Blood Trust jm-3

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Thatë stared straight ahead. “I was sent by the people who trained me. Russians. Grupperovka.” His eyes cut to her briefly. When she gave no visible reaction, he said, “You know that word?”

  Alli nodded. “Yeah. Mobsters, whole families of ’em.”

  He appeared somewhat surprised. His eyes reflected the dim lighting of the jet’s interior, turning them as glassy as marbles.

  “I’ve been to Moscow,” she said. “Why did the grupperovka send you here?”

  “To train with Xhafa’s freedom fighters.”

  Alli was aware of the slight hesitation; she didn’t need to see his face to know that he was lying.

  * * *

  PAULL SHOOK his head. “What gives me pause is why you and I aren’t on the same page.”

  “I have a feeling about him, Dennis.”

  “Jack, he’s the fucking enemy.”

  “If you believe that, then kill him. Right here. Shoot him in the back of the head like the Russians do. If he’s the enemy surely he deserves nothing less.”

  The two men stood toe to toe, their eyes locked, their wills silently battling. The spangled sword was gone. In its place was a sky compressed into layers of low cloud. A chill wind whipped through the trees, causing a great rustling, as if an armada of insects was moving through them. Paull had flicked off the pen flash. There was almost no light. The thick air made it seem as if they were on the ocean floor. Somewhere, not far off, an owl hooted.

  “I’m not giving in, Jack. And I’m not going to kill him,” Paull said. “We’ll let him go when we get back here. Until then, the pilot and crew are more than qualified to keep him under wraps.”

  Jack took a step closer, his voice lowered. “You said you trust me. Well, I have a feeling about him, Dennis. I think he can help us get to Xhafa.”

  “That’s why we have a geotech department.”

  “Has any one of them been to Macedonia, let alone anywhere near Tetovo?”

  “Not necessary,” Paull snapped. “They have computers—”

  Jack leaned in. “Dennis, don’t you get it? Computers don’t mean shit out here. This is the wilderness, this is a zone that’s redder than red. Don’t you think the SKOPES unit relied on computer-compiled data?”

  Paull’s mouth was a stubborn line. “I can’t hear you.”

  “You haven’t been in the field for years, so don’t be a fool, Dennis. Fate has given us an edge the SKOPES unit never even dreamed of, and you want to ignore it?”

  Paull’s mouth opened to reply, then he shut it with a snap. He let out his breath slowly and deliberately, as if he were mentally counting to ten to calm himself down.

  “This is so fucked, Jack.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

  Paull looked as if he wanted to hit Jack. “We follow my route. Period.”

  “You’re not thinking straight, Dennis.”

  “He stays right here with the plane.”

  Jack read the stubbornness on Paull’s face and understood that his boss needed to feel in charge. This was his first field mission in a number of years; he was understandably nervous. He’d worked hard on the details of his chosen plan; deviating from it now would seem rash and dangerous to him. He couldn’t win this fight. Pushing Paull further now would only damage their relationship.

  “Whatever you say.”

  Paull’s finger pressed against Jack’s chest. “This is on you. If he steps out of line, my men have orders to subdue him but not to harm him, because you’re the one who’s going to put a bullet in the back of his head.” He glared into Jack’s face. “Are we clear?”

  “Absolutely, but Alli is coming with us.”

  Paull hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Do you really think I’d risk the life of my friend’s daughter?”

  “She’ll be a help to us,” Jack said. “She brings unique—”

  “No.”

  “She can take care of herself.”

  “So we’ve seen.”

  Jack thought a moment. “How about this. If she can take you off your feet, she comes with us. If you put her down, she stays.”

  Paull snorted. “You can’t be serious. She’s only a wisp of a thing.”

  “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “Fuck, no. But—”

  “But nothing.”

  Jack went to the foot of the stairs and called to her. A moment later, Alli came down to them. He told her what he had proposed.

  She stared up at him. “Are you insane?” she whispered.

  “Do you want to come with us or don’t you?”

