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Chapter 21

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Three deadbolts locks had been installed on this door. It had been one of the reasons Feltzberger had chosen this building to hide in. That and the fact that it seemed to be in the middle of an abandoned remodel job so there was no one was around, made it the perfect place. Ron reached up to slide open the lock at the top of the door, while Stephanie took care of both the deadbolt near the doorknob and the lock on the knob itself. She stepped back and he bent to open the one at the bottom of the door. Someone had been serious about not letting anyone in here, and it still made Ron smile. Not even he had always been this paranoid.

Any trace of a smile faded quickly as he contemplated what he was going to find on the other side of that door. Stephanie looked up at him and grabbed one of his hands in both of hers. "This is going to be okay," she said with a smile. How he wanted to believe her.

Keeping hold on his hand, she reached out and turned the knob. She had told Rodriguez that she was coming out with Ron. It would have been impossible to explain everything on the phone, so she didn't even try. Instead she got his promise to let her take Ron back to RangeMan without any interference from him or the men she knew were probably standing with him. They would all know everything soon enough.

The door opened slowly, Rodriguez stepped back. Cal stood his ground, though he knew what Rodriguez had promised, he was going to stay close to her from the second Stephanie walked through that door. The other men seemed to have the same thoughts and they stood as still as statues as they saw Stephanie appear in the doorway.

Immediately her smile beamed at them. "Its so good to see you!" she gushed. One arm curved around Cal's neck, and she whispered into his ear. If he was surprised with what she said, he did not show it. Instead he smiled and hugged her back, very conscious of the fact that she was holding hands with the man he wanted to hurt, badly.

Ron moved out with Stephanie, grateful for the control he could see in the faces of each of the men surrounding them. As a former military man himself, he could appreciate the effort it was taking for them to honor their agreement with Stephanie.

Vince looked him in the eye and reached for the box, he nodded at Ron before he took it. Ron gave him a short nod of acknowledgement. They were all going to play this out just as Stephanie said. And that amazed him. In the short time he had spent with her, he had found Stephanie to be the most genuine person he had ever met. It was impossible not to like her, and he could sense the same feeling in each of the men here. She had called them her friends, how lucky they were, he thought. There was nothing as precious or valuable as a friend, especially a friend like Stephanie Plum.

As they started to make their way back to RangeMan, Stephanie and Ron were enclosed in a protective circle. They all moved forward quickly and were ushered into the conference room. Stephanie smiled. When she had left earlier, she had thought that she was done with this room. Now here they were again. Was it really only about six hours ago that she had closed the door after watching Joe run out of here? Tucking those thoughts away, she pointed to a chair for Ron to sit in. He sat, and she handed his backpack to him before taking the seat next to his.

Nodding at him, she smiled. "Just tell them what you told me," she said. She covered his hands that were now on the table in front of him. She could see that they were clenched together so tight that his knuckles had turned white. "Just relax," she said, giving his hands a little squeeze. He looked up at her and attempted a smile. Then he turned his attention to the men who were now seated at the table, and were staring at them.

"I work at GlobalGas, in Nicosia," he started slowly in a low voice that shook slightly with the fear he felt. Again, Stephanie squeezed his hand and he continued. "There was all kinds of commotion when Smith had to leave, someone stole one of the drones that I had been working on."

Ron put his hand under the table and leaned just slightly to his right. Immediately every man in the room stood. The sudden motion pushing their chairs to slam against the walls behind them. In a split instant, guns were drawn and pointed at him.

Whoa!" Stephanie held her hands up and stared down the guys. "None of that," she said as she helped Ron pull his backpack onto the table so that they could see that all he was doing was getting it out because he had something that he wanted to show them.

Reluctantly they all sat back in their seats, but the guns remained on the table in front of them. Ron cringed a little at the stupid move he'd made. These were ex-military men, he could tell that about them the moment he had seen them. Of course, reaching for something out of their sight was going to alarm them.

"Sorry," he said in a chastised tone of voice. He placed the remote for his one of his drones on the table. "I understand that you found my little robot," he said. "May I see it?"

BRIGADIER GENERAL Scott Adams closed the door of the room he had just left and nodded curtly at the guards stationed next to it. He took in a deep breath before he turned and walked down the hall. "This is not a damned hotel," he muttered under his breath. But still, he had his orders. And, at the moment, they included giving sanctuary and protection to the family of Turkish refugees that had just been brought here.

Adams was particularly irritated that the only person, out of the whole group, who would talk to him was a young woman who looked younger than his own daughter. He was not used to seeing people like her in a position of authority and it irked him. As much as he did not want to admit it, however, she did exude a certain air of competence and even power. That was probably what bothered him the most. He knew that she was perfectly capable of speaking with him, but she refused. She said that there were only two people that she wanted to see. She would give her answers to them because she trusted them.

Unfortunately, the man she mentioned had retired from working with the military a year ago, and he had not seen the woman she wanted in over three years. Until her name was mentioned, Adams had not thought about her for a very long time. He was getting slightly uncomfortable to have to be thinking about her now, but he could not stop his memories from surfacing again.

After a year of her constant reports and requests to him about one of the local rebels, he had sent Senior Airman DJ Miller to Germany, practically in a body bag. If she had survived her injuries, which he sorely doubted, he did not know about it. Now he was feeling more that a little bit of frustration and concern.

