Falcon: The Quiet Professionals Book 3 (31 page)

“Hawk, Falcon, clear out,” Dean made the call for him.

“Sir, we have to get Tang,” Hawk said.

“It would do you well,” spoke a voice thick with accent and intensity, “to leave immediately. You have four minutes before the bomb detonates.”

“No way. I’m going to bring her Chinese butt in.” Hawk sprinted into the hall.

“Hawk! Wait!”

CHAPTER 26

Kabul, Afghanistan
5 April—0438 Hours

S
teel clanged as Cassie rushed down the steps of the stairwell, determined to catch Kiew. She had to be here—it was the only logical course of action. To go down, to the garage, away from the team. And Kiew had said she wanted to leave, which meant she’d find the nearest exit from the building.

Panting as she leapt down to the landing, scaling four steps, Cassie grabbed the rail. Swung herself around.

Knocking steel echoed from below.

“Kiew!” She leaned down to see the maze of stairs. “Kiew, wait!” Hurtling down almost guaranteed she’d get hurt, but Cassie didn’t care. Her friend’s life was in danger.

Again, she hooked the rail and swung herself around.

Right into a booted foot. Kiew swung a round kick straight into Cassie’s face. Connected. Cassie flung backward, shock and pain riddling her body. Her head cracked against the cement wall. Pain jarred her, vibrating her bones and rattling her teeth. A fresh explosion of fire tore through her shoulder and warmth slid down her back. Shock choked her—Kiew attacked her as if she were a threat. Numb at the realization, she almost didn’t see the next kick.

Cassie threw her right arm up and out, shoving Kiew’s foot into the incline of steps. Though adrenaline doused her body and ignited the fight or flight mechanism, Cassie couldn’t think past the fact that her friend was attacking her.

“Kiew, please.” She hopped to her feet.

And came face-to-face with a silenced weapon. Cassie skidded, her boots slipping on the steel floor that offered no traction. Her legs went out, but her grip on the rail prevented her from a bone-jarring fall. She scrambled upright, chin up.

“What will it take to get you to leave me alone?” Kiew’s round face betrayed nothing but the cold, unfeeling words she’d spoken.

Hands up, Cassie eased back a step. “Listen, I know you feel you have—”

“You know
nothing
about me!” Eyes slit, her friend kept the weapon aimed at Cassie’s face. “You have not seen me in ten years! Christmas and birthday cards do not mean you have any idea who I am or what I want.”

The emotion behind those words betrayed the cold, heartless ones spoken earlier. “I do know you, Kiew. I know the girl with a soft heart who couldn’t get enough of
Neon Genesis Evangelion
. Who was outraged when Shinji’s father disowned him. You were as strong and outgoing as Mari Makinami, and I was—”

“This is not a manga, you idiot!” Face red, Kiew inched forward.

Affronted, Cassie shuffled back, her boots thudding against the step for the stairs she’d just descended. She struggled to keep her balance.

“This is real life and you are where you do not belong. Now.” She waved the weapon toward the door.

“Kiew—”

“Out! Or I will shoot you. And trust me, you are not the first American I have killed and you will not be the last either.”

Cassie’s hand went to her aching shoulder, wondering if Kiew had shot her as Sal had asked. “But—”

“Tang, stop right there,” came a deep, booming voice. Hawk.

Kiew jumped back, out of view from the center well of the stairwell.

“Please, Kiew,” Cassie said, her aching body warning her to be wary. “I can help you.”

Dark brown eyes lit with intensity. “Yes.” Her nostrils flared. Lightning fast, before Cassie could react, Kiew grabbed her by the collar. Hauled her up against her. “You can help me by being my insurance.”

Cassie went cold. Was this really Kiew Tang? The woman who had shared her room, laughter and love of anime and manga with her a decade ago? A girl who had an amazing career in front of her?

Hooking an arm around Cassie’s neck, Kiew dragged her backward. A fumbling of a handle then they were passing from the stairwell into the eerie silence of a floor of professional offices. By the smell of paint and new carpet, she wasn’t even sure the spaces were occupied.

Kiew shoved Cassie into a wall. Riddled with pain, throbbing in her jaw and fire in her neck and shoulder, Cassie stumbled. Used the wall to gain support and catch her breath. She wanted to scream that she didn’t understand how her friend could do this, how this could be the real woman named Kiew Tang, but she’d seen too many movies where the clichéd line only brought on criticism and ridicule.

Click. Tink
.

Beep
.

Cassie glanced to her frie—
Kiew
—and froze. She pressed buttons on a small, round device she’d set on a steel girder. Charges! “What are you
doing
?”

Kiew pivoted, only then the messenger bag slung over her body draped to reveal a half-dozen more. She lifted her weapon again and motioned with it. “Go. Toward the atrium.”

“No.” Cassie drew straight, her spine suddenly intact and not weakened by the delusion of a friendship long-since dead. “No, I’m not—”

Kiew lifted the weapon. Before Cassie even heard the
thwat
, gypsum spat at her. “Next one will not miss.”

How… how had she read it so wrong? Read Kiew wrong? “You’re going to kill us. All of us.”

“It is not my fault your team chose to ignore my warning.”

“It was you with Hawk. You nearly killed him.”

“And when I didn’t,” she said as she moved hurriedly down the corridor, “he repaid the favor by knocking me out, killing my associate, and leaving me as raw meat to Jin.”

When they stepped out into the atrium that stood open to eight floors, Kiew clung to the inner wall, apparently nervous Raptor would spot her.

