Kill Plan (Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers -) (27 page)

“Goddammit, I don’t have time to argue with you. You have to help me.”

“Explain to me properly why I should, and I’ll consider it.”

“I’ve already told you—we don’t have time.”

“I’m not going to let some crazy, half-assed theory get in the way of my investigation. Take it up with Deputy Chief Louden if you’re not happy about it.”

Ingrid let go of his arms and strode away. She called Louden. Maybe the deputy chief would agree to some resources to help her search. The call switched straight to voicemail. Ingrid wasn’t going to get any help there.

Time was against her. Left to search on her own, it would be practically impossible to find Sol. He could be anywhere in the building.

She ran toward the elevator, not really knowing where she would go when she got there. She passed another armed Marine guarding the door to the stairwell.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

He stood a little taller and raised his chin. Ingrid showed him her embassy ID and FBI badge. “Please, tell me why you’re here.”

“To ensure none of the kitchen or cafeteria staff leaves the basement. There’s a man stationed at every exit.”

“Really?”

“Orders from above.” He looked toward the ceiling.

Typical. Marshall Claybourne overkill. Trying to prove how much power he could yield. What a waste of resources.

“I’m guessing it’s OK for me to leave the basement?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He opened the door for her.

Ingrid got through the door, heard it clang shut behind her, and wondered what the hell she was going to do next.

Sol had to be inside the building. No way would he go anywhere without his cell. If Ellis really was within the embassy, was it possible he’d forcibly taken Sol some place? Wouldn’t somebody have noticed? Sol would have put up too much of a fight. It was much more likely that wherever Sol had disappeared to, he’d gone of his own accord. But then what had happened? And it still didn’t explain what his cell was doing on his desk.

Ingrid was finding it hard to believe that Cory Ellis was working within the embassy. But then he had gotten on the cleaning staff at Fisher Krupps without any problems. Maybe he’d done the same thing at the embassy. She’d seen all the cafeteria and kitchen staff, and none seemed to fit his description. Perhaps he was part of maintenance and engineering, or the janitorial team.

She had to remind herself that it was still possible Ellis wasn’t on staff at all and was planning to kill Sol outside of the embassy. Some place Sol was more vulnerable and exposed. But the fact that she couldn’t track down the assistant deputy chief made her fear that something had already happened to him.

An audacious attack within the walls of one of America’s most prestigious embassies fitted Cory Ellis’ profile too—how much of a coup would it be to kill a Federal agent right inside one of the most secure buildings in London?

Ingrid hesitated. Should she head up or down? She tried hard to fit together everything she knew about how Ellis operated when he was working through one of his kill plans. The method of execution would have something to do with a weakness he had discovered about Sol.

Ingrid wasn’t sure she knew Sol well enough herself to have discovered any weaknesses. Maybe he didn’t have any.

The creak of a door opening sounded from the floor below. Someone coming in from the parking lot, presumably. She waited for whoever it was to make their way up the stairs and pass her. But no one came. Maybe they’d gone down instead of up.

She waited a few more moments then shut her eyes tight and pictured Sol in as much detail as she could. What immediately sprang to mind?

What did she see, hear, feel?

She snapped her eyes back open. The strongest sense of Sol she had was his aroma. He always stank of cigarettes. Plus he had the worse smoker’s cough she’d ever heard. Surely his Achilles’ Heel had to be more significant than a nicotine habit. But then if it was something else she had absolutely no idea what it could possibly be.

She tried to picture where he was most likely to go for a smoke. Apart from the courtyard out back and Grosvenor Square itself, she was at a loss. He had mentioned some place inside the building he’d found for himself. A little niche, he’d said. But where?

Another noise sounded from below. This time she heard someone moan. The long, low moan of pain.

Ingrid’s immediate thought was of Sol. She flew down the stairs to the lower floor. The small landing area leading out into the basement parking lot was empty.

She heard the moan again.

She raced down another two flights.

Then she saw him.

Not Sol.

