From: Delphi@oracle.org

To: C_Evans@athena.edu

Re: demolitions expert, Lucy Karmon

Christine,

I think we’ve cornered Arachne. With the information from Diviner’s computer hacks, we’ve pinpointed a potential home base in Cape town, South Africa. It’s tricky politics down there, but Lucy Karmon has what it takes for this mission. Your recommendation was spot on.

Not only does she know the land and the people from her years in South Africa with her mother, but she’s got a history of breaking the rules, especially when she feels the end is justified. This is one of those times. As you know, we’ll do anything to take down Arachne’s web.

I’ll make contact with Lucy today.

D.

Dear Reader,

What a blast it was writing such an exciting, nonstop, action-adventure as Flashpoint. The story had a fluid movement that kept me glued to the keyboard, and the words just flowed. When it came to the ending, I actually suffered a week of depression, because I didn’t want to let Lucy or Nolan go.

It was so exciting to watch their love story unfold amid the danger they both faced. And what a neat setting for them to fall in love! Africa, with its unforgiving harshness and its alluring beauty. It truly is a melting pot of all cultures, and that’s what made researching Cape Town so special to me. There is no other place on Earth quite like it.

I can never do Africa the justice it deserves—no written word can—but I hope I’ve painted enough mental pictures to pique your interest. Maybe one day you’ll journey to Cape Town and think of Lucy and Nolan during your own adventures.

Hope to see you there!

Best wishes and happy reading,

Connie Hall

Flashpoint
Connie Hall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

CONNIE HALL

Award-winning author Connie Hall is a full-time writer. Her credits include six historical novels and two novellas written under the pen name Constance Hall. She’s written two action-adventure novels, Rare Breed and Flashpoint. Currently, she is working on The Guardian for Silhouette Nocturne. Her novels are sold worldwide.

An avid hiker, conservationist, bird-watcher, painter of watercolors and oil portraits, she dreams of one day trying her hand at skydiving. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, two sons, and Keeper, a lovable Lab-mix who rules the house with her big brown eyes. For more information, visit Connie’s Web site at home.comcast.net/~koslow or e-mail her at koslow@erols. com.

Special thanks to Natashya Wilson, Stacy Boyd

and all the editorial staff at Harlequin,

all Bombshells in their own right.

As ever, thanks to Anne and Camelot.

Couldn’t live without you guys. And to

Norm and the boys, for your support and for never

complaining about the number of hours I spend at

my computer. You’ll always be my heroes!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Prologue

Tijuana, Mexico, Twenty years ago

The icy cold of the operating room soaked through the flimsy sheet, oozed through the hospital gown and bled right down to Jan Strafford’s bones. Her teeth chattered from the cold. Odd thing was, she was sweating all over. Must be a case of nerves.

Muzak played from a speaker in the ceiling. Was it Beethoven? She’d hate “Für Elise” for the rest of her life. She could see windows in the ceiling and an observation gallery beyond the windows. Was it empty—no, wait. A shadow loomed across one window, but she couldn’t see the person. The person must have been sitting in the last row of the gallery, beyond her view. She felt like a specimen being opened for a biology lab, for one special student.

The smell of disinfectant clung to her nostrils like a cloying fog. Why had she agreed to this? Why had she watched that HBO documentary on plastic surgeries gone bad? She could end up maimed, or worse. The doctor had reassured her facial reconstruction was a breeze, an outpatient procedure. But it wasn’t him lying on the table, shivering, sweating every second. The hell with it. She was desperate. She owed several powerful men large sums of money. This was her way out.

A door opened and the nurse anesthetist entered the room carrying a menacing-looking tray. Overhead fluorescent lights gleamed off the glass drug vials and syringes. The end of a rubber tourniquet hung over the tray’s edge. The nurse wore a clinical blank face, a lot like her white coat. Not a hint of compassion in her expression.

Jan felt her palms sweating as she dug her fingers into the sheet covering. The gold charm bracelet she had insisted upon wearing during the operation clanked against the metal gurney, the Victorian ornaments rattling like bones. She’d had the bracelet since her twelfth birthday and never took it off. It was her talisman, her good luck charm. Boy, she needed it now.

“I must see both arms, por favor.” The nurse looked at the veins on the inside of her arms, then the backs of her hands. She grunted under her breath, grabbed Jan’s right arm and tied a tourniquet around her bicep.

“Relax, señorita, just a little stick,” the nurse said.

Jan glanced up at the shadow above her head. It seemed to grow darker and larger, a monstrous thing, many legs spreading all across the observation windows.

Just as the shadow began to emerge in the gallery window, she felt the prick of the needle, the metal forcing its way into a vein. Her last coherent thought was she’d never look the same again. Then searing fire coursed through her mind.

Chapter 1

Puerto Isla

Lucy Karmon, still clutching the remote detonator, stared through the special fiber-optic scope at the burning meth lab below her. Pieces of the structure mushroomed into a spectacular cinder cloud, two hundred feet of it, masking the night sky.

On the ground, the rebels responsible for supplying Puerto Isla with everything from black tar heroin to Jamaican sinsemilla ran for their lives. Some men, their clothes aflame, dove into a stream at the bottom of a ravine.

Mesmerized, she watched the symphony of destruction opening up before her. This is where she thrived, in the middle of uproar, mayhem, a world on the brink; a world she created and controlled. It touched a chord within her, an odd inner peace, a place that she desperately craved. Her mind settled into the calm and grew still. She observed the fallout, the wind shift, the added perk that she’d taken out the van and old Pontiac Bonneville parked near the building. Mission accomplished. Target annihilated. But what could she have done better? Less fallout, perhaps. That equaled less C-4. Maybe she should have used Danubit or Semtex explosive. But she’d been correct in avoiding TNT. Too volatile and subject to the high humidity on the island.

She always questioned her work. Dissect, assess, moderate and estimate: DAME. She had perfected DAME at the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women, a highly specialized college prep school for young women. Lucy could still hear Mrs. Warren, her junior year demolitions instructor, saying, “Strive for excellence. Anyone can destroy with explosives, but can you raze the target without loss of life? Can you tear down the ant hill without harming the ants? Refinement of the art, ladies, that is the key. DAME will help you not only in demolitions but in any aspect of your life. Remember the old dame well and she will always come through for you.” Mrs. Warren’s voice would always be a ghost in Lucy’s head, one of many.

A real voice piped into her ear. “Viper to Chaos, copy?”

“Copy, Viper,” Lucy whispered into the bone mic resting against her chin.

“Nice job, Chaos. It’s Fourth of July up here.” Tommy Jefferson, aka Viper, spoke over the sound of chopper blades. An ex-test pilot, he could fly anything with wings. He also owned a locksmith and security business, priding himself on being the world’s best safecracker. He chewed gum at the moment, his words clipped off by each chomp. “Ready for pickup in two, over.”

“Roger that.” She heard the Mojave helicopter pass overhead as she stuffed the detonator into a pocket of her ghillie suit and began running toward a grove of coffee bushes. “Madonna, you copy?” she asked, watching a rabbit she’d flushed dart out in front of her, turn and run off into the night.

“Copy, Chaos. Roger that. By the way, kick-ass job. Wish I had a burger to grill.” Betsy LaFave’s thick Georgia accent came through loud and clear.

Betsy, a top-notch sniper and black belt, had taken up a position on a higher elevation of the mountain. Lucy wouldn’t want anyone else covering her back. Like her, Betsy was ex-army, special ops. They had both left at the same time for different reasons, Lucy’s much more tragic.

Lucy ran as she spoke, her voice breathy as she called the last person in the team. “Chaos to Dragon, copy?”

“Copy, Chaos.” Cao Sun Tzu, the fourth member of the team, answered her, his Chinese inflection sometimes hard to follow. He was a defector from the People’s Republic’s Central Security Regiment Unit. There wasn’t a computer Cao couldn’t mine, or a code he couldn’t scramble. That he was a master of disguise and dabbled in inventing new electronic devices didn’t hurt, either. “That burger might get a little burned, over.”

“Not for me,” Betsy said. “I like my meat well done, over.”

“Give me a big steak, baked potato and a Corona Light the size of a Jeep, over,” Lucy said, feeling the tension that always built in her gut with each assignment, still there, still writhing, even though all team members were present, breathing and accounted for. Now to leave the island with no casualties.

