Seal Team Ten

by Brockmann, Suzanne

  Zoe spun her chair to face the row of video monitors. Jake stood, displayed from three different angles, combing his hair out of his face. One of the cameras must've been positioned directly behind the mirror, because he gazed straight into it, his eyes a vivid blue. His arms were over his head, his biceps and triceps flexing.

  "I'm sorry, Skelly," Zoe said, tapping that screen. "But that is not an old man. I don't know where you get off calling him that. He's in better shape than you are."

  His stomach was rock solid and his chest was muscular, despite being badly scarred.

  "Wow," Bobby said, subdued by the sight of all those scars. "He's seen some action, huh?"

  "Two years ago he was the target of an assassination attempt," Zoe said. God, if those scars were any indication, he'd been nearly mortally wounded. It was a miracle he was still alive. He'd miraculously escaped death many times while in Vietnam, too. Some people said he'd led a charmed life. Without a doubt, luck had always been his constant companion.

  Zoe hoped that same good fortune was riding copilot with Jake right now. If Christopher Vincent even suspected Jake was there as a spy...

  On the screen, Jake threw his comb on top of the dresser. He took his jeans from the closet. Too bad. He had very nice legs. As Zoe watched from three different angles, he pulled on his jeans and covered them up.

  His bedroom was a former executive office for the old factory, the walls still covered with cheap, tacky paneling,

  ancient orange-shag carpeting on the floor, blessedly faded. The furniture was cream-colored, with gold ornamenta­tion—directly from a low-rent motel liquidation sale. She'd have thought a group declaring themselves to be the chosen race would have a little more taste.

  "Besides behind the mirror" Zoe mused, "the other cameras are, where? Over by this window..." She pointed to the screen. "And...here near the door?"

  Wes spread the floor plan of the CRO compound—the former Belle Frosty Cakes factory—out on the counter be­hind her and she swiveled her chair to face him.

  "In Admiral Robinson's quarters, the cameras are here, here and here." He highlighted the locations in pink.

  "Any in Jake's bathroom?" she asked, leaning over for a closer look.

  "At least one," he told her. "Here."

  "Show me that one," she said, turning to the video screens.

  Bobby keyed a command into the computer, and the im­age on the far left screen changed.

  The camera in the white-tiled bathroom had a clear shot of the door, the sink and the toilet. But not the tub. The tub, with the shower, was off to the side, out of camera range. Interesting.

  On the other two video screens, Jake buttoned up his shirt, pocketed his wallet and keys and left the room.

  "Can you follow him?" Zoe asked.

  "Yeah, as long as he doesn't go too fast." Bobby had fingers the size of hot dogs, yet they flew over the computer keyboard. "But even if we do lose him, it won't take long to find him again. As soon as he speaks, we can use the computer and trace him by his voice."

  On screen, Jake walked purposefully along the corridor. He had a cocky walk, with a spring in his step more befit­ting a twenty-five-year-old. It was self-confidence, Zoe re­alized. Jake Robinson walked the way he did because he trusted himself completely. He liked himself, too.

  It was powerfully attractive.

  It had been two whole days since she'd seen him last, and Zoe felt a sharp tug of longing. She missed him.

  They'd been together every evening at the bar for two and a half weeks before that. During that time Zoe had smuggled to Jake the equipment he'd needed to enable the SEALs to tap into the CRO security cameras. And during that time, they'd established a very hot, very high-visibility romance.

  Zoe had made it clear to all the patrons of Mel's Bar that she was holding out for marriage. Despite the sparks she and Jake made on the dance floor, she publicly refused to bring him home with her. And Jake, he'd made it clear that he wasn't ready for any kind of commitment.

  It was kind of funny, actually. In truth, the man was Mr. Commitment. He would still be married to his first wife right now if she hadn't died. And Zoe didn't doubt for one nanosecond that he'd still be happily married.

  Conversely she, Zoe, had never even imagined herself married. She'd never seen the need, considering that she'd never truly been in love. She'd always purposely sought out and let herself fall halfway in love with men she knew would never be right for her. Halfway in love was all she'd wanted, though. It was safe. She knew exactly what she'd get, knew she'd never be in too deep, never out of control.