Isaac. He lay in the doorway leading to the third basement level, clutching his stomach with both hands. The heavy fire door had trapped him where he lay. His pants and his shoes were covered in thick dark blood. A pool of blood was spreading across the floor. His eyes flickered open and he looked toward her. He moaned again.

Ingrid bent down low and put her head close to his. “It’s OK, buddy. You’re going to be OK. We’ll get you some help.” She started to move away.

Isaac moaned again. Louder and more insistent this time. “Sol,” he managed to whisper.

Ingrid had retrieved her cell from a pocket and was dialing for assistance. Her fingers fumbled with the phone. “It’s OK—help’ll be on its way real soon.”

“You… gotta… help Sol.”

“What about Sol?”

“He’s… killing him.” Isaac looked down at his hands, both of them slick with red. He swallowed. “Help… him.”

“Where? Where is he?”

Isaac’s eyes closed. His head lolled heavily to one side.

Oh no, dear God
.

Ingrid looked at her phone. She wasn’t sure who she could call to get the response she needed. Everything would take just too long to explain.

Then she remembered the armed Marine two floors up.

There was nothing she could do for Isaac now. But she might still be able to save Sol.

44

She sprinted up the four flights of stairs and threw open the door. “I need you to come with me. Now.”

“Ma’am?”

Ingrid flashed her badge at him, just in case he’d forgotten her from ten minutes ago. “Come with me.”

“I have orders to secure the stairway on this level. The kitchen and cafeteria staff are in lockdown.”

“I realize that. But I’m ordering you to come with me.”

“Supervisory Special Agent Claybourne outranks you. I’m staying exactly where I am.”

Screw this
.

“Give me your gun.”

The Marine’s hand automatically flew toward the holster in his belt. “Step away, ma’am.”

Ingrid puffed out a frustrated sigh. She didn’t have time to argue with him. Still looking him square in the eye, she brought up her knee hard and fast and slammed it right into his crotch. As he doubled over, she kicked him hard under the chin. His head snapped backward at the same time his knees buckled. He fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, folding in on himself.

Ingrid prodded him with the toe of her boot. He was out cold. She popped open his holster and yanked out a Glock 27. Not the model she was used to. But it would do just fine.

She shoved open the door to the stairway and clattered back down toward the level three basement, her feet only lightly touching the edges of the steps.

She quickly reached Isaac. Why the hell did Ellis have to hurt him? He must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. More collateral damage Ellis didn’t give a crap about.

Ingrid blinked hard and pushed open the door, unable to avoid jarring Isaac’s body. In the dim basement light, she could just make out a trail of blood smeared along the floor. It led away from the door, deep into the corridor beyond. The corridor that carried all the services to the rest of the building. Thick insulated pipes ran along the low ceiling as far as she could see.

Ingrid struggled a little for breath, it was so hot and airless down there. She stepped over Isaac Coleman’s dead body and gently let the door rest once again against his ribs.

She inspected the Glock 27, and quickly unclipped the safety. She hated relying on a weapon she hadn’t personally tested, but she didn’t have a lot of choice. She held the gun outstretched in both hands, two index fingers resting lightly on the trigger. A gentle squeeze would be sufficient to let off the first round. She hoped to hell she wouldn’t have to use it.

She continued to tread slowly and carefully, glancing down at the trail of blood every now and then, but mostly keeping eyes front, staring into the gloom, watching for movement.

Now she knew where she was headed, her destination was obvious. The only place inside the building not fitted with smoke detectors was the bunker on basement level three. It had its own water, power and oxygen supply. And it was never used. Sol’s little smoking ‘niche’ was a nuclear fallout shelter.

The bunker had to be at least another hundred yards ahead of her. Its entrance was set into the wall of another corridor that ran perpendicular to this one. Cory Ellis could be anywhere between there and here. Assuming he was here at all. It was quite possible he’d done what he’d come to do, watched Sol die a slow and painful death, and escaped completely without detection.

Ingrid blinked the moisture from her eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was caused by sweat or tears. She glanced up toward the ceiling, at the thick pipes covered in insulating foam. It really was hot down there.

After a few more yards she stopped for a moment and listened. All she could hear was the deep, insistent thrum of the generators.

