12 Days of Christmas: A Christmas Collection

by Laura Greenwood

  Nice.

  If you didn’t know the language you’d swear she was coming on to him. And in this case, she was. Delilah was as much a tease as she was deadly serious. The kind of woman who could whisper sweet nothings in your ear while reaching for a knife. Sexy and terrifying at the same time.

  “Here.” He slid down the aisle and handed her a manila envelope. She took it while dragging two fingers across the top of his hand and sending electric shivers down his spine.

  “You’re,” he took a deep breath to clear his head.

  Focus, damn it.

  “You’re going under cover as a French college student visiting her grandma for the holidays. Zeta Team will be prepping your fake college registration and online presence, including some doctored photos of you protesting at a few animal rights rallies.”

  “Your marks name is Nevil Boucher. He’s the unofficial spokesman for the animal rights group in France. He’s vacationing in Orleans, so get close to him, and see what you can find out.”

  “What if I’m not his type?”

  “Inside the packet you’ll find a list of brothels and illicit sites he’s visited in the last few months, so he should be susceptible to your charms.”

  Humph. “And how far should I go?”

  “As far you have to.” Victor paused. The last time he gave her this much freedom her mark ended up in the hospital for three weeks. “Just don’t kill him before we get the information.”

  She gave him a sly smile. “No promises,” she said while puckering her lips. It almost looked like she blew him a kiss.

  Victor had to turn to someone else and focused on Mitch. This game of theirs was getting a little too obvious. “I want updates sent to Mitch every six hours even if it’s just to tell him you’re going to sleep. Is everyone clear on what to do?”

  They all nodded including Delilah. She might be a tease, but she knew when to quit.

  Victor pulled out five hypodermic needles from his shirt pocket and gave everyone a box of latex gloves and surgical masks. “This is an inoculation against the virus. While it’ll protect you, we’re taking no chances. Wear gloves and masks whenever appropriate.”

  He waited as each of them injected their arms before doing so himself.

  After the plane landed, they all filed out onto the tarmac, except Delilah. She had been staring her fierce green eyes at him the entire time. Her face, however, was completely passive. It made him feel like a bug in bell jar.

  “Is there a problem?”

  She stood and glided over to him, sashaying her hips like a cat. “That shot is worthless isn’t it?”

  Shit. She knows.

  There was no point in lying to her. She could read a man’s body language better than his own mother.

  “It’s a gamma globulin injection. It’ll boost your immune system, but no, it’s not a vaccine.”

  She slid her lips to one side and looked away. He couldn’t tell if she was disappointed with his lie or in how easily he gave up. By now, she had to realize that given her assignment, she’d have no opportunity to use the gloves and mask. That made her the most vulnerable of all of them to the virus and its consequences.

  “What gave it away?” Victor asked.

  “If you had a vaccine, there’d be no need for the gloves and masks. Plus, we wouldn’t have to kill the innocent to contain it.”

  “Do you think the others suspect anything?”

  She looked long and hard into his eyes. He began to feel queasy from the guilt and had to look away.

  “No,” she said. “They still trust you.”

  That hurt. Was she losing her trust in him? She had to know he was just doing his job. The urge to assign someone else to her duty screamed in the back of his mind. It wasn’t fair to put her in a position like this, but she was the best operative he had.

  She put a hand on his face and stroked his cheek with her fingertips. Maybe she did it to calm him, to let him know she understood what he was asking of her. Blood calculus. She then ran her hand down his chest which only made his stomach clench. How could he do this to her? Before slipping out of the aircraft, she turned and kissed him on the cheek.

  Be careful.

  He didn’t say it. In their line of work, there was no room for sentimentality. Only the callous and the strong could survive as part of his team. His gaze fell.

  Only the strong.

  3

  Victor sighed as he drove past miles of snow covered fields interspersed with a rare farmhouse and several tall round silos. It was almost idyllic and very remote. He could see why they choose the area.

