The Athena Project: A Thriller Read online

  “Bilingual?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s correct. How about one language?”

  “I don’t know,” said Casey.

  “American,” whispered Bianchi with a conspiratorial wink as he began laughing.

  If this guy only knew what was in store for him, thought Casey as she and Cooper laughed goodnaturedly at his joke.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bianchi. “That’s very rude of me. But it is true. America thinks it’s the center of the world and that everything revolves around it.”

  “Politics are so boring,” said Cooper, holding up her nearly empty glass. “But champagne; that’s something I can get excited about.”

  Casey nodded and held up her glass as well. “Can we tempt you into having a drink with us, Signore Bianchi?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, his face suddenly stern.

  Casey and Cooper looked at him.

  Then he smiled and added, “Not at least until you tell me your names.”

  Casey smiled back and held out her hand. “Jennifer.”

  “And I’m Elena,” said Cooper, offering her hand to Bianchi once he released Casey’s.

  “Beautiful names for the two most beautiful women at my party. I want you both to call me Nino,” he said, waving a waiter over. He took a glass of champagne off the tray.

  Holding it up, he proposed a toast. “To beauty, to love, and to their child, ecstasy.”

  They all clinked glasses and took a sip.

  “Death Takes a Holiday?” asked Casey.

  Bianchi was impressed. “Very good,” he said, tipping his glass in her direction. “How did you know that?”

  “It was one of my grandmother’s favorite films. She called it the most romantic toast she had ever heard. It made my grandfather very upset. He thought the toast he gave at their wedding was the most romantic.”

  Bianchi smiled. “So, what about you, Jennifer? Are you a romantic?”

  He was flirting with her.

  Casey replied coyly. “Romance is fine, but I think there are other things in life that are more exciting.”

  He liked that answer. “And you, Elena? What do you think?”

  Cooper leaned against Casey and ran her fingers slowly down her teammate’s arm. “I think Jennifer and I have a very similar definition of excitement.”

  That put the ball over the goal line. Both women could tell by looking at him that Bianchi was hooked. Two attractive women apparently interested in each other as well as him was all it took. Men were too easy.

  “Would you ladies like to see the rest of the house?”

  All of the blood had been drained from his brain and rushed to the part of his anatomy now doing the thinking. This operation was going to be over in record time. All they had to do now was get him down to the boat.

  “We’d love to,” said Casey.

  Bianchi insinuated himself between them. “Why don’t we start upstairs then?”

  Upstairs? That wasn’t going to work. They needed to get him downstairs. Once he got upstairs, he wasn’t going to want to leave; at least not until what he thought was going to happen, had happened.

  Casey knocked back her champagne in a long swallow and then handed her empty glass to Bianchi. “Hold this,” she said as she began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To get us a little more. I’ll be right back.”

  Before Bianchi could reply, Casey was already walking toward a bar that had been set up on the other side of the room. He watched her walk away and how the close-fitting dress she wore accented her beautiful body.

  Cooper gave Bianchi’s arm a squeeze. “That’ll be our third glass of champagne.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he asked.

  Cooper smiled seductively. “Not for you, it’s not. Not as long as you can keep up.”

  Bianchi reached down and rearranged the front of his suddenly tight-fitting trousers.

  After fetching three glasses of champagne from the bar, Casey stopped halfway back and set them on a table. She pretended to adjust her dress and plucked off what appeared to be one of its decorative beads. In actuality, it was a water-soluble capsule filled with an amnesic substance called Flunitrazepam, or Rohypnol, the date rape drug.

  She dropped it in Bianchi’s glass and allowed it to dissolve as she walked back over to him and Cooper.

  When she reached them, she took their half-empty glasses, handed them fresh ones, and then offered a toast of her own. “May we kiss whom we please and please whom we kiss.”

  “I like that one,” said Bianchi, beaming, as they all clinked glasses and he took a nice long sip of his champagne.

  As his glass came down, he then added, “Why don’t I show you ladies the upstairs portion of the house.”

  Casey moved in closer to him and put her hand on his chest. “Do you know what I like? What I really like?”

  “Tell me,” said Bianchi, narrowing his eyes, trying to appear seductive.

  “I like boats. I’ve always found them very sexy. I’ll bet you’ve got a nice boat.”

  “I do,” he replied. “But I have an even nicer library upstairs, with a beautiful view overlooking the canal.”

  Cooper knew she might be pushing their luck. She didn’t want to make the man suspicious, but said, “I bet we can’t swim naked up there.”

  “I actually have a tub big enough for all three of us,” he stated as he linked both of the women’s arms through his and led them toward the stairs. “If you’re both very, very good, maybe we’ll take the boat out later.”

  There was nothing they could do except go along with him until the drug kicked in and he became malleable enough to steer back down to the boat garage. The challenge, though, would be keeping him at bay. As they began their ascent of the staircase, he reached down and grabbed both their asses.

  CHAPTER 8

  The library was on the palazzo’s third floor. The marble floors were covered with expensive Persian carpets. The walls were lined with ornately carved mahogany bookcases. A gilded chandelier hung in the center of the room and the ceiling boasted a bright blue fresco with rosy-cheeked cherubs peeking out from behind puffy white clouds. For a man as gauche as Bianchi, the room was incredibly elegant.

