Flashpoint (33 page)

Last night, when he gave her that PG-13 version of his run-in with Leo the Claw, she knew.

She couldn’t do this.

Oh, she could do
this
. She could have a couple of days—or even weeks, if this assignment dragged on that long—of great sex with a man she was attracted to. But as for a relationship . . .

No, this was definitely temporary. She needed trust, not watered-down half-truths and fictionalized parents.

“Don’t you think it’s just a little creepy that you’ll sleep with me, and even claim to want a relationship, yet you can’t even tell me—really—about your parents?” Tess asked.

He was silent, and she looked up at him.

“I would love to know who you are,” she told him. Why did she bother? She should just close her computer, leap into bed with him, and redefine “coffee break.” But instead she sat there and talked at him. Did he hear
any
of this? “Skip your parents. Parents can suck. Parents are hard. Tell me a secret. Tell me something that you’ve never told anyone. You want to have a relationship, James? Talk to me. Otherwise, all we’re doing here is having sex.”

He opened his mouth, and she had a moment of pure, shimmering hope. He was going to do it, and she was a big, fat liar, lying to herself about how this was only temporary, and she was only in this for the great sex. Right.

She was so crazy in love with this man, her heart skipped a beat when he told her he used to be a smoker, for the love of God.

But then he spoke. “Actually, right now we’re
not
having sex. I couldn’t help but notice.”

At first his words didn’t make sense. And then she realized that he had made a joke.

Correction. He’d
tried
to make a joke.

One day she’d look back on this and laugh. She’d be on the phone with Peggy, her roommate from her first year of college, and she’d say, “Remember that total dickhead super-agent type I had that fling with, first time I went out of the country on assignment?”

And Peggy’d say, “Oh yeah, the James Bond wannabe. What a jerk.”

And she’d say, “There I was, pouring my heart out, begging him just to talk to me, and he makes some stupid joke.”

And Peggy’d say, “Because he was probably feeling really vulnerable—thinking that if he told you who he really was, you’d reject him, and like most idiot men, he was scared to death.”

Tess closed her computer and stood up. She had to get out of here before she went over to that bed to comfort Jimmy for feeling so
vulnerable
. “Vulnerable, my ass,” she told him crossly.

“What?” He sat up, his hair charmingly rumpled. “Time for a break?” he asked hopefully.

Yeah, right. At the top of her agenda for all she had to do today was have two minutes of great sex with Mr. Vulnerable. It was right up there with hooking her computer battery up to that awful generator so it could recharge and lugging water up from the well, because until the power came back on—

“Holy shit,” she said. She slapped her forehead. “The power’s still out. The banks all have generators—their computers are running. But the Grande Hotel’s been evacuated. The place is probably dark, the computer’s got no power, and any backup batteries are long gone. We’re going to have to go there with a power source, reboot their system . . .”

Like Jimmy and Decker and Dave, she now had suddenly been dumped into wait mode. Wait for cover of darkness so they could go, undetected, into that hotel.

They had about two hours until sunset.

Two hours to . . .
No. Put your libido down and step away from the man in the bed. . . .

They had two hours to gather all the equipment they were going to need.

“That generator we’ve been using to recharge our phones and my computer battery,” she said to Jimmy. “Is it portable?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Well,
portable
is subjective. Murph called it portable, but it’s heavy as hell. We can move it if we have to.”

“All the way to the Grande Hotel?”

He winced. “That’s going to hurt. But maybe if we got a baby stroller . . .” He thought about that. “Yeah, that would do it. Although God help us if we’re stopped by a police patrol.”

Tess threw him his pants. “Get dressed. We need to go get a baby stroller.”

Jimmy laughed. “Words that make a man’s blood freeze in his—”

He froze, and she inwardly cringed, because she knew what he was thinking. Back when they weren’t having sex, they’d slipped and had sex. Without proper protection.

