He now followed the sound of voices into the negotiators’room. Lieutenant Paoletti was there, looking like he’d been up all night. God knows he probably had been, dealing with sending O’Leary’s body back home and making arrangements for the wounded to be shipped to a real hospital in a country where they believed in the sterilization of surgical instruments.
“Bob, I need you to talk to me,” Max was saying. “Pick up the radio microphone and talk to me. No one’s dead yet, don’t cross that line. Come on back.”
Jesus, one of the minicameras was picking up the action in the cockpit of the plane. One of the tangos was standing with his weapon aimed right between the girl’s eyes.
“Bob, talk to me, man,” Max said as calmly as if he couldn’t see what was going on. “Come back.”
“But wait,” the tango said. “I better not waste the bullet, right? After all, we don’t have much ammunition.”
On the screen, he shouldered his weapon and turned, saying something to the other tango in the local dialect—something no one but languages expert John Nilsson could’ve understood.
And what do you know? Nils was there. Leaning over Bhagat’s shoulder, murmuring a translation.
Sam didn’t need to hear it to know that the first tango had ordered the second to hurt the girl.
Tango Two took off his weapon, obviously preferring to use his fists on anyone female and under thirty.
This was going to be bad.
Max was talking nonstop, trying to get the first bastard to pick up the radio microphone, and the girl was trying her damnedest not to cry, also talking, but in a voice that shook—“I thought, you know, if we’d met somewhere else that we’d be friends”—and backing away, but she had nowhere to go.
She had nowhere to go, and when Tango Two hit her, when she cried out, her fear and pain rang in the room.
Sam was going to be sick.
Because, oh shit, this guy was going to kill her while they could do nothing but stand here and watch. He hit her again, and Jesus, she must’ve landed on the microphone because the sound went out. The video was still running, and they could hear faint, ghostly cries from the microphones out in the main cabin—picking up the sounds of her pain from a distance. It was surreal.
The position of the camera on the floor made for a hideous angle as she landed right beside it, her lip bloody, one eye swollen.
She lay there stunned as Max continued to talk, broadcasting over the radio. Somehow he kept his voice steady. Sam didn’t know how he did it, how he managed.
Especially when, on the screen, the girl was flipped onto her back. Especially when, on the screen, she began to struggle. The way she was fighting, the intensity, the desperation, meant only one thing. The motherfucker was going to rape her before he killed her. And because Washington had told them to stall, they weren’t ready to go in. And because they weren’t ready, they were going to have to stand here and watch.
Sam threw up. Right there in the fucking wastebasket.
She thrashed so hard, the picture went out. It was impossible to say if she’d just covered it with her hair, or if she’d actually taken out the camera. Either way, they couldn’t see.
They could still hear her, though. Faint crying and pleading. And then, Jesus, just crying.
Max threw his radio against the wall. “Where’s Helga Shuler?” he shouted. “Someone fucking find me Helga Shuler!”
The news wasn’t good. “Cell phones aren’t working. We should have temporary access to landlines in several minutes, sir!”
Max pointed at Lieutenant Paoletti. “I want the SEALs ready to go in. I want them here in five minutes!” He turned around to face his silent staff. “Someone give me a goddamn radio!”
It was there, in his hand, almost instantly.
And as Sam watched, he took a deep breath and blew it out hard, and when he spoke his voice was smooth. Calm. As if he couldn’t hear the sounds of that girl being attacked.
“Bob, let me talk to Karen. Will you please let me talk to Karen?”
Something was ringing.
It took Helga several long moments to realize that it was the telephone.
She groped for it in the darkness next to her bed. Found it.
“Hello?”
“Helga. I need you here.” Whoever it was, he was very upset. “I’m ready to give the order to go in,” he said, “fuck Washington, and I’m not sure I’m making an impartial decision. I need your help.”
She felt for the light. Switched it on.
And found herself surrounded by a yellow sea of Post-it notes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, putting on her glasses and trying to read as many of them as she could. You are in Kazbekistan. An airplane has been hijacked. Stanley Wolchonok is Marte Gunvald’s son. “Who is this? Stanley?”
“What? No. It’s me. It’s Max. Wake up, for Christ’s sake! I need all synapses firing.”
Max. There was no Max anywhere, on any of the sticky notes.
He was talking to her as if she surely knew what he was saying, as if she could give him the answers he needed. “They’ve beaten the crap out of Gina,” he told her from between clenched teeth. “They raped her, too. We could hear—” His voice broke. “Jesus, we could hear them. They knew we could hear them, the bastards. They know we’ve got the plane miked.”
Dear God, no wonder he was upset. “Breathe,” she told him. “Just breathe, dear, and give me a minute here.”
She didn’t know who this Gina was—not that it mattered, precisely. And she was still trying to identify Max. Did he work for her? Or did she work for him?
A notepad lay on the bedside table, and she flipped through it.
“Helga, I don’t have a minute.” Max’s voice was strained. “These phone lines are unreliable. I’m lucky I got through to you at all. I want to give the order to go, but I can’t step back from this. I don’t know if I just want to save this girl, the hell with the other hundred and twenty passengers, the hell with the politics, the hell with the fact that after this, the hijackers are going to be ready and waiting for us to respond with force, and that puts the lives of my SEAL team at risk.”
FBI negotiator Max Bhagat, Helga read, and the last name stirred her frozen memory.
“I’m calling on you as a friend,” he said to her now. “This is not official, you know that.”
