Warriors

CHAPTER 3

In the next block he saw a chocolate brown Mercedes-Benz 600 “Pullman” limo pulled over and stopped. It was parked at the curb about twenty feet ahead of them. The 1967 Mercedes Pullman was a classic, the most highly desired limo of the 1960s. He’d been thinking about bidding on one at auction, for Lightstorm’s corporate driver.

The interior light was on in the limo, filling the car with soft yellow light. His senses were on high alert, but as he drew near he saw that the occupants were harmless. There was a liveried chauffeur leaning against the rear fender smoking a cigarette; a tiny, elderly couple was seated on the broad leather bench seat in the rear. And there was a diplomatic plate on the big car.

The Chinese delegation.

“Probably that new Chinese ambassador and his wife,” he whispered to Kat. “Looks like they need help.”

The passenger door was slightly ajar, and as he drew abreast of them he could see that they were plainly lost in the fogbound streets of old Georgetown. The wife, snow white hair held back in a chignon, wearing a mink stole over a black cashmere turtleneck with a strand of pearls, had a well-creased road map of D.C. spread across her lap.

Her husband was peering over her shoulder, pointing his finger at an intersection and asking the chauffeur something about the Estonian embassy.

“May I help you?” Chase asked in English, never trusting his always rusty Mandarin. He bent down to speak to the ambassador’s wife.

She looked up in surprise; apparently she hadn’t seen his approach in the fog.

“Oh,” the elegant woman said sweetly in English, “aren’t you kind, dear? We’re embarrassed to say it, but we’re late for a reception and completely lost. My husband, the ambassador, and I are new to Washington, you see, and haven’t yet got a clue, as you Americans say. We’re looking for the Estonian embassy… even our poor driver cannot find it.”

Chase leaned down to get a closer look at her map.

“Well,” he said, reaching inside to point out their location on the map. “Here you are. And here’s Wisconsin Street over here and the embassy is right—”

The woman clamped her small but incredibly powerful hand around his wrist. In an instant, she had pulled him forward, off his feet, halfway into the car. The husband had something in his hand, a hypo, and he plunged it into the side of Chase’s neck. He could feel a wave of nausea instantly sweep over him, tried to pull away but had no muscle power at all.

“Try to relax, Dr. Chase,” the woman cooed softly. “It will all be over in a second or two.”

She knew his name.

“Kat, grab Milo! Sarah! Run! Run!” Bill Chase cried over his shoulder. Kat looked at him for a second in astonishment, saw he was serious, and gathered Milo and Sarah up into her arms. And started running. He saw them run, then lost them, folding into the swirling fog.

It was the last time, he truly believed at that moment, that he would ever see them alive.

He was vaguely aware of a white van passing the limo, headed in the direction of his family. Next he was being manhandled by the chauffeur around to the rear of the Mercedes. The big man popped the massive trunk, lifted him easily, and dropped him inside.

The lid of the trunk slammed down.

All was blackness then.

Kat, who was losing her mind to terror, tried to run. But the fog, two children in her arms, and her damn Jimmy Choo heels made it all but impossible. All she wanted to do was speed-dial 911 on her cell, get the police, and—

A van swerved up to the curb just beside her. The rear doors flew open, and four large men all in black leaped to the pavement right in front of them. They were wearing ski masks, Kat saw, as one of them, his body enwreathed with fog, stepped under the hazy streetlamp to snatch Milo from her arms.

She cried out, ripping Milo away again, clutching her son’s frail little body to her chest, and that’s when something unbelievably hard, a ball of pain encased in steel, struck the back of her head. It made a dull, sickening noise and sent her sprawling to the ground, her pulse roaring in her ears, her face half submerged in a large puddle with fat raindrops dancing upon it.

She knew she was close to blacking out.

“Milo!” she cried out, raising her head to search for her children. “Sarah!”

But they had disappeared into the turning wisps and wraiths of fog that hovered around the white van. And one of the four thugs had taken them from her. The one who had hit her now had her by the ankles, dragging her toward the van, her head bouncing over the cobblestones.

Just before she slipped into blackness she saw one of the men pulling her limp son up into the rear of the van. The man who was yanking Milo and Sarah inside by the arm, his face hidden by the black balaclava, was screaming at her son. Unintelligible threats in some guttural foreign language… Chinese, perhaps.

What in God’s name was going on?