Black Skies (17 page)

“I’m afraid I must agree with my sister this time,” said Weinberg. “You have wasted enough of my time, and I must be going. I have a busy day in Vienna ahead of me. Anse, take him away. Torture him and find out what he knows. And be careful. He is tricky. Take Gert to help keep an eye on him. After you have found what he knows, kill him.”

Weinberg held a gun on him while Fleischer cut Morgan loose from the chair. Morgan kicked Fleischer downward on the shin and then pivoted for an uppercut to the jaw, but Fleischer deflected and grabbed him in a choke hold. Another man came in, presumably Gert, almost as bulky as Anse, with dark hair slicked back into a ponytail. He bound Morgan’s hands with plastic cuffs as Fleischer held him. Then Fleischer released him and set him walking.

“I have a gun to your back,” he said to Morgan in a thick, drawling voice. “It will be hidden, but it will be there. If you try to run away, you will die.”

Morgan, Fleischer, and Gert marched out the room and to the elevator.

“I’ll give you a million dollars to kill him and let me go,” Morgan said to Gert.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Fleischer in German. Gert remained silent.

They reached the hotel garage. Morgan looked for a possible way out, but there was no way he could run without risking getting shot. They escorted him to Weinberg’s Beemer, and sat him in the front passenger seat. Gert sat behind him, and Morgan could practically feel the gun in his back. Fleischer took the driver’s seat.

“Do anything,” Fleischer admonished, nose inches from Morgan’s, “and you will die.”

Fleischer pulled out, and then steered out the garage.

“So, where are we going?” Morgan asked in his best conversational tone. It was received with stony silence.

Morgan winced at the sudden light as they drove outside. He did not recognize the street they were on, but he spotted the Saint Nicholas Cathedral, and knew they were not far from their base of operations.

That’s when he saw it: a black van, coming toward them on the opposite side of the street. His plan had worked, sort of. Shepard had found him, traced his location based on the strange attempt to access the Zeta remote server.
I’ll have to remember to buy him a beer,
Morgan thought.

Then the thought occurred to him that they would be going to the hotel. They weren’t looking for Morgan in a car, and wouldn’t be able to see through the tinted windows, anyway. He had seconds to act.

In a calculated move, Morgan pulled the hand brake. The car skidded and fishtailed on the cobblestones until it came to a stop. Fleischer hit his head against the steering wheel, and Morgan felt the impact of Gert hitting the seat back. Without missing a beat, Morgan clicked open his seat belt and opened the passenger door.

He hit the ground rolling, and used the momentum to get to his feet. He then ran in front of the van, which was just about to pass the BMW. It screeched to a halt to avoid him. Diesel was behind the wheel, and Morgan saw the whites of his eyes as he stared in disbelief and yelled something. Morgan ran to the side door of the van as it opened from the inside. He jumped in, next to Bishop and Spartan.

“Go! Go!” he yelled. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

The van began moving. He heard gunshots outside, and there were several dull thuds as bullets hit the back of the van. Morgan allowed himself to breathe once they had been driving for thirty seconds and the sound of gunfire had died out.

“You guys sure like to cut it close,” said Morgan.

“Shepard said there was some weird activity in the servers, and traced it back to here,” said Bishop. “I didn’t want to come at all. Said it was probably some kind of fluke. You can thank him later.”

“Oh, I will,” he said, catching his breath. “I will.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” he said. “You’ll be interested to know he got a hit on your girl.”

“You mean the thief who stole the thumb drive?” asked Morgan.

“Yeah. This Lily person. Looks like he found out who she is.”

“H
er name really is Elizabeth,” said Shepard. “Elizabeth Louise Randall.”

Morgan was sitting in an old and stained wicker chair that groaned when he shifted his weight. On Shepard’s screen he saw the unmistakable green eyes and red hair. Lily. They were in one of the rooms of the base of operations. It was decorated Mediterranean style, with white walls, tile floors, and rounded arches on the doors, which vaguely recalled Middle Eastern styles. On another computer was the face of Diana Bloch, on a video conference call.

Diesel, who was the best of them at first aid, had taken care of Morgan’s fingers by setting them back and bandaging them. They hurt like hell, but they weren’t broken.

