Athena Force 11: Target Page 9

  She mentally noted every possible suspect, even if her head said they couldn’t possibly be the right person. And stopped cold as a particular name came to mind. One that fit every criteria to absolute perfection.

  Joseph P. Lockworth. Former Director of the CIA.

  Gramps? No way.

  She reminded herself to think like Oracle. No value judgments. Just the facts. Let them speak for themselves. And she was riding in his car this very second. Had she just handed herself directly into the clutches of the enemy?

  11:00 A.M.

  She reached for the door handle and tested it. Locked. Don’t panic. It was probably a standard security procedure to lock all the doors from the driver’s position. She looked outside. And noticed they were headed farther north than was necessary to get to the Mall, where she’d asked to be dropped off.

  “Hey, Darryl,” she said into the intercom on the panel in the back of the front seat. “Can you just drop me off right here? This will be perfect.”

  If anything, the car sped up more.

  Good Lord. Was she being kidnapped? By her own grandfather? Maybe the intercom just wasn’t working. She tried the button marked Up and Down for the partition. Nothing.

  “Darryl,” she said louder into the intercom. “Stop right here.”

  Still nothing. Crud. She couldn’t see him through the black glass partition. She banged on it with the flat of her hands and shouted, “Darryl! Stop the car!”

  Nada.

  Oh yeah. She was definitely a prisoner in here. She looked outside. They were well north of the Mall and traveling east. Fast. She banged on her side window, but nobody could hear her over the traffic noise, of course. She had to get out of here! But how? For all she knew, the window glass was bulletproof, and nothing she did would break through it. She tested the upholstery at the back of the seat. Maybe she could tear through to the trunk and kick her way out of there. The seat cushion pulled away to reveal a steel wall between the passenger compartment and the trunk. Maybe she could access the door lock itself. Tear off the inside door panel and manually release the locking mechanism of the door. She pried at the door lining and broke a couple of fingernails but didn’t budge the panel. She might be able to pry it off using some sort of tool, though.

  Okay. Plan A was to try to break out a window and escape that way. Plan B would be to try to take apart the door.

  Now for something heavy and hard to bust the glass with. Even if it wasn’t bulletproof, the window would still be made of tempered safety glass, and it took a hefty blow to damage that stuff significantly. She gazed around the interior of the car. Her purse was too soft. Her shoe was too light. She could wrap her leather coat around her fist and try to punch it out, but she doubted she had the strength to succeed. She opened the minibar contained in the back of the front passenger seat. Bingo. Bottles of liquor. She tested them and pulled out a magnum of champagne. The bottle had a thick, heavy bottom and a chunky body. The weight of the liquid and the pressure of the carbonated beverage outward upon the glass bottle might just give it enough smashing power to break the window. If not, she was about to make a really big mess for nothing.

  She pulled the sleeves of her leather coat down over her hands to protect them and herself from flying glass. She picked up the champagne bottle by the neck in both fists, closed her eyes and swung it with all her might at the right rear passenger window.

  Her arm jarred all the way to the shoulder and a tremendous crashing noise of breaking glass filled the air. She jumped in icy shock as cold champagne drenched her. But a basketball-size spiderweb of fractured glass had appeared in the window. Hallelujah!

  The car swerved violently and lurched forward again as if the driver had just stomped on the accelerator. Gave Darryl a fright, did she? Quickly, she lay down on her back on the seat, feet up. Using the heels of her boots, she kicked out the shattered glass. It bent outward in a sheet, and finally, under repeated blows from her foot, gave way. A cold wind rushed into the interior of the car. The vehicle slowed abruptly.

  Uh-oh. Darryl was on to her.

  She leaped up and ducked through the window. Her eyes watered ferociously and her hair whipped all around her face. She grabbed onto the roof of the car and sat on the edge of the door frame while she maneuvered a foot out the window. The pavement sped by underneath her at a good thirty miles per hour, but the vehicle was decelerating fast. She swung her second foot through and jumped clear of the car.

