“What the hell was that?”

Kate watched in helpless horror as the train station erupted in gunfire and what looked like small explosions. She dialed in. “M-One, this is Primary. What’s your sitrep?”

“Upon entry, the team ran into a pair of hostiles on the way out with the target. The standoff distracted them long enough so that a backup pair was able to ambush, terminating M-Four. We have recovered the target, and she is on her way up now with M-Two. M-Three and M-Five are also withdrawing, and I expect them to arrive shortly.”

“Okay, listen up.” This was the part she hated. “When the target is aboard, you give your people ninety seconds to arrive and if they’re not there, you withdraw.”

“Say again, Primary?”

“The rest of your team has ninety seconds from when the target arrives to get to the evacuation vehicle. If they don’t make it, you leave them behind. Acknowledge.”

There was silence, then the team leader replied, “Affirmative.”

The Finish Line
Room 59
Cliff Ryder

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jonathan Morgan for his contribution to this work.

The Finish Line

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

As he watched the nude, writhing, sable-haired woman rock back and forth above him, Harry Vaughn could scarcely believe his luck. Ah, the fringe benefits of being a radical environmentalist, he thought, trying to hold out as long as possible, to prolong their lovemaking until the very last second.

Her long locks falling over her face in a black curtain, Marlene leaned over and kissed him hard, nipping his lip in the process and making an animalistic growl rise in Harry’s throat. Pulling back, she laid a slender finger against his lips. In the dark hours of the fog-shrouded London evening, they had to be quiet, lest they wake any of the other half-dozen mates of his cell crammed into the flat they had rented at Edgar House.

He felt the familiar pressure in his loins, and clenched his pelvic muscles, gritting his teeth as his hands cupped her breasts. While Marlene wasn’t quite as well endowed as Harry would have liked, she had a coiled intensity that more than made up for what she may have been lacking. He’d certainly seen it before. It was the certainty that they might be arrested or even killed at any moment while preparing for and carrying out their mission. With that knowledge came the belief that every moment of freedom was precious, and should be enjoyed to the fullest before they went out to spread a plague through London’s city streets. Harry himself had likened them to modern-day samurai, exhorting his comrades to fear neither the police nor death itself, as long as the mission was completed. That Japan’s medieval warriors were often totally subservient to the state was a fact he was careful to omit during his carefully honed speeches.

Although his rhetoric was sometimes greeted with amused scorn, Marlene hadn’t scoffed or sneered, just regarded him with those smoldering, dark brown eyes that had made his groin tighten as he had returned her steady gaze on the first day they had met. As the elder statesman of the group, which had formed under the loose auspices of the leaderless Earth Liberation Front, he had sat back and watched as the younger men, filled with their self-important nattering, had tried to gain her affections ever since she and her brother had joined their cell about two months ago. The lucky ones had escaped with only their egos bruised. One young man had been so embarrassed after his failure that he had quit the group entirely.

Harry had simply bided his time, waiting for the right moment. It had come three weeks earlier, when she had visited the room where he stayed alone, by virtue of being the leader, in the early hours of the morning. She had come by every few days since, and they had kept their relationship private by mutual consent, not wanting the others to labor under the dividing sting of jealousy. The mission was all that mattered.

He heard Marlene’s ragged breath quicken as she leaned back again, her slim body settling on his thighs, and he increased the tempo of his thrusts, exulting in the small stabs of her nails on his skin as she rode him toward climax. Their coupling grew more rhythmic and frenzied as Harry, unable to contain himself any longer, bucked and arched beneath her, wanting her to come, as well. Even with the condom she’d insisted on, she made him climax faster than any other woman ever had.

Throwing her head back, Marlene’s breath hissed out between her teeth as her body shook in a long, shuddering spasm, completely lost in her own pleasure. At the same time, Harry felt that familiar white light explode behind his eyes as he also trembled in release. With one final jerk, Marlene leaned forward to collapse on him, her chest heaving.

“Goddamn, that was amazing.” Harry kept his voice to a whisper as he stroked her hair. He had been with many women in his thirty-eight years. The eco terrorist gig had always been a magnet for women—whether they were somewhat naive university students newly committed to the cause, or older women slumming while providing funds to fuel their low self-image. There was just something about the outsider, the rebel, that drew them like cats to clotted cream. Fortunately, both of us usually end up purring afterward, he thought.

She rolled off him with practiced economy and burrowed under the sheets, one hand snaking out to the cluttered nightstand to grab a crumpled cigarette packet. “Bloody hell,” she said.

She tossed the empty pack on the floor, eliciting a frown from Harry. Unlike the more radical members of their group, he knew the value of a shower, and liked to keep his quarters neat, one of the last byproducts of a stint in the army in the late eighties before he’d gone AWOL and dropped off the government’s radar completely.

He turned to her, resting his head on an elbow-propped hand. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Tell you what—I’ll pick it up if you be a dear and run to the corner to get another pack, love.” Her sultry voice never failed to send pleasurable shivers down his spine.

“First you shag a man till he can barely stand, then you want to send me out into the cold night air just so you can have a fag.” He laughed quietly.

She ran a hand beneath the sheet and up his leg, her nails sending tremors of delight through him. “If you hurry, maybe it’ll get your blood pumping again—and I’ll still be here in this nice warm bed, waiting for you.”

Harry leaned over and kissed her, relishing her eager response to him. “You drive a hard bargain, lass.”

“Hopefully it won’t be the only thing that’s hard in a bit,” she teased.

Rolling out of bed, Harry strolled to the bathroom, where he disposed of the condom in the toilet and wiped himself down with a warm washcloth. After toweling himself off and brushing his teeth, he dressed in the bedroom, pulled on boxers, pants, a T-shirt and a rugby shirt. He felt Marlene’s eyes on him all the while. When he finished, he turned back and leaned over her, kissing her one last time, his hand stealing below the sheet to cup a last feel of her breast.

“Mmm, minty.” She arched into him, her fingers caressing his stubbled cheek.

“You wait up for me now, eh?” he said.

“I won’t move a muscle until you return. Then we’ll see if you can move me again like you just did.”

“Count on it.” With a wink, Harry walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

The room opened into a narrow hallway with two other wooden doors along the left wall, and an ancient staircase leading down on the right. Other than the high-pitched, nasal whistle of Aron’s snoring, the rest of the flat was dead silent.

Harry crept past the closed doors, one of which opened slightly as he passed. With a grin, he eased it closed—that was where Marlene had come from in the first place, where she slept with Raynie. Staying close to the side of the staircase to avoid the creaky boards, he tiptoed down to the ground floor, and, after slipping into his battered jacket and equally worn pair of Doc Martens, he ghosted out the front door into a world of white.

Wyvil Road was wreathed in evening fog, the thick mist cooling his face as he walked toward South Lambeth Road. It was so heavy he could barely make out the small dead end where truck drivers often parked for a smoke or a cup of tea on their break between runs. Squinting, he made out a high-sided delivery van, its engine off, tucked into the small alcove. With a shrug, he continued toward the main road.

Harry had been protesting a bit too much back in the bedroom. He actually preferred walking around when the detestable city was quiet and still, not filled with the frantic scurrying of the hundreds of thousands of people running to and fro through their mindless, media-saturated lives. He knew the majority didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about what they were doing to the planet they were slowly trampling over, choking into polluted, smoggy submission and overdeveloping into extinction.

And if the planet itself cannot strike back, then it must have help, Harry thought.

As he turned the corner and strolled down Lambeth, Harry mused about the stroke of providence that had brought Marlene and her brother into their little circle. Not only had their devotion to the cause been fervent and absolute, raising the at-the-time flagging morale of the cell, but they had also been instrumental in moving the plan forward, helping to obtain the high-quality anthrax spores the cell planned to use to contaminate the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and several other large public areas where many groups of people attended. Harry, always pragmatic, had reserved a healthy dose of suspicion about them and the fact they had come to the Wyvil Road flat at such an opportune time, but his careful surveillance on the two had turned up nothing. When away from the rest of the cell, they carried out whatever duties they had been assigned, usually taking the Vauxhall Tube to scout out the various assigned targets. The two were dedicated members—and one an absolutely great shag. With another dozen as committed as them, Harry knew he could bring London to its knees. But for now, he’d have to settle for sowing contagious havoc throughout the city. Unlike those stupid gits who had tried to drive car bombs into the capital of England last year, his plan would succeed.

At the corner of Wheatsheaf and Lambeth, Harry ducked into a tuck shop and picked up two packs of cigarettes: an expensive pack of Gitanes Blondes for her, and Marlboros for himself. Although aware of the irony of smoking while trying to save the planet, he preferred to think of it as suffering along with the Earth instead. Resisting the urge to light up on the way back, he decided to wait until after the second round. The thought made him quicken his step, however, and he was almost trotting as he retraced his steps back to the flat.

Coming up the walk, he stepped on a rock that twisted under his foot, splintering apart with an odd scraping noise. Stifling a curse, Harry stopped and looked down at the sidewalk. In front of him was something that looked like a loose red brick that might have come from one of a dozen buildings or walkways in the neighborhood. But this one hadn’t turned his ankle like a real brick would have, and it hadn’t made the solid impact against the walk it should have when he’d stepped on it.

Squatting, Harry looked at the ersatz brick without picking it up, a sinking feeling growing in his stomach by the second. As he suspected, it was made of some kind of Styrofoam, and he spotted the round tube of a camera lens in its center.

The bastards are on to us.

Rising as if he didn’t have a care in the world, Harry’s brain churned through the possibilities open to him. Chief among them was that he could simply keep walking, continue down the street and get the hell out of the city. Glancing up at the first-story window, he shook his head. He couldn’t abandon Marlene and the rest to get nicked.

Climbing the steps, Harry fumbled with the lock, already going over the necessary actions. Don’t stop moving, get upstairs, get everybody up and out the back way. He knew the high improbability that the back way would be clear, but it was the only chance they had. If they hit us before, it’s everyone for themselves. Even Marlene. He knew she was the real reason he was even going back inside.

Wrestling with the lock, he wrenched the door open and slipped inside, resisting the urge to slam it. Instead, he shut it with a soft click and shot the bolt, then whirled around to head for the staircase—only to stop dead before he could take a single step.

