by Vicki Hinze
“Roger, Guardian One,” Colonel Drake’s voice sounded.
At least the colonel had gotten Morgan’s transmission.
It was a reasonable deduction that the challenge was being caused by weather and not by their adversary or their target. A tropical storm system churning in the gulf was moving northeast toward shore, and it likely was playing havoc with their systems or communication devices. But that was a deduced supposition, not fact, and the uncertainty added more stress to an already intensely stressful situation. Has to be weather. Has to be ... Megan treaded water, watched the yacht’s deck for signs of life, and admitted that any other possibility was too frightening to even consider.
“Home Base to 248.” Commander Drake’s barked baritone finally sounded through Morgan’s earpiece. “Drop back four clicks. Now.”
Two and a half miles. Morgan mentally converted the distance. That should do it. Bobbing in the water, she kicked, fighting the wave action. That had better do it. If it didn’t, odds ranked high the target would take Morgan down instead of her neutralizing him.
That dark thought set off a round of shivers in her that pierced her wet suit and speared icy chills straight into her bones. Ever since the initial briefing, she’d had a bad feeling about this mission. She’d fought it, but unfortunately nothing had happened between then and now to put her mind at ease, and that had her bitter as well as edgy at a time when she needed clarity and finely tuned, laser focus. A little confidence would be a welcome thing.
“On it, Home Base.” Jazie Craig, the second and youngest of the three women on Morgan’s team, responded from inside the Apache. Her voice was tight—so not like the affable Jazie—but considering what was at stake, only a fool wouldn’t be tense. And no fool would ever be assigned to any of Sally Drake’s S.A.S.S. teams, much less to the one tagged and activated for this mission. High priority classification. Threat to national security. Clear and present danger.
The stakes didn’t get much higher.
Seconds later, the muffled thumping of the props beating the wind grew distant and then finally faded.
Breathing easier now that the chopper wasn’t telegraphing their presence, Morgan looked back through the hazy moonlight to her own boat. Taylor Lee, the third and final member of her team, sat crouched at the bow watching the Sunrise through her NVG-equipped binoculars. Her slick silhouette showed her elbows-out, both hands gripping her equipment. No action yet.
Morgan took the brunt of a wave full in the face. The salt water burned her eyes, and they stung. She swiped at them, brushed her nose, and then adjusted the rifle sling strapped to her shoulder, keeping an eye out for Taylor’s signal—and for sharks.
Seeing Taylor was easy. Sharks? All but impossible, and it was prime feeding time for the eating machines. Conditions were less than desirable for sighting anything, especially from her vantage point. Worse, the gulf water was extremely rough; seas estimated at twelve to fourteen feet and whitecaps were breaking as far as the eye could see in the obscured moonlight. Staying stationary against the force of it took extreme effort, and it was a losing battle. Frankly, higher headquarters had recommended axing the mission in anything over six-foot seas, but they had made that recommendation knowing neither Colonel Drake nor her operatives would actually do it. The costs of abandoning this mission and not executing their orders were too high, and only unsuspecting innocents would pay them. Who could live with that?
Tiring, her muscles burning, Morgan did her best to stay in position near the yacht. Lightning streaked jagged bolts across the distant inky sky. The storm was definitely rolling in, and when one did, waterspouts typically rode heavy on the outer feeder bands. That could be problematic—though not nearly as much so as the fact that they were getting too close to the outer perimeter of the kill zone. They’d crossed her personal comfort threshold about a click ago. No one in her right mind wanted to be caught in a tornado over water under any circumstances, but while on this mission? And even those not in their right mind wanted no part of anything that could be construed as violating the kill zone perimeter. It’d bring out the worst of bureaucracy and political posturing and keep them all tangled in relentless red tape for the duration.
That possibility had Morgan extra nervous. Fighting the target was going to be bad enough. But fighting it and a merciless Mother Nature simultaneously? Not good; not good at all.
Finally, Taylor whispered, “Move out, Guardian One. Go. Go. Go!”
Silently, Morgan sliced through the rolling waves, narrowing the distance between her and the target’s yacht. With a little luck, she would be out of the water and the team would complete the mission and be back on shore before Tropical Storm Lil blew in full-force.
