Bodyguard Lockdown(6)

“When Mercer refused, Trygg stole the formula?” Jarek prompted.

“No,” Cain replied. “He didn’t need the formula, he had Sandra’s loyalty by then. What he needed was money to finance further research.”

“He had lost his American backing.”

“Exactly,” Cain explained. “Trygg understood marketing CIRCADIAN as a weapon would prove profitable. Enough that he could stake more research on correcting the formula.”

“But Sandra stopped Trygg,” Quamar stated.

“Dead,” Cain replied solemnly. “Trygg is driven by his ego. Sandra worshipped the man. But toward the end of the research he made a major tactical error. His ego got in the way. He decided her hero worship would make her an easy recruit into his Super Soldier project. When he approached her, Sandra played along, but secretly started gathering evidence to expose Trygg. At the end, she broke into Trygg’s office, downloaded his computer files with all his records and turned him in to the military authorities. And months later, testified against him.”

“Who was the nanite specialist Trygg brought in?” Quamar asked.

Jarek glanced at the file. “Doctor Lewis Pitman.”

“The records couldn’t prove his involvement,” Cain advised. “Pitman disappeared from the grid soon after the charges were dropped. We haven’t found him yet.”

“So what does all of this have to do with Booker?” Jarek returned to the original question.

“Read the last few pages of the report,” Cain answered. “By the time Sandra blew the whistle on Trygg, he’d already released CIRCADIAN on a test group days before. She didn’t know it at the time.”

Jarek flipped through the pages until he found the information. “It says here that Trygg kept the exercise a secret.”

“We believe Trygg had started suspecting Sandra’s behavior and kept the experiment from her.”

Jarek read a little further, then swore. He glanced up at Cain. “Booker’s men?”

“This was a whole new biochemical weapon that nobody had heard of before. Trygg needed proof for CIRCADIAN to be marketable,” Cain explained. “He decided on human guinea pigs. So he sent several of his military units out on maneuvers at one of our abandoned military bases. Although they couldn’t prove it, I think Lewis Pitman dumped the nanites from a plane. A million little micro bugs floating in the air. Fifty men died that day. Most were Booker’s troops.”

“A death sentence,” Quamar muttered, his fist tight. “How did Booker survive?”

“The report says Booker was called away on another assignment right before,” Jarek answered for Cain. “He hadn’t been on the base.”

“The story gets worse,” Cain said, his voice grim. “Trygg managed to appear concerned enough to visit each of the men while they fought for their life. He caught the effects of the biochemical reaction on a hidden video camera. Along with the doctor’s reports.”

“Documenting the result for his buyers,” Quamar stated, disgusted. “I have known many men like Trygg. Who feed off of human suffering.”

“None of Booker’s men survived?” Jarek asked.

“None. CIRCADIAN has no known antidote,” Cain answered. “Trygg told Sandra of the deaths while he was being arrested. I know—I was there. She held it together until the guards took him away. Then she collapsed.”

“Booker will not let Trygg remain free. He’ll kill him first,” Jarek acknowledged. He stood, walked over to the window. In an hour or so, the sun would break across the horizon, a warm gold over the pitch and curves of the centuries-old city roofs.

Through the years, he’d lost family. Quamar’s mother, and his own father and mother had been murdered. The thought of losing his people at the hands of a madman cut just as deep. “Hell, I would do the same.”

“We all would,” Cain added.

They’d all spent years in the field. They’d all been responsible for men who never returned home, for families and strangers who got killed, simply because they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

“After Trygg’s conviction, Booker resigned from the military,” Cain explained. “I recruited him into Labyrinth on President Mercer’s recommendation. A few months later, he volunteered to serve in Taer. Because of his expertise in desert warfare, and his background in oil drilling, I approved his assignment.”

“Booker’s request was no coincidence, Cain,” Quamar inserted, suddenly putting all of the pieces together. “He wanted to be close to Sandra.”

“You’re right but I didn’t realize it at the time,” Cain agreed. “After the Al Asheera tried to stage that coup on Taer a few years ago, I ordered Booker home to the States and instead, he resigned.”

“He said he needed a change of pace,” Jarek remembered. “So I kept him on.”

“He must have anticipated Trygg’s escape,” Cain speculated. “Or wanted to keep an eye on Sandra.”

“Or both,” Jarek inserted.

“Trygg planned his freedom for five years,” Quamar reasoned. “To him, freedom without power and respect is a poor existence. For both, he will need to obtain the formula from Sandra, then eliminate her. Booker understands this.”

“If Booker wants Trygg, he’d make sure Trygg came to him,” Cain added. “That’s what we’d all do.”

“And there is no better way to do that than to stick close to the one thing Trygg wants,” Jarek agreed. “The only thing that would bring him out of hiding.”

“Sandra,” Cain stated. “She’s Booker’s bait.”





Chapter Four



“Was that necessary?” Sandra demanded. “Hijacking the man’s car and leaving him sprawled in the street?”

“You’re right, maybe I should’ve shot him,” Booker quipped, then pushed his foot farther down on the accelerator.

“Very funny.” She shifted, then winced. Bruises tattooed her arms, blackened her wrists. She reached into her bag, pulled out a few aspirin.



“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live.” She swallowed the aspirin dry. “Which is more than I could have said six hours ago.”

Run-down and empty streets flew past them. Sandra could see the railroad tracks, the warehouses and the Sahara that lay just beyond.

“You’re driving us into the desert,” she commented, frowning.

“Change of plans,” Booker responded. “We’re not going back to the palace.”

“Because of Jarek’s dead guard back there?”

“I hired him several months ago. American. Ex-military. Impeccable record and references. Top security clearance. All of them checked out,” Booker admitted, his neck muscles rigid with anger. “If Trygg can get to him, he can get to others.”

“You said you hired Jarek’s man. Are you still working for Jarek, then? As his head of security?” Sandra asked quietly. She hadn’t seen him in months. Hadn’t talked to him in a year.

“I’m guessing not anymore.” He downshifted, dodged some loose brush and then glanced at the rearview mirror. “I was in a meeting with the Prime Minister of England, Jordan Beck. We were planning his family’s visit to Taer when I got word you were taken.”

“I was flying to Tourlay when Trygg’s men took me.”

“Tourlay’s a border town filled with lowlifes,” Booker stated. “What the hell were you doing traveling there?”

Sandra sighed. “I have...friends in Tourlay who can help me stop Trygg.”

“Friends?” Booker commented, annoyed that she’d turn to someone else for help.

“Actually, they are ex-rebels.”

“By rebels, you mean Al Asheera rebels?”

She nodded. “For the past year, I’ve been smuggling medicine and other supplies to their camps,” she explained. “They live in poverty, Booker. The men are afraid to work for fear of arrest. The women and children starve.”

“Is Jarek aware of your charity work?”

“No. And neither are my parents,” she admitted. “They would forbid it simply because I’m putting myself at risk. But it’s my choice. It’s not Jarek’s—or my father’s decision.”

Booker understood the anger, the bitterness.

Sandra’s father, Doctor Omar Haddad—at one time, a world-renowned genetic research scientist—didn’t approve of the choices she’d made in her life. Her schooling. Her career. Her decision to return to Taer years before.

“Your parents will be sick with worry, Doc.”

Sandra gazed out the window. Streetlamps cast a jaundiced glow against the shadowy buildings.