Caught full in the chest, he flew backward off his feet. His head clipped the steering console, and he crashed hard, hitting the deck with a dull thud.
The impact shouldn’t have been significant enough to take him off his feet. Morgan glanced down; he must have slipped on the wet deck.
Regardless, this time, he was lights out and staying down.
Rattled, Morgan blew out a held breath, settled down enough to get her heart back into her chest where it belonged, and then transmitted her report. “Target was faking it, Home Base,” she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. “But he’s down now.”
Taylor Lee hit the throttle and sped across the water in their boat, quickly closing the distance between her and the yacht. She tied off on the Sunrise and then climbed aboard and joined Morgan on deck. Confirming with a quick look that the man was down and out cold, Taylor grunted. “Missed him the first time, eh?”
“You think?” Morgan glared at her. He’d come close to knocking her on her ass, and while she was decent at defending herself, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe for a second she could take him one-on-one. He wasn’t using it in his current job, but he’d had the same training she’d had plus a lot more, and he had size, reach, weight, and strength on his side. He’d have pulverized her within seconds. Yet none of that bothered her as much as not getting the job done with her first shot.
She would have sworn she had caught the man in the neck. She’d have bet her life on it, in fact, and being wrong right now, when she already felt under-qualified for the mission and on shaky ground, played hell with her confidence. Could she trust her judgment at identifying the target by intuition when she couldn’t trust that same intuition on a simple shot she had fired at the man?
Taylor squatted beside him and patted him down. “No weapons.”
“Means nothing.” He either hadn’t expected trouble or wanted to appear as though he hadn’t.
She looked over and up at Morgan. “You searched the vessel yet?”
“Not yet.” Hell, she had barely recovered from the near miss, and she wasn’t at all sure that if she tried to move now her legs would hold her. As far as she was concerned, the regular S.A.S.S. operatives could keep their jobs and the anxiety that came with them. Too intense. Morgan was quite happy with her tamer psych consults. Her team rarely worked directly with individual opponents, just offered profiles or insights usually. And exposure wasn’t nearly so dramatic or stressful when the subjects were on your side.
The clopping sounds of the Apache’s props grew louder. Stirred up, the balmy wind tugged at her eyelids and skin and, in short order, the aircraft hovered overhead. Morgan cupped her hand at her brow to shield her eyes, and glanced up. Jazie dropped a line from the chopper’s open door to the Sunrise’s deck and then took it down.
She landed lightly on the deck, motioned in a wide circle above her head for the Apache to give them some space, and then turned to Morgan. “I can’t believe it.” Her tone turned incredulous, and her eyes stretched wide. “You missed him with your first shot?”
“So it seems,” Morgan said through clenched teeth, definitely prickly. They’d give her hell about this for a solid month.
Sighing inside, she spoke into her lip mic, “Give us half a click, 248.” She couldn’t yet release the chopper, but she did need to take precautionary measures to preserve any evidence onboard, should the target prove to belong to their adversary, Thomas Kunz.
Now that the target was down, she could breathe again, but it was no sin to admit that she’d been scared stiff. Seasoned operatives had quaked at going toe-to-toe with Kunz. He held the undisputed votes of the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the S.A.S.S. as public enemy number one. Anyone with sense had a healthy fear of the ruthless killer.
The chopper pulled away, cut a wide arc, and waited. Its sounds weakened to a dull roar in the night. The wind direction had shifted. Tropical Storm Lil was definitely on the move. Morgan watched the lightning in the distance.
In the last half hour, the outermost feeder band had moved substantially closer; their timeline had shrunk by at least half.
“Yeah, she missed,” Taylor Lee piped in, refusing to let it go. Shooting Morgan a smarmy look, she added a singsong lilt to her voice. “I’m seeing lots of time at the firing range in your immediate future.”
Morgan took the heat without comment, which wasn’t easy, and let go of the opportunity to remind Taylor Lee that she was already the better shot. That’s why she’d been in the water. “Just check the vessel.”
“Why?” Taylor placed her palm flat on the back of the target’s head. “Jazie’s taking her in. She should do it.”