Once the target was hit, it wouldn’t take long. If the target was hit ...
Not allowing herself to focus on that possibility, Morgan whispered into her lip mic, “Verify coordinates. Exact positioning mandatory.”
Taylor Lee answered. “Twelve-point-two-two-one miles.”
Anything beyond twelve miles was legally considered international waters. “We’re cutting it pretty close, Home Base.” Morgan would have felt better with a little more of a pad. Even half a nautical mile would have helped remove the inevitable skepticism. Two-tenths of a mile was a sliver that left them wide open to criticism. Some flailing politician would definitely exploit it and take public exception, hoping to hike his poll rankings. And not necessarily a politician from the enemy’s side of the fence.
Politics was always an issue. It shouldn’t be, but it was. If Morgan ever doubted it, which she hadn’t, she would only need to look at the S.A.S.S. headquarters to prove it. A political battle of wills that rated more like a spitting contest between Commander Drake and the Providence Air Force Base commander, Colonel Gray, was exactly how the S.A.S.S. ended up plunked into a shack in the middle of no man’s land when there was plenty of terrific office space for its headquarters available on the base proper at Providence. That battle, Commander Drake clearly lost, but she did win the command, which is what had ticked off the base commander in the first place. Gray wanted the job; she got the job. Political.
“I know we’re close, but it can’t be helped,” Jazie responded.
Taylor agreed. “We’ve got what we’ve got, and that’s two-tenths.”
Morgan waited for Commander Drake to agree. Without that half-mile pad, team consensus just wasn’t good enough. Morgan wanted command support.
“It is what it is, Guardian One,” Colonel Drake said.
That was good enough. The commander didn’t like it any more than Morgan did, but she’d accepted it. Higher headquarters had deemed this a high-priority mission, and while that designation gave the commander and Morgan and her team extra latitude to be lax on some of the rules and regulations, all bets were off on them breaching the kill zone.
Experience proved all bets were off, too, on any high-priority mission going down according to plan. Anything could happen. And on this specific high-priority mission, it was almost a certain bet something unanticipated would happen.
The S.A.S.S. Confidential unit was comprised of teams. Morgan’s was S.A.T.—Special Abilities Team—and no mission assigned to it was routine.
It wasn’t going up against an ordinary adversary.
And it wasn’t tasked with neutralizing an ordinary target.
“He’s topside,” Taylor Lee whispered. Tension elevated her tone a full octave. “Target is on deck. Repeat. Target is on deck.”
“Take him out, Guardian One,” the commander said, her voice hard, anxious, and urgent. “Do it now.”
That urgency, too, Morgan understood. The longer the delay, the greater the odds the target would pick up on the S.A.T. team being on site, and if he did, the odds were astronomically favorable that he’d successfully turn the mission into a bloodbath. He wasn’t a rookie. His instincts were professionally honed; he was an expert in neutralization missions. And Morgan and her team were functioning in a capacity th
at fell far outside their normal area of expertise. That was a huge disadvantage for them to absorb generally, but against a professional of his caliber, it translated specifically to deadly.
Unfortunately, her team tackling this mission officially had been deemed essential and critical. The honchos up the chain of command had determined that the S.A.T. team’s participation couldn’t be avoided. The mission, they felt, could not be accomplished without the team’s special abilities. Unfortunately, Secretary Reynolds and the president agreed.
Morgan understood that. She didn’t like it, but she understood it. Still, she was a psychologist, an intuitive one, a civilian subject-matter expert who acted as a consultant to the S.A.S.S. and Commander Sally Drake. Morgan was not a typical S.A.S.S. operative assigned to interventions or to terrorist-response missions. The same was true of her team members, Jazie and Taylor Lee, who also had special cognitive skills.
They were all three good at what they did. Really good—or Commander Drake wouldn’t tolerate them, much less welcome them as one of her units. But, while the team members had trained for hand-to-hand combat, it wasn’t among the skills at which they excelled or even ones they used frequently in their routine consults. Yet their special ability skills were what made activating them on this particular mission necessary, and the bean counters had projected their success by a reasonable margin, provided they acted alone and avoided hand-to-hand combat.