“See you guys on the flip side, over and out.” Lucy stuffed the detonator into her backpack, along with twenty-five feet of detonating cord, four fuses and six two-inch hand grenades she’d made out of plumbing pipe. Traveling light on this mission, she thought, grinning.

She zipped up the backpack, threw it over her shoulder and drew her Colt .45 from the shoulder holster. She ran along the edge of the coffee plantation, toward an open field, her eyes constantly scanning for uninvited drug dealers.

Her backup weapon, a .45 Colt Commander, rested securely on the right side of her left combat boot in an ankle holster. One of her mottos: never go on a mission without at least one Colt. If the first one didn’t stop the enemy, the second one would.

She reached the clearing just as Tommy lowered the chopper. Blade turbulence hit her full force, tearing at her ghillie suit, whipping her bright red hair from the tight knot at the back of her head, thrusting against the skin on her face and making it feel as if it would rip from her skull at any moment.

Like well-oiled machine cogs, all three team members emerged into the clearing at the same time. They had worked as a team for two years and it showed. She crouched-ran beneath the whirling blades. Cao reached the chopper first. Betsy, point man—in this case woman—covered them with a Sokolovsky .45 automatic, while holding the case for Sugar, her .308-caliber Remington 700 bolt-action rifle. Custom-built. It shot five match-grade 168-grain boattail hollow-point bullets. Betsy had let Lucy shoot Sugar once. Only once, after much coercing and a gift certificate to Starbucks. No one touched Sugar but Betsy.

When Lucy and Cao were on board, Betsy left her spot and Lucy covered her as she ran for the chopper. In one smooth movement, Lucy grabbed Betsy’s hand and helped her up into the cargo hold. At five foot eleven, Lucy was almost a head taller than Betsy and outweighed her by thirty pounds. She kept her body lean and prided herself on lifting as much as most men her size.

“Goodies on board,” Lucy said, the loud throbbing of the blades forcing her to speak over the mic to Tommy, though she could see the cockpit and the back of his blond head from where she sat.

“Roger that. Rock and roll.”

Lucy felt the vibration of the motor deep within her chest as Tommy throttled up and the chopper lifted off. She shoved the Colt inside the holster, set down the backpack, then plopped down and pressed her back against the wall of the cargo hold. The adrenaline rush slowly left her, her heart slowing, the familiar pulsing of the chopper like a soothing glass of wine.

Relax. Breathe. Another mission down. One they could be proud of, and one they’d be very well paid for by Puerto Isla’s new democratic government. The new president was intent upon cleaning up the drug trade on the island. The team had been more than happy to oblige. That’s what they did. International mercenaries for hire.

Betsy moved past Lucy, clutching Sugar’s rifle case. Camouflage paint covered Betsy’s bronze skin and short bleached hair, but her beautiful Halle Berry face was still evident. Lucy wished she had such great skin and near perfect features. She had fair skin, freckles and brown eyes, gifts from her father. Chromosomes could be so cruel.

Betsy saw Cao watching her. She ignored him, plopped down next to Lucy and dropped the rifle case next to her leg with an impulsive thump. Betsy seemed to realize she had set the case down too forcefully so she ran her hands over its aluminum exterior as if to make sure it was okay.

Lucy pushed the strands of hair out of her face and saw Cao’s expression fall. She suspected Cao had a crush on Betsy. It seemed her instincts were on target. He was well above average in the male department, with his round face, dark intelligent eyes and straight black hair worn in a ponytail. Why didn’t he make a move? At least if Betsy wasn’t interested, he could stop with the calf eyes and the underlying tension that stirred between them. The romantic in Lucy decided to help them along.

“So, what’ve you guys got planned for R and R?” she asked.

Betsy spoke first. “Heading for Baton Rouge. My grand-mama’s sick. You going home?”

Lucy wished she could go home to her dude ranch in Montana to unwind. She grimaced as she said, “Ethiopia for me.”

Cao looked at Betsy, his mood changing, the stern mask softening, his caring side revealed in his eyes. “Sorry about your grandmother.”

“She’s been sick a while.” The pain of impending loss flashed across Betsy’s face; then as if the emotion were too raw, she turned to Lucy, which caused a crestfallen look in Cao’s eyes. “Your mom in Ethiopia now?” Betsy asked.

“Yeah, she’s kinda settled in there at a clinic. Been there for over a year and half now. A long time for her,” Lucy said, thinking of her mother. Dr. Abby Karmon contracted work for the World Health Organization.

“Is she going to stay there a while?”

Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. When wanderlust strikes her, she’ll move again.”

“What about your father?” Cao asked, shifting so his elbows were on his knees, chin resting on his hands. “Is he back from China?”

At the thought of her father, Lucy narrowed her brows in a frown. Roy Karmon, an engineering specialist, built bridges, tunnels and dams. He had been hired to work on the engineering miracle of the twentieth century, the Yangtze River Three Gorges Dam project in China. “That’s why I’m going to Ethiopia. Mom says he’s coming for a visit.”

Lucy hadn’t spoken to her father in a year. And she wasn’t looking forward to this visit. She could have invented an excuse not to go this time, but she had heard the pleading in her mother’s voice and she couldn’t disappoint her.

“Your mom cool with that whole long-distance relationship thing?” Betsy’s eyes squinted slightly as if she were baffled.

“It’s always boggled my mind, but it seems to work for them.”

Betsy grinned. “Conjugal visits twice a year isn’t for me. If I’m going to marry a man, his ass better be in my bed at night keeping my feet warm.”

“I’m with you on that.” Lucy thought of her parents’ unconventional relationship. It wasn’t for everyone. She’d decided long ago it wasn’t for her, either. If and when the right guy came along, she wanted more than the casual connection that had kept her parents’ marriage together for the past thirty-two years. She had suspicions that her mother’s wanderlust was a coping mechanism for the loss of her husband’s presence, but Lucy had never questioned her for fear it might bring up resentment and emotions best left buried. “But there is a highlight to the trip. Val will be there. She’s stopping by on her way to the States.”

“Y’all have been friends forever, haven’t you?” Betsy asked.

“We have,” Lucy said proudly.

They’d been friends forever, or so it felt like. Their friendship had begun as pen pals. Val had already been attending the Athena Academy. Her glowing descriptions of the school and the challenges it posed in her letters had intrigued Lucy. There had been restlessness in her, even at fourteen, that she could hardly control. “Rebel Lucy” is what her mother had called her when her tutors complained about her lack of attention. Lucy just hadn’t felt challenged. Monotony was her enemy. She had always found her father’s work more than interesting and she had invented her own engineering designs just to keep from dying of boredom.

By age eleven, she could design and place explosive charges to bring down either a whole structure or simply a wall within that structure. It hadn’t seemed to impress her father, though.

In several letters, Val had suggested Lucy write to Christine Evans, the principal at the Athena Academy, and apply. Lucy thought getting accepted into the academy might please her father since nothing else ever had, so she took Val’s advice.

She had described her fledgling engineering designs and the knowledge she had gained from her father. She had been a ninth grader at the time. Most students entered the Academy in the seventh grade, like Val, so Lucy figured getting into the school had been a long shot. But to her surprise, she had received an acceptance letter.

She considered her years at AA the most important of her life. The Academy had taught her wilderness survival, martial arts, how to focus her physical and intellectual energies and find what she excelled at: demolitions. Somewhere along the way they also taught Lucy self-worth, confidence, and to achieve new heights to please herself—not her father. She didn’t know where she would be at this moment if the Academy had not been a driving force in those critical teen years. At the Athena Academy, she had become a part of something remarkable, made lifelong ties that could never be broken. Such as Val, fellow alumna and Lucy’s dearest friend, a sister in every way but blood.

“Where’d you say she worked again?”

“The U.S. Consulate in Egypt.” Lucy couldn’t tell anyone about Val’s real job, as a CIA operative. The consulate was her cover. Some Athena grads did internships for the FBI, CIA and NSA, and went to work for those agencies. Lucy had interned with the army’s special ops demolition division. Thoughts of her short stay in the army made her quickly change the subject. “So, Cao, what will you do?”

“Training.” He glanced longingly toward Betsy as if he wanted to ask her to go with him.

“For what?” Betsy asked.

“A triathlon.”

Betsy cut her eyes at him. “Sounds like torture.”

