Enemy in the Dark (2 page)

Just let it be in time . . .

“Let's go, Sarge,” Blackhawk whispered. “We need to round
up your boys and get back to Madrassa.” He took one last look at the château. The convoy was still coming, with no end in sight to the line of armored vehicles.
That's trouble. Big trouble.

“C'mon, Sarge. We're already late.”

Katarina felt a tingle on her finger, a small electrical discharge from her ring. It was a signal from Blackhawk, and it meant one thing:
trouble
. She had intended to seduce Aragona and get him to take her back to his château, where Blackhawk and Sarge's crew would help her get him out. Indeed, Aragona had already propositioned her twice. She'd been playing along, making sure he was truly hooked, but now that plan was scrubbed. Which meant she was down to the backup.

“I would love to accompany you back to your estate, Arra, but what of my husband?” Katarina glanced across the table, rocking slowly in her chair. She was pretending to be drunker than she was. She and Aragona had finished off a second bottle of the dry Black Château vintage, more than enough of the strong red wine to inebriate most women her size. Women who hadn't been through the years of hard training at the Assassins' Guild on Sebastiani, that is. Who hadn't done the rigorous survival training and the deep body control exercises she had. It took a considerable amount of alcohol to get Katarina Venturi truly drunk, and even then she maintained impressive control of her wits and reflexes.

“He is quite engrossed in his poker game, from what I am told. It will likely be dawn before he tears himself away.” Aragona's voice was distracted, his eyes glancing down at Katarina's bare leg. She'd shifted, moving to the side, and the Castillan lord had just noticed how high the slit ran in her dress. “We can slip away, and my men can have you back here long before morning.”

She stared at Aragona. She knew he was dangerous, far more so than his charming demeanor suggested. But she'd also heard his weakness for women was profound, and his devious intelligence at times took a backseat to another body part. She suspected it was ego that made him so intent to bed the beautiful wives of other rich and powerful men, another cold-blooded killer undone by hidden insecurities. He was tailor-made for her manipulations—which was why she had accepted the mission in the first place. Sex was a weapon, and one she was uniquely qualified to wield with deadly effect.

“I am sorry, Arra, but it is too much of a risk. Pavel can be a very jealous man, and he controls our fortune. If he should come looking for me and I am . . .”

“I assure you, my dear, your husband will remain at the tables, even if I must order my people to let him win.” Aragona's voice was tense, his urgency apparent. She knew she had gotten to him. Lust was doing its work for her, as it had so many times before.

“I want to, Arra,” she purred. “But I cannot take the chance. Without Pavel, I will be penniless, trapped on a foreign world.” She ran her hand playfully through her mane of shimmering black hair, her dark brown eyes locked on his as she did. “Perhaps—” She paused abruptly.

“Perhaps what, Irina?” He reached across the table, placing his hand on her arm.

She moved her fingers slowly, her polished red nails gently teasing his extended arm. “Perhaps we could sneak off to one of the suites in the hotel for a few hours.” Getting Aragona upstairs was the fallback plan, but she didn't like it any more than she had when they'd originally discussed it.
I
'
m sure I can lure him up there
.
But how are we going to get him out of the hotel? The
ch
â
teau is out in the countryside, but the Grand Palais is right in the middle of the city, full of guests and guards, and kilometers away from the
Claw.
I guess we'll just have to make it work. Somehow.

Aragona paused, a troubled look momentarily passing over his face. Katarina smiled. “Of course . . .” he finally said. “If you will excuse me, I shall have a suite prepared at once.”

He smiled and stood up, walking toward one of the stewards standing nearby. “Go and tell the manager I want the royal suite prepared at once. Flowers, candles, bowls of burning jasmina. And I am in a hurry, so I want it ready in ten minutes.”

“Yes, Lord Aragona.”

