Bodyguard Lockdown (14 page)

“She was a nurse. She’d worked a double shift—”

“How many times had she worked a double shift in her career? A hundred times? A thousand?”

Anger festered with the doubt. “You’re lying. The coroner’s report said it was accidental—no toxic substances were found in her blood—”

“Do you remember who performed the autopsy?”

He tried, but the memory was fuzzy. He’d read it at the bar, after he’d started drinking. “No.”

“It was the same doctor who performed my wife’s autopsy,” Booker stated flatly. “And we both know Emily didn’t
die of a miscarriage.”

* * *

L
EWIS
STEPPED
UP
ONTO
the ridge and unclipped his harness, disgusted. Enough with the walk down memory lane.

Another reason Jim Rayo did not deserve the respect General Trygg bestowed on him.

Lewis had his own plans. And they didn’t include General Trygg or Jim Rayo.

“You and you.” He pointed at two of the men standing guard by the Black Hawk
helicopter. “Help the colonel escort the prisoners when he’s done with his conversation. I will have the pilot relocate down at the base of the ravine and meet you all there.”

“Yes, sir.” Lewis watched the two men disappear over the ledge, then climbed up into the helicopter.

“Let’s go.” Lewis slid on his radio earphones, then raised his hand and pointed down. “Take us to the ravine.”

“Yes, sir.” The pilot flipped the ignition switches and then hit the button to set the blades in motion.

A moment later, the radio beeped in Lewis’s ear.

“Pitman.”

“Lewis, it’s General Trygg. I need to speak with Colonel Rayo. He isn’t answering my transmission.”

“He isn’t available, General.” Lewis kept the satisfaction from his tone. Just.

“Have you obtained the
cylinders?”

“Yes, sir. We have,” Lewis answered. “But our flight back has been delayed.”

“Delayed?” Trygg snapped. “What’s the problem?”

“The colonel is interrogating McKnight and Doctor Haddad,” Lewis responded. “I am to meet them at a pickup point down at the base of the ravine when he is done.”

“Interrogating?”

“Yes, sir.” Lewis leaned back in his seat, pictured the
frown on Trygg’s features. “The colonel was questioning McKnight regarding some information on a bar fight several years back.”

“I see,” General Trygg replied before pausing a long moment. “You have the cylinders in your possession, Lewis?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another pause. “When they return to the helicopter, I want Doctor Haddad restrained. Then I want you to dispose of Booker McKnight.
I don’t want him found, Lewis. Understand me?”

“Colonel Rayo won’t like—”

“That’s an order, Doctor,” Trygg snapped.

“Yes, sir,” Lewis answered. “And if Colonel Rayo objects?”

“Tell him to report to me when you land,” General Trygg said. “I’ll take care of any objections.”

The trip down to the base of the ravine took mere minutes. Beyond the windshields lay an ocean of
loose sand and rolling dunes. A good place to dump a body. Give the vultures a day, and no one would ever find McKnight.

After all, he had his orders. Lewis’s lips twisted. But very few carried as much satisfaction.

“Let’s go,” Rayo yelled from the edge of the ravine, catching Lewis’s attention.

The men prodded Booker and Sandra up into the helicopter. Lewis grabbed a set of handcuffs
from a nearby bag, tossed them to the nearest guard. “Cuff her.”

“What are the handcuffs for?” Jim demanded.

“General Trygg’s direct orders, Colonel. He wants Doctor Haddad and McKnight restrained,” Lewis sneered. He glanced at the man nearest the doctor. “Do it.”

Sandra winced when the handcuffs clamped around her wrists.

“A waste of steel, right, Rayo?” Booker’s eyes narrowed
as the guards handcuffed his wrists in front of him. “I won’t be finishing this ride, will I?”

Jim looked at Lewis, who shrugged and turned back in his seat. “Take it up with the general, Colonel.”

The pilot pulled back on the throttle.

The floor jolted under Sandra’s feet, tossing her off balance. She grabbed for the nearest beam with both hands.

Suddenly, bullets ripped across
the windshield, over the outside of the helicopter.

“Hold on!” the pilot yelled, then jerked the throttle, banked the helicopter around.

Equipment flew against the walls, through the open door. Men scrambled against the tilt, slammed into the back of the helicopter.

Booker shifted, catching himself on a hanging strap, his eyes on Lewis.

Lewis grabbed the wall, raised his pistol.

