Black Widow. Cliff Ryder
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the mangled bodies that lay scattered over the area.
If not for her husband, Maaret knew she would have walked into one of the apartment buildings and set off the explosives she had worn. The damage and the death toll would have been much worse. The man who had outfitted her with the explosives had told her how much destruction the explosion would cause, as if she should take joy in that knowledge.
She hadn’t.
And she hadn’t thought of the lives she would have ended. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t have been able to carry the explosives into the building. Children lived there, as well, though she’d been told the apartments she was supposed to target were dwellings without children.
Maybe it was the truth.
She’d gotten to the point where she no longer recognized the truth.
“You did well, Maaret,” Taburova said as he quickly guided her through the alleys. “I’m very proud of you.”
Maaret said nothing. She covered her bulging belly with her free hand to protect her child, but she knew she would never possess the power to completely protect him. She wept for her child, for her dead husband, and for herself.
1
Istanbul, Turkey
“Get up!”
Ajza Manaev woke instantly at the command but too late to avoid the slap to the back of her head. She recognized Fikret’s growl as her hand closed on the 9 mm Tokarev pistol under her pillow. Her natural anger suited the role she currently played, so she let the emotion take her.
Fikret obviously expected her to react to his rude awakening. He tightened a fist in her hair and tried to control her.
Ignoring the blazing pain at the back of her scalp, Ajza twisted in the small bed and rammed the pistol into Fikret’s underarm. She twisted and raked the sight across the nerves clustered there.
With a squall of pain, Fikret released his hold and stepped back. He was a bear of a man, thick and heavy with fat, but incredibly strong. A thick mustache bisected his round face. Stubble covered his cheeks.
He cursed at her as he yanked his jacket and shirt back to check his armpit for a wound of some kind.
“I ought to kill you!” he screamed. He released his jacket and shirt, and turned his gaze back to Ajza. His huge hand drew back automatically to deliver a blow.
Ajza held the pistol in both hands and aimed it squarely between Fikret’s eyes. “Touch me again,” she told him coldly, “and I’ll kill you.”
“I tried to wake you,” he protested. “You wouldn’t wake.”
“I always wake,” Ajza said. “You only tried to wake me once. Then you hit me. If we didn’t need you today, I would kill you for that alone.”
Fikret lowered his hand and looked over his shoulder at the other men in the small apartment. “Tell her,” he exhorted. “Tell her that I tried to wake her. Tell her that she is hard to wake.”
Nazmi shoved his foot into a worn work boot and laced it. He was young and lean. Long black hair grazed his shoulders, shoulders that bore tattoos of American rock bands.
“She’d didn’t look that hard to wake, Fikret,” Nazmi said with a big grin. “You told her to wake at about the same time you hit her. She woke pretty fast and offered to kill you.” He shrugged. “If she was hard to wake, I think you would have gotten out of the way in time.”
Fikret scowled and jabbed a big finger in Nazmi’s direction. “Maybe I should kick your ass, too, you young pup.”
A knife appeared in Nazmi’s hands like magic. An easy smile framed his face. “Anytime you wish to try, you fat oaf, you are most welcome.”
Ajza watched the exchange with a wary eye. The animosity between Fikret and Nazmi had existed from the beginning. In fact, most of the team avoided the big man because he struck quickly with verbal abuse and with his hands. This morning was the first day he’d tried that with her.
“Get away from my bed,” Ajza ordered.
Fikret scowled. “This is a very small room.”
“Then go outside.”
Angrily Fikret stomped outside.
“I don’t think you made him very happy.” Nazmi reached for his other boot.
“I’m not getting paid to do that.” Ajza sat on the bed and watched the others getting ready. The fact that so much activity going on hadn’t woken her surprised her. In a way, Fikret had been right. She had been hard to wake.
You’ve pushed this operation too long, she told herself. You should have been pulled a month ago.
But every time they’d gotten ready to retrieve her from the field, one more piece of the puzzle dropped into place. That slow trickle of crucial information had been the most exasperating of all.
If not for the cloud of doubt clinging to Ilyas’s death…
Resolutely, as she had done for two years, Ajza pushed away her pain and confusion over her younger brother’s death. Those feelings proved hard to bear. She missed Ilyas. Whenever she spent time at home with their parents, she felt the gaping hole left by his death.
“I think of making Fikret angry as a bonus,” Nazmi told her. “I’m just glad they’re not charging me for the privilege.”
Ajza looked at the younger man. At twenty-nine, though they thought her younger, she felt like the old person among them.
“Is this for real?” she asked. “Or is this another false alarm?”
Nazmi shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know.”
“I hate getting up early when there’s no reason.”
“But you miss so much of the day when you sleep late.” Nazmi stood and stomped his work boots into a better fit. “I will make you a deal. If this is another false alarm, I will buy you breakfast at the market. Okay?”
The crush Nazmi had on her had been apparent from the start. Given another time and place, Ajza might have let the attraction between them develop. Still, having a friend to cover her back when the bullets started flying was a good thing.
“All right,” she said.
Nazmi gazed at her. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?”
Ajza got out of bed with the Tokarev in her hand. She wore sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt. “Not in here,” she said.
“Get dressed in here and I will buy you two breakfasts,” Nazmi suggested. He made no move to get out of her way.
“Maybe I will shoot you in the head and take your money, then buy myself as many breakfasts as I want.” Ajza smiled sweetly as she looked up at him.
“You know,” Nazmi said, “I almost think you would do such a thing.”
Ajza knew that he had no idea of what she had done in the past or was prepared to do now.
“You know that Mustafa doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” Nazmi said.
“Tell him to leave. I’ll catch up.” Ajza pushed Nazmi aside and went to the bathroom.
Inside the small bathroom with the rust-coated shower and toilet, she turned on the water and undressed. Then she knelt, reached behind the toilet and pressed a section of the wall. The section slid away and she took out the micro-miniature burst transmitter.
“This is Calico,” she said quickly, in a voice that—thanks to the running water—couldn’t be heard outside the thin walls of the room. “The meeting is on.”
She pressed send and watched as the transmitter encrypted the message, compressed it and beamed it in a split second. Somewhere