Dana Marton (14 page)

The girls pressed up against her, one on each side, hanging on to her, watching Anna wide-eyed.

“Keep her still,” Parker said, looking over from where he was rigging up the charges.

“Is she going to die?” Katja asked.

“No, honey. She’s hurt but she is going to be fine.”

The sounds of fighting from above were growing louder. The Alpha troopers were getting closer.

Parker said something in Russian to the hostages. Everyone put on their gas masks, shoving in the last pieces of food first. Kate helped Anna and the girls.

“It feels funny,” Elena said, trying to take hers off after a few seconds.

Kate stayed her hands. “Let’s pretend it’s a game,” she said. “Do you know what Halloween is?”

The girls shook their heads.

“Do you ever put on a costume to look like a princess or a pirate or anything like that?”

“A masquerade?” Elena’s voice sounded strange through the mask and they giggled.

“Let’s pretend it’s a masquerade.”

“What are we?” Katja asked with caution, not completely buying the story yet.

“Monsters,” Kate said, offering the first thing that came to mind. “Undersea monsters.”

“Where are your fins?” Elena asked.

She improvised. “We are finless monsters.”

“Everything in the sea has fins,” said Elena doubtfully.

Kate’s mind worked in slow motion, unable to ignore the dying woman in her arms. She couldn’t fall apart. She couldn’t let the kids see how desperate the situation was. “Not everything.” She scrambled for an example, relieved when she found one. “The octopus doesn’t.”

“You don’t look like an ocpopus.” Katja touched her hand. “You don’t have enough arms. You look like Shrek. Except for the ears.”

She glanced around at the others and could see no resemblance to the animated figure, except that the gas masks had a greenish tint. “Do you like Shrek?”

“She loves
Shrek,
” Elena said. “We watched it in Russian and in English, too. Mrs. Miller lets us watch movies in English. She said it helps our pronceation.”

Pronunciation,
most likely. Kate smiled without correcting her. “Sounds like a smart woman. Your English is very good.”

“Where is Mrs. Miller?” the younger one asked.

“She got hurt,” Kate said after a moment of hesitation.

“Is she dead?” Elena asked.

“I’m not sure,” she told them. She hated lying but the situation was still dangerous. They had to keep their cool. They had to get out of here. It would be better for the children to stay as calm as possible. She couldn’t tell them in the middle of utter chaos that their parents
and
their nanny were dead.

“You should be Princess Fiona. You know, when she is an ogre,” the younger one said. “Your voice sounds a little like Fiona.”

Her gaze sought out Parker, who was now working with a couple of men by the wall. He had a makeshift scale made from a stick, two small boxes and some rope. He was measuring TNT against bags of salt.

Measurements that would be crucial.

She hoped his scale was up to the job.

Next he inspected the walls of the two-hundred-year-old palace. God knew what TNT was going to do to them. Parker knew, she corrected herself. He looked as though he knew exactly what he was doing. He was drilling a hole straight through the wall. Probably to measure the thickness.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Elena said.

“Me, too,” her sister chimed in immediately.

“Can you ask that lady?” Kate motioned with her hand toward one of the hostages.

But Katja wouldn’t let her go. “I want you to come with me,” she begged.

The woman must have understood English, because she came over to put her hand on Anna’s wound. But Kate was reluctant to let go, and when she did, she couldn’t look away from the blood that covered her hands. And the girls were reaching for her.

She wiped her palm on her black slacks as best she could before Katja and Elena grabbed on to her. Not that she had any idea where to take them. She headed toward an out-of-sight corner of the basement, hoping they would come across an old mop bucket.

But Parker was speaking in Russian again. Then to her. “Get behind cover.”

“Can you wait another minute?” she asked the girls, relieved when they nodded.

She followed the rest of the hostages to the half wall Parker had hidden behind earlier. They squatted snugly against each other. Everyone except Parker.

Then he came flying around the wall. “Keep your heads down. She’s gonna blow.”

