Poe

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Cooper told himself he would only go fifty feet down the tunnel, but when he reached that point, he heard splashes in the distance. The kind of splashes someone would make slogging across water-covered stone.

Another fifty, he decided.

This time when he reached his goal, he stopped and cupped a hand to his ear.

Footsteps. No doubt about it. They were regular for several beats, then they would slow or speed up randomly.

He was just about to call out Alex’s name, when he heard a faint voice shout, “Come on!”

That was enough to get him to yank the Beretta 9mm from the backpack and get moving again.

The assassin smiled when El-Hashim turned back to look at her.

It had to be a frightening sight — a killer, only ten feet away and closing fast.

Heart-attack stuff.

Hopefully, El-Hashim’s heart was sturdier than that. This hunt wouldn’t have a satisfying conclusion if the woman just dropped dead.

El-Hashim screamed and tried to run faster. She gained herself an extra half-second of freedom, but that was about it. The assassin lunged, clamped down on the woman’s shoulder, and jerked her backward, off her feet.

The flashlight flew straight up into the air. On its way down, the assassin snatched it — just because she could.

Damn, she felt invincible right now.

She pointed both beams at El-Hashim, lying now in the water, her body trembling.

“I bring a message from your employer,” the assassin said. “Your services are no longer needed.”

The fear suddenly turned to shock. “The committee sent you?”

“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

The assassin reached down and put a hand on each side of El-Hashim’s head. The woman grabbed at them, trying to pull them off, while rolling side to side.

The assassin dropped her knee onto the woman’s chest, pinning her down. “Just relax,” she said. “This will be nice and easy.”

“No! No! Let go of me!”

As she ran, Alex discovered that the edges of the floor curved up into the wall. If she traveled along them, she could minimize the amount of water she stepped in. This helped her increase her speed while making little noise. Her new pace wasn’t fast enough, however, to keep the attacker from reaching El-Hashim.

Alex saw El-Hashim go down and the woman jump on her, grabbing for El-Hashim’s head.

There were some words, but Alex didn’t try to listen.

She raced forward, the rock gripped tightly in her hand. As she angled herself to circle around them, she pulled her arm back and swung it forward, flinging the rock into the attacker’s forehead.

Right before the stone connected, she registered the woman’s battered face.

Frida.

Alex had no time to consider what this might mean as Frida flew backward with a watery thud against the stone floor.

Grabbing the flashlights, Alex pulled El-Hashim to her feet.

“Come on!”

Frida remembered the feel of the woman’s head in her hands. But what she didn’t remember was how she had ended up on her back, with El-Hashim gone.

Pushing herself up on her elbows, a wave of dizziness swept over her, nearly sending her back down. She gritted her teeth through it, then stood up.

Pain radiated through her forehead, and there was water trickling down her face. She reached up to wipe it off, winced, and jerked her hand away, looking at her fingers.

Though it was too dark to see them, she knew they were covered in blood.

How long had she been out?

Minutes? Hours?

Listening carefully, she heard rapid footsteps moving away. Two sets.

Powell, goddammit. Frida knew not finishing her off before would be a problem.

At least they hadn’t gone far, so that meant she must have been out for only a few seconds.

She didn’t care that she didn’t have a flashlight.

She could operate in the dark.

She had always operated in the dark.

“Hurry,” Alex urged.

El-Hashim had been limping since they left Frida behind, but that wasn’t what was slowing her down. She seemed distracted, even stunned.

“What did she say to you?” Alex asked, still hardly believing that Frida was the assassin.

El-Hashim didn’t respond, lost in her own thoughts.

“What did Frida say to you?”

El-Hashim came around now. “Frida?”

“The woman who was sitting on your chest. Frida was the name she used in the prison.”

“She’s…the one they sent to kill me.”

“Who sent to kill you?”

It was obvious El-Hashim had descended into thought again, so Alex decided to drop it for now.

The map was soaking wet as she pulled it from her pocket, but at least the lines were still visible. According to Teterya’s directions, there was one more false tunnel, then a straight shot to the end of a passageway that would lead to the rendezvous point, where hopefully Deuce and Cooper would be waiting.

Before they reached that point, though, she still had to get them through this godforsaken tunnel, and get El-Hashim to tell her how to contact her father.

She pointed the light ahead, and spotted the split with the last tunnel.

“Come on,” she said, giving El-Hashim a tug. “We’re getting close.”

With every step, Frida’s mind cleared a little more.

