Operation Sheba (19 page)

“Abigail.” He stepped in front of Brad, as if to take the bullet Julia was threatening him with. “What the hell are you doing?”

It happened so fast and furiously, Julia’s hand twitched. Frustration overtook heartbreak and fear. “My name is Julia.” She now looked down her gun at Michael. “Julia Torrison. Abigail Quinn doesn’t exist. Not anymore. But I do, and I’m trying to save your career. Read the papers and look at that disc. I’ll be in touch.”

Feet pounded up the stairs. Sticking the gun in her waistband, Julia dropped her bag over the balcony and let it fall to the ground below. “Tell Susan I know who Cari’s father is,” she said as she straddled the railing. “I’m going to him next.” She flipped herself over the edge and wrapped her legs around a post. Just as she began sliding down it, she heard a man call to her, demand she stop.

She hit the ground and rolled, grabbing her bag as she regained her feet. She snatched her cell phone off the ground, flipped it closed and took off running to the sounds of more shouting. She heard Michael’s voice yelling at the officers to put their guns away. Pongo was barking furiously.

Clearing the tripwires, Julia set off the house’s security alarm. The floodlights came on and she heard the buzz of the alarm inside the house before another command for her to stop came from the balcony. She jumped the small ravine and heard the retort of a gun. The bullet smacked a low-hanging branch of a tree on her left, and Michael’s voice rang out across the clearing, a booming, “
No!
”

She dodged, stumbled over her own feet, but ran on, ignoring more hanging branches that smacked at her face as she reached the cover of the woods. Her cell phone rang inside her tote, but she ignored it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Smitty and Ace were on their feet, staring at him.

He’d heard her voice, far away, and he’d jammed the phone tighter against his ear. Stone’s voice had mixed with Julia’s voice and then a thud, the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground had sent chills down Conrad’s spine.

“Julia!”

But yelling didn’t help. The connection was dead.

“Goddamn it!” He punched buttons to call her phone again. While it rang, he held out his hand to Ace. “Give me the keys to your car.”

“No way, bro,” Ace said, but he dug into the front pocket of his baggy cargo pants for the keys anyway. “You’re going after her? I’ll be your wheel guy.”

Conrad started to say no, it was too dangerous, but Smitty interrupted him. “I’m going too.”

Julia’s phone continued to ring. Seeing his own fear mirrored in his best friend’s face, Conrad checked himself. How ironic it was that with all their differences, the years of walking side-by-side between the rocks and the hard places with Ryan Smith had bound him in a loyalty that surpassed any he’d ever known. Even with his own brothers. “No. Smitty, you’re not going this round. I’ll take care of Julia. You take care of the files and all this stuff. Make a backup of all the information, especially the networks and liaison contacts worldwide, and secure it in one of Ace’s vaults. And then”—Conrad wished he could squeeze the life out of Susan’s throat—“you go see Stone and tell him everything. We have to stop Susan. Now.”

Smitty nodded sullenly. “It won’t be hard to find Julia.” He reached underneath the counter and pulled out a briefcase. He unzipped it and handed Conrad a Toshiba portable satellite computer. “This baby will dial up the satellite and find her for you.”

Conrad took the computer and jerked his head at Ace to get moving. “Thanks.”

Smitty followed them to the door. “If Stone throws my butt in jail, you’ll break me out, right?”

Conrad slapped him on the shoulder. “Damn straight, Smith.”

“Man, I dig this 007-shit, Connie. Flirting with danger, dressing incognito.” Ace touched the brim of his baseball cap. “Rescuing nicely stacked damsels in distress. This is some life you lead. Where do I sign up?”

Conrad kept his eyes glued to the tiny computer screen in his lap as the unit tried to acquire the satellite uplink it needed to track the GPS chip in Julia’s bra. “You already signed up, Ace. You’re the wheelman, remember? But you should understand the most important rule of this partnership. I get first pick of the nicely stacked damsels, distressed or not.”

Ace laughed into the wind roaring through the CJ. “You’re my hero, bro.”

Conrad reached down to check his cell phone while the computer continued trying to find the satellite signal.
Come on, Jules, call me.

“Hey, what was that
indiscretion
stuff Susan was threatening King with?” Ace asked.

Raising his head, Conrad answered, “Daniel King is Cari Von Motz’s real father. Susan is using their affair and Cari as a trump card to get King to back her up on this operation.”

