The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3

by Karen Robards

  Four-fingered Franz was the tip-off.

  What were the chances that one of Mason’s longtime flunkies would be watching her in a restaurant she’d just happened to duck into right after she’d felt the deadly weight of an assassin’s gaze on her back?

  At the time she’d thought he was acting as somebody’s spotter.

  Now she knew whose.

  There’s no such thing as coincidence.

  Mason had taught her well.

  Now it was time for her to use what she’d learned. Against him.

  She had a Ruger in her pocket. She’d counted her shots. Three left.

  She only needed one.

  He wouldn’t even know what hit him. No fear, no pain.

  Slipping her hand in her pocket, she aimed the weapon. And stopped walking. With Mason less than three feet away. Point-blank range. Her finger was on the curve of the trigger. She’d discarded her Lynette wig and the cheek prosthesis hours earlier, so she was herself again.

  Facing him.

  He sat there looking at her. It was too dark for her to see his expression. Which was good.

  He said, “You can’t do it, can you?”

  Ah. He knew. She inhaled, felt the trigger against her finger.

  “I couldn’t do it, either,” he said. “I had you in my sights in Paris. Twice. And out there on the ice. I didn’t take the shot.”

  “What about Berlin?”

  “I gave you the code. I knew you’d figure it out.”

  Her finger dropped away from the trigger.

  “They have Marin and Margery,” he said. “The CIA. They shot down my helicopter in Macau, captured me, found them. They let me go to kill you. It’s the only chance Marin and Margery have.”

  “My life for theirs.”

  “Yep.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Marin was seven years old. Until the shocks of the last few months, Bianca had thought of her as her baby sister. The truth was a cold bitch, but feelings, she discovered, weren’t that easy to switch off. There they were, settling like a stone in her stomach.

  “Then I guess you better kill me.”

  “That was the conclusion I reached, too,” he said, and stood up.

  33

  Friday, December 20th

  Hanes set the chopper down in the flat, grassy field he’d chosen for the exchange. Strapped into the rear seats were Thayer’s wife and child, sedated so he didn’t have to worry about them doing anything to complicate the situation, like try to run off. Anyway, he really didn’t like the idea of a child being scared or hurt, and this was the easiest way to avoid that. However this went down, the little girl wouldn’t know anything about it.

  “It’s done.” Thayer’s words had dropped like bricks over the phone when his call had come through yesterday. Hanes thought he had detected emotion in them, which coming from Thayer was something that he treasured. He only wished he was going to be allowed more time with the man—breaking him was high on his wish list—but a deal was a deal.

  This area not many miles outside the mountain village of Sagada, in the Philippines, had been chosen for the exchange. The CIA kept a safe house nearby, and it was remote enough that there would be no witnesses.

  A blue Nissan sedan came into view, speeding along the narrow blacktop road. He had no doubt it was Thayer. The car was an obvious rental, and tourists rarely came this way.

  He got out of the chopper in anticipation, made a gesture signaling to the pair of snipers he had stationed in the woods bordering the field to get ready. They were there because this was Thayer, who was about as trustworthy as a rabid dog. Not that he wanted to shoot the man. Too messy, and then there would be the wife and child to deal with.

  The Nissan pulled off the road and bumped across the field until it stopped beside the chopper. Thayer got out. It was a warm, sunny day, and the man was wearing aviator shades and a polo shirt and looked like he was on a damned vacation.

  Except for the gun in his hand.

  “You’ve got rifles trained on you,” Hanes said as he approached, to forestall any misunderstandings.

  Thayer smiled. “So do you.”

  Hanes figured it was a bluff, but—this was Thayer. He couldn’t be sure. The man had connections all over the world. Thayer waved in the direction of the woods across the road. A glint of something—a mirror, a flashlight—blinked in answer.

  So, not a bluff.

  “Where is she?” Hanes asked.

  “In the trunk.”

  “Open it.”