Standing in front of Harry was a person dressed from head to toe in some kind of matte-black, close-fitting uniform, with a web harness across his chest covered with equipment. The intruder’s face was completely covered by a sinister-looking mask that completely hid his features. The smell of burned gunpowder and blood was thick in the hallway. Harry absorbed all of that in a split second, but his attention was drawn to the smoking, silenced pistol aimed directly at his face.

“Where’s the girl?” the masked figure whispered.

Harry frowned in feigned confusion. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

The pistol’s muzzle dipped and coughed, and Harry’s left leg buckled as the bullet smashed into his kneecap. He dropped to the floor, gritting his teeth as he clutched his ruined leg. Who the hell is this bloke? No copper, that’s sure.

“Last chance for you to limp out of here rather than be carried out. Where is she?”

Through his tears, Harry couldn’t help glancing up at the staircase, but he was determined to give her as much time to get away as possible. “Bugger off!” he barked, then opened his mouth to shout a warning. As if in slow motion, he saw the pistol’s muzzle in front of his face, the round hole looking large enough for him to fall into. Then his world flashed apart in a burst of orange-and-red fire, and Harry knew nothing more.

1

“Team Two, hold your position!” In the white panel van parked in the turnoff north of Wyvil Road, Midnight Team member David Southerland wiped sweat from his brow and squinted at the suddenly underpowered forward-looking infrared system he had been using to watch the front door of the eco terrorists’ flat.

The five-man squad had been watching the flat for the past six hours, preparing to infiltrate the house and capture or eliminate the occupants, all wanted for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts against a sovereign government. Once their undercover agent had confirmed the presence of both biological weapons and homemade explosives in the house, Room 59, the global, top secret intelligence agency that had been tracking this cell for the past several weeks, had called in a Midnight Team, their own special-weapons-and-tactics division.

David was ready to move, but at the moment he was caught between closing the trap and trying to figure out what had just occurred. He and his partner in the van had just watched their target crouch down on the sidewalk, as if he had spotted something, but they couldn’t be sure. Even with the fourth-generation thermal vision scope he was using, he couldn’t make out the fine details necessary to confirm if their surveillance had been spotted.

“Jesus, M-Two, I told you, we’ve got a two-man hit team that just entered the back door. We need to get in there before they rabbit,” one of the other operatives said.

The voice of their leader came on. “I ordered radio silence unless anyone spots a target leaving. Anyone else speaks out of line, and they’ll answer for it.”

“What do you think just happened?” Next to David, the newest member of the squad, a green recruit named Tara McNeil, lowered the infrared binoculars she had also been using to scan the house.

“I can’t tell, but get your MASC on—we’ll be going green any second. Team Two, any activity on your side?” he asked over the radio.

“Nothing coming or going since we took our position, M-Two.”

David thought he heard the other half of the backdoor team, the member who’d been dressed down earlier, mutter, “At this rate, they’ll die of old age before we get to them.”

David ignored the comment as their leader spoke again. “Nothing on the rooftops. However, one of our targets has been eliminated. My scope picked out two figures in the hall, and two flashes of what was undoubtedly a firearm just now. Move in and take the house,” he ordered.

David flushed as their team leader pointed out what he should have seen in the first place. “Damn it!” He switched channels with a practiced flick of his eyes. “Vole, there are hostiles inbound, repeat, hostiles inbound on your position.” The plan had been to “capture” their inside man, in case his cover needed to be maintained. Now that, along with everything else, was in jeopardy.

Switching back to his team’s channel, David issued orders. “Team Two, take the back entrance. We have the front. Everyone make sure your seals are secure—there are biologicals in there.”

A chorus of affirmatives answered as David pulled on his Multi-Aspect Sensor Covering, or MASC for short. He’d always hated the acronym, but loved the full-head protective helmet with its integrated visual sensor suite, enhanced audio pickups, flash defense system, voice mask and networked heads-up display and communications unit. Along with their night-black uniforms under Dragon Skin flexible ballistic armor covering their limbs and torso, they looked like soldiers of the future, which, David supposed, they were.

He scrambled out of the van, with Tara right behind him. The fog was dissipating and the narrow street was deserted as they ran across and up the stairs to the door. With David covering her, he motioned for Tara to try the handle. She did and found it locked.

M-One’s calm voice sounded in David’s ear on the secure, laser-beam comm channel. “The door is blocked by a body on the inside. Suggest using the left window—that room appears to be empty.”

David switched over to thermal and saw M-One was correct—a still-warm body lay against the lower half of the door, while the room to their left appeared to be empty. Sudden motion in the hallway beyond caught his eye, and he glanced back to see a glowing red-and-orange-and-white human form step out from another room on the other side of the house, leveling something at the door.

“Cover!” David shouted and ducked away as a silenced submachine gun loosed several rounds inside the flat, a long burst of bullets perforated the door and sprayed shards of wood into the street. David looked at his HUD to check Tara’s status, along with the rest of his team, and was relieved to see that they were all uninjured.

More suppressed gunfire could be heard in the building from several weapons. “Team One, this is Team Two, be advised we have encountered multiple shooters upon rear entry.”

“Affirmative. M-One, clear the hallway, if possible. We’re going in through the side,” David said.

“Roger.” On the roof of the building across the street, David glanced back to see a hunched form poke out a long-barreled, suppressed XM110 rifle and place a trio of 7.62 mm bullets through the center of the door. David wasn’t worried about being hit by friendly fire, even at this close range. Their team leader’s weapon was wired into his HUD, and the Friend-Or-Foe imaging program meant he could not shoot his fellow team members unless he took the rifle off-line.

“Follow me!” David readied his silenced TDI Kriss Super V .45-caliber submachine gun in one hand and stepped onto the railing on the left side of the steps, bracing his free hand against the side of the building. Pointing the gun at the window, he triggered a short burst, shattering the glass and its wooden frame. As soon as the larger pieces stopped falling, he leaped to the windowsill, knocking out shards of glass with the butt of his weapon.

“Team One, where are you? Hostiles are advancing toward your position. They’re almost on you,” M-Five radioed.

“Almost there.” Clearing the last of the glass from the window, David slipped inside, finding himself inside a kitchen. His thermal vision picked out several figures, each outlined in shades of red, orange and yellow, jockeying for position on the other side of the wall, their automatic weapons spitting flame as they shot down the hallway. David was about to give them a huge surprise when a smoking canister flew through the doorway that led into the kitchen, landing almost at his feet.

“Flash-bang!” he shouted. Snatching the weapon even as he knew it could go off at any second, David tossed it back into the hallway and turned away. The grenade had barely disappeared when it detonated with a thunderous explosion and bright flash of light.

The sound dampeners on David’s MASC neutralized the potential damage to his ears, and the light-sensitive photofilm layer in his goggles had darkened at the first millisecond of the light burst, keeping his vision clear. Behind him, Tara had just come in through the window, and was moving into a position.

“Wait a—” was all he got out before the hallway lit up again with automatic-weapons fire, stitching her high across the chest as several rounds burst through the wall and impacted on her body armor. Caught by surprise, Tara still stayed upright and returned fire through the doorway, laying down a diagonal line of Le Mas .45-caliber SPLP blended-metal bullets from right to left.

“M-Three is hit, M-Three is hit!” David rose to check her, but Tara shrugged him off.

“I’m fine, let’s clear the hallway.” As if nothing had happened, she moved to the left side of the doorway and scanned the hallway again.

“Team Two, we are inside the perimeter to the left of the hallway. What’s your status?”

“Hostiles on ground level are both down. We are proceeding with caution—shit!”

David heard more gunfire. “Report!”

“Taking fire from the first story.”

“We’ll clear the front hall and meet you near the stairway.”

“Affirmative, but watch yourselves. We’re pulling flash-bangs.”

“Copy that, we got a glimpse of them already.”

Cody’s voice broke in. “All teams, all teams, local police are en route to target area. We are pulling out in sixty seconds, copy.”

“Copy that, M-One. We are clearing the area and will recover anyone still inside. You heard the man—let’s sweep and clear,” David ordered.

One last thermal scan revealed no one moving inside the hallway. With Tara on his right, David crept to the left and immediately covered the hall’s front half, sweeping from right to left with his weapon. Crouching low, he waved Tara ahead, then slipped in behind her. A dead man in civilian clothes lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, his face blown away. David spotted the Team Two members taking cover under the staircase, bullet holes pocking the plaster and woodwork around them.

David tightened his grip on his Kriss gun. “Team Two, we’re inside. Go for flash-bang.”

He watched the two grenades arc up onto the first-floor landing, then go off with twin explosions. Right after detonation, Team Two pounded up the stairway, sweeping the landing with their laser-sighted weapons. David and Tara followed, watching their six while also backing up the lead team.

“All teams, I have movement on the roof, repeat, movement on the roof. Hostiles are evacuating on top,” M-One reported.

While he had said that, the two teams had split up, searching and clearing every room on the floor. David and Tara had booted in a door only to find unmoving bodies, already dead from multiple bullet wounds to the head and torso. One of the victims was their own operative, his chest a red smear of blood. Coming out, they met up with the second team, who also shook their heads. Whatever had happened here, they had missed it.

“Proceeding to the roof,” David radioed as he pointed above them. At the end of the hallway they found a ladder and trapdoor. A quick scan showed no one lying in wait for them. David wasted no time in scaling it, readying his weapon before entering the room.

The dark third floor was filled with cobwebs, piles of timber and stacks of drywall. Checking all around, David spotted a square of light at the other end of the room. Once Tara joined him, he cautiously approached the far end, making sure their opponents hadn’t set up any surprises. At the next ladder, he looked up, now aware of faint sirens in the distance.

“Crap, the police are on their way.” Turning off his thermal vision, he climbed up and poked his Kriss out the trapdoor leading to the roof, panning the weapon all around. The small camera lens mounted on the right-side Picatinny rail gave him a good view of the rooftop without exposing him to enemy fire. He saw one black-clad body on the tarred surface a few yards away, a crimson pool spreading from his head.

“M-One, I have one hostile terminated on the roof. We are moving to secure, over.”

“Affirmative, hostiles have left across the buildings, three down. Recover the body, and I will meet you on the south side for exfiltration.”

“Shit, nearly get our faces blown off, and for what—a couple dead tree huggers and some dead shooters who weren’t even supposed to be here? We don’t even know who these guys are. I dunno about you all, but I’m seriously starting to rethink the benefits of this job.” M-Four, the loudmouth who had been riding David’s back earlier that morning, kept grousing as they grabbed the dead shooter’s body and hauled it to the back of the flat. Now they heard shouts and doors slamming as other people checked into the commotion in their previously quiet neighborhood.

