Chapter 14
RAPP froze.
He’d been mid-inhale when the darkness had shifted, but now his chest could have been made of stone.
If he’d been able to detect his pursuer, the operative might also see him.
Rapp concentrated on the musty air, the heavy darkness, and the hard stone beneath his feet.
He ignored the tightness in his chest, his burning leg muscles and pounding pulse.
Like an angler who’s just seen his bobber dance, Rapp focused entirely on the dark passageway.
For what seemed like an eternity, the tomb-like silence mocked him.
Then he heard another footfall.
A moment later, a figure emerged from the tunnel.
The man’s gaze swept past the crevice where Rapp was crouched, before shifting to the tunnel to Rapp’s left.
Voices echoed from the tour group and the man cocked his head, reminding Rapp of a German shepherd.
He stepped into the pool of light cast by the buzzing fluorescent bulb attached to the rock ceiling.
He was in his thirties, with a slim build, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, slacks, and leather shoes.
His face was clean-shaven and his dark hair neatly combed.
His swarthy complexion wouldn’t have been out of place in Spain, Greece, Italy, or a half a dozen other countries.
He could have been just another tourist.
He wasn’t.
He didn’t walk into the room. He flowed.
Though he wasn’t carrying a weapon, Rapp could envision the man as part of a tactical stack with an assault rifle tucked against his shoulder.
Rather than taking in the recently restored grotto tile, the Roman numerals chiseled into the dressed stone, or even the helpful placards erected around the excavation extolling the cavern’s history, the man only had eyes for what he didn’t see.
His target.
His gaze flickered across the room’s darker spaces, passing over Rapp without pausing.
Even trained observers tended to see what they expected to find.
The operative was looking for someone, but his subconscious was cueing his search toward a human-sized, standing male, not a crouched shape hugging the wall.
The man took a second step, putting him more directly in the light and even with Rapp’s hiding spot.
Rapp held his breath a second time.
This was the moment of truth.
Perhaps half a step more and the operative would be right in front of him.
The fluorescent light would already be affecting the man’s night vision, rendering the shadows even more impenetrable, and Rapp had already cleared the loose stone from the floor to ensure the debris didn’t shift at an inopportune time.
Once the man’s back was turned, Rapp would have options.
Plenty of them.
The operative froze mid-stride. At first, Rapp couldn’t determine what had caused the operative to halt.
Then he heard it.
Voices.
A child and at least two adults.
The operative pivoted toward the chatter, and a handful of stones dropped from the ceiling onto Rapp’s shoulder.
The man clocked the motion.
And Rapp.
His eyes widened and he reached for his waistband.
Rapp shot from his bolt-hole and drove his shoulder into the man’s quads.
Then he clasped his hands across the operative’s hamstrings in a wrestler’s Gable grip.
With a fluidity born from countless hours on the mats, Rapp finished the double-leg takedown by snatching the operative off his feet and burying the man’s back into the rock.
Perfect.
Or at least it should have been.
Unfortunately, Rapp wasn’t the only one who’d spent time in a dojo.
The man’s arm snaked across Rapp’s throat as the operative tried to cinch a guillotine choke home. The operative’s muscular forearm felt like an iron collar tightening around Rapp’s windpipe.
The babbling voices grew ever closer.
Releasing his grip on the man’s legs, Rapp did something that was frowned upon in every gym save the one run by Stanley Hurley.
Swimming his left arm between the operative’s legs, he grabbed hold of his testicles and ripped.
The positioning wasn’t ideal, but, as with horseshoes and hand grenades, sometimes close really was good enough.
The vise crushing his windpipe loosened.
Rapp popped his head free of the choke and snapped his forehead into the bridge of his opponent’s nose. The blow didn’t shatter the thin bone, but the collision bounced the man’s skull off the dusty tile.
He groaned and went limp.
Rapp wanted to bash his head into the floor a few more times, as safe always beat sorry, but the trio of voices grew louder.
Instead, Rapp made do with a straight jab into the operative’s solar plexus.
His breath rushed out in a garlic-smelling torrent and he moaned again.
Hooking his hands beneath the operative’s armpits, Rapp began to drag him toward the dark crevice where he’d been hiding.
“My name is Dixie Arthur. What’s yours?”
The question was asked in a little girl’s precocious voice. The child couldn’t be much more than six or seven, and she strode into the chamber like she owned the place.
“Kevin,” Rapp said. “Nice to meet you, Dixie.”
The little girl looked from Rapp to the operative. Her lips twisted into a frown. “Is your friend okay?”
“Fine,” Rapp said. “He just hit his head.”
“Do you need a doctor?”
This time the question came from the man who’d entered the chamber behind the girl. A woman trailed after him, looking at something over her shoulder, but at her companion’s question, she transferred her attention to Rapp.
And pursed her lips.
Fantastic.
He hadn’t been able to get the operative into the shadows, but Rapp had hoped that whoever belonged to the voices would be too caught up in their family vacation to pay him much mind. But instead of the stereotypically self-absorbed American family, he’d landed Nancy Drew and her parents.
“No need,” Rapp said. “He had one spritz too many before the tour and wasn’t looking where he was going. He crunched his head on a brick jutting from the wall and said he felt woozy. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“Head wounds can be dangerous,” the woman said with a certainty Rapp found disconcerting.
“My wife’s an ER resident,” the man said.
“The chief ER resident,” the girl said.
“It’s okay, Dixie,” the woman said with a smile. The grin vanished when she turned back to Rapp. “Let me take a look.”
Her no-nonsense expression suggested that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
This put Rapp in a pickle. Any competent medical professional would triage the man’s injuries and know that they weren’t from a slip and fall.
Had it just been the daughter and absent-minded father, Rapp could have talked his way out of the encounter.
This wouldn’t work on a chief ER resident.
The woman had likely treated domestic violence victims and would have a finely tuned BS detector.
He could not allow her to examine the operative, but he wasn’t sure how to deter the woman.
“Mommy, he’s right—his friend is fine.”
Rapp spun.
The operative was running deeper into the cavern. He wasn’t so much sprinting as careening from wall to wall like a pinball smashing against the flippers, but unless Rapp was willing to give chase, the man was gone.
Flashing the family a tight grin, Rapp headed in the opposite direction.
He’d passed several partially excavated passageways leading to the surface on his way to this chamber. The dirt and grime wouldn’t do wonders for his clothes, but he’d emerge onto the street out of sight of the surveillance team.
Hopefully.
Either way, he needed to get out of this subterranean trap and back to the surface before the operative returned with reinforcements. With the element of surprise long gone, Rapp figured he’d probably end up with more than just a headache if he encountered the surveillance team a second time.