The words came out so quickly that Alex barely understood them.
In the months since she had associated herself with Stonewell International, she had spent her spare time taking crash courses in a multitude of languages. Her instructors had been surprised to discover she was something of a savant. What took most people weeks to learn took Alex only a matter of days, including conversational Turkish, which she had come very close to mastering — although not quite as close as she liked to believe.
“Where are you headed?” the guard repeated impatiently. “Which floor?”
She caught it this time and said, “The radiology lab on four.” Istanbul was a melting pot and the small imperfections in her accent didn’t seem to faze him. She pointed to the ID. “See? I’m an X-ray technician.”
He studied the card again, then handed it back to her without expression and let her pass.
Alex heaved an inward sigh of relief and got on board, where two nurses, a doctor, and three civilians were waiting, none of them happy about the delay.
One of the nurses muttered something unintelligible and hit a button on the panel.
Friendly place.
The doors closed and Alex leaned past her, bypassed the button for the fourth floor and pressed six instead. The elevator car groaned and lurched into motion, a lumbering beast that wasn’t any happier than its occupants. Alex waited patiently as the numbers above the door ticked off their progress.
The car stopped at floors two and five before finally landing on six.
When the doors rolled open, she was the only passenger left, which was just as well considering how crowded it was up here. Several patients lay on gurneys in the hallway, waiting for someone to attend to them. The hospital staffers chatting nearby seemed about as interested in these poor people as weary morgue attendants in a room full of corpses.
“I’m on the target’s floor,” she said quietly. The pen clipped to her breast pocket had an extremely sensitive microphone built into it.
“Good,” Cooper said in her ear. “What’s your ETA?”
“Half a minute, give or take. Deuce, are you in position?”
“Ready whenever you are, kid.”
Alex threaded her way past the gurneys, giving one of the patients a reassuring pat, and moved down the corridor, headed in the direction of Room 633.
Yusuf Solak’s room.
After grabbing a stray wheelchair, she pushed it in front of her as she rounded a corner and found herself in a much less crowded hallway — empty except for two casually dressed but very dangerous-looking men, who immediately eyed her with suspicion.
Solak’s bodyguards. Both were JİT, Turkish Gendarmerie Intelligence, doing a bit of moonlighting on Solak’s dime. Alex knew from the intel that there should be two more men inside the room, and another half dozen in various parts of the building, including the stairwell where Deuce was poised and ready to strike.
She pushed the wheelchair toward the bodyguards, offering a smile. One of them came forward and raised a hand, commanding her to “Halt.”
When she did, he unceremoniously grabbed her by the elbow, shoved her against the nearest wall, and ran his hands along her sides and up and down her legs, coming perilously close to a molestation charge. She half expected him to order her to drop trou, but she was spared the indignity as he turned her around and decided instead to concentrate on her bra.
When he was done pawing her breasts, he took hold of her arm again and shoved her back toward the wheelchair.
“She’s clean,” he said to his partner. “Let her through.”
The partner nodded and stepped aside, offering her a crude grin as he gestured toward the open doorway to Room 633. She could feel his gaze on her as she passed, no doubt studying her ass, and she hoped he stuck around long enough to let her wipe away that grin with a well-placed fist.
She was greeted at the doorway by another bodyguard, this one smaller than his colleagues but no less dangerous. “Who are you?” he said.
No trouble with comprehension this time.
“Enise,” she told him. “From radiology. Mr. Karga is due for an X-ray.”
As a security precaution, Solak had been admitted under the name Nazim Karga, his occupation listed as importer-exporter. What the hospital didn’t know was that “Mr. Karga” exported terror, in many different forms. The network he commanded was responsible for a number of attacks on US and European targets, and had ties to the Taliban and several Islamist splinter groups in Iran, placing him on a number of wanted lists around the world.
As a result, Stonewell International, which specialized in fugitive retrieval, had been commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security to do a little exporting of its own. And because Alex was female and half Persian, allowing her to easily infiltrate the facility, she and her team had been tasked with grabbing Solak from his hospital bed and putting him on the next available transport out of the country.
Despite mixed feelings about her association with Stonewell, Alex had no misgivings whatsoever about the target. Slugs like Solak set her teeth on edge, and she was all too happy to be part of this acquisition.
The guy in the doorway frowned at her. “We weren’t told about any X-rays.”
“It’s right here on the chart.” Alex showed it to him.
He took it from her and flipped impatiently through the pages that had been expertly forged by Stonewell’s Photoshop whizzes.
“This is indecipherable,” he said. “What are all these numbers and abbreviations?”
“Things I spent many years in school to learn.” She pointed to a line on the top page. “There it is, right there. AP and lateral CSRX, two o’clock.” She checked her watch. “And if we don’t hurry, he’ll be late.”
“Who ordered this?”
She pointed again. “That’s there, too. Doctor Hasan.”
Hasan was one of three doctors who had been caring for Solak since his heart bypass a week earlier, and as far as Alex knew, he hadn’t ordered a damn thing. But it would take the guards a while to figure this out, and all she needed was to get inside Solak’s room. Once Deuce did his thing, the rest should fall into place.
That was the theory, at least.
The bodyguard sighed impatiently, handed back the chart, then gestured Alex through the doorway.
Bingo.
Another bodyguard seated in a chair near a curtained-off bed rose to his feet as the smaller one pointed at Alex. “Watch her.”
Alex stood there looking as submissive as possible as he pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed. Glancing at the bed curtain, she could feel the adrenaline starting to pump through her veins.
Her target was only feet away.
She said, “Is it all right to prep the patient while you call?”
She had raised her voice a bit, to make sure Cooper and Deuce could hear her. It was their signal to begin phase two of the operation — distract and snatch.
“Stay still,” the second man said and took a step toward her. He looked as though he wanted to smack her around a little just for the fun of it, but before he could turn that thought into action, the piercing scream of a fire alarm blasted through the hallway, courtesy of Cooper.
The two men exchanged startled looks, the first lowering his phone as the second one planted a hand on Alex’s chest, and shoved her into a nearby chair. “Don’t move.”
“But we can’t stay here,” she said, feigning concern. “We need to evacuate.”
“Don’t move or I’ll hurt you.”
Alex tried to look appropriately terrified and stayed put.
Right on schedule, the radio on the smaller man’s hip squawked. “Intruder on three. Northwest stairwell.”
Deuce.
The two bodyguards exchanged another glance as the smaller one ripped the walkie free from his belt and hit the call button. “How many?”