Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  Selena closed her eyes, aiming willpower at her rebellious stomach. I don’t have time for you, she told it. Without looking, she set the crinkly package aside, and then surveyed the remaining contents of the briefcase. A legal pad and a folder full of confidential documents. She supposed she could inflict some pretty powerful paper cuts. A few mints and some emergency personal supplies she wasn’t likely to need if she was actually pregnant.

  No flak vest, no Rambo knife, not even a convenient flare pistol.

  Then again, there was no telling what she might find with a good look around the capitol. Almost anything was a weapon if you used it right.

  Selena jammed the rejected items back in her briefcase, automatically locking it. She tucked it inside the foot well of Razidae’s desk and checked to see that she’d left no sign of her presence—except there were those crackers….

  She made a dive for the spiffy executive wastebasket beside the desk, hunched over with dry heaves. Mercifully, they didn’t last long. And afterward, as she rose on once-again shaky legs and poured herself a glass of the ice water tucked away on a marble-topped stand in the corner, she tried to convince herself that it was over. That she could go out and assess the situation without facing the heaves during an inopportune moment. That it was over, because over meant she’d eaten something that didn’t suit her and not that she’d added pregnancy to this volatile mix of Cole’s infidelity and Berzhaan’s turmoil.

  She dumped the rest of the water into a lush potted plant that probably didn’t need the attention, wiped out the glass and returned it to its spot. She very much hoped that she’d creep out to find an embarrassed guard and an accidentally discharged tear gas gun. Then she could stroll up with her pens and her pocketknife tucked away, as calm and cool as though she hadn’t been heaving in Razidae’s wastebasket moments before.

  A stutter of muted automatic gunfire broke the silence.

  So much for that idea. Selena’s heart, already pounding from her illness, kicked into a brief stutter of overtime that matched the rhythm of the gunfire. “All right, baby,” she said to her potential little passenger, pulling her fine wool scarf from her coat pocket and soaking it in the pitcher. “Get ready to rock and roll.”

  But as she reached for the doorknob, she hesitated. She could be risking more than her own life if she ran out into the thick of things now. As far as she knew, whoever had pulled the trigger of that rifle didn’t even know she existed. She could ride things out here with her lint-filled water and her cheese crackers.

  Or she could be found and killed, or the building could indeed blow up around her, or whoever’d fired those shots could succeed in their disruptive goal, and Selena and her theoretical little one could be trapped in a rioting, war-torn Berzhaan. She closed her eyes, her mind suddenly full of images of frightened students and dead capitol workers and a dead Allori. She closed her eyes hard.

  It really wasn’t any choice at all.

  Chapter 4

  The smoke settled toward the floor in the long hallway. Selena’s eyes watered above the damp scarf, but not so much that she couldn’t see. The hallway was all hers. She hoped it stayed that way.

  If she did this right, she’d complete her prowling unseen; she’d have an idea where Ambassador Allori had ended up and how Prime Minister Razidae had fared. She’d find the college students and even the arrogant Berzhaani businessman from the lobby.

  And she’d find the Kemeni rebels.

  Steady there. She didn’t know the Kemenis were behind this.

  Yes. I do.

  On this side of the five-story capitol, the prime minister and his cabinet members generally went about their business, addressing the problems of a nation with a tumultuous past. On the other side, ceremonies and social functions filled a dining-ballroom so grandly exotic it would have suited a Russian czar—and, given the country’s past annexation, might have once done just that. The kitchens, the maintenance, even a detention area…all on that side of the building. Somewhere.

  With some fervency, Selena wished that just once, she’d had a chance to glimpse a blueprint of the capitol. The CIA probably had one…but they hadn’t shared, and though she had a request in with Oracle, Delphi hadn’t yet come through. For now, Selena was on her own.

  All too literally.

