The Destroyed (23 page)

The first bump invaded her dream, but didn’t pull her back to consciousness. But the second—a drop of what felt like at least a dozen feet—woke her with a start. She sat up, and immediately pulled down the armrest on the open side of her seat.

A speaker in the ceiling crackled to life. “This might last awhile. So everybody just hang on.”

It was a no-nonsense announcement that, if given on a commercial flight, would have probably resulted in the pilot being fired. No one on this plane was complaining, though.

For the next several minutes, it felt like they were bouncing along a dirt road full of potholes and bumps that threatened to shake the plane apart. It was somewhere in the middle of this that she felt her stomach clench.

She breathed deeply and evenly, her fingers gripping the ends of the armrests. The plane suddenly dipped again, and she almost lost her dinner. As soon as she had tentative control of her system, she looked around for a barf bag but there was none.

She began panting, hoping that would settle things down.

The plane jumped up and down, up and down.

Sudden movement at the front of the cabin caught her attention. One of the three men who had questioned her when she arrived at the airport had jumped up from his seat, and was weaving over to the toilet. If she was closer, she was sure she’d hear him retching, a thought that caused her own stomach to flip again.

Oh, God
, she thought. It wasn’t going to stay down this time.

Putting one hand over her mouth, she used the other to unfasten her seatbelt, and lurched out into the central aisle. She started to turn toward the front, but remembered the man who’d staggered into the only toilet there.

She whirled around, and headed toward the back, her mind focused solely on finding the closest open receptacle. Her free hand grabbed the top of each seat, steadying her as she moved down the aisle.

In her head
stay down, stay down
played over and over. She could feel sweat gathering on her brow and above her ears. She wanted to wipe it away but both her hands were occupied.

She was getting close now. She could see two toilets in the back, one on either side. Even better, the indicator next to each handle was green, meaning they were unoccupied.

The plane slid suddenly to the left, nearly throwing her into an empty row. When she straightened herself up again, she saw with surprise that someone had moved into the aisle in front of her. It was one of the suited men with the prisoner, the young guy who’d stared at her as he’d passed her seat. In her distress, she had totally forgotten about her fellow passengers.

“You can’t be back here, miss,” he said. “You need to return to the front of the plane.”

“I can’t,” she eked out through the fingers that covered her lips. She’d never make it that far.

“There are facilities up there.”

“Someone…is using them.”

She could feel her stomach squeeze and everything inside boil in anticipation of its impending exit. She pushed it back down, but knew it might be the last time the effort would work.

“Please,” she said, the word not much more than a squeak.

From a seat nearby, the older guy said, “Olsen, let her through.”

“Sir, the orders.”

“Let her through, unless you want her to puke all over you.”

With a disapproving look, the young man moved out of the way. “Hurry up. Don’t take long.”

His instructions might have been the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Hurry up? Of course she’d hurry up, but she had no control over how long she’d have to stay.

She rushed past him, threw open the door, and dropped to her knees just in time. For the next five minutes, the only thing in her world was the toilet. It wasn’t until the retching finally slowed that she became aware of her surroundings, and realized that while she had shut the door, it was still unlocked. Weak from her ordeal, she reached over and turned the handle, engaging the
OCCUPIED
sign.

At some point, she stood again. That’s when she realized the turbulence had stopped. She cleaned up as best she could, and did the same with the bathroom. She wished she’d been aware enough when she’d left her seat to grab her toothbrush and paste, but that was something she could take care of once she returned to the front.

Someone knocked on the door. “Miss, you need to go back to your seat.” It was the voice of the guy who’d blocked her way—Olsen, the other one had called him.

“Just a second. Almost done,” she said.

She checked her hair and face once more to be sure she hadn’t missed anything, then opened the door. The man was standing a few feet outside, looking impatient.

“Sorry,” she said. “Thanks for letting me by, though.”

“Please return to your seat,” he said.

“Sure.” She paused. “I, uh, would avoid using that bathroom if you can help it.”

Now that she was at least seventy percent herself again, her view of her world was no longer limited to whatever had been immediately in front of her. She could see the other guards spread out in the last three rows of seats. The prisoner was in the second-to-last row, up against the window on the same side of the plane as her seat. While the metal collar was still around his neck and the hood remained over his head, the pole had been removed. As she neared his row, he twisted in her direction.

“Please, please, help me,” he said, speaking rapidly. “My name is Thomas Gorman. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m—”

The guard sitting next to him touched a handheld device against the prisoner’s arm. By the way the man started jerking, she knew the device must be a Taser or something similar.

“Keep moving,” the older man said to her.

Mila picked up her pace. When she reached her seat, she retrieved her small bathroom bag, and used the forward facilities to brush her teeth. She then sat again.

Though weak from throwing up, she couldn’t get the prisoner’s outburst out of her head. She had a hard time falling back to sleep. After thirty minutes, she finally gave up, and stared out the window at the dark.

It wasn’t like the hooded man was the first prisoner to proclaim his innocence. That wasn’t what had disturbed her. It had been his accent—American. Midwest or even West Coast.

Why would an American prisoner be on a flight to Europe? As far as she knew, the US was not in the habit of extraditing its own citizens. He could have been a foreigner who was just good at accents. Maybe, but it didn’t sit quite right.

Thomas Gorman
.

Why did that sound familiar? She knew that name, didn’t she? Not a friend. A movie star? Politician? Neither of those felt right, either. There was something there, though, some little itch of familiarity.

Whatever the answer was, it wasn’t coming to her.

When the plane finally landed, she was instructed to stay in her seat while the prisoner was removed. Unsettled by what had happened earlier, she turned on the hidden camera in her bag.