  He took her over to where Paull stood. She didn’t waste a second, but strode inside Paull’s defenses, extended her left leg, hooked her boot behind his ankle, and yanked him off his feet.

  He sprang up and went after her. Alli calmly stood her ground and, when he reached out for her, grabbed his arm with her left hand and drew him forward. Using his own momentum against him, she drew him around and, as he stumbled, she kicked out. He went down on his face.

  He lay there for a moment, one hand beneath him. When he rolled over, he had a Sig Sauer pointed at her.

  Alli kicked to the side, the sole of her boot pinioning his gun wrist to the ground.

  From his position flat on his back, Paull stared up at Jack. “You fucker,” he said.

  * * *

  STAKEOUTS WERE the worst, Naomi thought, as she shifted her position behind the wheel of her car. First, your filled bladder caused your head to throb, then the cramps started behind your knees, then your ankles started to swell from a combination of the inactivity and the salty snacks you consumed out of sheer boredom.

  Sitting several car lengths down the block from the entrance to McKinsey’s building, she had cause to think of the blood spatter she’d found at the Stem. Was it Arjeta Kraja’s blood? Was Jack right, was she dead?

  She was Secret Service, not a homicide detective. She’d had no experience with murder investigations—with murder at all, for that matter. She’d been trained to preserve life, to forfeit her own in order to protect the POTUS and the FLOTUS. Heinous crimes were beyond her ken, and as she sat shivering in the night, waiting for something—anything!—to happen, she was haunted not only by the murders of Arjeta Kraja, Billy Warren, and the two men in Twilight, but by the specter of the person or persons capable of such extreme cruelty, such contempt for life. Who were these people and what were they doing infecting her country? She was gripped by both fear and a sense of outrage. She harbored fantasies of doing to them what they had done to their victims. Christ, she thought, the world is a terrible place. And she was in a position where it chose to reveal that side of itself over and over. Not so for her sister, Rachel, happily married to a divorce attorney who made seven figures a year. She lived in a huge house in Maryland, had two beautiful children, an Airedale named Digger, and a seven-series BMW. For Rachel, the world was a dream come true, filled with roses and candy canes. Naomi might be jealous, except for the fact that she’d suffocate in the banality of that life. She was quite certain she was not cut out to be a wife with two children. When she’d been younger, she had envied Rachel, but now her sister’s life terrified her.

  Shifting in her seat again, she stifled a moan. Her butt was killing her and she was dying to get out of the car and stretch her legs, but she couldn’t take the chance of being spotted. So here she sat like a spider in the center of her web, waiting for a fly to entangle itself in the sticky strands.

  Her thoughts returned to the Stem and its slavery auctions. Dardan had been part of it, certainly, but in his phone call Jack had mentioned someone named Mbreti, Albanian for “king.” Who the hell was Mbreti? She had so little to go on—just the name—it was like trying to find a needle in a warehouse full of haystacks.

  And then there was McKinsey. It was no coincidence that she had seen Pete coming out of the Fortress Securities building. Connected with Fortress, he had to know more about the three guards than she did, yet he’d failed t
o mention it over dinner. He was hiding something from her, maybe a great many things. The thought chilled her to the bone. The one person she needed to trust now seemed to be entirely untrustworthy. Minute by minute, she felt the ground slipping out from beneath her.

  Several times she had tried calling Jack back, but either he wasn’t answering or he wasn’t in range of a cell tower. He hadn’t said what he was doing with Dennis Paull and she knew better than to ask. Still, she wished she could talk with him, wished even harder that he was here with her, because she knew that he was the one person who could unravel the mysteries that confronted her. In order not to think about Jack—about how she really felt about him—she flooded her mind with anger toward Pete McKinsey. Armored in her anger, she felt safe from emotions that would otherwise swamp her, emotions she’d rather not examine too closely.

  But then she heard Rachel’s voice in her head: “You make a fetish of not feeling anything for anyone. You think you’re incapable of feeling deeply, but it’s not true. You’re just terrified; you think you’ll be crushed.” She had shaken her head. “You’re too strong for that, Nomi. You’re a tank.”

