Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Moving back into the cell, Tess looked up at the ceiling and spit on her hands, rubbing them together.

  She placed both hands on the wall in front of her, then reached back with one foot and then the other, bracing them against the opposite wall. She was just the right height. With her arms pressing against the one wall, her feet against the other, she could walk backwards, shuffling her hands, up and up and up and up.

  In his movies, Jackie Chan always made it look so easy, but it wasn’t. Her arms and legs trembled from the effort. Afraid to exhaust herself on her trial run, she came back down.

  Tess then took off her jeans and shirt, putting her boots and the robe back on.

  She took her time, artfully arranging her clothes on the floor in the farthest corner from the door. She stepped back, satisfied.

  It looked as if she’d made like the Wicked Witch of the West and melted, melted away, leaving only her clothes behind.

  She spit on her hands again and climbed, this time all the way to the top, where she wouldn’t be seen by a guard standing in the hall.

  Taking a deep breath, Tess let out a blood-chilling scream.

  Decker sat, listening to Dave and Nash arguing about the best way into—and out of—Padsha Bashir’s palace, where Tess was being held.

  In the glow of a penlight, Sophia had drawn a layout of the place, marking the location in the basement where she believed Tess would be held. She called it a dungeon, for lack of a better name, since it was underground and apparently very unpleasant. Dave had taken a turn with the handmade little map and put Xs over the parts of the building that had been damaged in the quake.

  Sophia was silent now. She’d been lost in her own thoughts ever since Decker had told her that, before discovering Tess had been taken, his plan had been to head north. Decker would take Sophia and Sayid’s laptop and hide with them in the mountains.

  Dave, Nash, and Tess would stay behind to clean up and discard their extra equipment, and pack their clothes. They’d leave aboard a commercial airliner. Their luggage would undergo an extensive search, but the police and Bashir’s men would, of course, find nothing. Once out of the country, they would contact Tom Paoletti and arrange for an air extraction.

  A Seahawk helicopter, probably filled with SEALs from Team Sixteen, who were “training” in nearby Pakistan, would race into K-stani airspace to some desolate mountain location, and pull aboard the laptop—and Sophia and Deck—and race back to safety.

  It was the perfect solution to getting Sophia out of this hellhole of a country. Put her in possession of the laptop— No, why take chances? Handcuff her to the damn thing so they couldn’t take it without her.

  Decker couldn’t imagine getting the laptop out of K-stan any other way, not with Bashir and the police and every major and minor warlord in the region hunting for it.

  And while the U.S. Government wouldn’t make the effort to pull Sophia out, they would provide—and pay for—a military extraction to get their hands on al-Qaeda’s future plans.

  But now they were in a bind. Their cover was blown—none of them would be able to leave via airliner. Not now. And communications were down. Getting any kind of message to Tom Paoletti was going to be a real challenge.

  Nash had gone out to retrieve the sat-dish Tess had put on the church tower, but the last aftershock had knocked the power pack loose. It had ripped free from the dish, tumbling to the ground.

  Even if they could find an alternative power source, their comspesh—the one person who had even the slightest chance of patching it together and getting it running—was a prisoner in Bashir’s palace.

  Thanks, Nash pointed out, to Will Schroeder.

  Which wasn’t really that much of an exaggeration.

  Best Decker could figure was that the reporter had attracted Bashir’s attention by his investigation of the secret police compound at 68 Rue de Palms. If the police had started following Will, who’d stumbled upon that taxi driver who’d picked up Sayid at the Grande Hotel, and the police had then questioned the taxi driver and found out that Will was asking for information about Sayid . . . Well, they would certainly have brought that to Bashir’s attention. And Bashir would have insisted Will continue to be followed, and when Will had come to their home base at Rivka’s this afternoon . . .

  Well, it was done now.

  Nash was running out of patience, pacing in and out of the candlelight. He was ready to walk up to the palace gate, ring the bell, and kill everyone who got between him and Tess.

  Dave, however, wanted it all choreographed exactly. “How are you going to get in?” he asked, including Decker in the conversation. “That place is a fortress—don’t underestimate their ability to keep you out. And that damaged area is going to be heavily guarded. You’re going to have one heck of a body count, and that’s going to result in discovery—they’ll know you’re there within minutes. You’re going to have to know where Tess is, free her, and then you’re going to need some kind of vehicle to get you out of there.”

  The plan now was to send Dave into the mountains with Sophia and the laptop. Decker and Nash would enter Bashir’s palace, find Tess, grab her, and run. They’d all attempt to meet in several days and make the long, dangerous hike across the mountains and out of Kazbekistan together.

  Nash and Dave had started arguing over the pros and cons of taking one of Bashir’s own humvees to muscle their way out of the palace.

  Sophia spoke right over them. “Deck.”

  “Yeah.”