As they maneuvered the dead body over the knee-high parapet, something spanged off the edge. The four Midnight Team members ducked for cover, each one taking a quadrant and searching for a target.

“Who’s shooting from where?” David asked.

“From the west.” Tara pointed with her weapon along the row of three-story buildings. David looked over to see a black-suited figure two roofs over sketch a jaunty salute before disappearing from sight.

David saw red. “Regroup with M-One. I’m going after them,” he told the others.

Tara stopped and stared at him. “What? Pursuing is not in our orders. We already have a body for intel—”

David was already shucking his gear, leaving only his vest, pistol and MASC on. “The three of you rendezvous with M-One. I’ll meet up with you in a few minutes. Now go!”

Without waiting for a reply, he took off, hearing a muttered “When did the golden boy’s testicles drop?” from M-Four. Reaching to the edge of the roof, David leaped out over the narrow alley between the two buildings and hit the top of the second one. He tucked into a shoulder roll, and came up still moving, heading for where he had last seen the mystery shooter disappear.

2

This is why I need to get out of the office more, Kate Cochran thought as she sipped champagne from a crystal flute.

Sheathed in a red stretch satin designer dress, she stood in the middle of at least one hundred law-enforcement officials from across Europe who had gathered in Dublin, Ireland, for the Second European Congress on Fighting Organized Crime in Partnership. They had convened in the main wing of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, housed in the converted Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

It was founded and built by James Butler of Kilkenny Castle, also the duke of Ormonde and viceroy to King Charles II. The classically designed building, consisting of three major wings surrounding a large outdoor courtyard, was originally completed in 1684 to serve as a home for old, ill and disabled soldiers. Over the centuries, the building had played many roles, including the residence and headquarters of the commander in chief of the army, as well as the headquarters of the Garda, Ireland’s public police force, until it was converted into the art museum in 1991. While the clean stone walls and colonnade had remained on the outside, the interior halls had all been updated with modern amenities, including a staircase in the main hall that seemed to float in midair, and gleaming, black marble flooring. The hall’s inner wall was made of floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed the immaculate courtyard, with its neat grass lawns and graveled pathways, all shrouded in the light, misty rain coming down outside.

All in all, a rather strange place for a law-enforcement conference, Kate thought. Even though Room 59, the covert-ops agency she ran, was so secret she couldn’t even acknowledge its existence to the rest of the conference attendees, Kate knew the best way to gather intelligence was often to go on-site and get it face-to-face. She had been planning a visit to Europe and the various Room 59 department heads on the continent for some time—which meant as soon as her demanding schedule permitted. Although with the incredible technology at her fingertips, she could—and did—meet with her coworkers in virtual reality, Kate preferred seeing real people and places whenever possible. When the conference came to her attention, she put it on her schedule and refused to move it, figuring she was due for a vacation, even a working one. Her overseers at the International Intelligence Agency had grudgingly agreed, and she had been off before they could change their minds.

“Ms. Massen?”

Kate hesitated a fraction of a second before turning to see a silver-haired, middle-aged man in a sleek, spotless tuxedo standing next to her. Since her position as director of operations was as shrouded in secrecy as the agency itself, she could never go anywhere, even on what would be normal business like this conference, as herself. For events like this, she relied on her cover identity as Donna Massen, a midlevel employee with the U.S. State Department, as its sprawling bureaucracy could easily hide an extra employee or two.

“I just wanted to thank you for your comments on the potential alliance of law-enforcement agencies with private security companies. I feel that there is much potential business—and crime stopping—to be done if both sides can only come together.” The man’s words had that perfect British diction, and sent a slight shiver up her spine. After all, Kate did so like educated men.

She nodded, careful not to dislodge her glossy chestnut hair, which had been done up in an elegant French twist. “I’m afraid that you have me at a disadvantage, sir. So many people here to try to remember, you know.” That wasn’t really the case—she knew exactly who he was—but she often found it very useful to give the person she was speaking to the idea that he or she had gained a slight advantage in the conversation.

“Please excuse me, we met briefly at yesterday’s reception. I’m Terrence Weatherby, vice president of marketing for Mercury Security.”

Kate extended a slender hand. “Yes, now I remember. A pleasure to see you again. I hope your company’s name isn’t a reference to its godlike capabilities.”

Terrence chuckled and raised his drink glass before replying. “Actually, when we went global in ’99, we wanted to take on a name that implied quick, efficient service for our clientele. So far, I think we’ve delivered.”

“Of course.” Kate kept her professional smile pasted on her face, but her eyes looked past Weatherby to catch the gaze of a tall, lean, mustached man talking to a pair of energetic young women who worked for Interpol. As soon as their eyes met, she made a small, innocuous gesture with her hand, and he nodded just enough to show that the message was received. Although it was possible that Weatherby had sought her out to compliment her comments at the conference earlier, Kate never believed in coincidence. Most likely getting a feel for their potential competition, she thought as she turned her attention back to the conversation at hand. “So, Mr. Weatherby, just how do you see government intelligence agencies and PMCs working together?”

It was the opening he had been waiting for, and Kate reminded herself that when it all came down to it, he was a salesman. But at least he had a pleasant, butter-soft speaking voice. “Please, call me Terrence. I won’t bore you with a long, drawn-out pitch, but allow me to pique your interest with a few possibilities, as there are some legal issues that would need to be addressed, as well, before moving forward….”

He briefly outlined several potential alliances that did sound very good on the surface—intelligence sharing, team building on both sides to augment each other’s forces and the relaxation of controls that would make it easier for a formal government agency to use a PMC for deniable missions.

Kate broke in at that point. “Isn’t that a bit dangerous? After all, what incentive would your men have to not roll over on the hiring government to save their own skins if they were caught?” She sipped her champagne again, enjoying the mild look of discomfort that flitted across the Englishman’s face. Kate didn’t have much respect for most private military companies, considering only a handful of well-established ones to meet her very high standard in terms of integrity and trustworthiness.

“Well, it is our hope that would never come to pass, but in the unfortunate event of a member or team being captured, we would mount a rescue operation as quickly as possible in order to extract them before any information could be gained,” Weatherby said.

“Very noble of you.” Kate knew she was pushing it, but at the moment she almost didn’t care. She reined herself in, however, and turned the conversation to safer ground. “Your company has been focusing almost exclusively on Third World countries, Africa and the like. I’m surprised that we don’t hear more from you in more lucrative places—like Iraq.”

Terrence’s smile grew even tauter. “I hope you’ll pardon me for being rather blunt, but once the initial fireworks were over, it certainly seemed as if the fix was in, so to speak. The American PMCs picked up so many contracts, and the rest of us were left to fight over the scraps. Then there was all that nasty business with one of the more prominent contractors, and the environment turned even less receptive. We did a cost-benefit analysis, and realized that our talents could be put to better use elsewhere.”

And with even less oversight from watchdog groups, I’ll bet, Kate thought. “Well, you know what they say in business and politics—it’s not always what you do so much as who you know. Still, you make some very interesting suggestions, and I’d like to get some talking points on strategic alliances to show to my superiors.” Kate briefly turned up the wattage on her smile, and resisted the urge to bat her eyelids. “Here’s my card.”

Weatherby took it and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “That would be wonderful, but I was rather hoping, if you’re staying here past the conference, that we might discuss this further over dinner tomorrow evening.”

Hmm, is he hitting on me, or is this purely business? Kate drained her flute slowly, taking a couple of seconds to reappraise the man in this new light. Yes, her estimate of his age was accurate, but he was slim, fit and regal looking. She shook her head with a rueful expression. You’re not a field agent, you’re the director of Room 59. Your job duties do not entail dallying with PMC executives at conferences like this. Placing her empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray, she shook his hand again. “I’m afraid that tomorrow morning I’m heading to London for several days.”

Weatherby smiled, revealing perfect, even white teeth that had to have benefited from years of the very best dentistry. “Then it would seem that fate is crossing our paths, Ms. Massen, since my company’s head office is in London, as well, and I would greatly enjoy the opportunity to see you again and continue this conversation.” He offered her a card, a thin sheet of clear, flexible plastic with his name and contact information holo-graphically imprinted on it.

Kate took it and tucked it into her beaded clutch purse. “I’ll have to look at my schedule and see what might be arranged, but I cannot promise anything.” She looked around for the man she had seen earlier, but he was nowhere in sight. However, a stunning woman with sleek black hair, flawless olive skin and dressed in a shimmering silver evening gown walked toward Kate, leaving turning heads of both men and women in her wake. From the corner of her eye, Kate noticed Weatherby stiffen as she approached.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but are you Donna Massen, with the U.S. State Department?” The newcomer was British, as well, her contralto voice making Weatherby’s honeyed tones sound like those of a rough East Ender.

“I am,” Kate replied.

“I have a message for you.” The woman, whose face would have looked perfectly at home on the covers of the highest fashion magazines, turned to Kate’s companion. “If you’ll excuse us, Terrence.”

The PMC representative cleared his throat as if he had just remembered how to breathe. “Of course, Samantha. You’re looking well.”

The barest smile flickered across the woman’s face. “And you, as well. This way, Ms. Massen, if you please.” The willowy woman, several inches taller than Kate, led her through the crowd, leaving Weatherby to head to the bar.

Kate regarded her new escort with curiosity. “Professional acquaintance?”

The woman who had extricated Kate was Samantha Rhys-Jones, the head of Room 59’s UK division. “I knew Terrence back in his Royal Army days, before he retired, figuring there was more money in private security. When his own business failed, he must have signed on with Mercury. So, what were you two talking about?”

“Oh, dinner in London, among other things. Why, is there anything I should know about him?”

Samantha turned her head to regard her superior. “He claims to be decent in bed, if that’s what you’re after. I wouldn’t know—the last time our paths had crossed, he’d expressed interest, until I rebuffed him—rather forcefully.”

“I hope you didn’t leave any permanent damage.” Kate looked back to Weatherby, who had just tossed his drink back and was signaling for another.

“Only if you count his pride, I suppose.” Samantha turned her laser-sharp, brown-eyed gaze on Kate. “You can’t be serious about him.”

“Of course not. But I’ll keep track of him myself if I have to. Apparently they’re headquartered in London. But I doubt anything will come of it, so thanks for getting me out of there.”

