Nightfire (27 page)

Anyone visiting or returning to the condo would see a missing security guard and locked doors and assume there’d been trouble and probably call 112.

No, this was America, he reminded himself. 911.

He studied the security camera system for a minute while Dmitri was taking care of the front doors. He was familiar with most security systems. This one was particularly upscale.

But not invulnerable.

He flipped a switch and raised his eyes to the four corners of the atrium. The LED lights next to the cameras were off.

Okay, the building was sealed and blind.

Phase two.

The Mason woman had been on the fourth floor, third apartment from the left. Ordinarily, he would have ascended to several floors above the apartment, then come down the stairwell, but time was tight. The security system was off but he had no idea whether there were two guards on duty. That was the problem with improvisation—no intel and no proper planning. So they just took the elevator up.

Outside the door of the apartment, Nikitin held out his hand and Dmitri placed an infrared scanner in it. Nikitin switched it on, then looked, frowning, at the screen. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He walked quickly down the hallway, aiming the scanner, and found two people behind the doors and the walls of the apartments. One two doors down to the right, and the other behind the door of the last apartment to the left.

The heat signatures were small. Women or very small men. Housewives or cleaning ladies, most likely.

He walked back fast to the apartment where Chloe was. Nothing.

The door was featureless, obviously a sliding door operated by a keypad to the right. The door was impenetrable to infrared. So were the walls to either side of the door.

Shit! This Mike Keillor was very security-conscious. Nikitin met Dmitri’s eyes. He indicated the next apartment over and Dmitri nodded.

They moved to the next door in complete silence. Dmitri had been well-trained. Nikitin didn’t have to give orders.

He aimed the infrared at the door of the apartment right next to where Mason was staying. Wood, no barrier at all to infrared.

He walked the length of the corridor corresponding to the apartment and saw no heat signatures at all. Perfect. Whoever owned this place was out, probably at work. If they were out shopping, they’d regret it because Nikitin would shoot to kill if they returned.

His weapons were beyond traceable reach of U.S. law enforcement authorities. The security cameras were down. If he had to kill, they’d never trace it back to him. They were being very careful, but even if they left some DNA behind, neither he nor Dmitri would be in their system.

Nikitin eyed the lock. It was pickable, but it would take time. He nodded to Dmitri and stepped back. The shot was barely audible standing right next to the gun. It sounded like a can of beer being opened.

With a slight push of the door, they entered. Nikitin immediately turned right, aiming his scanner at the walls while Dmitri went from room to room, weapon up.

By the time Dmitri came back giving the all-clear hand signal, Nikitin had found Chloe, sitting in a room directly next to this apartment’s living room. He studied the scanner’s monitor.

A slight figure sitting on a chair, hand curled around something hot, the only other heat source what looked like a microwave, cooling rapidly.

She was sitting drinking tea or coffee. Perfect.

On October 23, 2002, Nikitin had been a young lieutenant in the elite Vityaz counterterrorism unit under the FSB. He’d been seconded to Moscow from Grozny for a three-month course in NBC terrorism when the call came in at 9:20
P.M
. Fifty terrorists had taken more than nine hundred people hostage at a theater during the presentation of a popular musical. The terrorists were armed to the teeth and wore explosive vests. A few hostages who had been backstage escaped out the back and briefed the Special Forces who were staged around the theater. The terrorists moved among the hostages, essentially walking bombs.

It was impossible to storm the theater—the casualties would be horrific. Unsustainable for a government elected on an antiterrorism ticket.

Negotiations sputtered into a stalemate that lasted four days. At 5
A.M
. on the twenty-sixth, Russian forces streamed fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic, into the theater, knocking out hostages and hostage-takers alike.

Fentanyl was a hundred times stronger than morphine and could fell a bear in five seconds. One small human female was going to be a snap.

Nikitin placed the infrared scanner on the floor, turned the monitor up and took a high-speed drill out of his backpack. He had to act quickly. If the Mason woman left the kitchen to go into a room with no common wall, his only other alternative was to break through the wall immediately, but that would give her time to call 911.

No, he needed her unconscious, right now.

He knelt next to the join between wall and floor and applied the drill. It emitted a soft whine, which made him frown. It was minor, but noticeable in a quiet room.

He looked up at Dmitri and mouthed
shum
. Noise. Dmitri nodded and a few moments later loud rock music came from the living room. Perfect. It blocked the noise of the drill.

The drill was small but powerful. It bit through the apartment wall, through the insulation and Sheetrock, and, finally, through the wall on the other side. He immediately switched off the drill.

Nikitin kept his eye on the monitor. The woman was still sitting in her chair. Her thermal signature was the same, but the cup’s temperature had dropped.

