Kitabı oku: «Look-Alike», sayfa 4

Chapter 5

Pulling Tuenis into motion, Sam walked to a position beside a forty-foot yacht moored at the side of the canal. She immediately attracted the attention of the boat’s security officer, but he remained at the railing twenty feet away.

For a moment, Sam saw Elle slinking through the shadows along the canal, then her sister was gone—vanished into the darkness provided by the boats tied to cleats. Party music—industrial, techno and old-fashioned rock and roll—thundered from the nearby boats and from clubs that dotted the area. Amsterdam was proving louder by night than by day.

“Who are you people?” Tuenis asked.

“Quiet,” Sam snapped. The thought of Elle encountering whoever was on the boat by herself didn’t rest easy. Maybe Elle had more experience with the city, but she wasn’t invincible.

“Are you guys criminals or government?” Tuenis asked.

Sam silenced the man with a sharp glance. “Another word,” she promised, “and I’ll tie you to an anchor and heave you into the canal.”

Tuenis nodded weakly.

Sam took her cell phone from her pocket. Chipped for international use, the phone also had a GPS locator. The global positioning satellite system accessed at least twelve of the twenty-four satellites in fixed orbit around Earth at any time.

She punched in Riley McLane’s number and waited.

Riley answered on the second ring. “Miss me?” he asked, and she could hear the mocking grin in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Look, I’ve been thinking,” Riley said, “I shouldn’t have gotten angry the way I did. I know that—”

“I need help,” Sam interrupted.

Riley paused.

“At least, I may need help.”

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

That was one of the things Sam loved about Riley. He was more talkative and chatty than she was, and more willing to reveal his feelings—maybe even more certain about how he felt—but he knew when to listen.

“Can you access a satellite view of my position?”

“Yes. Give me a minute.”

Tensely, Sam waited in the shadows.

Elle crept close to Satyr Dreams, then put a hand on the houseboat. As a water taxi sped by, she ducked to avoid the splash of light that ran along the vessel’s gunwales.

Getting the rhythm of the houseboat, she leaned her body weight on the side and pulled herself over as it rocked on the wave. Lithely, she rolled to her feet and flattened beside the stern door. A quick glance at the security system told her it had been bypassed.

Holding the H&K .45 in her left hand, Elle eased the safety off and put her hand on the door to test it.

It was unlocked.

Readying herself, Elle raised the gun and swung into position just inside the door.

The soft blue-white glow of a computer monitor filled the bedroom. Data streamed across the screen.

And the illumination fell across the dead man lying in the middle of the floor. She knew exactly what the black dot in the center of the man’s forehead was.

Silently, a shadow separated itself from the darkness. Only motion gave her attacker away. She pulled the gun up and fired. The pistol kicked back against her palm as the weapon’s silenced “cough” wheezed into the houseboat cabin.

Inside the room, a man cursed in surprise.

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Standing in the ops mission control room, Riley McLane stared at the images on the wall screens. He was a little over six feet tall and dressed in a brown turtleneck and tan slacks. Although he was currently riding a desk job, he wore his pistol in shoulder leather. His wavy black hair hung just above his eyebrows. His cheeks were smooth, freshly shaven.

Amsterdam. What the hell are you doing in Amsterdam, Sam? The question chafed at him.

The mission control room was quiet except for the hum of the computers and electronic equipment. Occasionally whispered conversations over the headset reached his ears.

“C’mon, Tolliver,” Riley coaxed. “This connect isn’t going to take all night, is it?”

“No.” Tolliver was young and intense. He kept his hair trimmed to baby-chick down that was golden yellow. Round-lensed glasses reflected the wallscreen. His fingers flew knowingly across the keyboard, then he hit a final sequence and leaned back. “We’re in.”

The view on the center four screens changed, opening up on a night view of a canal in a busy metropolitan area. Sam’s phone GPS showed up as a pulsing orange dot.

“Can you get closer to Special Agent St. John?” Riley struggled to keep the tension out of his voice.

“I’m on it.” Tolliver worked the keyboard again and brought up a closer image. “You are going to get permission for the use of this spy satellite, aren’t you, Special Agent McLane?”