Kate tightened her arms around the girls. “Plug your ears.”

The explosion that shook the basement the next second knocked them off their feet.

August 12, 03:10

“S
TAY DOWN
,” Parker said in Russian then repeated in English for Kate’s sake. He straightened to look at his handiwork in the settling dust, and smiled. “Okay. Let’s get going.”

He strode to the hole first, kicked a few bricks out of the way, checked a couple more overhead to make sure they wouldn’t fall on anyone. He looked through the hole. The basement floor in the neighboring building was at least eight feet below them, the space narrow. He looked closer as the dust settled. Maybe it wasn’t a basement at all, but some sort of secret passageway that had been walled off. The important thing was that it led out of here.

“Hurry.” He helped the first guy over, held him by the arms and lowered his bulk, the man’s feet dangling. Then he let go and the man landed with a thud on the floor below. Parker tossed a flashlight after him. “Everything okay?”

“Da,”
the man responded in his own language.

The next man had an easier time as he had assistance both from above and below. Then came the next and the next, Parker getting a number of handshakes and thank you’s.

The children went next, clinging to Kate.

“I’ll be coming in a second,” she soothed them.

And he after her. He would see her to safety then come back for Piotr. That would have to be dealt with. Soon. Once he had made sure Kate was safe.

He helped a woman down, looking at Anna. Now that the girls had gone ahead, Kate was back at the young woman’s side again. Getting Anna down would be difficult. She was unconscious and wouldn’t be able to hang on to anything.

Kate caught his gaze. “I think I saw a good chunk of canvas on the shelf by the stairs. We can lower her in that.” She ran off for it.

Parker helped another guy in the meantime, then the next woman. It was slow going. She was shaky from nerves and exhaustion. All the hostages were dehydrated and weak from hunger. Whatever little food Kate and he had been able to share hadn’t meant much after three days.

The woman slipped several times, and he was about to recommend that she wait and be lowered in the canvas, too, but then she finally made it, teary-eyed from the effort.

Only Anna was left. She was coming to, but was still too weak to move. While he made a rudimentary bandage for her chest to slow the blood loss, he explained to her how they would lower her through the hole.

“You need help up there?” he called up the stairs. The force of the explosion could have knocked over the shelves. Kate was taking too long.

No response came. The short hairs prickled at his nape.

He pulled his gun. “You go. Quick,” he told the hostages who were already on the other side. “Stay here,” he instructed Anna. “I’m going to come back for you.” Then he was off, running for the stairs.

Empty.

His heart about stopped, his lungs too tight to draw in air. He couldn’t let anything happen to Kate now. They had a way out. They’d made it this far, against all odds. In minutes they would be free and clear.

But Kate had disappeared, and the basement door was open. He saw the boards on the stairs, figured she had put those up earlier. She’d been under a lot of stress. She hadn’t thought to check that the door opened outward. The boards had meant nothing. And the explosion probably had blown the door open. Then Kate went up. And someone who had come to investigate the noise grabbed her.

Parker moved up the stairs with care, watching for any sign of a possible ambush waiting for him at the top. He should have gotten her out of here immediately, no matter the cost. He should have thrown her across his shoulder, should have knocked her out if he’d had to.

If anything happened to her—

He never had any trouble with his focus; his survival depended on it in his line of work. But he was having trouble now, thinking beyond the fact that the bastards had her. It would take them minutes to figure out that she wasn’t one of the embassy staff. She didn’t speak Russian.

He got to the top, gun ready, moving inch by slow inch when he wanted to fly to her. But he couldn’t get killed. To save her, he couldn’t afford as much as a single wrong move.

He stepped forward, low. Quick look to the left. Clear. Kicked the door shut so he could look behind it. Nobody there. The hallway was empty in both directions.

For a moment he thought of Anna, waiting for him down below. He wasn’t going to forget about her, but for now she had to wait. He hoped her weakness came more from lack of food and water than from her wound. She wasn’t bleeding that badly. Then again, she could be bleeding internally. He had promised that he’d be back for her. And he would. But he had to get Kate before it was too late.