  Thayer punched a button. There was a beep, and the trunk opened.

  Hanes walked over and looked in. A blue body bag was jackknifed into the trunk. From the look of it, whatever was in there was in a position no live human could assume. The smell hit him, made him grimace and settled the matter. There was no mistaking the stench of death.

  He unzipped the bag.

  The smell rolled out, enveloped him, choked him. It was all he could do not to gag.

  Trying not to breathe, he took a good look.

  Even dead, bloated, with shiny, purplish skin that looked like it might burst at a touch, there was no mistaking her: Nomad 44.

  A blackened, dime-sized hole between her eyes, the crusty brown of dried blood matting her hair.

  He hated what he had to do next: he checked the side of her neck for a pulse.

  Her skin felt cold, spongy, a decaying casing for an overripe body.

  No pulse.

  He withdrew his hand, zipped the bag up, closed the trunk, stepped away. And breathed.

  Then he slowly and carefully ran the wand-like bomb detector he’d brought with him over the vehicle.

  “What did you do to them?” Thayer asked. His tone was ugly. He’d been looking the helicopter over, searching for signs of sabotage, Hanes had no doubt, and had found his family.

  “They’re sedated, asleep. They’re fine.”

  “They better be.” The menace was unmistakable.

  Hanes said, “Give me the key.” Thayer had pivoted and was employing the same kind of military-approved bomb detector Hanes had used on the car to check the helicopter for a bomb.

  He wouldn’t find one. Not that the thought hadn’t occurred to Hanes. But there’d been zero chance that Thayer would simply climb in and take off without taking that elementary precaution.

  Finished, Thayer came back around to the side Hanes was on, tossed him the key.

  Without another word, Hanes climbed into the car, made a U-turn and headed back toward the safe house. The prize in the trunk needed to go into the freezer he had ready for her, pronto.

  Too bad he hadn’t thought to specify, when he’d told Thayer to bring him the body, that he wanted it on ice.

  In the rearview mirror, as he drove away, Hanes watched the helicopter lift off.

  34

  As soon as the car bumped into motion, Bianca came out of that body bag like a greased pig. The overpowering smell of the dead marsupial that was in there with her was enough to suffocate her. But needs must, as the saying goes.

  She and Mason had made the assumption that Hanes would drive the body back to the safe house, and they had had the road prepared accordingly. She had five minutes before the Nissan reached the overturned truck that had spilled a load of mangoes across the roadway. A small section of the pavement had been left clear—they didn’t want the car to stop altogether, just in case Hanes decided to take that opportunity to look in the trunk again—but to get around the obstacle he would have to go partway into the tall grass along the verge and that would require him to slow way down.

  At which point she would exit the trunk.

  Doing so required that she first unscrew the false bottom Mason had had installed while she was being transformed into the bride of Frankenstein. Their criminal contacts in the Philippines weren’t extensive, but those connections they did have did excellent work, as both she and the car proved. She didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver as she undid the scr
ews, and the dead animal they’d scooped up from the roadside to seal the deal stank horribly, but she managed it.

  When the car slowed, she was ready. She hit the button on the back side of the custom body bag that would cause the human-sized blow-up doll rolled up inside to inflate, so that at first glance anyone looking into the trunk would assume that there was still a corpse in the bag. Then she dropped out of the opening in the bottom of the trunk, hit the tall grass beside the road (they’d calculated that perfectly) and scrambled into the woods as the Nissan continued on down the road.

  She had a rendezvous to make. Putting her head down, she ran through the woods, pulling off her wig, peeling away the layers of latex skin that had allowed Hanes to check her pulse without feeling anything, shedding the bloated body suit that had made her look swollen with decomposition. She tucked all those items in the shoulder bag she’d brought, because leaving the discards behind in the woods was just not good tradecraft. Then she wiped her face with (several) makeup removing wipes.

