Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Catya’s pulse had slowly returned to normal when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and stared at the cracked screen and the text message from an unknown number.
Unknown: Make it out?
Catya: Who is this?
Unknown: Unwanted sidekick.
A frown pulled at Catya’s brow. Atkins
Catya: Where were you when the shit hit the fan?
Unknown: Got out.
Catya: Some backup
Unknown: You work alone
Catya: The man who left through the rear exit?
Unknown: Neutralized
Catya: The disk?
She’d only asked to see if he was aware of its existence. A long pause made her eyes narrow. He was aware.
Catya: ?
Unknown: They want it and will kill to get it.
Catya: Gia wanted me to get it back. You need to hand it over to me.
Unknown: Can’t. Warn your loved ones. They’ll use them as leverage. And ditch your phone. They can trace you.
Catya: Who are they?
She waited for his response. When none came, her gut knotted. A heavy feeling pressed against her chest.
She stared down at the last text from Atkins.
Warn your loved ones.
As an assassin, she didn’t let many people close. Only three came to mind.
Her parents comprised two of the three.
Her mother and father had relocated from Russia to Sentra, Portugal, changed their names and sank into anonymity when they’d walked away from their home country and spying careers, sick of killing and the direction Russian leadership had taken with the invasion of Ukraine. An only child, she’d been close to them. They’d taught her everything they knew about being sleeper agents, spies and, eventually, double agents.
Her mother had taken up painting, and her father had embraced gardening. He grew beautiful orchids.
Catya called her mother, knowing she’d respond even in the middle of the night. Though they’d retired, they didn’t let down their guard where she was concerned.
Her mother’s phone rang four times before her voicemail answered with a message in Portuguese.
Catya ended the call and tried her father’s number.
Again, the phone rang four times before his voicemail answered.
She left a message,
Catya: Get Mom and leave. Now.
As she ended the call, a text came through.
She almost sighed in relief when she saw it was from her mother’s number.
Her blood froze in her veins at the message.
Mom: TOO LATE
A video popped up on her display, buffering as with the beginning image chilling her to her very bones. Her parents were kneeling in their living room, hands tied behind their backs. Their faces were bruised and bloodied. Men wearing black ski masks stood with guns pointed at their heads.
Another man in black stepped in front of the camera and spoke in English with a gravelly voice. “Bring that disk to Bruges in forty-eight hours, or we’ll kill everyone you give a fuck about.”
Her father stared straight at the camera and shook his head. “Don’t do it. They’ll kill us anyway.”
The man who’d voiced the threat turned and punched her father in the face.
“No,” Catya whispered in horror.
Her father slammed his body into the man holding a gun to his head, knocking him to the ground.
The man’s ski mask fell off, exposing his face.
Catya’s father lunged to his feet, bent and rushed at the one holding a gun to her mother’s head.
The man raised his pistol, aiming at her father.
Her mother shifted, blocking the barrel of the gun with her head.
The gun went off.
Blood and brain matter splattered over Catya’s father. Her mother pitched forward into her husband’s chest.
He bellowed, the sound so visceral it ripped through Catya, gutting her.
Unable to look away, Catya watched as her father staggered to his feet and charged the man who’d killed her mother.
The man stepped backward, unloading every bullet left in his handgun into her father’s chest.
It didn’t stop him. He plowed into the man, knocking him backward until he hit the wall so hard his head cracked loudly.
Then her father and the man who’d killed her parents slid to the ground unmoving.
“Fuck,” the man who’d sent the threat turned to the camera. “This will happen to every person you ever gave a shit about. Be in Bruges in forty-eight hours with the disk or watch the next one die.”
The video ended, frozen on the carnage of her parents’ slaughter.
A huge lump lodged in her throat, blocking the air to her lungs.
Dead.
Her parents were dead.
Only one other person meant anything to her. She’d left him because of her chosen profession as an assassin, afraid the people impacted by her past hits would use him to get to her. She couldn’t care about him without putting him at risk.
At one time, she thought she could, even going so far as to move in with him in Athens. Her lapse in caution had almost gotten her and her lover killed. She’d left that day and hadn’t tried to contact him again.
Would whoever had killed her parents know about him?
Could they possibly link her to the former SAS Scotsman?
She called the number she hadn’t called in months, a plan forming in her head.
When he answered, all the emotions of losing him and her parents rushed up and choked off the air to her vocal cords.
“Catya?” His sexy Scottish brogue flowed over her like warm syrup, filling all the cold, empty places in her life, if only for a moment. “Catya? Are you all right?”
