Athena Force 7-12

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

  “I’ll just bet he does.” He’d probably expected her to be flushed out in that first forty-five minutes of intensive searching—as much as he’d seen of her already, he probably still hadn’t thought she’d be able to hole up and hold her ground without breaking like a frightened rabbit the first time someone stomped into her hiding place and glared around. Now…every hour that passed, his resentment of her would build—because the longer it took to get her, the more obvious her challenge of him. Woman to man. Immodest Western woman to self-appointed manlier-than-thou terrorist leader.

  The look on the young man’s face changed, becoming what he probably thought to be canny. “Alive, he said. But nothing more.” He eyed her from head to toe, a clumsy parody of the way Ashurbeyli had assessed her.

  Selena refrained from rolling her eyes. So it had occurred to him that he could now taste a Western woman. It wouldn’t even count as brutality, because Selena herself had already been tainted and exposed by her bold and unacceptable ways. What an astonishing and unexpected development that this should enter his mind.

  Looking at the way his pants scrunched up under the belt high on his waist and the rolled cuffs at the bottom, she thought she might be able to wear them. But the shirt was a better bet, oversize enough so that although she and the young man had about the same shoulders, there should be plenty of room for her breasts. And it was the olive-green color she coveted…after all, she’d need to ditch this coat soon. No doubt every one of them knew to look for it.

  He frowned, an exaggerated scrunch of brow. He sensed her mind was elsewhere…and couldn’t fathom it. Selena ever-so-subtly lifted her chest, letting her breasts push against the fine fabric of her black turtleneck.

  He took a step forward. He probably didn’t even realize it. His too-big pants bloomed with the evidence of his intent, and he probably realized that with much acuity.

  Overconfidence. A wonderful thing. She let herself look trapped. She let herself look frightened, and took advantage of the chance to make her chest heave with her panicked breath. He’d quit watching her face at all. He took another step, and the Abakan’s muzzle with its oddly shaped self-cleaning muzzle brake drifted away from Selena.

  She still didn’t want the rifle to go off. But she wouldn’t mind quite as much if it did.

  As he hesitated on the verge of the step that would put him within range, she put deliberate revulsion into her voice. “You have no right to touch me.”

  His expression flickered into empowered outrage. “You are in my country! You play your political games with my people! You should have stayed where you belonged!” He took those last few steps in a rush, eager with assumed victory.

  Selena dropped into a balanced crouch, thrusting the oven cleaner in his face and spraying with steady aim. By the time she hit the crouch, his victory had turned to boyish cries of pain. Only a youngster, at that. It wasn’t hard to take him down, levering him around her hip as she bounced back up to her feet.

  He landed hard, air knocked from his lungs with a grunt, cries of warning silenced—at least, until he caught his breath. She wrenched his rifle away and tossed it aside, and as the air whooped back into his lungs he rolled in pain, his hands clamped over the lye-infested chemicals she’d sprayed in his eyes, Selena targeted the nearest sink. She’d rinse his eyes, bundle him up, and stick him in—

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, and she had only enough time to think how stupid she’d been, that she should have been prepared for a second Kemeni. This one was bigger, heavier and wasted no time—he slammed into her hard, knocking her back against the gleaming tile wall. She groped for her pocket as he literally picked her up off her feet and flung her against the wall again. Her vision turned to sparks and darkness, and still she hunted her pocket. He backhanded her, knocking her aside; she crumpled to the floor.

  But she found the pocket. And as he lifted her up to start all over again, she pulled the ice pick free and jammed it into his ribs, aiming for the heart.

  He grunted when the wooden knob hit his ribs and twitched off the blow to shove her back against the wall, one hand pulling back to hit her again.

  Die, dammit!

  Incredulous, Selena withdrew the ice pick to try again, but suddenly understood—he was a big man, a huge man, and even if she’d hit his heart, even if she’d holed his lungs…the holes were very small indeed. He could do plenty of damage before keeling over, and he might well cause enough ruckus to bring others—and enough damage to Selena that she could no longer continue this self-appointed mission.

