The Orphan Uprising (The Orphan Trilogy, #3) (32 page)

The chopper Nine had called in was waiting for him at the rebels’ encampment and he’d been flown back to Kananga, in the south of the country, where he’d joined a tour group of British backpackers and crossed safely into Zambia. There, he’d caught a flight to Cape Town where he’d connected with the British Airways flight he was now on.

Aware Omega and the CIA would still have people looking out for him at the main international airports, Nine was traveling in the guise of a South African university professor visiting America on business. His latest disguise was a convincing one despite the fact he’d slipped into it in a zombie-like state before checking in for his flight.

His exertions during the raid on the refinery, combined with lack of sleep and a cruel travel schedule before and since that event, had left him feeling fragile. His shoulder hurt, too, but that was the least of his problems. In the past two weeks, he felt he’d aged a hundred years. His weak heart continued to trouble him and he could tell he was on borrowed time.

As the
Please fasten your seatbelt
sign lit up above him and the plane began its final descent to LAX, Nine’s thoughts turned to the next stage in his odyssey to find Francis. He was clinging possibility there was a secret lab in Nevada and his son was there.
He has to be!
That was all he had to go on. He couldn’t bring himself to consider what he’d do, or what he’d tell Isabelle, if Francis wasn’t there.

Nine was aware he always had the option of going public with the information he had on Omega’s secret orphanages. Leaking the confidential files to the likes of mainstream media outlets, government watchdogs, key politicians and law enforcement agencies would certainly expose Omega. It would also result in the closure of the labs and undoubtedly end the careers of Naylor and his cronies in spectacular fashion, but it wouldn’t return his son to him.

The former operative knew as soon as news of the labs’ existence broke, Omega would go into damage control. They would act fast to destroy all evidence the labs ever existed. And that evidence would include the children interned in those same labs.

#

While Nine’s plane was preparing to land at LAX, Seventeen was parked in her rental car outside Papeete’s upmarket Hotel Tiare Tahiti. She’d been observing guests coming and going from the hotel’s front entrance for the past two hours, hoping to sight her fellow orphan, Eight.

Within the confines of the small, nondescript Honda vehicle she’d rented, Seventeen was sweltering in the heat. She was still in the guise of a Belgian anthropologist. Perspiration threatened to ruin her carefully-applied, nutmeg brown tan and she would have loved to be able to languish in the hotel’s swimming pool whose sky blue waters she could just make out to one side of the hotel.

Seventeen was thinking about taking a break when she caught sight of a familiar figure.
Eight!
The Omega operative wore dark shades, but even they couldn’t hide her Oriental features. Besides, Eight was tall for a woman of Asian heritage and she generally stood out in a crowd. Seventeen estimated her fellow orphan was as tall as she was.

The former operative watched as Eight jumped into a waiting cab. Seventeen started the engine and followed the cab at a discreet distance. As she’d hoped, the cab traveled to Fa'a'ā International Airport.

Seventeen watched as Eight disembarked from the cab and entered the airport’s International Arrivals terminal. Quickly parking her car, she followed Eight inside. A glance at the flight arrivals board told her an Air Tahiti Nui flight had just arrived from Chicago. She assumed whoever Eight had come to meet would have been on that flight.

The former operative didn’t have long to wait. Two familiar figures emerged through Customs. Seventeen saw them even before Eight did.

Omega operatives Seven and Nineteen were traveling as themselves and were instantly recognizable. Seven, a muscular African-American male, hardly seemed to have aged in the eight years since Seventeen had last seen him. He still looked as youthful as ever even though she recalled he was her age. Seventeen wondered if he was still adept at terminating targets by garroting them. She recalled that had been his preferred
method of
termination
, as he’d called it.

Nineteen, a mixed-race man of similar age, hadn’t worn as well as his traveling companion, but he, too, looked in top shape and as foreboding as ever. One of the tallest of the Pedemont orphans at six four, he had a menacing persona. Of all Seventeen’s former colleagues, Nineteen was the one who frightened her the most. She had always sensed an evil presence in the man.