  She landed on her feet in a blessedly empty turn lane, but the impact and her momentum knocked her off balance. She tucked and rolled, flinging her arms over her head to protect it as her fall sent her tumbling end over end for a good twenty or thirty feet. She lay on the ground in a ball, stunned. Still alive. Amazing. Lucky as hell, too. Thank God for the tough leather coat.

  Brakes squealed ahead of her. She looked up in time to see the big Cadillac heave into a tire-screaming J-turn and stop facing her, like a bull getting ready to charge. The white flash of the license plate below the radiator looked like a fleck of foam dripping from the silver-toothed maw of the beast. The powerful engine shifted into gear. Here he came. She forced her aching body to unfold and pushed painfully to her feet, looking around frantically for cover. A couple car horns blared as cars passed her and swerved around the Cadillac, which was now facing the wrong direction. She was out in the middle of a six-lane street. No time to dive for cover behind one of the parked cars at the edge of the concrete expanse. She crouched at the ready. She’d wait until the last second and leap to the side. If Darryl was any good, he’d swerve to hit her. And then she’d have to leap back out of the way in the other direction. Fast.

  It was a plan, at any rate. And it wasn’t as if she had time to think up anything better. The black monster bore down upon her, gathering speed and momentum, building up deadly power. She saw Darryl’s face through the car’s windshield as he drew close. It was devoid of emotion, displaying only the utter concentration of a pro. He was out to kill her, all right.

  She head faked left and right like a basketball player trying to go around a defender to score a basket. But the car just came on, straight at her. She waited until the car was no more than a hundred feet away and jumped hard to the left. As she’d expected, the car swerved at her, like a heat-seeking missile tracking its target.

  Fifty feet.

  Darryl would expect her to jump back to the right at the last second. She glimpsed his hands changing grip on the steering wheel, in fact, readying himself to yank the car back the other way.

  Twenty feet.

  Acting purely on instinct, she jumped again. Farther to the left. Out of his way a second time. The car lurched and Darryl tried to correct for the sudden and unexpected movement. But he wasn’t in time. The sleek metal door brushed against her side as the car went barreling past. Damn, that had been close. Bullfighters could have their job, thank you very much.

  The Caddie’s brakes squealed again. She had to give the guy credit for being persistent. Time to split. She took off running, scooping up her purse where it had rolled to a stop in the street not far from her. She looked up and saw a wall of oncoming traffic. Crud. A stoplight had changed and sent three lanes of cars barreling toward her. She dived out of the way between two parked cars. Fortunately, the oncoming traffic blocked the Caddie from driving across the lanes of traffic in pursuit.

  “Hey, lady! Are you all right?” someone called out.

  No time to stop and chitchat with bystanders. She took off running down the sidewalk. She was in a business district. Plain concrete buildings that had seen better days lined the street. She ducked into the first decent-size doorway she came across. An office-supply store. She raced toward the back of it, ignoring the startled cries of the employees. She slammed through the swinging doors marked Employees Only and into the storeroom. Looked left and right and spied the loading dock to her right. She ran for it. Out onto the chest-high cement platform. A running leap off it, and her left ankle gave out as she
hit the ground. She turned it into a perfectly executed parachute-landing fall, rolled, and popped back onto her feet. The ankle felt okay. Off and running again. She raced down the dirty alley and came out on a one-way street. The traffic was heavy. She sprinted along the sidewalk, waiting for an opportunity to dive across the broad avenue.

  A shout behind her. The deep baritone of Darryl’s voice. Traffic or not, she jumped out into the street. A car stomped on its brakes and swerved, narrowly missing her. She darted across the next two lanes of swerving, honking cars and ducked as a metallic pinging sounded behind her. Bullets on metal. The bastard was shooting at her!