The sounds of combat filled his ears. He listened for Kate’s voice. Any words of arguing, crying or screaming. He heard nothing.

Out-and-out war was being fought on the floors above him. Machine-gun fire, small explosions. Smoke lingered in the air. Judging from the sounds, the battle was at a fever pitch, neither side holding anything back.

Anger and desperation gave him new strength, until he could barely recall his own injuries. He pushed forward with grim determination.

The building was a death trap.

And he had lost Kate.

August 12, 03:30

“Don’t. Please.” She fought against the beefy man who was dragging her along, keeping his gun firmly pressed against her temple. Piotr. She recognized him from earlier when he’d fought with Parker in the kitchen.

The man with the chemical-agent capsules. The man who had nothing to lose. That put her at a serious disadvantage when it came to negotiating with him. He probably figured that since he had succeeded in avenging his father’s death, he could die happily now, whatever happened. Great.

“Can we just stop and talk?” She tried anyway. She’d come too far to give up now.

He didn’t bother to respond. He held his gun in his left hand. His right wrist, which Parker had shot, was bandaged with a piece of blood-soaked cloth. Didn’t seem to slow him down much.

He had come out of nowhere, from behind her as she had tried to free the canvas for Anna from all the junk on one of the shelves. The explosion had rattled the door enough to shake off the boards. He must have had the lock already opened by the time she got up there. He’d been lurking outside, waiting.

She could have screamed for Parker, but she didn’t want to draw Piotr’s attention to the people who were escaping through the basement. She wanted to keep him away from the rest of the hostages, from Anna and the kids. So she went with him, struggling only to slow him down as much as possible.

Parker would come for her. She knew it in her heart. In the past she’d been angry at him for never being there for her, for always being away when she needed him. But in the last couple of days she’d gotten to know him better than she ever had before. And she realized that when she’d truly needed him, he’d always been there.

Maybe he hadn’t come along to pick out china patterns, but he had been there in the Florida night when those thugs accosted her. There were times a woman
thought
she needed her man. Then there were times when she
truly
needed him. So he’d never gone shopping with her. But the truth was, while she’d been out shopping, he’d been out saving lives, lives of people like Anna and the kids below. She wished she’d known that.

“Move it.” Piotr shoved her roughly.

Parker will come.
She fixed the thought firmly in her mind. She believed in him and trusted him one hundred percent. She’d thought him undependable before, too focused on his reporting career to care about others. She’d been wrong. She wanted to live long enough to tell him that.

But living even a few more minutes seemed less than likely.

She no longer had her gun, was grateful that at least her mask hadn’t been ripped away from her face. Her captor wore his own. Smoke rolled through the hallway he dragged her along. Smoke and maybe something else. Bodies lined the floor, most of them rebels, only two Russian elite-force soldiers so far that she could see.

She looked for signs of what had killed the men. Plenty of bullet holes in the bodies. Which didn’t mean that there wasn’t gas in the air.

He dragged her into the back staircase that was deserted at the moment. They went up.

“Please let me go. I have nothing to do with this. I’m an American.” She figured at this stage she had nothing to lose by revealing that. Things were already as bad as they could get.

“I know all about Americans.” The man then picked up speed as fresh gunfire sounded from above.

“Listen to me. I’m the American Consul. I can be your ticket out of here.” She gasped for air. He was going way too fast, not letting her catch her breath. “We can walk right out of here, the two of us. Nobody will hurt you as long as you have me.”

They exited the staircase and rushed down the long corridor ahead, took several turns. The man shoved her into some nicely furnished parlor that looked as though it had seen its share of fighting tonight. Chairs and antique tables lay broken on the expensive carpet, bullet holes pocked in the walls. The lights were off, but she could see clearly since floodlights lit the front of the building from the outside and the large French doors that lined one wall let plenty of light into the room.

