Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller) by Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne Page B

unconfirmed sightings over the last twenty years. He was a founding member of the German terrorist group known as the Black Hat Battalion. The organization appeared to have no particular political affiliation other than mayhem, and seemed to focus its talents on weapons and explosives trafficking, from which it made a great deal of money. Beck himself was known to his associates as Valac, a nickname with roots in demonology.
    Lovely , she thought and looked up at McElroy. “Okay, I can see why you’d want to grab this guy. So where do we find him?”
    “Does that mean you’re in?”
    Alex hated being so predictable, but she had a weakness for chasing after badasses, and this one was about as bad as you could get. If things went right, catching the bastard might even make up for the last debacle. And there was Deuce to consider.
    Of course, that didn’t mean she had to cop to it.
    “Where is he?” she repeated.
    “Not far from here. You’ve heard of St. Cajetan?”
    “It’s in the Bahamas, right? Club Med for the super rich.”
    “That’s the one.” He gestured to the chair across from her. “Mind if I sit?”
    She did, but granted him permission anyway, and watched him hobble across the room, still clearly in pain after his battle with her grandfather’s coffee table.
    Good.
    “Here’s the thing,” he said as he sank into the chair. “This isn’t the usual track-and-grab job. It’s slightly more complicated.”
    Alex didn’t like the sound of that. “Explain.”
    McElroy told her a story about the recent bombing in New York, and how one of the people involved had led investigators to a Serbian nationalist. This, in turn, put them on to a maze of phone calls that clued them in to an upcoming meeting between Reinhard Beck and a man named Frederic Favreau. Favreau was looking for a buyer for a set of codes he’d managed to acquire, and Beck, aka Valac, was first in line.
    “What sort of codes?” she asked.
    “That, I don’t know. Top secret, eyes only, don’t pass Go, all the usual nonsense. I’m not sure why they don’t just arrest Favreau and be done with it, but I have a feeling our friends at State have gotten greedy. They’re looking for a twofer.”
    “And for the sake of political expediency, they want us to execute it,” Alex said. “We grab Valac and the codes, and take the blame if it all goes south.”
    “Right. Only not in that order.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “They don’t want Valac to have the codes in hand even for a minute. That’s how paranoid they are. Our job is to snatch the codes before we snatch Valac, make sure they’re secure, then go after the prize.”
    “So we take Favreau down first.”
    McElroy shook his head. “That may spook Valac and nobody wants to take that chance. This is the closest we’re ever likely to get to him.”
    “Then how do you propose we handle it?”
    McElroy took something from his jacket pocket and tossed it to her. “These are hot off the press.”
    Using her phone for light, Alex opened an artfully forged and distressed passport and saw her photograph above the name ALEXANDRA BARNES . Tucked into the back pages was a laminated ID card with the same photo and name, showing her as a “Correspondent” for Travel Planet Lifestyles , an online travel site.
    “Travel Planet Lifestyles?”
    “It’s a Stonewell front,” he told her. “We’ve used it as cover for a number of ops when discretion is needed. It’s fully operational, so if anyone checks, it’s legitimate. It took some quick and dirty finagling, but we managed to snag you a couple days on the island. You’ll be doing a video profile of St. Cajetan for the site, complete with camera crew.”
    “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
    “Not in the least,” he said. “We want you to cozy up to Frederic Favreau at the hotel, locate and switch the codes, then let him lead you straight to Valac.”
    Alex arched a brow. “Cozy up?”
    “I’m told you’re just his