Shadows Rising Read online

  Adriana didn’t have to turn to see who it was. “Hello again, June. Good to see you.” Then she turned and looked over her shoulder at her friend. “He was a feisty one.” She pointed at Abdi.

  “Yes, yes, he was. Shot two civilians in the process.”

  “I will shoot the both of you, too,” Abdi said, looking up from the floor. His lip was bloody and swollen. Both eyes were black and equally enlarged from the rush of fluid flowing to the wounds and bruising. A long cut was oozing blood on his right cheek.

  “Probably not, Qufar,” June said, stepping away from the wall. “You don’t know who you’re talking to, do you?”

  “American whores,” he spat. A glop of blood and spittle hit the floor.

  There were four men in suits in the room to watch over the prisoner. One of them stepped forward, about to backhand the guy for his rude comment, but June raised her hand and stopped him.

  The guard stepped back to his position and folded his hands in front of his waist.

  “You know that guys like you make it hard on the rest of the Middle Eastern population, right?” Adriana asked, addressing the prisoner.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “Yeah. You think your little holy war is helping your cause, but in fact, more and more Muslims are getting sick and tired of your shenanigans. You’re giving them a bad name, making it harder for them to travel and enjoy their lives, and honestly, they hate you for it.”

  He chuckled. “You think I care what you say? Do you think I care about the hordes of nonbelievers or those who sit on a fence, tolerating the poison dripping from the lips of the West? If I make their lives harder, good. They deserve no better. Allah himself should punish them.”

  June shook her head. “He’s been like this since he got here. Won’t listen to reason.” She turned to the prisoner. “She’s right, you know. Guys like you give Islam a bad name.”

  Adriana thought about one of her friends, a woman from Istanbul that had moved to the United States. They’d met in college. Last Adriana heard, she was living somewhere in the Southeast. She’d kick herself if it was Atlanta, but it had been years since the two connected. She remembered being at her friend’s house when breaking news came across the television screen, showing scenes from the 9/11 attacks.

  Adriana’s friend had cursed loudly, letting slip a stream of profanity. There was no wondering why her friend was so angry. Adriana already knew. Acts of terror by extremists made life difficult for the rest of Islam. It would be weeks, maybe months, before her friend could even walk into a grocery store without being sized up by prying, paranoid eyes.

  Men like Abdi were the cause of those problems. Not to mention the fact that they took the lives of innocent civilians all over the world without the slightest hint of remorse. That lack of guilt was splashed all over the prisoner’s face, still visible through the layers of swelling, blood, and sweat.

  June nodded to the side and made her way over to the corner of the room. Adriana followed to hear what her friend had to say.

  When they were by a window, June looked out into the courtyard below. The sun bathed the facility in its warm embrace. Only a single cloud distorted the otherwise perfectly blue sky.

  “He won’t talk,” June said.

  “Looks like you worked him over pretty good.”

  “Didn’t matter, almost like he enjoyed it.”

  Adriana turned her head and looked over her shoulder at the man bound to a chair.

  “How far did you go?” Adriana asked.

  June nodded in the guy’s direction. “Just what you see.”

  Adriana nodded. “Leave me with him.”

  June’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “Adriana, I don’t think—”

  “I’ll be fine. Let me have ten minutes with him.”

  A sigh escaped June’s lips, and she looked over at the prisoner. “Take as much time as you need. But I’m telling you, he’s not going to talk.”

  “We’ll see.”

  June motioned for the guards to follow her out of the room. When the door closed behind them, Adriana stalked over to her quarry and stood behind him for a long moment. She put her hand on his right shoulder and ran her finger, seductively, up his neck to his ear.

  “So, what kinds of things did they ask you, Qufar?” She used his first name both to taunt him and to get his attention.

  “I won’t tell you anything. I am here on a mission from Allah. I answer only to him.”

  Adriana nodded. “I understand that.” She tousled his hair and then stepped around in front of him. “Except that I’m pretty sure Allah won’t appreciate you lusting after a woman.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

  She pulled her tank top down a little to show off her cleavage. He couldn’t help but notice her skin, her pouting breasts, concealed by a thin layer of cotton. He shifted uneasily and averted his gaze to the wall in the far corner.

  She lifted her leg and straddled his lap, lowering herself down slowly onto his thighs.

  He moved again, trying to wiggle free, but it was no use. He was trapped.

  Her scent wafted into his nostrils, filling him with the sultry smells of flowers and sandalwood. His heart pulsed quicker now no matter how much he tried to fight it. Adriana knew it would only be a matter of time until other things started getting aroused.

  “Get off of me, devil woman,” he said and spit in her face.

  She fought off the disgust rising in her throat and wiped her cheek with the bottom of her shirt. In doing so, she revealed a section of her firm abdomen and a small patch of the black bra she was wearing under her top.

  He swallowed hard and forced his eyes away again.

  “How long has it been since you were with a woman, Qufar?” She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “Too long?”

  His breathing was quicker, full of desperation.

  “I wonder if you’ve ever been with a woman.”

  “I…I have…long ago,” he confessed. “But no more. I am a servant of Allah now. Nothing can change that.”