“Oh, Fearghas.” She swallowed hard on the lump in her throat. “My parents... They’re dead.” Her voice caught on a sob.
“Where are you?” he demanded. “I’m coming.”
“No.” She shook her head, though he couldn’t see her. “You can’t come. I called to warn you. They might come for you next.”
“Catya, breathe,” he said softly. “Tell me what’s happening. Slowly.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The oxygen helped to steady her. “You have to leave wherever you are now. Go into hiding until I figure out who’s behind this.”
“Why are they doing this?” Fearghas asked. “What do they want?”
“A disk,” she said. “They want me to deliver it in forty-eight hours.”
“Where are you making the exchange?”
“Bruges, Belgium,” she said. “Only one problem.”
“Just one?” Fearghas asked gently.
She gave a short bark of laughter without humor. “I don’t have it.”
“Who does?” he asked.
“Peter Atkins,” she answered.
“Then don’t go,” Fearghas said.
Her jaw hardened. “I have to. They killed my parents. I need to know who they are. They must pay for what they did.”
“You can’t do it alone,” Fearghas insisted.
The video of her parents’ murders replayed in her mind. Catya’s fists clenched. “I can and will.” Before he could say anything else, she hurried on. “My phone has been compromised. You won’t be able to reach me at this number. Get out of Athens.”
“I’m not in Athens,” he said. “I’m in Amman.”
“Then get out of Amman,” she said. “They probably know where you are. They found my parents.” She gulped hard on a sob and continued in a whisper, “You must hide.”
“No way,” Fearghas said. “I’ll see ya in Bruges.”
“No. They’ll kill you like they killed my parents. Don’t come.”
“I’m coming. Like it or not,” he stated firmly.
She wouldn’t dissuade him once he’d made up his mind. If he got to Bruges before she did, he’d die. “Fine. Then meet me in Amsterdam. We’ll travel together to Bruges once we have the disk.”
“It’s a big city. How will I find you?” Fearghas asked.
“Show up on the MX3D bridge in the red-light district at eight o’clock this evening. I’ll find you. Wear a disguise. I don’t know how many people are involved or are following me.”
“I’ll be fine, lass,” he said softly.
“Just don’t get yourself killed.”
Tires squealed on the pavement outside the church garden.
“Fuck,” Catya muttered and pushed to her feet. “Gotta go.” She ended the call, ran to the back of the garden, scaled the wall and dropped to the ground on the other side.
She took a few precious seconds to stomp on the cell phone until the lights blinked out, and it was dead, along with the video of the murder of her mother and father.
Catya squared her shoulders. She couldn’t grieve. Not now. The people responsible for her parents’ deaths had to pay, and she had to find Atkins and the disk to get it into the right hands.
Whose hands those were was an entirely different question. Once she had the disk, she’d figure that out as well. And she’d kill Atkins for taking it.
The men who’d found her in the churchyard couldn’t follow her any further without the cell phone.
She ran several blocks, darting in and out of streets and alleys until she was well over a mile from the church.
Catya made her way toward the center of Rome with nightclubs that stayed open into the early morning hours.
One of her contacts lived near there. She dropped her Baretta in his mail slot. He’d hold it for her until she could get back to claim it. The man would do anything for her after she’d taken care of his sister’s rapist. That bastard had lied his way through court and had been freed to rape three more women before Catya had put an end to his terror.
After ditching her weapon, Catya found a taxi to take her to the airport.
Ducking her head low, she hurried inside, found an all-night souvenir shop and purchased a ball cap, an oversized sweatshirt and a box of chocolates.
In a ladies’ room, she hiked her leg up to the sink and ran water over the flesh wound on her calf. Then she rinsed the blood off her pants. She couldn’t do much about the bullet hole, but the pants were dark, and the hole was on the back side. Hopefully, no one would be staring at her pantleg from behind.
Catya dragged the sweatshirt over her jacket. She pulled her go-to disguise from her pocket and glued a fake beard over her mouth and chin. She attached matching bushy eyebrows over her own.
She had the restroom to herself as she wound her long black braid into a coil, tucked it into the ball cap and pulled the brim low over her forehead. From another pocket, she removed a passport. The picture inside matched her disguise—Willem Bakker, a Dutch national. The sweatshirt over the leather jacket made her body bulkier and her shoulders broader.
An older woman wandered into the restroom and blinked when she spotted Catya in her beard.
Catya muttered an apology in Italian for mistaking the women’s toilet for the men’s. She hurried out, made her way to a ticket counter and purchased a one-way flight to Amsterdam, flashing her passport to the woman behind the counter.
