by PM Kavanaugh
“No, I didn’t sleep with her.” Gianni reached over to brush a lock of hair off Anika’s face. His fingers lingered against her cheek. “I told her I was touched by Vasquez’s generosity, but that I am in love with my wife. I have no need or want of another woman.”
A quenching relief rushed through Anika. He hadn’t slept with her. Or, rather, he had slept with her. But only that. Nothing more. “I’m glad.” She took a beat to steady herself. “What did Suzette say?”
“Honestly, she seemed relieved. And quite happy just to go to sleep.”
Anika felt a twinge of sympathy. Suzette’s reaction was understandable. She and Claudette were clearly under Vasquez’s control and compelled to do whatever he asked. Gianni’s disinterest in sleeping with her had probably seemed like an unexpected gift. Her relief made complete sense.
Gianni took Anika’s hand in his, lifted her palm to his mouth, and planted a kiss there. Tiny sparks raced down her arm and exploded in her chest. “About tonight, then.”
She was having second thoughts about staying in separate rooms again. Maybe they could disable the cameras or find a hidden nook where they wouldn’t be seen or...
That’s when Gianni had suggested that Nino stage a fight. And have Lena explain it as typical behavior on his part the night before an assignment.
Anika had invented the bit about Nino always making it up to Lena afterward.
As the moon peeped out from the clouds, Vasquez pointed to a silhouette of a house at the edge of a cliff. “There,” he said.
Gianni reduced speed and angled the raft toward a small cove where they would beach. When they reached shallow water, Gianni cut the motor.
The knots in Anika’s stomach tightened.
Vasquez checked his handheld. “Ninety seconds until the next security cam sweep.”
Anika fired the turbo-harpoon at the far cliff wall that semi-circled the cove. The penetration point bit into the rock. She powered up the weapon. The hunting line retracted and pulled the raft onto the sand.
“Forty seconds,” Vasquez said.
The three of them debarked. While Vasquez continued the countdown, Gianni deflated the raft and Anika set up a chameleon screen with side and overhead panels two meters’ distance from the cliff’s face. Like the animal after which the agency’s tech team had named their invention, the screen’s material changed to resemble a rock’s coloring and texture. The camera’s eye would only see it as an extension of the cliff wall.
The three of them stood in a tight formation in the space between the wall and the screen.
“Ten seconds to spare.” Vasquez smiled his satisfaction.
The new plan hadn’t required major changes to the original one. In some ways, Vasquez’s desire to kill Tobar himself simplified things. Anika and Gianni had worked out the details that morning and gotten Vasquez’s approval. Then they contacted Agent Santos in secret to bring him up to speed.
Anika and Gianni would still be the ones to breach Tobar’s residence and isolate her inside. Vasquez would then join them. While his attention was focused on killing Tobar, Anika and Gianni would be focused on their double cross. As soon as Tobar was dead, they would sedate Vasquez, abduct him, and return to the cove, where they would rendezvous with Santos. There, the operatives would switch watercraft. Anika and Gianni would return to the hover plane with the real Vasquez while Santos would return to Vasquez’s compound and feign victory at having taken down his fiercest rival himself. Then, Santos-as-Vasquez would start work on his mission of dismantling the illegal operations of Vittorio Vasquez and Isobela Tobar.
“The elevator to the house is along this wall?” Gianni, pointing north, asked Vasquez.
“Sí, four hundred meters,” Vasquez said.
“And the code?”
“It resets every two minutes. When you’re ready, I’ll give you the next one in the sequence.”
“Okay,” Gianni said. “Tell your men to start.”
Vasquez spoke into his handheld and gave commands for the frontal and rooftop assaults.
Soon, Anika heard a low-pitched hum. The swarm of laser-firing micro-drones was approaching. The air assault was strictly diversionary. The micro-drones would swoop and swerve above the roof to draw the attention of Tobar’s guards and the anti-aircraft weapons. As the humming sound of the swarm grew louder, the peaceful lapping of ocean waves mixed with the staccato burst of gunfire.
