The only human noises were from the open door.
Ten cells. One drowned, the dead Arab woman and Chinese guy, there should be six more.
There were four.
No loss.
She didn’t need them, but they might be useful cannon fodder.
“Let’s go!”
Zaslon operative Elayne Kasprak didn’t wait to see if they followed. She was out of her cell. From here on, the rest of it had to be easier. In fact, the next piece of her trap should be springing soon.
That would be something to see.
To watch them writhe in person?
Oh! Maybe it was good that Harper had survived.
Now Elayne could take care of that bitch herself.
Maybe she’d find that Mike Munroe and fuck him right in front of Harper first.
Fuck him to death.
So sweet!
She licked the salt taste from her lips, almost the taste of blood.
She dodged into the thick trees.
After a year locked in a virgin’s cell, she couldn’t wait!
34
They’d been wheels-down in Tennant Creek at seven p.m. It had been full dark as the sun had set half an hour before. Holly wasn’t even functional as Quint had thanked Eli, got her down the steps, and walked her over to his truck.
The jet, after taking on just enough fuel to get back to Sydney, was aloft before he’d driven out of the parking lot.
Their conversation had been short.
“You have somewhere to stay?”
“My parents’ place is empty.” She hadn’t turned to look at him.
He’d made an executive decision, driven to the duplex he’d bought for himself and his parents, then dumped her in his bed. Turning for the living room, he thanked God he’d bought a comfortable couch for watching the games on the telly when he was home.
In the morning, the sun blasted him awake because he’d forgotten to close the curtains on the living room window. He made it to the bathroom before he missed her.
The bed was shipshape, military neat, and squared away.
“You did not skip out on me, Holly Harper.”
No. Her gear bag was still propped up by the side of his dresser.
He dressed, hurried out to the car, and went looking.
She wasn’t hard to find.
The Harper place lay on a chunk of dirt track out at the far end of Standley Street. Out past the power and water station at the southwest corner of town.
The house was the last of four at the end of the track. It faced the achingly dry sand and scrub of the Red Centre—so barren it made the Barkly Tablelands to the east appear as lush as the American prairie. The next civilization larger than a wandering indigenous family was Perth out on the west coast—over two thousand kilometers across the Gibson and Great Victoria deserts.
The wide roof overhangs to shield the house from the Outback sun sagged like unhappy frowns off each porch post. Two sections of wall had been painted a bright blue too many decades before, the rest were an orange so sun-bleached that they were more gray than faded yellow.
Her dad’s tractor truck may have died on the highway when he did, but the yard was strewn with old fenders, giant worn tires, and a ratted-out ancient Datsun Bluebird coupe. Cars didn’t rust in the Outback, but this one would be in better condition if it had. With the nearest big towns five hundred kilometers in one direction and a thousand in the other, the years had been hard on the old rattletrap.
As a kid, he’d never understood what the Harper place was really like the few times he’d seen it. Not that Holly or Stevie ever invited anyone over, but he’d shown up now and then to hang with Holly, and she hadn’t chased him off.
Since she’d died (or rather left), he’d done his best to never even drive by the turn onto the dirt track.
The door was open, which didn’t mean much out here. There were still indigenous who removed all the doors the day they moved in because they didn’t like the trapped feeling of being indoors.
He parked on the red sand and climbed out of his truck. The only sound was the steady grind of the gas-fired generators at the nearby power station, and the only movement was a pair of buzzards high on the wind.
Without warning, a noisy crowd of red-tailed black cockatoos swarmed the dead white gum tree at the center of the yard. For a brief instant, the tree was alive with a hundred or more black, foot-tall “leaves” all chattering at one another. Then, with a brief flash of the crimson stripes on their tails, the whole flock of parrots swarmed aloft and the dusty yard was once again plunged back into silence.
“Holl?” he called out as he stepped onto the porch and into the shady interior. The morning sunlight was still low enough to shine inside, but it only showed how bad the place was. If there’d been more belongings, it would have been a mess. Instead it was more barren than cluttered. Even the dust motes caught in the light seemed lifeless. As if no one really lived here, or ever had.
He found her sitting on the back stoop and staring at the yard. There was an old fence that rimmed about half of it; the other half lay in the dirt.
“See the beans and tomatoes. Peas climbing up the poles there. Green peppers, eggplant…” Her voice sounded drifty.
All he saw was the parched, sandy soil and a few stray sticks of wood.
“My brother and I planted this together. Fed the whole family from this garden on most days.”
“Looks like you did what you could.”
“I guess.”
He sat in silence with her, flapping a hand to keep the flies off his face. She was barely even doing that.
The times they’d gone into the bush together swam back over him.
A double handful of the indigenous kids—it was still okay to call them “aborigines” or “abos” back then—Holly, Stevie, and himself would go out into the deep Barkly Tablelands on most weekends. Often for a week or more during vacations. Sometimes they’d be figuring out bush tucker, or hunting up the odd snake or lizard for cooking, but other times they’d just all sit quiet with their own thoughts until someone had something to say.