Only now did Eight notice her colleagues. She hurried forward to greet them.

Seventeen observed the three operatives engage in the briefest of formalities before Eight led them outside. As had been the case when the female operative arrived, the latest arrivals traveled light with only one small travel bag each. They evidently didn’t expect to be in Tahiti long.

Outside the terminal, Seventeen watched as the three walked to a rental car bay where a small fleet of shiny cars sat glistening in the sun. There, Eight spoke briefly to an attendant who handed over a set of keys and pointed to a late model Renault parked close by. Seven and Nineteen piled into the vehicle’s back seat while Eight accompanied the attendant into a small office to sign the rental agreement forms. That done, she returned, climbed in behind the wheel of the Renault and drove off.

As Seventeen had done earlier, she followed at a discreet distance. Eight led her straight back to Hotel Tiare Tahiti. Rather than stopping outside the establishment, Seventeen drove on by – a precaution in case any of the operatives were watching for a tail. Knowing them, and knowing the exhaustive training they and all Omega’s operatives had undergone, she was aware they would always be on guard.

Seventeen didn’t need to stop anyway. She now knew who her targets were and where they were staying, so would deal with them later. Meanwhile, she had other business to attend to.

The former operative headed for the public hospital where Twenty Three was recovering. She planned to deal with him before he could recover from his injuries and once again become a threat to Isabelle and herself. Then it would be another one down and three to go.

68

After arriving at LAX, Nine flew by chartered plane to a private landing strip on the outskirts of Las Vegas and checked into a budget motel nearby. He’d chosen to base himself in
Sin City
because of its close proximity to Nellis Air Force Base.

Nine had also forsaken his South African guise in favour of a rosy-cheeked, bespectacled and slightly overweight tourist from Devon, in the south of England. His newly acquired paunch was courtesy of a small cushion he’d stuffed down his singlet. It was crude, but effective.

Since departing Los Angeles, he’d forced himself to put the disappointments of his failed African sojourn – and his Greenland and German visits before that – to the back of his mind and fully focus on what he needed to do in Nevada.

Nine was aware he was seriously disadvantaged. He had not a shred of information about Omega’s lab at the Air Force base. Unlike the agency’s offshore labs, its specific whereabouts, layout, access and security arrangements were a mystery to him. He wasn’t even sure the lab existed, though he wasn’t dwelling on that possibility for the moment.

The former operative reminded himself that for every problem there’s a solution.
That’s right, isn’t it, Tommy?
Holding onto his mentor’s oft-quoted mantra, he reviewed his immediate plans while eating a meal in the privacy of his motel unit. He was aware he needed to familiarize himself with Nellis Air Force base and its surrounds, but first he had more pressing priority.

Nine caught a cab to a downtown realtor’s office. There, he took out a short-term lease on a fully self-contained, private, ground-floor apartment that had caught his eye in a local real estate flier. While he didn’t inspect the apartment in person, he could tell from the photos it would meet his requirements: it would serve as a safe house, away from prying eyes, for Francis and himself. For security reasons, he didn’t plan to move in until after he’d rescued his son.

After lunch, armed with a camera and determined to give his best impersonation of a tourist, Nine joined a group of foreign tourists who were about to depart by coach to Nellis Air Force Base. It was the day’s last scheduled tour of the facility and Nine had been fortunate to obtain one of the last available tickets for the three-hour excursion.

Before boarding the air-conditioned coach, the tour guide advised Nine and his fellow passengers they would have to leave their cameras behind. Cameras were not allowed onto the base.

The former operative had a window seat toward the rear of the coach. As luck would have it, he was stuck next to a garrulous Australian woman who proceeded to tell him everything she and her equally garrulous chubby daughter had done since arriving in the US. Nine tried to feign interest, but it was a struggle and he had to resist the temptation to tell the woman to shut up.

Looking out his window at the vapor trails left by fighter jets in the blue skies above, Nine was taken back to his time at Thule Air Base, in Greenland. He wondered now, as he’d wondered then, what the significance was of locating secret orphanages at US Air Force bases.