It was quite the foundation for a solid, lasting relationship—small talk, sex, sex, more sex, and sheer terror.

Yeah, they’d get far.

“I’ll be downstairs,” she said, and escaped out the door.

Sophia was in the barn, in the stall next to the horse named Marge, cleaning off the baby stroller that Nash had found in the shed.

Decker’s latest news—that they may not be able to find someone willing or trustworthy enough to smuggle her out of Kazbekistan, even for fifty thousand dollars—had been devastating.

It was good to have something to do with her hands, to keep her busy as she tried to figure out her next move.

She was going to have to get out of Kazabek, that much was clear. Maybe she could go up into the mountains, well outside of Padsha Bashir’s territory. There’d be other dangers, other warlords, but none who had put a price on her head. She’d have to keep her face concealed, but that wouldn’t be too hard to do. She could make her way north, and maybe eventually find someone to guide her over the border.

She’d been on her own like this before, with little resources. At age fifteen, she’d returned to Kazabek without her parents. Of course, back then she’d worn her hair cut short and had dressed like a boy. She’d pretended to be French. It was possible to get away with quite a lot simply by pretending to be French.

She was going to need money to survive—lots of it.

It was one thing for Decker to loan her thousands of dollars with the knowledge she would be out of Kazbekistan and working to pay him back. It was another entirely for him to give it to her knowing she could well be trapped in the mountains for years. Or captured and killed.

“We’ll figure out an alternative,” Decker had promised her after dropping his bomb.

She’d wanted to cry. Instead, she’d volunteered to wipe cobwebs and rust from a twenty-year-old baby stroller.

Deck was clearly exhausted from whatever he’d been up to the night before—Sophia didn’t know what, no one had told her. But he lay down and took a nap, right there, on the floor of the barn.

She’d positioned herself as close as she could without fear of waking him.

The door now opened with a bang, and Nash came in.

“Shhh,” Sophia started to say, but then ducked down so that she was out of sight, her heart pounding. James Nash had been followed not just by Tess and Dave, but by a stranger. A tall man with red hair.

“Deck,” Nash said.

“Yeah. Over here.” Decker sounded wiped, but he sat up. “Hey,” he greeted the redhead. “How’s the wrist?”

“Broken. Hurts like hell.”

“I bet. Thanks for your help with Murphy.”

“He’s a good man.”

“If it had been me,” Nash said, “you would’ve let me die, right?”

Sophia relaxed a little. Whoever this was, Decker and Nash knew him enough to joke with him. Except no one was laughing.

“Schroeder’s been busy,” Nash told Decker.

Will Schroeder—she’d heard that name before.

“I was digging around,” Schroeder said, “asking people if they knew Sayid, if they’d seen Sayid, and lo and behold, I found someone who did and had. A taxi driver. Said he’d picked Sayid up, the afternoon before the quake, from—get this—the Grande Hotel.”

From her hiding place, Sophia saw Decker exchange a look with Nash.

“That’s great,” Decker said. “We already had reason to believe he’d been staying there—this is a good confirmation.”

“When are you going over to the hotel?” Schroeder asked.

No one answered him.

“Dumb question. It’s going to be tonight, as soon as it’s dark. Well, good. I’m coming with you.”

Nash opened his mouth, but Tess put her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Actually, I haven’t decided yet who’s going,” Decker said. “It’s not going to be easy getting in there undetected, and it’s certainly not going to be any safer once inside. For both of those reasons, I don’t want to go in with a crowd.”

This time it was Tess who couldn’t keep from speaking. “I have to go.”

“No, you don’t,” Nash said.

“Yeah,” Tess said earnestly. “Jimmy, I do. First I have to get the computer running, then I’ll need to access the telephone records, and—”

“If you get caught out after curfew . . .” Nash said.

“If
you
get caught out after curfew, it’ll be bad for you, too,” she argued.

“Did you
like
it there, in jail?” Nash asked. “You already had your one strike, Tess. In Kazbekistan, you don’t get another.”

