Ice Cold (34 page)

No. What
would
save her was him getting there in time, defusing the bomb in time, and getting her the hell out of Dodge in case the bomber had a secondary explosive device or remote control hidden up his sleeve.

Only Weber, seated in back, and Stuyvesant had been fit for duty. The others all killed or in no shape to be of any use. Weber herself had eschewed medical help. She had a knot on her head and probably a concussion, but she claimed she was fit to be back in the field. Replacement operatives had been called in, but they were hours away. Too long. Too late.

Holding Honey’s commlink, with its beeping GPS, she fed directions to Stuyvesant as he careened at manic speed past pools of dim streetlight and slashes of darkness through the almost deserted city streets.

The Ukrainian had clearly thought to taunt Rafael by leaving proof he’d taken Winston. What he hadn’t realized was that she’d placed a tracking device on
him,
and it was her commlink leading them to her location.

Stuyvesant, a short, wiry Italian on Weber’s Prague team, knew the city streets like the back of his hand. He turned left, following Honey’s GPS out of town, driving as if Honey’s life depended on his speed. It did. Rafael appreciated his due diligence. Fast wasn’t fast enough for him, though. If he could, he’d
run
.

“How long do you think it’ll take you to dispose of it?” Weber asked. He suspected the question was entirely rhetorical, used to keep him from jumping out of the car and running through the streets to their destination like a lunatic. Truth was nothing would have kept him in the car if he thought there was a faster route to Honey.

“Usually, as much time as necessary to defuse the threat. As little as a minute, as much as dozens of hours. Now? As quickly as fucking possible.”

Stuyvesant watched the road-Weber in back gave directions. There was no need for him to take his attention off the device in his hand. He pinched the screen, enlarging his view of the bomb.

The orange Play-Doh of Semtex. Kobevko favored his new home country’s product and it was right there. Label still on. No container. Fifty pounds. Enough to blow the building and everyone in it to smithereens without a trace. He swiped down the screen, looking for the detonator.

Electrical? He scanned the area for indications of RDX, TNT, or dynamite. Just because he didn’t see any of the above, didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Rafael slid the screen to zero in on her face. Her eyelashes fluttered.
Almost with you, hang on,
mi amor
. Just hang on.
Not looking away from her blue-tinged features, he demanded. “ETA?”

“Two minutes,” Weber told him, voice flat.

The Ukrainian wasn’t going to stick around to see the result of his handiwork. Comms made excellent remote devices to activate detonators. “The detonator could be Winston’s cell comm. We know where we’re going now. Get rid of it.”

A rush of frigid air filled the car as she tossed the commlink out into the street. “Building’s coming up on the left.”

Rafael glanced up. Stuyvesant already had the headlights off, and it was almost pitch-black in this part of town. Abandoned warehouses, many of them with bomb damage from World War II. Hopeless. Desolate.

“Weber. Concentrate on Kobevko. I might need him alive. Keep your eyes and ears open. Stuyvesant, take out the other man. I’ll deal with the bomb.”

And Honey.

Pollack. Dear God. Fighting her natural response, Honey chuckled low. “That’s your b-best sh-shot? Pollack’s eigh-ty-six years old. He’s going to d-die soon anyway.” Years of practice gave her words verisimilitude, but inside, she was screaming. Her brain seemed stuffed with cotton, making it difficult to play games. And God, if ever there was a time she needed all her marbles, this was it.

Curling her short nails into her palms, she fought off the cold and drug induced lethargy with everything she had and conjuring up her survival trainer’s voice. He’d been a hard-ass. Honey had disliked him intensely, but right then, she needed to remember his class on hostage-taking.

“Nothing,” he yelled in his booming, take-no-bullshit voice. “Absolutely not a
damn
thing, predicts the outcome of one’s resistance to pain better than one’s own personality.”

He stared her right in the eye. Only female in his class. Top of his class. Least favorite person in his class. He didn’t like women in the field, never made any bones about it. “Against some personalities,
nothing
works; against others, practically
anything
does. Which one are
you,
Winston?”

She was, and had always been, the former.
Thank you for the reminder, Dickchard Ellison.

Against some personalities, nothing works.
Now that a little feeling was returning, she knew she
was
tied. Wrists, ankles, and across her breasts and belly. The restraints were warmer than her skin. How many did they use for Christ’s sake? The entire roll? And what was the point, she could barely move because of whatever they’d pumped into her as it was. She tightened and relaxed each muscle group as surreptitiously as possible. Before she did anything, she had to warm up. There’d be no second chances.

Dawn hinted through the broken roof and walls. Not light, but lighter than the stygian blackness beyond the dim lights rigged around her. Presumably, so Savage could see her. Savage was talking and she tuned in.

