“I don’t think so.” Nate rose gingerly to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Quinn and Jar led the way through the cor­ridor and to the build­ing’s en­trance, with Nate com­ing next. Or­lando brought up the rear, on the lookout in case the driver showed up, but their exit went un­mo­les­ted. Less than a minute after they stepped out­side, Daeng drove a sedan into the park­ing area.

  Jar looked like she was in ser­i­ous pain, so they put her in the front pas­sen­ger seat where she’d have more room, and re­clined it un­til the back was al­most in Quinn’s lap.

  “I’ll call Misty,” Or­lando said, pulling out her phone. “And have her ar­range for med­ical to be wait­ing.”

  Daeng glanced in the rear­view mir­ror. “North?”

  “North,” Quinn said. “We have a plane to catch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Havel and Im­rich were five minutes out from the ware­house when Lorenzo called. Since Im­rich was driv­ing, Havel put the call on speaker.

  “Tell me you found the van,” he said.

  “I found the van.”

  Lorenzo de­scribed how he pieced to­gether the van’s route from dozens of se­cur­ity cam­eras through­out the city. “It made steady pro­gress to the north, un­til it neared Piazza Eu­c­lide.”

  Havel and Im­rich shared a glance. That was the vi­cin­ity where the se­cur­ity team had tried to res­cue Mr. St. Amand. “Is it still there?”

  “No. It entered a dead zone and was in it for ap­prox­im­ately ten minutes be­fore I saw it again, only a few blocks from where it dis­ap­peared.”

  “What were they do­ing there?” Havel asked, more to him­self than any­one else.

  Lorenzo answered, “I have no idea.”

  “I real­ize that. But do you know where they went next?”

  “North. Out of the city.”

  “Out of the city?”

  “Yes. Into the coun­tryside.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “And there are not very many cam­eras in that dir­ec­tion so who knows?”

  “Who knows?” Havel said. “That is not the right an­swer. Are you say­ing you don’t know where it is at this mo­ment?”

  “The dir­ec­tion, yes. And the vague area. But pre­cisely? No. There are many ways it could go from there.”

  “I don’t care how many ways. You need to find it fast!”

  “I’m not sure I can. Like I said, there aren’t so many cam­eras out­side the city.”

  “So, you’re say­ing you’d prefer me to tell Mr. St. Amand dir­ectly that you can’t do it?” It was an empty threat at the mo­ment, but Lorenzo didn’t know why they were in­ter­ested in the van.

  “That…won’t be ne­ces­sary.”

  “No. It would be my pleas­ure. Let me get him on the line.”

  “I’ll-I’ll find the van,” Lorenzo said, his tone over-the-top help­ful. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll get back to you very soon.”

  “See that you do.”

  “Oh, I al­most for­got. I pulled a good im­age of the driver. Will that help?”

  “It’s a start. Send it to us.”

  “Of course.”

  Havel dis­con­nec­ted the call.

  Two minutes later, Im­rich turned the sedan into the ware­house park­ing lot. Two of the or­gan­iz­a­tion’s vehicles were parked near the build­ing’s en­trance, which was open.

  Havel didn’t like that at all, but he was equally troubled by the tires of both vehicles be­ing com­pletely flat.

  “Stop,” he said, and pulled out his gun.

  Im­rich hit the brakes, the sedan’s head­lights il­lu­min­at­ing the dis­abled SUV and sedan.

  “Do you see any­one?” Havel asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Havel said. “Take us to the en­trance. Slowly.”

  Im­rich rolled across the lot un­til he was four meters from the open door and stopped.

  Havel stared through the open­ing at a long, dark lump ly­ing on the floor of the lighted cor­ridor.

  “I think that’s a body,” Im­rich said.

  It def­in­itely was.

  Havel pulled out his phone and called Drake, but after four rings the call went to voice­mail. “Stay with the car,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”

  He didn’t want to go in alone, but he didn’t want to risk hav­ing their tires slashed, too. He eased out and snuck over to the en­trance.

  A body, all right. Nikola. But he wasn’t dead. Havel could see his chest mov­ing up and down. He could also see two wires pinned to his torso, lead­ing to a Taser near his feet. The device would have hurt like hell, but it shouldn’t have knocked him out.

