Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2

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holograms around the table. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
    He stepped off the comm pad and moved toward Dasaro, who approached simultaneously. He noticed the captain was carrying a communicator, and his face was grim as if he had come bearing bad news. Perhaps Emeri would have preferred to continue his conference.
    “This had better be good,” he muttered.
    “You’re going to want to hear this,” Dasaro replied, handing him the communicator. “Payvan escaped.”

-16-
    Checkpoint Fifteen
    Tasmin Forest, Haphez
     
    Over an hour passed before Ziva found herself within earshot of what remained of Checkpoint Fifteen. In fact, she was surprised anyone was still there. The fact that she had escaped was no doubt old news by now, and she wondered why these agents weren’t out combing the forest for her.
    She crept closer to the checkpoint and took cover behind a large patch of brush, taking the time to spread a thin layer of black mud over her pale face that contrasted so starkly with the dark forest. It wouldn’t take too long for someone to catch up to her. Hoping to throw off any of her pursuers’ calculations regarding time and foot speed, she had made a point to start out traveling as fast as possible and in irregular patterns. Still, a decent tracker would be able to trace her movements over the wet ground fairly easily – she needed a new mode of transportation before they could do so.
    There were more agents at the checkpoint than there had been when the aircar had passed over, giving Ziva the impression that reinforcements had been brought in to assist with the search. That was exactly the case, according to what she could hear of a conversation going on nearby. Similar camps were being set up within ten kilometers of the crash site and agents would soon be dispatched into the forest in an attempt to box her in.
    Ziva was exhausted and soaked to the bone with sweat and rain, but she was relieved that her strategy seemed to have worked. She slipped behind a nearby tree and began to move around the perimeter of the camp, watching as portable tracking equipment and supply caches were set up in the clearing. Several groundcars and hoverbikes were parked unattended on the far side; that needed to be her destination.
    A holoprojector table like those in HSP’s situation rooms and the one in her own living room was being set up under a cover to protect it from the weather. Once they got it operational they might be able to hunt her down via one of the infrared probes hovering in the Haphezian atmosphere, assuming there’d even been any in the area. Unless one of them had been pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time, the chances were slim that they’d picked her up at the crash site. Even if HSP did manage to trace her to this place, she liked to think she’d be safely away by then.
    Ziva made up her mind then and there that taking out any of these agents would draw far too much attention. Still, she knew walking up to one of the bikes and riding off on it wasn’t exactly subtle either. She would have to come up with an appropriate combination of the two.
    “It was a stupid idea in the first place,” one agent was saying as he and a colleague carried a cargo container nearby. “I understand where they’re coming from, but they know better than to send a spec ops agent like Payvan off with such little security. Did they really expect things to end well?” He grunted as they set the container down.
    The second agent nodded in agreement and the two of them began unloading equipment. “If it were up to me, she should have been shot the moment she was apprehended. Keeping her alive was just an invitation for her to escape again.”
    Ziva took their remarks as compliments and continued moving. The process was slow, and several times she was forced to move away from the camp in order to stay adequately concealed. Twenty long minutes later, she found herself within several

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