Saving Brigit (25 page)

“Oh, I don’t know,” Thia said, “I think a good, old-fashioned catfight between us ladies would be fun.”

“Ladies?” Brigit stepped to her side.

The Claw stared at Thia. She clapped her hands. “Very clever. You’re the first ever to catch on.”

“She’s a woman, and she does this to other women?” Brigit sounded more angry than confused. “You bitch!”

Before Brigit could stride forward and take on the Claw, Thia heard shouts above the alarms. She thought she detected Derek’s voice. Then gunshots rang out. Finally, there was only silence as the gunfire, shouts, and alarm all ended.

The Claw started to back away. Thia used the side of her foot and downed her with a sharp kick to the knee.

Thia’s widened gaze shot to the door as a man outside called out something in Tajiki. That meant it couldn’t be Derek.

Her heart caught in her throat. Her palms became clammy with sweat. She positioned herself, ready to attack anyone who came through the door. The Claw was struggling to her feet, but Thia’s attention centered on the door. She held her breath as the doorknob turned.

A roar filled her ears. Her pulse pounded. As though from a distance, she heard the Claw move and felt Brigit at her back.

“Stay close.” Frantic, she looked around for something—anything—to use as a weapon.

The door handle stopped turning. The door cracked open, then slammed back against the wall. Derek launched through the door in a crouched position, with Rashid right behind.

“Derek!” Thia rushed forward, practically jumping into his arms before he came to a halt.

“The Claw,” Rashid bit out.

“He’s a woman, and she’s right back there.” Thia turned in time to see a door in the bookcase closing. “She’s getting away!”

Rashid flew past. His foot kept the door from latching. Pulling the hidden door open, he slipped through. Brigit, seeing the door close again, held it open with a book.

“After them,” Derek clipped out. Three burly men pushed past Brigit and through the door.

“Where’s the comb, Thia?” Derek’s voice was tight and firm.

“Here.” She opened her hand. He swept the pieces from her palm and crushed them with his foot. His gaze took her in. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said in a low voice. He stared. She cupped his cheek. “I’m not hurt, really.”

He seemed to take comfort in that. Kissing her palm, he shifted his examination from her to Brigit. “Are you all right? Able to get past a few obstacles to get out of here?”

“I’m fine,” Brigit said, “but I’m not leaving until we find Fatima.”

“Fatima? Who’s Fatima?” Derek’s focus swung back to Thia.

“Her friend.” She, too, looked at Brigit, frowning. “Brigit, we don’t have time. We’re not even sure where she is.”

Brigit’s eyes pled with Thia. “Everyone will be locked up. Don’t you see? As soon as the alarm went off, the women would have been taken back to their cells with no way out.” She started toward the door. A large man stepped in her way, rifle at the ready.

“This is my team,” Derek explained. “Since we’re here,” he said to the group of men crowding around them, “let’s tear this room apart. We’ll take whatever intel we can.” Several men jumped forward and began going through the desk and bookshelves. The man who blocked Brigit’s path stayed put. Derek said, “The rest of us are headed for the helicopter that should be outside the west wall.”

“Brigit,” he continued, “we have very little time before bombs are going to be taking this place apart. If we’re not at the rendezvous in”—he checked his watch—“twelve minutes, we stand a good chance of being taken apart, too.”

“I can’t leave her here.” Brigit feinted left and then did a right run around the soldier and out the door.

“Brigit!” Exasperated, Thia looked at Derek and threw up her hands. “We can’t just leave them.” She tore off after Brigit. “Hell,” she heard Derek say, and then two sets of footsteps followed.

Brigit stopped a few yards down the hallway. She moved from foot to foot over the body of one of the guards. Thia moved up beside her. Blood spattered the walls and ran out from under the body. A few feet away, another guard sprawled lifeless in an open doorway. Thia didn’t want to think about what might be in the room.

She put her arm over Brigit’s shoulders. “If we’re going to find Fatima, we have to keep moving,” she said in a low voice. Brigit’s head jerked up and down, but she didn’t move. Thia felt Derek behind her.

“Don’t look,” he ordered. “It’s easier if you pretend they’re fake and just keep going.”

Brigit let out a strangled sound, but she stepped over the corpse’s legs and started forward again. Thia did the same.

