Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I’m a little scared,” she admitted. “Okay, yeah, I’m a lot scared. You should see Will Schroeder—they beat the crap out of him. He’s in one of the cells on the lowest level. There was a guard posted and he looked unconscious, so I didn’t do more than make note of his location. But I’m worried he’s—”

  “Are you hurt?” he interrupted her as he passed the third floor. “You.”

  “I’m fine—honest. You know, Bashir’s got so much security on the gate, it’s assumed if you’re in the palace, you’re supposed to be here. I’ve been walking around for a while—I went all the way to the lobby to get the bag with the sat-dish, and then back up here. I found a tray with a couple of coffee mugs. I’ve been carrying it around and people—servants, I think—have walked right past me. I haven’t been challenged yet. Which is good, because I don’t exactly speak the language.”

  She paused just as Jimmy reached the top floor and looked for the stairs that would lead to the roof.

  When she spoke again, her voice sounded even smaller. “I’m not exactly sure yet how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when the guards change shifts, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have a lot of time before they realize I’m not in my cell. I was thinking if you could create some kind of diversion—” She cut herself off as he found a door, opened it.

  “Shit,” Tess said. “Someone’s really coming this time. Jimmy, I’ll call you b—”

  “It’s me,” he said. God damn, this was lucky. He was assuming he’d have to head up to the roof, stick his head out the door to get his bearings. But she’d already hung up. “Tess,” he hissed. “Tess!”

  And there she was.

  In the shadows at the top of the stairs. “Jimmy?” she breathed. “Oh my God! You’re inside the palace . . . ?”

  Jimmy pocketed his phone as he went up the stairs, as Tess came toward him, and then, oh my God, indeed, because he had her in his arms. She clung to him, and he just wrapped himself around her and held her as tightly as he possibly could.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, her faith in him ringing in her voice. “I knew it.”

  Sophia knelt on the cool tile floor just inside the front doors to Padsha Bashir’s palace.

  She kept her head down and her eyes closed as voices babbled around her.

  She held her robe in both hands, keeping her guns nearby, but she was careful not to cover herself too much. She was well aware that her nakedness was the cause of much of the excitement and confusion.

  Decker was standing near her, behind her. She couldn’t see him—even if she opened her eyes—but she could feel him there.

  She hadn’t been able to look at him when she’d first stripped off her clothes back in the Hotel Français. That had been hard for her to do, hard for him, too. But she knew he would get angry at the sight of her, at her mementos of Bashir’s abuse. And once they were at the palace, he could not react.

  He had to know what to expect.

  She, for once, hadn’t been able to chatter away. She’d just stood there, eyes down and silent.

  “I don’t want you to do this,” Deck had said quietly. “I don’t want you to have to go back there.”

  She’d looked at him then. “I want the money. So unless you can think of another way for me to earn it . . .”

  Now she heard the footsteps, heard Decker shift his weight behind her.

  She opened her eyes just a little and saw a dark brown pair of boots before her. She didn’t let herself look any higher.

  The boots’ owner put his hand beneath her chin, pulling her face up. “Look at me,” he commanded.

  She opened her eyes. It was the captain of the guard—a large man with a full beard, eyes that seemed almost to twinkle, and ruddy, round cheeks. Friendly cheeks. If his beard had been white, he would’ve looked like Santa. Santa of the guard. She’d seen him often, standing in the hall, waiting to speak with Bashir.

  “Hah!” he’d said to her once, coming out as she went in to Bashir’s chamber. “This time you wait for me.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said now. “I remember you. Such pretty eyes.” His hand was warm, his touch oddly gentle, even as he reached down to cup her breast, his thumb tracing one of her nearly healed cuts. “Such a shame.”

  Decker stepped into her peripheral vision, close enough for her to feel his body heat. “Don’t touch,” he muttered as if there were a real difference between being looked at and being touched. As if it mattered at all.

  “She’s already dead,” the captain told Decker. He looked past him to Dave, who’d taken on the role of leader so Decker could stay as close as possible to Sophia.

  None of the guards had seemed to notice that the third man who had brought her in—Nash—had vanished.

  “The reward won’t be ready until morning,” the captain said. “My sergeant will escort you to a room where you’ll be quite comfortable. As for the girl, I myself will see that she’s properly confined.”

  Sure he would.

  “We didn’t bring her all this way only to lose her now,” Dave said. “If we wait, she waits with us.”

  The captain took several steps back, and the dozen or so of his guards in the room raised their guns. As did Decker and Dave—aiming theirs directly at the captain. They all froze there. No one moved, no one spoke.

  It seemed absurd that they were going to die protecting her virtue.

  But if they died, they’d surely take the captain with them.