“It’s a challenge.” He looked over at her from beneath his long dark lashes. “But too much for some.”

Betsy stiffened. “You saying I can’t keep up with you?”

Cao smiled placidly, but the smug look in his eyes was unmistakable.

“You’re on, Jocko. When and where?”

“Sun River, Oregon.” He held up a finger. “One month.”

“I’ll be there.”

Cao’s smile widened. “I’ll be the one at the finish line.”

“I’ll be the one already there, waving at you.”

Lucy glanced at Betsy and wondered if she knew she’d just been manipulated into spending time with Cao. He was good, but Cupid had his work cut out with these guys. She tried once again to give him a helping hand. “Hey, you two, we never do anything just for fun. Let’s meet in New York in a couple of weeks and do the town. All of us. Sound like fun?”

Tommy spoke up. “Wait a minute, no one asked me what I was doing. Am I invited to this party?”

“Absolutely,” Lucy said, almost forgetting Tommy had been listening to the conversation through the mics.

“I’m in,” Betsy said. She pointed at Cao. “But I doubt Jack LaLanne there can make it. He’s got to train.”

Cao straightened at the challenge, his dark eyes glowing. “All work and no play makes Jack a dullard. I accept.”

The gauntlet had been thrown and picked up. By the toxic gleam in both their eyes, Lucy wondered if she should have suggested a less populated place, like Area 51.

Thoughts of seeing her father again made her wish she were heading to Area 51, the Mojave Desert, New Zealand, even the South Pole. Anywhere in the world but the same room with Roy Karmon. There wasn’t a room, a house, a castle or a country big enough for the both of them. Talk about pyrotechnics. At least her mother would be there to run interference and put out the blaze. Hopefully.

Pincer Industries, Cape Town, South Africa

“I’ve hired someone for the new chief of security position.”

Miranda N’Buta stared at the woman who’d just spoken in a raspy deep voice. The woman’s image passed through a webcam and onto the monitor on Miranda’s desk. Only a portion of the woman’s slender torso showed in the background, the webcam situated so her face and lower limbs were hidden. She always wore black and today was no different. Her breasts barely filled out a black silk shirt, and she sat in a wide modern chair that looked like something from the bridge of the Enterprise. Electronic keys covered both chair arms. Her right hand was close on the Web camera and magnified, filling the foreground. Slender fingers with long black painted nails held a cigarette. Smoke spiraled up past a large spider-shaped ring. Eight gold legs fanned out over three fingers. What looked like a five-carat diamond sat in the middle. Gaudy in the extreme, in Miranda’s opinion. Still, she felt a tinge of jealousy at the size of the diamond.

“You hired someone without consulting me?” Miranda stared blankly into the webcam directly in front of her, seething inside, yet appearing at ease on the outside. She’d spent years hiding her true feelings—animosity and pure loathing—for the woman on the monitor.

“I decided to screen the applicants myself.”

“I don’t know why we need the position at all. I oversaw security here—”

“You need what I say you need,” the image snapped back.

Miranda stiffened. The charms on her bracelet clicked, striking the room’s silence like nails hitting steel. Irritation churned in her stomach, and she had to swallow a scathing reply.

“You have enough to do. Security shouldn’t be your concern,” the witch’s voice mellowed to a patronizing tone. “I created this new position to help you.”

“Giger will be upset that you hired someone other than him. He’s handled security matters for us for years.”

“Don’t tell him right away about the position. Let him learn about it on his own.” The witch took a drag off her cigarette. She blew a cloud of smoke at the webcam. The thick cloud filled the monitor and blurred her black silk blouse to gray. “And have Giger meet our new employee at the airport. He arrives on British Airways, Flight 451, at 10:00 a.m.”

“Who is this man?”

“Nolan Taylor. I’ll send you his résumé. He’s perfect for what I need.”

It was always about what the witch needed. What about what was best for the company? The witch thought the whole world revolved around her. One day, she’d discover it didn’t.

“Why is he perfect?” Miranda asked.

“He’s hungry for money and eager for a quiet position in security where he can avoid certain aspects of his life.” A snide smile slithered through the witch’s tone.

“Is he wanted?” Miranda arched a brow.

“Wanted by the wrong people. At least three contracts are out on his life.”

“What’s he done?”

“Let’s just say he made some enemies in his old line of work.” She paused to take a drag on her cigarette. “No, I’m sure our Mr. Taylor will be eager to please and make a good impression. See that he is made comfortable and kept in the dark until we’re certain we can trust him. Keep me informed of his progress.” The hand reached toward the webcam, the spider’s diamond winking, then the picture went blank.

Miranda made a nasty face at the blank screen, then picked up her phone and dialed Giger’s extension. “I need to see you right away.”

Minutes later, a knock sounded on her door.

“Enter.”

Giger Anfinson walked inside and closed the door. He was a Scandinavian giant, towheaded, blue-eyed. His massive chest and arms could crush a man with little effort. He wore brown pants, white shirt and a tweed sport coat, the left side bulging from a side holster and handgun. Miranda’s office always felt small with Giger in it.

He walked toward her desk and paused, towering over it. “What do you need?” A Norwegian lilt marked his words and they had sounded like, “Vat do you neet?” The words also held an undercurrent of jaded ruthlessness, as if he’d do anything she required of him, however unseemly.

Miranda felt a familiar vibration of nerves around him. Though Giger was as loyal as any hound and had worked for Miranda and the witch for ten years, she had always wondered what he’d do if he were double-crossed. He wouldn’t be too happy when he found out the chief of security position had been created and someone else had been hired for the job. If Giger threatened her, Miranda could blame it on the witch and save her own skin. Giger wouldn’t dare retaliate against the witch. In many ways, they were both the witch’s captives.

She kept the edginess from her voice as she said, “We’re expecting a new employee. You’re to pick him up at the airport.” Miranda told him the flight number and time.

“What position is he filling?” An underpinning of suspicion swam through his words, while he gazed at her in that direct, brutal way of his.

Miranda hesitated, weighing her options. She could lie as the witch asked her to do and deal with Giger’s anger later when he found out. Or she could tell the truth and direct his anger at the person who deserved it, the witch. Why not be honest and lay the blame where it should go? Why should the responsibility fall on her shoulders when the witch was the real culprit in this drama? And if Miranda were being honest, she was sick of being under the witch’s tyranny.

Miranda drummed her fingers on her desk. “To tell you the truth, our superior has filled the chief of security position.”

Giger gritted his teeth, the veins in his thick neck bulging and pulsing. His pale complexion transformed before her eyes, getting redder and redder by the moment. His body tensed and shook with rage. He slammed his fist down on the edge of Miranda’s desk and made her jump. “I wanted that position. The bitch knew that. She did this on purpose.”

“I wish I could help you, but my hands are tied on this. She hired this man without my knowledge.” Miranda poured it on.

“We’ll see about this. Nobody passes Giger Anfinson over.” Giger stalked from the office, his hand resting on the pistol beneath his jacket.

Chapter 2

Jijiga, Ethiopia

Lucy rode in the passenger seat, clutching her purse, feeling her insides being jarred loose.

Her father drove the Hummer over another unusually large rut.

Lucy grabbed the dashboard and glanced over at the driver’s seat. Was that a hint of a smile on her father’s face? He’d found every hole from here to the airstrip. Lucy refused to acknowledge that his lousy driving was getting to her, so she held the dash and braced her feet on the Hummer’s floor.

Beyond a curt hello, they hadn’t spoken, and the tension in the Hummer had turned into a thick wall that she dared not climb. Why had her mother sent him to pick her up? What was she thinking? Quality father and daughter time? Yeah, right.

She glanced out the window. Up ahead, the Karamara hills looked like a massive python with rolling humps that met plains and river valleys as far as she could see. In the middle of this wide expanse, the mud and grass huts, tin shacks and markets of Jijiga looked like scattered Tinker Toys. Jijiga was a reasonably large city for the region, an aid coordination center for Ethiopia. A city born out of need, where people came to get food and medicine to survive the drought-stricken area.

The rain gods had been kind to the area. The flat plains that were usually clouds of red dust were now verdant. Even a coiffure of green covered the hills. Streams coiled out across the plains. She could see a group of Amhara women washing clothes in a nearby brook.