She knew Powell and El-Hashim had to be getting near the end of the tunnel. She also knew if they were able to reach it, her job would become exponentially much more difficult.

So she was surprised when she saw the beam of the flashlight less than a minute later. El-Hashim and Powell were walking not nearly as rapidly as Frida had expected. As the gap between her and her target narrowed, she thought she could hear Powell urging El-Hashim on.

And a moment later she saw why.

El-Hashim was limping.

Hurt when I took her down. Good.

Frida was only twenty feet away from them when her toe caught on a hole where a stone should have been. She grabbed at the wall, searching for a handhold, but her momentum was already carrying her toward the center of the tunnel.

With a loud splash, she stepped into the water, and started to fall to the ground. She jammed a hand down onto the stone floor, catching herself at the last second.

As she shoved herself back up, the beam of light caught her in the face.

“Go!” Powell yelled. “Run!”

Alex would have liked to take the final false tunnel and execute the plan she was going to do before, but with Frida somewhere behind them, that wasn’t an option. As they passed the junction, she noticed that El-Hashim’s limp seemed more prominent than before.

“Is it your knee?” she asked.

“Yes,” El-Hashim said, pain lacing her voice. “It’s hard to bend it now. I think maybe it is swollen.”

“We’ll take a look at it when we get out. And the faster you go, the sooner that’ll happen. Lean more on me.” Alex slipped her arm around El-Hashim’s back. “There. That help?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see if we can pick up the pace.”

They had taken no more than three steps when Alex heard a splash in the tunnel behind them.

She let go of El-Hashim and twisted around, bringing the flashlight with her.

Frida.

There was blood on the assassin’s forehead where the rock had smashed into her, but it didn’t seem to be fazing her.

“Go!” Alex said to El-Hashim. “Run!”

El-Hashim got the message. Though she didn’t exactly run, she took off at a faster speed.

Frida charged. By the angle she took, it looked as though she intended to run right past Alex and go after El-Hashim.

But Alex wasn’t about to let that happen.

She waited until Frida was five feet away, then launched herself, knocking into the other woman’s shoulder, and slamming the crown of her head against Frida’s jaw. In a tangle, they crashed against the wall, the flashlight falling to the floor, its beam now pointing across the width of the tunnel.

Frida tried to pull herself free, but Alex kept her arms wrapped around her as she turned her back toward the center of the tunnel, and hooked her foot behind the killer’s. Down they went, Alex on top, water soaking both of them.

Frida screamed in rage. She jerked side to side, trying to get her arms free, then jammed her knee up into Alex’s thigh. The sudden pain was enough to momentarily loosen Alex’s hold.

Frida ripped her arm from Alex’s grasp, and shoved her hand into Alex’s face, pushing her back. With her other fist, she repeatedly jabbed Alex in the ribs.

Alex could feel her hold on the woman slipping away. Frida must have sensed it, too. With a final, extra hard push, she sent Alex tumbling to the side.

Alex rolled with it, popping onto her hands and knees, then rapidly to her feet. Frida was already up, looking like she was about to run. Fortunately, Alex had ended up between her and El-Hashim.

“So you were faking it all the time, huh?” Alex said.

Frida snickered. “And you weren’t?”

“The fights? The injuries?”

“It’s not hard to get into a fight in a prison. Of course, I couldn’t always rely on others. Sometimes I had to inflict a little of my own pain.”

Through the indirect light of the flashlight beam, Alex could see Frida smile. The woman’s gaze flicked down the tunnel in the direction El-Hashim had gone, then back at her.

“That’s right,” Alex said. “You’re not getting to her unless you get through me.”

“Good,” Frida told her. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

She charged again. No yell this time, no scream.

Only focused anger in her eyes.

Cooper ran as fast as he could through the wet tunnel. He could hear splashes ahead, and what sounded like shouts and grunts. It all added up to one thing in his mind — a fight.

It was only a few more seconds before he realized there was something odd about the sounds. The big splashes and fighting noises seemed to be originating from a fixed point, but there were other splashes, rhythmic—splash-splash, splash-splash—coming closer and closer.

Someone was headed his way. If the tunnel didn’t have a slight bend, he was sure he would have seen them by now.

He stopped and raised his gun, filling the tunnel ahead with the beam of his light.

There were no breaks in the pace of the splashes, and now that they were right around the corner, he could hear heavy breathing, too.

Instead of continuing, however, the splashes came to an abrupt stop, just out of sight.

“Who’s there?” Cooper called out.

When no one responded, he took a few steps forward, his gun ready.