Flying into Brussels would get her to Bruges faster. Not that it would do her any good. She didn’t have the disk. Having ditched her gun earlier, she needed to pick up another weapon, plenty of ammunition and anything else she might need to bring to justice the men who’d murdered her mother and father.
She had a small apartment in a shadowy corner of Amsterdam, rented under one of her many aliases. Her laptop gave her access to the internet and, from there, the dark web. She’d tap into any information she could find about the whereabouts of a certain rogue MI6 agent carrying a valuable disk. Forty-eight hours wasn’t much when she had no idea where to find Atkins, retrieve the disk and return to Bruges.
What if she couldn’t find Atkins and the disk in that time?
She snorted softly. It wasn’t like she’d give them the disk either way. Having possession of the disk might give her the leverage she needed to ferret out who was behind this operation. She’d hold onto it until she got to the source—the people from MI6 who’d sent her on a suicide mission.
With only thirty minutes until her flight took off, she made her way through security, her box of chocolates her only carry-on. For all appearances, she was a man on his way to visit his sweetheart with a gift of chocolates.
With her senses on high alert, she made it to her gate without incident. Not until she was on the plane, the doors had been closed and the plane pushed away from the jetway, did she relax. Hopefully, by destroying her cell phone, she’d severed her attackers’ ability to track her. That didn’t mean she could let down her guard.
She hadn’t lived as long as she had by throwing caution to the winds.
Catya used her flight time to go through everything she knew or had observed that night. She concluded that her handler had sent her to kill Gia, giving Atkins the chance to steal the disk. Obviously, Atkins had known about the disk. Catya, on the other hand, had been set up. Had the people behind the setup also been the ones who’d sent the other gunmen to kill her, allowing Atkins to get away? Or were they in with the people who’d killed her parents? Or were they all in it together?
Her handler would deny any wrongdoing. Since he’d more or less sent her to her death, she couldn’t trust him.
She had to find Atkins. He’d have answers.
What the hell was on that disk, and how deep within the MI6 did the betrayal go?
Fearghas Gordon stepped off the train in Amsterdam shortly after seven o’clock in the evening. With an eight o’clock deadline to get to the designated meeting location, he hurried out of the station and into the narrow streets of old Amsterdam.
He would have left on an earlier train, but he’d let his new boss, former US Navy SEAL, Ace Hammerson, know of his plans to help an old friend in trouble.
As one of the newest members of the Brotherhood Protectors International, Fearghas couldn’t refuse the advice and guidance. Yes, he’d often been undercover as an SAS agent for the UK. He knew how to conduct a covert operation.
He didn’t know how he, a former UK SAS special operations type, fit in this new job with the Brotherhood Protectors International, the most recent addition to the organization, initially founded by Hank Patterson, another former US Navy SEAL.
The Brotherhood Protectors had been staffed primarily with highly-trained special operations types from the US. After Fearghas had helped a member of Hank’s team, Ace Hammerson, in a successful rescue operation, he’d been offered a position as a founding member of the international office of the Brotherhood Protectors.
After leaving the UK’s SAS, Fearghas had freelanced as a bodyguard to some rich and famous businessmen and celebrities passing through Europe. He liked that he could pick and choose the jobs.
He'd been surprised that Ace had told him to consider helping his friend as his first assignment with the Brotherhood. In fact, he and their tech support guy, Dmytro, a former Ukrainian with mad computer skills and nefarious contacts, Ace and Jasmine Nassar, a former Israeli Sayeret Matkal soldier, comprised the entire team.
Ace assured him they would interview several others they hoped would join them soon. Fearghas had recommended an old buddy of his from the UK SAS. In the meantime, they would be looking at real estate in Zurich for their European office.
Fearghas had been in Amman, Jordan, when Catya’s call had come through. Ace had quickly booked him on the first plane to Zurich to meet with Dmytro, who would set him up with anything he might need for the assignment.
Dmytro had picked him up at the airport, and in a few short hours, he’d come through with new passports. Now, Fearghas could move about Europe under several different names and nationalities.
The Ukrainian had also outfitted him with communications devices, a burner phone, a satellite phone, a handgun and a shoulder holster. At the last minute, he’d added a wicked KA-Bar knife typically used by US Navy SEALs.
Fearghas didn’t ask where he’d acquired all the equipment he’d loaded him with and Dmytro didn’t offer any information.
“You’re one of us, now,” the older man had said. “We take care of family.”
