The Orphan Uprising (The Orphan Trilogy, #3) (35 page)

74

Seventeen saw Eight’s pistol in time and reflexively grabbed the operative’s right wrist, pinning it to the elevator’s rear wall before a shot could be fired. Eight had reacted similarly, grabbing Seventeen’s wrist and holding it so the pistol was pointed away from her. As they’d been trained to do, the two flailed at each other, striking with their feet and knees.

A savage knee to the stomach winded Seventeen, forcing her to double over, gasping for breath. At the same time, Eight smashed the former operative’s right wrist against the elevator wall, causing her to drop her pistol.

Now unarmed, Seventeen was fighting for her life. As they continued to flail at each other, a karate-style, stiff-fingered jab of Seventeen’s found its mark, striking Eight’s Adam’s apple. Momentarily unable to breathe, the operative dropped her pistol and tried in vain to suck in a breath of air.

Seventeen swept Eight’s feet from under her and looped the strap of her shoulder bag around her opponent’s throat. Before the operative could recover, Seventeen crossed the strap over and pulled it tight.

Eight, who still hadn’t recovered from the jab to her Adam’s apple, flailed her arms about in desperation as she sought to get air to her lungs. Her eyes bulged and her face turned bright red as Seventeen inexorably tightened the strap. Finally, the operative’s eyes glazed over and she became motionless.

Seventeen maintained the pressure on her victim’s throat for another twenty seconds to ensure she was dead. Then, breathing hard, she released the strap and stepped away from the body. She thought she might faint and had to lean against one wall to recover.

Studying her reflection in the elevator’s door, Seventeen almost didn’t recognize herself. Blood from scratches on her face had mingled with sweat, leaving streaks in her fake tan; she had a black eye and blood also oozed from a cut lip. As for her blouse, it was bloodied and torn, and her dress looked even more disheveled than her hair, which now resembled the Wreck of the Hesperus.  

Thinking quickly, the former operative tidied herself as best she could. She then retrieved both pistols – hers and Eight’s – and placed them in her shoulder bag.

Eight’s discarded cellphone caught her eye. Wondering if the other party was still on the line, she picked the phone up and put it to her ear. There was no dial tone, which made her suspect someone was indeed still at the other end.

Lightening her voice to mimic Eight’s as best she could, she said, “You don’t have to worry about the target any more, sir.” She gambled that the other party was Naylor and she hoped he’d believe the target she referred to was herself.

There was a long silence. Finally, Seventeen heard a voice she recognized.

“What is the status of the target?”

It is Naylor!
Seventeen smiled to herself. “The target has been retired, sir.” 

“Permanently?”

“Permanently.”

Seventeen heard Naylor breathe a sigh of relief. Anxious to avoid being found out, she said, “Someone is coming, sir.” She spoke with urgency. “I must go.”

The former operative ended the call, cutting Naylor off. She hoped she had deceived him into believing he’d been talking to Eight. Of course, she knew he’d find out sooner or later that he had been tricked, but until then she prayed her former boss would delay sending reinforcements to Tahiti.

#

Seventeen had no way of knowing, but nearly six thousand miles away in the den of his mansion in Illinois, Naylor was quietly celebrating. The Omega boss had fallen hook, line and sinker for his former operative’s ruse and firmly believed Seventeen was dead.

Even though he had his trick of the moment awaiting him naked in his bed upstairs, he indulged himself by pouring a stiff brandy from his liquor cabinet and raising his glass in a silent toast.

The brandy combined surprisingly well with the Viagra he’d taken earlier. Suddenly excited and remembering what awaited him upstairs, Naylor drained the glass and hurried off to pleasure himself.

#

Fifteen hundred miles away, in his room in Paris Las Vegas, Nine was making final preparations to breach Omega’s secret lab at Nellis Air Force Base. The table he sat at was littered with the architectural plans and drawings he acquired that morning from Al
Madman
Ricca. He’d been studying the plans, taking particular note of the tunnels and pipes that would provide him with access to the underground lab.

