Mortal Crimes 1

by Various Authors

Too much time together; that was the problem. She needed to stay focused on the professional side of the relationship. And then there was that tiny little detail that she was married. She chastised herself for letting her eyes wander. She was nearly ten years older than he was anyway. How stupid to think that he wouldn’t completely lose interest in her the second some twenty-two year-old nymph walked by in a pair of tight pants. Focus.

  “Can you babysit this install while I get cleaned up?” she asked.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Just click ‘yes’, ‘next’, that sort of thing.”

  The hot water felt good. She’d been chilly; it was almost what passed for winter in the southern hemisphere and the thick stone walls had kept the room cool. The shower was good to clear her head.

  She forgot to bring fresh clothes into the bathroom and so she peeked her head wearing only a towel, prepared to ask Ian to hand her what she needed. But he was laying on the bed, next to the new laptop, his eyes closed and his breathing regular.

  Julia pulled fresh underwear, a t-shirt, and some shorts, all clothes they’d picked up on their way out of Cape Town, at the same time she was shopping for a computer.

  Back on the bed, dressed, she checked the computer. The install was complete. Julia started up the software, tested to see if it could connect to the probe, which it could. She wanted to pass the probe over the CPU in Ian’s chest and see if she could make a connection, if the backup battery still had charge. But she imagined him waking up to see her downloading information. After everything that had happened, she doubted that would go over well.

  She sent a quick email to Terrance to tell him again that she was okay and to thank him for sending along the software. Terrance came through in a pinch. He always had. Sure he had his faults, but he was a devoted husband. She felt guilty for letting her thoughts run away from her. She’d make it up to him, once this was over. Explain why she’d had no other choice. She was sure she would lose her job, but she was nothing if not mobile. She’d find a job, maybe private practice. Let Terrance pick where they wanted to live. His career had taken a back seat long enough.

  Julia shut the laptop, turned off the desk lamp and lay down on the bed next to Ian. She meant to just shut her eyes for a minute, but when she woke up, there was a gray light pressing through the window that cast everything in dark shadows. It would soon be dawn.

  Ian was still asleep, too, but while they slept, they’d moved closer to each other and she could feel her arm pressing against his. She propped herself on one elbow and looked down on him.

  Without thinking, Julia reached out her fingers and rested them against Ian’s bare shoulder. She moved aside the corner of his shirt and looked at the fresh stitches. Not bad for stitching at 60 miles an hour. The wound was still red and crusted with blood, but there was no sign of infection.

  His lips muttered something in his sleep. With a guilty feeling that only spread with every second, she brushed her fingers against his lips.

  His breathing changed. It was still too dark to see if he’d opened his eyes.

  She started to pull back her hand, but he reached out and took her wrist. His grip was firm, but not overly tight. He pulled her gently but firmly toward him. By the time he released, their bodies pressed together and her face was only inches from his.

  And then her lips were against his. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but since she was above him and he was no longer pulling her she must have done it herself. She felt pressure against her chest from his body. Her eyes closed.

  The kiss only lasted a second before she recovered her wits and pulled away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “There are worse ways to wake up. Don’t worry about it.”

  She stood, straightened. Her heart was pounding and the feel of his mouth still burned on her lips. She felt dizzy, disoriented. My God, what was she, sixteen years old again?

  “Well, I guess we should get going.” Julia threw open the curtains. The light was still weak, but it was enough to see by.

  “It’s early. Are you sure you don’t want to lie down for a little while longer?” he asked.

  “No, no, I’m awake. Just a cup of coffee and I’ll be fine.” She wasn’t sure if that’s what he meant. Probably not. Definitely not.

  “All right.” Ian sat up, stretched, ran his fingers through his hair, which had turned into an endearing mop as it had dried in the night. He turned toward his bag of clothes and stripped off his tank top, then rummaged for a shirt. Julia had a hard time looking away.

  I’m married, she thought. Married, married, married.

