Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (36 page)
Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
Ziva wanted nothing more than to go back downstairs and give Foda a taste of his own medicine, but the look on Kade’s face piqued her curiosity. There was no harm in hearing him out, she decided. Considering he was at his computer, maybe he had actually found something of value.
She approached, feeling almost sick as her fresh cut continued to sting. It wasn’t the pain that affected her so much as the knowledge that Foda had once more managed to hurt her, even after she’d vowed it would never happen again. And now Aroska had seen the scars…he knew, didn’t he? He’d read her files but hadn’t mentioned anything about her imprisonment. In turn, she’d refused to bring it up.
Kade moved aside to give her a look at the screen. He seemed nervous, fidgety, like someone who was about to bear bad news.
Great.
“I got the rest of Zona’s files open while you were out,” he explained. “It turns out he was doing a little research independent of the case – I don’t think he wanted anyone else to know about it. By the looks of it, he might have actually started taking everything I told him to heart.”
“This is all about me,” Ziva said, skimming over each of the file headings. She recognized each and every one of the incident reports and mission debriefs. Despite Zona’s high clearance level, many of them were redacted or only partially complete, but the amount of information that remained was enough for any experienced investigator to start piecing things together.
Kade swallowed. “There seems to be one other common factor.”
“Dasaro,” Ziva said. She caught his name in several of her own files and there was a separate collection of information about him alone.
“Search queries for Argall and Farag Foda also came back positive,” Kade said, sounding as though something was lodged in his throat.
“Argall,” Ziva repeated, not quite a question and not quite a statement. Why would anyone else at HSP have cared about Argall, and how could anyone outside of ops have known about Foda and the incident on Cobi? She looked closer at the timestamps on each file. Some were more recent, and some were from – she did a double-take – three years earlier. Three years.
I’ve had this hunch for three years.
Kat’s voice:
“He and the girl were killed three years ago.”
“Three years ago is when I first found something on Argall while I was investigating Dasaro,” she said. “That’s when Kat’s father and sister died, and judging by what Zona has collected here, it looks like he believes Dasaro was behind the killing that took place there.”
“Was that the gist you were getting back then?”
Ziva paused. “I’m not sure. There was a lot going on and I didn’t have time or probable cause to search any further. All I knew was that he had some sort of operation going on outside of HSP, but I never got a chance to find out what it was.”
Kade lifted an eyebrow. “But did
he
know that? Here he is coming after me because he’s afraid I know something I don’t.”
Ziva stared at the computer screen, attempting to put the puzzle together and see whatever big picture Zona had seen. “Kat has encountered Dasaro’s name just recently as she’s searched for information about her family.”
“And you’ve been digging again, right?” Kade said. “Three years ago, you were digging. Now, you’re digging. What else has happened both times?”
Ziva remained silent for a moment, eyes fixed on the file Zona had labeled CONCLUSIONS. “No,” she murmured, partly to herself and partly in response to his question, “that was completely unrelated.” The harder she thought, however, the more she understood his hint. He’d no doubt already seen what was in the file.
“What do we know?” he asked, encouraging her along.
“We know Dasaro is behind my set-up now,” she replied, rubbing her eyes. “So, what, I’m getting a little too close so he decides to frame me for an assassination to shut me up? You think the same thing happened three years ago?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Ziva clasped her hands in front of her mouth before the trembling could set in. She was having trouble replacing the image of Foda standing before her battered body in that bunker with the one of him on his knees downstairs. It seemed pretty clear that he was working for Dasaro now, if only as an informant, so it was quite possible that they could have been in league three years earlier. In fact, the idea made sense.
“There was no motive,” she muttered.
Nobody had ever been able to figure out the exact reason behind her capture, other than the fact that she was one of the agents tasked with putting the pirates’ operations to an end. During all her time in captivity, they had never asked a single question regarding troop placement or how much HSP knew. It wasn’t an interrogation – it was torture for the sake of torture, performed by someone who had been paid to take his sweet time carrying out instructions from a third party and not question his orders.
Ziva felt her face flush with anger and mashed a button on Kade’s keyboard, opening the Conclusions file. The notes it contained only reinforced the theory she had already formed. Three years earlier, she’d been searching for a connection between Dasaro and Argall, and the captain had arranged a seemingly unrelated circumstance to either incapacitate or kill her. Now she’d been investigating again, and again he had arranged a way to get her off his trail. She kicked herself for having not caught on sooner, but at the moment she was more bothered by the fact that Foda had done everything he did under orders.
The wound on her shoulder began to seep again as her blood pressure rose. She jerked into a standing position, nearly upsetting the table and all the computer equipment. Kade all but leapt aside to give her space as she stormed past him, descending the stairs on feet so light she could barely hear her steps over her own pulse. Once again it seemed as though time itself had slowed when she caught sight of Foda. Kat stood behind him, holding his tentacles as she removed a dirty old rag from his face. He sputtered and coughed as water ran down his body and contributed to the puddle that had already formed on the floor. Aroska stood with the bucket poised over his head, growling questions that Foda wouldn’t have answered even if he’d been able to.
Things were still only moving at half speed when Ziva reached the bottom of the steps. Without breaking stride, she turned toward the others, sliding her pistol from its holster as she did so. She took aim for Foda’s gaping mouth, the one that had sneered at and spit on her as he’d tormented her. His eyes widened when he noticed the gun.
“Whoa!” Kat exclaimed, leaning forward over Foda’s head.
Her sudden movements made Ziva hesitate just long enough to give Aroska time to turn and seize her forearm, but his grip was no match for the adrenaline surging through her veins. She threw her arm forward, knocking him off balance, and brought her elbow across his face. He flinched and tried to duck away, only to end up on the receiving end of a powerful left hook. Her fist met the side of his head and the impact sent him reeling backward. If there was a time in her life when she’d hit someone harder, she couldn’t remember it.