  She decided to start with the lobby. Moving carefully through the halls, silently over the carpet on her rubber-soled lightweight hikers…she spent long moments listening before she turned corners, stifling the constant impulse to cough and keeping a firm mental control over her unhappy but quiescent stomach. She found signs of struggle—pictures knocked askew, a coffee cup shattered against the wall, stains splashed across creamy paint…even a smudge or two of blood, a handprint where someone had reached out for support. As an undertone to the tear gas, the equally acrid smell of gunpowder grew stronger.

  When she peered around the final corner and into the unfolding delta of the lobby, she winced. The faint haze of remaining tear gas couldn’t hide the aftermath of the struggle, wasn’t strong enough to cover the visceral smell of blood and death. One guard sprawled before the security arch, his face missing. Selena couldn’t see the other, though she heard noises from behind the standing desk where he’d been. Still alive?

  Behind the desk…that’s where her gun had been stored, in its own lockbox. She took a step around the corner, exposing herself. She might as well be as naked as she felt; she was just as vulnerable. She eyed the semiautomatic pistol in the dead guard’s hand. Any thoughts she had of going for the weapon vanished as she saw the slide jutting back. He’d emptied it at someone.

  Or maybe just at the bullet-riddled wall on his way down.

  She could still grab it. She might find ammo if she could locate the security office. But she’d prefer her own familiar weapon, so she took a few more silent steps toward the counter and the rustling noises behind it, the occasional grunt. Her hand dipped into her pocket, her fingers twisting in the cords for the laptop AC adaptor. David and Goliath.

  She figured she was stamped as David in this particular scenario.

  As she reached for the sleek granite desk edge, fingertips hovering and ready to support her as she leaned over, a man popped up from the other side. His bearded face reflected astonishment; he dropped a handful of booty and scrambled to bring up his rifle, catching the muzzle brake on the inner structure of the desk. Selena jerked her hand from her pocket, whipped the chunky little AC adaptor over her head once to gather momentum and slung it against the man’s temple. Down he went, falling with a strangely soft landing.

  Selena pushed off against the desk, levering herself up to crouch atop it, ready to follow through—to scrabble over the rifle if she had to. But the man lay awkwardly on top of the dead guard from whom he’d been pilfering, the rifle out of reach.

  And David wins again. Selena didn’t let regret for the dead guard slow her down. Time to grab a weapon—the Abakan rifle, an obvious if puzzling Kemeni favorite, or the lockbox with her gun, or the guard’s gun…she didn’t care. But shouted alarm warned her; she looked up in time to see green-and-tan-clad figures rounding the corner out of the hallway opposite her own approach path. She instantly dived for escape back the way she’d come, just barely rolling into the movement as she hit the floor. Gunfire exploded into the silence; wood chips and plaster spit through the air. Selena rolled with purpose until she hit the wall and scrambled to her feet, shouting, “Grenade!” as she flung the adaptor in their direction.

  They didn’t stop to think why she’d warn them; they only reacted to the word, flinching and ducking as the adaptor bounced at their feet. It only took them an instant to realize the black device was not a grenade, not even a unique new American grenade—but by then Selena had thrown herself around the corner and driven out into a long-legged sprint. On her way past a stairwell she slammed the door open hard enough to hit the wall behind it but never hesitated, retracing her steps to make the next turn before they gathered themselves t
o charge the hallway in her wake. In moments she found the waiting room from whence she’d come, hesitating only long enough to leave the door open just the way she’d found it the first time. She dashed through to the prime minister’s office, grabbed her briefcase against the faint possibility that they’d trace her steps this far and headed out to his admin’s office. There she quickly rifled the desk drawers, ignoring the keyboard and flat panel screen monitor that had been slung across the room as well as the tea spilled across the desk. She hoped for but didn’t expect to find a weapon and found more reasonable treasure instead: a ring of keys.