  She was doing the exact same thing with Jake, too. Even if she could convince him to make their relationship more physical, more intimate, she knew damn well it would never go beyond that. He still loved his wife, and he wasn't looking to replace her.

  Zoe could love Jake—just a little—and still be safe.

  So she did. And she used her feelings to bring a certain authenticity to her role. No, she would not sleep with him, not until they were married. Well, okay, pretending that was a stretch. A long stretch.

  And at times, when Jake held her in his arms on the dance floor, or when she kissed him goodbye each night,

  she thought the sheer irony would drive her completely insane. Here Jake always pretended that he wanted to spend the night with her, and Zoe always pushed him away.

  She could think of only one thing she wanted more than to spend these long, cold autumn nights with Jake Robinson in her bed. She wanted to find the Trip X. But that was the only thing she wanted more.

  Still she sent Jake back to the CRO fort each night. And each night she slept alone.

  Each day, she locked herself in the team's surveillance trailer, using the computers to access the CRO cameras, electronically searching for the missing canisters of Triple X.

  She was exhausted, bleary-eyed and completely frus­trated on many, many levels. She wasn't going to find any­thing this way. She had to get in there, inside that electric fence. She needed to search with more than just her eyes, restricted by the lens of a camera.

  She had to get inside Christopher Vincent's private quar­ters, into those few rooms where there were no security cameras. The more she came into contact with Vincent, the more she was convinced that he was the type of man who'd get off on keeping a crate of deadly poison—enough to wipe out the capital city of this country—on the sideboard of his private dining room.

  She'd had it. She'd played it Jake's way for long enough. She was going to get inside the CRO walls whether he liked it or not.

  On the video monitor, Jake turned a corner, and with a flick of his fingers, Bobby made him appear on a different screen. The enormous SEAL didn't consult any list, didn't look at the factory schematic. He just somehow knew the camera codes.

  "You've already memorized both the layout of this part of the factory and the location of the cameras?" she asked.

  "I've got the whole factory up here." He tapped on his forehead. "I'm pretty good with maps."

  Pretty good?

  "Morning, John," Jake said in greeting to a man heading in the same direction. Bobby made another adjustment, and their conversation about the current dreary weather came in crisp and clear over the speakers, fading slightly as they moved away from one microphone, getting louder as they walked past another.

  "Tell me about the audio signal," Zoe said. "Do all the cameras have microphones, or is there a different miking system?"

  "There's a combination," Wes told her. "The dedicated mikes are higher quality, but they're also more expensive so there're fewer of 'em."

  "Is it possible to speak quietly enough so's not to be heard?" Zoe asked. ' 'I guess what I need to know is, once I'm in there, is there any way I'll be able to talk to Jake without the mikes picking up our conversation?"

  "Mid to high-range frequency overload will block low-volume conversation," Bobby said. He typed in a new command, and on the right-hand screen, the CRO kitchen appeared. About a do
zen women were in the big room, about half of them washing dishes. "See?"

  "Run water," Wes interpreted. "And speak softly. But don't whisper. A whisper could cut through."

  Sure enough, in the kitchen, water was running from the faucet, and Zoe could only make out the words of the women who raised their voices significantly when they spoke.

  "We also found a spot where the security cameras were set up a little carelessly," Wes told her. He pointed to the floor plan again, and she stood to get a better look, stretch­ing her legs. "Up here there's access to the roof. There must've been some kind of recreation deck there at some time. And the entire northwest corner of that area is com­pletely out of camera range. It overlooks the millstream— an added bonus, running water. Again, speak softly, and

  your conversation will be covered by the sound of the wa­ter. You won't be overheard."

  Bobby turned in his chair to face her, his dark eyes very serious. "Zoe, are you sure you want to go in there?"

  "Yes."

  "Don't take this the wrong way," he said, "but I'm not sure the admiral's got this under control."

