Bare Nerve (7 page)

“Finally someone who speaks my language,” Justine said.

Anna had to laugh at her American friend, who was very used to dealing with things on her own terms.

“No offense,” Justine said. “I just don’t have an ear for languages.”

“I suspect you make up for that in other ways,” Bay said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Where is Andreev’s base camp?” Anna asked. She was all for being pleasant, but she wanted to get this mission over with as soon as possible.

“In the southern highlands,” Bay said.

“The Ahaggar Mountains?”

“Yes. If you have a map, I will show you,” Bay said.

“I do. In fact if you have the GPS coordinates, I can plot it on our map,” Anna said.

“I’m going to check on our weapons and on the vehicle we’re supposed to be using. I want to make sure everything is ready when you have the coordinates,” Justine said.

“Sounds good,” Charity said. “Louis, I need the information your agent gathered on the flight from Paris.”

Charity and Justine both drifted off, and Anna found a table to set up her laptop. She pulled up the map and started entering the information Bay had for her. He smelled faintly of mint tea, and though he didn’t remove his headdress, she could see the faint indigo tint to his skin.

She suspected he was a man of importance to his people. Though the Tuareg were the Blue Men of the Sahara, many of them wore different colors these days. Only a select few kept to the old ways of dying their clothes and skin blue.

“The way we will go is not an easy one,” he said after he had given her the coordinates.

“We are used to that.”

“Are you? You seem familiar with Algeria.”

“I am very familiar with this country. My father once served here as an ambassador.”

“Sterling,” he said, his voice distant as if searching for a memory.

“Yes.”

“You were that girl,” he said quietly in Tamasheq.

“What girl?” Jack asked, stepping up next to Bay.

She was surprised that Jack knew the dialect, but she shouldn’t have been. He was the kind of man who was very efficient at everything he did. And it bothered her more that Bay might know or remember the girl she’d been.

She shook her head. “That’s a story for another time. Bay has given us some good information. Is your team ready to roll?”

Jack looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but she was an expert at keeping her own confidence and wasn’t about to push open the gateway to her past any further than she already had.

“We can take a few minutes for your story now,” Jack said.

She shook her head. “There are some things I don’t ever talk about.”

“Maybe you should. It’s never a good idea to keep something traumatic bottled up inside,” he said.

“What makes you think it’s a trauma?” she asked. She didn’t want to believe Jack was coming to know her so well.

“You would talk about it if it weren’t.”

He walked away before she could respond.

K
irk left their team in Algiers to try to reconnect with his contacts on Andreev’s team. It was difficult to do because Andreev had always played his cards close to his chest and changed his people often. His theory, according to Kirk, was that if you were always reinventing yourself, no one could find you.

And, to be honest, that plan had worked for Andreev for many years. It wasn’t lost on Jack that Andreev’s downfall had been his attempt at normal life. If Andreev hadn’t taken the pseudonym of Ivan and started a family, they would never have gotten as close to him as they had.

It confirmed what Jack’s men had been saying on the plane—that women were the downfall of men. That somehow meeting a woman who skewed a man’s normal perspective could be his downfall.

Was Anna Sterling going to be his?

“Hell, no,” he said under his breath.

“Pardon?” Anna asked. They were in the Humvee, and he was driving, following the coordinates she’d given him. Bay was in the backseat, along with Justine and Hamm. Charity was in the second vehicle with the rest of his team. They had left the beauty of the White City behind and were heading into an area that during the early nineties, had been dubbed the Triangle of Death.

Being in this business, Jack was intimately familiar with death and with the warring factions of Northern Africa. He looked at the desert landscape and realized the scenery had nothing to do with the brutality of the people. There were some parts of the world where peace was a concept that made no sense. And no matter how hard Algeria tried to bring itself into this new century, there were always going to be people like Bay who clung to the old ways.

“Nothing,” Jack said in response to Anna’s question. “Are you going to tell me about your past here?”

“No, I am not. But you can tell me about yours. I did a background check on you, Jack Savage, and you don’t exist before nineteen ninety-three.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope. Why is that?”

“Did you spell my name correctly?”

She gave him a look that he was coming to realize meant she was annoyed. “What are you hiding?”

“The same thing as you, I suppose.”

“I doubt that very much,” she said, a trace of melancholy in her voice.

“We both have something we refuse to talk about. I’m guessing that means we didn’t have rosy childhoods.”

