Lisa Marie Rice - [Ghost Ops]

by I Dream of Danger

  Elle looked out the window and thought she recognized a few landmarks. What difference did it make? They were going where Nick wanted to take her.

  He swooped down from the interstate on an exit ramp. They’d passed the signs too fast for her to make out exactly where they were. He threaded a fast, complex route through a number of side streets until they reached what looked like a dead industrial park.

  At the end of a trash-strewn street was a gate and Nick headed straight for it at top speed. Elle barely had time to gasp as the gates slid open just in time for them to sail through. She turned in her seat. Behind them, the gates were closing fast. Everything about the place spelled abandonment, but those gates had worked perfectly. Nick stopped the car and tapped a point on the console.

  “On site,” he murmured and she looked at him, startled.

  “Roger that,” said a disembodied voice, deep and loud and clear. “Incoming, ETA five minutes.”

  Nick looked over at her and ran the back of his index finger over her cheek. “Hang in there, honey. We’ll be home soon.”

  She was a fool, because just the sight of him in the penumbra, face strong and sober, voice tinged with tenderness, nearly undid her. This was so dangerous. He’d brought her to her knees ten years ago. It had taken years to recover.

  Granted, she wasn’t the naïve and needy young girl she’d been then, but he still had the power to affect her deeply. If someone had asked her, she’d have sworn that Nick Ross was dead to her and yet here she was, shivering and susceptible all over again, melting at his touch.

  Never again.

  She stiffened, pulled back.

  She’d projected twice in one day. She’d been pursued by men who had taken many of her friends prisoner. She was lucky to be alive. She had Nick to thank for that, but that didn’t mean she owed him anything but gratitude.

  Certainly not love.

  When she pulled back, Nick’s face turned blank and his hand dropped. His voice was brisk and businesslike. “I need to get the hovercar under cover. Can you stand?”

  Stupid question. Or maybe not so stupid.

  Elle pushed down on the floor with her legs. They didn’t tremble. Okay. Good to go.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Good girl.” In a second he was at her door and helping her down. Elle moved slowly. She wanted to make sure she’d been right about being able to stand. The idea of fainting was too awful to contemplate. She wasn’t weak and needy. She wasn’t the Elle he’d left. She was strong.

  It was just that it had been a very bad day.

  Her legs held, thank God. Nick handed her her purse. “Look up.”

  A wind had suddenly blown up and she wondered if she heard right. “What?”

  “Look up.” Nick put a finger under her chin and tilted her head back. “Our ride’s here.”

  Oh my God. A helicopter! Coming down almost right on top of her, and she hadn’t heard a thing! The helicopter was barely discernible in the gloom and the cockpit was dark. Instead of the deafening roar of helicopters in the movies, it barely made a low buzzing sound as it veered off a few feet and neatly landed, like a cat after a jump.

  “Come on!” Nick practically picked her up and hustled her over.

  The helicopter looked eerie—made of some sleek dark matte substance with no apparent windows. Just as she determined that there was no way in, a door slid open showing a dimly lit interior. Four steps unfolded from the side.

  Elle walked up into the cabin and sat down in one of the seats. Through the open door she could see Nick driving the odd car into what looked like a warehouse and then running back. He leaped into the body of the helicopter without using the steps, shouting “Go-Go-GO!”

  The steps retracted, the door closed, and the helicopter lifted off abruptly, leaving Elle’s stomach behind. It was utterly quiet inside the body of the helicopter. In every film she’d ever seen, people wore headphones to mask the noise, but inside it was like a cathedral.

  There was no way to see outside the helicopter. There were, though, four big monitors showing what looked like the view outside—the brightly lit interstate off to the right, and infrared images, thermal images, and GPS coordinates on a moving map.

  They were continuing their way north, the destination a blue cross to the northeast. Elle couldn’t make out where they were heading.

  “Name’s Jon. Pleased to meet you.” A partition had slid to one side and the pilot stuck his hand through. Elle awkwardly reached forward to take it. “Really glad Nick found you before his head exploded.”