While her location blocked any sounds of gunfire from the front of the house, Anika imagined that diversionary assault had also begun.
The real assault, from the sea—the most difficult and, therefore, the least expected—was the one she and Gianni were about to execute.
Chapter 16
“Review the sequence,” Gianni instructed her.
“I start the climb to the lowest level, Tobar’s bedroom suite,” Anika said. “Eighteen seconds out, I give the go-ahead. You start up in the elevator tube. I finish the climb, plant the explosive on the window, retreat outside the blast zone. Wait for your signal. When it comes, I detonate the explosive to distract the security detail. Elevator door opens. You engage the hostiles. I climb back up and secure the target.”
“Then you send the elevator back for me,” Vasquez said. “I join you and take out the puta.” He clapped his hands together and a smile spread across his face.
Anika’s lips tightened in disgust. “Yes,” she said. “For an additional twenty and a quarter percent.”
Vasquez’s smile faded, but he didn’t contradict her.
Anika shed her outerwear to reveal a unisuit molded to her body. She wound her single long braid into a tight circle and pinned it to her head. From her kit bag, she withdrew a utility belt, mini-explosive, hand laser, and night patches. She slung the patches around her neck, strapped on the belt, secured the explosive, and holstered the laser. Lastly, she removed the electro-adhesive gloves and toe tips.
“You’re sure there are no cams covering the cliff face?” she asked Vasquez.
“I’m sure,” he replied.
“If you’re wrong, and I’m discovered, you’ll never make it back alive. Nino will see to that.”
“Don’t worry. I want this as much as you do.”
I doubt that, Anika thought. You want to gain more power. I want to prove myself in the world’s toughest counterterrorist organization.
Gianni positioned a comm device in her ear and smoothed back a loose hair from her face. Her skin tingled from his touch. Without thinking, she leaned in for a kiss. This could be our last time. At the unbidden thought, her lips clung to his in a moment of desire and dread. Please don’t let this be our last time.
“If I had doubts you two were lovers,” Vasquez said, “and given your sleeping arrangements the last two nights, I did have doubts, that kiss erased them. ¡Dios mio! I can feel the heat from here.”
Anika glared at Vasquez. Her hand itched for the laser. I’d like to give you heat. That moment was coming, she reminded herself. A moment of justice, of payback for his crimes.
Gianni turned her face back toward his. “Focus,” he whispered.
She looked up. 230 meters. Cakewalk. If she were a Salvadoran yellow-headed gecko. She took in a belly breath, let it stream out. Powered on the gloves and toe tips. “See you up there.”
Anika extended her arms and slapped her hands against the cliff wall. The glove’s adhesive material suctioned her palms and outspread fingers to the rocky surface. She bent her right leg, pressed the toe tip into the wall and felt the adhesive material grab hold. She pushed up and planted her left toe tip. Peeled her right hand away, from heel to fingertips, as she had practiced the day before. Smacked it farther up the wall. Did the same with her left hand. Then, right leg, left leg. Over and over.
Soon, the gentle thumpf of the ocean waves receded. There was only the thud of her pulse, the in-out of her breath, the slap-kick-push-pull of her limbs.
Eleven moves up, as she straightened her right leg, her foot slipped. Pebble
s rattled down the cliff wall. Her heart rocketed into her throat. A gasp escaped her. Her hands clawed at their holds. The gloves loosened. The only secure hold was her left toe. Shitshitshit. Her body fell backward, but she managed to catch herself at the last minute, flinging out her arms and flattening her hands against the wall. She kicked her right toe into a different section. Both hands and toes sucked in tight against the rocky surface.
“Report.” Gianni’s voice sounded a million meters away.
Anika gulped in deep breaths of the sweet night air.
“Report status. Over.” His voice vibrated.
She rubbed her sweat-slicked face against the sleeve of her unisuit. “Estimate forty-six meters to bedroom level. The gear doesn’t work well on loose pebbled surfaces. I just learned that. I’ll make sure to tell the—” Anika cut herself off. She had almost said “geek-boys.” But Lena Bianchi wouldn’t use that term. “...tell the supplier. Over.”