Morgan couldn’t take offense to the caveat; facts were facts, and she agreed with the bean counters. The bigger the team, the greater the odds the target would spot them before they could accomplish the mission and, if reduced to hand-to-hand combat, her team would be pretty well done.
Actually, with just three-to-one odds against this specific target, they were also apt to end up pretty well dead.
Fear shimmied up her spine and turned the taste in her mouth sour. She swallowed hard, shook the splashing water from her face. Holding back a salt-induced sneeze, she took aim and sighted the target through her scope. Don’t miss, Morgan. Whatever you do, don’t miss ...
The live version of the photographed man she’d seen during the mission briefing stood on deck, half-facing her. The photos of him had been good—strong angular face, black hair, gray eyes, about six-two and put together like fantasy personified—but compared to the real thing the photos paled. Animated, the man was drop-dead gorgeous.
Definitely a shame. Morgan leveled him in her crosshairs.
The first guy she’d seen in a year that snagged her attention, and she had to shoot him. Didn’t it just figure?
She rolled with a wave, steadied her aim, and then fired.
He crumpled to the deck.
“He’s down,” Taylor Lee responded before Morgan could, relaying to the Apache and Home Base. “Target is down.”
Morgan released her tension, letting a shuddered breath escape through her teeth. Relief swelled and expanded inside her until the knots in her stomach loosened their clench. “Confirmed,” she reported. “The target is down.”
Thank God.
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About the Author
VICKI HINZE is the author of nearly forty novels, nonfiction books and hundreds of articles published in more than sixty-three countries. Her books have received many prestigious awards and nominations, including her selection for Who’s Who in the World (as a writer and educator), nominations for Career Achievement and Reviewer’s Choice Awards for Best Series and Suspense Storyteller of the Year, Best Romantic Suspense Storyteller of the Year and Best Romantic Intrigue Novel of the Year. She co-created an innovative, open-ended continuity series of single-title romance novels, an innovative suspense series, and has helped to establish sub-genres in military women’s fiction (suspense and intrigue and action and adventure) and in military romantic-thriller novels. Hinze loves genre-blending and blazing new trails for readers and other authors. She is a former columnist for Social-In Global Network and radio host of Everyday Woman.
Also by Vicki Hinze
S.A.S.S. Unit Series
Black Market Body Double | The Sparks Broker | The Mind Thief | Operation Stealing Christmas | S.A.S.S. Confidential
Clean Read
Breakdown Series
so many secrets | her deepest fear (Short Read)
Down and Dead, Inc. Series
Down and Dead in Dixie | Down and Dead in Even |
Down and Dead in Dallas
Clean Reads
Shadow Watchers (Crossroads Crisis Center related)
The Marked Star | The Marked Bride | Wed to Death: A Shadow Watchers Short
Clean Reads
Crossroads Crisis Center Series
Forget Me Not | Deadly Ties | Not This Time
Clean Read Inspirational
The Reunion Collection
Her Perfect Life | Mind Reader | Duplicity |
Clean Reads
Lost, Inc.
Survive the Night | Christmas Countdown |
Torn Loyalties
Clean Read Inspirational
War Games Series
Body Double | Double Vision | Double Dare | Smokescreen: Total Recall | Kill Zone
General Audience (out of print)
The Lady Duo
Lady Liberty | Lady Justice
General Audience
Military
Shades of Gray | Acts of Honor | All Due Respect
General Audience
Paranormal Romantic Suspense
Legend of the Mist | Maybe This Time
General Audience
Seascape Novels
Beyond the Misty Shore | Upon a Mystic Tide |
Beside a Dreamswept Sea
General Audience
Other
Girl Talk: Letters Between Friends | My Imperfect Valentine | Invitation to a Murder | Bulletproof | The Madonna Key (series co-creator) | Before the White Rose | Invidia
Multiple-Author Collections
Dangerous Desires | My Evil Valentine | Risky Brides | Smart Women and Dangerous Men | Christmas Heroes | Love is Murder | Cast of Characters | A Message from Cupid Seeing Fireworks
Nonfiction Books
In Case of Emergency: What You Need to Know When I Can’t Tell You | One Way to Write a Novel | Writing in the Fast Lane | All About Writing to Sell |
Mistakes Writers Make and How-To Avoid Them
For a complete listing visit http://vickihinze.com/books