“What is she, some kind of scam artist?” asked Morgan. “Grifter? Notorious cat burglar?”

“Not quite,” said Shepard. “She’s MI-5.”

“You’re
kidding,
” said Morgan. “British intelligence?”

“No doubt about it,” said Shepard. “Field operative. Got a list of skills to match yours, Cobra. With the added bonus of being a lot easier on the eyes.”

“Lily’s a spy?” said Morgan, still incredulous. “What the hell was she doing there?”

“That’s the thing,” said Shepard. “No one knows. She’s gone AWOL. Hasn’t checked in over the past two weeks.”

“Any chance that’s all plausible deniability?” asked Morgan, rubbing his bandaged fingers and testing for pain. “Could be they sent her on a covert op, and want to play it off as a rogue agent and wash their hands of her.”

“Unlikely,” said Bloch. “They’d be burning an agent for nothing if they did that. They might do it for a high-value assassination, but not for this kind of thing.”

“So, what, she’s gone rogue?” asked Morgan. “Working for the highest bidder?”

“Who knows,” said Shepard.

“It’s our best working theory,” said Bloch. “Any indication of possible sedition in her file?”

“No,” said Shepard. “She was a model agent before she disappeared. No indication that she would do something like this.”

“We still need to figure out what ‘something like this’ is,” said Morgan. “We still have no idea what her ultimate mission was in Monte Carlo.”

“Could be blackmail, sabotage . . .”

“Maybe,” said Morgan. “But she said something to me. After I found out it was her in Weinberg’s suite, as she left.
Weinberg’s mine.
I get the feeling this wasn’t about stealing the data.”

“Assassination after all?” asked Bloch.

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” said Morgan. “But the feeling I got is that it was personal. Like she wanted to—”

“Hold on—now this is something,” Shepard interrupted. “I’ve just got a hit on one of her identities. She’s just taken off on a commercial flight to Vienna.”

“That’s where Weinberg is headed,” said Morgan. “She’s going after him.”

“If she kills him, our lead goes cold,” said Bloch.

“Shepard, I need you to find out exactly where Weinberg is going to be in Vienna,” said Morgan. “I’ve got to stop her before she pulls the trigger. And I’m going to need a fast car.”

P
eter Conley looked through a slit on the side of the truck. After his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see the endless rocky mountains circling the road. It had been a very awkward drive so far. The whole Lambda team had bristled with suspicion from the moment they laid eyes on Harun, who was now sitting shotgun with the driver. The rowdy energy of the group had chilled, and everyone sat quietly, hardly speaking to one another, in the dark and bumpy ride. It didn’t help that the box they were in formed a natural steam room.

The vehicle in question was what was locally called a jingle truck. It had intricately carved wooden panels covering the entire trailer and the door, all painted in bright clashing colors. This particular specimen was yellow, red, and green, with tchotchkes hanging all along its grille and sides. The driver of the truck was a man named Yasir, who had agreed to carry this dangerous cargo only after significant cash-based exhortations, and was grumpy the whole way there.

By Conley’s estimation, they should be arriving in Dir at any minute. The city was an isolated town of twenty thousand inhabitants tucked away in a small valley in Northwestern Pakistan. Most of the people working in the town were truck drivers, which was good news for them. It might be tricky finding a driver somewhere unfamiliar, but that kind of supply helped, and they would likely go unnoticed in the swarm of trucks coming in and leaving town.

The trouble came in getting to their final destination, Chitral Valley, on the border with Afghanistan. The problem was less hostiles than that this was one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Narrow and treacherous, the twisting two-laner regularly claimed the lives of drivers who chanced it in their rickety, decorated trucks.

Conley opened up his satellite phone and sent a message to Ken Figueroa, the head of Lambda Division, asking for updates on Raza. He quickly got a message back that there had been none.

“That rat’s going to sell us out,” said Walker. “I can’t believe you’d lead us into a situation like this, trusting one of
them.
” Conley didn’t need to make out Walker’s face in the dark to know who the
you
of that sentence was.

“I trust Harun,” he said, “and Harun is managing the driver.”

“Should have taken a goddamn chopper,” said Walker.