Tucking her long blond hair inside her shirt, Jazie tugged her collar up and her black stocking cap down on her ears, ignoring Taylor and telling Morgan, “If you don’t mind, I would rather do it myself. If I’m taking her to port on my own, I want to know no one else is here.”
“Jazie Craig.” Fiery and outspoken, Taylor Lee slid Jazie a blistering glare that should have dropped her as cold as the target. “Are you saying you don’t trust me to search this vessel?”
Oh, boy. Here it came. Morgan ground her teeth and prepared to pull rank to restore peace and get them back on point. Fortunately, Jazie read her mind and handled it on her own.
“Of course not.” Ever diplomatic, she effortlessly blew off Taylor’s heated question and toned down the tension with a smile. “I’m saying I’d rather bet my life on a check I’ve run myself than on one anyone else has run.”
Getting the message but still taking exception, Taylor turned to Morgan. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that? We’re a team here. What good is a team without trust? You’re our fearless leader—and my damn maid of honor. Defend me, Morgan.”
Damn it. Did they have to go through this nonsense now? “We have trust, but Jazie also has a point. It’s her neck on the line.” Morgan held off completely speaking her mind and shrugged, electing instead to shift the topic and get back to business. “You have been pretty preoccupied since this latest engagement to …” Morgan blanked out. “What’s his name again?”
“Rick,” Taylor said from between her teeth, clearly agitated. “I’m marrying this one, okay? So knock off pretending you can’t remember who he is.”
“Sorry,” Morgan said and meant it. But her forgetting the new guy’s name wasn’t a pretense or as horrific—even for a maid of honor—as it might seem. Actually, it was ridiculously easy to understand, and even Taylor would see that if it were happening to anyone else’s fiancé.
In the three years they had been a team, Taylor Lee had been engaged at least half a dozen times. But while she loved engagements, she wasn’t so hot on actual marriage, and so she’d yet to make it to the altar. Now some would consider that odd, but when you have special skills, you also have special challenges. No one understood that like someone else with special skills and special challenges. So while the three of them had started out as professional associates, they also had become true friends. And in situations like Taylor’s frequent engagements, true friends bit their tongues and swallowed any skepticism or sarcasm they might ordinarily express. This was a matter of the heart, and one never does anything but fully support true friends on matters of the heart—even when doing so comes at inopportune times and minds should be on other matters, like now, with the target sprawled on the deck. Regarding Taylor’s fiancés, Morgan and Jazie had been true friends. They’d kept their mouths shut and had taken turns at being Taylor’s maid of honor. She switched men; they switched positions. No problem.
So far, the job had been pretty painless for them both. Taylor tired of fiancés pretty quickly, before the duties got too deep.
“Vessel’s secure,” Jazie said, emerging from the cabin.
“Great.” Morgan looked at Taylor Lee, whose hand was still on the target’s back. “You done yet?”
“Yeah.” She pulled away and stood up, then backed up a few step
s.
Jazie looked over, silently asking whether she should wait or go next. “Go ahead.” Morgan nodded at the target, delaying her own examination as long as possible. The unbridled rage in his eyes when he’d lunged at her had been powerful, and she still felt the remnants of it sizzling on her skin. He’d intended to kill her, and if he’d reached her before she’d shot him, he damn well might have. Knowing it still had her shaking inside. She needed to get grounded before scanning him to work past the fear. Otherwise, she would just be wasting her time.
Jazie didn’t say anything, but she’d picked up on Morgan’s struggle. “Go on, Jaz,” she repeated, eager to have it done without discussion. The sooner the mission was put to bed, the happier she’d be.
Silently, Jazie bent down, let her hand hover just above his spine, and swept down his torso to his waist. She paused, and then reversed, brushing up his back to his head. Surprise flickered across her face, the corner of her mouth tilted up, and she glanced at Morgan. A knowing light burning in her eyes, she stood up and then backed away.
“What?” Taylor Lee asked her. “Why the grin? Did I miss something?”
“Wait.” Biting her lower lip to downplay her megawatt smile, Jazie gave Taylor Lee a negative nod and lifted her hand. “Go ahead, Morgan.”
