JET II - Betrayal (JET #2) (6 page)

“And why is it that you haven’t been able to deal with this yourself?”

“To be frank, we tried on two separate occasions. Both ended disastrously. This man has decades of experience in the region and is as comfortable there as a native. He’s disappeared into the jungle, where he’s living like a tribal chieftain. It’s proved difficult to even establish where he is on any given day. Add to that, the wrinkle that the Myanmar government is actively hostile to us, and it’s a recipe for disaster.”

“What happened to the last two teams that tried to take him out? What went wrong?”

“Unknown. The first operative was found in Northern Thailand. The indigenous animals had feasted on him, so there wasn’t a lot left to process. Our last attempt, two men, disappeared without a trace. We’ve had no word from them for over a week. They had a sat phone that would work anywhere in the world, so it’s safe to say they’re off the table. Which brings us to you.”

“I might be more receptive to this if I wasn’t strapped in some prison cell.”

“I need you to fully understand the gravity of the situation, and not try to harm anyone here if we untie you.”

“At some point you’ll need to release me.”

“I think I’ll feel better about that once you’ve had a day to think this through. For the moment, I don’t believe you won’t immediately try to rip my throat out. And I’ve grown rather fond of it in my dotage.”

She glared at him. He had so far read her correctly.

“What I propose is that you take on this assignment. In return, upon its successful completion, I will give you half a million dollars – which will go a long way towards paying for your daughter’s education and whatnot. You are free to choose any method you like to terminate the target, but with one caveat. I want the diamonds back. We haven’t seen a flood on the market, so he still has them. Get me the diamonds and bring me his head, and you’ll have your freedom as well as a handsome reward. That’s the deal.”

“Wow. A one percent finder’s fee. That’s very generous.”

Arthur cocked a particularly ugly patch of scar tissue that used to be an eyebrow.

“Ah. Well, at least now we have a negotiation. Fine. I’ll up the offer to two percent of anything you bring back. Up to a million dollars.”

“And these straps? I’ll have to go to the bathroom sooner or later.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

He turned to leave. “Think this over. When I return, I will expect an answer, which will be a binding commitment.”

“So help me, if you harm a hair on Hannah’s head–”

“See? Still with the threats. Look. I just offered you a million dollars to do what you’ve done for almost free for the Mossad for years. I’ll look after your daughter like she was my own while you’re gone. You’ll never have to worry about anything again once this is over. I strongly suggest you consider this carefully. You’re not going to get a better deal. Ever.”

With that, Arthur spun on his heel and knocked on the door. One of the men outside opened it, and then he was gone. She heard the bolt slide back into place, and then the footsteps moved down the hall to wherever they’d come from, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

For all his experience, Arthur had made a mistake. Two, actually. The first was that he had tipped his hand. He needed her. That gave her power over him. The second was more subtle. He’d left the light on, which gave her the ability to see. That might not have seemed like a huge advantage, but it was enough.

She set to work on maneuvering her left arm, a millimeter at a time, up towards her shoulder as she exhaled, decreasing the expansion of her ribcage to the extent possible. The skin tore against the sharp edge of the strap, but she ignored it, forced even more air out of her lungs, and pulled.

~ ~ ~

Arthur stood in the deserted lobby of what had once been a mental institution in rural Virginia, long since abandoned and condemned for demolition. As the state fought with the federal government over the property and the ultimate use of the land, it sat empty, chain-link fence with razor wire ringing it, keeping looters and vandals out, and presenting the agency with one of several facilities where it could detain sensitive subjects in complete privacy.

Three men stood out of earshot, murmuring among themselves. All wore suits and had weapons in shoulder holsters.