  She had her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold—which couldn’t be the case in this heat.

  “I can get us inside,” she said.

  Dave and Nash both fell silent.

  Decker couldn’t believe what she was offering. “Are you suggesting—”

  “That you walk up to the front gate,” Sophia said. “All three of you. You’ll need other clothes—traditional K-stani robes. But you’ll be able to carry as many weapons in with you as you want. No one’s going to challenge you, because you’ll be there to collect the reward—and to deliver me to Bashir.”

  “Dear God, Sophia,” Dave breathed, speaking for all of them. Well, except maybe Nash, who was nodding.

  “There’s a holding area just inside the main door,” she told them. “A lobby, if you will. The captain of the guard will have us wait there while he tries to figure out what to do with me—and with you. Because when we get there, Bashir will be asleep.”

  “Sophia,” Decker started. How could she suggest this?

  “This is good,” Nash interrupted. “This is really good. While you’re waiting there, I’ll slip away, find Tess. We’ll meet over here.” He tapped the area on the penciled map where Dave said Bashir’s armored trucks were garaged.

  She was sitting there, scared to death at the idea of coming face-to-face with Bashir again, and yet offering . . .

  “It’s likely that the captain of the guard will try to take me downstairs,” Sophia said. “He’ll probably offer you rooms for the night so you can meet with Bashir and collect your reward tomorrow. If you insisted on staying with me, though, he might just go ahead and put us all in one room until morning.”

  “Yeah,” Nash said. He really liked this plan. “Who’s going to guard Sophia better than the men who want to collect that reward? The captain would save himself a hassle.”

  “And if the captain goes and wakes up Bashir?” Decker asked.

  “Then we improvise,” Nash said.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Sophia told Decker. “I’m not doing this for free. I want that fifty thousand dollars—but I want it free and clear.”

  “Done,” Nash said.

  She turned to him. “Yeah, well, I’m not,” she said. “I want a promise from you, too.”

  “Name it,” he said. “You’ve got it.”

  “If something goes wrong,” Sophia said. “And I’m . . . not able to collect that money . . .”

  “We don’t have to do this,” Decker i
nterrupted her. “There are other ways inside without putting you at risk.”

  “Other ways to get all three of us inside?” Nash countered. He wanted to get into that palace, to find Tess, so badly that he didn’t realize what he was asking of Sophia. “Armed?”

  “Jimmy, think about this,” Decker implored him, purposely using the nickname Tess used. All it got him was a dark look.

  “What do you need?” Nash asked Sophia, obviously ready to promise her anything.

  “Michel Lartet,” she said. “He gave me up to Bashir, and if I die, I want him dead, too. The same way Dimitri died.”

  Nash was silent. They all were.

  “I want him to know what’s coming,” Sophia whispered, “the same way Dimitri knew—the same way I’ll know. I want him to kneel on the floor and wonder what it will feel like when his head rolls. And I want him to know that it’s me doing this to him, reaching back, even from death, to strike him down.”

  She was looking at Nash, who looked unswervingly back at her.

  Somehow she knew that, out of all of them, Nash was the one she should ask to do this terrible thing.

  “Consider it done,” he told her quietly.

  “I can help.”

  “No, you can’t.” Jimmy didn’t have time for this, but Khalid wouldn’t back down.

  “Yes,” the boy insisted, “I can.”

  “Your little brother needs you alive.” Jimmy emptied his wallet, pressing the bills—both K-stani and American—into Khalid’s hand. He couldn’t give the kid his wristwatch—he still needed that. But he pulled off the gold ring he wore on his left hand and gave that to him, too. “Dave, you have any cash left?”

  “You need me more,” Khalid said.

  “Hide this,” Jimmy instructed him as Dave handed over another wad of bills—probably more than the kid had earned in his entire life. “When you get home, hide it somewhere outside of your house. Dig a hole and bury it, do you understand?”

  “Thank you, sir—”

  “If they come to question you—when they come to question you—start by shouting about how we left without paying you and how badly we mistreated you. Then you show them the bruises on your face to prove it.”

  “These were from the bomb in City Center,” Khalid said.

  “They won’t know that.” Jimmy saw that Sophia was finally ready to go.

  He also saw that Khalid was only pretending to acquiesce. The kid stood with his gaze lowered, pretending he had no intention of following them out the door. Yeah, sure.

  Jimmy looked at Decker in despair. “Don’t make me be the one to do this,” he said.

  Decker had mercy on them both and gave the kid what looked to be an almost gentle tap. It was amazing how effective that could be—like pushing an on-off switch. Khalid’s legs buckled, and Deck lowered him to the floor as Jimmy pushed Sophia’s rolled up jeans beneath the boy’s head.

  He’d wake up tomorrow morning with one hell of a headache. No doubt he’d be pissed, but he’d be alive. Of course, unlike the rest of them, he’d still be here, in Kazbekistan.