They had faced off again. Sophia looked over at Decker, who rubbed his forehead and sighed.

“Okay, you tell me,” Tess challenged Nash. “How are you going to do it? How are you going to reboot the hotel’s computer system? Huh?”

“Easy,” Nash shot back. “If I get there and my phone doesn’t work, I’m going to put that sat-dish you wanted so badly up on the Grande Hotel’s roof. And then I’m going to call you and you’re going to walk me through it.”

Tess swore. “That’s
so
unfair.” She turned toward Decker.

“What?” Nash countered. “It’s unfair to want to keep you safe?”

Tess saw the way Decker was looking at them, and she shut her mouth, no doubt realizing that, once again, their quibbling made them sound like arguing children.

“Will that do the trick?” Decker asked her. “If we get there and don’t have phone access, if we put a dish on the roof of the Grande . . . ?”

Tess gritted her teeth. She hated to admit it, but, “Yes,” she said. “Yeah. Yup.” She swore again.

“If it’s just you and me,” Nash told Decker, “we’ll be able to move that much faster.”

“Hey, Tess, looks like I’m not going either,” Dave said mildly. “Don’t take it personally, okay?”

“But it
is
personal. It’s all about what Jimmy wants. Why did I even bother to come here if no one’s going to let me do my job?” Tess fumed.

“You’ll be doing your job,” Nash said sharply. “You’ll just be doing it back here, where the risk of being gang-raped during a so-called police interrogation is considerably less.”

“What about the risks
you
face?” Tess countered hotly. “I’d like to put in a bid that Dave goes instead of Jim. Let’s not forget that Leo the Claw is out there, no doubt eager for
his
revenge.”

“Okay,” Decker said. “I think we know where we all stand.”

“That’s absurd!” Nash spoke right over him.

Tess turned to Decker. “This is just a 007 power trip, you know. Nash, James Nash, has got to be the one to save the day—”

“The fuck I do!” Nash exploded. “If I thought I was James fucking Bond, I wouldn’t be wasting time with
you
.”

Tess jerked back as if he had hit her.

And there was silence.

Decker sighed.

“No,” Nash said. “No, that came out wrong. I meant, I wouldn’t be wasting time
arguing
with you.”

But Tess didn’t look as if she believed him.

“This is my decision,” Decker said. “
My
decision. Just so we’re all clear on this.” He looked at Dave, then Tess, then Nash, one at a time, waiting until he got eye contact. Then he said, “I’m going. With Nash. Tess, you’re going to have to do your job—your important job—from back here, because not only does that mean you’ll be safer, it means
we’ll
be safer, too.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I have no excuse for—”

“Dave, you’re here with Tess and Sophia.”

“Yes, sir.”

Decker turned to Will, who looked as if he were about to speak. “No, you cannot come. And if you argue, I’ll shoot you.”

Will shut his mouth.

“We’ll head out immediately after curfew,” Decker announced. “Dave, come talk to me and Nash about the best way to get inside that hotel.”

Sophia stood up. “The best way into the Kazabek Grande is through a tunnel—an underground walkway—from the basement of the Sulayman Bank Building over in the financial district.”

Everyone stared at her, but she looked only at Decker.

“You don’t have to wait for dark,” Sophia told him. “If you want, I could show you. We could go right now.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE

There was an elevator at the end of the tunnel that led directly into the Kazabek Grande Hotel.

It was the only access leading up—there were no stairs.

Decker, of course, didn’t see it as a problem, despite the lack of electricity. He and Dave set to work, prying the doors open.

Jimmy made sure both the portable sat-dish and the battery pack were secure in their packs. They’d decided to take the battery instead of the noisy generator. It was slightly lighter, which was a plus. On the negative side, it had a limited amount of juice. They’d have to work fast.

The baby stroller had done the trick, carrying the heavy equipment through the street. A couple of lightweight blankets kept the hot afternoon sun from “the baby’s” face.