Nikitin fit one end of a small rubber tube over the spout of the canister and threaded the other end carefully through the hole on this side of the wall and the other side. He stopped when he gauged that the tube exited one inch from the hole.

It was a calculated risk. Nothing indicated that this Mason woman was an operator. She was a civilian, an
American
civilian, and was as dumb to surrounding perils as a rock. It was highly unlikely she would notice a tiny piece of flesh-colored rubber and very soon she would be knocked unconscious.

Nikitin fit a gas mask over his face, tossing Dmitri his. Once they’d checked that they worked, Nikitin flipped a lever, picked the scanner up and stood.

At first nothing happened. Then, the flame-colored woman on the other side of the wall sat up straighter, lifting her head. Weaponized fentanyl was odorless, but it was possible there was a slight hiss as it filled the small room.

The woman stood up, and for a horrible moment Nikitin thought the fentanyl wasn’t working. She lurched suddenly, hands braced on the table, then slid bonelessly to the floor.

Phase two, complete.

Nikitin packed everything away while Dmitri placed small charges along a virtual rectangle a meter and a half high and two meters wide. When he finished, Dmitri turned the music to its highest setting and they exited the room, waiting to the side of the living room door while Dmitri pushed the detonator.

The explosion was audible, but less loud than the music. Nikitin and Dmitri rushed to the wall dividing the two apartments, the gas masks protecting them from the drywall dust and from the fentanyl.

They put their shoulders to the wall, ripping and punching their way into the other apartment. Nikitin bent, handed Dmitri his backpack and pulled the unconscious woman up and over his shoulder.

A quick glance at the front door showed that there was another keypad, which doubtless was linked to some kind of signal to the owner that the front door had been breached.

No problem. They exited through the hole blown in the wall and out through the front door of the apartment owned by less paranoid people.

Their luck held. The elevator took them down to the garage level. Nikitin stood in the shadows while Dmitri went to get the SUV. While waiting, Nikitin checked the security cameras. Out, every single one.

Dmitri rolled down the ramp, turned around and backed up. Nikitin placed the Mason woman down in the back, checking her eyes and pulse. She was completely unconscious. Fentanyl was a dangerous substance. Nikitin hadn’t dosed it and didn’t even know what the lethal dose was. At the Nord-Ost siege, 170 people had died from the gas.

Chloe Mason was definitely going to die, but not before he got his thumb drive back. No one was going to trade something valuable in for a cadaver.

He put plastic restraints around her wrists. Then he pulled out a syringe and plunged it into her thigh. M5050, an antidote. She had to be able to walk in about an hour.

He climbed into the passenger seat, dialed in the GPS coordinates into the sat nav system and signed Dmitri to drive off.

Phase three complete, ready for phase four.

Chapter 18

M
ike walked into Harry’s office, taking in the situation at a glance. Harry, looking like he wanted to chew someone’s head off, Nicole sitting back in an armchair, feet up on the coffee table, fingers linked over huge belly, eyes closed. Sam, standing behind her like some huge guard dog, hands on her shoulders.

“Sitrep,” Mike said, as soon as the door closed behind him. Nicole’s eyes opened for a second, then closed again.

“Okay, we have the name of the man who ordered the attack on Chloe,” Harry said, and Mike froze. Every cell, every muscle on lockdown.

“Who? And where?” He managed to unlock his throat enough to get the words out.

The man who’d ordered the attack on Chloe. The man who had only a few hours to live.

“Whoa,” Sam said when Mike headed without a word for the gun locker.

“Yeah, hold it,” Harry said, holding up his hands when Mike snarled at him. “Listen, she’s my sister. You think I don’t want to get back at this fucker? At least as much as you do? But we need more intel.”

Back home, Mike had been so relaxed he felt boneless. Now he felt as if the top of his head was about ready to blow. He didn’t want more intel, he didn’t need it. If they had a name, they had an address, and he wanted to be there
now
.

He could barely reason through the buzzing in his head. Barely think of steps to take, how to plan it through, because his head was so full of images of a broken and hurt Chloe. “Where’s the intel coming from?”

“Same place the name came from. A woman Chloe helped. She works at the Meteor Club. Chloe did some talk sessions with her and some of the other women, they all started rebelling, and this guy sent his goons to teach Chloe a lesson.”

“Name?”
To teach Chloe a lesson.
That some man would hurt Chloe, send men to beat her up because she befriended some of the poor women who worked at the Meteor . . . Christ, that was a dead man walking. When Mike heard who he was, the hair on his body stood on end.

“Anatoly Nikitin. Former FSB, Special Forces. Now works for one of the big Russian mafiya conglomerates as an enforcer.” Harry shot an annoyed look at Nicole, resting in the armchair. “Nicole found that out. She beat me to it.”