“Let’s not go over this again,” said Conley.

They did not see the city of Dir except brief glimpses. Yasir parked the truck at a garage where other truck drivers were waiting for work. Harun haggled with a driver and then another. Money, of course, was no object, and even then it wouldn’t cost too much, because these drivers normally made something to the order of thirty dollars a month.

Eventually, the back door opened, and the Lambda tactical team had their semiautomatics at the ready. But it was only Harun.

“What are you doing?” he scolded. “Come on, I’ve got us transportation into the Chitral valley.”

They were in a closed garage. Yasir was there, as well as another man.

“Our driver,” said Harun. “Akram. He’s been driving the Lowari Pass for over ten years, never a wreck.” Akram was a man no older than thirty, with a jet-black moustache and a loose-fitting light brown button down shirt. He had his hands clasped in front of him and bowed, in a subservient manner. Walker and the Lambda team were visibly displeased, but didn’t say anything.

“I will get you food,” said Harun, “and then we go.”

Harun left them to lounge outside of a truck for once. The Lambda Tactical team spread out, stretching their limbs, a couple of them taking advantage of the limited space in the garage to exercise. Conley took the opportunity to inspect Akram’s truck, which was in poorer condition than Yasir’s, and then talk to Akram himself, who was standing silently beside his vehicle.

“How old are you, Akram?” Conley asked in Urdu.

“Twenty-nine,” said Akram. His Urdu wasn’t great, but he seemed to understand it fine, and seemed gratified that Conley spoke a language he was at least somewhat conversant in.

“You started doing the pass when you were nineteen?”

“Driving,” he said. “Before, I went with my brother. I helped to get the truck unstuck, remove rocks from the way, things like that.”

“So you know the road pretty well then?”

Akram smiled. “I do, sir. I certainly do.”

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get across, with the weather the way it is?” Conley asked.

“We can make it in one day, if we are lucky.”

“Good, good.” Conley looked around the room, arms akimbo.

“Akram, are you married?”

“I have a wife,” he said, smiling. “Children soon, inshallah
.
”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

Akram smiled as he called Conley up to the truck’s cab to show a picture that had been pasted onto the dashboard in a colorful frame.

Conley asked him if he liked chocolate, and he answered yes. “Hold on a second,” he said.

Conley drifted away from Akram toward the back of Yasir’s truck, where he had left his pack. Walker stopped him with a hand to the chest. “We’re supposed to kill ’em,” he said. “Not talk to ’em.”

“Take your hand away or you lose it, pretty boy,” said Conley.

Walker did, with a gesture of childish arrogance. “You’re going native, old man.”

Conley fumed. “Forget about being a decent goddamn human being for a second,” he said. “That man over there”—he motioned toward Akram—“just smiled at me. He sees me as human now. If he was ever planning on double-crossing us, well, I just made that a whole lot less likely.”

“You know what would make him a lot less likely to betray us?” said Walker. “A bullet to the brain.”

“And then you’re stranded in a strange town surrounded by people who hate you,” said Conley, anger rising. “Tell me, Walker, were you dropped as a child or were you born this stupid?”

Bluejay, a short Hispanic man with a round nose, stepped in. “Why don’t you both back off?” he said.

Walker scoffed. “Whatever. But we’d better get to killing soon, ’cause my trigger finger’s getting itchy.” He glowered at Akram, who shrunk to a corner.

M
organ flew down the smooth, well-kept highways to Vienna in his black Mercedes coupe, keeping the line of communication with Zeta open the whole way. Shepard, meanwhile, was looking into where Weinberg might be in the city, and where Randall might intercept him. Weinberg kept his schedule out of networked devices, but this wasn’t necessarily true for the people he was meeting with. Shepard ran a search that got him the information he was looking for.

“He has a five o’clock with an Austrian steel baron,” he told Morgan through the communicator, which was set up on a remote connection through Morgan’s phone.

“Can you send me satellite images for the location?” Morgan asked.

“It’ll be on your tablet in seconds,” said Shepard. “That’s where their offices are, and that’s where they’re going to meet.”