  With a snarl, she took his next blow, another to her already burning cheek and brow. This time she rolled with it, though it stunned her all the same.

  She drove the ice pick home at the base of his skull.

  He stiffened. Selena squirmed, still trapped, her vision prickling back to show her the stunned astonishment on his face and the already dead look in his eyes. She wiggled the ice pick around just to be sure. He spasmed and went utterly limp, collapsing so suddenly she had no chance to find her feet; she went down with him. But she bounced back up, staggering and mad about it. Shake it off.

  When she had her balance she stood over him and glared down. “You really shouldn’t have pithed me off.”

  The young Kemeni’s groan came right on cue, but before she dealt with him, Selena yanked the rifle away from the dead terrorist and went to the double swinging doors, glancing out the small windows. She saw no one. Maybe she’d gotten lucky…but she wouldn’t count on it. She wouldn’t dawdle. She hauled the unresisting boy to the kitchen sink and shoved his head under cold running water. He quickly realized the benefit of it and stayed there on his own while she grabbed a kitchen towel and soaked it. When she pulled him away from the sink and aimed him at the cooler, she stuffed the towel into his hands and said, “Keep that over your eyes.”

  He readily complied. Definitely one whipped terrorist. Not that Selena blamed him…she didn’t know if he’d taken corneal damage from the lye in the over cleaner, or even if he’d inhaled the fumes, soon to choke on the fluids of his damaged lungs. But while she’d offer him what ease she could, she couldn’t make herself be sorry. Not when she remembered the look in his eyes as he attacked her. Not when she had reason to wonder how many people he’d slaughtered in this one day alone.

  Now he was out of that game.

  She pulled the cooler door open with some caution—and a good thing, too, because Atif met her with a steadily aimed rifle. He quickly lowered it. “I was hoping that was you. You’ve been busy, I see.”

  “Exercise keeps one young,” Selena told him. She prodded her captive into place beside the man already so carefully bound in plastic wrap, and proceeded to restrain his ankles and wrists—except she left his hands in front of him so he could hold the towel to his distinctly reddened face. Just for a moment she pulled it away; he looked at her through the slits of his swollen eyelids and she doubted he could actually see her. “If you cause trouble, any trouble at all, you lose the towel and I truss you up like a roast lamb. You got it?”

  In testament to his misery, he only nodded.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she checked the double doors again, found them still clear and dragged the dead terrorist’s bulk into the cooler, leaving him well to the side of Atif’s decently covered friends. He nodded firmly at that arrangement, and then again at her face. “Are you hurt?”

  “Just my feelings.” Selena ran careful fingers over her cheek and the edge of her brow line, finding puffy, hot skin and a trickle of blood. The hefty one must have been wearing a ring. Jerk. “They made me feel downright unwelcome.”

  Atif snorted. “And have you brought more weapons?”

  “Let’s just see.” She pulled the bolt back on the first rifle, found it sticky, and took a much closer look. “We’re both lucky you didn’t pull the trigger on this one, kid. They didn’t give you much training on this thing, did they?” She wasn’t expecting an answer; she didn’t get o
ne. She pulled the magazine out of place and handed it to Atif, then pulled the oval pin on the side of the stock to release the joint there and folded the stock back on itself. Storage and transport configuration—and in this case, a signal that the weapon wasn’t to be used, at least not until it was thoroughly cleaned. She set it aside to inspect the second weapon, which proved to be in much better shape. “There we go,” she murmured. Not much in the way of ammo, but she had an idea just how she’d use it.

  Atif watched as she took a moment to remove the shirt from the dead terrorist, doffing her coat and pulling the shirt on over her turtleneck. “Lemon juice,” he advised as she pulled the shirt out to inspect the blood dot she herself had created. Amazingly small…all the bleeding had been internal.

