The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection

by Carolyn McCray

  Glass shattered, screams sounded, and chaos reigned.

  The restaurant was plunged into quasi-darkness as the lights were replaced by yellow emergency lighting.

  Everyone here was well aware of the Mumbai attacks. This current assault had all the earmarks for it. Car bombs to start then gunfire in the distance. The terrorists were known for hitting tourist spots, especially where Americans gathered. And the Taj Mahal on Valentine’s Day? This restaurant was an all you can eat jihadist’s buffet. The fundamentalists were getting more fundamental by the day. Even grabbing and beating native Muslims who expressed their affection too outwardly in public.

  He held Rebecca close as the other patrons scrambled to flee. But he pulled in one breath after another, making certain that there wasn’t a second car bomb waiting to go off. Once past five breaths, he tugged Rebecca behind him entering the stream of panicked diners who fled in all directions, falling, slipping, trampling one another.

  Brandt grabbed a young girl who had tripped, lifting her into her mother’s arms. Once free of the girl, he angled them across the restaurant, away from the bulk of the crowd. Unfettered, they broke into a full run. Brandt didn’t know whether to be proud of Rebecca or feel a little sorry for her. She was so used to being under attack that she didn’t complain. The woman knew when to run and when to ask questions later.

  They found the stairwell and pushed through the throng trying to get down from the hotel’s upper floors. Not Brandt.

  Rebecca’s heels clanged on the metal steps as they rushed upward. Making the turn from the second-floor landing to the third floor, Rebecca balked as an older man and woman burst through the stairwell door and hurried past them down the stairs.

  “Our room is right here,” she said trying to urge him into the second-floor hallway.

  Yes, their room, booked under an assumed name with the best forged passports that the CIA could come up with, was right there. The nearest room to the emergency exit and on a floor they could make a jump from the window and hope to live. But that wasn’t the room he was heading for.

  “Trust me,” he said, not having time to explain.

  And God love her, she did. Without another word, Rebecca followed him up those stairs and through the third floor door. He pulled out the keycard and swiped it in the first room’s lock but it flashed red.

  Damn it. Wrong key. He fished for the second key, found it, opened the door, and rushed inside.

  * * *

  Rebecca stumbled to a stop as the door hit her in the butt. In the dim light, she scanned a room crammed with weapons. There were equipment bags everywhere and enough machine guns and pistols to arm a militia.

  “What is this?” she croaked out, finding it hard to speak after the brutal shock of the last few moments. The explosion still rang in her ears. And the blood. They had run over and around dead bodies. How much devastation could one person see in a lifetime? And now this.

  As Brandt dug around in the bags, tossing weapons like they were baseball mitts into a gym bag, he answered, “A shadow room.”

  “Shadow room?” she repeated even though she’d heard Brandt perfectly fine the first time.

  “A room booked under a completely different identity used solely for this purpose,” Brandt said as he nodded to the weapons. “An emergency armory.”

  “How did you… ?” Rebecca tried really hard to process everything that happened. The explosions. The gunfire. And now a shadow room. Not that she minded having a room full of guns, it was just, you know, not where she expected to end up on Valentine’s night. “How did you know to have it?”

  “I didn’t,” he said, grabbing fistful of ammo clips and shoving them into a thick black canvas bag.

  “Then how…?” she felt like she was trying to understand quantum physics with an abacus.

  Brandt shrugged. “We’ve had one of these everywhere we stayed.”

  Rebecca stumbled back, glad the door was closed behind her. “Everywhere?” she repeated yet again. They had been to Madrid, Monaco, and Mozambique. And each time they’d had a room above them loaded with weapons?

  Brandt glanced over his shoulder a fierce smile on his face. “Why do you think I kept tipping the bellmen twenty bucks?”

  For a moment a silly question, given their dire circumstances, flared though her mind. Did she want to marry a man who thought a shadow room was an essential part of any vacation plan?

  He indicated the second bed. “That’s your stuff over there.”

