The Atlantis Stone (5 page)

CHAPTER 9

The next morning Volkov's men waited outside the building of converted lofts where Nick and Selena lived. The target was inside with her husband. The Russians were waiting for them to leave.

Viktor lit a cigarette. The side of his face was purple and bruised.

"It's a soft target. Getting in will be easy."

Vasily coughed. "Do you have to smoke inside the car?"

"I like American cigarettes."

"At least roll down the window."

Viktor muttered under his breath and lowered the window partway. He looked in the rearview mirror at Vasily in the back seat.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

"I didn't think so," Vasily said.

"Stop this bickering," Yeltsin said. He sat up straight in his seat. "There she is. In the green Mercedes."

Selena's Mercedes emerged from the underground parking garage and turned right onto the street.

"We give them a few minutes, then go in," Yeltsin said. "The woman is rich. There might be servants. If there are, act as though it's a robbery."

"The Americans must pay their spies well," Vasily said.

"Idiot. She inherited the money," Yeltsin said.

He looked at his watch. "It's been long enough. Let's go. Drive into the parking garage. There'll be an elevator or stairs."

They drove into the underground garage and parked. The elevator was at the far end. There were only a few cars, leaving most of the garage empty. The target lived on the top floor. Yeltsin pushed the button and the doors opened.

"You need a key for each floor," Viktor said.

"It's not a problem," Yeltsin said. "Remember your training."

He took a small leather pouch from his pocket, opened it and extracted two tools from a set of lock picks. It took seconds to turn the lock. He punched the button.

They rode the elevator to the top floor and stepped out into an entrance foyer about twenty feet square. The floor was of polished oak, the walls painted a soothing peach color. A pair of framed watercolors decorated the space. The door to the loft was opposite the elevator on the other side of the foyer. There were two locks on it. A discrete camera peered at them from over the door.

"She has the entire floor?" Vasily asked.

"I told you, she's rich. Her husband is also a spy. She's the one with the money."

Yeltsin manipulated his picks. After a minute the first lock clicked.

"This is high-end stuff," he said.

He worked with the picks until he could open the door. The three men entered the loft. An alarm blinked yellow on the wall next to the door. A digital clock counted down seconds until the alarm would sound. There was a camera farther along the wall. A steady red light showed it was powered on. Yeltsin took out a small, electric screwdriver and had the cover off the box in seconds. He took a device from his other pocket and hooked two wires to terminals inside the box and twisted a dial. The counter stopped with three seconds to go. The light on the camera died.

Vasily looked around the loft and whistled.

"All this space for two people?" He walked over to the wall of windows facing the Potomac and Virginia. "Look at that view."

"Were not here to sightsee. Start looking for the map. Try not to mess everything up. We don't want them to know we were here. Vasily, take the bedrooms. Viktor, you take those rooms on the right. I'll start with the living area."

An hour and a half later they were still looking.

Viktor called from the room he was searching.

"I found a safe."

Yeltsin and Vasily joined him. Viktor had turned back a Persian rug, revealing a safe with a combination dial set into the floor.

"You don't see these much anymore," Vasily said. "Everything's digital and biometric now."

"A combination lock is a better bet. Safer," Yeltsin said. "Electronic locks and biometric readers fail, even the good ones. With a combination, you can always get it open."

"Can you open it?"

"Of course I can. It may take some time. Find a glass. A wine glass, with a stem."

Vasily went to the kitchen and came back with a glass. Yeltsin knelt by the safe and placed the glass upside down on the door. He laid his left ear on the thin base and began to turn the dial with his right hand.

That was when Selena came home.

CHAPTER 10

Selena had come back for some notes she'd forgotten. The first sign something was wrong was the elevator in the garage. The light behind the button for her floor was lit, waiting for someone to push it.

It should have been off.

She eased her pistol from its holster as the elevator rose. She carried a SIG-Sauer 229 chambered for .40 Smith & Wesson. She liked the shorter barrel and lower weight of the 229, plus it came out of the holster a little bit faster. At the distance where personal shootouts happened, the extra barrel length of the 226 favored by many in the specialized services didn't make any difference. She could empty a magazine into the center mass of a target with either one.

The gun was fully loaded, a round in the chamber. Selena eased the hammer back and laid her finger alongside the trigger guard.

The elevator opened onto the empty foyer. The door to the loft was ajar. She thought about calling Nick but discarded the idea as quickly as it came. The noise would give her away if someone was inside. If no one was there, so much the better. If they were, they weren't going to violate her personal space without paying for it.

Whoever it was, they were good. Getting through the locks was the least of it. Somehow they'd managed to turn off the alarm.