  Havel stepped in­side and scanned the room. There was an­other body to the right. It looked like Vasil, only there was no chance he was still alive. His shirt was covered in blood, and his eyes stared at noth­ing.

  Havel tried wak­ing up Nikola, but no luck, so he checked the rest of the rooms along the hall­way, then went up­stairs. In the of­fice where Bi­an­chi had been killed a few nights earlier, he found three more men. These were all alive, but had been tied up and gagged.

  He at­temp­ted to re­vive them one by one. An­drey and Georgi didn’t re­spond, but after a few shakes and a slap, Neno blinked.

  “What…Havel?”

  “What the hell happened? Where’s Drake?”

  Neno nar­rowed his eyes. “Someone jumped me.” He blinked again. “We’ve got to warn Drake. We’ve got to—”

  “I can’t find him. Where did you see him last?”

  “Can’t…find him?”

  “Neno, god­dam­mit. Snap out of it. Where was Drake the last time you saw him?”

  A pause. “Down­stairs. One of the rooms.”

  “Which room?”

  “The…the third one from the end.”

  Havel freed Neno’s hands. “Help the oth­ers.”

  “The oth­ers?”

  Havel headed back down­stairs. Neno would fig­ure it out soon enough.

  Havel knew from his earlier search that the third room from the end was empty. All the rooms were. But on his first visit, he’d just glanced in­side. This time, he took a longer look around. There were sev­eral dark, wet spots near the cen­ter of the room that looked like blood.

  Drake’s? He hoped not.

  At the back of the room was an­other door. He opened it slowly and peeked out. The main ware­house space. No lights, only shad­ows and darker shad­ows, and a deep, heavy quiet.

  Did that mean no one was there, or that someone was ly­ing in wait?

  No way he was just go­ing to walk in. He cursed un­der his breath, then did the only thing he could think of do­ing.

  *

  Drake had not moved in the near ten minutes he’d been in his base­ment hid­ing spot. He’d even re­mained still when his phone vi­brated a few minutes earlier, wor­ried that the oth­ers would come down the stairs while he was pulling it out, and he’d miss his chance to gun them down.

  He figured the only reason his now former pris­on­ers’ friends hadn’t reached him yet was that they were search­ing the ground level first. He was so con­fid­ent of this that when he heard a voice shout­ing some­thing up­stairs, he didn’t at first real­ize it was his name.

  “Mr. Drake!” the voice yelled again.

  He cocked his head.

  “Mr. Drake! Are you here?”

  It soun­ded like…Havel.

  He scrambled off the ma­chine and hur­ried to the stairs.

  “Mr. Drake!”

  He moved quickly up the steps and stopped near the top, in case it was a trap. He waited for the voice again, and when it didn’t come, he took a deep breath and climbed the fi­nal steps.

  He was alone. He hur­ried to the still open door of the room where he’d been in­ter­rog­at­ing his pris­oner.

  It was also empty.

  Where was Havel? Drake was sure he hadn’t been hear­ing things.

  He peeked into the hall, and spot­ted Nikola ly­ing in the same spot as be­fore. He could now see a second body down the hall. He couldn’t tell who it was, but it had to be the one the pris­on­ers’ friends gunned down.

  He sprin­ted to the half open main en­trance.

  A third car was out­side, head­lights on, en­gine run­ning. For a mo­ment, he thought the guy lean­ing in the pas­sen­ger-side win­dow, talk­ing to someone in­side, was one of the oth­ers. But then the guy straightened up and turned to­ward the ware­house.

  Drake stepped into the open door­way. “Havel?”

  The man jumped, and brought his gun halfway up be­fore he stopped. “Mr. Drake?”

  Four minutes later, Drake, Havel, and Im­rich were on the road, head­ing north.

  Chapter Thirty

  Air­field KA14 was loc­ated ten kilo­met­ers off the main road, in a meadow nestled between olive tree orch­ards. It was fun­ded and main­tained through the joint col­lab­or­a­tion of sev­eral in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, in­clud­ing the CIA, MI6, the Ger­man BND, and the Italian AISE. The fa­cil­ity was com­pletely auto­mated and had no per­son­nel, save a three-man main­ten­ance crew that checked the fa­cil­ity once a week, to top off the fuel re­filling sta­tion and to make sure that the land­ing lights, weather sta­tion, and run­way were all in work­ing or­der.

