Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3)
Page 22
‘“Societé Strabo,”’ he spelled out slowly.
Anatole pressed the buzzer on the panel. A small burst of static preceded a pleasant female voice. ‘Hello, how can I help you?’ the woman said in French.
‘We’re with the Security Service,’ Anatole declared in a somber voice, his accent flawless. ‘We have reason to believe that a crime has been committed on the premises that poses a threat to national security. Let us in.’
A gasp travelled over the intercom. ‘Pl—please wait a moment!’ the woman stammered. An electronic buzz sounded seconds later.
Conrad pushed through the doors and strode along a hall that opened onto a circular foyer. Steel-reinforced security doors with biometric locks radiated off the round space. He stopped in front of the pale blonde in the white dress suit seated behind the curved reception desk. The woman was placing a phone back on its cradle.
‘Our security chief will be with you in a moment,’ she said in a flustered tone, her cheeks flushed a bright pink. ‘Please take a seat.’ She indicated the brightly colored, modular chairs behind them.
‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for that,’ said Conrad bluntly. ‘We need to talk with whoever is in charge of—’
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ someone cut in smoothly from the left.
Conrad turned and watched a tall, heavily built man in a crisp, black suit cross the floor toward them. ‘And you are?’ asked the immortal.
The man bristled at his tone. ‘I’m the head of security at Strabo Corp.,’ he snapped. ‘May I see your credentials?’ He extended a hand rudely.
They showed the man their IDs. He scrutinized the badges for some time. Conrad knew the delay was deliberate. Anatole’s eyes glinted with a cold light as he studied the Strabo Corp. security chief.
‘How may I be of assistance?’ the man finally grunted.
‘We have reason to believe that a poison used to assassinate an American prisoner and a Soviet agent may have been manufactured by this company,’ said Conrad. ‘We would like to talk to your director.’
The man sneered. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Mr. Sahin is with Professor Kadir. They are otherwise engaged at the moment.’
‘Oh.’ Conrad smiled. His patience was wearing thin. ‘Doing what, exactly?’
The security chief squared his shoulders. ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ he said coldly, ‘but they’re attending to one of our most important clients.’
Unease shot through Conrad at the look that flashed in the man’s eyes. ‘Anatole?’ he said quietly.
‘Yeah?’ Though anger radiated off the red-haired immortal in waves, he grinned apologetically at the blonde behind the desk.
‘Open that door.’ Conrad indicated the opening through which the security head had entered the foyer.
The man glared at him. ‘What the—?’
‘Sorry, lady.’ Anatole strode around the receptionist’s station and gently moved her wheeled chair back from the desk. He took her place in front of a sleek computer, his fingers dancing nimbly over the keyboard. The woman’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly behind him.
The security head reached inside his suit jacket and took a step toward the reception. He stopped dead in his tracks when the barrel of a gun kissed the skin at his temple, his own weapon frozen in his grip.
‘Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,’ Conrad murmured at the other end of the HK P8 pistol.
Nadica studied the contents of the metal case. ‘Is that all of them?’
‘Yes,’ said Professor Ridvan Kadir. The head of R&D for Strabo Corp. pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His eyes gleamed with a zealous light as he observed the black boxes stacked neatly inside the padded briefcase. ‘They’ve been tuned to the specific C-band microwave frequency of the satellites and are ready to be deployed. I would advise a trial run. One of the smaller targets, maybe.’ His lips compressed in a thin line. ‘The people you have at your disposal should be more than capable of taking care of such a task.’
The director of the company bowed. ‘Please let us know if you require more products,’ Volkan Sahin said ingratiatingly. ‘Your will is our command, mistress.’
Nadica smiled crisply at the Strabo Corp. scientist and CEO. She knew that the two men both feared and lusted after her. Her face and physique were nearly as stunning as those of Ariana Rajkovic, a combination that had proven lethal on more occasions than she could count during the nine decades of her existence to date. Still, none of the men Nadica had attracted in that time could ever hope to match her brother’s physical and intellectual greatness; she was more committed to her sibling than she could ever be to a lover. She engaged the security lock on the case, dipped her head imperiously at the men, and turned on her heels.
The company’s secret research facility occupied three levels of the tower block. The walls and floors had been reinforced with extra steel and concrete to mask the presence of the experimental lab in the middle of what was effectively a business complex.
Her eyes skimmed dismissively over rooms of expensive equipment and scores of white-coated staff as she headed for the stairs that would take her back to the goods lift. As far as she was concerned, Strabo Corp. existed for a single purpose: to make the components of the devices that would help Zoran Rajkovic become the ruler of a new empire.
She went down two flights of steps and entered a small foyer holding the elevator. A security door opened at the end of the passage to her right just as she pressed the call button.
Conrad froze when he saw the woman standing with a metal briefcase in front of a lift some twenty feet away. Shock flared in her slate-colored gaze. It was replaced by a flash of recognition and anger. Her free hand moved to the small of her back.
‘Hey, isn’t that—?’ Anatole started to say behind him.
Conrad bolted down the corridor a split second before she raised her gun. She squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Bullets whispered past his head. A grunt sounded behind him. Anatole swore. A soft ‘ping’ chimed. The lift doors opened. The woman darted inside the cabin.