  "Admirals can lose touch," Wes agreed. Since Bobby was so tall and broad and always with him, Wes always seemed short and wiry in comparison. But Zoe had to lift her chin to look at him as he straightened up. He had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, revealing a stylized barbed-wire tattoo that ran completely around an extremely well-developed bicep. He may have been wiry compared to Bobby, but only compared to Bobby. Wes Skelly was no lightweight, that was for sure.

  "Since when did you start smoking again?" she asked him.

  "Since I've been nervous as hell about this op," he countered. "Since we've been sitting here for weeks, re­lying only on Robinson, getting no closer to finding that TripleX crap."

  "Human beings slow down," Bobby pointed out.

  "After you hit a certain age, your reaction time really starts to suck," Wes agreed.

  "It's a fact of life."

  "Don't get me wrong," Wes said, "the admiral's a good guy—"

  "For an admiral—" added Bobby.

  "And we know he used to be a SEAL—"

  "A long time ago—"

  "But it has been about a million years and—"

  "You know how on 'Star Trek,'" Bobby started ear­nestly.

  "On classic Trek," Wes interjected with a grin.

  "Whenever a commodore's on board the Enterprise—"

  "And the intergalactic antimatter's about to hit the fan—"

  ' 'And this old, out-of-touch commodore takes command of the ship because he thinks he's got all the answers, and Captain Kirk's got to fight both the bad guys and the good guys to save the day?" Bobby continued.

  "Bob and I are alarmed at the remarkable parallels we've found between those episodes and this current mission," Wes told her. "We're sitting out here in the woods with this old rusty commodore, and our captain's back in Cali­fornia. It doesn't bode well for the Federation."

  Zoe started to laugh. "You guys are too much."

  "Actually, Zoe..." Wes's grin faded. "We were kind of hoping you'd talk to the admiral, you know, convince him that it's time to try to get more of the team inside those walls."

  They were kidding, but only halfway.

  "You guys need to read a book called Laughing in the Face of Fire because you obviously have no idea who you're dealing with here," she told them. "You have no idea what Jake did in Vietnam, do you?" She knew they didn't. Their expressions were blank. "I can't believe you wouldn't at least try to find out something about your team leader." She laughed again, but this time in disbelief. "Jake's not the commodore, boys. He's the captain. And if you're not careful, you'll be the good guys he's got to fight so he can save the day. He needs you standing beside him—not standing in his way."

  "At the risk of annoying you," Wes said, "I have a theory that your loyalty to the admiral isn't really loyalty, but instead has something to do with the fact that you've been sucking face with him for the past few weeks. Sex confuses things. Particularly for women."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I think you annoyed her," Bobby commented, turning away to hide his smile.

  "It's some kind of hormonal thing," Wes said, amuse ment dancing in his eyes. He knew he was completely piss­ing her off, damn him. "You think it's loyalty, but it's really just your hormones responding to the power of an alpha male, even if he is a little on the ancient side."

  Zoe stood up. "Well, it's been fun, but it's time for me to leave this den of total ignorance. You know, I bet you could find the book-on-tape copy of Laughing in the Face of Fire. I realize now that reading might be too big of a challenge for someone as pea-brained as you, Skelly."

  Bobby laughed. "What are the odds they've come out with a comic book edition? You might get him to read that."

  Wes pretended to be offended, but he couldn't keep a smile from slipping out.

  "You know, if this was 'Star Trek,' wiseass," Zoe heard him say to Bobby as she went out the door, "you'd be Lieutenant Uhura, sitting there in high heels, keeping hail­ing frequencies open. How does that make you feel?"

  "Like I'm in damn good company," Bobby said.

  Zoe wasn't in Mel's when Jake arrived.

  He knew it was only a matter of time before she showed up—she would've been paged as the surveillance team saw him leaving the CRO gates.

  He nursed a beer as he stood by the jukebox, filled with the same sense of anticipation and dread he felt every night before he saw Zoe.

  She would tell him hello—she always did—with a deep, searing, burning kiss. God, he loved kissing her. Loved and hated it.

