Athena Force 7-12

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

  Selena raised her chin, unable to hide her alarm. “You don’t need him.”

  “Because you’re going to let me walk away?”

  Reluctantly, she amended, “You don’t need him once you leave this room. So how about you use him for cover and then make a final defiant gesture by shoving him back in the room?”

  White smiled again. She’d really come to dislike that smile. He said, “You aren’t the only one I have to worry about. This building is crawling with heroic men and their guns. No, Mr. Razidae will be coming with me.”

  “Then I’ll be coming after you.”

  “And leave your wounded ambassador?” White shook his head; Razidae looked both bemused and offended to be bantered over. “And here I had you pegged as the loyal type.”

  Allori, until now silent, tipped his head to look at White, maintaining every bit of his dignity. “Which is exactly why she’ll do as I suggest and go after you.”

  He didn’t, in fact, have the authority to order Selena to do one thing or another. But if he was inclined to make the suggestion…she was inclined to follow it. After she checked him over more carefully than she could while crouching beside him and playing games with White. She gestured at the hallway exit, a mere tilt of her chin. “The sooner you go, the sooner I can catch up with you.”

  Dragging Razidae, his .45 pressed firmly against the man’s skull in defiance of a censuring expression that had controlled this country for years, White did just that. He backed up to the exit to the hallway that ran along the front of the function rooms, opposite the servants’ corridor. And then he stepped neatly into the hall, taking his VIP hostage with him.

  Selena had half hoped White would shove Razidae back into the room anyway, a decision to jettison baggage so that he could move more quickly toward his escape. White didn’t, of course. She muttered a scorching phrase under her breath and turned instantly to Allori and the growing splash of blood on his shirt. She set quick fingers to the small pearl dress buttons and ignored his surprise and his visible impulse to object. “The sooner I can assess this, the sooner I can do what’s necessary,” she told him. If he understood all the possibilities in “what’s necessary”—the sooner I can get you to help, the sooner I can run after White, the sooner I can watch him die—he didn’t let on. He allowed her to open the shirt, exposing a thickly haired chest, and then to peel it back until she found the source of the blood.

  And sighed in relief. She got up long enough to yank a tablecloth free, and to pull the knife from the dead Kemeni’s belt. She ripped a long strip from the fine white cloth and flipped the rest of it down to a rectangle in quick folds. When she knelt again, she pressed the pad up under his arm, and helped him forward so she could tie it in place. “It’s in and out,” she said. “I think it skipped along the outside of your ribs.” He had enough meat that she wasn’t sure, but she’d heard no air and he certainly hadn’t coughed up any blood. “If you can stay on your feet long enough to get out of here—”

  He snorted and winced, but met her eye. “I’ll crawl if I have to.”

  She tightened the bandage and tied it off, wincing as he closed his eyes and grunted against the pain. But when he looked at her again she said firmly enough, “You’ll have to crawl fast. The Kemenis have remote detonating devices for the bombs they’ve planted around the building.”

  He echoed her scorching phrase of not so long ago. “You’ve seen—?”

  “Better than that. I took two of them out of the mix. But they’ve got remotes for a lot more than two.” She pointed at the corridor entrance. “So crawl very fast. When you hit the end of the sneaky little passage, hang a left to the kitchen. Ignore the blood all over the floor—it’s been there awhile. And the kitchen door should be open for you. If you circle left, you’ll come around to—”

  “The front of the building. I heard you the first time, when you told the others.”

  “Good.” She stood, then put out her good arm.

  He didn’t pretend he didn’t need the help up—or that he didn’t need a moment to recover when his face went pasty white. But he put the time to good use. “In spite of what I said…consider coming with me. The rescue boys are in on this one, whether they’re ours or Berzhaan’s. They can grab White.”

  “They don’t even know he’s here.”

