Kate Donovan - Exit Strategy

There was no point in contesting them. Not yet at least. So Miranda and Ortega raised their hands without protest, allowing the guards to step forward, cuff their wrists behind them, and then pull Ortega’s pistol from his holster, before stepping back so that Benito Carerra’s view of his prisoners was once again unobstructed.

As for Kell, it clearly didn’t matter to him if there was one guard or a thousand. He leaned against a work table, the blood draining from his complexion as though life itself were leaving his body, and stared into the hypnotic eyes of the man who had kept him in a cage and tortured him mercilessly.

Miranda could only imagine what was going on in her lonely friend’s fear-wracked brain, so she tried to reassure him by whispering, “It’s going to be okay, Jonathan. You’re on his side this time, remember? Go and stand with your friends.”

“Your pretty visitor is correct, Jonathan,” Carerra told him. “It’s time to choose sides. I suggest you choose wisely, as Carl here did when he alerted me to the CIA’s presence.”

Tears streamed down Kell’s face as he edged past his tormentor then sunk to the ground in the corner where Miranda and Ortega had found him the previous evening. Except this time, he didn’t have a power pill in front of him. And he was shaking so violently, he probably couldn’t have steadied his hand enough to take one even if it were available.

There was nothing Miranda could do for him, so she turned her full attention to Carerra, trying to make eye contact without seeming to either challenge or submit.

He looked right past her, as though smiling at someone else. “You were right, Alexander. She’s very attractive.”

Alexander?

Miranda felt a wave of dread similar to what she assumed Kell was experiencing. Still, she didn’t want her captors to know what was going on in her mind, so she calmly turned in time to see Gresley enter the laboratory from the other door, along with two other men she recognized from the Brigade files: Victor Chen, a middle-aged, serious-looking fellow who was tall and slender; and the giant Tork, whose brawny build and scarred face confirmed his reputation as a street fighter turned paramilitary leader.

Gresley walked up to her and without missing a beat, slammed his fist into her gut so hard, she doubled over and almost vomited.

“Bastard!” Ortega sprang forward and head-butted Gresley before four guards intervened, wrestling him to the ground. Miranda sent her sometimes-lover a grateful smile, then looked up at Gresley, noticing with satisfaction that Ortega had caused a gash in the bully’s forehead almost as pleasing as the greenish bruise that ran along the side of his jaw, courtesy of Miranda’s blow three days earlier.

“Stand her up again!” Gresley directed the guards with a roar.

Victor Chen surprised Miranda by stepping between her and her assailant. “They’re no use to us unconscious. The Brigadier wants to question them, remember?”

“At least don’t hit her in the mouth,” Tork agreed cheerfully.

“I have other plans for her mouth that have nothing to do with questioning,” Gresley assured him, causing the giant man to burst into laughter.

As alarmed as she was by the Englishman, the giant Tork concerned her more. If he had been the one to hit her with that huge fist of his, powered by those Atlas-like shoulders, she wouldn’t just be gasping for air. She’d be dead.

Carerra waved his hand, and the guards stood her on her feet, then did the same with Ortega, with two of them keeping a grip on him just in case he decided to go berserk again.

Then the Brigadier stood in front of her and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

She nodded.

“So the question is, who are you? Jennifer Aguilar? Miranda Duncan? Jennifer Duncan?”

“I’m Miranda Cutler. I work for the CIA, but they didn’t send me on this op. They don’t even know I’m here.” She licked her lips, then admitted, “They use me exclusively for seduction ops. It’s a waste of my talents and training. So when I heard about the Brigade, I decided to try and impress my superiors by doing what everyone else had failed to do-learn your identity and agenda.”

“Interesting.” Carerra flashed Ortega a wide grin. “For a spy, she’s quite chatty, don’t you think?”

Ortega growled in agreement, but she suspected he knew exactly what she was doing.

She was protecting Kell, pure and simple. If she didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, they’d question the scientist, and it would destroy him. Even if they didn’t raise a hand to him, the flashbacks from being questioned by this monster again would scare him to death.

So Miranda would cooperate, hopefully not sharing anything with Carerra he hadn’t already figured out from talking to Angelina, Gresley and that sniveling little Carl. It wasn’t as if she knew much, anyway, since Ortega had sent her to bed before the real intel began to flow.

She hoped this maneuver would buy them some time, despite the slim hope of rescue. But Victor Chen had shown a tendency to be reasonable, and he might object to the hasty killing of two American agents. She also wanted to minimize Carerra’s excuse to brutalize them. Assuming a chance for escape would eventually present itself, they needed to be conscious and able to take a few steps without screaming in pain.

So she asked him softly, “Do you want to hear more?”

“Absolutely. Go on.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath, then continued spilling her guts. “I went to South America to get some information about Jonathan Kell. So that I could seduce him. I figured there would be psych profiles and personnel reports in his employment file at BioGeniSystems, and I was right. I photographed the file, using a camera hidden in a barrette. I also stole a sample of HeetSeek, but your wife interrupted me before I could photograph those files, too. She was there getting her blood tested by that doctor, right? Because she had just taken the power pill? I didn’t figure that out until this morning.”

Carerra laughed again, and again Ortega appeared to be disgusted by her willingness to confess before any real torture had been applied.

Or at least, she hoped he was pretending to be disgusted.

“After that,” she continued, “I went to London to seduce Gresley. And then I came here. I was making progress, then suddenly Ortega showed up to quote-unquote rescue me. He posed as the Brigadier.”

Carerra glared toward Kell’s quivering form. “Sniveling idiot. You almost ruined everything, falling for that.”

“Don’t blame Jonathan,” Miranda interrupted. “Your buddy Gresley had already given me the information I needed about the Brigade. I only came here to get a sample of the drug.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She’s lying!” Gresley shouted.

The Brigadier silenced him with a wave of his hand, then asked Miranda to continue.

“Gresley had a briefcase at his town house that was filled with information about the Brigade. If you don’t believe me, check my barrette. I photographed the whole thing. It’s in the front zippered pocket of my overnight case.”

Carerra inclined his head toward Carl, who disappeared into the hall.

Gresley was trembling with anger. “That file didn’t have specifics, Carerra. I swear that. Just philosophy-”

“Shut up, imbecile.” To Miranda, he said simply, “Anything else?”

“I think that’s about it. Unless you have any questions.”

“I have two. The first is, have you communicated any of this to your government?”

She smiled, glad to have a chance to send a compliment in Chen’s direction, just as she had been delighted to get Gresley into trouble. “Jonathan’s system is too tight. We couldn’t get a message out. Our plan was to call the CIA as soon as we got off these grounds, then rendezvous with international authorities in Geneva.”