Kat was still awake when Jeff came back to the cottage as dawn broke outside. She’d given up on sleeping soon thereafter and gotten up. He made no effort to speak to her all day. He participated professionally enough in the planning of the night’s mission, but when she tried to talk to him in private, she got exactly nowhere with him.
Each time he gave her a closed, stony look-the classic thousand-yard stare of a hardened soldier-her heart broke a little more. By suppertime, she was a complete mess. So much for being able to hold it together no matter what life threw at her.
She went out to the beach where she swayed and stepped through the slow motion dance of an ancient gigong ritual designed to calm and center the chi. Twice. It didn’t work. She resorted to the more violent Shaolin kung fu forms next. Better. At least working up a good sweat burned off a little of her urge to burst into tears. But she still felt like crap.
“You okay?” Aleesha murmured for at least the tenth time that day as Kat let herself back into the cottage at dusk.
“No, I’m not,” she snapped, her fragile calm already wrecked.
Aleesha laughed quietly. “Welcome to the world of wallowing in emotions like the rest of us.”
Kat threw her a bitter look. “Yeah, well, it sucks.”
“Ahh, but when it’s good, it’s great, isn’t it?”
Kat squeezed her eyes tightly shut. That was just sweat making them burn like that. Just sweat, dammit.
Aleesha sighed. “I really ought to pull you from this mission.”
Alarmed, Kat blurted, “You can’t. I’m the only one who can do it.”
A reluctant nod. “True. But we can postpone it a few days until you’re feeling more like yourself.”
Kat winced. She was starting to be genuinely afraid that from here on out this was herself. How was she supposed to close the floodgates and re-contain all that emotion that Jeff had let out? It would be like trying to empty a lake with a teaspoon.
“I’ll be okay, Aleesha. I promise. Once I get into the flow of the mission, my training will take over.”
Aleesha looked at her hard. “Make me a promise. If you get in that house and your concentration isn’t perfect, you’ll call it off and back out.”
“But-”
“No buts. Either you promise, or I’m pulling the plug. We’ll find some other way to draw these guys out. The way I hear it, those folks in the H.O.T. Watch can do surveillance on the entire island of Barbados at once.”
Having seen the Ops center, Kat could believe it. She glanced up to see Aleesha staring at her expectantly.
Kat sighed. “Fine. I promise.”
“On your honor?”
“Yes, mother.”
Aleesha nodded firmly. “All right, then. Now go take a little rest and we’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”
Kat crouched in the bushes outside the mansion that was her target. It was a massive lump of brick and stone, generically Caribbean colonial. And a hell of a tough nut to crack. The place had banklike security, and in the guise of being built hurricane-proof, had also been built practically burglarproof as well.
To the credit of the home’s designers, it had taken most of the staff of the H.O.T. Watch, a team at the Pentagon, and several high-powered civilian electronics and security consultants to come up with a way to breach the place. And were it not for the H.O.T. Watch’s high-tech satellite systems and an orbiting electronic counterwarfare chopper nearby, she wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting inside undetected.
Wherever he was right now, hidden in the trees, was Jeff worried about her? Or was he just mad? Or maybe he felt nothing at all. He certainly seemed to have shut down his emotions earlier. And how ironic was that? She was the one with the legendary self-control while he wore his feelings on his sleeve, and now she was a blithering idiot and he was a rock.
She checked her thoughts sharply. She ought to be reviewing the plan, running it one last time in her head, not to mention keeping an eye out for movement that didn’t belong out here. Good thing Aleesha wasn’t beside her right now, or this mission would already be over.
Jeff’s voice crackled over her earpiece, crisp and emotionless. “H.O.T. Watch and Bravo 51, report when ready.” Bravo 51 was the helicopter with the equipment that would jam several electronic portions of the mansion’s security system. She didn’t hear the chopper yet, but it would move in close when she started her run at the house.
Did he have to sound so cold and uncaring? Stop that. He was transmitting on a frequency that close to a hundred people were listening to. How else should he sound?