  By the time she reached the field where Mason was supposed to pick her up, she was dressed in a black tee and leggings, and her blond hair, which had been coiled up under the disgusting wig, was loose. She settled a headset into place, adjusted the position of the mic.

  The helicopter came swooping down out of the sky, right on schedule. As it came toward her, Mason leaned out of the pilot’s door. He, too, had a headset on.

  “Can’t stop.” His voice crackled in her ear. “Grab a runner and jump on.”

  “What?” That wasn’t part of the plan.

  But he was coming toward her, flying low, the runners about eight feet above the ground, and she could tell by the way he was flying that he was serious. It was a small helicopter—a B407, she thought—and as maneuverable as a mosquito.

  She turned and ran in the direction the helicopter was going, and when it passed over her she jumped up, grabbed a runner, hauled herself up on it, slid open the door and climbed inside.

  “What the hell was that?” She glared at him as the helicopter soared back up into the bright blue sky and she pulled on her seat belt.

  “I can’t stop.”

  “What, no brakes?” Her tone dripped sarcasm.

  He smiled. “I have a little bead of a tracker in my hand. They wouldn’t let me out to chase you down and kill you without it. Hanes can keep tabs on where I am. Which is why we flew into Manila separately, and why I had you get yourself and the car ready without me. Right now, he’s probably watching me flying away into the sunset. And if I stop for something, he’s going to wonder what.”

  “You could have told me that earlier.”

  “Need to know.”

  “From now on, whatever it is, assume I need to know,” she said with bite.

  “My, somebody rolled out of the wrong side of the trunk. Speaking of, you still have the slightest hint of eau de varmint about you.”

  “Thanks for noticing.” She glanced into the back seat. Marin and Margery were securely strapped in, leaning against each other, the child’s head on her mother’s shoulder. It was obvious they were asleep, equally obvious they’d been drugged. “Once Hanes finds out he’s been played, he’s going to be coming after you with both barrels. Me, too. You need to stash them someplace where they won’t get caught in the cross fire again.”

  “See why I taught you to keep emotion out of it? My family’s in danger because of me, and I’m hamstrung in what I can do because of them.”

  Funny that it still hurt to have him so casually confirm that he considered Marin and Margery his family, which by extrapolation meant she was not. Or actually, now that she thought about it, not funny at all.

  She glanced out—they were flying over acres of forests, and the treetops were an interesting mix of greens below. The road they’d come in on, the one Hanes was presumably still driving along, cut through all that green like a line drawn by a graphite pencil.

  “You could’ve killed Hanes back there. Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I don’t know what tricks he may have up his sleeve. And I want the girls tucked safely out of the way before I start an all-out war.”

  “I’ve got her.” It was Hanes’s voice, a tinny, distant version coming out of nowhere, and to hear it so unexpectedly made Bianca jump. “She’s dead. Nomad 44 is dead.”

  Her eyes slewed to Mason. He caught her gaze, tapped his watch. Which was not a watch at all, she saw, but a receiver.

  “I bugged the car,” he said. “Little insurance policy.”

  Bianca said, “You could have told me.”

  She read need to know in his face, but before her head could explode Hanes said, “In a chopper. Heading toward Manila.”

  Bianca realized that Hanes was referring to Mason, and what they were listening to was his side of a cell phone conversation.

  There was a pause, and then Hanes said, “Yes, sir.”

  Neither she nor Mason spoke. They were listening too intently.

  Hanes said, “I’ve taken care of it. About four minutes from now, the chopper’s going to be hit by a missile. I’ve already called it in. The drone’s in the air.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of Bianca’s neck. Mason’s hands tightened on the controls. There was no mistaking what they’d just heard.

  Hanes said, “It doesn’t matter if they set down. The drone’s programmed to target him.”

  “The tracking device,” Mason whispered. Face paling, anger tightening his mouth, he looked down at his hand.

  At just about the same time, Hanes said, “He was injected with a tracking device. There’s no way it’s missing him.”

