Athena Force 7-12

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

  But Cole had focused in on Selena’s hands. They weren’t quite natural; not quite right. The grain of the image kept him from seeing the fine details of her striking face, from reading the undertones of the expression there. But her hands…she held them in front of her, even though she didn’t seem to be restrained. She fiddled with her olive-green shirt, a garment that hung off her straight shoulders with room to spare, and she held herself stiffly—she held herself in a way that told him more than any stranger would know. “She’s hurt,” he murmured.

  “No blood,” Morel said instantly, his eyes narrowing; it wasn’t an argument, but contributing observation.

  “They’ve been hitting her, no doubt about that.”

  “They were probably hitting her back,” Cole said, no doubt in his voice. “It’s upper body somewhere. The way she’s standing—whoa, wait. Did she spot you?”

  For Selena had ceased fiddling with the shirt, her head still slightly cocked in the way to let Cole know someone was shouting in her ear, and now quietly held her hands in front of her, low at her hips, fingers moving.

  “She’s not looking at us,” Morel said, a frown in his voice.

  Josie spoke with assertion. “She knows there’s someone out there. The SEAL team, for one. Berzhaani teams. She’s talking to all of us.”

  “Two-ten, seven,” Cole said abruptly, even as Selena repeated the signs. “Twenty-seven.”

  Morel adjusted the view as the Predator arced in closer, giving them a new angle of those hands. “Hostages or terrorists?”

  “Terrorists,” Cole said, no hesitation. “She’s going to give us the most tactically important information first.” And just how much would she have the chance to say? How long would the Kemeni leader shout in her ear?

  The expression that flitted across her face in grainy technical magic made it look as though she wondered the same. With restraint, she turned her hand over, cupping it as though cradling an apple. Normally a gesture made high, the hand signal was nonetheless clear enough. Josie murmured it out loud. “Booby trap,” and then turned to look at Morel. “It’s what she was trying to tell us on the phone. ‘Check what you can see of the building, I think they’re going to booby-trap it.’”

  “It’s a layered operation,” Morel agreed. “Everything I’ve heard about Ashurbeyli…he’s got to know he can’t win this one—at least, not as things stand on the surface. So we’ve got to figure out the layers. Check that building until we find what she thinks we should.”

  “More than that.” Josie gave Cole a sharp look. “We’ve got to pass the information along.”

  Numbly, Cole nodded. “It’s why she gave it to us,” he said. “We’re the ones who have to find a way to make sure she isn’t caught in the middle. Or—” he stopped in surprise, realizing he’d fallen into the mind-set of taking them for granted—”or I do.”

  Josie’s look came even more sharply. “You had it right the first time. Don’t forget it.”

  He held her gaze, then lifted his chin in a slight gesture of assent. But he kept silent about his own plans.

  For he had no intent of just sitting here. Watching. Leaving Selena’s fate entirely in the hands of others.

  The video screen drew his attention again, and he realized he was still making assumptions. Everyone else to appear at the top of these imposing stone steps had died within moments. Don’t you let him kill you, he thought at her, not caring if the internal ferocity made it through to his expression. For this mission, the cool and irreverent Cole Smith—station name Jason P. JOXLEITER, CIA field officer and Jox to his friends—had been cast aside. This time, he’d draw deep. This time, it was personal. But—don’t you let him kill you!

  She might have heard him. She’d gone back to fiddling with her shirt, and the slight stiffening of her posture made him think the Kemeni leader was winding up his words of rhetoric and delusional rationalization. Cole didn’t need fine pixel resolution on the image to recognize that subtle change in her expression.

  Selena, about to make her move. You go, babe. But his heart hammered into overtime, and his fists clenched, and he couldn’t help but add an anguished inner prayer. Please. Oh, please…

  Ashurbeyli kept his hand tangled in the hair at the base of Selena’s neck, exposing only his wrist to the inevitable sniperscopes pointed his way. The rest of him hung behind the stout wooden door, a wood with a reinforced armor core. Dammit, she thought at all those inevitable, lurking snipers—at least one SEAL team, against Berzhaan wishes or not, and probably the Berzhaani Elite themselves—then shoot his wrist! She tried to tell them with her eyes, with her anger and her willingness to follow through on such a thought. Son of a bitch, anything but going down without a fight. She couldn’t be so straightforward as to give them another hand signal…there was a good British signal that would do the trick, but it took on meaning at throat level. Ashurbeyli would see it.