But now they had to climb an elevator shaft—oh, joy—with all those extra pounds on their backs.

And if Jimmy complained, Deck would make some mild comment about how, when he was in the SEAL teams, they used to jump out of planes with over a hundred pounds of gear and weaponry strapped onto them.

Yeah, well, Jimmy
wasn’t
a SEAL. He wasn’t James Bond, either.

Damn it, he could still see that look on Tess’s face when he’d said what he’d said out in the barn.
I wouldn’t be wasting time with you.

At worst, it sounded as if he was making a crack about her obvious lack of Bond Girl attributes.

At best, it sounded as if he thought the time he’d spent with her was a waste.

Jimmy opened his phone. No service. Big surprise.

“How many access points into the hotel does this elevator have?” Decker was asking Sophia.

“Three,” she told him. “One in the parking garage, one in the lobby, and one that opens directly into a suite on the seventeenth floor. Uqbah Sulayman’s mistress lived there.”

“You know the suite number?” Deck asked. He always collected as much information as possible, which was usually nice, but not when they were standing directly underneath a building that everyone and their engineer brother expected to fall at any moment.

Fall, as in, down.

With a roar that sounded as if the gates of hell had opened up.

“Suite 1712,” she told him. “North Tower.”

Finally the doors screeched open.

Dave helped them on with their packs. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around?” he asked. “This tunnel is secure—Sophia’s safe. I could take care of setting up the sat-dish on the roof.”

As Jimmy watched, Deck glanced at Sophia.

“I’d be fine with that,” she obviously lied.

But he shook his head. “No, I want you back at Rivka’s as soon as possible. As it is, you’ll be hard-pressed to make it before curfew. Let’s not tempt fate.”

Besides, Tess was back there, with only Will Schroeder and Khalid to protect her. Which was a joke. Because if there was trouble, Tess would take charge and protect
them
.

Khalid had told Jimmy the way she’d gotten him and Will beneath the wagon when that bomb exploded in City Center. Then she’d charged
toward
the explosion, searching for Murphy. Khalid had also brought another little detail to light—apparently Will had found another shirt for Tess to wear after she’d used her own to successfully control Murphy’s bleeding. But instead of covering herself, she’d used it to play Florence freaking Nightingale, to stanch other people’s wounds.

“You coming?”

Jimmy realized that Decker was poised at the entrance to the elevator shaft. Sophia and Dave were already heading back down the tunnel.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, looking up into the dimly lit shaft that stretched as far as he could see. “I’m right behind you.” He took out his penlight, turned it on, clamped it in his teeth, and began his ascent into a building that was on the verge of collapse.

Tess’s phone rang. The number on the display was Jimmy’s. “Yeah,” she said as greeting, while she got her own computer connected to the Internet.

“We’re in,” he told her. The connection was bad but not awful.

“That was fast,” she said, entering her password. Of course
fast
was relative. It had, in fact, been 112 of the longest minutes of her life.

“Yeah,” he said. “There was some kind of a balcony thing up on the eleventh floor. Deck set up the dish out there. I’m hooking the system up to the battery pack here in the hotel office. Holy Christ, this place stinks. I think the quake made the sewers back up. You should be glad you’re not here.”

“Right,” she said. “I’m really glad I’m not allowed to participate the way I want to. You sure know exactly the right thing to say to make me feel better.”

“Sorry. I—”

“Describe the hotel’s computer system, please.”

“It’s just a PC, nothing much to brag about. And I am sorry. About what I said before, too. I hope you know I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was talking about right then. That moment.”

“Yeah, actually, Nash,” she said, “when it comes down to you, I don’t know anything. I don’t really know you—I mean, other than your favorite sexual position and the fact that you actually like anchovies—so I kind of have to go on the face value of the few things that do come out of your mouth.”

“What, just because I don’t want to talk about my parents—one of whose names I never even knew . . . ?”

