“We need an excuse to explore the ruins.”
“No problem. We’ll go for a ride. The stables and trails are all around the old section.”
“Good. Can you sneak us into the palace so no one will know we’re there?”
THE PHONE RANG while they remained a good twenty minutes from the palace. Even as Hunter punched the button to answer, he stepped on the gas pedal.
“Maybe it’s Dimitri.” Tashya’s voice rose with hope.
“Shh.” Hunter waited until she stopped talking before pressing the speaker button.
“Meet me at the—” The kidnapper’s voice started to make a demand and Hunter hung up the phone.
Her eyes widened at Hunter’s action. “Why did you—”
“I’m buying time. Let him think we’re having phone trouble.”
The phone rang a few more times, but Hunter didn’t answer. He weaved in and out of traffic, pushing the limits of the car as well as his physical reaction time, adjusting to the road, other cars and the lights while his mind turned over options.
“The kidnapper is going to demand that we meet him. It’s probably not going to be anywhere near the palace.” He glanced at Tashya as her face paled. Obviously she understood the problem and the critical ramifications of their ultimate decision.
“Oh, God. We either go after the kids or adhere to the kidnapper’s demand.”
The phone rang again.
Hunter picked up, said “Hello?” then hung up again. People usually hung up on other people, not when they themselves were speaking.
“You may be making the kidnapper angry.”
“How long until we arrive at the palace?” Hunter asked her. “I can probably stall another few minutes without consequences.”
Hunter could read the doubts in her face and her understanding that the next decision they made could be the difference between rescue and disaster. He didn’t want to rush Tashya, but as the phone rang again, and again he ignored the ringing, he knew that arriving at a decision quickly was increasingly more critical.
Her voice was strained but calm. “What do you think we should do?”
“Go after the kids. The kidnapper has consistently lied to us. He tried to take us out at the phone booth and again at the hut. Neither time did he appear ready to release the boys in exchange for us.”
“But if we don’t show at the meeting place, if we don’t appear to be cooperating, then he’ll have no reason to keep the boys alive.”
“We’ll have to find them before he can harm them.” Hunter sped around a bus, ignored the driver’s angry fist raised in the air.
The phone rang again, and he picked it up on the first ring to keep the kidnapper off balance. “We’re in the mountains.” He lied, knowing that the chain running through Vashmira was hundreds of miles long. “We keep losing the sig—” He cut off the phone again.
Beside him, Tashya looked ill, and Hunter knew he couldn’t let her make this decision. If he made the wrong choice, it would be better for her to blame him than to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that she’d made a mistake that cost the lives of her brothers.
He could do that for her. It might not be much, but right now that was all he could give. “I’m driving straight to the palace. Can you get us inside without being seen?”
“I think so.”
When she didn’t protest his decision, a measure of relief swept over him that she trusted him. Trusted him to save the little boys. He only hoped that he could live up to her trust.
When the phone rang again, he let it ring four times, then answered. “Yes?”
“Don’t talk,” the kidnapper demanded irritably. “Just listen. Go to the ski resort at Lisem. Bottom of the gondola. One hour.”
“Two. We can’t get there in one.”
“One—or the boys die.”
Tashya raised her voice to an almost hysterical-sounding scream. “Please, an hour and a half. You’ve got to give us more time.”
“Ninety minutes,” the kidnapper agreed and the phone went dead.
“Well done,” Hunter told her as he set a timer on his watch to begin a ninety-minute countdown. “You put just the right touch of desperation in your tone.”
“I am desperate. You haven’t seen the old palace. An hour and a half isn’t enough time to find the boys without lots more help. There are thousands of rooms. Old passageways. Tunnels. If just the two of us search, it could take weeks.”
“Not if we steal your security chief’s thermal imager.”
“His what?”
“It’s a device sensitive to body heat. We aim the imager at the old section, and it should show us exactly where the boys are.”
“How do you know Ira has one?”
“I overhead one of the guards mention that they’d used it to prevent people from getting lost when Nicholas ordered the tunnels closed.”
“Ira keeps his equipment locked up.”
“Let me worry about that. You concentrate on getting us into the palace.”
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Why?”
“We need ‘Uncle’ Hadrid on shift.” She glanced at Hunter’s watch. “If you’d step on the gas, we might make it before he goes home for the day.”
“Pedal’s already on the floor.” Obviously his princess had no fear of speed. Either that or her fear for the children’s safety was greater. “Who’s Uncle Hadrid?”
“My favorite palace guard. Ever since I was a teenager he’d let me come and go through his gate with a friendly wave, a hearty wink and a warning not to get caught.”
Hunter raised an eyebrow. No wonder she’d taken to his kind of life so easily. As a kid she’d had to break rules to escape the palace just to act like a normal adolescent. “You never got caught?”
“Oh, I think my father knew. That’s when he made me promise to carry pepper spray in my purse.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t teach you to shoot a gun.”
“He did, but I don’t like them much. I wanted to go out so I learned to use a revolver. Father told me that I deserved some freedom. Looking back, I think he had guards follow me at a discrete distance—but at the time, I believed I was on my own. Someday, Nicholas is probably going to have to make the same arrangements for Dimitri and Nikita—if we find them.”