“You ready, Cobra?” Aleesha prompted.
Kat started. Crud. She was supposed to report when she was ready, and then Jeff would give the green light, and she’d forgotten to do it. Aleesha’s transmission had been a subtle kick in the pants to get her head in the game. And Aleesha was right.
Kat slid the switch on her waist pack to hot mike. Everything she said now would broadcast live without her having to press a microphone button. She’d need both hands to do her job pretty soon. “Cobra ready to proceed.”
“You are cleared to proceed,” Jeff said. “Give us a time hack.”
Kat pushed up her sleeve and opened her mouth. The pair of two-inch-long Cyalume sticks she’d tucked into her cheeks emitted a faint glow from between her teeth-enough to see her watch face. “On my mark, it will be 1:30 a.m. Three, two, one, mark.”
And with the last syllable, she took off running toward the house. The pressure sensors in the lawn reported wirelessly to the security computer inside, but Bravo 51 had that covered.
On cue, an electronic warfare specialist came up on frequency and announced, “The pressure sensors are jammed. You are clear to cross the grass.”
She reached the expanse of green a few seconds later. In her mind, this was the most dangerous part of the mission. She was to run across the lawn in plain view of anyone who might be lurking nearby. After all, the idea was to let the hostiles know she was here. Once she gained the cover of the house, there’d be much less chance to take her out. The working theory was that the commandos would want to capture the Ghost to ask him where the disk was now, and that they wouldn’t want to kill him. At least not right away. But if that calculation were wrong, now was the moment they would find out-when bullets slammed into her exposed self.
And then she was across the lawn, crouching in the shadows of an oleander bush. One of its narrow leaves tickled her nose, and she pushed it aside absently. She had about thirty seconds to wait while Bravo 51 did its magic on the house’s outside phone lines. They were going to do something having to do with setting up a feedback loop that blocked a dial tone. The end result would be that when the house’s automated alarm system tried to summon the police, no call would get out. At least, that was the plan.
She recognized Jennifer Blackfoot’s voice in her ear. “We show no hostile heat signatures on satellite imagery at this time. You are clear to proceed.”
“Phones are down,” Bravo 51 reported.
That was her signal. She stood up and went to work on the window above her. It was an easy enough matter to cut a foot-wide circle out of the glass and lift it aside. Trickier was the maneuver to use a thin steel rod to manipulate the window latch without breaking the grid of laser beams an inch beyond the window’s surface. But with patience and concentration, she got it. After sliding a flat metal strip under the window to maintain contact on the pressure sensors there, she slid the window up gingerly. The house alarms remained silent. Gripping the window frame, she leaped up lightly until she was poised on the narrow sill, balancing on her toes. Carefully, she slipped mirrors into the laser grid until she’d created a gap about ten inches high and eighteen inches wide. It would be a tight squeeze, but that’s why she was doing this and not a hulk like Jeff.
The thought of him momentarily broke her breathing rhythm, and she had to pause to remind herself to breathe lightly and evenly. Her calm restored for the moment, she eased through the narrow gap, reaching across a three-foot gap to the back of a leather sofa. Never touching the floor, she slid over the sofa back and twisted to land lightly on its cushioned surface.
“I’m in,” she murmured.
The laser grid in here was visible to the naked eye, which made her job of sliding, climbing, leaping and squeezing past it easy. She reached the bookcase beside the door. She commenced pressing, pulling and shifting books in the shelf until she found the dummy book that actually was a switch. It tilted outward from the shelf, and to the right of the library door, a small panel slid open to reveal a numeric keypad.
She described it quickly over her radios. A new voice came up on frequency and didn’t identify himself. He did, however, identify the model of alarm system pad she’d described. She spent the next ten minutes following his detailed instructions on how to open the box and disable the alarm.
“Okay, Cobra, give the doorknob a try. If we’ve done it right, you should be able to open the door and get no alarm siren.”
She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. From this moment forward, she’d be on her own inside the house. She turned the cool brass knob slowly. Cracked the door open an inch. Silence. She’d done it.
