Agent Out
Page 21
At least the numbers were thinning. Rossiter had left with three of the henchmen, heading up the tunnels toward the courthouse. That left only Marsh, Catherine, and two other lackeys. If Will and Gaia were going to make a break, they should do it before Jimmy’s bunch returned.
Of course, there was still the little matter of their industrial-grade rope bindings. Not to mention all the loaded guns.
His mind still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that Catherine, his fellow trainee and friend, was pointing a loaded Ruger at his head. Or was it his chest? No, not even that high. As she chewed the fat with Gaia, her aim was slowly relaxing. Now the gun was aimed toward his middle.
So that’s what Gaia’s doing, he realized. She was distracting Catherine, pretending she was interested in their whole radical movement. She was doing a great job of it, too.
If only he could take advantage of it. If only he could find a weapon or send a distress call or hypnotize one of the gunmen, Mesmer-like, into helping them. Anything that could give him hope.
Damn! It seemed like his FBI training should have prepared him for this. But he must have missed the lecture on how to keep from freaking out when you’re hog-tied, outnumbered, outgunned, and dizzy from lack of sleep. Either that or he’d been daydreaming about Gaia that day.
“Catherine? What’s going on over there?” Marsh called from the center of the room. He was gathered around two crates with the remaining henchmen, looking over a large piece of paper.
Catherine quickly got to her feet, her face flushing slightly. “I’m explaining to Gaia how her country has been lying to her all these years,” she explained.
Marsh held out his hand firmly, as if he was giving an order without using words. Instinctively one of his flunkies handed him a switchblade. Will tried to quell the fear that was rising up into his chest. Then Marsh grabbed a piece of fabric off the floor and cut it into two pieces. He strode over and handed them to Catherine.
Marsh glared at Gaia. “Shove this in their mouths. Then come over here for a briefing.”
“Okay.” Catherine’s gun lifted to head level again. “You two, separate,” she ordered as she backed toward her father’s work-station. “Taylor,” she said to Will. “Scoot to your left.”
“You don’t have to be so formal,” Will said snidely. He inched sideways until he was right up against a metal wall brace. “This far enough?”
Catherine smiled, right before shoving a wad of rag into his mouth. “That’s fine. If you move an inch, I’ll be forced to—” She didn’t finish that thought. Instead she glanced furtively at Gaia and then shoved the fabric into her mouth as well.
Will sat back and leaned his head against the metal joist. Ow! he thought as something sharp poked his forearm. Glancing down, he saw a rough, serrated corner where the steel beam disappeared into the concrete floor.
Great. Now not only was he unable to talk to Gaia and chewing on something nasty, he was practically impaling himself against a wall of jagged spikes. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up slicing open his skin or dying from whatever cleaning solvent this rag had been in contact with.
A sudden realization swept through him, revving the tempo of his heartbeat. Pushing against the wall, he cautiously rubbed his arm against the rough spot again. Yes, it was sharp. Very sharp.
Sharp enough, in fact, to slice through the thickest rope Socorro could buy.
ALMOST PRIMAL
Kim sat across from Special Agent Malloy, trying to stop his legs from bouncing nervously. It worked—for a few seconds. Then his heel would start tapping against the carpeting again, like Thumper pounding the forest floor.
It didn’t help that he’d been escorted to the office by a pair of burly jarheads armed with automatic weapons, one of whom now stood to his left and the other in the hall by the door. Nor did it help that his commanding officer was shooting him a look of such intense fury, Kim wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam billow from his nostrils. Malloy was a rough, brutish man to begin with. When angered, he seemed almost primal.
“Agent Lau, is it possible that someone with your intelligence would not grasp the magnitude of the situation you are in?” Malloy paused to take a breath, using it to amp up the volume even more. “Ignoring regulations, circumventing security, accessing top-secret clearance files, and helping a fellow trainee go AWOL! Am I forgetting anything?”
Nope. That just about covers it. Understanding the question was rhetorical, Kim kept his mouth shut and glanced down at his quivering kneecap.
Malloy turned and shared a glance with Special Agent Bishop. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. Ever since she’d stepped into the office, she’d done nothing but serve as a do-wop girl to Malloy’s blustery rants. But Kim knew the base’s second in command was just as angry and just as capable of making someone squirm as her louder, coarser superior.
“While you have been sitting in the holding cell, my men have been reviewing security tapes and data records,” Malloy restarted. “We know what information was being accessed. We know Agent Taylor called up files on Ramon Niño and his group, Socorro.”
Kim stared back at him blankly. At the time he hadn’t had any clue what Will was searching for. All he knew was that it involved Gaia and Catherine and that Will was trying to help them. He hadn’t been privy to the exact details.
When Catherine had gone missing, Kim had also been frustrated at the bureau’s official findings. Their explanation that she’d been abducted and killed just didn’t make sense. Who kidnaps someone from a heavily armed base? If it was information they wanted, why not nab Malloy or Bishop, someone actually privy to highly classified files? Then, when an agent as smart and dedicated as Gaia had gone AWOL as part of an apparent quest to find Catherine, he’d realized something even more insidious might be at work. Gaia had either thought that the bureau was too inept to find Catherine or, even worse, that they hadn’t wanted to find her.
Kim glanced at the clock on the wall. He wondered if Will had made it to Gaia yet with the information. Somehow he was sure he had.
“Agent Lau?” Bishop stepped forward and placed her palms on the desk, leaning toward Kim. “What you might not realize is that Ramon Niño is the head of a particularly dangerous group of terrorists. And what you also might not know is that right this minute, he is being transferred to a Pennsylvania courthouse for his parole hearing. We’ve been tracking his people for a while now, but we’ve lost contact with one of our undercover agents. Something is going down—we know it.”
Kim’s gut clenched. Terrorist cells? He’d had no idea the trail would lead his friends into something like that. A couple of blackmailing, kidnapping thugs they could handle. But a group of deadly fanatics? That was something very different.
Malloy rose to his feet, his figure cutting an enormous shadow out of the sunlight that spilled into the room from the window behind him. “Forget your own future for a moment, Agent Lau. If you think you are somehow helping your friends, you are sorely mistaken. And unless you want their blood on your head, I suggest you start telling me everything that you know. So what’s it going to be?”
Kim’s mind raced, and his eyes darted around the room as if looking for a sign. What the hell should I do? If I spill my guts, the FBI may simply haul them in and toss them in the brig beside me before they have a chance to rescue Catherine. But if Malloy’s right and I do nothing …
“I don’t have time for this nonsense!” Malloy boomed. “Guard, take this man to—”
“Wait!” Kim rose to his feet. “I’ll help you. I’ll tell you what I know—which, by the way, isn’t much. But you have to promise me you won’t hurt them.”
Malloy and Bishop exchanged a brief, indecipherable look. Then Bishop approached Kim and placed her hand on his arm. “Agent Lau, this loyalty you feel for your fellow trainees … what makes you think we don’t feel it toward all of you?”
002
Revenge is sweet in a new novel from the bestselling author FRANClN
E PASCAL
Every high school has its mean girls. Twyla Gay has had enough—and now she has a plan. The popular girls’ reign of terror is over. The Ruling Class is going down.
From Simon Pulse
PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER