Into the Crossfire (34 page)

Muhammed could. Easily. There was nothing here that didn't fill him with

hatred and disgust.

The women, in particular. Wall Street was full of them now, with their

mannish ways and full-out aggression.

He had grown up in a culture where women dropped their eyes, never

looking a man full in the face. He remembered vividly when he had turned from a

boy to a man. How the street women who had yelled at him, cuffed his ears,

suddenly avoided him, spoke to him softly, if at all.

The women in Manhattan would eat a man alive, if you let them. They were

casual mothers and wives, discarding husbands and children like unwanted

clothes, but deadly serious about money.

Monsters, not women. And Allah, through his servant Muhammed, was

about to punish them.

His view took in the entire harbor, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and in

the far-off distance, the slow swells of the Atlantic Ocean. The direction from

which vengeance was coming, at sixty knots.

Each day was a gift from Allah, and it was a sin to wish a gift away, but

Muhammed ached for the day after tomorrow. Only the sternest self-discipline

kept his face placid with the bankers, hedge fund managers, CEOs he dealt with

daily. Inside, he was exulting. He could see an empty, desolate Manhattan so

clearly--smashed windows, grass growing up through cracks in the sidewalks,

loose newspapers fluttering through the streets--it confused him that there was still

traffic clogging the streets, people walking on the sidewalks, office buildings lit up

with workers making deals far into the night.

Soon, so soon, it would all be over, the heart of the Great Satan punched

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out.

And he--Muhammed Wahed--would have done this. For his people and for

his God.

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San Diego

The van pulled out from the parking lot so fast the tires burned rubber. Had

it not been the dead of night, Nicole could have hoped that the speed would have

attracted some attention.

Or she could try buzzing down the window and screaming at a passing car.

Make noise. Wrench the wheel and cause an accident.

Do something. Resist.

But they had the highest bargaining chip possible--her father. Who was

right now terrified and no doubt in blinding pain, held in a hidden location. The

only path to her father ran through this large, cold man sitting beside her.

And probably she wouldn't have been able to do anything to escape this

man, anyway, even if he and the intruder weren't holding her father hostage.

The driver was vigilant. His eyes tracked from the inside and outside

rearview mirrors to the road ahead, to her, ceaselessly, in a constant loop. There

was only a mere second between glances, there would barely be enough time for

her to bunch her muscles for a move, and he'd notice that.

No, her only hope would have been to attract the attention of someone. But

there was no one around. The man in the van had waited for the taxi driver to drive

off before leaning down to turn on the ignition. Nicole had watched the taillights

of the cab disappear with despair. There had been no chance whatsoever to

communicate with the taxi driver. The phone had been open during the drive and

then she'd had to get into the car with the new man and her phone had been

destroyed.

It had been her last hope--that maybe Sam could somehow trace her

through her cell phone. In the movies and in the thrillers she loved to read, a cell

phone was like the bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel. In NCIS, Tim could

trace cell phone signals down to a couple of square feet, and he could do it in the

blink of an eye.

If Tim McGee could do it, Sam Reston could. Of that she was certain. If

anyone could track her down, it would be Sam.

But not even Tim McGee could track a smashed and dead cell phone and

even if by some wizardry he could, she wasn't there anymore. Sam would track her

down to some smashed bits of plastic and metal. The cell phone had been

destroyed and she was hurtling through the darkness with an unknown man to an

unknown destination. The only thing she was certain of was that they had hurt her

father and wouldn't hesitate to do it again. She sneaked a glance at the driver.

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He was driving fast but well, like Sam. He shared other attributes with Sam.

Tall, though not as tall as Sam, very fit, with the gift of stillness and a strong aura

of self-control.

But there, of course, the similarities ended. This man gave off menacing

vibes by the ton. No doubt Sam could do that, too, but she didn't think he could do

that with a woman. And she couldn't--by any stretch of the imagination--imagine

him hurting a sick old man.

Where the hell were they?

Nicole tried to keep track of where they were going, with some vague idea

of stealing a cell phone, surreptitiously phoning Sam and providing him with an

address.

But by the fourth squealing, stomach-churning curve, Nicole was utterly

and completely lost. She had no idea what direction they were traveling in and she

didn't recognize anything about her surroundings.

They were near the ocean, that's the only thing she knew. They were on a

straight stretch of road now and at the cross-roads, to her right, she could see a

glint of moon off coal-black water. It didn't help her. San Diego was nothing but

coastline.

They were in some kind of industrial section, only run down and deserted.

She imagined a functioning port area to be busy day and night, loading and

unloading the ships that arrived and departed on an hourly basis.

This place had mile after mile of derelict warehouses and industrial plants

behind chain-link fencing, the buildings low and utterly dark.

Nicole sneaked a glance at the driver's hard face, then looked away. She

had no sense at all that she was in a car with another human being. He could have

been a robot-driver for all the emotion he betrayed.

She tried to steel herself for whatever was coming, but waves of panic

rolled over her. Even trying to make some kind of a plan--how could she, when

she had no idea what was going on?

The driver was not the man who had attacked her. So there were at least

two men involved. Two very hard, criminal men. Where there were two, there

could be three or four. There could be an army. It didn't make any difference.

She'd been powerless against one. She couldn't hope to hold her own against two.

If there were more, it didn't really make that much difference.

There was absolutely nothing on her person she could use as a weapon.

Whatever they wanted from her, they were going to get.

"Where--" Nicole's mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to the roof of her

mouth. She shuddered and tried again. "Where are we going?"