  Mason’s face contorted, and then he heeled the helicopter around.

  Bianca grabbed the side of her seat. “What are you doing?”

  Hanes said, “Yes, sir. I’ll do that.” From his tone it was a sign-off.

  Mason said, “I’m heading for the safe house.”

  “What? Why?” Bianca shifted in her seat so that she could see him better. “We have to get that tracking device out of you right now.”

  Mason shook his head. “If he misses me with this, he’ll just keep coming. One of these days he’s going to succeed, and he’s going to take Marin or Margery—or you—with me. This stops now. I’m taking him with me.”

  They were flying back the way they’d come, only he’d maxed the throttle and now everything beneath them was a blur.

  “What?”

  “When we get to the safe house, you’re going to take over the controls. I’m going to jump down onto it. He thinks you’re in his car, which he’ll pull into the garage. Whoever he was talking to—his boss, I’m betting it’s Wafford—thinks you’re in the car. The missile hits the house, the house blows up, Hanes is dead, I’m dead, everybody—the CIA—thinks you’re dead.”

  “You’re not really going to let them kill you.” The horror in her voice made it as much a question as a statement.

  “I’ll see what I can do. But this is an opportunity not to be missed. It’ll take out Hanes, and you and I will be officially dead.”

  “But—”

  It was too late. The safe house was in sight. It was small, painted yellow, and had a red tile roof complete with a stovepipe and skylights. No sign of the Nissan in the driveway. But the door was closed on the attached garage, and since there was no sign of the car on the approaching road, she assumed it was in the garage and Hanes must have already arrived. Bianca cast a terrified glance out the window, searching the sky for a drone.

  But the thing about drones is, once you see them, you’re already dead.

  “Get ready to take over the controls,” Mason said.

  “What about don’t be a hero?” She almost screeched it. It was one of the rules.

  “I’m not being a hero. I’m doing what has to be done.” The helicopter dropped; they were coming up on the safe house. Mason undid his seat belt and opened his door. Warm, jungle-scented air rushed in, along with the thwap thwap thwap of the r
otor blades. Eyes wide with horror, heart jackhammering, she undid her seat belt. He looked at her. “Get over here. Bring me in low.”

  She scrambled into the pilot’s seat, grabbed the controls—and he swung out onto the runner. Breathing like she’d just run a marathon, she brought him in low.

  “Bianca—” He had to shout to be heard over the rotor. She looked at him. His silver hair whipped skyward. His eyes blazed bright blue. Her stomach lodged in her throat. “Take care of the girls. And get the hell out of here.”

  He jumped, landed on the tile, scrambled for a foothold, found one.

  And she sheered the helicopter away.

  35

  Hanes heard the crash, and walked into the living room to see what that was about. Until that moment he’d been wearing a headset, listening to the guys in the control center at the base monitoring the drone. Once that was taken care of, he would have Nomad 44’s body put into the freezer. But she could wait. He had no real animosity toward her, while he hated Thayer from the marrow of his bones. He didn’t want to miss the missile’s moment of impact, even if he was only hearing about it, not seeing it.

  All in all, it was shaping up to be one of his better days.

  The sight of Thayer crouched in his living room in the middle of a sunburst of broken glass hit him like a gut punch. He stopped, did a double take, sputtered, “What the hell?”

  Thayer’s hand was bloody, his mouth was bloody, and even as Hanes gaped at him he took off at a dead run, spitting something bloody out before making a leap at the picture window at the far side of the room.

  Thayer was still in flight as Hanes made the connection: bloody left hand, bloody mouth, bloody spit, tracking device.

  He felt a thrill of horror.

  He turned to run.

  Boom.

  36

  Sunday, December 22

  Wafford lived in a big stone house just outside of Alexandria, Virginia. It was impressive, with a pillared portico and lots of mullioned windows and a set of wide concrete steps leading up to the door.