Twin Targets

by Jessica Andersen

Michael said, “Obviously grab weapons if you can, but don’t waste time. And keep as low as you can—the chopper still hasn’t lifted off. Best guess is that the bastard is waiting for us in the helo, and is going to open fire once we get near the boat. He’s not going to want to let us get off the island. If we make it off, he’ll target the boat.”

  “Any questions?” John asked.

  “Just one.” Sydney looked at him sideways. “Which group am I supposed to go with?”

  “You’re with me,” John said, and there was a wealth of meaning in the words.

  She smiled faintly. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get out of here.” But he reached over and took her hand, right in front of everyone, and held on as though he needed the reassurance of the touch as much as she did. “Any other questions?”

  When there weren’t any, the team split and moved out, with the men promising to meet up at the ropes in under five minutes. That’d be cutting it close, but it was the best they were going to be able to do.

  John led, with Sydney right behind him, and Michael bringing up the rear guard. They moved quickly through the mansion, eschewing stealth for speed. There were no more boat noises, only the thump of the idling helicopter.

  “Do you think they cut your boat loose?” Sydney asked as they reached the front foyer, which seemed even colder and more impersonal with the sense of emptiness that echoed throughout the mansion, and the lack of the normal blowers and low-grade beeps coming from electrical systems that’d gone dead thanks to the worm program.

  “Unless you have a better suggestion, we’re going to assume it’s still there,” John responded with a hint of an edge in his voice.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’re right. Don’t ask unless it’s something we can fix.”

  He blew out a breath and squeezed her hand, which he was still holding. “I didn’t mean to snap. I just wish I had a better answer.”

  She squeezed back. “I think we’re just about due for a lucky break, don’t you?”

  “If you say so.” But he smiled and touched his lips to hers. Then he pulled away, readied his weapon and went into agent mode. “Ready?” he asked Michael.

  The sharpshooter nodded. “Let’s move out.”

  They were halfway across the cleared lawn area surrounding the mansion when the first shot rang out, coming from the direction of one of the guard shacks. John immediately spun Sydney and shoved her toward a stand of trees nearby. “Get under cover. I’m right behind you.”

  Heart pounding in her chest, she didn’t stop to argue or ask questions. She bolted for safety, crashing through the thick brush while the men opened fire behind her, retreating along the path they’d come up only an hour or so earlier.

  Sydney took two steps past the trees, stumbled and went down. The impact knocked her breath away, and she lay dazed for a second, the sound of gunfire muted by the ringing in her ears. It took her a moment to focus. When she did, she saw the tripwire that’d taken her down.

  Then she saw a pair of loafers appear, topped by cabled pants and a tweed jacket, with Tiberius’s face looming far above.

  His mouth split in a wide, patronizing smile.

  And everything went black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The attack stopped abruptly. One minute they were taking heavy fire from three positions on the mansion side of the clearing, and the next there was a silence so complete it put John’s instincts into overdrive.

  That hadn’t been an attack, he realized. It’d been a distraction.

  He spun and bolted for the trees. “Sydney!”

  There was no answer, and when he reached the clearing there was no Sydney. She was gone.

  A week ago, even a day ago, his first thought would’ve been that she’d betrayed him, but not now. He knew her better than that, trusted her more than that, and he didn’t even break stride before reversing course and returning to Michael. “Tiberius has her,” he reported tersely. “They’ll be headed for the helicopter.”

  The sharpshooter didn’t hesitate. “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  They headed for higher ground, and the sound of the helicopter rotor-thump. The detour was going to take time they didn’t have to spare, but there was no discussion as they melted into the trees and headed for the helipad. Sydney was one of them now, and they weren’t leaving her behind.

  SYDNEY’S HEAD was buzzing when she regained consciousness. Or rather, there was a buzzing noise all around her, she realized as her surroundings started to come clear.