They’d come up two flights of stairs and she had no idea of her location otherwise.

“We have to go back down. We have to get out of the building. We can go out the front. The media is there. Nobody will shoot you with me in front of you.”

Movement caught her eye on the other side of the French doors. Her breath caught. Parker? The Russians?

It meant the difference between life and death. She didn’t dare look that way, afraid that if it was Parker, she’d give him away. But whoever it was didn’t come in. She waited, her captor talking into his cell phone, barking questions and instructions she didn’t understand.

Come on, Parker. Come on.

She moved so he would have a clear shot if that was what he was waiting for, pulling away from Piotr as much as he allowed her. She waited for the shot. Nothing happened.

Her captor put away his phone and focused on her. She had to keep him occupied.

“I know the freedom of your people is important to you. If you die here today, you won’t be able to fight for it again. It’s useless to die now. This battle is lost. But if you stay alive, you can help your people win the war. I can help you get out of here safely.”

She was handling the situation. Managing the problem. She managed everything. That was who she was, what she did. Except she’d never been able to manage Parker, and she realized only now, too late, that a man like Parker could never be managed. Should never be managed.

Piotr grabbed for her with his left hand as quick as a snake and ripped her gas mask off, tossing it aside.

“I’m fighting for no people. I’m fighting for me,” he said. “I already got what I came here for.”

And she remembered now Parker telling her that he wasn’t even Tarkmezi. He was Russian, with his own agenda—an agenda that had already been accomplished. Which didn’t leave her with much leverage.

She gasped the smoky air. Her lungs contracted as if they were ready to collapse. Oh God, there
was
gas in the air.

She clawed at her throat, scared out of her mind now, her eyes filling with tears. But a few minutes passed and she was still alive, and she realized her reaction was caused by the smoke and her own panic. She fought to slow her breathing and get a lungful of air.

“Who are you?” Piotr watched her dispassionately with eyes that looked small and watery blue through the glass of his mask.

“I’m a Consul of the United States of America. We have to help each other.” She coughed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then, “Doesn’t matter.” He had relaxed his gun for a few moments, but now he pressed it hard against her head again.

She gasped for breath, expecting it to be her last, casting a desperate glance to the French door. And caught sight of movement again, and this time, she could see what it was. She could have cried with despair.

Out there, in the night breeze, fluttered the white, blue and red cloth of the Russian flag. That was the movement she had mistaken for Parker.

They were at the front balcony of the building, the place the rebels had used to throw out bodies of hostages to make a point in front of the press who camped outside.

And she was the last hostage they had. Parker was even now saving the others through the basement.

Her limbs froze. She understood with terrifying clarity what Piotr’s plan was.

Parker was coming for her. She had no doubt of that. But he had no way of knowing where she was. And there was fighting all over the building. He might be held back for a while yet.

Time was something she no longer had.

What they said about your life flashing through your mind before you die was true. Scenes of her and Parker flickered across the TV screen of her brain—the good times and the bad. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry that she had walked away without giving him a second chance. God, she wanted to tell him so much, wanted to feel his arms around her one last time.

But the cold metal of the barrel pressed against her temple as Piotr shoved her toward the French doors that led to the balcony.

“This is for that interfering bastard friend of yours,” he said.

H
E KNEW
exactly where they would take her. And if he was right, she didn’t have much time.

Parker burst into the staircase.

Unfortunately, two rebels crashed through the door on the level above him at the same time. He shot without hesitation, got one of them, but the other flattened himself in the doorway. Parker crept upward, glad that whatever negligible noise he made was swallowed by the sounds of battle above.

When he came to the turn in the stairs where he presented a clear target, he blanketed the enemy position with fire. No answering shots came. He found out why when he reached the top of the stairs. The second guy was dead, too.

He stepped over the bodies, ran up one more flight and pushed the door open slowly. Thin smoke settled like fog in the hallway. He heard plenty of fighting, but saw none of it at the moment and was keen to take advantage of that.

