Athena Force: Books 1-6

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

  “Yes.”

  Mitchell tapped the keyboard again. “Then tell me what you see.”

  The digital record started again. The camera work was deft and certain. The observer followed a swarthy man in casual Western clothing down the crowded streets. No audio accompanied the video, but Sam could imagine the hubbub of voices that surrounded the slow and steady pursuit through the crowded streets and alleys.

  The man met another man in front of a small curio shop.

  Mitchell paused the video again. He tapped more buttons and zoomed in on the newcomer’s face. “Do you recognize this man?”

  The man was heavy-set. His face was broad and soft, marking a life of excesses. He wore a mustache and beard trimmed close to the skin. A scar, pink in its newness, cut through the beard on his left cheek. He wore loose white robes and a burnoose.

  “Abdul Hassan.” Sam knew the man instantly. She’d been with a team that had tracked him for a few days.

  “Correct. And you know what he does?”

  “He’s an arms dealer. I was with a team that tracked him for a time. He slipped away from us.”

  “I know,” Mitchell stated dryly. “Hassan has been connected with the Q’Rajn for four years. Even before the United States decided to support Prime Minister Razidae and his staff against the Kemeni rebels.”

  Sam knew that as well. The Kemeni rebels worked to oust the present government and even curried favor with the United States. The Kemenis had taken care not to attack American Consulate staff, business interests or tourists. The Q’Rajn terrorists actively targeted both the current government officials as well as Americans.

  “Over those years,” Mitchell continued, “Hassan has proven able to slip through the best efforts of the Berzhaan military and the people we’ve managed to field there. We’ve had reason to believe that someone hacked into the Agency’s files regarding operations in Berzhaan.” He pursed his lips. “We’ve never been able to prove or disprove that.” He paused. “Until now.”

  From the corner of her eye, Sam saw the corners of Riley’s mouth turn downward. He was obviously displeased. An impending feeling of doom filled Sam. She’d learned to pay attention to feelings like that while she’d been bounced from house to house. The other shoe was about to drop.

  Mitchell set the video into motion again.

  Silently, though questions filled her, Sam watched the video. Hassan and the man the observer had been following disappeared into the curio shop. The video cut, picking up from inside the shop as Hassan and his companion entered through the door.

  “MI-6 knew where Hassan was going that day,” Mitchell said. “They had a man on the inside.”

  Hassan and the man passed through the shop and walked out into the alley.

  Another viewpoint change took place, and this time the man capturing the video was in one of the buildings overlooking the alley behind the shop. Hassan and his companion stood and waited.

  “The British team had been dogging their quarry’s movements for over a week,” Mitchell said. “They’d gotten a tip that Hassan was setting up an arms deal. They wanted to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar.”

  The camera angle shifted slightly, picking up the dirty white Toyota van that pulled into the alley. Two figures sat in the front seats behind the dirty glass. A moment later the van rocked to a stop in front of Hassan and his companion.

  “Watch closely,” Mitchell advised. “I don’t want you to miss this.” He watched Sam instead of the screen.

  Sam tried to ignore the CIA director’s attention. Her throat felt dry with dread.

  “Things move quickly here,” Mitchell said. “MI-6 was well set up for their observation. They’d been tipped off early enough to get their agents into play. However, they didn’t know the Kemenis had sat in on the game, too. Not until it was too late.”

  Onscreen, violence broke out. Bullets struck the van, shattering the windshield and striking the driver. The van lurched forward and rammed into the side of the building. Mortar and stone broke free and cascaded to the ground. Other bullets ripped holes along the van’s side. Hassan and his companion doubled back into the curio shop. The MI-6 observer leaned out from the window of the building.

  “Pay careful attention,” Mitchell said.

  The rear of the van opened and three people bolted out into the open. Two men and one woman, all carrying assault rifles, took up quick defensive positions around the van.

