Locke, stop!”
At the shout from behind her, Abbie moved faster. She darted toward the nearest row of cars, the sound of her footsteps echoing through the cavernous garage. Her parking spot was on the next level down. Should she try to make it to her car, or head for the exit ramp? She glanced over her shoulder.
Flynn was following her. He was pressing his hand against his forearm, and she could see blood on his fingers. Her stomach churned. How badly had she hurt him?
“Abigail!”
She veered to the right, choosing to try to reach the exit instead of her car. The sooner she got outside where she could get help, the better her chances of escaping this…this…whatever she was mixed up in.
“Block the exits,” he said. “She’s heading for the ramp.”
His voice was low and hard. Who was he talking to? Was he crazy? She looped the strap of her purse around her neck and broke into a sprint, her arms pumping as she gulped in air. Her foot hit a patch of oil as she followed the ramp around a pillar. She slid sideways and crashed into the wall.
“Abigail, please stop!” he called. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
We? We? She slapped her hands against the cement wall and pushed off. She didn’t see the van that was coming down the ramp until it was directly in front of her.
Tires screeched as the vehicle skidded to a halt. A trim blond woman in a yellow cardigan set stared through the windshield at her, then opened the driver’s door and hopped out. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”
Abbie heard footsteps pound up the ramp behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Flynn was steadily closing the distance between them. His jaw was clenched. The sleeve over his forearm glistened dark red. She whipped her gaze back to the woman from the van and made a split-second decision. “Please. You’ve got to help me,” she said, racing around the hood to the passenger door. “That man’s crazy. I need to get out of here and call the police.”
The woman didn’t hesitate. Abbie had barely pulled the door closed behind her when the woman slid behind the wheel, flipped the power locks on the doors and threw the van into reverse.
Abbie braced her hands on the dashboard, trying to catch her breath. She saw that Flynn had stopped running. His lips moved, as if he were talking to himself again.
“No problem, Sergeant,” the woman said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Flynn smiled and lifted his bloody hand to his forehead in a crisp salute.
Abbie whipped her gaze back to her rescuer.
The blond woman palmed the wheel as she changed gears, expertly sending the minivan into a skidding half circle so that it was pointing up the ramp instead of down. She gave Abbie a tight smile. “Relax, Miss Locke. If you had the good sense to run away from Flynn O’Toole, then you won’t have any trouble understanding what I’m about to tell you.”
Chapter 4
The warehouse looked as if it had been empty for years. The weeds that poked through the cracks in the asphalt loading area were waist high in places. Rust stained the overhead doors and trailed down the brick wall beside the corroded rain gutters. High in the wall beneath the eaves, the rising moon glinted from a row of windows. The darkness behind the broken panes stood out like missing teeth.
Flynn eased back on the throttle and let his bike coast toward the middle door. “It’s O’Toole,” he said quietly.
The door lifted on well-oiled rollers. Staff Sergeant Lang was on guard duty. He averted his rifle and motioned Flynn to drive inside.
The bike’s headlight revealed several parked vehicles beside a canvas tarp that formed a wall directly in front of him. Flynn took off his helmet and waited until the warehouse door rolled shut, then swung his leg off the bike and headed toward the tarp.
In fact, the tarp was one side of a large canvas military tent that the team had erected inside the warehouse as part of their security precautions. The ruse was low-tech, fast to implement and surprisingly effective when it came to ensuring the outside of the building continued to appear dark and deserted.
The operational detachments from Delta Force were accustomed to working on their own—after some spectacular failures decades ago when the force was first formed, they had learned the hard way not to trust outside intelligence. They’d also learned the more fingers there were in the pie, the more likely that matters would spiral out of their control. The best way to keep a secret was not to tell anyone, so besides the president and the brass at the Pentagon, no one knew that Eagle Squadron was here.
Flynn lifted aside a flap, stepped over a bundle of electrical cables that snaked along the cement floor and strode into a blaze of light and activity. The tent was organized into two areas: one for equipment, the other for personnel. To his left he saw two soldiers cleaning their guns while Rafe Marek sorted out the ordnance they’d assembled. On Flynn’s right, the team’s communications center had been set up on a table crammed with radio, telephone and computer equipment. Scale maps of the area and photos of known members of the LLA had been taped to the poles that supported the roof. Some folding chairs, a trestle table, a small refrigerator and a microwave oven marked the mess hall and beyond that were two rows of cots that would serve as their barracks for the duration of the mission.
They’d brought only the bare necessities to Washington when they’d loaded the transport plane at Fort Bragg—vehicles, equipment and shelter. This self-contained temporary base of operations could be packed up and stacked in the back of a truck as quickly as it had been assembled. The living conditions were cramped and far from comfortable, but the plumbing in the warehouse bathrooms worked, and Gonzales had coaxed hot water out of the showers. Compared to other places where Eagle Squadron had set up shop, this tent was downright luxurious.
As far as Flynn knew, the mission was still a go. According to the latest news, the damage done by the mix-up at the ransom drop and the scuffle at Abigail’s apartment appeared to have been successfully contained. To everyone’s relief, the team had moved swiftly enough so that no word had leaked to the media or to the local authorities. How much damage had been done to the Ladavians’ negotiations with the LLA was another matter.
Flynn turned right and headed toward the stocky, bald man who was seated in front of the radio. “Is there any word from the Ladavian Embassy yet, Chief?”
Chief Warrant Officer Esposito shook his head as he glanced up at Flynn. His forehead creased like a pit bull’s. “The LLA hasn’t been in contact since they put the boy on the line.”
“How’s Vilyas?”
“Not doing well. He had to be sedated.”
“That’s rough. He didn’t look in good shape when I saw him at the ransom drop.”
Esposito bared his teeth, exposing a flash of gold. “I can’t blame him. If anyone snatched one of my boys, I’d have to be tied down to keep from going after the bastards myself.”
“Do you think the Vilyas kid is still alive?”
“At this point, the odds are in his favor. The ransom money isn’t all the LLA are after. They want to terrorize Vilyas and the Ladavian government, and as long as their hostage