  ________

  “Springbok, South Africa?” Markov asked. He was in a hotel in Windhoek, Namibia. Markov spread a road map of Namibia and South Africa on the table.

  “That’s right,” Terrance Nolan said on the other end of the phone. “Chang’s Trojan Horse worked as advertised. Julia installed the software and logged back in to send me an email.

  So far his search had come up empty, but he was handicapped by lack of resources and by hostility from the Namibian government to his presence. He was in the country on a diplomatic passport, but nobody was fooled. Charles Ikanbo, Central Intelligence Service Director, met him personally at the airport, and warned Markov that he’d be watching at all times. Ikanbo had two men parked outside his hotel room even now.

  Not that it mattered. Markov could lose the tail whenever it became necessary.

  “Hold on, let me find it,” he told Terrance.

  Markov studied the map. Looked like Springbok was a couple of hours south of the border by car. As the news was already three hours old, and he was short-staffed, it didn’t make sense to send someone to watch the border.

  “Does that help?” Terrance asked.

  “It does, but I can’t get to her just yet. What I need is someone at Langley to watch for updates from her computer. Around the clock. I need to know the instant she connects again.”

  “Sure, no problem. What do you think she’s doing back in Namibia?”

  “I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. That information is available on a need to know basis.”

  “Right, of course. I was just curious. But I guess the only reason Sarah would send you would be to neutralize Ian.”

  Markov didn’t say anything.

  “Ah, well. I guess that’s life,” Terrance said after a minute.

  “And you don’t care?” Markov asked. He should have kept his mouth shut, but couldn’t help himself.

  “What? Of course I care.”

  “You know me, I’m a company man. The things I’ve done for my country—well, you wouldn’t understand, and you’ll never know anyway—but Julia’s your wife, for God’s sake. If I were Sarah Redd, I’d have sent you on forced voluntary vacation the instant Julia went AWOL. Put you on a beach somewhere with a drink in your hand and two minders who never left your side.”

  “Good thing you’re not Sarah Redd,” Terrance said. His tone was testy.

  “Right, because I guess I’d have been wrong. You’re not only not helping your wife, you’re helping us capture her. And I’m wondering why.”

  “Because it’s my job, you son of a bitch,” Terrance said. “What’s wrong with you? Just make sure she’s OK. It’s that bastard Westhelle you need to take out. I’m this close to going out myself and finding her.”

  “You can’t be serious. You haven’t been in the field for fifteen years.” It was real anger, Markov thought, but misdirected. He wasn’t trying to hide a genuine anguish over what was happening to his wife; he was angry that Markov was calling him out.

  Interesting.

  “Sorry if I offended you,” Markov added. “I do appreciate your help. And it must be very painful to have your wife in danger. All the years you’ve spent together, your history together.”

  “Yeah, it is. Hurts like hell.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to keep her safe. I promis
e.”

  After he hung up with Terrance, Markov spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to trap Ian and Julia, given his minimal resources. Where were they going?

  Two possibilities occurred to him. First, they might be trying to meet up with Charles Ikanbo. Find out what the man knew about the battle at the mining camp. Ikanbo had come upon the aftermath, had met with Li Hao and the Chinese group, as well as with the Blackwing Contractors.

  Problem with that theory is that there would have been easier ways to contact Ikanbo. A phone call, for one.

  Second, maybe Ian wanted nothing more than revenge. Whatever had happened in the Kaokoland wilderness, his best friend had died. Markov now doubted that Ian had killed Kendall. His new theory was that someone had drugged Ian after Ikanbo took the man into custody. He hadn’t yet figured out who, or why.

  So Ian would come back to the Blackwing camp and finish what he’d started, as he’d blurted in the Windhoek jail cell. Kill the contractors, destroy the Chinese infrastructure.

  He liked this theory except for one detail. Inconveniently, it failed to explain what Julia was thinking. Okay, so maybe she was just infatuated, nothing more. No surprise that she’d fall for a handsome young field operative with a foreign accent. Not when she was married to a guy like Terrance Nolan, who apparently did not care if she lived or died, in the most literal way possible.