  She was lying on her side against a wall of cargo netting, which held stacked boxes and trunks in place. The hard surface beneath her vibrated at an increasing frequency as the pitch of the hum increased. The whole world seemed to shudder, then sway, and the hum became the roar of an engine.

  She was on the helicopter!

  Panic slashed through her. She exploded into motion, only to find herself brought up short by bindings at her wrists and ankles. They gave slightly, but cut into her skin. Zip ties. And they were attached to the cargo netting, leaving her trapped, lying helpless on her side at the rear of the large, twin-rotor helicopter’s cargo bay.

  She was facing the forward passenger compartment and the cockpit beyond, and the light from a rolled-open side slider showed four men ahead of her: the pilot and copilot, both wearing guard uniforms, one other guard and Tiberius.

  She must’ve made some sound while waking up, because Tiberius turned around in his seat to look at her.

  He shook his head as though she’d deeply disappointed him. “Blanking the computer banks was a bad move, Sydney. And here I thought you were one of the smart ones. Turns out you’re just as stupid—and idealistic—as your boyfriend.” When the engine note changed again, he glanced at the pilot. “We good to go yet?”

  “Almost, sir. The chips controlling the pressure gauges are just about done rebooting. I’m just lucky I logged out of the network when I did, or her program would’ve taken out the entire system.”

  Tiberius glanced at his watch. “You have five minutes to get us over the water.”

  The chopper dipped and spun unsteadily, and the motion slid Sydney a few more inches along the deck until she came to a stop at the farthest reaches of her bonds. Her new position gave her a glimpse out the side door, enough to let her know they were still on the island.

  More importantly, she caught a flash of motion from the treeline. John.

  “What are you going to do to me?” she said sharply, trying to draw Tiberius’s attention.

  He turned back to her and raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m certainly not stupid. I’m going to chuck you once we’re over open water.”

  His flat-affect delivery was equally as terrifying as the threat itself, and Sydney didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice when she said, “I can re-create the virus. I know the shortcuts now. I can do it in half the time it took me before.”

  “I’m through making deals with you,” he said, flicking his fingers in dismissal. “You can’t be trusted to stay bought. Not a very admirable quality.”

  She dropped her voice. “Try me. I’ll make it worth your while.” She paused, and when he didn’t turn away immediately, said, “The technology’s not just limited to DNA testing, you know. I bet I could program the vector to recognize a specific DNA fingerprint and kill just that one person. You wouldn’t need to be anywhere near the target. Just leave some of the virus where he’ll come into contact with it. Poof. Murder by long distance.”

  She had his full attention now. “You’re saying you could make such a thing?”

  “Imagine the possibilities,” she said, trying to make him believe she’d throw herself fully on his side, if only to ensure her life. “If the target has DNA on file in one of the databases, you wouldn’t even need a DNA sample. You could just lift the repeat numbers from the database, and poof. They’re dead.”

  Frowning, he said, “It wouldn’t work if the target has been in
fected with the other bug, right? The fingerprint would be too blurry for the virus to lock on to.”

  Triumph spurted. She had him considering it now. “I won’t know for sure until I’ve tested the actual constructs, but even if that’s the case, what’s the downside? If someone wanted to block themselves from the fingerprint-targeting vector, they’d have to buy the fingerprint-blurring vector from you. Either way you’re getting paid. It’s a win-win.”

  She was making herself sick even thinking this way, let alone saying it aloud. Worse, John could hear her. What was he thinking as he listened in?

  Tiberius’s eyes flashed. “If this stuff is so easy to conceptualize, why do I need you? I should be able to give the theory to another scientist—one who’ll stay bought—and have him turn it around with far less risk.”

  She met his eyes and willed him to see nothing but what she wanted him to when she said, “Are you willing to take that gamble?”

  Before he could answer, the engine note changed to a deeper, full-throated growl, the helicopter stabilized and the pilot called, “All set, sir!”

