the eroded remains of several massive stalagmites marked what used to be the cave floor. Between them, a faint path led the way back to an old entrance to Harrison’s Cave-an extensive complex of caves stretching away beneath her feet. An iron security gate blocked the cave entrance to protect the caves from the local kids and vice versa.
“Don’t turn around.”
The whispered voice was quiet, barely reaching her ears. Male. Strongly French accented.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Of course not. My partner wouldn’t hear of me coming out here by myself. He’s hiding in the trees somewhere.”
Two things happened simultaneously. Jeff swore sharply over the radio into her earbuds as he realized she was speaking aloud-off radio, and a quiet laugh floated out of the darkness behind her.
“Such refreshing ’onesty. I like you.”
“Why did you want to speak with me?”
“Yes, let us go directly to the point. The danger this night is much greater than your friend.”
She asked quickly, “What are you talking about?”
“As you may know, I ’ave been busy ’ere in Barbados.”
She answered dryly, “So I’ve heard.”
Another chuckle. “When a fisherman casts ’is net, ’e hopes to catch one kind of fish. But often, ’e catches another as well. Like the fisherman, I took a painting, but by accident, I took something else as well. Something you need to see. It was affixed to the back of a canvas.”
“What is it?”
“In a moment. First, you must tell me true. Do you work for the American government?”
“I do.”
“Perfect. If you will come over to the gate behind you, I will give it to you.”
Startled, she stood up. The movement caused a flurry of chatter in her earpiece as the Medusas readied themselves for her to go mobile. She picked her way with exaggerated caution toward the gate, both because it was dark and hard to see in the shadow of the thick curtain of vines, and also to give her teammates a few extra moments to reposition themselves.
Isabella was the first to announce that she’d acquired a heat signature inside the opening to Harrison’s Cave.
Kat murmured low, “Step back from the opening a little. My colleague has you in his sights.” She might be willing to save the Ghost’s life tonight, but she wasn’t foolish enough to give away to him the true degree of backup she had out here.
“
“Do you want me to come in there?” she asked as she approached the heavily padlocked gate.
“It is not necessary. Please, if you will reach your hand through the bars…”
She did as the Ghost directed.
Something smooth and flat that felt like cardboard was laid in the palm of her hand. “What is this?”
“This-’ow you say-self-explanatory.”
“A warning, my friend. This time we have met in honorable truce. But I cannot extend that to you after tonight. My boss has ordered me to use whatever force is necessary to stop you. And next time, I will be bound by that order.”
“Understood. In return, I ’ave a warning for you as well. If anyone finds out that I ’ave given this disk to you, you will find yourself in immediate and extreme danger. Be very careful.”
“Danger from whom?” she asked, startled.
“You spared my life-for we both know you could ’ave killed me if you wished-and now I ’ave paid you back. Equal warnings ’ave we traded as well. I count us even.”
She drew her hand back through the gate, tilting the cardboard sleeve in her hand to pass it through the metal bars. It held a CD of some kind.
Jeff announced sharply, “H.O.T. Watch says we’ve got heat signatures incoming. Four hostiles. Moving fast. Armed.”
Kat started. She’d momentarily forgotten that the folks in the Bat Cave were monitoring tonight’s meeting via surveillance satellite. She murmured, “The men who chased you from the scene of last night’s theft are coming. Time to go, my friend.”
“What men?” The Ghost’s question was sharp. Alarmed.
He didn’t know? She thought fast. Should she warn him or not? Maybe they were some law enforcement agency that the H.O.T. Watch wasn’t aware of working on the case. If she gave the thief any more information, she could be compromising a criminal investigation. Except she’d already revealed the men’s existence. And her gut instinct said to tell the Ghost about the men.
Jeff spoke in her ear. “Move out, Kat. Take cover.”
She spoke fast. “Last night. Six men. Armed. Wearing black. White van. They staked out the estate. While I was chasing you, they were chasing both of us.”
“What ’appened to them?”
“Their van crashed. We took measures not to be followed home. Do they know who you are?”
Jeff’s voice was more urgent. “Get out of there, Kat! They’re almost here. We don’t need a firefight out here.”
The Ghost murmured, “
Kat felt his swift departure into the bowels of the cave as a faint whiff of air against her skin. She took a quick look around and dove behind the curtain of hanging vines. Lying on a bed of moss, she announced quietly over her throat mike, “He’s gone.”
Jeff snorted and muttered, “And they’re here. Everyone pull back. Quietly. No confrontation.”
Kat reached out with her senses, hearing, smelling, even tasting the verdant night around her. If she crawled on this tender moss, it would rip, leaving obvious black gashes to mark her passage. Moving slowly, she drew her pistol and held it over her head with both hands in a firing position. Then she began to roll, gradually easing away from the cave opening. With each revolution, her gaze roved all around, seeking any movement, any shadow that was not of the night and of the forest.
Without warning, a tall figure clothed in black rose up about thirty feet beyond her head. She froze, lying on her back, gazing awkwardly up and back at him as he swung up a semiautomatic carbine in a smooth motion. In an instant, she identified the weapon. A Yugoslavian SKS rifle with a bayonet mount. Not a weapon Jeff or the Medusas used. And the guy obviously had a target in sight. The weapon settled against his shoulder and his right forearm tensed. He was firing!
Without hesitating, she squeezed off two shots overhead while lying on her back. The first shot caught him under the right ear. The second, she’d adjusted downward to compensate for his beginning to collapse, and it hit him square in the temple. A kill shot.
The guy dropped like a stone as crashing sounds erupted from all directions. Men shouted back and forth. They yelled in a language she didn’t know, but she didn’t need to understand. They knew they had a man down, that there was a shooter out here, and they were determined to find and kill her.
This scenario, she knew. The kill was always easy. The escape afterward was hell. She rolled fast across the remaining moss, then rose into a crouch behind a tree trunk. She glanced up. A towering black pine. Not ideal for climbing…the branches were too thin to support much weight, and closely spaced enough to make scaling the trunk a pain in the rear. But she didn’t have much choice.
She often made use of three dimensions when egressing a close-range kill. Most people only thought in two dimensions, so thinking vertically gave her a big edge. Not to mention, Hidoshi had trained her to climb like a monkey.
Not worrying about noise as the dead man’s colleagues crashed through the gully like a herd of bull elephants, she jumped for the nearest branch. The soft wood bent deeply beneath her weight, but held.
Up she went, distributing her weight as best as she could among multiple branches as she climbed the rough ladder of limbs quickly. A dark shadow moved below, and she froze, one arm around the trunk, the branch she stood