“And I want another bottle of the Black Château in the suite. Lightly chilled.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Katarina was sitting quietly, listening to Aragona's seduction preparations.
No doubt, he thinks I cannot hear him.
Katarina's hearing was quite acute, though, and her mental discipline allowed her to tune out background distractions. She couldn't match Blackhawk's uncanny senses, but she was the closest of the crew to matching the
Claw
's enigmatic captain.

Katarina had also heard the fear in the steward's voice. It was another reminder not to underestimate this man. She'd seen terrified servants before, and she'd met a hundred variations of the brutal masters who had instilled them with that fear. She hadn't killed them all, but she'd wanted to. She was a cold-blooded killer herself, but she directed her attentions toward the powerful and dangerous, not the poor and weak, and she despised bullies who brutalized those who couldn't fight back.

No doubt, for all his arts of seduction, he
'
d kill a lover too. Because she displeased him. Or simply because he felt the urge.

Aragona walked back, smiling. “I am having them open the
royal suite for us, my beautiful Irina. It will be ready in ten minutes.” He smiled, but she could see through it, to the monster below the surface. “Just enough time to finish our drinks.”

Katarina reached for her glass and returned the smile. “I look forward to a memorable evening.” She took a sip of her wine and set it down, still smiling sweetly. But inside she was regretting that this was a snatch-and-grab job.

She suspected she would have enjoyed killing the son of a bitch.

Lucas Lancaster sat in his usual place, the pilot's chair on the
Claw'
s bridge. The
Claw
was quiet, too quiet. It was just him and the Twins. He was in charge of the ship, as usual, and the Twins were in reserve, in case anyone got into trouble. Everybody else was out on the op, even Sam.

The brothers were monsters, gargantuan human beings well over two meters tall and weighing at least 150 kilos. They were great in a fight, but a bit too noticeable for undercover work—and a little too stupid, too. For all their blind loyalty and astonishing strength in a fight, Tarq and Tarnan were what Ace liked to call dull blades.

Lucas was monitoring the operation, and as far as he could see, everything was going according to plan. Unfortunately, he couldn't see much, because Blackhawk had mandated near-total communications silence.

But Lucas wasn't without resources. He'd managed to hack into the Castillan Orbital Command before the op and commandeer one of its surveillance satellites. He was scanning the entire area, looking for anything out of the ordinary, any kind of problem that might interfere with the operation. Things had been quiet so far, but if his experiences on
Wolf
'
s Claw
had
taught him anything, it was that the situation could go to crap in a heartbeat.

Like now.

His eyes caught something on the scanner, movement around the Aragona villa. “What the fuck?” he muttered to himself. He stared at the screen closely, trying to discern what it was he saw. He thought about sending an instruction to the commandeered satellite, retasking it slightly to give a closer view, but that would require a high-energy communications burst, and Blackhawk had forbidden him from taking that kind of risk—unless the situation was dire. Lucas wasn't shy about massaging the meaning of a word, but he couldn't stretch all the way to “dire.” Not yet.

His eye caught a flashing red light on the board. A signal from Blackhawk—and a step closer to dire. The mission was compromised, and they were moving to the backup plan.

Lucas let out a long sigh. That was bad news. The backup plan sucked. Trying to snatch a paranoid psychotic from his villa in the countryside was bad enough, but grabbing him from his own hotel in the center of one of Castilla's biggest cities—that was downright suicidal.

And yet, just another day
'
s work on the
Claw.

“Tarq, Tarnan, I need you guys to suit up. We might have some work to do.” He wasn't going to rush in and blow everyone's covers. Not yet, at least. But he was damned well going to be ready, because the shit was sure as hell going to hit the fan . . . it always did. And when that happened, he wanted the Twins ready to go.

Ace looked at his cards again. It was one of the false tells he'd invented, a way he'd been controlling the game, allowing Cordoba to win often enough to feel he was getting the better of his
adversary, despite the fact that the money had remained fairly even. Ace had left Cordoba feeling he'd outplayed his opponent, and that his own losses had been due to dumb luck. It was the perfect enticement to keep the Castillan at the table. Every gambler knew luck could only last so long.

