by Kara Lennox
If he waited, Peter might get in his car and drive off, leaving Nadia to survive—and leading them to Lily. In a few fractions of a second, Rex considered whether Peter would pull the trigger. He put himself inside the target’s head, as he’d been trained to do. If Peter were rational, he would realize it wouldn’t serve his purpose to kill Nadia. He would take her as a hostage.
Rex’s secure cell phone rang and he debated whether to answer it. Then he recognized the ring as belonging to Ace—they each had a coded ring—and decided he’d better explain himself.
“What the hell is going on here?” Ace’s voice came over the radio. “What is Robert Candless doing trussed up like a pig on its way to market?”
“He was going to kill Nadia,” Rex returned.
“Where is Nadia? Where are you? Where is Peter?”
Rex described the situation as quickly and calmly as he could.
“Do you think he’ll kill her?”
“Not unless she forces the—” The muffled report of a gun cut him off. In a purely instinctual reaction, Rex pulled the trigger of his Glock. But he was at least thirty yards away, too far for an accurate shot with a handgun, and for the first time in his career, he missed his target altogether. Peter, alert to the threat, had ducked the moment he squeezed the trigger and dived into his car.
Rex, in a firestorm of emotion, fired three more times. He hit the car, shattering glass. But apparently he did not hit Peter, because Peter screeched out of his parking place. Then reason took over, and Rex held his fire. Peter could not lead them to Lily if he was dead.
Running toward where he thought Nadia was, Rex yelled into the cell phone. “Ace, call for medical help. I think Nadia’s injured.” As for the rest of his team, he wished now they had their trusty headset radios. But he had to believe that the other team members were watching and knew what to do.
He heard another car engine start; it sounded like his Blazer.
Nadia was maybe twenty yards away now, but it was the longest twenty yards Rex had ever run, dodging around cars. When he reached the spot where he’d seen Peter knock her to the ground, the sight that greeted him froze his blood. Nadia lay on her back, still as a painting. Her pristine white lab coat and the sweater beneath it were stained bright crimson.
Rex fell to his knees beside Nadia. “Oh, God. Oh, Jesus, please, no.” But just then he heard a shuddering breath, and he realized Nadia was still alive. Her skin was almost as white as her coat, but her eyelids fluttered open.
Alive, and conscious. No blood seeped out from beneath her, meaning the bullet had probably not gone straight through her and exited out her back. She could be bleeding internally. He ripped her shirt open and pressed his hands against the entrance wound, which was just under her right breast, and did his best to stanch the flow of blood.
“G-get…” she started, but Rex hushed her.
“Don’t try to talk.”
“H-have to…didn’t give him…it’s…it’s…” Her voice was a thready whisper, and he leaned closer to hear her. “…it’s cyanide. Lethal fumes.”
Rex understood instantly. The beaker wouldn’t lead to mass death, but it might kill one—or two.
“Lily. Save my daughter,” Nadia said, her voice slightly stronger, though her breathing was labored and painful to hear. “Leave me. Get Lily. Save her.”
The paramedics weren’t far away. When the First Strike team had planned this venture with Robert Candless, they’d made sure emergency response vehicles would be close at hand.
Paramedics had to bodily pull Rex away from Nadia. Then they swarmed on her like locusts, hooking her up with IVs and oxygen and stuff Rex didn’t recognize. But they looked reassuringly competent, shouting at each other using incomprehensible medical jargon.
Ace joined him. “Lori said Peter won’t get far. They cut his fuel line.”
“I want him to get away,” Rex said. “I want him to lead us to Lily.” It was the only thing that mattered now. Rex had failed Nadia at the crucial moment. He’d hesitated, believing Peter wouldn’t kill her. Granted, it had been a bad judgment call, not a loss of nerve.
He made contact with Lori on the cell phone. “When his car quits, Peter will take off on foot. Do not take him down. Follow him, but let him think he’s gotten away. And let’s change over to the radios. These cell phones suck.” He wanted to be able to speak to everyone at once—and hear them instantly if they spotted something.
