“Hey!” Zoe squawked and slammed on the brakes. She slid to a stop at a Y in the track. There were tire tracks leading up either side, making it unclear which way to go.
Luke checked the Road Book. “Uh, sorry. Left. I guess the trucks must have gone right.” The Road Book only told them where to go, with nothing about where other vehicle classifications went.
Cars, quads, and motorcycles almost always followed the same routes, but there were some things ten tons of truck simply couldn’t do. So they were occasionally routed off onto another route for part of a stage.
“Maybe best if we both ignore Sofia.” Odd, he couldn’t even imagine what he’d seen in her before, not with Zoe for comparison.
“I will if you can.” It was almost a tease and it made him feel much better.
Then a car overtook them from behind and shot into the left leg of the Y.
“Not for long, buddy!” Zoe had the Citroën spitting dirt in seconds and flew into the lane.
“I tracked Legends whose vehicles did not come on the ship from France and who are still in the race.” Sofia’s liquid tones sounded from the small computer sitting on the camper’s cramped dining table.
Nikita sat close beside Zoe, which she found very comforting. Drake sat across from them, craning his neck to see the display. Luke stood with his back against the door to make sure they weren’t interrupted.
“I have discounted motorcycles based on Luke’s analysis of the tracks departing Hathyaron’s Pakistani compound. Even a job box and a pair of motorcycles on a trailer would have been unlikely to make such an impression in the hard soil.”
Zoe glanced at Luke to check in with him, but she couldn’t read him through his mirrored sunglasses. There’d been a time, a brief time, when she could read every thought on his face, but that was gone. Gone along with her lover. Her choice, so she’d have to live with it.
She turned back to Sofia.
The display was an aerial view of the day’s Selective Section. Only eleven lines traced their way back and forth across the screen.
“You lost one here to a broken axle,” Sofia placed a yellow circle around a line that ended abruptly in the middle of the course. “And you effectively lost another here,” she indicated a line that had zigged wide of the course. Obviously lost, it crossed back and forth several times, losing time and distance. “When they’d finally spotted the track and returned to it, they’d missed two waypoints, which incurred an hour of penalties. They dropped from eleventh to thirty-fourth place.”
Zoe knew that could happen to anyone. A single moment of inattention—like her entire day yesterday—could be a race-ending event. Someone had been watching out for her that day and she rather suspected that it was a Team 6 SEAL rather than some unknowable deity. She didn’t turn to look at him, but she could feel him there. Watching her. Waiting.
Well, he was welcome to wait until hell froze over.
She turned her attention back to the display. “So we’re assuming that Hathyaron is a Legend who is still in the race and still running well.”
Nobody answered. It had been her original suggestion.
“I know it’s probably fanciful, but it still feels right,” Zoe answered her own question and no one argued. “So tell us about the remaining nine.”
“You can cross out this one,” Sofia marked which one she was talking about with a red X.
“Why that one?”
“Unless you and Luke are doing something we don’t know about, you aren’t suspects.”
“Okay, I guess we can make that leap. At least on my behalf. Any dark past you want to admit to, Luke?” She’d turned to face him automatically, until his name caught in her throat. It was the first time she’d addressed him by name since… There was a tightness that clenched her body as if she’d been frozen into a block of immovable ice.
He studied her for a long moment through his mirrored sunglasses before replying, “None that I’m real interested in talking about.”
Zoe watched him for the length of a breath. So he wasn’t interested in talking. Should they talk? It would be even harder than telling her father about his best friend’s dark past. Or was he saying that she didn’t need to talk about the past if she didn’t want to? Or…
She was going to make herself insane if she followed that back-loop much longer. If they did need to talk, it was something she wasn’t strong enough to face. Not now. But she hated that it had to be soon.
By brute force alone, she managed to turn back to the display, though it was nothing but a bright blur once she had.
“Three cars and five trucks make up our remaining lines,” Sofia continued. As she listed off the names, Zoe tallied them in her head. She knew them all by name and two of the car drivers quite well. She almost told Sofia to cross off their names, but feared that she’d already narrowed the field too much and kept her thoughts to herself.
Sergey Kanski of Poland was currently the race leader in car group—an incredibly able driver—he’d recovered all of the time he’d lost in Stage Two. Perhaps he also had access to Russian military suppliers. He’d have made a splendid Cossack horseman under the Czar—dark and brooding.
Cid and Jabir had recovered splendidly from their float in the river and were currently in sixth. She’d actually have to watch out for them as they were driving like they had something to prove and could well catch up to her before the end. Were they a front for Saudi or Iranian interests? Should she discount them simply because they’d showed a sense of humor at the ford and been glad to chat with her since, despite her success?
Henni was the only other female car driver still in the race. Was her shyness and soft English accent a mask for an evil career? Or was Hathyaron her secretly supportive lover—the team sponsor without being the team driver?
“We need to learn more about the five trucks.” She didn’t know them well at all.
“Nothing obvious in their bios,” Sofia replied. “I’ll send all of their names over to The Activity. They found Hathyaron once, maybe they can find him again from some clue we don’t see.”
