Athena Force 7-12

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

  He intended to prove that she hadn’t made the wrong decision.

  Selena followed her “safe” route back to the kitchen area—up a story and over, avoiding the activity on the first floor. She kept the fake Luger out and ready, having paused long enough to combine her available rounds into one magazine and make sure there was one in the chamber.

  But she met no one. And while she couldn’t complain…

  She could wonder.

  If they were drawing in on themselves, it wasn’t good. It could only mean they didn’t care if their domain was invaded—that perhaps they even waited for it.

  She needed to shake them up a little.

  She eased out into the hallway, down to the intersection where the long hall ran behind the function rooms, and she watched. Waited. Saw no one.

  No, that can’t be good.

  She wrote them a short note—in Berzhaani, as they’d all been—and snaked her hand around the corner to press it to the wall. Selena was here.

  And then, on this side of the corner, Are you sure you’re going to go Boom?

  If anyone saw the notes, she hoped they’d sow doubt and delay and a little bit of chaos. And if no one saw them…

  Well, she’d be out a pad of sticky notes.

  Cole closed in on the capitol, flashing his credentials at several soldiers along the way. One of them made enough fuss that he thought he’d have to get creative, but Hank—who spoke Berzhaani fluently as opposed to Cole’s firm grasp of related but distinctly different Russian—made what turned out to be a big fuss of getting the man’s name and rank and a few personal tidbits. All for the purpose of giving him a few shining lines in the article they’d be writing, naturally. Eventually the man let them through to the press area, uttering dire warnings about the dangers of getting too close.

  Well, who knew. Maybe Cole would end up writing an article. The CIA-run paper served many different purposes, but in order to justify its existence it also had to report the news. And like Cole, many reporters had already crossed this line past which the general public wasn’t allowed, angling for shots of the remaining blood on the rain-washed steps, hunting dramatic camera angles in front of the besieged but still imposing building.

  Tory Patton was one of them, of course. As Cole approached, she unclipped her collar mike and handed it to a young woman; they put their heads together for a moment until Tory nodded, satisfied. Even in this weather she looked elegant; the chill brought a natural flush to her cheeks, and under a fedoralike rain hat, her bobbed hair was just tousled enough to remind viewers she was out in the field. Beneath her lined raincoat, her flak jacket was barely evident.

  Her gaze landed on him as he approached, remaining professional but not quite welcoming. Cole affected his best Berzhaani accent, polished by recent coaching. “Miss Patton,” he said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offer my admiration of your work.”

  “Thank you,” she said, genuinely enough—but her gaze took in his somewhat conservative attire and reflected a hint of surprise. Behind her, another news crew moved into place, and she gestured that they should take the conversation aside.

  “You expected me to say something else,” he guessed, moving with her. Hank hovered behind him, making it clear he wouldn’t be joining the conversation.

  She gave the smallest of shrugs. “It shouldn’t surprise you to hear how often I’m told my career and behavior is inappropriate. Often not in so many words, but any journalist knows how to say things between the lines, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.” His fervency startled her, as he’d meant it to. “Even though I must admit my own work is hardly worth note.” He flashed her his press pass, displaying the name of the paper. If she was as tuned in as he thought she was, it would mean something to her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Some people prefer to remain behind the scenes.”

  “Exactly so. Sometimes one hears more that way.” He eased closer, as if they could have privacy in this bustling place—a street lined with armored personnel carriers and equipment trucks, heavily patrolled by both soldiers and cameras. The pavement in either direction held not only vehicles, but field tents. Not so obviously, somewhere in or on the buildings behind him—three-and four-story structures as old and older than the capitol—he knew the SEALs were lurking. Watching. Ready.

  She let him close the distance between them, but something in her posture made it very clear that she was making a deliberate choice, and that she was quite ready to change her mind at any time. He lowered his voice and dropped the accent. “I hear, for instance, that our eyes in the sky have spotted some potential activity moving in.”

  Someone else might have gasped at the sudden change in his demeanor; Tory took only the smallest of surprised breaths. “What are you doing here?”