  She ran her fingers up the inside of his thigh. “I doubt that. And I doubt you’ve ever been with a woman like me.”

  “No. Please. I’m…I’m not permitted.” He shifted and jolted like a bucking bull, but there was no getting her off him.

  Adriana squeezed her legs tight against the outside of his. “Not permitted? Why is that?”

  “To…gain admittance to…heaven, we must be pure.”

  “Oh, I see.” She stroked the back of his head, her fingers getting tangled in the greasy black hair. He smelled like a homeless person who hadn’t bathed in a month, but that didn’t matter. She had him.

  She reached down and unfastened the button on his pants.

  “No, you can’t do this,” he said.

  “No? Sure seems like I’m doing it.”

  “Please, stop.”

  “I’ll stop…when I’m done.”

  “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

  “I think you know,” she said and let her finger drift down to the zipper.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You can’t—or you won’t?”

  “I’m not permitted,” he repeated.

  She leaned back, taking her hands off him, and removed her shirt. There was nothing between him and her but a thin black bra.

  “Please,” he begged.

  “They beat you up, didn’t they?” she asked. “They worked you over to find out what you know about the Red Ring.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. I told them nothing!”

  “But you’ll tell me.”

  “Never! I’ll never tell a whore like you.” The insult flew from his mouth with a mist of spittle.

  She rolled her shoulders. “Very well.” She reached back and unhooked the bra strap keeping the garment in place. The fabric sagged a little. “I’ll just get what I want out of you and leave you
to them.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I am.” She let the bra slip a little farther down, to the point where he could almost see everything. “And I’ll tell you what else I’m going to do. I’m going to let you satisfy me while the cameras in the room film every second of it. Then we’re going to send that footage to every known terrorist cell media outlet we know. My face will be blurred, of course, but yours…yours will be prominently displayed. I wonder how your bosses would feel about that. I’m guessing it would be frowned upon.”

  He swallowed hard again. Sweat rolled down his temples and dripped onto his shirt.

  Adriana knew she’d hit the mark with her threat. This guy was trained to take as much physical pain as human beings could dole out. Sure, she’d thought about peeling off his fingernails or dislocating a few joints, maybe breaking some bones, but her comrades had already tried hurting him.

  They hadn’t tried appealing to his skewed sense of righteousness.

  “I don’t know his name, okay?” Abdi finally blurted out. “I’ve never met him. I’m just a lowly middleman. I get them what they want and leave it at a drop spot.”

  Adriana leaned back, placing her hands on his heaving chest. “Where?”

  He breathed hard as if considering not telling her. A battle raged inside him, a war between the instinctual forces of his hormones and his beliefs. “Here, in Istanbul,” he said, his voice full of regret. “It’s a place here in Istanbul. I go there twice a week. Once to pick up a note with what they want listed on it. The second time is to drop off the goods.”

  “I need an exact location.”

  The words flowed quickly from his lips. When he was done telling her what she wanted to know, Adriana climbed off him and fastened her bra. She slipped her tank top back on, strutted over to the door, and flung it open.

  “You get that?” she asked.

  June was standing in the hallway with the guards. They’d heard the entire thing.

  “Yeah,” June said with a nod. “We got it.”

  “Good,” Adriana said. “Don’t tell Sean about that, okay?” Adriana had been dating Sean Wyatt for years now. He was often busy with his friend’s International Archaeological Agency, traveling the world in search of ancient artifacts. The two occasionally found themselves in a heap of trouble. Sometimes that trouble involved Adriana. June was dating Sean’s best friend, Tommy Schultz. It was fascinating how the four lives had come together in such an unlikely way. Yet here they were.

  “Not a word,” June agreed.

  3

  Istanbul

  Adriana and June, with weapons ready, crouched behind a shipping container. The AR-15s weren’t what Adriana was accustomed to using, but the weapon had proved itself in countless battles around the world and was now a first choice of aficionados back in the States. The two women had been monitoring the docks for the last four hours to make sure no one interfered with their stakeout.

  The plan was simple. Wait for Abdi’s connection to show up, send the whelp in to do the deal, and then catch the bigger fish.

  Simple. Except in life, and especially this line of work, things were rarely that easy. If everything went according to plan, what a wonderful world it would be.

  Adriana stole what was probably her five hundredth glance over at the cargo van parked in a corner lot where two concrete retaining walls met. The truck was old and beat-up to make it appear like it belonged in the abandoned docks—a derelict vehicle of yesteryear. In the back, she knew Abdi was being guarded by four agents with automatic weapons. If he so much as spit the wrong way, he’d pay dearly for it.

  The prisoner had warmed to their plan, although Adriana and June didn’t fully trust he would stick to it. They’d promised him asylum—not in the United States but in Puerto Rico, where he could hide from his soon-to-be-former overseers for the rest of his life. He’d have a simple bungalow near the beach and a modest salary from the US government, but he’d be safe and wouldn’t have to work again unless he wanted a more luxurious lifestyle.