  The hand was big and tough and belonged to a man who looked like he’d just come in from surfing some big waves. Though it was freezing cold outside, he had on an unbuttoned aloha shirt over a blindingly white T-shirt. The aloha shirt had bright blue parakeets flying among bright yellow palm trees, echoing his bright blue eyes and long sun-bleached hair.

  He had a big black gun in a well-used shoulder holster.

  Everything about the man was breezy and easygoing except his ice blue eyes, which were cold and hard, and his gun, equally cold and hard.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She looked at Nick, then back at Surfer Jon. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  Jon winked and one side of his mouth turned up. “Any time. Rescuing beautiful women seems to have become our latest pastime.”

  “Jon …” Nick growled.

  Jon rolled his eyes and cocked his head to one side, contemplating Nick. “Dude, chill.”

  “Where are we going?” Elle tried to keep her voice calm. The only answer was silence.

  The question had to be asked. With every passing minute, Elle felt her strength returning. She’d just been rescued, it was true. But it was also true that she was in a helicopter going God knows where with two men, one of whom had just murdered four other men in a terrifying display of surgically precise violence.

  Nick.

  Forget that she’d known Nick very well once. She’d grown up with him. But then he’d disappeared, made a brief appearance in her life and then disappeared again.

  She had no idea who he was now. None. For all she knew he was as dangerous to her as the men he’d killed. And Jon? With his happy turquoise and yellow shirt and the charming smile? And who was now ferrying the three of them God knew where?

  He looked dangerous too.

  So—what were her options? None, as far as she could tell. The helicopter was sealed tight. Even if she could somehow overpower two visibly strong, armed men—which was crazy—she’d have to learn to pilot a helicopter before it plunged to the ground. Which was insane.

  Door number one was closed, which left just door number two.

  Do nothing and hope she survived.

  Nick tried not to stare at Elle. He really did try but it was impossible. Lucky thing she wasn’t looking at him. In fact, she looked everywhere but at him.

  She was feeling stronger. When she first came to, she looked as if it took everything in her just to keep upright. Now she kept her back stiff and kept herself turned away from him.

  It wasn’t just hurt feelings. She’d been plunged into a new world—his world—like plunging into an ice cold lake. Dangerous men had come after her, and though she hadn’t seen him actually kill the four men, he knew he had the stench of murder on him. Elle had always been spookily aware of things, as if she were plugged into some other system of information. He wore what he was like a cloak around him. He and Mac both were uneasy in the civilian world. People parted for them, instinctively, and were usually agitated without knowing why. Sheep backing away in distress from the disguised wolf.

  Jon on the other hand was just as dangerous but managed to conceal it for a little while with his garish shirts and predator’s smile.

  Elle sensed what Nick had become. She didn’t like it, but he didn’t give a fuck about that. She’d get over it.

  Against all the odds, he’d found her. He thought he’d spend the rest of his life alone, but he’d found her. He wasn�
��t ever letting her go. She was his until the end of time.

  So she could hold herself stiffly away from him and she could not look him in the eyes and she could feel unease, but in the end it didn’t make any difference at all. She was going to Haven with him and staying there.

  Elle was watching the monitors, doing her best to ignore him when the map monitor winked off.

  “Nick.” Jon’s voice drifted back from the cockpit. “It’s time.”

  Oh, shit. He was frozen. How could he do this to Elle?

  “Nick.” This time there was pure steel in Jon’s voice. Nick knew that if he fought Jon on this, Jon would turn the helo right around and head back to Palo Alto.

  Elle turned and finally looked at him, a question in her eyes. He hated this, simply hated it. Nick picked up Elle’s hand and faced her squarely. “Honey, I’m really sorry. Believe me when I say it’s for your own good.”

  He reached behind him and slipped a hood over her beautiful, astonished face. He held her hands with his because he’d have fought fiercely anyone who put a hood over him. It was the ultimate of insults, and if she’d struggled with him, slapped him, kicked him, he’d understand and simply take it.