“Lord Suvarov, I am sorry to interrupt.”

Ace turned abruptly, an angry look on his face.

Shira stood behind him, clad in a sleekly tailored white suit. Her short hair was combed straight back, and she was wearing heels that made her already significant height even more impressive. She held a small tablet in her hands.

“What is it, Felice? What was so important it compelled you to interrupt my recreation?” His voice was haughty, dripping with arrogance. Sure, he was playing a part for the mission, but nothing said he couldn't enjoy it, too.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Lord Suvarov,” she apologized again, “but we just received news about the shipment. The initial freighter has had to cancel the contract due to mechanical problems. We need to utilize our secondary alternative.”

Ace stared at her with a sour expression on his face. “Well, if there is no alternative, then proceed. And don't disturb me again unless it is important.” It
was
bad news. Shira was relaying Blackhawk's order to go to Plan B. Beyond the problems that the captain would encounter, Ace's whole purpose had been to keep Cordoba occupied and in town while the abduction went down in the villa. Now, though, all that had achieved was to keep the psychopathic son of a bitch in the same building where they were going to snatch Aragona. Ace wasn't the prime mover in this plan, but he hated being counterproductive.

I'm not a big fan of the plan going straight to shit immediately, either.

Although I should be used to it by now . . .

“A problem, Lord Suvarov?” Cordoba glanced across the table, a hint of concern in his voice, but no real suspicion Ace could detect.

“Nothing a better staff wouldn't solve, Lord Cordoba.” He glared up at Shira. “Go. See to it, now.”

She looked back down at him and nodded respectfully. “As you command, my lord.”

Ace watched her hurry from the room, and he noticed Cordoba doing the same. He had to admit she looked good in the form-fitting suit, but he felt like he was watching his sister. He knew Shira preferred women, at least when she defrosted enough to want anyone, but she had no difficulty attracting attention from either sex. No one could match Katarina for raw seductiveness, but Ace suspected Shira could have done the job, too.

He held back a sigh. Things were going to hell, and the next few hours were likely to be extremely dangerous. Still, he enjoyed treating Shira like a servant, a small perk of the op. He suspected he'd pay for it later, assuming they all made it out, but it was still worth it.

“Indeed, Lord Suvarov. It is a constant challenge to find competent servants.” Cordoba paused a few seconds before asking the question Ace knew was coming. “Pardon my curiosity, but perhaps I can assist you with whatever business you are conducting.”

Ace reached over and grabbed his glass, taking a sip before answering. “As you know, many of my brethren from Saragossa were dispossessed these last eight years by the revolution there. However, recent news suggests that our cause has taken a turn for the better, and the revolutionary armies are on the retreat. Let us just say I have been safeguarding some . . . special hold
ings for some of my fellow nobles, items they wanted to keep out of the hands of the rebels.” He paused for a few seconds, glancing through the arches separating the VIP area from the main casino. “It is a delicate matter, Lord Cordoba, perhaps one best discussed elsewhere.” He gestured toward the table. “Besides, the cards await us now, do they not?”

“Indeed they do, Lord Suvarov. Indeed they do.”

Ace watched the pudgy Castillan deal slowly.
Now there
'
s something else for you to think about: how you will manage to cheat me out of a ship full of Saragossan treasures
. He smiled. There was nothing Ace liked better than dealing with greedy men. And he could see by the look in Cordoba's eyes, his reputation was well deserved. That was good, because Ace expected he was going to need every distraction possible if he was going to get back to the
Claw
.

“LET'S GO, BOYS. WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME.”

Really, we don
'
t have any fucking time.
Blackhawk knew Katarina couldn't stall Aragona all night. Sooner or later, she'd end up in one of the hotel suites with him. He knew she didn't need help subduing him, but she was damned sure going to need backup getting him the hell out of there and back to the
Claw
.

