Dana Marton (6 page)

Frankly, she needed theirs. She was a lot more freaked out than she let on.

But being responsible for someone else now gave her extra strength. Whatever came their way, she was going to tough it out for these girls. Strange how that worked. She wished she had the rifle Parker had left with her, and she knew that she would use it without hesitation when the time came. Nobody was going to hurt these kids while she was breathing.

“Do you know where your nanny is?” She tried to remember the name. “Have you seen Mrs. Baker?”

Elena shook her head. Katja was staring at Parker.

“She wasn’t here when your mommy brought you up?”

The girl shook her head again.

“We have to go,” Parker was saying.

And in a hurry, Kate thought. They couldn’t be sure that nobody had heard Elena’s scream.

“Let’s go,” she repeated to the girls, and stood, holding their hands, holding them close to her body.

“To daddy?” Katja asked, her incredible blue eyes still fringed with tears.

“Yes,” she lied, her throat growing tight. They couldn’t tell the girls the truth now. They needed them as calm as possible and moving fast. “We have to hurry so we can find him.”

“What’s wrong with mommy?”

Although Kate held the girls away from the body on the floor, they must have seen it already from their hiding place.

“Did she die?” Elena asked.

And Katja’s eyes were already filling up with tears all over again.

“She’s just a little tired. We have to leave so that she can rest for a while,” she lied again. They had to move in absolute silence. She had to make sure the children wouldn’t cry and draw the rebels’ attention. The girls would have to wait for the terrible truth until they were safely away from this place.

Elena was watching her doubtfully, but Katja nodded, and held her hand a little tighter.

The small gesture from the little girl who didn’t know yet that she’d been orphaned and was all alone in the world again squeezed Kate’s throat, sending moisture to her eyes. She glanced at Parker, caught a soft look on his face as he watched her. The same regret that clutched her chest swam in his eyes. He nodded as he went to the door and looked out. “Okay, hallway’s clear.”

Up until now, she had made sure that she’d been between them and the body on the floor, as had Parker. Now she turned them as they walked, talking about how quiet and fast they had to be to keep their attention on herself as they hurried out of the room.

Parker was standing below the vent cover. “You go back in. I’ll take them to the basement.”

The girls tightened their hold on her.

“I’ll go with them. You can’t just leave them alone while you come back up for the rest of the hostages.”

“They’ve been alone for the past couple of hours. The basement is much safer than being up here. In another half an hour the rest of the embassy staff will be down there with them.”

The girls pressed against her legs, one on each side.

He looked at them, and must have realized that he would need a crowbar to pry the kids away from her, because he shook his head, threw her a dirty look, then unfolded his fingers that had been waiting for her to step up to the vent hole, and jumped for it himself. He caught the edge on the first try, pulled out the rifle and then the vent cover and put it back into place.

“Are we going to stay out in the open now?” As much as she hated the ducts, she wasn’t too crazy about the idea of wandering around in plain sight. “Where are we going?”

“Can’t crawl in the walls with kids. They make one noise, it’s game over.”

And with a sinking heart, she knew he was right. “How far are we from the gym?”

“It’s two corridors over and one floor up.”

“We’ll take the kids.”

“They would have been safer sitting in the basement.”

“Then I’ll go and sit there with them.”

“You are taking the shortest way out of here. I’m not letting you go in the opposite direction.” And that was that, the look on his face said.

Fine. “Where is the staircase?” They’d taken so many turns in the ducts, she had no idea where they were anymore.

“That would be guarded by the rebels. And the elevators were taken out at the beginning, shut off along with the security system.”

She tried to stay calm for the kids’ sake. They were stuck out in the open, still with no clear plan on how to get out, two children in tow, no knowledge of where the main rebel force was hanging out and no way to get to the other hostages. Oh, yeah, and time was running out, too.

She didn’t think things could get any worse.

But then a door opened, without any warning, not twenty feet down the hallway from them, and a scruffy rebel soldier stepped out.