  Tiberius turned. “Then get us out of here.” He was turning back to Sydney when his attention fixed on something outside the open slider. He shouted and grabbed for the guard sitting beside him.

  And all hell broke loose.

  John lunged onto the helicopter, followed by Michael. Just then, the craft lifted off the ground, wallowing with the added weight. The guard beside Tiberius leapt from his chair and opened fire, causing the pilot and copilot to duck and swear. The chopper dipped and swayed, bouncing off the ground and rattling the men locked in hand-to-hand combat in the passenger cabin.

  John grappled with Tiberius, whose face was etched with rage. John, on the other hand, maintained his icy calm as he struggled to subdue the other man, while looking around the small cabin.

  The ice cracked when he saw Sydney.

  “Take him!” He shoved Tiberius at Michael, who caught the older man with a good punch along the jaw.

  Then John was kneeling beside her, cutting the zip ties away and helping her up, and the only thing in his eyes was concern and love. For her.

  “I didn’t mean any of those things I said to him.” She gripped his wrists, willing him to believe her. “I never would’ve built such a thing.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it.” He touched his lips to hers. “I’ll have to admit that your brain is a pretty scary place, though.”

  She grinned and started to laugh, but the laughter was cut off by a bark of gunfire and a sudden flurry of activity from up ahead as Michael flew backward out of the helicopter. The guard was down and unmoving, but the chopper was gaining altitude as the load lightened.

  “John!” Sydney cried, her heart lunging into her throat at the realization that they were seconds away from being trapped on Tiberius’s helicopter, heading out over open water.

  “Stay back,” he ordered, “and get out the door as soon as you can. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Before she could answer, he’d rushed Tiberius. His momentum drove them away from the door and he shouted, “Sydney, go!”

  She dove through headfirst, not realizing that the craft was a good ten feet off the ground and rising fast. Screaming, she grabbed on to one of the skids and held on for dear life, her feet dangling in thin air. “John, help!”

  There were three shots in quick succession, coming from inside the helicopter, but she couldn’t tell who was shooting or who’d been shot.

  “Sydney, let go,” Michael yelled from below. “I’ll catch you!”

  She didn’t think or argue. She closed her eyes and let go.

  Her stomach jumped into her throat in a moment of free fall, and then she hit, taking Michael down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Above them, the helicopter took flight, banking and soaring away with one member of the team still on board.

  “John!” Sydney surged to her feet and reached for the aircraft, though that was futile. “John!”

  “Sydney!” Michael dragged her back. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

  The urgency in his voice pierced the terror and anguish of seeing the chopper grow smaller, and she remembered the countdown.

  How much time was left?

  Seeing he had her attention, Michael started jogging downhill, toward the cliffs. “Come on!”

  They fled toward the cliffs where the boat should be, reaching the ropes in under three minutes. Sydney stumbled to a halt at the sight of a man waiting for them, but it was Jimmy. One of the good guys. “Hurry!” he shouted. “Move!”

  They moved. The cliff descent was a blur of gravity and burning palms to Sydney, and she hit the beach running. Drew grabbed her and boosted her up and over the edge of the boat, and the others followed moments later. Then they were casting off, and Michael was gunning the boat away from the island.

  “Use the riptide,” Drew shouted over the crash of waves and the laboring noise of the boat’s engine. “Doesn’t matter where we go, just so long as it’s away from the island!”

  Michael nodded and sent the skiff toward a section of flatter-looking water that was all moving in one direction, forming what looked like a river within the ocean swells. When they hit the current, the skiff leapt forward, forcing them to hang on for the ride.

  Sydney hung on, but she couldn’t make herself do any more than that. Her entire attention was fixed on the empty sky, while Tiberius’s words rang in her ears: I’m certainly not stupid, he’d said. I’m going to chuck you once we’re over open water.

  Only he’d be tossing John’s body, not hers.