“You bet.” Riley would, of course. But it wouldn’t be permission he was seeking. Rather, it would be forgiveness. In the spy trade, he’d learned that it was often more productive to everyone involved to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Permission usually never came, and forgiveness was generally around the corner and most of the time no later than the next presidential election.

Sam stood in the shadows of a tree along the canal. Riley could tell from his lover’s posture that she was worried. He wished he could put his hand on the wallscreen and touch her.

“Start capturing images, Tolliver,” Riley said. Although he was more inclined to fieldwork, Riley was also being groomed as a handler. He didn’t want to come in from the violent world that he loved, and felt that he could do the most good in the trenches, but he knew that sooner or later he would be forced to do it.

Tonight, however, he was thankful he was in a position to help Sam. He clicked over to Sam’s phone connection. “I’m here.”

Tolliver worked quickly, downloading image after image and saving it off to a file.

“I’m here with Elle,” Sam said. “She’s in a houseboat about two hundred feet southeast of my position. Farther along the canal.”

Covering the mouthpiece with a hand, Riley said, “Back out. There’s a houseboat on the canal. A second agent is aboard.”

“What agent?” Tolliver clicked the keys and the view backed out. The houseboat came into focus.

“It’s a need-to-know, Tolliver. Just acquire the images.”

“Yes, sir.”

Riley didn’t want to have to explain how Sam happened to be in Amsterdam with her twin sister, who happened to be an excellent Russian spy. He had no clue himself.

“What am I looking for, Sam?” Riley asked.

“Someone broke into the houseboat,” Sam answered. “Elle went to find out who.”

“Is the person or persons still there?”

“I don’t know.”

Riley heard the irritation and frustration in Sam’s voice. As carefully guarded as she was with her emotions, he doubted many people would have noticed. “What are you working?”

“Private business.”

“For the school?” Riley knew from recent experience that Athena Academy graduates had a tendency to operate quietly in the background to deal with their own issues.

“There’s no time to talk about it now.”

Shelving his irritation, Riley studied the screen, finding Elle standing beside the houseboat’s stern door just as the woman moved out of the shadows. An instant later, a quick illumination flared into being, then just as quickly disappeared.

“That was a gunshot,” Tolliver said.

“I know.” Tension swirled inside Riley. He knew the flash indicated a weapon had been fired. He’d spent years out in the field. “Does Elle have a weapon, Sam?”

Joachim didn’t get a good look at the woman as she came through the door. He’d gone after her immediately, hoping to catch her by surprise. Instead, she’d caught him almost flat-footed by firing so quickly. There had been no hesitation. Whoever she was, she intended to kill him.

He twisted as he saw her hands shift. The bullet grazed his chest, sliced through his shirt and pulled at his jacket as it ripped through. Another inch or two and he’d have been a dead man. He wrapped both hands around the woman’s and forced the pistol from his direction.

She fired again, and the muzzle flash ripped through the cottony darkness. The bullet slapped low into the wall behind him, letting him know she was a pro because she was firing at the center of his mass rather than panicking for a head shot.

In the next handful of seconds, Joachim found out he had a hellcat on his hands. Her elbows and knees lifted, crashing into his body rapidly, going for his crotch and his face—softer tissue areas. He maintained his lock on her hands, then swept her feet from under her and fell on top of her, knocking the breath from her with his weight. He was more than a foot taller than her and had her by at least a hundred pounds. She shouldn’t have given him much trouble. But she did.

He made the mistake of lifting his head to look at her and identify her. She responded by crashing a forearm into his nose and left eye. Blinding pain screamed through his head and he lay on top of her again, somehow managing to knock the pistol away.

“Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“Like you didn’t hurt the guy on the floor?” She continued struggling, but—for the moment, at least—he had her arms pinned.

“I didn’t kill him.”

She went still. “Then let me up.”

Cautiously, Joachim lifted his head and looked at her. With the blue monitor glow washing over her, he saw that she was one of the blond women he’d met earlier at Central Station. Not only that, she was the one he’d been so intrigued by. Almost instantly, he grew aware of how her body lay pressed under his. Before he knew it, his body responded and he was pressing with more than he’d intended.

