David Morrell - Burnt Sienna

“I don’t know what you’re -”

Derek grabbed the hand she’d extended and yanked her viciously toward the doorway. She struggled to resist, but his strength was too powerful. He flung the door open so hard, it slammed against bookshelves.

“Derek, no, what are you -”

He forced her along the corridor, into the vestibule, and up the curving staircase. As she resisted, his next tug made her lose her balance and drop to her knees. He yanked even harder, dragging her.

The first landing.

The second.

“Stop!” Sienna pleaded.

He kept pulling her.

“Where are you taking me?”

The top floor. Jerking her upright, he reached the door next to his bedroom, pulled a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and shoved it open. Shadows beckoned.

“No, I don’t want to -”

He shoved her inside, turned on the lights, ignored the portraits on the wall, and forced her toward the urn. “Christina,” he murmured. He spun her toward the wall of photographs. “You have no idea how much I loved her.” He stared at the numerous photos, scanning them, finding the ones he wanted. “There. On the balcony, on the pony, at the carnival, and on the yacht.” He flipped open the scrapbook, turning to the final page. “The time and date when she died. That’s how you knew about my sister! Somehow, you’ve been in here before .”

“No, I swear. I didn’t know anything about -”

“‘Five years ago, we loved each other. Why can’t we go back?’” Derek mocked.

“I meant it.”

“Oh, of course.”

“What happened between us?” Sienna asked. “ Why did you turn against me ?”

For a moment, Derek’s eyes cleared, as if he finally understood how wrong everything was.

“Christina happened,” he said.

His eyes again black with fury, he dragged her out of the room. “Ahmed will soon be here. Finally you’re going to be of use to me.”

The speeding chopper cleared the ridge and came into view of the valley. Bellasar’s estate was hunkered in the middle.

“We’d better be right about this,” Jeb said. “Back at the airport was risky, but now…”

Malone adjusted the microphone on his helmet. “Bellasar’s expecting the chopper to come back with Ahmed. Here it is.”

“He’ll also expect a radio message, some kind of identification before he lets this thing get closer. You don’t know what you’re supposed to say.”

Malone nodded. When he had flown here with Bellasar a lifetime ago, he had heard the pilot speak to the estate, but the pilot had used French, and Malone had no idea what he had said.

He adjusted the radio’s frequency until he heard a male voice saying something in French. Even with the accent, some of the words were close enough to English that Malone understood he was being asked to identify himself.

He tapped the microphone a couple of times, then brushed a piece of paper across it, murmuring a few of the French words he had just heard, trying to create the impression that radio problems were breaking up his signal.

He switched off the radio.

The helicopter flew closer to the estate.

“This had better work,” Jeb said. “An arms dealer’s likely to have missiles down there.”

“Probably. But he won’t risk killing Ahmed unless he has to. So far, we’ve done nothing to indicate we’re a threat.” Malone looked back at Jeb’s partner and the others who were helping him. “Ready?”

The tension on Dillon’s face was all too familiar from when Malone had prepared for missions in the military. He switched his attention to Ahmed and Potter, handcuffed to the side of the chopper. Their expressions were stark with fear.

“Buckled in nice and tight?” Malone asked. He jerked on the controls. Abruptly the chopper tilted and spun.

“Jesus!” Jeb had known this was coming, but he hadn’t been prepared for how closely Malone’s maneuvers would simulate a chopper that was out of control.

“Gas masks.” Malone tilted the chopper dizzyingly in the opposite direction.

Each man had one. They slipped them over their heads.

“Might as well let Potter and Ahmed have one also,” Malone said. He took off his pilot’s helmet, put on his gas mask, then made the helicopter waver so alarmingly that anybody on the ground would assume it was close to crashing.

“Hatches!”

Dillon and the others opened them.

“Smoke grenades!”

“Ready!”

“Do it!”

Two grenades were dropped to the chopper’s floor. Muffled whumps were followed by sudden gray smoke that filled the chopper. For a moment, Malone feared that he had miscalculated, that the smoke swirling around him would get so thick he wouldn’t be able to see to control the unstable maneuvers he was forcing the chopper to perform. If the charade wasn’t convincing to the guards on Bellasar’s estate…

Wind from the open hatches cleared the smoke, allowing him to see the estate as the chopper wavered onward. Most of the smoke now billowed outside, making it seem that an accident had happened on board. Malone imagined the frantic questions the radio controller was trying to send him.

He spun. He tilted. All the while, he moved closer to the buildings and gardens of the estate. He was near enough now to see guards down there. On paths, among trees and shrubs, they stared up in confusion.

At a height of a thousand feet, he wavered over the estate. Some of the guards ran for cover, afraid the chopper was about to crash on them.

“ Ready ?” Malone shouted to the back.

Dillon opened a box.

From the corner of his vision, Malone saw him throw out a quart-sized glass container of a type used in laboratories. It tumbled through the air, easily visible because of the white powder in it. As guards hurried to avoid it, the container shattered on a sidewalk. Malone imagined the noise it made and the consternation on the guards’ faces as the powder burst into the air and the day’s breeze carried it toward them. A few whose curiosity was stronger than their apprehension came close to investigate. Malone knew that when they saw the sturdy label keeping some of the shattered pieces of glass together, they would stumble back and panic. Even in English, the message was unmistakable. CAUTION: ANTHRAX. BIOLOGICAL HAZARD. The skull and crossbones symbol was equally unmistakable.

Smoke spewing from the chopper, Malone tilted toward other areas of the estate. As more glass containers plummeted, he switched his attention toward the tennis court and the area of the first impact. Amid the drifting white powder, guards raced away. He imagined them holding their breath. A few of them shouted warnings. Guards who weren’t near the impact zone put greater distance between them. A container shattered among those guards, who raced in a different direction, while another container broke ahead of them.

Five, six, seven. As Malone guided the chopper’s erratic path over the property, more and more containers smashed on the grounds, white powder spewing. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The mansion, the Cloister, the stable, the swimming pool, and the weapons-testing range had blotches of white on them. Seventeen, eighteen. More guards rushed to escape. Some jumped into vehicles and sped toward the gates.

Until now, Malone had relied on the double distraction of the apparently about-to-crash chopper and the falling containers to keep the guards from firing at him. Believing they were under attack from a biological weapon, few had overcome their primal fear enough to get off a few shots before they ran in panic. But even a few were too many. Malone assumed that the chopper was armored, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t invulnerable – when he and Sienna had used the other chopper to escape, a barrage of gunfire from the guards had managed to disable it. Now, as bullets whacked against the fuselage, he needed a reinforcement that the estate was under attack from biological and chemical weapons.