S
URPRISE FLASHED
across the young man’s face, but he was aiming his AK-47 already. Not fast enough. A barely audible pop, not louder than a person smacking his lips together, came from Parker’s gun first. He loved the new silencer that the SDDU had been testing over the last couple of months.

One of the advantages of being a part of the Special Designation Defense Unit was that they got to try out all the latest gadgets first. He loved that part. And he loved knowing that he made a difference in his job. But he hated that a particularly gruesome mission in Southeast Asia had cost him Kate two years ago.

She gasped as the rebel soldier folded to the ground, but Parker was there already, catching the man’s rifle before it could have crashed to the marble floor. Then he pushed through the door with his gun raised.

Nobody in there, he registered with relief.

He stepped back out, glancing at Kate, who had the kids behind her, protecting them with her body, blocking the sight of the fallen man. The girls were crying again, but at least quietly. She was talking to them in a soothing voice.

He grabbed the body by the boots and dragged it inside the room, scanned the place for all possible hiding spots and decided on a metal supply cabinet. He had to remove a shelf to get the guy in, but he managed, locked the door and pocketed the key. He didn’t want the rebels to find the body and realize that there was someone inside the embassy who wasn’t under their control. He didn’t need them to organize a hunting posse. The man whose uniform he had taken earlier was safely stuffed into the vent duct near the gym.

Parker brought out the guy’s gas mask and handed it to the older girl, hoping he could get his hands on another for the little one. Kate had worked her magic on them, it seemed, because they were no longer crying, just watching him with large blue eyes fringed with tear-soaked lashes.

They were cute and tough. Followed directions well. He supposed their life in a Russian orphanage hadn’t been a bed of roses before their adoption.

“Everyone okay?” he whispered.

They were still too scared of him to talk to him. But Katja whispered something to Kate.

“She has to go to the bathroom,” she said.

He tried to think when the last time was he’d seen one. Damn. Not anywhere nearby. He took in the kid’s scrunched-up face. “Okay.”

They found a bathroom without any problems. But then they spent an hour jammed into the same stall, balancing on top of each other as rebels came in and out. The girls kept as quiet as mice. He was simmering with impatience by the time they got out. Time, they’d only lost time, he reminded himself. They could have lost much more.

He moved ahead and glanced around the corner. All clear. He signaled them to follow. The elevator he’d been heading for stood a little over twenty feet away and was unguarded as he’d hoped. He’d figured nobody would care much about it since it was out of commission. Perfect for his purposes.

He walked up to the stainless-steel doors and pried them open with the knife he had gotten away from the first rebel he’d taken out. He pushed the panels aside enough for his head to fit in and looked around. The elevator car was stuck on the ground floor below them.

“Come on,” he said as he stepped back and forced the door open another few inches, enough so he could fit in sideways. “We’ll be going up through here.”

Kate looked in and up at the metal ladder, holding the kids even closer. “Can they do this?”

He thought back to his own childhood. “Are you kidding? Kids climb like monkeys. Right?” He grinned at the girls and Katja smiled back shyly. She had a dusting of freckles across her nose and a very direct gaze that looked a lot like Kate’s.

He lifted Elena first and placed her on the nearest rung of the ladder, wouldn’t let go until she had a secure hold on the metal bar and started moving up. Kate went next so she could help the girl if needed. Then he helped Katja up and stepped in behind her, closed the elevator doors when they were all in, enclosing them in darkness. It lasted only a split second. Kate’s flashlight came in handy.

He kept his attention on the three people in front of him as he climbed, careful not to rush them, although the pace was excruciatingly slow. But he didn’t say anything, letting them pay attention to each handhold, each step. The drop to the top of the elevator was about twenty feet—probably not fatal, but enough to break a bone or two, injuries they could not afford. He watched them, all three, ready to catch whoever needed his help.