“Right behind you, Captain.”

Blackhawk could hear the exhaustion in Sarge's voice, and a quick glance over his shoulder told him the rest of the crew was in even worse shape. Blackhawk knew his lung capacity was at least half again theirs, and probably more. He'd been driven by urgency, though, and his concern for Katarina and Ace and the rest of his people in Madrassa. But the others just couldn't
maintain his pace. He was going to have to make a choice: go on ahead by himself or slow down enough for them to keep up. He hated the idea of splitting up, but the thought of leaving Katarina on her own was worse.

He stopped and spun around, his eyes focusing briefly on each of them. “Sarge, I'm going to go on ahead. You guys follow as quickly as you can.” He stared at the hulking soldier. “You remember the layout of the city, right?” He hadn't expected Sarge's people to get anywhere near Madrassa, but they'd gone over the backup plan anyway.

Once.

“Yes, sir. I remember.” Blackhawk wasn't sure he believed the grizzled warrior, but he figured they would manage. Sarge was staring back, a troubled expression on his face. “Captain, we can run faster. We can keep up with you.”

“No, Sarge. You can't.” It was a little harder than he usually put things for the crew, but he didn't have time to waste. And there was no point in explaining that he'd been holding back so they could keep up. “I need you guys in shape to fight . . . assuming we end up in a battle.”
And when the hell don
'
t we?
“Stay as close behind as you can.” He gave them all a quick wave, then took off, practically sprinting toward the looming buildings of the city.

He figured they were still ten klicks out, but alone he could cover that in thirty minutes. “Half an hour, Kat,” he whispered as he raced down the darkened street, his keen eyes making do with the dim moonlight.

“I'll be there in half an hour. Just hang on.”

Katarina looked around the room. The suite was palatial, with an antique grand piano and a sweeping view of the city and
the shoreline beyond. The walls were covered with hand-carved wainscoting, and she suspected the art on the walls was among the best on Castilla.

Though that isn
'
t saying much.

Logs were crackling in the fireplace, and the room was full of flowers. There were candles on the tables flanking the bed, and small bowls of fiery liquid. Jasmina was a plant from the Castillan tropics, the fragrant vapors from its burning extract another supposed local aphrodisiac. Katarina suppressed her amusement. She was astonished at the cheap theatrics that worked for men like Aragona. Though she expected his wealth was more of a factor in his success with women, or, when that failed, coercion.

She wondered how much a high roller had to gamble in the Grand Palais's casino to see the inside of this place. Five hundred thousand florins? A million? So much simpler just to flash a little leg . . .

“Here you are, my dear.” Aragona stepped up with two crystal goblets in his hand. He stood close behind, handing her one of the glasses. “It is quite a view, isn't it?”

Katarina felt the warmth of his breath on her neck. She was sure she could disable him at will, but she was wondering if she should wait—to give Blackhawk and the others a little more time to get in position.

She'd managed to get him up to the suite without any of his guards in tow. Her pleas for discretion and privacy might have aroused some suspicion if Aragona wasn't already so focused on getting her into bed. But even alone—and that assumed there were no active surveillance devices in the suite—she knew once she disabled him they were on a rigid time clock. They had to get him out before he came to, or she'd have to kill him and
make a break for it. She figured she had a decent chance of getting away if she had to, but the mission would be a disaster. And Katarina hated failure.

The bank wanted a live captive, and the price Blackhawk negotiated reflected the increased difficulty over a simple assassination. A dead Aragona meant the crew wouldn't get paid at all—this wasn't a dead or alive contract—and they'd have wasted time and resources on a pointless excursion. And that assumed everyone else made it out. Katarina had lived most of her life embracing a coldly calculating mentality, to consider the people around her as assets, expendable if it helped the mission succeed. But she knew she'd lost some of that keen edge, the almost inhuman coldness that marked a Sebastiani assassin. Against all her training and discipline, she'd become quite fond of her shipmates, and the thought of any of them dying on a blown mission was not something she wanted to contemplate.