  So as Ashurbeyli wound up his meaningless demands—demands she was now almost certain he’d never expected to be met—she reached into her unbuttoned shirt and eased the thin metal panel from her waistband. She had to clear the snag in her turtleneck—the one that had cut straight through to skin—but it gave her a chance to confirm the exact location of the jagged edge.

  That’s me. The Jagged Edge. My new superhero name.

  His voice fell away, a welcome respite. He pulled her head back into the cold muzzle of his pistol.

  Dead, one way or the other. Might as well be the other. Go down fighting.

  His fingers tightened in her hair—

  Selena spun. She pivoted around his grip instead of trying to break it, slashing the metal upward, slicing into his wrist; the gun fell away. Her elbow slammed back into his gut. When he jerked over the pain, fingers still clutching her hair, she met him with another sweep of metal—scoring his handsome face, his charismatic features. He staggered back a step.

  His fingers loosened.

  Yes!

  Selena tore free. She couldn’t reach the gun, but she could kick it away, and it clattered down those stone steps behind her, flashing dully in the midday sun in the very corner of her vision.

  The lobby lay open before her, cleared on Ashurbeyli’s orders; he’d wanted no one exposed to weapons fire. Selena kicked into high gear, all her pains forgotten. Ashurbeyli’s hand scraped down her back as she bolted, grasping for her shirt—losing it. I warned you! she cried, but her mouth stayed clamped shut and determined, and the words never made it past her lips. Through the security arch, past the inner lobby, headed for the nearest corner as shouts of anger followed. Déjà vu, but this time she couldn’t duck through her old path—Ashurbeyli had that figured out. She sprinted for the next corner and turned it, and she wished fervently for a nice escape hatch to appear in the floor because from here she couldn’t go anywhere but in circles.

  Elevator.

  Great, a nice closed-in little box. Wherever the door opened, there’d be someone waiting.

  Unless it didn’t go anywhere at all. She angled for it, coming in at such speed that she bounced off the wall even as she slammed her hand against the elevator button. Old…slow. Maybe too slow. Selena grabbed up the elegant metal ashtray-topped cylinder beside the elevator in anticipation of head bashing and headed for the nearest doorway, pushing it open, considering a quick foray out the window—until a glance reminded her that the first-floor windows were thoroughly covered by decorative but sturdy iron bars.

  Great. Trapped.

  The elevator dinged. For an agonizing moment Selena hesitated, weighing the time she’d need against the sound of pounding feet, the shout as her pursuit split up at the previous hallway, the bang of doors slammed open and the crash of things knocked aside as men bounded in and out of those rooms, checking for her. They’d find her here, no question about it. They were mad and they were thorough, and she’d bet Ashurbeyli was leaving men at the corner of each cleared hallway so she couldn’t double back. Eventually he’d run out of them, but for now she
had nowhere to go but up.

  She dashed out to the elevator; the doors had closed again but the car sat there, waiting patiently for its next summons. With swift care she replaced the ashtray right where it had been, fitting it into the indentation in the carpet. She hit the elevator button even as she used a foot to sweep a stray fallen clump of ashes into dust across the carpet, and when the doors opened she jumped right in, not hesitating to climb atop the narrow, waist-high railing that lined the inside of the car.

  Nowhere to go but up.

  The brake-and-cable service panel, of course. The doors shut behind her and the elevator sat waiting further instruction. Foot time again; Selena used her toes to push every button available and let the elevator sort out which way to go first—to the basement or the roof. Someone hit the closed doors and she flinched—but she couldn’t tell if someone had seen her, or if the brass doors had simply been a convenient target of anger.