The general had not asked him to interview these people. His orders had been to provide them with room and board until further notice. But Adams would be damned if he was going to sit here and let these people take advantage of his hospitality without his knowing why they were here. It had been an easy enough proposition. Kinkaid did not tell him what was going on, so he figured that he could go in and find out from the rebel themselves. He had not considered the possibility that they would not be willing to talk to him.

That made him angry, but what really steamed him was the fact that he could do absolutely nothing about it. If he wanted to know anything from them, he had to produce Ranger or Miller. And that, he knew, was impossible.

HOW MANY PEOPLE did the cops have in here? The building suddenly seemed to be swarming with men in uniforms. Oersted had been watching as they took a man away in an ambulance, and he had assumed that it would all be over after that. He had even seen patrol cars leaving, clearing out the street that had been blocked off temporarily. So where were all of these people coming from?

A little reconnaissance work showed that these policemen were systematically moving from room to room, and from floor to floor. They were clearing the whole building. It would not take long, he knew, for them to find his hiding place.

He travelled light, so gathering his things, and erasing evidence of his being here would not take long, but there was no place for him to go. Oersted was irritated that it had come to this. Another thing to go wrong. What next. And still no word from Jones.

If he had just left when he should have, this would not be his problem. But waiting on Jones had kept him here. If he got out of this, he vowed that Jones was going to answer for this.

SMITH FOUND his way to Hector's office. With a tap on the door, he entered and stared at the mangled black box. Having only taken a step into the room, he looked at Hector as if to ask permission to pass.

Hector waved him in. It might be good to have another set of eyes to look over the drone. He handed him pair of plastic gloves and pointed out a few things that he had discovered. Smith nodded and let Hector finish his explanation.

The small device looked like it had been beaten. Smith was shocked by the damage. He was used to seeing it in pristine condition in the labs at GlobalGas, where he had last seen it. This was one of three prototype models, and despite the abuse it had taken, he could see the modification that had been done on the arms. This model had rubber tipped pincers with intricate grips. Smith was impressed, and he wondered if this was the improvement that Faust was telling him about just days before it had been stolen.

He felt sick to know that someone had done this to his baby. It had been several years in the making. So many hours of working out every detail. This had been the best part of working with Kinkaid at GlobalGas. He'd had access to a full lab, and the benefit of collaborating with the smartest inventors in the world. He and Faust had turned a dream list of ideas into a viable product in their spare time. And though it had been a long way from being perfect, it was a dream come true.

For a moment, Smith wondered how Faust was taking the fact that the drone had been stolen. There had not been time to talk to him personally before Kinkaid sent him to track it, and he just hoped that Faust understood that he had done all he could to get it back. His friend had as much time and effort invested in it as he did, and Smith knew it wouldn't be easy for him to see this happen to it.

Hector turned the robot around and tilted it so that they could see the bottom. There were cameras on every side, and the lenses on the bottom were shattered, but the rest were in pretty good shape. The camera systems were the brainchild of Faust. He had developed an intricate design that had proven to be too complicated for the size and weight that they needed to allow it to fly. Smith had helped him simplify the design to keep the best features but still meet the requirements they would need.

If Faust was here now, Smith thought, he would be as anxious as he was to look at the memory chips and battery packs to see if they had worked as well as they hoped. A noise from behind them made both Smith and Hector turn around.

The door was nearly completely filled with one of the largest men Smith had ever seen. His head brushed the top of the door frame, and his shoulders were so massive, he must have come in sideways to get through the door.

"Filiaga," Hector said, "Come in, it's okay."

The man shook his head. He looked like he did not dare breathe in here, let alone get near any of the equipment.

"No thanks," he said pleasantly. "Rodriguez needs you, and you are not answering your phones again." He gave a little shrug, this happened a lot, and since he worked down the hall, Filiaga was frequently called to deliver messages to Hector.

Hector immediately started running off some rapid Spanish as he checked the phone on his table, and then pulled his cell phone from his pocket and started punching buttons.

"Sorry man," Hector shrugged and looked a bit sheepish. "I forgot again."

"No problem," Filiaga said, "He just needs you to bring up the robot. He has someone who wants to take a look at it."

Hector looked as if he stopped breathing. Finally he looked up at Filiaga and asked "Who?"

"THAT WAS THE LAST thing that I wanted to tell you," Kinkaid said as he pulled Ranger into a private corner of the room. He had filled in all the details about Stephanie's disappearance because Ranger had asked. He would have preferred not to have mentioned it at all. He knew it was not easy to hear about things like this happening when you are so far away.

Kinkaid knew that the team wanted to go home, he understood, but he couldn't let them go, not yet. He had one more thing that needed to be done. Part two of the mission, the part that he had promised Miller he would do for her.

She was still waiting to hear if he had been able to locate the rebels. They both knew it would not be easy, but it was so important to her, and he couldn't let her down. Not now, not after all she had been through.

As if she knew he was thinking of her, DJ looked up and smiled at him. Kinkaid nodded in return. They had been through so much in the past few years, more and more, he felt it was not fair to her to keep her trapped in the world he had made for her. While he had created the perfect soldier, and she had fulfilled all of his expectations, he could not do it to her anymore.

This op was to be her last. He had not told her that yet. He would have to find the right time to have that talk with her. Letting her go was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done. The old man had come to think of DJ as the daughter he never had. That is the reason that he had to set her free. And doing so was going to break his heart.

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