This is another Victoria-less chapter. The next, and last, one is all hers.
Mercy Mild—Chapter Twelve
Casey knew he shouldn't have let Riah come along on this particular operation. Their daughter had been dead right when she'd objected: her mother had been stolen. He hadn't even noticed, and that was the part that infuriated him most—well, right after the fact that his wife had been snatched in the first place—especially after he had reassured Victoria it wouldn't happen. He handed his son to Ellie with a carefully controlled, "Stay with Ellie," and looked for Walker.
His partner had her hands full with a couple of idiots who took too long to know they were beaten. She was supervising their reluctant removal.
As soon as the prisoners were out the door, she eyed Casey.
"Seen Riah?"
Walker shook her head, then she frowned, her forehead wrinkling slightly. "Wasn't she with you?"
He nodded. "Can't find her."
Gesturing to a couple of the men who'd come in with her and Chuck from the other side of the office, she told Casey, "I'll look. You see if Faraday's camera caught anything."
Thanking God Bartowski was busy with his sister, Casey nearly told Walker he wasn't an idiot, but he probably should have asked the Canadian the moment he saw Riah was missing. Instead, he simply grunted.
There was no way he could get Bartowski out of the loop. He was going to hear Casey's request, but maybe there'd be a miracle and he'd stay with his sister. "Faraday," Casey barked signaling two of his team and heading for the door. The other man responded as he cleared it.
"Problem?"
Casey's eyes narrowed at the man's amused tone even though the Canadian wasn't there to see it. "That camera of yours."
"What about it?" the man asked, but this time he sounded no-nonsense.
"Still in place?" Casey signaled two other of his men to join him and the ones already with him.
"Yes."
"It record or just let you have eyes?"
There was a pause, and Casey wondered if the man had to ask someone or if he was trying to figure out why Casey asked. "Yes."
"Which?" he snapped.
Faraday's, "Records," followed quickly. Casey approved of both the promptness and the conciseness of the idiot's response.
"Take a look about the point where we entered the rescue site," he ordered.
"Mind telling me what I'm looking for?"
"Where my wife went."
Thankfully, the man was smart enough not to crack a joke. Casey quickly gave his men orders to search the building. He knew Riah hadn't decided to just have a look around for old time's sake, so that said they missed something. He wasn't sure how, unless some of his team had failed to properly do their job. In his head, he reviewed the floorplan, but there had been nothing that indicated a bolt hole someone shouldn't have found and cleared.
"Casey?" Bartowski asked behind him.
He shot a look over his shoulder but kept moving.
"Casey?" the kid said again, his voice more pointed and persistent this time. Casey rolled his eyes and stopped, waited for Bartowski to catch up.
"Did I hear that right?" Chuck asked as he searched Casey's face. "Mariah's missing?"
His jaw worked a moment before he was able to loosen it. "You see where she went?"
Chuck shook his head. "She has to be here, though, right?"
Casey knew she didn't, and Chuck should have known it as well. It belatedly occurred to him there had been a convenient exit within ten feet of the door through which they had entered the office where Ellie and Jack had been held. "Dietrich," he barked this time. "Anyone leave besides prisoners?"
Before he got an answer, Faraday was in his ear. "Three men took Ad—Casey into the office opposite the one where the hostages were." About to ask which one, the other man said, "Across the hall from where the two of you entered—only she didn't enter. They got her just after you went in."
Casey ran back down the hall, Bartowski on his heels just as Dietrich told him only prisoners had exited the building. "Call V. H.," he told them. He didn't care which of the two did it. "Tell him to get Ariel and see if she knows anything about this damn building we don't."
They went over every single inch of the office Faraday claimed Riah had been taken into, but they couldn't find even a fiber. If there was an exit in that room, Casey was damned if he could find it. No one else could, either. This one had old furniture and crates stored in it, so they moved each and looked below and behind them. Casey made the men open the crates and look inside, but there was nothing.
