Flashpoint

Chapter 2

Jijiga, Ethiopia

Lucy rode in the passenger seat, clutching her purse, feeling her insides being jarred loose.

Her father drove the Hummer over another unusually large rut.

Lucy grabbed the dashboard and glanced over at the driver’s seat. Was that a hint of a smile on her father’s face? He’d found every hole from here to the airstrip. Lucy refused to acknowledge that his lousy driving was getting to her, so she held the dash and braced her feet on the Hummer’s floor.

Beyond a curt hello, they hadn’t spoken, and the tension in the Hummer had turned into a thick wall that she dared not climb. Why had her mother sent him to pick her up? What was she thinking? Quality father and daughter time? Yeah, right.

She glanced out the window. Up ahead, the Karamara hills looked like a massive python with rolling humps that met plains and river valleys as far as she could see. In the middle of this wide expanse, the mud and grass huts, tin shacks and markets of Jijiga looked like scattered Tinker Toys. Jijiga was a reasonably large city for the region, an aid coordination center for Ethiopia. A city born out of need, where people came to get food and medicine to survive the drought-stricken area.

The rain gods had been kind to the area. The flat plains that were usually clouds of red dust were now verdant. Even a coiffure of green covered the hills. Streams coiled out across the plains. She could see a group of Amhara women washing clothes in a nearby brook.

Silence stretched between them, the tension solidifying by the second. Lucy felt it pulsing against her, drenching the air. When she found it hard to breathe any longer, she said, “It looks like they’ve had rain here.” The weather was a safe subject.

“Your mother says it’s a blessing for the area. The nomads are going back to the countryside to graze their herds. It’ll mean less starvation and people will be able to survive,” he said, his words forced through his lips, uttered with stilted formality. He didn’t glance at Lucy, but stared straight ahead at the road. A muscle twitched in his right cheek.

She had brought up a subject. His turn now. She waited.

Nothing.

She watched as they passed two men on camels and asked, “So, how is China?”

“Just as I left it.”

She stared at this man who’d always been a stranger to her, yet in many ways a mirror of herself. Both independent, both stubborn, and both apparently feeling the strain of dealing with an alter ego.

For a man of fifty-seven, her father was still in good shape. Well-defined muscles showed below his short-sleeve safari shirt and matching shorts. He wore a fedora that covered his short, red, wavy hair. Since the last time she’d seen him, he’d grown thick muttonchops that sliced across his ruddy cheeks and almost touched the corners of his mouth. That wasn’t the only change in him. More wrinkles crept out from the corner of his brown eyes, and the freckles on his face had multiplied, unlike her own that only dotted her nose. She stared at the large hands clutching the steering wheel, the veins protruding on his muscular freckled forearms. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt them hug her. Had her father ever hugged her?

“So…”

Lucy almost jumped at the sound of her father’s confident voice. “So,” she parroted back, knowing she must have sounded like a voice recorder.

A pregnant silence hung between them as if neither of them could think of one safe subject.

He shifted in the driver’s seat and stretched out his left leg, rubbing his knee. Was that arthritis bothering him? Somehow he’d aged without her realizing it. God, she wished things were different. She fidgeted in her seat, pulling at the seat belt.

Finally he said, “So, how is this latest venture of yours going?”

His emphasis on the word venture made her grit her teeth. He seemed unable to say the word, so she supplied it for him, “You mean the team?”

“Yes, that.”

“It pays the bills.”

He paused as if trying to control his emotions. It didn’t last long as he said, “You put your life in danger to pay bills?”

“You have a lot of room to reproach me. You work in Third World countries where you need a full-time security force to protect you.”

“I don’t risk my neck like you—”

“Don’t you? The only difference between us is that you blow up mountains. I blow up targets. And have you forgotten you’re the one who got me interested in demolitions?”

“I didn’t know you’d make a career of it.”

“Ah, come on, Dad. You were the one who taught me how to make gunpowder before I was eight. Most girls my age were playing with dolls. I was designing bombs. Admit it. You were grooming me.”

“Not for taking the kind of chances you do.”

“Don’t talk to me about chances.” In her heart Lucy always knew her father had wanted a son. Tough. He’d gotten her.