  Time to change the rules of engagement, here. She had to get off the street. She took the first left turn to the south and put on an extra burst of speed. God bless the Army’s stringent physical fitness standards, and God bless all those years of sports at the Athena Academy. A right turn, down another block, and another left turn.

  She looked over her shoulder, panting. No sign of Darryl. She looked around fast. And jumped into a dark little Greek restaurant. She made her way, huffing, past the mostly empty tables. Too early for the lunch crowd.

  The manager looked up and surprise lit in his eyes. Reacting to her unsavory punker getup, no doubt.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” she asked breathlessly.

  He pointed over his shoulder toward the back of the place. Perfect. Beside the kitchen. She stepped into the dim bathroom. She ran a sinkful of water and rinsed the streak of red out of her hair. Paper towels painfully, albeit effectively, rubbed off her heavy makeup, leaving her skin reddened, but mostly back to its normal hue. She dug around in her purse for yet another of her punker accoutrements. A can of black aerosol hair spray. Normally she’d just do the tips in black or maybe a lone streak of black, but today she laid it on all over her head. She didn’t have time to make it look nice as she covered her golden blond hair with the black spray. There. At a glance, she’d pass for a brunette.

  She coughed at the cloud of aerosol propellant around her head and zipped her purse shut. Pulling out a black silk scarf she usually tossed around her neck, this time she wrapped it around her head for a total profile change.

  She stepped out of the bathroom and the manager about gave himself whiplash double-taking on her. As she ducked through the door into the kitchen, he belatedly lurched and shouted something at her in Greek. The chef looked up in surprise, but merely watched, bemused, as she rushed past him toward the back exit.

  She popped out into a narrow access alley and ran lightly down it until she reached the street. Slowing to a quick walk, she stepped out onto the sidewalk. Now, it was all about stealth. About blending in. As she moved toward Capitol Hill the crowds grew thicker. She thought she glimpsed Darryl well behind her, once, but she couldn’t be sure. He was too far away to see clearly. Which was good news. With her new disguise, he very likely couldn’t make her out in the crowd, either. Especially since he’d be looking for a pale-skinned blonde with stark makeup and that telltale blood-red streak in her hair.

  She slowed down her pace to blend in with the leisurely crowd of tourists beginning to make their way toward the Mall and the Inaugural Parade. She guessed she was still ten blocks from the Capitol, whose dome peeked out above the buildings ahead. She crossed a street and turned the corner and happened to catch sight out of the corner of her eye of a man in a camel overcoat shifting to the far side of the street behind her.

  Alarm bells went off in her head. That was a standard surveillance move for someone working as part of a multiman team to tail a target. Was it just some random guy crossing the street, or God help her, had someone managed to pick up her trail again? She doubled back abruptly and dived into a recessed storefront with multiple glass display windows. Using the glass as a makeshift mirror, she watched for the telltale shift of a pedestrian across the street in the middle of the block. There he went. A guy with a long, gray ponytail in a black leather jacket. Dammit.

  She ducked into the jewelry store beside her.

  A female clerk eyed her colossally bad hair-dye job as she approached the counter. One of the woman’s hands slid unobtrusively under the counter. Reaching for the silent alarm.

  Diana sighed. She still looked completely disreputable, apparently. She reached—slowly—into her purse and pulled out her wallet. She flashed her military ID card at the clerk and spoke in her most professional tone of voice. “I’m an intelligence officer with the Army. I’m helping provide security for the inauguration, and I’ve got a bit of a problem. There are some men moving down this street whom I need to follow. Is there a stairwell inside this building, maybe a fire escape, I could use to get to the offices upstairs? I’d be tremendously grateful if you could help me.”

  The woman weighed her words for a moment. “Is that a disguise you’re wearing?” she asked.

  Diana grimaced. “Yes. Horrible, isn’t it? But it was the best I could do when I spotted these jokers.”

  The clerk came out from behind the counter. “Follow me.”

