7

PAWN TO D4

Near the Bayway Refinery

From atop a nearby hill, Vanessa stood rigid, numb and disbelieving, as she watched the Bayway Refinery burn. When the tenth ambulance left the facility without its lights and sirens, signaling it was carrying another dead body, she fell to her knees, dropping her ATN NVG7 night-vision monocular to her chest, hugging herself. She had to get it together, had to.

Her Semtex hadn’t done this. The small second explosion, that had been her bomb. She didn’t want to believe what she was seeing, but the horrific flames, the shouts, the screams were all too real.

No deaths. That was her rule, Matthew’s rule. No deaths.

Well, it had been Matthew’s rule until tonight. Now they had blood on their hands, real blood. She wanted to scream with grief, with fury. She heard her uncle’s voice telling her, “Nessa, don’t blame yourself, sometimes things will simply be out of your control, awful things that you’ll simply have to learn to live with. Follow your training, Nessa, you won’t go wrong, not in the end.”

But these were innocent people’s lives, no way around it. However could she learn to live with that?

And she knew what it meant: Matthew had perfected his small gold-coin bombs and used a tiny part of one as a test. Thank heaven he hadn’t used an entire gold coin, it would have wiped out countless thousands and reduced the landscape to rubble.

She knew to her gut it was Darius who’d kept after Matthew to finish perfecting his bomb, Darius who’d decided to test it tonight. It hadn’t taken her long to recognize Darius for what he was—a born soulless killer who didn’t care how many people died. But this time she knew he’d had a reason. To see for himself how powerful Matthew’s new bombs were because he wanted them for himself.

She breathed deeply, again and again, until she calmed. She wondered what Matthew was thinking as he looked out over the killing field and knew it was his creation that had brought it about. Was he as horrified as she was, or was he with Darius, and very likely smiling and nodding at the success of his bomb? All the deaths. And it was up to her to stop both of them.

She rolled over onto her stomach and raised the monocular again. She’d been watching the two civilians. Now they’d been joined by another man, and she realized who they were. Not civilians, no, they were FBI.

Over the past two weeks, she’d memorized files on all the FBI players. The older man was Milo Zachery, head of the Criminal Investigative Division for the New York Field Office. The younger, taller one was that Brit, Nicholas Drummond. Of course she recognized the woman who could double as a biker chick in her black boots and black-framed glasses—Michaela Caine. She’d watched them on the news after they’d helped stop a nuclear attack in Europe. Of course, even without the media flood, Vanessa would recognize Mike Caine. Even back in the day, Vanessa remembered her as a burning light, smart, funny, unforgettable.

Of all the people she didn’t want to see, these two were at the top of the list, but here they were—not more than a hundred meters away, witnesses to the horror that her group had brought about. And here she lay, one of the anonymous deathmongers. And how would she ever learn to live with that?

She remembered the Matthew Spenser she’d met only a little more than four months before. That Matthew hadn’t believed in collateral damage, had abhorred the thought of killing anyone, accidently or on purpose. He’d been gaining more and more attention from the small-scale bombings, as he wanted. And then Darius had come, dumped a million dollars in his lap, and begun manipulating him, changing him. And now this. She knew Darius—or whatever his name was—had a plan, and now he’d sucked Matthew, sucked all of them, into it, made them all murderers, made them all—terrorists. Didn’t Matthew realize he was now no better than the terrorists who’d killed his family?

Matthew had told her so little, and she hadn’t figured out how to get him to open up to her. Sex wasn’t in the cards now, even if he put the moves on her. She simply couldn’t bear to think about his hands on her now, not with the horrible stench of blood and death filling her nostrils. The Matthew she knew was quick to anger, just as quick to laugh, a man who could spend hours concentrating his genius brain on something he was creating. She’d believed he liked her, maybe even coming to trust her, at least until Darius came along. But now she realized he was headed toward something unimaginable, something horrific, and that something involved Darius. She had to find out what it was before it happened, and somehow get her hands on Matthew’s bombs and his formula, or her assignment would be a failure. Now, that was a small order to fill, wasn’t it?

Matthew had almost told her his plans yesterday at their apartment in Brooklyn. They were talking about the logistics of the Bayway bombing, and Matthew, as was his habit, was skillfully weaving a gold coin through his fingers over and over again, like a magician. Wily, no-nonsense Ian had rolled out the blueprints a night supervisor had provided them—Larry Reeves had cost them the rest of their ready cash, though Andy always got his hands on more; it never seemed to be a problem. Matthew and Vanessa ran through the last of the logistics, drinking Bud Light because that’s all Luther from Belfast, one of the boys, had bought at the corner market.

She’d taken a sip from the bottle, eyed him, and thought, Careful, careful.

“Matthew, what’s next? You already have the attention of the world. Every law enforcement organization is looking for us. People are afraid of what you might do next. We’ll have much more destruction at Bayway, a much bigger statement. The FBI will be in an absolute frenzy. What are we going to do to top Bayway?”

He’d reached over and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “Tomorrow the plan will be in place, and no one will be able to stop it—”

And then Ian had come back into the room and Matthew backed away from her and once again was weaving a coin through his fingers. She remembered the first time she saw those gold coins, no larger than a fifty-cent piece, remembered how Ian McGuire, her compatriot from Belfast, was so excited to tell her how he’d met a fellow terrorist-hater all those years ago, and he’d recognized his genius, and he’d happily offered her up to make bombs for him.

She could deal with Ian, but what to do about Andy Tate, that wild ungoverned boy who’d set fires since he was seven years old and, even more, was a computer genius, a hacker of incredible talent, probably more valuable than she or Ian was to Matthew, since he procured the money.

Vanessa saw another ambulance silently leave. Another dead. Had Matthew known what Darius was going to do? Or had Darius simply taken one of Matthew’s bombs and used it? Would Matthew be as livid as she was? Or had he changed that much? She’d never forget what he’d said when Ian had brought her into the group, “No innocents can die, Muslims included, Vanessa. I’m not like those terrorists who kill wantonly. I’ll make my point without death.”

She looked out over the burning refinery. Everything had changed now. It didn’t matter which of them was responsible, or if both Darius and Matthew were complicit. It had to stop.

8

CASTLES

Where was Darius? He was supposed to meet her, and she hadn’t seen him come out of the refinery. She would wait another ten minutes, then she had to clear out because she knew law enforcement would be searching the area soon. Could he possibly be dead, burned up in his own fire? Wouldn’t that be fine irony? And one less terrorist she had to deal with.