“You’re doing the right thing,” Massarra whispered, her lips barely moving.
“I understand what I am doing, and its necessity. I also understand the stakes.”
“Where is she now? In the cell block?”
Durand nodded.
“You know her exact location? Right now?”
The man nodded again.
“Is she being treated well?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you seen her? How fit is she?”
“They’re feeding her, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did she appear tired? Fatigued, physically I mean?”
“More angry than anything else.”
“Anger is good.”
Durand shifted in his seat as though he had been waiting for a moment to arrive and had made a decision to seize it. “What is your intention?”
“For now, information gathering. Later, we may have to be active.”
“Active?”
“We’ll discuss it when the time comes.”
“What happens now?”
At first, Jess thought she was dreaming. Her cot shuddered. She opened her eyes to darkness, and after a few minutes drifted back to sleep. A second growling spasm shook her awake again. She wasn’t sure how much later. The cot, the walls, the air around her—everything quivered. This time she heard it too.
Not a dream.
Another explosion reverberated deep in the rock.
“What’s happening?” she shouted, not knowing if anyone could hear her. The only light was a gray reflection from down the hallway. “Hey! What’s going on?”
No one answered. A chill swept through her. Had she been abandoned? The dull thud of another distant blast shook the Perspex glass, and the ground kicked through her feet. Dust billowed from the rock walls.
She screamed in frustration.
Then she stopped.
Silence for a few seconds. And then a few minutes. Her heartbeat hammered in her chest in an almost deafening silence. What was that? A meteor strike? Her breathing returned to normal after a few more minutes. It must have been something outside. At least they were covered by hundreds of feet of granite.
Another juddering detonation.
Closer.
Close enough to feel a compression wave in the air against her skin, even in this sealed area. Not outside. That was from inside. She scanned her cell in the semi-darkness. Could she rip one of the chairs from the bolts that held them down? Bash it against the glass? No way she could rip them out, and not a chance she could damage the Perspex. It looked like it could withstand a rocket-propelled grenade attack. Maybe crawl out the air vent? It wasn’t more than four inches square. She was trapped.
“Get me out of here!” she screamed.
There wasn’t just silence between the blasts anymore. Muffled screams, and then closer, angry words in the hallways beyond her chamber. A gunshot, then another, followed by the staccato burst of an automatic weapon. The overhead lights blinked on, and Jess had to squint in the sudden brightness. She heard the hallway door to the cellblock open, and she frantically glanced around for anything to defend herself with. The only thing she could find was the charging cable for her leg.
Stupid, but she didn’t have anything else.
Her fists balled, she steadied herself behind the metal table, expecting a black-clad execution squad, but instead watched in amazement as Michel Durand’s wiry frame limped, still in suit and tie, in front of the Perspex.
Ballie Booker followed behind him, holding a pistol.
“What’s happening?” she yelled through the glass, still crouched behind the table.
“We have to hurry.” Michel’s voice was thready and weak. He clicked the keypad on the wall across from Jess, and the magnetic lock opened on her cell door. “Explosions all over the complex. Several sections have collapsed.”
Jess sprinted to the door to join them. “How do we get out?”
“There’s a…there’s…” Michel grimaced.
A red stain spread across his midsection.
Ballie put one arm around Michel to support him. “Keep moving,” he yelled at Jess.
Another explosion, this time even closer.
Jess flung open the hallway door. Two black-clad San EU military lay on the floor of the cellblock security entrance. The air smelled of cordite. Three people stood by the hallway leading out, one of them half the size of the other two. Hector ran straight at Jess, and she bundled him into her arms. Giovanni turned, his face grim, and pressed her forward.
It took Jess a second to recognize the slender person holding the M4.
Massarra.
What the hell was she doing here? But there was no time for that. Jess turned to help Michel through the door, but was pushed away.
“Get going,” urged Ballie.
“Don’t let Müller get away with it,” Michel wheezed.
“With what?”
“Framing you. Your family. Everything he did.”
“Is he doing this? These bombs?”
Michel shrugged weakly. “I don’t know. My daughter…” He sighed. “She would have been just your age…”
Another blast, this one close enough to almost knock Jess from her feet. Debris whooshed down the hallway Massarra guarded.
“Go!” Michel wheezed.
Still with Hector in her arms, Jess ran hard. She followed Massarra and Giovanni. Left and right, up through stairwells. Massarra knew exactly where she was going. They passed people in suits, running in random directions through the halls, and even past groups of black-clad San EU military police. Nobody paid them any attention. The air was filled with dust, and the distant sound of thudding. It had to be collapsing rock. Hector clung tight to Jess, and her arms burned with the effort of holding him tight.
They finally reached the main chamber. No more simulated blue sky. Just a gaping black emptiness hundreds of feet overhead. White floodlights lit smoldering ash swirling into the air. She followed Massarra and Giovanni to the left, still with no idea where they were going. She looked on in horror as a vast section of the ceiling trembled and fell. It seemed to move slowly, time stretching as it pitched downward.
“Jessica!” someone screamed.
A slight figure loomed from the smoke.