  Diana followed the woman into a small back room with a desk, a coffee machine and a door that looked as though it led to a bathroom. Diana frowned as the clerk stopped near a metal locker and stooped down inside it for a moment. Was she reaching for a weapon? Diana tensed in preparation for disarming the older woman.

  The clerk emerged with a cardboard box. “Lost and found. Is there anything here you could use?”

  Diana sagged in relief. “Bless you.” She rooted around in the assorted items of clothing and came up with two scarves, one a vivid cobalt blue, and the other a pattern of assorted brown tones. “These are perfect. I’ll return them when I’m done with them.”

  The clerk shrugged. “No need. They’ve both been in there awhile. The fire escape is this way.” She led Diana to a heavy-looking metal door and punched in a code on the number pad beside it. The door buzzed and the clerk opened it. “Good luck.”

  Diana looked the woman in the eye sincerely. “Thanks. I really appreciate your help.”

  And then she was off, racing up the stairs to the building’s second floor, and as she had hoped, a long office complex that spanned the entire block of stores below. Unlike the jewelry store, the fire doors onto this floor were not locked. She walked quickly all the way to the far end of the building and stepped into the corner office. A man wearing a white shirt and a sloppy tie looked up from his desk.

  “Can I help you?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yes. I need to look out your window for a moment.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She moved past the guy as she flashed her military ID yet again. “I’m doing security for the inauguration and your office has the view I need for a minute. I’ll be out of here in a flash.”

  She plastered herself against the wall beside the window that looked down on the street she’d just left. She watched the ebb and flow of humanity below, and sure enough, after a minute or so, three people stood out from the normal movements of the crowd. The man in the camel coat, the guy with the ponytail in leather, and…Darryl. Sonofagun.

  The man in the camel coat turned the corner, and she shifted over to the office’s other window. Yep, standard search pattern in progress for a lost target. Straight out of the government training manual. Who were these guys? More CIA trained terrorists, or no kidding government types this time?

  All three men were Caucasian. Not one among them looked even remotely Berzhaani. Not Q-group material, then. Somebody else. But who, dammit?

  “May I use your phone?” she asked the guy at the desk.

  “Um, sure,” he said cautiously. Man. Even mostly cleaned up, she still exuded some vibe that made people think she was trouble.

  She leaned across his desk and dialed zero. Asked the operator for a taxi company. Got a dispatcher on the line. She held her hand over the phone and asked the poor guy whose office she’d invaded for the street address of this building. He told her quickly, as if he was relieved at the ide
a of getting rid of her. She relayed the address to the dispatcher. Twenty minutes, the guy said.

  “Make it ten and I’ll double the fare and throw in a tip for you,” she said into the receiver.

  “Done,” was the prompt reply.

  She put down the phone and smiled gratefully at the office worker. “Thank you so much for your help, sir. You have no idea how valuable your assistance has been.”

  “No problem,” the guy said, warming up to her dazzling smile.

  “One last favor, if I might. Could you tell me how to get out of this building?”

  He gave her directions to the elevators down to the main lobby. She made her way to the ground floor of the building and lurked inside, partially hidden behind a big, fake fig tree. At least it wasn’t a palm tree, this time. She kept a sharp eye out for her three tails, but saw none of them. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, they’d moved on past this area in search of her.

  Ten minutes later on the nose, a Yellow Cab pulled up out front. Using the muted brown scarf to cover her head and shoulders, she hurried outside to the cab and jumped in. “Thanks for getting here so quickly,” she told the driver.

  He nodded in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”

  She thought fast. If the Q-group was trying to make a political statement, they’d do it in front of the largest possible crowd, which meant the Mall and its teeming thousands of tourists. “As close to the Mall as you can get me,” she answered.

  “Which end?”

  Good question. The blasted thing stretched forever. How was she supposed to figure out where they’d mount their attack along its length in the next hour? Well, it wasn’t as if she had any choice but to just start looking. Gabe’s motorcade would probably enter the Mall from 15th Street beside…

  “Take me to the Washington Monument.”