Keep Me

by Anna Zaires

  “We have stationed a few soldiers on this floor,” Sharipov says, changing the topic. “You will be safe here until the Russian envoy arrives to bring you to Moscow.”

  “Where are my men?” I repeat my earlier question, my eyes narrowing as I see Sharipov’s gaze slide away again. “Are they here?”

  “Four of them,” he admits quietly, looking back at me. “I am afraid the rest didn’t make it.”

  I keep my expression impassive, though it feels like a sharp blade is twisting in my insides. I should be used to it by now—to people dying around me—but somehow it still weighs on me. “Who are the survivors?” I ask, keeping my voice level. “Do you have their names?”

  He nods and rattles off a list of names. To my relief, Lucas Kent is among them. “He regained consciousness briefly,” Sharipov explains, “and helped identify the others. Besides you, he’s the only one who wasn’t burned by the explosion.”

  “I see.” My relief is replaced by slowly building rage. Nearly fifty of my best men are dead. Men I’ve trained with. Men I’ve gotten to know. As I process that fact, it occurs to me that there is only one way the Ukrainian government would’ve known about my negotiations with the Russians.

  The pretty Russian interpreter. She was the only outsider privy to that conversation.

  “I need a phone,” I tell Sharipov, swinging my feet to the floor and standing up. My knees shake a bit, but my legs are able to hold my weight. This is good. It means I’m capable of walking out of here under my own steam.

  “I need it right now,” I add when he just gapes at me as I pull the IV needle out of my arm with my teeth and peel the monitor sensors off my chest. My hospital gown and bare feet undoubtedly look ridiculous, but I don’t give a fuck. I have a traitor to deal with.

  “Of course,” he says, recovering from his shock. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a cell phone and hands it to me. “Peter Sokolov wanted to talk to you as soon you woke up.”

  “Good. Thanks.” Placing the phone in my left hand, which protrudes from the cast, I begin to punch in numbers with my right. It’s a secure line that moves through so many relays, it would take a world-class hacker to trace it to its destination. As I hear the familiar clicks and beeps of the connection, I reclaim the phone with my right hand and tell Sharipov, “Please ask one of the nurses to get me some regular clothes. I’m tired of wearing this.”

  The colonel nods and walks out of the room. A second after he leaves, Peter’s voice comes on the line: “Esguerra?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” My grip on the phone tightens. “I assume you heard the news.”

  “Yes, I heard.” A pause on the line. “I had Yulia Tzakova detained in Moscow. It seems like she’s got some connections that our Kremlin friends overlooked.”

  So Peter is already on top of this. “Yes, it seems like it.” My voice is even, though anger boils within me. “Needless to say, we’re scrapping the mission. When are we getting picked up?”

  “The plane is on its way. It should be there in a few hours. I sent Goldberg along in case you could use a doctor.”

  “Good thinking. We’ll be waiting. How is Nora?”

  There is a brief moment of silence. “She’s better now that she knows you’re alive. She wanted to fly out there as soon as she heard.”

  “You didn’t let her, though.” It’s a statement, not a question. Peter knows better than to fuck up like that.

  “No, of course not. Do you wish to see her? I may be able to set up a video connection with the hospital.”

  “Yes, please set it up.” What I really want is to see her and hold her in person, but the video will have to do for now. “In the meantime, I’m going to check on Lucas and the others.”

  * * *

  Because of the bulky cast on my arm, it’s a struggle to put on the clothes the nurse brings me. The pants go on without any issues, but I end up having to rip out the left sleeve to get the cast through the armhole. My ribs hurt like hell, and every movement requires tremendous effort as my body wants nothing more than to lie back down on the bed and rest. I persist, though, and after a few tries, finally succeed in clothing myself.

  Thankfully, walking is easier. I can maintain a regular stride. As I exit the room, I see the soldiers Sharipov mentioned earlier. There are five of them, all dressed in army fatigues and toting Uzis. Seeing me emerge into the hallway, they silently fall into step behind me, following me as I head over to the Intensive Care Unit. Their expressionless faces make me wonder if they’re there to protect me or to protect others from me. I can’t imagine the Uzbekistani government is thrilled to have an illegal arms dealer in their civilian hospital.

