Athena Force: Books 1-6

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

“I’m trying to find out who’s setting up my government regarding the arms shipments the Kemenis are receiving,” Riley said.

  “I was assigned to find proof that the Americans were supplying those weapons.”

  “I know.”

  Elle sipped a breath. “I also know that the CIA is not responsible for those shipments.”

  Riley waited.

  “There is a man,” Elle said, “a very dangerous man named Lee Craig who is involved in those shipments.”

  “I don’t know who he is,” Riley admitted.

  “Tch.” Elle shook her head slightly. “Then there is much you don’t know.” She ejected the pistol’s magazine, popped the round in the chamber out, and left the slide open. “You have put my double in with Ivanovitch?”

  Riley took the pistol. “Yes.”

  “Then she is in much danger,” Elle said. “If Ivanovitch does not find out that she isn’t who she says she is, then Lee Craig will kill her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lee Craig knows that I am not what I seem,” Elle said. “I was undercover with Ivanovitch. He represents the interests of certain crime families in Russia—the Mafiya—and is here dealing with Lee Craig and his associates on their behalf. The Mafiya and the concerns Lee Craig represents are trying to go into business together.”

  “If you’re telling the truth,” Riley said, “then I’ve really underestimated you.”

  “When you intercepted me, I had found out from my control that Lee Craig had penetrated my cover story. Perhaps he has even told Ivanovitch. One of my contacts was killed. He didn’t die quickly or peacefully. I was warned only minutes before you tried to take me down in the alley. I thought you were Lee Craig’s people.”

  Riley cursed. “Sam’s with Ivanovitch now.”

  “If she is not already dead,” Elle said, “then Ivanovitch will kill her when he finds out I have betrayed him. Perhaps he will save her for Lee Craig. Lee Craig lives to murder people.”

  “Who is he? The way you talk about him, I feel like we should know him.”

  “Perhaps you know him by his other name. He’s also called the Cipher. He’s an assassin.”

  Riley felt as if the floor had opened up beneath him. If Sam wasn’t already dead, then she might as well have been. And it was his fault.

  “Are you doing all right?”

  Seated in a chair in the kitchen area, Sam stared into Ivanovitch’s dark eyes. “Yeth,” she said, because it was hard to talk with her lip numb and him holding on to it while he stitched the cut closed. He was on the fourth stitch, taking time to make them small and neat. The anesthetic took away all the pain but she felt the pulling and the pressure.

  “One more stitch and I’ll be finished.” Ivanovitch was as good as his word. He finished the final stitch, gazed at her lip to admire his handiwork, and released her. “There. Good as new.” He grinned. “Are you surprised?”

  Sam tentatively touched her lip. “Yeth.” Having her lip released didn’t completely fix the speech impediment. With the anesthetic in her lip, the flesh was even more puffy and unwieldy than before.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised.” Ivanovitch picked up his glass and drained his drink. “I’m a man of many talents.”

  Sam glanced at the watch on her wrist. “We’re running out of time.”

  Ivanovitch nodded. “Yes. We are. But I have a feeling the people we’re meeting are going to be willing to be patient a little longer. I think they’re going to be surprised to see you.” He put his empty glass to one side. “Get your things and we’ll go.”

  Sam walked to the bedroom and got her bag. She didn’t know if the SEAL team had heard the conversation. Returning to the kitchen area, she asked, “Has the meeting place been changed?”

  “Yes,” Ivanovitch told her. He adjusted his jacket, hiding the twin pistols once more.

  Just yes? Sam felt frustrated. She knew better than to ask a question that could be answered so conveniently.

  “Let’s go,” Ivanovitch said, opening the door.

  Sam stepped out into the hallway. Two men stood there waiting on her and Ivanovitch. The SVR colonel took the lead, walking toward the bank of elevators down the hall. He took out a satellite phone and had a quick conversation that she couldn’t hear. When he finished, he was smiling.

  “It appears the American CIA is foolishly trying to follow us around again,” he said. “Perhaps even more, they may be trying to intercept us. Like the agent we encountered a few days ago, remember?”