Ace was in the worst danger. Despite her efforts at discretion, Aragona's men knew she'd gone upstairs with their boss. They believed she was Ace's wife, sneaking off behind her husband's back. If they found their boss dead in the hotel suite . . .

No, she had to get Aragona out of here, and do it quietly, so Ace had a chance to slip away. When she first bought passage on
Wolf's Claw
, she couldn't understand why someone as coldly competent as Blackhawk had such a loudmouth fool as his sidekick. Her first impressions of people were usually spot-on, but she eventually realized she'd misjudged Ace. Despite his loud—and often annoying—theatrics, she'd found him to be keenly intelligent and enormously reliable. And, if she was being totally objective, not completely unattractive . . .

No—she couldn't leave him at the mercy of Aragona's enraged retainers. She wouldn't. Whatever it took.

“Why, Arra, are you trying to get me drunk?” she purred softly, turning and running her hand down his face. “Because, I assure you, that is not necessary.” She leaned back into him.

“Your husband is a fool to neglect a woman like you.”

She felt his hands on her shoulders, his fingers slipping under the thin straps of her dress. She moaned softly at his touch and leaned her head back, her silky hair pressed against his face.

We
'
ll see who the fool is. It
'
s only a matter of when
. . .

Blackhawk slipped through the dark streets, moving as quickly as he could without attracting notice. It was late, but Madrassa was known for its nightlife, so the restaurants, casinos, and clubs would be crowded until dawn.

He tried to stay in the shadows and on backstreets. He'd expected to be infiltrating the villa, and he was wearing combat fatigues and boots. He was filthy, too, his legs covered with half-dried mud from tramping around in the tidal estuaries. He'd managed to avoid any undue notice so far, but the minute he walked into the Grand Palais, every eye would be on him. The hotel was the finest establishment in Madrassa, and its patrons would be impeccably dressed.

He looked around, his eyes scanning the late-night revelers walking by. He needed clothes, and he could only think of one way to get them. He watched and waited, looking for an appropriately dressed partier . . . preferably one around his size.

Finally, he saw a man approaching. He was alone, and he looked to be a good physical match. And he was swaying back and forth, clearly drunk.
Even better.

Blackhawk waited for the man to walk by, and then he struck. He lunged forward, striking the back of the man's neck.
His victim crumbled instantly, and Blackhawk caught him and slid his limp form into an alley.

He put his fingers to the man's throat, feeling for a pulse. A look of relief slipped onto his face. He hadn't used a killing strike, but he'd been worried he'd hit too hard. Blackhawk had fought an astonishing array of cutthroats and killers, but he wasn't used to disabling drunk civilians.

He stripped out of his fatigues and put on his victim's suit. It wasn't a perfect fit, but it would do. He picked up his assault rifle, looking around the alley for a place to stash it. Once again, his equipment for the villa had no place on the floors of the Grand Palais, and there was no way he could conceal it with these clothes.

He walked over and shoved the rifle into a trash bin, carefully pushing it down under the garbage. He paused for a minute and sighed, unbuckling his holster belt and tossing it in after the rifle. He wasn't getting in with a pistol, either.

He turned and took a last glimpse at the man lying on the ground. He pulled a ten-crown platinum coin and placed it in his victim's hand. It was enough to buy a hundred suits, compensation enough, he hoped, for both the clothing and the headache he knew the man would have when he awoke. Arkarin Blackhawk was a lot of things, but a thief wasn't one of them.

Okay, it
'
s time.
He didn't know exactly what he was going to do, but he knew he had to do it now. He took a breath and slipped out of the alley, heading swiftly through the streets toward the Grand Palais.

“Lucas, we're at the airlock. Armed and ready.” Tarq Bjergen's voice was so deep it rattled the speaker on Lucas's workstation.

