by Nancy Holder
“You said Echo implicated you in a scheme with Kishinev,” Sam said to Allison.
“She knows you’re here, then. We’ll have to abort,” Morgan put in.
“No, they were here because of me,” Elle said. “So sorry I flushed them your way.”
“Onto a deserted atoll in the middle of the ocean.” Morgan slid a glance at Allison.
“They must have heard I was in the area,” Elle argued.
“You have a leak?” Morgan asked.
“This is spycraft,” Elle retorted. “There’s always that possibility.”
Morgan gave Allison a hard look, and she remembered that someone had known how to break into the Loschetter safe house and snatch Loschetter. Again she rejected the possibility that one of her agents was betraying her. It made no sense.
The four dragged the two bodies behind a stand of palm trees. Scatters of brightly colored birds erupted from the crowns of fronds.
“Allison, it is a little…” Sam waggled her hand in the air. “Coincidental.”
“You might be right,” Allison conceded reluctantly. But she had more forces on the way. All kinds of help. And Des Asher was bringing them a new superweapon that just might take Echo out. This was it. She could feel it. They couldn’t turn back now.
“You have to be dispassionate about this,” Morgan insisted. “Something’s hinky.”
“Morgan, we have less than sixty hours to stop her or that bomb goes off,” Allison said.
“We don’t know that she’s behind the Circle of Justice. All we know is that we have two dead guys who shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not calling it off,” she said. “Echo would have sent in more firepower than two Russian goons with a couple of cap guns.”
“Which were aimed at my head,” Morgan reminded her. “Less than an hour after we landed.”
Elle and Sam glanced at each other, then gave Morgan’s nude body an appreciative once-over.
“Did they ask you where I was?” Allison asked him. “Did they ask about a necklace, or Delphi?”
He glared at her. Finally he shook his head.
“They spoke to me in Russian, but they didn’t ask me any questions.” He held up a hand to stave off her I-told-you-so. “Because they didn’t have time.”
“I beg your pardon for saving your life too early,” Elle bit off. She looked straight past him to Allison. “Our Zodiac’s moored a few feet out, beside a local vessel they rented off an island about thirty kilometers from here. There was no one else on the boat. I don’t know who’s waiting to hear from them.”
“We should investigate.” Allison turned and headed back to camp. “If they were working alone, we can sink the boat and move forward.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Morgan said. “We need to abort. You cannot guarantee that they were alone.”
“We can be reasonably sure,” she replied. “Give me some time and—”
“We need to get in this plane and leave now,” he replied, standing with his feet wide apart, as if ready to take her on.
“This is my show, Morgan, not yours. I’m sending Diana to look around. And put some clothes on, for God’s sake,” she snapped at him.
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to kick you in the balls.”
“You can’t touch me. What am I even talking about? This is insane.”
“Morgan, Circle of Justice,” she said.
“Goddamn it,” he said, balling his fists and pressing them against his forehead. “Listen to me.”
“It’s happening,” she yelled. Then she lowered her voice. “You can’t deny me my meaningful death, either. Deal?”
Morgan clamped his jaw shut. Turned.
Nodded.
Diana Lockworth did a few flyovers, investigating the vessel—easily traced back to a small island, where no one was exactly checking IDs for rentals—then landed her Black Hawk on Allison’s atoll. The copter bore Royal Australian Air Force insignia; Diana might be off all books, but she had friends in high places. Jessica Whittaker was with her, and she swam back to Elle and Sam’s Zodiac with the twins. No radios, no cell phones.
“Those guys were off the books, too,” Sam insisted.
“Okay, final analysis,” Allison said. “Do we need to abort?”
“No way,” Jessica argued. “We’re too close.”
“Those two Russians showing up, that’s weird,” Diana argued. She exhaled and ran a hand through her strawberry-blond hair. “On the flyover, I got a message from Kim. The Circle of Justice has gotten orders to move to Step Three. We don’t know what that means, but the Ozone team has the impression that they’re pushing up their timetable.”