  Sam thought furiously, remembering that Riley had told her how Ivanovitch had gotten the upper hand on him while he’d been looking for her double. She nodded and regretted the action immediately.

  “I remember,” she said.

  “Your head pains you?”

  “Very much.”

  “Only a little longer.” Ivanovitch pressed the elevator buttons. “Then you’ll be able to rest all you want.”

  Sam stood as the elevator dropped smoothly. Evidently Ivanovitch had a specially coded keycard because the elevator cage dropped without interruption, not stopping till it reached the basement. The doors opened and revealed the underground parking garage.

  “I thought you had a car out front,” Sam said.

  “I do. But that car is merely bait. The CIA agents were spotted before my arrival.”

  Sam didn’t think that was true. She’d seen Commander Novak’s men in action; they didn’t make mistakes. Of course, Riley had insisted on deep security for her. It was possible they had been seen.

  Ivanovitch led the way to a Russian sedan. Situated as close to Russia as the country was, Berzhaan had a number of Russian vehicles. The sedan would be almost invisible out on the streets of Suwan.

  When Ivanovitch opened the door to the rear seat, she hesitated. She was about to disappear off the SEALs’ radar and she knew it. No one was stationed down in the underground parking garage, and the heavily tinted windows and the lateness of the hour would guarantee that no one would see her inside.

  “Elle,” Ivanovitch prompted. He gazed at her, one hand idly touching his shirt front.

  “A moment of dizziness, that’s all,” Sam said. She climbed inside the sedan and slid across the seat.

  Ivanovitch got in after her and closed the door. The driver put the vehicle into motion at once and they slid through the electric dawn of the underground parking garage and out onto the dimly lighted streets.

  Riley stood watching the computer monitor over Chief Marshall’s shoulder. Elle Petrenko stood at his side. Despite her obvious injuries and the fact that she’d been heavily drugged, she was surprisingly alert and capable.

  On the monitor, Commander Novak led his team through the switchback stairs that made up the hotel’s emergency escape routes. Every man of the team had a small video camera built into the baseball caps they wore. The caps not only served to carry the video equipment, but also to provide instant identification for the team. The video units connected to belt battery packs and sending units.

  All of the SEALs carried pistols and knives. Assault rifles inside the hotel hadn’t been possible.

  “St. John’s first language was Russian?” Elle asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Riley replied. He knew the woman was struggling with the information they had received from Mitchell.

  “Do you think she is my sister?”

  Despite the tension of the moment, Riley looked over his shoulder at the woman. Even though she projected a tough exterior, he knew she was hurting and confused inside. How the hell do you react to something like this? he wondered. Then he realized that Sam didn’t yet know.

  “I don’t know,” Riley answered. “But I know there’s no way the two of you can look so much alike without some kind of family connection. You’d have to get DNA testing to confirm it.”

  On the monitor, Novak and his team had reached the floor Sam’s borrowed room was on. They paused at the door, then Novak waved his point man through.

  “I was
told she was dead,” Elle said. “My adoptive parents told me all of my family was dead. I had pictures of them, but that was all. Not even memories.” She paused. “At least, I didn’t have memories until I saw St. John.”

  “That triggered memories?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know. Not at the moment. But later, when I was drugged, I dreamed of playing with a little girl who looked exactly like me. That was before I knew that no cosmetic surgery was involved in St. John’s features. I thought she was just a double the CIA had created, though why they would go to such lengths, I had no idea.”

  “She doesn’t remember you, either,” Riley said. “But seeing you troubled her.”

  “If I had known that my parents’ attempt to get us out of the country had worked, at least halfway, I would have gone to her,” Elle said. “I believed her to be dead. All my life I have felt that half of me was missing. Did St. John ever mention anything like that?”

  “No.”

  A vague look of disappointment touched Elle’s face but it quickly vanished.