  “Did you really think I’d wait out there in that nice safe hangar, watching a video monitor?”

  “I hoped,” she said. “Do you really think Selena needs something else to worry about?”

  He gave a sharp shake of his head. “She doesn’t know I’m here. Not yet.” It wasn’t an answer to the question, but it was as much as he’d give her. Of course Selena didn’t need to worry about him. But that’s not why he was going in there. He was going in there to help.

  “And just exactly what do you hope to accomplish?”

  “Aside from giving you a heads-up on possible incoming action?” Cole looked over at the capitol building with its stained steps and its stolid facade and thought good question. “I’m playing it by ear, Tory. Maybe you’ve heard…it’s what I do best. But at the least I hope to get inside there and make a difference when it counts.”

  “Inside,” she said flatly, tipping her head down so her hat caught a sudden gust of wind against the brim.

  “Inside.” He tipped his head at Hank. Hank P. STUNTLY, waiting and ready. “I’ve brought along a little diversion. But if you can think of anything that might help…”

  She considered him, and a subtle gleam entered her eye. “A couple of minutes from now I can have my crew take a special interest in getting cameras pointed at those steps.”

  He smiled, and the mustache tickled like the dickens. “And everyone else will assume you actually see something.”

  “Even the Berzhaani soldiers,” she said, her own smile a satisfied one. “They’ve gotten used to reacting to us.” But then she held up a finger. “There’s a catch, of course.”

  Damn. Just when he thought he’d navigated around the potential. He waited, as patient as he could be with those steps right there in front of him, giving him a tangible setting over which to superimpose the images of Selena that had been burned into his memory. Bruised. At gunpoint.

  Striking back.

  He raised his brow at Tory, waiting.

  “An interview, of course,” she said. “We’ll black out your face, wobble your voice—”

  He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible.”

  She capitulated too quickly to have truly expected his agreement. “Then when you leave the Agency. Whenever that is. Until then, a print interview. It’ll be good for Newsweek.”

  “On one condition.” He looked at her, his expression searching and totally beyond serious. “You have to come up with a really cool code name for me.”

  A tiny laugh escaped between her teeth. “I think I can guarantee you that much.”

  “All right, then.” He glanced at his watch. “Give me a few minutes.”

  She grew more serious. “Do you even know—”

  He smiled at her, showing her the same confidence that always put people at ease. “I’ll find a way in.”

  And he did. Several of them, in fact.

  None of them were ideal. An old fire escape leading to the roof, which might or might not be guarded at this point. A simple climb on decorative brick outcroppings to reach the second floor, where the windows lacked iron bars but would yield to his clothing-protected elbow if the ones within reach happened to be
locked. They might be security wired, of course, but Seth had said the security systems had been taken down in the initial invasion. There was also an exit leading from the back corner, but Cole didn’t expect it to be open, or to be easily vulnerable. The SEALs might well use it once the time came.

  He decided to try for the roof. It meant running in close to the building, behind the thick shrubs—and then exposing himself to view while he leaped up to catch the raised lower rung of the switchbacking fire escape. But Tory wasn’t his only diversion…just his most subtle one. Cole waited until movement at the front of the building—people pulling inward, toward the center—caught the attention of newscasters and soldiers alike. All except for the two men who watched the back of the building, standing imperturbably at the corners. Cole nodded at STUNTLY, who gave him a cocky little grin and quite casually sauntered toward the back of the building.

  Within moments, he’d goaded the soldiers into giving chase, drawing them away. “Good luck,” Cole muttered after him, already in motion—but he knew that Hank also wore layers; all he needed was an instant out of sight to turn himself into someone else. With the discipline of experience, Cole left Hank’s fate in his own hands and ducked behind the shrubs—big, bushy, evergreen, and—as usual—prickly. He hesitated there, assessing the leap to the fire escape, when something caught his eye—and then caught his full attention.

  Detonator?

  He crouched by it. Yes, an electronic detonator. Meant for use with a remote.