Ace nodded and Conrad returned his focus to the computer. A second later, the satellite zeroed in on Julia’s location. “Yes! She’s still in the woods west of Stone’s house. Looks like she’s following a north-south road that parallels Highway 65.”

“I’m on it.”

Conrad felt a stab of relief, pulled his hat farther down on his head and watched the image on the screen continue southwest.

Come on, Jules, call me
.

Julia was still moving, but had slowed her pace. She was sure security officers were following her, but she couldn’t hear anyone moving through the woods when she stopped to listen. Hugging the tree line beside the gravel road, she watched a pair of horses on the other side of a white fence across the road. Nervous energy from the approaching storm was eating at them. Their tails swished viciously, their heads up and ears pricking forward as they watched her pass from tree to tree.

A few fat drops of rain fell on the leaves around her. Shifting her attention back to herself, Julia stilled again and listened. Still no telltale noises. She shifted her Beretta to her left hand, shook some feeling into her right and pulled out her cell phone.

While the phone tried to connect, Julia held it to her ear with her shoulder and took the picture from her bag.

She was shivering from head to toe. Her face was scratched and her feet hurt like hell after running several miles through the woods. Somehow she’d managed to step in something that smelled awful. Her body ached from the drop off Michael’s balcony and the cool spring air seeped through his sweatshirt and made her teeth chatter. The first rush of adrenaline had worn off, and as she pushed on through the tangle of fallen branches and decaying forest, her mind kept swimming with Michael’s face. She put the picture of Con in front of her and silently pleaded with him to answer his phone.

“Go faster,” Flynn yelled to Ace over the whine of the Jeep’s tires.

“Jesus, Connie, I’m doing ninety! My tires will blow out if I push it any faster!”

Conrad pointed ahead. “Turn there.”

Ace slowed and bounced the CJ onto the gravel road. “Now this is better. Baby loves rocks.”

Ace shifted and the Jeep picked up speed. Conrad surveyed the growing storm system moving in their direction. Rain would kill the Toshiba and Smith would kill him if he let the computer get wet, but with the top off the Jeep, he had little choice. There was no way he was stopping now to reattach the soft roof, even if it meant saving the precious computer. An impelling force was pushing him to get to Julia. They were less than two miles from her and if the rain would just hold out another five minutes…

The cell phone vibrated in his hand. He flipped the case open. “Jules, are you all right?”

“Not exactly,” came her reply. She sounded a little shaky. “Your queen has managed to step in shit, and I mean that in the most literal and technical way imaginable.”

He chuckled, grateful to hear the professional reference to their past working relationship. “I’m here to serve. Want some help?”

“I’m on foot, on some backwoods country road southwest of Michael’s house, and Susan’s Agency officers are looking for me.”

“That happens when you play with bad guys.” He forced his voice to sound calm although he was spitting mad and scared for her safety to boot. “Ace and I are on our way to pick you up. We’re approximately two miles south of your location.”

Relief relaxed her voice. “Thank goodness for Smitty and his computer gadgets.”

“Yeah, the one-man geek squad adds something to our team, doesn’t he?”

“What if the Agency men find me before you do? Any suggestions?”

Conrad glanced at Ace and did a circling motion with his finger, signaling him to pick up speed. Ace nodded and pressed the Jeep’s accelerator harder. “They mean business, Jules. Susan may have given them the okay to shoot to kill. You have to fight dirty. No fighting like a girl.”

“I’m
not
a girl, Flynn.”

Conrad smiled to himself. “Got your gun, sweetheart?”

“In my hand and fully loaded.”

That’s my girl.
“Use it. Understand?”

Julia returned the picture to her tote bag. Her mind swerved as Conrad’s current advice merged with the past…

Survival, Julia. You do whatever it takes to stay alive. Steal the food, pull the trigger, hot-wire the car. It’s all the same. It means you live and someone else dies, but you do it anyway. Understand?

Tidewater, Virginia. Training camp. By day, crawling on her belly like a snake in the Farm’s underbrush while Flynn and his soldiers hunted her and the other students from the air. By night, crawling into her bed exhausted, only to have Flynn wake her two hours later and lecture her about staying alive in the field.
If shooting the guy in the head means you walk away and he doesn’t, you shoot him. Understand?

She could clearly remember dark eyes snapping at her, the voice demanding,
Understand?

Julia heard a sound in the distance behind her, a man’s feet crunching fallen leaves? She wasn’t sure. The rain was picking up, clattering on the tree leaves all around her like marbles falling on a tile floor, and the light between the trees was fading. She crouched behind a bush and watched the area behind her, straining her ears to pick up more sounds.

