by S L Shelton
“Who’s Tris, sweet girl?”
Almost as if my voice caused her agitation, her hand reached up and weakly pushed away at my chest and face.
“Kathrin, it’s okay. You’re safe now.”
I cupped her head in my hands and looked into her face, feeling like I could suddenly fall away in peace.
“I did not see that coming,” Seifert said, looking in the rearview again.
I nodded, still staring at her, feeling as if my world was finally in order. “Un-fucking-believable.”
**
1:10 p.m. — Limon Bay, Colón, Panama
The cabin cruiser Seifert had rented bobbed gently in the protected waters just off the city of Colón, the city on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. I had been fighting the floating sensation in my head since I’d laid eyes on Kathrin a few hours earlier, and it only deepened with the motion of the boat.
Doc leaned over Kathrin, checking her pupils with a small flashlight, then pulled the thermometer from her mouth. “She has an infection of some sort, but at least the fever is breaking.”
Her eyes darted from wall-to-wall, falling briefly on me, then back on Doc.
“How do you feel?” he asked, adjusting the flow on her IV bag.
She nodded weakly. “Tired,” she said, her voice cracking dryly.
He got up and I moved into his spot. “Are you in any pain?”
She nodded again. “Everywhere.”
Behind me, in the corridor to the deck, onlookers had been taking turns gawking at the miracle find. No one, particularly those who had been present the night she was “killed” could believe Kathrin was actually here and alive.
Mark Gaines appeared in the cabin. I could feel him standing at my back.
Kathrin looked up at him. “I know you,” she said, her voice quiet and weak.
“Yeah. From the Caymans,” he said with a little more edge than I would have expected.
“You’re a friend of Scott’s?” she asked.
I turned and looked up at him.
He smiled ironically. “Well, I guess if you’re going to label it…”
“Don’t listen to him,” I said with a chuckle. “He loves me.”
He tapped me on the side of my head with the back of his hand. “Now, you’ve gone too far.”
Kathrin grinned, her eyes no more than tired slits then wriggled herself deeper into her blanket and the cushions.
I reached over and took the cup of crushed ice from her lap so she wouldn’t lose it, but looked at Mark when he cleared his throat. He nodded his head toward the deck then turned to leave.
I set the cup of ice next to her on the table and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be right back.”
Her eyes closed and she nodded. I followed Mark out of the cabin and through the galley where Storc busily scrambled back and forth between three laptop computers. He looked up and smiled, his mouth opening, about to speak. I raised my finger for pause then pointed at Mark. He nodded his understanding and returned to his work.
On deck, Mark looked around and shooed the men away with a flick of his hand. “Give us a minute, boys.”
I stepped closer to him to listen.
“Earl’s about an hour out. We’re going to anchor on the west side of the bay and board there, away from the city,” he said in a lowered voice, referring to John Temple’s old navy buddy who had helped us in the Caymans and Jamaica when we were declared traitors. “He said he has a buddy to fly a shadow on our plane to help us cross into the US later tonight. But he wants to make sure we go in clean.”
I nodded. “We’ve already taken the batteries out of Braun’s phone and Goughin didn’t have one.” I looked around the deck at the tired faces, some busying themselves cleaning weapons, eating, and some with eyes closed, napping. “Make sure we all do the same before we leave the boat.”
He glanced away and nodded. I could tell there was something else gnawing at him.
“What?” I asked finally.
“Where’s she been?”
I shrugged. “I’ll find out. Right now, she’s not sure how she got here. Whatever has her sick is messing with her memory too.”
“Well, at least it’s not a bullet to the head.”
I nodded until I realized that was a jab at me. I turned and walked back down into the cabin below. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”
He grabbed me by the arm, not in anger, but firmly. “Two months is a long time. You better make sure she’s still the girl you remember.”
I yanked my arm away and turned quickly back to him, sending him into a defensive posture. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything,” I said in a harsh whisper, emphasizing each word as if he hadn’t heard me clearly the first time.
He put his hands up in peace. “Okay. Just pointing out the obvious.”
I resumed my course downstairs. “Obviously.”
Rather than travel to the back cabin where Kathrin rested, I stopped and sat next to Storc, he smiled as he finished his compile, then refreshed the cycler on the many cellular connections he had hooked up. He waited to make sure the dynamic proxies took the new commands, then turned to me, still grinning.
“Goddamn, it’s good to see you.”
I smiled in return though I couldn’t say I felt the same. Aside from Kathrin, all I had were snapshots of Storc in my head…none of the past emotion seemed to connect. “You said that like three times already.”
He chuckled. “I know. Just…deal with it.”
I nodded, head down, grinning. “Okay.”
“So,” he said, slipping into a more sober expression. “It’s not as bad as I thought on the money. They only found about three hundred million of the funds, and most of it was already in transition out to European accounts.”
“Three hundred million?!”
His eyebrow hooked high, displaying a curious, suspicious glare. “Yeah, it’s only a little more than point two percent of what we took…it’s chump change comparatively.”
