Hit Hard

by Amy J. Fetzer

  “Why wouldn’t they?” The people they were dealing with wouldn’t care, Sam thought. They were selling stones for lower cash value than they’d get in a jeweler’s market.

  “Quality and size versus more stones. Though no good jeweler would ever let diamond dust go down the drain. They sell every aspect of a cut, some made into the blades they use, drill bits for granite.”

  “I’ve checked out diamond-cutting equipment, but it’s a commodity here like the gems,” Logan said. “Lots of new and used, refurbished, impossible to trace.” He mentioned the article about the diamond cutter kidnapping in Sri Lanka.

  She ate, listening to them talk about the stone and their mission, trying to pick up on the acronyms they tossed around. “What weapons have been stolen lately?” She speared chicken, the fork poised at her mouth.

  The men scoffed. “The sixty-four-dollar question. Arms dealing is big business, aside from the countries, not our allies, who’ll sell them on a regular basis.”

  “Then who’s the richest bad guy you know?”

  The room was quiet and she looked up. They were frowning at her again. “Well, you said yourselves that whoever is in charge wants only uncut diamonds. Which is black market, dangerous, and a passion to him. To risk everything with conflict diamonds, he’s got to have a lot of power and pull.”

  Sam thought of the plane getting off the ground without notice, that they were one step behind finding anything tangible.

  “You’ve got my attention, Viva, keep going,” Max said, leaning his forearms on the table.

  “You, Dragon One—cool name, by the way—know weapons. This Rohki guy, what’s he dealt with before?”

  “Rifles, bomb materials, mortars, RPG’s. Rocket propelled grenades,” Max clarified.

  “Scary to me, not him, right? Sam nodded. “Was Ryzikov dealing with the same kind of weapons?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Must be something not only dangerous, but different. So much that a single leak would alert the authorities as to who has it.”

  “That takes out rifles and mortars.”

  “Christ, ballistic missiles again?” Sebastian groused.

  “The dead man in the jungle, your snitch cut up, the video feed from Ryzikov’s hotel.” Sam noticed her fingers tighten on her fork before she said, “This bad guy is careful to the point of paranoia.”

  Sam thought of Dahl and the extremes they went to, to get him to fly the jet.

  “Cutting the stone isn’t important. He wants them uncut for a reason,” she said. “But you’re still back to square one, sorry.”

  Sam watched her chow down like a marine at boot camp. “When was the last time you had food, Viva?”

  She looked up, chewing, then swallowing. “Sorry, I must look like a Viking. This is great, Sebastian, and other than a sandwich on the river market, and some toast in the hotel, my last decent meal was at the dig.”

  Looking concerned, Sam held up three fingers and Logan left the table. He was back in a few minutes with a syringe and stood near Viva’s chair.

  “I’m packing away the protein and carbs,” she said in protest. Logan simply waited. She sighed and rolled up her sleeve, their protectiveness touching. He swabbed, then injected her with some vitamin concoction. “Pretty great that you have your own doctor. Everyone want to show me their scars?” She wiggled her brows. “Chicks love scars.” They laughed, and she went back to eating up a storm.

  When Logan didn’t return, Sam stretched a look into the living room. He was staring at a computer screen and didn’t look happy. “Logan?”

  “We have the fingerprints.”

  “Who’s the bastard that shot at me?”

  Logan rubbed his mouth and met his gaze. “Sitting next to you.”

  Thirteen

  Sam turned his head slowly. Viva was eating, oblivious. “That’s impossible.” He shot out of the chair, coming to Logan.

  Logan gestured to the screen. “Young and Goth, but it’s her. Maybe sixteen, seventeen.”

  Viva felt the sudden silence and looked up from her meal. She was alone and left the table, hunting them out in the living room. All four were entranced by the screen.

  “That’s got to be wrong,” Max said as Viva approached.

  “No, it’s not,” Viva said, and they turned. “I was really hoping it was all a nightmare, my imagination. I guess not.” She shrugged.