Her right hand, holding tightly to the Beretta, twitched. Fight dirty. Survive. “Yeah, I understand,” she said softly, struggling to keep her teeth from chattering. “Just hurry, Con.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Raising his attention from the warrant in his hand, he took a step toward her and stared her down. “You forced your way into my house, Susan. You ordered Ben Raines to shoot at the woman I love. Don’t stand there and expect
me
to justify
my
actions.” He paused and pointed a finger at her. “You’re lucky I don’t toss you over that railing.”

Susan stood indignant, but Michael saw the quick glance she gave to the balcony’s edge. Below them, Raines’s men were spread out, watching, he supposed, for Abigail—
Julia
—to return. Yeah, like that would happen in a million years. A more likely reason they were spread out along the perimeter of his yard was to make sure he didn’t take off with her.

His head was spinning from it all. Flynn was alive. The ramifications of that alone made his head pound with anger. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he did know Susan and her officers had invaded his most personal space and, warrant or not, had attacked Julia. That was unacceptable in his book.

“Raines will track her down,” Susan said, more to herself than him as she scanned the tree line. “He’ll find her before she gets too far.”

Michael threw the warrant down on the patio’s table, covering the papers Julia had given him. She was being accused of treason, along with Flynn and Smith. Her face swam in front of him, and he took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, wishing she hadn’t run off like a guilty criminal.

But she had. “Tell Raines he is not to shoot her under any circumstances.”

“I won’t,” Susan responded. “She’s resisting arrest and she’s armed. Raines’s life could be in danger.”

Michael balled his hands into fists. He would go after Julia himself, but Raines had a good head start on him and was by far a better tracker. The only way he could insure Julia’s safety at this point was to give the order not to harm her. “Julia would never hurt anyone unless she was threatened. Now call Raines on your portable radio”—he pointed at the one Susan was holding—“and tell him I order him not to shoot.”

Susan studied him with a critical eye. “Your judgment is clouded, Director. I’ll give no such order.”

It was a standoff and Michael called on all his willpower not to follow through with his threat and throw Susan off the balcony. Julia had said her name had been on the list of candidates to take out. If Susan was the CIA’s mole, then she was still looking for a way to eliminate Julia Torrison, especially if Julia, Flynn and Smitty had uncovered her secret dealings.

Michael fingered the disc stuck in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Then he looked Susan in the eye. He’d always found directness to be an efficient tool. “Are you setting me up, Susan? Are you the insider undermining everything I do?”

She started, but checked herself. He saw the lie pass through her mind before her dark eyes returned his stare as blank as steel. “You’ve been sleeping with a traitor, Director Stone. I believe you’re the one now under the microscope.”

“Does the name Cari ring a bell?” He saw Susan blanch and lifted his eyebrows. “I suggest you radio Raines and call the search off. It seems you and I have some talking to do.”

Susan skirted past him and walked through his bedroom as if she would run away. Michael grabbed the papers off the table and followed her. “Julia gave me a message to pass on to you,” he said, trying to stop her.

It worked.

Susan, her back to him, stopped on the stairs.

“She said to tell you she knows who Cari’s father is.” He moved up behind her. “And she’s going to him next.”

The enraged look Susan turned on him was startling. Michael could see Julia’s words had hit their mark, and he wondered who the man Susan was hiding was. But Susan said nothing, only turned her back on him and continued down the stairs and out the front door which she left open.

Following behind her, Michael closed the door and rested his hand on it.

“She’s either extremely gutsy or extremely stupid,” Brad said from behind him.

Michael had forgotten his security officer was even still in the house. “Who is? Susan?”

The young ex-Marine pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “No, Abigail, or Julia. Whatever her name is. I can’t believe she just did that.”

Me either
, Michael thought and went into his office where his desk phone was ringing. As he answered it, he set the papers on his desk and pulled the disc out of his pocket. “Stone.”

“Hello, Director.” The voice was quite familiar. It was Ryan Smith. “I need to talk to you immediately.”

Michael drew a deep breath and willed his voice to sound unemotional, unconfused. “This better be damn good, Smith. You are two breaths away from finding my foot buried up your ass so far you’ll never be able to sit down again. Start talking.”

The rain had stopped but the clouds were still threatening. Julia sat quietly, wrapping her arms around her knees and trying to conserve heat. She’d buried her bag under leaves and brush beneath a bush across from her, taking only her guns, her phone and the picture of Paris, hidden in Michael’s sweatshirt, up to her hiding place.