  To her horror, Naomi discovered that she had begun to weep. Oh, God, no, she thought. But she knew that the heart wanted what the heart wanted. It was simply that what her heart wanted was unattainable.

  Wiping her eyes, she shook her head. Grow up, she berated herself. Just grow the fuck up.

  Was that her voice, or her brother’s? The oldest of the three siblings, Damon had had an iron personality, a volatile temper, and a great love for his sisters. But his idea of love was to be even tougher on them than he knew the world would be.

  “Girls get shafted,” he’d tell them, “and here’s why: Girls are weak, they knuckle under to men all the time, they can’t take the hard knocks of life. Bottom line: They’re not tough enough.” Rachel had told him to go to hell, but, entirely without knowing it, Naomi had swallowed his philosophy whole.

  “That’s why you get into trouble,” Rachel had told her once. “That’s why you’re alone.”

  By that time, Damon was dead, the body shipped home from Afghanistan. Their mother had collapsed in grief and had never recovered, dying thirteen months later. The doctor said it was a stroke, but Naomi knew it was a broken heart.

  Naomi thought of her brother often, and when she did, he increased in stature, until he was larger than life. Every month she went to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath at his grave and to talk to him. She missed him in the way a child misses her father. Her sorrow was bitter and unending.

  The night was growing thin. The gray sky, as fragile-looking as an eggshell, wavered as it tilted toward dawn. Cathedral Avenue, where McKinsey’s huge Art Deco apartment building rose like the prow of the Titanic, was coming alive with traffic. A light rain fell and then, as abruptly as it started, ceased, leaving the road and sidewalks as slick as the surface of a skating rink. McKinsey’s Ford was still parked down the block, cold and deserted, mocking her.

  A gust of wind swept trash up into the air, sudden movement on a lonely, deserted street, and she shivered again. She was deathly tired; even her bones ached with exhaustion. She had been working nonstop for the last two days without even an hour of sleep. Unconsciously, her head tilted back, her eyelids closed, and she slid from awareness, only to snap herself awake. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, which reflected a face as pale and sunken as a corpse’s.

  Damn, she thought, I need a vacation.

  At that precise moment, her gaze was drawn to a metallic flash as the door to McKinsey’s building opened. A young woman in a broad-brimmed hat, stiletto-heeled boots, and stylish reflective raincoat stepped out. In one arm, she cradled one of those tiny teacup poodles with a rhinestone-studded collar. She put the dog down on the sidewalk and attached the leash. As she and the poodle trotted down the broad stone steps, McKinsey emerged and scanned the immediate vicinity. Naomi froze, scarcely daring to breathe.

  Apparently satisfied, he went down the steps and headed for his car. She leaned forward, her hand on the ignition key, her right foot on the brake. The idea was to start her car when he did, so he wouldn’t hear it. Her eyes followed McKinsey as he got into his car and slid behind the wheel. The instant he leaned forward to slot the key, she fired her ignition. A moment later, he pulled out. She counted silently to ten, then followed him into the traffic of Cathedral Avenue.

  He took her south and then west into Georgetown. Turning left off M Street, he drove down to the water and parked. For some time, he sat in the car with the driver’s side window down, smoking. In no hurry, he appeared to be staring out at the water.

  At precisely 6:14, he got out of the Ford and strolled down to the water. Elbows on the railing, he leaned out over the water and stared down. Naomi stepped out onto the sidewalk and followed his path to the east side of the Sequoia Center. As she did so, McKinsey did a strange thing. He straddled the railing, then dropped over the water side.

  Naomi broke into a run. A motor coughed to life. She arrived at the railing just in time to see McKinsey standing beside a man driving a small motorboat. They were heading out to Theodore Roosevelt Island. Naomi caught a glimpse of the man McKinsey had gone to meet. He was in his mid to late thirties, athletic in build, with thick, dark hair, curling at his neck. He sported a full beard. There was a flash of dark predator’s eyes, set deep in his skull, before the boat swept away in a white spray of wake.

