LETHAL SCORE Read online

  Greatrex and I had been chatting about the upcoming tour.

  “So really, don’t hold back,” I said to him. “Tell me what you honestly think of Antonio Ascardi.”

  He was silent for a few seconds. “I know you like him, Nick, but I see something darker underneath that altruistic image he likes to present.”

  “You don’t think maybe you’ve just started to see the worst in people, becoming a little jaded perhaps?” I regretted the words as soon as they passed my lips. Before I could apologize, my friend answered.

  “I understand what you mean, but no. I get the feeling there’s something not quite right behind that welcoming smile. I also wonder if the man’s bid to save the world from itself is genuine in light of his obsession with money. And of course, there’s the wine thing. What the hell was that all about?”

  “Ascardi is certainly a complicated personality,” I responded. “But again, if you think of the new age of tech tycoons, they all seem quite complex. Their almost ‘on the spectrum’ way of thinking gets them started, allowing them to innovate and write code that others only dream of. The really successful ones seem to combine that with a flair for the entrepreneurial, the ability to build a successful business.”

  “Point taken,” said the big fella. “I suppose the next thing you’re going to tell me is they all have an altruistic streak as well?”

  “Ambition and ego seem to be part of a billionaire’s job description,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t believe in something. Look at Zuckerberg, Gates, Sean Parker. They’re all tech-successful philanthropists who have given millions if not billions to great causes. Parker’s even on the board of the Obama Foundation, for Christ’s sake. Is it so far removed to think Ascardi could be cut from the same cloth?”

  Greatrex looked at me from the passenger seat. His face read like a book on skepticism.

  “You see Richard Branson, I see Obadiah Stane,” he said.

  “You can’t judge a man by his beard,” I said, pointedly glancing at my friend’s own manscaped exhibit.

  The big fella chuckled and we drove on in silence.

  A while later and farther down the road, my thoughts drifted to the woman I had seen in the castle’s courtyard the night before. I’d been wrong to think I’d recognized her. Nothing sinister, nothing to see here. Maybe I was doing just what I had accused Jack Greatrex of—seeing the worst in a situation.

  I tried to put the girl out of my mind.

  The trouble was, she wouldn’t go.

  Chapter 4

  Four days later, the tour had begun. The first show at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre had gone well. Better than well. The media had been there in droves and were glowing in their reviews. I wasn’t used to the attention. In my musical career so far, I’d always been the sideman, the hired hand, living out of the public lens. It had been the same when I was a Marine Scout Sniper. A sniper’s job, by definition, functions on the fringe of the group. Maybe Antonio Ascardi was right. Nicholas Sharp, lone wolf prowling the ridges.

  I had to accept that, at least for now, things were going to be a little different in that regard. I didn’t have to like it.

  I’d done a few press interviews in the days after the show. I kept my story as simple as possible—love the music, love the people, etc. No one had mentioned my past life. I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.

  After the attention, I needed some “lone wolf” time. The equipment had gone by truck, and Greatrex with it. The rest of the tour party had boarded a London North Eastern Railway service that afternoon. This created the perfect opportunity for the rented black Audi A5 and I to cruise the A1 down to London. I was enjoying the road and the car. No talk, just a little music and several speed limits to break.

  Winter in the UK means darkness begins to set in around four in the afternoon. That took some adjustment for an Angeleno. It was still light, but the evening was making her overtures as the North Sea appeared beside the road. Storm clouds dominated the horizon. White foam topped the waves and a drubbing rain struck the windshield. I pressed my right foot down, the Audi clicked down a gear, and the road before me disappeared under the front wheels.

  I had just seen a sign to the town of Skateraw when I came up behind a gleaming dark-blue sports car. I planned to take no prisoners today, so I pulled out to accelerate past. Even at that speed, I thought I could tell the driver was a woman by the shape of the hair. As I pulled out to overtake the vehicle, I recognized it. It was the same model BMW driven by the woman I saw at Antonio Ascardi’s castle.

  My curiosity was piqued. As I sped past, I turned to get a look at the driver’s face. The shock was total and instantaneous. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me. A split second later I was fighting to regain control of myself and my car.

  This couldn’t be.

  The BMW dominated my rearview mirror as we both hurtled along the A1. I didn’t think she’d seen me, but I wasn’t sure. I needed time to think, to pull this together in my head. I didn’t want to lose sight of her car, so I matched her speed at about one hundred yards ahead.

  I’d last seen Elena walking off into the glare of an L.A. sunrise after leaving only a bloodied note in my hand. It had been my blood.

  An encounter in my favorite bar in Venice Beach had led to a convoluted and painful night. I had been playing piano, we met, and we talked. She had known too much about me and my past, and I told her so, rejecting her pleas for some sort of help.

  By sunrise three men who had abducted her outside the bar had been violently incapacitated, by my hand, despite my intent to stay uninvolved. The girl rewarded me by leaving. No explanation, just an obscure note. That was that.

  The mystery of that night had bothered me for over a year. I didn’t really understand what had happened or why. I had no idea. There were two things I did know. First, Elena was a dangerously unpredictable woman, and second, I wanted to understand what was behind the events of that brutal evening. Perhaps it was a fool’s curiosity.