  Willing her legs to move, she found a scientist’s equivalent of an armory. There were laptops, encrypted hard drives, satellite phones, the works. She opened a leather case, revealing a laptop that looked exactly like her own, sans the dents and scratches. When she opened the lid, the computer bloomed to life with exactly the same security window. Typing in her password, the desktop appeared, again identical to her own. How often did they clone her laptop?

  “Clothes are on the pillow,” Brand instructed.

  She found a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, thick cotton socks, and hiking boots.

  Rebecca reached for them but heard that distinct thunk, followed by a whistle. Having no time for the clothes, she grabbed the case with her cloned computer and sat phone. Brandt grabbed what he could as they headed for the door.

  It was barely closed behind them when an explosion rocked the hotel. Thrown forward into the opposing wall, they fell to the floor as the door they just went through glowed red from the fire behind it.

  Rebecca looked up at Brandt, ears squealing in protest. “This isn’t random, is it?”

  * * *

  How Brandt wanted to lie to the woman he loved. To tell her everything was going to be all right. That they weren’t the targets of a concerted and well-orchestrated ambush meant to mimic the Mumbai attacks. That this wasn’t the Knot’s last, grand attempt to wipe them from the face of the planet.

  But he loved her, so he couldn’t lie to her. He just shook his head and helped Rebecca to her feet. Brandt went to get them moving but she paused.

  “Hang on just a second.” They didn’t really have a second, but he waited as she kicked her high heel against the stairwell concrete. Finally the heel broke off. She repeated with the other shoe. “Okay.”

  Again, he wasn’t sure if he should be proud of her, standing there in her torn and bloody dress, or feel sad for her that this was her life now.

  “What are we waiting for?” she asked.

  Yeah, on second thought, he was just pretty damned proud. He took point as they rushed back down the stairs, hitting a logjam of people that poured out onto the second-floor landing, slowing their descent. Brandt went to follow the crowd done to the ground floor but Rebecca pulled him toward the door.

  “Our room is toast,” he said, confused on why she was obsessed with the second floor again.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  And he did.

  She rushed past their burnt-out room, took a sharp left, then went down a hallway and took another left. It wasn’t until they were nearly in the room that Brandt realized that they were headed to the hotel’s business office. What could they use here? An emergency fax? Nevertheless, Rebecca burst into the room and started pulling wiring out of the electronics.

  Gunfire sounding from outside was met by answering screams. The Knot was advancing on their position. They had very little time to make it out of the hotel before the gunmen breached the hotel.

  “Hon?”

  Rebecca opened her laptop and plugged a cable into a port. “Like the lights, the Knot’s knocked out phone reception, including our sat phones.” Brand pulled his phone from his hip. Sure enough. Only interference. “Along with all Wi-Fi.”

  He didn’t doubt her. But that still didn’t answer why they were here.

  She pushed back a stray lock of blonde hair. “I’m hoping I can find a cable modem. A separate line I can patch into. One that they hadn’t thought to cut.”

  That was his girl, always thinking.

>   “Bingo.” Smiling, she typed rapidly. “Let me fire off an email…”

  And by fire off an email, Rebecca meant sending a highly encrypted message to the E-Ring. Ever since Belgium, Rebecca and the Pentagon had been BFFs. Basically, if Rebecca was sending a message, you could bet it was about a threat to National Security.

  * * *

  Rebecca typed in the third security code. She understood why the enhanced vigilance but when under fire it would sure be nice to have some kind of 9-1-1 code. Once the final key was accepted, her computer bloomed with real-time heat-seeking satellite imagery.

  It was a riot of yellow and oranges as people fled the hotel, fanning out into the street. Green and blue images didn’t move, marking the dead bodies as they cooled off. Then there were the dots moving in a slow and methodical pattern toward the hotel.

  “Nine total,” Brandt said, mainly talking to himself. “Four creating a noose from each side with one left over for RPG duties.”