Tess had to laugh. “Oh, that’s just perfect, Jimmy. Throw me a bone. That’ll make up for everything.”

“Look,” he said. “I honestly didn’t mean—”

“But you
did
mean to make sure that I stayed back here, nice and safe. God, even in the field, I’m stuck working support. Do you know how frustrating that is?”

“You’re the one who’s always shouting about the importance of being a team player,” he said. “Suck it up, and be part of this team.”

“This is hardly the time or place for this conversation,” she said stiffly, because deep down—about this, anyway—she knew he was right.
She
was the James Bond wannabe.
She
wanted to be the one to save the day.

“Yeah, I know.” He said something, but he wasn’t speaking into the phone, and she realized he was talking to Decker. He came back. “Okay, everything’s connected. Tell me how to do this.”

“Turn on the battery, and the system should reboot automatically,” she told him.

That made him laugh. “How am I going to reboot the hotel’s computer system, huh?” he said, tossing her words back at her. “Like it’s something only the genius comspesh can do . . . Okay, here we go. They use Windows. Hail, Bill Gates. Oops, I’m getting a scan disk message and being chastised for shutting off the computer improperly. In French no less, which makes it sound naughty.”

“It’s going to take a few minutes,” she told him. “That’s a fairly old system, huh?”

“Yeah, I’d say circa 1995, without a whole lot of whistles and bells. Which is lucky—it uses less battery power.”

“Just so you know,” Tess said, “after this is over, if the Agency offers me a field position, I’m taking it.”

He was silent, and she thought she’d lost the connection.

“Are you still there?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m . . . just surprised.”

“I thought that would be easier. For all of us—including Decker, who’s probably got a big black X next to my name, under the heading that says ‘Bickers and Whines Too Much.’ ”

There was a pause, and then Jimmy said, “So much for us going steady, huh?”

“You know it wasn’t working,” she told him.

“Actually, I thought it was working rather well. At least until I publicly insulted you.”

“That’s not what this is about,” she told him. “It’s about me wanting you to be someone you’re not. I love you, Jimmy, but I want to change you, and that’s . . . it’s just plain stupid. And so is being in a relationship with someone that I know—I
know
—will hammer me emotionally, someone who can’t—not won’t,
can’t
—give me what I need.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

“Good,” she said, completely unsurprised at his total lack of response to her heartfelt words. It was nothing more than she’d expected.

But then he did surprise her. He lowered his voice. “Don’t take the Agency field position. The bureaucracy will drive you nuts. Stay with Tom’s team. I know it’s where you really want to be, Tess, and . . . I was already planning on leaving. This assignment—it was really just one last favor to Deck.”

“But . . .” Tess knew she shouldn’t ask, she
couldn’t
ask. That battery was going to run out far too quickly, and Jimmy and Deck were sitting in a twenty-eight-story death trap.

“Tell me what to do,” Jimmy said, and they got to work.

The Kazabek Grande used good old-fashioned locks to ensure their guests’ privacy. As Nash acted as the channel between Tess and the hotel computer, Decker located a master key.

And a map of the hotel.

It was enormous, four connected buildings constructed in a classic K-stani style, around a completely enclosed and private center courtyard.

Back when Decker first came to Kazbekistan, that courtyard had been luxurious, with a swimming pool and lounge chairs and even a bar serving tropical drinks. There had been palm trees and lush greenery, flowers everywhere.

Now the pool was bone dry, the trees brown, the lounge chairs broken and bent, their bright colors long since faded.

“Suite 933, West Tower,” Nash announced, snapping his phone shut.

They immediately headed through the eerily empty lobby to the stairs marked
WEST
in seven different languages. Nash wanted to get up there and get out as quickly as possible.

“Not only was the call to Nizami’s cell phone billed to 933, but the hotel also received a special delivery from the Kazabek Kidney Center. The room was being used by one Mr. Ifran Aklamash Umarah. Tess is passing that name along to Tom Paoletti and the client.”

