Flashpoint (34 page)

And they were. Nash pocketed his phone as they shouldered their bags and went out into the hall. “I am so ready to be out of here.”

Decker followed him into the stairwell.

Eighth floor, seventh floor, sixth floor, fifth. As they hit the fourth, approaching the lobby, they both slowed slightly, just enough to be sure they were moving soundlessly.

Nash covered his penlight so it was little more than a glow in his hand. Decker turned his off, slipped it into his pocket.

As they drew closer to the door leading out into the lobby, Nash held up his hand.
Stop.
His light went off, too, since the door was ajar and the dim twilight from the lobby windows came in through the crack.

He looked back at Deck, who nodded. Yeah, he’d noticed it, too. It wasn’t so much that he’d heard something as felt it.

A microscopic change in atmospheric pressure due to additional bodies within an enclosed space.

Or the invisible, soundless wake that continued to disrupt the air molecules long after someone had stopped moving.

Or an electrical current that came from another living being. Or lots of other living beings.

Nash already had his sidearm out and held at ready.

And then they heard it.
Snick.

Most people, even when trying to be silent, just couldn’t hold completely still for very long.

There was definitely someone out there.

Again a
snick
, followed by an absolutely unmistakable rustle.

Deck signaled to Nash—slowly, carefully, so as to disturb as few oxygen molecules as possible.
Fall back.

They went up the stairs, touching as little of the steps with the soles of their shoes as humanly possible.

They had barely gone a half a floor when it happened.

Decker gave Nash a
What the fuck?
look, but then instantly realized what it was.

Aftershock.

It started as a low rumble and worked its way up to a definite brain-rattling shake.

Oh, boy. Hell of a time to be in a building that was on the verge of collapse.

Apparently whoever was waiting for them in the lobby felt the same way. They all started talking—a babble of voices, a variety of dialects, but the same general message.
We have to get the hell out of here.

Decker knew Nash was thinking the same thing. But,
Up
, Deck signaled. He grabbed his penlight and switched it on, covering the bulb the way Nash had before, making sure there was enough light to be seen. He signaled again.
Go up.

Nash went, but he didn’t want to. “They’re about to clear out,” he whispered. “If we wait . . .”

In the lobby, whoever was in charge spoke over the voices. “Hold steady! This will bring them down to us.”

Something crashed—it sounded like one of the smaller chandeliers breaking free and hitting the tile floor—and there was a shout. “Here they come! From the South Tower!”

And then a voice speaking English: “It’s an ambush—they’ve been following me for days—Decker, look out!”

There was a ripping sound—an automatic weapon being fired. Who the hell were they shooting at?

“That was Will Schroeder,” Nash realized. “Shit, did they kill him? If they didn’t, I’m fucking gonna. I can’t believe he led them here.”

Another shout in the local dialect. “That wasn’t them, idiot! There’s no one over there!”

“Six-man squads, each stairwell, now! Go!” Deck heard the command, and he and Nash broke into a full run, light bobbing. No need to be quiet any longer.

Nash, however, had his phone out. “Come on,” he said as he attempted to dial. “Ah, Christ, don’t fuck with me now.”

It was slowing him down. “Come on, Nash,
move
.”

“God damn it! Deck! Check your phone!” Nash was the closest to wild-eyed that Decker had ever seen him. “Is it working?”

And he knew what Nash was thinking. Tess. If what Will had shouted was true—that he’d been under surveillance for days—then he’d probably been followed when he went to see them at Rivka’s house.

Where Tess was now.

Alone.

Decker checked his phone. “No.”

“We have to get back there, and we’re going
up
!”

Decker knew what Nash was thinking. Up, with no chance of a helo waiting there to pull them off the roof.

“Dave’s probably back by now,” Decker told him. Dave—and Sophia. Jesus. If Rivka’s house was being watched—or worse, if everyone in there was brought in for questioning . . .

“Yeah,” Nash said. “Yeah. Dave’s probably . . .”

He’d pocketed his phone and was using his arms to help pull himself more quickly up the stairs. Which was good, because Decker could hear the sound of a squad of soldiers following not more than five or six flights below.