  She did none of those things and he realized how much he underestimated her. Elle was nothing if not smart, and she knew she was no match for him physically, in any way. And certainly no match for him and Jon. The only intelligent thing to do was endure and that’s what she did.

  She sat stiffly, hooded head turned toward the front, dignified and completely still. Her hands were as stiff as wood in his.

  Nick had never loved her more.

  And he knew that with each passing minute, she hated him more and more.

  Luckily, they were close to Haven. Jon was flying the helo at top speed now. It was a cloudless night and they were off everyone’s radar. Soon they were on the home approach.

  Mount Blue was a black shape against the starry sky. Below them, he knew, a large metal plate was extending out from the base of the mountain, providing a landing platform. Four minutes later, Jon landed perfectly on it and shut down the quiet engines. The metal plate started retracting with the helo into the huge hollow structure invisible to the outside world.

  Mount Blue. Haven.

  Home.

  A tension Nick had refused to acknowledge lifted from his shoulders. Elle was safe here. Everyone was safe here.

  This was their refuge and the refuge of the family of misfits and talented outcasts they had gathered around them. He and Mac and Jon. Ward and Lundquist, Romero and Pelton. The entire Ghost Ops team had been sent to destroy a lab in Cambridge they’d been told was secretly weaponizing Yersinia pestis, bubonic plague. Only there was no secret project. A team of soldiers had been waiting for them to take them out. They’d been accused of high treason and had escaped on the way to a court-martial in Washington.

  There was no way anyone could hold a Ghost Ops operator prisoner.

  On the run from the entire U.S. government and bitter about their betrayal at the hands of Ward, a man they all worshipped, Mac, Jon, and Nick had found refuge on Mount Blue in northern California, inside an abandoned mine Mac had explored as a child. They holed up here, and damned if soon a community hadn’t congregated around them. The community was turning Haven into the most comfortable high-tech lair for people on the run the world had ever seen. They were becoming self-sufficient in everything: energy, Internet, food—you name it.

  The best thing was that the entire community was funded by two Latin America drug cartels. Jon, who had a personal crusade against drug dealers though no one knew exactly why, had spent two years undercover in the biggest Cartagena drug cartel walking a tightwire, pretending to be an emissary from California’s dealers. He got enough intel, while burrowing deep into their finances, to put three hundred men away forever.

  Whenever Haven needed anything, they just skimmed off the Caymans and Aruban bank accounts of the cartel, leaving bread crumbs and footprints back to one kingpin after another and enjoyed it greatly when some scumbag took the blame and got whacked.

  One less fuckhead on this earth, Jon had said. In the meantime they all had black credit cards in false names with several million dollars behind them.

  The platform stopped moving and they were inside the hangar. It was an immense space two hundred feet high. They kept all their vehicles and drones and the helo here.

  Elle couldn’t get down out of the helo hooded, so Nick simply picked her up by the waist and swung her out. She didn’t resist, but as soon as her feet hit the ground, she stepped back, away from him.

  Oh no you don’t, Nick thought.

  These security measures were standard practice and necessary, he knew, though he regretted bitterly having to treat Elle like this.

  The thing was, he, Mac, and Jon had become the front line of defense for a community of vulnerable, talented people that trusted the three outlaw soldiers to keep them safe. The three of them took that trust seriously. Everyone who came was vetted. If they passed, they could stay. If they didn’t pass, they were given a big dose of Lethe, an amnesia drug, and left down in the valley without any memories of the hidden city inside Mount Blue.

  Nick knew that if Elle somehow didn’t pass the test, he was going back into the world with her, even though he was hunted by the U.S. government and there was a huge bounty on his head. He’d take his chances. Elle was not leaving his side, ever again. And he was never leaving hers.

  Nick and Jon exchanged a glance. No talking. The rule for those who came to them but weren’t of them yet. Any voice would echo in the huge chamber. Nick simply put his arm around Elle’s waist and started walking to the elevator, Jon keeping step.