“No!” Sandra gripped the beam harder, swung her legs up and kicked Booker square in the back.

“Grab McKnight!” Rayo yelled. But the warning came too late.

Booker flew through the open doorway and dropped two stories to the desert below.

“Make sure she doesn’t cause more trouble!” Lewis ordered.

Sandra spun around saw the pistol gripped in one of the guards’ meaty fists.

Pain exploded in her temple and then she fell.

Into a deep, black void.

* * *

B
OOKER
BLINKED
,
FORCING
his eyes to open against the glare of the sun, the sharp stabs of pain as his body woke.

She shoved him out of the helicopter!

Booker focused, spit out the grains of sand, then raised himself up on his hands. When he got ahold of the doc’s beautiful neck, he’d wring
it.

He took a quick inventory of his injuries. Sprained wrist, twisted shoulder. When he shifted to his knees, pain jabbed his side.

Bruised ribs.

“Well, well.” The voice drifted over him, prodded him between his shoulder blades with the barrel of a machine gun. “That was quite a free fall you took, McKnight.”

“I told you he survived, Boba.”

Booker turned over, took in
the Contee brothers standing a few feet away. “You were the ones who fired on the helicopter, weren’t you?”

“Guilty.” Madu Contee smiled lopsidedly through a fat bottom lip, revealing a fresh gap in his teeth. “Although, we were just trying to damage it enough to force a landing.”

“We stopped when we saw you falling,” Boba added. “We weren’t allowed to shoot you.”

“That was orders.
This isn’t.” Without warning, Madu kicked him, catching him in the stomach.

Pain ripped through Booker’s gut. He rolled over, sucking in oxygen.

“
That
was for wiping out all my merchandise at the warehouse, McKnight.” He dragged Booker up by the collar, putting them almost nose to nose. “A half million dollars of weapons...gone.”

“And a few of your teeth it seems.”

“More than
that,” Boba commented, his brow creased, his tone serious. “The office chair shot back and hit him in the crotch—”

“Shut up, Boba,” Madu warned. He dropped Booker and advanced on his brother, his fists tight.

“What did I say?” Boba put his hands up, confused. “You screamed loud. I heard you over the ringing in my ears—”

“Damn it, Boba!” Madu slapped his brother upside his head.
“You just never know when to stop talking—”

“I don’t have time for family squabbles, boys.” Booker maneuvered himself to his knees, then stood. “Either kill me or take me to Minos.”

* * *

T
AER
’
S
HOSPITAL
AND
MEDICAL
offices occupied one of the city’s tallest buildings. Twenty-four floors to be exact.

Although Doctor Omar Haddad had worked on all twenty-four floors at one time
or another, the basement was where he preferred. Where he found his solitude.

Alone with his thoughts, his equipment and the dead for company.

The vault was what most of those who worked with him called the coronor’s lab.

A long, wide room of tiled white flooring and concrete walls covered half the length of the hospital wing. Its farthest wall was little more than a bank of mortuary
refrigerators, large enough to house fifty bodies.

Omar Haddad stood in the middle of the room, amidst the ten examining tables, all of which were empty except one.

He stared down at the man on the table. Senator Keith Harper. Once a friend, a colleague—who turned on his country at the whim of his daughter and her greed.

Senator Harper, a man in need of the love of his daughter.
Until her need for money destroyed her, and in its aftermath, him, too.

The other man groaned, and his eyes blinked open, clearing the haze of the drug away.

“What the hell?” Harper focused on Omar. He struggled to rise. For the first time Omar saw fear and panic in his friend’s features.

“You told the wrong person that you were coming after me.” Omar reached over to his surgical
tray and grabbed surgical gloves. With deft fingers, he snapped the gloves over his hands. “Minos owed me a favor. He told me you were on your way. You are a creature of habit, my friend. Something you learn not to be when you work as a spy. It took very little effort to arrange for your hotel water to be drugged.”

Harper looked down the length of the table, realized he’d been strapped in
across the chest, arms and legs. Still, he struggled against the bindings.

“Save your strength for what’s coming. You’re going to need it,” Omar ordered. “You aren’t going anywhere, Keith. Not until you tell me what I want to know.”

“You killed my daughter,” Keith spat out. “What makes you think I’ll help you?”