The aftershock was over and the hotel still stood.

Someone shouted. “Here, they’re in here!”

Good, draw ’em all into this stairwell.

“What’s Dave going to be able to do?” Nash asked Decker.

“I don’t know,” Deck said. “But he’s Dave, he’ll do something.”

“Where the hell are we going?”

That Decker
did
know. “Seventeenth floor.”

Nash knew instantly why they were going there. “Suite 1712,” he said. “North.
North.
We’re in the wrong freaking tower!”

Back in the early 1970s, when the Grande was brand-new, you could make a full circuit of the hotel on each floor, passing from the corridor in the West Tower to the one in the North Tower to the East Tower to the South, and then finally back again to the West.

Each tower had its own elevator, as well as a stairwell, but if you were staying, say, in 1712 in the North Tower, you could take any elevator—North, South, East, or West—and still find your way to your room. Eventually.

But in the late ’80s, trouble came to town and often visited the Grande in the form of armed robberies and kidnappings of its wealthy guests. The hotel management erected walls on each floor between the towers, to restrict movement inside the hotel. It was an attempt to eliminate the vast array of escape routes.

The walls that were built to separate the towers were little more than plasterboard over a cheap frame made of two-by-fours.

Of course all the walls in this formerly four-star hotel were ridiculously thin.

“Deck,” Nash said again. “We’re in West—not North! We’re in the wrong tower!”

“No such thing,” Decker told him, “when you’ve got C4 in your pocket.”

Jimmy hated this.

But as much as he hated this, as frightened as he was about Tess’s safety, as freaked out as he was by the thought of this building coming down on his head, he loved watching Decker work.

The man was relentlessly cool under pressure.

They came out of the stairwell on the seventeenth floor, and Decker shone his penlight to the left without hesitation. “This way.”

Was it . . . ? Yes.

They ran to the end of the hall, but Decker didn’t blow a hole in that flimsy wall that had been constructed directly on top of the diamond-patterned corridor carpeting.

Instead he used the pass key he’d lifted from the front desk to unlock the door to the last room on the right.

They went inside and closed the door behind them.

The goons giving chase wouldn’t realize they’d lost them until they hit the roof.

At that point, they’d probably start a room to room search, but they’d restrict it to the West Tower.

Of course, by the time they got down to the seventeenth floor, Decker and Jimmy would be long gone.

By the time the soldiers got to the seventeenth floor, Jimmy would be back at Rivka’s, where Tess would be waiting, safe and sound.

Tess, who loved him, but who recognized that he was poison and thus didn’t want to be with him.

Jimmy didn’t blame her. If he could have, he would have run away from himself a long time ago.

Damn it, wasn’t that what he had done when he joined the Agency?

No. They’d changed his name, but they hadn’t changed who he was.

Decker was standing on the bed, tapping on the wall behind it, searching for the studs. He seemed satisfied as he stepped back onto the floor. “Help me move this.”

Jimmy grabbed one side of the metal bedframe, and together they pulled the mattress and box spring away from the wall.

Deck knelt on the floor, tapped the walls one more time to make sure he’d gotten it right. He took from his pocket the remainder of the C4 explosives he’d used to blow the safe in Sayid’s room and went to work.

If there was one thing Deck was good at, it was blowing shit up. It was one of those special Navy SEAL skills.

Jimmy took out his phone. Nothing. “Fuck.”

“Aftershock probably knocked over the dish I put upstairs,” Decker said, lighting the fuse. “We’ll be out of here soon.” He stood up, moved back. “Fire in the hole.”

Pop.

Only a SEAL could blow something up relatively quietly.

Decker had blown a neat little hole in the wall, near the baseboard. Using his foot, he kicked out more of the plasterboard, making it big enough for them to squeeze through.

“Help me,” he said again, and Jimmy grabbed one side of the bed, moving it back in place, against the wall.

Talk about brilliant.

Someone coming in to give the room a cursory look would never see the hole.

Jimmy went first, under the bed, through the hole, and into the adjoining room—which was in the North Tower. As was suite 1712, which held the elevator shaft leading down into the tunnel that would take them safely back to the financial district.

