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  She watched him gasping. She hadn’t landed a lethal blow, choosing to pull the strike at the last second, so he would eventually recover. Still, neither one of them would be mugging anyone in the near future.

  “Pick up your buddy and get the hell out of here before I tear your arms off and beat you over the head with them,” she said in a low voice as she knelt and grabbed the knife, eyes on her incapacitated assailants.

  The man on the ground groaned as the younger one staggered over to him.

  There was nothing more to see. It would take them a few moments to collect themselves and be able to walk, by which time, she’d be long gone.

  Jet scooped up the plastic bag with her clothes in it and backed out of the alley, watching the motley pair to ensure she wasn’t surprised by an unexpected burst of stamina from either man, then hurried up the block and entered her hotel. She was reassured to note that her respiration and heart rate were normal. This was the old Jet. The instincts that had served her so well had come back quickly.

  Not all of them, though.

  She hadn’t killed either mugger.

  In the old days, she wouldn’t have pulled the punch.

  Jet stripped off her clothes and took another shower with cool water before throwing herself onto the bed. She groped for the bedside lamp and switched it off, plunging the room into darkness, the only sound an occasional car rumbling down the street to the beach.

  She was out cold within sixty seconds.

  Chapter 9

  Two Years Ago, Trinidad

  “My water broke.”

  The nurse took Maya’s hand and led her to a seat. After a hurried discussion on the telephone, she turned to face Maya again.

  “The doctor is on his way, darling. Just come lie over here, and we’ll get you ready. Don’t worry about anything,” the nurse cooed in a heavy island lilt, motioning at a gurney an orderly had pushed through the double steel doors of the emergency room.

  With the nurse’s assistance, Maya did as instructed, and within a few minutes, she was wheeled into a private room. Another nurse took her vital signs and helped her into a hospital gown, hanging her clothes carefully in the small closet.

  The contractions were coming more regularly, and when the doctor rushed in wearing street clothes, she exhaled a sigh of relief. He performed a brief examination and listened to her stomach with a stethoscope, then told the nurse in a hushed voice to bring a portable ultrasound unit in immediately.

  “What’s wrong, Doctor?” Maya asked.

  “Probably nothing. Don’t worry. I just want to check something,” he said, but wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

  The nurse returned with a cart, and the doctor quickly put gel on the probe tip and moved it slowly around her abdomen. His expression as he watched the monitor was strained. When he looked up at her, he was frowning.

  “There’s a problem. The baby’s heart rate is in a critical zone. We’re going to have to do a C-section immediately.”

  “No! I don’t want one. I told you I want to deliver naturally.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no choice in the matter. I’m sorry. We don’t have any time to waste. Seconds count. Both you and the baby are in danger.” The doctor turned and issued a set of terse instructions to the nurse.

  Maya processed his statement, sweat rolling down her face.

  “Fine. Do what you have to do. Just make sure my baby is okay.”

  He nodded at the nurse, who hurried out of the room, returning in a few moments with an orderly pushing another gurney — this one with an IV bag suspended from a hanger. Maya shifted onto it with the orderly and the doctor’s help, then the nurse started an IV line and motioned to the doctor. He withdrew a syringe from his bag and approached her, then fixed her with a caring gaze.

  “We’re out of time. I’m going to give you the anesthesia and get you into surgery. The injection is much faster than gas. Are you ready?”

  She grimaced. “Yes.”

  He slipped the plastic cap off and then slipped the needle into the IV line.

  “All right. Here we go…” He slowly depressed the plunger. “Just relax. Everything is going to be okay. This will be over in no…”

  His voice seemed to be coming from a great distance as the room faded and everything went dark.

  ~ ~ ~

  The first thing she registered when she came to was the smell. The distinctive antiseptic odor typical in hospitals everywhere in the world. The lights were low, the temperature moderate. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was.

  In her hospital room. She was groggy and felt drugged. Everything was foggy and seemed muted, surreal, slower than reality. It took almost superhuman effort for her to turn her head and look at the window. It was dark out. It had been light when she’d arrived.

  Maya fumbled around until she found the call button. She pressed it after a few tries — her hands felt like someone else’s and seemed to lack the dexterity to operate the gizmo.

  It was all she could do to keep her eyes open.

  A nurse entered a few minutes later and moved to the side of the bed.

  “Take it easy, now. You’ve been through a lot,” she said with a look of concern on her face. She looked at the monitor and adjusted the sensor on Maya’s finger, then turned the volume on the box down a little.

  “I am taking it easy. I’m awake now. I want to see my baby. My daughter. Hannah.”

  The nurse’s eyes darted to the side, and she stepped away from the bed, suddenly all hurried efficiency.

  “All right, then. Let me call the doctor. He’ll be in shortly,” she promised, offering a timid smile. The nurse patted her hand and then eyed the IV before hurrying off, leaving Maya to the altered state that was a kind of chemical purgatory. She listened as the nurse’s footsteps echoed down the hallway outside of the door, then went back to drowsing uneasily, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  She didn’t know how much time had elapsed when the doctor entered and approached the bed.