Something heavy crashed to the floor above him. Much heavier than a body. Furniture? He ran toward the front of the building.

He found fighting as soon as he turned the corner. A black-clad Alpha trooper was holding off two rebels. He had nothing against the Alphas; they were a fine special-forces team. But right now, the guy was standing between him and Kate, holding him back, and that he could not allow. The rebels had noticed Parker and were shooting at him already. He shot back, clearing the way before him.

The guy in black didn’t give himself easily. His skill level was several notches higher than the rebels’ and his bulletproof vest was a good one, with a ceramic insert that stood up to rifle fire as well as handguns. But there were places it didn’t cover. And Parker was an excellent shot. The man went down.

He picked up the guy’s semiautomatic rifle and checked it for ammunition. Half a magazine. He shoved his handgun, which was close to empty, into the back of his waistband then broke into a run.

He found the right hallway, but didn’t know which was the right room.

An explosion came from somewhere above, toward the back of the building. The rear balcony? Gunfire intensified. A full-on attack. Did that mean the hostages had made it out so the Alpha troops knew they no longer had to worry about them?

He opened one door after the other. Some rooms stood untouched, while others showed signs of combat: smashed furniture and bullet holes in the walls and flooring. Then he got to the right one, could hear Kate’s voice through the closed door. He couldn’t make out the words, but the fear and desperation came through. He backed up a step and kicked the door in.

“Parker!”

Two things claimed his immediate attention: Piotr, who held a gun to Kate’s head and was just about to take her out to the balcony, and the Vymple team guy, who entered the room through another entrance at the same time as Parker had.

Vymple was the Russian special forces. The Colonel had told him they were here along with the Alpha troops, but this was the first guy he’d seen.

Parker’s gun was trained on Piotr. Piotr kept his on Kate. The newcomer put Parker in the crosshairs. A three-way standoff. And two out of the three men in the room probably didn’t care much who lived and who died.

Kate coughed.

The smoke was getting thicker. She was the only one who didn’t have a mask.

Piotr surprised them all by tossing Kate aside in a sudden movement, practically slamming her into the floor, and shooting at the Russian with a fierce cry, hitting his target with the first shot, right through the left eye glass.

The next second his gun was on Parker. Kate was now between him and Piotr so he had to be careful. She was coughing again, trying to come to her feet, but went down again.

Was she hurt? He could see no blood. Dammit. What was in the air? He needed to know how much danger she was in.

“I don’t know how my friends missed you, but I’m not going to make the same mistake, McCall.”

“Since when do you have Tarkmez friends?”

“Since they promised to give me what I want.”

“Victor?”

“My only regret is that it was over so fast. I would have preferred to savor it.”

“So he’s dead. You have what you wanted.”

“What I want is another forty years, but I’m not likely to get it. The doctors give me six months at the most. But you, you have nine lives. I sent four of my best men after you when I realized you followed me to Paris. You’re supposed to be three days dead and six feet under. And yet here you are.”

Parker watched the man, wondered what his illness might be—he didn’t look weakened yet, whatever it was—realized that his plan was probably to go out in a blaze of glory instead of a hospital bed. Piotr was here on a suicide mission.

He wasn’t surprised that Piotr had sent the men after him. He had suspected as much. Piotr seemed to be at the center of a lot of things.

“You’re all right, you know,” the man was saying now. “Almost as good as I am. Just have bad judgment. Picked the wrong side.”

“How about we let her go?” Parker nodded toward Kate without taking his eyes off Piotr. “Then we’ll see who is better. Just you and me. A man deserves a little fun before dying.”

Piotr seemed to consider the offer for a moment, but then shook his head.

Parker tossed his rifle as if giving up, then pulled his handgun from the back of his waistband. The bullet hit Piotr in the throat.

He was beside Kate before the man even hit the ground, ripping Piotr’s mask off and securing it on her face. “Are you okay?” He kept his weapon on Piotr to be on the safe side.