When Brigit made a blind turn and looked around, confused, however, Derek pulled out a map and took the lead. His man took the rear.

“If you see something that looks familiar, let me know,” he said.

He turned into a different hallway, took a staircase two steps at a time, and then stopped at the edge of an open courtyard. Derek scanned the area. He faced his teammate. “I don’t see any way except across, do you?”

Thia had never seen such confidence as these two men showed. Their belief in what they were doing infected her, too. “We can make it across,” she whispered.

Derek gifted her with a smile. “Always ready for adventure.”

The compound seemed strangely quiet. At Derek’s signal, the men herded Thia and Brigit across the open area while searching the rooftops for trouble. A shot rang out somewhere in the distance, but no one intercepted them.

“I know where we are,” Brigit cried out when they entered another building.

“Stay behind me.” Derek held a handgun.

Thia couldn’t help wondering if one of the dead men they’d seen had met his end because of Derek. She wondered, but she didn’t care. What the Claw did was despicable. The guards worked for her and followed her orders. At the moment, Thia couldn’t find a sympathetic thought to spare for them.

With Brigit telling them where to turn, they found themselves entering a long, darkened hallway. Muted illumination came from a light with a red shade hung on the end wall.

Derek stopped, holding up his hand to signal the rest to do the same. “I don’t like the look of this.”

“Fatima’s room is at the end on the right,” Thia said.

“Yes,” agreed Brigit. “Fatima!”

“Damn it!” Derek raked his hair, gun raised. “Why don’t you let them know where we are and what we’re doing for Christ’s sake?”

“You said you were in a hurry,” she answered. “Fatima!”

“Brigit?” The sound came from behind a wall or a door.

“That’s her,” Brigit said breathlessly. “We have to get her out.”

“What are all these other doors?” The man who’d accompanied them spoke for the first time since entering the building.

“Women. There are about fourteen of us, give or take. I was never sure if we were all together at any time or not.”

“Pretty sturdy locks,” the man said, examining one of the doors.

“Which room was yours, Brigit?” Thia reached out and touched the younger woman’s arm.

“Over there. The third one on the left.” She lapsed into silence.

Thia moved to Derek’s side. “How can we get them out?”

“No problem.” He holstered his handgun and waved his teammate forward. “I’ll take the left side.”

“Yes, sir.” The man slung his rifle over his shoulder and reached inside a zipped pocket on his pants. He withdrew a coil of black wire. Derek had his own wire, which he separated into several smaller coils. The two men worked in tandem as though they’d done so for years.

“Ready?” Derek asked.

“Tell them to stay away from their doors.”

“What are you going to do?” Brigit’s voice held a mixture of excitement and fear.

The other man started shouting in Tajiki. Brigit took a step closer to Thia.

Derek turned to them. “You two stay back here. If you see anything or hear anything, call out.” He walked to the closest door on the left, wrapped one of the wires around the outside knob, sticking it to the door with a square of molding plastic. He used a lighter to fire the end of the wire and stepped back.

The flame circled the coil in a few seconds and ended in a burst of white light. The door fell open. Derek didn’t take time to look inside. He moved to the next door in line and began the process again. His teammate repeated the actions on the right side of the hall. When one of the women screamed when her door came open, the man shouted to her in Tajiki.

Screams didn’t matter by the time they reached the end of the hall. Women filled the hall, talking, crying, running into each other and away from each other. Brigit pushed through the crowd until she reached Fatima.

“Come on,” Brigit shouted. “They’re getting us out.”

Fatima’s eyes were wide. Her mouth hung open. “What is happening? Who are these people?”

“No time.” Thia hadn’t wanted to let Brigit out of her sight, so she’d dogged her heels to the end of the hall. She took Fatima’s arm in one hand and Brigit’s in the other hand and hustled them back through the chaos.

“But, why are you here?”

Thia stopped and turned to the other woman. “She came for you.”

“Because that’s what friends do,” Brigit said. “And now we’re going to get you out of here.”

The three found Derek, who leaned against the wall, alternately looking at his watch and his teammate, who was trying to bring order to the group of women. When he saw Thia, he straightened, popped two fingers in his mouth, and let out an ear-splitting whistle.