With a gentle push, she eased the door partway open. She heard voices.

Russian. They're speaking Russian.

Her heart began pounding as adrenaline flooded her. She took a deep breath and listened to what they were saying.

They found the safe.

She pushed her shoes off in the foyer and slipped through the door. Her feet made no sound as she padded across the floor. She moved to the wall and worked her way along it until she was outside the entrance to her study.

"I have three numbers," someone said. "One more and I'll have it open."

"We've been here a long time," someone else said. "Can't you hurry it up, Major?"

At least two,
she thought.

"Don't bother him, Vasily. You wouldn't have gotten through those locks on the door."

Three.

"What if they come back?"

"They went to work. They're not coming back. If they do, we take care of it."

"Will you two shut up? How can I hear what I'm doing with your yammering?"

Selena heard the click as the last tumbler fell into place, then the metallic ratcheting of the handle that pulled back the locking bars inside the safe door.

"It's open," the first voice said.

"Is the map in there?" The second voice said.

"I don't see it."

Time to introduce myself,
Selena thought.

She was angry. These thugs had come into her home, into her private space. She stepped into the room with her pistol held in front of her in both hands. One man knelt over the open safe. The other two stood nearby.

"Don't fucking move,"
she said in Russian.

Yeltsin looked up from the floor and saw an angry woman with intense violet eyes, holding an automatic pistol pointed at him. Without thinking he reached for his Makarov.

Selena's first shot sounded like a cannon in the confines of the room. It hit Yeltsin and bowled him over. She shifted to the right and shot Vasily, two rounds into his chest. He staggered and fell onto his back, knocking over a floor lamp as he went down. She swiveled toward the third man. He was trying to free his gun from his pocket. He grabbed a book from her desk and hurled it at her. The book struck her hand as she fired. The round missed. The slide locked halfway back and stopped.

Jammed!

She didn't have time to think about it. Viktor charged her. He was a big man, fast for his size. She threw her gun at him. It bounced off his shoulder. He barreled into her and knocked her down. As she fell she swept her leg around and took his foot out from under him. He went to the floor, cursing. She arched and flipped backward onto her feet. Viktor reached out and grabbed her ankle and pulled. She twisted and felt a jolt of pain as she went down. She fell on top of him and drove her thumb into his eye.

He screamed and grasped at her. She brought her elbow down hard on his face and heard bone break under the blow. She slammed his throat with her elbow, once, twice, and rolled away. He thrashed on the floor trying to breathe.

The first man she'd shot lifted his pistol. She rolled to the side as he fired. Hot, electric pain shot up her leg from the injured ankle. The barrel of the Makarov was aimed straight at her.

No.

The pistol wavered. Yeltsin coughed. Bright red blood vomited from his mouth. He collapsed and lay still. His bowels let go and a sewer stench filled the room. Selena gagged.

Shaken, she crawled to the desk and pulled herself up on her good leg. She tried to put weight on the injured foot and felt the warning pain. She looked at the bodies of the men she'd killed. The clock on her desk showed a few minutes after ten in the morning.

Hell of a way to start the day,
she thought.

She picked up the phone and called Elizabeth.

A cleanup team arrived at the loft less than half an hour after she'd called. Nick showed up ten minutes later.

"You're all right?"

"Yes. I hurt my ankle when that asshole grabbed it." She gestured at Viktor's body. "I can't put any weight on it."

"Stinks in here. Come on, let's get out while the cleaners finish up. Lean on my arm," Nick said.

"It's a good thing there's no one on the floor below us," Selena said. "No one heard the shots."

She hobbled with him over to the elevator. They descended to the parking garage.

"Wait here."

Nick got the car and brought it over. He opened the door and Selena dropped into the passenger seat.

It wasn't until they'd crossed over into Virginia that she began shaking.

Nick pulled over to the side of the highway. He took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders.

"You're okay," he said.

"I know." She wrapped her arms around herself. "One of them was pointing his pistol at me. I couldn't get out of the way. I couldn't do anything. I thought I was going to die."

"But you didn't."

"Not this time."

"Not next time, either."

"I don't know if I believe that anymore," Selena said.

"You have to believe it. So do I. If we don't believe it, we can't do what we do."

They spent the rest of the ride in silence.

CHAPTER 11

"Thank God you're okay," Elizabeth said.

Lamont, Ronnie and Stephanie were in the room. Lamont had probed at Selena's injury and taped her ankle and foot.

"You sprained it pretty bad," he said, "maybe tore a ligament. There's no way to tell without an MRI. Keep it taped up and try not to get in any more fights."

He grinned at her.

She looked down at her foot, wrapped in white tape. "Thanks. Where did you learn how to do that? I think I'll start calling you Doc."