It took Jess a moment before she realized who it was. “Abbie? What are you doing?”
“Thank God you got out,” the teenager replied, closing the last few feet. “Come with me. My dad has a transport that can take us out of the south tunnel. He’s on your side.” She held out her hand. “We have to hurry.”
Massarra and Giovanni noticed that she’d stopped. They doubled back. Both of them screamed at her, but Jess stood still.
“We’re going to beat Müller, Jess. Come with me,” Abbie urged.
“Do not trust her.” Massarra lifted her M4.
“Put that down.” Jess used her left hand to point the muzzle of the weapon away.
“I know you,” Abbie said to Massarra. The girl’s eyes went wide with recognition. “You’re the terrorist that destroyed the Vivas facility.” She paused. “Wait, did you…is this you that did this?” She pointed at the clouds of smoke.
“What are you doing here?” Jess asked again.
“I came to save you.”
“Do not trust her,” Massarra repeated.
“Me?” Abbie looked nervously at Massarra. “Are you kidding? Jess, you have to get away from this woman.”
Another massive explosion, this one on the other side of the complex, not more than five hundred feet away. An angry orange fireball billowed up, followed by a concussive shockwave and blast of heat. Screams. And the whine of gunfire. Bullets ricocheted off the glass office walls behind them. Four San EU military police had finally recognized them and stood fifty feet away in the haze. By now, Ballie and Michel had caught up. Massarra laid down a purring buzz of automatic fire from the M4 and the police scattered into the smoke.
“Please, come
with me,” Abbie pleaded.
Jess looked at Massarra, then said: “Abbie, get out of here.”
No time to debate. More gunshots echoed.
“We’ll hold them off,” Ballie said. “Get going.” He fired his pistol. Michel slumped to the floor beside him.
Jess shoved Abbie, watched her start to jog away from them, still glancing over her shoulder to see if Jess might change her mind. Massarra gave Jess a nod, her expression impassive, raised a hand to her eyes and covered them. For a moment, Jess didn’t understand, then Massarra took a small canister from her belt. Jess hunkered down with Hector to protect the boy. Jammed her eyes shut.
She didn’t see Massarra throw the flash-bang grenade, but when it went off, the reverberations convulsed savagely through her jaw and temples and into her chest. The air resonated against her skin, the noise drilled through her temples and into her brain. Nausea rose in her throat. Jess staggered to her feet. The San EU military she’d seen were specialists, probably trained to the worst of the effects of the flashbang. They might not have more than a few seconds’ advantage.
Massarra sprinted ahead, and Jess followed with Giovanni.
A second later and a terrible, groaning cracking filled the air. A hundred feet behind them, the complex’s rock wall collapsed in slow motion, right where Ballie Booker and Michel Durand had been. Jess lost a step, but realizing it was futile, she turned to run as fast as she could, sensing the thousands of tons of granite pressing down overhead. Debris scattered. Exhaustion burned her leg muscles, but her left robotic prosthetic bounded her forward, and adrenaline lifted her, kept her moving and alert, barely ahead of the confusion and fear that threatened to overcome her.
She fought back against her emotions; told herself to focus.
“Are you hurt?” Massarra shouted as she stopped at a corner.
“I’m fine. Keep moving.”
Another explosion rocked the complex and behind them came the thunderous roar of more of the ceiling collapsing. Flames licked up the sides of the rock walls through the smoke. Massarra took a left turn into a tunnel lit with an amber light. Smoke billowed everywhere and she kept low, crouched as best she could beneath it. The stifling heat intensified.
“What is going on, Massarra?” Jess struggled through violent coughing.
The Israeli didn’t answer but just kept moving forward, her M4 sweeping back and forth. Behind them, the clouds of dust and smoke roiled up the hallway. More screaming. The corridor ended in a smooth rock wall. Massarra took a keycard from her pocket and waved against the metal wall to their right.
The rock wall slid away.
An elevator door opened behind it.
Jess put Hector down. Massarra and Giovanni stepped inside the elevator, but Jess held back. She turned to squint into the smoke behind them in the corridor.
“They’re gone,” Giovanni said softly. “No way Ballie wasn’t crushed by that collapse.”
More screaming and thudding detonations.
“I should go and check…he saved your life, Giovanni.”
“We have to go.”
She hesitated, but then closed her eyes and stepped backward into the elevator.
Her heart sank as the lift accelerated up. The noise of the destruction below receded into the high-pitched whine as the carriage gained velocity. This wasn’t any regular elevator. Jess’s eared popped as they gained altitude.
She turned and grabbed the muzzle of Massarra’s M4, pulled it from her hands. “Now what are you doing here? And what have you done?”
“Ufuk Erdogmus sent me to get you.”
“How did you get to him?”
Massarra’s face remained impassive. “I didn’t. He was the one who got to me.”
Jess breathed in short shallow gulps. “Wait. You know him?”
“For a long time.”
“Just how long is a long time?”