Morgan took the tablet computer from his bag, which was on the passenger seat, and held it in his right hand as he drove with his left. On the screen there appeared a 3-D model overlaid with satellite images of tall buildings on a broad street. He tossed the tablet aside to pay attention to the road, weaving through traffic.

“What do you think?” asked Shepard.

“She’ll be there,” said Morgan.

“How do you know?”

“It’s where I’d be.”

Shepard worked on getting everything he could about the area as Morgan continued to speed the rest of the way to Vienna. From the target location, the modern office building called the City Tower, in Vienna’s business district, Morgan guessed that there was one of two ways she’d do this—sniper rifle or poisoning. Given that Weinberg knew her face, Morgan had gone with sniper as most likely course.

From there, it was a matter of finding the best place to set up—the place that he would choose. And the choice here was obvious.

“The parking garage,” said Morgan. “That’s where she’ll set up.” Morgan was within the city limits by now and starting to hit traffic. “I need you to find everything you can about that parking garage,” said Morgan. “Look for security cameras and anything that might tell us if her car is in there.” A light turned yellow, and the car in front of him stopped. “Shit!” He banged the steering wheel in frustration. “And get surveillance on the streets!”

He gripped the steering wheel as traffic moved, slowly, so slowly.

“Already did,” said Shepard. “Weinberg is due to arrive in ten minutes.”

Morgan swore. “Okay,” he said. “Traffic laws just turned optional.” He passed the car in front of him in wrong-way traffic and ran a red light, narrowly avoiding a scrape. “How are we doing with eyes in the parking garage?” Morgan asked.

“Coming, coming,” said Shepard. “It’s got them, now just a matter of gaining access . . .”

“Make it snappy,” said Morgan, to the honk of a car that he cut off to shave a few milliseconds off his time.

“Okay, got it,” said Shepard. “Feeds coming in—holy hell, that’s a lot of cameras. It’s going to be a while to sort through all of them.”

“Can’t you just work some computer magic to—”

“No, Cobra, I cannot write a program from scratch to search these video feeds for Randall or her car.”

“Is Bishop there?”

“Here,” came Bishop’s deep voice through the communicator. “Diesel and Spartan, too.”

“I need all eyes on those cameras. Top floors first, Shepard. She’s likelier than not to be up high. She’s going to have a car with her to make a getaway, but it might not be the same.”

“Then what are we looking for exactly?” asked Bishop.

“I don’t know, just see if you find something!”

Morgan was stuck behind a crowd of tourists crossing the road. They cleared, and he hit the gas. Within a minute he could see the City Tower, and shortly after the far less impressive parking facility.

“In view of target,” he said.

Traffic was heavier here, and the slow crawl with his destination in plain sight was worse than all the rest. So close, so close.

Finally, he made the turn into the parking garage, with three cars ahead of him for the electronic ticket booth.

“What’s up with that camera?” came a woman’s voice—Spartan.

“What are you talking about?” said Morgan. The line of cars moved ahead.

“It’s just dark,” said Shepard, “it’s nothing.”

“Wait, dark like broken? Or working and dark?”

“Looks like it’s working,” said Shepard.

That had to be her. Disabling or blacking out the camera was the first thing he’d do if he were setting up. Morgan reached the ticket dispenser and pushed the button.

“What level?” he asked.

“Fifth.”

“Where on the fifth level?”

“Southwest—well, I’d say corner, but the building’s an oval,” said Shepard.

“Good enough.”

Morgan sped along the spiral ramp faster than even he was comfortable with. Twice the side of his car scraped against the guard walls—a bigger slip would break the concrete and send him sailing into the air to a sudden and dramatic stop. He kept a steady curve, tires squealing.

“Weinberg’s car is pulling up,” said Shepard. “Get your ass up there!”

The Mercedes turned screaming onto the fifth level of the parking garage. The direct route was closed off, and he was forced to go around the level to get to the location Shepard had given him. He was making a racket, but it didn’t matter. If she was there, he’d already announced his presence.

“Cobra, he’s getting out of the damn car!”

Morgan brought the car to a screeching halt and stepped out, leaving the door open behind him, his Walther in his right hand. He ran down the aisle, looking from car to car until he spotted the top of her head through the windshield of a VW sedan. He could just tell that she was facing inward, waiting for him to pass, probably to shoot him and then get to Weinberg.