  His car skidded to a stop in a gravel driveway. The bio-weapons lab was in front of him, hidden inside a gray stone barn with wood shingles. He checked his phone. A little under forty-six hours left. He opened the door and headed to the fenced in chicken coop. Heavy snow fell, coating everything in a fresh white layer.

  Surrounding the property out to about a hundred yards was a simple four foot high slatted wood fence. At the corners were two large elm trees that spread their empty, snow covered branches. The empty area made an excellent place for a sniper.

  Soon after he arrived, a man in a black trench coat trotted over to him.

  “You must leave immediately!” he said in French.

  Victor spotted the handle of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster and the bulging of body armor under his clean white shirt.

  Must be DGSE.

  He put both hands up. No need to provoke the man. He then slid out the fake ID from his front shirt pocket. Time to see if his French accent was still as good as it was in college. Two others approached from his flanks with their hands tucked inside their coats, no doubt gripping their weapons.

  Definitely DGSE.

  It was exactly what he’d have done in their situation. The first man swiped his ID and gave him a cautious look.

  “So… you’re the special investigator from Paris. You don’t look like much.” The man flicked the ID back at him, and Victor snatched it out the air. “I thought you’d be taller.”

  Victor ignored the veiled insults. He could understand the man’s anger at being sidelined. He was about to take over, and the dead men had most likely been under his command.

  The man’s nose flared and lips scrunched, like he had just smelled a week old diaper. “Name’s Galen. Me and my compatriots are at your service.”

  As Victor took a step forward, Galen raised his palm and stopped him.

  “I assume you have your weapon permit.” He turned his palm face up.

  He was good, spotting Victor’s concealed gun and asking him for a vague ID that he knew he needed to have.

  Victor put one hand behind his back, pulled out a wallet, and handed it to Galen.

  After perusing his wallet, Galen passed it back to him. He gave Victor a piercing gaze like he was an unwelcome guest at a funeral. “You don’t say much, Pierre Archambault of Montereau.”

  “Would you,” Victor said in French, “if you had three armed men staring you down?”

  “I suppose not.” Galen motioned a hand toward the barn, and they began walking to it. “As per your instructions, we left the scene exactly as we found it and only took pictures. Copies will be sent to your office in Paris.”

  “So, no police reports were filed with the local constable?”

  “No, the neighbors heard nothing, but it’s not surprising given the isolation.”

  Victor rounded the large barn doors which were wide open. Inside, it looked just like he expected. Piles of fresh hay in one corner, bags of feed in the other, and worn rusted tools hung from nails on the sides. There was even a loft. Everything, however, seemed a little too clean and tidy. There were no bits of feed on the dirt floor, no splintered pieces of wood missing from walls, and the tools had no chunks of stuck mud or feces.

  Graffiti matching the animal rights group lined only the interior walls and doors of the barn.

  Odd. Not much of a manifesto if no one can see your w
ork.

  It also seemed to be done in a haphazard way. Not clean with sharp angles and nice circles like the other places they attacked. Either they were in a hurry, or they took no pride in the message. One was also on the hidden doorway to the lab just to the left side of the chicken feed. Was it a coincidence, or were they making a statement?

  “How many cameras do you have?”

  “Two.” Galen pointed at each. “One on the barn and one on the chicken coop.”

  They were clearly visible with black lettering on the sides indicating they were common and commercially available.

  Victor cocked his head. “Only two cameras?”

  “If we turned this place into an armed camp, it would draw too much attention.”

  “I see. Can you show me the footage?”

  Galen pulled out a pad and replayed the video feeds, side by side, at the time of the attack. It showed the guards moving to and from the barn and chicken coop in a regular pattern. A leaf fluttered, falling through the corner of the videos. Then it did it again.

  Victor focused on the leaf. “Replay the last two minutes.”

  Galen tapped a few buttons, and the video replayed. The guard marched the exact same way over and over in perfect cadence.

