Under His Watch (15 page)

“It wouldn’t have happened if the SEALs had been involved,” he said grimly. “Let’s sit down in the corner. I think we’re going to be here a while.” Then he said, as if reading her mind, “And don’t even think about trying to get a picture of the head. Who knows what Herzyov—or his bodyguards—would do.”

He guided her to the corner of the cellar, and helped her sit down with her back to the stone. He sat next to her, not taking his eyes off Mosa, the man who had taken his gun, whose own attention seemed fixed on something going on in the temple above—the negotiation, Charity assumed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He seemed pretty normal—charming even, like Winnie said.”

“He probably is mostly normal,” Ryan replied, “but we don’t want to give him a reason to accuse us of something.”

“What do you think is going on out there?”

“I’m guessing Winnie is talking to Herzyov. Depending on what he wants, this might take a very long time, or very little time at all. Unfortunately, in you he has a very valuable hostage.”

“Me?”

“You may not be all that famous, but the CIA definitely doesn’t want that to change. You’re a princess.”

“I am not a princess, Ryan.”

Ryan laughed, clearly in spite of himself. “I didn’t mean that way,” he said. “I mean that you’re like the equivalent of royalty. If anything happened to you, as unfair as it seems, the CIA would be in much bigger trouble than if something happened to, say, me.”

* * *

By the third hour, Charity realized that what she really needed, if she were going to have any hope of relaxing, was Ryan’s cock inside her, or his hand spanking her bare bottom very hard. Since that was out of the question, she said softly to him, “Sir, what are you going to do, the next time you use my body for your pleasure?”

Ryan didn’t even turn around. “Whip your backside thoroughly for distracting me.”

Charity pouted. “What if I order you to say wicked things to me, sir? I don’t think I can take it, unless you tell me about how much you want to fuck me in my little bottom, and how hard you’re going to pound me when you put me over the camp bed in our tent, when we finally get out of here.”

Now he couldn’t help laughing, though he still kept his eyes fixed on their guard. “Can I just tell you that my cock is very hard now, and that fighting with an erection is not recommended either by the marquess of Queensberry or by the Navy SEAL manual?”

“I bet I could do something about that,” Charity said, in her sudden fervor even daring to reach her hand around his hip and put it on the front of his jeans.

But that made him serious, unfortunately. “Charity, get your hand away from there right now. I’m not joking. If something happens, a fraction of a second could make all the difference in saving your life.”

She withdrew her hand. “Sorry, sir,” she said. “But wouldn’t my sucking your cock make you nice and ready for action?” She caught sight of the statue head, about the size of a beach ball, lying in the opposite corner, and she could scarcely believe that she was talking this way in the cellar of Alexander’s temple of Apollo. “I have it on very good authority that Alexander liked blowjobs very much, and he’s the greatest warrior in the history of the world.”

“Charity Phillips, my honey-slut, you are in a world of trouble when we get out of here.”

“Oh, Ryan, I love you so much,” she said, feeling love fill her chest, driving out almost all the fear. “Do you know how much better that makes me feel?”

“Good,” he said, turning around very briefly and risking a kiss, before he turned back to see the perpetually motionless figure of the guard. They had arrived about noon; now shadows were falling. Charity could barely make out the location of the head of Alexander; the features of the face had already been lost in the obscurity of the twilight.

Suddenly a voice, speaking, Charity thought, in the dialect of Farsi that was the most common language of Handristan, shouted something. Next to her, she felt Ryan tense. Silently, he shifted his position very slightly—was he getting into a crouch?

All the fear he had driven away returned in a rush. It took every ounce of will she had not to say, “Don’t. Please. Just stay here.”

She watched the guard ascend a single step, heard him shout something in return, and then Ryan seemed to be flying through the air toward Mosa. Charity bit her tongue to keep from crying out, and cowered back into the corner.

Ryan connected hard with the guard on the steps, and used his legs as leverage to pull him down the stairs. Whether through something Ryan did, or just through the luck of falling down stone steps, Mosa stopped moving, and then Ryan had his gun and was backing toward Charity, shouting, “Hostages secure!”

About ten seconds of shouting followed, during which the unconscious guard didn’t stir. Then there was silence.