In point of fact, they expected any bad guys to jump her as she left the house. She ought to be able to proceed from here unhindered. Nonetheless, she eased forward cautiously. It was a short trip down the hall to her right, across the foyer and left into the expansive living room where her target-a magnificent Van der Meer painting-hung.
She eased down the carpeted hall, her passage utterly silent, and frowned. Something didn’t feel right. It was nothing she could put her finger on, but an uneasy intuition stole over her. Maybe it was the fact that she was committing a major felony that bugged her.
For no reason she could explain, she paused at the edge of the three-story-high foyer and examined it suspiciously. A huge chandelier dripped with crystal. An ornate table in the middle of the space held a giant Limoges porcelain vase she couldn’t wrap her arms around. It was empty at the moment, but would no doubt hold a large floral display when the house was occupied.
The floor was a marble so glossy it glistened like glass in the scant light. Her senses kicked over to another level altogether, her military and martial arts training blending until she was vibrating with awareness at a level so minute her teammates wouldn’t believe her if she tried to explain it. And that was probably why she noticed the infinitesimal flicker of movement in a dark shadow under the far leg of the table. She pulled out her sniper scope, a palm-sized telescope she usually used to measure distance to targets. She zoomed it in on the spot where she’d seen the movement.
She frowned. It was a gnat. Lying on its side, one wing beating sporadically in an attempt to free itself. How was the bug trapped? It ought to be able to use its legs to right itself. It was probably just a dying bug and happened to have ended up in that pose. Except…
She sniffed the air experimentally. The faintest odor of something familiar-lightly sweet with a musty undertone-just barely registered. She knew that scent. But where from? She sniffed again, letting its essence flow over her and through her. Summers in Korea. Hidoshi’s snug little barn, where the pigs and sheep spent their nights. The paper fly strips that spiraled down from the ceiling, mustard yellow and sticky…and smelling exactly like this.
Flypaper? What did that have to do with this opulent home? Alarm bells went off in her head. Something was not right here. She knelt down to get a better look at that gnat. Now that she thought about it, the gnat was acting just like one of the myriad flies that used to bumble onto Hidoshi’s flypaper and then buzz frantically until they died.
The floor. It smelled more strongly of the flypaper glue. From this angle, it looked like a thick layer of polyurethane had been freshly spread over the marble, drying to that glossy sheen. There wasn’t a single nick on that satin-smooth surface. What floor had absolutely no nicks or scuffs?
She reached out tentatively to touch the floor and started as it gave way, viscous beneath her touch. She withdrew her hand, and her fingertips stuck to the gooey surface hard enough that she had to yank her hand back, leaving a little skin behind.
That was a powerful epoxy of some kind. The entire floor was coated with glue! Had she stepped in it, she doubted she’d have been able to walk across the floor without sacrificing her shoes, and then her socks, to the glue. Who in their right mind lived in a house like this and poured glue all over their foyer?
A trap.
This was a trap.
Adrenaline surged through her veins, screaming its warning at her. She froze, only her gaze roving quickly in all directions. She saw no cameras. No microphones. No other surveillance equipment. Her gut said she wasn’t missing anything. The threat she sensed was more human than machine.
Holy sh-
Was she alone in here or not?
Was this why the H.O.T. Watch had seen no hostiles outside? Were they already inside? Was their ambush about to be turned on them? She eased her hand down to her belt and pressed the transmit button three times fast, three times slow, and three times fast, sending out a clicked S.O.S.
Jeff’s response was immediate in her ear. “Are you injured?”
Two clicks for no.
“Are you in danger?”
One click for yes.
“Are you under attack?”
How was she to answer that? She wasn’t yet, but if there were hostiles in here, she very well could be soon. Did she want the Medusas to come roaring in here with guns blazing, or sneak in and possibly catch whoever else was in the house?
She gave two clicks for no.
“That was a long pause before you answered. Are you about to come under attack?” Jeff asked quickly.
An quick, emphatic single click.