Intuiting why Jazie was amused, Morgan pulled out her flashlight and stooped down beside the target. She clicked on the light for a millisecond—just long enough to see his neck. The telltale evidence presented itself: a droplet of blood.
“Damn it.” That from Taylor Lee. “You didn’t miss him with your first shot.”
“No, I didn’t.” Somewhat relieved, Morgan shoved her flashlight back into place at her hip and then scraped her fingertips over his angular face.
Stubble. Lean flesh and bone. Toned, relaxed muscle … Nice. Far too nice … She backed off, dusted her palms, then tried again, reminding herself he wanted her dead and when he awakened he would want to kill her all over again. That should have provided all the influence necessary, but it didn’t, so she reminded herself who he could be: Thomas Kunz, the most feared terrorist on the planet—or one of his lethal body doubles.
That sobered her right up, put her mind solely back on business. Opening her mind, she cut her senses loose, giving them free rein. She sank deep, then deeper, beneath and beyond the physical, and then deeper still until she tumbled fully into the nebulous realm of pure sensation …
Anger.
Surprise.
Outrage.
She let the feelings flow through her and then slowed down and carefully examined the area just inside his hairline, under his jaw, looking for thin ridges of scars that would signal he’d had plastic surgery. But she found none there, none at his ears or inside the tip of his nose, all of which confirmed her intuitive reaction to him.
“Unbelievable.” Obviously impressed, Taylor grunted from beside Jazie. “I can’t freaking believe it. It honestly took two tranqs to knock him out?” Admiration tinged her tone, admiration and a little interest that was purely female and purely sexual. “The guy must have the stamina of a bull.”
Morgan blanched. If the woman pulled one of her sex-kitten purrs, Morgan might just tranq her.
Jazie tilted her head. A long blond curl escaped her hood and hung down over her shoulder. From around it, she studied his face. “I know you didn’t expect a lightweight—not after seeing his photos.”
“I’m engaged.” Taylor Lee snapped off a couple of photographs of him and the deck for the records, then clamped the camera back to a loop at her waist. “I wasn’t … noticing assets, only relevant specifics.”
“Right.” Taylor Lee was full of it. She always noticed assets. But being honest—if only with herself—Morgan had noticed, too. And she hadn’t expected a lightweight. Still, a two-tranq knockout was a rare thing, especially with a neck shot. She glanced at Taylor Lee. “Noticing or not, it did take two to drop him.” Positioning her fingertips at his throat, she checked his pulse and stilled. Strong and surprisingly steady, considering the dosage he had absorbed. An odd tingle started in her fingertips, coursed through her hand and up her arm to her chest. Certainty filled her. Surprisingly breathless and distracted, she ran a quick second scan to double check, dragging only her index fingertips over his face and neck and then through his soft, thick hair.
The sensations were powerful, strong, almost … erotic.
Stunned, she drew in a sharp breath and rocked back on her haunches. “Damn it.” Erotic? Where had that come from? Who cared? She blew past it, not wanting any part of it. She’d never reacted personally to a patient in her practice or to a subject in her S.A.S.S. consults, and she wasn’t going to start now.
“Damn it, what?” Jaz asked.
Morgan didn’t dare answer. But with the risks, she had to confirm, and again tested her impressions. Blessing or curse, they didn’t change.
“Two scans?” Taylor asked, lifting both hands, palms up. “What the hell is going on here? Is something wrong with you, Morgan?”
“The water was cold,” she lied, grabbing the first plausible excuse that came into her head. If she admitted that erotic stirrings from a target might have interfered with her input and she’d had to scan twice to confirm her own findings, she would never know another moment’s peace. Taylor Lee and Jazie would see to it, and they well might report it to Colonel Drake, which would be a hundred times worse. As it was, it’d haunt her. She didn’t need insult added to injury from anyone else, and doubt was not a welcome thing in an S.A.T. team leader.
“We need to move,” she told them. “When he wakes up, we’re going to have two hundred pounds of Special Ops-trained, pissed-off man on our hands. I’d prefer it if, when that happens, we have plenty of backup around to deal with him.”