As the coach neared Nellis Air Force Base, Nine surveyed its layout and began to take more interest in the tour guide’s patter. The guide, an enthusiastic twentysomething Hispanic woman, addressed her captive audience from the front of the coach.

“Nellis is under the jurisdiction of Air Combat Command and is home to the Fifty Seventh Wing,
our
Air Force’s biggest composite flying wing,” the guide gushed. “It includes F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon Aggressor air and space squadrons to help keep
our
citizens safe.”

Nine was amused the way the guide personalized everything about the base – as if she had some ownership of, or a stake in, the base and its squadrons.

“Ten thousand personnel are assigned to the base and to the NTTR,” the guide continued. “NTTR stands for the Nevada Test and Training Range, which facilitates training for military ops for
our
people.”

Surveying the base, the first thing that struck Nine was it seemed many, many times busier than Thule Air Base. Fighter planes were landing and taking off every thirty seconds while others taxied in readiness for take-off and still others queued to await their turn to roll onto one of the many runways in use. The noise of jet engines almost drowned out the tour guide’s patter even though she was now shouting into her microphone.

The coach slowed as it approached a manned security gate. A uniformed guard motioned to the driver to stop. The guard exchanged pleasantries with the driver through the driver’s open window then requested an inventory of his passengers. The driver handed a list of names to the guard.

Nine had expected as much. Similar security precautions had been in force at Thule Air Base. However, he didn’t expect what happened next.

A distinguished looking man wearing civvies emerged from a nearby guardhouse. Nine couldn’t see him clearly as the sun was in his eyes. He guessed the man was around his own age, and by the look of him he kept fit. The man walked purposefully toward the coach.

Nine suddenly recognized him.
It’s Ten!
The tenth-born orphan had been his best friend at the orphanage. They had been like brothers. Nine remembered him as the orphanage’s practical joker. Each had been the butt of many a practical joke over the years and each had been reprimanded by their Omega masters many a time for their unsanctioned tomfoolery.

Now wasn’t the time for nostalgic reminiscing, however. Nine could see that Ten was in the process of boarding the coach. He could feel his heart racing.

As he’d done every day since Naylor had sent him to the base to watch out for the rogue operative, Ten had boarded each and every tour coach – morning and afternoon – to check its passengers. Starting at the front of the coach, he slowly walked down the aisle, studying the faces of each passenger.

Nine hoped his rosy-cheeked English tourist guise would pass muster. In support of his disguise, he engaged the Australian woman next to him in a discussion about her homeland, using his best rural Devon accent. By the time Ten reached them, Nine was telling the woman about a visit he’d made to Ayers Rock in the heart of Australia.

The former operative could feel Ten’s eyes on him and he prayed he wouldn’t be recognized. His heart was beating faster than ever.

Ten continued on down the aisle, leaving Nine and the Australian woman deep in conversation.

As Ten completed his inspection of passengers and disembarked from the coach, Nine silently thanked his old tutors at the Pedemont Orphanage for giving him the ability to shape-shift and adopt believable disguises at will. His pulse returned to normal, but he was left with a feeling that resembled heartburn. It was a new sensation and Nine didn’t like it one bit. He tried to put it out of his mind.

Ten’s presence at the base confirmed to Nine the likelihood that it was home to a secret medical lab.
And if that’s the case, Francis could well be here!
Nine wondered how many other operatives Naylor had sent to the base. He thought it probable Ten was alone. After all, Naylor couldn’t know that his rogue operative was aware another Omega lab existed.

69

Seventeen returned to Papeete’s main public hospital after dark. Her visit earlier that day had been cut short by the unforeseen appearance of the newly arrived Seven and Nineteen who called in to check on the progress of their injured colleague, Twenty Three.

For this late night call, which was well after official visiting hours, Seventeen had disguised herself as a nursing sister. As she’d hoped, security was lax as she strode through the hospital’s main entrance, small bag in hand, and entered the first ladies’ restroom she came to.