  And that wouldn’t explain Ian’s motivation. Sure, maybe he was just as smitten with Julia—she was an attractive, bright woman, albeit a few years older than Ian—but she’d only get in the way when the time came for shooting.

  So what was it?

  Markov kept coming back to the software that Terrance had sent to Julia. Chang had locked her out of Ian’s implant, but she’d know that by now. And as soon as she found out, wouldn’t she have emailed Terrance again, to try to get the new access codes? Only she hadn’t.

  And suddenly it came to him. There was another implant out there.

  Kendall Rose.

  What had happened to Kendall’s body? Blown up, Sarah claimed, by U.S. air support doing their best to cover up Ian Westhelle’s botched operation and murder of his handler. They’d recovered a few shards of bone, enough to identify the man by DNA.

  Markov could verify that information easily enough, with calls to the AFRICOM field office, in Botswana, and forensics, at Langley. But say Sarah had been lying or was lied to. Could Kendall’s body still be out there somewhere?

  If so, he knew exactly where to find Ian and Julia. He picked up the phone to call his men, begin the operation to intercept the pair. This time, he was sure, they would not escape.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ian felt like it had taken as long to drive the 100 kilometers into the Kaokoland Wilderness as to drive the preceding 500 kilometers up the C13. Desert driving sucked. They’d been stuck twice, and Ian had to get out and build up the sand under the wheels, pack it down with as much water as they could spare from the back of the Land Rover and tease the car back and forth until it settled on firmer ground.

  He’d been this way once before, but it seemed like the road was in a completely different place. Probably was. Road was a generous term. The way sand blew over everything, it was often unrecognizable due to sand drifts for kilometers at a stretch.

  When the sand ended, the rocks and hardpan began. They rattled along in a cloud of fine dust. It coated every surface of the car, inside and out. Even after he’d turned off the vent and rolled up the windows, it still seemed to find a way in.

  The only thing more constant than bad road conditions was the smell of fumes from the extra 100 liters of petrol they’d packed into the trunk and back seat. Not a smart thing, really, to load up with enough liquid explosive to finish the job for the CIA. But it bloody well beat walking back if they ran out of fuel. Fortunately, the company was good. Julia was glowing, her spirits higher than at any point so far on their travels. She’d point out each gemsbok, asked questions about Ian’s home, the Zulu nanny that raised him until his early teens. She asked about his father, about his sister who’d moved back to Johannesburg and already had four kids.

  And Ian found himself drawn into the conversation, reliving memories, opening up. It was a great distraction for both of them. He had nearly died on the other end of this road, and the ridge was in range of the deadliest stockpile of weaponry in Southwest Africa, all of which would be happily directed to blow them up if anyone recognized him.

  What struck Ian the most was how comfortable he felt with Julia. He’d been around a lot of women. Since high school they’d followed him like sand flies, though most were considerably more pleasant and a few were more subtle. It had been a shock to see how aggressive American women were compared to their South African counterparts, all smiles, eyelashes, and legs. He’d always been respectful, never one to take advantage or press his hand. No need to.

  His intimate encounters with women were generally short-lived. For one thing, his job kept him moving. It wasn’t the sort of career that attracted women looking to settle down. Nor did Ian give off that vibe.

  Even the women who tolerated that kind of lifestyle would find that they had little in common with Ian when he was dressed. And Ian soon began to find his pursuers shallow, provincial, flighty. The closest thing Ian had to a female friend was his sister, who he hadn’t seen but twice in the last three years, though they kept in contact by phone and email.

  So it surprised him how easily he could talk with Julia. She was intelligent, thoughtful, different from other women he knew. She cared about what he thought, his childhood, about him.

  But as the car approached the hill where he and Kendall had stashed their weapons, he withdrew from conversation and concentrated on the terrain. This time there was no GPS, only the landscape seared into his memory. He remembered the battle, seeing Kendall hit, the flash of exploding ordinance.

