Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  Once the image was fairly clear in his head, he opened his eyes, focused on the white circle of rocks, and tried again. “Pachico, get your transparent ass over here.”

  The forceful words echoed in the chamber. For a second it looked like his second command was going to have the same effect as his first—which was to say no effect whatsoever. But then a misty swirling stirred the dirt floor within the stone circle. Slowly, oh so slowly, a transparent form took shape. It wasn’t long before Rawls recognized the bald head and black knife sticking out of the translucent chest.

  “So now you wanna talk to me.” Pachico’s hollow voice was filled with condescension. But then he noticed the four elders on their benches, and a surprised look crossed his face. The surprised look gave way to caution. “What is this? A welcoming party?”

  Although the question was spoken sarcastically, Rawls could hear the tension in the ghost’s voice. Apparently death hadn’t stolen his instincts. He knew something was in the works. Something he wasn’t going to like.

  “Ask the biitei its name,” Red Etchings said, his face calm and body still.

  Rawls turned back to the circle of rocks and the translucent form caged within. “What’s your name?”

  The ghost laughed, although there wasn’t an ounce of humor in his voice or on his face. “Seriously? You want to know my name? What the fuck do you think we are? Girlfriends or some shit?”

  In unison the four elders reached into the pouches hanging at their sides, grabbed a handful of whatever was in there, and threw it on the fires burning at their feet. The four fires flared, their reflections glowing in the circle of rocks, and Pachico screamed.

  The scream was so unexpected, Rawls jumped, watching in shock as the translucent form that had been tormenting him for the past seven days writhed in apparent agony.

  What the hell . . .

  “Ask again,” the lead elder said as the flames died and the translucent form in the rocks quit squirming.

  Rawls cleared his throat. “Your name.”

  “Fuck you,” Pachico snarled, his form going thin and so translucent it was barely visible.

  The elders reached into their pouches and their fires flared again. Pachico’s scream echoed with agony.

  “It has been bound to the circle. It cannot leave.”

  Once again it was the guy with the red-and-yellow sunburst who spoke. Rawls was getting the distinct impression he was the only one of the four who had a voice.

  “Ask its name.”

  “I’m pretty sure they can do this all night,” Rawls told the rock circle, with its barely visible hostage. “Do yourself a favor and tell me your damn name.”

  A snarl sounded from within the stones, but when the four elders reached for their pouches, a name erupted from the circle. “Robert Biesel.”

  Well, look at that, they were making progress. He doubted the ghost had lied, because it would be too easy to check out the name. All it would take was a trip to the DMV.

  The four men on the benches lowered their hands, but kept them on their pouches in a subtle threat.

  “So, Robert Biesel, who were you workin’ for?”

  Might as well get the big questions out of the way first, from there he could work his way down to the nitty-gritty stuff. When Biesel remained stubbornly silent, the four musketeers dug into their pouches again. Once the screaming stopped, Rawls stepped in with a not-so-gentle reminder.

  “You realize, you stupid fuck, they’re only usin’ a pinch from those pouches. How much more painful do you think a handful would be? So let’s try this again. Who were you workin’ for?”

  This time Biesel’s hollow voice sounded a little ragged, and thick with rage. “I don’t owe that asshole a thing. So you want to know his name? Fine. Eric Manheim. Good luck touching him, motherfucker.”

  Eric Manheim.

  Of all the names Biesel could have shouted, Manheim’s shocked him the most. The billionaire, hell, more like trillionaire, was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Among the one percent of the wealthy who controlled most of the world’s wealth . . . except Manheim spread his wealth around. He funded countless charities and nonprofit organizations. His wife was the face and voice of the Focus on Hunger program. His was the least likely name to come up in conjunction with terrorism and blackmail.

  “Eric Manheim,” Rawls repeated slowly, trying to wrap his head around this news and figure out if the asshole was lying to him. “Why the hell would he be involved in somethin’ like this? The prototype Faith and her team were workin’ on wouldn’t affect him. His money comes from financial institutions.”

  In fact, the Manheim family trust owned most of the banks in the world. On the other hand, the family also had enough cash and influences to run the kind of operation required to take down an airliner, and frame anyone that got in the way.

  Now that Biesel had started talking, he got downright chatty. “His interest has nothing to do with money. It has to do with how it would affect the rest of the world. Manheim belongs to this crackpot conglomerate of Richie Riches who see themselves as the new ruling order. Christ, they even call themselves that. The NRO—New Ruling Order. Humanity’s not-quite-so-benevolent dictators.”

  “The NRO?” Rawls repeated, making a note to remember the acronym, and to do some googling as soon as he got back to a computer.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rawls saw the four elders sitting on the benches, along with Wolf, react to the acronym. Hell, Mr. Stoic, who was standing next to him, actually rocked back on his feet, surprise registering on his hard, normally blank face.

  “You know this organization?” Rawls asked, turning to address Wolf.

  “It would appear,” Wolf said with a tight, cold smile, “that your enemies are our enemies.”

  Well that was news. Good news too, considering the arsenal of technology and weapons Wolf had at his disposal.

