Strike Back Read online

  “Uh, okay.” Hilary gave a shrug. “Sure, I can drive.” She caught herself thinking she would have the option of ditching Elias in the middle of their date if she felt like it.

  “Great.” He walked her to her car door, holding it while she slipped behind the wheel. Then he rounded the vehicle and got in next to her.

  The car seemed to fill with tension.

  “Where to?” Hilary asked, turning up the heat as a sudden chill raised goosebumps on her arms.

  “It’s a surprise,” Elias said rather shortly. “I’ll give you directions. How’s that?”

  “OK.” Hilary forced a laugh, while thinking longingly of her cat and her warm pajamas. Following Elias’s instructions, she pulled away, heading toward the beltway.

  “It feels like we’re going to work,” she commented as he guided them in the direction of McLean.

  Apart from giving her directions, Elias kept quiet. Hilary cut a curious glance at him. He sat rigidly in her passenger seat, eyes glued to the four-lane highway before them. Where was the easy-going companion she had spent the other day with? How would they get through an entire dinner if he didn’t relax?

  “Does my driving make you nervous?” she inquired.

  He swallowed visibly. “Well, you do drive a little fast,” he said, causing her to slow her speed and move into the right lane.

  “Sorry.”

  He said nothing in response to her bid to put him at ease. God help me, Hilary thought, snapping on the radio to ease the tension.

  “Take the next exit,” Elias ordered as they came up on the exit she took each day to work.

  Hilary’s curiosity simmered. As far as she was aware, there were no restaurants anywhere near the Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus. “We’re not going to your office, are we?”

  “No.” Elias’s chuckle struck her as forced.

  “Turn right?” They had come to the intersection where she’d first noticed him pulling up behind her car.

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  In her agitation, Hilary punched her accelerator as she came out of the turn. They were approaching the turn off toward the gate at NCTC when Elias reached into his front pocket and pulled out something shiny. A snick drew her gaze to the object clutched in his right hand. Before she’d even registered he was holding a knife, he leaned toward her, pressing the tip to her throat. As the sharp point broke the skin by her jugular, Hilary yelped, certain he’d drawn blood.

  “Keep driving.”

  The steering wheel wobbled in her grasp. Oh, my God! He’d stuck her with a knife! Common sense ordered her to turn right toward NCTC, but her hope to avoid being sliced open overruled it.

  “Watch the road,” Elias barked.

  The exit to the gatehouse came and went. She kicked herself for not driving straight to Harold, the guard, who would have rescued her. Too late now. She wanted to reach up and feel if blood was trickling down her skin, but Elias still held the knife to her neck so she kept her hands on the steering wheel, holding perfectly still. How could she not even feel where a moment ago he’d jabbed her?

  “Wh-what—?” She couldn’t even articulate her confusion.

  “Do exactly what I say,” Elias grated, his breath fanning her face, “or your cheek is next.” The blade glinted at he moved it up near her right eye.

  Hilary flinched from it. “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “No talking. See the entrance coming up on your left? Pull in there.”

  He wanted her to turn into a storage facility?

  The unlit sign for U-Store It advertised secure and temperature-controlled units. She’d never even noticed the facility before, hidden as it was behind a chain-link fence trimmed with barbed wire. Compelled by the razor-sharp blade beside her cheek, she turned into the entrance, coming to a stop before the levered bar that blocked them.

  “Roll your window down,” Elias told her, “and swipe this card over the scanner.”

  Taking the card he gave her, she did as he said, only to regret not dropping it outside her car door. Think, Hilary, think! she railed at herself, even as Elias snatched the card back from her and the bar lifted.

  Hilary cast a hopeful eye all around them. Perhaps another car would come along and someone would notice her being held at knifepoint. But the area remained deserted.

  “Pull in,” Elias ordered.

  No. Hilary was certain once she drove into this place, she stood little chance of ever coming out again. She had no idea what Elias wanted—whether he meant to rape her or sell her into the sex trade or what.