“It wasn’t a ploy—I really do have a message for you.” Samantha snared two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray with elegant ease. “A Midnight Team operation went down in South London approximately twenty-six minutes ago. Unfortunately, the targets were not eliminated as planned—the team encountered another hit team on-site and had to engage them instead.”

“Another team? What was the outcome?” Kate asked.

“The main targets were terminated before or as our team arrived, as far as we can tell, but the other shooters got away. One of our operatives was taken out, as well. We’re still trying to determine what happened.”

Kate’s mouth tightened. “South London, you said?” Off the other woman’s nod, she continued. “I assume you’re going back to head the investigation?”

Samantha nodded. “I took the liberty of booking us both on a ten-thirty flight this evening. You’ll have just enough time to pack, but as for rest—”

Kate held up her hand. “Don’t worry about it—an airplane seat is practically like a second home to me. Just let me update Jake, and I’ll have him meet us there.” She scratched the nape of her neck. “Besides, it will be like heaven to take this damn wig off anyway.”

3

David slowed as he approached the edge of the building, his enhanced hearing picking up both the noises of his quarry and their conversation as they ran.

“What the hell was that? We’re lucky we only lost three guys to whoever those guys were, and then you go and pull a goddamn stupid stunt like that? It’s bad enough I have to report this to HQ, and I’m seriously considering bringing you up on insubordination charges once we get back—”

“Jesus, would you put a sock in it, you sound like my grandmother. They were just as surprised as we were. They got lucky is all. Besides, they had some nuts going head-to-head with us. And as for our deaders, well, I never liked them all that much anyway. Besides, we got the job done—”

“Not all of it, jackass. In case you’d forgotten, she’s still alive, which makes this even worse—”

They missed someone? David crouched at the roof’s edge and listened as the two arguing men clattered down the stairs of the fire escape and hit the alley. A soft beeping indicated that his superior was trying to contact him, but David ignored the insistent tone, trying to hear more. As soon as they were on the street, he swung over the side and followed them, his HK USP Tactical .45-caliber pistol out. He stepped carefully to minimize any noise.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll find her. That little bitch is crappin’ her pants and on the run. We’ll take her down in no time.”

“Says the guy who can barely keep his own e-mail account open. Don’t forget, she’s a hacker, and a damn good one, if she and her brother really got what we wanted. That fuckin’ prick, trying to jack up the price on us—you should have seen the look on his face just before I double-tapped him. It was almost worth all this trouble….” The first man’s voice trailed off.

David was coming down the first-floor steps when he heard an engine turn over. Looking down the narrow, grimy alleyway, he saw the headlights of a boxy SUV flare to life.

Leveling his pistol, David stepped to the end of the first-floor fire-escape landing and aimed at the driver’s side of the windshield. The Range Rover sped forward just as he fired three shots. A trio of pockmarks appeared in the glass, but it didn’t break as he had expected. Instead the SUV zoomed forward to pass below him.

Shoving his pistol into its holster, David grabbed the railing with both hands and vaulted over the side, tucking his feet under him to break his fall when he landed on the moving vehicle. He had practiced the maneuver during his Midnight Team training dozens of times, and pulled it off flawlessly, landing on the metal roof with a thud. As soon as he hit, he dropped to his knees. The built-in pads on his armor easily absorbed the impact as he grabbed on to the sides of the vehicle. The roof was more solid than he had expected, and he realized that it was armored, as well. If they can’t shoot me, then they’ll have to come out and get me.

The Range Rover picked up speed as it shot out of the alley, swerving in a hard right turn onto Wyvil Road—away from the rest of David’s team. He opened a channel to his leader. “M-One, this is M-Two. I’m tracking the hostiles, who are heading west on Wyvil—” David braced himself as the SUV ran over the curb and shot onto a larger avenue, heading north. “Make that north on Wandsworth Road.”

“So nice of you to report in, M-Two. I’ve got you on our tracker—are you on the roof of the target vehicle?” M-One asked angrily.

“Affirmative—” David broke off as a man popped up from the passenger-side window, aiming a silenced pistol at him. Without time to draw his own weapon, he lunged toward the man and grabbed the gun just as it went off. The bullet disappeared into the night air. Holding the weapon away from him with one hand, David tried to maintain a grip on the roof with his other, but couldn’t do both at the same time. The pistol slowly inched back down toward his head, the other man using his superior leverage with both hands to force it against his helmet. David let go of the roof and grabbed the man’s other arm, but his opponent twisted out over the street, pulling David’s upper body off the roof. Feeling himself slipping further, David lashed out with his left arm, grabbing the shooter’s shoulder and pulling him down with him as he slid precariously close to the road.

“Whoa!” The man leaned back as David’s weight forced him half out of the window. Dropping his pistol, he grabbed the door frame with one hand while trying to remove David’s hand with the other. The driver yelled something, but David couldn’t make it out. He tried to grab the window frame, as well, but the other man knocked his hand away, then clamped on to his fingers and pried them from his own black-suited shoulder. David tried to hold on, but felt each digit being loosened one at a time. He flailed frantically with his other hand, stealing a glance at the rough London pavement flashing by below, and not wanting to get any closer than he already was.

Before he could regain his grip on the other man, David’s hand was torn away, and he flew from the Range Rover as it took another right turn. He landed on the street with a breath-stealing impact, rolling, bouncing and skidding to a halt at the side of the road. He had just begun to clear the stars from his eyes and get some air back into his lungs when a tire screeched to a stop only inches from his head. He heard doors popping open above him, and then strong hands were under his arms, hoisting him to his feet.

“Let’s go, tough guy, you already fucked up the op enough, don’t you think?” David caught M-Four’s mocking words as he was unceremoniously stuffed into the back corner of the van, right next to the dead body they’d hauled back. Everyone else was in position. M-One was in the driver’s seat, and hadn’t even taken his eyes off the road as they’d collected David. But as David examined his battered body, he met the team leader’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and got a very clear message—we’ll discuss this later. Beside M-One, looking back with a concerned expression on her face, was Tara. M-Four, the loudmouth, had removed his MASC to reveal a lean, fox-faced man with a shock of ginger hair and a smattering of freckles.

Their final member, M-Five, rose from his position at the communication console to tend to David. “M-Four, take over here,” he said.

The other man did so with a contemptuous snort. “Sure, make sure the hard charger hasn’t hurt himself any more.”

“M-Four, that’s enough.” M-One’s voice was as calm as if he was ordering dinner, but it commanded immediate respect from the rest. “Monitor the police channels. It’s bad enough we’re exposed like this, but we might as well follow through now. Coming up on South Lambeth Road. M-Three, watch for cross traffic, particularly cops.”

The windshield was blocked out by the dark face of M-Five bending over him. “Saw you take that flyer off the SUV. Ballsiest move I’ve seen in a long time, but none too bright.” The tall South African undid the clasps on David’s body armor as he spoke. “Take your gear off and let’s get a look at you.”

The van swayed as M-Five worked, and everyone heard the blast of car horns outside. “Too close,” M-One commented. “Now heading east on Fentiman Road. They’ll either try to lose us in the neighborhood streets, or else take their chances on Clapham—”

“Watch your left!” Tara pointed, and the van jogged to the right just in time to avoid a truck that filled the windshield, passing close enough to knock the flexible side mirror out of alignment.

“Thanks. Passing Meadow Road. They’re heading to Clapham for sure.”

M-Five ran his hands along David’s ribs, pressing gently and listening for any exclamation of pain or indrawn breath. Although his joints ached from the drubbing they’d taken during his roll on the street, David said he felt fine overall. “That Dragon Skin is some tough stuff.”

“Yeah, and the MASC did its job, as well.” M-Five shone a light into each of David’s eyes. “I don’t see any immediate signs of a concussion, but I’m gonna keep you under watch for the next twenty-four hours,” he said.

M-Four spoke up from the console, shoving earphones off his head. “The bobbies are cordoning off Wyvil Road at both ends, and expanding their net to include the surrounding blocks. Due to reports of explosions in the house, a bomb squad is being called in. Looks like we got out just in time.”

“Good. The more time they spend there, the less time they have to look for us.” M-One glanced both ways as they sped toward a busy intersection. “We’re coming up to Clapham, folks, so hang on—this next bit’s liable to get bumpy.”

David had shrugged off the team medic’s attentions and sat up just in time to see them roar into the intersection. Still hard on the SUV’s tail, the van shot out into the main thoroughfare, forcing cars to screech to a stop on both sides of them and attracting much more attention than anyone inside was comfortable with.

“Damn it, we’ve got company,” Tara said.

David looked out the one-way rear window to see a motorcycle officer hit his lights and siren and give chase.

“Can’t be helped now. If we’re blocked for any reason, you all know what to do,” M-One said.

Since Midnight Teams were brought in only as a final resort for specific missions, they weren’t supposed to attract attention in any way, even in what would nominally be a friendly country. If they were stranded, their orders were to escape and evade capture by any means necessary, up to and including deadly force. David grimaced as he realized what this chase meant—the longer it went on, the higher the risk of their being caught, and that simply couldn’t happen. And if I hadn’t gone racing into it, we might have kept this more low profile—the way we’re supposed to operate, he admonished himself.

“Looks like we’ve got them.” M-One alternated between keeping an eye on the SUV and watching the motorcycle officer slowly gain behind them. “The traffic on Clapham is slower than usual—must be something blocking the road ahead.”

The van slowed just enough to keep ahead of the patrolman. M-Four looked up from the radio console, headphones half on his head. “If we don’t do something soon, he’s gonna call in reinforcements, assuming he hasn’t already.”

The van’s speed decreased further. “As long as it’s not the Specialist Crime Directorate, we should be all right. If the SCD shows up, we disappear. Almost there…brace yourselves!” M-One slammed on the van’s brakes, making it skid to a stop. The pursuing motorcyclist, caught off guard, was unable to stop in time and slammed into the van’s rear door hard enough to send the rider sailing over the handlebars and thump into the door himself. He fell to the street, his bike toppling on top of him.

“Damn, that had to hurt.” David turned his attention forward again, where M-One was issuing orders. Ahead, he saw a large truck that had apparently jackknifed in the road, blocking both lanes of traffic on their side, and slowing the cars and motorbikes going in the opposite direction. Although yellow-vested officers were directing traffic, it seemed that they hadn’t been told about or noticed the slow-speed chase was approaching them.

“All right, we’re coming to a stop. On my command, Team Two will exit the side door and approach the SUV, pistols out but covered. Try to take them alive if possible, but defend yourselves and the civilians. Okay, here we go—”

With a screech of rubber, the SUV suddenly lurched out of its lane, wheels spinning for purchase as it rose onto the sidewalk, clipping a light post and scattering sparse passersby in all directions.

“Son of a bitch!” M-One shouted.

The Range Rover barreled completely off the road and into Kennington Park, tearing up grass and dirt. M-One followed, edging onto the sidewalk and into the park, ignoring the whistle blasts of the London bobbies, who had definitely noticed this unusual activity.

With a wide-open space, the SUV opened up and accelerated away from the van, but M-One tried to stay with it as much as possible. A man leaned out of the SUV passenger’s window again and pointed a submachine gun at the pursuing van. M-One jinked the steering wheel back and forth, trying to break up their silhouette to present less of a target. Short bursts sprayed from the submachine gun, the slugs pinging against the van’s bullet-resistant glass and shattering one headlight.

“Everyone hold on!” M-One floored the accelerator, and the van sped forward, close enough to almost tap the bumper of the Range Rover. Suddenly the SUV swerved to the right and decelerated, causing the van to pull alongside. The driver slammed his vehicle into the van, making the higher-center-of-gravity vehicle slew to the side, with everyone aboard swaying and grabbing at the sides to keep their seats.

“Damn it, we’re in a clear area—can’t we take them out?” M-Four asked.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do, but they got the idea first.” M-One had wrestled the van back under control, narrowly avoiding a tree as they raced through the darkened park. Fortunately there was hardly anyone out at this time of night, just a few couples who gave the fast-moving vehicles a wide berth.

“If you’re gonna do something, now’s the time, before they get back on the roads!” David said.

“I’m open to suggestions.” M-One grunted as he tried to catch up with their target again. “We’re not fast enough to catch them, and trying to spin them only resulted in our nose getting slapped.”

David shook his head. “Can’t shoot them down, either. That windshield shrugged off my .45s like nothing. Tires are probably run-flat, too.”

“We’re running out of space and time, people.” M-One swerved to avoid another of the many trees dotting the park, his night vision glowing green in the darkness. The small dot of light reflecting off the windshield gave David an idea.

“Are they running lights out, too?”

“Yeah.” Tara glanced back. “What’re you thinking?”

David grabbed a minigrenade, matched it with a barrel adapter and inserted it into the muzzle of his gun. “If we can’t bull them over with brute force, we can dazzle them with brilliance.” Staying on his knees, he moved to the van’s sliding side door. “Stabilize me.”

M-Five’s eyes widened in recognition as he grasped what David was up to, and he grabbed his teammate’s web harness to secure him.

“Open the door, M-One.”

The night air rushed in as the side door slowly rolled back. “You’re clear ahead, but you’ve only got a hundred meters—don’t hit anything but the ground,” M-One said.

“Affirmative.” David reset the grenade’s fuse and eyeballed the range between the two rocking, swaying vehicles as best as he could. The fence delineating the outer perimeter of the park rushed at them. “Fire in the hole!” Squeezing the trigger, he watched the explosive arc over the SUV and disappear into the darkness. It came down almost where he wanted—a few yards in front of the speeding Range Rover. At the last second, David shielded his eyes and turned away.

Even so, he caught the flash of the detonating flare grenade, its burst of brilliant phosphorus lighting up the open area like a miniwhite sun. David stared at the ground near the SUV, hearing its engine whine and feeling dirt spatter on his arms and chest as their quarry spun out of control, crossing in front of the Midnight Team’s van. With a loud crash, they caromed off a large tree and into a small wood-sided building that looked as if it might hold groundskeeping equipment. The SUV broke through the front wall in a splintering crash of wood and glass, coming to a halt wedged firmly in the middle of the structure.

M-One braked the van to a stop about twenty yards away. “Team One, take the right. Team Two go left.” He grabbed his XM110 and slid out the driver’s-side window. “I’ll cover. Move out—you’ve got twenty seconds to apprehend them.”

The four other Midnight Team members hit the ground running, submachine guns out and ready. David and Tara used the century-old trees as cover, leapfrogging toward their objective. There was no movement or sound from the ruined building.

When they were about five yards away, David hailed the other team. “Team One in position.”

“Team Two in position.”

“M-One in position. Execute.”

David and Tara rose as one and took a step toward the SUV when it burst into flames, spraying the remains of its shattered windows everywhere. David immediately ducked back down as the shock wave of the explosion washed over him.

“You got anything on scope?” he asked Tara, who was scanning the surrounding area with her MASC.

“Negative.”

“How about you, Team Two?”

“If they got by us, they were freakin’ invisible,” M-Four replied.

“All teams, fall back to the van.” David heard the two-tone scream of the approaching British police sirens. “We’re leaving,” M-One ordered.

Still alert in case their opponents were crazy enough to double back, David and Tara skirted the trees as they headed to the van. Jumping aboard, M-One closed the doors and drove out the back way, turning left onto the road that bordered the north side of the park and driving away casually as the rest of the team members removed their armor and changed into civilian clothes.

Driving until they well away from the park, M-One pulled into the parking lot of a car-washing facility and looked around. “M-Four, open that garage door.”

David ignored the dark stare as M-Four, a guy named Robert Muldowney, shoved past him on his way out. Instead, he worked his way up to the space between the two front seats. “Sir?”

“Yes?” M-One’s eyes never left the nearby road.

“The other team, they hadn’t finished their job when they left.”

That remark earned him a raised eyebrow. “Explain.”

“When I followed them—” Against orders, David thought but didn’t say “—I overheard them talking about a woman, and how she had escaped the ambush. One of the men said something about if she got what they wanted. She was some kind of computer hacker—”

The rattle of metal against metal interrupted him as M-Four pushed the garage door up, revealing a large interior with hoses and other cleaning equipment. M-One drove inside. “Soap it down and get every scrap of paint off,” he ordered.

David scrambled outside and grabbed a wand as M-Four turned the washing system on. As soon as the soapy water hit the van’s dark gray paint, it began to flake and slough off in large sheets, dissolving into a sludgy mess that dribbled toward the drain. Underneath was a pristine white coat. Inside, M-One hit a button, and the license plate rotated to a completely new number.

David smiled, humming the James Bond theme under his breath. Sometimes the old ways are still the best ways, he thought. He examined the fender damage caused by the SUV’s graze, making sure that no paint traces from the other vehicle had been left over in the wash. Five minutes later, they had completely transformed the van. He also knew they wouldn’t show up on any street cameras, since M-One had activated a scrambler that would knock out any recording devices in a one-block radius. Anyone using a digital camera at the time was out of luck.

Their leader pulled the van back out, and David and M-Four cleaned up, making sure that all of the paint was washed down the drain, and leaving the tools exactly where they had found them. M-Four closed and locked the door.

Tara beat David back to the side door. “M-One wants to see you up front.”

“Yeah, time to face the music. Sorry to make you lose your seat.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She held up a funny-looking piece of foam with what looked like a black piece of plastic inside. “I need to play with this at the console anyway. Recovered it from outside the house—figured the other team put it there for surveillance.”

“Nice going, rook—ah, M-Three.” David flushed, all too aware that he hadn’t been nearly as proficient in executing the mission as their newest teammate. He clapped her on the shoulder and headed up to the front of the van.

“Now that we’re undercover again—” M-One’s gray eyes flashed at David, letting the other man know he was still accountable for the breach of orders earlier “tell me everything you heard—every single word.”

4

The woman shivered in the chill evening air as she watched the bustling activity around Wyvil Road. The entire area had been secured by police tape, with the street blocked off at both ends by Metropolitan Police Service vehicles and uniformed, armed officers bustling everywhere. Beyond the cordon, media vans swarmed, with perfectly pressed and coiffed reporters jockeying for the best shots and interviews as they scrambled to get on the air. The woman made sure to avoid the roving cameras at all costs.

For the moment, she was safe enough among the crowd of people peering and peeking, everyday, ordinary folk looking for a bit of excitement, their voices overlapping as they tried to find out what was going on:

“Do you know what happened?”

“Probably a drug deal gone wrong. Wankers most likely lit each other up….”

“I saw some of the lodgers around…they seemed like nice enough people….”

“Dear God, what is that smell? Someone been trudging around in the sewers?”

At that last bit, she moved a couple meters away, all too aware that she was the one most likely causing the odor the last person had complained about. Even as she stood there, watching the chaotic scene, a part of her mind repeated that she needed to move, needed to get the hell out of there, just casually turn around and walk away, another spectator who had grown bored with watching the police and was heading for home. But she stayed, waiting to see the proof with her own eyes.

Waiting for the bodies to be removed from the scene.

It had seemed like only moments ago—had it really been an hour?—when she had finished with Harry and sent him on his errand, hiding the few cigarettes left in the pack because, well, by the time he got back, she’d be gone from his life forever.

As soon as she’d heard the front door close, Marlene had slipped out of the bed, grabbed her clothes and run to the bathroom, cleaning up and getting dressed in under three minutes. Pulling her long hair back in a ponytail, she had grabbed her laptop and case, trotted to the door and opened it to reveal her brother about to knock, an impish grin on his face as he sniffed the air.

“You two getting cozy in here?”

“Don’t be gross. Are we done?”

He held up a matching, soft-sided computer case and patted his front jeans pocket. “I finished the final run downstairs while you were—taking care of business. We’re out of here.” He nudged her as they walked to the stairs. “Next time we do a run like this, we need to find a group with a hot woman as the leader. Maybe a blonde.”

“I’ll be sure to put that on my list. Now come on.” She had been about to put her foot on the first step when she heard a noise from downstairs—a noise that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Who’s up at this hour? she wondered. None of the cell members should have been moving around—the sedative she had added to their dinner of vegetarian curry would have ensured that. And Harry had been taken care of by her personally. So who’s left?

“What’s the holdup?” Ray peered around her, trying to see into the gloom of the ground floor.

“I heard something—like a footstep,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Probably just the crappy old house settling. Here—” he pressed the flash drive into her hand “—I’ll go have a look. Hang back until I call you.”

She waited on the landing as he crept down the stairs. He had only taken a few steps when the noise sounded again, a bit louder this time. “Hey, who’s down there? Gabe? Aron?”

Marlene peered around him, trying to see in the dimness, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She wanted to call Ray back up, tell him not to go down there, but before she could, a black-clad arm extended out from the archway leading to the back hall, with something even darker extending from its fist.

The sneeze of the silenced pistol made her choke on her warning. The gun coughed again, making Ray gasp as each bullet impacted his body. He sagged, clutching the railing, then slid down the rest of the staircase to land in a messy heap on the floor. The arm pointed down at his face, and fired the pistol twice more.

Marlene clapped her hands over her face to keep from screaming. She was frozen with terror, unable to comprehend what she had just seen. The arm moved forward, with a night-clad figure materializing in the dim hallway below her, his face covered in a strange mask with large, eerie goggles over his eyes. The shooter checked her brother’s body, then looked up the stairway as he lifted one foot to begin the climb. The motion shocked the breath from her body, but then the strange, masked head looked down the hall as it and Marlene heard the same noise—a key turning in the lock of the front door.

Leading with the pistol, the intruder stalked down the hallway. Only when he was out of sight did Marlene move, creeping back to the door without making a sound and slipping into the bedroom. After the door was closed and locked, she remembered at last to suck in a breath. She heard a strange, muffled thump from downstairs, and realized what it probably was—Harry had just been shot.

Oh, my god. Marlene went to the window overlooking the street and moved the heavy, dusty curtain back to peek out the window, hearing footsteps pound up the front steps.

The only thought in her mind now was escape. She had no doubt that Ray was dead—his killer was too much of a pro to not make sure of it. She looked around, frantically searching for and discarding options. The windows had been painted shut long ago, and certain death waited outside the door. Her gaze settled on the laundry chute, flashing back to a playful wrestling match Harry had had with her a few days ago as he had threatened to stuff her down it. At the time, it had been in jest, but now it was her only way out. She opened the trapdoor and peered into the square black hole. No one used it anymore, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t blocked by anything. At least she hoped it wasn’t. The only thing worse than facing the killers out there would be having them find her, trapped and helpless, halfway down.

Hopping up onto the ledge, she inserted her legs into the chute and braced herself against the sides, clutching at the trapdoor to make sure it closed after her. Taking a deep breath, she let go, holding the padded laptop case above her head. The fall was claustrophobic and brief—total blackness for a moment, and then she landed in a pile of stiff, moldy sheets she and her brother had seen the last time they had been down in the basement.

Rolling out, she stood and threw the cloth to one side, wiping away grime as she made sure that the laptop case was still secure, then slung it over her shoulder. “So it did work.” She looked up at the square, then jerked back as she heard more firearms going off on the floor above her. Holes suddenly punched through the side of the chute, raining plaster and pieces of wood down on her. Time to get the hell out of here, she thought as she heard a deafening bang from upstairs.

Running to the opposite corner of the basement, brushing webs out of her face—the spiders are just as bad over here as in the States—she pushed aside a grubby, damp tarpaulin, revealing an old, wet and stained manhole cover, left over from one of the innumerable sewer updates during the past century. Taking a small halogen headlamp from a pocket on the computer case, Marlene levered the cover off, nearly wrenching her arms out of their sockets, and disappeared into the small, dank tunnel below, making sure to pull the cover back over the hole before she left.

She splashed through the muck as fast as she dared, the small light only illuminating a few yards ahead of her. The air was hot and moist, and she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. Sounds of night creatures were all around her, with the squeaking and scurrying of rats through the muck, and the buzz of the strange insects that made their home in the filthy surroundings. Although she had watched her brother get gunned down without a sound, she nearly lost it when a large, multilegged insect dropped onto her head. Brushing it off with a stifled scream, she hurled it against the wall and kept moving.

Marlene pushed aside all other thoughts, like whether or not the masked killers were coming after her, and concentrated on the twists and turns in the tunnel that would take her to her ultimate destination and out of this hellhole. Only once did she pause, at an intersection that led to another, cleaner tunnel leading off to the north-northwest that she and Ray had used often during the past few weeks. Brushing away tears, she turned down the smaller, grimier tunnel that led to the northeast.

After several more minutes of trudging through the ankle-deep sludgy water, she saw her goal—a street drain in a seldom-used alley behind an abandoned Pakistani take-away restaurant. She and Ray had made sure the grate could be opened the previous week. Trying to hold back her sobs, she reached the iron grating and shoved it up and out of the way, set the computer case on the ground, then hauled herself up. She gulped in the stale, fried-food smell of the restaurant Dumpster nearby as if it was fresh country air. After replacing the grate, she washed her feet off as best as she could in a nearby puddle of water, but was still all too aware of the stench she had picked up on her journey.

The first thing was to change her appearance. Scanning the street of the run-down neighborhood, she spotted what she needed at the corner—a youth hostel next to a twenty-four-hour shop providing supplies for weary travelers. A quick visit to the latter got her a change of clothes, and payment for a common room ensured the use of a bathroom with a toilet stall for some privacy. Marlene got out her Swiss Army knife, opened the scissors attachment and went to work.

Ten minutes later, her long hair had been cut to a short, spiky bob, and she was dressed in clothes that belonged on the body of a woman a decade younger than her, but were suitable for today’s London—striped black-and-white leggings under a denim miniskirt, an off-the-shoulder, tight-fitting T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt to go over the top of that. A ball cap completed her disguise, very useful for keeping her face out of sight of the ever-present cameras. The only thing they couldn’t replace were her shoes, so she rinsed them out in the dirty sink and put them back on, doing her best to ignore the squelching noises they made with each step.

After leaving the hostel, her initial thought was to get to the Tube and figure out a way out of the city at least, and the country if possible. But her steps had led her back to the house on Wyvil Road, and now she smothered a gasp as two white-sheeted forms were carried out on stretchers to waiting ambulances. They were followed by two more, then two more.

Marlene knew that no one she cared about had survived the ambush. Bye, Ray. Bye, Harry. She patted the pocket of her skirt, which held the flash drive that her brother had given her, and walked away from the commotion down the fog-shrouded street.

5

In the backseat of a limousine, Kate resisted the urge to add drops to her parched eyes, blinking to remoisten them. Although the trip from Dublin to London had only taken a little over an hour, the warm, dry air at the airport and on the plane, not to mention the accelerated pace at which she had left her hotel and raced to make the flight, had left her more tired than she cared to admit.

Next to her, Samantha looked flawless, as usual. Kate resisted the urge to sneak disdainful looks at her out of the corner of her eye—the unflappable Brit wouldn’t even notice, and it would only make her feel more unkempt. Damn jet lag, she thought. I should have known catching the red-eye over the pond wouldn’t help me all that much.

Even worse, the man sitting across from her also looked disturbingly bright-eyed and alert at this late hour. Still clad in the tuxedo he had worn to the party, Jacob Marrs was her Room 59–assigned bodyguard. He kept an eye on her pretty much anytime she left the house. At first, Kate had protested the very idea, stating that since the agency she worked for was so ultrasecret, who would even know that she worked for them or what she did? The board members of the IIA had insisted, however, and now she could hardly imagine a time when Jake’s solid, imposing presence hadn’t been nearby. Even now, with the gorgeous Samantha hardly an arm’s length away, he gave her no more attention than he would any other person who wasn’t a threat on his radar. He had checked their driver’s identity six ways from Sunday, scanned the limousine for bugs, bombs and anything else out of the ordinary, and only when he had been satisfied had he let the two women get in and made the signal for them to be on their way. Once on the relatively quiet city streets, his alertness hadn’t wavered for an instant, as he constantly surveyed the areas they passed through, watching for the slightest anomaly or anything that seemed out of place.

Without looking up from her PDA, Kate decided to test him. “How did marking Mr. Weatherby’s car go?”

“The car was marked within ten minutes of your giving me the signal, and an operative is watching his every move as we speak. If there is no overt activity on his part that is out of the ordinary in the next twenty-four hours, standard operating procedure will reduce surveillance to intermittent unless otherwise ordered.” His eyes flicked to hers for a second before resuming his sweep. “I would have searched his car more thoroughly, but I had to make sure to keep you in sight before you left the party.”

Samantha nodded in approval. “You weren’t kidding when you said he was good.”

“Better than good.” Kate met his gaze and flashed a brief smile.

Jake didn’t stop his study of their surroundings as he spoke. “Don’t get the chance to do a lot of fieldwork, other than making sure Kate can do her job without interference, so it’s a nice change of pace to stretch my legs and get my hands dirty, so to speak. Besides, while I can’t speak for her, six months of accompanying either Kate or Mindy on shopping trips or runs to the grocery store can make a person long for something a bit more—exciting—to break the routine.”

“Spoken like a true man of action.” Samantha leaned forward. “I’ve perused your dossier, Mr. Marrs—it’s quite impressive. If there’s time while you’re here—and with Kate’s permission, of course—I wouldn’t mind utilizing your extensive training with some of my field agents. I’d imagine you would have a lot to teach them, particularly in the area of executive protection.”

Jake rubbed his chin. “Well, the Room 59 training is pretty extensive, but I might be able give them a few specialized pointers. Let me know if you had any specific areas in mind, and once we’re settled into the op base—and if I’m not needed elsewhere—I’ll see what I can do.”

The chirp of a satellite phone interrupted the conversation, and Samantha reached for hers and flipped it open. “Excuse me. Hello?”

She listened for a moment. “Yes…yes, I had been informed of the situation as of two hours ago…. Actually, our agency director from the States is sitting next to me at the moment…. Yes, I think that would be best…. Let me conference my phone to her computer, and you can brief us all directly. If I may?” Samantha nodded at Kate’s slim laptop.

“Of course, I’ve already activated the Bluetooth program, so you shouldn’t have any problem,” Kate said.

Samantha plugged in, and moments later, she, Kate and Jacob all heard the ambient noises and breathing from the caller. Samantha cleared her throat. “Go ahead, M-One.”

The man on the other end wasted no time. “Thank you, Directors. Initial surveillance on target for Operation Firewall commenced at 1620 hours, using the data gained by our operative who had infiltrated the group. Subjects were observed and logged for the next six hours and ten minutes, noting numbers, unusual activity, et cetera. The file of surveillance activity is being uploaded to our network for review as I speak. At 2030 hours, Team Two members noticed a pair of unfamiliar men entering the back of the house, and soon afterward, gunfire was seen in the location through thermal imaging. After attempting to alert the operative inside, both teams converged on the location and engaged the hostiles to attempt to draw them away from terminating the subjects. Although my team performed their objective with exemplary ability, killing two of the hostiles, all but one of the subjects were killed before the teams were able to get to them. Remaining hostiles were sighted on the roof, and the teams were ordered to pursue if possible. One member, at considerable risk to himself, tried to stop the hostiles, and learned that they were still searching for the surviving subject, who had apparently escaped the house through unknown means. After recovering one of the hostile’s bodies, we pursued the survivors through the city, but lost them at Kennington Park. However, they were on foot when they escaped. We have also recovered a surveillance device that the hostiles used, and are analyzing it for data. That file has also been uploaded for analysis.”