  If they’d seen her, her clever hiding place would turn into a literal dead end. But if she waited, it’d be too late. So she went for it, stretching for the offset panel in the ceiling. Her injured arm wouldn’t reach up over her shoulder, not at that angle; she gave a snarl of impatience and twisted around, walking the handrail until she could reach up with the other arm and nudge the panel out of place. The elevator lurched on the way downward. One floor to the basement, and she had to assume someone would be there to meet it even if the odds were low. Dammit, where’s a ladder when you need one? Or maybe even a nice pile of terrorists to climb.

  She leaped for the opening—and with only one hand making a solid landing, slipped to sprawl awkwardly across the floor.

  It was, she decided, a moment to leave out of any future report. But she scrambled to her feet—and, out of time, tucked herself back up against the front of the elevator. If anyone waited, they’d have to come in to find her. The old elevator jerked to a stop; the doors cranked open. Selena held her breath, listening.

  If any Kemeni waited, they did the same.

  And the doors closed.

  She didn’t hesitate. The first-floor button wasn’t lit, but someone could push it at any moment, especially if that someone happened to notice the elevator already on the move…and no more sign of Selena on the first floor. Up to the handrail, and this time she balanced there like a cat, her gaze locked on target. Grab the edge of the opening. Get the good elbow up. Haul ass. She took a moment, took a breath—

  Took a leap.

  Got it.

  Her arm screamed a protest; she gasped in pain. But she held on, and she forced the other arm to do more than its share. A few swings back and forth and all that damn free-weight work came in handy—Cole spotting her, the look on his face telling her exactly what was on his mind and it sure wasn’t adding another round of reps and focus, Selena—she heaved herself up and locked her elbow over the edge. A moment of distinctly inelegant scrambling and she pulled her legs up through the opening, rushing to replace the hatch panel just as the elevator came to a stop at the first floor and damned if those doors didn’t open after all. The car quivered as several Kemenis rushed in, jostling each other in the small space.

  Really, she thought at them, as still as could be and breathing shallowly through her mouth while her lungs cried out for big gulping inhalations, if I was down there, I think you’d have seen me by now.

  Apparently they came to the same conclusion. They tramped out, leaving the elevator free to continue upward. Selena grabbed those big deep breaths she’d been starving for and eyed her new territory—four stories of empty air pierced by the elevator cable. Narrow spears of light leaked in at each floor where the exterior elevator doors closed imperfectly; high above, the cable drum rotated to pull them upward, the motor grinding with a desperation that spoke of its age. A tempting series of wooden rungs ran up to the roof, set in a channel that might just be deep enough to hold her and let the elevator slide by. “Ah,” she murmured out loud, too taken by the absurdity of the moment to stay completely silent, “I’ve been shafted.”

  Hurt like hell, just as she would have expected. Aching face, stinging scalp—she checked for blood where Ashurbeyli had gripped her hair, but didn’t have enough light to tell for sure. Her side still stung, and her arm flirted with the kind of explosion more common to potatoes in the microwave.

  Great. One battered, possibly pregnant, intermittently nauseous, barely armed FBI legate against the world.

  Well, against all the Kemenis in this building. Might as well have been the world.

  But her focus had changed. She wasn’t alone in this any longer, not entirely. Cole was out there, doing his best to take her part. The SEAL team—and she knew there was one out there somewhere—had to have seen her signals, and that meant they’d realize she knew of them, could work with them. And now she’d become all but certain the situation was much more complex than a batch of rustic terrorists grabbing hostages to make petulant, impossible demands. They weren’t concerned enough about the capitulation to those demands. They killed hostages to make a point as much as to get what they wanted; Selena wondered if Ashurbeyli wasn’t using those deaths to build exactly the impression he wanted to…that of a narrow-viewed terrorist sticking to impossible demands beyond all reason.

  That particular path had become well-trodden in recent years.