Ahead of them the empty road stretched, dark buildings on either side.

Nicole would have no trouble believing that she and robo-driver were the last

humans on the face of the earth.

Silence.

She licked her lips and tried again. "Where are we going?"

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Somehow, not knowing where they were racing to added another layer of

horror to the situation. If only she knew where they were going, she could, she

could...

What?

"Here," robo-driver growled and turned a corner so fast she had to cling to

the seat belt.

"Shit," Sam growled, banging his hand on the steering wheel. "Can't go any

faster."

He was pushing 90 mph as it was. He just hoped he didn't run into any

cops, because he wasn't slowing down for anybody. It wasn't that the SUV couldn't

go any faster--he'd clocked it at 140 mph on a racetrack--but rather that Harry was

triangulating their relative positions. Harry observed the path of the vehicle

carrying Nicole and had to calculate the best, fastest way for Sam to get there. It

was a complex piece of geometry and Sam had to be able to take a corner on a

dime when Harry said.

Mike wasn't paying him any attention. He was staring at the small screen

set in the dashboard, listening hard to Harry through his earpiece. Sam was getting

the same intel over his.

Mike acted as navigator, quietly telling him two minutes before he had to

turn a corner. If they'd been traveling during rush hour, they'd both be dead in

smoking ruins by now.

"Turning left onto Spring Road," Harry said. "Where the fuck is he going?

There's just nothing there but..." His voice trailed off.

"But warehouses," Mike finished for him. "I thought that might be where

he's headed." His mouth pressed into a thin, grim line. Sam met his eyes briefly,

then gave his whole attention back to the road.

"Not good," Mike said quietly.

No, it wasn't good. It was a section of town destined for demolition. A new

residential complex was supposed to go up afterward, though the plans had been

halted due to the real-estate crisis. In the meantime, it was an area of derelict

warehouses and abandoned buildings. Empty, for miles. Guaranteed privacy, for

as long as they wanted. No one would ever hear Nicole screaming...

He pressed the accelerator just a little harder.

"Target stopped," Harry announced quietly into their headsets.

Mike pointed to the screen. "We're about ten minutes out."

"Where, exactly?" Sam asked, eyes on the road.

Mike leaned forward, frowning at the map on the screen. "Turn right." The

tires' squealing sounded loud in the night's silence. "Left."

A straight stretch. Sam nudged it up to 110 mph.

"Coming up," Harry's voice came over the headset. "Got it?"

Sam flicked a glance down at the grid on the laptop screen on the console,

where a blipping light was stopped. It wasn't on the road, but inside an outline.

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"Got it. What the fuck is it?"

"They're inside a compound. Don't know what security measures they've

got set up, though. You and Mike be careful." Harry's calm voice sounded loud in

Sam's ear.

"That's a whole row of condemned buildings." Mike ran his finger over the

street. The map showed long rectangles of buildings separated by alleys along the

waterfront. "You got the number?"

"Says here 3440." Harry's voice was low, calm, but Sam could hear his

fingers pounding the keyboard. "It was--yeah, coming up now. Formerly a bonded

warehouse. Company moved out in 'oh six."

"There was a big bust there," Mike said grimly. "Arms for cocaine. SDPD

bagged a couple of real bad guys. That was before Sam set up shop here, before

my time even."

No one to hear her scream. Sam's hands tightened on the wheel and he

pressed down on the accelerator. They were going so fast it took all his skills to

keep the SUV on the road at turns.

They were on a straight stretch, only a few minutes out. Sam started

slowing down.

"Kill the engine...now," Harry ordered, and the vehicle drifted soundlessly

forward until it came to rest at the curb of a cross street, about ten feet from the

street where the car with Nicole had gone in.

The SUV was still rocking when Sam shouldered the driver's-side door

open, ready to leap out. A strong hand held him back.

What the fuck?

"Goddamnit Mike, Nicole's in there." Urgency rippled through his veins,

prickled his skin. Right now, someone could be hurting Nicole, cutting her,

burning her..."Let me go," he snarled.

"Wait," Mike said calmly. "We need more intel."

Sam swallowed. He knew this. He knew this on an intellectual and

theoretical level. You do not go blind into a situation. But, shit, Nicole was in

there now and Sam felt like jumping out of his skin with urgency. He was panting,

the sound loud in the dark cabin of the vehicle.

Mike pulled his head around and went nose to nose with him. "Listen up

here, I know you're worried, but I'm not going to let you fuck this up. I like Nicole,

too. And the best way to bury that beautiful woman is to go in guns blazing

without knowing the terrain or even where they are."

"Blueprints of the building coming up...now," Harry said into their

earpiece. The screen darkened, then lit again with the blueprints of an industrial

complex.

"See?" Mike said. "There's at least sixty thousand square feet there. How

the fuck you think you're going to find them? By following bread crumbs?"

Sam and Mike stared at the screen. Sam sure as fuck hoped Mike was

taking it all in, because he wasn't. A high keening sound rattled in Sam's head, the

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sound of panic. He had the classic symptoms. His heart raced, his palms were

sweaty, he could barely focus his thoughts, he didn't have a sense of his own body,

only of imminent danger to his woman.

This wasn't helping Nicole.

He leaned his head back against the headrest, pressing against it hard, and

wiped his mind, concentrating on his breathing, trying to repress the very clear,

spotlit image he had of Nicole being hurt that made his heart trip-hammer.

Breathing slowing, heartbeat slowing...

"Welcome back," Mike said quietly.

Sam opened his eyes and just like that, he was back. Capable and cool, the

operator he'd always been.