by Cindy Dees
A receiver was duly handed to him, and his senior aide’s voice came across the line. “Scatalone, here. What can I do for you, sir?”
“Get your ass down here to Florida and get control of your team, dammit.”
Alarm vibrated in Scat’s voice. “What’s happened?”
“Just get down here,” Wittenauer retorted.
“I’ll be there in—” a short pause “—four hours.”
“Get over to Andrews, pull rank and make it three hours.”
“Uh, okay. Three hours it is, sir.”
Wittenauer set the receiver down in the cradle. “God damn it,” he growled. And resumed pacing.
Gorgeous George walked down a long passageway ahead of Aleesha toward the high-rent suites. She followed at a distance, in some disbelief that she was actually doing this. Not once did he check over his shoulder to see if she was following him. Either he was supremely confident or a trained pro. But what kind of pro? Ex-military? A professional terrorist? Had he come out of some secret camp that one of the big terror networks ran? Fastest way to find out was to keep walking down this hall.
He turned right, ducking into a room without warning. Her steps slowed and she approached with caution. It took every ounce of discipline she had, but she looked straight ahead as she drew level with the door. To stop or not to stop? Go. Stop. Curiosity warred with common sense.
She jumped as the door burst open beside her. “In here.”
What in the world was he up to? She’d come this far—she might as well see it through. She swerved and stepped quickly through the portal. She’d probably just given Isabella heart failure. For, surely, her teammate had been watching her on the ship’s cameras.
A pair of strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders, shoving her against the door at her back.
Multiple impressions assailed her at once. Hands as powerful and competent as she’d expected, but he was restraining her without hurting her. And his hard gaze swam with urgency.
She replied evenly, “What do you want from me?”
His answer made her blood run cold. “I need you to get word out to the other passengers not to try anything stupid. Help is on the way.”
Help was on the way? Had he seen them board the ship?
Holy shit! Then why were the Medusas still alive? Why hadn’t the Tangos attacked her team the minute they set foot on the ship? If the hijackers knew the Medusas were aboard the Grand Adventure, why wasn’t an all-out search underway? What game were these guys playing? It was insane for hijackers to knowingly let a counterterrorism team infiltrate their hostage population. Surely she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. The very fact that she was alive meant he couldn’t be talking about the Medusas. What then? What did he mean?
“We don’t have much time.”
No kidding. He started to drag her away from the door, but she’d had enough. She reached inside his grip on her shoulders with both of her fists and gave his elbows a good pop. With a grunt, he let go, but lightning fast, his leg whipped out, knocking her feet out from under her. She went down hard, twisting to land on her left side. She rolled into his shins, trapping his feet beneath her. She kept rolling into him and returned the favor, planting him on his butt. Following him as he went down, she leaped on top of him. Pure suicide. This guy was big and strong, and if he had the kind of training she thought he did, she was going to have a hell of a time subduing him. Nonetheless, she straddled his chest, planting her knees on his upper arms, preparing to fight for her life.
He stared up at her in shock and began to shake beneath her.
She tensed, waiting for him to try to throw her off. Nothing happened. More shaking. She blinked, staring down at him in shock. He was laughing at her. Laughing!
“What’s so damned funny?” she demanded.
A grin broke across his face. “Nice takedown,” he commented. “And here I was thinking you passengers needed help. My mistake.”
His mistake, indeed. Might as well capitalize on being on top. “Who are you?”
Her challenge wiped the grin off his face. “Let me up.”
“You can talk right here,” she replied coolly.
He shrugged beneath her thighs, and she was abruptly aware of the fact that she was sitting on this guy’s chest in a rather suggestive pose. And all of a sudden the bastard seemed prepared to sit back and enjoy the view. Eyes narrowed, she glared at him.
She saw the moment when he yanked his mind back to business and his features settled into grim lines, more appropriate to the situation around them.
“I propose a trade,” he answered back, as cool as she’d been a moment before.
