The Destroyed (24 page)

Two, the agent in charge of the other project was a man named Evans, the very same man who’d retired to the UK under the name Johnston and been killed just a few days before.

Three, the lead agent on the flight itself had been Lawrence Rosen, whose recent death had been caused by smashing into a Tanzania sidewalk.

And four, Rosen’s partner on the flight had been Scott Olsen.

CHAPTER 26

ROME, ITALY

“Y
OU’RE SURE YOU
don’t want one?” Orlando asked, holding out one of the pain pills Dr. Pelligrini had reluctantly given them on the way out of his clinic.

“No,” Quinn said.

The last thing he needed was to be drugged up. There were moments when he had to pause and just ride through the pain, but, however strong it became, he handled it. Physically, he probably wasn’t up to doing much, but decisions would have to be made, and he needed to be the one making them.

In all his years as a cleaner, with all the bullets that had flown in his direction, this was the first time he’d been seriously hit. He would have preferred for his lucky streak to continue, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

“How much farther?” he asked Nate.

“Twenty minutes,” Nate replied from the driver’s seat of their stolen sedan. “When we get there we’ll have to park about a quarter mile away and walk in.” His words came with an implied
do you think you can make it?

“No problem,” Quinn said. Whether that was true or not, he’d find out soon enough.

Orlando said, “We should have at least waited until morning.”

“My legs are
fine
,” he told her, a bit more harshly than he’d intended. He softened his tone. “Besides, morning might be too late.”

With no good response, she shook her head and turned away.

Quinn glanced through the window. Outside, city had given way to country. Gentle hills and vineyards and unused fields took turns cradling the road. Scattered among them were copses of trees and the occasional old-stone home or barn.

In the early hours of the morning, they all but had the highway to themselves. A handful of trucks, another car or two, but that was it. When Nate finally turned onto a side road, the additional traffic dropped to zero.

“Will they see us coming?” Quinn asked.

Nate shook his head. “There are a couple hills between us.”

“They could have lookouts.”

“They could, but they didn’t earlier, and Daeng’s been keeping watch. He would have called if something had changed.”

It felt odd to Quinn not to be the one in the know. He wondered momentarily if his own mentor, Durrie, had felt the same when Quinn had started running his own operations. Who knew what Durrie thought, though. He’d been a real ass at times. Hopefully, Quinn wasn’t falling into that category.

Ten minutes on, Nate began to slow the car. To either side, grapevines moved out into the darkness. He shut off the headlights, and turned down a narrower dirt road that weaved through a break between the rows. They didn’t go too far before the vines on their left were replaced by a gently sloping hill covered with trees. Within a couple few minutes, Nate veered off the path and inched into a space between several of the trees. He let the car roll to a stop, and killed the engine.

Twisting around, he looked at Quinn. “If you’re not feeling up to it, I could try to drive in a little closer.”

“I’m fine.”

Looking skeptical, Nate glanced at Orlando, who just shrugged as if to say, “I give up.”

Silently, they climbed out of the car and gathered near the front.

“We go around the edge of this hill, then up the next one. That’s where Daeng is.”

Without waiting for a response, Nate took the lead.

They were halfway up the second hill when he suddenly motioned for everyone to stop.

__________

“S
OMETHING’S NOT RIGHT,”
Nate whispered. Daeng should have heard them by now and come to meet them. “Stay here.”

He dropped to a crouch, moved quietly toward the top, and paused twenty feet shy of the crest. From there, he had a clear view of where Daeng had been stationed, only Daeng wasn’t there.

Nate listened, trying to pick up any sense that there might be others around, but everything was still and quiet. Cautiously, he moved forward, his gaze splitting time between watching the woods for movement and scanning the ground for signs of a struggle that might indicate Daeng had been discovered. But there was nothing out of the ordinary.

So where the hell was he?

As he glanced toward the farmhouse, he flipped on his comm gear. “Daeng? Are you there?”

He knew there was little chance he’d get a response even if Daeng were okay. When Nate left, they had both turned off their gear to preserve batteries.

“Daeng?”

Dead silence.

Nate checked for guards, and spotted one on the porch of the farmhouse, and a pair in front of the other building.

He tried the comm one more time, then pulled out his phone as he crept back down the hill to the others. Given the circumstances, he was leery to call Daeng. If the former monk was in a delicate situation, the last thing he needed was his phone ringing.

He decided to give it a try anyway, and hit
SEND
.

Voice mail. Not even a message, just a beep.

“Where are you?” he said, and hung up.

__________

D
AENG HAD LEARNED
from his dealings back in Thailand and Burma that when an opportunity presented itself, a person should grab it.

About a half hour after Nate had left, two of the guards had begun a wide swing into the hills where he was hiding. Instead of panicking, he had simply circled around to the vineyard on the other side of the buildings. If the men had returned to the farmhouse right then, he would have stayed where he was, but they were taking their time. More importantly, they’d left only a single guard standing near the farmhouse to watch over everything.

This
was the opportunity.

Leaving the cover of the vines, Daeng crept over to the windowless building. A glance around the front corner confirmed that the guard near the farmhouse porch hadn’t moved.

Now or never
.

Taking slow silent steps, he approached the door, wrapped his fingers around the knob, and tested it. Still unlocked. He turned the knob until he felt the latch slip free, quickly opened it enough so he could slip inside, and closed it again.

He found himself in what amounted to a short empty hallway that T-boned into a wider corridor going left and right. He took a step forward and leaned out just enough so he could look in both directions. No one, just a hallway with two doors to the left, and two to the right, all along the opposite wall. At the end of the corridor to the right was a metal staircase leading up to the second floor and down to a basement level.

