She looked down and saw she was on a metal wall-mounted bunk covered in rough blankets. Beside it was a stainless steel wall-mounted toilet.
Without a seat, she noticed with dismay.
The only source of light was a narrow window at the top of the cell, too high for her to see through. Then she looked behind her and saw her wheelchair at the head of her bed, but even if she climbed into it and pushed herself across the cell there would be no way for her to haul herself up and get a look out of the window.
So this was Tartarus.
Once again considering how alone she was, she felt her heart quicken in her chest. She was alive, but that didn’t mean to say her father or Brandon had made it. She guessed Faulkner had some kind of insane show trial planned for her father, but that still didn’t guarantee he was alive. What if a fight had broken out and things had gotten ugly?
Easy, Alex.
You have to stay calm — there ain’t no getting out of here by having a panic attack and passing out on the floor. You have to hold it together and think rationally.
She pushed herself up into a sitting position and then pulled the chair around to the side of the bed. With a great deal more effort than most realized, she heaved herself over into the chair, pulling her heavy legs into place when she was comfortably sitting down.
She blew out a breath and took a second before releasing the brakes and wheeling over to the door on the far wall. In its center was a letterbox which she presumed was for posting meals into the cell. When she raised her hand to touch it, she saw it was bolted shut from the other side.
Of course it was.
She pressed her right ear up against the cold, bare metal of the door and strained to hear anything that might give her a clue to any sign of life, but she heard nothing. From the far side of the cell and with her eyes properly adjusted to the light now, she was able to get a slightly better angle of the window but all she saw was a perfect rectangle of pure blue sky. It told her nothing. She could be anywhere on earth.
She felt like crying and for a moment wondered if she might lose control and all the horror of the last few days would come flooding out. But she surprised herself by holding it back and keeping a level head on her shoulders. She closed her eyes and heard her father’s voice in her head.
Don’t let the bastards get to you, kiddo.
“I won’t Dad,” she whispered in the unforgiving silence of her new home. “I promise.”
When Jack Brooke woke up, he found himself slumped face-down on the floor of a grimy prison cell. He had a split lip and a black eye, but only the vaguest memory of how they got there. He knew he had been drugged. How hard had they beaten him while he was under their influence? Had he said anything? Checking his arms, he saw several puncture marks and started to get an idea of just how much they had drugged him.
He rubbed the back of his head and cursed under his breath. Struggled to his feet and took a seat on the side of his wall-mounted bed. Blowing out a long, anxious sigh he stared around the small room and tried to take stock of his situation. As a man with many years military experience under his belt, he knew where he was straight away. He was sitting on military-issue sheets and this was a military prison.
Tartarus, just as Faulkner had threatened.
The only problem was up until right now he had no idea such a place even existed and certainly not the first clue as to where its location might be. Was it on an island in the middle of an ocean, or was it a compound somewhere hidden in a jungle or a desert? Some said it was on an artificial island, but that could be disinformation.
Judging from the bright light streaming in through the cell window high above his head, he knew one thing — it wasn’t an underground facility. That was something, at least, but he had so many other concerns he didn’t even know where to start.
Except he did.
Alex. She wasn’t in here with him, so they must have put her in another cell. He got up from the bed and paced the room, counting the steps and taking measurements. Assessing the height and tapping the walls to see what materials had been used to construct his prison. He tried to check the light bulb for any information that might give him a clue — a date, a name — but it was screwed in behind a chunky panel of safety Perspex.
He walked over to the window and leaped up until his hands grabbed the slim concrete sill. Heaving with all his might, he pulled himself up until he could just peer out of the window, but when he saw the view outside he almost wished he hadn’t bothered. All he could see was another plain cinder block wall stretching out of his line of sight in both directions.
“Great,” he muttered, and lowered himself back down to the floor.
He checked the door but it was locked, just as he had fully expected it to be. A man like Faulkner didn’t take over the United States in a coup d’état and then forget to lock a door on the cell of the man he’d just ousted.
Stepping back over to the bed he stretched himself out flat and crossed his arms behind his head. He’d been in worse scrapes in his life. Seen more shit than a monkey can fling, he thought. All that was really bothering him at this exact second was the wellbeing of his daughter and the Secret Service Agent who had loyally defended her right up to the last moment.
He sighed. The reinforced concrete ceiling offered the blandest view on earth so he closed his eyes and let his mind wander. None of this left him with much hope. Faulkner seizing power and then arresting him and his daughter. Flying them out to this Tartarus location that he had never heard of in all his time in the top echelons of the US Government.
If he knew one thing, it was that things were going to get a hell of a lot worse before they got any better. With that thought, he started to drift back to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
High in the Vitosha Mountains and in the darkness of night, Hawke skilfully slipped his trusty monocular from his pocket and raised it to his eye. Lit in the eerie phosphor-green of the night-vision technology, the rugged slopes of the nation’s biggest park stretched away into the night in an endless vista of pine forests, canyons, caves and waterfalls.
In a smooth sweeping motion he followed the line of a ridge in the middle distance until he found what he was looking for — the private castle of Sergei Dimitrov. It was nestling deep in a narrow valley of myrtle and heath and much larger than he had expected.
Built inside the grounds to the west of the castle, he counted three smaller villas dotted about here and there, all connected by wooden footbridges and floating staircases. Besides the castle itself, the center attraction was an enormous sparkling swimming pool the shape of an electric guitar.
“So where’s the lyre?” Camacho asked. “In the villas or in Castle Grayskull?”
Hawke felt the cool night air on his cheek. “My money is on the castle.”
“Mine too,” Lea said. “But we should split up.”
“Bagsy the villas,” Ryan said. “That castle looks like the kind of place you don’t come out of. There’s probably vampires in there.”
Lea rolled her eyes. “This is Bulgaria, Ry, not Romania.”
“Vampires don’t respect borders, Lea.”
“For fuck’s sake stop being such a fool.”
“Just making conversation.” He smacked a mag into his gun and stuffed it in his belt, silently giving thanks to Orlando Sooke. Their new friend had been as good as his word. When they told him where Dimitrov was located, he quickly arranged for an SUV loaded with weapons to be delivered to a parking lot in Sofia. When they arrived a man who introduced himself only as Krasimir gave them the keys and wandered off to the nearest Metro station.