Silence stretched between them, the tension solidifying by the second. Lucy felt it pulsing against her, drenching the air. When she found it hard to breathe any longer, she said, “It looks like they’ve had rain here.” The weather was a safe subject.

“Your mother says it’s a blessing for the area. The nomads are going back to the countryside to graze their herds. It’ll mean less starvation and people will be able to survive,” he said, his words forced through his lips, uttered with stilted formality. He didn’t glance at Lucy, but stared straight ahead at the road. A muscle twitched in his right cheek.

She had brought up a subject. His turn now. She waited.

Nothing.

She watched as they passed two men on camels and asked, “So, how is China?”

“Just as I left it.”

She stared at this man who’d always been a stranger to her, yet in many ways a mirror of herself. Both independent, both stubborn, and both apparently feeling the strain of dealing with an alter ego.

For a man of fifty-seven, her father was still in good shape. Well-defined muscles showed below his short-sleeve safari shirt and matching shorts. He wore a fedora that covered his short, red, wavy hair. Since the last time she’d seen him, he’d grown thick muttonchops that sliced across his ruddy cheeks and almost touched the corners of his mouth. That wasn’t the only change in him. More wrinkles crept out from the corner of his brown eyes, and the freckles on his face had multiplied, unlike her own that only dotted her nose. She stared at the large hands clutching the steering wheel, the veins protruding on his muscular freckled forearms. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt them hug her. Had her father ever hugged her?

“So…”

Lucy almost jumped at the sound of her father’s confident voice. “So,” she parroted back, knowing she must have sounded like a voice recorder.

A pregnant silence hung between them as if neither of them could think of one safe subject.

He shifted in the driver’s seat and stretched out his left leg, rubbing his knee. Was that arthritis bothering him? Somehow he’d aged without her realizing it. God, she wished things were different. She fidgeted in her seat, pulling at the seat belt.

Finally he said, “So, how is this latest venture of yours going?”

His emphasis on the word venture made her grit her teeth. He seemed unable to say the word, so she supplied it for him, “You mean the team?”

“Yes, that.”

“It pays the bills.”

He paused as if trying to control his emotions. It didn’t last long as he said, “You put your life in danger to pay bills?”

“You have a lot of room to reproach me. You work in Third World countries where you need a full-time security force to protect you.”

“I don’t risk my neck like you—”

“Don’t you? The only difference between us is that you blow up mountains. I blow up targets. And have you forgotten you’re the one who got me interested in demolitions?”

“I didn’t know you’d make a career of it.”

“Ah, come on, Dad. You were the one who taught me how to make gunpowder before I was eight. Most girls my age were playing with dolls. I was designing bombs. Admit it. You were grooming me.”

“Not for taking the kind of chances you do.”

“Don’t talk to me about chances.” In her heart Lucy always knew her father had wanted a son. Tough. He’d gotten her.

“I’ll talk all I want. I never thought you’d use that knowledge in a mercenary capacity.” He sighed as if part of his soul was escaping through his lips. “You could have worked with me, done something constructive with your life.”

Here we go. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Go directly to emotional jail. She forced her voice to stay even. “That’s right, but I’m happy with my life.”

“You should have finished engineering school.”

“Wasn’t for me.” She hadn’t been able to tame the restlessness in her long enough to get an engineering degree.

“Premed didn’t suit you, either. You destroyed your mother’s hopes of you following in her footsteps.”

“It doesn’t bother Mom half as much as it bothers you.”

“And it’ll bother me all my life. If you had—”

“If could’ves and should’ves were candy and gold, yeah, yeah, yeah.” She dug her fingers into the brown leather of her purse.

“You didn’t even stay in the army.”

That one was below the belt. “I chose to leave.”

“Because you’re too damn hardheaded to follow orders.”

“That’s not the reason I left.” Lucy squeezed her purse into her chest, seeing the whole tragedy unfold in her mind. It tore at her insides. She had never told anyone why she left the army.

“So, enlighten me.” He’d raised his voice, his face bloodred.

She blurted out, “I saw a friend get his head blown off, all right?”

The silence of stunned disclosure settled in between them.

Finally her father said, his tone softer, “I’m sorry, but you knew when you joined the army it wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream.”

She and Jack Kane had been good friends. One night in a bar, Jack had come clean about his attraction to her. They had decided to start dating. Two days after their first date, she’d had to watch a forensic team pick up pieces of him off a field. She wrung her hands in the strap of her purse. Her voice shook as she said, “Peaches and cream, Dad? How callous can you be?”

“That’s not callous, that’s practical. He shouldn’t have been in demolitions if he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“He was following orders, going by the book.”

“There’s a right way to do things. Casualties happen. You join a man’s world, you have to take it like a man. I thought I taught you that.”

Lucy’s brows narrowed at her father. She had just poured out the nightmare that had changed her life forever and all he had to say was, “…take it like a man.”

It made her lose control and raise her voice. “Yeah, Dad, there’s the take-it-like-a-man, by-the-book, blow-your-guts-out-way, or the logical way.” The Athena way, she thought. “So you’re right. A soldier’s life may be dispensable to a general sitting two hundred miles away giving orders from some secure command room, but every life in the field counts with me. And if too damn much red tape gets in my way and I see a better way to go about a mission, you better believe I’m taking it.”

“That’s your trouble. You’ve taken your own road your whole life. And look at you, floundering around with a group of mercenaries. The only worthwhile thing you ever did was that Athena Academy. I thought it would turn your life around.”

Lucy wanted to tell him that it had turned her life around, and the irony was she still felt closer to her instructors and Athena classmates than she did to her own father.

She couldn’t stand another moment of this so-called bonding, so she grabbed the door handle. “Let me out. Now.”

Her father jammed his foot on the brake. The Hummer skidded to a halt. He stared straight ahead.

Lucy flung open the door, rolled out of the seat and slammed the door. Trembling all over, she stood firm as the Hummer’s spinning wheels spewed dirt and dust all over her. She watched the white vehicle dripping and running into gray behind her tears. Why was it always like this between them? Why couldn’t he just accept her and be proud of her? Maybe by the time she reached her mother’s home, they both would have calmed down and been able to stay in the same room together. Maybe.

She blinked back the tears, slung her purse over her shoulder and strode down the road. The red clay soil felt like spongy crust beneath her sandals. Afternoon sun beat down on her head. She took off the white scarf from around her neck and tied it around her head. Thank goodness she’d worn a long white linen peasant dress. At least she wouldn’t be so hot.

The morning heat swirled up the inside of her legs as she walked. Her shoulder bag thumped against her right hip, her .45 adding to the weight. Over the years, the sensation of a weapon close at hand made her feel secure. At the moment, it didn’t give her any refuge, her father’s words still smarting.

She grew aware of her lucky charm thumping against her sternum. She pulled out the .25 caliber casing. The small empty brass cylinder dangled from a gold chain. When she was little, her father would take her to the range. When they were done shooting, they always picked up the spent casings and reloaded them with gunpowder. This was the first casing her father had taught her to reload. She hadn’t been able to part with it. It made a lump form in her throat and she dropped it back inside her dress.

One of her two cell phones rang. One connected to the team only. The other was a secure line, chipped for international use and connected to AA.gov, an Athena Academy network overseen by the Department of Defense. She had done courier assignments for AA.gov in the past, and if this was another assignment it would be a welcome interruption to her dad hell.

She reached in her purse, found the phone and popped it open. An encrypted text message scrolled across the LCD screen. She hit a button and the encryption scrambled into English:

Lucy,

A contact named “Delphi” wishes to hire you and your team to go after a target in Cape Town, South Africa.

She narrowed her eyes at the moniker Delphi and typed back:

I’ve never worked for a contact named Delphi before.

The response:

This is a legitimate assignment. It’s tied to recent threats against the Athena Academy, including the kidnapping of two students. Athena alums have been targeted, as well. You could be in danger, so if you accept this assignment keep your own Athena alum status on the QT. Do you accept?

Lucy read the message again, intrigued by what she was told and what she was not. Like who had been kidnapped, and was this target in South Africa behind these threats. She typed:

Will accept.

Another line appeared:

Stand by for verbal briefing with Delphi in two minutes.

She slapped the phone closed and waited for the briefing. Thoughts of breaking the news of her shortened visit to her mom made her grimace. She hated disappointing her, but she’d make up for it later. Maybe ask her to vacation at her ranch. Her father, well, he’d probably wish her gone. What about Val? She was to arrive at the end of the week. Lucy truly missed her friend. They’d just have to reschedule.