Just as they finished searching the office, his phone rang. Expecting it to be V. H., Casey ground out, "What?"
He was mad as hell, and he wasn't going to play nicely with anyone until he had Riah back. He had made the mistake of not acting fast enough when Victoria called about Jack's kidnapping, so there was no way in hell he'd wait to act this time.
"Sugar Bear?"
There was a distinct possibility Casey would explode since the hard anger inside intensified, burned through him, at both that name and that voice. He had the urge to hit something, anything. "I got your 'note,'" he snapped nastily. "I've got my son, too, and if your new friends know what's best for them, they're going to leave my wife, alive and unharmed, where I can find her. Now."
To her credit, Ilsa didn't prevaricate, and, for once, she didn't take potshots at Riah. "There's a tunnel," she told him softly and rapidly. "The factory floor has a large drain where you can enter it. It leads to a warehouse in the next block." She reeled off the address. "You don't have much time."
Then she hung up.
He glared at the phone, felt it cut into his palm where he crushed it.
Turning to Bartowski, he told him. "Take some men. Get Ellie and Jack. Take them to my house, and stay there." Chuck looked like he was going to argue, so Casey gave him his hardest glare. "They have Riah, and they don't need the other bookend as well. Get out of here so we have a fighting chance of getting her back."
As he watched the kid retreat, he was surprised that had worked, that Bartowski had gone with no further argument. Knowing the other man, though, he might only be going to send his sister off before catching up to Casey. Casey wouldn't mind having Walker along for this, but he sighed, called to Bartowski's retreating back, "Take your own wife with you."
After all, if this went any further in the toilet, Walker was as good as Ellie as an incentive for Bartowski to turn himself over. She needed to watch Chuck's back, and she'd also see they all got home safely.
Chuck frowned at him, so Casey braced for an accusation that he had no faith in Bartowski, but the younger man apparently either changed his mind or realized that hadn't been what Casey meant—not entirely, anyway.
"What?" Casey prompted gruffly, if only because Bartowski was clearly formulating some kind of response.
"I'll see Jack and Ellie get home," Chuck said, "but Sarah and I—"
"Are staying there to keep what's in your noggin out of the bad guy's hands," Casey finished for him.
"Come on, Casey!"
That outrage was more like the Chuck Bartowski he was used to. There was a fleeting moment of fondness before Casey slammed it face-first into a steel door. "Remember the part about you being government property?" He amped up the glare. "Walker better put you in detention so they don't get the only two versions of the Intersect that still breathe."
"We can help," Bartowski insisted.
"You can find yourself a hostage, and I already have one who's a lot more important to me to recover than you." Casey felt a little guilty for that, especially since those brown eyes of Bartowski's suddenly bore the kind of soulful hurt normally only seen in a Labrador that had just been told it was a bad dog.
"I get it," the kid said, and the annoying part was that Casey was certain he did, "but really, Casey? Let us help you get Mariah back."
"I'm running out of time," he bit out, "so this argument is finished. Find Walker and follow your orders."
This time he didn't wait to see if Bartowski obeyed. Ilsa had said he didn't have much time, and he'd already wasted a few minutes indulging the kid.
His men had found the drain and opened it. To his surprise, Faraday waited beside the open hole.
"I'm going with you," the other man told him. "Boss's orders."
So he'd been the one who talked to V. H., Casey thought sourly. He had a few inches on the man, so he loomed as best he could in order to punctuate what he had to say. "I was there when she was nearly killed," he bit out, "and while she may think you're innocent, as far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out. Do anything that puts her in jeopardy, and I'll put you down like a rabid dog."
Annoyingly, Faraday didn't look remotely intimidated. "You're supposed to call him, by the way," he told Casey blandly.
"I don't have time," he snapped. "Give me the highlights."
"Ariel Taylor knew nothing about the building, told Adderly she'd never been in it."