“What sort of trade?”
“You tell me where you learned to fight like that, and I’ll tell you who I am.”
Her eyebrows shot up. This was too easy. So easy her gut rumbled in suspicion. “I had brothers. Lots of them. I learned to fight as a matter of survival.” It was a lie, of course, but then, he wouldn’t be telling her the truth, either.
“My name is Michael Somerset. I’m British SIS, and I’ve spent the last couple of years infiltrating the terrorist group that just took over this ship. I need the passengers to stay calm until I can figure out some way to regain control of the ship.”
Aleesha stared. Oh. My. God.
Reactions to his announcement crowded into her brain almost too fast to process. Disbelief. Elation. Caution. This guy was undercover SIS? If that was true, they could blow this thing wide open. An insider who could report on the hijackers’ plans and goals before they acted on them?
But what if he was lying? What if the hijackers saw the Medusas come aboard, but not soon enough to intercept them before they went to ground in the maze of crew cabins? Was this a ploy to get an operator they’d spotted to lead them to the rest? Was this guy trying to use her to set up the rest of the Medusas? How in the world had he figured out she was one of the infiltrators? Or did he know that? Was he guessing because she’d volunteered to bring the food to the terrorists? Or was he using her to spread word among the passengers of his identity in hopes that it would reach the ears of whoever’d boarded the ship last night?
Her head was beginning to ache with all the permutations and possibilities.
Aloud she asked, “Why me? Why are you telling me this?”
“Some of my…colleagues…are known racists. You’re—” Another pause.
She filled in, “Not Caucasian.”
He smiled briefly. “Right. Not Caucasian. And, therefore, necessarily not the female terrorist I happen to know is hiding among the passengers.”
Son of a gun.
She rocked back on her heels, her fanny coming into solid contact with rippling abs of steel. Good Lord, she was still sitting on top of the guy. Startled, she jumped up, stepping away from him as she did so. He climbed smoothly to his feet, tall, powerful and disturbingly close. She looked up at him and was jolted a second time by the intensity in his dark gaze.
She opened her mouth to speak. “I—”
The door opened behind her, rattling as it hit the chain holding it shut.
“What the hell is this, Michael? Are you all right? Paulo radioed down from the bridge that you might be in trouble.”
Her companion cursed viciously under his breath and grabbed her by the arm. Moving at the speed of light, he shoved her into the suite’s bedroom and whipped the door shut behind her. Through the panel, she heard him snap, “Take it easy, Viktor. I’m coming.”
She looked around the bedroom hastily for a place to hide. Nada. The closet was crammed with weapons and gear. The bed was platform-style with drawers beneath it. No sofa to hide behind—the furniture was built into the walls.
The same French-accented voice that had called through the hallway door spoke from inside the suite this time. “Why the hell did you lock the door? What are you up to, my old friend?”
She didn’t like the sound of that. The silky menace in the guy’s voice as he called Michael “old fri
end” made the hackles on the back of her neck stand straight up. Damn. The Frenchman was bound to search the suite. And she was a sitting duck in here, trapped with no place to hide.
“What’s this?” the French voice asked. “Your bedroom door is closed. Are you perchance hiding something from me?”
Shit. She was out of time and out of options. She yanked her polo shirt and bra off over her head and tore back the covers, leaping between the sheets just as the door opened.
Chapter 11
Jack walked into the perpetual twilight of the TOC in Miami three hours and forty minutes after he’d hung up with General Wittenauer. He’d failed to meet the general’s demand to be there in three hours, but all in all, it was remarkable that he’d managed to haul ass down here so fast. A C-21—a speedy Lear jet—on alert at Andrews had been scrambled to fly him to Homestead, and the crew had done yeoman’s duty getting him here as quickly as humanly possible.
