On point was Lindsey Jenkins, a tiny slip of an Asian American woman with mad tracking skills and a total kick-ass attitude—thanks in part to her years with the LAPD. Apparently, she’d committed to memory the blueprint of the maze of tunnels, and she moved surely and silently, leading the way through the dimness, proving to the world that size didn’t matter.
Which was something of Jules’s own mantra, since he was no hulking giant himself. He still sometimes shopped in the teen boys department in order to find T-shirts that fit him snugly enough to wear clubbing—not that he’d actually gone to a dance club in the past few years.…
But here and now, compared to Lindsey, who could move as if she had a note from her doctor excusing her from the laws of gravity, he felt oafish and noisy.
And freaking envious.
Lindsey was the relatively recent bride of Petty Officer Mark Jenkins, an adorable Navy SEAL who’d gotten leave from Iraq in order to meet her here in Germany. Her new husband’s transport flight had been delayed, however, and he’d shown up at their hotel just as the entire Troubleshooters team had met in the lobby for breakfast.
Needless to say, Lindsey and Mark had not joined them for the meal. The SEAL had soul-kissed his spouse, right there in the lobby, thrown her over his shoulder, and carried her into the elevator—and that was the last anyone had seen of either of them until they’d all met for this op at 2300.
But no one had teased her about it. Too many of them knew what it was like to have or be a spouse in the military. Time with one’s partner was precious—and too-often infrequent.
And that made Jules think of Ben, which was exactly what he didn’t want to be thinking about …
Wait, Lindsey hand-signaled now, then vanished ahead into a part of the tunnel that didn’t have dim moonlight shining in through heavy cast-iron drainage grates.
Two other Troubleshooters operatives, curly-haired computer specialist Tess Bailey and elegantly blond Sophia Ghaffari, who was clearly in training or at least a bright green rookie, hung back, obeying Lindsey’s command, while Jules and Alyssa continued to guard their six.
Even though it was unlikely that there was anything down here to guard them against.
Their mission was to prove that the Nachtgarten barracks were vulnerable to terrorist attack via these ill-protected tunnels that wound beneath the entire city. Because—as if the idea of tunnels that crisscrossed beneath the military base wasn’t enough of a threat—there was also a no-longer-used, buried and long-forgotten massive oil tank that sat, still two-thirds full, just beneath the facility’s main housing.
With some correctly placed C4, aided by that enormous tank of oil, any terrorist with a little Internet-acquired know-how could create an explosion that would take down the multistory building and make the Khobar Towers bombing look like child’s play.
And as far as the Internet went …
Alyssa and Sam, acting as agents for the country’s most elite personal security team, Troubleshooters Incorporated, had written and submitted a detailed report on this installation months ago. They’d outlined, quite specifically, the dangers of what they believed to be a serious threat, due to that very oil tank.
But after the powers-that-be thanked them for their time, absolutely nothing was done to safeguard the lives of the thousands of servicemen and -women quartered at the base.
And then, a few short days ago, Jules had found out that Sam and Alyssa’s top secret report had actually circulated the White House via nonsecure e-mail—which meant that the barracks at Nachtgarten were now even more vulnerable. The report, which mentioned the long-forgotten oil tank, had floated about on the Internet for a solid week before anyone noticed it contained classified information.
Jules had taken the news of the leak up the chain of command to his boss in the FBI, Max Bhagat, who’d been furious about the security breach—enough to get Admiral Chip Crowley involved.
Crowley, a Navy SEAL himself, was a man of action, and before Jules had even left Max’s office, a task force had been formed and Troubleshooters Incorporated once again had been hired. This time they were to play the part of the “red cell” in a mock attack of the military base.
Their job was to get, covertly, into Nachtgarten and once again find said oil tank—which was supposedly “too costly to locate and remove,” and, also according to the geniuses in charge, “too difficult to locate to create any real threat to the army personnel housed therein.”
