Adrenaline

by Jeff Abbott

  Yasmin, panting and mewling, smashed the baton across Mila’s head, and Mila fell onto the fine Persian rug.

  “She hurt me,” Edward said. Blood welled along his skin, dotted his shirt. Mila looked up, and Yasmin Zaid leveled a gun at her. Her thin mouth—with a stitched lip—jerked, wavered, slid back to a mostly straight line. The hand shook slightly. The eyes were blank of feeling. Whatever personality that once ruled this woman was gone, hollowed out and replaced with an emptiness that twisted Mila’s stomach.

  “Stand up,” Yasmin ordered.

  Slowly Mila stood.

  “Where’s Sam Capra?” Edward said.

  “Gone. Hunting that wife of his.”

  “She got away from him? I’m supposed to believe that? And you just came here to confront us? Please. Do I look moronic?”

  “You don’t look smart,” Mila said.

  “Is Sam Capra here?” Edward asked.

  “No. I came alone.”

  “These people you work for, who are they? Are you CIA? Or are you MI5? What?”

  “You should be so lucky,” Mila said. “We’re worse. We’re focused. You won’t know how to fight us.”

  Edward backhanded her. She held her ground and her strength seemed to enrage him.

  “I am not breakable, you pathetic small freak,” Mila said in a hoarse whisper.

  “We’ll see. Yasmin, bring her with us. Where are the guards?”

  “They went to see about a delivery at the stables.”

  Edward froze. “Have they come back?”

  “No.”

  “Radio them. You, come with me.” He grabbed Mila, put the gun close against the cool of her throat. He hurried her down a hallway.

  “Your friend, Piet. When I killed him,” Mila said, “it was like beating a crying sack of flour.”

  Edward didn’t slow. “You did me a favor.”

  “Ah. Yes. You slaughtered your own people back in the brewery.” Mila turned her head and spat in Edward’s face. Edward slammed her into the wall, drove a brutal fist into her stomach.

  “You’re trying to delay me. It won’t work.”

  “I know what you are,” she said to Edward. “You worked with a slaver. You’re no better than he is.”

  “You don’t like that Piet was a slaver?” Edward laughed. “When I’m done with you, when you’ve spilled every secret about who you work for, I’m going to sell your ass to a man I know. You’re not too old to be broken into the trade.”

  “We don’t need her,” Yasmin said, coming up behind them. She centered her gun on Mila’s forehead.

  “I feel sorry for you,” Mila said, and Yasmin’s aim wavered. “Whatever he did to you, time can undo. I know people who have been through worse than you and you can recover.”

  “What he did was set me free.”

  “If there’s a shred of Yasmin Zaid left under the brainwashing, you know that’s not true.”

  “I am what I wanted to be, always—free of my father,” Yasmin said. But her mouth wavered, her hand shook.

  “You traded one bully for another,” Mila said.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Edward ordered. “I want to talk to her. Did the guards report any problems?”

  “Some horses got loose,” she said. “They’re chasing them down.”

  He frowned. “I don’t like it.”

  Yasmin, gun now to Mila’s neck, hurried her to a wall hanging. Edward pushed it aside, pressed a release, and a door opened. Dim light showed stairs going downward.

  “Churchill planned to use the estate as a base for a resistance, if needed,” Edward said. “The resistance is here all right. It’s just not the one he envisioned.”

  He shoved Mila through the door.

  The explosive felt soft and claylike under my fingertips, and for an odd moment I thought of playing in the mud along a river in Thailand with my brother Danny when we were young.

  I heard the sound of a footfall behind me.

  “I’m holding high explosives,” I said. “So you probably don’t want to shoot.”

  No bullet came. I’d given him room for doubt. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw the redhead aiming a gun at my back.

  “Put the explosives down.” He spoke with a Serbian accent.

  “You’re the smartest guy I’ve met here.”

  “What?”

  “Put the gun down. You’re making me nervous. You don’t want me nervous. You can only kill me. I can kill us both.”