  Even with all that, Adriana had her doubts about the man. He was a snake, and she knew what snakes were capable of. They’d hide in the weeds, waiting for the opportune moment to strike when their prey least expected it.

  “What’s your status, Angel Two?” she said into the wireless radio connected to her ear.

  “Bored, Angel One. What’s it looking like out there?” The man’s voice was gruff and sounded slightly irritated, probably at being given babysitting duty.

  “All clear,” Adriana said.

  She peered around the giant steel box. The docks were situated on a little peninsula that jutted out into the Mediterranean. She could see why Abdi and his associates had chosen the location. The property hadn’t been used in years, probably because more of the commercial shipping industry had moved to a different part of the city’s coast. Based on the weathered For Sale signs hanging on the rickety fence surrounding the area, she figured few people came around other than the dregs of society looking for a place to sleep for the night in one of the abandoned warehouses or offices.

  In America and in many other parts of the world, places like this were often the haven of drug addicts who’d lost almost any hope of returning to society.

  So far, she hadn’t seen any signs of such people, but she’d keep a lookout just in case. The last thing they needed was some whacked-out meth head stumbling into their ambush and spooking the targets.

  There was still plenty of daylight left, but as the hours crawled by, Adriana started to wonder if Abdi’s connections were going to show. She hadn’t spent a lot of time doing these sorts of things. While there’d been dozens of missions where she’d had to wait on a mark, usually to get information out of them, running a clandestine operation against a serious terrorist threat was a different animal. Her previous line of work was more like a hobby, something she could walk away from whenever she felt like it. No one would get hurt. And the world would never be the wiser.

  The stakes were much higher in this game. Astronomically so.

  Adriana tucked back behind the container again and leaned her back against the warm metal.

  June sensed her friend’s impatience. “This sort of thing is a big part of what we do,” she said. “Lot of sitting around and waiting. Sometimes, the bad guys don’t even show up.”

  “What do you do when that happens?”

  June smirked. “We hit the reset button, try to figure out what went wrong, and then set up another sting.”

  Sting was a funny term, at least Adriana thought so. It was a word cops used when they were taking down drug dealers or fences. She guessed it applied here, too, though she didn’t like it. Then again, it didn’t matter what it was called. The only thing that mattered was taking down the terrorists.

  A motor groaned from around one of the buildings, and the two women perked up. They stood up and looked around the corners of the shipping container. Two black SUVs pulled around one of the abandoned buildings to the right, followed by a small moving van, not dissimilar to the one the prisoner was being held in.

  As the vehicles stopped in the middle of a wide patch of asphalt between two cinder block buildings, men with submachine guns poured out of the SUVs and scattered. They took up defensive positions in pairs; setting up what was essentially a ring of death about a hundred feet across. The driver of the van got out when all the other men were in place and rushed around to the back to open the cargo bay door.

  It was difficult to see what was inside, but Adriana figured it was empty since this was meant to be a pickup.

  “Targets are in place,” June said. “Time to put the pawn in play.”

  “Copy that, Angel One.”

  The cargo van inched forward, and a moment later Abdi climbed out. One of the guards motioned him to move forward to the cab.

  The terrorist middleman looked scared. Adriana could see it in his eyes from fifty feet away.

  She hoped he didn’t flake out, or worse
, do something stupid like run from them. Then they’d have to kill him. If that happened, there’d be a shootout, and from the looks of things her crew was slightly outnumbered. Even though the operators in the group were well-trained, covert ops guys that had been brought in from other agencies, she knew that guns were a great equalizer in a fight. Any idiot could get lucky with a bullet. It took a lot more skill to win a hand-to-hand fight.

  Abdi made his way to the front of the truck and climbed in the passenger side. He’d been apprised of all the mission details, which included him riding in the front seat for the final leg. He knew the driver would be armed and ready to shoot him dead if he tried anything stupid. Adriana and June both knew that—if given the chance—people would do something stupid. So the driver was told to keep his weapon trained on the prisoner at all times during that stage of the operation.

  “Package is on board,” the driver said. “Moving into position.”

  The van pulled out of the corner and slowly drove into the thoroughfare. It passed the two women still crouching in their hiding spot and turned right, heading straight for the small army of men waiting in the middle of the landing.

  The driver stopped the vehicle a dozen feet from the other van and put it in park. Abdi hopped out of the cab and looked around. The gunmen watching the center of the circle didn’t move. Then the front passenger door of one of the SUVs opened, and a man in a white button-up shirt and black pants stepped out.

  Adriana watched him carefully, doing her best to keep out of sight. The distance between her position and the targets was far enough that she’d be difficult to spot, but there were no guarantees. If one of the gunmen were to use binoculars or a scope, she’d stand out like an alligator at a crocodile party.

  June kept one hand to her right ear. Unlike Adriana, she had two different earpieces. One was for communications; the other was for listening in on the conversation between Abdi and his associates.

  One of the Shadow Cell operatives—Angel Three—was perched behind the retaining wall, hidden in some bushes and covered in camouflage with a long-range microphone. The device was delivering an isolated stream of sound from the arranged meeting. He was also equipped with an AR-15 with a long-range sniper scope in case things turned south.