Yeah, maybe it had been too difficult to locate until some bureaucrat wrote an e-mail about it, attached Sam and Alyssa’s report, and then freaking sent it to all their friends …
God. Nothing pissed Jules off more than stupidity.
Hopefully, after tonight’s exercise—complete with weapons that fired only rubber bullets, and Hey, Nachtgarten security teams, you think that might be a hint that some war-gaming might be going on tonight?—the stupidity would finally end.
There was, of course, no guarantee of that.
But the Troubleshooters red cell had been ordered to plant a “bomb” atop that oil tank—which would hopefully help wake people up. They weren’t going to use real explosives, of course. Instead, they would affix to the tank an electronic device that was the equivalent weight of the C4 needed in an attempt to take down the building. With this device and a nifty computer program that would receive and read the box’s signal, analysts would be able to accurately measure the amount of oil that remained in the tank, as well as the effect of an explosion on the barracks above.
Jules had seen this particular computer program in action before. It would create a simulation of the size and strength of the fictional blast, as well as estimate damage and predict body count. It would also—nifty little thing—translate it all into an outrageously huge dollar amount for those bottomline thinkers who believed that removing an obsolete oil tank was a tad too costly.
But all of that was going to happen after the team found the tank and slogged their way back to the much fresher air of the decaying riverfront warehouse, where they’d accessed this gross-as-shit drainage system.
Yes, this was so much fun.
Lindsey must’ve returned from her scouting trip, because Tess signaled them forward and they began to move into a part of the tunnel that was pitch-black. It seemed endless, but finally, ahead of them, was another stretch where the moonlight shone in.
And okay, yeah, actually? If he could ignore the malodorous stench? This was kind of fun in a twisted way. Jules wasn’t quite sure if the idea was Alyssa’s or that of the Troubleshooters CO, Tom Paoletti, but one thing he certainly was enjoying was the fact that this particular red cell was manned only by women.
Well, except for Jules, who was really only there as an observer.
Still, it felt very Charlie’s Angels, which appealed to his inner 1970s-era pop-culture-loving child.
As for his role of observer, he was here because Alyssa had insisted. She’d known how completely freaked out he’d been by his mother’s weekend visit. Lys had wanted both to hold his hand and to distract him from the craziness that had gone down last Saturday and Sunday.
The funny part of that was that Jules hadn’t yet told her about last Thursday’s and Friday’s drama. God, had that all really been just a few short days ago? He glanced at his watch. It was currently early a.m. Wednesday. Which meant it was now only two days until Friday—which was when he and Ben had planned to hook up again.
Yikes.
And wasn’t that just peachy keen?
Jules should have been feeling anticipation. He was a fan of anticipation when it came to things like food. And sex.
Instead, what he felt, felt an awful lot like dread. And guilt. Yup, the guilt sure was a nice touch, swirling around on the top of his mix of emotions about the entire fiasco—last weekend included.
Jules had actually taken the weekend-in-question off because his mother had called to say she was coming to DC to see him. She and her second husband, Phil, lived in H
awaii in a house overlooking the ocean, and Jules usually went there to visit. That was a no-brainer. In the vacation boxing ring, Hawaii could take out DC with one solid uppercut, every single time.
And yet his mother had flown all the way to the East Coast, nearly out of the blue and completely Phil-less, which made the trip seem all the more odd. But when everything was said and done, odd wasn’t even close to describing the weekend.
Jules’s mom had completely caught him off guard with her news that she and Phil were getting divorced.
And—although she didn’t put it into such glaringly harsh plain-speak—their split was because of Jules. Phil had finally admitted to feeling that their relationship was strained due to his discomfort with Jules’s sexual orientation. He’d actually sent away for literature on a variety of ex-gay ministries—programs that Jules could enter to be “fixed” and turned straight.
Linda Cassidy—she’d kept Jules’s father’s name, even after remarrying—had immediately “fixed” her ailing marriage by lancing the two-hundred-pound boil that was Phil.