“Thanks. Anything else, anyone?” Zoe had to smile to herself at that one. Sofia was her commander, Drake and Nikita were ST6 enlisted, and Luke was a Navy officer. So how had this become her mission?
When no one said anything, they signed off and stowed the laptop.
She looked around again, forcing herself to look at Luke as well—he was part of the team after all.
Still no one spoke.
“I guess this means we’re on to Stage Ten.”
Nods and shrugs.
She checked her watch. “Almost time for the course briefing. I’ll go,” she continued even as Luke turned for the door. And barely managed, “with you.”
He stopped with his hand wrapped around the door handle as if steadying himself. A moment later he had the door open and was holding it wide for her and the others to exit the camper as if nothing had happened to make him hesitate.
She hadn’t imagined it, but what could make an ST6 lieutenant commander show such weakness?
30
Luke waited by the trailer for Zoe to come out. He’d woken just before dawn, feeling suffocated by the light. The night wrapped about him more comfortably than the day.
Nighttime was the heart of a Spec Ops warrior’s soul. It was the environment in which technology truly was winning the war. Night-vision and teams like the Night Stalkers had altered the battlespace for the past thirty years. Their enemies were making giant strides, but even the Russians and Chinese weren’t crazy enough to offer their technology to notoriously unpredictable terrorist groups no matter how they were aligned.
Also in the night, Zoe slept and he could lay his pad outside the only door into the camper and sleep—or at least pretend to. By day—when she came to life—it felt as if a piece of himself was torn from his body every time she walked away.
Each morning though, he made sure he was away from the door and sitting by the car lon
g before anyone else woke.
“May I?”
Luke jolted. Again he hadn’t heard the person approach. Worse, it was a civilian with no training in stealth. And worst of all, it was Brian DeMille, Zoe’s father.
“Of course, sir.” What else could he say? No, go away. Haven’t I already hurt you and your daughter enough? Instead, he sat still and wondered if that simple act might be the bravest thing he’d ever done.
“I still can’t get used to her as a blonde.”
No, please! He was not about to have a discussion about Zoe with her father.
“Only way I’ve ever seen her, sir.” Apparently he was.
“I’m sorry I put on such a show,” Brian said as he dropped into the chair as if dropping onto a living room sofa. By the moonlight, Luke could see that he’d passed more than his black hair and blue eyes on to his daughter. Her features were a refined version of her father’s: cleaner lines, a narrower face, but just as shapely.
“I’m sorry for my part in it, sir.”
“I’m not a sir. I never served like you do. You are in the service, aren’t you? With Zoe?”
“Yes, sir.” Brian’s quick smile acknowledged the “sir” just as Zoe’s would have.
“What are you two doing racing The Dakar?”
“I, uh, I can’t tell you that, sir.”
“Which means you’re on assignment? I’ve never known what Zoe does for the Army.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you that either, sir.” And Luke could see her father slump in the chair. “But I can tell you that she is perhaps the smartest and most skilled woman I’ve ever met—and when you meet my second-in-command, you’ll know just how high a compliment that is.” Luke almost assured him that his daughter worked from a place of complete safety—an RPA control coffin—except she’d been right in the fray in Honduras and now was driving in a race that had killed seventy people over the years and injured a hell of a lot more.
“I’ve always thought she was amazing myself, but then I’m just her father. That makes me totally biased in her favor. So, like, what do I know?” Brian nodded to himself.
They sat in silence long enough for the stars to begin fading with the dawn.
“He was my best friend. How could I not know?” The first light caught the tracks of tears running down Brian’s cheeks.
His best friend? Zoe had mentioned that her father was in business with his best friend from childhood. The fucking bastard. Luke fought against the fury that shook him. She’d probably grown up with him as practically a second father. And then he’d betrayed that trust by…
Then other pieces started connecting. Her fear when they’d first started to make love against the side of the Renault on that remote Senegalese beach. The bastard hadn’t merely taken her, he must have done it in the family auto shop—staining yet another portion of Zoe’s past.
By what unholy strength had she managed to turn her fear around and make love to him there. No wonder she’d wept in his arms afterward. Awash in her past, she’d chosen to purge the memory and create a different future. He didn’t know of many SEALs who could face themselves that clearly and make choices that hard. Certainly not him. The less he remembered of his old man and his battering fists, the happier Luke was. Zoe had faced it head on.
“Is he actually dead or did Zoe make that up?”
“He’s dead, thank God,” Brian’s voice caught. “I don’t know what I would have done if he wasn’t. I know I could never face him again.”
Never face him again? Luke was tempted to find the bastard’s grave just so he could dig him up and pound on him more than death already had. Hopefully he’d suffered even a tenth of the pain he’d caused Zoe before he finally went down.
“You can take comfort in the fact that she’s become an amazing woman, sir.”
Brian merely nodded, but the tracks of his tears still caught the light.
More than an amazing woman.
Luke finally knew what was wrong with him, why sleep was more elusive than while on watch far behind enemy lines.
She was the amazing woman. If he had a choice of any single woman to spend the rest of his life with, it was Zoe DeMille.