And then back to Rivka’s.

And Tess.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR

Tess was in the kitchen with Khalid when the earth started to shake.

It was worse than usual, so she grabbed the boy, pulling him with her into the doorway to the yard, praying that this was just an aftershock, that this wasn’t another massive quake.

Please, dear God, don’t let the Grande Hotel fall. . . .

She’d spoken to Jimmy a matter of minutes ago. There was no way they could already have moved out of the hotel complex. Not yet.

Shaken off the kitchen table, a pan fell with a clatter, and the glasses clinked in the cabinet.

Thankfully, whatever it was, it didn’t last long.

“Are you all right?” Tess asked Khalid, who nodded.

She grabbed one of the lanterns, still swinging from its hook, and ran swiftly upstairs, passing Rivka on the landing.

Guldana was spending the night with their eldest daughter, whose husband had broken his leg in the quake and was still in the hospital, in traction.

“Are you okay?” she asked him as she went by.

“Sadly, I’m growing used to being shaken about.”

Cr-r-r-ack!
It started with a single explosion in the distance, but didn’t stop there. It kept going, rumbling and roaring like thunder gone mad.

It was the kind of sound the Kazabek Grande Hotel might make as it collapsed.

Tess couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. “Is that from the south or north?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
Please, God, no . . .

Rivka only shook his head.

She ran for the bedroom. “Searching for service . . .” her phone told her.

She grabbed the robe and burka she’d been given at the police station, grabbed the bag that held the last portable sat-dish they’d brought with them.

She rushed down the stairs and through the kitchen and out into the yard where it was—shit!—dark, of course. Curfew had just begun.

She could see the sky glowing in the distance—something was on fire, and occasionally still exploding. Which direction was that? She was all turned around.

Okay, Bailey, slow it down. Don’t panic.

First things first. She had to go to that abandoned church, get the communications system up and working. Once she could use her phone, she could try to call Jimmy.

Please, don’t let him be dead.

“You aren’t intending to go out, are you?” The slightly accented, deep male voice came out of the darkness.

Startled, Tess looked over at the gate. Who was out there? She dropped the bag with the sat-dish and tried to kick it behind the wheel of Khalid’s battered wagon before an enormous flashlight clicked on and was shone right in her face.

She squinted at the shadowy shape of a man. Shapes. Was there an entire police patrol right there at the edge of Rivka’s yard?

“No, sir,” she said. “Of course not. I . . . heard the noise and came out to see . . . Do you know what’s burning? I have friends who were working—relief work—down near the Grande Hotel. I’m worried about them.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I suppose it could be the hotel. Do you mind if we come in?” Whoever he was, he’d already opened the gate.

Tess backed up. “Forgive my lack of hospitality, sir, but my husband—he’s with People First. He didn’t make it back before curfew. I’m afraid it would be considered improper—”

“Oh, but you’re American. Surely you don’t follow such quaint customs in your own home?”

As he moved closer to the house, the light from the kitchen door and windows fell on him. He was a large man with a full beard, dressed in a uniform that wasn’t police. He held that flashlight in one hand, and a cane to support himself in the other.

And it wasn’t a police patrol that he had with him, but rather a veritable army—submachine guns held at ready by men with harshly featured faces and stone cold eyes.

“As I said, sir,” Tess told him, forcing a smile. “This isn’t my home.”

“No, it’s not, is it?” The man with the cane looked past her, toward the kitchen door. “Good evening to you, sir.”

She turned to see Rivka standing there, astonishment on his broad face. He fell to his knees and spoke in the K-stani dialect that Tess had made up her mind to try to learn. It was such a lilting, pretty language. But she recognized only a few of the words that Rivka spoke—the title “great sir,” which could be translated to “lord” or even “king”—and then a name: Bashir.

Oh,
shit
.

As Sophia watched, the armored trucks rolled away.

Padsha Bashir was returning to his palace, taking Tess with him.

“This is bad,” Dave admitted. “This is very bad. Nash is going to freak.”