  Lucas is not there, so I check on the others first. As Sharipov told me, they are all badly burned, with bandages covering most of their bodies. They’re also heavily sedated. I make a mental note to transfer a huge bonus into each of their bank accounts to compensate them for this, and to have them seen by the best plastic surgeons. These men knew the risks when they came to work for me, but I still want to make sure they’re taken care of.

  “Where is the fourth man?” I ask one of the soldiers accompanying me, and he directs me to another room.

  When I get there, I see that Lucas is asleep. He doesn’t look nearly as bad as the others, which is a relief. He’ll be able to return with me to Colombia once the plane arrives, whereas the burned men will have to stay here for at least a few more days.

  Coming back to my room, I find Sharipov there, placing a laptop on the bed. “I was asked to give this to you,” he explains, handing me the computer.

  “Excellent, thank you.” Taking the laptop from him with my right hand, I sit down on the bed. Or, more appropriately, collapse on the bed, my legs shaking from the strain of walking all over the hospital. Thankfully, Sharipov doesn’t see my ungainly maneuver, as he’s already heading out the door.

  As soon as he’s gone, I go on the internet and download a program designed to conceal my online activities. Then I go to a special website and put in my code. That brings up a video chat window, and I put in yet another code there, connecting to a computer back at the compound.

  Peter’s image appears first. “Finally, there you are,” he says, and I see the living room of my house in the background. “Nora is coming down.”

  A moment later, Nora’s small face shows up on the screen. “Julian! Oh my God, I thought I would never see you again!” Her voice is filled with barely contained tears, and there are wet tracks on her cheeks. Her smile, however, radiates pure joy.

  I grin at her, all my anger and physical discomfort forgotten in a sudden surge of happiness. “Hi baby, how are you?”

  She gapes at me. “How am I? What kind of question is that? You’re the one who was just in a plane crash! How are you? Is that a cast on your arm?”

  “It appears to be.” I lift my right shoulder in a brief shrug. “It’s my left arm, though, and I’m right-handed, so it’s not a big deal.”

  “What about your head?”

  “Oh, this?” I touch the thick bandage around my forehead. “I’m not sure, but since I’m walking and talking, I assume it’s something minor.”

  She shakes her head, staring at me with disbelief, and my grin broadens. Nora probably thinks I’m trying to be all macho in front of her. My pet doesn’t realize that these kinds of injuries truly are minor for me; I’ve had worse from my father’s fists as a child.

  “When are you coming home?” she asks, bringing her face closer to the camera. Her eyes look enormous this way, her long lashes spiky with residual wetness. “You are coming home now, right?”

  “Yes, of course. I can’t exactly go after Al-Quadar like this.” I wave my right hand toward the cast. “The plane is already on its way to get me and Lucas, so I’ll be seeing you very soon.”

  “I can’t wait,” she says softly, and my chest tightens at the raw emotion I see on her face. A feeling very much like tenderness winds through me, intensifying my longing for her
until I ache with it.

  “Nora—” I begin saying, only to be interrupted by a sharp crack outside. It’s followed by several more, a rapid-fire burst of noise that I recognize right away.

  Gunshots. The guns are using silencers, but nothing can quiet the deafening bang of a machine gun going off.

  Immediately, there are screams and answering gunfire. Un-silenced this time. The soldiers stationed on the floor must be responding to whatever threat is out there.

  In a millisecond, I’m off the bed, the laptop sliding to the floor. Adrenaline rockets through me, speeding up everything and at the same time slowing my perception of time. It feels like things are happening in slow motion, but I know that it’s just an illusion—that it’s my brain’s attempt to deal with intense danger.