“What was your impression of the hostile force?” Kate asked.

“A professional group, they assaulted the location from two areas to maximize surprise, and were able to do it practically under our very noses. Their operation was quick, well-timed and ruthless. We did not have any advance notice, even from our inside operative, so whatever surveillance they had done on the location had been prior to our watch. They were definitely ex-military, and they were well armed with state-of-the-art submachine guns, flash-bang grenades and optical technology that almost rivaled our own. We’ll provide a full report once we’ve had the chance to examine the body before forensics.”

“Why did you decide to pursue the unknown hostiles when they left the target area?” Samantha’s tone wasn’t accusatory, just inquiring.

“The presence of the hostiles, along with their tactics and armament, suggested that they were either a unit from another intelligence agency or a private group hired to eliminate the subjects for a yet-unknown reason. I made the decision to attempt to follow and apprehend to learn what their true motives were, and if possible, whom they worked for if they were a government unit, or who hired them if they were private operators.”

“So one subject is still alive and somewhere in the city, correct?” Kate asked.

“To the best of our knowledge, that is correct. However, we cannot confirm that information at this time.”

Kate had already brought up a London street map on her laptop. “Perhaps when we reach the site, we’ll be able to discern what might have happened. Based on your observations, why do you think the other team was there?” she asked.

“While it may have been a simple sweep and termination, M-Two overheard two of the hostiles talking, and believes that they need to recover something from the surviving subject. What that is, however, we do not know at this time. What are your orders?”

Kate exchanged glances with Samantha. “We’ll need to alert all operatives in the city and surrounding area to be on the lookout for this subject, as soon as we figure out exactly who it is. Matching the bodies with the live count should give us a face, if not a name,” Kate said.

The beautiful Brit nodded. “If we’re going to be going up against another strike team, it may be wise to keep the Midnight Team on active status for the time being. Since they’ve already come up against these people, they would know what to expect and be better prepared to stop them if they’re encountered again,” Samantha said.

Kate noticed Jake’s raised eyebrow at this idea, but didn’t address it. “M-One.”

“Ma’am?”

“Take your team to the nearest safehouse and prepare your report. Once there, contact Primary, and a forensic team will meet you there and go over what you’ve collected.”

“Affirmative. M-Team out.” The spec-ops leader cut the connection.

Samantha took her phone back. “And excellent timing, since we’ve just arrived.”

Kate glanced out the window to see a London street a few blocks from the Thames that ordinarily would have looked like any other lane, except for the profusion of police cars and other unmarked cars she figured were from MI-5, the government department pledged to protect the United Kingdom from external threats. A few onlookers still milled around, but there didn’t seem to be much of a crowd now, which was just the way Kate liked it. A few diehard media vans were parked down the street, and she made a note to keep an eye on them in case they decided to come too close.

Samantha had the limousine drop them off about two blocks away, and Kate drew up alongside the other woman as they walked down the sidewalk toward the house on Wyvil Road. “How much trouble do you think we’ll have getting on-site?”

“It depends—this will be under MI-5 jurisdiction, and while I have good relations with anyone in the field, it has been a while. Let’s see who’s in charge and what the situation is.”

This is always the tricky part, Kate mused as they approached the crime scene. Room 59 had incredibly broad jurisdictional powers, granted by a consortium of allied nations around the planet to fight any and all threats to the free world. At the same time, however, they had been created to operate behind the scenes, taking care of matters deemed too sensitive for the public intelligence agencies to handle. As such, there were many times when Room 59 operatives would be operating in a country without even advising the home agencies, not only for plausible deniability, but also due to the fact that negotiating every layer of bureaucratic oversight and permission took time, often a luxury the operative didn’t have. Because of this, it was always best to work below the radar whenever possible—except when a team found itself in the middle of a high-profile firefight, like earlier this evening. Then Room 59 operatives did what Kate and Samantha were about to do—walk in and see what they could find out. But before that…

“Jake?” Kate asked.

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you hang back even farther and see if you can find out anything around the back. Above all—”

“Don’t get caught. Yes, I do remember the drill, thanks. Page me if you need anything.” The tall, ex-army man slowed down, his black tuxedo jacket helping him fade into the shadows between the streetlights. When Kate glanced back a moment later, he had disappeared.

Kate adjusted her earpiece just as Samantha got the attention of the ranking MI-5 agent in charge, a craggy-faced, brown-bearded bear of a man in a tailored suit.

“I’m Officer Kryden. Can I help you?”

Samantha showed her cover identification. “Samantha Rhys-Jones, consultant with MI-6. I understand that you might have information concerning a known terrorist suspect involved in the incident here?”

“We’re still sorting through everything to make sense of what happened. What’s the sister service’s interest, if I may?” Kryden asked, employing the casual name for MI-6.

“One of the tenants living here was involved in a smuggling ring that may have trafficked in biological weapons, including bringing them inside the country.”

Instead of replying, his searching gaze fell on Kate. “And you are?”

Kate quickly produced her own identification. “Donna Massen, U.S. State Department. I’m here primarily in an observer capacity. However, we believe that one or two of the tenants may have been U.S. citizens.” Kate touched a hand to the back of her head, thankful she had decided to maintain her disguise for the time being.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but as of right now, this scene has been classified for authorized personnel only. If this is part of an ongoing investigation with the sister service, then once I’ve verified it, I can discuss particulars with Ms. Rhys-Jones here only.”

“Of course, Officer. I appreciate your candor and understand the need for confidentiality. If you don’t mind, Ms. Rhys-Jones, I’ll just wait by the corner.” Just then an officer brought a piece of evidence to Kryden, who turned away to examine it. Kate caught Samantha’s arm and brushed her wig back, revealing the earpiece. Samantha nodded and unpinned her own hair, letting it fall and cover her ears—and her own inserted earpiece.

Kate turned and headed up the street, walking slowly, scanning the front of the house, which looked like a war zone amid what should have been the normally placid street. The left front window had been shattered, though there was little glass on the ground, indicating that someone had come in from outside. The main door, centered in the middle of the building, had also taken heavy damage, with several bullet holes in it. Adjusting her glasses, Kate took several pictures of the building, using the tiny camera built into her spectacles. She also got a picture of the MI-5 officer in charge. After all, one never could tell when it might come in handy. As she worked, Kate also kept an ear cocked on Samantha and Kryden a few yards away.

The wireless earpieces that the Room 59 directors wore had been modified by agency technicians to transmit over short distances without the aid of a designated cell phone, although adding one could extend the range significantly. With the appropriate hairstyle, they made excellent eavesdropping devices. Even so, Kate held her breath as she saw Kryden on his cell, talking and nodding. He hung up and turned back to Samantha, his voice as clear as if he was standing right next to Kate.

“Sorry about that. However, everything seems to be in order. Here’s what we know at present—”

Kate listened to the officer’s succinct presentation of what they figured had happened, which pretty much matched what the Midnight Team leader had told them—two separate teams of shooters converging on the house, killing everyone they’d found inside. A blood trail led out the back door to an alley down the street, where the police had found three .45-caliber shell casings, but no evidence of anyone being injured there. The department was tying this in to a car chase that terminated in Kennington Park, where one vehicle was destroyed, along with the groundskeeper’s lodge it had smashed into.

The MI-5 officers were looking at camera footage from various points around the area to get any kind of description of the parties or the vehicle that escaped released to the public. They also had the body of one of the shooters, and would be examining it as well. Kryden figured that the terror alert might be raised, since they had discovered what looked like biological weapons inside. “It’s a miracle none got released, what with all the destruction that went on in there—bloody war zone, looks like.”

“So it doesn’t look like any of the bioweapons were taken?” Samantha asked.

“Not that we can tell. Of course, it’s not like they left an itemized inventory sheet. But the room where they were storing it looked relatively untouched, compared to the rest of the place.”

“Would you happen to have pictures of the victims, both the tenants and the shooters? It’s possible that they may have connections outside the country, especially if biological warfare is involved. We’d like to cross-check any identification you find against our files, and see what we come up with.”

“Right, I can e-mail you photos of the faces and names, if that helps.”

“That would be splendid. Please keep me informed as to what you discover, and I’ll be sure to do the same.”

“Sure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish getting the scene processed,” Kryden said.

“Of course, thank you very much for your time, Officer. I’ll be in touch,” Samantha said. She shook his hand, then turned and walked back to Kate. “I assume you got all of that?”

Kate nodded. “So if the second team wasn’t after the bioterror weapons, why did they assault the place and kill everybody in the first place? And what part does our mysterious missing person play in all of this?”

“Good questions all. Come on, it’s a bit chilly to be standing around out here when we could be discussing this in the car. Where’s your shadow?”

Kate scanned the street, but didn’t see any sign of her bodyguard. “I sent him off to poke around out back, see what he might come up with. No doubt he was still able to keep an eye on me at the same time.”

“You’re absolutely right.” Jake materialized out of an alley next to them. “I didn’t find much. Your boys had both entryways sealed up tight—I expect they aren’t going to miss much.”

Samantha smiled. “I expect they won’t.”

“However, I’m afraid they aren’t going to find this.” He brought out a small, handkerchief-wrapped bundle from underneath his jacket. “I overheard one of the techs say the vehicle that had been parked in the alley had turned right onto Wandsworth, so I ambled down to see what I could find, and came up with this in a pile of garbage near the curb.”

He unwrapped enough of the object to reveal the slide and muzzle of a semiautomatic pistol. “It’s a Walther P-99, DAO model. At least two shells fired.”

“Well, let’s get it back to Primary and see if we can trace it.” Kate dialed a number on her cell as she got into the limousine. “I’ll rouse the troops and have them take a look at the London city surveillance system, particularly in this area. Time for everybody to go to work.”

6

Anthony Savage felt the weight of his surname pressing down on him as he led the remaining members of his team through the London streets, always making sure to keep them moving away from the cock-up that had occurred in Wyvil Road earlier that evening. Along the way, he barely resisted the overpowering urge to punch someone or something.

