Vertigo

by Wesley Cross

  “Audrey’s in trouble,” Rovinsky said, cutting him off in turn. “The school’s been ambushed by some guerrilla fighters, presumably Al-Shabaab, and they took her hostage, along with one of the kids. It sounds like she managed to escape the room where they were being held, but she’s still in the building.”

  “Is there something you can do?” Hunt was standing now, without any recollection of how that happened.

  “Yes. We have some assets in the area, but it might take some time before they get there. An hour, maybe two.”

  “Shit.”

  “She’s a resourceful girl. She’ll pull through. I gotta go, pal. I’ll update you as soon as I hear anything at all.”

  “I need to get there.”

  “There’s a plane leaving in three hours for Camp Simba from Virginia. If you can make it to the airport before that, I’ll put you on that plane. That is the best I can do on such short notice.”

  “I’ll be there,” he inhaled sharply. “Thank you, Jim. I owe you one.”

  Hunt threw some cash on the table and went outside. He stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds looking at his phone, considering if he should call his son, but decided against it. Jason wouldn’t be able to help in any way and considering that his son didn’t know about his involvement with the agency, it would create more questions than Hunt was ready to answer now. He scrolled through his contacts and dialed his assistant.

  “I need Clive to be ready to take off in forty-five minutes. And have somebody pick me up from the heliport on West Thirtieth in fifteen.”

  He hung up the phone and waved a taxi down. Even through the haze of overwhelming worry, the irony of the timing of this development wasn’t lost on him. He couldn’t turn down Rovinsky’s offer after all. To turn away the chance to wield such great power and be able to use it against the scum like those terrorists who had kidnapped his wife. He might regret it later, he decided—probably sooner than later—but there was no way on Earth he was going to say no.

  Hunt squinted against the sun as he dived into the cool belly of the taxi. His fingers ran across the soft leather of the dossier, feeling the creases and scratches of the surface. It occurred to him that many things of great importance started with an ordinary object like this dossier, chock-full of information that most people wouldn’t understand.

  He took a deep breath. It might have been a rash decision, if he was going to be honest with himself. But those people who had kidnapped his wife and others like them deserved to burn in hell, and he was personally going to put them there and then make sure that the coals never grew cold.

  5

  July 2007

  New York

  Mary Chen stepped out of the car before the driver had a chance to walk around and open the door. She hated when he did it. It made her feel like a spoiled brat, unable to fend to herself.

  It was a rough day. The board was pushing for the merger with Guardian, and she’d found herself on the defensive. Long-term, it wasn’t making any sense. Rapid Science had been on the rise, and in another five or six years, Mary could see it being able to actually compete with the giants like Guardian Manufacturing.

  Sure, if Guardian acquired them now, the large shareholders—Chen included—would get a nice fat check, instantly multiplying their wealth. But then the company she’d spent years building from the ground up would be dissolved in the massive belly of Simon Engel’s behemoth. And just like that, their vision—her vision—for the future of Rapid’s research would become irrelevant.

  Not on her watch. She may have been employee number seven when the company only had seven employees, but six short months later, when venture capital had dried up, and everybody was jumping ship, including the founder and then-CEO, she stayed on. Her persistence paid off, and now, a decade later, she was at the helm of one of the fastest-growing biotechnology companies in the world.

  She had to be realistic, however. Rapid Science’s success and meteoric rise was both its blessing and its curse. Its greater visibility made it easier to attract new capital, but it also attracted vultures like Guardian. It wasn’t going to be able to fend off attacks from the likes of Simon Engel for much longer unless they got bigger. Much bigger. There was going to be a merger, just not the one the board was hoping for.

  A few weeks ago, Chen had hired Peter Shultz, of Peter Shultz and Associates, a mergers and acquisitions firm. She disliked the man on a personal level, who seemed to be always standing a tad too close and touching her back or a shoulder as they went through the papers, too often to be appropriate. But the man knew how to deliver business. In the short span of two weeks, he introduced her and carried her through a few rounds of intense negotiations with Lightning Labs, a startup from San Francisco, looking to gain a foothold on the East Coast.

  Under different circumstances, she’d stay the course, slowly but surely growing the business. But this merger was going to be the next best thing. It would be a marriage of equals, where as long as the parties compromised, her vision would be preserved.

  The elevator chimed as it opened into the hallway of her apartment. She kicked off her Louboutins without turning on the lights, marched to the massive refrigerator, opened a bottle of white, and poured herself a generous amount. Then she positioned herself on a couch, set the glass on a small round coffee table and prepared to let the view of Central Park, framed by the curved glass of her thirty-sixth-floor windows, calm her nerves.

  The greenery down below was dyed by the deep orange tinge of the setting sun. At this hour, the darkening skies washed out the buildings at the northern tip of the park and it looked like the green patch of trees continued on forever, separating the opposing armies of high-rise buildings on either side.

  “You really can’t beat the view,” the voice said behind her, making her jump.

  Only now she noticed a petite woman who was standing in the dark corner of her living room, pointing a small glistening object at her.