Lucy watched two women, balancing full laundry baskets on their heads, stride past her as the phone rang again.

She answered, eager to speak to this Delphi. If she was going to risk her life and the team’s lives, she wanted to directly communicate with this person. And she wondered how Delphi was tied to the AA.gov network.

Cape Town, Africa

Nolan Taylor followed the red line that led to the porter’s booth on the walk of Cape Town International Airport. When he reached the end, he paused, the toe of his black wingtips an inch from the end of the line. He set down his suitcase and glanced behind him.

The big bloke was still following him. He had paused, going through the motions of buying a newspaper from a vending machine. Sunglasses covered the fellow’s eyes, but his head was turned Nolan’s way. He looked about thirty, his pink fair-skinned scalp showing through his crew-cut white hair. His fairness hinted at a Scandinavian descent. He was burly, tall, about six foot three but still three inches shy of Nolan. From the bulge under the bloke’s tweed sport jacket, Nolan suspected a concealed weapon. Nolan hadn’t wanted to suffer yards of red tape to bring his own Ruger revolver into South Africa, but he wasn’t completely helpless. He had his fists and a T-shaped push knife hidden in his belt buckle.

Nolan quickly stood. He’d made a lot of enemies ferreting out terrorists. It was the main reason he’d left England. At least two terrorist organizations had a price on his head. Was this bloke an assassin? An alarm went off on his watch. Exactly 10:00 hours. He had two hours before his interview at Pincer. Enough time to deal with Viking. With a flick of his finger, he snapped the alarm off.

He handed the porter a five-pound note and spoke to him in Afrikaans, or “Cape Dutch,” a West Germanic language spoken mainly in Cape Town. “Praat U Engels?”

The porter nodded. “Ja.”

He switched to English. “Be a good chap and get me a taxi.”

The line of taxis, ten cars deep, stretched along the walkway, comprised of every make and model of car, mostly older models. He even saw an ancient Checker Cab; thoughts of London and home stabbed him. He missed his parents until there was an ache in his chest. But he couldn’t contact his family and put them in danger. No, he was on his own.

The porter blew a whistle and motioned toward the taxi at the front of the line. The taxi sped forward. Another cab pulled out from the back of the line and floored it. The taxis raced toward him, headlights to headlights. The driver on the left overtook the one on the right, cutting him off, almost colliding. Brakes screeched as the winner stopped at the curb in front of him.

The loser shook his fist at the winner and yelled an expletive in Afrikaans. Taxi wars amused Nolan. Capitalism at work.

He waited until the porter threw his suitcase in the trunk, then slid inside, his knees touching the front seat.

The Crown Victoria smelled of stale cigarettes, body odor and filth. He leaned forward to speak to the driver, a small man with dreadlocks. “Praat U Engels?”

The driver bobbed his head. “Ya, boss.”

“Excellent. There’s a big chap in a tweed sport coat in front of us—don’t look. He’s getting into a black Taurus sedan in the valet area. He’s been following me. You’ll get a twenty-pound tip if you lose him.”

“Ya, boss, lose him.” The man nodded, whipped the taxi out into the flow of traffic.

Nolan memorized the license plate number: 1267PR as they passed the Taurus.

The taxi driver zipped around a double-parked bus, taking his tip seriously.

Nolan kept the Taurus in view as it sped up, and Viking bullied his way into the traffic behind them. The sporting part of him, the part that enjoyed a good game of rugby, made Nolan grin.

Jijiga, Ethiopia

“Hello, Lucy,” an electronically altered voice said.

She hadn’t expected the disguised voice and it raised her suspicion. “Look, if this is some game you’re playing—”

“For safety reasons I protect my identity. I assure you I want to hire you. We are working on the same side.”

“Convince me. Name a person on your side.”

“Lucy, this is Allison Gracelyn speaking. This is a conference call.”

“Allison?” Lucy knew Allison Gracelyn. She was the daughter of Marion Gracelyn, the founder of the Athena Academy. Allison was a fellow Athena alumna and a consultant to the board of directors. Lucy trusted Allison.

“It’s me. Delphi thought you might need some convincing, so I was allowed to participate in this briefing.”

Yep, that was Allison’s voice. It was all the convincing Lucy needed. “Okay, I’m in.”

Delphi’s creepy altered voice said, “You probably know that House Representative Bryan Ellis is under arrest for fraud and attempted murder of Athena alum Francesca Thorne.”

“I heard about it on the news.” When Lucy had seen the report that Ellis had tried to kill Francesca, she had wondered why. The report hadn’t gone into much detail. “Why did he try to kill her?”

“She was instrumental in his arrest.”

“Oh.”

“What you probably don’t know is that fellow Athena grad Nikki Bustillo recently captured a computer hacker, Martin Slobojvic, a Kestonian wanted in a dozen countries for corporate espionage and spying. We found out he’s been working for Bryan Ellis—”

“In what capacity?”

“Someone was blackmailing Ellis, and Slobojvic was helping him track the blackmailer. Slobojvic traced the blackmailer through the regular electronic fund transfers taken from Ellis’s account. With Slobojvic’s help, we’ve tracked the blackmailer’s trail to a safety deposit box in a Swiss bank. We believe the blackmailer has a home base near Cape Town and has been conducting business through this bank. You are to retrieve any records within the box and the name behind the account.”

Lucy suspected she wasn’t getting the whole briefing and she waited, silence stretching between them on the line. She listened to Allison clear her throat, then Delphi’s hesitant breaths as if what was about to be said was highly classified.

Finally the altered voice said, “You should know this international blackmailer has been on all U.S. intel-gathering agencies’ radars for years. In Russia she’s known as Madame Web. Weaver, Spider, Webcrawler and Arachne are just a few of her other personas. Not only the U.S. but nations across the globe have a price on her head. She’s managed to avoid capture by staying one step ahead of us. We’re certain her wealth figures into the equation.”

“Like how wealthy are we talking?”

“Billions.”

“Jeez, that’s a lot of extortion.” Lucy couldn’t imagine the number of lives this blackmailer had destroyed.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“So you believe Arachne is behind these kidnappings and threats to Athena grads.” Lucy watched two young boys riding a camel pass her on the road.

“Yes, and we’re trying to locate her before she strikes again. All the information you need, as well as your fee, is being forwarded to you by courier and will arrive at a safe house in Cape Town. Proceed there and wait for the courier. You can rendezvous with your team there as well. The house’s address will be texted to you, along with the keypad entry code.”

“Fine.”

“And Lucy, Arachne is, above all, a killer. If she’s cornered, your life, as well as your team’s lives, could be in the balance. Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Keep me posted on your progress at Delphi@oracle.org.”

Click.

“Goodbye, Lucy,” Allison said, “and good luck.”

“Goodbye.”

The dial tone sounded in Lucy’s ear.

She stared at the phone. Why was Arachne targeting Athena Academy alumnae? What did she hope to gain from the kidnappings? The very notion that someone was trying to harm the Athena Academy and its grads awakened Lucy’s protective instincts and caused them to roar to the surface. Anger stirred in her breast as she thought of Arachne. One thing Lucy was good at was destroying a target, and Arachne was now in Lucy’s crosshairs.

The Flats, Cape Town

“Listen, mate, leave my suitcase at the Waterfront Arabella Sheraton.” Nolan handed the taxi driver the fare, keeping one eye on the Taurus as it pulled in behind a bus. He knew his suitcase might not make it, so he added, “There’ll be another twenty in it for you if you come back for me in half an hour.”

“You sure you want to get out here, boss?” The driver motioned to gang drug dealers standing on the corner.

When the driver hadn’t been able to lose Viking, Nolan had directed him through the city to the low-lying Cape Flats, southeast of the city. From memory, Nolan could have drawn a complete map of the Flats and Cape Town proper. He’d been here before and he never entered a city without knowing the quickest exits and entrances, the airports and the bus and train terminals. And the most dangerous areas.

Shantytowns melded into each other in the Cape Flats and gangland violence contributed to the highest murder rate in the world. Known as “apartheid’s dumping ground” of the 1950s, the area became home to people the apartheid government designated as “non-White.” Race-based legislation made it illegal for those people to live in “White” areas. So they were forced into the Flats, an area scarred by apartheid’s influence. And an ideal playing ground to deal with Viking types.