“I’ll talk all I want. I never thought you’d use that knowledge in a mercenary capacity.” He sighed as if part of his soul was escaping through his lips. “You could have worked with me, done something constructive with your life.”

Here we go. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Go directly to emotional jail. She forced her voice to stay even. “That’s right, but I’m happy with my life.”

“You should have finished engineering school.”

“Wasn’t for me.” She hadn’t been able to tame the restlessness in her long enough to get an engineering degree.

“Premed didn’t suit you, either. You destroyed your mother’s hopes of you following in her footsteps.”

“It doesn’t bother Mom half as much as it bothers you.”

“And it’ll bother me all my life. If you had—”

“If could’ves and should’ves were candy and gold, yeah, yeah, yeah.” She dug her fingers into the brown leather of her purse.

“You didn’t even stay in the army.”

That one was below the belt. “I chose to leave.”

“Because you’re too damn hardheaded to follow orders.”

“That’s not the reason I left.” Lucy squeezed her purse into her chest, seeing the whole tragedy unfold in her mind. It tore at her insides. She had never told anyone why she left the army.

“So, enlighten me.” He’d raised his voice, his face bloodred.

She blurted out, “I saw a friend get his head blown off, all right?”

The silence of stunned disclosure settled in between them.

Finally her father said, his tone softer, “I’m sorry, but you knew when you joined the army it wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream.”

She and Jack Kane had been good friends. One night in a bar, Jack had come clean about his attraction to her. They had decided to start dating. Two days after their first date, she’d had to watch a forensic team pick up pieces of him off a field. She wrung her hands in the strap of her purse. Her voice shook as she said, “Peaches and cream, Dad? How callous can you be?”

“That’s not callous, that’s practical. He shouldn’t have been in demolitions if he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“He was following orders, going by the book.”

“There’s a right way to do things. Casualties happen. You join a man’s world, you have to take it like a man. I thought I taught you that.”

Lucy’s brows narrowed at her father. She had just poured out the nightmare that had changed her life forever and all he had to say was, “…take it like a man.”

It made her lose control and raise her voice. “Yeah, Dad, there’s the take-it-like-a-man, by-the-book, blow-your-guts-out-way, or the logical way.” The Athena way, she thought. “So you’re right. A soldier’s life may be dispensable to a general sitting two hundred miles away giving orders from some secure command room, but every life in the field counts with me. And if too damn much red tape gets in my way and I see a better way to go about a mission, you better believe I’m taking it.”

“That’s your trouble. You’ve taken your own road your whole life. And look at you, floundering around with a group of mercenaries. The only worthwhile thing you ever did was that Athena Academy. I thought it would turn your life around.”

Lucy wanted to tell him that it had turned her life around, and the irony was she still felt closer to her instructors and Athena classmates than she did to her own father.

She couldn’t stand another moment of this so-called bonding, so she grabbed the door handle. “Let me out. Now.”

Her father jammed his foot on the brake. The Hummer skidded to a halt. He stared straight ahead.

Lucy flung open the door, rolled out of the seat and slammed the door. Trembling all over, she stood firm as the Hummer’s spinning wheels spewed dirt and dust all over her. She watched the white vehicle dripping and running into gray behind her tears. Why was it always like this between them? Why couldn’t he just accept her and be proud of her? Maybe by the time she reached her mother’s home, they both would have calmed down and been able to stay in the same room together. Maybe.

She blinked back the tears, slung her purse over her shoulder and strode down the road. The red clay soil felt like spongy crust beneath her sandals. Afternoon sun beat down on her head. She took off the white scarf from around her neck and tied it around her head. Thank goodness she’d worn a long white linen peasant dress. At least she wouldn’t be so hot.

The morning heat swirled up the inside of her legs as she walked. Her shoulder bag thumped against her right hip, her .45 adding to the weight. Over the years, the sensation of a weapon close at hand made her feel secure. At the moment, it didn’t give her any refuge, her father’s words still smarting.

She grew aware of her lucky charm thumping against her sternum. She pulled out the .25 caliber casing. The small empty brass cylinder dangled from a gold chain. When she was little, her father would take her to the range. When they were done shooting, they always picked up the spent casings and reloaded them with gunpowder. This was the first casing her father had taught her to reload. She hadn’t been able to part with it. It made a lump form in her throat and she dropped it back inside her dress.