Too bad she wasn’t speaking to him anymore.
You gotta find a way to fix this, Nikita had told him. I just wish it was possible.
Yeah, him too. But Nikita, who knew Zoe better than any of them, wasn’t feeling very hopeful.
This mission had just become the highest stakes of his entire life.
Hovering just inside the camper’s door, Zoe watched the two men sitting by the car. Okay, there were worse-case scenarios for how this would play out—she just couldn’t imagine what they might be. She’d left her father in a nurse’s care thousands of kilometers behind, and now he was here, sitting next to Luke as if it was a perfectly natural thing.
They appeared to be talking as little as men ever seemed to and she prayed that the few words they were exchanging chronicled the weather. Lost that bet without even gambling, girl. Talking about the next stage? Nope.
Could she crawl out a back window of the trailer and run away? It would be totally chicken, but she was wearing a yellow racing suit.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped out and did her best to be cheery.
“Daddy!” It wasn’t hard to be cheery with him.
He lurched to his feet and wrapped her in a hug. He held her hard for a long time. She let herself close her eyes and lay her head on his shoulder just as she always used to. Somehow they’d come through this okay.
“I’m sorry you didn’t tell me,” he whispered just for her. “I guess I’m glad that I didn’t know, for my sake, but I wish I’d known for your sake. I was hurt for a while, but I guess I understand why you didn’t say anything.”
No, he knew nothing about why she hadn’t, and maybe, just maybe, she’d come to terms with the real reason. Or would someday. Preferably sooner rather than later, though she suspected that it would be quite the opposite.
She opened her eyes without raising her head from her father’s shoulder.
Luke too had risen to his feet, but he kept his hands jammed into his pockets and his expression blank.
“Morning, Luke.”
“Hey, Zoe,” she could see him swallow hard. “You doing okay?”
Was she? No longer having to hide everything from her father was a huge relief, even if there was still one thing he could never know. She raised her head enough to nod, she was okay—in the most basic sense of the word.
She could see the next question as clearly on his face as if he’d shouted it: were they still okay? Having no answer to that one, she closed her eyes again and clung to her father for dear life.
31
Stages Ten, Eleven, and the start of Twelve through the Andes from Chile into Peru were no more than a blur.
Luke kept functioning, but the lack of sleep was really catching up with him. A trademark of a Spec Ops soldier was that they could sleep anywhere, anytime. Helo flight into a life-threatening mission? Perfect excuse for a twenty-minute catnap. Roaring along at thirty thousand feet in a C-130 Hercules, fully dressed for a highly dangerous HALO parachute jump? Better than a sleeping pill.
Being apart from Zoe during those three long nights of the rally had nearly killed him. He’d gotten them lost twice, once for twenty minutes in the trackless dunes of Stage Eleven. The only comfort was that all the teams were so tired that the screw-ups weren’t limited to him.
Sergey ran into a boulder and lost time replacing a tire and doing a field repair on the suspension.
Cid and Jabir didn’t high-center themselves on a dune ridge, instead they hung themselves out to dry. They’d tried to jump a depression in the sand but hadn’t cleared it. Their front end had hit the far side and then the rear had caught on the near side. The car ended up dangling its wheels a meter in the air while its front and rear ends were buried in the sand. It had taken them a long time to dig down enough to free their car
.
Henni had busted her top two gears and finished well behind on the Stage Twelve Selective Section. Her crew would be frantically rebuilding her transmission through the night.
Their own Citroën wouldn’t still be in the game if Zoe’s dad hadn’t joined the team. He wasn’t merely an ace mechanic, he was an ace racing car mechanic. He and Ahmed functioned together on some level that neither Nikita nor Drake could match.
The Dakar was taking its notorious toll. There hadn’t been any deaths this year, but there were sixteen racers and five spectators still in the hospital with injuries worse than Christian Vehrs’ back: shattered pelvises, major concussions, crushed ribs with a collapsed lung—the list was long and gruesome. A kid who’d chased a ball across the road at the wrong moment was going to be playing soccer with an artificial leg the rest of his life. It was by far the worst toll in decades.
The motorcycles were down by a third; though most of his Malles Motos buddies were still in it even if they looked as if they hadn’t slept in two weeks. The cars and trucks were down by more than half. A hundred and fifty competitors had been swept off the course by the brutal challenge of The Dakar. Fellow Americans were particularly hard hit and were now few and far between.
They’d started Stage Twelve with a huge sendoff from Arequipa. Peru’s second-largest city sat at seven thousand feet, dramatically close to the foot of the nearly twenty-thousand-foot active volcano El Misti. The historic eruptions of El Misti and the two other nearby monster volcanoes had also made it the most fertile region of Peru. If it ever had more than four inches of rain per year, it would be lush instead of merely green. But even that was a relief to the eyes after crossing the Andes and the high Atacama desert plains.
Here the men in Arequipa traditional dress was brown Spanish bullfight attire with black sombreros. The women’s dresses landed mid-calf, but more than balanced out the view with far more vivid colors that the Argentine dancers wore—powerful reds and rainbow stripes.
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