“I miss those times.”
“Which ones?” Holly didn’t look over at him.
“The quiet ones. I get all wrapped up in the pilot world. Always busy. Always a schedule. Layover in one city or another. Checking out the bars. You know.”
“And the women.”
Quint shrugged. It wasn’t worth denying. “But then I come back here and I remember.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
He didn’t have a convenient answer to that.
“I went by the churchyard cemetery, but I couldn’t find them.”
“They’re out at the old cemetery, south of town. I’ll drive you, if you’re done here.”
She didn’t even look around. “I’m so done here.”
“Want anything from inside?”
She held up a square-headed Ford truck key.
“Stevie’s?”
She nodded.
Christ! The truck that had been washed away by the same flood that took her brother’s life. He should grab it and throw it out into the dust where she’d never find it.
“Anything else?”
“Not on your life!” She actually shuddered before pushing to her feet, then circled wide through the yard as if even getting near the house hurt her.
35
The old Tennant Creek cemetery lay two kilometers south of town along the Stuart. Or it had when Holly left. Now the town had expanded most of the way here on the Tennant Creek side of the track. The gully beyond the cemetery would occasionally have some flow during the Wet season, but it was the Dry now.
The graveyard’s red sand surface was broken up with thin clumps of gray-brown Mitchell grass and wide-scattered Mulga acacia trees. Their leaves were red-dusted to such a pale green that it was a wonder they could use the sun at all. It would still be another three months before there was a chance of a December rain rinsi
ng them clean.
Holly let Quint lead her out among the gravestones. She felt as if she was merely floating along, disconnected from anything that could possibly be real.
The Holly Harper who had left here at the age of sixteen—exactly half a lifetime ago—had been a wild, angry, and impetuous girl. After years of pushing her younger self away, at the house Holly had been able to see her so clearly. Laughing with her brother. Tending her garden. Watching Mum drink and Dad sit in silence, watching the telly between runs, never knowing it was anger that was eating her alive.
Quint led her past the grand crosses and imported black gravestones.
Past the simple white headstones.
In the back corner, the grave markers were foot-high chunks of concrete with a brass plaque glued to the surface. Out here, that could last a thousand years. Far more permanence than any Harper deserved.
Mum and Dad shared a marker, nothing but their birth and death years. Not even “Husband and Wife.” It was fresh and shiny, barely dusted at all.
With an odd hesitation, Quint pointed at the next marker. There was a small pot of wilted flowers close beside it.
She read the plaque.
Holly had to read it out loud to make sense of it.
“Stevie and Holly Harper. Brother and sister. Died 2004.”
No birth dates.
No—
“What the fuck?”
“This,” Quint spoke softly, “is why I thought you were dead.”
“My parents buried me?”
Quint nodded.
“Your flowers?”
“Your birthday last week.”
It had been.
She’d never mentioned it to anyone, not even Mike. Her sixteenth birthday had been a big day. Stevie had taken her in personally to get her learner’s permit. It also marked three months until she killed her brother by drowning him in his pickup truck during the wet season.
Not a date she was much interested in remembering.
The pressure started building all over again.
The horror of finding Stevie’s body.
The fight—that final long, horrid, drunken (on her mom’s part) brawl.
First the screaming match.
Then the words that could never be taken back on either side.
Finally, they had battled up and down the length of the house. Throwing accusations—and whatever else came to hand.
It was the only time Mum had ever done more than give Holly a slap of admonition.
Holly had never seen the fist coming.
The massive nosebleed stain had marked the biggest change ever in her life. How appropriate that blood marked the day she lost all illusions. The same rug still lay there this morning—as soiled as ever.
The stain should have been there.
Instead? Gone, as if it had never happened.
As if she’d never existed.
The only thing in the entire place that showed she’d ever been there were the remains of the dead veggie patch.
After the fist to the face, she’d bought herself a moment to recover by kicking Mum in the crotch so hard that it blasted through even her drunken haze.
It had taken under a minute to staunch the flow of blood from her nose.
Another minute to pack.
Then she’d been gone while Mum was still curled up in fetal position.
Dad had done absolutely nothing. He just sat in his chair and watched them with a long neck of XXXX Gold brew in his hand as if they were just a show on the telly.
And now Mum was dead.
Holly needed to either laugh or cry as she stood over her own grave.
But she couldn’t find it in her to do either one. Not even when Quint slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into a hard hug.
36
Clarissa stared at her phone.
She needed to make the call, but she didn’t dare. It didn’t matter that she was the Director of the CIA and her husband was the Vice President. Holly wasn’t the sort of person to care about position when seeking revenge.