Morgan took a hard right and jumped up onto the VW, rolling on the roof of the car and sliding down behind Lily. Before she figured out what the hell had just happened, he had his Walther against her head.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.

She tensed up in surprise at hearing his voice. She was holding a sniper rifle, which he recognized as an AS50 BMG—not his first choice, but respectable for its portability. “The car salesman,” she said without looking at him.

“Not quite.”

“So I see,” she said. “You are full of surprises, Mr. Morgan. Although I suppose that’s not your real name, either.”

“Drop the rifle and hands up, Agent Randall.”

She didn’t move. “Oh, we’ve gone all formal now, I see. I think I liked you better as a car salesman.”

“No you didn’t,” he said.

“Cocky aren’t we?”

“
Drop it,
Lily. I don’t want to kill you.”

“But for some reason you so very much want to save the life of Gunther Weinberg. Tell me, how much did he pay you to make you turn? How much are you worth, Morgan?”

“I do have my reasons,” he said. “But none of them have to do with wanting to protect him. I can explain, just toss the rifle. You won’t be able to make the shot now. Not with me here.”

“Are you sure?” He caught her eye in the rearview mirror of the VW, and there was a glint of challenge and mischief. She swung the rifle backward by its barrel, apparently betting that Morgan wouldn’t shoot her. She was right. The rifle’s stock missed his head by half an inch and got him in the shoulder. The blow didn’t do much except throw him off balance, but that’s all she needed. With a kick, she knocked the Walther from his hand, grabbing it from the air in her left and, in a move he had to respect, grabbed the two bandaged fingers in his left hand. He cried out in pain.

Taking the opening, she picked up the rifle again. Morgan braced for the deadly shot, but instead she made straight for the guardrail at the edge of the garage, right behind him. She hastily set up the rifle and looked through the scope.

“You’re kidding,” said Morgan.

She pointed his Walther at him with her left. “I’m very much not.”

“You couldn’t possibly hit him like this.”

“I was top of my class in sniper training,” said Randall. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do with one of these.”

“Okay,” said Morgan. “Suppose you can. It doesn’t mean you should.”

“And why is that, Mr. Morgan?”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

She scoffed. “You’ve got to do better than that, love.”

“Okay, then. I will. Don’t shoot Weinberg because he’s our only lead in the abduction of the American Secretary of State.”

Her grip on the handle of the rifle loosened. “You have got to be kidding me. Weinberg?”

“We’ve got it on good authority,” said Morgan. “Might have been able to confirm it if I only had the contents of that thumb drive you stole off of me.”

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I’ve got it here in my pocket. You can have it, soon as I kill him.”

“If you kill him, there’s no going back,” said Morgan. “You’ll never work in intelligence again. And if anyone catches you, it’s life in prison.”

“Somehow, I think I’ll survive.”

“Think about this, Lily.”

“I’m already burned,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to go back to. This is all I’ve got left. So why don’t you leave me to it?”

“It’s not all lost,” said Morgan. “We can help.”

“How would you possibly be able to help? And who the bloody hell is ‘we’?”

“We are . . . a nongovernmental organization with friends in high places. Let’s just leave it at that. We can smooth things over with MI-5. Hell, with your skills, I’m confident we can even give you a job if you’d like.”

“What I’d like is to kill that bastard Weinberg.”

“We can arrange for that,” said Morgan. “I’ll personally do it if you’d like. God knows the world would be better off with him dead. But not today. Right now, I need you to put away the rifle. We need him alive.”

“He’s right there,” she said. Morgan saw. He had Fleischer next to him, and his car was coming around. “All I have to do is pull the trigger . . .”

“Don’t,” said Morgan. “Whatever reason you have to kill him, it can wait. Just until this crisis is over. Then I promise you—”

“All right,” said Randall, exhaling and backing away from the rifle. Morgan watched as Weinberg entered his car. “I’ll hear what you have to say. And if it helps to stop whatever Weinberg is up to, then good. But afterward, I get him, and you help me do it. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” said Morgan.

“Christ, I need a beer,” she said, taking apart her sniper rifle. “You’re buying.”