One of her two cell phones rang. One connected to the team only. The other was a secure line, chipped for international use and connected to AA.gov, an Athena Academy network overseen by the Department of Defense. She had done courier assignments for AA.gov in the past, and if this was another assignment it would be a welcome interruption to her dad hell.

She reached in her purse, found the phone and popped it open. An encrypted text message scrolled across the LCD screen. She hit a button and the encryption scrambled into English:

Lucy,

A contact named “Delphi” wishes to hire you and your team to go after a target in Cape Town, South Africa.

She narrowed her eyes at the moniker Delphi and typed back:

I’ve never worked for a contact named Delphi before.

The response:

This is a legitimate assignment. It’s tied to recent threats against the Athena Academy, including the kidnapping of two students. Athena alums have been targeted, as well. You could be in danger, so if you accept this assignment keep your own Athena alum status on the QT. Do you accept?

Lucy read the message again, intrigued by what she was told and what she was not. Like who had been kidnapped, and was this target in South Africa behind these threats. She typed:

Will accept.

Another line appeared:

Stand by for verbal briefing with Delphi in two minutes.

She slapped the phone closed and waited for the briefing. Thoughts of breaking the news of her shortened visit to her mom made her grimace. She hated disappointing her, but she’d make up for it later. Maybe ask her to vacation at her ranch. Her father, well, he’d probably wish her gone. What about Val? She was to arrive at the end of the week. Lucy truly missed her friend. They’d just have to reschedule.

Lucy watched two women, balancing full laundry baskets on their heads, stride past her as the phone rang again.

She answered, eager to speak to this Delphi. If she was going to risk her life and the team’s lives, she wanted to directly communicate with this person. And she wondered how Delphi was tied to the AA.gov network.

Cape Town, Africa

Nolan Taylor followed the red line that led to the porter’s booth on the walk of Cape Town International Airport. When he reached the end, he paused, the toe of his black wingtips an inch from the end of the line. He set down his suitcase and glanced behind him.

The big bloke was still following him. He had paused, going through the motions of buying a newspaper from a vending machine. Sunglasses covered the fellow’s eyes, but his head was turned Nolan’s way. He looked about thirty, his pink fair-skinned scalp showing through his crew-cut white hair. His fairness hinted at a Scandinavian descent. He was burly, tall, about six foot three but still three inches shy of Nolan. From the bulge under the bloke’s tweed sport jacket, Nolan suspected a concealed weapon. Nolan hadn’t wanted to suffer yards of red tape to bring his own Ruger revolver into South Africa, but he wasn’t completely helpless. He had his fists and a T-shaped push knife hidden in his belt buckle.

Nolan quickly stood. He’d made a lot of enemies ferreting out terrorists. It was the main reason he’d left England. At least two terrorist organizations had a price on his head. Was this bloke an assassin? An alarm went off on his watch. Exactly 10:00 hours. He had two hours before his interview at Pincer. Enough time to deal with Viking. With a flick of his finger, he snapped the alarm off.

He handed the porter a five-pound note and spoke to him in Afrikaans, or “Cape Dutch,” a West Germanic language spoken mainly in Cape Town. “Praat U Engels?”

The porter nodded. “Ja.”

He switched to English. “Be a good chap and get me a taxi.”

The line of taxis, ten cars deep, stretched along the walkway, comprised of every make and model of car, mostly older models. He even saw an ancient Checker Cab; thoughts of London and home stabbed him. He missed his parents until there was an ache in his chest. But he couldn’t contact his family and put them in danger. No, he was on his own.

The porter blew a whistle and motioned toward the taxi at the front of the line. The taxi sped forward. Another cab pulled out from the back of the line and floored it. The taxis raced toward him, headlights to headlights. The driver on the left overtook the one on the right, cutting him off, almost colliding. Brakes screeched as the winner stopped at the curb in front of him.

The loser shook his fist at the winner and yelled an expletive in Afrikaans. Taxi wars amused Nolan. Capitalism at work.

