"No, just Jake Robinson," Harvard responded.
"He says five minutes—oh, is that all? Or maybe even less till it blows. He says he needs support. He says come in as covertly as you can, as quickly as you can. He says he's ready to guess where the package—meaning the Trip X—is, but it's just a guess. Wear gas masks, be ready for anything, don't forget there are women and children here. He says come now. Now."
On the other video screen, Zoe had arrived in Christopher Vincent's outer office.
She looked so small, so fragile compared to the CRO leader's bulk. She was looking at something Vincent held in his hand.
"That's a paper clip," she said. "You're all worked up over a paper clip?" She laughed. "Chris, I'm a waitress. I'm not a spy. That's crazy!"
Christopher hit her with his fist, like a club against the side of her head, and as Lucky watched, Zoe went down, hard.
"Move fast, team," he said, his heart in his throat. "Zoe's in serious trouble."
The room spun, and Zoe clung to the floor, trying desperately to regain her senses, fighting the waves of nausea and dizziness that made her want to retch.
That was her fault. Her fault. Crazy. She should have remembered that Crazy Christopher went ballistic when he was called crazy.
Her head pounded and her vision blurred as two of the guards dragged her to her feet. She fought to focus her eyes, Christopher stood in front of the open door to his private office. That door was heavy duty, as Jake had pointed out, with dead bolts that would withstand anything short of explosives. If she could get in there and lock that door behind her...
"Here in the CRO fort, like most countries, treason is a Vincent was holding a gun on her.
Zoe blinked, but the gun was real, not a result of the problems she was having with her eyes.
It was a. German-made Walther PPK twenty-two caliber. The kind of gun any inbred militia leader with Hitler aspirations would take pride in owning. "Is Jake Robinson also here to spy on us?" he asked her.
Zoe let herself start to cry. "Chris, I don't know what you're talking about—"
"Yes," he said. "He is, isn't he? He's here because of the anthrax."
Every now and then, there came a mission in which it was necessary to accept that her cover had been blown. And if Christopher Vincent thought that the poison he'd appropriated from the Arches test lab was merely anthrax...
It was definitely time to lay all of her truth cards out on the table.
Zoe stopped crying, stopped pretending. "Chris, you don't have anthrax. What you have is called Triple X. It's a nerve agent. A chemical weapon that's deadlier than even you can imagine."
"So you are a spy."
"I'm here to try to help you," Zoe told him. "If you give me the missing canisters of Triple X now, I'll make sure it's known that you cooperated fully—"
"Guilty," Christopher said. "I find Jake and Zoe Robinson guilty as charged. Their sentence is death, to be carried out immediately." He looked at his guards. "Find Robinson. Now."
Zoe kept talking. "Chris, this is the dead last thing you want to do. If you kill me, if you harm anyone, if you even attempt to use the Triple X, the CRO will be crushed."
Christopher Vincent lifted his gun, and as Zoe stared into the deadly blackness of its barrel, she prayed. God, please don't let Jake come bursting in the door right now. Please, God, keep him far, far away from here.
"Oh, God," Lucky said. "Oh, God, he's going to kill her!"
There was nothing he could do. He could only watch on the video monitors, completely unable to stop the murder that was about to happen miles away in the CRO compound. It was the most awful, completely impotent moment of his entire life.
He was going to watch this woman he admired so much, his friend, die while he sat here, unable to lift a finger to save her.
Zoe could barely stand after that blow Vincent had 'given her to her head, but the guards moved back from her, out of their leader's range.
Zoe was still talking, telling Vincent about the Triple X, trying to make him understand that the United States Government would not rest until they recovered it.
Vincent smiled, and...
"No!" Lucky shouted. "No!"
The bastard fired the gun, the roar deafening over his headphones.
And the screens all went black.
"Sit-rep, O'Donlon." Harvard's voice came in. "What are you shouting about?"