  The elevator was a miracle of technology. The elevator lifted two thousand feet in the air so smoothly that it was entirely possible that Elle didn’t realize she was in an elevator.

  The elevator, together with most of the infrastructure had been designed by a talented engineer, Eric Dane. Eric had spent years writing report after report about the structural weaknesses of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. When the ’21 Halloween quake struck the bridge, collapsing and killing forty people, Eric’s reports vanished and he was blamed for the collapse. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit was filed against him but there was no one to sue.

  Eric had made it to Mount Blue, where he built them a comfortable, beautiful impregnable fortress. Haven.

  There was no elevator ding at the top, just a silent opening of doors onto Haven’s atrium.

  If they weren’t outlaws, and if Haven were a public place, the atrium would win a slew of city design prizes. A huge airy plant-filled plaza filled with terra-cotta pavestone paths winding through unexpected small squares with a flower bed here and an organic tomato patch there. There were benches and flowing metal-and-wood sculptures by the famous sculptress Kloe, on the run from her very rich and very abusive husband.

  Overhead was an invisible arched roof made of graphene, one molecule thick, studded with tiny solar panels that provided light in the evening and helped keep the atrium at a steady 72 degrees all year round. The atrium was ringed with balconies, behind which were offices and homes. Some housed families and some, like Nick’s pad and Jon’s pad, were glorified bachelor officer quarters, though more spacious and definitely better-looking. Whenever a space needed decorating, everyone turned to Nancy Parsons, whose decorating firm was destroyed by her husband and partner, who ran off with every cent and the secretary, leaving Nancy holding a sackful of debt her husband owed the mob, no way to pay for it, and the mob on her heels.

  On the third floor was their war room and Nick and Jon made their way through the paths of bright vegetation. It was four A.M., too late for the owls and too early for the larks. Mac and Catherine would be up, though, waiting to debrief.

  Even if there had been people, not many would think twice about Nick and Jon marching a hooded figure across the great plaza. At one time or another, many honored members of Haven had been
marched hooded up to the war room.

  Another elevator let them out onto the third floor. Nick kept his arm around Elle to guide her and also … because.

  Because he was still finding it hard to believe that she was here, with him. Pissed at him, sure. She had every right to be. But against all the odds she was safe and alive, and that’s how she was going to stay. He’d found her, he’d fought for her, he’d waited for her for ten long years. She was his.

  Jon went ahead, his biomorphic profile opening the door. Elle’s wasn’t programmed in. Yet.

  Elle sensed that there was a threshold and she stopped dead. The war room was straight ahead of her, the corridor behind. Her new life, her old life. Straight ahead of her Mac and Catherine were waiting, as Nick knew they would be. They’d stayed awake all night, even Catherine, who was three-months pregnant. She wouldn’t leave Mac, who wouldn’t go to bed until his men were home. Mac wouldn’t even have tried to convince Catherine to lie down because she wouldn’t and he knew that.

  To one side was a serving cart with a number of dishes with silver covers.

  Stella. Bless her. She’d once been a world-famous actress until a stalker slashed her face to pieces. No one at Haven even noticed her scars anymore because everyone loved her. She was smart and kind and ran the extraordinary communal kitchen with a lot of help. No one ever wanted to get on her bad side because access to Stella’s cooking was basically access to heaven itself. On the run and hunted, the people of Haven ate better than most millionaires.

  From here on in, Elle was his and he was going to take care of her and that included feeding her. Before bedding her.

  At the thought, his dick swelled.

  Shit.

  After long years of training, his dick had learned to obey him. It didn’t get out of control anymore. In fact, it had been so obedient the past couple of years it was practically dormant. Ghost Ops had taken every ounce of attention and energy he had. Then they were on the run and in hiding, so bedding a woman became this huge energy suck. Not only because he had to plan the exit before the entry, as always, but now also because he had to work really hard not to leave a clue as to who he was. That involved having fake docs on him at all time, and it involved remembering his fake name and fake legend, exactly as if he were working undercover.