They hadn’t made it back to Rivka’s before curfew—thank goodness. If they had, Sophia would be on her way to the palace, too. The thought made her stomach hurt and her mouth dry.

Because of the curfew, they’d had to move slowly.

Or rather, Dave—beautiful, wonderful Dave—had made sure they took the absolute safest routes, moving from one secure hiding place to another, taking their time. He hadn’t pushed her to hurry; instead he’d waited, again and again, while she’d caught her breath.

They’d been hiding here in an old storage shed just down the street from Rivka’s when the trucks had pulled up.

There had been a terrible explosion. Even Dave, who knew everything, didn’t know what that was. Even Dave was afraid that the Grande Hotel had finally come down.

With Decker and Nash inside.

Sure, why not? Sophia had learned that God could, indeed, be that cruel.

Shocked by that explosion, stunned by the sight of Padsha Bashir standing in Rivka’s yard, Sophia had watched in silence as the warlord went into the kitchen.

She’d sat in that kitchen, just hours earlier.

Dave put his arm around her—not for comfort, but because she was shaking so hard he was afraid the shed would start rattling.

Bashir was in there for quite some time, and there was nothing they could do. He had an army of men with him, some of them standing lookout in the street, not far from their hiding place.

“Don’t let them take me,” Sophia had whispered.

“I won’t,” Dave had promised, but she could see from his eyes that he didn’t really understand what she meant.
Don’t let them take me alive.

Although she clutched her littlest gun, she knew she didn’t have the ability to turn it on herself. A few days ago, she would’ve, but now—even now, even after Decker had told her they couldn’t risk smuggling her out of K-stan, even after she’d heard that explosion that well may have taken the lives of both Decker and his friend, Nash . . . she couldn’t do it.

Because she’d had a taste of goodness, a reminder that truth and light were out there, counterbalancing the world’s ugliness and evil.

And it sparked something to life inside of her, something that had been waiting, lying silently dormant.

But once awakened, it grew ferociously, filling her with . . .

Hope.

She didn’t just not want to die—she wanted to live.

Sophia sat with Dave in that tumbledown shed, and watched as Bashir left with Tess. He’d left some of his troops behind. Hidden. In the house. In the barn.

Waiting for the rest of them to come home.

“First thing to do is to get you someplace where you’ll feel safe,” Dave said now.

“No,” Sophia said. “The first thing is to make sure Decker doesn’t walk into an ambush.” Assuming, of course, that he was still able to walk.

“Shh,” Dave said almost silently, his finger against her lips.

Outside the shed, a shadow moved.

A voice whispered, “Dave, sir? Is that you?”

“Khalid?” Dave pushed open the door and hauled the boy inside. They had to squeeze tightly together to stay hidden, but Sophia didn’t mind. “Where did you come from?”

“I was in the house, sir, but they didn’t see me when they came in. Did you know . . . ? That was Padsha Bashir!”

“Shh,” Dave said. “We know.”

“I went out the window, but I stayed close and listened. He asked Mrs. Nash about that man—her friend, Will. And he asked her all kinds of questions about a computer, and she said she didn’t know what they were talking about, but then Rivka told Bashir everything.”

Dave swore, and Sophia realized that before this, she’d never heard him utter such words.

“He told him Tess had a computer upstairs,” Khalid continued, “and that she and Mr. Nash and Mr. Decker and you, too, sir, didn’t seem to spend all that much time on the relief effort. He told him you had telephones that worked, and that Murphy had died, but no one was sad and still talked of him as if he were alive. He said he thought you were spies for the American government, always whispering together out in the barn.” The boy looked at Sophia. “Rivka told him about you, too, miss.”

She couldn’t help it, she drew in a breath. Dave’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

“He said he believed you were Mr. Decker’s girlfriend, even though he already had a wife. He said he was tired of that shameless behavior going on in his house and he was planning on telling you to leave—but I know he didn’t mean that because just earlier today he told me how sad he would be when you had to go back home.”

“Did Bashir ask a lot of questions?” Dave asked. “Tell us everything—as much as you can remember.”