  “So,” he said, draining the last few drops from his champagne glass. “Who would like some more?”

  Chewing pensively on her bottom lip as if she was thinking better of it, Casey finally raised her glass and said, “I’ll have some.”

  “Excellent,” he replied. He had no idea that both women had been covertly dumping out here and there as much of their champagne as they could.

  Casey walked around the room admiring the books as she scanned for the security cameras she knew he had. “You have quite a beautiful collection,” she said, running her fingers over the leather-bound volumes.

  “I like beautiful things,” said Bianchi as he produced a bottle of champagne from a minibar hidden behind a row of faux book spines.

  “Is that Dom Perignon?” Casey asked, placing her hand on her hip and cocking her head sideways.

  Bianchi smiled. “Indeed it is. It’s a very special bottle that I’ve been saving for a very special occasion.”

  “I’ve never seen one that color before,” said Casey.

  “Or that size,” added Cooper, who came over to get a better look.

  “It’s very rare,” said Bianchi. “It is called Dom Perignon White Gold. The bottle, known as a Jeroboam, contains three liters and is—”

  “Completely made out of white gold?” interrupted Casey.

  The man nodded. “Like I said, I like beautiful things. I also like celebrating special occasions.”

  With that, the arms dealer popped off the cork and the women squealed with feigned delight as Bianchi raced to capture the overflowing champagne in their glasses. The drug was already making him a bit sloppy, and he spilled some over the top of the bar and onto the carpet.

  Passing out the glasses, h
e said, “Here’s to beautiful things.”

  Casey caught Cooper’s eye and knew what she was thinking. The guy was a pig. But they were professionals and they weren’t going to screw this up.

  Setting his glass down, Bianchi reached for a remote, punched a button, and music began to pour from hidden speakers somewhere in the walls. He grabbed Cooper and pulled her into the center of the room to dance.

  Pressing himself against her, he ran his hands up and down her dress and over the contours of her body.

  “What about your other guests?” Cooper asked, trying to create a little daylight between them.

  Bianchi scoffed. “Boring. All of them. They only come to eat my food and drink my wine. This is where the real party is.”

  “You can say that again,” said Casey as she dropped another capsule she had plucked from her dress into the man’s glass.

  “Come dance with us,” he said, looking up and waving Casey over. “We don’t want to leave anyone out.” He was beginning to slur his words.

  Casey smiled and brought him his glass of champagne. He took another long drink, set the glass down, and then pulled Casey toward him so he could run his hands up and down her body as well.

  She was about to reach for his glass and encourage him to have a bit more when the door of the library was thrown open and three of Bianchi’s security detail rushed in. They were more thorough and more protective than had been expected. In Italian, they told their boss that they had backed up the security tapes to see when the women he was now alone with in his library had arrived, and with whom. There was just one problem. They couldn’t find them. The women hadn’t come through the front door like everyone else. The first time the cameras had any record of them was when they appeared in a hallway near the stairs down to the boat garage.

  Uh, oh, thought Casey.

  Bianchi was so out of it, he stepped forward and shoved the two women behind him to protect them from his own security people. He definitely wasn’t thinking very clearly. He was furious that he’d managed to get two gorgeous ladies upstairs, had opened a forty-thousand-dollar bottle of champagne, and now his security team was destroying the mood.

  For their part, Casey and Cooper didn’t waste any time. Staying behind Bianchi so they could use him for cover, they moved in perfect unison as they drew their weapons from their garter holsters at exactly the same moment.

  The standoff lasted for less than a second. When one of Bianchi’s men reached for his gun, Cooper fired and put two rounds into where his throat met the top of his chest.

  One of the other men went for his weapon and Casey took him out with two shots to the head. The third security man bolted from the room.

  “We’re blown,” said Casey over her earpiece.

  “What happened?” asked Ericsson.

  “No time to explain. We need to get out of here now,” replied Casey as she kicked Bianchi in the back of the knee, buckled his legs, and sent him down to the carpet.

  Cooper rushed to the door of the library, counted to three, and then peeked out. The manuever was met with a hail of automatic-weapons fire from the hallway.

  She pulled her head back inside just as the rounds tore up the doorframe above her.

  “How many?” asked Casey as she made Bianchi lie down, face-first on the floor.

  “At least one with more coming up the stairs.”

  “Lock the door!”

  Cooper pulled one of the dead security men out of the way so she could close the library door. After locking it, she slid one of the room’s heavy leather couches in front of it and jammed the two security officers between its legs to make it harder to open.

  Once again, Casey scanned the walls and ceilings. “I think we’re being watched.”

  “I figured as much,” replied Cooper. “There’s no way we’re getting down to the boat garage. What’s Plan B?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Hearing shouts from the hallway, Cooper said, “You’d better work fast.”

  Casey had Cooper watch Bianchi as she walked over and opened a pair of French doors overlooking the canal. There was a wrought-iron railing with a polished brass cap that came up about waist high.

