Broken Heart: Action Adventure Thriller Page 5

  "Thank you so much, you are such a help." Gabriella beamed brightly at the young man. "You must have to beat the ladies off you with that smile of yours."

  "Not as many as you think." The young man blushed as he moved the wispy hair off his forehead. "I’ve always been a little bit shy around the ladies."

  "Well you helped me a whole bunch," Gabriella winked at him. "Do you have any information on what hotel it was supposed to go to?”

  The young man looked to his computer again, seeing if there was any further information.

  "Nothing more here, ma’am. It just tells us the flight details,” the young man confirmed. "From what I can tell, he was going to wait at the airport for the bag himself.”

  “I can't thank you enough for helping me today,” Gabriella gushed. “You’re a real credit to this hotel. I would love to send a letter to your boss letting them know how great you are, but of course I won’t mention how you were able to help." She winked at him again.

  "Are you going to be staying here for a while then?" the young man asked, mustering up his courage. “If you are, maybe we could get a drink together later on?"

  "Oh, that sounds like such a great idea." Gabriella smiled at the young man. "But if I'm going to catch up to my friend Victor, I best get moving quickly."

  "Maybe if you come back around this way sometime, we could chat and get a cup of coffee then," the young man said, building his courage even further.

  Gabrielle smiled at the young man, watching him as his courage built and as he fought his fears away in the face of a beautiful woman.

  "If I'm ever back this way, it's a date."

  Chapter Nine

  The flight from Cape Town in South Africa to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, was nothing to take lightly. The time on the plane was spent on the limited amount of research that could be done by the green-eyed assassin trying to track down her victim. Other than the occasional turbulence, there was little excitement and little to do, other than plot a plan that she knew could change minute by minute in the face of real action.

  Rio de Janeiro was a beautiful city sitting by the ocean. The kind of paradise dreams were made of. Full of travelers who were willing to take an occasional mugging in order to enjoy everything that the country had to offer.

  The Mantis knew better than to stay in the tourist location, and instead moved to the west, to Sao Paulo. Brazil's largest silver city, hosting more than twelve million inhabitants, it was a place that one could slip into and quickly be absorbed by the community around them. Much like most major cities that held an international flavor, mixing multiple shades of skin tones allowing nobody to look out of place.

  Hustling her way up to her room, her green eyes scanned the numbers on the doors, keeping her guard to see if there was anybody waiting for her.

  Fumbling with the keycard, she slid it into the slot, causing the lock mechanism to turn to green allowing her access to the room. Quickly moving in and closing the door behind her, Gabriella slumped on the bed after realizing that no one had been in the room before her.

  "I'm getting too old for this." Gabriella looked up at the ceiling, weary from the flight and the travel. "There’s got to be a better way to do all this. I'm running my ass all over the world, trying to catch a guy who is trained to not be caught."

  Allowing her eyes to close, Gabriella felt her mind relax and she started to drift into the hazy world between being awake and asleep.

  As was all too often the case when her mind slipped into the world of dreams, the childhood she knew from the training facility in Russia came back with vivid recollection and details that she wanted to thwart.

  "You are a killing machine," said the man standing in the military uniform in front of her. A face easily recognizable, even in her dreams. The man who went by the name, Makarov. "Failure is not an option for us. You must do everything you can to protect your nation. All of us, we all place our lives in your hands."

  Sitting in the chair alone in the room, the young girl was stone-faced, looking forward and giving no sign of emotion, just as she'd been taught. Although biologically still human, the red Army in the KGB had done all they could to chase any emotion out of the young girl before she had any chance to develop.

  "Who are you loyal to?" Makarov snapped, staring down hard at the little girl who continued to look straight ahead.

  "The Soviet Union!" said the little girl with the green eyes.

  "What will you do for the Soviet Union?" Makarov yelled again.

  "I will do all that is necessary to complete my missions," the young girl replied with no emotion. "If I must die, I will die."

  "What does death mean for you?" Makarov asked.

  "It is a great honor to die in the line of duty fighting for Mother Russia," she answered. "I will give all of myself to my country."

  "You have learned well, Gabriella," Makarov praised. "Your mind is perfect, though your body is still young. But when you are older, you will learn that your body can be as good a weapon as your mind and fists have ever been."

  The young girl gave no reaction, continuing to stare straight ahead, but realizing what the man spoke of. Sexual contact was nothing that had been missing from her life, there were a few particular guards that took any opportunity to lay their hands upon the young girl in the darkness of the night.

  "I know you know what I'm speaking about," Makarov drawled. "The cameras are on you all the time, we see what happens."

  "Yes, sir." Gabriella felt a stirring on the inside of her body at the betrayal from her commander.

  "We know they touch you and we told them to do so." Makarov leaned down close, looking into the face of the girl who would not look him in the eyes. "Are you angry with me for this?"

  "No, sir!" Gabriella said sharply. "This is part of my training."

  "Why do you think that I'm training you this way, Gabriella?" Makarov asked. "Why would your teacher and commanding officer let you be harmed in such a way?"