  By the way his eyes scanned the reading, Rebecca could tell he was memorizing the pattern of the assault. However, she had other concerns. Like how far away was back up? Not the Indian police, but back up that knew how the Knot worked and could stand up to them. Rebecca sent an email asking if Brandt’s team was in the region before she turned her attention to an even more pressing concern.

  Like how the hell the Knot found their room on the third floor? It seemed highly unlikely the Knot were taking potshots and just happened to hit a room she and Brandt occupied. And after the gaggle in the stairwell it would have been impossible to tell which heat signatures were theirs versus guests of the hotel.

  Quickly, she made a small screen in the corner for Brandt with the heat-seeking readout as she pulled up other feeds from the satellite, trying to determine what, if anything, made her and Brandt’s signatures different.

  “We probably should be moving,” Brandt suggested, and she couldn’t agree more, but something in her gut wouldn’t let her leave. For an ancient society, the Knot loved their technology. How many times had the Knot outflanked them in Paris, Hungary, and Turkey?

  “Let me just check the last feeds,” Rebecca said as Brandt shouldered the gear, getting ready to head out.

  Feeling his urgency, Rebecca flipped through the various feeds, infrared, motion enhancement, and ultraviolet so quickly she nearly missed the one that only had a few small blips, not the hundreds on the other screens. Scrambling back Rebecca brought up the isolated feed. Sure enough two brightly glowing objects were on the second floor, within the business center.

  “What the…?” Brandt breathed out.

  There were two other blips downstairs, but that was it. Four blips total. No wonder the Knot had known where they were.

  “It’s Gamma radiation,” Rebecca explained as she checked the feed’s source. “They are tracking us through Gamma.”

  It seemed impossible, but here was the proof positive.

  “But how the hell did they paint us?” Brandt asked. “I’m not an expert but that crap doesn’t last long. We had to be tagged within the hour.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “More like fifteen minutes, and at these levels…”

  She couldn’t say it. How could they have been at dinner one minute and not only radiation-tagged, but poisoned as well?

  “At these levels?” Brandt pressed gripping his gun. If only bullets could fix their problem.

  “Within an hour, if we don’t find some way to decontaminate ourselves…”

  Again, she couldn’t finish. As an expert in DNA, Rebecca knew all too well what radiation could do to the delicate strands of nucleic acids and the horrific long-term consequences that this much Gamma could do.

  Then a light flared on the smaller heat-signature window. That would be an RPG being fired. Rebecca grabbed her laptop. Brandt urged her under the desk as the second floor was rocked by another explosion.

  Luckily, the business office was located in the back of the building, so the rocket didn’t penetrate that far. However, it would only take a few more rockets would eventually break through into the office.

  A ding brought Rebecca’s attention back to the computer. An email awaited. She scanned the text, feeling her heart sink even further. “Lopez and the rest are at least three hours out.”

  Brandt seemed to take it well, but the look on his face registered the fact that they probably didn’t have three minutes, let alone three hours, to get out from under this mess.

  “Well?” Brandt asked her.

  “Well, what?”

  “What do we do next?”

  They couldn’t run. The Knot would easily track them via the Gamma signature. They needed to decontaminate themselves, but they needed to get to a hospital for that. Which, of course, meant running, which they couldn’t do. And with no tangible back up on the way? No sniper hidden away? No crazy Latino able to shoot faster than the speed of sound?

  Tears stung as she answered, “I have no idea.”

  * * *

  Brandt didn’t accept that. Rebecca was in shock. It was hard sometimes to remember that his fiancée was a civilian. He guessed it was one thing to get shot at, but quite another to be radioactively poisoned. Had Brandt been on active combat duty he would have had iodine tablets, but close protection duty? It was the one thing he hadn’t packed. Although, with the Knot still running around he obviously should have.

  He gripped Rebecca’s shoulders. “Babe, you gotta pull something out of the hat here.”

  She shook her head though, tears streaming down her face. If defeat had a look, it marked Rebecca’s face.