“Do you request backup?”
Again, a single click.
Jeff gave the Medusas a flurry of orders to move in and enter the house through various doors and windows. Jennifer Blackfoot came up on frequency and ordered Bravo 51 to stand by to hit the house with all it had, jamming all electrical function of any kind within the mansion.
And then Jennifer said, “We’ll have a Predator drone on sight in two minutes. It’s equipped with structure-penetrating radar. Stand by for insertion, Medusas.”
Jeff acknowledged her.
Kat hunkered down in the hallway, thinking fast. She couldn’t stay here. She was completely exposed and had no cover if this turned into a shoot-out. She glanced around for options. With nothing but the glue-filled foyer before her and an empty hallway behind her, she didn’t have much to work with. And then she looked up. Time to use her secret weapon and go vertical. She eased back into a shadow and quickly pulled out her climbing claws, donning them over her shoes and on her hands.
She climbed the hallway wall first, and then eased around the corner into the foyer nearly ten feet up. As soon as she entered the open space, she worked her way higher, crawling up the wall, spiderlike, until she was well above the sight lines of anyone looking from the adjoining rooms into the foyer. She headed for a shadow and awkwardly resumed her game of twenty questions with Jeff.
She laboriously tapped out the Morse code to spell, “Trap. Foyer.”
He replied immediately. “Should we avoid the foyer?”
She clicked an affirmative, and he amended Karen’s point of entry to the dining-room window instead of the front door.
Kat double-tapped a negative to that. If Karen came into the dining room, she’d have to cross the foyer to get to anywhere but the kitchen.
Jeff understood immediately. “Will it work if Python comes in through the living room?”
Isabella was already scheduled to come in the living room window. That would put two Medusas in there simultaneously. Kat’s best guess was that would be where the hostiles would be hiding. They’d surround the painting that the Ghost was after.
Kat clicked a yes to Jeff’s suggestion that Karen enter the living room.
Astutely, Jeff asked, “Should I concentrate more force than I already am on the living room?”
She clicked a relieved affirmative.
Yet another adjustment to the entry scheme was made, and all the Medusas were massed outside the windows.
Then Jeff asked, “Where are you now, Cobra? I don’t want your teammates shooting you.”
She looked down at the foyer. Up here, she’d be clear of any bullets flying into the foyer. She reviewed the house layout quickly in her mind. But if she wanted to join the fight at all, she’d be squarely in her teammates’ fields of fire. She had to move.
She tapped out, “Foyer. Moving to living room.”
Jeff’s response was quick and sharp. “Don’t go in there by yourself! Wait for backup!”
He didn’t understand where she was at the moment, and although his advice was sound, she needed to ignore it. She sent one last message. “Am on ceiling.”
That caused a stir as Jennifer Blackfoot and Aleesha came up simultaneously to ask what the heck she meant by that.
A chuckle was evident in Jeff’s voice as he explained. “Cobra straps claws to her feet and hands and can crawl upside down along a ceiling like an insect. Medusas, keep your field of fire at eye level or below and you won’t hit her. She’ll be overhead when you enter the room.”
Jennifer retorted, “Are you kidding?”
Jeff answered, “Nope. I’ve seen her do it. It’s for real.”
A male voice interrupted. “The Predator is approaching target. Switching on cameras now. Stand by for real-time photo intelligence analysis.”
Kat didn’t know if the analyst would be at H.O.T. Watch Ops or sitting on the nearby helicopter, but she didn’t care either way, as long as the analyst knew his stuff.
A female voice came up. “I have eyes on target. I show one human heat signature…” A long pause. “Near the ceiling of the foyer, moving down the wall toward the living room entrance.”
Jeff murmured, “That is correct. Continue.”
“I paint two human signatures in the dining room, one to the right of the foyer entrance, one under the far window.”
Bingo. As disconcerting as it was to know she was, indeed, in the middle of an ambush, Kat was relieved to know that her instinct had been right and all this fuss wasn’t for naught.