If they found them. A very big if.
TASHYA LED HUNTER around to the side gate with two minutes to spare. Of course Hadrid wasn’t really a blood uncle but the old guard had always treated her with the same affection as his nieces and nephews. This time was no exception. Since he didn’t seem the least bit startled by the prince’s presence, she assumed that Alexander had often availed himself of escaping the palace through this very gate.
Once inside, she and Hunter strolled along the towering wall of stone toward the back of the main gatehouse where Ira stored his security equipment. The sun, which had shined almost steadily during the last few days, had disappeared behind an overcast sky, and the gray palace walls seemed more like a prison than a protective structure. Just when her hopes were rising, a damp gray mist of fog shrouded them in gloom.
Tashya whispered to Hunter, although she wasn’t sure why, since no one seemed to be around in the gray drizzle. “There’s a back door to the equipment room, but it’s always locked.”
Hunter walked beside her. “Are there guards inside?”
“I don’t know. Ira has tightened security.”
Hunter kept walking but slowed his steps. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into waiting here for me?”
She eyed him, sensing by the determined gleam in his eyes that there were some things he didn’t want to say. “We’ve come this far together…”
“Fine.” He shrugged and possessively took her elbow. “I didn’t like the idea of leaving you behind anyway.”
But she also knew he didn’t want her with him. Strange man. Sometimes she wondered if he just yearned to be rid of her altogether, because even though he seemed to care fo
r her, he obviously didn’t like having those feelings.
Her speculations ended as Hunter set down his duffel against the stone wall next to the locked back door. He extracted a sharp metal tool, inserted the tip into the lock and picked it open as easily as if he’d possessed the key. No wonder he’d told her not to worry about breaking in.
She followed Hunter inside the darkened room, which smelled of machinery, oil and stale coffee. He flicked on a penlight and headed straight for the area where Ira kept the expensive equipment behind a padlocked, chain-linked fence. Hunter broke through the padlock in less than ten seconds.
The air smelled moldy here, and Tashya kept holding her breath. At any moment she expected someone to come in and find them, but that worry couldn’t explain her jumpy nerves. Even if security caught them, the prince and princess had every right to go anywhere inside the palace grounds.
Her heart rate accelerated and her palms broke out with sweat. She couldn’t let the time limit get to her. Finding and using the thermal imaging device was critical to rescuing the kids. But she really wanted to run through the ruins, screaming their names, not methodically plot and plan the best method to accomplish her goal.
Steady. Soon, she would be free to gallop her horse over the old palace ruins in search of the boys.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. She waited in silence, trying to be patient, as Hunter ran his penlight over the equipment.
“It’s not here,” he whispered.
“Maybe the military department borrowed the equipment. Ira and Vladimir often share the high-tech stuff.”
Hunter pointed the light at a crack in the wall. “That’s odd.”
“What?”
He leaned into the shelving that housed ammunition and guns and flicked a switch. The entire wall moved back on a silent hinge, leaving them to stare at a wall of television monitors and VCRs that taped activities in various locations inside the palace. The last time she’d toured this room, she hadn’t come through the secret entrance, and she wondered why there was a secret entrance as she looked at the screens that revealed the kitchens, the main entryway, several corridors, the ballroom and even some of the private quarters. Did Ira know about the secret entrance? Could someone else have built it and had secretly been watching the comings and goings inside the palace? There were several views of various gates, many interior shots.
A security guard walked inside and snapped on the lights, interrupting her thoughts. Startled by their presence, he frowned. “Highness, I just stepped out for a smoke.”
“We’re checking on palace security. I don’t want you leaving this room during your shift. If you need a break, call in someone to cover for you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Highness.”
Hunter ignored the guard and scanned the equipment. Something must have caught his gaze because he suddenly focused on several pieces of gear neatly laid out on a table.
Hunter spoke as if Alex had just found his favorite diamond cuff link. “Here’s the thermal imager.”
She wondered why the thermal imager, the specific equipment they’d needed to find the boys, hadn’t been stored in its normal location. Was it simply a coincidence? Had someone borrowed it and forgotten to put it back? Or had Ira anticipated that this piece of equipment would be extremely useful in finding the children and deliberately misplaced it?
Hunter picked up the imager and snapped on a switch. “The battery’s fully charged. Let’s go.”
Hunter didn’t bother explaining anything to the security guard, simply closed the door behind them. He slung his duffel over his shoulder and headed around the east wing of the palace toward the stable. Several gardeners noted their passage and greeted them. So did a few merchants who entered and exited the palace through the rear entrance, delivering raw vegetables, fresh fish and tea.
Tashya hoped none of them commented on the prince and princess’s presence. She didn’t want word to get back to the kidnapper that they were at the palace instead of on their way to the ski gondola as they’d been ordered.
But she could no more stop palace gossip than she could make herself disappear. They didn’t have time to disguise their appearance or skulk around in the bushes or wait until dark. They had about an hour left to find her brothers.