“—years
training
you and years s
tudying
you?” Savage sounded impatient. “I don’t buy it. I know you better than that, Winston. You love that old codger more than you love computers. Answer a few simple questions and I’ll make it easy—for
both
of you—to die pain-free.”

Catherine had always prided herself on “knowing” people, but the truth was she saw everyone through the skewed lens of herself. “Ei-either way we die. Why bother telling yo-you anything?”

“I loathe redundancy, you know that. Give me the access codes to your main computer and I’ll make it quick.”

Main computer?
Honey felt a jolt of shock but maintained her poker face. Did Savage know about her computer array in Montana? Impossible. Only three people knew about it, and she was one of them. One was dead. The other she trusted as much as she trusted herself.

Savage was fishing.

Was Savage in
possession
of her laptop? Though secured in the hotel safe, it would’ve been child’s play to retrieve. Worst-case scenario, Savage had her highly encrypted laptop. Honey bet her life, and Pollack’s, that her mentor would be unable to get beyond the failsafes and counter viruses installed to access pertinent, secret, data. However, it was possible she’d learned enough to be curious.

“No can do, sister.” Besides, her laptop’s data, and Montana’s data weren’t directly connected. There
was
no link between the two. Her slow inhale hid her emotions, and she passed the slight tremble off as a shiver of cold. Relief, fear, cold.

Movement detected out of the corner of her eye was snow falling steadily from the open rafters. The two men waited on either side of her, presumably respectfully, for Savage to speak.

“Your laptop doesn’t have anything on it I haven’t already seen,” Savage told her, impatience lacing her words. “The harder you make this on me, the harder I’ll make it on Pollack. Give me the access codes to Montana. Now.”

So much for the nanosecond of reprieve.

“Four zero six.”

Brief pause. “That’s the
area
code. Access code, Winston.
Now
.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s a c-complete sentence.”

“Administer ano—” Savage’s furious voice cut off by the startling, loud, and unexpected retort of a gunshot. The camera’s red eye, staring down at Honey from perhaps ten feet away, exploded in a shower of glass and metal.

Simultaneously, a second shot hit the doctor, who’d been standing at the ready beside Honey, in the back of the head. Blood and gore splattered her skin like hot buckshot, as he dropped to the cement floor with a dull
thunk.

Rafael stepped out from behind the wall. “Hands away from your body, Kobevko. Move it, asswipe!”

The Ukrainian stood at the foot of the table where Honey lay, and Rafael kept his eyes fixed on the man. Weber and Stuyvesant spread out as they approached the center of the vast warehouse.

Snow drifted through gaping holes in the roof, and large piles of white shifted and swirled with the breeze blowing through open walls. Rafael’s breath preceded him as he moved forward. He blocked out everything but the Ukrainian bomber.

Kobevko lifted his arms out to his sides. “You can’t stop the progress of time, T-FLAC,” he shouted derisively. “The girl is, for all intents and purposes, already dying. You might as well leave, to chase me another day.”

“The
girl
is very much a-alive and f-freezing her ass off,” Honey informed him loudly as Weber reached her side, piling on various items of LockOut procured from the team members they’d left in the hotel. “Cut the chitchat. Just shoot him and get me out of here, Navarro!”

“Give me a minute.” He reached Kobevko. Stuyvesant was checking the video feed. And would gather the doctor’s paraphernalia to take back to the local lab. “Take off your coat. Slowly.” Rafael saw no indication that the man had a timer or detonator on him. He grabbed the coat as the guy threw it aside, searched it quickly but thoroughly, then tossed it to Stuyvesant, who took it to Weber to put over Honey. They knew not to move her. They did
not
know if there was a pressure sensitive plate under her, but he took the risk that there wasn’t because much longer in this cold and it would be moot.

“Where’s the detonator?”

“And you think I would offer this information—Why? My work here is done. Understand, you do not have the time or the intelligence to prevent the inevitable. Kill me, the girl dies as well.”

Dead-man’s switch? Timer? “What makes you think I give a flying fuck about some half-frozen blonde?” Rafael asked briskly, motioning with the muzzle of his H&K for Kobevko to remove his shirt and pants.

He did so reluctantly. Rafael motivated him by firing at the toe of his heavy boot. The Ukrainian screamed, falling to one knee, his face contorted as he clutched his ankle, blood flowing freely as he cursed.

“Stop whining and hurry the hell up. The next one will shatter a knee cap, and I’ll keep going higher!” Grabbing him by the arm, Rafael hauled the bomber to his feet.
Foot
. Impossible to place his newly shattered foot on the ground, and he had to hop to maintain his balance. Swearing made his face red. Over the sound of his cussing, Rafael jabbed his gun in the guy’s cheek for more motivation. “Strip faster, asshole, and talk while you’re at it. What’s the disarm code?” Rafael watched where his hands were, primed to act if Kobevko made a move to activate the device as he tore at his clothing.