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  Sarah dished up the waffles and set them on the table along with butter and syrup, and the four of them sat down to eat. Without any details of the mission, they simply made small talk. Noah noticed that Sarah kept grinning at Jenny, but he’d already grown accustomed to it. She found Jenny’s natural submissiveness entertaining, even though it only manifested itself when she was with Neil. At any other time, Jenny was as controlling and ruthless as Noah himself. The only difference was that she could be quite emotional at the same time.

  Noah couldn’t. After witnessing the traumatic deaths of his parents when he was a child, Noah suffered from a form of PTSD known as histrionic affect disorder, which meant that he lacked the ability to feel normal emotions. Without emotion, he was also without conscience, and it was this reputed handicap that made him the most effective assassin the United States government had ever known. He could kill his target without feeling any guilt or recriminations, but only if his own internal logic agreed that the death was necessary.

  Jenny, on the other hand, was classed as a highly functioning psychopath. After carefully plotting and executing revenge against New York City gang members for murdering her sister, Jenny had discovered that she enjoyed killing. Unfortunately, she had been arrested for those murders and was looking at the death penalty when Allison Peterson, the director of the organization known as E & E, found her. Allison paid her a visit and she gratefully accepted the opportunity to become an assassin rather than keep her own date with the Grim Reaper. It was only when she was at home with Neil that she could relax and be the submissive she had always wanted to be, and Neil’s natural dominance suited her perfectly.

  When breakfast was over, Jenny kissed Neil goodbye and hurried out to her car. Neil sat at the table, his long legs stretched out under it, and listened as the Jaguar drove away.

  “She'll be back,” Sarah said.

  Neil looked at her. “I had a bad dream last night,” he said. “I dreamed she went out on a mission and wasn’t coming home ever again.” The look on his face was one of total despair, and Sarah reached across the table to lay her hand on his.

  Noah didn’t believe in premonitions, but he was fully aware that all of the teams were under a constant risk when they were on mission. Just being in a foreign country with the intent of committing an assassination that would manipulate political factions was considered an act of espionage, and possibly even of war if it could be proven they were agents of the United States government. This was the reason that they were automatically disavowed by the State Department if they were captured. Each and every one of them was expendable, and they knew it.

  * * * * *

  Jenny arrived at the headquarters building and parked the car in the underground garage, then rode the elevator up to the top floor. That's where Allison’s office was located, inside a dummy corporation known as Brigadoon Investments. As she entered the executive offices, Allison’s secretary smiled and told her to go on into the conference room.

  Allison, Donald Jefferson, Molly Hansen, and three men were already there, and Jenny waved and smiled at all of them as she got herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the conference table. The men were Jim Marino, the intelligence specialist for Team Cinderella; David Lange, the transportation specialist; and Randy Crow, the backup muscle.

  Randy Crow had, until a few months earlier, been known as Randy Mitchell, but he had been blackmailed into complicity with an unknown person, at the time thought to be a CIA mole, who was manipulating agents and agencies all over the world. He had been forced to provide that person with information about Noah, but his complicity had been compromised by that point. Instead of divulging true information, he passed off a fabricated file that concealed much of the truth about Team Camelot and its leader.

  The mole had then ordered Noah to eliminate Randy. In order to keep him from being actually murdered, Noah had used a risky drug that made him appear to be dead so convincingly that a death certificate had been issued. In reality, however, he had been given a new face and a new identity and sent right back to work with Jenny.

  As Jenny took her seat, Allison looked sternly at all of them. “You're about to embark on a mission that's very different from anything you've done before,” she said. “This time, you'll be doing everything possible to keep your targets alive while convincing the entire world, including the Russian government, that they're dead. A general plan has already been put together, and Molly will brief you on it, but I'm sending you because you have the ability to adapt. The objective of the mission is to bring out Deputy Defense Minister Anton Kalashnikov and his family, so that they can defect to the United States. Kalashnikov has absolutely invaluable information, and confidence in his intentions is very, very high.”

  Jenny scowled. “You mean I don’t get to kill anybody this time?”

  “If I know you,” Jefferson said, “an opportunity will probably present itself. You're authorized to kill only in the furtherance of the mission, however. Don’t go off the reservation, Jenny.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry, but I was looking forward to it,” she said. “I've been stuck at home for almost two months, now.”

  Allison stared into her eyes for a moment and Jenny subsided. A moment later, Allison raised a finger and pointed at Molly, and everyone turned their attention to her.

  “As Allison says,” Molly began, “the objective of the mission is to bring this family out safely. We put together the scenario that will allow that to happen, but there are going to be some very tricky aspects of it. Some of those,” she said, looking pointedly at Jenny, “may provide an opportunity for you to utilize your particular talents.”

  She squeezed a clicker and the face of Anton Kalashnikov appeared on the screen behind her. “This is Minister Kalashnikov. For almost a year, now, he has been carefully providing information to a Russian double agent who has been forwarding it to one of our operatives. Some of that information has helped us avert some terrible tragedies in former parts of the old Soviet Union, as the Russian government tries to reassert itself in certain areas.”