“What if Peter does get away?” Ace asked. “Candless said what’s in that test tube could—”
“It’s harmless except to the one person who opens it,” Rex said, heading at a run for Ace’s Jeep Cherokee, which they’d parked in the employee lot earlier today in case they needed extra transportation. “Nadia told me.”
“You’re sure?” Ace asked, keeping pace. He was more than twenty years Rex’s senior, but he wasn’t even winded.
“Absolutely.” He spoke into the phone again.
Ace nodded. “That’s good enough for me.”
PETER GOT A COUPLE OF MILES away from JanCo before his car sputtered and died. But he wouldn’t have gotten much farther anyway. One of the bullets that had come flying his way had nicked a tire, and now it was flat.
With a muffled curse, he stuffed the precious beaker into a secret compartment in his padded backpack, which he’d modified especially for that purpose. Then he donned a baseball cap festooned with fake, long gray hair, wincing a bit at the unexpected pain. He reached up and realized he was bleeding. Had flying glass cut his head? Well, it couldn’t be too bad. He quickly pressed on a false mustache and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
Now he was just an old hippie out for a winter hike.
He abandoned the car on the side of the highway and scaled a small fence. Beyond the fence were acres and acres of piney woods, great cover. They wouldn’t be able to spot him from a helicopter. They could track him with dogs, but it would take them a long time to get dogs to the area.
Amazingly, he hadn’t been followed as he’d crashed through the JanCo gates. They were too scared, now that they knew the power he wielded. He’d seen only one other car on the road, a black Mustang, and it had passed him without a second glance.
The strip shopping center where Denise awaited him was just on the other side of this patch of woods, about a mile away. He was in excellent shape, and the slight wound on his scalp wouldn’t slow him down at all. He expected to reach his destination in twenty minutes, which would be just under Denise’s deadline. They would calmly climb into Denise’s recently stolen silver BMW—he’d requested that she get them a nice car for their final run to the private airstrip, where a twin-engine Cessna awaited them. The Cessna would take them to another airport, where a Learjet, on legitimate business to Turkey with all permits and passports in order, would take them out of this cursed country.
He hoped never to see American soil again.
“WE’VE SPOTTED HIM,” came Beau’s voice over the headset. “He’s trucking through the woods at a good pace. Gavin and I are on it. Over.”
“Where’s your car?” Rex said. “I need it.”
Beau explained where the Mustang was parked, keys under the seat, as they’d planned earlier.
So far so good, Rex thought, trying to keep his mind on his work and away from the mental image of Nadia lying on the pavement covered in her own blood. He had already let his feelings for her distract him, cloud his judgment. But maybe, just maybe, missing Peter had been a good thing. Killing him wouldn’t bring Nadia back. Letting him live, though, might save Lily’s life.
A minute later, he and Ace passed the disabled gold Lincoln on the side of the road. Beau’s black Mustang was about a half mile farther. “Beau, what direction is the target moving?” Rex asked into the radio.
“Due south,” Beau responded. “He seems to have an agenda.”
Ace consulted the satellite maps. “Looks like there’s a big shopping center on the other side of this hill. Also an old logging road t
hat cuts through roughly the spine of the hill.”
“Lori, Craig, what’s your twenty?” Rex asked.
“Look straight ahead, bro,” said Lori. Sure enough, his own Blazer was coming straight at them. He’d left it parked outside the JanCo security gates, anticipating the need for more vehicles. “We drove on past when he pulled off the road—didn’t want him to see us stop. We were coming on foot from a different angle when we heard Beau say they’d spotted him.”
As Lori jumped out of the Blazer, she gasped, her gaze riveted on her brother. “Whose blood?”
“Nadia’s.”
Her face tensed with worry. “We heard the shot, but we couldn’t see what happened. Is she…?”