But an entire night of hounding her hacker twins hadn’t erased the truth. Neither had an entire day of cyber-searching by the on-site teams revealed the first link in the chain, even though she knew where it must be. There was no way through the firewall of the Diego Garcia Black Site.
And yet, there was no other answer.
Someone had found a way.
And of the ten “guests” incarcerated there, only one had any connection to Holly Harper.
The origin of the attack had to be Guest Seven, the Zaslon operative Holly had caught and the CIA had incarcerated at the Diego Garcia Black Site.
Zaslon were Russia’s version of her own Special Operations Group. They used them to poison defectors and opposition leaders. Assassination of counteragents, theft of secrets, and anything else that required the stalk-kill-vanish trifecta. If it was a mission for which a president needed plausible deniability: Zaslon, the SOG, Israel’s Kidon, France’s Action Service, the UK’s E Squadron…
There was an entire clandestine global war that was mentioned only when a mission went wrong. A war carried out by tiny elite cadres—numbering no more than a hundred or so in any country—in contravention of every legal accord.
And Holly had actually captured a Zaslon operative, without ever revealing how.
Though now that she had the reports from Kurt Grice, she could guess.
The SOG team sent to Johnston Atoll had been less than forthcoming. In fact, the leader had made it clear to Kurt that his life now had only one mission…the eradication of Holly Harper.
While Clarissa could think of worse things to happen, she couldn’t have someone going rogue.
She’d authorized Kurt to proceed with the leader of the SOG squad as he saw fit. It really was a pity that the SOG team leader of the Johnston Atoll cleanup mission had become so upset during his debriefing that he’d died of a heart attack. One induced by what method, Clarissa would never know. She appreciated the plausible deniability that Kurt had afforded her.
If the rest of the team had any suspicions, none of them had seemed terribly upset by it. He’d been very efficient but he hadn’t exactly won himself a lot of friends inside the SOG operations teams.
No, the useful report of the events on Johnston Atoll had come from the Air Force crew of the C-17 Globemaster III. Miranda’s three warriors had taken down six of her agents in mere seconds, using such a simple tool: distraction.
Holly must have done something similar to capture the female Zaslon operative originally. Or maybe not. Clarissa had seen what a battered mess Holly’s team was afterward that capture. One Special Operations Forces warrior was even hospitalized for over a month. It didn’t matter how, she’d done it.
The deal had been simple. Clarissa could do anything she wanted with the intelligence asset that a Zaslon operative could be, but she must never be allowed to touch the outside world again in any way.
Clarissa had even been careful not to learn the Russian woman’s name. She was simply Guest Seven.
Yet they’d gotten to know each other in the long phone calls. They were remarkably similar. She had a ruthless edge that Clarissa recognized in herself. In a different world they could have been friends, coworkers, collaborators. They could have helped each other.
But this wasn’t that world.
The Russian Zaslon operative and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The distance was too great.
But her one guarantee to Holly of Guest Seven’s permanent isolation had failed.
She’d somehow orchestrated the downing of the Airbus plane—and put the blame for the cover-up orders directly on Clarissa’s desk.
Yet it was impossible for her to have issued the order to mobilize the SOG clean-up operation. That had still come from one of her directors.
Holly was going to be beyond pissed. For that, she just might follow through on her threat to hunt down Clarissa and make
her pay.
She should have erased Guest Seven when she had the chance.
But that chance was gone. And she’d lost half of her assets on Diego Garcia just during the escape.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Clarissa dialed the phone.
It rang for a long time.
37
“What the fuck do you want?” Holly answered after breaking from Quint’s embrace when she saw who was calling.
“I have a problem.”
“Good!” Holly hung up the phone just because it felt good. Something had to on a suck-ass day like this.
It rang almost immediately.
“What? You having a bad hair day, Clarissa?”
“I need your goddamn help,” the snarl behind the words said she’d struck home. Clarissa was very particular about her long blonde ponytail.
“I’d rather have a sharp poke in the eye.” Of course, staring down at her own grave was doing a depressingly superb job of that.
“It’s important.”
“Not to me. Not right now.” What she wanted to do most was go get bloody lost in the bush until she woke up as somebody else or the world ended—whichever came second. Just her and a sharp knife, and she’d be fine. Surviving out there only took experience and a certain bloody-mindedness; today she had the latter in boatloads.
“What the hell, Harper? You know that it’s a major problem if I’m calling you.”
She did. “Still don’t care.”
“Jesus. Who rammed a stick up your butt? Your parents?”
“They’re dead.” Holly felt even less like talking after that came out.
“Good thing or bad thing?”
“Fuck you, Clarissa.” And there was the problem. It was a good thing, and Holly hated that she felt that way as she stood staring down at their graves.
“I had one and one,” Clarissa’s tone was suddenly soft. “The day Mom died was the single worst day of my life. The night I executed my father was the best.”
Holly kept her mouth shut. For Clarissa to admit that casually seemed unlikely.
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