Somehow, Casey wasn't surprised. Dietrich joined them, and Casey relayed the information Ilsa had provided, though he didn't explain where he got it. Dietrich would approach the building from the street with the ISI team. They would leave enough men behind to round up any of Quinnell's men who might come back.
The tunnel was narrow, and Casey had to duck. He wondered when it had been dug. It wasn't finished enough to be an official conduit, so he couldn't help wondering if Quinnell or Ford had had it dug as an escape hatch. He was still trying to figure out how they had managed to get past his men and get Riah, get her out, and not be seen leaving.
There was a slow rise, and he appreciated that there apparently wouldn't be steps when they reached the other end, though he was going to have to crouch before he was out unless the low ceiling rose with it. Casey was more worried about going into a building blind—no floorplan, no eyes inside to tell him what they were walking into—than he was cracking his head on something.
Then Dietrich was in his ear. "I've got the floorplan. Assuming you're headed straight in, you'll enter a basement storage area, probably a small boiler room. There's only one door. Outside it, you'll find a hallway. Head left, and in about a hundred feet, you'll find stairs to the first floor. There's another staircase to the right in about twenty feet, but it leads to an exterior door."
"What's the first floor like?" Casey asked.
"Mostly open space. The company that leases it claims they're an import/export operation, so expect merchandise in crates—but I suspect it's really Bridges' weapons."
So either neat rows of stacked crates or semi-chaotic stacks, Casey thought.
"Offices are on the second floor. You'll have to cross the warehouse to get to the stairs that will take you up."
"Anything else I need to know?" Casey asked.
"Just that we're in position. I'll wait on your order to enter."
Outside the door, he took a deep breath, thought through what would have to be done, and hoped like hell this wouldn't go south. More, he hoped Riah was there and nothing had happened to her beyond being taken prisoner.
He listened carefully at the door, and then he nodded for the men to go. The boiler room wasn't as small as Dietrich had made it sound, but at least there was no one waiting for them. The hallway outside was the same. They went rapidly and quietly up the stairs. Casey wished there was a second entrance so they were less vulnerable when they entered the warehouse proper.
That turned out to be prophetic. When they went through the door, they found a heavily armed welcoming party—one far larger than they could manage. Casey scoured their faces, but he didn't recognize any of the men pointing weapons at him and his team, which made him wonder if they'd already moved Riah.
"Glad you could make it, Colonel Casey," one of them said. "We've been waiting." He smiled, and Casey wanted like hell to knock it off him. Shooting it off would give him pleasure, too. Since he was the apparent leader, Casey kept his weapon trained on him.
He briefly wondered if Ilsa had only called him to get him here or if she had genuinely wanted him to have a chance at recovering Riah.
"If you want to see your wife alive, Colonel, tell your men to put down their weapons."
There was an out there, but if he literally followed the order, he'd be the only armed man facing at least twenty-five armed men who looked like they knew exactly what to do with their own weapons. Casey, who was no fool, was going to give in, though he wouldn't do it with any good grace.
"There's usually an 'or else' there," he growled, his eyes steady on the talker.
The man shrugged. "Okay, or else we'll kill your men."
That wasn't the expected answer, Casey thought. It implied they wanted him alive, and he wondered why. If this had been an elaborate plan to get him, he simply couldn't find the motive, other than Bartowski's lady feelings would guarantee he'd come after him. Casey calculated the risks quickly. There were no guarantees they wouldn't kill the men he'd brought with him if they disarmed, but he was going to bargain for them anyway. "How about they leave, and then I'll put my weapon down."
"Alright."
Casey blinked. He didn't trust the man he watched for a minute, and he certainly didn't trust that he'd do what he'd just agreed. He saw, from the corner of his eye, Faraday look at him incredulously. Without looking at the ISI team leader, Casey ordered, "Lead them out, Faraday."
"My boss gave me different orders," the other man said, no inflection in his voice.
"Adderly isn't here, and I give the orders on this operation," Casey reminded him. "Retreat."