  An edge cut his voice. “Put the gear down, stand up, hands on your head.”

  The gear was in place and I slid the triggering device into my sleeve.

  “Now!” the redhead yelled. He looked at me like I was the prize, a promotion, or a bonus. Normally I applauded ambition. Not now.

  Slowly I stood, turned, locked my fingers on the top of my head.

  “Move back from the door.”

  I obeyed, taking five steps.

  “Where’s the trigger?” the redhead asked. He was the smartest, after all.

  “In the gear bag.” The edge of the triggering device lay cool against my wrist. I took another step backward, getting the redhead between me and the door. The guy was doing it all wrong but I wasn’t going to correct him. Not my place.

  He knelt by the gear bag. Explosives apparently made him nervous, as they would any sane person.

  “It looks like a silver cylinder,” I said, and it was true. But the guy didn’t do what I hoped; he picked up the bag instead of searching its jumble and gestured at me with the gun. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Don’t jostle the bag.” I made my eyes frantic-wide. “Not at all. Because it’s a sensitive button, it gets pushed, then it’s boom, boom.”

  The redhead stopped, so I turned and I pretended to stumble over the outstretched arm of the unconscious African, dropped one hand and the detonator device slid into my palm.

  “Then you come find it. Not me. I’m not touching this again.”

  “All right,” I said and I covered my ears and head as I dropped to the floor and pressed the detonator.

  The blast juddered the heavy door and blew it off its hinges. The noise thrummed my bones as I leaped up and slammed a fist into the redhead’s face. Already concussed and dizzy, the man collapsed.

  I bolted through the mist of grit and down a set of stone stairs into the darkened tunnel.

  87

  I PUT THE MAP MILA HAD shown me into my head. Mila had told me there was a sharp bend after you entered the tunnel from the house, and that was where the old complex lay, where Zaid would have done his secret work, and where the truth about this weapon would be.

  I ran. Dim lights illuminated the tunnel, and the air smelled damp. I could hear in the distance a rushing of water. As I went down the tunnel, the sound increased in volume and then faded as I ran deeper into the ground. The passageway opened into a large open space, hewn from rock. Concrete blocks, gray with age, constituted the floor. The air was cool. Low-hanging lights. A metal table filled with an array of computers. Personal photos dotted it: Bahjat Zaid and his family; a picture of Yasmin as a girl, standing with her father, the sun slanting across her face.

  I shut the door behind me and flipped the lock, then I sat at the computer at the center of the table. Gear that looked like external hard drives was attached to the machines. Each drive held a small slot, too small for a CD, more like a flash-drive connector but narrower. Each bore a Militronics stamp.

  I moved the mouse. The computer’s monitor awoke. Someone had been here, and recently. The screen showed what looked like an oversized barcode image, full of encoded data that meant nothing to me.

  I looked at the file’s name: DNA 017. This was someone’s DNA analysis? The software had an Open Recent Files option.

  There was a list of files under the arrow: DNA 001 to DNA 015. I hit the More option under the last listing. It showed a numerically ordered list of files, the last being DNA 050. Fifty files, fifty DNAs.

  In each cor
ner was a picture: DNA 050 was a girl who looked to be about twelve.

  They were analyzing the genetic profiles of children? Why?

  I started scanning the files. Most were children; a few were men; the rest were women, most appearing to be in their forties and fifties. They looked like normal, everyday people. Some of the photos looked like passport images, but some did not; the people, all well dressed, were walking, several of them waving at the camera. I recognized none of them, and no names were attached to the files.

  Who were these people?

  I looked at the drives. One was mounted on the computer’s screen. Maybe all the answers were on the external drive—a backup I could take with me. I selected Eject on the icon.

  But the drive didn’t eject. Instead, a small chip did, from the drive. I held it up. It had a flat shiny surface, a grid on it echoing the one I’d seen on the weird gun and on the remnants of the Amsterdam bomb. On the table lay a plastic case sized for the chip. I slid it into the protective case, then put the case into my shoe.