“Absolutely,” he said, pulling his long legs out of the cab.

He tapped the top of the hood, to let the driver know he was clear, then the taxi sped off as he walked in the other direction. The air was redolent of suntan lotion and dirty sand. The beach, only a block away, heightened the water’s glare and forced him to squint.

He strode past bleak metal and wooden sheds, made of lumber, tin and plastic scraps. Lean-tos and metal shacks served as pool parlors, coffeehouses and shebeens, a local word for bars. Sidewalk vendors sold cheap beach towels, sunglasses, sunscreen and woven hats. He passed some gang-bangers selling coke on a corner. He might have stopped and forced them to move on, if he didn’t have a more pressing matter behind him.

Several hookers waved at him from a doorway. One wore a string bikini, the other a halter top and short shorts that left nothing to the imagination.

“Hey, boss, a discount you,” Halter Top said to him in broken English.

“Hmm, baby, baby you’re a big one. I like ’em big,” Bikini called out in Afrikaans, touching her breasts suggestively.

“Not today, ladies.” Nolan winked at them, handed them a twenty-pound note and said, “Get off the streets.”

They purred a thank-you.

He knew they’d still be there tomorrow and kept walking. He glanced behind him.

Viking still followed. He stared directly at Nolan, all pretense of stealth gone. His lips thinned in a threatening smile.

Nolan grinned back, silent code that he accepted the challenge.

Nolan broke into a jog.

Viking followed.

Chapter 3

Fish Hoek Village, False Bay, South Africa

Lucy stood looking out on the balcony of the safe house, polishing off a glass of sangria. She’d just finished eating a meal of bobotie, a kind of shepherd’s pie made with a lightly curried mince topped with savory egg custard, served on a bed of turmeric-flavored rice with a dab of chutney. Lucy loved the pungent spices. The dish, a local favorite, came from the Cape Malay cuisine, a blending of early European Dutch and Malay fare.

The July wind gusted and whipped Lucy’s hair against her face. South Africa’s winters ran from June to October, so different from America’s. She set down her glass on the railing and zipped up her sweatshirt. The wind hadn’t stopped blowing since she’d arrived, and she’d quickly learned that she hadn’t packed enough warm clothes. She’d had to make a run to the local market to buy another sweatshirt.

The safe house was in Fish Hoek Village, about thirty minutes from Cape Town. The village faced the Indian Ocean side of the Cape Peninsula and, like most of the Cape, the winds tore at the shore, molding the beaches to its will. She’d since learned that the wind blew constantly here, sometimes at twenty knots. Monster thunderstorms were known to rise up without notice. Even now dark clouds gathered to the west. She watched a janitor emptying a trash can on the beach, struggling to corral the plastic bags, paper cups and empty soda cans. A bag got away from him, flitted across the beach, smashed into the sea froth and was swallowed by the thick lengths of black kelp that chopped against the shore. The kelp was so thick, two surfers in wetsuits fought it to paddle away from the beach.

She looked out at the horizon and saw whale-watching boats bob and list in the wave swells. Miles up the beach, penguins guarded eggs, cavorted in the surf and wobbled up and down the beach like stiff wind-up toys.

The three-story safe house itself was shaped like a Far Eastern pagoda with a curved smiling roof, wide pillars standing tall across the front. A balcony wrapped around the top floor, providing awesome vistas of the Cape. Behind the house were the sharp jagged peaks of Simonstown Mountains. Mountain ranges seemed to cover the western coast of South Africa. Jagged escarpments coughed up pristine white beaches, creating spectacular seascapes.

The violence and savagery of the wind here drew her. She enjoyed the unrestrained feeling of it pushing against her, thrashing her shift against her legs, bits of sand stinging her lips. It stirred her almost as much as the African bush. She had seen a lot of Africa traveling with her mother and nothing could compare to the wildlife and wilderness of the bush, but Cape Town was by far the most beautiful city on the continent.

Inside the house, retro modern furniture and thick mahogany tables were paired with an oriental theme. A windowless basement ran the length of the house and held a lab with enough explosives and weapons to keep an anarchist happy for a couple of years.

She felt her hair stinging her cheeks as the wind lashed it against her face. Uncertainty tugged at her. She’d been here a whole day and no courier had arrived. The team should be here in a couple of hours. No one complained about the change in plans. Flexibility was essential in their line of work. Tommy was flying Cao and Betsy over in the Cessna he used for his security business. She had taken a chartered flight in from Jijiga.

A knock on the door brought her out of her seat. She stepped through the open patio doors and paused near the security monitor.

The heart-shaped face and short brunette hair she spotted made her smile. She pressed the intercom and screamed, “Oh my God!” Her jaw fell open. “Val!”

“Hey, girlfriend, open the door. I’m growing warts here.”

Lucy grabbed the knob and flung open the door. She almost leaped into Val’s arms, but the cupcake and burning candle her friend held made her pause.

Val broke out into a smile. “Thought I’d forget? Happy birthday, McGill.”

Lucy grinned at the sound of her old nickname. McGill stood for McGillicuddy. Louise Benson, Lucy’s archrival at the Athena Academy, had dubbed Lucy with the name because of her red hair resembling Lucille Ball’s. The name had stuck. Lucy hadn’t liked the pet name at first and she had paid Louise back by putting Elmer’s Glue in her hair conditioner. Louise had walked around for a week with chopsticks for hair.

Louise hadn’t known it at the time, but she’d done Lucy a big favor. The nickname had made Lucy buckle down, rein in her restlessness, strive harder in her classes so she wouldn’t live up to her I Love Lucy namesake. She had graduated with honors, and if she were brutally honest with herself, it was partially owing to Louise’s spite.

“Oh, no! I forgot yours,” Lucy said. They shared the same birthday and had always tried to celebrate it together. She wondered if her mother had planned a surprise party for both of them. Knowing her mother, she probably had. She’d have to make it up to her.

“Okay, so I win the better friend medal today.” Val strode inside, sporting an Ann Taylor white pant suit, matching shoes and purse. Sleek white sunglasses to match. When Val made an entrance, heads turned.

Lucy stared at her own jade-green shift, Nikes, and white tourist sweatshirt with Cape Town, South Africa silk-screened on it. She felt a little dowdy around Val, who always looked like she’d just stepped out of a Neiman Marcus window.

Lucy closed the door and Val held out the cupcake. “Make a wish for both of us.”

Lucy filled her cheeks, closed her eyes and blew.

“Still got enough hot air for both of us, I see.” Val thrust the cupcake at Lucy, pushed her sunglasses up on her head, and glanced around at the luxury surrounding them. “Can you find a knife in this dump?”

Lucy laughed until her eyes glistened with tears. God, she had missed Val. “Share some dinner with me, then we’ll eat the cupcake.”

“Lead the way. I’m starving.”

Val followed her into the galley-style kitchen. “So what are you doing here? How did you find me?”

Val wiggled her fingers like an evil conjurer, her bright green eyes glistening. “We Khaosians have ways of finding out things.”

Lucy thought of the Khaos mentor group Val and she had belonged to at the Athena Academy. The group had been named after Khaos, the primeval Greek goddess of air. Her name actually meant “gap,” the space separating heaven and earth. They went hot air ballooning and sky diving, and on special occasions put on fireworks displays. The group activities had been a blast, but Lucy had taken the most pleasure in setting up the fireworks.

“Come on, spill the beans,” Lucy said.

Val pulled a manila envelope from her backpack and handed it to Lucy. It looked like any business envelope, innocuous enough. She must have breezed through customs.

“You’re the courier?” Lucy asked, staring at the envelope in disbelief.

“Delphi must have known we were friends and asked me to drop it off.”

“I just found out about this Delphi person. I was skeptical at first.”

“Delphi is one of the good guys. You shouldn’t have any reservations about accepting an assignment from that quarter.” Val hesitated for a moment, then said, “Delphi thought you might have some questions and said I should brief you on the Oracle network.”

“What is Oracle?”

“All I know is that it’s a secret network that monitors intel from U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies, and Delphi oversees it.”

“So you work for Oracle, too?”

“I do assignments when I can.”

“We’re both Athena grads. Does that mean Oracle gets its recruits from the Athena Academy?”