Wittenauer was visible through a glass wall, sitting in a conference room eating a sandwich. He gestured for Jack to join him as soon as they made eye contact with each other. Jack had spent the entire flight trying to figure out what in the hell his girls had done to make the old man so mad. Thing was, he wasn’t entirely sure his boss was angry. He thought he might have detected a faint note of fear in Wittenauer’s voice. And that made Jack’s blood run cold. The woman he loved was out there on that ship, her neck on the line.
Definitely the downside of being involved with Vanessa Blake. Sometimes it was possible to know too much about your loved one’s work. She’d confessed to sweating bullets whenever he was out on an op and in harm’s way, too.
As he stepped into the room, Wittenauer told him quietly, “Close the door.”
Crap. Not good. If Wittenauer was only irritated, he’d be bellowing like a bull moose. But when the general was well and truly ticked off, he got quiet. Like this.
Jack sat down at the table across from the general. “What did they do?” he asked heavily. No reason to pussyfoot around.
“They were in the ship’s restaurant at dinner observing the hijackers. Out of the blue, Aleesha Gautier strolled out of the room—alone—with one of the terrorists, apparently completely of her own free will.”
Jack’s brows slammed together. “She damn well knows it’s against standard procedure to make direct contact with Tangos on a surveillance op. If she did something like that, I guarantee she had a hell of a good reason for doing it. Has she reported in yet?”
Wittenauer glanced up at the bank of clocks on the wall. “Nope. They’re reporting in every four hours. Last we heard, she’d just ducked into a suite on Deck 9 with one of the hijackers and was out of contact with her team. I couldn’t tell you if she’s alive right now or if she’s blown this op completely out of the water. The Medusas are due to check in with us in under an hour. Assuming they haven’t all been rounded up and shot.”
He ran a hand over his face and set aside the panic threatening to erupt in his gut. His brain went into hyperdrive, listing possible scenarios and their likely outcomes.
“Walk me through your thoughts, Jack,” the general ordered.
He complied, saying, “We’ve got to assume she had a good reason for going with this guy. If that’s the case, there’s a decent chance she’ll come out of that suite alive. And believe me, if some terrorist tries to go one-on-one against Aleesha, she’ll kick his ass. She’s a hell of an unarmed combat specialist.” All of the Medusas were. He’d made sure of that during their training. Nobody would expect it of them, and it would give them a huge leg up on staying alive in a crisis like this.
He continued, “We have every reason to believe this will turn out okay. I suggest we not draw any conclusions until the next report comes in.”
Aleesha had to have a good reason for doing something so risky. Not that he could begin to fathom what it might be. The doctor was usually the soul of common sense. It wasn’t her style to flake out like this.
Wittenauer pushed a plate of sandwiches across the table, and, with a sigh, Jack picked up a club sandwich on soggy toast. He wasn’t worth a damn at waiting while his teams were out in the field, Vanessa or not.
Aleesha gasped as a lean, dark man burst into the bedroom with Michael close on his heels. Viktor, Michael had called him. His eyes glowed with the feral intensity of a zealot, and menace radiated from him. Without a doubt, she was looking at the leader of the hijackers, its mastermind and driving force. She let fear shine in her eyes and clutched the sheet over her bosom.
“Who is this?” the Frenchman demanded—for surely that was a French accent if she’d ever heard one. Sexual interest flared in the guy’s eyes as his gaze dropped to her barely covered chest. Bastard.
“A little extracurricular relaxation,” Michael answered smoothly.
Why he was covering for her, she had no idea, but she nodded fearfully in agreement with Michael’s words. Might as well play on the Frenchman’s sense of colonial imperialism. He probably viewed island natives like her as little better than slave material. It rankled to play up to that sort of prejudice, but if it kept her alive, she was all for marginalizing herself.
“We don’t have time for this,” Viktor snapped. “We’re supposed to be having a meeting in ten minutes. Get her out of here. Now.”
She looked at Michael, and he jerked his head at the door. “Get out,” he ordered roughly.