"You learn a lot of stuff like that in the SEALS."

"It's good to see you back."

"It's good to be here."

Lamont had been in the hospital for weeks, then rehab after that. Two shots to the chest had almost killed him. He was thinner than his usual wiry self. His rich, coffee-colored skin looked washed out. Selena thought his blue eyes seemed brighter than they had before but told herself she was imagining it.

Ronnie looked at what Lamont had done and nodded approval.

"Not bad for a swabbie," he said.

"Coming from a jarhead like you, I suppose that's a compliment," Lamont said.

Elizabeth interrupted. "Ronnie, Lamont, now's not the time."

"Sorry, Director."

"We need to think about what happened." She turned to Selena. "You're positive they were Russian?"

"I'm certain. The one they addressed as major had a strong Moscow accent. You can't mistake it. They were after Sokolov's map."

Stephanie said, "Two of the bodies had Spetsnaz tattoos."

"They have to be FSB," Nick said.

"Or SVR," Ronnie said.

"Or GRU or MVD. All the Russian security forces have Spetsnaz personnel. My money's on the FSB. They're the ones who were after Sokolov."

"No matter who it was, the ante just went up," Elizabeth said. "The Russians know Selena works for us. They wanted that map badly enough to risk a confrontation on our home turf."

"Which they got." Nick scratched his ear.

"Didn't work out quite the way they expected," Lamont said.

"The cleanup team found Serbian passports on the bodies," Stephanie said.

"No way those men were Serbs," Selena said.

"I can work with the pictures on the passports. If they turn up in the database, I can identify them."

Elizabeth said, "That might help pin down who sent them, FSB or someone else."

"What are we going to do about it?" Nick asked. "This isn't business as usual. Maybe they were hoping to get the map without running into Selena, but they tried to kill her when she showed up."

"They might make another attempt," Elizabeth said.

"Would you?"

"I wouldn't try to steal it. There's no way they can get to it now. They know we'll be waiting for them."

"It wasn't in the loft anyway," Selena said. "What would they have done when they found out it wasn't there?"

"That's easy," Ronnie said. "You know what's on the map. I were them, I'd grab you and make you tell me what was on it."

"Thanks. I'll sleep a lot better tonight because of that."

"Hey, I'm just telling it like it is."

"He's right," Nick said. "If they can't get the map, Selena is the next best thing. They'll try again."

"Not those bozos," Lamont said. "They're not going anywhere."

"The Russians have plenty of bozos. They'll just send different ones."

Ronnie rubbed a hand across his close cropped hair. His face was thinner than before he'd been shot, though his Roman nose was as big as ever. He'd lost weight in the hospital, more when he'd gone home to the Navajo reservation. The doctors had patched up his body. The traditional rituals of his people had restored his spirit.

"Seems like a lot of effort for what might turn out to be a myth," he said.

Selena held up her phone with a picture of the French tablet.

"When I've translated this we'll know more."

Elizabeth asked, "When will you have it done?"

"I'm not sure. There's quite a bit here and I'm only beginning to get a grasp on it. Perhaps a few days?"

"How did they know where you lived?" Ronnie asked.

Selena looked stricken. "I hadn't thought of that. That letter was sent to my agent. I'd better call him."

She took out her phone and dialed. An unfamiliar male voice answered.

"Detective D'Angelo."

"You're the police? Is Michael Daly there?"

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.

"Who's calling?"

"A friend. Would you put Mike on please?"

"Give me your name and number and I'll have him call you back."

"Has something happened?" She heard people talking in the background.

"There's been an accident," D'Angelo said. "I can't tell you more than that right now. Give me your name and number and we'll call back."

Selena hung up the phone.

"A detective answered the phone. The cops are there and I could hear people in the background."

"What did he say?" Nick asked.

"He said there'd been an accident. He wanted my name and number and said he'd call me back. I didn't think it was a good idea to give it to him."

"That was the right choice," Elizabeth said. "The last thing we need is to get mixed up with the police on this."

"Mike was in Afghanistan, a Ranger. He was a combat vet. He wouldn't have given them my address without a fight."

"He might be okay," Nick said.

"You know he isn't," she said. Her voice was bitter. "Why else would the cops be there?"

Elizabeth cleared her throat.

"I'll find out what happened. In the meantime you all have something to do. Selena, your priority is the translation of the tablet. Nick, you and Ronnie work with the new guns. Lamont, set up the combat course. See if you can add a few new twists. When Selena's done with the translation, get her up to speed on the MP-7 and then take everyone through the course. Steph, track down those thugs. Let's find out who sent them."

Later, they would look back on that day as the beginning.