  They waited for an explanation. She wished she had a good one, but she didn’t.

  “I was on the roof, I don’t know how. One minute I’d finally fallen asleep, the next I was kneeling on a rooftop with that.” She pointed to the rifle propped against the wall.

  “Do you even know what it is?”

  “A Dragunov SVD, Russian, gas powered, semi automatic.” She picked it up. “PSO-1 with infrared resolution detection capability. Whatever that means. Range of four to five hundred yards, max rate of fire, thirty rounds per minute.” She checked the load and shot the bolt home.

  They just stared, dumbfounded.

  Viva held out the nine-pound rifle and Sam took it. “Don’t all talk at once.” She moved to the computer. “The records are sealed. Stole a car when I was seventeen, a joyride, a dare.” She stared at her face on the screen, remembering she’d done that look to piss off her father. “That’s a really awful picture, huh?”

  “Viva!” She met his gaze and Sam saw it, the confusion, and sudden helplessness.

  She looked at each man, felt a little cornered. “I don’t remember. I swear it.”

  “How can you fire a sniper rifle and not remember?” Sam asked.

  She reeled back. “Fired! I fired it?”

  “At me, dammit!”

  She crumbled. Right before his eyes, she fell apart in little jagged pieces and Sam instantly regretted his tone. He reached, pulling her into his embrace, swept his hand down the back of her head. She trembled against him, and gripped him like a lifeline.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. Hi there, nice night, catch a bullet lately? I couldn’t tell what was real or a dream.”

  “I believe you, I do.” Over her head he looked at Logan, begging him to help her.

  “Viva, let me check you out.”

  She turned in Sam’s arms, unwilling to give up the comfort and safety. “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything, everything.”

  Fear sparked her eyes and Sam rubbed her arms. “We need to know how you got on that roof and why.”

  “So would I. Lead the way.”

  Logan grabbed a black duffel and as they disappeared toward the other rooms, Sam turned to the screen. Match flashed at the bottom in red. Someone set her up, left that rifle for her. Why her? She was the least skilled at weapons. He remembered her tumble off the roof, the chase. Her strange behavior at the hotel. Did she even know what she’d done then?

  He waited for Logan to examine her, a thousand questions racing through his mind and when Logan finally appeared a half hour later, Viva behind him, his gaze popped between the two.

  “I’m totally embarrassed, doctor or not.” There ought to be a law against good-looking doctors, she thought, dropping into a chair.

  Logan smiled gently. “You’re fine, except you have blood in your ears.”

  “Gross.”

  “That means your eardrums have ruptured.”

  She frowned. “I don’t hear any different. Wait, no, I did.” She shifted to the edge of the seat, excited. “I heard stuff, well, not…it’s hard to describe. I’d sleep and it was so real, but you know when you dream, you know it’s not real so you just go with it? This felt patterned, more like I heard it, not envisioned it. Just weird.”

  “Do you remember the dream?” Sam asked.

  “Only pieces.” And they scared her. “But it felt familiar, like I’d been through it before.”

  Logan’s gaze shifted to Sam’s.

  “What?”

  “I’d like to run some tes
ts.”

  She made a face. “Doctors always say that when they don’t know what to tell a patient, Logan. Tell me, I can take it.”

  Still, he didn’t give a diagnosis. “I’ll take some blood, urine, and maybe try some hypnosis.”

  His last word didn’t faze her. Anything he could do to learn what had happened was fine with her. “Voodoo, spells, whatever. I’m cleaning the kitchen.”

  “No, right now.”

  Ramesh Narabi hovered over the worktable, the tight focus of light passing through the stone and showing him the table. His hands had stopped shaking hours ago. His fear turned to his work and what he must do to survive.

  He lifted his tools, positioned the bore, and made the cut. He kept his normal routine, yet the stone’s cut was unusual, no facets, no refraction at all. He glanced at the pile already complete, the largest stones he’d seen in a long while. He had everything here to make them first water. But that was not required. He continued, feeling the bore of the cameras spying down on him. Whoever was behind this was cloaked in secrecy and Ramesh would rather not know more than he did. Yet as he continued to cut the blood diamond, he wondered, after he had completed the task, would they really let his family live?