The man opposite Casey sent enough men to make sure the others did, indeed, leave. He figured Faraday was smart enough to report to Dietrich, so he didn't worry that the cavalry wouldn't come. The question was whether or not they'd come quickly enough.
When the men who'd escorted Faraday and the others out returned, Casey reluctantly handed over his rifle. When the man held a hand out and flexed his fingers in the universal give-me signal, he handed over his SIG. If they wanted them, he decided, they'd have to find the other two sidearms themselves.
"Mind telling me what this is about?" Casey asked as the man gestured for him to follow. When he didn't get an answer, he snarled, "I'm talking to you."
"You'll get your answers, Colonel, just not yet and not from me."
"Just the help, that it?"
That needled the man, but it didn't get him to spill, not that Casey really expected it to. They escorted him to an office, but only the man in charge entered with him. That was fine because Casey definitely recognized the man waiting.
He had Bailey Ford up against the wall with a forearm over the man's throat and Casey's weight crushing in on his windpipe after he connected a fist with the man's left eye. "That's for my son," he ground out as he cocked the fist again, "but this one's for my wife."
It didn't connect, though, because two men caught it and wrestled him away from the CIA traitor. Fleetingly, Casey thought the agency was apparently riddled with them if his own experience since the beginning of the Intersect mission was anything by which to judge.
The men holding him needed a little more help to keep Casey off Ford, and it soon arrived, dragged him back several feet.
Ford, the little prick, touched his own eye delicately, like he was trying to see if his makeup smudged or something. Casey's eyes narrowed, his body tensed. The second these idiots let him go, he was going to pound the other man to a pulp.
"They warned me you were a homicidal maniac, Colonel," Ford said, "but I would have thought concern for your wife would have made you temper that enough to find out if she was still breathing."
"If she isn't," Casey ground out, "you'll be dead in two seconds, guaranteed." Ford paled a little. "Besides, you obviously wanted me here for a reason, and killing Riah isn't the way to get whatever it is you want."
Ford nodded at one of his goons holding Casey. The man stripped his com equipment from him, took it to Ford, who crushed it beneath his heel. "I doubt V. H. Adderly would want the Americans to know exactly what his daughter is."
And there it was, Casey thought. "I've had nearly a decade of listening to that," he snapped at Ford. "I'm more than a little tired of it since there's never been anything to it."
A soft snort came from the other man. "I heard about Laurance's little taunts," he acknowledged, "but I'm willing to let you see exactly why people have wanted her for years. She's truly an exquisite bit of work, far more valuable than your Agent Carmichael, and for far different reasons."
"And then what?" Casey asked, let his inherent sarcasm off its leash. "You'll sell her to the highest bidder?"
This time Ford chuckled, an irritating sound that became even more irritating when it moved up the scale to a braying jackass's laugh.
Casey shut up. The man was clearly a member of the talk-you-to-death bad guy club. All he had to do was wait.
"Some of my friends would like to, but she's far too unique an asset to only get a single payment." Ford shook his head. "She's the kind of gift that keeps giving."
Certain Ford had chosen his words to imply prostitution and push Casey's buttons, he decided not to play. He was beginning to get the picture. If she was a viable Intersect, they could hold her, force her to flash, as Chuck called it, and sell the intel a piece at a time. He was surprised no one had really considered that with Bartowski, had instead wanted the Intersect itself.
"Restrain the Colonel so he's less lethal," Ford instructed, and Casey's arms were wrestled around behind him. He wasn't worried when the cuffs snapped around his wrists. He could get out of those, after all. There was a little more give than handcuffs normally allowed, though, so he eased his hands out from behind his back before realizing he could get them to his sides. That didn't last long. They quickly added ankle shackles and then ran chains from those to each of his hands so he wouldn't be able to get them close enough to one another to free himself.
"I'm well versed when it comes to your record, Colonel Casey," Ford told him with a slight smile. "You aren't getting a chance to break a bone and get loose."