  Enough time spent; the echoes of frustrated shouts came faintly through the waiting room on the other side of Razidae’s office. Selena ran out into a hall that ran parallel to the one she’d just left, heading for the set of stairs that logic told her would be opposite those on the other side and taking them two at a time when she found them. All the way to the fourth floor, where the secondary residences filled the space. Guests, dignitaries, distant family members…here they lived. A fumbling game of find-the-key finally netted her entrance, and she eased halfway into the hall, not ready to commit herself yet. She didn’t think the Kemenis would be up here just yet—they hadn’t had enough time to secure all the public space—but she took nothing for granted. She hesitated, taking her breathing back down, listening and watching.

  If anyone hid here, they were—quite wisely—still hiding. Selena let the door close behind her, making sure it latched as silently as possible, and then turned in the direction that would take her back above the ballroom, moving at a more cautious and sedate pace.

  She had no doubt there’d be plenty of time for more running later.

  Chapter 5

  “No,” Cole said into the phone, more firmly than he should and less firmly than he wanted. “I just got back. I’ve got something going on here, and I’m not going anywhere until it’s settled.” He wrapped the damp towel around his neck, a match to the one tucked around his hips, and barely listened to the persistent voice in his ear. Given the frequency with which Selena checked e-mail, he should have heard from her by now. He should have had an answer to his simple, straightforward question.

  What’s wrong?

  “No,” he said again, this time with a sharp shake of his head that his caller would have known to heed had he seen it. “Even if you couldn’t do without me on this, you owe me. You’d never have uncovered that budding little problem without me—hell, you’d never even have known about it. And who else do you have who can switch-hit with the FBI so easily? So back off, Sarge.”

  The man wasn’t a sergeant. But in an organization where rank was rarely assigned, the nickname served its purpose.

  “Yeah, okay.” Cole pulled the towel away from his neck, idly rubbing it across his still-damp chest, and glanced into the living room where he’d left the television on. Special news flash, generic sort of logo that meant whatever had happened was either too new or too unimportant to have its own catchy headline name. “I’ll be in touch at this number. It goes where I go, right? But don’t be surprised if I answer from Berzhaan.”

  That got a little snort of disbelief, a warning to watch his ass if he even looked at that part of the world, and an abrupt sign-off that left Cole looking at his phone in bemusement. Berzhaan wasn’t vacationland, but the FBI wouldn’t have sent Selena into a war zone.

  Especially not now. Not when he had a marriage to fix—and needed the chance to do it.

  Except he looked up from the phone to find a map of that small country on the television with a dramatic arrow pointing at Suwan; the image flipped to an imposing building with barricades all around it, emergency and military vehicles beyond that, and an ambulance speeding away from the outside edge of it all. Berzhaan was the special news flash. Berzhaan and a sudden surge of violence across the country, killing people, destroying their livelihoods. “No one knows the Kemenis’ exact goals or what drove them to this move just when their arms dried up…” And the building was the Berzhaan capitol, only a few blocks from the embassy out of which Selena worked. The embassy that had apparently been evacuated as soon as the siege of the capitol began.

  Then where’s Selena?

  Selena pinned her hopes on finding a master key on the stolen key ring, and sighed with relief when the fourth key she tried snicked neatly into the well-lubricated lock of the room at the end of the guest quarters hall. No one answered her quiet knock, but she found the room littered with signs of use and tried the next door down.

  This room looked ready for guests—or at least, ready to be ready. There were no flowers on the table in the suite’s first room, and when she found the bedroom she didn’t see any dents on the pillow. But it was clean and ready for whatever final touches were deemed appropriate for its next occupant.

  She didn’t intend to stay here long. Sooner or later the Kemenis would do a room-to-room search, rounding up anyone they might have missed the first time through. She’d give them enough time to settle down…but not so much they’d entirely have their act together. And even though her inclination to rush down and check out the situation drove at her, she forced herself to brew a cup of tea from the supplies in the kitchenette. Her stomach hadn’t been more than grumbly, but tea might well calm it further.