  Samples taken, twenty minutes later Logan was alone with Viva in a dark room. She was stretched out on a bed, her mind in a deep, tranquil place. Max had set a small speaker on the nightstand, rigged it to play out in the living room. Logan figured that Sam was hanging on to every word.

  “What do you remember just before you were on the roof?”

  “I was asleep.” She told him how she’d felt, the fear, the images and knowledge that came to her without reason. Of walking to the docks and being shocked she was there. And the uncontrollable need to get to the roof. She’d felt ill constantly, headaches when she’d never had one before, and she murmured how the feeling lessened the farther she was from the hotel. Then Logan knew: someone had programmed her mind.

  “Did you see anyone on the roof?”

  “No. No one.” There was panic in her voice. “Only the rifle. I picked it up, knelt and waited.”

  “For what?”

  “My target!”

  “Take deep, slow breaths,” he said, trying to calm her. “What was your task?”

  “Kill the cowboy, take the stone.” Her tone was impersonal, cold. Logan coaxed her further away from their control.

  “You had him in your sights.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you missed. Why?”

  “I—I couldn’t.” Tears slid from behind closed lids and onto her temples.

  “Who told you to do this?”

  Her brows knit. “A voice.”

  “You saw no one?”

  “No.”

  “Would you recognize the voice if you heard it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the voice instruct you to do anything more?”

  “No.” Her lips thinned. “Yes.”

  Logan waited.

  “To leave the stone in the fountain, near the temple at Wat Pho.”

  A massive temple with lots of people paying homage, Logan thought, sighing back into the chair. He asked her for details—the clothes, the rifle—but it all came back to the voice. It was the only tangible thing they had and finding a match would be impossible. The voice could have been distorted for the programming. How these guys got to her was a mystery. Programming was usually in a very controlled environment. That this worked well with such precision said they were up against something much larger.

  As he brought her up from the hypnosis, he instructed her to remember everything, and to fear none of it. She was, and always would be, in control. Logan didn’t have any doubt. That she didn’t kill Sam said that whoever did this chose the wrong woman to manipulate. Logan would bet the voice hadn’t counted on that.

  Taking her to the last level, he woke her, and Viva sat up, sniffling. Then she looked up, eyes wide.

  “Oh, my God. Your diamond, the voice, he wants it.”

  “And he knows Sam has it.”

  Winston Brandau heard the speaker hum before the voice called his name. He didn’t bother to look up. He felt stupid talking to a black box. “Yes.”

  “Your progress?”

  He spun the chair. “I’ve done my part. But it won’t have the range.” If his employer didn’t want to travel to use the weapon again, then they had to give him what he needed, and it would be tough to get classified material. Not his problem. He could wait, the pay was good enough. “Coordinates?”

  “I will have them by nightfall,” the voice said.

  The speaker clicked off and Winston scoffed. That’s what he’d said about the stones. Whoever he was. Winston had never seen the face of his employer, their one and only meeting taken in the shadows, his identity so covert that only a select few would recognize his face. No photos had ever been taken, supposedly no DNA left to match.

  Winston didn’t care. Three men had broken him out of a Chinese prison camp. If this guy wanted him to make a bomb, he’d do it. The accommodations were a sight better than the wet floor of a cell, he thought, his gaze moving to the bed in the far left corner, then swept toward the ceiling to the glass window, eye-shaped and dark. They watched him constantly, if not from the glass perch, then from screens all around the compound. Even if he wanted out, it was too late.

  Yet the Pharaoh—he smirked, doubting his employer was really Egyptian—had spared no expense. The cavernous room lacked for nothing except some style. The bland surfaces of concrete and steel, painted a soothing pale blue with black floors. A kingdom of equipment: circuits, tools, computers, even test subjects; humans corralled like sheep, helplessly waiting to have their bodies assaulted. If his conscience bothered him, the three million already sitting in a Swiss account was enough to soothe it; another five when he completed the job. As long as the Pharaoh kept paying him, the outcome made little difference. Though, it would to the rest of the world.