Casey still had enough movement he could get to one of his remaining guns, but he would be literally shooting from the hip, and the leg chains meant he'd be more easily disarmed. He'd wait a little longer, let Ford have his dog and pony show, if for no other reason than at least he'd have a better idea of why Riah remained a target despite very little evidence she was functional as an Intersect.
He let them shuffle him to a window that looked down at the open warehouse floor. Most of the men who'd been waiting for them when he and his team entered arrayed themselves around the space, waited. Casey wondered for what.
"Mariah Adderly is a very different mechanism than Charles Carmichael," Ford said, sounding for all the world like a professor—not the kind you didn't mind listening to but the kind who was pedantic as hell and would put you to sleep in under ten minutes. Casey hung on every word but resisted correcting her name as she inevitably did, and he didn't look at the man, kept his eyes on whatever was being staged below.
"I was intrigued that in the second Intersect Carmichael was given self-defense skills he could easily be taught rather than offensive skills."
"You've obviously never met Carmichael," Casey deadpanned. After all, there were just some things Bartowski hadn't had an aptitude for, and since he was never intended to work without a support team, offense wasn't considered as valuable as the intel or the softer skills like languages. Not only that, Bartowski lacked the killer instinct, resisted any training that might give it to him, and likely would have found a way to overwrite any offensive programming. Defensive training, on the other hand, had been vital given the kinds of situations Bartowski got himself into on a disgustingly regular basis.
"ISI's Montreal Project, in its early days, was less about the intel and more about training an operative who worked on auto-pilot, so to speak. They realized, especially after reading an early paper by Stephen Bartowski and several from former Soviet researchers that a combination of training, programming, and what we call the Intersect was ideal. Intelligent, malleable young minds still building neurons seemed the most practical, and there, Mariah Adderly shone. The others couldn't do quite what she could, couldn't process any of the implants, and several had a kind of brain damage as a result of even trying."
Parts of that, Casey had guessed. Other parts Riah had told him herself after her father had sent the files to her. He waited to hear the unique part, to which Ford hadn't managed to get yet.
"Unfortunately, your wife is erratic," Ford said on a sigh. "Carmichael is, too, but his seems to be tied to emotions. In her case, it's more that the cylinders don't fire—bad sparkplugs. There are some who think a marriage between the CIA's Intersect and ISI's Montreal Project would smooth that out, make the ultimate weapon."
Despite knowing Ford didn't mean a literal marriage, Casey grunted, made the instinctive crack: "She's already married."
Ford snorted. "Not the kind of marriage I meant, Colonel. The tech can be merged, and then she's likely to be fully-functional."
He was tempted to ask as what? That was part of whatever they were going to show him, he suspected, so he stayed silent, hoped they got on with it so he could work out how to get them out of this before Ford and his buddies got the chance to play modern-day Dr. Frankenstein with his wife.
"ISI's Dr. Houston and those who followed him noticed a strange anomaly in your wife, Colonel," Ford continued. "When she's extremely tired, when she's emotionally distraught—especially when both conditions are present—the programming works as it's designed to. Your wife has to be made dysfunctional to function, and that's a dangerously unpredictable state."
Shooting him a disgruntled look, Casey reviewed the things he'd seen her do that jibed with the other man's words: breaking Jeff Barnes's nose with an economy of motion and an instinctively precise targeting of that vulnerable part had startled even Casey, especially since she'd been sleep-deprived and emotionally strung out; the ways in which she was able to compartmentalize her emotions to do the job in front of her with lethal precision; that long ago afternoon on Mount Royal when she had taken out two highly trained agents and her mole, a young man she still regretted killing.
"Major Clack saw it first," Ford continued, crossing his arms and eyeing Casey. "She was seven, and she put down two operatives without breaking a sweat—highly trained grown men, mind you—because they scared her."
Casey frowned. He wanted to ask, wanted to know if that had been before or after her abduction.