She’d first met Max nearly fifteen years ago. He’d been impossibly young, incredibly cocky. One of those young men who was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was always right. She could remember the situation in which they’d met with a clarity that was astonishing. A Palestinian man had taken hostage a busload of Americans touring Jerusalem.
And Max had talked the man off the bus.
Try as she might, she couldn’t remember more than the vaguest specifics of the current situation. Something about an American senator’s daughter. But the girl’s name was Karen, her notes said. Helga didn’t know who this Gina was.
She didn’t know even half enough to help Max now.
“I’m sorry,” Helga told him, ashamed that it should have come to this. How dare she put herself in a position where others had to rely on her? She had completely blown it. She had let down a friend—by pretending she was okay, when she so obviously was not. Perhaps she could hide the truth from other people, but she couldn’t hide it from herself. At least not anymore. “I can’t help you.” She closed her eyes. “I’m ill. I’ll call Desmond, though. Maybe he—”
The phone line was dead.
Helga jiggled the button. Got a dial tone. She pushed zero.
The hotel operator greeted her in the local language.
“This is Helga Shuler,” she said. “Can you reconnect me to the party to whom I was just speaking?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. All outside lines have just gone down.”
Merde. “Connect me to Desmond Nyland’s room, please.”
There was a click and then a buzzing.
Des picked it up on the first ring. “Nyland.”
“Des, I’m so sorry, did I wake you?”
He just laughed. “Not a chance. I just got in. Are you all right? Are you awake? This is good timing actually. I have something urgent I need to talk to you about.”
“I have something I need to tell you first,” she said, closing her eyes. And then she said it. Aloud. “I have what I think is Alzheimer’s. I think I’ve had it for a while—of course, I’m not certain—it’s like that bad joke. I don’t remember. But I do know that I can no longer do my job. I’ll be faxing my resignation in the morning.” She opened her notebook to a fresh page. “And I’m writing this down—that I’ve told you all this. I’m sure I’ll need to be reminded.”
Des laughed softly. “Lady, I’m going to miss you. But we’re not done working together yet. I think you’re going to be able to help me with one last thing. It’s important. Are you dressed?”
“No.”
“Get dressed—I’m coming over.”
“It’s time, Senior,” Jenk said over the radio. “Come back.”
“Holy shit,” Stan said, checking the clock, surprised that it was morning. He’d fallen asleep facedown in Teri’s bed, and here he still was, as if he hadn’t moved an inch all night long.
Except he had. He definitely had. He distinctly remembered Teri waking him up in the middle of the night with a kiss and . . .
Yeah, he’d definitely come alive for that.
He pushed himself up and off the bed. “I expected to get called hours ago. What the fuck happened? Over.” He winced as he looked at Teri. “Excuse me.”
She sat up, and the sheet fell away from her as she stretched. Dear God. He was definitely not used to the sight of her naked. He suspected he never would be. She got out of bed, and he watched her walk across the room to the dresser, unable to look away.
“L.T. said whoever woke you before the last possible second was going to get their ass kicked, come on.”
Man, he’d been trying to pretend that he hadn’t woken up aroused, but the male anatomy being what it was, it was going to be hard for her to miss.
“Do we have food and water? Coffee?” Stan asked as he tried to focus his attention on his search for his briefs. “Do we even have a pilot? Over?”
“It’s all taken care of, Senior. Just get to the roof, ASAP, come back.”
“Yeah, who’s our pilot, over?” Found ’em. Two more seconds and he would’ve given up and just pulled on his pants.
“Green, come back.”
Teri was getting clean clothes from where she’d actually unpacked them into the hotel dresser drawers, and she turned to look at him in almost comically outrageous dismay.
“Where’s Teri Howe assigned? Do you know, over?” Stan asked, slipping into his briefs and stepping into his pants.
There was a pause while Jenk searched through the paperwork.
“I wanted this assignment,” Teri said. “After all this, to not even be there, at the airport, with you . . . ?”
“I’m sorry,” Stan said as he pulled on his T-shirt. “But maybe it’s just as well—”
“Howe’s been assigned to standby at the hotel,” Jenk came back.
“Thanks, Jenkins,” Stan said. “Over and out.”
He went into the bathroom to take a leak, and Teri followed him right in.
“You’re happy about this,” she said as she quickly brushed her teeth, watching him in the mirror. “Aren’t you?”
He couldn’t lie to her. “With the increased security, you’re probably safest right here,” he said as he zipped his pants, flushed, and went to the other sink. He splashed water on his face. “So, yes, I am.”
“You said I was the best pilot you know,” Teri countered as she handed him a towel and then the still soapy toothbrush.
“You are.” This was . . . unique. While he’d had one or two relationships where he’d spent the entire night, he’d never shared bathroom time with a woman before. And he’d never shared a toothbrush. But why the hell not? He’d had his tongue in her mouth last night.
“The reason you don’t want me to do my job is . . . ?”
“You are doing your job,” he told her as he rinsed his mouth and dried his face. “Someone’s got to be here— Look, I’ve got to go.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said, following him to the door. “I’m going to see if Green’s willing to switch.”
He stopped her. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t get it. Christ, even after yesterday, she still didn’t get it.
“You leave this room,” he said sternly, “you wear your flack jacket.”
She nodded. Grabbed it from the floor. And looked him dead in the eye. “Where’s your flack jacket, Stan?”
He laughed. None of the SEALs wore jackets. There was no way they could maneuver and move quickly with all that extra weight. Forget about the fact that by noon it would be close to 120 degrees in the shade.
But Teri was serious, and laughing was a mistake. She caught his arm. “What is this?” she said. “That we’ve got going here? Is it just sex or is it something more?”