  And then she sat cross-legged on the floor on the opposite side of a plush chair, giving herself a good view of the double-locked door while remaining discreetly tucked away, her briefcase at her side. She sipped tea and she considered the situation and how little she knew of it so far. Kemenis. They seemed to have based themselves in the public part of the capitol. The ballroom, perhaps, where the students would have been. She still needed to discover their intent. If they were holding hostages, to what purpose? What demands would they make…and how soon would they start killing people to achieve those demands?

  For the Kemenis had never demonstrated a reluctance to kill people.

  Quiet moments later, Selena set aside the tea, pulling her knees up to briefly rest her forehead there. Her stomach felt better…soothed. Her mind still whirled with unanswered questions—was she actually, truly pregnant? So hard to tell with her whimsical cycles…Had Cole actually, truly faked an assignment to have an affair? So hard to tell with his astonishing ability to play the moment…to play people.

  But it shouldn’t have been. She should have just known. And he was sending e-mail from their home computer, returned sooner than expected. Not surprisingly—he obviously hadn’t had far to travel. Selena pulled her phone from the leather pocket on the side of her briefcase and turned it on. Its pale blue LED screen informed her she had voice mail, and that she had less than half the battery life left. She stared at it, tempted.

  No. She’d wait until she had answers to her other questions—the Kemenis’ intentions, their manpower.

  Answers it was just about time to find out.

  In her hand, the phone vibrated. Selena jumped, chided herself for being nervy and checked the incoming number.

  Cole. Of course it was Cole; the message was probably his, too. It’d been forty-five minutes, maybe even an hour since the Kemenis had made their move on the capitol. By now CNN had a live feed going. He’d be expecting to find her at the embassy…and he’d be wrong.

  The phone gave another hopeful vibration, and this time Selena thumbed the on button, resolutely putting the phone to her ear. “Hello, Cole.”

  “Selena!”

  She’d never thought to hear Cole frightened. Of anything. But the fear tinged his voice even through this staticky satellite connection. Cole’s voice. It was a wonderful, smooth low voice that triggered a flush of the very emotions she’d been trying to avoid—along with the usual warmth she felt in his presence.

  The very reason she had to run so far away in order to sort out her feelings.

  She’d always responded to him that way—the first day she met him, the day they’d gotten married, and each and every time he turned that smile on her. With effort, sh
e managed to avoid blurting out her suspicions about being pregnant—because he really didn’t need to know it. Not now, when she was trapped in a building under Kemeni siege. For whatever he’d done, whatever potential affairs he might have conducted, she knew he cared. Right there in his voice, she could hear how much he cared. She just wasn’t sure if he cared in the way that she needed—or if he even could. He was so good at filling so many roles…maybe he simply couldn’t limit himself to one relationship role.

  You believed he could when you married him. That he had.

  “Lena?”

  Selena blinked. Battery time. Don’t waste it. “Listen,” she told him, moving up to her knees so she could react more quickly if anyone came to the door during this time she couldn’t hear them as well. “I’ve got to save this battery, so I only have a moment. I’m in the Berzhaani capitol building.”

  He swore a blistering oath, but cut it short. “What’s your situation?”

  “At liberty. As far as I know, I’m the only one. I’m about to go down and scope it out, but I think Allori, Razidae, the staff and a whole busload of college students all picked the wrong day to be here.”

  “Fits what I’ve heard.” Cole swore again, more softly this time. “Any chance you can get out?”

  “I don’t know yet. I doubt it. They know I’m here.” Selena hesitated, hunting the best words. Businesslike words. Orderly words. “What have you heard? What do the Kemenis want?”

  “Razidae’s resignation,” Cole said promptly. “Along with all his advisors, support staff, any capitol employee who ever touched the hand of an American in peace and all dogs who’ve wagged their tails at Americans. The cats can stay, because everyone knows they’re notoriously fickle anyway.”