Chapter 4
Hong Kong, five years before Nomad
A damask sun had already washed away what was left of the daylight and given way to Hong Kong’s garish nighttime carnival. A glistening sheen of color reflected off the black water lapping against the hull as the Twinkling Star ferry began its preparations for the short journey across Victoria Harbor toward Kowloon. The engine’s growl cut through the late evening clamor as ropes cast off from the pier. Despite the hour, or perhaps because of it, the Twinkling Star teemed with excited faces.
The lumbering vessel slowly edged away, pitching gently as the partygoers leaned over the railings. Massarra gazed downward. She followed vivid smears of light as they danced across dark waves.
She waited.
There were two of them aboard, watching Ufuk Erdogmus: a man and a woman. It was always possible there were more she couldn’t see. They’d waited in line a little way back from the target of their surveillance, apparently deep in conversation, yet more likely murmuring updates to the rest of their watching team.
As Ufuk boarded, and made his way casually with the crowd to the front of the vessel where she was standing. The man and the woman hung back as their tradecraft demanded.
Soon Massarra was surrounded, jostled slightly by the Twinkling Star’s exuberant visitors, but also hidden by them. Ufuk didn’t look at her, but instead stood slightly behind her and studied the landscape of Kowloon.
“You’re being followed,” she said without turning to him. “Don’t look. Turn your back to me. Take out your phone and take some pictures.”
Ufuk did as he was told. She noticed he had become tense. As he captured the blazing lights of the skyline behind them, he asked quietly, “Who is following me?”
“Difficult to say. The Ministry of State Security is the most likely candidate, but the nature of your meetings here might also have attracted the interest of other organizations concerned with the protection of state secrets. Either way, it makes our meeting somewhat challenging.”
“I was surprised at your request to meet in person. Especially here.”
“It was deemed necessary.”
“I am not accustomed to being kept in the dark. I contribute a great deal of money to your organization. I expect to be treated with courtesy.”
“We are grateful for your contributions, and for your continued work toward our mutual goal. Hence this meeting. We felt this conversation would be more appropriate in person. However, not here.”
“Where then?”
“Spend an hour or two in Kowloon. Perhaps have a drink and something to eat. Then return to your hotel. There are cameras and listening devices in your room, so we cannot meet there. You will order room service and we will do the rest. Wear a suit with a white shirt and brightly colored tie.”
“What will you do?”
“Not here. Now, walk away. Spend the rest of the crossing at the other end of the ferry. If you manage to identify your tail while you are in Kowloon, do not attempt to lose it. As long as they think they have the advantage, we are safe.”
“What about you?”
“They may follow me for a little while, perhaps run my face through their systems. They will find nothing.”
Massarra could have followed Ufuk into Kowloon and ensured he didn’t lose his Ministry of State Security watchers. That had been her plan before she arrived. However, events had overtaken her, even surprised her.
Within a few hours of landing in Hong Kong, Massarra had discovered she was herself being followed. Fortunately, it had not been the Chinese. She had seen conducting delicate, barely observable surveillance measures. Had she not been looking for the signs, the product of long habit and the secret fear that stalks every professional, she might easily have missed them.
The perpetrators were both subtle, and expert.
She gave no sign she had noticed their surveillance, but informed the rest of her team the moment they arrived at their hotel. They complained about their room, too close to others who were noisy was the claim, and were immediately switched to another room of their choosing. Even s
till, they swept that new room for any sign of electronic surveillance and left countermeasures of their own to prevent further intrusion.
Instead, over the day of preparation required before Ufuk Erdogmus arrived in Hong Kong, Massarra had adopted an approach that allowed her to capture as many of them on film as she could without alerting them to her realization. However, even with that work, at no stage was she able to identify who they were.
So, instead of following Ufuk into Kowloon, she took a second Star ferry back to Central and tried again to learn a little more about those who seemed to have an interest in her own movements. However, she found nothing.
This filled her with concern.
It was not the first time an operation run by the Council had been subject to scrutiny by professionals with impeccable tradecraft. The process of rooting out who it was, and how far the incursion went, would need to begin immediately on her return to Israel.
A knock came at the door, accompanied by the announcement of room service. Massarra heard this because the data fed to the laptop conveyed audio as well as visual images from the cameras placed by the Chinese in Ufuk’s suite.
Massarra clenched her fists as she watched, but forced herself to relax. Beside her another man, an Egyptian named Ammon, the second member of her small team, watched on another laptop, scrutinizing yet more cameras. These had been placed by her, rather than the Chinese, and offered views of the corridor to their own room.
In the grainy video, Ufuk went to the door and opened it. A man his own height and build, for Erdogmus was unusually tall and slender for a Turk, and whose hair were styled precisely to match his, stood behind a tray laden with food and a bottle of champagne accompanied by a single glass.
Ufuk seemed to hesitate and the man, a Syrian named Burhan who was chosen because his physical appearance approximated that of Erdogmus, improvised: “May I come in, sir?”
Massarra watched Ufuk nod and step aside. The man took the trolley to where the suite led into the bedroom as they had agreed. The only place in the Four Seasons Deluxe Suite the carefully placed Chinese cameras couldn’t serve. “Shall I leave it here, sir?”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 7
