Lockard wouldn’t come after Alex, because Jack could then find Grant’s gun. If she tried to take Lockard herself, he would just shoot her. His best option, then, was to ignore Alex while he hunted down Jack.
Because right now, Jack only had a knife.
Lockard stepped over a pack of cash as he stalked down the wide aisle.
Taking a deep breath, Alex reached up and took hold of the joystick with her left hand while overriding all autopilot fail-safes with her right hand. She pulled the stick all the way back, raising the nose of the plane into a suicide angle by hiding the tail in the wind shear of the wings. Ten degrees, then twenty, all the way up to thirty-five degrees. She would bury this bastard at the bottom of the ocean. Even if it cost her own life to do it.
Lockard fell forward, dropping the gun. “Goddamn it, Winter! Flatten the plane. Now!”
“You do it.” Staggering out of the cockpit, Alex grasped the seat backs to stay upright, the wings shuddering with vibrations as the jet struggled with the angle.
“Push the goddamn thing down! We’ll stall!” Lockard said, as his HK slid into a tight spot behind the wet bar.
That’s the idea, she thought, stumbling down the hill of the aisle.
Lockard came back toward her, planted his foot, and drove a fist toward her injured shoulder again. Alex anticipated the move, turning her leg out wide and using the full weight of her body to counter with her own punch, a solid uppercut that hit him in the chin. The blow drove his lower jaw into his upper, causing his head to snap back.
Lefty.
Lockard shook it off, though, and against the gravity of the aisle pointing down toward him, he swung a kick that knocked them both to the floor. They tumbled between two stacks of money as he powered them back into the flight deck.
“You crazy bitch!” Lockard yelled as the plane climbed toward vertical, rattling and shaking with the slowing speed and wing angle. The Synthetic Vision System and control panel screamed with warnings of danger and vital instructions. The flight was racing toward unrecoverable.
Needing a few more seconds, she glanced at the controls while driving her arm through his and twisting it for leverage. If Alex could have killed him with her bare hands, she would have, but that was not going to happen with this animal, so she went for the next best thing. Contain him for another thousand feet and let him go. By then it would be too late to recover the plane.
But Alex knew what Lockard would do with it.
Wedging herself between Lockard and the seats, and forcing her own body to stay grounded, Alex fended off a blow with her forearm and another with her wrist, as he swung and swung again.
He drove her between the seats as he tried to grab the joystick, but she pressed her back against the dash and with her foot planted on the joystick, pinned it to maximum lift.
The alarms flashed and rang all over the displays in reds and yellows and oranges, sputtering with final warnings.
Lockard pounded a fist into her injured shoulder once and then again, but Alex held her ground. She fought back with every ounce and every want and every need in her now and in her past. She fought for every woman and every man with a shred of humanity.
Alex did not give.
The jet sputtered in massive vibration and finally entered wing stall, spinning forward like a leaf. Then it began dropping toward the ocean.
The windshield behind her showed a missile on target for the clear blue water, and in the last second left for engine recovery, Alex reached back, flipped open the safety cover of the tiny switch, and pushed it down, cutting the fuel to both engines. She fell to the floor as they went silent.
“You fucking lunatic!” Lockard lunged, shoved the joystick forward, and pounded at buttons frantically, scrambling to do anything to reignite the engines. But it was too late and they were too low. Both engines had flamed out.
Leaving Lockard, Alex scrambled to the cabin, stepping past Grant, who lay on the floor writhing in pain and bleeding from the gunshot wound in his chest.
She heard Lockard strap himself in.
Staggering through the long cabin, she held the seat backs and searched for Jack. He must have gone to the very back, away from the loose stacks of money, because Alex couldn’t find him. She searched the floor and under the tables, behind the seats. And then she saw him, crumpled on the bathroom floor, Grant’s HK in his hands.
He was bleeding from the leg again.
“Hold on!” Alex helped him up and hobbled with him to the back of the plane, fighting gravity’s deadly spin.
As they stumbled down the aisle, Lockard gained enough control to right the plane, though it was too late to bring it back to life. He would have to glide it home and hope for the best.
Like the Talonstrike stall drill, Sui Cadere Dulcis.
Sweet Suicide.
Knowing they had but mere seconds until they hit the water, Alex pulled Jack into the flight-crew emergency jump seat, strapped him in, belts across his shoulders and over his waist. Then she fell into the seat across from him and looked out a window as the water approached.
Five seconds.
Alex strapped herself in. Shoulder belt one.
Four seconds.
Shoulder belt two.
Three seconds.
God help them.
Two.
She closed her eyes, and every muscle and tendon in her body tensed. She felt it as Lockard touched the flaps at the very last second, giving the plane the slightest boost.
Alex thought of Jack.
One.
Then of her father.
Then they hit the water.
The hull skittered across the waves on the barest of an upswing, then tore apart in a gigantic ripping of metal and fabric. Both engines burst into flames, spraying burning gas over the center of the plane and across the bales of cash. Like a giant Jet Ski, the last third of the plane, with Alex and Jack at the back, spun to the side and past the other wreckage. They were spared from ejection by the force of the spin pressing their backs into the seats.