“Wh-what’s happening?” Charity asked.

“Hopefully the CIA just captured Herzyov.”

“Charity and Ryan, are you okay?” came Winnie’s voice from up above.

“Yes,” Ryan shouted back.

“Stay there. We’re securing the area.”

“What’s going to happen?” Charity whispered.

Ryan gave a rueful-sounding laugh. “You should probably take a few pictures, before they let us up. I think we’re probably headed right back out of here tonight.”

“What?”

“God only knows how they’ll explain this—Mithras, our government, whatever government takes over in Handristan—but the mining deal cover is gone, since the deal was with Herzyov. The good news is that you’ll probably get to come back soon, and get a hero’s welcome from the new regime. The bad news is that FPCH isn’t going to get a documentary about the temple out of this particular visit.”

“No camp bed to put me over?” Charity said forlornly.

Ryan laughed much more easily then. “I promise I’ll give you everything you have coming in a nice hotel room in Dallas.”

Just then Winnie came down the stairs. She saw the unconscious guard and said, “Chen and Looper, cleanup down in the cellar. One for the secure hold.”

Charity looked at her in confusion for a moment before she realized Winnie had spoken into an earpiece. “You okay, Charity?”

Charity nodded in response.

“Ryan?” Winnie asked.

“Good to go,” Ryan said. “Can Charity take a picture or two down here before we go?”

“Of what?” Winnie asked.

“The head of the statue of Apollo that used to be up there is down here, if I’m right,” Charity said. “It’s unbelievably important. It almost certainly was modeled after Alexander himself.”

“Cool,” Winnie said dispassionately. “Feel free to snap some pics.” Then she paused, clearly thinking about how to say something she felt she had to say next. “Charity, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to blow the temple.”

Charity thought for a moment that she hadn’t heard correctly. “Blow the temple?” Her brain tried to find a way to interpret Winnie’s words that didn’t involve explosives, and failed utterly.

“And blame it on Herzyov?” Ryan said.

Winnie nodded quickly. “Only cover that works. He dies in a megalomaniacal explosion, trying to go out like Alexander the Great because he knows his enemies are closing in.”

“Wait…” Charity said. “The… the CIA… is going to…”

“Mine the temple, and blow it up,” Winnie finished. “And, as Ryan perceived, blame it on the outgoing dictator of Handristan.”

“Come on,” Charity said, feeling herself sliding again into the strange clarity she had felt the moment the bodyguard had grabbed her on the temple steps, when she had been so excited about the paint on the column. She knew it had some strong relation to a state of shock, and she also knew it had a maniacal tinge to it, though as she spoke everything sounded perfectly reasonable to her.

She knew about the maniacal twinge from the way Winnie and Ryan both immediately assumed expressions of soothing understanding—that was, understanding that didn’t sympathize, but rather said that she was ranting, and they would pretend to go along so that she could say what she needed to say. But although she might be in shock, Charity also knew that she stood on the right side, and the high ground. Part of her, in the back of her mind, also told her that the high ground and the right side didn’t make much difference to people with explosives and silenced sniper rifles.

She tried to slow her breathing. It seemed like she was doing a lot of that today. “Come on,” she said again, in a slightly less frantic tone. “You can’t be serious. The guy… he can… die in a freak mining accident
next
to the temple.”

Winnie shook her head. “Not dramatic enough. We need something that really catches the eye, but leads it away from the truth.”

Ryan said, “It’s a really tough break, honey, but you have to see where they’re coming from.”

“Oh, my God,” Charity screamed, losing it utterly. She felt suddenly like the open eyes of Alexander the Great were watching her from the darkness. “See where they’re coming from? They’re coming from some land of the barbarians—Scythians, Hyrcanians, Hyperboreans…” Now Charity could hear how crazy she sounded. And for what? A building.

Winnie looked at her sympathetically. “If it makes you feel any better, Charity, you’ll get to come back very soon, I think. The stones will still be here, and I have it on good authority that the next government will be much more amenable to cultural heritage projects.”

“Thanks,” Charity said hollowly.

“We have to go, honey,” Ryan said. “Take your pictures of the head.”

“Wait,” Charity said. “We’re taking the head with us.”