  He gave her a wry once-over. “You’re not in much better shape than I am.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Selena said. “I’m not bleeding.” Anymore. But she took in his expression—the one that told her he wasn’t fooled, that he understood her right arm wasn’t exactly working right and that one eye was half-closed and that the rest of her had been bashed around into creaky shooting pains—and she nodded reluctantly. “If the cavalry shows up, I’ll step aside. But until I know they’ve got him in their sights…”

  She wouldn’t even have given him that much, not if it hadn’t been for the potential family member within her. Too small to see, too small to feel, and yet so hugely a part of her—potential or not. But she did, and Allori nodded in reply, understanding it was the only concession she’d make—and knowing that if Razidae died, in many ways the terrorists would prevail even if they didn’t emerge from this building alive.

  He pushed himself away from the wall, holding himself with stiff determination. “I’ll see you on the steps,” he said. “Alive.”

  “Works for me,” Selena said, watching until he entered the corridor.

  And then she went hunting.

  Cole slipped quickly through the halls, his skin crawling with the awareness that a T-shirt labeled U.S.A. didn’t keep him from being a Kemeni target, or even a victim of friendly fire. If he was a SEAL or one of the Berzhaani Elite, he wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t shoot first and figure out the identity of this strangely garbed interloper later. Possibly much later.

  Seth had shown him simplified blueprints of the capitol, enough so he knew to cut away from the Kemeni trail—the ejected shell casings, the smears of blood, the occasional body—and to take a cross hall to the back of the building, fully intending to come up on them from the back.

  The problem, of course, was that being behind the Kemenis very much meant being in the line of fire from the good guys.

  Unless he guessed wrong, and the Kemenis had another route in mind altogether—maybe up to the roof, or doubling back to the other side of the capitol, or ducking down through the basement. But the recent explosions had been on that side—Hellfire missiles courtesy of Josie Lockworth, if Cole didn’t miss his guess, probably aimed at approaching Kemeni allies—and so was all the attention. Nope, this side looked good for a quick escape, if not quite so clean as planned.

  A sporadic exchange of gunfire gave way to shouting as Cole skimmed along the wall of his final approach, and it made him hesitate. They’re negotiating? They’re this close to an exit and they’re negotiating? Gut instinct told him they were up to something else.

  Like preparing to blow the building—but making sure the rescue teams were trapped inside when they did. It meant setting off the right bomb first. Which could well mean stalling, in spite of the risk.

  With the utmost care, Cole risked a peek around the corner. Just beyond the turn, an open door led into the stairwell, and the Kemenis had crowded into it; they seemed to be tearing through their baggage in search of something. The remotes? And…was that a Post-it note stuck to the door? Apparently so, for even then an anonymous hand ripped it away, crumpling it before throwing it back out in the hallway.

  Cole knew that the stairwell landing held an exit to the outside—it was the same door he’d seen on approach to the building, and all the stairwells included exit doors. Why don’t they—

  A few exchanged gunshots answered the question for him. They hadn’t left because they had a welcoming committee on the outside. And they couldn’t return to the hallway, not with the team of Berzhaani Elite that Cole had glimpsed taking up position in the hall—close enough to take an instant shot at anyone who r
eappeared from the stairwell, but off at enough of an angle so no one in the stairwell had any chance of targeting the team.

  Great. So they’re trapped. Time on their hands and they’re trapped. And they have those remotes. And Cole hadn’t had time to brush up on the local lingo. He sorted through his Berzhaani and filled the gaps with Russian, making sure he was good and clear of anyone’s line of fire before he revealed himself to either set of combatants. “Don’t shoot,” he told them, just as a good submissive opening line. “I want to let you know I’m here.” Actually, he thought he’d probably said I announce me, but it was close enough.

  Someone from the stairwell instantly fired at the sound of his voice, chipping huge chunks of wallboard from the corner.

  “Hey, I said don’t shoot,” Cole protested. “I’m too busy hiding to mess with you.” Okay, lying was sometimes a good thing.

  “Who?” demanded one of the Elite, a voice full of annoyance and fired up with battle. “SEAL should be at the lobby!”

