Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  Several of the partygoers used satellite phones to conduct business and keep in touch with their offices while at the castle. Steiner’s security allowed for those signals to come and go and didn’t jam them. That was a weak spot the intelligence division at the Agency had ferreted out to use for their own on-site sat-link communications.

  The true trick in penetrating Steiner’s stronghold had been in wangling an invitation to the party. Even the paparazzi hadn’t been able to break into the castle. Steiner’s estate security was top-notch. However, the man did like publicity that he could control. Sam had chosen that as her route into the castle party.

  “Bret?” Riley asked.

  “Affirmative.” Bret Horn, Sam’s partner on the mission, stood a few feet away. Blond and good-looking, Horn had immediately drawn the attention of several females attending the party. He masked his response with the glass of beer he held while pretending to listen to the two dark-haired women vying for his attention.

  “Sam, we’ve identified the target’s room and the computer he uses for his drops,” Riley said. Until Bret had marked Steiner with the ultraviolet spray, they hadn’t been able to ascertain that. “I’ll direct you there when you’re ready.”

  “Understood,” Sam said. Immediately, adrenaline spiked through her body, invigorating her. But she kept herself under tight rein. She liked being in control of herself. Some of her friends insisted she was a control freak, never quite able to let herself go.

  Sam didn’t agree with that assessment completely, but she understood how others could see her that way. Control was a big part of her life and her career. So many other things in her childhood—her abandonment and who her parents had been—remained mysteries and out of her reach. She’d had to focus on the here and now, not think about parents who had walked away from her or surrogate families that had provided for her but made certain they never got close to the strange child who was something of a genius.

  Growing up, Sam had only been a visitor in those homes. Not family. She hadn’t had that until she’d reached the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women. Her friendship with the Cassandras, as she and the others in her orientation group had called themselves, had been deeper than anything she’d ever known, then or since leaving the academy. She didn’t trust the world to offer her anything like that again. She’d trained herself to be complete. Maybe she wasn’t always happy, but she was independent.

  “At the first sign of trouble,” Riley stated quietly, “I want the two of you out of there.”

  Irritated, Sam said, “Maybe we could concentrate on a successful mission before we throw in the towel.”

  “I am concentrating on this mission’s success,” Riley stated sharply. “Getting you out of there alive is the greatest success.” He paused. “Both of you.”

  Sam felt guilty at once because she knew Riley wasn’t happy with getting sidelined from the action by his recent injury and didn’t care for the role of mission controller. He wasn’t cut out to be an observer. He was a player. Sending others into danger was hard for him.

  Riley had gotten shot on his last mission nearly a month ago. That mission had brought them closer to Steiner, finally giving them enough information to realize what the man was doing. That was also why Riley had been put into place as mission controller.

  Sam had served as part of the extraction team that had brought Riley out of downtown Munich, Germany, after his cover had been blown and he’d been wounded. Though he insisted he was now at one hundred percent and ready for fieldwork, Medical hadn’t yet released him.

  “I’m just reminding you of the mission parameters.” Riley’s voice took on an edge. “We’re not all or nothing on this take. We’ll have another chance. The target is a big fish, but he’s not going to pull a fade on us. He’s got too much to lose.”

  Sam knew that wasn’t entirely true. Konrad Steiner had operated for years without being discovered. The action that had resulted in Riley’s wounding had put the man close to ground for weeks. With all his money in Swiss and Cayman Islands banks, Steiner could slip away in an instant and become someone else.

  “You don’t have an extraction team there, Sam,” Riley reminded. “And you’re not exactly the most seasoned agent we could have sent.”

  Sam resisted the urge to argue the point. She was good at what she did; that was why she was there.

  If Riley knew he’d angered her, he didn’t act like it. He continued in the same commanding tone that grated on her nerves. “Tread lightly,” he ordered. “This is my show. My call.”

  Sam grew more irritated. She could be a team player when she needed to be, but she preferred calling her own shots. Because of her size and the way she kept to herself, most people underestimated her. They often thought she was too small, too shy. She didn’t like the fact that Riley seemed to be one of those people.

  During her six years with the CIA, Sam had been on several missions. Generally those missions had depended on her linguistic abilities, translating conversations and documents, rather than hands-on work that could get her killed. Only a few missions had actually required her to operate in the field and at such close proximity to a dangerous target.

  Steiner made his way through the crowd. He was known as an investor and a deal maker. His interests included developing music groups like the one playing in the next room, pharmaceuticals, transportation and genetic research. If a profit could be turned at an endeavor, Steiner seemed to find a way to become part of the enterprise. Everyone was eager to meet him.

  Even me.

  Sam knew that at least some of the others would not be so eager to make Steiner’s acquaintance if those people knew how many people the man had compromised over the past fifteen years. That was how Steiner had made so many business acquisitions.

  According to the files she’d read, Steiner’s actions had resulted in seventeen suicides, twenty-three murders and eight disappearances. Nine corporations had succumbed to hostile takeovers or been broken up after going bankrupt because of his actions.

  And that was only what the CIA intelligence services were successful in confirming. Estimations about the true number of those activities were likely to triple.