  “Where is the NRO located?” Rawls asked Biesel, and knew from Wolf’s grunt of approval that he wasn’t the only one wanting to know the answer to that question.

  “There is no united location. They meet in secrecy, in undisclosed locations, a couple of times a year and plot and scheme to advance their agenda.”

  “Their agenda of what? Takin’ over the world? Sounds like an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory,” Rawls said.

  There was nothing quite like a conspiracy theory to get many of his SEAL brothers all fired up. Hell, you get a couple of these true-blue believers in the same room and they’d argue the merits of various conspiracies for hours. Generally, there was just enough truth in the telling to make one wonder—which was undoubtedly how the originators of the theories hooked their believers.

  “From the sourpuss expression on the Big Bad Wolf’s face, I’d say he’s run into the living embodiment of this debunked conspiracy theory before.” There was a hint of dryness to the hollow voice.

  Rawls stole a glance at the man standing so dangerously still beside him. Biesel was right about that. Wolf looked like he’d just swallowed an entire package of Warheads.

  “Tell me about the lab we apprehended you in. Were you part of the team that kidnapped the scientists and faked their deaths?” If they could find the scientists and extract them safely, they could exonerate his team and bring Manheim’s involvement out in the open.

  “Yeah, you have any idea how hard it is to effectively fake that many people’s deaths?” The hollow voice dropped to an irritated grumble. “But did the big boss appreciate that? Hell no.”

  A dizzying sense of unreality swept through Rawls. Sweet Jesus, he was standing here interrogating a ghost, listening to it bellyache about unfair working conditions.

  Wolf stirred beside him. “Was this biitei involved?”

  “Yeah,” Rawls said slowly, for the first time realizing that Wolf couldn’t hear what Biesel was saying. The Arapaho warrior was reacting to Rawls’s responses. Not Biesel’s answers. But what about the four elders? “Can any of you see Biesel?”


  “No.” Wolf’s voice was abrupt. “Only those who have crossed over and back within a short time of the biitei’s crossing can see it.”

  Rawls mulled that over. If he understood that answer correctly, that narrowed the field down to him and Faith.

  “Many among us can sense them,” Wolf continued after a moment, his voice slightly less tense.

  “Like Jude? And you?” Rawls glanced at the four elderly men on their benches. “And them?” He took Wolf’s grunt as an affirmative.

  But after a moment he turned back to the rock circle. He still had plenty of questions left. “Where did you take the scientists?”

  Biesel laughed. “Where else? Silicon Valley. Who’s gonna notice another lab springing up there?”

  Rawls repeated the address the ghost rattled off, and committed it to memory. “They’re still alive?”

  “How the hell should I know? I’m dead and stuck to you, you moron.”

  Biesel took him through the layout of the lab where they’d stashed Faith’s team, and Rawls committed every room, every guard to memory. All this shit would come in handy when they moved in to rescue the hostages.

  After several minutes of questions and answers, there was only one thing left to ask. “How did they track you to Yosemite?”

  The smirk was clear on the transparent face. “Through the same shit they dumped into little Brendan and Benji’s veins. Poor bastards. They’re a walking data stream now.”

  Rawls’s mouth tightened at the bastard’s callousness. “How can the compound be neutralized?”

  “It can’t, far as I know. Or at least that information wasn’t made available to us.”

  Rawls scowled. Unfortunately, the bastard didn’t appear to be lying about that. It was more like he simply didn’t care. Which was believable since it no longer affected him.

  “Who developed the compound?” Whoever had developed it had to have an antidote.

  “I don’t know. Someone at Dynamic Solutions. Ask James Link. He brought that shit with him when he came on board.” Biesel’s voice turned impatient. “Look, I answered all your damn questions. You want to let me out of this damn cage?”

  “Not my call. I’m just a guest here,” Rawls said, although from the Arapahos’ reaction to having a ghost present, he’d bet that Biesel wouldn’t be getting loose anytime soon, if at all. The interrogation wrapped up soon afterward, and Rawls turned to Wolf.

  “It would be handy if we could keep him on ice like this, in case any more questions come up,” he said in a low voice.

  Apparently Biesel had the ears of a cat. “Ah, come on, man, that’s inhumane. This thing’s smaller than a fucking cell.”

  Wolf shook his head. “Too dangerous. Biitei grow stronger with age. It must cross back over.”

  “Now wait one Goddamn minute.” Biesel’s voice climbed. “I can help you. I know lots of things we haven’t even touched on.”

  With a ceremonial half bow, Wolf nodded to the elders. Four male voices rose in chant. In unison, the men stood and emptied their leather pouches into the fire at their feet. Flames hissed and crackled and shot so high in the air they touched the ceiling.

  The reflection of the fires engulfed the rock circle and the translucent figure within it. Ravenous orange tongues engulfed the writhing, gyrating form. This time Rawls couldn’t hear the screams. The crackle and pop of the fires drowned the ghost’s cries out.

  As the fires burned hotter, the figure inside the circle disintegrated, until there was nothing left but flames.

