But if he happened to run into any of his enemies along the way, he wanted to be prepared.

Nina went up the stairs and found herself in another corridor, this one lavishly decorated by someone with an apparent fetish for red velvet. Tall windows at each end let in enough light for her to switch off the flashlight. Through the nearest window she could see the surrounding mountains; the other one overlooked the courtyard at the center of the fortress.

From where she could hear gunfire. Chase and Castille were making their entrance.

She also heard running footsteps from around a corner coming towards her-probably somebody heading for the generator room to restore power. She ducked through the closest door. The brief glimpse she caught before closing it and plunging the room into darkness told her it was a library, the walls lined with bookcases of reference texts and historical tomes. Hajjar obviously liked to be as well informed as possible about the artifacts he traded.

Hands shaking, she pulled the gun from its holster, pointing it at the door as she backed away. The footsteps came closer.

If the door opened, would she have the necessary willpower to pull the trigger?

She didn’t need to find out. They faded, clattering down the steps into the basement.

With a sigh of relief, Nina turned on the flashlight again. A library would be a good place to hide out. It was unlikely that any of Hajjar’s people would feel the need to check a historical reference in the middle of a crisis. She just needed to wait for Chase to contact her again…

Suddenly Nina froze, puzzled. The room seemed a lot brighter, as though her flashlight had magically doubled in power.

Filled with dread, she turned.

Hajjar stood barely three feet from her, having just emerged from a room hidden behind a moving bookcase, a lantern hanging from a strap over one shoulder. He seemed almost as surprised as she was-but not so surprised that he didn’t think to point his sinister-looking gun at her.

“Dr. Wilde,” he said, running his gaze up and down her body before raising the blade attached to his right wrist to her throat. “Good to see you again.”

The courtyard was a long rectangle with the main gate at the center of the southern wall. Off to each side were large raised marble stands containing ornamental plants, three in each row. Chase and Castille took cover behind one of them as they got their bearings.

“The way down to the cells should be through that door,” said Chase, pointing ahead.

“She might not be in there,” Castille replied. “We should split up, so one of us can check the upper floors.”

“What about his men?”

“He’s a criminal, not a warlord! It’s not as though he has a private army.”

The door Chase had indicated burst open, five men armed with MP-5s rushing into the courtyard.

“On the other hand…” Chase grimaced as he opened up with his Uzi. Castille popped up and let rip with the G3 over the top of the plants. Two of Hajjar’s men fell immediately, blood splattering the walls behind them. The remaining three split up, two sprinting across the courtyard for the cover of the planter diagonally opposite Chase and Castille, the third diving behind the one ahead of them.

Chase hunted for an escape route. Besides the main gate, the nearest exit from the courtyard was through a set of arched French windows in the west wall, but reaching them would require a sprint of almost forty feet-with no cover. “Shit! If they pin us here for too long, those guys from the bottom gate’ll catch up from behind!”

“What about-” Castille began, just as the flowers above him blew apart in showers of petals. “Excusezmoi!” he yelled at the gunmen in complaint. “What about those windows?”

Chase followed his line of sight-ten feet away in the south wall were two windows, at roughly chest height. But they were each less than two feet wide. “Bit small, aren’t they?” He counted the shots from Hajjar’s men, already sensing a pattern. Pop up, fire a three-round burst, duck back while his mate repeated the process…

He paused for a second, then leaned around the side of his cover. Right on cue, one of the men across the courtyard jumped up to aim at them-only to reel back and drop out of sight as a single bullet from Chase’s Uzi blew a hole in his face. “One down! If we can nail another one, we can cover each other until we reach those doors.”

More innocent flowers were blasted into potpourri. Castille flapped a hand as fragments of petals rained around his face, their scent at bizarre odds with the acrid tang of burnt gunpowder. “It’s a good thing they don’t have grenades.”

“Yeah, and too bad we don’t either! We could-” Chase stopped as he heard a warning shout. “Oh, you had to bloody tempt fate, didn’t you? Grenade!”

Both men fired at the windows as they sprang up and ran towards them. Behind, a grenade arced down from the other end of the courtyard, landing with a thump of soft soil in the planter.

The glass shattered as Chase stitched a line of bullets up it, diving headlong at the narrow opening. Beside him, Castille did the same. They let go of their guns just before hitting the shower of glass, protecting their faces with their arms as the exploding grenade blew out a huge chunk of marble from the side of the planter and hurled soil and vegetation over thirty feet in the air. A lethal hail of metal flew after the two ex-soldiers, but by then Chase and Castille were already through the windows. What little glass remained in the windows flew after them like razor-edged confetti as they hit the floor.

Chase shook off the fragments of glass. The room was a gallery of some kind, lined with statues. His ears were ringing, but besides the jolt of the hard landing on his elbows and knees and a stinging cut on the back of his head, he didn’t feel any new pain. “Are you okay?”

Castille winced. “I’ve been better!” He held up his left arm; his sleeve had been slashed open and a long jagged cut ran down his forearm, splinters of blood-slicked glass protruding from it.

“Can you fight?”

“Always!” He picked up the G3. Chase looked for the Uzi. It wasn’t there-it must have hit the window frame and landed outside.

He drew his Wildey, pressing his back against the wall next to the smashed window. Castille did the same on the other side. The two guards were running for the French windows, intending to enter the building and cut them off.

A shot from the Wildey blew the lower jaw off one man. He crashed to the ground, limbs thrashing. Castille fired twice, plugging the second man in the chest. He fell into the French windows, slamming headfirst through the glass.

“Come on,” Chase snapped. They needed to find Kari-and Nina-fast.

As they left the gallery, the lights pulsed, then came back on.

Kari was certain Hajjar would try to flee the fortress. If her rescuers were attacking from the main gate, he would head for the helipad, a platform recessed into the northern side of the building.

She mentally connected the routes she’d taken from the helipad to the cells, then the cells to Hajjar’s office. Down another floor, then right…

After restoring power, one of Hajjar’s men hurried back up the stairs-to find his boss waiting for him with an unexpected guest. Apparently today was “beautiful Western women” day at the fortress.

Though he couldn’t help noticing that this one, a ponytailed redhead rather than the taller ice-blonde he’d seen earlier, really needed a shower.