  Sam stared at the speaker, anger rippling off him in waves. All my fault. She’d been used, programmed to kill because of him and that goddamn diamond.

  “Sam?”

  He turned. She stood under the pagoda arch of the room, her hands looking for a place to be, her expression drawn with worry. “I couldn’t hurt you.”

  “I know.” He crossed the room, his gaze on hers as he neared. “You’re too damn stubborn to take orders. And if you really wanted it, I’d be in heaven.”

  “Don’t say that!” she snapped, then jutted her chin up. “And what makes you think you’d go to heaven?”

  “If I keep hanging around you, no chance of it.”

  Her smile was slight, strained, and she stood perfectly still. “Oh, Sam.” Then he did what she wanted; he took her into his arms and held her warm and tight. “I’m sorry.”

  He pressed his mouth to the top of her head, and murmured, “It’s not your fault, baby, it’s mine.”

  Sam felt her release a hard breath, and he gripped a little tighter, unwilling to let her go. Who else would use her against him?

  Someone cleared their throat and Sam ignored it to kiss her softly. Viva would have nothing of gentleness and demanded more, made him hunger and take. She dug her fingers into his back, her kiss taking on an almost desperate edge for his forgiveness when he should be apologizing for bringing her into this. When he drew back, her lids lifted slowly, her green eyes clear.

  “Wanna finish this later, without an audience?” she whispered for his ears alone.

  Sam laughed softly. He never knew what to expect from her. “Definitely.” The memory of tasting her filled his mind and he clamped down on the rising need, kissed her forehead, then turned to the team.

  “The only person who saw the stone was the Thai mafia man in the jungle and he’s dead.”

  “The blowgun bitch saw it too.” she said.

  That made them smile.

  “Now you have it, and the woman kills Half Ear to keep his mouth shut, but she’s s
een Sam with the stone, then goes after the three of us in the jungle. Failing that, she goes after the easy target—me. To get the stone and kill you.” Her voice wavered and she met Sam’s gaze, empathy in his dark eyes.

  “I’ll buy that,” Max said, smiling.

  “The person who messed with your mind is the same one who wants the big diamond. The blowgun bitch”—Sebastian winked at Viva—“is trying to get it back or protecting it?”

  “Both, I think,” Sam said.

  “You know: you want in on the deal and you have the big kahuna of stones. That gives you leverage. A lure, and with Ryzikov’s stones…” She picked the bag off the coffee table and tossed it at Sam. “It’s plenty, right?”

  “He doesn’t know you’re not a weapons dealer,” Sebastian said, rising to the challenge.

  “You have Ryzikov’s work on the computer. I’ll bet the answer is in there.”

  “I can’t get past the passwords,” Logan said, clearly angered at himself by that.

  “You don’t have a decryption program?” she said to Logan.

  “Not in Russian or Chechen.”

  “So make one.”

  Logan scowled at her.

  “Look at this sweet setup.” She waved to the computers. “It’s got to have a translation program.”

  “It does.” His eyes flared. He hadn’t thought of that. “I can copy the encryption program, translate it and run it.” He got busy.

  “Try both languages and for a password in Arabic, too. Sheiklike. He had a thing for role-playing.” The memory pushed her anger to the surface, renewing her pain, and making her touch the finger marks on her throat. “What did you do with Choan?”

  “Left in the jungle, right about where we jumped in the river,” Max said.

  “The monkeys were eyeing him for a date,” Sebastian said.

  “Did I mention he was naked, and smeared with bananas?” Max added.

  “I was hoping you tortured him.”

  The room went silent, all four staring at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I was sold, twice,” she snapped, her eyes gone brittle. “To a sadistic fanatic whose only intention was to repeatedly attempt murder and screw me till I was dead. Put yourselves there, then we’ll talk about sufficient retribution.”