  Then the door unlocked and opened as I began to sit down at the computer again.

  Edward and Yasmin stood there, with a gun locked on Mila’s head. The same unusual gun I’d seen him fire inside St. Pancras.

  “Hands up, Sam,” Edward said.

  I obeyed.

  “Finally. Face-to-face.” He smiled. “Wow. You’re a piece of work, man.”

  I didn’t speak. I thought of him slapping Lucy in the car. I thought of him driving away while my friends burned and died.

  “I don’t blame you for trying,” he said. “You are much tougher than I ever thought you would be. We figured you for, you know, a PowerPoint jockey mostly. But no. I really have to say, you surprised me.”

  My gun was on the table, less than a foot away from me. Even if they killed me and Mila, I could not let them walk. Whatever they were planning, my God, against innocent people, against kids…

  “If you move or resist us,” Edward said, “your baby dies. It just takes one call.”

  He knew where my child was.

  “Stay still,” Edward said. “Yasmin, take his weapons.”

  She obeyed. She brought the gun and the knife to Edward.

  “Why?” I said. “Why my wife? Why kill all your friends in Holland?”

  “Why should I explain a thing to you? I don’t care if you die confused. Yasmin, search him.”

  She came back to me and her hands, shaking, roamed my body. She didn’t think to check my shoes…

  “Who do you work for, Sam?”

  I nodded at Mila. Mila said nothing.

  “And who does she work for?”

  “She won’t tell me.”

  “Where is our troublesome Lucy?”

  “Gone.”

  “Dead,” Mila lied. “She wouldn’t tell Sam where his son is.”

  “I will put your mind at ease about one point, Sam.” Edward smiled. “I sold your son.”

  They were the four worst words I’d ever heard. Worse than “Watch what happens to men like him,” when my brother was killed. Worse than “I’m supposed to kill you,” said by my wife. For a moment I thought my knees would buckle.

  “I sold him to a trafficker. She’s keeping him close at hand for me. She’ll kill him if you or Lucy make trouble.”

  I have no words for the horror, the rage. White hot, like I’d been crafted from lightning.

  I spoke the only words that occurred to me: “I’m going to kill you.” I should have bargained. Said I’d do whatever. Just don’t… just don’t hurt my kid. Sell him? Vomit rose in my throat. I swallowed the sourness down.

  Edward laughed. “No, you’re not.” He gestured me away from the computer. I stepped away. Then he did something odd. He ejected a computer chip from the side of the gun where the unusual grid lay and inserted a new one from his shirt pocket. The chip was just like the one in my shoe. The gun was a bit bigger than the standard Glock, heavy and glossy and very dangerous.

  Yasmin started. “Are you giving a demo? Did you get his—”

  “Never mind,” Edward said. “I want to take them to the shaft.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Mila was in handcuffs. Yasmin took me by the arm, pressed a gun against my neck, and guided me out of the lab. We walked—me and Yasmin first, then Edward and Mila. The corridor was narrow, not enough room to fight. And if I fought, he had my son killed.

  “Your father just wanted to save you,” I said to Yasmin. “He gave up everything to save you.”

  “My father wanted to control me.” She virtually spat out the words.

  “Someone’s controlling you far worse than your father ever did,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Edward said.

  I wanted to keep him rattled. He’d make a mistake, maybe. “The DNA analysis for the kids and the other people? What’s that about?”

  “You’ll be free of all worries by then,” Edward said. “Don’t burden your mind with it.”

  This was the end of my life. No way out, no exit. We walked down to a dark room that was a widening in the corridor. I could smell the earthy tang of artesian water.

  “Just kill them,” Yasmin said. Her voice shook. We knew what had been done to her, and she didn’t like us being around. We were from her old life, outside the cocoon where Edward had trapped her.

  The hallway’s splinter opened up into a narrow room, and the concrete ended at a heavy steel door. We went through the door into a round stone room. At the end of the room was a large hole, nearly seven feet across. In its depths I could hear a rush of water. I remembered seeing the start of a river on the property map. This must be the underground route of that river.