Jules had never really liked the guy, but it had broken his heart to see his mother cry. Especially when she admitted how much she missed his father, who’d been dead now for close to twenty years.
Alyssa touched Jules now—just a hand on his shoulder. They were being silent, so she didn’t say anything, but it was clear that she knew exactly where his thoughts had gone.
She shook her head, as if to say Don’t you be thinking about that right now …
Jules forced a smile as he met her eyes in the dim light. So … I finally had sex with someone who’s not Adam. How about that? About freaking time, huh? What was wrong with him that he finally got the courage to confess that breaking news to his best friend now, when they both needed to remain completely silent?
Yup, he was a total headcase, no doubt about them apples.
But then Tess, who was in front of them, lifted her hand, signaling stop,quiet and then down.
Crap.
Jules faded back with Alyssa, even farther into the shadows, getting even more intimate with the stankariffic dankness that hugged the tunnel’s sides and floor.
They waited there, silent and still—until Lindsey beamed herself back, directly in front of them. And okay, it was probable that she hadn’t actually used Starfleet technology to get from point A to point B. She’d probably used her feet and walked it, but she’d done so both silently and invisibly. It was damned impressive.
She crouched next to Alyssa, and, as soundlessly as possible, gave her report.
“We’re not alone down here. Someone else came through, maybe an hour ago,” she said. “Five of ‘em, probably all male, carrying heavy packs and all going in the same direction. They came in via a different tunnel, but merged with our route about twenty feet back from where we are right now. I followed their trail for about half a klick and the good news is that they went past the turnoff to the oil tank. They either missed it or …” She shook her head.
“The bad news?” Alyssa asked.
“The way they went? It dead ends. There’s no access to the surface—no way out of here.”
Which meant, whoever they were, they were down here still.
“Is it possible they’re a second red cell?” Tess asked. She and Sophia had approached in order to hear Lindsey’s report.
Alyssa shook her head. “We’re not the ones being tested here. Tom would’ve told me if he were going to do that.”
“Could it be a security patrol from Nachtgarten?” Sophia asked.
“If so,” Alyssa asked, “why not guard the tank?”
“They may not know where it is,” Jules reminded her.
She looked at him sharply, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she was having a big eureka moment. But being Alyssa, she could tell from wherever she was in A-ha! Land, that Jules hadn’t yet reached the same thrilling conclusion. So she explained. “They’ll know exactly where the tank is after we lead them to it—and put what’s essentially a homing beacon directly on top of it.”
Jesus yikes. That would be very, very un-good.
“Break radio silence,” Alyssa ordered Tess, who was carrying their radio. Being a red cell, i.e. a group of make-believe and not necessarily wealthy terrorists, they’d been outfitted with less-than-high-tech gear. Instead of equipping each of them with radio headsets, they’d been given a single crappy Vietnam-era radio.
Tess fired it up, but then frowned. She fiddled with it, then frowned again. “Signal’s being jammed.”
Shit.
It was looking more and more likely that their unexpected company hadn’t come down here to play games. It was probable their mystery five had real C4 in their backpacks, and real bullets instead of rubber ones in their guns.
And the consequences of their actions would result in real, horrific death and destruction as opposed to the computer-simulated kind.
Alyssa reached for her cell phone—they all did. Jules’s phone had zero bars. No signal. Not down here in the first level of hell. “Anyone?” Alyssa asked. Tess, Lindsey, and Sophia also shook their heads after checking their phones. Nope.
Alyssa met Jules’s gaze. “Fall back,” she ordered. “We’re going out the way we came in. Lindsey, take the radio and run ahead. As soon as you can get a signal, I want an order going out to evacuate the barracks.”
Lindsey vanished as Alyssa looked at Jules and the two remaining Troubleshooters operatives. “Let’s move.”
Chapter Three
“Whoa,” Dave said, leaning in closer to squint at his laptop’s screen as he sat at the dining table in the hotel suite they’d designated as the temporary Troubleshooters headquarters in Nachtgarten. “That’s … very weird.”
