Kiss the Enemy (Slye Temp) (34 page)

Logan and his men would step up to escort Wilder. They’d take a route back through the service area where they had a GMC Yukon waiting that Party Man had already confirmed as on site. From that point—

An explosion rocked the room.

Party Man shook his head. “Not my shit, Cuz. Wrong location, too.”

People were standing up at their seats and looking around,  not sure what they’d just heard and felt. Security was rushing around, hands at their ears listening.

Logan took in Wilder who had that confused dog look. Why wasn’t he anxious and searching the security to see who was going to kidnap him?

Another blast hit further away.

People started running for the exits, shoving and yelling.

“Let’s get him,” Logan told his men and leaped up on the stage to hook Wilder by the arm before the star of the show took off toward the exit.

Wilder’s face had lost color. “What’s happening?”

He sounded genuinely terrified.

Logan kept his voice professional. “We’re going to escort you out, Mr. Wilder. Just come with us.”

Security was ushering the attendees out but two of them were fighting against the tide to get to the stage.

Party Man held his ear and announced, “Exits are getting blocked. We need to go.”

Logan put his hand up in a stop motion, hoping those two security guards were too busy to argue. Then he gave Wilder a tug.

Wilder didn’t balk this time. “Hurry up. Let’s get out of here.”

“Just stay calm, Mr. Wilder,” Logan told him as they moved to the service exit.

As soon as they reached the service area, Logan pulled his Glock 21 and stopped Wilder. “We’re taking you to the Banker.”

“What Banker?”

Logan got that sick kicked-in-the-nuts feeling. “The one who cut the deal between you and China.”

“Who the fuck are you people?”  Wilder tried to back up, but Moose was there shoving him back toward Logan. “I don’t have a fucking deal with China.”

“Drop your weapons. Hands in the air!” shouted from behind Logan.

A SWAT team in tactical gear and carrying M4 Carbines converged on them from every direction.

Logan lowered his weapon to the concrete floor and raised his hands.

One of them stepped up ahead of the others and removed his face shield. Hard eyes that gave no quarter stared back. “Where are the bombs, Dragan?”

Fuck me
.

CHAPTER 46

The Banker’s helicopter had lifted off amid a buzz of news helicopters hurrying toward the news story of the day at the convention center.

It all played out so normally, right down to the pilot calling in his flight path and getting approval.

Margaux sat between two of the Banker’s guards, but she could hear him talking to someone on his sat phone.

He listened a moment then said, “Everything’s right on time. Call me as soon as the drill site blows then you’ve got forty-five minutes to clear out.”

He turned around. Just couldn’t get enough gloating in. “I do love when everything goes according to plan.”

She’d seen a real bomb blow out second-story windows at the convention center as the chopper had lifted off. “Why send in a team with real bombs if you’re so sure Dragan will be caught with Wilder?”

“It’s bad to threaten a fake terrorist attack. Word might get out that I was involved and that could reflect badly on my reputation.”

Something had bothered her since leaving downtown. “Why Dragan? You don’t hit me as a man who does something without gaining plenty of benefit from a deal.”

“It’s taken a while to lure Dragan Stoli into my web. He crossed me nine years ago when he destroyed my entire operation. I was just getting going and he wiped me out. I was on the way to becoming a legend then.”

In your own mind.
But she wanted to know how he and Logan were connected so she let him talk.

“I swore he would pay. It took me all this time. He’s not easy to draw out of hiding. I had to use his brother Yuri. I have not decided if I will let him linger in prison or terminate him, but I spent a great deal of money to frame Yuri. I need a return on my investment in pain and suffering.”

She was speechless. The Banker knew who Logan was if he knew who his brother was.

The Banker nodded. “We go way back. He forgot about me, but I never forgot about him. This is going to be the trifecta of all plays. I’m paid to insure Wilder Explorations is a nonentity, that the relationship between China and the US is put in conflict and, as a bonus, I land Logan Baklanov and Margaux Duke. Logan actually thinks he’s going to trade me to the Russian Federation for his brother. I’m insulted they would place such a low value on my capture.”