He didn’t know what surprised him more: that the woman was the one from Central Station, that his body could react so quickly under the circumstances…or that she arched her back and headbutted him in the face.

Bright pain ignited inside Joachim’s skull. If his nose wasn’t broken, he was going to be further surprised. Blood dripped into his vision from a cut over his left eye.

He cursed.

“You,” she accused. Those beautiful ice-blue eyes widened in shock.

Shifting, straddling her uncomfortably now with his excitement hard against her belly, Joachim held her wrists and sat up. He looked down at her. “What are you doing here?”

“You were following us.”

“How could I be following you if I got here in time to kill that man before you did?” he asked.

Another thought occurred to Joachim. “Where’s your sister?”

She glared at him.

Joachim growled a curse. “Don’t play games. That could get your sister killed. There are worse people out tonight than me.”

Sam waited anxiously after the muzzle flash. Riley’s question kept wriggling through her mind. Does Elle have a weapon?

Then the second muzzle flash blazed to life inside the houseboat.

“What’s going on?” Tuenis asked.

For a moment, Sam considered releasing the man and going to her sister’s aid. With luck, they could find Tuenis again. Then Riley spoke into her ear over the phone.

“Sam, you’ve got trouble.” His voice was deadly calm. “Three men—no, four men are closing on the houseboat. You’ve got to get out of there.”

Instinctively, Sam pulled Tuenis back into the shadows with her. She scanned the street with her peripheral vision, not trying to see the men, just opening her vision up to spot approach patterns.

Two of the men came into view at once. Both men were unknown to her, but both moved liked predators closing in for the kill. A moment later, she spotted the third and fourth. All of them converged on the houseboat.

“Who are they?” Sam asked.

“I thought you could tell me,” Riley replied.

“No.” Desperate, Sam glanced around and spotted a small seventeen-foot speedboat moored behind the yacht. The canal was the fastest way out of the area. She pushed Tuenis into motion. “Move,” she ordered.

At her direction, Tuenis clambered into the speedboat. Their movement had attracted the attention of the four men, temporarily freezing them in place. By that time, Sam had cast off the lines to the mooring cleats. She jumped to the wheel and reached below, jerking out wires to hotwire the boat. It felt like years before the engine fired, and she shoved the throttle forward and cut the wheel sharply. The speedboat powered out into the canal, bumping against the yacht ahead of it and drawing a string of curses. A water taxi sped by, missing her by inches. She kept the throttle buried and headed for the houseboat.

No more muzzle flashes came from within. Sam wondered who was left alive and prayed she hadn’t lost the sister she’d so recently found.

Chapter 6

With the computer glow playing across his face, Elle recognized the man from the train station. Stay centered, she told herself. You can’t help Sam if you’re dead.

“Your sister may be in danger,” Joachim repeated.

Blood from the cut on his forehead tracked down his handsome features to his nose and chin, then dripped off. Beneath the cut his eye was already starting to swell. Elle noticed that other parts of him had swelled, too, though she doubted that had anything to do with the headbutt.

Two phones, each with a distinct ring tone, went off in Joachim’s jacket. He ignored them.

“Popular tonight, aren’t you?” Elle asked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

A third phone buzzed. This time Elle realized it was hers. She wore it at her waist.

After a brief hesitation, Joachim shifted Elle’s wrists into one massive hand and with the other reached for her phone. He flipped it open and said, “I’ve got your sister.”

Riley Connor listened to the phone ring in his ear. He scanned the wallscreen. Tolliver had tagged the four identified predators with red triangles over their heads. Blue triangles marked Sam and the houseboat. An orange triangle stayed over the head of the unidentified man with Sam.

One of the men pulled a long, tubular device from under his jacket.

“Magnify,” Riley commanded, listening to the phone ring in his ear again. Sam was on hold on another line, but he could clearly see her in the speedboat she’d liberated.

Tolliver threw a rectangle over the man and blew up the image onscreen. The details fuzzed out a little, but Riley was able to identify the tube.

