At Risk

by Inc. Thriller Writers

  Behind me, I heard Beth sprinting up the stairs, barking orders into her radio. The guy landed on his back, in a fetal position.

  Checking my conscience for any shred of mercy or compassion, I found none. “Are you here alone?” I asked.

  Tears ran down his face as he glared at me. I lifted my foot again. “Are. You. Here. Alone?” I repeated.

  He managed to nod in the affirmative. I hoped it hurt.

  Beth came charging in, gun drawn, with a glare a blind man could translate as “You better be right.” She disappeared around a corner, and it got quiet.

  The guy tried to get to his feet, both hands cradling himself. I put my foot on top of his hands and pressed to hold him still. He still tried to get up. I leaned down, aimed carefully, and hit him as hard as I could with the heel of my hand between his eyes while my weight came down on his crotch.

  He screamed nicely.

  A barrage of footsteps sounded up the stairwell, getting closer. Jeff and half the team blew past me. Bristol stopped and looked down at the man I had pinned with my foot, just as we heard Beth’s voice.

  “Dear God.”

  No one in the room moved.

  Her footsteps echoed down the hallway toward us.

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until my lungs started cramping.

  Beth came back out from wherever she’d been.

  In her arms was Angela Frazell.

  Alive.

  Angela looked at all of us, then at the man being none too gently yanked to his feet and handcuffed. Taking a breath deep enough to make her little chest puff out, she bellowed, “YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  Alive and mad as hell.

  “He will, honey,” Beth said. She carried her out the door and down the stairs to where other agents were waiting.

  I waited until I was sure the two of them were gone before I turned back.

  “The people you work for murdered three federal agents,” I said to the handcuffed man. “You’ve been taken into custody by federal agents.” I paused, my eyes never leaving his. “I’m willing to bet you’ll resist arrest along the way.”

  Bristol took in the disheveled state of the guy, turned his head slightly and winked at me. “Looks like you were forced to defend yourself,” he said.

  I kept a straight face and replied, “I’m lucky to be alive.”

  I turned and walked down the stairs.

  * * *

  Jeff was doing a flawless impersonation of a man about to have an aneurysm and coronary occlusion simultaneously over my behavior, but Angela’s presence on the return trip made him play nice. I knew I’d hear about it, eventually.

  I also knew the Bureau would call me again if they needed to.

  In the backseat, Beth was whispering to Angela and soon had her giggling just like a four-year-old should.

  Jeff parked, and the three of them headed for the glass doors. I took two steps toward my car before Beth’s voice stopped me.

  “Nicholas?”

  I turned and looked at her. She handed Angela to Jeff and came toward me. Jeff carried Angela through the glass doors and inside.

  “I’m sure the president would like to speak to you,” she said.

  “Sorry, Beth. Not my kind of thing.”

  She looked at me closely. “This is—”

  “I was never here,” I said, interrupting her. “‘Supervisory Special Agents Elizabeth Canton and R. P. Bristol, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jefferson Keyes V, handled this extremely delicate matter and achieved a safe resolution.’”

  “You sound like a press conference.”

  “Probably won’t be a press conference. This will be classified beyond words.”

  She thought that over, nodding.

  “You’ll have to be debriefed.”

  “More like de-boxered, but whichever you’d prefer.”

  The red bloomed in her cheeks.

  “When do you go back to Quantico?” I asked.

  She didn’t take her eyes from mine as she considered her answer. “Settling all of this? A week, maybe ten days,” she said.

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “That’s how long I’ll be in town.”

  She glanced around the garage. We were alone.

  She wrapped her hands in my jacket lapels and pulled me close. Next thing I knew, her kiss was long and insistent.

  “Do you have any idea how sexy you are when you save the world?” she asked when she pulled back, a bit out of breath.

  I waited until my vision refocused before I answered her. “I didn’t save the world. Just one little girl.”

  “To-may-to, to-mah-to,” she said.

  “Now then,” I asked, coughing slightly to clear my throat. “About that dinner?”

  “What’s the old saying?” she asked, pressing closer. “Why don’t we talk about it over breakfast?”

  She ran her fingers under my collar while I pretended to consider it.

  “You FBI agents are so evasive,” I said.

  “Does that bother you?” Her fingers began to creep into my hair.

  “Not a bit,” I replied. “But I thought we weren’t getting back together.”

  Her fingers climbed higher. “Persuade me.”

  I was doing an admirable job of keeping my voice level. “How do I do that?”

  “Oh,” she said with a mischievous look in her eyes. “I’m sure I’ll get the thrust of your argument….”

  * * * * *

  NIGHT HEAT

  Laura Griffin

  For as long as there have been myths, rescue has been a favorite theme. The knights these days just wear a different type of armor.~SB

  Manila, The Philippines

  2200 hours

  Petty Officer Mike Dietz peered through the high-powered binoculars and knew there was a high probability that the woman in the low-cut black cocktail dress was going to die.

  Unless he did something soon.