  “Not SEAL,” Cole said. “American…in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Great. He was pretty sure that had come out as American accident.

  The Berzhaani response was instantaneous—a chorus of voices telling him to get lost. Succinct, to the point, and laced with English curses he certainly understood. Cole grinned, sardonic humor in the midst of life and death. He couldn’t blame them a bit. “Listen first,” he said, or maybe listen one. Dammit. “They have bombs. You know of the—” roof, what was roof, dammit? “—building top? There are more—they have…” He rolled his eyes at himself and tried again. “They have set-offs. You have to get them or—”

  The building rumbled and shuddered around them, a deep sound so profound it thumped like a hollow drum in Cole’s chest. The structure shook and crackled and glass broke; Cole instinctively ducked down under the feeble protection of his own arms, wondering how many they’d set off and where those bombs had been and how long they all had until this sturdy old building crumbled down around them. In the next instant he realized that it must have been those bombs on the roof, with all their force escaping up and out and little of it directed at the capitol’s supporting structure. Those in the most danger would be the Elite just outside the building, the ones bottling the Kemenis up in their stairwell. The Kemenis had chosen this first detonation with care—something to take everyone aback, to give them the opportunity to—

  Gunfire erupted anew. The Kemenis were blasting their way out of their dead end, seizing the moment to overcome outside forces battered by falling brick and shattered glass. The Elite in the hallway responded in kind, moving up to take their shots until Cole’s ears rang with the intensity of the exchange.

  No fools, the Kemenis—outgunned, they rushed the Elite, taking the battle to close-quarters fighting. Cole took another look around the corner, as flat against the wall as he could be—and found himself in the perfect position to spot the lone Kemeni lurking behind the dubious cover of the stair riser, weighing two remotes in his hands.

  Decisions, decisions. Cole lifted his Hi-Power, breaking cover to take careful aim—because of course he’d had every intent to “mess with” the Kemenis from the start. Two men lurched between him and his target, lurched away…revealed the man having made up his mind, setting down one remote detonator in favor of the other.

  Cole squeezed the trigger. The man jerked back, his eyes wide and surprised, and the remote tipped out of his suddenly feeble grip. For an instant it seemed as if no one noticed at all—and then the fighting seemed to hesitate, everyone at once feeling the balance of things change and tip and—

  Get the remotes. For the Elite seemed focused on the Kemenis themselves, and suddenly the Kemenis were no longer a team, but individuals squirting off in every which direction. Cole dodged his way through the chaos of fists and knives and sporadic gunfire and dived into the stairwell, catching up against the back of the stairs and abruptly too intimate with the man he’d just shot. It’d been a solid hit; the man only now began to stir, coming out of the initial daze of the impact in the center of his chest. “Be still,” Cole told him, recovering to an awkward crouch. “Help will come.”

  Maybe, maybe not. But no need to kick a man when he was already down and getting a close look at death. Cole hunted for the small black remotes the man had dropped, gathering them up with a quick glance to confirm they each needed both hands for triggering. Safety devices. Something ironic about that. He dumped the injured man’s small canvas bag on the floor and used it for collecting the remotes. Four, five…six. Was that it?

  This little nook had so isolated him from the chaos that Cole started when a man jumped down to block the way out; he jerked back, smacking his head on a low stair. “Dammit—”

  The man before him glared with the tight, barely leashed fury of a man thwarted beyond his own imagination. “Leave those.” His voice sounded so constrained, so close to the edge of explosion, that Cole couldn’t imagine how he’d spoken at all. In perfectly fine English, to boot.

  And he sounded familiar.

  Cole shook his head, a careful gesture in the face of the man’s gun. “I don’t think so. And I wouldn’t hang around, if I were you. I believe by now they’re probably quite willing to shoot you in the back.”

  And the man across from him—so close to him in this tight space, a man out of place with his honed, hawkish features and perfect brooding eyes—gave a little start, looking at Cole with sudden recognition.