He took a few more steps towards the main entrance, a glass and iron affair with two oversized doors that were scarred from decades of grim traffic entering a facility few ever left unless in a body bag. Plywood had been mounted across both glass panels to prevent breakage, and an armed guard patrolled the grounds day and night. The locals had considered the woods around it a damned place for generations, so it was natural that the facility no community wanted anywhere near it would wind up there. Built as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal construction boom in the 1930s it had been shut down in 2001, the last of the patients transferred to modern hospitals, where they could get more compassionate care. Its history was one marked by questionable treatments and controversial approaches, and it had gained a certain professional notoriety in the Forties and Fifties following a propensity for performing lobotomies on a far greater percentage of its population than anywhere else in the country – fully double the national average.

A pool of rank rainwater glazed the uneven tiled floor of the foyer, and a furry form scurried into a corner as he approached. The place was perfectly suited for this sort of detainment. That it had a certain medieval quality was icing on the cake. He wanted those he was ‘negotiating’ with to hate and fear it, and want to be anywhere else in the world. As he was sure the woman named Jet wanted to be free of her grim imprisonment.

He flipped open his cell phone and placed a call, staring off into the near distance as he waited for it to answer.

“We have her. I gave her the ultimatum. I expect an affirmative response within the next twenty-four hours,” he said quietly.

“Then what?”

“Then our friend gets his comeuppance.”

“Why are you so confident in her when your best men couldn’t make it happen?”

“She’s…different. Hard to explain it. If anyone can pull this off, it will be her. That, and we’re sort of out of options, aren’t we?” Arthur observed.

“There’s that.”

“Which, I thought I would mention…we aren’t having much success with the new group that took over since he killed the old one. Apparently they feel that there’s substantially more risk associated with dealing with us than there was before. So the cost is considerably higher. Which makes it far less interesting for us.”

“I understand. Perhaps they will see reason once we have rid the jungles of the white devil.”

“That’s our hope. Right now they’re talking to others, and you know as well as I do, that if anyone else does a deal it will disrupt everything we’ve built. That cannot be allowed to happen,” Arthur underscored.

“We are in agreement. It can’t. You really think she can do this?”

“I’ve never met anyone I am more sure about. You know her history.”

“The jungle is a different environment than the desert.”

“True enough. But she’s got ten times more experience than our next option. Honestly, she’s scary to be in the same room with. And you know I don’t scare.”

“Very well. Do whatever it takes, but make it happen. We’re running out of time.”

“I know.”

Chapter 6

The sound of a banshee wailing reverberated off the asylum walls and brought the guards at a run. The shrieking was horrifying, pure terror, ending with a yowl of pain and then silence.

“Move. Come on. But remember what we’re dealing with. She’s extremely dangerous,” Fred reminded his men.

All three gripped stun guns. They were not to use deadly force if it could be helped. The orders were clear.

“What do you think happened?” Jim asked.

Fred rubbed his nose and sniffed. “Could be rats. I never thought it was a good idea to leave her down here unguarded. Some of them are the size of minivans. If a bunch of them got to her…it could be ugly.”

“Or it could be some kind of a trick.”

“She’s lashed to the bed. You helped me do it. Nobody could get out of that. Especially not after getting shot full of rhino tranquilizer.”

Fred beamed his flashlight on the rusting steel door. The area was completely quiet other than their breathing. Whatever had caused the commotion was over. The single industrial fluorescent lamp in the hallway flickered, its glow inadequate to provide more than slim illumination to the windowless space. The other four lamps had long ago stopped working, lending the area the feeling of a dungeon.

“Jim, you slide the bolt open. Carl, you go in first. I’ll follow,” he whispered.

The two subordinates nodded and tensed in preparation.

The bolt slid open with a
thunk
, and then Jim, who’d jerked it free, pushed the door wide, the bottom scraping on the uneven broken tile before slamming against the interior wall.

The room was dark. They could just make out the shape of the ancient bed, but it was indistinct. Carl, in the lead, reached to his side and felt for the tripod lamp. He found the stand and groped up to the control at the top and flipped the switch, but nothing happened.