  “Here.” Mitchell tapped the keyboard. The camera view locked on the woman. Her face was in profile, her mouth slightly parted in surprise. She wore jeans, a white cotton blouse and a green nylon windbreaker that had to have been hot considering the temperature. She was raising the AK-47 Russian assault rifle she held to her shoulder. “Do you recognize her?”

  Sam stared at the woman. There was something familiar about her. The woman was lean and graceful, much smaller than her companions. Her skin was pale. The eye that was visible was ice-blue. A burnoose covered the top of her head, but a few blond hairs leaked around the side.

  “Do you recognize her?” Mitchell asked.

  “No,” Sam said. The picture wasn’t clear enough to make a positive identification.

  “Keep watching.” Mitchell tapped keys again.

  The digitalized video moved at a reduced speed, putting everything in slow motion. Sam would have sworn that she could see bullets cutting through the air before striking the van, the wall and the alley floor.

  On the screen, the woman pushed up and turned toward the camera. The empty magazine dropped free of the assault rifle as the woman tugged another one free from a shoulder bandolier beneath her robe. The folds of her robe jumped as bullets tore through the material. She moved so slowly that Sam felt certain the enemy fire was going to cut her down at any moment.

  Just as the woman’s face turned toward the MI-6 camera so that Sam could view the woman’s face fully, one of her companions got hit several times. The man jerked back, responding to the bullets that ripped into his flesh, standing as he forced himself up in what was going to be a last-ditch effort to get away. His body blocked the MI-6 operative’s view of the woman’s face.

  “Do you know who it is?” Mitchell asked.

  “No,” Sam said quietly. Don’t you mean, who she was? Sam felt certain that the woman couldn’t possibly have lived through the attack.

  Amazingly, the woman was still in motion. Bullets peppered the back of the van where she’d just been. She turned in slow motion, following the speed of Mitchell’s presentation. When she stepped out from behind her stricken companion, she was in profile again, presenting the other side of her face. Again Sam had the strange feeling that she knew the woman.

  Two Kemeni rebels raced from the other end of the alley. The woman fired deliberate three-round bursts at her attackers as she ran. Both Kemenis went down, tumbling like dervishes in slow motion.

  In the next instant, the camera view shifted, dropping and plunging toward the street. The camera tumbled end over end, only occasionally catching the woman as she advanced along the van’s side.

  “The cameraman was hit and killed,” Mitchell said in a quiet, conversational voice. “But the agent who followed Hassan and the unidentified man into the shop was in position by this time.”

  The view shifted, swinging around quickly to pick up the woman as she ran toward the front of the van. The other MI-6 agent’s plunge from the other building caught part of the frame. Sam felt sick to her stomach as the man’s body slammed against the alley floor. He fell, sprawled and didn’t move. Blood showed on the robes and burnoose he wore. He’d been hit several times.

  Onscreen, the woman caught hold of the door and yanked it open. The driver leaned across the steering wheel. From where the second MI-6 observer was, the view afforded showed the inside of the van. Calmly the woman reached inside, grabbed the dead man by the collar, and yanked him out. Bullets that searched for her caught the dead man, jerking his body with the impacts. As the man tumbled
to the ground, struck again and again by bullets, the woman stepped up into the cab. Her arm masked her face as she started the van and backed it up.

  More Kemeni rebels raced toward her. Rips appeared along the van’s front and cracks spiderwebbed the windshield.

  The woman drew a pistol and fired smoothly as she continued backing the van free of the wall. Her bullets chopped into the two men and spun them away. A rebel ran for the rear of the van.

  Sam felt sure she was about to see the woman gunned down by the surprise assailant.

  Incredibly, the woman braked the van and turned around in the seat as the rebel gained the open doors of the van. From the camera’s vantage point, Sam saw the woman turn around and point the pistol at the rebel hauling himself into the rear of the van. In the next instant, the rebel toppled back from the van with a bullet between his eyes.

  The rearview mirrors, Sam thought, impressed at the woman’s skill. That was how she had seen her attacker coming.