  “I’ll bet you weren’t here before the trouble started,” he said to it. “In fact…you’re barely damp. How did you—”

  A small hinged door just above the ground, that’s how. A wooden door, still open, set into the concrete blocks of the basement. An opening just barely big enough…

  Crouching behind the shrubs, Cole shucked the overcoat and tossed it through the door. The dishdasha followed, leaving him in his Kemeni outfit—and in serious trouble if he was spotted that way. He flipped the door up and backed through it, a dignified butt-first entrance that almost left him hanging like Pooh Bear in the honey tree. A little wiggling, a little contortion…a little brute force. He scraped his shoulders through, landing lightly on his feet in the basement of the capitol.

  Hang on, Selena. Here I come.

  Selena crouched in the not-so-secret corridor, ready for instant retreat. She’d come all the way to the end of it to spy on the ballroom, and knew herself to be acutely vulnerable.

  And still, already the risk was worth it. Already she’d seen enough to confirm what Jonas White had told her…and to confirm her own suspicions that the Kemenis were getting ready to pull out. Not only had her navigation through the capitol been too easy since her return from the basement, but right there, right now, she saw the fruits of their labors. One after another, gathered hard drives were being tucked away for hard travel in the antistatic, airline- and gorilla-proof cases. A stack of CD jewel cases found less luxurious accommodations, while a handful of USB key chain drives quickly disappeared into special wrapping. Ashurbeyli watched the process with satisfaction…and rightly so. He gave a few quick orders…for Ashurbeyli, he was practically jovial.

  They’d come prepared. They had the experts they needed; they had worked under the cover of the hostage crisis. Selena had seen those cases from the start and not realized their true significance. They even had a big wheeled dolly, festooned with bungee cords in waiting.

  And there on a table, almost obscured by a stack of jackets and other soon-to-be donned outdoor gear, sat the detonator remotes. Selena’s fingers twitched. I’ve got to get those remotes…

  Sure. If I was invisible and my arms were nine feet long and there wasn’t a table between here and there…

  Well, she knew how to distract them all, maybe even enough for an opportunity at the remotes. But probably not enough to gather up both the remotes and the hostages, and right now the hostages came first. She had to get them out of this bloody arena before the building came down on them—or, if she hadn’t found all the charges in the basement, blew up from beneath them. She looked at the remotes with longing—and then realized the importance of Ashurbeyli’s recent words, the orders to bring in refreshments. Kaliber. Fayrouz. Non-alcoholic malt drinks—luxuries to terrorists on the move, but trendy items a well-stocked kitchen would provide. And, apparently, a nice treat to buoy the Kemenis before they made their climactic shift to Plan B.

  And most importantly, the shortest route to grabbing the drinks was through the servants’ corridor.

  Or maybe the most important part was the perfect opening for Selena’s diversions.

  Either way, she couldn’t be caught here. She backed swiftly away from the door and moved down the corridor, finding pleasant irony in posting herself outside the entrance closet in the same spot from which she’d been ambushed not so long ago. She found herself a nice stout cast-iron frying pan, and as the Kemeni errand boy exited, his expression distracted and his eyes on the kitchen, she pounced from the side with a sharp knee to his stomach and a solid follow-through thwak of frying-pan-meets-skull.

  Too hard, probably—he wasn’t dead, but she wouldn’t put eventual dying beyond him; a quick prod to his head revealed a certain unnatural mushiness. “Occupational hazard,” she told him, although she hadn’t meant to hit him so hard and couldn’t help a scowl of self-blame. It didn’t slow her down…she couldn’t afford to let it. She dragged him into the kitchen and tossed him in the open cooler, not bothering to secure him. Within a few moments he’d be a moot point, and she didn’t expect him to be functional within that time.

  In quick succession, she found a serving cart and a couple of basins; she rescued one of Atif’s abandoned tablecloths and snapped it out to cover the cart—too big, but that was the point. The bottom shelf was completely obscured, and so was the basin in which she put an inch of warm water and then the dry ice jar. She found a giant plastic canister filled with sugar and dumped the sugar, filling the canister halfway with bleach. It went beside the basin, and next to it, the gallon of ammonia.