“I don’t know if all the operatives who work for Oracle are AA grads. I have my suspicions that a lot of them could be. And I know they often use resources from AA.gov.”

“Do you know who Delphi is? That altered voice creeped me out.”

“You, too?” Val grinned. “You get used to it.”

Lucy had a feeling Val was avoiding the question so she said, “Okay, so who is it?”

Val shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I believe it’s someone connected to the Athena Academy. I don’t even know who any of the other Oracle agents are. I only knew about you because Delphi gave me your name as my contact. We’re not even supposed to be discussing it. Pretty hush-hush stuff.”

“Oh, okay.” Lucy let it drop, but she was still curious about Delphi’s identity.

Val pointed to the envelope. “By the way, you’re not to open that until I’m gone.”

“So you’re not here for long?” The excitement dropped from Lucy’s voice. She set the package on the counter and pulled out a plate and fork and knife for Val.

“Sorry.” Val checked her Rolex. “We got two hours, then I’m on a flight for the States.”

“CIA biz?”

Val nodded as she picked up the take-out container and shoveled the rest of the rice onto a plate. “What did you wish for?” she asked.

“Can’t say. Bad luck and you know it.”

“Remember that silly vow we made our sophomore year?”

“I’d almost forgotten about it.”

Val shrugged and shook her head. “Falling madly in love by our thirtieth birthday and turning down at least five marriage proposals. Hard to forget.”

They both smiled at each other, their expressions turning somber, pensive.

A strange sadness tugged at Lucy. Maybe it was the lost closeness they had shared at the academy, a youth that had slipped by all too quickly. Or it could be the vow that still nagged at the back of her mind, a whispered uncertainty that she might not ever fall in love. She certainly hadn’t turned down any proposals. Thoughts of Jack Kane surfaced, but she hadn’t really loved Jack in that breathless, love-ever-after way. They’d only gone out on one date before he died. But if they’d had more time… Jack might have been the one. She forced memories of Jack back into that dark place she refused to enter.

“Remember,” Val said, her voice faraway, “I wanted twin boys that looked like—”

“Johnny Depp.” Lucy finished for her. “And I wanted a girl—”

“Without red hair and freckles who didn’t look like an extra from the cast of Annie,” Val said, grinning. “Although, you know, all the Khaosians envied your red hair.”

“They did?” Lucy stared at her in disbelief.

“Sure, why do you think everyone kept calling you McGill? Nothing but jealousy, girlfriend.”

“Well, if we’re coming clean, I’ve always wanted your hair—anyone’s hair color but my own.” Lucy grinned.

“So we didn’t get a family and we didn’t get the hair color we wanted, but we got kick-ass careers…” Val’s words trailed off, her tone slightly sulky. Her brows narrowed as she poured herself a glass of wine from the open bottle of sangria Lucy had left out. She gulped down a large swig.

“What?” Lucy looked expectantly at her.

“I’m just…I don’t know.”

“Lonely,” Lucy supplied for her.

“Yeah. Even in a singles bar, hunks all around me, hitting on me with their goofy lines, and I still feel like I’m alone on the planet.”

“So fall for a line.”

“I’m tired of one-night stands. I don’t think there’s anyone for me. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

“Sure, but I haven’t given up yet.” Lucy hadn’t really been on the prowl for a man. There’d been a few meaningless nights, when she hadn’t been able to face an empty bed and another night alone, with guys whose names she couldn’t even remember. But no one serious. And she wanted to keep it that way.

“Oh, you’re a hopeless romantic.” Val waved her empty glass at Lucy.

Lucy realized she might have been a romantic at one time. God, she wanted to feel that way again.

At Lucy’s silence, Val said, “Remember that time you made me watch An Affair to Remember six times?”

“You cried. I saw you. Admit it.”

Val rolled her eyes.

“Talk about tired movies. What about your Steven Segal fests?” Lucy pointed at Val.

“I thought you liked them, all the explosions.”

“Only my own explosions.” Lucy grinned. “Too much overkill and fallout in Hollywood.”

“You’re right. Let’s do an indie weekend, get in some serious angst and melancholy with a little black humor thrown in.” Val grinned at Lucy, then looked at her watch. “And we’d better plan it quick. One hour and fifty minutes and counting.”

Lucy gulped back the tightness that had suddenly swelled in her throat. She wanted more time with Val. She glanced at the envelope sitting on the counter, and it felt as if minutes were traveling at light speed. An overwhelming restlessness within her wanted to reach out and grab time, force it to be still. Suddenly a foreboding gripped her, one that told her she’d better enjoy this fleeting moment with Val because she might never get another one.

Cape Flats, Cape Town

Nolan fought the wind hitting his face and darted into the throng of an open air market. He weaved his way past farmers hawking melons, grapes, fava beans, coffee and spices from crates and wheelbarrows. He dodged sari-clad women, dragging packages and children behind them. He knew his height made him an easy target to follow, so he crossed to the market’s higher-end side and zigzagged his way through the covered stalls. Vendors sold everything from ostrich-skin wallets to zebra-hide cushions. The strong smell of body odor, animal hides and incense made him grimace. He could barely make out Viking’s footfalls over the market’s noise.

When he neared a rug seller, he darted in between several lines of hanging carpets. The vendor, a thin man wearing a turban, watched him with wary eyes as if street violence and people being chased was the norm.

The carpet line ended near an abandoned metal shack. Beside it, knee-high grass covered a small area. Nolan ducked beneath the last Karabakh carpet, and pressed his back against the metal, the heat of it burning his spine. He waited.

Viking’s footfalls grew closer.

Nolan watched his progress below the carpets. Viking’s feet came to the end of the line and halted.

A carpet wall separated them.

Nolan listened to Viking’s heavy breathing and could almost hear his indecision: lift the carpet or not. Make the leap or be safe. Be the clever intimidator or the wimpy sod. Nolan had learned early on in his life that muscle-bound thugs liked testing their strength on bigger chaps. And since he’d always been in the top percentile for height and weight, he’d fought every bully at school and in his neighborhood before he’d turned six. It was no different in his later life. He was actually looking forward to facing this sod.

Nolan didn’t move, breathing through an adrenaline rush.

As Nolan had planned, Viking stepped around the carpets, the barrel of his gun coming first. Nolan drop-kicked the gun from Viking’s hand.

It landed in the grass and discharged; the report seemed to echo for miles.

Viking faced him, pulled a switchblade, his face like that of a cat with its prey. “How you like this?”

“The question is, do you have the bollocks to use it?” Nolan circled him, his arms out in a wrestling stance.

Viking lashed out at him.

Nolan easily avoided the knife, grabbed Viking’s arm and twisted it behind his back. Nolan caught the man in a headlock. “Sorry, mate, you’ll have to do better than that.”

Viking cursed in Norwegian and struggled in Nolan’s arms. But Nolan was bigger, stronger and had the upper hand.

“Move again, and I’ll break your bloody neck.”

Viking growled in frustration and stopped struggling.

“Better. Now, who do you work for?” Nolan asked, his tone pleasantly composed.

No answer.

Nolan turned Viking’s head within a millimeter of snapping his neck. Color bled into Viking’s pale cheeks. The patient quality left Nolan’s voice. “I’ll ask again, but this is the last time.”

“Myself,” Viking ground out.

“What have I ever done to you?”

“My job…”

“Your job?” Nolan narrowed his brows at him.

“She gave you my job. It should have been mine.”

“You work at Pincer?”

Viking ground out, “Yes.”

“It’s all very clear now.” Relief washed over Nolan. At least the terrorists hadn’t discovered his whereabouts—if this bloke was telling the truth.

Instead of breaking Viking’s neck, Nolan applied pressure to his carotid artery. Too long and the lack of oxygen to his brain would kill him. Just enough and he’d be out for a while and wake up with a bloody headache. Nolan chose the headache.

Viking went limp in his arms. He patted the sod down, pulled out his PDA. He pocketed the handheld computer, then grabbed Viking’s arms and pulled him toward the abandoned building. He wasn’t certain Viking had been telling the truth. Jealousy could make a person do just about anything, and Viking seemed like the type to even scores at any cost. Nolan hoped the PDA might contain information that could confirm Viking’s story.