  One of the woman’s companions broke from cover and ran to the van. She waited till he reached her, then gunned the engine and rocketed through the alley. Just once, she looked through the driver’s side window to lift her pistol and fire again.

  Mitchell froze the image. His timing was impeccable, offering silent proof that he’d grown used to stopping the video in that spot.

  “Do you know who she is now?” Mitchell asked.

  Not believing what she was seeing, Sam stared into the woman’s face. The blond hair, the blue eyes and the features matched hers exactly.

  “No.” Sam barely forced the word through her clenched teeth. Although she didn’t know what was going on, she was certain that she was being set up.

  Silently Mitchell worked the keyboard. The image of the blond-haired woman separated from the rest of the violence and filled the left side of the screen. The right side of the screen was dark for only an instant, then another picture surfaced from a murky haze to fill it.

  Sam recognized her own CIA ID file picture on the right side of the screen. Although the woman’s head was turned at a slightly different angle than her own, Sam knew the resemblance was unmistakable.

  “That’s not me,” Sam insisted.

  Mitchell didn’t argue. He tapped more keys. The woman on the left turned as the digital reimaging program seized hold and turned her face to the same angle as the ID. In the next moment the two images shuddered, then slid into each other, overlapping so they were two layers deep.

  The mystery woman’s face slipped over Sam’s ID picture like a hand inside a glove.

  “That’s not me.” Sam’s voice was weaker than it had been. She knew the woman in the footage wasn’t her, but she had no explanation for what she witnessed. “This isn’t possible. There’s been some mistake. Someone is setting me up. The video is a fake.”

  “The video isn’t faked,” Mitchell said. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his index fingers. “I’ve had experts going over every second of this footage for the last fourteen days. Since the Munich assignment. The video is legitimate.”

  “It can’t be.”

  Mitchell let out a long sigh. “It is. How long have you been working with the Q’Rajn?”

  “I haven’t,” Sam answered. “And I won’t.”

  “Things would go easier on you if you confessed.”

  “How would they go easier?”

  “You could cut a deal. This thing is bigger than you. There are people who want to know who else is involved. We’ve got several operations involving Berzhaan that may be compromised. The Agency wants to know how exposed those agents and those operations are.” He paused. “I want to know.”

  Tight-lipped and scared, Sam said nothing. She knew there was nothing she could say in her defense.

  “St. John,” Mitchell prompted.

  “That’s not me,” Sam whispered, staring at the haunting pair of faces on the monitor. “When was this shot?”

  “This footage, according to MI-6,” Mitchell said, “was shot four months ago. In May.”

  “I wasn’t in Suwan in May,” Sam said. “I wasn’t even in Berzhaan.”

  “No,” Mitchell agreed. He pulled one of the folders from his desk and opened it. Sam’s picture was neatly clipped on the left side of the folder. “But you were in Prague. You could have been in Suwan long enough to manage this arms deal.”

  Sam remembered Prague. The assignment she’d been on involved a Chinese director working for Hollywood who worked for the Triads, the Chinese Mafia, and was coordinating arms buys for the rising Romanian criminal underground. With the economic boom Prague was experiencing by becoming a favorite hangout for the jetset and Hollywood moviemakers, a boom in criminal industry had naturally followed.

  Sam had interpreted several documents captured and stolen from the Romanian contingent. Her work, and that of the agents involved in the mission, had resulted in getting a clearer picture of the transportation of money and arms. As a result the fragile trust between the Chinese Triads and the Romanians had almost been dismantled.

  “You had a lot of downtime in Prague,” Mitchell commented. “You served in an advisory capacity. The agents there left you on your own a lot of the time.”

  That wasn’t exactly how it had been. Sam had been the newest addition to the team. The group had included only one other woman, and she was a field agent, not an expert sidelined to pushing papers. The group had spent a lot of their downtime with each other when they weren’t at post. And they had shut Sam out, relying on e-mail transmissions at times. Sometimes days had passed without human contact.

  “I. Never. Left.” Sam’s made her voice cold and hard.