  The tip of his knife touching her cheek forced her cooperation. She eased her foot off the brake and, of its own accord, her Mini rolled into the deserted enclosure.

  With sudden insight, Hilary realized this was where Elias worked, not at IARPA. The facility was close enough to NCTC that he could see her vividly painted vehicle whenever she left the campus. He must have waited for her to leave each night then raced to catch up with her. My God, how long had he been planning this crazy abduction?

  “Pull up to the back,” he ordered, sounding more assured, perhaps due to being on familiar territory.

  Her Mini coursed a narrow alley between the walls of two brick buildings.

  “Turn right,” Elias added as they reached the end at the back of the facility.

  In the gathering gloom, the chain link fence on their left hemmed them in. Beyond the fence was a fire break, then nothing but trees. No one would see her when Elias dragged her out of her car into one of the rear units. Dread turned her limbs to lead and her mouth to dust. She thought of her phone, stashed in her purse, but that was sitting on the floor of the car behind his seat.

  Suddenly someone stepped out of an unlit door—a uniformed security guard.

  Hilary’s hopes winged upward then crashed back to earth as she beheld the man’s swarthy aspect and malicious expression. As he waved them closer, it was clear that he’d been expecting them. Was this one of Elias’s friends—perhaps one of the dissidents Stu had mentioned?

  Her heart wrenched with horror. Oh, dear God! Stu had been right about Elias, hadn’t he? Elias was friends with terrorists. Worse than that, he was delivering her to them.

  She braked, abruptly, refusing to go any farther. Elias reached over and killed the ignition. The other man’s footsteps filled the sudden quiet as he stalked to her car and hauled her door open. As his rough hands seized her, Elias unfastened her seatbelt and reached for her purse.

  To no avail, Hilary struggled. Every muscle in her body strained in protest as the stranger dragged her from her car then propelled her toward the door from which he’d emerged.

  Unable to wrest free from the man’s cruel grasp, Hilary found herself thrust into a short hallway, dark but for the light shining from one of a half-dozen rooms. The stranger shoved her through the open doorway, and she staggered into an enclosure roughly ten by ten feet. A naked lightbulb illuminated a third man, seated at a card table behind his laptop. The rest of the room was merely four bare walls and a cement slab for a floor.

  At her entrance, the third man rose from one of two chairs to glower down at her. Tall and gaunt, with a beard that hid the lower half of his face, he struck Hilary as utterly ruthless. All oxygen left her lungs.

  “Sit.” He gestured to the second chair, which faced the table. She wasn’t given an option or even the chance to comply. The second man pressed her down into it, while Elias shut the door, locking it with a twist of the deadbolt. Clunk.

  Rocked by her thudding heart, Hilary swayed where she sat. Elias crossed the room, delivering her purse into the hands of the one who was clearly the leader. Without any respect for her personal property, that man pawed through her purse until he came up with her cell phone. He roused it, then regarded her with such soulless eyes that she felt her heart shrink.

  “What’s your password?” he asked, the soft tone of his voice causing a chill to race up her spine.

  When she hesitated, he dro
pped her purse onto the table and approached her with a menacing swagger.

  English, like Elias’s, suggested he’d been born and raised in the USA. Hilary stared at him. She didn’t keep any secrets on her phone, but she did keep contact information for her colleagues, including their street addresses. Holding her tongue, she quaked as she awaited the consequence of her silence.

  With an impatient mutter, the man leaned down and seized her right wrist. Using his superior strength, he pressed her thumb to the scanner, and her phone immediately unlocked itself. Damn it. She had never considered that shortcut might be used against her.

  “Next time you don’t cooperate,” he warned her, tossing her hand away, “Tarek will cut your thumb off.”

  Tarek? Her gaze jumped to the man by the door. Wait, she knew that name.

  Tarek and Sayid. Stu’s voice echoed in her head. Holy shit! Her supposition was correct. They were Elias’s Facebook friends.

  Shock dumped adrenaline into her bloodstream. Terrorists. She’d fallen into the hands of terrorists.