“Is it only your childhood you’re hiding?”

“Not at all. I’m an open book.” Jack didn’t delve into his past. He’d always believed that each day he survived was another one he had behind him. And that past wasn’t anything that needed to be explored and examined. He’d done some things he’d rather never relive. And no matter what traumatic event was in Anna’s past, it was nothing compared to the horrors he was hiding.

“Where’d you get that scar?” she asked.

“In Afghanistan.”

“What were you doing there?”

“My job.”

She reached over and stroked her finger over the one-inch scar on the side of his face. Jack proudly wore the scars of every battle he’d fought in. He was proud of the warrior he was. But when Anna touched him, he felt some of the emotions he liked to pretend he didn’t have.

“Your job has taken a toll on you.”

“Hasn’t yours?” he asked.

She shrugged and looked down at the minicomputer on her lap. “It’s different for me. I’ve been involved in some gunfights or physical fights, but for the most part I spend a lot of my time catching crooks with my computer knowledge.”

“You’re insulated from the action,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You live your life that way. Tucked safely away behind your computer while the rest of the world is dirty.”

“That makes me sound…not very nice.”

“I didn’t mean it as a criticism,” he said. But a part of him did. He was the kind of man who could never stand on the sidelines and let life pass him by. He didn’t want to catch Andreev via some sophisticated computer-tracking program. He wanted to be out there in the field. He wanted to cuff Andreev and maybe beat a little justice into his hide. Any man who made his fortune on the blood of others deserved to be brought down in a violent manner.

“Okay,” she said.

“What?”

“We’re about as different as two people could be. I know that, and you do, too. There’s nothing between us.”

He glanced over his shoulder, confirming that the occupants of the backseat were occupied.

“We have something between us, Anna Sterling. An attraction even you can’t deny.”

“I’m not someone who gives in to my baser instincts,” she said.

“Yeah, right. We have something else in common.”

“What?” she asked. She looked tired, as though she wanted to be anywhere but there. He didn’t take it personal, because he sensed there was more to this mission than just catching an arms dealer.

“We both are willing to fight for justice. To make sure the innocent of the world have someone to stand up for them.”

“Justice? With a gun?”

“So I’m more aggressive about it than you are. At the end of the day we both want the same thing.”

“And that is?”

“For the world to be a better place. A place where children are safe and people can go to sleep without worrying about being shot in their sleep.”

She tipped her head to the side. “Maybe there
is
more to you than your warrior body projects.”

Demetri hated the mountainous region of the sub-Sahara. There was a reason he’d left this place. And whenever he was drawn back to Algeria, he had that same strangling rage that had first motivated him and Maksim to go into their line of work.

The men around him were leery that he was here; he hadn’t been back in three years. He’d seen these men in other parts of the world, but this base camp he had avoided.

It reminded him of the fact that this was his true self. In Seattle, with his wife and children at his side, he could pretend he was a different man. That he’d changed from the boy he’d been.

But here there was no escaping the truth. This crude system of caves was his world now. He was angry, but at the same time he knew this was the way of the world. He was in a part of the world the Americans would have a hard time finding him in.

Unlike the mideast, where there were oil reserves at stake, there was little in Africa for the Americans to come after. And as much as he resented being sent back to this place, he knew he was safe.

He would lie low, continue to broker his arms deals, and take on a new identity. He would have to give up his wife and children, and that bothered him, but he’d lost his family many times, beginning with the small, angry one of his boyhood. Next came the family he and Maksim had created in his early twenties, and now this final family.

How many times did a man have to be burned before he stopped reaching into the fire?

“What do you need from me?” Yan asked.

“Nothing, for now. We will leave in the morning to meet our contacts in St. Petersburg. I want to make sure our stores are secure.”

“They are. I will go into Tamanrasset and hire some locals.”

That city was built in a
wadi
—a desert valley. And it wasn’t a city in the way foreigners thought of a city. To be honest, even
he
wasn’t used to the small mountain-village city. He liked the cement jungle and the conveniences that came with it. Most of the men he dealt with preferred that world as well.

“Good. We will leave once you return from hiring them. I want to assemble a new team for this deal with the Sudanese.”

“Do you need anything else of me?”

“Not tonight.”