  Elena, from the Republic of Georgia: stunning, beautiful, captivating, and quite possibly deadly.

  As my thoughts cleared, I found myself working through a couple of hypothetical scenarios. Do I pull her over? Do I let her overtake me and then follow her? Two minutes later, the decision was taken out of my hands.

  In my mirror I saw her indicator flash, and she turned off the A1 to a side road on her left. I stopped a couple of hundred yards down the road. Darkness was settling in. That would work to my advantage. I turned around and headed back to where Elena’s car left the main road. No other cars had followed her, so I could see her taillights clearly over the distance that lay between us. I followed her along the side road but turned my own lights off. Until I had decided on a plan, there was no point in making my presence known.

  After a couple of minutes, she passed through a small village. When she turned right, I followed her. She was virtually on the water when she turned right again, pulling into a small car park a little way along the beachfront. I pulled up a discreet distance away, out of sight in the darkness.

  As I looked on, the girl seemed to just be sitting in the BMW, waiting. I had no idea what or who she was waiting for. Through the dim light I could make out the road, the dirty white foam of the waves crashing on the beach, and a colossal edifice just a few hundred yards beyond her vehicle. The ominous structure’s floodlights cast a mosaic of light and shadows on the surrounding landscape. Somehow it just didn’t belong.

  I had noticed the building from the main road, but I had no idea what it was. The more I studied it, the more it looked more like some sort of complex rather than a single building. I pulled out my phone and googled the location, trying to identify the building. As the image appeared on my screen, worry skewered my stomach. The ghostly white building looming out of the shadows was the Cinaed Nuclear Power Station.

  What in God’s name was Elena doing here?

  The pain grew worse.

  Chapter
5

  Another ten minutes passed before there was any sign of movement from Elena’s car. Then the cabin light went on as she opened the driver’s door. I could see her face clearly. There was no doubt I was looking at the girl who had caused me so much grief in Los Angeles.

  As she got out, I slunk a little lower in my seat. There was no need; she didn’t even glance in my direction. I had wondered briefly whether she would have recognized my car from the castle courtyard when I passed her. I would have to assume there were enough black Audi A5s out there for it not to matter.

  She walked a hundred yards or so along the shoreline toward the complex’s fence, stopped, glanced over her shoulder, and then kept going. I took that opportunity to climb out of my own car and follow, staying in the darkness as much as possible.

  I had made it to Elena’s car by the time she reached the six-foot fence that surrounded the nuclear complex. She hesitated, and I ducked. Her next move surprised me. After looking around again she seemed to slip through a premade cut in the fence. Then, doing what I had just done, she used the shadows created by the complex’s powerful security lights to move toward the closest building.

  I had already been questioning how this girl was in some way connected to Antonio Ascardi. I had seen her with him in his castle’s courtyard. Given my past with her, it was a hell of a coincidence. My first inclination was to warn Ascardi. He may not know anything about her. Then I wondered if he did. I put that thought aside.

  Suddenly I didn’t have the luxury of time to consider sorting through these apparent contradictions any longer. Elena was disappearing from view. I had to make a choice: act now or don’t act at all.

  Three seconds later I found myself running through the darkness after the girl. A moment later I slipped through the cut in the fence and followed her toward the building.

  The car taillights of those working the dayshift at the station were disappearing along the entrance road in the distance. I assumed there would be fewer staff at night, but of course there would still be security personnel. It was a nuclear power station after all.

  Ahead of me I saw Elena open an external door and head into what seemed like one of the outbuildings. I waited ten seconds and then followed her. The door led to an antiseptic white corridor that led to another door. No sign of the girl, so I went through the next door.

  I found myself in some sort of external courtyard with buildings on every side. There was still no sign of Elena, but I was certain I saw a door across the yard swing close as I entered. My biggest problem was there was too much light on the area. If I crossed it, I would be very exposed.

  Scratch that: I had a bigger problem. Muted gunfire rang out at the exact moment the door handle disintegrated beneath my fingers. I hit the ground as another bullet tore the air above my head. Ten yards away, a freestanding rack held a fire hose. Stay here and be shot or try for the rack’s protection. I got up and ran. As I reached the stand, I felt a sharp jolt as a bullet pierced my shoe.

  I looked down at my feet. The bullet had shredded the rear half of my shoe’s sole, but no blood.

  I wasted a moment in reflection. Having broken into a nuclear power station for no valid reason apart from following a girl, I was under fire from someone who seemed keener to kill me than arrest me. That meant the shooter was probably not part of the power station security force. The shots were muted. A legitimate security team would not use suppressors.

  Sometimes it’s better not to reflect.

  Whoever was shooting had skill. It wouldn’t take long for them to change their position and come at me from another direction. My sanctuary was temporary. Time to retreat. I sprinted back to the door that I had passed through less than two minutes earlier. As I shoved it open with my shoulder, wood splintered beside my head when two bullets shattered the doorframe in quick succession. Someone was trying to double-tap me. Professional.