  Only air­craft that had been au­thor­ized to use the field would have the codes needed to gain re­mote ac­cess to the field’s sys­tems. Sensors and hid­den cam­eras would note any un­au­thor­ized land­ings and send an alert to a duty of­ficer at AISE in Rome. If it was de­term­ined the plane posed a threat, the duty of­ficer would dis­patch an in­ter­cept team and ac­tiv­ate the run­way’s built-in de­terrents. This con­sisted of rows of steel posts, set every fifty meters along the run­way, that rose via hy­draul­ics to a meter above­ground and made the air­strip use­less.

  When Howard ar­rived at 12:50 a.m., the air­field was com­pletely dark. He parked near the small, fenced-in hut that con­tained the fa­cil­ity’s auto­mated sys­tems, po­s­i­tion­ing the back of the van to­ward the run­way. This would make the trans­fer­ring of the pris­on­ers easier.

  The drive up from Rome had been un­event­ful. He’d en­countered a bit of traffic as he left the city, but after that it had been smooth sail­ing. He stretched in his seat, work­ing out the kinks of sit­ting so long in one place, and then grabbed the syr­inge pouch Or­lando had given him, and climbed out.

  As he walked to the back of the vehicle, he slipped the pouch into his pocket and drew his gun. He’d heard move­ment dur­ing the last ten minutes of the drive, and guessed at least one of his pas­sen­gers had woken. He doubted they would have had time to un­tie them­selves, though. He opened the door care­fully and poin­ted his weapon in­side.

  All four men looked sound asleep.

  Howard wasn’t buy­ing it.

  He flicked the calf of the one on the far left, one of Sand­strom’s men. The man didn’t move, nor did he tense even in the slight­est. Keep­ing his eyes and gun on the cargo area, Howard took a few steps back, placed the pouch on the ground, and re­moved one of the syr­inges.

  The needle slipped right through the man’s pant leg and into his calf. Howard de­pressed the plun­ger un­til half the con­tents had been de­livered.

  There were un­writ­ten rules in the secret world, rules some people ig­nored, but not the people who worked for Quinn. One was to not cause un­in­ten­tional harm to an ad­versary—or friend, for that mat­ter—when it could be avoided. To this end, Howard ex­changed the used needle with a re­place­ment in the kit. He then in­jec­ted the second man, Sand­strom’s other as­so­ci­ate.

  The syr­inge now empty, he ex­changed it for the fi­nal full one and moved on to pris­oner num­ber three, Sand­strom him­self.

  When Howard grabbed the older man’s calf, he felt the muscle con­tract a little. He pre­pared him­self for Sand­strom to put up a fight, but the man barely moved as the needle slipped in.

  Not awake yet, then. Just start­ing to, Howard figured.

  Which meant the noise he’d heard earlier could have been made only by con­test­ant num­ber four, Chris­tophe St. Amand.

  Howard changed the needle and ap­proached St. Amand like he had the oth­ers. When he moved his hand to­ward the man’s leg, how­ever, he stopped short of touch­ing it. St. Amand’s calf shif­ted.

  Howard pulled his hand back. “Good morn­ing, Mr. St. Amand.”

  The arms dealer showed no sign of hav­ing heard him.

  “Come on, now. I know you’re awake.”

  St. Amand con­tin­ued his act.

  “All right, we can pre­tend you’re still out. You’ll be really un­der in a mo­ment any­way.”

  For a mo­ment, noth­ing, then St. Amand’s eyes opened. “There is an­other op­tion.”

  “See, I knew you were awake.”

  Howard raised the syr­inge like he was a nurse check­ing for air bubbles.

  “You know who I am,” St. Amand said. “So you know I can make you a very wealthy man.”

  “Are you try­ing to buy me?”

  “I’m try­ing to show you there are solu­tions you may not have con­sidered.”

  Howard lowered the syr­inge. “How wealthy?”

  “How does a hun­dred mil­lion euros in your bank ac­count by the time the sun comes up sound?”

  “A hun­dred…mil­lion? Ser­i­ously?”

  “Ser­i­ously.”