He stopped in front of each door, listened, then tried the handles. All four were unlocked. Inside each he found what could only be called a cell. The two middle ones were about the size of the small bedroom he’d had in Hollywood when he lived with his aunt. Maybe seven feet square, perhaps eight. The two on either end were much smaller—same length, but the width was no more than four feet at best.

He moved over to the stairwell, and detected a faint, almost rhythmic sound coming up from below. If the guard was down there, no way Daeng could descend the stairs without being noticed. So instead, he lay on the floor and inched forward until his head stuck out into the empty space above the receding staircase. He tilted it down as slowly as he could.

There was little to see at first, just the start of another corridor that looked to be a twin of the one on the ground floor. The further his head moved, the more hallway he saw. When he caught sight of the guard, he froze. The man was sitting in a chair at the far end, holding a book in his lap. Only he wasn’t reading. He was sleeping.

Whatever prisoner he was watching over had to be in one of the nearby cells, probably the one at the end.

Daeng pulled back.

There was a fine line between opportunity and stupidity—one he would surely cross if he ventured downstairs.

As he stood up, he comforted himself with the knowledge that he had pretty much confirmed that there was, indeed, someone in one of the cells. It was time to head back. When Nate showed up again, he’d tell him what he’d found, and they could figure out what to do next.

He walked to the front door, slowly opened it, and looked out.

Immediately, he pulled his head back in, and used every ounce of restraint he had to ease the door shut.

The others had returned, and were huddled together in front of the main house, talking. He might have been able to sneak away, but that would have been even riskier than if he’d made a try for the basement.

He’d just have to wait a few minutes until they finished whatever they were doing. Hopefully most of them would go into the house. It would still be a risk, but—

He heard feet outside heading his way.

Panic was not part of Daeng’s nature, so he calmly stepped back into the larger corridor and turned in the opposite direction from the stairs. As he reached the tiny cell on the end, he heard someone opening the main door.

Daeng opened the door, and slipped into the darkened cell. It wasn’t until the door shut that he realized it had no interior handle. So while the cell doors were technically unlocked, that only applied if one was on the other side.

Which he wasn’t.

Not quite what I had in mind
.

He sat down on the mattress that filled most of the cell’s floor, and started going through the contents of his pockets, identifying everything by feel. Euro bills and change, the passport that matched the ID he was traveling under, the envelope Nate had asked him to hold, his comm, and his phone.

He checked the reception on his cell. One bar. The walls of the building were thick, and apparently not cell-phone friendly. Still, one bar was better than none. Hopefully it would be enough to at least get a text message out.

He tried, but it failed. He tried again. And again. And again.

After pushing the mattress against the door to block any sound from seeping into the corridor, he tried calling Nate several times, but apparently one bar
wasn’t
enough for either option.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there when his phone vibrated. An hour? Two? He snatched it up and looked at the display.

Nate.

He punched
ACCEPT
, but the call failed to connect.

He tried calling Nate back, then texting him, but again, the signal wasn’t strong enough.

Maybe he’s close.

He picked up his comm gear and turned it on.

“Nate? Can you hear me? It’s Daeng. Are you back?”

__________

 “W
HAT’S GOING ON?”
Quinn asked as Nate reappeared on the hill just above them.

“I don’t know. Daeng’s not there.”

“You’re sure we’re in the right place?” Orlando asked.

“Positive.”

“Show me the farmhouse,” Quinn said.

“Okay. Down a little bit, though. Not here.”

Staying at their current elevation, they moved parallel to the summit until they were a good fifty yards to the left, then snuck up the slope, dropping to their stomachs just before they reached the top.

From this angle, the farmhouse hid a portion of the outbuilding. Nate pulled night-vision binoculars out of his pack and handed them to Quinn.

The buildings were just as Nate had described them. Though they looked old, they had probably only been constructed in the last ten or fifteen years. Quinn had seen others like them, residences specifically designed to be used as mission headquarters and safe houses. The structure without the windows was particularly telling. He’d seen a similar type of building three or four times in the past, and knew without even walking through the front door that there would be holding cells and interrogation rooms inside.

He picked out the guards, then swept the binoculars around, scanning for other signs of life. The three men seemed to be it. He was about to ask Nate if there was a backup spot where Daeng might have repositioned himself, when Nate suddenly cocked his head, his eyes losing focus.

“Daeng?” he said.

He fell silent again.

“Is that him?” Quinn asked, realizing Nate was listening to the comm line.

“I’m not sure. The signal’s not strong.”

“Do you have another set?”

“The spares are in my backpack,” Nate told him, then said, “Daeng, is that you?”

Quinn moved around Nate and zipped open the pack. He found the pouch by feel, pulled out two comm sets, tossed one to Orlando, then donned the other.

“…ate…can…me?” The words were weak and broken by digital noise, but Quinn was sure it was Daeng’s voice.

“Daeng, it’s Quinn.”

“…uinn…how are…”

“Where are you?” Nate asked.

This time the words came back completely garbled.

“We’re not going to hear him until we get closer to wherever he is,” Orlando said.

Nate nodded. “You two go that way, and I’ll go the other. We can meet up in the vineyard on the other side.”

__________

N
ATE STAYED UNDER
the cover of the trees as he worked his way west along the hill. Every ten seconds or so, either he or Quinn would say,  “Daeng, are you reading me?”

Most of the time Daeng answered, but his responses were still impossible to decipher. When Nate reached a point where Daeng didn’t answer at all, he knew he’d gone too far, so he cut to the north, staying low to the ground as he crossed an open field to the vineyard about a hundred fifty yards away. From there he began working his way back toward the house.

Since the grapes were planted just a stone’s throw from the back of the buildings, he was able to get quite close to them while staying under cover.