The Invisible. Andrew Britton
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himself, Kealey shook his head angrily. Deep down, he knew he was being naïve. He wanted to condone her actions, to fully accept her decision to resume working for the Agency, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Nor would it be fair to what he knew. In the months following the terrorist attack that had nearly claimed her life, he had personally cared for her at his home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She had spent part of the winter with him, and in that time, he’d come to understand how deep her issues actually ran. They certainly weren’t the kind of problems that could be overcome by six months of training at Camp Peary. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to give up on her. He’d made that promise to himself a long time ago, and he had no intention of breaking it now.
At the same time, he couldn’t speak for the operatives they were going to meet in Spain. He couldn’t make that decision for them, and if Naomi’s behavior threatened to put them at risk, he’d have no choice but to intervene and pull her out. Before accepting the assignment, he had made one simple demand of Jonathan Harper: he wanted tactical command for the operation in Spain. The rest of it could be decided at a later date, but he insisted on running things in Madrid. Harper had readily agreed. Naomi had been told as much the next morning, with Kealey present, but she hadn’t reacted in any noticeable way, and she hadn’t mentioned it since. Kealey wondered if she’d taken it seriously, but in the end, it didn’t really matter; he was in charge, and that was final. If he decided to pull her off, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Then again, doing so would almost certainly mark the end of their relationship. And that was assuming, Kealey reminded himself moodily, there was even a relationship to salvage.
He turned back to the window and stared absently out at the rain. He decided to wait and see. He wanted to give her the chance, but if she didn’t snap out of it soon, he’d have to make a hard, but necessary, decision. He had put her life ahead of thousands of others once before. He’d gotten away with it on that occasion, but he had no desire to push his luck. If she was going to see this through, she’d have to earn the right. It was just that simple, and just that hard.
CHAPTER 10
RAWALPINDI
When she blinked back to consciousness, Brynn Fitzgerald was momentarily confused as to what had happened. She could remember the first explosions, the sickening images of blood, smoke, and fire. She knew the driver had managed to get their vehicle turned around, but everything after that was a blank. Painfully turning her head to the right, she saw that the haze had started to clear, and she realized she was still in the vehicle. The front seats had been blown from their anchors and partially pushed back. She was lying on the floor, facedown. The driver’s seat was jammed against her right shoulder, or maybe it was the other way round. Either way, it hurt to move, and there was a weight on her back that could only be Lee Patterson. She said his name a few times, raising her voice each time in the hope he was merely dazed, but he didn’t respond.
Doing her best to push her way through the mental blocks of fear and confusion, Fitzgerald tried to figure out how serious her injuries were. Her limbs seemed to be moving well enough, but her chest felt tight, and it hurt to breathe. The pain was intense; it felt as if someone were pushing down on her chest with both hands, constraining her lungs. Her arms were pinned under her body, but she was able to feel around on her torso. There was a sharp pain on the left side, indicating that a few of her ribs were probably broken. Worst of all, no one was rushing to their assistance, which could only mean the attack had succeeded.
“Lee.” Fitzgerald was taken aback by how weak her voice sounded. She coughed involuntarily, then cleared her throat. She could taste blood in her mouth, and that frightened her more than anything else. “Lee, can you hear me? Say something. Please, just say something.”
There was still no response. A sudden flurry of voices outside the car jolted the secretary of state back to reality. She was hit by a wave of relief but then realized that the voices weren’t speaking English. There was a banging on the door, then a strange noise that she couldn’t decipher. It almost sounded as if something was being affixed to the exterior of the car, and if that was the case, it could only be one thing. She felt another sick wave of fear, but she just couldn’t move; there was nothing to do but wait for the end.
The voices moved away as suddenly as they’d appeared. Fitzgerald could hear running feet and the screams of injured civilians. She was trying to figure out what to do next when her body was wracked by a fit of coughing. Then she realized that she hadn’t made a sound; it was Patterson who’d been coughing on top of her. She could feel his chest rising and falling against her back, but his breathing was erratic and labored.
“Lee?” She tried to turn to face him, but the seat was wedged too tightly against her shoulder. It was almost impossible to keep the panic out of her voice. “How bad is it? Can you move?”
He muttered something she couldn’t understand. There was a flash of searing light, followed by a loud bang. Fitzgerald blacked out again, but only for a second. Coming back to herself, she realized that the passenger-side door—the door closest to her feet—had been blown off its hinges. Although she could no longer hear out of her right ear, the desperate screams of pain and fear were suddenly louder. There was a sustained rattling noise, the sound of automatic gunfire, and some of the screams stopped abruptly. Fitzgerald felt the weight on her back shift without warning, Patterson’s body sliding down her own. Then the weight was off completely, just as a pair of hands clamped round her ankles. She cried out and tried to kick the hands away, but it was no good. Arms were waiting for her as she was pulled roughly from the remains of the Suburban, and then she was dragged clear of the vehicle.
A pair of men hauled her across the road, supporting her with one arm on either side, their free hands gripping hers. As her feet scraped over the shattered glass that covered the asphalt, one of her shoes came loose. The splinters instantly tore through her nylons and into her foot. A scream rose in her throat, but she bit her lip and held it back in time, not wanting to give them the satisfaction. Turning her head to the right, she saw that Patterson was being moved by another pair of armed men. He was unconscious, his body limp, chin lowered to his chest. Once they were clear of the devastation, she was dropped into a painful heap on a patch of dead grass. Patterson was deposited a few feet away. The secretary of state looked back to the vehicle she’d just been pulled out of, and what she saw caused bile to rise in her throat.
The Suburban’s engine compartment was a smoking ruin. The reinforced windshield was completely opaque, damaged by the force of the explosion, but Fitzgerald could see through the passenger-side window, which had completely blown out. Mike Petrina’s head was partially caved in, covered in blood and lolling forward against the dash, which had been pushed into his chest. The man charged with her protection was clearly dead, and that was the worst blow yet. With Petrina at her side, Fitzgerald had never felt vulnerable; it had never occurred to her that something could happen as long as he was alive. He was just too capable. But now he was gone, and a man was walking toward her….
The tall figure was dressed in what appeared to be a Pakistani army uniform, but his head was covered by a black balaclava. All Fitzgerald could see was his eyes, which were a flat shade of amber brown. He was holding a gun in his right hand, and as he drew near, he slowed by the prostrate form of an injured woman. She lifted a bloodied hand and said something that Fitzgerald couldn’t hear, but she was clearly pleading for help. The man paused, looking down at her, then lifted the gun and fired once into her forehead. A fist-sized mass of bone, blood, and tissue spattered over the pavement. The man kept moving forward as if nothing had happened, impervious to what lay behind him, a nightmarish scene of burning vehicles, maimed people, and mangled bodies.
As horrendous as the sight was, Brynn Fitzgerald couldn’t look away. Her mouth was hanging open, a scream frozen in her throat, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the man who had just killed an innocent woman in cold blood. She had just witnessed—and survived—a brutal attack, but it had happened so fast that it hadn’t really hit her yet. None of it could compare to what she had just seen; the casual, routine way in which the man had carried out the act was simply overwhelming. Now the killer was walking toward her, looking right through her, and the gun was still in his hand….
“Brynn.”