Nine considered the two hundred grand the plans had ended up costing him money well spent. They were extremely detailed – right down to the exact location of every nut and bolt – and they pointed to the facility being a series of interconnected labs and medical rooms.

Ricca had confirmed the facility was a medical lab, though he claimed he never knew who its intended patients were. However, he did reveal he’d learnt that some specialist personnel were recruited from international drug company
KaizerSimonsKovak
to work in the new facility. That had caught Nine’s attention because he was aware
KSK
was an Omega-owned company.

Nine’s plan was to access the facility just before midnight. That was only two hours away, so he knew he needed to get moving.

The former operative was under no illusions about the difficulties that lay ahead. Accessing an out-of-bounds facility that didn’t officially exist on heavily guarded Air Force property would be hard enough, but freeing a five-year-old boy – assuming he was even there – and secreting him out of the state and out of the country amounted to his most difficult assignment yet. And he knew it.

Still, he clung to his mentor’s slogan:
For every problem, there’s a solution
. He was working on a solution at that very moment.

On a brand new smart phone he had purchased that afternoon, he saved two emails he’d typed out. The first contained new instructions for his attorneys in Europe; the second contained detailed information about Omega and its illegal medical labs, and was addressed to American law enforcement agencies, high profile politicians and international news agencies. He planned to send the emails as soon as he found Francis, his rationale being that the inevitable furor they’d create would provide him with the smokescreen he needed to secret his son out of the country.

Without warning, the heartburn Nine had experienced earlier returned. What began as a dull ache quickly progressed to sharp pains. He hurried to his bedroom to retrieve the container of heart pills he’d left there. Before he even got to it, he remembered he’d run out of pills. He’d intended to use his last repeat prescription to purchase more at a drugstore in the hotel’s retail arcade earlier, but hadn’t got around to it.

Nine shook the container to check.
Nothing!
He cursed his forgetfulness.

The pain wouldn’t subside. Nine feared he was having another heart attack. Frightened and unsure what to do, he staggered over to the telephone on his bedside table, picked it up and dialed reception.

Nine momentarily blacked out. When he opened his eyes, he found himself on his hands and knees. The telephone was on the floor beside him. Somewhere through the fog in his brain, he could hear a concerned woman’s voice asking, “Hello? Are you alright, sir?”

Nine picked the phone up. He gasped, “Send someone to room ten eleven plea- -” He collapsed face down on the carpet.

“Hello? Hello?” The concerned receptionist got no answer.

75

The shrill ringing of the bedside telephone jarred both Naylor and the hooker lying next to him awake.

“What is it?” the sleepy young woman asked.

“Go back to sleep.” Naylor picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Sir, this is Dan Abernathy.”

Recognizing the name as the codename Omega operative Number Nineteen was currently using, Naylor sat up in bed, suddenly alert. “Go on.”

“I have some bad news,” Nineteen said. “Sue Lee was found dead in our hotel this evening.”

Naylor thought he was hearing things. He recognized
Sue Lee
as Eight’s codename. Mindful that he’d been speaking to her only a few hours earlier, he asked, “How did she die?”

“She was murdered. Strangled.”

Naylor rubbed his temple as his all-too familiar headache returned. The realization that he’d been duped was starting to set in. “What was the time of death?”

“Around seven forty-five pm, Tahiti time.”

That confirmed it for Naylor. He had been duped. He recalled that the telephone discussion he’d assumed had been with Eight had been around that time. He could feel his blood pressure rising. “I don’t believe this!” he suddenly shouted. “I send five elite operatives to find one pregnant lady, and some slip of a woman terminates four of them!” 

The hooker lying next to him cowered beneath the sheet as her client vented his fury over the phone.

The Omega director gradually calmed down. Controlling his anger, he said, “I’m sending more reinforcements. They’ll be there within twenty four hours.”

Naylor ended the call then speed-dialed a number. He was calling Ten, one of four operatives he’d dispatched to watch out for Nine at Nellis Air Force Base.

After a short delay, a sleepy voice came on the line. “This is Frederick Schlanger,” Ten answered using his current codename.

“This is Naylor. I have new instructions for the two new arrivals.”