  In the protection of the corridor I took a second to catch my breath. Then I had the most ill-timed thought. When Bruce Willis’s character has just been attacked by terrorists in Die Hard 2, his response was, “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

  Another bullet through the corridor wall above my head shook me out of my stupor and sent me barreling down the corridor toward the exit.

  I flung the door open, bolted for the fence, and saw the light in Elena’s car go on in the distance. I needed to make a decision. If I headed for the fence and my sniper came out the door after me, I would be exposed with nowhere to run. Yet I couldn’t stay where I was.

  My marine combat instructor had always said, “If your back is against the wall, do the unexpected.” The unexpected was all I had left. I turned around and ran back up the corridor toward the shattered doorway leading to the floodlit yard. As I charged toward the door a figure dressed in black came in through it. In his right hand he held a large black Glock, deadly accurate up to fifty yards in the hands of a professional. He was two yards away.

  The difference between us was I was expecting him, and he had no idea I would be there. We both fell to the ground on impact, but I was first to get up. Before the man could turn his gun toward to me, I unleashed a powerful kick with my right foot. It smashed into the side of his face. I heard bone crack. He shook his head but kept getting up. I didn’t expect that. Resting on one knee, he raised his pistol. I kicked again, slamming my foot into his hand and sending the gun hurtling down the corridor. An instant later the man was on his feet again and charging at me. This guy was a juggernaut. He grabbed me around the waist, taking us both back down to the floor. He was strong. If this became a long fight, I would lose.

  As my assailant rose and drew back his arm, fist clenched for what he thought was going to be a knockout blow, I waited. Just as he was about to connect, I twisted my head to the right. He didn’t have time to pull his punch, so his fist, with all his weight behind it, crumpled against the concrete floor.

  I had a chance, a window, but it afforded an ugly view. As his fist hit the floor, I wrapped both my arms tightly around the man’s neck, his body tensing in surprise. I pulled his head in tight and, using my own body weight, smashed the crown of his head hard against the floor. A second later, it was over.

  I sat there panting until my breathing slowed to an acceptable level. While I knew this guy would be out for a while, I didn’t know whether he had any friends that were about to come through the door to take up the fight. The balaclava over his head and the silencer on his gun meant the unconscious man on the floor in front of me was definitely not a member of the power station security team. Now I needed a plan. I liked plans.

  The smart thing would be to retreat outside and through the fence while there was a chance I could make it without a bullet finding my back. On the flip side, most of the trouble I’d caused myself in life stemmed from my being more curious than I was smart. I needed to know what was going down. Armed intruders infiltrating a nuclear power station under the cover of darkness could mean nothing good, yet if I approached them, the power station guards would arrest me before I could even try to persuade them something was amiss. I looked out the door leading back outside toward the fence. Elena’s car had vanished. She’d done it again. Put me in the middle of a firefight and disappeared. “How does the same …”

  Against my better judgment, I shrugged, turned around, and crept in the other direction toward the inner workings of the complex.

  Eight doors and four corridors later I found myself standing in the most confusing workspace I had ever seen. There were hundreds of pipes, large and small, three levels including a main floor, two gantry-style levels, and an abundance of complex machines, many with flashing consoles. Up on the highest level I could see two large blue cylindrical objects. I didn’t need to be a nuclear scientist to figure out I must be in the plant’s turbine room.

  Fortunately, the room also provided numerous places for me to hide as I tried to work out what to do next. I slid behind some enormous silver pipes and crouched do
wn. Voices murmured from above me. I assumed they belonged to plant workers, but at this point nothing was certain.

  It was strange that I’d been able to get this far undiscovered. Dumb luck. Or the man I’d taken out had already laid a path to get here through either violence or bribery.

  It seemed logical that Elena was allied with my unconscious friend back in the corridor, and that there could be others in their team—many others—who I hadn’t yet encountered. Remaining undetected would be paramount. The next and most obvious question was what were the intruders doing here? Assumedly something nefarious, but what?

  Further penetrating the complex, I figured these people were aiming to cause some damage; at a nuclear power station, damage could endanger hundreds of thousands of people. Stopping that was a responsibility I really didn’t need in my life.

  The most perplexing question about Elena’s conduct—her sudden departure from the complex—wasn’t to be answered now. Given the situation’s urgency and my position’s precariousness, that could wait.

  If lives were at stake, I had no right to protect my own freedom: I would contact security, try to tell them what I suspected, and accept my arrest. But if corruption were involved, members of the security team could be compromised. Would I be handing myself over to the enemy?

  I decided to give myself ten minutes to see if I could get a grip on the situation. If I couldn’t, I would just hand myself in, pass on the information, and risk whatever consequences.

  Footsteps on the metal stairway above me brought me back to the moment. My hiding place would not be secure for very long. Edging my way along to my left, I tried to conceal myself behind the pipes and metalwork while inching toward a door that was visible near the corner of the chamber. Fortunately, the rhythm of the footsteps receded as I edged further along. Abruptly, a man in dark-blue coveralls appeared. I ducked and held my breath. He seemed oblivious to my presence and approached a control panel on the other side of the room. I exhaled and continued creeping toward the door.