  “If they’re close enough to wonder about it, they’re already too close.” The olive-green shirt over her khaki cargo pants would merely allow her to draw less attention at a distance. They presented a color combination the terrorists were well trained to see as friendly—at least until they noticed her hair and the fact that she sported breasts. This particular shirt went a long way to hide those pesky giveaways, as ill-fitting as it was.

  She would have cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, but the terrorists had already created plenty of their own blood trails and her own efforts barely added to them. So she left it alone, and rummaged in the cooler for things she’d seen here earlier. Butcher twine, very nice. Candle stubs and matches she’d find in the entrance to the service corridor.

  “May I ask,” Atif said, clearly prepared to ask regardless, “your intent? You are just one woman. They are many men. You cannot defeat them all.”

  Selena tucked away the twine in a thigh pocket, and yanked the ice pick free of the dead terrorist, squinching her face up in matter-of-fact distaste. Stay strong, stomach of mine. She cleaned the pick and threaded it between her belt and her hip. “You’re right. I can’t defeat them all. I’m not sure that’s my job.”

  “Then—?”

  “Keep them off balance. Keep them distracted from the hostages. Make it personal to Ashurbeyli, so he loses perspective.” Check. Been there, did that. “Make them think I am important, so they’re caught off guard when the real rescue comes along.” And there’d better be a real rescue. She had to count on Cole…had to believe he’d see to it, whatever he had to do. Meanwhile…she looked around the room, from the dead Kemenis to the live ones. “Three down. And the rest to go.”

  Chapter 9

  The condo closed in around Cole. It surrounded him with Selena, with her belongings and her style and even her scent. And with UBC muted, it surrounded him with memories of her voice on the phone. He wasn’t used to the uncertainty he’d heard from her only hours earlier—uncertainty that underscored the problem between them.

  He’d been on assignment; he’d come back. Somewhere in between, something had hit her hard.

  He just needed the time to find out what. The chance.

  He understood her request that they use the hardwired phone—it didn’t crackle with static, nor drop every other syllable in a whimsical verbal word game. They wouldn’t be overheard by those baby monitors—or by the various intelligence communities of the world. But if he only could leave—

  What then, Jones?

  Nothing, that’s what. He’d called his office; he’d been shuffled all the way up to the deputy director himself. He’d passed along what he knew, the tidbits Selena had given him, and he’d been admonished to do the same with any further information she gave him. But what had he learned? Nothing. What had he gathered by way of reassurance that the CIA would immediately share this information to best benefit Selena? Nothing. And if there was one thing Cole had learned in his years of covert operations, it was that the various intelligence agencies jealously guarded their information. They talked a good game, and on some levels the situation had improved immensely—his recent assignment had proven that much—but cooperation was a boon, not the norm.

  Call the State Department.

  Yeah, he could do that. And they’d play the same games with him, and he’d still have no assurance they wouldn’t lose Selena in the big picture.

  He caught sight of Tory Patton, gesturing at the Berzhaan capitol building, her classically beautiful features tight with concern. The bottom of the screen held a scrolling tally of the damage and death tolls caused by the terrorist activity since it had kicked off in the village of Oguzka.

  Go to the news station. Call UBC, spill everything he knew…dangle his inside source. That would light a fire under the CIA, the State Department and even the FBI. It would bring the troops circling around, forcing them to share intel…forcing them to act.

  And he’d give it about thirty seconds before the CIA came and lit a fire under him. They’d haul him away for questioning, and he wouldn’t be here to answer that phone at all.

  Everyone else had their eyes on the student hostages, knowing that along with a tragedy, it’d be a publicity nightmare if those kids were hurt. They had their eyes on Razidae and Allori, both men that the region—and their countries—couldn’t afford to lose. It was Cole’s job to keep his eyes on Selena. To make things happen in a way that included her best interests. For neither the U.S. nor Berzhaan might realize it right now, but she was their best chance of coming out of this mess with survivors. She just needed the right kind of backup….