Conrad staggered to a stop in front of the closing elevator. ‘Help me!’ he shouted. He dug his fingers in the gap between the panels and pulled.
Anatole joined him, blood blossoming on his left temple where a bullet had grazed his head. Harsh grunts left their lips as they forced the outer doors apart. Conrad looked down the shaft, aimed his gun at the power unit on the roof of the rapidly disappearing car, and fired rapidly. The bullets struck metal with loud cracks.
Something exploded inside the electric motor; a high-pitched whine followed as the unit controlling the lift’s inner doors failed. The elevator slowed and stopped, its automatic safety measures engaging.
‘Take the stairs!’ Conrad barked. ‘And warn the Bastians!’ He jammed his pistol in his waistband, pulled out the gilded staff, and twisted the first ring.
Anatole gaped at him, his eyes shifting from the weapon to the yawning elevator opening. ‘Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re—?’
Conrad leaned inside the shaft and weaved the double-ended spear through the hoist ropes. He jammed the ends into the guide rails on the walls, braced one foot on a cable, and stepped into empty space.
The weapon shuddered in his hands as he slid some thirty feet down, the spear blades raising hot sparks from friction against the steel supports.
His boots struck the roof of the car hard, the shock of the landing reverberating up his legs. He yanked the staff from the cables, broke the locking mechanism on the ceiling exit hatch with a blow from one of the spear blades, and wrenched the trapdoor open. Brightly lit paneling appeared beneath him. He kicked through the frosted surface. The panel fell toward the floor of the lift.
Conrad kneeled and poked his head through the opening. He pu
lled back sharply. A bullet winged past his left cheek and struck the masonry wall of the elevator shaft above his head. A tortuous whine of metal reached his ears from below.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ he hissed.
He closed the staff, swapped it for the HK P8, and dropped inside the cabin.
The elevator had stopped partway between two levels. The woman had already forced the inner doors apart and was prizing the outer panels open onto an uneven landing. She spun around when the car juddered under the impact of his feet. Her eyes shrank into slits.
She cast the briefcase through the gap between the cabin transom and the adjacent floor, twisted on one leg, and aimed a high-kick at his head. Conrad blocked the blow with his forearm and staggered back a step.
The woman turned and jumped toward the opening. The immortal lunged forward. His fingers closed around her right calf. She gripped the edge of the landing, glared at him over her shoulder, and kicked out. Her boot connected sharply with his head.
Conrad stumbled, bright spots bursting across his vision. He shook his head dazedly and looked up in time to see her disappear through the breach. He swallowed a curse and put the gun away before scaling the exposed concrete wall.
Alarmed cries resonated close by as he rolled past the opening. He leapt to his feet and looked around. The woman was racing down a passage on the left, the briefcase and gun in her hands. Heads appeared in the doorways lining the corridor. Conrad clenched his teeth and bolted after her. He glimpsed rows of shocked faces as he sprinted past the startled office workers.
The hallway ended in a panoramic glass wall overlooking a vista of glimmering towers. The Arc de Triomphe rose along Charles de Gaulle Avenue in the far distance. The woman reached a fire door adjacent to the large window. Her fingers stilled on the handle and her head whipped around when she sensed his looming presence.
Conrad slammed into her with a harsh cry. His momentum carried them inexorably forward. They smashed sideways into the glass wall, hoarse grunts escaping their lips. The glazing shattered under the force of their combined impact.
Conrad froze. The woman’s eyes rounded. Wind whistled in his ears as they tipped through the expanding breach in the facade of the building. They fell outside in a rain of sparkling shards. Sunlight struck Conrad’s face. A kaleidoscope of white clouds, blue sky, and glittering walls flashed across his vision during the moment of weightlessness that followed.
He hit the roof of the atrium on his right side. Air fled his body in a guttural wheeze. Numbness enveloped him as his senses shut down from the pain of the impact.
He lay winded for long seconds, his throat and chest locked in a spasm of shock. He opened his mouth and heard a labored rasp whistle past his lips. Blood thundered in his ears, drowning all other sounds. A choked cough finally tore up his windpipe.
Conrad shuddered and gasped as oxygen flooded his lungs. The roar in his head faded. The panicked shouts rising from below finally registered.
He rolled onto his stomach and started to push himself up on his elbows. His right arm throbbed. He winced and looked down. His forearm was broken. He pressed his lips together and sent a burst of healing energy to the injured limb as he staggered to his feet. By the time he stood up, the angled bone had snapped back into place and repaired itself, along with the damaged flesh around it.
He looked for the woman.
Chapter Twenty
Nadica spat out crimson drops and crawled to her knees. Pain stabbed through her left flank from a pair of broken ribs. The ringing in her head subsided to a dull thrum. She inhaled shallowly and looked up.
They had plummeted two floors onto the roof of the glass-covered courtyard that connected the complex of towers. Distant figures milled about more than a hundred feet below, their fingers pointed agitatedly in her direction. The metal briefcase and the gun had escaped her grip during the fall and lay some fifteen feet away.