Fish Hoek Village, False Bay, South Africa

“Plus Suisse Worldwide Depository is our target?” Cao asked, frowning at Lucy across the dining table. He sat nearest the open balcony doors, and a breeze rustled the shaggy black hair protruding from beneath his black sun visor. He wore a black matching warm-up suit.

“Yes.” Lucy squinted at the schematic on the computer screen. It was part of the info Delphi had sent her on a flash key. She’d also received the history of the PSWD, a twenty-four-hour, fully automated Geldschrank bank. They maintained offices not only in Switzerland, but all over the world. Criminals and terrorists could hide stolen bonds, accounts, art treasures, passports. Just about anything they wanted to keep from law enforcement. Ambiguity was PSWD’s ultimate profit source: electronically untraceable computer source code escrow accounts. Anonyme lager, otherwise known as anonymous drop storage boxes. Digitized international transferable accounts. All high-tech blankets of privacy. Accounts were by numbers only. No names. No faces. The bank’s very anonymity policy could be its downfall. It might be its only one.

She studied the building’s twelve floors, six of which were underground bank vaults, buried beneath thousands of tons of concrete and steel. It really looked like a rat-maze fortress.

“You say there are three electronic readers we have to get through to get inside?” Betsy asked, reaching for the bag of potato chips. She chomped one down, then chased it with a sip of sangria. Betsy had on red biker shorts that looked poured over her small hips. The straps of her sports bra peeked out from the top of a red sweater that hugged her flat stomach.

“Yes.” Lucy peered at the schematic Delphi had supplied for them. “One in the underground parking deck. Two on each vault floor.”

Tommy gazed at Betsy’s glass of fruity wine, tasting it with his eyes. He’d been a recovering alcoholic since he was sixteen. He picked up his can of Pepsi, frowned at it like an old friend who annoyed him, then said, “How many guards on duty?” He settled against his flight jacket that rested on the back of his chair and sipped his soda. The slogan, Pilots Do It Better, blazed across his T-shirt.

“One at the lobby desk,” Lucy said. “Three manning the security cameras.”

“Better than ten.” Tommy rubbed his finger around the top of the can.

“I can get us past the readers and the metal detectors,” Cao said in his quiet, serene voice, all the while looking at Betsy as if he were imagining what lay beneath her sweater and bra. He reached in a briefcase and pulled out something that looked very similar to a hotel pass key, but had a metal casing.

“What is it?” Betsy asked, narrowing her eyes at the gadget.

“A microprocessor wireless modem. My design.” He grinned, looking pleased that she had questioned him about it. “You just insert it into the electronic reader and I’m in their computer.”

Betsy frowned at the invention as if it were a new brand of bullet that she’d never used before. “You sure it will work?”

“Of course.” Cao shot Betsy an indignant glance.

“Won’t they have filters that scramble a foreign signal?” Tommy asked.

“I’ll break them before the alarm goes off.” Cao paused, seeming to be at war with an emotion for a moment, then said, “There’s one drawback.”

“What?” Lucy asked.

“This device has to stay in the electronic card reader and cannot be taken out. Preferably the reader in the parking deck. Inside the bank, the wireless signal will be blocked.”

“It’s only got to get me inside and to the strongbox. So will it work…here?” She pointed on the schematic to the security gate that opened into the underground parking deck.

Cao nodded.

Betsy reached for another chip. “We have to make sure it’s not spotted by a guard or another customer.”

“We’ll deal with them.” Tommy chugged the rest of his Pepsi and burped.

“You’ll have three minutes between the entry doors,” Cao said.

“Okay.”

“What about the strongbox’s password?” Cao asked. “No way I can find out that info.”

“I got the password right here.” Lucy pointed to a pea-size piece of C-4 she had stashed in a pillbox.

Tommy leaned back in his chair, the glint in his green eyes turning apprehensive. “There’s another hitch—the carbon monoxide delivery system in the vaults. Get caught in there and your ass is grass.”

Cao spoke up. “It only takes a concentration of .04% to be fatal. At 1.28%, you’re dead in less than three minutes.”

Betsy frowned at him. “You’re a regular book of creepy facts.”

Cao cocked his head at her. “I designed a gas chamber for North Korea once.” He didn’t sound proud of the fact, but he still met her eyes without blinking.

Betsy winced. If he had meant to shock her, it had worked.

Lucy said, “So will a gas mask work?”

“Not with CO,” Cao said. “It absorbs all available oxygen, and with a mask you’re filtering and breathing in the stuff that comes out of your car’s tailpipe, but more deadly.”

Tommy spoke up. “You can use a portable oxygen mask. That’ll keep you alive until you can get to an oxygen source.”

Their conversation drifted into a heavy silence that mixed with the sound of the breaking waves outside the door.

Lucy stared at the glowing schematic on the screen. It radiated with an eerie liquid blue glow. Was she looking at the blueprint of her own coffin?

Pincer Industries, Cape Town, South Africa

Nolan Taylor drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. What was taking so long? He had arrived promptly, not a minute before or after, twelve hundred hours. He lifted the heavily starched French cuff of his white shirt and read his watch: 12:10. Was punctuality too much to ask?

The hum of a computer on the sleek modern desk across the room began to irritate him. He looked at the webcam turned in his direction. Was he being observed? Nervous energy got the better of him and he stood and walked over to the windows that ran floor to ceiling in the high-rise office, out of the webcam’s sight.

From his fifteenth-story view, the vast microcosm of humanity that was the metropolis of Cape Town spread out before him. Cape Town had evolved from a refueling outpost for Dutch ships in the sixteen hundreds to what it was today, a diverse city with 2.9 million people, one of the busiest shipping corridors in the world. This made it a perfect place for smugglers and terrorists.

He could see the N1 Freeway curving around the fringes. White beaches and blue water met the Atlantic seaboard side of Camps Bay and Bantry Bay. Along the waterfront were the old Dutch docks that had been converted into Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a tourist’s dream of shops, bars and cinemas. Part of this area, the Sea Point Promenade, included the Muslim district and the notorious “red light” district. He’d tracked down terrorists in the Muslim district before.

High-rises stacked the city proper like building blocks. Down the street from Pincer Industries, the historical yellow sandstone walls of City Hall gleamed in the sunlight. Farther on the Botanical Gardens formed a lake of green. Table Mountain towered in the background over the whole seaside city, its plateau looking just like the natural UFO landing pad in Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a few extra hills on either side.

His gaze moved southeast of the city to Cape Flats, where its white beaches looked pleasantly beautiful, innocuous enough from this distance. His brows furrowed as he remembered what he’d left there only two hours ago.

A side door to the office opened. He straightened his tie, then turned to face the CEO of Pincer Industries.

Downtown Cape Town

Lucy drove a rented Corolla down St. John’s Street. She had rented six vehicles for the stay in Cape Town: the Corolla, three Jeeps and two vans, all at different rental places, all fees paid with cash, and all under assumed names. She tugged at the short black bangs of a wig, making sure her auburn eyebrows were covered. Cao had her disguised with a Roman nose, black glasses, and sideburns. She’d wrapped her breasts so they wouldn’t show beneath the male pin-stripped suit she wore. She was just tall and muscular enough to pull it off, with the help of shoulder pads. How did men get used to all these layers of tight clothing?

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The white van carrying the rest of the team cruised several car lengths behind her. It reassured her, but it didn’t stop the adrenaline strumming her veins.

She neared the target, Plus Suisse Worldwide Depository, a monolith of steel and glass that shadowed half a block.

She approached the cement-lined ramp to the underground parking deck and slowed. “Okay, going in,” she spoke into the bone mic.

“Passing you,” Tommy said as the van eased past her.

“Turning.”

Cao, Betsy and Tommy all wished her luck, and she heard the worry in their voices. Tommy pulled the van into an alley across the street, next to a sleek modern law office. Cao slid a tiny portable dish onto the roof.

She paused before the electronic podium and gate. An LCD screen spewed out directions in Afrikaans, French, Dutch, German, English, Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Setswana, Muslim, Hindu…and the languages kept rolling.

She spoke more than ten languages, a necessity from having lived in many impoverished Asian and African provinces with her mother, so she had already pulled out the mini modem.

“Okay, in we go.” She slid it in. It fit perfectly. No alarm went off. Always good.

Would it work? Her faith in Cao had never wavered until this moment. She counted the seconds by the steady pulse in her temple.

Waited. Held her breath.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.