The Socotra Incident (8 page)

Tony protested, “The blueprints and schematics the hotel filed with the city the last time they—”

“Natalie, take the EM key and your kit. Get to the other room now,” Shannon said.

Natalie let the penlight drop from her mouth into her hand.

“There anyone in there?” she said as she knelt down. The chair on top of the table wobbled like Jell-O as she reached for the chair back.

“No, we’ve had the security feed on the hallway since this morning. No one’s come or gone,” Shannon said.

Natalie tried to step on the table, and that’s the moment when the chair decided to slip out from under her. She tipped over and fell onto the bed with a squeak. The chair clattered against the floor. Natalie looked up at the ceiling and marveled at how comfortable the bed was.

“What was that?” Shannon asked.

Natalie pushed herself up and picked up a can of hair spray from her carry-on.

“Nothing. Going next door with the implant and the skeleton key,” she said.

“Seven minutes,” Tony said.

Natalie didn’t bother to put her shoes back on as she raced out of the room. After a quick glance up and down the hallway to see whether anyone was watching, Natalie proceeded to walk calmly and purposefully to the next room down the hall.
Always act like you belong
, her training had demanded.
Not like you’re about to commit a felony.

She held the can of hair spray against the card key lock of the room and waited. A half second later, something whirled inside the can. The locks of most hotels used key cards and magnetic locks on the doors. With a powerful enough magnet, like the one hidden in the false bottom of her hair spray, most hotel doors would unlock.

The door lock clicked, and Natalie pushed her way in. The room stank of cigarette smoke and stale food. The bed sheets were a twisted mass, and an open suitcase was on a folding luggage rack. There was no sound from anywhere in the room.

Natalie shut the door without a sound and peeked into the bathroom. Empty.

No one was on the unkempt bed either.

“Okay, unoccupied, but there’s definitely someone staying here,” she said.

“Hurry!” Shannon said.

Natalie had to move a room service tray with half-eaten eggs, bread crust and a smashed cigarette butt from the round table. She took a mental picture before she moved it; everything would have to go back perfectly once she was done, or she’d risk alerting the occupant that he’d had a visitor.

She set the table under the target panel and got a knee on it.

“Natalie, a man just got out of the elevator and is heading your direction,” Shannon said.

Natalie’s heart started pounding, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear poured into her blood. This wasn’t what she needed to hear.

She got up on the table and knocked aside the ceiling panel, heedless of the dust and particulates sprinkling down. She put the penlight in her mouth. A mass of wires ran though the plenum space, bound together by black zip ties into a fasces.

“Irene, get his face in the system. Is he known?” Shannon said.

Please shut up please shut up please shut up
, Natalie thought as she dug through the wires. She found the only thick green wire and tugged it to the outer edge of the mass of wires. She took the clamp and sank the teeth into the wire. Lights lit up on the device.

“Contact,” Natalie said. Something blinked deeper in the dark space, farther down the line of wires. Something else was attached to the wires. Natalie brought the penlight up to illuminate it.

“Receiving, we’re tapped into the
Russian bear’s feed. One minute to spare,” Tony said.

“Natalie, you’re about to have company,” Shannon said.

“There’s another wiretap,” Natalie said. “I can’t get it.” She put the ceiling panel back, leaped from the table, and shoved it back into place.

The door beeped, and the handle rattled.

Natalie ran into the bathroom on her tiptoes, the wiretap case and can of hair spray in hand. She shut the bathroom door as the door beeped again. Her magnetic skeleton key must have upset the inner workings of the lock.

She heard the door open and stood in front of the mirror with the hair spray in hand.

The door to the bathroom swung open, and a well-built, olive-skinned man in his late thirties, one hand undoing his zipper, stepped into the room.

Natalie let out a blood-curdling shriek, and the man leaped a foot in the air.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” Natalie shouted.

The man backed against the wall beyond the bathroom, looking at Natalie like she was an eight-headed Hydra and not a woman standing barefoot in his bathroom.

“This”—he looked around and down at the key in his hand—“this is
my
room,” he said. His accent was Middle Eastern and not the Arabic accent she’d grown used to during her time in Iraq.

“No, it isn’t.” Natalie stomped a foot for emphasis. “Get out right now before I start screaming, ‘Rape’!” She put her hands akimbo against her hips.

“We’ve got a hit on him,” Shannon said.

“Look, there is my suitcase.” The man pointed into the room.

“What?” Natalie did her best to feign surprise. “I stepped out of my room for a second to look at the Belvedere Palace out of the hallway window and came back into my room.
My
room. Number six four three. Look at the door.”

“This is room six four
five
. Look, ah, maybe my door was a little open. You came in by accident. Yes?” he said.

Natalie pressed the fingers of both hands over her mouth. “Oh. My. God. Am I really that much of an idiot?”

“Here, look.” The man stepped deeper into the room and waved an arm at his mess.

Natalie took a tentative step into the hallway and readied a finger on the hair spray cap.

“He’s a known associate of Ari. He’s Israeli intelligence, Mossad,” Shannon said.

The man looked over his bed, then saw the tray of food. Natalie hadn’t put it back on the table.

He whirled around and reached for Natalie’s arm. She brought the hair spray up and blasted him in the eyes. Tony had designed the false exterior of his devices to function. The Mossad agent reared back, pawing at his face. She snapped a kick out and caught him square in the groin.

The man doubled over, and Natalie swung an elbow into his temple. The blow smashed his head against the wall hard enough to dent the drywall. Natalie grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the floor. He lay on the ground, groaning.