“There were lots of questions,” Khalid told them. “What is this girlfriend’s name? Julie Something. Rivka said he didn’t know—didn’t care to know—her last name. Had he seen her passport? Yes, yes, of course . . .”

Sophia looked at Dave. What? Rivka hadn’t seen her passport because she had no passport.

“What does she look like?” Khalid paused. “Begging your pardon, miss, but he said you were scrawny and plain. He said he’d walked in on you in the bathroom, while you were washing up and . . . he said . . .” He leaned close to Dave and whispered in his ear.

Dave laughed softly. He looked at Sophia. “Rivka was protecting you. I think he probably knew he couldn’t lie about everything. If they searched the house—and they were going to search, that was a given—they’d find Tess’s computer setup. They’d see all our equipment and know we aren’t your average relief workers. But he
did
lie about you. He told Bashir that you were, uh, built like a boy. He used, um, slightly different language. He also said you had a pierced, uh, well, nipple. Which, in his opinion, was the equivalent of decorating a hovel with gold paint and lanterns in hopes that people would be blinded by the glitter and not notice the disrepair.” He laughed again. “I do love Rivka.”

“After that,” Khalid said, “Bashir had no more questions about you.”

Rivka had managed to protect Sophia.

But not Tess. Heaven help her.

“Okay,” Dave said. “Let’s assume Decker and Nash are out there, they’re alive, and that they’re heading back here. They’re not going to go into the house. They’re not going to get close. Tess, bless her heart, managed to put out a warning.”

What?

He pointed toward Rivka’s gate. “We have a warning system. A short piece of rope, both on the front gate as well as the kitchen door. We set up two, because the side door’s not so easy to see from the street. If either piece of rope is not where it’s supposed to be, that means trouble. Tess managed to grab the rope from the gate, drop it into the street, and kick it beneath the truck without anyone seeing. Deck and Nash will check for the rope, see that it’s gone, and check this shed, actually, for messages. What we’ve got to do is figure where we can go—someplace safe to regroup and plan our next move. Which, I assume, is going to be getting Tess away from Bashir.”

“I know where to go,” Sophia said.

Tess tried to pay attention as she was led through a labyrinth of palace hallways. She tried to orient herself. Part of the palace’s roof had fallen in during the quake and was in the process of being repaired.

If she were going to attempt an escape, the construction zone would be the route to take. She focused on visualizing where she was in relation to that front lobby.

She tried not to think about what Padsha Bashir had told her shortly after they’d arrived at the palace, after she’d been led through the ornate doors and past the sentry’s station into that busy lobby. Even at this time of night it was hopping, with guards and other people coming and going, phones ringing.

It appeared to double as both prisoner- and equipment-holding area. It was there that Bashir’s men had unloaded everything they’d taken from Rikva’s house, all the bags and boxes and packs.

Including the one Tess had tried to kick behind the wheel of Khalid’s wagon—the one that held that sat-dish and power pack. It sat off to the side, with stacks of crates and bundles—loot Bashir’s army had taken from other unfortunates.

“We’ll set up a trade with your husband,” Bashir had said. “You for him—and the laptop.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tess had stuck to her story, the way Jimmy told her to. She was a relief worker, recently married to a man she didn’t know all that well. It felt like a betrayal, but it was the cover Jimmy had told her to use if something like this happened. He could, he’d reassured her, take care of himself.

She hoped so.

The captain of the guard stood courteously to the side as Bashir took a phone call, only speaking when the warlord turned to acknowledge him. The two men spoke softly, and Tess realized they didn’t know she couldn’t speak their language.

There was a lot they didn’t know about her.

Whatever that phone call had been about, it hadn’t made Bashir very happy. He turned to leave, but then he turned back to Tess. “The Grande Hotel
has
fallen,” he told her.

Her heart stopped beating.

The son of a bitch was lying.

Please let him be lying.

It
was
possible that he was lying, because after he’d spoken, he’d then watched her closely for her reaction.

Tess had channeled Jimmy and managed—she hoped—to look only slightly disappointed. “I guess it’s a good thing that area’s been evacuated,” she’d said, her voice even. Unconcerned.