Free Tom Clancy Under Fire by Grant Blackwood Page B

YOU?
    Y.
    WATCH YOUR BACK. WILL CALL LATER.
    The screen went blank.
    Edinburgh, Scotland
    The place Helen had found for them, a run-down, side-alley garage with a cramped, two-bedroom flat above it, was private enough, but was filthy and stank of motor oil.
    As Olik sat on the ratty plaid couch watching television, Helen finished cleaning the kitchen and putting away groceries, then started cooking lunch—beans and toast and grilled tomatoes, a UK staple, apparently. A good leader fed her troops, she thought.
    From below came the honk of a car horn.
    Helen said, “Olik, go.”
    Olik headed down the stairs. Helen leaned over the railing and watched as he lifted the main door’s crossbar and swung open the double doors. The garage’s interior was lit by a lone fluorescent light suspended from the rafters. Outside, the alleyway’s cobbles were wet with rain.
    The van rolled inside and Olik shut the doors. Yegor shut off the van’s engine and climbed out, as did Roma.
    “I have it,” Yegor announced with a smile.
    Yegor trotted up the stairs, shrugging off his coat as he went.
    “Did you have any trouble?”
    “Very little. The students have lockers. When she went to lunch, I jimmied the door to hers. No one saw me.” He drew a small notebook from his back pocket and handed it to Helen, who scanned the pages.
    “Class schedule, dormitory room number, appointments . . .”
    “There are only a few here.”
    “The rest would be on her phone,” Yegor said. “I’m surprised they write anything down these days.”
    “Which dormitory is she in?”
    “Chancellors Court.”
    “Good,” Helen replied.
    She walked to a nearby cupboard, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a map of the university’s campus. She laid it on the kitchen table and traced her finger over the legend until she found Chancellors. “Right here. It’s part of the Pollock Halls complex. We need to see it up close. We’ll go when it’s dark.”

H OW DO we even know it was him?” Ysabel said.
    They were back at her apartment, again watching the sunrise streaming through her balcony windows and enjoying a cup of her nuclear-powered coffee. Jack had slept fitfully, half hoping for an update call from Gavin Biery while his brain worked the “Seth problem.” Jack wanted to move, to take action, but the smart course was to do nothing until he got Gavin’s results.
    “We don’t,” Jack replied. “If it wasn’t him, it means someone’s got him. Or at least his phone.”
    “If that’s true, and they were asking about what we found in the safe, it means you might have been talking to the men who took you. Oh, that reminds me . . .”
    Ysabel got up, walked to the credenza behind her couch, opened a drawer, then returned with a fifteen-inch MacBook Pro and sat back down. When the laptop booted up, she started typing. After a minute she said, “The van’s placard was real enough—Yazdani and Son Electrical Contractors. The address is in an industrial part of town, on the east side—Ehsan and Tenth Street. Should we go?”
    Jack considered this. While they weren’t going to find Balaclava and his partner loitering about in Yazdani’s offices, it was a lead. Seth’s trail was growing cold.
    •   •   •
    THEY DROVE YSABEL’S RANGE ROVER to a public parking lot a half-mile from the Yazdani address, then got out and hailed a cab. As the car pulled to the curb beside them, Ysabel said, “When we get there, I’m going in alone.”
    “No—”
    “It’s better this way. Trust me.”
    Jack hesitated. “Okay, but call me and leave the line open.”
    “Worried for my safety, Jack?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s sweet. Let’s go.”
    The cab took them into the industrial district, two acres of streets lined with cracked sidewalks, sliding security gates, and warehouses fronted by faded red and green awnings and signs in Persian/Farsi. The driver pulled up to a strip of warehouses and stopped.
    Ysabel said something in Persian to