A faint smile appeared on Nicole’s mouth. Without opening her eyes, she wriggled her fingers in a hello gesture.

“According to the woman who came to us, this Russian is the vanguard of a major investment Russians are making in the Meteor, and they’ve got something big planned. The Russian came over with three other goons, two of which are out of commission thanks to you.”

My pleasure,
Mike thought sourly. Man, was he sorry he hadn’t whacked both of them.

“We got this intel from a woman, as I said. The Russian is blind over here and doesn’t know what happened to his men. That was a good call to keep the info anonymous. The Russian—this Nikitin—waterboarded the woman for more information.”

Mike turned his head slowly, carefully toward Harry, trying to make sure his head didn’t explode. “He
what
?”

Harry blew out a breath, grim lines in his face. “You heard me. Fucker waterboarded this woman for intel on Chloe. She didn’t have anything to give him so he did it three more times. Just to show her who’s boss.”

Mike felt nauseous for a moment. SERE training was part of Force Recon training, and Mike had undergone it at the Remote Training Site in Warner Springs. Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. That more or less said it for what they trained them to face if they ever got caught by the enemy.

The Marines were right to subject applicants to the worst things that could be thrown at them because, by God, the enemy had even worse things in store. He’d undergone R2I—Resistance to Interrogation—where he’d been subjected to everything short of life-threatening physical torture. Of all the tests Mike had survived, waterboarding had been the absolute worst.

There had been something so very dark about it—reducing you to an animal state of panic. It got results, because it broke men down fast. Mike had survived two bouts by the skin of his teeth, but it had taken him days to recover and he still had nightmares. Used against enemies sworn to destroy his country, he could sort of justify its use.

But a woman being waterboarded for information on another woman? And when she didn’t have anything to offer, being waterboarded three times more as punishment? That was the kind of man after Chloe? Man, he was going down.

Chloe. Without thinking, his cell was in his hand, the first number on his speed dial list ringing.

“Hello?” Mike let out an exhale at hearing her voice. Harry relaxed just a bit, too.

“Hi, honey, just checking. Everything okay?”

He listened carefully to her tone. “Mike, you left about half an hour ago, what could possibly happen in half an hour? I’m fine. I’m sitting in your kitchen, sipping tea. Pretty soon I’m going to go looking for something to read that isn’t gun magazines and every novel Stephen Hunter ever wrote. I left my Kindle in my place and I need something to read.”

He smiled. She sounded just fine. Maybe a little bored. Bored was fine. Bored was great, actually.

“There’s a Kindle in the bedroom. Order yourself some books from Amazon. On my credit card, password ‘remington.’ ”

“Figures.” Chloe laughed. “Okay, I think I will. So, I guess I’ll see you later?”

You bet. “Yeah, honey, just as soon as I can make it. Don’t go anywhere and don’t open to anyone except me or one of us. Check the security cam outside before you open the door.” He switched the cell phone off and looked at Harry. “She’s okay.”

“Yeah, I heard. And good luck to anyone trying to break into your place. Just a little while longer and I think we’ll get a handle on this thing. Just as soon as we crack what’s on that thumb drive, we can retaliate. With any luck, we can take it to Kelly and he’ll have this Russian, Nikitin, and the other guy deported so fast their heads will swim.”

Mike narrowed his eyes. Having them deported wasn’t permanent enough for him. He wanted to—

Harry narrowed his own eyes. “And that’s it, Mike. We have to bring him to justice. No funny business that will just come back and bite us in the ass. Is that clear? I want Chloe safe just as much as you do, but I also don’t want you spending thirty years in the brig. Chloe would be really pissed off at that, big-time.”

Mike opened his mouth to answer when the side door opened and Barney walked in frowning, a small, frilly woman’s purse hanging incongruously from one big, hairy paw, a scanner in the other. Right behind him came a gorgeous dark-haired woman, clearly frightened, tear tracks drying on her cheeks.

Before Mike or Harry could ask what Barney had done to make the woman cry, Barney threw the purse on Harry’s desk in disgust. The woman was barely holding it together, arms crossed over her midriff, shaking like a leaf.

“What’s this, Barney?” Harry frowned.

“Bad news, boss. I asked Ms. Consuelo here”—he jerked a huge thumb at the woman—“whether she was being tagged. She said she turned her cell phone off before coming here. But then I turned on the scan and it’s picking up on a transponder somewhere, and we can’t find it. I don’t think it’s in the purse.” He switched the scanner on. A small LED light lit up and it emitted a faint whine. Unfortunately the audio level of the scanner wasn’t correlated with distance. It could only tell that there was a transponder within a radius of five feet, not where it was.

“Let’s find out,” Harry said. He picked up the purse, which looked almost as ridiculous in his hand as it had in Barney’s, and pressed a button. Marisa appeared almost immediately in the doorway. She looked at the crying, shivering woman and immediately looked daggers at every man in the room. “What have you men done to that woman?”