Annoyed, he pointed his flashlight at the bed. The beam played across the empty surface just as a bolt of yellow swung across his field of vision and a hard metallic rectangle slammed into his head with the force of a hammer blow. Warm blood streamed freely from a gash in his forehead, and he cried out as he dropped the light. The room swirled in blackness, and he lost consciousness, sinking to the floor with a groan.

A short length of metal smacked into Fred’s skull, and he went down like a bag of rocks, landing heavily at Carl’s inert feet. Jim stood frozen just outside the door, staring dumbstruck into the room’s inky depth, trying to process what was happening. Jet swung down from the ceiling, gripping an overhead pipe like a gymnast and propelled herself into his chest with both legs, her feet striking him with startling momentum. His stun gun clattered harmlessly by his side as he collapsed onto the cold cement floor, his ribs shattered. She watched him as he struggled for breath, then she reached down and pulled his pistol loose from his shoulder holster, pausing to inspect the Colt 1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic before tucking it into the waist of her jeans.

Fifteen seconds had passed since the door had opened, and all three agents were incapacitated. She shook her head. If this was any indication of the level of expertise at Arthur’s disposal, it was no wonder he needed competent help.

The strap buckle had made an effective weapon, as the first unlucky man had discovered, and the rest of the binding straps had proved useful to provide a cradle between the exposed pipes running along the ceiling, where the sheetrock had long ago rotted away.

The man she’d body-slammed didn’t look good – he was still struggling for air, flailing like a fish on the deck of a fishing boat. It was possible that one of his ribs had punctured a lung, judging by his inability to breathe, but it wasn’t her problem – they were all lucky to be alive. She dragged him by the hair and dumped him in the room with his unconscious colleagues, then took a moment to consider the pile of bodies before pulling the door closed, driving the bolt home and then turning and surveying the hall. A few still-wet footprints in the accumulated dust told her which direction the men had come from.

The agent’s pistol back in her hand, she crept cautiously down the hallway, past thirty doors identical to the one she’d been locked behind, towards the stairs at the far end. Light filtered in from above, and she saw a slick of greasy fluid tracing its way down the stairwell, which stank of rot and filth. Wherever this was, it had been unoccupied for a long time.

She ascended and paused at the landing, allowing her eyes to adjust to the unexpected gloom of the ground floor. All of the windows had been boarded up, and the only illumination came from an exposed incandescent bulb hanging from a workman’s scaffold; motes of dust floated in orbit around the sixty-watt glow.

Jet crept to the double doors and peeked through one of the spaces between the moldy plywood. A broad driveway stretched into the distance, empty except for a black and white cat skulking near an empty fountain in the center of the plaza that served as the arrival area. A few outdoor lamps lit the immediate surfaces with a harsh white glare, but thankfully it got darker farther away from the building – if she could make it to the shadows undetected, she would have a running chance. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was seven o’clock. So she’d lost at least almost a full day.

Whatever the time, she wasn’t going to stick around and see what kind of reinforcements showed up after the men locked in the tomb below missed their check-in calls.

Jerking her pistol free, she pushed one of the oversized doors ajar a foot and slipped through the opening into the frigid evening air. She didn’t see anyone, so if there was any exterior security, it was lax, unless the grounds were wired for motion or infrared – which she’d discover soon enough.

Keeping to the overgrown hedges that lined the drive, she trotted in a crouch to the massive iron gates that sealed the compound from the road beyond. A rusting chain held the barrier closed, but she was able to squeeze through the gap between the two sections, turning to take in the hulking faux-French façade of the building she’d escaped. It looked abandoned, except for the new fencing that ran just outside of the rock perimeter wall that circled the grounds.

“Hey. What are you doing here? Go on, get outta here. This is private property,” a gruff man’s voice yelled at her from near the left wing’s entry. Jet could see that the guard was uniformed and carried a shotgun. She slipped the pistol back into her jeans and pulled her light sweater over it. He was far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to make out the detail in the half-light of dusk.