Brie’s hands were bound behind her back, but she could still reach the tracker. Savvy had made sure of this when they’d selected the spot for the chip to be inserted. Should she initiate it now? Or wait until they’d reached wherever it was that Nikolai was taking her? It would transmit for up to four hours.

What if Nikolai was taking her on a longer drive? The tracker could be spent before they reached their destination. Much as she itched to send out her SOS, she had to wait.

It had been too much to hope Nikolai was taking her to his villa. She knew his villa as well as she knew her own. But he drove the other direction.

It slowly dawned on her that she knew where they were headed, and the realization made her stomach cramp. There was a small airport in the city—closer than the new international airport she and Bastian had flown into. When she’d flown to Morocco with her father on his private jet, they’d always used this airport.

Nikolai was taking her to his private jet. Where they would go from there was anyone’s guess.

Bastian ran for the stairs. They had to get to the upper floors, where a cell phone would work. Ivan said he’d planted a tracker on Drugov’s car. They’d get Brie’s current location, and Bastian would call SOCOM. The team could reroute and save her.

She would be safe.

They reached the main floor and Ivan directed him the back of the building and into the warehouse with a four bay loading dock. Parked on a ramp just inside was Cardona’s limousine.

Bastian set off for the vehicle at a dead run. Cardona had a phone Bastian could use while Ivan used his to track Drugov’s location. It had been at least forty minutes since the tracker had been initiated. It was possible a team of SEALs was only minutes away.

Inside the limousine, a drugged-out Cardona was curled in a ball, cradling his bloody wrist, out cold but breathing. Bastian grabbed his cell phone, which had bloody streaks on the screen. Apparently, Cardona had tried to make a call but hadn’t connected before passing out.

Bastian wiped off the screen and dialed Savannah James as he jumped into the front passenger seat of the limousine. Ivan would drive while Bastian contacted SOCOM.

Savvy signaled the incoming call with a hand motion, and the room went silent as she answered. Her cell had already been patched into the console, knowing her number would be the one most likely dialed if Bastian got to a phone.

“What’s going on, Chief Ford?” she said.

“Drugov’s taken Brie. We’re going after her now. The lab is a Russian death factory. Drugov has a stockpile of sanitary napkins infected with Ebola that he plans to distribute to the largest UN refugee camp in South Sudan.”

The words had the effect of a bombshell across the room full of SOCOM commanders and special forces operators. The men visibly flinched and emitted sounds of shock and horror.

Ebola in a refugee camp could lead to an outbreak unlike any seen before. Over a hundred thousand people were in the Upper Nile refugee camp, which was already stressed beyond capacity, dealing with famine, cholera, and malaria. The sick would be cared for by family and friends, not medically trained aid workers. The virus would spread.

But this information changed things. Forewarned, they could stop it. She’d known sending Bastian and Brie to Morocco was the right thing to do, but she’d had no idea the threat Drugov posed was this big.

“Where is Drugov?” Captain Oswald asked.

“There’s a tracker on his car.” Bastian read off the coordinates, which a tech typed into the system. “I’m on my way there now.”

This agreed with the data from his tracker, which was on one of the large screens. He was on the road and moving fast. Whoever was driving was ignoring all speed limits.

A second screen showed the coordinates Bastian had just relayed, and Savvy blanched. “Bastian, Drugov is at a small airport in the heart of Casablanca. Does he have the Ebola-infected pads with him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. The lab was cleaned out. It would make sense he’d move it before grabbing Brie. He could be taking Brie and Lawiri back to South Sudan, with the intent to deliver the infected supplies. He believes his plan to cause an Ebola outbreak remains a secret. He has no reason to think his donation won’t be accepted.”

Chatter in the room rose, and Savvy muted her end of the call. She didn’t want Bastian to hear commanders suggesting that they let Drugov deliver the goods and apprehend the oligarch and the general then. She cleared her throat. “You’re talking about leaving Brie Stewart with Drugov for what would be at least a six-hour flight—longer if he doesn’t go directly to South Sudan and we can’t find him.”

“How far out is the SEAL team?” Bastian asked. “Please tell me there’s a SEAL team on their way.”

“There is,” Savvy said after unmuting her phone. “They’re ten minutes out.”

“Reroute them to the airport. We’ll probably arrive about the same time.”

A SOCOM commander gave her a nod, and she said, “Done,” to Bastian.

She met Cal’s gaze, and for the first time in days, his eyes didn’t hold hostility. Had he expected her to argue for sacrificing Brie?