  She looked up at him, her eyes struggling to stay focused. His face was impassive.

  “I want to see my daughter, Doctor.”

  “I can appreciate how you would.” He hesitated. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this…”

  “What? What isn’t easy to say?” Her eyes got larger, and her vital signs spiked, her pulse and blood pressure increasing by twenty percent in seconds. She fought against the fog, forcing herself to clarity.

  “You need to calm down. This isn’t good.” He picked up the phone on the side table and dialed an extension. “Nurse? I’m in room eleven. This is Doctor Barsal. Can you come here, please?”

  Ten seconds later, a nurse stuck her head in.

  The doctor moved to the door, and they had a hasty discussion before she left the room.

  “What’s happened, Doctor?” Maya blinked, straining to shed the drug haze.

  “I have bad news, I’m afraid,” he began. Her vitals continued to climb. He stopped talking as he watched the monitor.

  “Bad news? What kind of bad news?”

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  The drugs made it so hard to concentrate. The doctor wasn’t making any sense. He had bad news. What bad news? Was her baby sick? Had she been injured during the procedure?

  The nurse returned and quietly slipped the doctor a syringe. He moved to the IV and closed off the drip, then injected the contents into her line.

  “This is just a sedative. It will help you relax. It’s for your own good.”

  She felt instantly dreamier. Maybe he was right. It was good to relax. And he was helping her to do so…

  Her vital signs normalized almost immediately as her heart and breathing slowed.

  “That’s better. Now, as I was saying. I have some bad news. Your baby…there was a complication caused by the umbilical cord wrapping around her neck. I’m afraid we didn’t get to her in time. She…didn’t make it. We did everything we could, but it was too late.
I’m so sorry…”

  The walls seemed to close in as she listened to the impossible words. Her baby didn’t make it? That was crazy talk. What did that even mean, didn’t make it? Of course the baby made it. She didn’t understand.

  Maya shook her head. “No. I don’t understand.”

  The doctor frowned and took her limp hand in a caring gesture.

  “I know it’s a shock. I’m so sorry. But your baby was pronounced dead half an hour after the attempted delivery. I signed the death certificate myself. We did everything possible, but sometimes…” He shrugged and frowned again. “Sometimes nature beats us no matter how hard we try. It’s one of the great frustrations of medicine. We can only do so much, and then it’s out of our hands.”

  The words struck her like hammer blows, each one causing more damage than the last.

  Her baby was dead.

  Her daughter, Hannah, dead.

  Maya’s tortured scream was audible all the way to the elevators at the end of the wing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Maya stood by the side of the small plot as the tiny casket sank into the ground, the wind blowing huffs of salt air from the sea, carrying with it the smell of life. She hadn’t wanted anyone around — just her and her baby, her Hannah, gone forever before getting a chance to live.

  Tears rolled down her face, shoulders shaking as she sobbed her grief into the blue absolute of the heavens, repeating the same unanswered question over and over again. Why? Why Hannah? What kind of God would do this?

  The casket came to rest, and the two men who had lowered it into the grave removed the straps, pulling them free before the taller one looked at her.

  “I’m sorry for your loss. Would you like to put in the first soil?”

  Maya moved woodenly to the banked-up pile and grasped a fistful of moist loam, vision blurred, her breath rasping in harsh bursts as she struggled to retain her composure. She stood above her hopes and dreams, now dead as her soul, and paused to offer a blessing before relaxing her fingers and letting the cool earth fall from her hand.

  She stood at the edge of the gravesite, crying, alone, as grieving mothers had cried at their children’s graves since time immemorial, her pain so visceral and intense she wanted to join her daughter in death’s indifferent embrace. But that wasn’t to be. The unlucky suffered on in a hell of their own devising while innocents paid the ultimate price in homage to a frivolous universe.

  Maya knelt at the small headstone, as she had every week for the last two years.

  “Sweetheart, there isn’t a minute that goes by that I don’t think about you. I wanted you so much…”

  Her voice cracked. She couldn’t go on. She fell forward and sobbed quietly, supporting herself with one hand clutching the grass that had grown on the small mound that was the barrow of her treasure.

  Maya stayed in place, head bowed, her anguish a raw nerve, the most devastating blow of her existence nestled a few feet beneath her. For the umpteenth time, she railed at an uncaring deity for taking her baby instead of her. The rage came, as always, like a black tsunami; it was all she could do to fight it back and find the will to go on another day.

  Eventually, she stood, streaks of sorrow traced upon her face.

  “I’ll be back again next week, Hannah. I love you. Mommy loves you. Always.”

  Chapter 10

  Present Day, Moscow, Russia

  “Is this some kind of joke? Are you testing my patience?”

  Grigenko’s voice boomed off the walls of his penthouse office, the lights of Moscow spread out below him. He was screaming into the phone, incredulous.

  “No, sir. I’m afraid it isn’t a joke. We lost everyone except for three men.” The voice on the phone was deadly earnest. Yuri Kevlev was a seasoned professional who had been operating a private army for years. He was without question the best.