Allison looked at Morgan. He balled his fists and shook his head.
“Let’s look at those blueprints again,” Allison said, walking over to her laptop case. She picked it up while Diana, Jessica, Elle and Morgan got busy draping the Black Hawk with camouflage.
Sam met her on her way back to the group.
“A minute?” she asked.
Allison nodded, stopped walking.
“Morgan,” Sam said. “What’s going on?”
“He wants us to abort,” Allison replied.
“I know that.” Sam cocked her head. The tropical breeze ruffled her white-blond hair. “I mean, between you two?”
Allison shook her head. “It’s nothing.” Then she lifted her chin and smiled ruefully. “It’s nothing if you’re not out in the middle of the ocean on a mission to save the world.” She clutched the laptop case against her chest. “I tried to stop it. I can’t let him worry about me. He’s got to stay focused. If he’s worrying about me…” She left the rest unsaid.
“It’s good for us if he’s worried about you, Delphi,” Sam replied. “We all know it, Allison. And we know you’ve got to make it through this. The rest of us are…expendable.”
“That’s wrong,” Allison blurted out, even though until very recently, she would have agreed. “No one person is more important than another.”
“That’s an incredible statement, coming from a woman in love,” Sam replied. She didn’t smile. “I can see it. You love him. So…how expendable is he? Would you risk the world to save him?”
“No,” Allison said instantly, but her cheeks blazed. She reached for the necklace, tucked inside her shirt. “I wouldn’t. He would hate me if I did that.”
“Then I’ll follow you into battle,” Sam replied. “And so will everyone else. Including him. Even if he thinks you should abort.”
They gazed at each other, then melted into an embrace. Allison closed her eyes. She was scared.
Allison and Samantha St. John walked back to the camp. Morgan’s eyes followed Allison’s every move as she opened her laptop and linked it to the satellite Diana had succeeded in tasking for this very purpose. The group gathered around to study the Echo Chamber blueprints.
“It appears that the lab is located underground,” Allison said, tracing her finger along the lines on the monitor. “See these? We think they’re run-off pipes for the sprinkler system that drain directly into an undersea cave. It appears that there are a set of emergency controls and a fireproof hatch on a dense structure above the surface. Could be volcanic rock.”
Chatter squawked on the Black Hawk, which was completely draped. Diana lifted up a section of the covering and scooted inside. She spoke for a minute, then returned.
“The Special Boat Service troops are approaching,” Diana announced as she climbed back down. “Des Asher commanding, Dawn and Selena Shaw Jones are with him. There are six Futura Commandos. They hold six each. Plus we’ve got Elle and Sam’s.”
Morgan looked at Allison. So far the op was running exactly as she had set it up.
“You know your boats,” Allison said to the group. “Jessica goes with Des, Selena, Diana, Morgan and me. Dawn, you and five of Asher’s troops are coming with us. Load up your gear.”
Everyone went to the weapons caches, gather
ing spear guns, bang sticks, revolvers, Uzis, neck knives, boot knives, grenades.
Morgan was equipped by the time the Zodiacs had arrived. Dressed in a wet suit, Allison greeted Des Asher, the CO, with short-cropped, burnt-pewter hair, and her two agents. Morgan recognized both Selena Shaw Jones, the blue-green-eyed brunette who had saved the bacon of friendlies in Berzhaan not once, but twice, and the superegg baby Dawn O’Shaughnessy, with her thick golden hair and the remarkable green-gold eyes of Thomas King, the Navy Seal who had unwittingly been her sperm donor father.
Asher had brought fifteen British Special Boat Forces with him, square-jawed men who jumped to comply with each of Allison’s commands. Asher was their point man, but Allison was their leader. Athena Force Team One had eight members; and Des and his fifteen men made twenty-four. The extra seats in the Zodiacs were for rescuees and prisoners.
They took to the sea, Elle in her Zodiac and four of Asher’s men peeling off to the west, where they would try to make the beach to investigate the shadow on the Predator photo. Sam and another four headed in a British Special Boat Service Zodiac for the eastern side of the volcano. Wearing face paint and lightweight but effective Kevlar body armor, they were well-stocked with weapons, climbing equipment and explosives. Their mics were working fine, and Morgan could hear Elle flirting in her lilting English with her British escort as they motored away.
The remaining three Zodiacs clustered at a rendezvous point in the shelter of an outcropping of stone and coral. Morgan picked up his binocs and studied their target across the water, a dormant volcanic island much like the one on which they had landed. Palms bowed in criss-crosses along the beachheads, surrounding a craggy volcanic mass that had long ago collapsed into its center. He picked out the shadows on the east and west flanks that Elle and Sam were headed for.
Echo had quite a flair for the dramatic—also unparalleled expertise and access to resources. A formidable foe, to pull off building a state-of-the-art high-tech lab in there; abduct over a dozen young women and break two enemies of the state out of prison.
And we are going to take her down.
Allison and Jessica went through a sound check on the underwater comm system. Asher had brought masks and packs for everyone aboard, along with his special present for Allison: two experimental Metal Storm prototype handguns, capable of electronically firing the equivalent of thirty thousand rounds a second. There was no way to know if they could take out Echo’s force field until they were deployed in combat.
“Okay, Jessica, you’re a go,” Allison told the young woman.
Wearing a wet suit top, goggles and fins, and a facemask for underwater communication with its accompanying backpack, which also contained alarm descramblers—but no SCUBA gear—Jessica Whittaker picked up her bang stick and spear gun for protection against shark attacks and gave Allison a thumbs-up.
“I’m away,” Whittaker announced and flopped backward into the water. Half a minute later, from beneath the water, her voice came in clear on the hydrophone. “Swimming toward the target,” she said.
“Roger. Be careful,” Allison said into the mic.
All they could do now was wait. Morgan spent the time mentally running the op, examining the possibilities, predicting the things that would make everything go FUBAR. He was also wearing a wet suit, and he was sweating.
Time passed. They drank water, ate protein bars. He watched Asher and O’Shaughnessy, so clearly in love. He wished them well.
“Stolichnaya checking in,” Elle Petrenko said in Morgan’s earpiece. “We’re here. Seeing a road about a hundred yards above us. Approaching.”
“Understood,” Allison said.
“Mermaid in a cave, breaking the surface, seeing a blinking red light,” Jessica said.
“Roger,” Allison replied.
Morgan felt her tense, and then saw the light on the screen. It sat squarely in the center of a control panel, to the left of a round hatch, increasing its frequency as Whittaker got closer to it. Jessica was about nine inches shorter than he was; he’d have to watch his head when he went in.
Then he saw Jessica’s flashlight beam land on a set of metal stairs. There was a Fiberglas motorboat tethered to the bottom rung.
“Use extreme caution,” Allison said.
Morgan watched as Jessica broke open her wireless descrambler—a rectangular-shaped black plastic box—and beamed it at the panel. Rapid-fire readouts flickered in the display panel and he grunted in admiration.
“I want one of those for Christmas,” he told Allison.
“Only if you’re good,” she replied. “Sam, where are you?” she murmured beneath her breath.
Then she ticked her glance back to Morgan and covered her mic. She looked at him hard.
“My spider necklace is in a capsule, buried where you and I…” She exhaled, as if she were relieved she’d decided to tell him. “Back on the island. Sam, Elle, Selena and Diana know, too. And I e-mailed Lynnette and Kim.”
“I’m honored,” he said, and he meant it.
“Don’t screw up.” The gold in her eyes glimmered. “If I go down, keep going.”
“I will. You do the same.”
She licked her lips. “I will.”
And this may be the closest to a wedding ceremony people like us get, he thought wryly.
“Mermaid is in,” Whittaker reported.
Echo’s underground lair
Tap-tap-tap.
Willa had been picked up, and Echo had checked on all her girls, snug in their rooms. Everyone was very quiet. Maybe Pace was right; maybe they were up to something.
She felt tense. She needed to calm down…spend some time with her mother.
She pushed away from her desk and faced the black door behind her. Tears welled as she placed her hand over the print reader. It aligned with her hand and the door clocked open.
“Mummy,” she whispered, pushing it open.
It was cool here, and dark. Dark as a womb, black as her soul. The octagonal room was fitted with ebony walls, a ceiling of obsidian and a floor of black marble. Hundreds of strands of spun gold hung from the corners, crisscrossing, swaying gently as Echo observed the torchlight flickering on them. No electric lights here, just smoke and flame.
It was also the safest, most heavily fortified place in her entire complex.
In the center of the web, standing on a black crystal globe ringed with black marble stairs, a life-size statue of Echo’s mother gazed down on all she saw, like a madonna. She was formed of gold, and she looked so lifelike that sometimes Echo thought she could see her breathing. Did the two spider necklaces around her neck rise and fall against her chest?
Echo ducked beneath the elaborate golden web, easing away some of the silken threads. She mounted the stairs, stood on tiptoe and kissed her mother’s golden lips. Tears formed in Echo’s eyes.
“Aren’t you proud of me?” she asked. “I’m so close, Arachne. Soon I’ll be a daughter worthy of your legacy.”
Echo reached around her mother’s neck and lifted up the two spider pendants, showing them to the unseeing gaze of the figure.
“See? Soon there will be three, and I’ll reweave your web, and carry on your work. The world will tremble, Mummy. It won’t be long now.” Tears washed down her face, marring her makeup, but she let them remain as a testament to her depth of feeling for the brilliant woman who had conceived her. “I wish you were here. I wish you hadn’t had to die.”
She kissed Arachne’s lips again, then, and eased her way out of the room. She shut the door.
She sat down and began a note to Vlados, to give him a little advance warning, both of the nuclear explosion and of her imminent arrival in his lovely oppressed nation.
Tap-tap-tap. My Dear Demented Dictator, By the time you read this…
She smirked and deleted the “Demented Dictator” and replaced it with “Vlados.”
“We’ll be arriving sooner than planned. If you have any assets in Maryland, I suggest you remove them imm
ediately.”
Her long fingernails clattered on the keyboard as she typed in another message to the Circle of Justice. They were getting into place, waiting for her word.
[email protected]: My Brothers, I give you the code to begin your operation.
Echo smiled. Tap-tap-tap, inputting the first two syllables of the three-syllable Berzhaani word for “forbidden fruit.” Then she noticed something very peculiar: her cursor was blinking in an odd, rhythmic pattern.
“What is this?” she asked aloud, leaning forward and watching it.
Dit-dit-dit-daw-daw-daw-dit-dit-dit.
“What?” she said again, as a slow, terrible realization dawned on her: It was an SOS.
From my cursor? Is someone using my machine, my heavily protected, impenetrable machine, to send out secret messages?
With a sudden, terrible feeling, she opened up her cached files and started scanning them. Transmissions she had not made lay inside layers of protection. Three of them…all to a MySpace page for someone named Tasi Arejab. What the hell? From her computer?
Impossible!
Tasi Arejab. Who the hell was that?
She typed in the name. A window marked Personnel File: Laboratory Technicians, opened up, revealing the image of the mousy lab tech.
Her cursor blinked.
Another window popped open, revealing a file marked Armory. The full list of weapons for her security team scrolled down.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked, leaping out of her chair and racing for her door.
Allison, Morgan, Diana, Des, Dawn and five SBS troops crouched beside Jessica at the hatch. They had transported their weapons and body armor in a series of inflatables riding along the surface like sharks. Everyone had on state-of-the-art vests, helmets and headsets; Allison and Diana had the Metal Storms. Selena and two backup men were back with the Oracle laptop in the Zodiacs, linked up with Kim at Oracle HQ and Lynnette at Oracle West.
Elle and her people were stationed around the entrance to a tunnel. Sam and her squad verified that they had located a metal hatch. They’d wired it to blow with the British plastic explosive, PE4.