“Good idea,” Gianni said, his tone back to normal. “When we get back home. Over.”
Home. She started to climb again. Was that Gianni or Nino talking? Did Gianni think of the agency as his home? Did she?
“Eighteen seconds out,” she said. “Do you copy?”
“Copy that. Ascending in elevator. Over.”
“Copy. Moving to bedroom window. Over.”
Anika continued her crawl toward the large pane of reinforced glass that rang the length of the bedroom. A warm light glowed from within. As she grew closer, the percussive staccato of gunfire from the rooftop grew louder. The diversionary assault was still in progress.
She completed one final vertical push and stopped. “In position to set the explosive. Over.”
“Copy. I’m in the elevator. Proceed. Over.”
“Copy that.” Clinging to the rock wall with both toes and her left hand, Anika peeled away her right hand and removed the puck-sized device from her utility belt. Reaching up, she attached it to the window’s outside corner, then climbed back down the cliff until she was outside the blast radius. “Explosive in place. Awaiting your signal. Over.”
“Copy that. Stand by. Over.”
She imagined the scene inside the bedroom. Heavily armed guards surrounding the door of the single-person elevator tube, waiting with coiled patience for its arrival, waiting to unleash lethal blasts of laser fire, or maybe rounds of gunfire, on whoever was inside.
Her heart squeezed in fear. She prayed Gianni’s magnetic harness attaching him to the elevator’s interior ceiling would give him the necessary cover in those first critical seconds between the guards being distracted by the explosion and redirecting their attention—and firepower—to the elevator.
“Detonate,” Gianni said.
Anika pushed the green button and hugged the cliff face. A deep-throated boom followed. Then a high-pitched tinkle of falling glass shards. The cliff moved, as if shaken by a giant. Short bursts of gunfire, prll-prll-prll, gave way to agonized cries.
Anika scrambled up. Please be alive. As she neared the blown-out window, she heard a strange command from Gianni. “Anika, hold your fire.”
Why had he given her away? And why use her real name?
An even stranger sound came from the room. It was so unexpected that it took Anika a moment to place it. Piercing cries. No, not just cries. Howls. Wails.
A baby?
Chapter 17
Anika clung to the cliff wall and peered inside.
Three guards were down, limbs splayed, killed by the explosive. Regret twisted in her, but she shut it down. She couldn’t afford to lose focus. She couldn’t afford to be distracted from the mission. She chose to see the dead men as the killers they had been. More bad guys taken out of this world.
Gianni, the harness still strapped around his torso, stood in the middle of the room at the foot of a large bed. His hand gripped a laser, but it hung at his side. Sweat glistened on his face. Anika’s throat constricted, like a cord pulling tight, at the sight of blood leaking from a wound in his left shoulder. His attention was focused on the far corner of the room.
A fourth man lay crumpled on the ground. From his position, it appeared he had been using his body as a shield for the woman huddled there now: Isobela Tobar.
Tobar cradled a wriggling shape in a blanket. Her dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders as she leaned over the bundle and murmured soothing sounds. She wore cotton drawstring pants and a tank top. Her bare feet were bleeding from the shattered pieces of glass that covered the floor like confetti.
“Come inside.” Gianni spoke to Anika even while he kept his gaze on Tobar.
Anika pulled herself to the window ledge and dropped into the room. Glass crunched underfoot. “Are you okay?”
“Flesh wound. How was the climb?”
“Next time, I’ll take the elevator.”
A smile flickered across Gianni’s face.
The tension in Anika’s throat loosened and her next breath flowed in and out. “Why didn’t Vasquez tell us,” she said, gesturing toward Tobar, “about the baby?”
Tobar looked up. Her espresso-brown eyes burned. “He doesn’t know. The only ones who knew are...” She looked at the men on the floor. “Dead.”
So, this was why there had been no sightings of Tobar outside of her residence in recent months. She had been concealing a pregnancy and birth.