Lucky worked frantically to get some sort of signal. But there was nothing. There was no signal to receive.
Jake, true to his word, had taken out the security system.
"Security's down," Lucky rasped. "But, God, H! Vincent shot Zoe. Point-blank. The bastard executed her." His voice shook, and he couldn't stop the tears that came to his eyes. "I've got it all on tape."
"Oh, God."
"Cowboy's team intercepted all six canisters of the Triple X about ten minutes ago." Zoe would've been so glad to hear that. Lucky pushed his lip mike away from his mouth so the senior chief wouldn't know he was sitting here crying like a baby. But, dammit, this operation wasn't over yet. He didn't have time to lose it this way. He took a deep breath and repositioned his mike. "As far as I know, Jake's still alive. But they're looking for him, Senior. Let's make sure we find him first."
"We will. But we're still about two minutes from contact." Harvard's voice was grim, cold.
"If you come face to face with Christopher Vincent," Lucky said, doing what he knew Harvard was doing—turning his grief into frozen hard anger "—hurt him bad for me."
Jake covered his head as his fourth and final bomb took out a big piece of the fence surrounding the CRO fort. It was hard to blow a fence like that, and he'd used a little too much of the C-4. Bits and pieces of what once had been trees and underbrush rained down on him.
He shouldered the Uzi he'd appropriated from a careless guard. A guard who'd have one hell of a headache when he finally woke up.
Jake moved silently through the darkness toward the factory—toward Zoe.
She was still in there. He prayed she was able to take advantage of the sudden explosions, of the power going out. But even if she wasn't, it didn't matter. Because he was going in after her.
Smoke alarms were wailing, and he could hear shouting, sounds of confusion from inside.
He hadn't used enough of the explosive to start a real fire, but the smoke and dust were thick. And the complete darkness had to be daunting to a group of people used to living under the constant scrutiny of bright spotlights.
Jake was nearly to the door of the building when he looked at the velvety blackness of the night sky.
It wasn't so much that he'd heard them or seen them. It was more that he'd sensed them.
And sure enough, it was his SEAL team, parachuting in, dropping out of the sky.
So much for blowing the hole in the fence to let them in.
The SEALs gathered their chutes as they landed, unhooking themselves, instantly armed, weapons locked and loaded.
Senior Chief Harvard Becker recognized Jake almost as quickly as Jake recognized Harvard.
"Sir. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." Jake had smeared himself with dirt in an attempt to cover the reflective paleness of his face as he'd crossed to the fence in the brightly lit yard. "But Zoe's still in there. I could use some help getting her out—and finding that damned Trip X, as well."
"Sir, the Trip X was intercepted by Lieutenant Jones and his men. Christopher Vincent tried to send it to New York tonight." The door to the building opened with a crash, and they all stepped further into the shadows. Bobby and Wes had joined them, as well as Billy, and two other men Jake recognized but didn't know—Joe Catalanotto and Blue McCoy, the Captain and XO of SEAL Team Ten's Alpha Squad. Harvard apparently didn't call just anyone for backup. And despite their higher rank, they were standing back and letting Billy and Harvard run this show.
"Jake, I think it would be really smart if we got you out of here right
now," Billy said.
"You better think again, kid, because I'm not leaving without Zoe."
Billy looked at Harvard, who shook his head very slightly. Bobby looked at his feet.
"You guys gonna help me help Zoe, or what?" Jake asked.
Silence. Complete, total silence.
Then Harvard put his hand on Jake's shoulder. And Jake realized Bobby Taylor was crying.
"Jake," Harvard said, his voice thick with emotion. "Zoe doesn't need our help anymore."
No. Jake knew what they were telling him, but he couldn't believe it. He looked at Billy and saw the awful truth echoed in the kid's eyes.
"She's dead," Billy said. "I'm sorry, Jake."
Chapter 19
Zoe was dead.
Jake stood there. Somehow he managed to stand there, to keep his knees from crumbling, to keep himself from folding into a ball of pain and anguish. "No," he said.