  The leader, who had to be Sayid, was searching for something on her cell phone. He evidently found it, shooting a triumphant smirk at his companions. “He’s here.”

  With that same cold smile on his lips, he started to compose what could only be a text—to whom? Was he texting Ike Calhoun? She remembered stupidly pointing him out to Elias. And if not her boss, then who?

  In a flash of clarity, she realized the truth—it was Stu, who had introduced himself to Elias as a Ghost Security Group member, having no idea how much that title would intrigue Elias.

  “Wh-what are you telling him?” she asked in a voice thin with fear.

  Sayid glanced at his companions first, then shrugged and looked at her. “You know who we want?” he asked mildly.

  She wet her dry lips in lieu of answering.

  Sayid supplied the answer for her. “Stuart Rudolph. He’s your boyfriend, right?”

  She swallowed to find her voice. “No,” she said truthfully.

  Sayid ignored her. “Let’s see how much he cares for you.” He looked back at her phone and started texting.

  Clearly, he meant to lure Stu to their location. “What are telling him?” she repeated.

  “You’ll see.”

  Sayid’s upper lip disappeared into his mustache as he finished his text. Then, gesturing for Elias and Tarek to relax, he rounded the table and returned to his chair. He laid her cell phone next to his laptop, then dropped into his chair and folded his arms across his narrow chest.

  “Now we wait,” he added, gloating with the certainty that Stu would come to her rescue.

  Hilary, who recalled with a pang how she’d rejected Stu on Sunday, was not so certain.

  Chapter Eight

  Dragging his gaze from his watch, Stu looked back at his laptop at Sayid Zafrani’s latest Facebook post. It was hard to focus on the cryptic message with thoughts of Hilary’s date interfering. He had nearly parked his car close to her apartment that evening so he could follow her and Malki on their outing. What if the man mistreated her? What if she needed rescuing?

  In the end, he’d decided Hilary was smart and feisty and, therefore, capable of looking out for herself. Following her amounted to stalking, so he’d returned to his hotel room after his meeting with the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

  With his duty to Congress complete, he could go back to Virginia Beach that night if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He had walked away from Hilary the last time and had regretted it ever since. Leaving her with things the way they were between them didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt plain awful.

  By now, Hilary would have listened to the detailed voicemail he had left on Sunday, apologizing for his stupidity and begging her for a second chance. She had his new number; why wasn’t she calling him?

  Ugh! Now he knew how frustrated she must have felt all those months when he’d ignored her. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve her cold shoulder. He did, but she was taking it a bit too far. For all he knew, she was on her date with Malki, which meant that Stu might never get her back. If only he could prove Elias didn’t work for IARPA. That agency, unfortunately, laid claim to commendable security measures. Not even Stu, the Hacker, had managed to hack his way into its HR department.

  Heaving a frustrated sigh, he looked back at Sayid Zafrani’s latest Facebook post.

  Tonight the Great Ghost faces Allah’s judgment!

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? Stu analyzed the sentence word by word. Great Ghost called to mind the Great Satan, which was, of course, ISIL’s favorite way of referencing the USA. But what if Ghost referred to Ghost Security Group; after all, members of GSG were referred to by the media as “ghosts.” Why would Zafrani predict that a ghost would face Allah’s judgment, that night of all nights?

  The buzzing of Stu’s cellphone kept him from theorizing an answer. His heart leaped to see Hilary’s name accompanied by a text from her.

  Hey, can you help me? I went to get a box out of storage and I got locked into my unit.

  Stu blinked at the perplexing message before thumbing a quick reply: Aren’t you on a date right now?

  Her answer took almost a full minute. He was about to call her outright when she texted back: No, I changed my mind. I went to my storage unit to get you something. The door closed behind me and I can’t get out.

  Something for him? His jealousy cleared in an instant. Hot damn! She had changed her mind about Malki, and she was thinking about him instead! His heart seemed to expand in his chest. What’s more, she was calling on him to be her knight in shining armor and rescue her from…a storage facility.

  He glanced at his watch. 7:15 p.m. Couldn’t she have waited until morning?