Still, her head jerked forward and slammed into the seat back, and Alex’s vision went black. Her stomach crammed up into her throat as they stopped spinning and immediately began to sink. Half conscious, water already up to her neck, Alex took a quick breath as she searched her lap for the straps and buckle but couldn’t grasp it. She looked right, but Jack was gone.
Blinking in the salt water, Alex found the metal buckle and yanked it open, then twisted her body from the seat. She kicked with both legs, trying to ignore the insane pain in her shoulder and her knotted stomach as she reached for the surface. The tail was sinking, its plunging force dragging her with it. Kicking harder, with all she had left, Alex pumped her arms out wide and reached and kept reaching until she broke free of the pulling force and rose with the bubbles. A glimmer of surface grew closer.
She tightened her lungs and willed herself not to take a breath.
Focusing on the red light of the fire above and on the rising bubbles, Alex kicked against the burn and the pain. She forced herself higher and higher.
Until she surfaced.
Gasping and spitting, she spun, searching for Jack in the twilight of the setting sun and emerging moon. A trail of money and fire stretched for a hundred yards.
“Jack!” Alex yelled, turning in the water.
But it was Lockard she saw, only twenty yards away.
Floating, he had both arms wrapped around a cellophane package of bills, a two-point-five-million-dollar lifesaver. He turned at her yell, and the moment their eyes met, she found Jack.
He bobbed on the surface and then dove back under, ten yards behind Lockard.
Lockard spun, and when Jack resurfaced closer to him, Lockard dove for him. The two of them thrashed in the water before Lockard pushed Jack under. Driving her own arms through the water, Alex raced toward their fiery silhouettes.
For a moment, they both disappeared underwater, then resurfaced with their arms tangled, Jack coughing and spitting, L
ockard with the advantage.
Reaching them, Alex grabbed the back of Lockard’s head, and he swung, hitting her in the face with his forearm. Jack dove back under as she pounded Lockard in the back of the head with a spearing elbow. He kicked backward.
Then he yelled.
He looked up, horror and fear frozen on his face. A pool of red began to spread in the fire-lit water below him. He yelled again, a gurgle this time, and peered down into the water in disbelief.
Jack popped back to the surface just as Alex pushed Lockard away, his body beginning to convulse and twitch as he drifted in the growing pool of blood.
A glitter of steel flashed in Jack’s hand.
Lockard bobbed twice and reached straight up into the air, eyes wide and mouth open. Then he sank in silence, along with his millions.
Alex pulled Jack to her.
“Payback,” he gasped.
Hooked to Jack with one arm, Alex grabbed a pilot’s leather seat with the other. They drifted in the cold Atlantic water, kicking away from the burning and sinking money, Jack mumbling now.
“I told you,” he said again, looking at her. “He’d gone too far.”
“Shhh.” Alex pressed her lips to his forehead. “It’s okay now.”
Lockard was gone.
“You beat him.”
And though she was shaking as they held tight to each other, she exhaled hard with the realization.
That they’d beaten them all.
Forty
Bora Bora, French Polynesia
Four weeks later
Lying on the teakwood chaise and facing the endless blue-green of the South Pacific, Alex reached for her watch. It was easy to lose track of time in any luxury resort, but this place downshifted you to a gear right above comatose.
Fine by her.
Though, a few days ago, her physical therapist—she’d found him through her Far East contacts—had suggested Alex schedule something called a Taurumi massage, with local oils meant to “enhance one’s emotional and physical state” and “heal the spirit.”
Other than the therapy, it was the only appointment she’d scheduled in the last month. And the masseur would be there any minute.
Alex listened for footsteps on the long wooden pier behind her. The bungalow, complete with a plunge pool and ladder extending to the lagoon, was the farthest from the shore at the resort. She wondered if she’d chosen it for the view and seclusion, like she’d told herself, or to prevent anyone from sneaking up on her.
Maybe a bit of both.
Her phone buzzed, and thinking it was the therapist, she checked it. The States. Virginia area code.
Staring at the device, Alex contemplated chucking it into the water, but she’d been completely out of the world-event loop after filing her resignation from the CIA, never mind simple Company developments. She hadn’t spoken to a single superior since the new DDO himself called and told her to sit tight. He was supposed to get back to Alex after a careful review of the events. So she’d done as told and pushed it from her mind, focusing on nothing but R&R, healing, and an upcoming Taurumi massage.
But she wondered about Jack.
She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d returned to the London safehouse with Hanna. They’d agreed to part ways for a while, agreeing that neither of them was ready for more than what they’d shared. Still, an ache had bloomed inside her as the first weeks passed, and she was forced to admit to herself that physical injuries weren’t all that needed to heal. But there was a strange beauty to solitude, the place where a person can both hear her own thoughts and reflect on them without the interference of others’ needs or opinions. Without the need to keep moving at the modern-day pace.
The phone buzzed again, same Virgina number, and—figuring it would be the only way she could return to the sweet silence of solitude—Alex decided to clear this one unavoidable task off the list.
“Yes Director.” Alex didn’t attempt to hide the slight annoyance in her voice.