  Cole paced behind the couch, down the hallway to the bedroom where her scent tortured him, a precise turn on his heel to stalk back to the living room where her beloved quilt squares reminded him of her well-hidden sentimentality. Complex, that was Selena. And every bit of her had called to him on that evening they’d met four years earlier—some state function he didn’t even remember now, because all he could think of was the way she’d smiled at him and how he’d been so certain she’d had hidden fire under that cool, lean exterior.

  He’d been right, too.

  He realized he’d hesitated by the couch, that he ran his fingers along the cool leather. Not so long ago she’d stopped a similar pacing jag by pulling him right over the back of the couch and into her arms. He groaned at the thought, resting his forearms on the couch back and dropping his forehead between them. Dammit!

  Go ahead. Torture yourself. Think about the way she’d been lurking under the comforter with her eyes closed and only a thin cotton camisole and sporty briefs covering freshly bathed skin. Think about the play of lean muscle covered with just enough padding to make her soft to the touch. Think about how she’d drawn him close and wrapped herself around him and whispered something about making babies he’d just barely had the remaining concentration to hear. Think about how she’d taken him so fast and hard that even now the memory dazed him.

  Yeah, go ahead, do that. Get lost in it.

  In how much you’re afraid of losing her.

  Slowly, he pounded his head against the couch. Not hard enough to do damage…but hard enough to interrupt himself. To try to get his thoughts back on a track that would do him—and Selena—some good.

  When he looked up, there was Tory Patton.

  Don’t go to the news station.

  Go to the reporter.

  And go to her not as a reporter, but as a graduate of Athena Academy, and a former classmate of Selena’s. For the Athena graduates didn’t lose touch. They might go on to their individual achievements, but first and foremost, they were women of Athena.

  And like Tory Patton, they had strings to pull. Influence to wield. And a noted track record for saving the day.

  Selena crouched in the back stairwell, head tipped back. Thinking.

  Unlike the posh main stairs in the front part of the building, this set was made of painted steel and concrete—and not recently painted steel at that. Tubular railings ubiquitous to stairwells everywhere, stained and worn texturized concrete…your standard ugliness.

  Gunfire would echo magnificently.

  She’d sacrifice the rifle, but it had little in the way of ammo—and like
any soldier untrained in the use of this particular weapon, she found it unwieldy and a little counterintuitive. Not a combination she wanted to depend on in a tight spot. If things went right, she’d gain a few moments with the hostages—and maybe even an extra moment or two to cause inconvenience for the Kemenis.

  That would be nice.

  So yeah, she’d sacrifice the rifle.

  But for now, she sat in the stairway, head tipped back, thinking. Making sure she had a clear idea of her purpose here. Given that she didn’t intend to leave the embassy—an excursion that would no doubt be more dangerous than staying here—and that she didn’t intend simply to hide in the basement, and that she’d already passed along what little she knew to Cole…then what could she hope to accomplish?

  Free the hostages?

  That, she knew, was thinking a little too positively. There were too many of them, too many Kemenis, and too few places to hide. The service corridor was a godsend, but the terrorists obviously already knew about it; she couldn’t lurk there in safety or stash the hostages there, either.

  Reassure the hostages.

  A definite possibility, especially if things went to plan here in the stairwell. She didn’t expect to draw anyone off their assigned post, but those who lingered in the ballroom…they were another story.

  Nibble away at the edges of the terrorists. Another possibility. She’d already managed a few small bites. As long as she remained only an irritant, she didn’t think Ashurbeyli would divert too much effort to finding her. Why should he? He still had the control; he still had the hostages.

  Stay alive. Now there was the question. She didn’t think he’d have her killed outright, not at this point. No, he’d want to talk to her. Perhaps mistreat her. Make the point of his superiority, and salve the insults she’d already reaped on him—though she wasn’t sure if he’d figured out the three men were missing. With all the rotating shifts and various patrol sweeps they were doing, it might well take time.