  Hated it because her kisses so completely overwhelmed him. When Zoe kissed him, nothing else existed. His world narrowed down to him and her, his mouth, her mouth, his arms around her, her body against him.

  When Zoe kissed him, he could barely even remember his own name, let alone the taste of Daisy's kisses.

  Zoe had completely invaded his dreams, as well. More

  than once he'd woken up reaching for her, so certain that his impossibly detailed, incredibly erotic dreams had been real.

  Lately in his dreams, he only saw Daisy from a distance. He'd spot her from the bedroom window of his Washington apartment and go out the French doors onto the deck to call to her. Halfway there, he'd realize he was naked, that he'd just been in bed with Zoe. His voice would catch in his throat, and Daisy would disappear.

  He didn't need Joseph and his dreamcoat to figure out what that meant.

  He'd wake up, aching from guilt and need. It was not a good combination.

  Jake glanced at his watch. Dammit, where was she?

  Tonight he wasn't just anticipating her arrival because he wanted to kiss her. Tonight he had some vital infor­mation he needed to pass along.

  "If you're looking for Zoe—" Carol, one of the other waitresses, the pretty, dark-haired, forty-something one, stood behind him, holding her tray "—she called in sick again tonight."

  Sick. Again? Oh, damn, he'd purposely stayed away for a few days. What if she'd been sick all that time? What if she'd needed him? "Is she all right?"

  Carol shrugged. "Gus thinks it's the flu. Personally, I just think she's pouting."

  "Thanks for letting me know." Jake finished the rest of his beer and carried the empty bottle toward the bar.

  "Before you go racing out to her place," Carol said, following him, "you should probably be ready for her to hand down an ultimatum. That girl wants some kind of commitment, Jake. She told Monica you've been dragging your feet so hard, she was starting to give second thoughts to becoming Christopher Vincent's fourth wife."

  Jake nearly dropped the bottle. "What?"

  Carol smiled. "Yeah, I figured you didn't know about that. Apparently your friend Christopher has been hitting

  on Zoe, too. He wants to add her to that sick little harem he's got going up there at the old Frosty Cakes place."

  "She never said a word ab
out that to me."

  "I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice, Jake. Zoe's a little wild, a little out of control. That's her nature. But she wants a ring. This is probably the first time in her life she's held out for something like this, and I'm certain that she's serious. I know you haven't known her for that long, but she wants to get married before she turns thirty, and she's getting close to the point where she doesn't par­ticularly give a damn who she marries. But she is in love with you. You should hear her talk about you—it'd make you blush."

  "She does go on and on and on about you, Jake." Some­how the bartender had become a part of this conversation. The two old men who were permanent fixtures in the bar were also unabashedly listening in.

  "If you feel anything for her at all, buy her a ring," Carol advised him. "Have Christopher Vincent do that mumbo-jumbo wedding ceremony that he does. It's not real, anyway. He has no more authority to officiate at a wedding than my pet poodle. But it'll make Zoe happy, you'll get what you want for as long as you want it, and it'll keep her away from Christopher. He's just a little too rough with women, if you ask me."

  "You'd be a damn fool not to marry Zoe for real," one of the old men said. Roy. Zoe had told him that Roy was ninety-two years old. ' 'If I were just twenty years younger, I'd've asked her myself the first time she came in here."

  Zoe's trailer was parked just down the block, in the empty lot alongside Lonnie's gas station. The light was on as Jake approached.

  She opened the door before he even reached the steps— she'd been watching and waiting for him.

  She was wearing her jeans and that little flowered T-shirt she'd had on in Washington the first time they'd met. Her

  hair was down, long and silky around her shoulders. She wore almost no makeup, and her skin seemed to glow with good health.

  "I guess you don't have the flu," he said as she closed the door behind him.

  "Gee, you sound almost disappointed."

  Her gym bag was packed, her backpack, too. They lay on the floor of the tiny hall that led to the trailer's single bedroom.

  Dammit, she was actually trying to force his hand. She wanted him to marry her and bring her to the CRO com­pound.