  Seconds ticked by, interminably slowly, and still no one moved.

  Finally the captain laughed. “If that’s what you want, you may as well wait right here,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  Jimmy closed his phone. “Tom’s going to try,” he told Tess, who was sitting at the top of the stairs, near the roof of Bashir’s palace.

  As in try to get a military helicopter to fly over the border into a hostile country, all the way to the capital city of Kazabek, to pick up a team of civilians who did not work, officially, for the U.S. Government?

  Jimmy smiled at the look of obvious disbelief that was surely on her face. “They won’t be coming in to save us,” he told her. “Their single objective will be to pick up that laptop.”

  He touched her hair, his hand warm against her cheek, and for the six thousandth time in the past few minutes, Tess said a silent prayer of thanks that the Grande Hotel hadn’t fallen.

  Jimmy had told her that, to the best of their knowledge, the explosion she’d heard had been the result of a gas leak in the proximity of one of Bashir’s ammo dumps. All it would have taken was one person, lighting a cigarette. . . .

  “Good job getting communications up.” Jimmy laughed, shaking his head. “How the hell did you get out of the dungeon? Sophia described it to us and—”

  “Shouldn’t we get moving?”

  He sat down next to her. “No. Tom asked us to wait a few minutes. He’s going to call right back. If he can’t get a chopper heading out here ASAP, we’ll have to extract according to Deck’s plan—hot-wire one of Bashir’s armored cars and blast out through the side gate. Head for the hills. If we dismantle this sat-dish and take it with us . . .”

  They’d be able to set up an air extraction from their location in the mountains. Save themselves the long, dangerous hike across the border.

  But once Tess dismantled the dish, they’d lose contact with Tom. For not the first time this trip, she wished their sat-com radios, with their long, mobile antennas, had survived their journey, wished they’d been able to replace them when they reached Kazabek. But not even Murphy, the king of scroungers, had been able to get his hands on that kind of equipment.

  Jimmy was looking at her as if he still couldn’t quite believe that she was here and she was safe. He couldn’t believe she’d gotten out of her prison cell and then gone all the way to the front gate, back to where she’d seen Bashir’s men drop the equipment stolen from Rivka’s house.

  “I’ve done field training,” she reminded him.
“And I’ve passed the PT requirements. I know you’re always going to think of me as ‘Tess from support,’ but I paid attention in class. I know how to fight. And I noticed right away that most of Bashir’s security is on his outside perimeter. After they stashed me in my cell, only one man stood guard.”

  “You got past a posted guard?” he said in surprise, which was a little annoying.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I did. Remember that the next time you get the urge to mess with me.”

  “I love this,” he said. Which was not exactly the same as I love you. Which she’d said to him just a few hours ago. I love you, but you are going to hammer me emotionally, so I can’t do this. Which was stupid. She’d found that out a few hours ago, too, when she’d thought Jimmy was dead. You couldn’t attach a but to I love you. You could only attach an and. I love you, and you are going to hammer me emotionally and that’s just the way it’s going to go.

  But wasn’t it better to be hammered now than later? Wouldn’t it hurt less just to get the hammering over and done with?

  No. Yes. Maybe. She couldn’t make up her mind.

  Tess told Jimmy how she’d gotten out of her cell. The narrow walls, the high ceiling, the climb up, the clothes on the floor. The guard’s expression of disbelief when he’d stared into what looked to be an empty cell. She didn’t speak the language, but she understood his tone.

  The door opened, he came inside, she dropped. A kick to the ’nads, a kick to the head, she’d grabbed his weapon, and locked him, unconscious, in the cell.

  No biggie.

  Except it was. She was proud of herself.

  And completely in awe of Sophia when Jimmy, in turn, told how they’d walked in through the front gate.

  “I can’t believe she would do that.” Tess shook her head. “I met Bashir. He’s . . . frighteningly normal. He scared me to death.”

  He put his arms around her and held her close again. “I was . . .” He took a deep breath, blew it out hard. “Scared, too. When I found out where you were. All I could think was that I’d made you stay behind, because the thought of anything happening to you makes me . . . so freaking crazy. And here you were, in this awful danger that you wouldn’t have been in if you’d come with us and . . . it was all my fault. I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself as much as I did right then.”

  She pulled back, astonished at all he’d copped to. But now he wouldn’t look at her.

  “We need to get moving.” He stood up, opened his phone, and dialed a number. “Tom must’ve hit a snafu,” he said, phone to his ear. “Deck’s not picking up—he must still be in the lobby.” Where Bashir’s guards would look at him hard if he—supposedly from a tiny mountain village—pulled out a phone and took a call. Jimmy shut his own phone. “Let’s get that sat-dish and go.”