Barney held up his huge hands. “Nothing, Marisa, I swear.”

The woman, Consuelo, had stopped crying and was looking astonished. “No, no, ma’am. No one hurt me. Nothing like that at all. I’m afraid I might have hurt
them.
”

Harry handed the frilly purse to Marisa. “I need for you to take this into the lobby for a few minutes please, Marisa. We need to understand if there is a bug transmitting Consuelo’s location in it.”

Marisa’s face cleared immediately. She was intimately familiar with all the tricks men could use to track down women they wanted to hurt. Harry didn’t need to explain any further.

“I’ll take it into the lobby and then into the outside hallway, just so you can be sure.” She looked at Consuelo. “No one but me will touch it, I guarantee it.”

Consuelo waved her away, swiping at her face with the heels of her hands. “I don’t care. All I care about is that maybe I have something on me that will let him follow me here.”

Marisa disappeared. The door whooshed behind her.

The LED light was still on, unchanged. Whatever was setting off the signal wasn’t in the purse.

Barney was standing in front of Consuelo, a dull red on his cheekbones. “Ma’am?” he rumbled. “It’s on your person. It has to be.” He looked helplessly at Harry and Mike, the blush turning stoplight red.

Barney was a certified sharpshooter, a sixth dan, and the company mechanic. He kept the RBK fleet of vehicles in perfect running order. He was a master at close-quarter combat and had an amazing collection of blues LPs.

He also had difficulty dealing with women, particularly in the saying-no department. Nicole, Ellen and Chloe ran roughshod over him.

Mike disappeared behind a door that he firmly closed behind him. In front of him was a panel with a keypad. He punched in a long string of alphanumeric digits and the panel opened. Behind it was a very large locker room filled with weapons, mostly Mike’s, and gear for every possible need. There was several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stuff in there, every item catalogued.

Mike had no need to look around. The locker had been organized by him and he was definitely OCD when it came to weaponry and gear. He knew exactly what to get and where it was. He pulled it out, reset the code and alarm, and walked back into the room.

This scanner was the latest model, both the audio signal and light signal sensitive to proximity.

Mike approached the woman, one hand open in the universal sign of peace, the other with a short titanium stick with a display just above the handle, looking a little like Harry Potter’s wand.

“May I?” he asked, and she nodded, looking a little less freaked out.

Nicole opened her eyes suddenly. She was prone to tiny little naps during the course of the day and everyone let her rest. She took in the scene at a glance and held her hand out to Sam. Sam didn’t help her up so much as lift her up. Bless her, Nicole had realized that the woman might be uncomfortable, so she went to her and placed a reassuring hand on the woman’s shoulder.

The woman tried to smile, though anxiety was etched on her face. The closer Mike got, the louder the audio from the scanner. Something was on her, all right.

Mike started at the head and didn’t make it beyond the neck. The light pulsed and the audio signal grew to an annoying whine. The shirt?

“Nicole?”

Nicole smiled and touched Consuelo’s white shirt, fingering the collar. “May I?”

The woman nodded.

Nicole gently brushed the woman’s glossy chestnut hair to one side to check the collar and froze. She ran her finger up the woman’s slender neck. “Uh, guys? I think we have something here.”

Nicole lifted the hair up in a ponytail and pointed at a small red spot. “Consuelo, what’s that?”

Consuelo’s hand went up to touch her neck, her face blank. She blinked. “Oh, I completely forgot that. It’s a shot of some kind. some vaccine. All of us got one. Against STDs. And also birth control.”

Mike wanded her neck and the scanner practically jumped up and screamed
There it is!

“I don’t think you got a vaccine jab, ma’am. I think you got tagged with a bug so they could know your whereabouts.”

The woman’s head whipped up so fast Nicole dropped her hair. It swirled around her shoulders. She was white-faced, shocked. “I have something
inside
me that tells them where I am? Oh my God, oh my God!” She twirled, frantic, trying to escape something that was in her body. “Get it out of me, get it out of me,
get it out of me!
” She was screaming and jumping up and down. “He’ll find me, he knows where I am right now, he’s going to come get me and take me back, oh my God, help me! He’s coming, he’s coming!
Help me!
”

A man of stone would be unable to withstand such levels of panic and none of them were made of stone.

“Quiet, ma’am, it’s okay. We’ll get you to a doctor—”

“No!”
she screamed. “Get it out of me now! Oh God, please get it out of me!” She was hopping up and down in a panic.

Harry stood still for a moment looking perplexed, very un-Harry-like. He always knew what to do. Mike was at a loss, too. They had to get the bug out of her, but if she didn’t want to go to a doctor, what were they supposed to do?