“You have the extra weapons with you?” Lucas didn't know
what was happening to the rest of the crew, but he was sure of one thing: if they'd moved the op to the Grand Palais, they weren't waltzing in there with assault rifles. They'd be practically unarmed, and if he had to send the Twins in to rescue them, he suspected some extra guns would come in handy.

“Yes, sir. We each have three extra rifles and pistols and a sack of flash grenades.”

Lucas nodded his head. That was a lot of extra crap to carry into battle, but then the Twins weren't average fighters. He'd seen the two gargantuan brothers flip over an armored vehicle once. They could handle a few extra guns, along with the giant autocannons the two normally wielded

“All right. Stand by.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lucas smiled. He wasn't remotely a “sir.” No one on
Wolf
'
s Claw
really was, except Blackhawk. And the captain was the last one to make a big deal out of rank. The crew had a variety of respectful names for their leader, but just as often he was simply “Ark” to them all.

Below Blackhawk, though, there really was no rigid hierarchy on the
Claw
. Lucas and most of the rest of the crew generally thought of Ace as second in command. All except Shira. And Lucas knew that in a crunch she'd swallow her pride and accept Ace's orders, too. Truth was, in the end they were a team, and whatever disagreements or rivalries they had disappeared when any of them was in danger.

He stared at the power readouts. He had the field up at full strength. The
Claw
was as good as invisible to any casual observer, and even to a serious search effort unless it was extremely targeted. The distortion field was another of Black
hawk's mysteries. None of the crew knew where it had come from, but they were well aware how useful a device it was. It had probably saved their lives more than once—a lot like Blackhawk himself.

For the millionth time, Lucas wished he could run the engines and the field at the same time, but the strange artifact drew an enormous amount of power. He'd been planning to test the new reactor Marshal Lucerne had given them to see if it could manage the strain, but that was an experiment for a time when they weren't in the middle of an operation—and when Sam was down in engineering where she belonged.

Still, he was tempted. Castilla wasn't one of the Prime worlds by any means, but it wasn't a backwater shithole like Saragossa or Kalishar, either. It wouldn't take long for the Castillan defense forces to detect a launch after he dropped the field. From then he'd have maybe ten minutes to get to Madrassa and grab everyone—or the
Claw
would end up in a battle with the entire Castillan fleet. Not an attractive prospect.

Lucas stared down at the readouts, but his thoughts were with the rest of the crew. Should he blast off and rush to Madrassa? Or should he sit tight and see what happened?

They may call me sir, but I hate being in command.

“Sam, I need you to go back in there.” Blackhawk had linked up with Sam and Shira just outside the Grand Palais, and he was doing something he hated to be forced to when he'd had a perfectly good plan: he was improvising.

“Whatever you need, Captain.” Sam Sparks was one of the best engineers in the Far Stars, but she was also incredibly capable in a fight. Her age and introverted nature tended to
make people either want to protect her or dismiss her, but that's because they'd never seen her in action. Blackhawk had. And he knew she'd killed a lot of people for a twenty-seven-year-old.

A lot of people.

“We have to get Katarina and Aragona out of there,” he continued, “and we need a diversion of some kind to do it. Do you think you can get down to the mechanical level and knock out the building's power?”

She looked back at him for a few seconds before she answered. “I can try, Ark.” She paused again. “I'll manage it. Somehow.”

“Be careful, Sam.” Blackhawk reached out and put his hand on her arm. “I know this is dangerous, but don't take any unnecessary risks. If you can't get down there, back off. We'll manage some other way.”

She nodded. “I'll be careful.” She smiled and turned to walk back toward the hotel's entrance.

Blackhawk watched her go, a little worried about just how careful she would be. He spent most of his time worrying about Ace doing something insane, but he knew Sam had a little streak of craziness in her too. It put a knot in his gut, but it also made him proud as hell.

“What do you want me to do, Cap?” Shira stood next to Blackhawk, also watching Sam walk toward the hotel.