I did my best to rein in my shock, but judging by his concerned response, I’d failed. “Okay. So where does that leave us? Connection wise?”
He turned one of the laptops around. “Like I said, they pinged the Latin accounts, but I found out where they made the connection. With the NSA’s data on their side, they were able to match a set of IPs I used to connect to the Clearwater Florida data center that Jo blew up. One of the cycle points used came from my system,” he said, contrite. “I was running out of IP addresses because we recycle them so frequently…I started reusing a few of the older sets. I screwed up.”
I shook my head. “No one could keep that much information in their head. You saved those guys asses. If it hadn’t been for your security on the routers, you wouldn’t have known about the breach until they were at your doorstep, shooting their way in.”
Storc nodded and took a deep breath. “Well, still…I’m not reusing any IP sets anymore. If I run out, then I have to scale back until I can pirate more.”
Pirating more meant sending viruses out into the world and recording unused or underused IPs then using a script to hold the door open. The average webmaster had hundreds of unused IP addresses sitting around begging to be used. All it took was a little friendly malware to hijack someone’s unused mail IP, or FTP IP, one of a thousand other sorts, just assigned and never used.
The only difference was that Storc would be harvesting them a thousand at a time, bouncing messages through them, then discarding them. It was an IP hungry business staying off the grid.
“You da man,” I said. “Any luck on that tattoo picture I gave you?”
“Yeah! Weird shit. Russian paratrooper. Specifically, Spetsnaz.”
I leaned back and let that piece of information trickle into my brain, hoping to coax a little assistance from my memory. “Like the Russian version of Delta.”
Storc nodded. “GRU controlled, sort of like JSOC units…SEALs, Delta—”
“That tattoo cou
ldn’t have been more than three years old.”
Storc nodded. “It looked pretty clean around the edges.”
A piece of memory slipped into my head. I couldn’t remember the context, but I was talking to someone then someone else interrupted me in Russian. Trying to recall the specifics, I stared blankly at the wall across the galley.
“Does it mean something?” Storc asked.
“I’m not sure. Do you still have access to the Intelligence Data Collection Site?”
Storc pulled one of the laptops closer and banged a few lines of query. After a moment, he nodded. “Yeah, but it chews up a lot of IPs getting in.”
“Necessary. I need the security video from the Amsterdam US Consulate, from four nights ago.”
“John’s handover of BeauLac?” Storc asked.
“Yeah. There was shooting. I want to see who was trying to stop John from handing BeauLac over.”
A confused crease formed on Storc’s forehead. “Wouldn’t it have been Combine?”
“Maybe. But that was a ballsy move, drawing weapons in broad daylight on US citizens right outside the consulate, then giving up and running away because what?”
“I don’t know, what?”
“I don’t know either,” I said, grinning. “That’s why I need to see the video.”
He nodded as understanding struck him and began his encrypted tunneling.
I got up to go see Kathrin. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“I can’t believe you found her. Wild coincidence.”
I’m CIA. I’m not allowed to believe in coincidence. “Yeah. Wild.”
Kathrin was resting peacefully when I got to her. Rather than wake her, I crawled into the narrow bed and put my arm around her. She stirred, then angrily pushed my arm away.
I jumped out of bed. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”
When her eyes opened, she still had an angry glare, which softened after a second of looking at me. “You startled me,” she said weakly. “Sorry.”
I smiled and lay back down next to her. “No need to apologize. You’ve been through the wringer.”
She nuzzled up against me but remained rigid.
“Would you feel better if I left you alone?” I asked.
She looked up with the oddest expression. That devilish grin she always had, but with something else—as if poised on the edge of violence. She shook her head. “No. This is good.”
When she settled back down, I felt the overwhelming need to question her, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I looked down across her face and saw her eyes were open, blinking.
“What happened to you?” I asked, whispering to the top of her head.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was wounded. They had me in a clinic…it’s all fuzzy.”
“Who’s Tris?”
She tensed. “Someone…someone I met, like me.”
“Like you?”
She nodded, then snuggled closer. “Hush,” she whispered. “Sleep.”
As if all my questions had evaporated, and the weight of the morning’s events had drained me, all I could do was close my eyes and hold my girl. You’re back, I thought. I don’t know how, and I don’t care…you’re back.
“Sleep,” she said again—and I did.
**
I woke half an hour later to see Kathrin up on her elbow, staring at me. My joy at waking to her face was replaced by distress. Rather than longing, her face was twisted in a confused glare, as if she had forgotten me, wondering how she had arrived in my bed.
I sat up. “Everything okay?”
She shoved my shoulders down and climbed on top of me, straddling my hips.
“Sweetheart, they—”
She put her fingers on my lips silencing me as she reached down and unlatched my belt and pants. One hand pressed against my shoulder, and when her other hand reappeared, it smelled of her sex. She put her hand back across my mouth as she rose up, then sank back down on my rising erection.