  Cole narrowed his eyes as disbelief warred with the sudden startling urge to lunge forward and rip this man apart. “We do know each other.”

  The Kemeni’s face flashed through emotions too quickly to decipher. Wariness, jealousy, hatred—?

  And Cole knew for sure. The voice on the other end of the phone. The man who’d hurt Selena. His throat tightened down; his words came out strained. “Where is she?”

  Ashurbeyli—it had to be Ashurbeyli—grinned at him, an expression that barely looked sane. “I don’t know.”

  “Then,” Cole said, shifting his weight ever so slightly, “there’s no reason I should let you live, is there?” And he lashed out with a foot from his crouching position, kicking the gun away, giving himself the chance to raise his own weapon and squeeze off a shot—but not before Ashurbeyli grabbed a too-familiar black box from his front shirt pocket and clasped it in both hands.

  Cole fired anyway, an ill-aimed shot that hit Ashurbeyli just beside the join of neck and shoulder and flung him backward. And then the floor shook beneath him as muffled thunder detonated above his head—right above his head, somewhere here in the stairwell—and he flung himself out from under the stairs, scrabbling forward with his world narrowed to the chunks of concrete suddenly falling around him and ow dammit on his leg and then a serious crack on the head so his world grayed out and he had no point of reference at all; he might as well have been swimming or floundering through snow or navigating through black space or—

  Cole opened his eyes. He sat against the wall inside the building, one of a dozen men similarly arrayed with legs outstretched, similarly dazed. Warm blood ran over his face and into his slightly open mouth; he sputtered, quite suddenly alert. His mustache sat askew, and Cole reached up to tug it off, learning that he hadn’t quite regained his motor skills as he clumsily hit himself in the face.

  A man crouched beside him, the red cross on his white armband as unmistakable as such symbols come. “This is over,” he said. “You will be fine again.”

  “I’m fine now,” Cole said, and brought his legs in so he could stand—and stared stupefied at the Aircast on his lower leg. “Huh. I’ll be damned.”

  “Maybe not just yet,” the Berzhaani medic said dryly.

  “But I can see to it if you do not keep yourself quiet. I have others, worsely wounded than you, who need attention.”

  “Crutches,” Cole said. “I’m not done yet. My wife is still here somewhere.”

  “The only women are with the hostages, and the host
ages are free.”

  Cole glanced down the hall—one direction and then the next, noting the arrival of the first stretchers, the clear intent to evacuate everyone from this compromised old building.

  The obvious missing face. Ashurbeyli.

  “I need crutches,” he insisted. “And I need them now.”

  Chapter 18

  Selena caught up with White at the front corner of the building just as a second explosion rocked the building. It gave a deep groan, eerily human, and a crack split the plaster along the wall, tectonic building plates drifting apart. White shoved Razidae up against the corner and propped him there by leaning against his throat, his hammy hand wrapped around the prime minister’s larynx with just enough weight to make breathing difficult. Selena ducked into the nearest function room, a small room on the end of the row, and let her gun peek out the door.

  “You stupid bitch,” White said, and for the first time he sounded tired of this game. “Do you really think I won’t kill him?”

  “I really think you won’t kill him yet,” she corrected. “And wouldn’t you be better off to use him for cover? Because it’s only going to take me a tiny little look to pinpoint you in my sights.”

  White snorted. “As if that matters. By the time you manage the trigger on that useless gun, you’ll be pointing at your foot.”

  Well. Yeah. Some truth to that. But she scoffed. “Oh, please. Doorjamb…stabilizer. Get it?”

  And all the same…she really didn’t want to shoot the prime minister by mistake. She reached into her pocket for the marbles she’d jammed there, wondering if the same trick would work twice. Fingered them and considered it. Risky.

  “Jonas White!”

  She froze. Ashurbeyli’s voice. But he was out of this now, long gone with his men…with any luck, already dead. A man with his own kind of honor, too uncompromising to exist in this world and allow others to be safe.