  Her stomach a tight knot, Faith pushed a pair of green beans around with her fork. The tension had started the moment Rawls and Wolf had returned, and it continued to build steadily during lunch. From the reassuring looks he kept sending her, and his comments about how good all her tests looked, Rawls had picked up on her anxiety and assumed it was associated with her heart and the tests she’d undergone, or the tests still to come. He thought she was having trouble adjusting to this miraculous new life Kait had given her.

  How to tell him her worry wasn’t linked to her health, rather it was driven by fear for his?

  For sure the tests had shown a miracle. A completely functional, totally restored heart. The echocardiogram and EKG had given her reason to believe in a new life. A life without restrictions. A normal life. One where she didn’t have to worry about organ rejections or replacement. She’d barely had a chance to process this realization, to accept it—when Rawls had returned with Wolf and told her that Pachico had told them where her fellow scientists had been taken.

  Just listening to Rawls banter with his buddies during lunch had deepened the dark cloud of foreboding hanging over her. From the suppressed tension and barely leashed anticipation emitted by the four men, they were planning something . . . And then there was this big meeting with the brass of Shadow Mountain the four men were headed to after lunch.

  Her belly cramped and a light gloss of perspiration broke out down her spine. She was very much afraid she knew what the meeting was about, and why the men were vibrating with such adrenaline-fueled anticipation.

  If they’d located her fellow scientists, then they had all the information they needed to run off and rescue them. Or try to, anyway.

  If Dr. Benton had rebuilt the prototype, and it unleashed the same effect on the brain, they’d be slaughtered during the rescue attempt. Every last one of them.

  She stared down at her shaking fingers and forced them to stillness.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  “Hey,” Rawls said in a low voice from beside her, nudging her with his shoulder. “You okay? You’re awfully quiet over there.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Faith said. Giving up on the appearance of eating, she pushed the plate aside. “You’re going after them, aren’t you? After Gilbert and the rest of my team?”

  Rawls cast a cautious look down the long steel cafeteria table their group had taken over. Beth and Zane sat hip to hip, their heads tilted toward each other, quietly talking. Cosky and Kait sat across from Marion Simcosky, laughing at something she was saying. The women were upbeat and relieved.

  Did they know what their men had planned? Or that they were acting off information provided by a ghost? She doubted Wolf or Rawls had explained the circumstances behind this sudden opportunity.

  “How about we talk about this when we get back to the clinic?” Rawls said, bending toward her so his request was spoken directly into her ear. “The doc’s doing the stress test in two hours, right? We can talk then.”

  She quivered as his warm breath caressed the side of her neck and tickled the inside of her ear. She wasn’t sure exactly where things were headed between them, which was one more thing they needed to talk about. There was definitely a sense of building intimacy in their interactions. He wasn’t pulling away any longer. But what that meant, she didn’t know.

  The only thing she knew for absolute certainty, at this moment, was that her information couldn’t wait until after her stress test.

  “When are you meeting again to discuss their rescue?” she asked in an equally quiet but persistent voice.

  “Faith.” He turned a censoring look on her. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  “No.” She half twisted on her seat to look at him. “We’ll talk about this now. I want to be in on this meeting.”

  He smiled at her, a patient, maybe even affectionate smile. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, darlin’.”

  It had to happen. It would happen.

  She couldn’t let them attack the building where her team was re-creating the technology she’d been instrumental in creating—not without warning them of what they were walking into. It was true they were military. It was true there was a possibility that once they realized the prototype’s potential, they would move to weaponize it. But she couldn’t let them walk into a possible ambush.

  She simply couldn’t.

  If the prototype was working at capacity, they’d be massacred.

  �
�Look, there are things you don’t know about the research we were doing. Things that will get you killed.”

  He studied her face intently, and in some indefinable way, his gaze seemed to sharpen. “What things?”

  She released a frustrated breath. “I’ll tell you at the meeting!”

  “What meeting?”

  It was Cosky’s flat voice. Faith glanced down the table to find everyone’s gaze locked on her. The argument had finally caught the attention of the rest of the table.

  “Our nineteen hundred,” Rawls said after a moment, still studying Faith’s face. A faint frown furrowed his brow.

  “That’s classified.” Mac’s tone was clipped and abrupt—like the subject was closed.

  “She has critical information to share about her research,” Rawls said, shooting Mac a flat look.

  “Sure she does,” Mac snorted.

  “Information,” Rawls continued, his voice cold and challenging, “that is essential to any rescue attempt.”

  Faith’s stomach tightened and churned. For a moment it felt like the small amount of chicken and bread she’d managed to force down was about to come up. She glanced down the table at Beth and Kait, wondering how the two women were handling the news that their men were about to throw themselves into harm’s way. Neither woman looked surprised. And if they were worried, they had locked the fear behind calm faces.

  A wave of shame washed over her at their courage and her lack thereof. She was barely involved with Rawls and the thought of him in danger left her crumbling inside.

  “If you have vital information, then tell us now, and we’ll pass it on,” Mac said impatiently.

  Rawls ran a hand over his hair and shook his head. “We’re not runnin’ this show. Wolf and his team are. And somethin’ tells me they’re gonna want to hear the information directly from the horse’s mouth.”

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen