Black Skies (15 page)

The thumb drive, specially prepared by Shepard, began downloading everything on the drive. The data would still be encrypted, but encryptions could be cracked with a powerful enough computer, which would be no problem at all, as long as they had enough time to run the program. The issue was getting access to the data in the first place. And by doing it this way, they could steal it without Weinberg ever knowing it was gone.

Morgan looked around the room once more. It was still dark, the only light coming from the pool area outside, wispy curtains flying in the breeze. In about a minute, the thumb drive blinked red to indicate that the download was complete. He removed it from the USB slot, then set the drive back exactly as he had found it in the briefcase. He then set all the wheels back to zero, closed the safe and locked it with the override code.

He heard the metallic
whir
of the lock resetting.

“Okay, now it’s time to get the hell out of here,” he said to Shepard through his comm.

Just as he was about to turn around, he heard the
click
of a gun being cocked behind him. He turned, holding up his arms, the thumb drive in his right hand.

Behind him, across the bed, was a figure dressed all in black with a black hood over its face and a ski mask covering everything but the eyes. From the outline, he could see that it was a woman, lithe like a cat. She was holding a snub-nosed Ruger LCR double-action revolver in her right hand. It was a tiny gun, almost comically small. But, even if it didn’t have the stopping power of a Desert Eagle, she could stop him well enough by plugging a couple of these bullets in his chest, and she seemed to be well aware of that. With her left hand, she pointed at the thumb drive, then motioned for him to give it to her.

“You don’t want this, sweetheart,” he said. “I can get you money. However much you want. This here isn’t worth anything to you.”

“Cobra?” asked Shepard. “What the hell is going on in there?”

Morgan couldn’t answer directly, so he said to the woman, “Are you in Weinberg’s room for his money? I can give you the combination to his safe.”

She made a show of taking aim at his heart, and motioned once more for him to give her the thumb drive.

“Cobra, is someone in there with you? I’m paging Bishop as we speak, he’ll come and get you.”

Damn it,
thought Morgan. All he needed was a tactical team barging into this situation. “I don’t think you’ll shoot me,” he said. “It would be a damn shame if we attracted a lot of attention to ourselves and the owner of this room found out we were here.” He hoped Shepard would take a hint.

“Do you want me to call it off?” asked Shepard. “Use the word ‘bad’ if you do.”

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves in a bad situation here,” said Morgan.

“Okay,” said Shepard, “calling them off. They’ll be circling the hotel. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

The woman made an emphatic gesture for him to give her the thumb drive.

The bed was between them. He couldn’t rush her, not without taking three bullets to the chest. Running away was equally out of the question. Call her bluff? Dodge her bullets? Or live to fight another day?

“All right,” Morgan said. He tossed it to her, too hard, trying to get her to fumble, but she caught it like a pro, and put it into a pocket in her pants. She then took a bow and started walking backward, to the balcony door.

“Shit!” cried Shepard. “Cobra! It’s Fleischer! He’s on your floor!”

Goddamn it.
Well, there was no saving this op now. “Fleischer is coming,” said Morgan to the woman. “He’s going to be in through that door any second now. Let’s get out of here, you and me, before he catches us.”

The woman stopped moving, as if startled, and trying to figure out what to do.

“It’s true,” said Morgan. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He inched closer to her. He had to get that thumb drive.

“Cobra, I’m going to deauthorize his card, but that’ll only hold him so long.”

The figure continued her inching walk toward the door to the balcony, gun trained on his chest. He inched along with her, keeping a constant distance between them. He cleared the bed, so that nothing blocked his way to her.

They both heard the sound of a card being inserted into the reader at the door, and a fumbling at the knob. The thief turned her head to look. Morgan took advantage of the distraction by dodging to the left and then rushing her. He knocked the gun out of her hand, but she avoided his tackle. The gun hit the hardwood floor with a heavy
thunk
and went sliding to the corner of the room.

Morgan swung a punch, and she ducked out of the way. She grabbed a poker from the fireplace and swung at him. It connected painfully with his side, strong enough to crack a rib. She swung again, this time at his head, but he grabbed it and pulled it out of her hand. She staggered forward as he did, and he got her into a half nelson. At the door, Fleischer was rattling the doorknob.

Morgan could feel her hair on his face, bunched up and covered by the black hood. Up so close, he could even make out her scent, almost neutral, but with just a hint of—

“Lily?” he asked. The hesitation was all she needed to kick him in the shin and swing her head back hard, hitting him in the cheek. That was going to leave a mark. His grasp slipped just enough for her to wrest herself free.

She dashed out to the balcony, and Morgan ran after her. He followed her down the length of the balcony, past the three French doors to the other rooms of the suite.

“Nowhere to go from here!” he yelled out.

“Nowhere to go but up!” she answered, clambering with incredible, catlike speed onto the railing, then a cornice, then pulling herself up to the roof. She looked down at him, gloating. “Sorry love,” she said, “but Weinberg’s
mine.
” She disappeared into the darkness, taking the thumb drive with her.
Goddamn it!
He examined the walls, amazed—there was no foothold he could possibly use to follow her up.

“She’s on the roof,” said Morgan.

“Who’s she?” asked Shepard. “What?”

“Lily Harper’s on the goddamn roof! I want Bishop and tactical on it! And check out where she’s staying. She drives a blue Aston Martin sports car. She’s got the thumb drive. Find her!”

Morgan heard a loud crack. Through the door to the balcony, he saw that Fleischer had just broken down the door, and was standing at the doorway.

“
Scheisse,
” whispered Morgan.

Morgan looked at that mountain of a man. He didn’t like the odds of a fair fight against him, and he didn’t have a gun on him. He looked back, but the odds of not breaking his legs in the fall were even worse. Morgan ran forward, grabbed the poker that Lily had dropped and took a running swing at Fleischer. He was big and slow, and didn’t react fast enough. Morgan hit him square in the face. He doubled down and held his face in his hands, crying out in pain. Morgan ran right past him and out the door.

He ran down the stairs, skipping steps at a time, straight to the lobby and then out the door.

“Mr. Morgan,” said the valet as he approached, “Shall I get your car?”

Morgan ran right past him, ignoring the question.

“Shepard, I need someone to pick me up.”

“Where are you?”

“Running along the hotel.”

“Bishop’s coming around with the tac team in the van,” he said. “I’ve got you on GPS. I’m sending him your way.”

Morgan kept on running until a black van pulled up alongside him. The side door opened, and he saw Spartan and Diesel, from Zeta tactical, inside. He hopped into the van without its coming to a stop, and it kept right on moving with him inside. They closed the side door, and Morgan fell back against the seat, exhausted.

“So what’s the status?” asked Spartan.

“I lost it, and I got made. Total bust. Any sight of her?”

“We were just about to spread out and make our search,” she said.

“It’s too late,” said Morgan. “She’ll be gone by now. Let’s regroup.”

“And then what?” asked Bishop from the front seat.

“Then we find Lily Harper and get that thumb drive back. Did you hear, Shepard?
Find out where she’s staying.
Because if we don’t, we’ve lost the only thing we’ve got on Weinberg, and our only connection to the location of the Secretary.”

“H
ave you got anything on Lily Harper?” asked Morgan, poking at his rib where she had whacked him with the iron poker.

He was back at the temporary base of operations that they had set up in Monte Carlo. It was a two-story house, up the hill and far from the beach. Shepard was at his computer, as usual, and Morgan was pacing the room. Bishop and the tactical team were out looking for Lily Harper at the hotel where they had found out she had been registered. Morgan wasn’t hopeful that she’d be there.

“Nothing,” said Shepard. “Nothing yet, anyway.”

“You have a picture, can’t you use face recognition software to match it to an ID?” Morgan asked as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He had an ugly black-and-blue bruise on his left cheek where she had head-butted him.

“Yes, but it takes time to run a picture through every known database in international intelligence!” Shepard said.

“All right, all right,” said Morgan, backing off.

He stepped out onto the balcony, looking at the breathtaking beauty of the Monte Carlo sunrise. A longing crept up from the back of his mind to be here with his wife, Jenny. He pictured what it would be like to be there without responsibilities, an actual vacation—

Some movement below caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head down to look. It was a blue compact Aston Martin, driving down the road.

“Is the car fueled up?” Morgan asked Shepard.

“What?” asked Shepard.

“The car,” said Morgan. “The Chevelle. Is it fueled up?”

“Yeah, we had it ready for Weinberg to turn on the engine and test it out.”

“Good. Where are the keys?”

“They’re in the garage, hung up on a hook,” said Shepard. “What—”

“No time!” said Morgan. “Send Bishop and the rest after me!”

Morgan ran downstairs and burst into the garage. He took the keys and pushed the button to open the garage door. He then got behind the wheel of the car. He turned the ignition, and the car came to life.

It was sacrilege, he knew. The car was mint condition. There was no other car like it. He looked down at the odometer, which read only one mile, as the garage door rolled open. Simply driving it would ruin it, let alone the kind of driving that Morgan tended to do. It was physically uncomfortable for him to do this. But the mission was more important. It was the most important, more than any car. Even a two-million-dollar, one-of-a-kind car. He took a deep breath.

Morgan tore out of the garage. The driveway was practically nonexistent, and he drove right out onto the road. Harper was on a different street, over and down, and with the glimpse he had caught, he formed a mental map. He maneuvered and turned right, then a second right to follow her. She’d be ahead of him now, but he had a hunch that she’d be getting out of town at that very moment, and there was one way out from where they were.

Morgan picked up speed, but was still not going fast enough to attract attention from the police. In under a minute, he was within sight of the Aston Martin. He coasted the car, letting it slow down to keep a fair distance from her.

She picked up speed.
Damn,
Morgan thought. He figured he’d be able to follow her for longer before she caught on. She was good. She’d had training, that much was obvious. And he supposed the racing stripes on the Chevelle didn’t exactly help.

Harper sped on down the avenue, forcing cars off the narrow road. She was driving a small sports car with excellent steering, while Morgan’s vehicle was broader and heavier, made for the open American road and not narrow European streets. Morgan had to swerve left and right to keep up, dodging compact European cars and leaving angry, honking drivers in his wake. To his right was a short cliff, and Morgan knew that going off of it would mean serious injury, possibly death. He pressed on.

Up ahead, Harper turned into the highway, which was not much wider than the avenue they had been on, but gave them a bit more room to maneuver. He stepped on the gas, leaning on the horn so that other drivers would get out of the way. She was putting a lot of distance between them. He had to speed up, or he was going to lose her, and the very thing that he’d come to Monte Carlo to retrieve.

Ahead he saw a sharp, upward-inclined curve. Morgan knew that if he slowed down here, he’d lose her.
Let’s go then, you bastard.
He floored the accelerator, going for a drift, and the car roared. He turned, but the tires didn’t hold. The car spun out, the world becoming a blur until he felt the impact with a boulder on the passenger’s side, just in time to see Harper’s Aston Martin disappearing in the distance.

Morgan blinked twice. He felt woozy. He blinked again, and had the impression he had blacked out, not knowing how much time had passed. Seconds? Minutes? Though the car was still, the world still seemed to be spinning.

“Shepard?” he said. Had he put in the communicator or had he left it? He couldn’t remember. “Shepard? Come in.” He tried to feel for it in his ear, but the task seemed to be beyond him.

He tried to open the door, but it took several pushes before he could get it open. He staggered out of the car, but his knees buckled and he fell to the ground.

Morgan turned on his back, and looked up to see a man looking down on him. His vision was blurry, so it took a moment for the face to resolve into that of Anse Fleischer. The world darkened as the enormous German picked him up. Morgan was dragged into a navy blue BMW sedan. Morgan lost consciousness just as the door shut out all the light from the outside.