When neither man made a move to give her privacy to dress, she stood up, dragging the sheet with her. Holding the bedclothes against her chest, she bent over, picked up her clothing and headed for the door. She was forced to step between the two men, neither of whom bothered to make room for her. She turned sideways to pass between them, and Michael’s hand cupped her rear end, squeezing painfully. Her gaze snapped to his. Nothing but hard disdain glittered in his black eyes.
With her back turned to the men, she stepped into the living room. And stopped cold. Eight! Count them—eight terrorists stood there, staring at her as if they’d never seen a woman before.
“Good evenin’, gentlemen,” she said evenly, falling into a heavy, lilting, Jamaican accent.
They nodded, apparently too stunned to speak after finding Somerset, or whatever his name was, in bed with a woman. Her head held high, she dragged her sheet to the bathroom as if it was a royal wedding gown. Once inside, she dropped the sheet and shrugged into her clothes quickly. Now what was she supposed to do? Wish them all a good night and walk out? She opened the door and marched into the room. At least she had the presence of mind to make mental images of all the faces and physical descriptions for Isabella.
“Nice piece of ass,” Viktor commented behind her. “After this is all over we should take turns with her.”
She froze in her tracks. No man was going to talk about her like that and get away with it! Her grandmama always said if you once tolerated bad behavior from a man, you gave up the right to complain the next time it happened. She pivoted slowly, just in time to see Michael shrug. “I don’t fuck used goods,” he remarked. “If you want her, you can have her. I’ll get myself another one.”
Letting her indignance flow freely, she drew herself up to her full height and planted her hands reprovingly on her hips. In her best brogue she exclaimed, “Gentlemen! What would your mothers say if dey heard you speak aboot a lady dat way?” She shook a finger at Michael and Viktor. “Shame on both of you. Now you two eat your supper and keep a civil tongue in your heads.” With a head toss for good measure, she turned around and sailed out.
She stepped out into the hall and closed the door firmly. Then she blinked. And then she nearly threw up! Had she just told off a roomful of armed hijackers? How in the world had she gotten away with that? Her intent had only been to brazen her way out of there, not dare them to kill her!
She moved away from the suite quickly, lest they reconsider and drag her back in to “share” now. Vividly aware of the security cameras overhead, she dared not return to the Medusas’ room right away
. She moved through the ship and found herself on the promenade deck. She sat on a deck chair there for nearly an hour, shivering in delayed shock, until the evening curfew went into effect.
Who was Michael Somerset? Why had he made excuses for her presence to that Viktor guy? Was he really an SIS agent? Was it possible? He’d certainly been polite to her and hadn’t hurt her in the fight when he certainly could have. He seemed sincere.
And she was a trained professional. She should be able to set aside her feelings and analyze the operational situation!
A good enough actor could seem saintly. How long would it take the TOC to confirm this guy’s story? And in the meantime, did she dare continue having contact with him or should she break it off now? Was the potential inside information worth the risk? She could talk to her teammates about it, or even to Lipton and company at the Tactical Ops Center. But at the end of the day, she was the only person with firsthand exposure to Michael. It would boil down to her call until the SIS verified this guy’s claim.
The wind was heavy with moisture this evening, gusting fiercely, a harbinger of things to come. The storm, which was now a hurricane, was getting closer by the minute. Last report before they came aboard the Grand Adventure, was that it would affect these waters in about seventy-two hours and hit for real in four to five days. The Medusas were supposed to finish their surveillance in time for the SEALs to make the rescue before the storm hit. The clock was ticking.
She fell into the dejected crowd of women headed to their cabins for the evening lockdown and made her own way down to the crew deck. Several other female crew members were headed down the hall to their rooms, and she followed them into the narrow corridor. She knocked quietly on the door to the Medusas’ impromptu headquarters. It opened immediately and she stepped inside. The entire team was there. They were staring at her expectantly.
All Vanessa said was, “And?”
“And, I think I just made our job a whole lot easier,” she replied. The tension in the room dropped instantly at the reassurance that she’d actually had a good reason for doing what she had.