“Alex, how’s the rehab coming along?” David Wood, the new DDO who’d replaced Moss, asked. There was a faint echo in his voice, evidence that this connection to paradise was forced, unnatural.
Rotating her arm in reflex, she said, “If you count skinny dipping in eighty-five degree teal-blue water as far as the eye can see? Fantastic.”
He laughed. “Are you bored yet?”
“I’ll let you know after my massage.”
He laughed again, then turned to a more serious tone. “Listen, Alex, I called with good news.”
The faint creep of footsteps sounded at start of the pier behind her. The only news she was interested in, but she asked anyway, “How good?”
“You’ve been cleared of all possible sanctions and disciplines from the Company on your most recent assignment.” Alex waited as the pad of footsteps behind her drew closer. Finally, Director Wood said, “About your retirement.”
Here it came. The pitch to rejoin the ranks and resume her status in Clandestine Service. “I have a proposal.”
She stopped him there. “Look, Director Wood, I thought long and hard before filing that paperwork.”
“That’s the thing. Those papers? They were never filed.” The echo was worse now, as if the conversation were being translated through a conch shell. Loud and clear and then fuzzy and broken.
Alex sat up straight. “You’re going to force me to keep working for the CIA? What is this, the new KGB?”
“Do you have a laptop?”
Of course she did. “No.”
The footsteps from the pier stopped at her door.
“Then I’m glad I came.”
“You what?” Alex turned to see who was at her door, but whoever it was had stayed to the side of the entrance and remained hidden from her.
Damned spooks.
Holding the phone to her ear, Alex eased out of the lounger and rolled her shoulder again, then walked through the bungalow to greet the man she’d now hoped in vain was her masseur. Instead, the man who appeared wore a perfectly creased dark almond linen suit that matched the color of his eyes. He held a tan leather briefcase in one hand. She reflexively clinched her robe tight and took two steps back.
Then she noticed that he held a cell phone at his leg.
Director Wood smiled and turned the phone off. Then he nodded to her. “May I?”
Alex moved aside as he stepped forward. Though he was quite a bit older than she, Wood moved with ease and fluidity. Like a man of ultimate experience and confidence.
He stopped before Alex, placing the briefcase on the table.
He gave her a once over. “You look good. Even better than…” he glanced outside, up toward the sky, and continued, “I figured.”
Alex fought to suppress the immediate swell of anger at the thought of this man watching her all the way out here, like a damned voyeur. She’d been naïve to blank out the fact that Tempest’s reach spanned pole to pole. And with that anything-but-subtle indication, Wood let her know exactly how powerless she was to disappear from the CIA’s eye in the sky.
A few more beats of silence passed and he said, “Are you ready, then?”
“For?”
“The proposal.” Wood pulled a laptop from the briefcase and flipped it open. After pressing a few keys, he turned the screen to her and stepped back. “That is your new account. The sum of money you see is to get you started.”
Alex stared at the numbers and the anger began to rise again. “So you’re forcing me out. Giving me, what, three million dollars to keep my mouth shut and…” she glanced at the sky herself this time and continued, “pretend to disappear?”
“Quite the opposite actually.” He paused for a second and said, “but if that is really what you want, Alex, then by all means. Take the money. We’ll leave you to go live your life. Or stay here in paradise. God knows you earned it.”
“Or?”
“Or…consider the money a starter kit. Get you on your feet and set up. Then you’ll receive
a line of credit to spend any way you like to further your operation. No questions asked. But if at any point you refuse an assignment, no matter what it is, we close the line, drain the account, and set you free.”
Alex stared at the screen and tried to make sense of the number before her, the proposition he was suggesting.
“It’s close to the same program we offered your father,” Wood said. “Similar circumstances, even. Though less complicated.” He smiled.
Less complicated, as in, no children left orphaned by the plan.
Alex stared at the screen. That money would burn up faster than the packets Lockard had stolen. She’d need this kind of expense account to succeed in the jobs that would be thrown at her.
“Either way, a star will be etched in your name next week, and there will be a ceremony to recognize your contribution to the Company. How you gave your life to the service. You understand, of course. The President himself couldn’t even know.”
Translated: Alex couldn’t retire. She was already dead.
Placing the phone on the table, Alex took a long, deep breath and stared back at The Director.
But Wood’s gaze had drifted over her shoulder and to the wall of sketches Alex had made in the last month. Every person, every locale, every important moment. Except for one. She still hadn’t been able to draw the Millennium Bridge. She hadn’t fully revisited that night yet. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
Tracing the lines on Director Wood’s face with her gaze, Alex wondered. Could she work like her father had? Could she do this job, chasing rogues, and not only drawing the shadows, but living in them?
Wood said, “We could start with some healing sessions. You know, someone to help you with all that’s happened.”
“No need.” Alex nodded toward the wall. “That’s my therapy.”
He pursed his lips to that then walked through the bungalow and out onto the deck, where he stopped with his arms crossed and stared out at the water. Alex followed and stopped a few feet behind, watching as a stingray slid along the shallows before shifting to glide all the way out and disappear.
The Shadow Artist Page 30