  “Heads up,” Riley said over the transmitter. “Sam, you’ve caught Steiner’s eye.”

  Sam sipped her drink and watched as Steiner worked his way through the crowd toward her. Her heart sped up a little. The response wasn’t out of anxiety, but rather her body getting ready for the unexpected encounter.

  “Making contact with Steiner at this juncture isn’t good,” Riley said.

  “I know,” Sam replied. “Running away at this point isn’t exactly acceptable behavior.”

  “Maybe if you had dressed more conservatively,” Riley growled.

  “If I’d dressed conservatively I’d have been more noticeable than I am now,” Sam replied. Every woman there with a figure flaunted it, and there apparently were no women without figures there that night. “And I might not have made it through the metal detectors.”

  All of the women at the party wore revealing and tight evening dresses and gowns. Sam honestly felt that she blended quite well with the crowd in an ice-blue, off-the-shoulder number. But her dress shouldn’t have caught the man’s attention.

  So what had put Konrad Steiner onto her scent?

  Steiner came to a stop in front of Sam and extended his hand. She offered hers in return and suffered through the obligatory hand kissing, which made her skin crawl.

  “Ah, Miss Werper, so good to meet you.” Steiner oozed charm. He spoke English with a trace of an accent.

  Sam was willing to bet Steiner knew about the accent and kept it on purpose. The man was polished and smooth, and the fact that he knew her, even though they had never been introduced proved that he did his homework.

  “I have looked forward to meeting you, Herr Steiner,” Sam responded.

  “Call me Konrad. I insist.”

  Sam smiled at him. Her senses coiled within he
r. Steiner’s three personal bodyguards remained a discreet distance away.

  “All right, Konrad,” Sam said, smiling again. “Then I insist that you call me Franziska.”

  “This is Odile.” Steiner gestured to the young redhead at his side.

  Sam told the young woman it was good to meet her, and Odile responded in kind. Both of them knew that neither of them cared.

  “I’m told you are a reporter,” Steiner said.

  “A writer, actually,” Sam corrected. “I write articles for different publications on a freelance basis.” That fit the cover she was using, and the note of pride embellished it.

  “I’m told you are quite good.”

  “Yes.” The Agency kept her cover name in the press through ghostwriters.

  “I was told you wanted to do a piece on the movie industry I have interests in.”

  “I would also like to do an interview with you, if possible.” Sam gestured at the castle. “Having seen this place, I’d like to do a piece on your home, as well.”

  Steiner shook his head and smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. Someone should have told you that I don’t give interviews.”

  “Someone did tell me that,” Sam replied, meeting his gaze. “Someone should have told you that I don’t take no for an answer. I’m here after all, aren’t I?”

  Steiner laughed. “Touché, Franziska.” He nodded to her. “Perhaps later I’ll allow you an opportunity to change my mind.”

  “I look forward to the challenge.” Sam ignored the scathing glance Odile gave her.

  “Enjoy the party.” Steiner nodded politely and kept moving through his guests.

  “Okay, Sam,” Riley urged. “Let’s go. The sooner you get out of there, the better I’ll feel.”

  Sam made brief eye contact with Bret, then threaded through the crowd. The staircase and the upper rooms were open to guests for business meetings as well as private recreation in any form they could have wanted.

  As she passed, Sam collected glances from men and from a few women. She reached the top of the stairs without incident.

  “Hold up,” Riley ordered.

  At the top of the stairs, Sam felt adrenaline rush through her body. The tension in Riley’s voice was unmistakable. She took a position beside the stairs and glanced down over the crowd as if checking the view.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “I thought I recognized someone there.”

  Sam scanned the faces as best as she could from the angle. “You probably did. A lot of those faces have been on magazine covers and CNN.”

  Below, rock stars chatted with business moguls while actors mixed with sports figures.

  “Not those faces,” Riley growled. “Someone from our line of work. Who do you know at MI-6?”

  MI-6 was Great Britain’s external espionage agency, a counterpart of the CIA. Sam scanned the crowd more closely. None of the faces she knew were in view.

  “Naming names right now might not be a good idea,” she said. “Their presence here doesn’t have to mean anything. They’ve got just as much interest in our target as we do.”

  Silence dragged over the connection.

  “I’m going for it,” Sam said. “Hesitation isn’t going to net us anything.”

  Riley growled unintelligibly for a moment, then added, “Go.”

  Quickly Sam turned and headed down the hallway. Her pulse beat at her temples. She kept her stride full and determined, listening to the soft tick of the mental clock inside her head, counting down and eradicating her safety zone. She was in no-man’s-land. There was no turning back now. She was off the hook and operating on the fly. Success and failure rode on the roll of the dice.

  If she was caught, she had no doubt that she’d be executed immediately.

  Chapter 2

  Riley McLane paced the raised section of the small, compact control room floor in the Langley, Virginia, CIA HQ. More than anything, he wanted to be inside Konrad Steiner’s castle-away-from-home. In Riley’s opinion, Sam simply wasn’t experienced enough to know what she was getting into.

  She’s a linguist, damn it, he thought. Not a trained field operative.