An old memory floated up from the dark recesses of his mind. His father teaching him how to climb a tree in the park. He couldn’t have been more than four at the time. It’d been well after midnight. Then the picture switched to the last time he’d seen his father. He hadn’t thought about his old man in a while, hadn’t had that nightmare in a decade or more. He pushed those thoughts away.

When they reached the door that led to the second floor, he motioned for them to go a little higher until he was level with it. He pressed his ear against the metal panels. No sounds came from outside. He eased them open an inch, looked out, but couldn’t see anyone. He opened the doors wider, stuck his head out first then his body. Luck was still with them. He helped the others out.

“Which way?” Kate asked once the doors were closed behind them.

The girls didn’t look too shaken by the climb. They were more excited than anything else at this point, actually, and he was grateful for the short attention span of kids that age.

“We’re going to sneak around a little,” he told them.

“Like Super Spy Girls on the Cartoon Channel?” Elena’s face was glowing.

He had no idea what she was talking about. “Exactly,” he said.

He shut his eyes for a second and pictured the hallways they had taken on the floor below. Where did that put them in relation to the gym? “This way,” he said and they followed without another word.

This hallway was not decorated with paintings and even the light fixtures were utilitarian, a stark contrast to the antique chandeliers of the main areas of the embassy. He glanced at the row of doors on each side. Maybe these were the back offices where visitors weren’t allowed. He tried a door. Locked. Not that he wanted to go in there, but he wanted to make sure nobody would be coming out and getting behind him.

Then, at the next door, he heard a small noise and he froze with his hand on the doorknob. He motioned for Kate to stay back and stay down with the children. Since the embassy was furnished mostly with antiques and had kept the old style, he wished they had kept the antique hardware, too, with keyholes instead of security locks. That way he could have taken a look. Going into a situation he knew nothing about was dangerous, but he had no other choice. If there were rebels in there, he had to neutralize them.

Kate was holding the rifle in front of her. The girls were crouched behind her, peeking over the side, watching him, wide-eyed. He’d better not make a false move. Whatever waited for him behind the door he would deal with it. Whoever was in there and however many of them there were, he would not allow them to reach Kate and the kids.

He tried the knob silently and wasn’t too surprised when it gave. He opened the door a millimeter. He was ready to shoot at anything that moved, but nothing did. A dozen bodies covered the floor. They weren’t wearing the camouflage militia outfits of the rebels, but the official Russian dress uniforms. The embassy security force, all dead and piled on top of each.

He stepped in carefully but stuck a hand back out the door to signal to Kate to stay where she was with the girls. They didn’t need to see this. He spotted a man in civilian dress, too, with a different style of military haircut and typical Midwest good looks, ruined only by the hole in his head. He figured him for Kate’s bodyguard. The muscles tightened in his face. He stepped farther inside and grabbed as many guns and gas masks as he could for the hostages, then drew back in surprise when one of the men he touched groaned. Parker had his gun aimed at the guy’s head the next second.

“Help,” the man begged in Russian, his unfocused eyes fluttering open.

He had blood on his face, but Parker couldn’t see an open wound. The guy had plenty of blood soaking his pant leg, too.

“Can you stand?” Parker asked and held his left hand out, keeping the gun handy in the right.

The man rubbed the back of his head. “Give me a second. I got knocked out.” But he was scrambling to his feet anyway. He looked at the carnage around him, his eyes and the set of his mouth hardening.

“What happened?” Parker asked.

“I don’t know. I was at the back gate. We got ambushed.” Anger seethed in his words. “They must have thought I was dead and brought me here.” He pressed a hand to his leg and limped over a body, stared at the carnage. “They killed everyone.”

The man eyed Parker’s uniform warily. “You’re not one of them. Alpha troops?” he asked with suspicion. “Did they take the building back?” He seemed angry at the thought. Probably because he had missed the action. Protecting the embassy was his duty, and here he’d lain the whole time, out cold.