“So is he, or isn’t he?” Jazie propped her hands on her hips. “Inquiring minds want to know.”
“He’s the real Captain Jackson Stern.” Morgan nodded and looked from him up at Jazie. “If Thomas Kunz tried to substitute himself or someone else as a body double for Stern, he failed.”
“You’re sure?” Taylor Lee narrowed her eyes. They glistened dark against the smooth rubber cupping her head. “No doubt?”
“I’m positive,” Morgan said, as certain of it as she had been that she’d hit him with the first tranquilizer dart. She stood up.
“As positive as you can be without DNA backup,” Taylor Lee said.
Morgan nodded, giving her that one, and then swiveled her gaze to Jazie. “What did you get?”
“Not a peep.” She shrugged. “Sorry. But I’m not surprised,” she said, tilting her head. “The man is unconscious.”
No internal dialogue going on for Jazie to tap into and overhear. Logical. Disappointing and expected, but logical. “He is that.” Morgan nodded, shifting her focus to Taylor Lee.
“I didn’t see a thing.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Like Jazie said, right now he’s too drugged out to be seeing any mental images I can pick up. Wish it didn’t, but I’m afraid that puts all the weight on you.”
It did. Morgan would have liked confirmation from at least one of them, but she wasn’t going to get it. Disappointment shot through her, and she gave herself a full second to feel it and then moved on. “It was an outside shot,” she reminded them. “We go with what we’ve got.” Morgan nodded at Jazie. “Cut the Apache loose.”
“Just a second,” Taylor Lee said, a little apology in her tone. “Not that I’m doubting you, but we are just a tenth of a mile inside the zone,” Taylor reminded Morgan, shifting her weight foot to foot. “I’d feel a lot better about this if one of us could verify your findings before we lose the option to retreat and recover.”
“So would I.” Morgan agreed. If further examination proved Jackson Stern was a body double and he was in the U.S., then all kinds of problems would rain down on their heads, which is why the honchos had insisted the S.A.T. team interdict him and verify his identity using their special skills while
he was still in international waters. “But that’s not happening, so we have no choice but to act on what we’ve got—”
“What you’ve got,” Taylor Lee corrected her.
“Exactly,” Morgan said, a bite seeping into her voice. “And what I’ve got is that he’s the real Jackson Stern.”
The only way to prove his identity beyond any doubt was for Dr. Joan Foster to test him with drug therapy, and being pregnant and in her last trimester, she couldn’t very well come out here into international waters to intercept the man and administer those tests. He had to be S.A.T. verified and then brought to her. And Morgan had to pray like hell that she was right about him, because if she was wrong … Oh, man, she couldn’t be wrong.
Jazie signaled, and the Apache peeled off and sped away. The night again grew empty of sound except for the waves crashing against the Sunrise’s hull and the dull rumble of wind and thunder rolling off in the distance.
“Just so we’re clear.” Taylor Lee frowned at Morgan. “It’s the risks of being wrong I’m doubting, Morgan, not your intuitive abilities.”
“Hell, I don’t know why you’re not doubting my abilities,” Morgan said. “I doubt them all the time.”
Jazie stepped around an anchor and chain. “Could it be because over three years they’ve been bulls-eye accurate about 80 percent of the time?”
“Eighty-seven percent,” Morgan corrected her, “but it’s which 13 percent of the time I’m wrong that keeps me doubtful all the time.” And scared to death, especially when the costs of being wrong carried consequences this stiff.
“So humble,” Taylor Lee said, and then stood up. “That’s just as well, I guess. You’d be a pain in the ass with a big head.”
“Taylor Lee!” Jazie sighed. “No offense, but you really do need to learn that some things that float through your head are better left floating and not said.”
“Why? Truth is truth, isn’t it?” Taylor Lee looked back at Morgan. “So okay. We’ll all feel better when Dr. Foster verifies Jackson Stern is really Jackson Stern. Fine. At this point, we can’t risk doing anything other than what we’re doing.”
Vicki Hinze - [War Games 04] Page 2