  Megan Rhodes’s voice came over their earpieces. “We’ve got trouble at the front door. The security team has weapons drawn and they’re trying to get an angle on the window you just opened.”

  Casey stepped back and cursed.

  “What do you want me to do, boss?”

  Just then Cooper said, “It just got very quiet in the hallway. I think they’re getting ready to hit the room.”

  “They won’t risk killing Bianchi,” answered Casey.

  Cooper drew her teammate’s attention to the fact that Bianchi was lying prone on the floor and that the two of them were standing up. “If he’s got cameras in here, then they know exactly where we’re standing and where to shoot.”

  She was right. “Drag him over here,” said Casey, who then turned her attention back to her other two teammates outside. “We’re going to need a hot extraction in thirty seconds.”

  “Roger that,” said Ericsson.

  Casey added, “Long-distance assistance is authorized.”

  “Roger that,” replied Rhodes as she adjusted her rifle and placed the crosshairs over the head of her first target.

  Cooper looked at Casey. “And how are we getting downstairs in thirty seconds?”

  Casey looked past her and out toward the canal. “When life shuts a door, it often opens a window.”

  “Gretch, we’re three stories up. It’s going to be like hitting concrete for him.”

  “Then we’d better make sure he’s got the wind knocked out of him so he doesn’t aspirate any canal water,” replied Casey as she backed Bianchi up and propped him against the railing.

  Fearing for their boss’s life, the security operatives in the hallway decided to move. As Casey stepped away from Bianchi, the library door was splintered with bullets.

  “Extraction in ten seconds,” Ericsson said over the radio.

  “Tango one is down,” said Rhodes, followed by, “Tango two is down.”

  It took Cooper only a fraction of a second to realize what Casey had planned as she leaned back and kicked Bianchi in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and toppling him over the railing.

  Before the arms dealer had even hit the water, both Casey and Cooper had jumped out the window after him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Casey and Cooper slammed into the water feetfirst. When they broke the surface, they could see Megan keeping the security men in the palazzo pinned down with a steady stream of suppressed fire from her LaRue OBR. Chunks of stone from the library window casing were raining down into the canal.

  No sooner had Casey and Cooper reached Bianchi than Julie Ericsson roared down the canal and brought her Zodiac with its enormous engine to a stop between the palazzo and her teammates.

  “Move! Move! Move!” she yelled as she raised a suppressed H&K MP7 to help take out any hostiles Rhodes might not be able to see.

  Cooper climbed over the side and into the boat. Righting herself, she reached down to help Casey, who was holding Bianchi, and pull him out of the water. The man had landed badly and had been knocked unconscious.

  Neither of the women bothered to look up to see what was going on with the arms dealer’s security men. That was what Ericsson and Rhodes were supposed to do, and Casey and Cooper trusted them implicitly. All of their actions were synchronized. Even in the heat of battle, they never second-guessed their teammates.

  Rhodes kept pounding away at the library window and Ericsson engaged two additional targets who had popped out of the front door with shotguns. She managed to nail them both before they could pull their triggers.

  Cooper planted her feet and gave Bianchi once last tug, which pulled him the rest of the way into the boat. This coincided with Rhodes’s running out of ammo and needing to do a magazine change, which meant the men in the library windo
w were free to engage.

  “Go! Now!” yelled Casey from the water as she grabbed the rope that was threaded along the exterior of the Zodiac.

  Ericsson tossed Cooper the MP7 and slammed the throttle all the way to the stop.

  The powerful black Zodiac reared up and raced forward as Alex Cooper drilled all of the third-story windows with rapid three-round bursts.

  As they sped down the canal, Casey used her exceptionally strong arms to pull herself up and into the boat.

  “We’re clear,” said Ericsson over the radio to Rhodes. “At the bridge in ninety seconds.”

  “Roger that,” said Megan, who had already zipped up her red-hot rifle and was exiting the apartment across the canal from Bianchi’s palazzo.

  Casey reached over and checked Bianchi’s pulse.

  “Is he alive?” Cooper screamed above the roar of the engine.

  Casey flashed a thumbs-up and was about to say something when she noticed a boat speeding down the canal in their direction. “Contact!” she yelled.

  Ericsson turned and looked over her shoulder. Closing in on them was a black Donzi speedboat. “Everybody hold on,” she said.

  Casey used one hand to hold on to the boat and the other to hold on to Bianchi. As she did, two shooters on the Donzi let loose with a loud barrage of fire.

  “So much for them not wanting to injure their boss!” shouted Cooper as she returned fire. She had only gotten off two bursts when her MP7 ran dry.

  “Magazine!” she called out.

  Julie Ericsson pulled two from the bag next to her and handed them to Cooper. “I’m going to try to lose them!”

  Cooper nodded as she grabbed the mags and reloaded.

  Ericsson sped even faster, dodging gondolas and other Venetian water traffic. Terrified onlookers screamed as they watched an almost fatal collision between the Zodiac and a smaller utility boat that had pulled out of a side canal, not expecting such a rapidly moving craft.

  While Ericsson had managed not to hit the small boat, the Donzi slammed right into it and kept going.

  “I’m in place,” said Rhodes over the radio from her position at the Rialto Bridge.