  She centered the second basin on top of the tablecloth, dumped in several scoops of ice from the machine tucked beside the cooler and went hunting the drinks. Kaliber sported a beer-bottle shape; Fayrouz had more of a wine-cooler look, and Selena grabbed one for herself, taking a moment to gulp down a fizzy, fruity apple-raspberry malt. Until it hit the back of her throat, she hadn’t realized just how thirsty she’d become. Stupid, she chided herself. She hadn’t made it this far to go down in a dehydrated faint.

  Dropping the can opener beside the ice-filled basin, she checked her presentation—bottles in ice, nasty tricks securely hidden below—and then smiled as she tucked her empty bottle amidst the others. Her subtle but wicked heads-up to Ashurbeyli—likely to be seen, but not soon enough to do anything about it.

  After a quick check of the hallway, she took her goody cart back up the servants’ corridor, just as pleased to see that the errand boy had left the diminutive door to the ballroom ajar. She made no particular effort to hide her approach, and she hesitated just before the opening to duck down and screw the lid tight on the dry ice jar and make quick work of dumping the ammonia into the bleach. Holding her breath, she gave the cart a shove and closed the door behind it. Less than five minutes. The intensely cold dry ice, sitting in its warm water bath, would sublimate quickly to gas…and the gas took up much more volume than the hard, cold chunk of ice with which she’d started. When the gas volume overcame the integrity of the glass jar, it would do so with a violent explosion of glass shards and brittle decorative glass marbles.

  Customized Selena-bomb.

  But the chlorine gas generated by the bleach and ammonia hit first. It didn’t take long for the coughing to start, for the confused exclamations as Kemeni eyes began to sting, irritating noses and throats and eventually lungs. Eventually even damaging eyes and nose and lungs…eventually, perhaps, even turning lethal. Someone made a cranky comment about the man who’d b
een sent to provide for them even while reaching for the bottle opener and a bottle of Kaliber, but the source of the irritation remained obscure, and the men had no idea they were gathering around it.

  In the midst of it all she heard the noise of new arrivals. They burst into the room looking for Ashurbeyli, voices sharp. Within a few words and a few angry gestures and the glimpse of light blue paper, Selena had caught the gist of it: they’d found her notes. The seeds of doubt had been well sown.

  Ashurbeyli grasped the situation with his usual stark acumen—and then startled Selena by looking around, examining the room as if he’d suddenly find her there. It was enough to make her move away from her little peephole, although she told herself she’d only done so because it was time. Her eye had felt the first faint sting of gas, and several of the thirsty Kemenis were now doubled over with miserable coughing as the sharp voices rose to true alarm. Ashurbeyli was the one to point at the empty bottle in the bin; Ashurbeyli was the one to shout warnings as he backed swiftly away from the cart.

  But Ashurbeyli was too late.

  Chapter 17

  The glass jar exploded with a noise as sharp as the deadly shards that arrowed through the room. Selena ducked reflexively, and ducked again as planter marbles thunked against the wall only inches away. Men cried out in surprise and pain; someone cried out in pure fury.

  Ashurbeyli.

  He knew who to blame.

  The noises of fear and surprise rose from the next room, too. The hostages. They were her first priority now. She took a final glance into the ballroom and discovered more havoc than she’d even imagined—men with their legs slashed and bleeding, too stricken by the chlorine gas to react quickly to the more visible wounds made from flying glass. At least half of them were down, and the other half fully occupied with the wounded.

  Not Ashurbeyli. He glared fiercely at the chaos as he plucked a giant splinter from his chest. He barked a few short orders, but he didn’t look at the men around him reaching for their comrades, reaching to stem the flow of blood, pulling one man from the soaked carpet where the serving cart had overturned. He looked around as though expecting Selena to materialize from thin air…as though he not only expected it, but gladly anticipated it, his fists balled into white-knuckled weapons.