' 'Lucky saw that prick Vincent kill her. He shot her right before the power went down." Wes sounded strangled.
Zoe was dead.
Pain screamed through Jake, growing louder, stronger with every beat of his heart, with every ragged breath that he took. And as it grew, it changed. It boiled and churned and hardened and blackened, and it numbed him. It deadened him, and all the joy and the life that Zoe had breathed back into him with her laughter and brightness over the past few weeks dried up and skittered away like leaves in the cold winter wind.
Zoe was dead.
"Please, Jake," Harvard said again. "We've got what we came for. The Triple X has been recovered. It's time to move you to safety, sir."
Zoe's arm was on fire.
She sat on the floor of Christopher Vincent's inner office in the dim emergency light, bleeding onto the carpet, listening to the sound of the CRO guards pounding on the steel-reinforced door.
She'd surprised Vincent by rushing toward him rather than away right before he'd discharged his weapon. She'd dived for his feet, and he'd tried to compensate, but his bullet had only skimmed her.
It was just enough to make her bleed like crazy and hurt like hell.
But at least she wasn't dead.
And the pain was a good thing. She could use it to keep her focus—to keep herself from blacking out from that blow to the head he'd given her.
She crawled toward Christopher's desk on her hands and knees, afraid if she stood up, she'd fall over.
She searched the desks, hoping for some kind of weapon—a handgun, a switchblade, anything.
She found a book of matches and... She had no pockets. Damn, not wearing her jeans was so inconvenient. She tucked it into her bra, hoping she wouldn't inadvertently light herself on fire.
The door to the fabled inner chamber was still tightly locked, and she searched for a paper clip. She unfolded it and set to work on the lock.
Jake looked at the Uzi in his hands. "Does somebody have an M16 for me, or am I going to have to use this piece of crap?"
The captain finally cleared his throat and spoke. "Begging your pardon, Admiral—"
He looked into the man's compassionate brown eyes. "No," he said. "No, Captain, I'm not ready to be taken to safety. I suggest if you have further support available, you talk to them via radio and tell them about the hole I just blew in the fence. Remind them that there are women and children here. I need eyes open and brains working. No autopilot. The same goes for the rest of you. Because we're going in there. Our goals are twofold, gentlemen. We're going to apprehend Christopher Vincent. And we're going to recover Zoe's body. She was a member of this team, and SEALs don't leave teammates behind. Even when they're KIA."
Killed in action. Jake's voice shook. Even the numbness spreading through him couldn't keep him from hurting as he spoke the acronym he'd hated so passionately for so many years.
Zoe had loved him. A miracle had happened, and he'd been given a second chance to find happiness. She hadn't been Daisy, but no one was. No one could have replaced all that he'd had with Daisy. But in the exact same way, Daisy hadn't been Zoe. Zoe had touched parts of Jake's soul that Daisy would never have been able to reach even if their life together had lasted another thirty years.
There was no way really to compare, no contest as to which woman he had loved most, because although he had loved them both, he'd loved them differently.
And yet, when Zoe had offered him forever, he'd been too obsessed with doing the math. He was too old for her. When she turned fifty, he'd be seventy-four—if he even lived that long. It had seemed so absurd, and he couldn't understand why she would want that, why she would want him.
But he understood now. Because love didn't always make mathematical sense. And forever was completely relative. Zoe wasn't ever going to turn fifty now. Not ever. Her forever had been obscenely short.
And Jake had forsaken every opportunity in the far-too-briefness of their time together and hadn't even told her that he loved her.
He felt ancient as he looked into the still-young faces of his SEAL team. "I loved her," he said, his words far too little, far too late. "Who's going to help me bring her out?"
Bobby stepped forward, pulling a twelve-gauge shotgun from a holster he wore on his back. "Since you're taking the point, Admiral, you might want to carry this."