“What is?” Sam Starrett asked, because knowing Dave, he’d tell Sam anyway. He didn’t look up from surfing the TV channels, looking for something even vaguely entertaining and stopping on SpongeBob SquarePants—in German. That was kind of cool. Guten Tag, Patrick. Wie geht’s?
“I’m getting a signal,” Dave reported. “But …” He hunched over his computer, fingers flying across his keyboard.
Dave Malkoff was something of an oddball. He’d been working for Tommy Paoletti’s Troubleshooters Incorporated since nearly its inception, yet remained adamant about not wanting to be a team leader, which was fine but a little mystifying to Sam.
A former CIA operative, Dave sometimes took himself—and life—a smidge too seriously. He was one of those guys whose intellect was too big for his own good. He’d aced every test he’d ever taken—and a hell of a lot of good that had done him when it came down to real life.
He didn’t seem to have any family, and although he appeared to be friends with the incredibly beautiful Sophia Ghaffari, he wasn’t friends in the Hey, mind if I drop by so we can lick chocolate off each other sense of the word.
And it was pretty obvious to Sam that Dave wished it were otherwise.
Jimmy Nash,a nutjob in his own right, was convinced that Dave was like the guy in that movie—a forty-year-old virgin—but Sam seriously doubted that. Although he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that old Dave hadn’t done the deed yet this decade.
It was, after all, only 2006. No need to rush things.
“Whoa,” Dave said again. “Alyssa definitely just activated the box.”
Sam looked up from the TV at the mention of his wife’s name. He looked at his watch, too. It was a little too early for her team to have reached the location of the oil tank. No way. Maybe if they’d been moving at a dead run, but … That wasn’t the plan. They couldn’t have gotten there yet.
“But it’s completely in the wrong place,” Dave added.
Sam moved his feet from the top of the desk to the floor. “Why would she do that?” he asked, standing up and moving across the suite, to look over Dave’s shoulder at his computer screen. His wife—their team leader—knew exactly where that oil tank was. “Maybe the box got switched on acc
identally.”
Dave scratched his head. “I doubt it, sir. There’s a code she’s got to punch in to unlock the system. It couldn’t have been just bumped and turned on without someone knowing.”
“Is there a system malfunction?” Sam asked. “On our end?” His voice sounded terse, almost sharp, to his own ears, but Dave didn’t so much as flinch.
And indeed, there was concern in Dave’s eyes, too, as he glanced at Sam. “No, sir,” he answered unequivocally but then backpedaled. “I mean, okay. Yeah. I suppose there could be, but …” He was shaking his head. “No.”
The hair on the back of Sam’s neck was standing up. Through the years, both as a SEAL and as an operative for Troubleshooters Incorporated, he’d learned to trust his gut instincts—or at least take them extremely seriously. He picked up the hotel phone, dialed Jimmy’s room number.
“Nash,” the man answered after only one ring.
He’d been on edge all night, hyper-aware that his fiancée, Tess Bailey, was out there in the world, without him tagging along as backup. Sam had finally sent him to his own hotel room.
“I need you back in here,” Sam ordered. “Decker, too. And see if Mark Jenkins is still in Lindsey’s room.” He hung up without waiting for Jimmy to respond.
“They’re definitely a half a klick from the tank,” Dave reported as he checked and rechecked both his computer and the program he was running.
There was a rap on the door, and Sam opened it. It was Nash—with Deck right behind him.
“Situation, sir?” asked Decker, who’d once been a chief in the SEALs. It was hard for him not to address the former naval officers in Troubleshooters with formality. In the same way, it was equally difficult for Sam and Tom not to call Deck Chief, especially in times of high stress.
“Alyssa activated the box in the wrong location,” Dave repeated the little that they knew, as Mark Jenkins, too, came into the hotel room, “and we don’t know why.”
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