  High-definition plasma monitors lined the wall in front of him. Six operatives sat at workstations that held monitors on smaller scales. Some of those monitors matched the views presented on the wall across the room. All of them came from the button-cams on-site and the sat-link.

  The button-cams were miniaturized video sending units no bigger than a shirt button. Adhesive backs allowed their use almost anywhere. The confusion of the party atmosphere, as well as the electronic toys brought by the partygoers and those supplied by Steiner, had provided Sam and Bret with plenty of cover to activate the video surveillance equipment without discovery.

  Riley wore jeans, a charcoal-gray turtleneck and hiking boots. A Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol rode in a pancake holster over his right hip instead of in its accustomed shoulder rig. The change was a concession to the tenderness of his left shoulder where he’d been shot. He stood two inches over six feet and had an athletic build from years in the gym and on the go. His dark hair set off his hazel eyes.

  The phone on Riley’s workstation lit up. He crossed the room in three long strides and scooped the headset up. “McLane.”

  “Why did I just authorize a high-level hack into British espionage circles?” CIA Director Stone Mitchell’s voice was calm and uninflected. He’d put his time in over the years, rising from fieldwork to his current administrative position.

  Riley turned toward the wall of monitors and stared at the images. Onscreen, Sam followed the verbal directions one of the techs gave her to Steiner’s private rooms.

  The view was from above, looking down onto and into the castle. The thermographic imaging revealed the building’s structure in blues and violets, peering through the roof and floors. Special computer programming rendered the information into a three-dimensional display and gave measured distances at the press of a key. The people were translated into orange and red figures based on their body temperatures. Sam and Bret wore unique transponders that showed up on the satellite’s thermographic imagers.

  “Because I spotted a guy I think is with MI-6. I wanted to confirm that.” Riley stared at the fox-faced man who had caught his attention. Jackson had plucked the man’s features out of the crowd at Riley’s insistence, then run him through the database.

  “MI-6 is interested in our target, too,” the deputy director pointed out. “Seeing them there is no surprise.”

  “To our knowledge, MI-6 hasn’t penetrated Steiner’s ID. This isn’t one of Six’s Intel agents, either. He’s one of their hands-on black-bag guys who specialize in kidnapping and assassination. The problem is, this guy doesn’t seem to be as interested in Steiner as he is in Sam—Special Agent St. John.”

  In the picture above the nearly full-faced shot of the man Riley had tentatively identified, the man watched Sam, frozen in midstride up the staircase. He hadn’t been focused on Steiner.

  Seeing Sam in the ice-blue evening gown had drawn Riley’s attention, too. Agent St. John was an arresting woman. Despite her active outdoor lifestyle, her coloring remained fair, with just a hint of a tan warming her smooth skin. Her shock of shoulder-length, white-blond hair was pulled back in some kind of intricate knot that showed off her neck and shoulders.

  “I don’t like coincidences, sir.” Riley gazed at the still image of Sam on the stairway. “The presence of an MI-6 black ops team at our site is a variable I want more information on.”

  Mitchell sighed. “I concur.”

  Jackson spun around in his chair. A big smile split his dark face. He was young and still excited by the cyber-snooping he did at the Agency. “Got it.” He tapped the small screen beside him. “You’re looking at Henry Watterson. Got another hit, too.” He tapped keys and brought up another image on his personal screen.

  A heavier and older man with a square jaw and cold, dead eyes filled the screen. The face was new to Riley
.

  “MI-6 operative Ian Callan,” Jackson said. “He specializes in abduction and control of people MI-6 wants to interview.”

  Riley turned his attention back to the still image of the party scene. Callan’s attention was on Sam, too. A cold, uncomfortable itch spread between Riley’s shoulder blades.

  “We’ve confirmed two men, sir,” Riley told the deputy director. “Maybe you can go through channels and see why those men are there.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Mitchell promised.

  Riley thanked his superior, broke the connection and watched the thermographic image of Sam stop at the door to Steiner’s private quarters in the castle. Riley stood straight and watched, hoping that the woman stayed out of harm’s way. His injured shoulder throbbed painfully, reminding him how quickly death could come for someone in his profession.

  Sam removed a thin electronic device from the seam of her tiny purse. The fist-size clutch hadn’t drawn a second look from security because it had hardly been large enough to hold a compact. Instead, the purse held the device she was using now as well as a sat-phone and another surprise.

  An electronic lock sealed Steiner’s door.

  Opening her purse, Sam took out a small screwdriver and removed the two screws holding the lock’s cover in place. She kept watch over her shoulder for wandering partyers and roving security people.

  Steiner’s voice boomed downstairs in the ballroom as he welcomed his guests over the public address system. He repeated his greeting in six different languages.

  With the electronic lock’s cover out of the way, Sam looked at the wire bundle inside the device. She moved her hand over the mechanism, allowing the ring camera she wore to transmit the image in color. “Blue and white wires?”

  “Affirmative.” Riley’s voice was tense.

  “Something up?” Sam asked, responding to the tension in his voice.

  “No. Keep your mind focused. That lock can be tricky even with the decoder you’re carrying.”