What she captured was even more than she’d expected. As the guards walked the prisoner down the aisle, he started shouting again. “Please, someone, anyone, help me! My name is Thomas Gorman. These people have taken me from my home, have violated my—”

This time the electric shock came through the collar.

Something her camera also caught.

CHAPTER 25

WASHINGTON, DC

P
ETER WAS FINALLY
alone. Olsen had just left, claiming a dinner meeting. He didn’t say who he was seeing, but Peter was sure it had to be Mygatt and Green.

“Inform me the minute anything happens,” Olsen had said on his way out the door.

“Of course,” Peter had lied.

“When you find her this time, make sure your men
have
her. I don’t want any more fuckups.”

Peter had yet to decide when he should tell Olsen that Mila had already been detained. There was a growing part of him that was wondering if he should at all. What he needed to do was make a rational decision based on facts he didn’t currently have.

Once Olsen was out of the flat, Peter joined Misty at her desk, and leaned over her shoulder as she brought up the security system. They could monitor the whole street via over a dozen cameras, including one directed at the nearby parking lot where Olsen always left his car.

Right on cue, Olsen stepped out of the building, walked down to the lot, and drove off in his shiny BMW 535i.

Peter leaned back. “Keep an eye on him. I’ll be upstairs.”

With a nod, Misty activated the software that would track Olsen’s movements by way of a tiny chip she had sewn into the lining of his coat while he was in the office with Peter. There was also a second chip affixed to the undercarriage of the BMW. And if those weren’t enough, three freelancers Peter trusted were doing a rotating tail so that there were actual eyes on Olsen at all times.

Peter climbed the secret staircase to the hidden apartment. Misty referred to the three-sided desk in the middle of the main room as mission control. On each side was a different computer. The one on the right was tied to the network downstairs and mirrored a machine in one of the unused offices, so if someone did a search, they wouldn’t realize the computer was actually in a different room. It could access any of the other machines in the flat without the need of a password. Unfortunately, that didn’t cover Olsen’s private laptop since he’d taken it with him when he left. That was probably for the best, anyway. Peter would have been tempted to try to hack in, something that could have triggered an alarm alerting Olsen.

The other two computers were not linked to those below. In fact, neither was using the same Internet access as the rest of the office. Each was hardwired to a different, neighboring building.

One was used for accessing the public Internet, or the occasional hack into something a bit more private. The other had backdoor access to several divisions within the US intelligence community—not full access, but close enough.

This last was the computer Peter woke from its slumber.

When Mila Voss showed up alive in Tanzania, Peter had thoroughly gone over the file on her termination. As happened with most projects, many of the finer details were deemed unnecessary to the task at hand and were held back. It was a perfectly logical thing to do. In fact, Peter liked it that way. If he didn’t need the big picture, he didn’t want it. It made it easier to focus on what did need to be done. Mila’s removal was one of those situations. Why she had to die was none of his business.

Not anymore.

Though Mila had worked for him a few times, he’d never had any direct contact. Hiring and briefing her had all been handled by subordinates. Peter had gone back and checked those records, and found that she had done her job, was thoroughly reliable, and had never caused any problems. Of course, he wasn’t her only employer, but given how she had performed for him, he found it hard to believe the experience had been drastically different for anyone else.

Using the special-access computer, he set to work attempting to create a chronological list of jobs Mila had done. He knew there would be holes, people she might have worked for who were not official US agencies, but those gigs didn’t concern him. The order to terminate had come from Mygatt through Green. They were both with the government at the time, so the project that had caused the problem had probably also come through government channels.

Peter spent two hours sifting through the digital records before Misty called and asked if he wanted her to pick him up some dinner.

“A sandwich,” he said. “And put on some coffee.”

“Coffee’s ready whenever you are.”

Just after nine p.m., he had what he considered to be as close as possible to a complete list of Mila’s projects in the four months prior to her termination order. Whatever she did that had made Mygatt think her death was necessary would most likely have occurred not long before the scheduled event in Las Vegas. He thought it was pretty damn likely it had happened no more than eight weeks out.

He printed the list so he could lay it across the desk and get a clearer picture. Using markers, he highlighted those jobs on which there was an intersection between Mila and either Mygatt or Green. He then looked through these to see if something stood out, but on the surface there was nothing. Next, he concentrated on the jobs the two men were not—openly, at least—involved in. Same results.

Dammit
.

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. What was he missing? The room grew deathly still as his mind ran through every possibility. A full ten minutes passed before he rocked forward, thinking there was another angle he could check.

Using date, time, and location information from the jobs Mila had worked, he began his new search. The list he came up with was shorter than the one he already had, but he’d expected that. It was simply a list of projects that coincided both in time and relative location to those Mila was attached to. Other than that, there were no apparent connections between the jobs.

He checked each against her corresponding project. The first was in Chicago at roughly the same time of day, but on a different side of the city so contact between the two was unlikely. The next was in DC. For a few moments, he thought that might be it, but it was soon clear, once again, there had been no overlap. The same was true of a job in Boston, and two in New York.

The sixth had been in Atlanta. Actually, he corrected himself, it had
started
in Atlanta for Mila. This time there
was
an overlap—a flight between a small airport outside the city and Lisbon, Portugal. Mila was on the flight because of its convenience for the run she was on. The other project had been using the flight to get to Europe, too, though there was no info telling Peter what they’d been up to. He didn’t recognize the names of the people who were ultimately in charge of the project—neither Mygatt nor Green was mentioned—but there were four things that did stand out.

One, the flight had happened
exactly
one month before Mila was supposedly eliminated.