  “You knew you were a twin,” Riley said. “Sam didn’t. She still doesn’t. Seeing you has raised some questions for her, but she’s a professional.” He knew that was true now because he’d seen her in action. Maybe she was still green in some areas, but she was learning quickly. “Once we closed out this mission, I’ve no doubt that she would have investigated you.”

  “Does she have a family?”

  Riley watched as the SEALs closed on the hotel room. Thankfully, no other guests or hotel staff were out. “Sam was raised in foster care.”

  “She was never adopted?”

  “No. She never had a family.”

  Elle was quiet for a moment. “That is sad.”

  “Yeah,” Riley agreed, thinking about his own large family.

  On the monitor one of the SEALs shoved a silenced pistol at the lock. No one had seen Ivanovitch or Sam or one of his men come through the lobby. If the Russians were still inside the room, things were going to get bloody. Riley only hoped the SEALs had arrived in time.

  The SEAL squeezed the trigger. The pistol jumped in his fist. Sparks left from the metal plate as the lock disintegrated under the assault of two more shots. The audio dampened the dulled thumps of the silenced pistol, the shattering metal and the splintering wood.

  Then the SEALs kicked the door open wide and barreled through. They went left and right, splitting up into designated groups. Their voices came clear and quick as they secured each room in the suite.

  Novak came on the line less than twenty seconds later. “They’re gone. She’s not here.” He ordered his team out of the suite.

  A cold chill seized Riley’s heart as the statement sank in. We’ve lost her.

  Chapter 16

  Sam stared out at the rolling black expanse of the Caspian Sea east of Berzhaan. White curlers rode the tide into the expanse of sand and rock that barely supported the gnarled trees and scrub bushes along the coastline. Suwan butted up against the sea, spilling old and new docks and pilings out into the water.

  A number of fishing boats sat at anchor with their sails furled. Powerboats and a few pleasure craft, mostly belonging to business executives and successful entrepreneurs, shared harbor space with freighters carrying oil, industrial goods and cargoes of food.

  From her previous missions into Berzhaan, Sam knew that the Caspian Sea was misnamed. The body of water was actually the world’s largest lake. The surface was ninety feet below sea level, and was reportedly shrinking every year. Much of the water was dependent on the flow from the Volga River, which accounted for three-fourths of the water supply, but the many dams built of late along the Volga had been steadily shutting the water flow down. The Caspian was literally drying out.

  The driver turned and followed the gradual descent of the street from Suwan’s downtown district to the docks. Suwan was constructed on a large, rolling hill.

  Sam felt certain that none of the SEALs had followed them from the hotel. She’d tried to be circumspect in her interest, and felt certain she’d succeeded but she’d seen no sign of Novak’s team. Also, she didn’t know if the transmitter concealed in the bag worked clearly enough to record her voice and send it.

  “What’s wrong?” Ivanovitch asked.

  “Headache,” Sam answered. “Changing from the darkness to the lights out here isn’t a pleasant experience. Also, some of the feeling is returning to my lip.” That was true enough, as well. Her eyes ached with the intensity of the lights, and her lip felt like a bee had stung it. When her tongue explored the stitches, they felt rough and alien.

  “I thought, just for a moment, that you looked…nervous.”

  Sam studied the SVR colonel in the corner of the back seat. Ivanovitch sat like a pampered cat, content and full of himself.

  “We’re doing this now,” she said, “when I’m not at my best. I know I’m not at my best.”

  “I have every confidence.”

  That’s not what you said earlier, Sam thought. But she sat quietly.

  The driver evidently knew where he was going. Once he arrived at the docks, he wound through the shipping-and-receiving warehouses and parked at a dock where a sleek motor sailer was tied up. Sam didn’t miss the six men stationed around the dock area in obvious security positions.

  “And now,” Ivanovitch said, “we do business. Come along.” He got out of the car.

  Sam got out on her side and joined the SVR colonel. She fisted the MR-443 Grach 9mm pistol her double had carried in her bag earlier but hadn’t been able to get to.

  “Go easy,” Ivanovitch advised.