  She squeezed the clicker again. “Here is Kalashnikov with his wife and children. His wife’s name is Ivana, his fourteen-year-old son is Piotr and his fifteen-year-old daughter is Olga. As far as we know, the family has no idea they're about to become Americans, but Kalashnikov refuses to leave them behind. He is afraid that, should it ever become known that he defected, they would be murdered in retaliation. Considering that the FSB employs many of the same agents and tactics of the old KGB, he is probably correct.”

  A new picture appeared, of a sailboat. “In a few days, Kalashnikov and family will board this boat at Vladivostok and sail out into the ocean to watch the passing of blue whales. This is something that only happens rarely in that area, but it happens to play directly into our plans. The boat will be rigged with explosives, and hidden in its hull are four escape pods. An American agent who lives in Vladivostok will be posing as the captain of the boat, and it will be his job to get the family into those escape pods when the time comes.

  “Shortly after the boat leaves port, we're arranging for the FSB to be notified that there's a planned assassination attempt against Kalashnikov, and that the boat will be blown up. The idea is for the FSB to send a helicopter to try to warn Kalashnikov, and it's at that moment that the explosion will take place. The FSB agents in the helicopter will witness the explosion, which we hope will eliminate any doubt that Kalashnikov and family have perished. When it goes off, the escape pods will be dropped into the ocean…”

  She squeezed the clicker again and an unusual image appeared. It looked like the outline of a whale, but the inside resembled blueprints of a ship.

  “Meet Big Willie. I know, I know, I was just as surprised when I found out about this as you are. Big Willie is actually a submarine, but it's designed to look and move like a blue whale. His mechanisms are all controlled by a computer, and a single operator steers it. It's literally capable of doing everything a blue whale
can do, even to the way they jump out of the water and splash back down. When the explosion happens, Big Willie will be close by, and the four escape pods will be taken inside and carried away.”

  “Are we changing Kalashnikov’s name to Jonah?” Marino quipped.

  “I'll take that under advisement,” Allison said with a grin.

  Molly grinned also, then went on. “Big Willie can swim about 300 miles at a time, so his mother ship, the Hyperion, will be stationed about 80 miles away. Since there will be other blue whales in the area, no one is going to pay attention as they continue on their journey, and the Hyperion will be sitting right in their path. When they get there, Willie will simply be drawn up into a hidden compartment in the hull, the escape pods will be taken out and carried to a shipping container on the deck that's been fitted up like a luxurious state room, and the family will be released. The ship will head for Niigata, Japan, where the container will be offloaded onto a truck. It will be carried to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, where the family will be placed on a diplomatic flight to Washington DC.”

  Jenny held up her hand. “Question,” she said. “What happens to the agent running the boat? How is he supposed to get off the sailboat?”

  “He will be the only one to be rescued,” Molly said. “Ironically, it will probably be the FSB who rescues him, but he is well known in Vladivostok and shouldn’t have any problems. Since the FSB will already believe the explosion is part of the assassination attempt, he will probably be questioned for a while, but he shouldn’t be in any danger.”

  Jenny looked at Allison. “It sounds to me like this is already worked out,” she said. “What do you need us over there for?”

  “Mostly just to ensure the plan comes off without any problems,” Allison said. “You'll be posing as American tourists who are also there for the whale watch. You'll spend Friday night in the same hotel as the minister and his family, and you'll be on another sailboat close by when everything happens. Once Big Willie picks up the escape pods, you'll receive a brief radio signal telling you that phase of the mission is complete, and then you'll just go back to port with everyone else. You'll undoubtedly be questioned about what you saw, but I doubt you'll be detained more than a couple of hours. You'll stay in the hotel again that night and come home the following day.”

  “Bor-ing!” Jenny said, making everyone chuckle. “Doesn’t sound to me like I'm going to get the chance to kill anybody.”

  “Actually, you might. It's common practice for high-ranking officials in Russia to be under regular surveillance. The reason you'll be at the hotel is to look for that surveillance and eliminate it. That will actually fit in with the information we provide the following day about an assassination attempt, because the surveillance agents would be seen by most assassins as a form of security that needed to be out of the way.”

  “Oh, goody,” Jenny said, “at least I can look forward to a possibility, right? This surveillance, it would probably be somebody bad, right?”

  Allison gave her a wicked grin. “Probably,” she said. “I suppose you can enjoy yourself if the opportunity arises.”

  Jenny broke out into a big smile.

  “You'll be leaving today,” Molly went on. “We have our own agent in Vladivostok, and he will provide weapons and such when you get there. Other than normal tourist clothing, the only thing you're taking with you is the special receiver you'll need when the mission goes down. Wally will have that for you when you go to R&D to pick up your bags.”

  “And I have your ID kits,” Jefferson said. “Jenny, your name is Patricia Stewart, and you're married to Jack Stewart, which is Randy. Jim, you'll be going under the name of Arthur Hickman, and Dave, your name is Charlie Ross. Arthur and Charlie are old friends of Jack and Patricia, and records have been established as showing that the four of you travel quite a lot together. Your passports all bear the same stamps, and you'll have lots of photos showing you in different locations around the world. Wally has all of that stuff ready, as well.”