She saw Ben Raines before she heard his footsteps and mentally swore. He was a good tracker and she knew he would eventually look up and see her crouched in the branches of the hundred-year-old oak tree, but she held her breath and prayed something would distract him.

The tree was next to the gravel road and Conrad was only minutes from picking her up. She glanced at the distant hill and willed him to come charging over it. He did not.

Her fingers gripped the SIG Sauer tightly. She’d had to switch to the lighter gun because her hand and wrist were exhausted from carrying the Beretta. Now she wished she had the more familiar gun back in her hand, but didn’t want to risk digging for it. Movement of any kind would attract Raines’s attention.

He moved to the left and stood almost directly under her. Her teeth started to chatter and she carefully pulled the sleeve of Michael’s sweatshirt over the heel of her left hand and shoved it in her mouth, keeping her right hand with the gun trained on Raines’s head.

Again she glanced at the distant hill and willed Conrad to come. All she saw was an empty dirt road and layers of dark clouds.

Below she heard Raines snap the safety off his gun. She looked down and found herself staring at the dark hole of a .40 caliber Glock. Forty-caliber weapons offered more takedown punch and better penetration than the popular 9-mms, and Julia had no doubt the Glock had already sent a bullet her direction earlier. She shivered thinking about the damage it could have done, could still do.

“Drop your weapon.” Raines backed out from under her. “And come down slowly. One wrong move and I have orders to shoot.”

Julia swallowed hard and released the SiG. Raines retrieved it, emptied it of bullets and motioned at her to come down. She gripped the tree branch she was sitting on and swung down, dropping the last few feet to the ground.

Her feet and legs cried out in pain. It was easy to let her body fall to the ground and roll down the ditch. As she did, she grabbed the Beretta hidden in Michael’s sweatshirt pocket. Coming to her feet, she raised the gun with both hands and pointed it at the black Glock.

Raines smiled.

“You’re not really going to shoot them, are you, Con?” Ace asked over the roar of the wind. He cast a nervous glance at Flynn’s drawn Heckler & Koch as he brought the Jeep up over yet another rolling Virginia hill.

Conrad shoved a full clip into the gun. “If necessary.” He raised his head to look up the road. “There she is.”

Ace’s focus followed his, locking on Julia only a hundred yards ahead of them. Her gun was drawn on a man—a decent-sized brother who had one hell of a big gun pointed at her head. A Mexican standoff.

“I think I changed my mind about wanting to be your wheel guy,” Ace said, even as he continued to press the accelerator.

“Too late.” Flynn grinned at him before fastening his attention on the scene in front of him again. “Think of it as a rite of passage, brother. You do good on this one”—he patted Ace on the shoulder—“and I’ll hire you to be my full-time wheelman.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Ace muttered.

The only thing Raines had moved since finding a gun pointed at his head was his mouth, which was still quirked in a smile at her. Julia knew that smile. She’d seen it before. It said,
yeah, right
. The man didn’t believe for one minute she was going to shoot him.

“Drop. The. Gun. Or. I. Will. Shoot. You.” Each word received equal stress in a voice that said she meant business. And she did.

But he didn’t drop the gun.

Julia sensed more than heard one of Raines’s men a few feet away. If he were smart, he’d come at her and distract her. Working as a team to divide and conquer. That’s what good partners did. It had been an early lesson in Conrad’s school of spy survival.

Julia backed up a step toward the road. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Jeep, like a rock hurling itself in her direction. Finally. Good partner to the rescue.

Taking another step back, Julia returned Raines’s smile.

As thunder boomed in the distance, he moved toward the edge of the ravine, towering over her. The smile on his face faded as his eyes took on the look of a hunter. In the echo of the thunder, she heard the muffled sound of footsteps in the rustling grass off to the left. She saw a shadow move.

Fight dirty, Julia.

Raines cleared the tree line and registered the Jeep, his focus flickering to the road and back to her so fast she might have missed it. But she was expecting it. With a sudden but accurate shift of the Beretta, Julia dropped to her knees and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The heavy black gun Raines had been holding thudded on the ground and he cried out, falling to his own knees in pain and holding what was left of his right hand with his left. As he fell, Julia fired a second round at the trees where Raines’s man was moving and saw him duck for cover. He fired his gun, but the shot went over her head.

Back on her feet, Julia jumped out of the ditch and ran for her life. She continued to send bullets at the woods as she ran to meet the Jeep.