She picked up a little pace, conscious Sol could very well be struggling for his last breaths just a hundred or so feet away. She forced a little more air into her lungs and continued down the corridor, keeping her eyes fixed on the end, now just thirty or so yards away, occasionally glancing left and right toward maintenance access doors as she passed each one. Sweat was dribbling between her breasts and making her shirt stick to her back.

Finally she reached the last few yards of the corridor. She pressed herself against the wall and edged sideways, barely daring to breathe, not wanting to make too much noise. She got to the end of the corridor, where it met the one running perpendicular to it.

From her position, she could just make out the innocuous painted wooden door set in the wall of the corridor beyond. The door that led to the fortified bunker. She struggled to remember the layout on the other side.

As far as she could recall, this door actually opened onto a square, ten feet by ten interior room. The bunker itself was situated on the other side of a twelve-inch thick titanium reinforced hatch that looked like something from a ship or a submarine—a circular handle set into its center, a punch code security pad on the wall to the right.

Ingrid steadied her breath for a moment.

She had no idea whether Ellis would be armed. He could quite easily have overpowered a Marine the same way she had.

Only one way to find out.

Gun in one hand, she inched forward and reached the wooden door. She bent her head in close. She listened. The blood pumping in her ears pretty much drowned out anything else. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. Her lips were stuck to her teeth.

She pushed down on the handle. When the latch released, she pushed open the door wide and shuffled sideways, pressing her back flat against the corridor wall. No sound came from within. She waited another couple of seconds then stepped through the doorway. Gun outstretched, she swung left, then right.

The anteroom was empty.

The shiny reinforced hatch leading into the bunker itself was ajar. Ingrid stepped toward it. She peered through the gap.

She couldn’t see much, but about thirty feet away, half obscured by shelves of dried goods and eight-gallon water containers lining both sides of a narrow corridor, she could see into another room, beyond another submarine-style shiny metal door that was open wide. She’d never seen inside the interior room before. She could just make out a figure stooping low, his legs straddling a large object on the floor.

Ingrid slowly opened the hatch in the anteroom wider and stepped into the long, thin corridor that stored the supplies. As carefully as she could, she started walking down the shelf-lined passage, toward the inner room, her eyes fixed on the stooping figure she could see through the open hatch. It was definitely a man. He straightened suddenly.

Ingrid froze.

How had he heard her? She’d been so quiet.

The man started to turn.

“Show me your hands. Now!” she yelled, running along the remainder of the corridor toward the open hatch and the interior room. “Hands over your head!”

He didn’t move.

“I won’t ask you again.”

He turned a little more, one hand gripping his thigh, the other behind his back. As he moved, Ingrid caught a glimpse of Sol’s lifeless body lying at his feet.

“Get away from him.”

“What are you going to do, Agent Skyberg?” Slowly, he turned to face her.

He didn’t look like the photograph or the artist’s impression. His hair was cut in a short crop, close to his scalp. His chin and cheeks were covered in two days’ blonde stubble.

“Hands over your head!” she said again.

He smiled at her.

She suddenly felt vulnerable, standing in the middle of the room, and backed up closer to the hatch, keen not to get locked inside.

“You really think I’m going to do what you say? Haven’t you done your research? You should stop wasting your breath.” He let out a little laugh. “Your friend here stopped wasting his a short time ago.”

“Step away from him.”

“You shoot me, I win. I’ve done everything I came here to do. You don’t shoot me, you die.” He pulled his right arm from behind his back, his right hand wrapped around the handle of a ten-inch screwdriver.

She couldn’t let him have what he wanted. Suicide by cop? No way.

He jabbed the screwdriver toward her. But he was still more than ten feet away. He stepped closer.

“Drop your weapon.”

“Haven’t we just been through that? Weren’t you listening to me? I guess I should make allowances—the carbon monoxide still preventing the oxygen getting to your brain, huh?” He smiled again. “I was pretty pissed when your friend turned up to save you, but then if she hadn’t, I guess we wouldn’t be enjoying this moment together now, would we?”