  That is, unless Mike and his team did something soon. Barely an hour ago, the eight-man squad of Navy SEALs had been summoned away from a practice op in Manila Bay for an all-too-real rescue mission at the American ambassador’s house. Still damp with salt water, the SEALs had arrived, geared up and reviewed their orders. Now they were ready to kick some ass. But while a bunch of bureaucrats debated exactly how and when that ass would be kicked, Mike and his teammates were left to simmer in the hot Manila night with their fingers itching on the triggers of their M-4s.

  “What’s the word, Dietz?”

  Mike turned to look at Lieutenant Junior Grade Derek Vaughn, who was set up on the balcony beside him with a sniper rifle. The house behind the ambassador’s had become a makeshift command post for tonight’s operation.

  “Still waiting on Quinn,” Mike said, referring to their commanding officer, who was at this moment on the phone with Washington.

  It was midmorning right now in D.C. and the guys in charge were probably seated around a conference table, sipping coffee and debating options while a young American woman’s lifeblood drained out of her.

  Mike gritted his teeth as he gazed through the binocs again. Jill Whitfield was pale, slender and had long dark hair that fanned out beneath her on the cobblestone patio. Since the initial attack, she’d been playing possum—and doing a damn good job of it—while feeding information to Mike’s team through a cell phone hidden somewhere on her body. Smart girl, she’d realized that in the wake of the siege, the local embassy would be flooded with phone calls, so she’d directed her SOS to the American embassy in Bangkok, which had verified her identity and patched her through to Mike’s commanding officer. She’d been providing info ever since, all the while surrounded by dead bodies and live terrorists.

 
And these tangos weren’t the warm fuzzy kind. According to the team’s latest intel, they were ACB, or Asian Crescent Brotherhood—a ruthless batch of extremists that made al Qaeda look like a glee club. They operated out of the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where just last month they’d captured and beheaded no fewer than thirty missionaries who’d wandered too close to one of their training camps. The missionaries’ bodies—only—had been dumped on the outskirts of the island’s largest city, and every female among them showed signs of brutal sexual assault.

  The radio in Mike’s ear crackled to life.

  “Witness confirms four tangos, I repeat, four tangos, now stationed on the north patio door.”

  Mike shifted the binoculars until he saw the terrorists. Like the others, these guys were armed with AK-47s, Tokarev pistols and hand grenades.

  Mike was ready to move. This was just the sort mission the SEALs of Alpha Squad had trained for: neutralize a band of heavily armed terrorists, rescue civilian hostages and defuse any bombs reportedly on the premises. No problem—it was textbook. But the chances of this op having a textbook outcome had been diminished by the fact that a number of those hostages—possibly including the ambassador himself—were already dead, along with the four armed marines who had been guarding the compound.

  Sweat trickled into Mike’s eyes, but he blinked it away. He kept his breathing even, his heart rate steady. But despite his cool demeanor, every muscle in his body itched to leap down from his observation post, scale the fence, and get Jill and every other civilian in there out of harm’s way.

  Mike studied her again through the binoculars. Jill Whitfield worked at the embassy as the ambassador’s scheduler and had been one of two dozen guests at his poolside soiree. Out on that patio, she was getting paler by the minute. The terrorist patrolling the backyard had passed by her three times now, and evidently the puddle of blood under her body had convinced him she was dead or at least neutralized—and he couldn’t be far from wrong. By the size of that puddle, Mike knew Jill probably needed a blood transfusion to have any hope of surviving.

  Mike wanted to go in now. Ahora. But he wasn’t in charge of the plan here, which involved waiting until 0200 hours, at which point Alpha Squad would slip into the compound through a hidden side gate and take the enemy by surprise.

  But that was nearly four hours away. Jill didn’t have four hours. She might not have four minutes.

  And yet her lips were moving. Despite whatever injuries she had, she continued to whisper into that phone. Was it hidden in her bra? Under her hair? Mike didn’t know. But he did know that if the terrorists figured out what she was doing, she was dead. Period. And she had to know that. Mike had seen a lot in his twenty-eight years, and not much impressed him. But this woman risking her life to get his team intel sure as hell did.

  “Okay, listen up. New plan.”

  As his CO’s voice came over the radio again, Mike traded looks with Vaughn. The sniper could see Jill through his rifle scope, and Mike could tell he was impatient, too.

  “Thanks to Harden, we’ve got the camera up and running,” the commander said, referring to the smallest member of their team, who possessed the highly useful ability to slip through enemy lines and install surveillance equipment. “We’ve got six confirmed tangos in the backyard and another four in the house, all huddled around the so-called ‘secret’ entrance to the ambassador’s panic room. We’re guessing at least one to two armed tangos inside the room itself—” static interrupted the words “—and civilian guests. We’ve also got eight confirmed dead.”

  Eight dead. Same as an hour ago. Mike watched Jill’s motionless body. He desperately hoped she’d stay alive long enough for him to get her out of there.

  “So that’s twenty-one friendlies, including the ambassador and his wounded staffer, and at least twelve enemy targets. I just got off the phone with Washington, and they’ve given us the green light. That’s the good news. Here’s the bad.”

  Mike’s hand tightened on his weapon.