Movement caught Nadica’s eyes. She swung her head, her instincts on high alert. Conrad Greene was rising a short distance from where she stooped on all fours, his broken arm hanging limply at his side.
Nadica stiffened at what she witnessed next. Greene’s limb straightened itself with a low crack. The red swelling deforming his skin vanished before her eyes. He lurched upright and glared at her.
‘Give yourself up!’ he shouted. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go!’
Nadica stared into the gray-blue irises and felt a shiver run down her spine. A cold conviction flooded her consciousness.
Conrad Greene was no ordinary man.
An unexpected thrill followed that thought; here was someone who could be her brother’s equal. She wiped blood from her mouth, rose in a low crouch, and reached for the short kilij saber tucked in a scabbard under her jacket. Her amulet fell out of the neckline of her shirt.
Greene’s stare focused briefly on the pendant before shifting to the Turkish sword in her grip. He removed a gilded staff from his back and twisted a ring in the middle of the shaft. Twin blades sprung out from the ends of the weapon.
Nadica observed the spear and its holder appraisingly, a quiver of lust shooting through her. Her lips parted in a savage smile. She darted toward Greene, slipped to the side, and thrust the curved blade toward his gut. He deflected the strike.
She whirled around him and came in for another stab. He spun the staff expertly between his fingers, the weapon hitting her arm and wrist in rapid succession. The edge of the spear sliced across her skin.
Nadica sprang back and stared incredulously at the crimson beads blooming on the shallow gash on the back of her hand. No one had ever wounded her in battle. She stroked a thumb across the cut and licked the end of her bloody finger; her gaze hooded as her temper flared.
‘You’re mine!’ she hissed.
Sunlight gleamed on the sharpened edge of the kilij as she attacked, the crescent blade flowing seamlessly through the air in a rain of deadly stabs and thrusts. Greene parried her blows just as skillfully with his spear staff, his jaw set in a forbidding line.
Sparks erupted where their weapons collided. Seconds later, the kilij slipped past his guard and carved a deep line along his cheek. Nadica gasped.
The wound healed immediately, the damaged skin and muscle knitting seamlessly together in front of her eyes, not a single drop of blood spilled.
A sliver of fear skittered through her veins, dampening her rage. She straightened and took a step back. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
A dark smile dawned on Greene’s lips. His eyes glittered with the light of an arctic storm. ‘I’m the son of a bitch who’s going to stop you,’ he said coldly.
Automatic gunfire suddenly erupted behind them. Bullets peppered the roof of the atrium with sharp pops. A shot thudded into Greene’s leg. Terrified cries replaced the shocked silence from the crowd in the courtyard below.
Nadica looked up and saw the Strabo Corp. security head standing at the broken glass wall two floors above them. She turned and ran, her heart thundering inside her breast. Greene started after her. He skidded to a stop a split second later as more bullets riddled the transparent floor around him.
Nadica swooped down, grabbed the metal briefcase and her pistol, and raced for the tower wall. She glanced over her shoulder. Greene had exchanged the staff weapon for a gun and was running in a zigzag to avoid the hailstorm of shots from above. She smiled grimly and accelerated, the pain in her chest drowned by the murderous fury pouring inside her.
A crowd of horrified faces loomed behind the window of the office in front of her. Nadica raised her weapon and fired rapidly, hoping her bullets would maim, blind, kill. The only thing that could satisfy her wrath in that moment was a bloodbath of death.
The figures scattered as her shots smashed into the glass. The glazing collapsed in shimmering fragments. She dove through the opening, rolle
d when she hit the floor of the room beyond, and rose to her feet.
Conrad weaved a random path across the roof of the atrium, his heart in his throat. He had already ejected the bullet from the gunshot wound on his thigh and repaired the injury. A further burst from the automatic rifle whistled past his ears. He lifted the HK P8 in the direction of the Strabo Corp. security chief, hesitated, and cursed. He jammed the pistol viciously in his waistband; he could not shoot at the tower without the risk of one of his bullets striking an innocent bystander.
The gunfire ended abruptly. Conrad looked up and saw Anatole struggling with the security head. He clenched his teeth and changed direction, boots pounding the glass roof as he sprinted toward the broken window where the woman had disappeared.
He launched himself through the gaping hole, landed hard on a bed of shards, and slid some twenty feet across a polished floor. Blood blossomed from dozens of cuts on his body as he spun to a stop. He leapt to his feet and looked around wildly.
‘Where did she go?’ Conrad bellowed at the people cowering on the ground.
A man pointed shakily to a door on the other side of a row of cubicles. Conrad turned and ran toward it. A wide corridor lay beyond. He spotted drops of blood on the marble floor and followed the scarlet trail to a foyer with a service lift. His eyes darted to the operating panel. It showed the elevator opening on an underground car park.
Conrad swore and slammed his fist against the steel door. He scanned the lobby and saw a fire exit in the corner. He barged through it and started down the stairs beyond, the tower’s rear facade a solid wall of glass to his left.
‘They’re in the garage under the main building!’ he barked into his Bluetooth transmitter as he glanced out to the back of the complex.
‘Gotcha!’ responded the Bastian Hunter through the earpiece.