“Good.” It was possible Sayid had used that alias before. Even though the terrorist leader was dead, it would still be useful to find out where he’d been and whom he’d talked to recently.

As they took the stairs up and up and up, penlights out, Nash was quiet, almost pensive.

He said some rather choice words though, when, upon hitting the ninth floor, a sign on the wall indicated that 933 was all the way down at the end of the dark hallway.

The key did the trick. The suite was as dark as the hall, but at least there were windows.

Jimmy went in first, flashing his light quickly around the sitting room and stepping briefly into the bedroom, making sure they truly were alone. He crossed to the windows, peeked out, then opened the curtains only a fraction of an inch.

“Room faces the street,” he told Decker as he went back into the bedroom to do the same thing at that window.

It wouldn’t do to have someone standing down on the street—one of Bashir’s men, for example—notice that a pair of rooms on the ninth floor suddenly had their curtains open.

Still, the last rays of the setting sun streamed in through that narrow slit, providing just enough light for them to see.

Decker quickly found the room’s safe in the bedroom. It was unoriginally placed behind an oil painting of an ocean sunset.

He set to work as Nash methodically searched the room, sticking any papers he found into his pack.

Murphy—bless his many talents—had managed to scrounge up some C4 before he was injured. There wasn’t much of the explosive, but Deck didn’t need a lot. With proper placement, like on the hinges—“This thing has its hinges on the outside,” he called to Nash, who laughed at the design flaw—it would pop open this safe. He cut a fuse, lit a match.

“Fire in the hole,” he warned Nash as he stepped back.

Bang.
It hardly made more noise than a popped brown-paper lunch bag.

And the safe hung open.

“Shit,” he said.

Nash came to look. “Whoa.”

A laptop—probably
the
laptop, thank you, Jesus—sat on top of stacks and stacks of neatly packaged, crisply new United States currency. Hundreds and twenties. Mostly twenties. Old style—all green.

“Is it real?” Nash grabbed a pack, pulled out a bill, and held it up to the light. “Not even close. A ten-year-old would know this is a fake.”

Decker stashed the laptop in his pack. It was an older model and nearly as heavy as that battery they’d lugged from Rivka’s. “What if that ten-year-old—or forty-year-old—hadn’t seen U.S. currency in years?” he asked. As was the case for a large portion of the population of K-stan.

“Then it might look pretty damn real. What do you think Sayid was here to buy?” Nash helped him pull the counterfeit money out of the safe and jam it into their bags.

“If we’re lucky, he’s kept some sort of diary or log on his laptop,” Decker said.

“Dear Diary,” Nash said. “Today I came to Kazabek to purchase a rocket launcher. It’s only slightly used, and at twenty thousand dollars it’s quite a good deal. Especially considering the money I’m using cost only fifty dollars to make. Although, gosh darn it, I sure use up that green ink in my printer cartridge awfully fast.”

Nash’s phone rang. “Hey,” he said, answering it. He stuck it between his ear and shoulder as they continued searching the room. “Good timing. Guess what Deck just put in his backpack?”

It would be bad form to assume the laptop in the safe was the laptop they wanted, and walk away without checking carefully beneath the king-sized bed.

“Shit.”

Deck looked up. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Schroeder’s gone,” Nash reported to Decker. He paused, listening again. “Tess went down to check on him and Khalid, found Khalid in the barn. The kid was tied up and gagged so he wouldn’t run and tell Tess that Schroeder was leaving. She thinks the prick’s probably on his way over here. Khalid said
he
said something about wanting to get photos here at the hotel.” He paused.

Photos. Decker rolled his eyes. God save them from reporters.

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who didn’t anticipate it, Tess. Dave should be back soon, and we will, too. Really, don’t beat yourself up over this. We’re not in any danger. There’s no way he’ll find the tunnel. Just . . . Yeah. Stay cool. We’re on our way.”