Admiral. When Bobby said it like that, it wasn't a title, it wasn't a rank. It was his old nickname from Nam.
Harvard nodded, his dark brown eyes deadly. "We're right behind you, Admiral. Lead the way."
Zoe found it.
The Triple X.
Behind the locked door to Vincent's inner chamber, inside a cheaply made safe.
It was no longer stored in the testing lab's metal canisters. Instead, someone had put the powder in old coffee cans. Here at the CRO compound, they'd replaced the Fol-gers crystals with the dried ingredients of a deadly nerve gas.
In the office, the door strained against the battering it was receiving from Vincent and his guards.
Zoe closed and locked the door to the inner chamber, and using all her Girl Scout training, she set about building a campfire in a small metal trash can right on top of Christopher Vincent's conference table.
She could only destroy half of the chemicals. There was no sprinkler system in this part of the factory, but the possibility of someone bursting in and spraying the fire with water and creating a massive amount of potent Trip X was not worth the risk.
She used single sheets of paper as kindling and twisted chunks of computer reports in place of wood.
She took the matchbook from her bra and lit the fire, waiting for it to really start burning before she added the A component of the Triple X.
She knew that the chemical would burn clean. The smoke would be nontoxic. But smoke didn't have to be toxic to kill.
This room had no windows and only the one door.
Already the smoke was chokingly thick.
She added the first coffee can of chemicals to the fire, then stayed low to the floor. She stayed as far away as she could from the flames, praying she'd have time to destroy all the chemicals before the smoke overcame her.
The fire alarm went off.
Jake and his team had just moved out of the stairwell and onto the fifth floor.
The noise was deafening—it came from one of those old-fashioned bells attached to the concrete block wall. It was good. It would mask their approach. No one would hear them coming.
There was one emergency light at the end of the hallway. It was old, with a bulb that sputtered and flickered, giving the impression that they were lit by leaping flames.
Welcome to hell.
Jake slowed as they moved closer to the door that led to Christopher Vincent's private suite of rooms. And when the door opened, he moved against the wall into the shadows. He didn't need to look behind him to know that Harvard and the rest of the team had disappeared, as well.
Christopher came striding out.
He was followed by his entourage of guards and lieutenants.
Jake stepped into the light, shotgun held high, finger heavy on the trigger. "I think you can probably leave the car in the garage for now, Reilly," he said, shouting over the noise of the alarm.
Christopher Vincent froze, but behind him, a half a dozen guards shouldered their weapons.
Jake didn't have to turn around to know that his SEALs were standing behind him, their weapons already locked and loaded. He could see them in the eyes of Vincent and his men.
"What do you think, Chris?" Jake shouted over the alarm. "My guess is we could have it out right here. Maybe some of your guys will get away, but you sure as hell won't. Do you know what a twelve-gauge can do to a man at ten feet?" Jake turned his head slightly without ever letting his eyes leave Vincent. "Hey, Bob, what you got in here? Double ought buckshot?"
"Five rounds of it." Bobby's deep bass voice had no problem cutting through the racket.
"One round'll do," Jake told the CRO leader. "Think of it as the equivalent of me firing, oh, about six or seven regular bullets all at the same place at the same time. It'll put a big hole in you, Chris. And while I'm looking forward to doing that, you may not be, in which case it would be really smart of you to tell your men to drop their weapons. Now."
Jake had played mind-game poker plenty in his career, but this was no bluff. He suspected Chris recognized the edge of insanity he saw in Jake's eyes.
"Do as they say," Christopher ordered his men.
Harvard took over, collecting their weapons, pushing the men onto the ground and searching them none too gently for anything they might be carrying concealed.
"Can someone shut that damn thing off?" Jake asked. His head was aching and his stomach hurt. Part of him wished Christopher Vincent hadn't given in. It didn't seem fair that he was still alive while Zoe...
He was going to have to go in there, into Vincent's quarters, and carry Zoe's lifeless body out of here.
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