Ford snorted, shook his head. "V. H. Adderly had to take her to work with him one evening, and she was roaming the building without permission. The two operatives were sent to round her up before she got into trouble. She disabled one and shot and killed the other with his service weapon. It happened just outside Clack's office. He got her in his office and took the weapon. He called Dr. Houston, but by the time the man arrived, she had absolutely no recollection of the incident at all."
As he studied Ford, Casey was careful not to let the man see the shock that reverberated through him. He was beginning to get a fuller picture not only of the taunts he'd endured from bad guys after his wife over the years but of just how damaged she might have been by what ISI had done to her.
"That's when Clack got fully up to speed with what the Montreal Project was really for and ordered the operation shut down and cleaned," the other man said, and there was a kind of glee in his voice Casey found especially distasteful. "When they went after her, they didn't count on her resilience or her father's persistence."
So she was supposed to be dead like the other children on the list she'd told him about, and while he'd always known Clack was the ultimate pragmatist, Casey couldn't help wondering why Riah's godfather hadn't followed through on that. Instead, he'd recruited her to ISI.
"Watch," Ford said with a kind of quiet awe. "She thinks she's managed to get lucky, her guard got careless, and she's escaping."
There were easily twenty men in the warehouse, and they all lifted their weapons on a signal from one of them. Riah, still armed, came cautiously through one of the doors below, and one of the men before her took a shot. Casey noticed he missed, which made him curious because armed as he was and at that close a range, that should have been impossible. She dropped the idiot with a single shot through the forehead. The others fired, too, and Casey finally decided they were firing blanks to make sure she wasn't hurt since nothing appeared to hit her, not even her vest. That got every single one of them, except the ones who finally ran for cover, quickly dead.
Her ammunition was obviously live.
As he watched, one tried to come up behind her, but she must have heard him because she swung around and dropped him, too. She made a move for the outer door, but one of them cut her off—tried, to anyway—and if it weren't for another hitting her with a taser, she'd probably have made it.
"You know what the real beauty of it is?" Ford asked, watching as four men below restrained her. He sounded weirdly satisfied and not at all concerned that he'd just lost twelve of his twenty men. "She's the perfect assassin. She goes in, she does the job, and thirty minutes later she doesn't remember a single detail about any of it." The other man shook his head in wonder. "That's why she's more valuable than your Carmichael. When triggered, she can do any job, but if she's caught, she can't talk."
She never talks, he remembered Bartowski babbling during the debacle with Kellett and Laurance, and it was true. It had just never occurred to Casey that she didn't because she couldn't.
Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't completely true. After all, she still recalled in vivid detail that afternoon on Mount Royal. François Rochambeau was still with her in living color. Casey wondered if that was because he had been her friend and because she felt crushing guilt for what she had had to do to him.
"Of course," Ford continued, "we think we've found the right man to fix the flaws. Failing that, our man's pretty sure a chemical cocktail can control the more unpredictable side effects." He shook his head and looked at Casey. "No one, especially not her father, could understand why Clack recruited her, why the Major would take on emotionally damaged goods, but the man knew exactly what he was doing. His mistake was thinking he could contain her, and when he realized the liabilities and the instabilities in her programming, he bowed to her father, put her in ICOM, and occasionally took her out for a particularly delicate operation."
Ford eyed Casey a second before returning his gaze to where a group of the remaining men below escorted Riah back the way she came. Casey noted they were mostly dragging her, and he wondered if she was hurt. They hadn't been gentle when they restrained her, and his temper ticked up again. He noted the men's features, would remember them later.
Now, even more than he already had, he wondered exactly what V. H. had been using her for. He couldn't imagine the other man would use her as an assassin, mainly because that was not how V. H. preferred to operate.
"Of course, they've already tried drugs," Ford continued, "and one of the reasons the Ring forced you to commit treason was the one with the most promise was the one you nearly sacrificed your career and your marriage to get."