Fearghas preferred his own pistols, but he didn’t have time to return to his Athens home to secure one. He presumed he’d need every bit of artillery he could manage to pack.
Because he was carrying a gun on his person, he didn’t attempt to fly from Zurich to Amsterdam. Traveling by train would take longer, but it would also avoid the hassle of smuggling a gun through customs at an airport.
The chilly air and fine mist felt good on his face after being on a train for over eight hours. He lifted his face to the low-lying clouds, keeping vigilant through his peripheral vision, searching for anyone who might pose a threat.
On the train ride out, he’d gotten off the train and back on at several stops, watching carefully for anyone following him.
He hadn’t spotted anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Catya’s warning echoed in his thoughts. He’d been chomping at the bit to get on the train and get to her as soon as possible. Arriving early at the designated location would do him little good if he didn’t know where to find her. Eight o’clock was as good as it would get. A glance at his watch assured him he’d be a few minutes early despite leaving later than he’d wanted.
He hurried through the streets, carefully staying out of the bicycle lanes. Even at this hour, plenty of riders traversed the city on the most popular mode of transportation. They didn’t appreciate pedestrians wandering into the lanes marked explicitly for bicycles. There were more bicycles than people in a city of over eight hundred thousand residents.
Fearghas crossed a bridge and continued through the cobblestone streets, slowing as he neared the newest bridge in Amsterdam.
The MX3D bridge had been designed by a Dutch engineer and built of steel using a 3D printing technique. Fearghas had seen pictures of this S-shaped bridge and had always wanted to see it. From what he could see in the near-dark, the pictures didn’t do the structure justice. He'd spend more time studying the beautiful design if he weren’t concerned for Catya’s life.
He glanced around, searching for Catya and anyone who might interfere with their rendezvous.
A couple stood in the middle of the bridge, locked in an embrace, kissing as if they didn’t care who was watching.
A bum sat with his back against the wall of a building with a red light glowing over the doorway and ladies standing, sitting or lounging behind windows, displayed like merchandise.
Fearghas wasn’t as much concerned by the ladies in the windows as he was by the constant flow of tourists crossing the bridge.
The streets remained active, especially in the red-light district, until the early morning hours. Any one of the supposed tourists could be a threat, looking for him, or looking for Catya.
He glanced at his watch again.
Two minutes until eight.
Movement in the corner of his vision caught his attention.
He turned to face the couple who’d been kissing as he’d approached the bridge.
The woman, slender, dark-haired and wearing a long black fashionable trench coat, held out a camera and said something in what Fearghas guessed was Dutch.
He raised a hand, shaking his head.
She frowned, pushing the camera toward him. In a split second, she dropped the camera, grabbed his hand and twisted his arm up and behind his back while the man rushed forward and threw a punch toward Fearghas’s face.
Fearghas ducked but not soon enough to avoid contact.
The blow glanced off his left temple, hitting hard enough that he saw stars.
The woman pushed his arm up behind him and pressed it between his shoulder blades with one hand, pressing a knife against his throat with the other. “Move, and I’ll slit your throat.”
She spoke English with a Yorkshire accent.
Fearghas could kick himself. What kind of bodyguard wouldn’t see that coming? Damn, he was rusty. Now, he was a hostage, and he was sure they’d use him to get to Catya. He couldn’t let that happen.
The man who had been sitting with his back to the wall under the red light joined the couple and grabbed one of Fearghas’s arms. The other man gripped the other arm. Though he fought to get free, between the three of his attackers, they managed to secure his wrists behind his back with duct tape.
The busy bridge of a few moments ago, now strangely deserted, made Fearghas wonder where all the tourists had gone so quickly.
He couldn’t see his watch, but he knew it had to be eight already. Catya would be looking for him on this bridge. The assassin was smart enough not to walk into a trap.
Once they had his wrists secure, the woman patted his jacket, locating the handgun in the shoulder holster.
Before they could pull back the jacket and divest him of his weapon, Fearghas jerked out of their grip and lunged forward.
One of the men snagged his elbow and spun him around.
Fearghas kept backing up, dragging the man who held his elbow toward the bridge rail.
The other man rushed forward, reaching for Fearghas’s other arm. A loud horn honked, coming from the canal below him.
Banking on the momentum of the man rushing toward him, Fearghas let him grab his arm and then shoved his feet hard against the ground and threw himself backward.
Over the rail, he went. At the last moment, the two men released their holds on his arms to keep from falling with him.
Fearghas dropped into the canal. Without his hands free to swim, he sank below the surface.