  "To get me ready for future missions, sir."

  "Is that why you do not fight them?" Makarov pushed.

  "I have been given no directive on what to do in the situation, so I keep still and focused." Gabriella did not let her eyes waiver to the side, keeping herself as the ever-vigilant soldier.

  "And what if I were to touch you, Gabriella? What if I were to do what those men did in the night?" Makarov placed his hand on the girl’s knee.

  "I would do as I was instructed by my commanding officer," Gabriella replied. "If you feel that there is a need for you to have sexual contact with me, then I assume that is the best for my training. All my faith lies within the program and you, sir."

  "You're unflappable, young lady." Makarov moved his hand from the girl’s knee and stood straight up. "There's no reason in your training for me ever to put my hands on you in that way. I feel you and I have a bond, Gabriella, one that is producing the greatest agent that Russia has ever seen. I will not allow that to be sullied by sexual contact."

  "But if you think is right for me, I shall allow it, sir."

  "I'd like to offer you something, Gabriella. A prize," Makarov said slowly. "I know you sit in front of me right now, telling me how you only do what is commanded. Shutting off all emotion, keeping yourself completely focused. But what those men did to you must've had some impact on you. There must be some level of seething and hate inside you for them."

  "No, sir, it's all part of my training."

  "Gabriella, in all your years with me you've never been offered a choice of what to do. Your meals, your clothing, where you go, what you do, have all been laid out for you by me, but I think it's time to start learning how to make choices to help you when you're in the field," Makarov said. "It's gonna be many times you're faced with a choice to make, and you need to be able to make those choices with confidence. So, I want to give you the first choice in your life. You can have it right here, and right now."

  The young girl kept her gaze straight ahead, not reacting to the
man's words. The attentiveness inside her though, picked up, as being faced with a choice was both overwhelming and exhilarating.

  "Those men that touched you during the night, the very ones that harmed you and hurt you. They’re now in our custody." Makarov smiled at the young girl who did not return the look. "I can have one of them or both of them brought here right now. They are in this building. Strapped to my waist, I have a .45 caliber handgun that I can place in your hands to kill one or both of those men. Would you like to kill them?"

  "I am here only to do as I am ordered to do." The young girl allowed her eyes to flicker from a straight ahead stare for the first time, and looked at the face of Makarov.

  "That's not what I asked you, Gabriella." Makarov moved closer down to the girl again. "I asked if you would like to kill one or both of those men. We can do it right now. They just have to walk in the room, and we can kill them. Excuse me, I meant, you will kill them. That is if that's what you want to do."

  "I will do as I am ordered." Gabriella tightened her gaze up again to the straight ahead position.

  As the final words left her mouth, Makarov’s open hand slapped across her face hard, causing the young girl to wince in pain and regroup herself.

  "This is not some semantic game!" Makarov screamed at her. "You will choose if these men live or die, and you will do it now. This is part of your training, and you will commit to it. So, I ask you for the last time, do they both live, do they both die, or does one live and one die?"

  "I'll kill them both." The young girl tightened her fists and squeezed hard.

  Chapter Ten

  Sau Paulo came with an advantage. Due to the Olympic Games, the major cities around Rio had been equipped with facial recognition software now used by police in the closed-circuit TV systems.

  The hack was almost impossible for the common man, but for someone with the specific training on how to work their way into the numerous systems in the world, it was pretty simple.

  The first step was getting into the coding of the system and finding out where the servers were. Once on the inside, and realizing that you're undetected, the cloaking device of the software could keep you hidden and unrecognizable to the salaried employees who stared at the same screens every day, bored by the flow of faces that now were not nearly as exciting after the Olympics had left many years ago.

  Uploading a picture of Victor, Gabriella set the system in motion, searching for a match in the main database. If Victor had come through customs at the airport, he would be in there. The chance of him using a disguise was slim, being the pursuer rather than the pursuing. Or so he thought.

  Two hours after being set in motion, her computer held half a dozen results of a man that hit the facial recognition software, but only one stood out as a dead match.

  "Well there you are, Victor," Gabriella said looking at the screen with a big smile.

  She traced back the time that he went through the airport by linking into the closed-circuit system of the Cape Town airport. Victor’s boarding pass and all his ‘information’ came flashing up on the screen.

  Oswald Covington, originally from Moscow, Russia, but currently living in Toledo, Spain.

  "You’ve got to be shitting me," Gabriella huffed, looking at the name and information. "You're supposed to be the greatest agent in the world, and this is the best you can come up with."

  Tracing the name back and pulling into the present of Brazil, Gabriella ran the name he was using through the system once more, seeing his entrance into the country just two days before her own.

  She continued to scan through the archives of the closed-circuit television that lined all the streets, his face popped up three times in front of the Hotel L Bordereau. Two images clearly showed him entering the hotel, which only sat two buildings down and across the street from the hotel Gabriella was calling home.