  “We stop here. Sure you’re up to this?” Ian stepped out of the car and took a look around him, checking for tails on their approach. He scanned his mind. It was on. He tried again to remember when, or if, he had turned it on. He didn’t like feeling like he couldn’t control. This had to stop. But not now. Once they’d retrieved the data he could get Julia to find a way to silence the commands.

  Julia’s expression hardened. “I’m ready. Let’s go get the data and get out of here.”

  Ian walked up the slope, with Julia close behind. She carried the laptop. He held his Glock in hand. His senses sharpened, he noted every sound.

  They crested the ridge and looked over the brush that edged the hard pan he and Kendall had fought their way up. He motioned for Julia to crouch. “Probably have this area monitored,” he whispered. “Motion sensors. Infrared.”

  A haze of smoke rose from the Ondjamba camp. It had doubled in size, in a growing spiderweb of roads, tiny vehicles, buildings, cranes, and other machinery.

  He retreated from the ridge and followed it to their old weapons cache. Nothing left but a pile of rubble, with charred rock and occasional glints of metal casings and exploded ordinance among the boulders.

  When he stopped, Julia asked, “Where do…”

  He cut her off, pointed to his ears, and then to the ground. He wasn’t sure they’d have microphones on the ground, but Blackwing were no amateurs and he wasn’t taking chances.

  He walked to a collection of boulders and probed the rubble. He knew exactly where Kendall had been, but the crevice his friend had hid under was shattered, with no clear spot to mark where he had been hit.

  Memories flooded back. Ian remembered running toward Kendall, grabbing the sat phone and throwing it with all his strength onto the hard pan. Kendall was pinned under a massive boulder over his abdomen and pelvis. His leg twisted at an angle, a shard of bone protruded through his torn fatigues at the thigh.

  His pelvis had to be shattered, his abdomen filling with blood. Kendall was struggling to breathe, agonal gasps trying to force air into lungs that couldn’t expand. His eyes looked
up at Ian, filled with terror and pain.

  Ian thrust his shoulder against the boulder, screamed as the rock refused to budge. Again and again he rammed against the rock, cursing in Afrikaans at the boulder, at the CIA, at God.

  Kendall’s eyes looked down at Ian’s knife, pleading. He tried to speak, but no sound came out except gurgles. Ian fell to his knees, cradled Kendall’s head in his arms and cried.

  An explosion from a mortar round deafened Ian, and he saw the nose of an APC edging up the hard pan now in direct view. Ian lifted his KA-BAR knife with shaking hands and thrust it into Kendall’s chest. Blood poured onto the rock. Then Ian turned at a sprint with the bloody knife still embedded in his friend’s chest, and ran down the ravine to flank the advancing APC.

  A moment later, an explosion ripped on the hillside he’d just abandoned. He glanced back to see a plume of smoke rise from the crevice where he’d left Kendall. His muscles burned with fatigue, but Ian continue to race down the crevice in a crouch, brush whipping the skin on his arms until he was at the wrecked Blackwing vehicles taken out by the C-130.

  Ian crawled under a burning RATEL infantry fighting vehicle and lay panting, hoping the flames would shield his infrared signal from the planes above. There was a dead man by his side and Ian wrenched free his AK-47, searched him for ammo.

  He must have shot back when they came for him, but he couldn’t remember any of it. The next thing he recalled was waking up in his Namibian cell, groggy and confused. He remembered Julia through the walls of the cell, there to take him home from the pain and inhumanity. The familiar face was the most profound feeling of relief he had ever felt.

  Now he recreated the position of Kendall’s body. He looked over the ridge, remembered the advancing APC, the brush around the crevice, and started digging.

  He pulled at the rocks, tried to slide them aside as quietly as possible. Julia moved to help, but he waved her back. He stood and scattered loose scree with his foot, tried to get a handhold on the deeper rocks.

  It was fifteen minutes of work, and he panted, his shirt stained with sweat, but there it was. First a torn piece of clothing, then an inch deeper, the hard outline of Kendall’s leg. He motioned Julia over.