  “You weren’t ly­ing when you said wealthy.”

  “I was not. All you have to do is let me go.”

  “What about your friends here?”

  “I don’t care what you do with them. The deal is for me.”

  “A hun­dred mil­lion for just you.”

  “Yes.”

  Howard’s eyes nar­rowed. “How do I know you’d ac­tu­ally do it?”

  “You have my word.”

  Howard snorted. “All right, say I do take you at your word. The way I hear it, you kill any­one who sees the real you. Which, ob­vi­ously, I have. So maybe you trans­fer that money to me, but then have me killed at the first chance and take the money back.”

  “With the money will come a job, work­ing for me. You clearly have tal­ents I could use. I don’t kill my em­ploy­ees.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “You would be one of my top ad­visors. It’s the highest po­s­i­tion in my or­gan­iz­a­tion.”

  Howard glanced down the air­strip. “I can’t deny it’s tempt­ing. I only see one is­sue.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure I can take care of it.”

  “Un­for­tu­nately, Mr. St. Amand, you can’t. See, I’m not an am­a­teur thug you can just buy off. I’m a pro­fes­sional. My friends are pro­fes­sion­als. And when pro­fes­sion­als like us take a job, we fin­ish it.”

  Through­out the con­ver­sa­tion, Howard had been mov­ing the syr­inge closer to the man’s leg. He jabbed the needle into St. Amand’s thigh and shoved down on the plun­ger.

  St. Amand’s eyes widened.

  “I do ap­pre­ci­ate the of­fer, though,” Howard said as he pulled the needle out. “It’s flat­ter­ing. But arms deal­ing is not my idea of a ca­reer up­grade.”

  Whether it was be­cause of where the Beta-Som­nol had entered St. Amand’s sys­tem, or from sheer force of will, St. Amand didn’t fall un­con­scious quickly.

  “You are all dead,” St. Amand said. “I will get out of this. I will find you. And I will kill you all my­self.”

  Howard smiled. “You really don’t know who you’ve been deal­ing with, do you? A part of me wishes you would some­how get free and try to take us down. That would be fun.”

  Eye­lids grow­ing heavy, St. Amand said, “Who are you people?”

  Howard pat­ted him on the leg. “Get some sleep. It might be the last you have for a very long time.”

  St. Amand tried to speak again, but in seconds he was out.

  *

  “That’s it,” Or­lando said, point­ing at the nar­row dirt lane that served as the en­trance to air­field KA14.

  Util­iz­ing stand­ard mis­sion prac­tice, Daeng killed the lights and took his foot off the ac­cel­er­ator, so that the sedan slowed without his hav­ing to tap the brakes and sig­nal their in­ten­tions to any­one be­hind them.

  After mak­ing the turn, Daeng kept the car at a near crawl, due to ruts and potholes pur­posely de­signed into the dirt road.

  “Jar, you okay?” Quinn asked. He was sit­ting be­hind her and couldn’t see her.

  “I will…be happy when we…stop,” she said.

  “Not long now,” Or­lando told her.

  “Any­thing?” Quinn asked Nate, who was watch­ing out the rear win­dow.

  “No. It’s quiet.”

  Quinn checked the time—1:42 a.m. They’d cut it close.

  “Up there,” Or­lando said. “See where the road Ys?”

  They were driv­ing by star­light and the dim glow of a quarter moon, so it took Daeng a mo­ment be­fore he said, “Yeah. I see.”

  “We want the left fork. After that, there’ll be an­other turn to the right and that will take us in.”

  The road be­came smoother after the fi­nal turn, al­low­ing Daeng to in­crease their speed. About a minute later, they passed out of the orch­ard and into the meadow con­tain­ing air­field KA14.

  The van was parked near the run­way, but there was no other vehicle around.

  “What’s go­ing on with the doc­tor?” Quinn said. “Wasn’t he sup­posed to be here?”

  Or­lando was tap­ping a text into her phone. She said noth­ing un­til a reply came in seconds later. “Misty says he’s ten minutes out.”

  Quinn grim­aced but said noth­ing. The delay meant the doc­tor would have only a few minutes to check Jar be­fore the plane was due. Quinn wanted them to load up and get the air­craft back in the air as quickly as they could.

 

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