Yan left Demetri alone in his room. The sky was brighter here than in Seattle, and as he stepped outside and stared at the sky, he wondered what his kids were doing. He couldn’t contact them—had barely had time to tell his wife good-bye before he’d had to leave the country.

One step ahead of the law.

He’d been on the run his entire life, and he wanted…what? He wasn’t the kind of man who could just sit down and stay in one place.

He had to keep moving.

Demetri opened his laptop, took a glance at the picture of his kids, minimized the photos, and went to the secure Web site he used to broker his arms deals.

He had three e-mails waiting for him from men he had used before. Kirk Mann was one of them. He wasn’t sure how much he trusted Kirk; after all, the man was a mercenary, but, to be fair, no one double-crossed Kirk. He was very good with weapons, and Demetri had found that his clients liked seeing their merchandise demonstrated in competent hands.

Pierre Munro had left a message as well. He was a good pilot and driver and was excellent in the tensest of situations.

Demetri decided to use both men for the deal in St. Petersburg, but he didn’t need them until the end of the month. He fired off e-mails to both men and then sat back.

This was a far cry from the luxury he liked to surround himself with, but now that he was here, he was starting to remember the hungry youth he’d been.

That was one lesson Maksim had forgotten as they’d aged. You had to be hungry to stay alive. Once contentment flowed in, so did the mistakes.

And that was exactly what had happened to Demetri in Seattle. He had gotten a little too comfortable in that silly CFO job with his pretty wife.

He’d started to think he was just like the other men in the corporate world. That was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.

He summoned Yan.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am going to stay here while you go to St. Petersburg and make arrangements with our client. I want to make sure nothing goes wrong this time.”

“Certainly, sir. Is there any reason you aren’t leaving?”

“I’ve been gone too long.”

Yan smiled at him. They were cousins on his mother’s side, and that branch of the family was loyal to each other—as loyal as men always fighting for money and life could be.

“Yes, you have. It’s good to have you back home.”

Demetri looked around the cave and silently acknowledged that this was his home. This was the place where he belonged, and if he was going to stay alive and in the game, he would do good to remember that.

“It
is
good to be home. I think it’s time we stopped playing games and concentrated on what we’re good at.”

“Arming the world,” Yan said.

They stopped in Ghârdaïa where there were a lot of modern-looking hotels and restaurants. The city was the south of M’zab, which was home to the Mozabites, a puritan culture that didn’t really like outsiders. The city of M’zab was picturesque with it’s green date palms lining the streets. The drive into the mountains had been long: despite the fact that Yazid had been welcoming, the rest of the people they encountered in Algeria weren’t trusting of the foreigners.

They were now on their way into the Sahara, and Anna felt as if she were caught between two worlds. First, the old-world architecture of Algiers’s European-inspired city, and now this place, which was near the heartland of Islam.

Anna would rather have kept moving, but the majority of the team knew it would be better to rest now. They weren’t that far behind Andreev, and to capture him, they needed to be rested. Well rested. Yet she couldn’t sleep.

She had been staring at the ceiling of her room for over an hour now. The sounds outside her window were foreign, and the room itself didn’t feel secure to her. She was restless and edgy.

Anna tried to block out those feelings, but the only other subject her mind wandered to was Jack Savage, and she didn’t want to think about him. Or about his scarred body and face. Or the intensity in his eyes whenever he looked at her.

She really needed to just focus on the mission, but there was nothing to be done right now. They were all on their way to capture Andreev, and that was it.

Frustrated with herself, she got out of bed and dressed in a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

She went downstairs and out into the night, where their vehicles had been left. There was barbed wire everywhere and the kind of security lights that cast no shadow. The world of tourism was foreign in Algeria, but the businesses—like this hotel—that wanted to encourage visitors made it their number-one priority to protect guests.

Anna felt less trapped out here. And she felt safe with her semiautomatic handgun at her side. This was what she needed. Fresh air and exercise.

“Can’t sleep?” Jack asked, his voice coming out of the darkness just off the doorway.

“Obviously,” she said. She didn’t want to see him. He was part of what had her so edgy, and she needed respite from him and the circumstances of this mission.

How had Justine and Charity handled this? The feeling of other things…men…interfering with a mission? And she knew that they both had been dealing with stuff from their pasts at the same time. Anna felt inadequate as she realized she couldn’t cope with it all. She needed the barrier she always used to insulate herself. But there was no computer to hide behind. And Jack Savage wasn’t leaving her alone.