  “Take him to the edge, Yasmin,” Edward said. She eased me along. Edward kept one gun trained on Mila’s throat, the other on me.

  “You behaved, so your son lives,” Edward said. “You are a good father.”

  “You don’t need to hurt my kid. Ever.” I was going to die for a son I’d never see. Okay. It was what it was. But I wished I’d gotten to hold him, to see his face, look for the clear bits of me and Lucy—yes, even Lucy, the Lucy of my dreams, the honest one—in his face.

  Edward’s mouth twitched. “I’m sure he’ll have a good life.”

  I had nowhere to run, nowhere to fight, and in my last moment I decided dignity was the only exit.

  Let me go, Lucy had said, and I hadn’t. I couldn’t. It had got me here. “I’m sorry, Mila,” I said. She nodded.

  Edward raised the odd, heavy gun that he’d slipped the computer chip into and aimed it at my chest. He was seven feet away. I wondered if I’d die before I hit the water, if I’d drown. I didn’t want to drown. I thought of my father, my mother, the weird life they’d made for me, my brother. I thought of Daniel. I held on to him.

  The barrel of his gun centered on my chest.

  He fired.

  I kept standing and like an idiot I looked down at my chest, where a gaping hole should have been. My T-shirt was unmarred.

  Four feet away from me, Yasmin staggered, stunned. Blood welled from her chest.

  Couldn’t be. The gun was aimed directly at me. Impossible. She was four feet to my left, and Edward’s aim hadn’t veered.

  Edward laughed. Mila’s mouth dropped open. I caught Yasmin at the edge of the shaft, felt the life pulse out of her as I held her in my arms.

  “One man’s science,” he said, “is another man’s magic.”

  “What… what?” I managed. She couldn’t be dead. The gun was aimed at me.

  “I don’t need her anymore.” He raised the gun again.

  “While you die in the dark, I am going to kill your baby,” he hissed. “Just because I can.”

  He fired two more shots. I held Yasmin, tried to turn us both away but there was nowhere to go. The bullets hammered into her and I fell into blackness. I fell into dark water, Yasmin still in my arms.

  88

  I STAYED UNDER THE WATER. If I surfaced, he would just shoo
t me. The cold was a shock. Illuminated by the crooked lights above the stone shaft, the water was gray.

  I kicked down, steadying myself against the stone wall, trying not to rise again. If I broke the water’s surface, he would kill me. He had to believe me dead.

  My lungs felt like they would explode. I heard a distant scream, perhaps Mila. Or, I wished, Edward. Mila was not the screaming type and I was sure Edward was. A crazy, disjointed thought to keep my lungs from shredding. But no Mila crashed down to join us. Yasmin’s face turned to mine, an inch away, eyes half open in the water. I touched her throat. No pulse. A little wooden dove on her necklace floated between our faces.

  The lights went out. In the distance I heard a heavy grinding—the stone door shutting. Total darkness. My lungs seared with the burn of spent oxygen. I eased to the surface, tried to breathe as quietly as I could. I failed. My gasps echoed against the stone.

  No shot came. Edward was gone, and I was buried in a horrible, suffocating darkness.

  I groped for the side of the stone shaft and explored it with my fingers. But it wasn’t smooth concrete; it had to be a more ancient well with hewn stone that might give me a chance to climb it.

  I didn’t think I was badly hurt. I could feel furrows along my wrists, where the skin had parted as the bullets had hit Yasmin as I held her, and my already-wounded shoulder hurt very badly.

  First try I made it up about five feet before I fell and slid back into the water’s embrace. I didn’t bother to rest. I clambered back up.

  I am going to kill your baby. Just because I can.

  I made it ten feet. At least I thought I had. The pitch dark could be playing a cruel trick on me. Then I ran out of handhold and flailed, found another grip, lost it. Stone hit my chin and opened the flesh. Blood was a seeping warmth down my front.