Ten realized the Omega boss was referring to operatives Twenty One and Six who had arrived at the base only the previous day.

“They are to leave immediately for Tahiti.”

“Immediately, sir? They’re sleeping right now.”

“Immediately!” Naylor snapped. “Our man in Papeete needs their assistance and it’s urgent. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good. Their orders and flight tickets will be awaiting them when they check in at McCarran,” he said referring to Las Vegas’ main international airport.

“Yessir.”

Naylor ended the call then speed-dialed his PA, a renowned heavy sleeper. Resigned to having to wait for her to wake, he fumed over the latest news from Papeete. Eight’s murder confirmed to his way of thinking that Seventeen wasn’t working alone. He didn’t believe the former operative could cause so much mayhem on her own. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced Nine had returned to Tahiti. To his mind, that justified pulling operatives out of Nevada and sending them to Papeete.

“Hello, this is Susan,” the PA finally answered.

Naylor instructed her to immediately book Business Class seats for operatives Six and Twenty One on the first available flight to Papeete. Hanging up, he lay back and ruminated on recent events.

Since Nine had accosted him in his home, Omega’s twenty-one remaining elite orphan-operatives had been reduced by over half to just ten. Naylor still couldn’t quite get his head around that. For the best part of two decades, the agency’s elites had proven time and again they were without peer in the murky world of espionage as they heaped success upon success in high stakes missions around the world. How two washed up former operatives could cause so much mayhem was a mystery to him – more so given one had a known heart condition and the other was until recently a verifiable nutcase.

If there was one thing Naylor was sure of, it was that his beloved agency was starting to unravel. He knew it and his fellow directors knew it. All were unhappy and there had been whispers that at least two of them were considering resigning from the board, no doubt to distance themselves from Omega.

The fear remained also that Nine had been wired when he’d broken into Naylor’s home. Regardless of that, the Omega boss thought there was little doubt Nine would have downloaded the confidential files he’d accessed on his computer or, worse still, emailed them to a third party. Either way, he knew there was a very real possibility that Nine would release damaging information into the public domain – information that could sink Omega, or at the very least make life exceedingly uncomfortable for its directors.

Naylor clung to the hope that the rogue operative wouldn’t risk doing that as long as Francis remained in Omega’s custody.

#

Isabelle smiled joyfully as Atea handed her newborn baby to her. She couldn’t believe that just three hours after going into labor, she’d given birth to a healthy, beautiful girl. Compared to Francis’ traumatic birth, which had nearly cost her, her life, this birth had been very straightforward.

Sitting up in bed, Isabelle kissed her daughter’s cheek. “I name you Annette Nicia Hannar,” she whispered lovingly. The Frenchwoman knew Nine would approve. Their daughter had been named after Nine’s mother, Annette, and after Isabelle’s birthmother, Nicia.

Overcome by emotion, Isabelle began crying. Atea and her midwife helpers cried, too. Theirs were tears of joy while Isabelle’s were tears of joy and sadness – sadness that her husband and son couldn’t be here to enjoy the moment.

#

Seventeen just wanted to sleep. It had already gone midnight. Since terminating Eight, she had checked out of her old hotel and into a new one under a new guise. The suntanned Belgian anthropologist had evolved into a pale-skinned, freckled, red-headed New Zealand tourist. Strategic use of makeup and fake freckles had helped conceal her black eye and other bruises, and dark red lipstick had helped hide her split lip.

The former operative had spent the past two hours tending her cuts and bruises, and trying to improve on her new disguise. She was making hard work of it. The nonstop events of recent days had caught up with her. After so long removed from the world of espionage, she felt out of condition and craved sleep. However, sleep was a luxury she couldn’t afford right now.

Seventeen was mindful that, if he hadn’t already, Naylor would be sending more personnel to Papeete soon. She knew there was a good chance Nineteen was still alone and so there wouldn’t be a better time to terminate him than right now, before the inevitable reinforcements arrived.

76

For a minute or two, Nine couldn’t work out where he was when he woke. Nor could he make sense of the tubes and cords that connected him to machines and drips beside his bed.