“Is that a rifle?” Tolliver asked.

Fear screamed through Riley’s system. He barely walled it off. “No. That’s a LAW. A light, antitank weapon. A disposable rocket launcher.”

The phone rang again and was picked up on the other end. Riley had called Elle’s number, knowing that she would either answer or not. After the shots fired in the houseboat, it was a safe bet that her presence was known.

Instead of Elle’s calm voice, so like Sam’s except more worry free, a thick male voice with the hint of a German accent barked, “I’ve got your sister.”

“This is Special Agent Riley McLane of the United States Central Intelligence Agency,” Riley announced, cutting the man off. “There are four men outside the houseboat closing in on your position. One of them has just taken aim at you with a rocket launcher. I don’t think they intend to take either of you alive.”

Rocket launcher. The words she’d overheard burned into Elle’s mind. She forced herself to relax, to focus. She’d been under fire dozens of times in urban places and military zones. She could rely on her training.

Atop her, Joachim shifted, striving to see through the covered window. Bucking her hips, Elle shoved him off and threw herself in pursuit of the pistol. Her hand closed around the gun butt. At the same time, Joachim’s hand closed around her ankle. Turning and twisting, she powered through his grip—hoped that he didn’t sprain her ankle or her knee—and came up in a sitting position.

She aimed the pistol at the center of his face.

Joachim froze. His lips moved in a silent curse as he grimly accepted his fate.

“I know that was Riley McLane,” she said. “If he told you there’s someone out there with a rocket launcher, there is.”

Joachim nodded. “What do you propose?”

“That we get the hell out of here.”

Taking his hand from her ankle, Joachim pushed himself to his feet. He drew the curtain aside just a fraction and peered out.

Immediately a hail of bullets crashed through the window and the houseboat’s wall. Glass, wood and insulation sailed into the air. The bullets continued on to the other wall, tearing through again. At least two or three smashed into the computer monitor.

Elle jumped to her feet and into a run. She moved smoothly in the zone she had created for herself.

Joachim followed her.

Anticipating that the gunners might assume their prey was coming out the stern door, Elle aimed for the forward door. She ran through the galley, shoved her way through the cluttered mess of the bedroom and had her hand on the doorknob as another volley of shots tore through the wall behind her.

She tried the door. “Locked,” she told Joachim.

“Stand aside.” He ran at the door and hit it with his shoulder.

Propelled by Joachim’s size and strength, the door ripped from its hinges and slapped onto the houseboat deck. Elle stumbled out, caught by surprise for just an instant. Joachim steadied her with a hand under one elbow, then dragged her toward the prow.

“Jump!” he roared.

Reaching the side, Elle shoved her hands forward while maintaining the death grip on the H&K .45 and leaped over the side. A fiery comet’s tail from the LAW rocket reflected on the canal surface just before she hit.

In disbelief and horror, Sam watched debris from the houseboat sail up into the night then come raining back down.

The phone clicked in her ear. “Sam.”

“Riley,” Sam choked out, powering down the boat.

“She made it,” Riley said. “She jumped from the bow of the houseboat before the rocket hit. I’ve got her onscreen. She’s safe. So is the guy with her.”

“What guy?” Sam peered ahead, but although the flames from the burning houseboat illuminated the nearby area, the light seemed to make the darkness beyond their reach even darker.

“Look out,” Riley called. “Portside.”

Glancing to her left, Sam saw another powerful speedboat coming at her from the other end of the canal, facing her. A man with an assault rifle stood to the boat pilot’s left.

Ducking down, Sam slammed the throttle forward again. The propeller ripped into the canal water and the speedboat shivered like a wet dog as it leaped into motion and hydroplaned up to the surface.

The man with the assault rifle fired immediately. Some of the rounds took off a corner of the Plexiglas window and others trip-hammered the length of the speedboat. Pieces of coaming leaped into the air.

Staying low, Sam aimed the speedboat at the other vessel. She couldn’t veer away. If she did, she’d leave herself at the mercy of the gunman.