“What?” Winnie asked. She turned on a flashlight and walked over to the corner. She shook her head. “No. Not only would it cause an international incident if it turned up in our possession, but it would take a bunch of manpower to lift it that I can’t spare.”

“My plan,” Charity said, now completely clear because she had the solution at last, “would be to make you bring it back after you blow the temple up. But without a provenance it would still be a very important artifact, and no one would know that it came from Handristan.”

“Be that as it may,” Winnie said coldly. “I’m not going to spare a team of my people…”

“You can have the real miners do it,” Charity said.

“Honey, that puts them in danger,” Ryan said, still apparently thinking she needed soothing.

“I don’t care,” Charity said. “Miners understand danger. And, whomever you decide to assign, I can assure you it will require more manpower than it’s going to take to control me and my big mouth.”

“Charity!” Ryan said. “We’re talking about the fate of millions of people here. Take your pictures, and then we’ll go home. Winnie just told you that you’ll be able to come back.”

“No,” she said, looking steadily at him in the near-dark.

“You are in big trouble, young lady,” he said softly.

“I know,” she said. “But I’m saving Alexander’s face, and you can’t stop me short of…” She felt herself flushing bright red and she was glad of the dark. She could probably think of some things Ryan could do that didn’t necessarily involve bullets, that might persuade her, but she had no wish to admit that. “Short of killing me,” she said firmly.

Ryan looked at Winnie. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Winnie said into her earpiece, “Get me Riley, Unger, Perez, O’Leary up here immediately. We’ve got to get a big piece of rock out of here and onto the plane.” Then she looked at Charity. “You can be a very persuasive young lady. I hope you learn to listen to your bodyguard’s advice a little more in the future.”

“Thank you,” Charity said. “I’ll certainly try.”

Chapter Eighteen

They watched the demolition of the temple from inside the plane, whose engines were already started in order to take off as soon as the demo team got inside. Charity didn’t look, and Ryan held her close as the explosions rocked them in the cargo hold. She wept into his chest, and the rest of the team, who if Ryan knew anything about demo or miners, would have been whooping and hollering under other circumstances, remained silent out of respect for her.

Herzyov and his bodyguards were in the secure hold. Part of the reason the demo had to be so spectacular was that the CIA didn’t have bodies lying around to substitute, and DNA testing would have made that unlikely to work anyway. Something cataclysmic enough had to happen that the story could be told as Herzyov incinerating himself and the bodyguards fleeing for parts unknown.

The head of Alexander’s Apollo lay strapped in at Charity’s feet. It had taken four men thirty minutes to get it down the hill and onto a cart to go the rest of the distance to the plane. Ryan couldn’t help feeling like Charity’s story should have had a very different ending, but at least she had this little victory to be proud of, even if she couldn’t tell anyone—even Standish—about it.

“It was so well-preserved,” Charity sobbed. “It was… now no one will ever see it; I couldn’t take any pictures at all because it was dark.”

Winnie cleared her throat. “Well, actually, Charity, the intelligence team took several hundred pictures during your little tour, and we have Mosa’s camera.”

“Really?” Charity asked.

Winnie nodded. “And I think if you edit that footage, and we massage it a little, you might have something you could include in a documentary as ‘This is the last footage of the temple before Herzyov destroyed it.’ I know it’s not like having the temple intact, but at least it’s something.”

Charity nodded. “Thanks,” she said. Just then the demo team started to climb aboard the plane, and the captain announced that they would be taking off shortly. She looked up at Ryan. “Was the demolition really cool?” she asked.

Ryan nodded solemnly. “Really cool.”

“I bet Alexander would have liked it.” She reached down to pat the greatest conqueror in the history of the Western world on the head. “He liked destroying stuff—and he probably could have appreciated it even though it was his own temple.”

* * *

As he had promised, Ryan disciplined Charity in a Dallas hotel room, thirty hours later, after they had landed and slept. They had a long day of debriefing ahead of them, and he thought it might ease the tension to take care of a few things before they had to face it. Before they went to sleep on—could the whole crazy thing really only have taken a week?—Saturday night, Ryan said, “Charity, I’m going to wake you up early tomorrow to spank you.”