“I said, who’s there?”

Still nothing.

Instead of walking forward this time, he ran, hoping to surprise whoever it was. As soon as his flashlight beam fell on the woman around the curve, she turned and started to go the other way.

“Stop!” he ordered. “I’m armed.”

For half a second, he thought maybe she didn’t speak English, but then she halted. He approached her, stopping just outside of arm’s reach.

“Turn around.”

Slowly, she did as asked.

She was blonde, wearing a black shirt and pants. Maybe not quite middle-aged, but working on it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She hesitated, then said in a heavy French accent, “Marie.”

“What are you doing here?”

“That is not business of you.”

Though he knew he’d never met her before, there was something familiar about her.

“Did you come with Alex?”

“Alex?”

Her answer was a tad too quick for his liking. There was also something in her eyes, a forced innocence.

Her eyes.

They were brown, which didn’t exactly go with her hair — assuming her hair was naturally blonde.

Still, it was her eyes that were familiar. Why?

Another shout from down the tunnel broke into his thoughts.

Alex. She had to be involved with whatever was going on down there.

He grabbed the woman’s arm.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You’re coming with me.”

Whoever she was, he wasn’t about to let her get past him until he found out. But Alex came first.

Pulling her after him, he headed toward the fight.

“Please,” she said. “My leg. I cannot go so fast.”

“You were doing all right a minute ago. Pick it up.”

There was a small S curve in the tunnel. When they came out of it, there was a light about sixty feet away, low and focused on the wall. He could still hear the fight, but couldn’t see anyone.

Then suddenly two shadows danced into the beam. They struggled with each other, twisting and turning, pulling and punching.

“Alex!” he called out.

The fighters, both women, paused and looked toward him.

“Cooper?”

Alex’s voice. But he wasn’t sure which one it had come from, their silhouettes far from distinct.

Before he could answer her, the fight resumed.

He let go of the blonde woman. “Don’t move,” he told her, and raised his gun.

Because he couldn’t tell who was who, there was no way he could shoot Alex’s opponent, but he might be able to stop them for longer than a second.

Aiming the barrel in the direction he’d just come, he pulled the trigger.

The boom was deafening in the confines of the tunnel.

As he’d hoped, the fight ceased again, the women pulling apart.

He aimed the gun back toward them, making sure it could be seen in his flashlight beam.

“You don’t want to make me do that again,” he shouted. “Alex, over here.”

“Two seconds,” she said.

A fist suddenly flew out from the woman on the left. The sound of flesh smacking flesh was loud even at this distance, as the punch connected with the other woman’s cheek. The woman on the right fell against the wall.

“Okay, I’m done,” Alex said, and began walking toward Cooper and the blonde. She was about halfway to them when Cooper was able to make out the features of Alex’s face.

“Looks like prison treated you well,” he said.

“Regular holiday,” she told him. “I see you found my friend.”

“So she was with you. El-Hashim?”

“One and the same.”

He hadn’t figured the terrorist money launderer for a blonde, but it looked like he — and a lot of other people — had been wrong.

“She told me her name was Marie.”

Alex stopped a few feet away, and gave Cooper a relieved smiled. “She woo you with French?”

“French accent, anyway.”

“She doesn’t have a French accent.”

“Figures.” He jutted his chin down the tunnel past Alex. “What about that one?”

“She doesn’t have a French accent, either.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Alex glanced over her shoulder. “She was sent in to eliminate your arm candy there.”

In the distance, the woman Alex had punched began rising back to her feet.

“Give me,” Alex said, gesturing to Cooper’s pistol.

“I’m not sure that’s such a—”

He could have put up a fight, but when she grabbed the gun, he let her take it.

As she swung around and pointed the Beretta down the tunnel, the other woman pushed off the wall and ran in the opposite direction, into the darkness.

Swearing under her breath, Alex fired a shot down the tunnel as she started running after her.

“Alex, stop!” Cooper yelled. “Let her go. There’s no time.”

It was as if she hadn’t even heard him.

“The alarm went off at the prison,” Cooper went on. “We have to get out of here now!”

Holding on to El-Hashim, he turned and headed toward the exit of the tunnel. A few seconds later he heard Alex run up alongside him.

“The alarms?” she said. “When did they start?”

“Five, ten minutes ago.”

She glanced back in the direction the other woman had disappeared. “Dammit.” She turned back and moved around to the other side of El-Hashim. “It’ll be faster if we carry her.”

Without another word, they lifted El-Hashim into the air, and ran.