But in another situation, that might be exactly what she did. In this instance, they had a better opportunity to grab Drugov, which happened to include saving Brie from hours of rape and torture.

But if the plane took off before the SEALs could get there, all bets were off.

If the plane took off, they’d have to face the decision of whether or not to shoot it down. In the first minutes of flight, it might circle over the ocean, providing the perfect opportunity to stop a genocide and an oligarch with one shot.

Brie’s heart raced in overdrive as Nikolai forced her at gunpoint to march onto the cargo plane.

Cargo plane?

That wasn’t his usual mode of travel.

She debated initiating her tracker. But the flight would almost certainly last longer than four hours. She had to be patient. She needed information. “What’s going on, Nikolai?”

“I wanted to show you your present. It would be my wedding gift to you, but I no longer wish to take you as my bride now that your body has been defiled by so many men.”

“Fuck off, Nikolai. I’m not ashamed of my past. I’m just glad your tiny prick is the one I’ve never let near me.”

He backhanded her again, and her genuine reaction was to laugh, in spite of the pain. “Oh, did that hit a nerve? I bet your dick is so tiny, I won’t even be able to tell when you’re erect.”

Another blow came, but she didn’t let up. “That’s why you beat instead of fuck, isn’t it? Because you hope I’ll be in so much pain, I won’t notice you have no penis.”

His hand closed on her throat, silencing her.

She closed her eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. He wouldn’t kill her. Not yet. But the world was beginning to tunnel. She could pass out.

He released her throat, and she took a deep, gasping breath.

“Come see your present,” he said, dragging her with him.

Inside the cargo hold, she came face-to-face with Lawiri. He grinned the same gap-tooth smile she remembered from their first meeting.

“It is a pleasure to meet again,” he said in heavily accented English. “You have served my people well.”

“They’re not your people. You are one of them, not above them. If anything, you are beneath them.”

His lip curled. “They are pawns. Animists. Children. I will be their king.”

Nikolai pinched her arm. She refused to react, holding herself still as ice as his fingers tightened like a vise.

When he got no reaction, he took his burning cigarette and pressed it into her shoulder. She couldn’t stop herself and whimpered at the searing pain.

“Breaking you will be exquisite,” Nikolai said, his cigarette breath mingling with the scent of her burned flesh.

She swallowed bile and said nothing.

“Your precious girls will all die, you know,” Nikolai added. “And it will be your fault. Your underwear. It will make them sick.” He spread his hand to encompass the boxes lined up in the cargo hold. “Ten thousand pairs of underwear. Ten thousand lucky girls.”

Nikolai’s nasty hints became clear. She didn’t know what was in the underwear, but it was something deadly. Biological warfare. Genocide.

She broke. She head-butted Nikolai, then twisted to kick the exiled general in the nuts. Just like Bastian taught her. Her action wouldn’t save anyone, but at least the blows would cause both men pain.

Nikolai fell back, then came at her again. His hands closed around her neck. She bucked and kicked but couldn’t get a good angle.

The world slowly dimmed.

The limousine raced down the Casablanca streets without a care for traffic law, for which Bastian was grateful. Ivan was like a ninja behind the wheel.

They reached the airport, and he barreled through barriers, driving slalom through cars, guardrails, signs, and medians.

They careened past several parked planes and pulled out to the front of the long airstrip. At the far end was a cargo plane, circling around to begin its takeoff run. “Motherfucker,” Ivan said. “That’s Drugov’s plane. We can’t let it take off.”

“No shit,” Bastian said.

“No. I mean, we can’t let it take off with Brie on it. Or she’s dead.” Ivan hit the gas, and the limousine shot forward, heading straight for the oncoming plane.

“Yeah. No fucking shit.” Drugov would have Brie in his clutches for hours in the air. He would rape her. Torture her. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t kill her before they landed in South Sudan.

“No. I mean the cargo plane was my failsafe. In case Nikolai tried to escape before I could get to him.”

They sped forward as the airplane did the same, limousine and cargo plane playing chicken on the runway.

“What does that—” Bastian braced himself as they closed the distance, the giant tires of the oncoming plane on a collision course with the nose of the car.

The airplane lifted a heartbeat before impact. The tire bumped the top of the windshield, shattering the glass and sending the speeding limousine into a spin.

Ivan hit the brakes as he turned into the spin. Glass rained down as they came to a stop a hundred and eighty degrees from their starting direction.

“There’s a bomb on the plane,” Ivan said. “It will blow when it—”

A fireball erupted in the sky. The cargo plane shattered, and debris rained down, pelting the hood of the car and burning Bastian’s skin.