  Grigenko paced to the window, stupefied.

  “One…girl…did this?” Grigenko pronounced the word like an expletive.

  “She may have had help. We don’t know for sure. But yes, barring assistance we’re unaware of, she killed most of the group.”

  “This is not the result I pay you for.”

  “No, sir, I agree it isn’t.” There wasn’t much to disagree with.

  “Did you send untrained men? Green personnel? How do you explain this?” Grigenko demanded.

  “No, we didn’t, sir. These were experienced veterans. All ex-Spetsnaz, as always. No corners were cut. I, frankly, am at a loss…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  This was a disaster. Grigenko sat back down in his executive chair and slammed his fist on the table in frustration.

  “I have,” he seethed. The silence on the line was deafening. “Are we in any way exposed?”

  “Of course not…I mean, no, sir. We have taken all the usual precautions. Nobody had any ID. There are no criminal files available on any of them through Interpol. Their identities will remain a mystery. Nothing leads back to any of us,” Yuri assured.

  “And what are you doing to re-acquire the girl?” Grigenko asked, through clenched teeth.

  “Everything possible. But as you know, once a target is alerted, it can become extremely difficult. Especially if they have decent knowledge of tradecraft, which I think it’s obvious this woman does.”

  “I want no expense spared. None. I don’t care what it costs or how many men it takes. I want her head brought to me so I can piss on it. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Abundantly, sir.”

  “And Yuri? I can’t express to you how disappointed I am with how this was handled.”

  “I understand. There will, of course, be no charge for the failed operation. And you can trust that I have taken this personally. I will be handling every aspect of the sanction from this point on. You have my guarantee that I will make things right.”

  “I thought your contracts came with an implicit guarantee.”

  “They do, sir. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It cannot be allowed to stand. My reputation depends on my ability to perform. So I will perform.”

  “You’d better.” Grigenko slammed down the phone, fuming.

  A straightforward execution, routine, like countless others he’d commissioned, suddenly went south on them and became a massacre? He was flabbergasted. This woman had been given no warning. She couldn’t have known anything. He had been getting daily reports of her movements, and she suspected nothing. Then a team of the most lethal killers in the world moves in to terminate her, and suddenly, she not only gives them the slip, but also paints the streets with their blood?

  What the hell was going on?

  Jet was up early the next morning, the clamor of traffic below her window acting as an alarm clock. She took a shower, noting that her hand was free of infection. The mirror confirmed the shoulder and knife wounds were also clear. She turned and studied her face. The discoloration on her jaw was noticeable, and probably would be for at least another couple of days. She’d need to get some makeup to cover it so as not to arouse attention.

  She checked the time and decided on some exercise before breakfast — a daily regimen she’d adhered to since her teen years. After pulling on the shorts and T-shirt, she strapped on the backpack and grabbed a hand towel and her water bottle, then hit the stairs.

  Once at the beach, she took off down the sand at a run, moving rapidly past the vendors, who were just setting up for the day. This was their reality, selling trinkets or snacks along a desolate stretch of the Caribbean in a city most had never heard of. They would live, love, fight and die there, and none of it would ultimately change much of anything.

  She pushed the fatalistic thoughts aside as she stretched out along the strand, sweat beginning to trickle down her back as the morning heat increased under the ascent of the sun. A gathering of gulls hopped in and out of the creeping tide while pelicans wheeled overhead, occasionally dive-bombing for their breakfast beyond the surf line.

  On her return to the ho
tel, she stopped at an internet cafe that featured ten-year-old PCs, and slipped the proprietress some coins in exchange for a half hour of time. She logged on and began a search for any news from Trinidad. It didn’t take her long to find it.

  Every online site on the island had extensive coverage of the bloodbath. All described it as an unprecedented outburst of regrettable drug-related violence, with speculations about cartels battling for supremacy over territory. Photos of the bullet-riddled SUV and car abounded, as did several grisly crime scene photos of blanket-draped forms surrounded by police.

  And there was her passport photo. She was listed as wanted for questioning — ‘to help the authorities with their inquiries’, as the hacks had tactfully phrased it.

  Reading on, she saw that the coverage didn’t really have any substance, and the articles were all essentially the same. Sensationalistic descriptions of running gun battles and carnage, all of them gravitating to the organized crime angle. By some miracle, no tourists or other innocents had been harmed, and Carnival festivities were still in full swing, albeit with a heightened police presence.

  Two of the papers had posted short accounts of the stolen boat and the explosion in Venezuelan waters off of a remote, uninhabited stretch of coast. None made any connection between the shootings and the theft — it was viewed as a separate incident. A government official made a terse statement about a probable gas fire onboard and left it at that.

  One of the articles described the dead men as from former Soviet bloc countries. Nothing more specific. That tied in with what she’d seen of them — obviously not Latin. It went on to hint that perhaps the Russian mob had made a play against local drug lords and discovered the hard way that they weren’t welcome.

  None of the articles mentioned that all of the gunmen had been equipped with identical silenced weapons. The police had probably left that out of their press briefings.