  “He is dangerous,” Sam reminded.

  “I know.”

  Sam continued walking at Ivanovitch’s side until they reached the dock where the motor sailer was tied up. A man stepped out of the shadows aboard the boat and stood waiting. He wore a black turtleneck, a black windbreaker and black trousers, looking like he was a shadow that had stepped out of the darkness. Even though he was wearing a black watch cap against the chill that came in with the tide, Sam recognized him at once.

  He was the man she had tentatively identified as the Cipher in the pictures from Turkey. Her heart thundered and blood pulsed in her ears. This was the man who had killed Rainy. Her fist tightened around the pistol in the bag. She thought about killing him, but she didn’t think she could do it. Not in cold blood. She remembered what it had felt like to shoot a man when she was in Munich, the guilt that had been attached even though she’d done it to save her own life. That was the only way she’d thought she would do that again. She wasn’t a murderer.

  Wait, she advised herself. The Cipher is a hired gun. Someone else wanted Rainy dead. This guy just cashed the check. She made herself breathe out. You want whoever hired him. Not just him.

  “Come aboard,” the Cipher called in English.

  “Thank you.” Ivanovitch stepped into the boat’s bow. Sam followed him, feeling her footing go soft and mushy and uncertain.

  The Cipher glanced at Sam, studying her briefly, then apparently dismissed her. She stood behind and to Ivanovitch’s right, leaving herself a clear field of fire.

  “You have my weapons?” the Cipher asked.

  “Of course,” Ivanovitch said. “Do you have my payment?”

  The Cipher grinned. He led them down into the motor sailer’s living quarters belowdecks. The quarters were spacious and expensive but didn’t look lived in. The boat wasn’t a place where the Cipher spent a lot of time; it was just a borrowed place to conduct business.

  Sam found herself staring at the man, feeling herself get tighter and tighter inside. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the Cipher.

  He turned on her. “Do you have a problem with me, miss?”

  “No,” Sam said.

  “You’re watching me rather closely.”

  “I was told to. Colonel Ivanovitch says you’re a dangerous man.”

  The Cipher grinned. “You mean, he acknowledges that I am a dan
gerous man.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I’m flattered,” the Cipher said. He turned his attention back to Ivanovitch and snapped his fingers.

  One of the men who had followed them belowdecks stepped forward with a briefcase. He put the briefcase on a large table in the galley and opened the locks. Inside, the briefcase was filled with diamonds, a sparkling deluge of them.

  “Some of South Africa’s finest,” the Cipher stated with a trace of pride.

  Ivanovitch ran his hand through the glittering gems. The facets caught the light as they trickled through his fingers.

  “All right,” Ivanovitch said. “I’ll take you to your weapons now.”

  They returned to the motor sailer’s deck. Ivanovitch asked to pilot the boat and took over the controls. The engines started smoothly and he pulled the craft out into the water.

  Sam stood at Ivanovitch’s side, but she scanned the coastline and harbor for any sign of Riley McLane or the SEALs. She saw none of them.

  “Are you all right?” Ivanovitch asked over the sound of the wind and the dulled roar of the engines.

  “Yes,” Sam said, but she felt sick. The anesthetic had completely worn off. Her whole face hurt, but the pain seemed localized in her lower lip.

  “It won’t be much longer,” Ivanovitch promised.

  Sam nodded. She kept hold of the Grach 9mm inside the bag. If the transmitter in the bag didn’t work, there was always the pistol.

  Riley sat in the back of the sedan and talked with Mitchell in an effort to secure another CIA team that was on the ground in the city. The agents operated within a skeletal framework, gathering information instead of responding to threats. Military security at the American Embassy took care of open threats, and getting them out into the operation to recover Sam St. John would leave the embassy exposed to the Q’Rajn terrorists. Sam had the only fireteam in-city. As it turned out, even a few of the CIA agents were impossible to reach.

  Mitchell couldn’t say how long those agents had been offline because they had random contact times. They were supposed to be so deep in the city’s infrastructure that they were invisible.