Instead, the man piloting the other craft pulled out of her way. Sam steered after him. Her speedboat juked and quivered, then slammed against the other boat. Shudders passed through the other speedboat as it rode higher out of the water. For a moment Sam thought it might even flip. Then the enemy speedboat dropped back down into the water.

The gunman tumbled from the boat into the canal.

She followed Achterburgwal south, listening to Tuenis bleat in terror behind her. When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw that the other boat had reversed engines and was coming back around.

Bullets cored through the canal behind Elle. She paused and frog-kicked, holding her position beneath the water’s surface. She kept her calm with some effort.

With the houseboat burning nearby, the flames ripped away some of the shadows. Gray-green streamers ignited by the light followed the bullets’ trajectories.

An iron grip closed on her ankle and tugged.

Panicked for just a moment, Elle kicked out at the hand that held her. The water slowed the kick, but she still hit Joachim in the head.

He released her ankle and held his open hands up in surrender. No, he mouthed and shook his head. Air bubbles escaped his mouth and nose. He motioned to her to follow and took off swimming toward the darkness. She swam after him.

A moment later, when she knew she could no longer hold her breath, Elle surfaced. She’d lost Joachim in the shadows. She floated faceup, not surfacing any more than she had to and using only one hand.

A big hand came out of the darkness and cupped her chin. She tensed, getting ready to fight.

“Easy,” Joachim whispered in her ear. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He cradled her against his body. She felt the heat of him, hotter even than the flames from the burning houseboat. Muscles in his forearm corded around her neck and she felt the thick heaviness of his powerful chest moving easily as he breathed. His heart thudded against her back.

He released her, and as he slipped away his heat drifted off in the chill of the water.

A sudden burst of fire from what Elle knew to be a Kalashnikov assault rifle sounded out in the canal.

Following the familiar yammering noise to its source, Elle spotted two boats idling out in the middle of the canal, looking as if they’d collided. Just before one craft took off, Elle recognized Sam at the wheel. Bits and pieces of the speedboat she piloted plopped into the canal as sparks spat from metalwork.

At first Elle thought Sam was going to make good on her escape. A moment later, the other boat came around. The pilot idled for just a second to allow a man in the water to clamber aboard. Then he powered up again and shot across the water in Sam’s wake.

“She’s not going to make it,” Joachim said. “That boat’s too fast.”

Elle’s mind raced. Panic threatened to disrupt her control. Help Sam. Rusland Street wasn’t far away. Once she made it there, she could cut across to Kloveniersburgwal Canal and attempt to ambush the boat following Sam. But she needed a rifle rather than the handgun she had now.

Hurried footsteps rushed to the canal’s edge above her.

One of the hunters appeared through the darkness and leaned over the canal’s edge. His head and shoulders hunched together, forming a tight frame around the assault rifle he held. The man saw Elle and sighted the rifle at her.

Before the man could fire, Elle shot for his face. He pirouetted around and dropped bonelessly to the ground.

Elle swam to the nearest landing and climbed up to the street. She stopped at the man’s body, took the AK-47 and ran her hands along his pockets to turn up two fresh magazines for the assault rifle.

Police sirens cut through the night air.

Elle couldn’t tell if the sound came from within the city or out on the canal. Police would be coming from both directions.

Another man, this one dressed in a long coat, came at her from the houseboat wreckage. The twisting flames illuminated his features. He carried a pump-action shotgun that he lowered into position.

Cradling the AK-47, Elle swung around and feathered the trigger, unleashing a deafening three-round burst. The bullets stitched the man from hip to shoulder, staggering him. His shotgun blast struck the pavement and ricocheted in all directions. Some of them must have struck his own feet because he flopped to the ground.

Joachim freed two pistols from the first man’s shoulder holsters. For a moment, Elle held him in her sights. He looked at her, his dark eyes unworried and calm. Pocketing the pistols, he searched the dead man for extra magazines.

“If you’re going to shoot, you’d better hurry,” he said calmly. He thrust the magazines into his pockets, then took the pistols back out.

Which mistake are you going to make? Elle asked herself. Shoot him and discover he’s innocent? Or let him live so he can shoot you in the back?