“Come this way!” he shouted. Then he turned and swung his arm like John Wayne waving the wagon train forward. Amazingly, when he started off, almost as one, the women followed. Thia glanced over her shoulder. Derek’s team member once again took up the rear. He met Thia’s gaze and shook his head. A wry smile lit his face. She almost laughed. She promised herself she
would
laugh—when they were safe and sound back in San Francisco.

Rashid stepped into the rock-walled corridor and jerked his head left and right to catch any sign of the Claw. A flash of color caught his eye. He took off in pursuit.

The sound of footsteps approaching from behind should have worried him, but he’d heard men come through the door in the wall and knew them to be his. Derek had the women now, so he’d sent the others as backup. If he caught up with the Claw, they might have to protect him from Rashid. The men he’d lost due to the Claw’s interference on previous jobs had had families. Forget the intelligence they might gain from the man, Rashid wanted revenge.

His feet flew out from under him as he rounded the corner and tripped over a discarded man’s robe.
So, he’s changing his appearance.

Rashid tried to fix in his mind the brief glimpse he’d gotten when the bastard had been escaping through the door. The person was tall, there was a sense of slenderness, and a short beard. Black hand gloves, no question—had pulled the door.

A door closed ahead. Rashid added a spurt of speed. He flew around another corner where two hallways intersected and skidded to a sudden halt just before slamming into a wall.
Damn!

He spun around and started the other way, nearly bowling over the first of his men.

“He’s down here,” Rashid focused all his faculties on listening and observing. There had to be some hint as to where the Claw had gone. His team stood as quietly as he, tensed for immediate action.

Rashid looked to the right, in the direction he would have continued had he not made the last turn. He saw nothing. Straight ahead, then.

There! A glove, nothing more than a splash of black lay on the floor outside a closed door.

“Come,” he ordered, even as he started forward. Reaching the door, he quickly assessed how to proceed. He shrugged. Blast in, that was usually the best.

He pulled his Glock from the back of his pants and pointed it toward the ceiling. The doorknob turned easily and quietly. He rotated it until it stopped, swung around, and gave the door a strong kick, putting his whole body into it. The door slammed back into the wall and rebounded. In the second of time he could see the interior, a man swiveled toward him, a look of surprise on his face.

Briefly, Rashid wondered if his own face reflected the same shock. Marel might well have been the last person he’d expected to see. He dropped to his haunches, knocked through the door, and rolled the rest of the way in, ending with his gun aimed at his former comrade in arms. His three-man team crowded into the room behind him, their own weapons aimed at the unknown threat.

Marel faced them all with contempt-filled his eyes. The room wasn’t small, but even against the wall, where he stood as though on guard, he seemed to suck out all the air.

Rashid quickly examined his surroundings. A mid-sized bedroom, it held a full bed, dresser, and table where someone could eat or play cards. The furnishings were spartan, with no personal touches.

“Marel, old friend.”

Marel spit on the floor in an action that matched his expression.

Rashid steeled himself. “Where is the Claw?”

“You will not stop her.” Smirking, the man ignored the three men pointing their weapons at him.

“Her?” He’d been so anxious to capture the Claw, what Thia said hadn’t registered. She said the Claw was a woman. Impossible!

“I know the Claw came in here. Where is he?”

The man gave a harsh laugh. “We seem to have many men in the room, yet you search for one more? Fool. You still do not know what you seek.”

“Tear the room apart,” Rashid told the men, trying hard to ignore the smirk on Marel’s face. What did he know that gave him such arrogance?

Rashid narrowed his eyes, studying the man. Except for turning rapidly when they’d burst through the door, he hadn’t moved, covering the wall space as though he protected gold.

Rashid snapped his gaze to meet the giant’s. An understanding passed between them. “Move over here,” Rashid ordered. His men must have detected the currents in the room, for they stopped searching and faced Rashid and the hulking man.

“I don’t believe I will. I love her, you see.” He threw up his arm, discharging a knife that had been concealed in his sleeve. The blade pierced Rashid’s left shoulder. Waves of pain crashed through him. He fought sinking to his knees only through sheer will. Shots rang out from all three guns. The man’s body, for long moments pinned to the wall with the violence of the shots, slowly drifted to the floor when the firing ended. Dotted with bullet holes and splattered with blood, the wall revealed a door.