Who the fuck were those guys? They busted in like they owned the place and were there to kick everybody’s ass, no matter who you were. And that sniper? If Tommy hadn’t spotted him—and immediately become his primary target—they’d all be lying on that rooftop beside him. Our own surveillance didn’t spot dick. Where did they come from? And where the hell did Mags disappear to? She had to be inside when we came in—we saw her go in the door.

“Boss, we need to take a breather—his leg has started up again.” Behind him, the surviving two members of his team followed, Charlie’s face pale as he leaned on Liam, his free hand clamped on his thigh.

“Right, just let me procure transportation.” Anthony had already commandeered one car, driven them all several miles, then ditched it, not wanting to keep a stolen vehicle for any longer than necessary.

“Yeah, and try to make sure it’s a four-door this time, will ya? I thought we were gonna kill him getting in the last one,” Liam said.

“You just keep your goddamn eyes open.” Their team leader scanned the street, looking for an opportunity. He found it in a tan, five-year-old Volkswagon Eurovan with no alarm. Less than a minute later, they were cruising down the street toward their safehouse on the outskirts of the city.

Once they had pulled up to the curb of the small semidetached house on the south edge of Chelsea, Anthony dispatched Liam to get rid of the van, and helped his wounded teammate into the house.

“How you doin’?”

“I’ve been fuckin’ better, that’s for sure.” Charlie McCaplan groaned as he maneuvered himself across the step and into the tiny foyer. “I’ve been trying to figure out who the hell kicked us in the bollocks over there, ya know—keep my mind off the pain.”

Anthony helped him down the hallway to one of the small bedrooms. “Yeah? Come up with anything?”

“Fuck, no. They weren’t Brit intelligence—they would have announced themselves before bustin’ caps all over our asses. These guys were on the same mission we were—search and destroy. Lucky we came in when we did, or the whole mission would have been shot to hell even quicker. As it was, I expect we were lucky to come out of it with only the losses we did take. By rights, it could have been all of us.”

Anthony only partially suppressed his shudder at the thought—not at dying, but at the idea of not completing his mission. Since he’d started with the company four years earlier, he had gone out in the field at least a dozen times, and always had accomplished whatever had been asked of him. This was the first time that a mission he’d led had been a complete, unqualified failure, and that idea was already starting to gnaw on his innards. Anthony Savage hated failure, no matter what the reason for it, but he had bigger fish to fry instead of concentrating on what had gone wrong. There’d be time for mission evaluation later.

“Friction can be overcome through a variety of methods,” he muttered under his breath as he helped make Charlie comfortable and checked the hastily applied pressure bandage on his thigh.

“Eh…whazzat?”

“Nothing, mate. You just lie back and relax, and the extraction team’ll get you out of here and into a comfy private hospital bed quicker than you can blink. You need another hit?”

“Naw, I’ll be fine. You just requisition me a couple o’ pretty nurses while I take it easy, and everythin’ll be…just fine.”

“That’s my boy. Stay cool, and we’ll take care of you.” Anthony did care about the men under his command, and wanted to see them come out of each mission in one piece, and with no new holes, either. He strode out to the living room, taking out his cell phone. He went to the sofa and grabbed a large aluminum briefcase from the floor at its side and set it on the table. He hit speed dial, then concentrated on the case, flipping up its catches and opening it, revealing a small monitor, keypad and several switches and LED readouts. As the phone rang, he powered the unit up, waiting for it to run through its self-diagnostic.

“Yes?” The voice on the other end was male and otherwise toneless. Anthony had never met his handler; the company preferred it that way. He knew why—if they ever hung him out in the wind, they thought he’d never be able to find and kill the guy who had given the orders. Anthony knew they were wrong—anyone could be found—but he let them go on believing that. So far, so good, but he was aware that this could change when the right opportunity came up—or the wrong one, like this mission so far.

“This is Precision Team One. There’s been a problem,” Anthony said.

“Explain,” his handler said.

“Executed on target as planned, but encountered another team of spooks on-site. Completed tertiary and half of the secondary mission. However, one of the targets escaped.”

“How?”

“That has not been ascertained yet, sir.”

“And the primary objective?”

“Has not been obtained at this time.”

“Casualties?”

“Two down, one wounded but mobile. We were unable to extract the bodies.”

“Understood. Do you have a vector on the primary target?”

Anthony’s eyes flicked to the screen, which showed a bird’s-eye view of London. Underneath was a small action bar that was three-quarters full, indicating the long-range tracker was almost finished with its initial sweep of the area. “We’re working on it now.”

“I’m sending a BOLO general directive to all field agents in the area. If one of them gets to her first, then that’s that.”

“I understand.” More competition, is what it is. His handler was sending a Be On the Look Out alert to all agents in the city. If anyone else happened to spot her first and bring her in, then Anthony’s team would be out of luck—no hazardous-duty pay, and no overtime for the entire job. And the boys—those who were still alive—wouldn’t be too thrilled about that.

“And you know what to do,” his handler said.

“Yes, sir.” Complete the mission ASAP. “I would like to request replacements for my three members, positions two, four and five.”

“They’re being mobilized immediately, and will be at your position within the hour. Get that program, above all else.”

“Yes, sir.”

The connection was broken just as the scanner beeped, signaling that it had finished its search of the area. Anthony leaned forward, mouth curving up in a mirthless smile, and rubbed his broad, rough hands together in anticipation of sweet payback. “All right, sweetheart, where the fuck are you?”

7

It’s times like this, David mused, when I feel like even more of a fifth wheel than usual.

Around him, everyone was absorbed in their own tasks. Cody had gone into the second bedroom to make his report. Tara had taken apart the false brick and camera and was poking around its innards, seeing what data she could extract from it. The other two team members, Kanelo, their gregarious South African medic, and Robert, the pugnacious Welshman, were talking to each other in low voices. Leaving David as the odd man out.

He settled for fieldstripping and cleaning his weapons, making sure every part was clean, clear and ready for action. While he did that—his time spent in Marine recon ensured that any time he held a weapon for more than an hour, it got cleaned and reassembled so that he was sure it was working properly—he went over the mission, examining everyone’s role and seeing how he could have executed better. After all, he was sure Cody was going to ask him that very same question later on, and he wanted to be ready with an answer.

It was hard enough coming into a team as a rookie, but so far David had been shown up by the first woman on a Midnight Team not once, but twice. Tara’s composure when she had taken the burst on her chest armor, as well as her foresight in recovering the hidden camera at the entrance, had earned her high marks from their team leader and the others. David’s impetuous move to pursue the hostiles, while gaining them useful intelligence, had also earned him the label of team cowboy, which was as much a curse as a nickname.

David knew cowboys were simultaneously admired and distrusted for their penchant to bend or break the rules of the espionage game. While they could be very effective in the field, they were also dangerous for the rest of the team, since they were often the only ones to survive their antics unscathed. That had inadvertently been the case with his last Marine recon team. The squad had been out on patrol when a shaped IED had detonated near the lead vehicle, flipping it and blocking the road. As the other members had moved up to assist, insurgents had completed the ambush by attacking with RPGs and AK-47s. In the ensuing firefight, each one of the other squad members was either killed or wounded so severely he would never fight again. David came through the entire ambush without a scratch, and was awarded the Silver Star for intrepid gallantry and courage under fire when he not only carried two of the wounded to safety, but also held off the insurgents until reinforcements arrived. After his second tour was over, he had been slated for Iraq, but had come to the attention of the folks at Room 59 first.

It was a different game, played with a whole new rulebook, one that, he had to admit, he was still learning at times. Although Midnight Teams had huge latitude in carrying out their missions—when they were on an assignment, only a director could alter their mission or recall them—they also had to maintain even more of a low profile than the standard operative. Each operation had to be accomplished with a minimum of fuss, muss and public visibility. And I suppose chasing an SUV through a public park qualifies as exactly what we don’t want, he thought.

“Hey, I think I’ve got something.” Tara’s voice broke his musings. David reassembled his HK pistol before getting up and going over to her improvised desk, crowding around it with the other two men.

The brick had been cut away, and the small digital camera now lay in several pieces on the desk. A tiny memory chip was loaded in Tara’s universal reader, which could access almost anything, even proprietary chips that weren’t on the open market. Lost in her work, Tara looked up with a start. “Jeez, I didn’t expect all of you to come galloping over.”

“Well, since we’re here, what do you have?” Kanelo gently prodded.

“Well, there wasn’t a lot—they must have been replacing it daily, but it did activate whenever it detected movement, and kept going for about a minute after the scene cleared. But take a look at this.”

She brought up a snippet of video showing a tall, lean, bearded man walking up the steps arm in arm with a shorter woman with long, dark hair. They talked and laughed, and at the top step both looked around furtively before sharing a lingering kiss.

“Yeah, so? That’s the head bloke we were supposed to bring back alive, as I recall.” Robert snorted his disgust. “Until those other bastards came in and bollixed up the whole op. Ruined a perfectly good smash-and-grab, they did. Dunno who the skirt is.”

David leaned in for a closer look. “I think that’s what Tara’s pointing out—the woman. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t remember seeing a dark-haired, female body anywhere on the premises.”

“Hey, a couple of those tree-hugging hippies had long hair, so they all look alike to me,” Robert said. The remark earned the wiry Welshman a cuff on the shoulder from Kanelo.

“Stop spouting kek, you dumb bastard, and pay attention.” Instead of biting the tall black man’s head off—like he most assuredly would have done if David had said something like that—Robert just shrugged and turned his attention back to the screen.

“Tara, please rewind it to where she’s almost facing the camera.” David leaned in for a closer look. “No, she’s completely unfamiliar. I think you’ve just found our missing piece. Why don’t you isolate that and send it to Primary for further analysis?”

“Right.”

Cody came out of the back room just as his cell chirped. “M-One…Key word is ‘isolate’…. Go ahead…. You’re outside?…Great, we’ll pop the garage door so you can pick up the package, just give us a minute.” Catching Robert’s gaze, he nodded at the door leading out to the garage. The smaller man slipped out. “When you see it open, come on in.” He snapped the phone closed. “What’s happening out here?”

“We isolated a photo of the missing terrorist group member.” Tara waved him over. “Here she is.”

Cody glanced at the monitor. “Okay, how are we gonna find her?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.