  Naomi slammed her fists into the top rail and wondered what the hell her partner was up to.

  * * *

  THEY WERE already high in the foothills of the Korab mountains by the time the talons of dawn scraped the eastern horizon. At first, there was just a thin line of red, then, in the space of a heartbeat, the terrain was flooded with a golden light so dazzling they were forced to don sunglasses.

  Alli walked between Paull on point and Jack at the rear. The trio wore climbing boots, jeans, and camouflage microfiber windbreakers. They carried ArmaLite AR 25 assault rifles, featherweight backpacks stuffed with food, water, and the DARPA weapons Paull had procured.

  The ground’s pitch steepened, the dips more shallow and, at the same time, the way became more rugged. The switchback path was strewn with larger and larger rocks, and clots of loose earth that skittered and slid out from under their boot soles, tumbling backward down the slope. Trees were bent as old men, twisted by the high winds of storms, and the scrub took on the lackluster color of clay, looking more dead than alive. High above them, hawks circled and dipped on the thermals, searching for prey.

  With daylight full blown, Paull called a halt and they made temporary camp in the shadow of an enormous boulder, leaning like a giant’s tooth knocked off true. They drank and ate a little, then took turns at lookout while the others dozed. When it was Alli’s turn to stand guard, Jack rose and picked his way to stand beside her.

  “Did you find anything interesting on Uncle Hank’s cell?”

  Her voice was soft and hushed, her eyes moving across the terrain, searching for any movement, anything out of place.

  “Yes and no,” Jack said. “There are only two numbers on that phone, odd enough in and of itself, but to make matters more mysterious both are assigned a single letter—A and D—rather than a name. The designations could be the first letter of names, or some code of your uncle’s devising.” He gestured. “Out here, there’s no way of connecting with these numbers, so I’ll have to wait to check them out.”

  Alli gave him a swift glance. “You think this means he knows about the Stem? About Dardan?”

  “This cell, these coded numbers, may concern something altogether different, Alli. It’s too soon to tell.” Discussing Henry Holt Carson brought home to Jack a duty he had been reluctant to perform. There was no time like the present, he thought. Still, the trauma Alli had so recently sustained made this difficult task even more so.

  “Alli, there’s something I need to tell you. I know your uncle neglected to tell you.�
� He took a breath, let it out. “The night Billy was murdered … your mother passed away.”

  Alli said nothing. She stared out at the unfamiliar terrain, blindingly outlined against a sky so blue that without sunglasses it made your eyes hurt. Hardwood, pines, miles of granite, split and jagged. Not a hint of human habitation anywhere.

  Jack could hear her breathing. “I’m so sorry. I’ll miss her.”

  “Uncle Hank knew?”

  “Of course. He was called to the hospital, as were Dennis and I. They tried to contact you, but by then Fearington was in lockdown.”

  Alli’s breathing seemed to shorten, to quicken. “Why didn’t he tell me?” She turned to Jack, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. “When I was at his house, when he locked me into his study, why didn’t Uncle Hank tell me?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Jack said softly. “But it’s possible that being angry at him isn’t the way to go at this moment.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Alli?”

  She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t think about them—either of them.”

  “You will, sometime.” His voice was both soft and gentle. “The longer you wait—”

  “Shit,” she said, and walked away.

  Jack watched her for a time, a tiny, lone sentinel. Her back was ramrod straight, her stance as fiercely battle-ready as any soldier.

  A stirring at his side alerted him.

  “She’s an enigma, isn’t she, Dad?”

  “That she is, Emma.”

  “Even to herself.”

  * * *

  NAOMI SPENT a very frustrating day with Pete, collating all the information they had amassed, including the forensics on the knife found behind Alli’s room in Fearington, which indicated that it was, indeed, Billy’s blood on the blade. However, the handle had been wiped clean, which was consistent with both a premeditated murder and a conspiracy to set up Alli.

  “The bloody knife is such a clumsy attempt to frame Alli,” she said. They sat at facing desks, close enough for easy conversation. “I don’t get it.”