Casey's jaw locked at the reminder of Keller blackmailing him into stealing the laudanol, tallied another debt Ford now owed for what he'd done to Casey's family.
"You're being remarkably quiet, Colonel," Ford observed.
"You're not getting her," Casey promised.
"We already have her. The transport will be here soon, and this time there's no one who'll bow to reckless emotion to save her."
That was a reference to Clack, who had always decried V. H.'s penchant for leading with his heart. It also confirmed for Casey that Clack wasn't entirely the heartless bastard he'd always believed. V. H., though, would move heaven and earth to get her back—had done so more than once, after all—and Ford shouldn't underestimate the man.
That left Casey, whose own emotions were rarely reckless except when it really mattered. He'd find a way to insure Ford didn't get to keep her. "I won't let you have her."
Ford's grin was unpleasant. "That's why you get to die before we leave. I just thought you ought to know why."
Casey nearly rolled his eyes. As he'd thought more than once, the bad guys really ought to get a better line of taunt, he thought.
Before he could bite out his own response, the door opened, and Ilsa and her henchman, Antoine du Montfort, strolled in. Well, in du Montfort's case, limped in. Several months ago, Ilsa had tried to get Casey to help with a case; now he wondered if he'd done so whether any of this would have happened. He had a feeling that sooner or later someone would have taken Riah, so the particulars didn't really matter. At least he better understood what they were after.
Unfortunately, if anyone outside of Quinnell and Ford knew what he'd just seen and been told, life was about to be far more complicated than it had been in the past. As long as the bad guys believed Riah wasn't really functional, she was mostly left alone. News of what she could really do would change that.
"Casey."
He didn't respond, mainly because he was mad as hell, and she was part of the reason why. He also didn't respond in part because he didn't know if she was using an alias other than Ilsa Trinchina.
She turned to Ford, then. "Let's get this over with. You have Adderly's daughter, and Quinnell's waiting for her."
Casey's eyes narrowed. He wondered if this time Ilsa really was on the other side. She had crossed the lines a lot in her career, but this time his wife was the one whose life was in jeopardy. If Ilsa was responsible for her death, their past would mean nothing to him: he'd kill Ilsa himself, preferably with his bare hands.
"Antoine will see to Colonel Casey," she told Ford. "Get Miss Adderly, and let's go."
Ford actually made for the door. Casey watched, incredulous. Then he turned his attention to du Montfort. He calculated what damage he might be able to do given his restraints.
Once Ford was gone, Ilsa crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, something he'd never really seen her do before. "Hurry."
The other man limped over to Casey and knelt. Casey was about to lift his boot and see if he had enough play in the chains connecting his shackles that he could kick the man, but then he realized the man had a key and was about to unlock him. He waited, watched the man's movements, but the second he was free, he retrieved his backup piece and pressed it against the man's temple. "Talk fast, Ilsa."
"Undercover, Casey," she told him, and that was apparently all the explanation she would offer. "Your little Riah is about to be spirited away. I assume you'd rather she wasn't, so Antoine and I are going to assist you with her rescue."
Dumbfounded, Casey, like an idiot, asked, "Why?"
"Because she needs to not fall into their hands."
He studied her. If he had been standing in her shoes and if Riah wasn't his wife, he would put a bullet in her head to keep her from being used against their side. Ilsa wasn't exactly friendly to Riah, and if her agency knew what Ford had just spilled, Casey suspected a kill order was in place. After all, if this were all true, Riah could do a lot of damage with the wrong people controlling her.
"For God's sake, Casey," she said with some exasperation. "Everyone wants her out of the game, but our orders are to not kill her—not yet, anyway."
So a bullet was on the table. "You're just going to let me take her out of here?"
It was du Montfort who said, "We're going to help you get her out of here."
Ilsa raised her brows. "I suggest you get whatever it is out of her head or at least see to it she quits playing spy games."