Once they reached the familiar stable, her nerves settled a little. A gallop was out of the question in this weather. She requested that her groomsman choose a steady and gentle mare for Hunter and another for herself. She did not want to ride a highstrung animal in the rain over slippery grounds. These mares also had the advantage of being accustomed to the sound of gunfire, part of their training, since her brothers rode them in parades.
While she saddled her horse and the groom performed that chore for Hunter, he sorted through his weapons, slinging an automatic assault rifle over his shoulder. The groom, accustomed to men carrying military weaponry didn’t seemed the slightest bit alarmed. As soon as they mounted and rode out of sight, Hunter handed her another automatic pistol, this one small enough to hide in the palm of her hand. Did he expect her to feel safer with two guns?
She took the second weapon from him, checked to make sure it was loaded and the safety was on, praying she wouldn’t have to fire it—especially anywhere near the boys. She guided Hunter along a well-worn trail between crumbling ruins of a Byzantine church and an ancient library, and over excavated stone streets that still bore the two-thousand-year-old marks of Roman chariots.
Beside her, Hunter rode with one hand on the reins, his right hand aiming his thermal imager at every structure they passed. She knew he would signal her the moment he spotted anything, but she couldn’t help worrying that the kidnappers might spy them first. Surely, if they were keeping the boys under guard, they would have a lookout.
In their favor was the drizzle that had increased into a light, chilling rain. Perhaps the lookout was huddled under a ledge, his view obstructed. Better yet, he might be snoozing.
Because if the lookout spotted the prince and princess, he might have orders to shoot them out of their saddles.
Chapter Thirteen
Hunter operated the thermal imager with a growing sense of unease. Russian made, the imager didn’t have the sensitivity of its Israeli or American counterparts. Nor did it have switches to widen the scope of his search or to home in on the targets. With the maze of tunnels and a labyrinth of crumbling halls, porticos, pavilions, churches, cloisters and corridors that made up the old palace, he wondered if this outmoded heat-sensing device could penetrate the numerous thick stone walls that had been built almost two thousand years ago.
Perhaps they should have obeyed the kidnapper’s directive and gone to the gondola at the ski resort. He checked his watch and realized that another twenty minutes had passed, leaving him a mere forty minutes to find the children and rescue them before the kidnapper realized that the prince and princess weren’t going to show at the ski slope.
He would have liked to ride faster, but feared he would miss a blip on the screen. Actually he welcomed the drenching downpour since it helped to cool the surrounding stone and would increase the heat differential and thus the prominence of the images. He’d begun the search in the ruins closest to the palace, figuring that the less back-and-forth activity there was, the less chance the kidnapper would have of being noticed.
But if the kidnapper wanted just to hide out, he might have picked the most remote spot he could find. He considered hurrying to the far end and working his way back to the middle, but a mad dash into danger could get them killed. They couldn’t help the kids if they were dead.
They’d just ridden beneath the remains of an arched aqueduct that had once carried water through the old city, when he spotted three blips on the screen. “Hold up.”
He stared at the fuzzy images, two small, one much larger and thicker.
Tashya peered over his shoulder. “Looks like two children and an adult.”
Suddenly the larger image broke into two. Where th
ere had previously been one rather thick image, there were now two much more slender ones. “The two guards must have been close together and are now exchanging places. If we’re lucky, one is the lookout, and he didn’t spot us.”
“And if we’re unlucky?”
“He spotted us, went inside and is calling his boss for orders.”
“What makes you think the boss isn’t here?”
“He might be. Or he might be near the ski lodge. Or back at the palace.” Hunter dismounted and led their mounts into shelter from the rain. “From here, we go in on foot.”
Tashya tied their horses’s reins to a protruding pipe, then took a moment to wipe the rain from her eyes with the back of her wrist. She didn’t say a word about the water running down her collar, soaking her shirt, causing her to shiver and her lips to turn blue.
Hunter checked the time. Thirty minutes.
He slung the thermal imager over his shoulder, set his phone to vibrate instead of ring, and carried his weapon in front of him. “Let’s go.”
“I’m right behind you.”
“Stay close. Try and step where I do. Don’t touch anything. There could be booby traps,” he reminded her.
“They aren’t expecting us,” she whispered.
“A good terrorist always has a multitude of backup plans.” He stepped into the room, dodged across the ancient street, using the aqueduct’s thick pillars for cover. Tashya had taken her weapon from her pocket and ran lightly behind him, matching his stride, keeping up without trouble.
For a moment doubts about bringing her along shook him to his core. His job was to protect a civilian, a princess, a woman, not lead her straight into the villain’s lair. He could order her to stay back, but he knew her well enough to realize she wouldn’t waste a moment arguing. She’d agree to stay back, and then simply follow him again. It was better to keep her next to him where he could protect her.
At the entrance to a narrow, low building that had long ago lost its roof, he examined the area for tampering. Traps could be hidden almost anywhere, a pressure plate under a rock or a filament of wire at ankle level strung across a doorway. In addition, he listened for sounds of footsteps or breathing, knowing body armor might prevent the heat imager from revealing an enemy gunman. A lookout could hide in innumerable places in these ruins. Hunter breathed deeply, probing the air for the scent of a cigarette, coffee, deodorant or cologne. He smelled nothing but rain, saw nothing but crumbling rocks.
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