  Impatient with texting, he jackknifed out of his chair and called her number directly. Her phone rang and rang, but she didn’t pick up. Instead, she sent a map via text, pinpointing her location. Ironically, U-Store It appeared to be right up the street from the National Counterterrorism Center.

  I want to talk to you, he texted her. Call me.

  The reception is bad. We have to text.

  Stu narrowed his eyes at the printed assertion.

  The outside gate should open automatically, she added seconds later. I’m in C3 in the back. I’ll text you the code when you get here. Hurry!

  Stu scowled at his phone. Something—aside from the sheer bizarre nature of the request—felt off about out it. True, Hilary was prone to doing the unexpected, but this was weird.

  Querying the uneasy feeling in his gut, Stu thought of his friend and teammate Jeremiah, who’d taught him never to dismiss the whispers of his intuition. After all, Elias Malki was supposed to have been taking Hilary on a date tonight. What if Malki was somehow behind Hilary’s bizarre request?

  A sudden thought jerked Stu’s gaze back to his open laptop and to Zafrani’s mysterious post there: Tonight the Great Ghost faces Allah’s judgment!

  A suspicion pierced Stu’s thoughts. Was it possible Elias Malki had enlisted Sayid Zafrani and Tarek Hayek in a scheme to lure and capture Stu of all people?

  Raking his fingers through his hair, he sought a valid counter-argument. Zafrani and Hayek lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Stu was down here. So how would they get their hands on him?

  Easy. At Malki’s behest, they could have hopped on a plane that morning. That man might have persuaded them they could use Hilary as bait to capture an actual Ghost Security Group member. Hell, they seemed pretty confident of their odds, enough to predict a victory on social media.

  Certainty made Stu’s scalp prickle. That wasn’t Hilary texting him. It didn’t sound anything like her. She was being used to lure him in.

  What if he ignored her texts? The terrorists would likely kill her. He wasn’t going to let that happen, and they knew it.

  He needed help. Fast.

  Stu’s immediate instinct was to call up his teammates. With Tristan’s ringer alr
eady sounding in his ear, Stu thought better of it and severed the call. Not only were his teammates several hours away, they were all involved in rigorous training that week and would never get permission from the CO to come to Stu’s aid.

  He turned and prowled the length of his hotel room. His thoughts went to Hilary’s boss, Ike Calhoun, and he drew up short. The man had been a SEAL himself during the War in Afghanistan. When Tristan’s fiancée had been shot in the head five months earlier, Calhoun had responded to a call for help, arrested the shooter, and promptly cleared the crime scene. As Hilary’s boss and head of the Inter-Agency Counterterrorist Taskforce, he was the go-to guy.

  Finding the man’s contact information in his cellphone, Stu crossed to his suitcase as he placed the call. He accessed the secret panel at the bottom of his suitcase and withdrew the locked box that held his Sig Sauer Legion 226. Calhoun’s phone rang four times before the man finally picked up.

  Stu stammered through an introduction only to be cut off.

  “I remember you. What’s up?”

  With the heartfelt hope that he wasn’t wasting the man’s time, Stu launched into a quick explanation of the date Hilary was supposed to be on with a man who had dissident friends on Facebook. Ike listened silently but intently.

  When Stu finished with, “I think she’s been abducted, and they’re using her to try to get to me,” Calhoun’s chair gave an audible squeak. “She’s texting me, telling me she locked herself in her storage unit, and she needs me to get her out.”

  “Who’s her neighbor, and who are the dissidents?”

  “Her neighbor is Elias Malki. He’s friends with Sayid Zafrani and Tarek Hayek.”

  “Shit.” Calhoun cursed on the other end, taking Stu by surprise.

  “You’ve heard of them?” Stu guessed.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of them. They flew into Dulles this morning. We’ve been following them since, but they lost us around rush hour.”

  Stu’s stomach lurched unpleasantly. Too much of a coincidence. “I think I know where they are.” He strapped his paddle holster over his chest and cinched it tight.