Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

of pain.
    She drifted.
    Another memory: The bus arriving at the village. Her shock at the relaxed manner of the guide and translator as they announced the safety rules: “Stay on cement walkways. Don’t touch anything. You will be fine.”
    As if you could draw boundaries around something that was invisible, odorless, and silent: radiation. The half-life of Plutonium-238, she’d learned, was 88 years. Other forms of Plutonium retained their dangerous power far longer. Extended exposure to the material, even after decades had passed, was as deadly as any biological weapon.
    At first, the guide cast the tourists’ raised cell phones and cameras only a lazy glance as they snapped away. One of the few Americans on the tour announced that he planned to put up a website to honor those who had died. A German woman told the group that she was related to one of the 31 victims, which the former Soviet government initially claimed were the only deaths.  Talia knew that the LCU had long ago proven the death toll was far and away above that figure, into the thousands once you counted those who had died lingering deaths due to unexplained cancers and other diseases, now believed to be a result of radiation poisoning.
    Talia switched cameras, stowing her pocket-size Minolta and switching to more sophisticated gear to run some video. She panned the area. When the group moved along, she hung back then wandered off by herself and focused on a chain-link fence behind which hundreds of abandoned ambulances, busses and military vehicles had been left to rust away. She switched equipment again and shot a fast twenty or more images with the Canon EOS-Mark II, moving toward what appeared to be a warehouse of some sort.
    And then it happened.
    A man she hadn’t seen before stepped in front of her lens. Thick-necked and surly, he bellowed in a throaty accent, “No, bitch! No fucking way.” His enormous paw came up in front of her lens to block her shot then turned, palm up, in a ‘give-me’ gesture.
    It was abundantly clear that he wanted her not just to stop taking pictures, he expected her to hand over her camera―seven thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. Hell, no!
    She shook her head. “The guide said photographs are allowed,” she lied.
    “Nyet!” he snarled, eyes menacing.
    She turned and started marching away from him, back toward the rest of the tour group. Quickly. She’d be safe with others as witnesses to the man’s bullying.
    When she looked back to see if he was following her, he was snapping his fingers like a haughty maitre d’ summoning up his wait staff. Two gun-toting thugs stepped out from behind the warehouse. She looked around, heart exploding in her chest, frantic now. The tour group was nowhere in sight. She broke into a run toward the bus.
    It struck her that, as pissed off as the guy seemed, he’d take all of her equipment—three cameras, pricy lenses, the memory cards in her camera bag that contained every photo she’d taken since arriving in the area. Probably even confiscate her phone. Physically, she was no match for the three men if they used force. She didn’t doubt they would.
    Talia scanned the wooded terrain. Her eyes burned. She needed a hiding place, fast. Maybe the guard had seen only the big cameras. She might ditch the smaller Minolta, come back for it later.
    Ferns and pine needles, interspersed with boulders and fallen tree trunks, carpeted the forest floor beneath her running feet. She calculated the moment when she’d round the next bend in the path, pass through a broken gate and, for a few precious seconds, be out of her pursuers’ sight behind one of the abandoned dachas. She reached into her camera bag, grasped the Minolta and looked around, trying to figure out how to hide it. She could just fling it as far from the path as she could, but what then were the chances she’d ever find it again? Or that they wouldn’t.
    She took another step. The ground wobbled under her boot