  Tears filled her eyes and grief hollowed her out until she was nothing but a shell of sadness, nothing but regret. In the end, he’d trusted her. He’d known she was lying to Tiberius about the virus, and hadn’t doubted her for an instant. She should’ve told him she loved him right then, when she’d had the chance.

  Now it was too late.

  “Don’t give up on him yet,” Michael said, coming up beside her and dropping a blanket over her shoulders. “Sharpe is the Iceman. If anyone can gain control of the chopper and bring Tiberius in, it’ll be him.”

  “He would’ve won if he hadn’t been worried about rescuing me,” she said softly, staring at her fingers twined in her lap. “I messed him up, made him weaker.”

  “Not necessarily. You gave him something to come back to.” Now Michael was looking up at the stubbornly empty sky, too, as were Jimmy and Drew, but to no avail.

  Then Jimmy pointed. “There! Do you see it?”

  Sydney lunged to her feet and grabbed the gunwale. “Where?”

  Seconds later, the island exploded behind them with the sound of a thousand subway trains crashing into each other at once.

  Sydney screamed as the shockwave slammed into the boat, rolling it up on one side and leaving it poised there for a second before it hurtled back down into a trough, shuddering with the impact. Heat scorched the exposed skin of her hands and face, and shrapnel peppered down around them, large and small pieces of island debris, chunks of masonry and wood stinging her where they hit.

  It took her a second to realize she was alone at the railing. “Michael!” she screamed, looking around, to where the others were picking themselves up off the deck, checking small injuries and shrapnel hits. “Where’s Michael?”

  Seconds later, Drew went over the side and struck out swimming toward Michael’s motionless body, which was floating facedown in the water.

  Drew was in the process of hauling Michael back to the boat, swimming one-handed, when a new sound became audible over the fading rumble of the explosion.

  Helicopter rotors.

  Heart lunging into her throat, Sydney searched the sky but saw nothing more than she’d seen before, save for the section of sky obscured by a thick pillar of smoke and debris pouring from the wreckage that had been Tiberius’s island.

  Then the noise increased and the chopper appeared from behind the smoky curtain, creating
mad swirls of soot in the air.

  John! she wanted to scream, but couldn’t because her throat was locked on the word, on the very act of breathing as the helicopter drew near.

  “Grab him!” Jimmy shouted behind her. There was a flurry of motion, and the boat tipped slightly as Jimmy and Drew struggled to get Michael on board.

  “He’s breathing,” Drew reported, at the same moment Jimmy shouted, “Get us the hell out of here. Chopper incoming!”

  Sure enough, the aircraft swept in a slow arc and headed straight for the boat.

  For a split second the future hovered between salvation and destruction. Then the men on the chopper opened fire.

  “Down!” Drew shouted, though they were already scrambling for the scant cover available on the sturdy boat.

  With Michael down, Drew took over the controls and sent the skiff hurtling in a series of evasive maneuvers, slewing the craft wildly from side to side and avoiding the first strafing run as the chopper passed overhead. The pilot corrected quickly, though, and lined up for another run.

  “There’s the Valiant!” Jimmy cried, pointing to a dot on the horizon.

  The skiff hurtled in the direction of the coast guard ship with the helicopter right behind it, but the men on the chopper didn’t fire again. Instead, the aircraft began to wallow from side to side, as though it was having mechanical difficulties.

  Or someone on board was putting up a hell of a fight.

  “Almost in range of the Valiant’s launcher,” Drew called, still swerving the boat in a series of evasive runs. “One minute.”

  It took a moment for that to penetrate. When it did, Sydney spun to the others. “They’re not going to shoot the chopper, are they? They can’t! They—”

  She broke off when the door in the side of the helicopter slid open and a body pitched out and fell limply for twenty feet or so to the sea. Sydney screamed, and screamed again when the helicopter suddenly swerved in the sky, seeming to be coming for them again.

  “Fire, damn it!” Drew shouted, though the approaching coast guard cutter was too far away for anyone to hear, and the rotor-thump drowned out the shout as the helicopter approached.