  Allison looked at the team. “Any other questions?”

  Since there weren’t any, the four of them left the conference room and headed straight out to R&D. An hour later, they were all in Dave Lange’s Cadillac Escalade and on the way to the Denver airport.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The flight made two stops, one at Los Angeles and the other at Seoul, South Korea. They arrived in Vladivostok at just after two in the afternoon on Thursday and took a shuttle directly to their hotel. Kalashnikov and his family would not arrive until the following day, so the itinerary called for Jenny and the men to act like tourists until then.

  The shuttle driver turned out to be one of the American agents, and they discovered that they had an extra suitcase when they arrived at the hotel. Jenny opened it quickly in her room and was delighted to find a number of weapons, including her personal favorites: a simple Beretta 9 mm pistol and a 9 inch stiletto knife.

  After such a long flight, however, Jenny decided that it wouldn’t be out of character for them to simply rest. Once they were checked in, they went to their rooms—she and Randy shared one, while Dave and Jim were in the adjacent room—and relaxed until dinnertime. The hotel had a five-star restaurant, so they lay down to nap until it was time to meet for dinner at seven.

  The next morning, they rose early and rented a car. Jim had looked at tourist attractions and they decided to visit the Vladivostok fortress. The fortress had been one of the most advanced of its day, built before World War I as the most impregnable fortress in the world. It was claimed that the fortress’ existence was the reason Japan chose not to ally themselves with Germany against Russia. Vladivostok was too close to Japan and was capable of defending its fleet of ships. Those ships could have wreaked havoc on the small island nation, and so Japan refused to engage Russia.

  They spent the morning going through the fortress, seeing the underground barracks and tunnels that led from one section to the other. Although it was completed before 1918, the fortress had electricity in every part of it and underground communication cables kept every section in touch with the rest.

  Jenny and the men took a lot of photos and even encouraged other tourists to take pictures of the four of them posing together. They were laughing and having an obvious good time, and Jenny was confident that they were accepted as only what they appeared to be.

  They went to a restaurant called Zuma for lunch, and Jenny joined a few other American tourists in complaining when a surcharge was added to their checks because they were American. Randy played his part well, obviously trying to calm down his wife without ending up in the doghouse himself. When they finally left, Jenny couldn’t help laughing at him.

  “You need to find somebody and get married,” she said. “You’ve got the henpecked husband routine down to a science, buddy.”

  “It's called acting ability,” Randy said. “I have to play my part, right? Just chill, this ought to be one of our easiest missions yet.”

  In the afternoon, they visited Primorski Aquarium. The Aquarium was a major tourist attraction for Vladivostok and known for its underwater exhibits. Transparent walls allowed visitors to go down below the water level and watch many types of marine life in their natural environments. They all thought it was fascinating, but then they got to go and watch the dolphin shows. Trained dolphins performed a number of tricks, similar to what a tourist might see at Sea World or Marine Land parks in America.

  They got back to the hotel at six and it was Dave who first spotted Kalashnikov. He and his family were checking in, and Jenny signaled the men to watch for the expected surveillance. It took them only minutes to spot it; two men, doing their best to go unnoticed, were carefully watching everything Kalashnikov did. As soon as the Minister and his family were checked in and got into the elevator, both men stepped up to the desk to claim the rooms they had already reserved.

  Randy and Jenny stood close behind them, apparently waiting to check with the desk for any messages. Randy, who spoke fluen
t Russian, managed to pick up the room numbers the two were assigned, so after they were told there were no messages waiting for them, they headed on up to their own room. Dave and Jim were already there and waiting for them when they arrived.

  “One of them,” Jenny said, “is right below this room. I'll call him Demetri. The other one, call him Khrushchev, is in the room next door to the one the Kalashnikovs are occupying.” She opened the window that led out to a balcony and stepped outside, looking over the rail. “I could get to the one underneath me this way,” she said. “I'll need some rope. Jim, what about video security in the building?”

  “I checked it out last night,” he replied. “It's a pretty simple system, and I can get into it to shut off any cameras you want, or just erase a section of video.”

  Jenny nodded. “Okay, then I'll take them out tonight. Dave, I need you to go find me some rope somewhere. There’s a lot of scuba diving around here, so they probably have rope in any of the dive shops. Jim, I want you to keep an eye on the targets. Let me know if they go anywhere, and what they’re doing. I don’t know if Kalashnikov is aware of their presence, but I want them out of the picture before morning.”

  Randy snickered. “Yeah, and you want to let the monster out of its cage. I feel a little bit sorry for these guys.”

  “Why?” Jenny asked. “These guys are killers themselves, they probably deserve everything I'm going to do to them.”

  “So what? I know that look in your eyes, you’re planning to enjoy yourself. We all know you get off on killing people, that's just part of who you are.”

  Jenny smiled sweetly at him. “That's true,” she said. “And I'm very frustrated, so unless you want to help solve that problem by becoming my next victim, shut your mouth and do your job.”

  Randy burst out laughing. Jenny’s threats sounded a lot worse than they really were. Well, usually, anyway.