  Mitchell regarded her blankly. “Unfortunately, you can’t prove that any more than I can.”

  “There were e-mail transmissions,” Sam pointed out.

  Mitchell riffed a stack of paper included in the folder. “I have them.”

  “I never missed a transmission. I was never not there for the team.”

  “No,” Mitchell commented. “No, you weren’t. But the e-mail transmissions don’t show where you were at the time you made your response. The Agency allowed that open window for you by assigning you a satellite phone and giving you access to a rolling IP address.”

  Sam couldn’t say anything. The rolling Internet Protocol address was SOP in the field, and standard operating procedure existed to protect operatives. Having an agent log on at the same IP address opened the whole mission up to attack if the address was traced.

  “I didn’t leave Prague,” Sam replied.

  “Can you prove that?”

  Sam met the director’s gaze boldly, but felt trapped and helpless. She didn’t speak. She couldn’t speak.

  Mitchell leaned back in his chair and kept his eyes locked on the double image on the monitor. “Neither can I.”

  Fear filled Sam. She controlled it only by using the same skills she’d learned long ago when she was helpless.

  “We’re both trapped by this, St. John,” Mitchell said in a dull voice. “I can’t prove that you’re guilty, and you can’t prove that you’re innocent.”

  “I haven’t asked for an attorney,” Sam said in a quiet voice, “but I’m asking for one now.”

  “Duly noted, St. John, but it won’t do you any good. Under the Homeland Security Act, the Agency can keep you sequestered here till Hell freezes over.”

  The sharp bite of tears burned the backs of Sam’s eyes. God, she hated feeling helpless. She’d had to feel that way so much of her life.

  “Even if the Agency were inclined to set you free or even use you as bait,” Mitchell said, “even if I were so inclined, no one can do that. MI-6 lost several agents over there the last few months. They attribute those losses to information leakage that could only have been gotten from the CIA.” He nodded at the monitor. “They think they have an answer. If you were set free, it would be like leading a lamb to the slaughter. Their agents are looking for their pound of flesh. They would find you event
ually, and they won’t settle for containing you.”

  Sam made herself breathe. Her heart thudded like a lead balloon.

  “However,” Mitchell continued as he shuffled papers on his desk, “it appears we have a new problem.”

  Sam focused on Mitchell. Anything that was a problem for him might be leverage she could use.

  “You know Josie Lockworth, a captain in the USAF,” Mitchell said.

  Josie. Mixed feelings warred within Sam. Rainy’s loss had come without warning. Josie was a pilot in the air force, and lately she’d been testing her own experimental plane design. Had something happened to Josie? Sam made herself go dead inside, choosing to feel no hope and no dread.

  “We went to school together,” Sam answered.

  “It seems several of your classmates are curious about why you didn’t put in an appearance at the funeral of your mutual friend. Josie, who wasn’t there, either, has taken it upon herself to track you down for the group.”

  Sam didn’t respond. If Josie was trying to find her, it meant Josie was all right.

  “Did you know that her grandfather was once a CIA director?”

  Sam waited. She had known that, but she’d gotten into the Agency on her own merits. Although Josie had offered her grandfather’s intercession, Sam hadn’t wanted any help.

  “Joseph Lockworth remains highly thought of,” Mitchell stated. “He’s still got the ear of several politicians.”

  Standing at ease in front of Mitchell’s desk, Sam kept calm. She knew Mitchell was waiting for her to speak, to ask questions or to claim some kind of triumph.

  “Captain Lockworth insists on speaking to you,” Mitchell said. “She wants to make certain you know about your friend’s death. And she wants to make certain you’re all right.”

  Sam thought that was curious. Why would Josie think anything was wrong with her? It was one thing to wonder why Sam hadn’t been at Rainy’s funeral, but directly calling the CIA seemed like overkill.

  “I’ve put the captain off as long as possible,” Mitchell said. “She’s asked her grandfather to intervene. I’m starting to get some pressure from the White House.”