fuselage door, the stocky man he’d seen before was leaning out with an HK416 in his hands.

  Skarda had just passed through the long shadow of a tilting boulder when bullets chewed up fountains of dirt around them.

  NINETEEN

  London

  APRIL couldn’t focus. From deep inside her an emotion stirred, but she couldn’t grasp what it was, couldn’t name it. It flitted away from her like a ghost in the dark. She tried to snatch at it, but it was gone.

  It made her mad.

  That was it—anger!

  She wanted to grab it and form it into a hot, red ball of seething heat, to let it explode with fury inside her head to clear away the cobwebs that draped her mind.

  But she just couldn’t do it.

  She felt a lurch and then she was moving. Down. She could feel the sensation in the pit of her stomach. Concentration eluded her. She winced, willing her brain to work. To remember. The attempt made her head pound, as though her skull were filling up with hot blood like the inside of a magma chamber.

  A hazy image formed in her memory. They’d given her a drug. Now she remembered the Eurocopter, the prick of the hypodermic in her arm. She had the vague impression of being forced into the back of a van in wet, chilled air, but the memory seemed far away, unreal.

  It made her mad.

  Opening her eyes, she tried to focus again. Elevator doors whooshed open and she wrenched her neck backwards, catching a glimpse of a lumpy-faced, mouse-haired woman in her forties. Eye
s the color of mud were staring at her with an intense expression.

  April recognized it.

  Lust.

  Rolling her head back, she looked down the length of her body. She was naked, lying strapped onto a gurney.

  The woman flexed her shoulders and shoved the litter through the elevator doors, pushing it down the length of a white-painted corridor.