  “What kind of cameras are these?” Victor asked.

  “Standard wireless ones from a supplier in Paris. The feeds were encrypted, in case you’re wondering.”

  “And yet, your recorders were fooled into doing a feedback loop.”

  Galen shifted his stance. “Tell me something I don’t know. We think whoever did this uploaded a fake manufacturer’s update to create a backdoor.”

  Well, at least I’m not dealing with fools.

  “Show me the guards.”

  Galen motioned his hands toward the chicken coop.

  “You’re not French are you?” He said after taking a few steps.

  Shit.

  Victor turned to him. “I don’t—”

  Galen raised a hand. “Your accent is excellent, but you’re much too uptight to be French. You don’t have the ‘joie de vie’.” He motioned his hand to Victor’s face. “I can see it in your eyes. They dart from one thing to the next without stopping for even a second to take it in. You’re so assured of yourself, yet so alone.” He put a hand to his chin. “If I were to guess I’d say you were… American.”

  Definitely not fools.

  “Interesting theory,” Victor said in French. “Got any others?”

  Galen gave him a broad smile. “Just a word of advice. Remember whose pool you’re pissing in, American.”

  They rounded the corner of the chicken wire fence. The two guards were covered with white sheets, perfectly camouflaging them in the fresh layer of snow. Galen lifted the plastic-coated sheets revealing a gruesome sight.

  Both bodies were riddled with at least twenty blood soaked holes in the chest and one almost dead-center in the throat. Each guard was dressed in worn overalls, flannel shirts, and poly-ply overcoats. The powder burns on their clothing indicated they were shot at close range. Their sidearms still holstered on their waists.

  They didn’t even have time to draw their guns. Must have been ambushed.

  Galen pointed to the side where they just came in. “The spent shell casings are over there, buried under the snow.”

  Victor put a hand to the side of the whitewashed chicken coop. The pattern of the blood droplets made no sense. Although a massive amount of blood soaked into the ground and clothing, only a smattering of blood dotted the chicken coop about waist high. If the guards were shot with multiple random blasts at close range, he expected there would be a lot more blood on the walls.

  Maybe the overcoats defected some?

  Victor turned and headed back to the barn.

  Interviewing the scientists turned up nothing useful. Victor expected this given the thickness of the metal door to the bunker. Still, he had to try.

  What bothered him most was the lock to the bunker was disguised as a modern touch screen phone. In the dingy caverns of the barn, the clean phone stuck out like a sore thumb. Yet despite the graffiti, there was no sign it had been disturbed.

  Victor had a hunch and blew some dust on it. Four fingerprints appeared, the smudge pattern clearly indicating the key combination. All you needed was twenty-four tries to find it. Victor tapped the phone and discerned it in two.

  Galen rolled his eyes. “Clever, except it also reads your fingerprints.”

  “I see.” Victor pointed to the dead guards. “Did they have the combination?”

  “Yes,” he said with a perplexed frown.

  Victor pulled out a folding combat knife and flicked open the blade. “So what you’re telling me is all I need is a dead man’s finger to open it.”

  Galen’s eyebrows rose then fell and slanted together. His lips narrowed to thin line as he glared back at him.

  Victor put the knife back in his pocket. “Whoever these guys were, they had the means, opportunity, and the weapons to crack open your super-secret bunker, but they didn’t. Why?”

  He left Galen to think about it. He had seen enough here to know this was no animal rights raid, yet nothing else about this made any sense. It had all the hallmarks of a hit by a group of trained assassins, and yet the execution was sloppy and excessive. And why leave the biggest prize; the cell cultures, incubators, and scientists, behind?

  4

  Around 6:30 PM, Victor met up with Delilah for dinner at a local sports bar, strictly to keep up appearances. It was part of a necessary pattern he maintained throughout the day. Drop into a tourist spot, look at a camera, talk to someone, make an impression, get a receipt, and leave. Rinse and repeat several hours later. All for plausible deniability if the mission went south.