  I operate on instinct honed by a lifetime of training. In an instant, I assess the room and see that there’s no place to hide. The window on the opposite wall is too small for me to fit through, even if I were inclined to risk falling from the third floor. That leaves only the door and the hallway—which is where the gunshots are coming from.

  I don’t bother trying to figure out who’s attacking. It’s immaterial at the moment. The only thing that matters is survival.

  More gunfire, followed by a scream right outside. I hear the heavy thump of a body falling nearby, and I choose that moment to make my move.

  Pushing open the door, I dive in the direction of the thumping sound, using the momentum of the dive to slide on the linoleum floor. My cast knocks against the wall as I bump into the dead soldier, but I don’t even register the pain. Instead I pull him over me, using his body as a shield as bullets begin flying all around me. Spotting his weapon on the floor, I grasp it with my right hand and begin firing shots into the other end of the hallway, where I see masked men with guns crouched behind a hospital gurney.

  Too many. I can already see that. There are too fucking many of them and not enough bullets in my gun. I can see the bodies littering the hallway—the five Uzbekistani soldiers have been mowed down, as well as a few of the masked attackers—and I know it’s futile. They will get me too. In fact, it’s surprising that I’m not already riddled with holes, human shield or not.

  They don’t want to kill me.

  I realize that fact just as my gun bucks one last time, discharging the last round of bullets. The floor and walls around me are destroyed from their bullets, but I’m unscathed. Since I don’t believe in miracles, that means the attackers are not aiming at me.

  They’re aiming all around me, to keep me contained in one spot.

  Rolling the dead man off me, I slowly get to my feet, keeping my gaze trained on the armed figures at the far end of the hallway. The gunfire stops as I begin to move, the silence deafening after all the noise.

  “What do you want?” I raise my voice just enough to be heard on the other end of the hallway. “Why are you here?”

  A man rises up from behind the gurney, his weapon trained on me as he begins to walk in my direction. He’s masked like all the others, but something about him seems familiar. As he stops a few feet away, I see the dark glitter of his eyes above the mask, and recognition spears through me.

  Majid.

  Al-Quadar must’ve heard that I’m here, within their reach.

  I move without thinking. I’m still holding the now-empty machine gun, and I lunge at him, swinging the gun as I would a bat, arching it deceptively high before jabbing it low. Even with my injuries, my reflexes are excellent, and the butt of the weapon makes contact with Majid’s ribs before I’m thrown back against the wall, my left shoulder exploding in agony. My ears are ringing from the blast as I slide down the wall, and I realize that I’ve been shot—that he managed to fire his weapon before I could inflict real damage.

  I can hear yelling in Arabic, and then rough hands grab me, dragging me along the floor. I struggle with all of my remaining strength, but I can feel my body beginning to shut down, my heart laboring to pump its dwindling supply of blood. Something presses down on my shoulder, exacerbating the fiery pain, and black spots cover my vision.

  My last thought before I lose consciousness is that death will likely be preferable to what awaits me if I survive.

  Chapter 24

  Nora

  I don’t realize that I’m screaming until a hand slaps over my mouth, muffling my hysterical shrieks.

  “Nora. Nora, stop it.” Peter’s steady voice pulls me out of the vortex of horror, dragging me back to reality. “Calm down and tell me exactly what you saw. Can you calm down enough to talk?”

  I manage a small nod, and he releases me, stepping back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rosa and Ana standing a few feet away. Ana’s hands are clamped over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks again, and Rosa looks scared and distraught.

  “I didn’t—” I can barely force the words through my swollen throat, “—I didn’t see anything. I just heard it. We were talking, and then all of a sudden, there were gunshots and—and screaming, and then more gunshots. Julian—” My voice breaks as I speak his name. “Julian must’ve dropped the computer because everything went topsy-turvy on the screen, and then all I could see was the wall, but I heard it—the gunfire, the screams, more gunfire . . .” I am not conscious of sobbing uncontrollably until Peter’s hands close around my shoulders and gently guide me toward the couch.