Her body burned hot. Almost uncomfortable to the touch.
I reached up and pulled her hand from my mouth. “Baby, you’re burning up. We should wa—”
She pressed her mouth against mine and twisted her hips, grinding herself against me. As her hot mouth and tongue entwined with mine, she grabbed my shoulder in a grip that surprised me—painfully.
Her nails dug into my back as she wrapped her other arm through mine, pressing my arm above my head. She began violently thrusting.
“Baby, slow down…ow!”
A flicker of sadistic joy passed across her face and she climaxed. But rather than slow, she sped up, grasping my wrist with her outstretched hand and bending my arm behind my head. For a moment, I thought she hoped to break it.
I pushed her off of me and rolled on top of her, grasping her arm. “What’s wrong with you?!”
Smiling devilishly once more, she spread her legs and wrapped them around my waist, pulling me back into her. I rose up on my elbows and stared at her face as her hips ground against me. The expression could have been nothing else but anger.
I pulled away, and she struggled to reengage.
“What’s going on?” I asked in an angry whisper.
She struggled more, flexing her groin against me. “Didn’t you miss me?”
It was pure venom in her voice.
“I’ve been on a two-month bloody vengeance spree because I thought they’d killed you.”
“You left me to die!” she screamed and bucked me off of her.
I fell to the floor and fastened my pants as she hovered, crouched on the bed above me as if ready to pounce.
I looked up at her and felt my heart break in those angry eyes. For two months she’d lived in god knows what hell, thinking I’d abandoned her.
I pointed to my head, at the scar that still blazed red and swollen from the traumas. “On the beach, I took a bullet in my head…trying to shield you.”
Her face softened. “In your…in your head?”
I nodded. “It left me paralyzed on that beach.”
“But how…? How could you be…”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. All I know is that after I fell, I couldn’t make myself get up.” I reached out to her. “I laid there with sand in my mouth, staring at you…you were dead.”
“I wasn’t dead.”
I closed my eyes and felt a hot tear slide down my face.
“I wasn’t dead,” she whispered again.
“I didn’t know.”
She stared at me blankly, then slid down off the bed in front of me, her hand cautiously reaching toward my head. She paused, looking into my eyes for a moment, then gently touched the wound on my head with her fingertip.
After running her thumb across the spot, she looked at my eyes again. “Does it hurt?”
“Not my forehead…but everything else does.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “You got this trying to protect me?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
I reached up and caressed her cheek with my palm, wiping the tear with my thumb.
She looked from the bullet wound back to my eyes. “You jumped in front of a bullet,” she said, laughing through a fresh sob. “Then left me on the beach.”
I smiled. “They hauled me out. I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
She started sobbing heavily, crying into my shoulder, holding me tight—very tight. If she had squeezed me any tighter, she might have broken a rib or two.
“Are we done with whatever this is?” she asked. “This stupid spy business?”
“Almost,” I whispered.
She coughed through a sob, then pulled back to look at me. “Then let’s be done with it.”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward, pressing her lips to my ear. “Let’s be done with this, however we can, and never come back to it.”
The vibration of her voice tickled my ear, but reached deeper and stirred a willingness that threatened to pull me down with it. At that moment,
there rang the real possibility that I would go up on deck, hand the accounts over to Mark, and wish them luck in completing the mission.
I nodded against her cheek. “As soon as we’re done, you and I are out of here.”
I could feel her smile against the side of my face. “However, we can,” she repeated.
“However we can.”
She kissed my earlobe. “That’s my sweet man.”
**
10:25 p.m. — In the sky above the Gulf of Mexico, off the Southern Coast of Louisiana
Earl’s Grumman Mallard hummed along the water, its twin engines vibrating the deck and walls until all I could hear was white noise. We’d stopped in Cancun to refuel a few hours earlier, then circled below radar after getting closer to the US Gulf Coast. Earl’s friend with a similarly-sized plane was late showing up. But once it arrived, swinging in from the coast, Earl switched off his transponder and tucked in quietly beneath the second plane.
The two planes flew in tandem, one above the other for twenty minutes or so.
“I found it!” Storc yelled across the crowded cabin.
He handed his laptop to me. He’d spent the past few hours filtering through days’ worth of security video from the Amsterdam US Consulate. I pressed play on the clip he’d spooled up for me and watched as vehicles rushed toward one another, sending John Temple’s car onto the sidewalk, then over the grass into the bike path.
The assailants had exited and fired on John. Masked men, holding weapons like seasoned soldiers, opened fire on John’s car as it swerved and maneuvered around the blocking vehicles.
I paused the video as they neared the gate and stared at the car for several minutes, zooming in on the occupants and the Marines ushering them through. The video only raised more questions.
I looked up at Storc as I handed the laptop back to him. “Are there any ballistics reports from the incident in the archive?”
“I’m not sure. I can check.”
I nodded. “Please.”
He tipped his head to the side, confusion on his face. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’d just like to know what we’re up against if we have a new set of guns in the game.”