Anika stepped closer to Gianni. “This changes things,” she said. “We can’t ki—can’t complete the mission now.” No matter what terrible crimes the baby’s mother had committed, Anika wasn’t going to allow him—or her? —to become an orphan.
“New plan. We’ll need your cooperation,” Gianni said to Tobar.
“Why should I?” she sneered.
“So your child will live.”
Tobar’s eyes contracted to twin slits. Her lips drew a blade-thin line.
“Our organization is working with your government to close down your illegal operations,” Gianni said. “Both yours and Vasquez’s. We have arranged to insert a replacement for Vasquez. A man who looks and talks and moves like him. Initially, the plan was to kill you, kidnap Vasquez, and replace him with our man who, in your absence, would take over both operations. But now, you’ll work with our man. We had anticipated a six-month timeframe. But it should go faster now, with your help. And our incentive.”
“What incentive?” Tobar asked.
“To ensure your cooperation, we’ll be keeping your child. Once the authorities are satisfied that the objective has been met, we’ll return him.”
Anika’s stomach somersaulted. The idea of taking the newborn made her sick, but she knew Gianni was right. It was the only way to guarantee Tobar fulfilled her end of the deal.
“Her. She’s my daughter.” Tobar pulled the now-quiet bundle closer to her. “You’re not taking her from me.”
“It’s either that, or go back to our original plan,” Gianni said. “What do you think will happen to your daughter then?” Gianni’s voice was gentle, but he kept a firm hold on his laser.
“We’ll keep her safe,” Anika said, her voice steady. “Just focus on the objective. The faster you meet it, the sooner you’ll get your daughter back.”
Fury smoldered behind the woman’s tears. “You have children?”
Anika sipped in a deep breath, and shook her head. “I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother. I won’t let that happen to your child.” She met the woman’s fierce gaze. “As long as you do what’s being asked.”
The woman buried her face in the soft blanket and rocked her baby. It was hard to reconcile the woman’s tenderness with the ruthlessness displayed in the gruesome images in her profile. The beheadings, the severed limbs, the charred bodies. While those images filled Anika with revulsion, the woman’s behavior toward her child evoked a different response.
Anika looked away from a sight that threatened to split open heart-deep wounds. Her own mother had never held her like that. Or had she? Right before abandoning her in a monorail stat
ion?
“Any questions about the plan?” Gianni asked.
“What will happen to Vasquez? I hope you’re going to kill the bastard.”
“We’re taking him back with us. Alive. He can provide intel about his operations, background, relationships that only he knows. And he can help verify information you may feed our man. For now, he’s of greater value to us alive than dead. When the mission is over, we’ll return him to the authorities here.”
“That will also be my fate? To be given over to the authorities, or imprisoned for life, or executed?”
“You may be granted leniency in exchange for your help.”
“If I help the authorities, I will be a dead woman in this country.”
“There are other countries,” Anika said.
The woman glanced back and forth between them. She exhaled a slow breath. “Very well. I accept your terms.”
“I’ll contact Vasquez,” Gianni said. “Send down the elevator.”
“Let me change first.” Anika walked to a closet next to the elevator and pulled out a dark top and pants that resembled the clothing worn by the guards. While the pants stopped well short of her ankles, they fit over her hips and around her waist. She rolled up the legs of her unisuit so they were hidden underneath the pants fabric. “Call him,” she said, then pressed the elevator button. She lay prone, facing the wall, next to one of the dead guards. Gritting her teeth, she placed the man’s slack arm, still warm, over her head.
Minutes later, Vasquez strode from the bullet-pocked elevator cage. His gaze swept past the dead guards to focus on Tobar. She knelt on the floor, hands on her head, Gianni’s laser trained on her. She had already settled her baby in the adjoining bathroom, surrounding her with towels and pillows in the tub. No sounds could be heard coming from there.
“Excelente,” Vasquez said. “Hola, Isobela. I’ve dreamed of this moment for years. Although, in my dreams, tears streamed from your eyes and you begged for mercy.”