So that was Logan’s end game. He’d planned to capture the Banker for the Russians.

Sabrina and the team would be his next target. The Banker was going to murder everyone Margaux cared about. He’d started with Nanci.

He had an audience and wasn’t letting it go. “But you want to know what makes this one of my premier events?”

“What?” She asked out of habit to get information more than actually caring at this point. What more could he possibly do?

“I’ve had two thousand feet of deep charges set into the part of the Cascadia Subduction Zone that runs closest to the Pacific Northwest. Took seventeen months to do that. Engineers in Germany have guaranteed me when I send the detonation signal to those explosives, there
will
be a massive earthquake and there
will
be a tsunami. Every model they created shows a wave great enough to wipe out everything from the coast all the way through Seattle. It might even set off a second earthquake along the Seattle fault, but that wasn’t part of the deal. Just a potential extra.”

Please let me have one chance at his throat.
“Who can insure that?”

“People with small children and wives they want to keep alive. They won’t be wrong. You’ll see as soon as we get airborne. I received word the drill site explosion was a success. I needed cause and effect. First the drill site is compromised. Then the threat of an earthquake. Then a real earthquake. No one will question that it was caused by the failure at the Wilder drilling site. That will send drilling in this country back to the dark ages.” 

She wanted to shove every smug word from his mouth down his throat. It wasn’t enough just to kill innocent people. He intended to wipe out an entire state.

Nitro and Angel were already dead.

With no way to get out of the city, Dragan, Party Man, Ty and Moose would end up captured.

They wouldn’t go to prison. They’d all die with Sabrina and the team when the tsunami hit.

The Banker had made a bad calculation. Margaux had nothing left to live for if those people died. The Banker controlled the detonation, but only if she didn’t stop him.

She would watch for her chance and take it.

The helicopter began its descent to a mid-size airfield with a set of hangars and three buildings on one side. A Learjet was parked on the far side of the runway as if it owned the place.

Or maybe the Banker had paid to have the only flight in or out today. That wouldn’t surprise her.

When they landed, the guard squad stepped out and surrounded them. They walked as a unit, facing away from the Banker as he strolled toward the Lear that glowed white against a forest of evergreen backdrop.

CHAPTER 47

“What the hell’s going on?” Logan barked at the man who identified himself as Nick, a friend of Margaux’s. But that was only after Dragan showed them a fake bomb and convinced Nick the Banker had double-crossed him and Margaux.

He’d heard from Nitro and Angel who had followed his instructions and waited five minutes past the time to pick up the technicians. The drilling site blew with three minutes to spare.

Nick was driving Logan, Party Man, Ty and Moose in a paneled van with two of Nick’s men in the back covering them with M4s, because Nick wasn’t letting his guard down until he was convinced Dragan was telling the truth.

Some techie named Dingo was on the radio, giving Nick directions as Dingo cleared traffic and routed him out of Seattle heading west.

Nick scowled at him and took another curve on two wheels at the same time that he punched numbers into a computer mounted to the dash. “Can you feed the video to me?” 

The voice known as Dingo called back, “Workin’ on it, mate. They’re out of the chopper and headed for the Lear.”

Logan watched the monitor that flickered then the image of a sleek white aircraft came into focus. The Banker’s four people covered Margaux and the Banker, walking them to the jet. “Where is that?”

“About five miles south of the city.”

Party Man called out from the back, “How’d you know they’d be there?”

Nick cursed at a driver that was half on and half off the road then answered Party Man. “I dropped a tracker on Margaux at the café while your boss was trying to swallow her tongue.”

Logan recalled the moment and snarled, “If the Banker had found that tracker he’d have killed her.”

“The alternative is not knowing where she is right now so I don’t fucking want to hear it.”  He punched the accelerator when he hit the interstate and the van took off like an Indy racer. “Our team had eyes on her when the chopper took off from the downtown building and caught the flight plan. We had someone alter the security camera to keep eyes on the Lear.”

“Shots fired!” Dingo called out.

Logan leaned down to the monitor and watched a horror show unveil. “
No, don’t
...”

CHAPTER 48

The Learjet sparked like a jewel in the sun. That was the end game for the Banker that Margaux couldn’t let happen.

The Banker’s four-person guard squad held their positions as a unit as they approached the jet.

No help in any direction.

Margaux didn’t need it.

She stumbled, going down to her knee. One of the guards whipped around and grabbed her arm to yank her up.

The Banker turned, grin in place.

She shoved up hard, head butting the guard and wrenched his weapon.

The power suit woman dove toward her boss. The Banker grabbed her to use as a shield.

Margaux took her out first, then the next closest guard as he shot back.

Something hot burned Margaux’s arm. Her good one, dammit.

Shots fired everywhere, hitting the Lear and the other two guards. Who was shooting now?

Margaux turned her weapon on the Banker. If she stopped the tsunami, Logan might survive. If he did, she couldn’t destroy the chance for saving his brother. She shot the Banker in the leg. More bullets peppered around her.

The Banker froze, grabbed at his chest and fell backwards.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He couldn’t die. Logan needed that miserable death merchant. She took a step toward the Banker and felt the bite of something hit her hip. She ran forward.

Sirens and cars exploded onto the runway.

She took two more steps that dragged.

Her vision swam. She couldn’t be losing blood that fast, could she? Her adrenaline would ... would ...

She crashed face first onto the pavement, staring at the Banker who finally stopped smiling.

He wasn’t breathing.

Don’t die, you miserable dog
. Not yet. Logan needed him.

But she couldn’t move to check his pulse or try to keep him alive. She was the one dying. Her body wasn’t even trying to move. Her heartbeat had been racing. It was slowing down with each tiny breath she took.

Someone shouted and two fingers touched her neck.

Too late. She closed her eyes.

CHAPTER 49

Logan stared at the video feed on the monitor in horror. It all happened in seconds and Margaux was down. “Get up, Sugar. Get up.
Get the fuck up!”

Black vehicles slammed into view. Everyone jumped out with FBI on their windbreakers.

Logan wanted to reach inside the monitor and pull Margaux to him. “Get out of the way,” he shouted at someone on the screen who was standing in front of Margaux’s prone body.

A female agent came up and the asshole moved. The woman put her fingers on Margaux’s throat. One second ticked off. Then another and another while he gripped the sides of the monitor.

The female Fed turned to a man who must have asked her something. He pointed at Margaux and the woman shook her head then stood up and walked off.

Logan jerked on the monitor. “No. Go back. She’s alive.”

Everyone in the van was quiet.

No matter how much Logan tried to will her to move, Margaux just lay there. Not breathing.

The feed died and he beat the dash with his fists until he crushed it and his fists were bloody. Tears stung. The pain was like nothing he’d ever endured.

He’d let his team get fingered for a terrorist attack.

He couldn’t save his brother.

And he’d lost
her
.

CHAPTER 50

Chatton watched the sun set on the Pacific Ocean. People in Seattle had suffered damage she couldn’t prevent but it could have been a wasteland at this minute. Instead, a catastrophy was prevented today. She waited for the clicking to stop that insured she and Wayan had a secure line.

When he came on, she said, “You dodged a nasty bullet today.”

“I had very disturbing phone calls over the past hour,” Wayan said.

“Understandable, since the attack in Seattle is only six hours old, but the calls have ceased, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because it takes time to manuever the details so that the truth comes out. The Banker intended for the US to believe that Russia had been behind the terrorist attack funded by China to put your relationship with the US and Russia in conflict. I have averted that disaster. True?”

“Yes, but what of the Amber Room panel?”

Amazing. The man’s country has just barely managed to avoid a military conflict with the United States and he’s worried about a bloody artifact. She really had to get her hands on that piece. “It’s beyond the General’s reach. At the moment, he is busy trying to explain an email that was sent to his Pentagon computer from the Banker. A traceable email.”