His teeth gritted. The truth was, Stephen Bartowski had told him before he died that it was better to leave what was in Riah's head alone. Casey had no idea who might be able to do what Ilsa said—assuming the senior Bartowski had been wrong. "Plan on it," he said, though he knew he would do whatever was best for Riah and kept her out of a bunker or a grave.
"Then let's go."
"Wait." The other two turned to look at him. "Three of us against all of them?"
Ilsa smiled. "Your kind of odds."
While that was true enough, this time Casey was unwilling to risk failure. He eyed du Montfort. Ford and his goons hadn't taken his phone, so he fished it out, called Dietrich. Before the other man could say anything, Casey ordered, "Bring it. Ten men for sure, maybe more. Cruella and her henchman are on our side. We'll meet you on the warehouse floor."
Dietrich said, "Roger."
"Watch the dead bodies," Casey warned.
"Busy boy?"
"My wife's work," he admitted.
"Not like you, Casey."
Dietrich's amusement irritated him. "Just get your ass in here."
Ilsa frowned at him. "Cruella?"
He grinned at her. "My daughter's name for you—Cruella De Vil."
They met Dietrich and Faraday with their men on the floor. Ilsa told him on the way that her team would take Quinnell simultaneously so he couldn't make a run for it. Casey led the way to the door behind which Ford had disappeared, and then he worried that they might have had another exit through which they had already extracted Riah. He asked Dietrich, but the other man shook his head, told him there was no exit that way.
Looking at his old friend and Faraday, he told them and their men, "Ford's mine. The rest are fair game."
He and Faraday led, and they very efficiently removed the threats. Ford was in with Riah, and Casey took great pleasure in cold-cocking the man. He might have preferred a more satisfactory pounding, but he decided getting Riah out and away from anyone else who might decide to take possession of her was more important than doing considerable physical damage to the man. He let Dietrich's team take Ford after Casey took the keys to Riah's restraints off the unconscious man.
Once she was free, he looked her over. She seemed dazed, so he searched for bumps and bruises that might indicate yet another concussion. For years he had worried about the possible damage done by the ones she'd sustained earlier in her life. He probably should have worried more about what was in her head, he thought, and once more he wondered what she might have been doing while he was otherwise occupied.
V. H. Adderly had a lot of explaining to do, and if his father-in-law didn't know the answers, then Major Jonathan B. Clack would damn well have to supply them. Casey would insist on knowing all of it this time.
Holding her tightly to him, Casey wondered if she had any idea of what she had just done—could do. Then he decided to test what Ford had said. He wouldn't ask, would wait until they were home and see if she remembered killing twelve men with the kind of lethal efficiency normally only seen in movies. It had been a pretty impressive display, but Casey couldn't help wishing she was not capable of doing that.
There had to be a way to insure she wouldn't remain a target, a way short of killing her or incarcerating her—though killing her was more likely since anyone they missed in the mop up would remember, would, as Victoria put it, steal her and do what Ford and Quinnell had planned with her.
Riah's arms were around his waist and her face buried in his chest. There was a weight there, about where her nose burrowed into his vest, a weight that had never been there when he thought about Bartowski's possible fate. It occurred to him that if either Ford or Quinnell were taken alive and answered questions, then an awful lot of people were going to advocate for the bullet solution in order to prevent a repeat of the last couple of days.
If he killed Ford, though, he would lose his job, and he remembered again Riah's contention that he would be retired with prejudice. Beckman would likely see to that in this case. He knew, after all, and it was time to make sure the number of people who did was as close to zero as possible.
"Let's go home," he told his wife softly. She nodded and pushed back from him.
"Jack?"
He kissed her. "By now, he's at the house with his Woobie being spoiled rotten by his grandmothers."
For one of the very few times in his career, he left the clean up to others. Before he took one of Dietrich's cars and took his wife home, he made a very quiet suggestion to Mick Faraday. The other man nodded, and Casey left with a clean conscience.
After all, if the other man thought to ask, V. H. would simply make Casey's suggestion an order.