  She wasn’t quite sure of his true intentions, or of his methods—what, exactly, he hoped to gain if she’d guessed right, if White’s timely flinch had been confirmation—if he blew the building as she suspected he would—or when he even planned to do it. She was sure only that there was more here than met the eye. And while she’d started out with the hostages as her first priority—finding a way to free them, to keep those kids safe until Ashurbeyli’s people were neutralized—now she wasn’t sure but if helping those on the outside to storm the place might be the very last thing she should do. She needed to understand the situation. She needed to thin their ranks, disrupt them from the inside…and figure them out.

  Jonas White.

  He’d be a weak point. He was a man used to running things from a distance. Even now he spent much of his time away from the Kemenis, no doubt in one of the more luxurious apartments the capitol building had to offer.

  “Jonas White,” she murmured…and then gave a sharp shake of her head. Not quite yet. It would cause too much of a stir, and the last she’d seen he’d been in the ballroom, anyway. So…add one more thing to the list. Identify the room he was staying in. If timing allowed…have a nice conversation with him there. Until then, she’d cause what trouble she could. No more innocuous gunfire up the stairwell; if she pulled a trigger, someone would be in her sights. Ashurbeyli would be furious…but she imagined her status was already shifted to kill on sight.

  “Learn to be invisible,” she whispered, crouched on the top of a moving elevator car. Advice to herself. Wise advice, as impossible as it was. Probably the only way she’d stay alive.

  Best to get moving, then. She had a lot to accomplish before she died.

  Chapter 14

  The elevator stopped at the third floor, submitting to another inspection. When it lurched into motion again, it headed downward—and Selena stepped neatly onto the wooden rungs of the four-story shaft, letting the elevator drop away below her. She climbed up past the fourth floor and right up past the noisy hoist mechanism to the roof access. The access panel that sat on the roof like a small squatter’s shack, offering a railed platform at the edge of the shack. She climbed onto the platform, wiping her filthy hands on her shirt. When she peered through the louvered door, she found an empty roof under a low, nickel-gray sky with individual clouds scudding quickly past, driven by capricious winds. Rain smattered briefly against the worn shelter. From the north.

  Anyone up here on guard duty was most likely sheltered to the south of a roof structure. Maybe even this one.

  We’re playing for keeps, now, she reminded herself. Whatever safety margin Ashurbeyli’s interest had once given her
had not only disappeared, it had now marked her for death. She’d embarrassed him one too many times.

  You can always go crawling back. Beg for forgiveness. Submit. Admit you were a fool and that you know better now.

  She considered it a moment, and in the dim, indirect light filtering through the louvers, gave a firm shake of her head. Nope. Still a fool. Still trying to save the day.

  Her current goal was simple enough—return to the guest room she’d appropriated. Gather up what little of use remained in her briefcase. See if there was enough left of the cell phone battery to call Cole.

  And for pure luxury, maybe she’d have a chance to wash her face, use the bathroom and see just how deeply the metal strip had cut into her side. Maybe there’d even be a token first aid kit in the closet. She suppressed a sudden sardonic snort. Yeah, that’s what she needed…a Band-Aid. Wouldn’t that just fix everything.

  But first she had to get from here to the stair access. She had a vague idea in which direction the stairs were located, and a sneaking suspicion she’d find Kemenis on the way. It’d just be too easy if she didn’t, wouldn’t it? Just as it would be too damn easy if this old, rickety door didn’t creak like hell when it moved.

  Well, we can change that.

  She left the door long enough to eye the currently quiescent elevator mechanism, gauging the distance between them, carefully testing the strength of the railing without actually committing herself to leaning on it. It shifted, but it held. What’s one more chance? Slowly, she stretched out to the massive hoist, just barely reaching the nearest part. Cold metal met her fingertips. Cold, greasy metal.

  The hoist gave a clunk, startling her; Selena jerked back onto the platform and fell smack on her ass—but she looked at her fingers and smiled, and she didn’t even bother to get to her feet as she smeared heavy grease into the hinges of the access door.

  Moments later she slipped silently through the smallest possible opening, squinting against the sudden wind and cold and occasional spit of rain. Rain is your friend, she told herself. No doubt the Kemenis were squinting, too.