“I don’t know,” Rex said curtly as he spread the satellite map over the hood of his car. “Craig, I want you to check out this logging road. Denise might be waiting somewhere along there. But if he’s merely crossing that road, let him go. If you find nothing, go next to this shopping center. Ace and I will already be there. Lori, you take Beau’s Mustang and follow us. We’ll all look for Lily. Failing that, a well-groomed woman with a face like a rat.”
“They might not be there,” Ace pointed out. “Denise and Lily might be halfway to Russia by now.”
“Peter must have support nearby. If it’s not Denise, it’s someone else. Be ready to tail whoever it is.”
“Rex.” Lori laid a hand on her brother’s arm. “Does Peter have—did he get what he was looking for?” No one but Rex knew what that something was, but they all knew of the potential danger.
“No. But he’s got a bottle full of cyanide, so watch out. The fumes can kill you.”
AS HE APPROACHED the logging road that roughly bisected this section of woods, Peter slowed, taking the opportunity to catch his breath and listen. Car engines, helicopters, voices—they carried on the wind. But he heard nothing. Apparently his enemies were giving him wide berth.
He hoped they hadn’t found Denise. She was expendable, but he’d come to like her over the past few weeks they’d been planning and working together. At first he’d been worried when the organization had assigned him a woman partner. But he’d soon found out she was worthy. Cunning and vicious, not to mention skillful in bed. Then there was the added bonus that a woman could be forced to care for the child, something he hadn’t looked forward to. Another man would never have been coerced into changing diapers.
He knew exactly where he would emerge from the woods. He had planned for this contingency, a chase on foot. He had studied the terrain. From his emergence point, he would see whether the BMW was parked in the proper spot, whether Denise was behind the wheel. She would be eating a fast-food meal and reading a women’s magazine, but she would be watching for him. And she would signal him if the coast was clear. He would work his way down from the slight incline and across the road to the parking lot, climb in, and they would be off.
There was the matter of Lily. Once they escaped, authorities would be looking for a couple with a baby. Her pictures would be all over the media. They would have to get rid of her.
Abandonment would be their best bet. Now that Nadia was dead, there would be no satisfaction for either of them in carrying out his threat, even though she’d tried, at the last minute, to deceive him. In fact, they could just leave Lily at the side of the road someplace. They could even use her as a false clue, make the authorities think they were heading one direction, then double back and go a different way.
Stupid cops, or bounty hunters, or whoever they were. They’d never catch him. By the time they put together a plan for stopping what they saw as a new terrorism threat, the man they were looking for would no longer exist.
The logging road was quiet, abandoned. There was a fresh set of tire tracks in the mud, but he imagined kids came up here joyriding in their SUVs all the time. There was no one here now.
He hitched his pack up higher onto his shoulders and resumed his progress through the woods, accelerating once again into an easy lope.
REX WAS APPALLED when he got his first close-up look at the shopping center. It was huge. He knew aerial photographs were deceiving that way, but he hadn’t envisioned such an enormous shopping mecca this far out of town. The town was growing this direction, however. Subdivision after subdivision went in, many of them to accommodate JanCo’s growing ranks of employees. There were a couple of other government contractors out here, too.
And every resident of the area seemed to be out in force, shopping at the supersize grocery store, the drugstore, the craft store, the shoe store, the baby store. Every chain store known in America had opened an outlet here at Wind O’ The Pines Outdoor Mall. Every restaurant was jammed, the aisles of every store packed with customers. And all of them seemed to have babies.
Rex and Craig were on foot, methodically searching each store, while Lori drove through parking lot after parking lot, scanning the parked cars for anything suspicious, anyone who might be Denise or Lily.
There were means of escape in every direction, Rex noticed. Every street in the area converged here. Then there were alleys. A fugitive could secret himself in the back of an eighteen-wheeler and be smuggled out.
The plans Peter could have made were infinite. And he might not actually be heading here. He might have just struck out in a random direction.