  “Who are you? How did you get here?” Mary demanded as her heart raced. She lowered her feet to the floor, considering her options.

  “Don’t make any moves,” the woman said, ignoring the question. A sound of a cocking gun sounded like thunder in the quiet apartment.

  “What do you want?”

  “What does everybody want?” the woman said, an irony in her voice. “Money.”

  “I can pay you,” Chen said.

  “Oh, of course you will,” the woman replied, “but I need some insurance first. Take off your clothes.”

  “What? No,” Chen said forcefully. “You won’t get away with it. This building is full of high-resolution cameras. Leave now, and I promise I won’t call the police.”

  “I’d suggest you start undressing, unless you want me to shoot you through your knees, and after I’m done here, visit your sister out in Queens,” the woman said, steel in her voice. “All of it, now.”

  She obeyed this time, her trembling fingers fumbling with buttons and hooks. Finally, she was standing there, cowering in anger and shame. Yet she refused to cry.

  “That won’t work,” the woman snapped. “Lie back on the couch and sell it to me. Either that or first your knees, then your sis.”

  Defeated, Mary robotically followed the woman’s directions, moving this way and that, taking positions as a small camera clicked away.

  Satisfied, the intruder put the camera on a table.

  “Now drink up.”

  “Why?”

  “Wasn’t it what you wanted in the first place?” The woman chuckled. “Besides, I can’t allow you to run after me the moment I leave your place.”

  “What kind of a person are you? Who does things like that?”

  “Wouldn’t you want to know?” the petite woman snapped. “Now drink. I need you to finish this bottle right now, or there’ll be violence.”

  Mary forced herself to down a glass and poured herself another. She considered throwing the bottle at the woman, but she was too far away and would dodge it w
ith ease. Besides, Chen had no desire to find out whether the woman would fulfill her threat of shooting her knees.

  “So, how’s it going to work?” She could feel herself getting woozy. “Do I write you a check or something?”

  “No. Tomorrow you will withdraw one hundred thousand in twenty-dollar bills and put them in a gym bag. You’ll be carrying this bag with you at all times. Then, sometime next week, I will call you with instructions on where to deliver it, and you will have thirty minutes to bring it to the place of my choosing. If you’re late, even by a minute, I’ll post these pics everywhere. You’ll be ruined.”

  “What if I don’t care? Everybody’s got their pictures online now, so what?”

  “Well, in that case, I hope you’ll remember that I know where your sister lives.” The woman waved her gun in a circular motion. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your adorable younger sister Helen, would you?”

  Mary finished another glass and stared at the bottle. She hadn’t eaten since lunch, and three glasses of wine were making her stomach feel funny. She was sure that if she finished the bottle, she was going to be sick.

  “I don’t have all day,” the woman in the corner said.

  Hesitantly, she emptied the bottle into the glass and forced it down in one long swig. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Her head was getting heavy, and she leaned back on the couch. She could tell she was about to pass out.

  Strong hands unceremoniously grabbed her and brought her to her feet.

  “Whatchadoingtome,” she managed, her tongue two sizes too large for her mouth.

  “You’re drunk,” the voice said in her ear. “You need some fresh air.”

  She felt as the hands half-guided, half-carried her across the living room, around the coffee table and chairs toward the floor-to-ceiling window.

  “Imgonnabesick,” she spat, the waves of nausea sweeping her body, moving from her stomach upward.

  “That’s why you need to get some air,” the voice insisted, pushing her forward.

  The pressure in her stomach finally reached the boiling point, and she doubled over, spraying the white Persian rug with foamy yellow liquid. She was sweating profusely now, her knees buckling under her weight. Strong hands guided her onward and the other woman pressed something heavy into her hand. It pinched, and the pain briefly penetrated the drunken fog. Mary tried to pull back, but her strength abandoned her.

  “Stop,” she managed, as dark panic swept her whole body.

  The woman swung her hand, sending the heavy object crashing into the window. It cracked, and the woman hit the window again, breaking it this time, pieces of glass raining to the streets more than three hundred feet below. Mary tried to turn, but before she could do that, she felt a hard push. There was weightlessness for a brief moment, the rush of air enveloping her naked body like a cool blanket.

  Then there was nothing.

  6

  July 2007

  Kenya

  Mike Connelly threw his deployment bag out and away from the helicopter and swung his legs to the outside of the Black Hawk. The roar was deafening, as the machine hovered above a patch of sandy ground wedged between the rocks, its blades chopping hot, dry air.

  “Go.”

  Connelly let the training take over, guiding his body in a series of precise movements. He pushed himself off the skid and dropped into the void below, the rope swooshing through his guide hand, as he accelerated toward the ground. He landed on the balls of his feet, keeping his knees bent, and let go of the rope. He then stepped aside and brought his submachine gun to his chest level, ready to cover his teammates.

  They’d landed two miles north from the school, just outside of the town. He would have preferred finding a more secluded spot and then trekking toward their destination under cover of darkness. But in reality—right now their best ally was speed, even more so than stealth.