Taking advantage of the few seconds of freedom, she pivoted and leveled the gun at Foda’s chest. She pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, and watched his body buck and fall backward. A stunned silence fell over the room. Kat and Aroska stared, wide-eyed, and Ziva was vaguely aware of Kade standing on the stairs behind her.
Let them stare
. There were some people who warned that revenge would never bring peace; perhaps that was true, but revenge was also sweet, wasn’t it? Standing there staring at Foda’s limp form, Ziva couldn’t help but be happy she’d spotted him in the street. He would have met his demise eventually, but it wouldn’t have been by her choosing. This outcome was much more ideal. She stepped forward and put one last round through his head for good measure.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there with the gun still aimed at him before Aroska approached her from behind and placed his hand over her own, pistol and all. “Give it to me, Ziva,” he said, his voice quiet but firm.
Ziva released the gun after a brief hesitation and let her arm fall to her side. She didn’t resist when Aroska took her by the shoulders and led her across the room to the sofa where he sat her down and kneeled before her, forcing her to look him in the eye. He said nothing, but his face displayed the same qualities as it had on the landing pad outside the Dakiti facility on Sardonis – a hint of awe, but mostly fear and disappointment.
She watched him through narrowed eyes and shook her head. “He didn’t know anything anyway,” she muttered.
Aroska rose to a standing position and crossed his arms, looming in much the same way Dasaro had in the interrogation room. He was joined after a moment by Kat, who was in turn joined by Kade, and she felt smothered by their collective stare.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry, because I’m not.”
“Nobody’s asking for an apology,” Aroska replied, “but we’re all in this together, so I think the rest of us deserve a nice long explanation of what the hell is going on.”
So there it was. All along, Ziva had known she’d have to tell her story at some point, but over time she had found herself putting it off and hoping everyone would forget. She looked up at each of them in turn – Kat and Kade were wide-eyed and confused, and Aroska‘s face was stone cold. But they were all waiting expectantly.
Ziva stood up to escape their intense stares. She took one last look at Foda’s body, using that time to gather her thoughts. The trembling had already set in, so she placed her hands on her hips in hopes of stilling them.
“I’m sure you all remember hearing about the series of attacks on the weapons transports three years ago,” she said, keeping her gaze directed toward the dead Cobian. “I was part of a task force assigned to track the pirates down and I ran point on a strike team that infiltrated the old base on Cobi…”
Ziva froze and held up her right hand, signaling for her team to halt as the garbled transmission came through her earpiece. Exasperated, she pressed her back up against the wall of the outbuilding they were concealed behind and waited until the five agents with her had done the same.
“Red Leader here,” she responded.
For a moment there was nothing but static and jumbled voices as two transmissions vied for priority. She barely caught Skeet’s voice: “Z, are you seeing this?”
Without turning around, she held out her hand and received a viewscreen that displayed an infrared bird’s-eye-view of the old military compound in which they stood. There were two other teams identical to hers, headed up by Skeet and Zinni, that held their positions on the other side of the compound and were represented on the screen by clusters of yellow dots. Those clusters were moving outward and away from the base’s center structure, away from the target.
“What the hell?” she muttered. “Command, this is Red Leader. Why are we retreating?”
The original transmission finally got through and she found herself listening to Dasaro’s voice. “Repeat, all teams fall back,” he said. “New intel. I’m sending exfil coordinates to you. Report back to the base ship for briefing.”
“But sir!” Ziva said, stealing a glance around the side of the building. They were so close! “My teams are all in position – if we move now, we can take the warehouse.”
“Tachi’s orders, Payvan,” Dasaro replied. “We just received an anonymous tip – some members of Foda’s gang were spotted in the city.”
“But there’s a high probability we’ll find Foda himself here.”
“An order’s an order, Payvan. Pull out now!”
Ziva handed the viewscreen back to the agent beside her and took a moment to examine each eager face as the others waited for the verdict. It had taken nearly two hours of sneaking and creeping for them to reach their current position, and she dreaded to think it had been for nothing.
“My brother worked on one of the transports that was attacked,” one of the agents spoke up. “Foda’s gang killed him. I’m with you all the way, Lieutenant.”
“As am I,” said another.
The other three nodded in agreement.
The wheels in Ziva’s head began spinning. If they managed to advance another forty meters or so, they’d be past the point of no return and HSP would have to let them continue. They’d need to move fast or an extraction team would catch up to them and blow any chance they had of bagging Foda.
She considered opening a transmission to Dasaro but decided against it for fear that he would send someone after them before they had time to move. “Let’s go,” she said.
Two of the agents moved out in front of her, sweeping the area and providing cover for the rest of them as they darted across the grass to the next outbuilding. They froze halfway across the clearing, sending a nervous tingle through Ziva’s body. She looked up to see a group of six Cobians forming a barrier across their path – they were all armed and held their weapons up and ready. There was a rustling behind them and she turned to find seven more blocking the way they had come. She was too focused on them to notice the two flash grenades rolling toward her.
Ziva tried to look away as they went off but found herself staring straight into the glare of a third one that had been thrown by the other group. She turned, blinded by the spots and stars that danced in her eyes, and collided with one of the other agents. They fell to the ground, their feet entangled, and her rifle slipped from her grasp. Heavy footsteps thundered around her and she was vaguely aware of shadows passing by overhead. She caught sight of her weapon, or more accurately, two of her weapon, and reached for the nearest one, but her hand came away full of dead grass. Her vision began to right itself and she reached for the real gun; her fingers touched metal just as the stun baton hit the back of her neck.