  "My my my." Gabriella shook her head at the screen. "Look at this… using the same name to check into the hotel. Room 705. Feels like a rookie move."

  Pulling up a room layout of the hotel through public access channels of the town, Gabriella searched for where room 705 would be. The agent certainly didn’t aim for average. The room was on the top two floors, and was considered a suite. The corner location allowed for light from two directions, and sat conveniently facing toward Gabriella’s hotel.

  "Let's see if anybody's home." Gabriella walked over to the curtains and closed them to within an inch. Pulling a set of binoculars up to her eyes, she held them lengthways only looking into one hole. Standing back from the curtains she let her eyes look through and focus on the room that he was in.

  "Victor, in in the middle of the afternoon," Gabriella whispered to herself, seeing him walk to the opening of his window and looking down to the street below. Gabriella's mind jumped to the thought that he was looking for cars that looked out of place to see if he had been followed. "You’re looking in the wrong direction."

  Quickly dropping the binoculars to her waist, Gabriella knew that his next action would be to scan all the buildings on the horizon to see if anybody was looking across. He would check the windows and the roofs.

  Moving her hand up quickly, she closed the opening in the curtain, knowing that he was doing his due diligence, whether from force of habit or from a genuine concern that others could be around.

  "Looks like it's time to get busy." Gabriella clapped her hands together, before pulling a burner phone from her pocket. She typed in the phone number she's only used a few times before.

  "Hello," came a man's voice in a thick, Brazilian accent.

  "Telling a secret is always a lie to the person who told you the secret," Gabriella spoke quietly, holding still.

  "Secrets and lies are often misconstrued for one and the same," the man's voice replied.

  "The .45 caliber Sig," Gabriella said, clean and without hesitation. "I'll text you the address."

  "All I need is five minutes," the man on the other end of the phone said before hanging up.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Mantis learned a long time ago that any contact she could get with locals was valuable, but the negative side was that the information was usually skewed due to their personal involvement in whatever the situation was. The same held true for suppliers. They always seemed anxious and ready to get the supplies to you, but it was basically a fifty-fifty proposition that they would actually show up and have what you needed.

  Despite the large bravado that he had what was needed, the man that went by the name Ramon came packing with nothing but a small Smith & Wesson 38 revolver. The old Saturday night special favorite of police and FBI from days long gone by. The exchange from Ramon was a quick hand off, both of them merely passing by each other and then disappearing off into a deep crowd.

  A handgun with a little more power as she’d requested would’ve been better, but as a woman of immense skill, the Smith & Wesson would have to make do. Wearing a skirt that was loose and flowing, just as the local women did, Gabriella had attached a holster to her thigh ready to place the 38 in it, keeping it concealed even from a well-trained eye.

  The sun peeked between the buildings, filling the air with warmth. Gabriella's eyes looked at the front door of the hotel, knowing exactly where she was headed. If Victor was in his room, the incident would hopefully be fast. Nothing more than two quick shots to the head and she could leave before many people could notice.

  Walking into the hotel, Gabriella presented herself like any other guest. Gliding by the front desk, she pulled himself up close to the concierge station, giving a smile to the young man behind it.

  "Hello, sir, do ya speak English?" Gabriella asked in a southern accent from the United States.

  "Yes, ma'am, how may I help you?" The young man behind the desk gave her a large smile.

  "You speak English very well," Gabriella nodded her head to the man.

  "I'm originally from Washington, born from Brazilian parents," the young man explained. "I learned to speak Portu
guese from them."

  "Well that must come in handy working here," Gabriella said, keeping solid interest.

  "It has given me this chance to travel and experience life where my parents grew up. They’re both originally from right here in the city."

  "That's fantastic," Gabriella smiled. "I'm staying here in the hotel and I was wondering if there was a great restaurant in the area that you could recommend?"

  "Of course, the first I will tell you about is right here in the hotel. If you enjoy steak houses and what they have to offer in the United States, this would be ideal for you. It's located on the top floor of the hotel and is called Rodizio. They have classic steaks of all kinds and also quite a good seafood menu to go with it. Being as close as we are to the ocean, many of the dishes here in Brazil are seafood based. It makes for a good mix for everyone."

  "And I won't even have to leave the hotel," Gabriella said smiling.

  "Have you ever been to Brazil before?" the young man asked.

  "It's my first visit," Gabriella replied.

  "Then let me give you a little tip if you’re traveling alone. If you can, carry a false cell phone and a false wallet or purse. I know that may sound silly but we have an extremely high rate of tourists being mugged. So if you have these items as decoys, muggers typically will take things and run as fast as they can, so they won’t know they have the decoy items."

  "I did hear about that a few years ago during the Olympics. I assumed it was just because of so many tourists coming in, but it sounds like it's a regular issue," Gabriella mused.

  "Not for locals, but they will usually go for the tourists," said the young man. “I'm not trying to scare you though, it’s just a precaution and it can't hurt."

  Gabriella smiled at the young man and nodded her head. “Thank you so much for your help."