“Trygg killed your daughter before I could stop him,” Omar corrected.
“I should have never told you the truth behind her death. If I’d let you believe she died by accident—”

“But you didn’t,” Harper sneered. “And now you know how it feels to lose a child to Trygg.”

“I’ve already lost a child, Keith. Years before I even knew you. I watched my little boy, Andon, die in front of my eyes, because I refused to kill a good friend of mine.” Omar picked up a thin
scalpel. “I won’t make that mistake again. Sandra will not pay the price for the choices I’ve made in my past, like so many others in my family.”

“If you know Minos, you have the coordinates to Trygg’s camp.”

“He’s moved his airbus.”

“Which means he has your daughter,” Keith taunted. “I’m not going to help you save her, you son of a bitch.”

“Oh, I think you will. Pain is a
great motivator, Keith.”

“I’ll die first.”

Omar’s face hardened. “No. You’ll just wish you had.”

* * *

T
HE
TENT
WAS
RED
. Bloodred. A beacon amidst the bland brown of the sand it sat upon.

Arrogant.

They’d traveled by jeep. Over two hours of listening to the brothers’ bickering. And when that got old, they enumerated the virtues of their new leader, Minos.

Once
they got to camp—a camp surprisingly clean, with families crowding the sand, watching—hundreds of eyes stared at the men from over red scarves.

“One big happy family,” Booker murmured, then stretched the cramps out of his shoulders and arms. He slipped the shim back into his wristwatch, then strained against the unlocked handcuffs, applying just enough pressure so as not to raise the brothers’
suspicions.

“My family,” Madu snapped, and raised his rifle butt. Pain exploded between Booker’s shoulder blades. He fell to his hands and knees, then gripped the sand, held the grains in his fist until the pain eased.

“Get up.” Boba grabbed him by the arm, dragged him to his feet. “The boss is done waiting.”

He shoved Booker through one of tents at the edge of the encampment.

“McKnight.”

Booker jerked around to the sound of laughter. His hands tightened around the sand still in his fist.

Black eyes crinkled at the corners, the only feature visible over the red scarf.

“Minos.” Booker’s spine went rigid. “I’m glad I amuse you.”

The Al Asheera leader glanced from Booker to the brothers then back again. “I have to say when Madu called his find in,
I was a little surprised. I didn’t expect you’d be so easy.”

“He’d been thrown out of a flying helicopter,” Boba responded, smirking. “Knocked him stupid.”

“How did you know how to find the helicopter?” Booker asked.

Minos shook his head. “First my questions.”

Booker glanced around the tent, noted the bar, the leather recliner, the pillows and curtains and bed in the corner.
“Terrorism seems to pay well these days.”

“Yes, it does,” Minos replied evenly. He pulled out a 9mm Glock from his robes, pointed it at Booker’s chest.

“I need to have a talk with our friend here, gentlemen.” Minos’s gaze locked with Madu’s. “Run that errand for me. The one we discussed earlier.”

Booker watched the brothers leave. “So now that we are alone...” He turned back toward
the other man. “You can lose the scarf, Sabra.”

Aaron laughed, then tugged the cloth from his face. The gun stayed on Booker. “Quamar said you were smarter than you looked.”

“You’re sure he didn’t say I was smarter than you?” Booker took a step closer, tightened his fist.

“He might have, but don’t let it go to your head.”

Without warning, Booker dropped the cuffs off his wrists,
then heaved the sand at Aaron’s face.

Aaron swore, lowered the gun, grasped his eyes.

Booker grabbed the other man’s gun and slammed his fist into his jaw.

Aaron hit the floor, stunned. He lay there for a few seconds, blood flowing from his lip. “Damn it. I should have seen that coming.”

Before he could move, Booker shoved the pistol under the other man’s jaw and jammed it
up until his head locked back. “I should kill you right now.”

“First tell me how you figured it out.”

“It wasn’t hard. The fact that you knew about Sandra’s flight out of Taer. And how much you care for the Al Asheera.” He nodded toward the chair. “The first recliner I’ve seen in a tent.”

“Picked up on that, did you?”

“I also picked up on the red tent. I bet it went a long
way in establishing your authority with the Al Asheera. You thumbed your nose at discovery from your enemies. Defied anyone to stop you. Most would have been worried about satellites spotting your location. But Taer doesn’t own satellites and the United States—the only other country that would be interested in your activities—already knew of your location. In fact, they approved. Or should I say,
the President approved.”