  “You got us out of Rome,” Brand reminded her. “You can get us out of this.”

  Again she seemed capable of was to shake her head.

  The time for coddling was over. “Damn it, Rebecca.” Her lip quivered but he pushed on. “You’ve got that big brain in there. Use it.”

  Her eyes flickered back and forth across his features. Then they flickered to the screen as another RPG hit, rattling the doorframes. The Knot was getting closer to breaking through and they knew it. The men outside moved with certainty, tightening the noose even tighter. Each second he delayed was a second that shaved percentage points off their chance of escape, radioactive tagged or not.

  Then that slow expression of a dawning idea transformed Rebecca’s bleak features into radiant confidence.

  “The champagne.”

  Brandt frowned. He loved it when she went all super smart on him, but it usually also left him in the dark. “Not following.”

  Rebecca pointed to the two dots on the first floor. He hadn’t realized it before but they were positioned at their dinner table.

  “They put the Gamma in the champagne,” Rebecca hurried as her words seemed to catch up with her brain. “That waiter that kept topping us off. That’s how they painted us.”

  “I’ll buy that, but how do we counteract it?”

  “You aren’t going to like,” she stated as she gathered up her gear.

  “When do I ever?”

  As the third RPG hit the building, shaking debris from the ceiling they pushed off from the business offices and down the stairs. How he would love to take the alley and made a sprint for it, but with the radiation cooking his belly, they had to make the smart play and that was Rebecca’s play.

  In her ragged and soot stained dress she led them back down to the dining room. The place was trashed. Both from the car bomb and from the panicked flock of diners. Now it stood eerily empty except for the bodies on the floor. Brandt had to relax his trigger finger. He would just have to avenge them by taking out their murderers. The Knot. An organization that proclaimed they were doing God’s work, but turned out to just be butchers, killing innocent people to carry out revenge against Rebecca.

  He checked his corners as they made their way to the table with their champagne flutes. The enemy shouldn’t be here yet, but at the pace they were accelerating, it could be at any moment.

  With shaking hands, Re
becca poured champagne from their glasses into glasses from another table.

  “Um, hon?”

  Instead of answering, she handed him two flutes. “Put those toward the entrance.”

  Brandt didn’t bother asking what in the hell she was doing. He asked her to use her big brain and now he just needed to follow where it led. After several such rounds of strangely precise, strategic flute placement, Rebecca went to the aquarium and began pulling tubing.

  Yes, the aquarium. Okay, now it was time to question her genius.

  “Babe, those gunmen should be here. Like now.” That was if they stuck to their pace. Their only hope was if the Knot was as confounded by Rebecca’s behavior as he was and had slowed their entrance.

  She scooped up a big handful and black material from the aquarium’s filter and said without a trace of hesitation, “Eat up.”

  * * *

  Rebecca urged her dripping wet hand to Brandt. They didn’t have much time.

  “I am not eating…” Brand said, his face scrunched in disgust. “Fish crap.”

  “Yes, you are, along with the activated charcoal.”

  To prove to him it might be gross but essential she downed a mouthful of the gritty black material herself. And it did, in fact, taste like fish crap.

  Brandt’s eyes narrowed as he scooped some of the material into his hands. “As in activated charcoal that will absorb and neutralize the Gamma radiation?”

  “Yep, that’s the activated charcoal I am talking about.”

  The high surface area of the active charcoal made it ideal for absorbing and negating all kinds of toxins. From the ammonia in fish urine to drug overdoses to natural gas leaks, activated charcoal was the filtration substance of choice. And this was no different. Radiation could be trapped by the same mechanism as heroin.

  Was her solution perfect? No. Would it absorb enough to save their lives and mask their presence? She hoped so.

  “I am never eating fish after this,” Brandt said, choking down the last handful.

  She gulped down her last grimy bite, then turned on the sink and poured the last of contaminated champagne down the drain. In a single moment all four signatures should have winked out.