The analyst went on. “I paint four humans in the living room, two on each side of the fireplace on the far wall. I paint one more human in the kitchen-he’s on the move, heading toward the butler’s pantry.”
Kat reviewed the house layout quickly. That guy would be circling through the back side of the house to come into the living room if she had to bet. After all, these guys couldn’t use the foyer any more than she could. Misty was slated to come in from that direction. She could drive that guy toward the living room if need be.
The analyst concluded, “That’s all. Seven tangos and one friendly doing a Spider-Man.”
Jeff came up. “Copy. Medusas, prepare for radio failure. Go on Bravo 51’s call of systems activated.”
All five Medusas acknowledged in turn, with Kat clicking hers.
Then Jeff said, “Bravo 51, light it up.”
“Roger,” came the electronic warfare man’s voice. “Here we go.”
Kat swore she could actually feel the radio waves bombarding her. Static abruptly filled her ears, but she wasn’t in a position to turn down her radio volume at the moment. She started crawling, heading for the dining room. Jeff was going to deal with those two guys, and she didn’t like those odds. As glass crashed from a half-dozen windows at once and shouting broke out around her, Kat planted a piton at light speed, clicked her rope onto it, and let go of the wall. She swung downward, dropping upside down until her head and shoulders cleared the dining-room entrance. More importantly, her pistol cleared the archway. For tonight’s work, she’d chosen a high-caliber handgun with enough stopping power to drop a man. Thankfully, she routinely practiced shooting from odd angles like this, and she took in the scene before her in an instant. Jeff had just crashed through the window and was rolling across the floor while two men in black turned, startled, and were bringing their weapons up to bear on him.
Jeff was situated to nail the guy under the window, so she aimed at the man closest to her, double tapping a pair of shots into the guy before he ever knew she was there. Gunfire erupted from the living room as Jeff efficiently dropped his man. He jumped up and started toward her.
“Stop!” she cried.
He skidded to a halt.
She bit out, “There’s epoxy glue all over the foyer floor. You’ll have to go around.”
He nodded and took off running toward the kitchen. Quickly, she curled into a ball, caught her rope, and righted herself. She took off, crawling crablike around the foyer toward the shoot-out now in progress in the living room. The space was huge-easily fifty feet square, and crammed with furniture, cabinets, tables, and any manner of good cover. At a glance, all the shooters, both friendly and hostile, looked pinned down and at a stalemate. She glanced over at the doorway Jeff would have to come through. He’d be a sitting duck if he tried to get in there.
She had to do something to tip the scales and fast. He’d be here in a few more seconds.
She climbed up to the twelve-foot-high ceiling and commenced crawling stealthily across it. There. Below her. One of the hostiles. She pulled her pistol and shot down at him, burying a round in the top of his skull and a second round in the back of his neck as he fell.
Her shots elicited a round of gunfire, but none of the hostiles spotted her. She held her position, unmoving. She was completely exposed up here. If any of the bad guys looked up, she was dead meat.
Jeff spun into the room, and the hostiles seemed to realize that the stalemate was breaking against them. They commenced running around, shooting wildly. Although they didn’t hit any Medusas, they did effectively foul up everyone’s field of fire. Kat saw Aleesha and Isabella draw knives and move out, easing around the perimeters of the space.
Two of the hostiles drew together in the middle of the room, back-to-back behind a giant armoire in a highly defensible position. They were going to be hell to reach. Anyone who came into their line of sight would be shot.
And then she spotted Jeff moving toward them.
He was going to be a hero, dammit.
Swearing under her breath, she scrambled forward. From her vantage point, she saw Jeff pause around the corner from the hostile pair. He shoved a new clip of bullets home and tensed to move. A quick glance showed her the worst. The tango was sighting down the barrel of an AK-47, right at where Jeff was going to emerge, finger poised on the trigger. The second Jeff came around the end of the wet bar, he was going to be blown away.
Desperate to stop him from diving straight into the commando’s hail of lead, she scrambled the last few feet. And let go of the ceiling.