  “It’s been only a few minutes,” Tess said, squeezing the words past her heart, which was securely in her throat. “Let’s give it a couple more.” God, she wanted Tom to call. She wanted that chopper to swoop in and take them out of here. And she wanted Jimmy to tell her that he loved her.

  “If we get separated,” Jimmy said, still all business, “for whatever reason, work your way down to the garage. Do you know where that is?”

  Tess shook her head.

  “Other side of the palace,” he said. “As far east as you can go. It’s a separate building. You know how to fire a grenade launcher?”

  “No,” she said, blinking at the sudden change of subject. “I haven’t ever—”

  “That’s okay. Take this then.” He handed her a generic-looking 9mm semiautomatic and a couple of extra clips.

  “Jimmy.”

  He stopped rearranging his equipment and looked at her, his face only dimly lit from the light in the hall.

  “Thanks for . . . being so honest,” she said.

  He laughed, but it was without humor, and his words came back to her in a rush. I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself as much as I did right then.

  “What if I told you that about five years ago, I had the opportunity to rid the world of Padsha Bashir?” he asked. “But I didn’t, because that part of my mission was optional. So I packed up and went home instead.”

  She was silent, hoping he’d tell her more.

  “Sometimes the assignment is not optional. Sometimes the deletion order comes down and . . . Deletion—nice word, huh? ‘Delete as many of the terrorists as possible.’ I’ve been performing deletions a long time, Tess.”

  Now he was looking at her as if he expected . . . what? That she would faint? Scream? Turn away in disgust?

  Was he serious? He was.

  “I know that,” she said. “Jimmy, do you really think I don’t know that? Hello, I worked in support.” She’d read all of his reports. All of Decker’s, too.

  Now he was the one who didn’t seem to know what to say.

  “You might want to check in with people every now and then,” Tess told him, “before you decide—for them—how and what they should feel. Like Decker. Have you actually talked to Deck about the fact that this is your last mission with him?”

  She answered her own question. “Of course not. Why talk to him and risk finding out how he really feels about losing your invaluable skills as a team member, your experience and expertise as an operator, and, oh yeah, your love and friendship. But hey. You already know how he should feel, so don’t talk to him.

  “And me, I guess I’m supposed to be, what? Repelled by you? Horrified because you’re so bad?” She laughed in disgust. “You’re the one who hates yourself—I happen to like you. But you’re so wrapped up in who you think you are and what you think you deserve. You enjoy being dark and tortured and . . . and . . . running away to Mexico, don’t you? Because God forbid you ever let yourself be too happy—everyone knows bad people shouldn’t be happy. Frankly, I think you’re full of crap, because I look at you, and what I see is mostly good. But okay, fine.” She went up the stairs, past him. “Be bad and dark and miserable. But do it by yourself, Nash, because I don’t need that.”

  He followed her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Of course he was. Miserable people were always sorry.

  “I’ve read your Agency file, you know,” she told him.

  “I don’t have a file.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  He paused. “Are you serious?”

  “Nash, Diego. Subject must be convinced without any doubt whatsoever of both necessity and moral justification of mission,” she quoted.

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Nash, Diego. Formerly known as James Santucci, aka Jimmy the Kid. Subject would not fold under pressure to provide information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of . . . What was the name? Victor something. Subject’s mother didn’t visit once while subject was in juvenile detention from . . . When was it? Something like 1982 to 1986.”

  “You hacked into an unhackable file,” Jimmy breathed.

  “No such thing,” Tess told him.

  “When did you . . . ?”

  “Shortly after I joined the Agency,” she admitted. “A few weeks after we met.”

  The look on his face was one she’d remember for the rest of her life.

  “Imagine that,” Tess told him. “I read your file, all those years ago and I still fell in love with you.”

  His phone rang, ending this conversation.

  It was Tom. Jimmy spoke to him briefly, then snapped his phone shut. “We’ve got a go,” he told her. “Ten minutes, LZ right here on the roof. We need to go tell Decker. Lock and load and follow me.”

  Tess grabbed the 9mm and followed him down the stairs. Follow me instead of Stay here.

  It wasn’t quite as good as “I love you, too,” but it was close enough.

  Sophia was watching Decker pace when she heard it.

  Angry voices down the hall, moving toward them.

  Decker moved in front of her, and Dave stood up.

  She knew they’d both counted t
he guards. There’d been little else to do while they’d sat here and waited . . . for what?

  For Nash to return, with Tess in tow, at which point they’d . . . what?

  Stand up and walk away, hoping nobody noticed.

  Stranger things had happened.

  But now that scenario was off the table.

  Sophia stood, too, glancing again at the guards who were drowsing by the door.