“Beau, Gavin, do you still have visual contact? Over.”
“We got him,” Beau said. “We’re staying just far enough back that he can’t see us. But he’s leaving a trail like a wounded elephant.”
“He’s bleeding?” Rex asked, surprised.
“Yeah. You must have winged him.”
Somehow, Rex could take little joy from the knowledge that he hadn’t completely missed. However, a wounded man would find it harder to run. At least he had that.
“Rex, I think I’ve got something.” It was Lori.
“Go ahead.”
“A woman sitting alone in a BMW at the KFC parking lot. The windows are tinted, so I can’t see whether she has a baby, but she’s got the driver’s window cracked and she’s smoking.”
“What else?”
“I saw just a bit of her face when I drove past. Blond hair, sharp features. Could be called rat-faced. And one other thing. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I thought I heard a baby crying. And she looked like she couldn’t care less.”
“You got a plate number?” he shot back.
“Of course.” And she rattled it off.
“Craig,” Rex started, but Craig interrupted.
“I’m calling in the plates now.”
“Lori, keep your distance,” Rex said. “I’m going to my car now. Everybody else, get ready to roll.”
As soon as he approached the fast-food restaurant’s parking lot, he saw the silver car. It was just sitting there. Maybe the woman’s husband had gone inside to get dinner while she waited outside with the baby. But the restaurant wasn’t as crowded as some of the others—it shouldn’t take that long to get his order.
Rex pulled his vehicle into the drive-through line and paused in front of the menu, where he had a good view of the woman and he could study her without arousing suspicion. She looked nervous to him—and her gaze kept darting around, as if she was waiting for something.
He itched to confront her. But he decided to wait— Craig would have an answer on the plates soon.
A minute later, Craig came back on the radio. “Those plates are registered to a Nissan pickup truck.”
A charged silence followed Craig’s news. The BMW was almost certainly stolen.
“I can approach her based on that,” Craig said. “I’m off duty, but I could still detain her if I believe she’s in a stolen vehicle.”
It would be a chance to let someone get close enough to verify whether Lily was inside that car. “Do it. You see Lily, signal and we’ll all move in.” He briefly organized how the bust would take place. A car pulled in behind him and honked; apparently he’d taken too long in making his decision about whic
h chicken dinner to order. During his moment of distraction, the BMW roared to life.
He cursed colorfully. Had they tipped off the woman?
“Peter’s broken from the woods,” Gavin reported. “He’s headed down the hill for the shopping center.”
Sure enough, a lone man with a backpack was making his way down the slight incline, heading straight for them. He had long, stringy hair, glasses, a mustache—didn’t look at all like Peter Danilov! For a split second, Rex panicked, thinking they’d made a mistake. Then he realized the clothes were the same as those Peter had been wearing at JanCo. And one side of the man’s face was red with dripping blood.
Denise—for that was surely who it was—had seen Peter a few seconds before Rex had and she was already veering out of the parking lot. Rex pulled out of line and followed her. “It’s definitely Denise,” he said into his headset. “Don’t let her get away. But don’t do anything to endanger Lily.” Rex was acutely conscious of the promise he’d made to Nadia, possibly the last words he would ever say to her.
He would get Lily back safe, or he would die trying.
Lori, in Beau’s Mustang, had reacted more quickly than Rex and was directly behind the BMW as it pulled out into traffic. “Lori, I want you to get in front of her and be ready to cut her off. Craig?”
“I’m right behind you,” Craig said. “We’ll box her in.”
Denise turned left at the intersection, probably intending to pull off to the shoulder as soon as possible so Peter could get in her car. Lori roared past her. Then everything happened at once. Sirens from out of nowhere. A helicopter. And a gun, pointing out the BMW’s driver’s window. Denise fired wildly at the Mustang, and Rex felt sick at the thought of his baby sister getting shot. But Lori skidded the car sideways like a pro and he saw her fly out, ducking behind the car with her own gun in hand.