“Natalie! Say something,” Shannon said.

“He’s down. Not sure for how long,” Natalie said. She looked around for a weapon in case he did get back up.

“You need to keep him down until this mission is finished,” Shannon said.

The man groaned. A leg flopped against the floor.

“Um, okay,” Natalie said. She reached into the open suitcase and pulled out a belt.

Shannon stood behind Tony at his workstation. Her arms were crossed, and one foot was tapping as she watched the time to submit her bid for the Club K tick away one second at a time. One screen showed all the incoming Internet traffic to Bronislava’s room. An e-mail popped up with a price and a buyer code.

“Only one left besides us,” Irene said. “Top bid is thirty-two million.”

“One minute to go. Who’s left?” Shannon asked.

“My guess is Ari,” Irene said.

“He’s watching this too,” Shannon said and tugged at her bottom lip. “Get ready, thirty-five-and-a-half-million bid.”

Irene swallowed hard and typed up an e-mail. Her mouse cursor hovered over the
send
button.

“Ten seconds until the deadline,” Tony said.

“Okay, the guy ain’t going anywhere,” Natalie said.

“Stand by, Natalie. We’re—”

An e-mail popped up on Tony’s screen.

“Thirty-six million!”

“Irene.”

A clatter of keys later, Irene smiled. Their offer of $37 million came across the screen.

“Two seconds to spare.” Irene touched her arm with a finger, withdrew it quickly, and blew on it as if she’d touched something hot.

“You know we only had to beat him by one dollar, not a million,” Shannon said.

“Two seconds! I panicked,” Irene said.

“The guy’s cell phone is ringing? What do I do now?” Natalie said.

The Mossad man lay face down on the bed, his hands bound over the small of his back with a silk tie. His ankles were tied together and pulled into the air. A pair of belts connected his bound extremities, and another tie was wrapped around his head and stuffed into his mouth like a gag. Summers working on her uncle’s ranch had taught her how to hog-tie animals big and small. She’d never thought that skill would ever be useful outside of a barn, but here she was.

Natalie bent over and looked the Mossad man in his terrified eyes. Blood seeped from a cut on his forehead where he’d collided with the wall.

“I’m taking this,” Natalie said as she brandished the man’s wallet in front of his face. He mumbled something through his gag.

She looked the man in the eye again.

“I take no pleasure in this,” she said and tugged the man’s pants down past his thighs, exposing his bare buttocks.

Natalie left her room with her carry-on in tow, the man’s wallet in hand, and in her pocketbook all the cash she’d found squirreled away in his suitcase. Shannon insisted the mess look like a robbery gone wrong. High-end call girls had a tendency to rip off their Johns, and that’s exactly what it would look like when hotel security arrived to investigate the anonymous tip that would come after Natalie was out of danger.

She felt her limbs go leaden as the adrenaline high melted away. An ache in her elbow and a sprained toe from the inexpertly placed kick to his groin caressed her with a promise of lasting pain.

She pushed the call button to the elevator with cracked nails and trembling fingers.

The last time she’d come down from an adrenaline high like this she’d been in Iraq with Ritter. The embarrassment of losing control resurfaced, and her face flushed.

“Come on,” she said as she pushed the button again. She took the cash and credit cards from the wallet and tossed the leather billfold into the trash can adjacent to the elevator doors.

“Congratulations, Natalie. You just bought a cruise missile,” Shannon said.

The doors opened with a
ding
, and Natalie stepped inside. She turned around, waiting for the door to the man’s room to burst open and for him to run out with the gun she knew she’d missed during the search of his room.

The doors closed without incident. Natalie pressed a hand to her face and took a ragged breath.

Devereaux’s SEALs would assault the
Opongsan
from Ospreys, which was the cherry on the top of Ritter’s otherwise-miserable day. He and Mike stood at the end of a line of SEALs, ready to quickly rope from the rear hatch of the Osprey to the deck of the
Opongsan
.

Ritter shifted the weight of the body armor, ammo pouches, and the SCAR battle rifle attached to his chest. He and Mike wore the same gear as the rest of the SEALs, no matter how unfamiliar they were with it. As part of the Caliban Program, they fought dressed as their enemy to blend in with their surroundings; the attire was rarely more than civilian clothes and a pistol. The same principle applied here.

He looked out the open side hatch and saw wave tops undulating in the moonlight, the smell of salty air betraying just how low to the deck the pilots were flying. The team medic had plenty of Dramamine, and Ritter’s pride had hit its limit during the long flight from Italy.

The sea vanished as the Osprey banked hard and climbed into the air. Ritter’s arm shot out and steadied himself against the maneuver that tilted the aircraft almost on its side. The rest of the operators and Mike hardly flinched.

The SEALs were eerily silent during the entire flight from the
Reagan
to the
Opongsan.
They’d seethed with a tense energy the whole trip, like racehorses at the gate.

A red light spun to life over the aft hatch, and the Osprey leveled out. The hatch whined open with painful slowness.

A SEAL with a sniper rifle stood at the starboard side of the hatch, scanning the deck of the
Opongsan
as it came into view through his scope. A SEAL built like a fire truck stood next to him; a rope as thick as Ritter’s wrists was coiled in his arms and attached to a hook in the roof of the Osprey. He threw the rope into the night air, coiled his arms and legs around it, and slid away.

Ritter’s heart pounded so hard that he swore his gear rattled as his turn approached.
Just hold on for dear life and let gravity do the work
, he thought. He’d trained for this kind of air assault for most of a day…three years ago at the Fort Campbell air-assault course.