  “Some of these guys are wearing bomb vests,” Quinn said. “We’ve confirmed two so far. The tango in with the ambassador is said to be wearing one.”

  Shit, this was a suicide mission, just as they’d feared. Not good for the ambassador. And definitely not good for Jill.

  “You know the plan,” the commander said. “Now let’s get this done.”

  * * *

  Jane had never paid much attention to the smell of blood before, but right now it was all she could think of. It had pooled beneath her on the pavement. It had dried in her hair. The stench of it filled her nostrils and attracted flies that swirled around her with their ominous buzz.

  Jane blocked out sound and smell and thought instead about her mouth. She longed to lick her lips. She longed to inch herself over to the pool and suck down about a gallon of water. But she knew she couldn’t move. She couldn’t bat an eyelash. One twitch while any of those men was watching and she’d be dead.

  Jane’s heart pounded at the thought, but not nearly as hard as it had pounded during the initial attack. There had been a loud bang—like a thunderclap—accompanied by a burst of smoke. Next thing she knew, she was on her stomach beside the pool with a goddamn bullet in her leg. She’d started to push herself off the ground, but then everyone around her had gone down in a hail of machine-gun fire, and she’d made an instant decision that her best chance of survival lay in pretending to be dead.

  She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be pretending.

  The backs of Jane’s eyes stung with tears, but she willed them away. After withstanding an hour of agony, how pathetic would it be if she blew her own cover with some stupid tears?

  Buck up, Janey!

  She thought of her brother Josh’s gruff impersonation of their grandfather’s voice. Their granddad had been a Green Beret and had admonished them from an early age that crying was for girls. Forget that Jane was a girl—he’d made it clear tears wouldn’t be tolerated, no matter what the injury or how many stitches it entailed.

  Stitches. If only it were that minor. Jane was pretty sure she needed surgery for this one. Her leg burned from the bullet wound. But oddly, even more painful was the gash in her arm from where she’d fallen on a shard of china. At the time of the first explosion, Jane had been holding a plate piled with fancy hors d’oeuvres that the ambassador’s chef had adorned with little American-flag toothpicks. She’d been nibbling on a bite-size sausage when she’d heard a commotion and glanced over her shoulder as the first grenade exploded. At least, she’d thought it was a grenade. Looking back now, she was pretty sure it had been a flash-bang—an explosive designed to stun, not kill. It was one of the few indicators Jane had that her captors didn’t intend to kill everyone here, and she was clinging to it desperately. These terrorists wanted at least some live hostages—such as the ambassador, who was holed up with them now in the vaultlike room designated for emergencies.

  The tropical heat seemed to press down on her as she lay there, motionless. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead. She prayed the tangos wouldn’t see it. To take her mind off the pain in her thigh, she penned a postcard to her brother in her head: Weather’s here. Wish you were beautiful. It was an inside joke that would bring a smile to his face. And she’d sign it, I love you. –Janey. The last part was uncharacteristically sappy, but it needed to be said because if Jane didn’t make it out of here alive, Josh would blame himself. Both of them knew that Jane was here, indirectly, because of him. If not for her older brother’s example, she might be married right now, possibly even a mom, instead of the globe-trotting adrenaline junkie she’d been since her twenty-fifth birthday. Jane needed Josh to know she didn’t blame him—she loved him. And she didn’t regret for a minute following in his footsteps, even if doing so ended up getting her killed.

  That the best you got, J? Her brother’s voice echoed through
her head, thick with contempt. You mean to tell me that’s it?

  No, that wasn’t it. She felt dizzy and nauseated, but she still had some fight left in her.

  Boots clomped on the other side of the patio. She heard the rapid-fire exchange of Bisaya, the language of the southern islands. She knew the dialect well, having studied it for years now, just as she knew what all their jargon meant. These guys were Asian Crescent Brotherhood. She’d been following the group’s movements for months and had been one of the first agents to get word that they were gearing up for a “big event.” At the time she’d intercepted this important bit of intel, Jane had no idea the “event” in question might directly involve her.

  If, in fact, it did. Was storming the ambassador’s residence their main play, or just their opening act?

  Jane needed to find out. There were some other things she needed to do, too, and she had to keep her senses sharp. No giving in to fatigue. Or fear. Or that numb, tingly feeling that threatened to overtake her…

  Buck up, Janey!

  She forced herself awake. She listened to the footsteps fade and risked opening her eyes, just slightly. The ambassador’s swank reception had started at dusk, but it was dark now except for the tiki torches surrounding the pool. They’d seemed so festive earlier when she’d been chatting with other expats and sipping on her rum and Coke. Jane’s gaze shifted to the skirt of her dress, which she’d bought just a few weeks ago. At five-nine, Jane towered over all of the women in this country—along with most of the men—and she’d had to go to a European store in Hong Kong just to find something in her size. It had cost half a month’s pay, but she’d rationalized it as a well-earned splurge after a grueling two-year tour that had almost come to an end. Her official stint as the ambassador’s “travel liaison” ended tomorrow.

  If she lived that long.

  More boots on the concrete. They made the circle around the pool. They moved behind her, paused. Jane held her breath.

  And then the world exploded.

  * * *