He waited until the porter threw his suitcase in the trunk, then slid inside, his knees touching the front seat.

The Crown Victoria smelled of stale cigarettes, body odor and filth. He leaned forward to speak to the driver, a small man with dreadlocks. “Praat U Engels?”

The driver bobbed his head. “Ya, boss.”

“Excellent. There’s a big chap in a tweed sport coat in front of us—don’t look. He’s getting into a black Taurus sedan in the valet area. He’s been following me. You’ll get a twenty-pound tip if you lose him.”

“Ya, boss, lose him.” The man nodded, whipped the taxi out into the flow of traffic.

Nolan memorized the license plate number: 1267PR as they passed the Taurus.

The taxi driver zipped around a double-parked bus, taking his tip seriously.

Nolan kept the Taurus in view as it sped up, and Viking bullied his way into the traffic behind them. The sporting part of him, the part that enjoyed a good game of rugby, made Nolan grin.

Jijiga, Ethiopia

“Hello, Lucy,” an electronically altered voice said.

She hadn’t expected the disguised voice and it raised her suspicion. “Look, if this is some game you’re playing—”

“For safety reasons I protect my identity. I assure you I want to hire you. We are working on the same side.”

“Convince me. Name a person on your side.”

“Lucy, this is Allison Gracelyn speaking. This is a conference call.”

“Allison?” Lucy knew Allison Gracelyn. She was the daughter of Marion Gracelyn, the founder of the Athena Academy. Allison was a fellow Athena alumna and a consultant to the board of directors. Lucy trusted Allison.

“It’s me. Delphi thought you might need some convincing, so I was allowed to participate in this briefing.”

Yep, that was Allison’s voice. It was all the convincing Lucy needed. “Okay, I’m in.”

Delphi’s creepy altered voice said, “You probably know that House Representative Bryan Ellis is under arrest for fraud and attempted murder of Athena alum Francesca Thorne.”

“I heard about it on the news.” When Lucy had seen the report that Ellis had tried to kill Francesca, she had wondered why. The report hadn’t gone into much detail. “Why did he try to kill her?”

“She was instrumental in his arrest.”

“Oh.”

“What you probably don’t know is that fellow Athena grad Nikki Bustillo recently captured a computer hacker, Martin Slobojvic, a Kestonian wanted in a dozen countries for corporate espionage and spying. We found out he’s been working for Bryan Ellis—”

“In what capacity?”

“Someone was blackmailing Ellis, and Slobojvic was helping him track the blackmailer. Slobojvic traced the blackmailer through the regular electronic fund transfers taken from Ellis’s account. With Slobojvic’s help, we’ve tracked the blackmailer’s trail to a safety deposit box in a Swiss bank. We believe the blackmailer has a home base near Cape Town and has been conducting business through this bank. You are to retrieve any records within the box and the name behind the account.”

Lucy suspected she wasn’t getting the whole briefing and she waited, silence stretching between them on the line. She listened to Allison clear her throat, then Delphi’s hesitant breaths as if what was about to be said was highly classified.

Finally the altered voice said, “You should know this international blackmailer has been on all U.S. intel-gathering agencies’ radars for years. In Russia she’s known as Madame Web. Weaver, Spider, Webcrawler and Arachne are just a few of her other personas. Not only the U.S. but nations across the globe have a price on her head. She’s managed to avoid capture by staying one step ahead of us. We’re certain her wealth figures into the equation.”

“Like how wealthy are we talking?”

“Billions.”

“Jeez, that’s a lot of extortion.” Lucy couldn’t imagine the number of lives this blackmailer had destroyed.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“So you believe Arachne is behind these kidnappings and threats to Athena grads.” Lucy watched two young boys riding a camel pass her on the road.

“Yes, and we’re trying to locate her before she strikes again. All the information you need, as well as your fee, is being forwarded to you by courier and will arrive at a safe house in Cape Town. Proceed there and wait for the courier. You can rendezvous with your team there as well. The house’s address will be texted to you, along with the keypad entry code.”

“Fine.”

“And Lucy, Arachne is, above all, a killer. If she’s cornered, your life, as well as your team’s lives, could be in the balance. Be careful.”