  Earlier for lunch, the five of them got together to play a round of pool and crammed inside one of the silly photo booth machines to get their picture taken. Delilah sat behind him, sticking her face over his shoulder while pinching his cheeks for one shot.

  He tossed the photo-strip into his rental car cup holder. It was going straight to the shredder when he got back to the States.

  During the last ten minutes, he and Delilah spent their time engaging in small-talk when a large hulk of a man in a tight white T-shirt and jeans stood up from a table across the room. Victor’s eyes flicked toward him and the two other men who followed behind. No sign of any weapons, but the cheeky grin on the man’s face gave away his intentions.

  He approached Delilah and slid a hand on the bar while flexing his muscles. “You my dear,” he said in a slurred French accent, “look like someone in need of a good time.”

  Delilah’s nose flared. The man’s breath reeked of alcohol and moldy cheese.

  She rolled her eyes up, raised an eyebrow, and turned back to her drink. “Buzz off, I’m with someone.” Her hand rubbed across Victor’s back.

  “You mean grandpa? I think you can do better.” He slapped her butt.

  Her eyes flared. She stood with a scowl and sized the man up. A predatory smile formed, exposing the tips of her canine teeth.

  “Delilah,” Victor said.

  She ignored him and stroked the man’s rippling bicep before hooking his nose with her fingertips and snapping his head back. “I don’t think so. You’re not my type, pretty-boy.”

  She sat down and winked at Victor. She had had her fun and knew when to quit.

  The man in the white T-shirt didn’t. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her to her feet. His face was red with a fuming scowl. “Maybe I am, and you just don’t know it.”

  Victor turned to see the two others the man was with stepping in front of him. Their fingers were hooked, ready to grab him if he intervened. In their drunken state, these two made easy targets, but they were trying to keep a low profile.

  Shit.

  Victor leaned back against the bar and double checked the exits. He knew better than to interrupt Delilah’s playtime, but they may need to make a quick getaway once she finishe
d toying with them.

  She wound up doing the last thing any of them expected. Her open hand wrapped around the man’s shoulder and pulled her body close. She whispered something into his ear and a huge smile formed on his face. This turned to an agonizing grimace as her knee thrust into his groin. As the man crouched away, she grabbed him by his hair and smashed his head into the bar. He collapsed with a gurgled yelp to the floor.

  The two others turned and their jaws dropped.

  She glared her cold green eyes back, stabbing icy daggers into them. “Want some?” she said.

  They took two hesitant steps back, and she strutted forward. Her arm hooked around Victor’s, and they strolled out. Victor sighed and shook his head as they left.

  “What?” she asked. “Can’t I play with the locals?”

  “Can we eat first?”

  She smiled, and they walked arm and arm into a restaurant a few doors down.

  At 10:08 PM, Victor pulled into the parking lot of his motel. A drab little place near the outskirts of Orleans, and a little over fifteen minutes from the lab. Victor pinched the bridge of his nose and pulled his hand down his face. He had just spent the last two hours looking at video footage from the only street cameras near the lab. Both were traffic cams at intersections about twenty minutes on either side. He noted the license plate, make and model of every vehicle that crossed under them, and gave them to Mitch to ID the owners.

  Probably useless information as many side roads bypassed these cameras, but he hoped for a break. The deeper he got into this mission, the more confused he became. It had to have been done by professionals. Maybe middle east terrorists, North Koreans, or Iranians. Somebody with deep pockets. Certainly not this animal rights group, but why go to all this trouble and leave the virus cultures and equipment behind?

  He plopped himself on his bed and tossed the hand-written report given to him by Zeta team. They were going over the forensic evidence of the murders of the two ‘farm hands’ collected by Galen. Nothing conclusive so far. He made sure everything was in paper format, not digital, so it could be easily destroyed.