  Sophia and Dave had already gone out the door, and Jimmy and Decker hurried to catch up.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It went according to plan, considering that the plan was for fifteen armed guards to step down from the front gate of Bashir’s palace, their semiautomatics locked and loaded and aimed directly at them.

  Decker stood back and let Dave talk.

  Nash wore an M16, grenade launcher attached, slung over his shoulder, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He yawned, completing the effect of fatigue and boredom, squinting from the searchlights that were shining in their dirt-smudged faces.

  Deck knew better. Beneath his hooded robe, Nash was a virtual arsenal of weaponry and ammunition.

  Yes, they’d heard rumors of a curfew. Dave spoke in the dialect used up in the mountains, in Firyal. It was spooky how authentic he sounded.

  But they’d gotten tied up on the road from Ikrimah. Transportation was spotty and they’d had to walk most of the way.

  Yes, they knew it was very late, but they’d thought His Excellency and Lord Most High Padsha Bashir would appreciate them taking care to have the thief he’d been searching for locked inside his own gates tonight.

  Decker was holding Sophia’s arm. He’d felt her trembling start when they’d begun their approach to the palace. Covered completely by her robe and burka, it was surely hard for her to see or hear any of this. Still, she knew what was happening.

  “She’s changed her hair, of course,” Dave told the guards who glared at them. “But it’s the woman Bashir’s been searching for.”

  At Dave’s nod, Deck yanked the burka off her head, jerked the robe from her body, pushing her down onto the street.

  Naked.

  She’d insisted on being naked beneath her robe, saying that if they were going to do this, they should do it right.

  Her scars would convince the guards that she was, indeed, the woman Bashir was looking for.

  And her nakedness would prove that she wasn’t armed beneath her robe, that this wasn’t a trick or a trap.

  “Push me down hard,” she’d told Decker back at the Hotel Français. “We have to make this look real.”

  So, yeah, okay, it looked real.

  The light gleamed off her body, all that skin, all those angry-looking wounds that were finally starting to heal—wounds he’d thought were hennaed designs, or maybe even tattoos, put there by choice, when he’d first met her.

  She lay in the street, head down in defeat, eyes tightly closed.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she’d told him back at the hotel. “Being naked like that. It’s not like I haven’t . . .” She’d shaken her head. “Being naked is nothing.”

  It wasn’t nothing. She was as vulnerable lying there as she could possibly be.

  Decker threw her robe down beside her—which was also part of the plan. She would cling to it, as if trying to cover herself. In reality, they’d quickly stitched her little handguns into the sleeves. If she needed to, she could grab them and fire right through the fabric.

  The highest ranking guard, a lieutenant, nodded, his eyes wide. “Bring her inside,” he told them. He turned to his sergeant. “Get the captain.”

  Jimmy Nash used the spectacle of a naked woman being dragged into the palace to slip out of the lobby and down the corridor.

  No one saw him go—all eyes were on Sophia.

  Jesus Christ, Bashir was one sick bastard. Tess had told him and Decker about the cuts on Sophia’s body. Seeing them was . . . It was the farthest thing from a turn-on he could imagine.

  Bashir, apparently, got extra happy at the sight of blood.

  Jimmy smiled grimly. He’d love a chance to give the fucker a postmortem boner.

  He was halfway down a flight of stairs when his phone vibrated and nearly made him discharge his weapon into a row of potted plants.

  What the hell?

  He opened it. The number was one he didn’t recognize. “This better not be a sales call.”

  “Jimmy? Is that really you?”

  Holy Mother of God in heaven above, he nearly couldn’t squeak out a single sound. “Tess!” He sounded like Mickey freaking Mouse. He tried to move back even farther into the shadows, tried to keep from speaking too loudly. “Yeah, it’s me.” Holy Christ! “Where are you?”

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. The connection was awful, her voice tinny and distant, as if she were calling from Mars. But at least she didn’t keep cutting out. “Thank God. Bashir told me the Grande Hotel came down, and I’ve—” She broke off, whispering, “Wait, wait, shhh!”

  After what seemed forever, she said, “Okay, they went past. I’m on a land line—my phone was confiscated—and it’s a little inconvenient. Not to mention how pissed Bashir’s going to be when he gets his phone bill. Jimmy, pl
ease tell me, are you really all right?”

  “Yes! Where the fuck are you?”

  “I am—the fuck—near the roof of the palace, about four—no, five—chimneys to the west of what looks like some kind of helicopter landing pad. I set up our last sat-dish here, near what looks like a guard outpost—currently unmanned. I was hoping you’d be close enough for your phone to work. I haven’t been able to get through to Decker.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he turned around and headed up instead of down. She sounded all right. Please Jesus God, let her be all right. He took the stairs two at a time to the first floor, the second . . .