Safety net of belief ripped away, Cassie walked outward, not a lot, but enough for Sal to see her.

Kiew grabbed her arm and yanked Cassie to the wall. “Do not think I am stupid.”

“I don’t know what to think of you.” Her words hit their mark. The mask of anger and heartlessness slipped. Just a little. But enough for Cassie to see.

The gun pushed against her temple. “The last person who tried to betray me dropped several IQ points.”

Cassie swallowed—hard. Maybe she was reading into the situation instead of
reading
it. Reading Kiew. Shouldn’t she have seen this coldblooded killer the day they had lunch, rather than the manga-loving friend who went to cons and cosplayed with her their senior year?

“I never thought you’d try to kill me.”

“I never thought you’d be so stupid to push my hand.” Kiew stepped back, and for several long, silent seconds she stared at something behind Cassie.

Unsettled, Cassie glanced back. What? What was Kiew looking at? She only saw a teak door with a gold plate with the word P
RIVATE
etched into it.

“Sit.” She waved the gun to a teak bench with lines as hard and unfeeling as the woman motioning to them.

“You’re setting charges and you want me to sit?”

Kiew reared and slammed the gun into Cassie’s face.

The unexpected move spun Cassie around. Her feet tangled. She pitched forward and down. She shoved out her hands to break her fall. Her forehead rammed into the protective glass barrier. Her eyes glued to the marble floor three floors down. Though her brain told her the glass barrier had broken her fall, her ears rang with dizziness that overtook her.

“Andra!”

The hollow shout of her name pulled her away from the glass. Wobbling, she came to her feet and turned to find Sal and Hawk jogging out from the same stairwell door Kiew had dragged her through.

But she pushed herself to the right. After Kiew. Where had she gone? They had to get her. Stop her. The gloves were off. Cassie’s strength and balance grew with each step.

She made it to the next juncture and heard feet clapping on marble below. Cassie ran to the barrier. A blur of black raced toward the lower exit to the parking garage. “Kiew!”

The door flapped open. And for a second, Kiew paused. Her expression went wide with terror. Then she was gone.

“Cassie!”

She pivoted back to Sal. “I’m going—” Her gaze snapped to blinking lights on the right side of the corridor entrance, just above a silver control panel. Her heartbeat detonated within her chest. Charges.

The instant powered down into an agonizing slow-motion nightmare. She sucked in a breath, the sound a hollow
whoosh
in her ears. Her pulse thundering—
boom
. Her breath as if she stood in a protected environmental suit, shielded from the terror, but also forced to witness it.

In a blink, she looked at Sal.

Whoosh. Boom-boom!

Another blink revealed two lights
behind
him as well.

Boom-boom!
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Powerless.

Hawk leaned over the barrier, shouting something she couldn’t understand over the
whoosh-whoosh-boom
of her vacuous world. Just over his left shoulder… another charge. This one on the cement pylon supporting the overhang of the balcony section of the floor.

Charges. They were surrounded by charges. Kiew had rigged this whole level to blow.

“No!”
She threw herself forward, her legs leaden like a sick dream. “Sal! Back!”

CHAPTER 27

Kabul, Afghanistan
5 April—0445 Hours

M
en who live by the sword, die by the sword
.

The sick thought zapped through Sal’s brain in the microseconds that had hit the freeze button on this moment. When Cassie looked toward the wall, her fair skin went white. Deathly white. And forced Sal to look in that direction.

He saw the charge. The same kind disguised as a smoke detector in the corridor. And by the terror gouged into Cassie’s face, they were going to detonate.

Throwing himself toward Cassie, Sal twisted to the right. To where Hawk stood. “Hawk, ruuunnn!”

Hawk jolted. In frozen animation, he hunched his shoulders. Threw himself forward, toward Sal. Toward safety.

BooOOOOOooooom!

An invisible fist punched Sal backward. Though he blinked. Though the fireball torpedoed toward him. Sal somehow saw Hawk lift into the air and get thrown.

Sal smacked hard into something. Dropped. A gust of searing air snapped over him. Followed by an orange-and-red fireball. The concussion of the explosion clapped its mighty hands over his ears. The world cracked and rained black.

A warbling noise tugged Sal from a heavy darkness.

Pressure against his shoulder. Pain on his cheek.

He grunted.

Again the warbling noise.

He blinked. Grit fell into his eyes rubbing. Gritty. Burning.

But he saw her face—Cassie her blond hair coated with ash—peering down at him. “Sal?” Black smudged her face, mingling with the blood from where Tang had cracked open her cheek. “Sal!”

The warbling was her voice. She pushed against his shoulders. Only then did the world coalesce into a semblance of clarity. Fire licked the walls and crackled as it snaked through the building.

He’d been thrown into Cassie, who lay beneath him. He pried himself off the floor, feeling as if he’d been clobbered by Thor’s hammer. Immediately he noticed the gaping hole in the floor. The spot where—

“Hawk!” Sal popped to his feet, coughing.
“Hawk!”

“Falcon!”

Sal hurried forward, eyeing the damaged floor for vulnerabilities. “Where—?”

“Here!”

The explosion had bitten a crevice off the balcony, devouring a section of the glass barrier and several feet of carpeted floor. Clinging to a stretch of mangled steel that had held the glass, Hawk dangled precariously over the several-story drop. Below, glass, cement, and debris littered the ground floor. If a drop didn’t kill him, it’d break his back or legs.

“O God—” Falcon choked on the rest of his desperate plea and threw himself forward. The floor trembled beneath him, threatening to pitch him into the depths.