  He forces me to sit down as I begin to shake, the terror of what I just witnessed combining with memories from a few months earlier, when I had been taken by Al-Quadar in the Philippines. For a few horrifying moments, the past and the present merge, and I’m again in that clinic, hearing those gunshots and feeling fear so intense that my mind can’t register it. Only now it’s not Beth and I who are in danger.

  It’s Julian.

  They came for him—and I know exactly who they are.

  “It’s Al-Quadar.” My voice is hoarse as I get up, ignoring the tremors that continue to rack my body. “Peter—it’s Al-Quadar.”

  He nods in agreement, and I see that he’s already on his phone. “Da. Da, eto ya,” he says, and I realize that he’s speaking Russian. “V gospitale problema. Da, seychas-zhe.” Lowering the phone, he tells me, “I just notified the Uzbekistani police of the events in the hospital. They’re on their way, as are more soldiers. They’ll be there within minutes.”

  “It will be too late.” I don’t know where my certainty comes from, but I can feel it deep within my bones. “They have him, Peter. If he’s not dead yet, he will be very shortly.”

  He looks at me, and I can see that he knows it too—that he knows how hopeless the whole thing is. We’re dealing with one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, and they have the man who’s been hunting them down and decimating their ranks.

  “We’re going to track them down, Nora,” Peter says quietly. “If they haven’t killed him yet, there’s a chance we may be able to retrieve him.”

  “You don’t really believe that.” I can see it on his face. He’s just saying it to placate me. Majid’s people have been able to evade detection for months, and it’s only the lucky capture of that terrorist in Moscow that led to the discovery of their whereabouts. They will disappear again, hiding somewhere else now that they know their location in Tajikistan has been compromised.

  They will disappear, and so will Julian.

  Peter gives me an indecipherable look. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. The fact is that they want something from your husband: the explosive. They wanted it before, and I’m certain that they want it now. It would be very foolish of them to kill him right away.”

  “You think they’re going to torture him first.” Bile rises in my throat as I remember Beth’s screams, the blood spreading everywhere as Majid systematically cut off bits and pieces of her body. “Oh my God, you think they’re going to torture him until he breaks and gives them this explosive.”

  “Yes,” Peter says, his gray eyes steady on my face as Ana begins to sob quietly
into Rosa’s shoulder. “I do. And that gives us time to find them.”

  “Not enough time.” I stare at him, sick with terror. “Not nearly enough time. Peter, they’re going to torture him and kill him while we look for them.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” he says, pulling out his phone again. “I’m going to throw all of our resources at this. If Al-Quadar so much as blips on the radar someplace, we’ll know it.”

  “But that could take weeks—even months!” My voice rises as hysteria grabs hold of me again. I can feel my grip on sanity slipping as the roller coaster of grief, joy, and terror I’ve been riding for the past couple of days plunges me into a bottomless pit of despair. It was only yesterday that I thought I’d lost Julian again, only to learn that he’s alive. And now, just when it seemed like the worst was over, fate has dealt us the cruelest blow of all.

  The monsters who murdered Beth are going to take Julian from me too.

  “It’s the only option we have, Nora.” Peter’s voice is soothing, like he’s talking to a fractious child. “There is no other way. Esguerra is tough. He may be able to hang on for a while, no matter what they do to him.”

  I take a deep breath to regain control of myself. I can break down later, when I’m alone. “Nobody is tough enough to withstand nonstop torture.” My voice is almost even. “You know that.”

  Peter inclines his head, conceding my point. From what I heard about his unique skills, he knows better than anyone how effective torture can be. As I look at him, an idea enters my head—an idea that I never would’ve entertained before.

  “The terrorist they captured,” I say slowly, holding Peter’s gaze. “Where is he now?”

  “He’s supposed to be remitted into our custody, but for now he’s still in Moscow.”

  “Do you think he might know something?” My hands twist in the skirt of my dress as I stare at Julian’s torturer-in-chief. A part of me can’t believe I’m about to ask him to do this, but my voice is steady as I say, “Do you think you could make him talk?”