  This was not an American-friendly neighborhood by most standards. Located less than five miles from the porous Somalian border, the town quite often served as a pit stop to a host of different terror groups roaming free back and forth between the two countries. The population of the small town had lived in constant fear of drug dealers and warlords who came and went, taking whatever they wanted along the way. Most of the shops and stalls had to account for a part of their profits to be used for payoffs just to be left alone. That was the only way to survive.

  It hadn’t always been this way, but the steady rise of terrorism since the infamous Nairobi bombing brought groups like Al-Shabaab and fringe factions of al-Qaeda to the area. They were careful at first—coming in the middle of the night and slipping out before the daybreak. But as the years passed, they’d grown more brazen as the local government, plagued by corruption and the chronic lack of resources, didn’t, or couldn’t, do anything to bring them to heel.

  The Black Hawk banked hard and sped away, quickly gaining altitude from the drop site, the noise of its rotors disappearing into the night. Connelly’s group consisted of six soldiers, two snipers, and the breach team, which included Connelly himself. Under normal circumstances, the two snipers would do the initial recon around the target, clover leafing around until they found the best vantage point onto the site where the hostages were located. But this was a fluid situation and they were going to have to improvise.

  The team was between the missions when the orders came down the chain. Last night, they came back from a large raid that they executed alongside their SAS counterparts against a pirate base in Somalia. The raid was a success and Connelly was looking forward to taking it easy for the next two days when he and his team were called into the captain’s quarters. They were up in the air in less than an hour after that.

  On their way to the drop-off site, they pored over satellite images and settled on two locations that would give the sniper team a commanding view of the school building. One was a rusty sixty-foot-tall radio tower, located near a small mosque. It was roughly four hundred yards away from the school and provided an unobstructed 360-degree view of the town. The other was a patchy hilltop covered with copper-colored boulders. It looked down the dirt road leading to the T-junction where the school was located while also letting the sniper keep an eye on the main road. If any additional trouble was headed this way into the town, the sniper would have enough time to alert his teammates.

  The two snipers left first, the long silhouettes of their SR-25s pointing to the sky. The remaining four soldiers split up, with Connelly and his bearded partner, Smith, heading to the western part of the school building while the other two moved to the eastern wing. They were halfway to the school, squatting next to a dirt hut with a broken slate roof, when the speaker in Connelly’s ear came to life.

  “One is in position,” the voice said.

  “Two is in position,” another one added a few seconds later.

  Connelly clicked his mic twice in response, acknowledging the snipers. As he turned to cross the dusty road, he looked at the two large words scribbled in white paint on the side of the hut.

  LOVE LIFE

  “No shit,” he mouthed to himself and shuffled over to the next building in a combat crouch.

  The school was a broad four-story brick building straddling the T-junction. Its bright-white façade with green and brown stripes, large clean windows, and freshly painted signs looked decidedly out of place flanked on both sides by the rows of rust-colored shacks.

  “Why do you think they took it?” Smith whispered to him as they came to a halt next to a grocery store a block away from the building, his face glistening from sweat. “It ain’t worth much.”

  “Who cares,” he whispered back, scanning the area in front of the school. “Maybe they want to change careers. Let’s go.”

  He flipped the safety off on his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and gestured to his partner.

  “The ditch?” Smith said, his teeth gleaming on his dark face like a row of white pearls. “It looks like a good spot to me
.”

  “Yeah, it should do it. Watch the Ma Deuce.”

  As they crawled over the intersection, Connelly kept his eyes glued to the beat-up Toyota pickup truck on the other side. Whatever went down tonight, they had to make sure none of the assholes got to use the fifty-caliber M2 machine gun mounted on top of the vehicle. That bad boy could quickly spoil any party. Connelly rolled over the ridge of the drain and slid down into the foul-smelling cavern.

  “Three is in position,” he said quietly into his mouthpiece.

  “Four is in position,” responded a voice in his ear.

  Connelly planted his elbows in the dirt, moving his MP5 in a short arc, covering the front of the building. Now all they had to do was to wait for the sniper team to give them a signal and after that, there’d be a blur of fire and blood.

  Hopefully their fire and only the other guys’ blood, he thought. He wiped perspiration off his forehead with the back of his hand. By now, Connelly’d been on more missions than he could count, but the wait before things kicked into high gear never got easier.

  “This is One. We have two tangos at the entrance, one by the truck and another at the west end of the building,” came the voice of one of the snipers. “Two, take the guy on the truck. Three and Four, on my mark.”

  Connelly tensed like a coiled spring. He planted his right foot on the slope of the trench, gripped the MP5 tighter with his gloved hands, and readied himself to scramble over the edge of the ditch and toward the school.

  “Wait up, wait up, wait up,” another voice sounded in his ear, its urgency unmistakable. “We have a truck heading your way. Looks like it has army markings. Possibly more tangos.”

  “Could it be one of ours?” Connelly heard Smith whisper into the microphone.

  “Negative.”

  Connelly could hear it now too—a whiney sound of a large vehicle growing louder by the second. A minute later, a pair of brilliant headlights flooded the schoolyard, and a beat-up AM General diesel truck still bearing the markings of the US Army pulled up into the school front yard.