James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

Rack whispered to Stella, "We can take them all out."

"It's not right. They're students."

"They've got guns and fingers on the triggers." Rack raised his shotgun.

Stella put her hand on the barrel of Rack's gun and pushed it down. "They don't have a clue what they're doing."

Just as she turned toward the security camera, movement caught her eye. She jerked her head back to the window. Two women marched from an office, followed by three armed men. One wore traditional Islamic dress; the other sported Farrah Fawcett hair and a short skirt.

The first American hostage.

"Damn!" Stella whispered. The throbbing of her heart seemed to shake her entire body. She recalled her father's training. Paint the picture you want them to see. Stella took out the smoke grenade, pulled the pin and dropped it on the stairwell floor. "Your mask. Now."

"You crazy?" Rack pulled the respirator over his face.

After a few seconds' delay, the grenade spewed white smoke. Stella looked again at the security camera, extended both arms parallel to the floor and pumped her fists toward her ear three times, as if flexing her biceps. She prayed Sergeant Molson was monitoring and caught the military's visual signal for gas.

Smoke filled the stairwell. "Fire!" Stella shouted in Urdu, then thrust her chin into the mask, seated it and exhaled. Careful to stay clear of the burning phosphorous, she opened the door and held it long enough for a cloud to billow out. Like a skilled cricket player, she grasped the gun by its barrel and knocked the white-hot grenade into the hall with the butt. She glided across the corridor and yanked down hard on the fire alarm. An ear-piercing ring filled the hall. She winced.

Down the hall a tear-gas canister rolled across the floor. Within seconds the gas mixed with smoke. Lost in the thickening haze, rioters bumped against one another, scrambling to find their way out of the building. The marine dashed to the stairwell as ordered.

"Help!" the American woman shrieked.

Stella ran toward the cries. The Pakistani still held her hostage by the wrist. Stella dug her thumb into the pressure point between the Pakistani woman's thumb and index finger until she found bone. The woman released her grasp.

Just then, Rack appeared. He picked up the hostage and carried her to the stairwell.

Stella twisted the Pakistani woman's hand around and pressed down, bending it backward. Stella led her without further resistance to the stairs. The stairwell was smoky, but nothing like the thick cloud in the hall.

On the third floor, Rack pushed up his mask. "What the hell are you doing with her?"

"Get your own hostage-she's mine."

Stella escorted the Pakistani woman to the office where she had stashed the Dragunov. As soon as she let go of her, the woman collapsed to the floor in a coughing fit. Barely able to hold her head up, she vomited from the tear gas. Stella calculated that she had a couple of minutes to work without interference. She crouched below the window and inspected her surroundings as she crawled over to lock the door.

Before she reached it, she sensed someone in the hall. She stopped and aimed the shotgun.

"Friend!" Rack's deep voice boomed above the din of the fire alarm.

Stella lowered the shotgun, now certain he had military experience.

"Get your pretty ass back into the vault," Rack said. "I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but taking this woman as a hostage isn't going to mean shit to them."

"Cover the hallway while you're standing there." Stella inventoried the office. Its standard furnishings provided no unusual options.

"That mob will rip you apart," Rack said.

"You know as well as I do they're going to loot this place, then torch it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sticking around." She rifled through a desk drawer. A private collection of Snickers bars, Cadbury chocolates and a bag of Fritos was stuffed behind a cash box. She ripped the wrapper from a candy bar and bit down. She tossed Rack a Snickers, then shoved the rest of hers into her mouth.

"You're nuts." Rack looked out the window, then lowered the blinds.

"Eat it. If you're with me, I'm not going to risk your blood sugar tanking." She glanced at the woman who was still throwing up from the tear gas.

"Who the hell are you?" Rack asked her.

"A girl who needs the wind at her back and sunlight streaming toward her." She flashed him a smile, then opened a metal supply cabinet. "I am going to get out of here." She found duct tape. "Guess this is the best I'm going to do."

"I don't like leaving everyone behind in that vault."

"You'll figure out a way to spin it before election time rolls around. If I could save them, I would. Bernie's the ranking officer-he has to stay. But the others are diplomats. They'd rather be taken hostage than fight their way out."

A chunk of brick smacked against the bent blinds. Stella didn't jump but only glanced up. She crawled over to the heaving woman and gently patted her back to reassure her while she removed her light gray headscarf. She continued talking to Rack. "If you're with me, you need to find your own costume. I'm sure there are several donors still groping around down there." Stella coughed. Smoke and tear gas were beginning to blow upstairs. "Lock the door when you go. And try to pick up one of the En-fields to add to the illusion."

Stella tied up the woman and pulled on her jilbab to begin her transformation to a modest Muslim woman. Her arms stuck four inches out of the sleeves and the hem hit between her ankles and knees, a racy length she would have to compensate for with her posture. She tied the scarf around her head, shoving every strand of hair under it.

As she was about to leave, Rack returned, depositing an armful of white clothes and an old rifle onto the desk. "Here's hoping that one of these pairs of Paki pj's fits."

"No friends with you?"

"I don't do hostages-slow you down too much." Rack thrust his arm into the sleeve. The seams ripped. He tried the other one on, but he could barely shove his large hand through the narrow opening. "I might have just screwed myself when I gave the diplomats our guns and told them to lock the vault."

Even the most hard-core rioters avoided burning buildings, but Stella took only enough time in Thompson's office to use his CIA-issue disguise kit to darken their fair complexions and to rinse color through Rack's blond hair and long sideburns. He wore a wool skull cap and a pair of white kurta pajamas that Thompson had stashed in his office, no doubt for a clandestine rendezvous. Aside from the gas mask, he made a pretty good local, albeit a large one.

Stella ran as quickly as the long, tight jilbab permitted. She put on the gas mask, pulled up the coat and bounded down to the first floor. The hallway was empty of intruders but filled with tear gas and smoke. They didn't want to risk going out a door and allowing more rioters inside. They had to find where they had broken in.

She crept into an office. The windows were partially broken, but the grates were intact. She crossed the corridor and entered another office, catty-corner from the one she had checked. She searched the ground floor in a modified star pattern, careful not to move along the same line, always staying a shade to the oblique.

Rack found her, motioning that he'd discovered the rat hole. She signaled him that she needed a moment. He disappeared into the cafeteria.

It was time to add the finishing touch to her costume: a typewriter. In a land where most people paid scribes to type their papers, she would be the envy of the other looters.

She stepped inside an office, then froze. Two men lay motionless on the floor. One wore only his underwear. One of their heads was turned a little too far to the left. Necks were not easy to break. The congressman's trained-if he's a congressman.