by Cindy Dees
“Start talking,” Vanessa ordered quietly.
Quickly Aleesha relayed her exchange in the restaurant with Michael and her reasons for deciding to follow him. Her teammates didn’t comment until she concluded with repeating Viktor’s parting shot about sharing her among his men.
Vanessa leaned forward intently. “And you think this Viktor guy is the leader?”
“No doubt about it,” Aleesha replied.
Isabella piped up. “Give me a detailed physical description of him.”
Thanks to their training with a police sketch artist, Aleesha knew precisely how to describe Viktor’s appearance. A sketch artist in the TOC would translate her words into a picture for the SEALs to memorize. Ideally, the Medusas would get a photograph of him with one of their digital cameras to send to the TOC, but there was no guarantee that the guy would show himself again.
“What do you make of this Michael guy?” Misty asked her.
Aleesha shrugged. “I don’t know. He could be exactly who he says he is, a plant from British SIS. He could also be playing me to see if you guys exist. Maybe the hijackers saw us come aboard but didn’t get down here before we’d faded into hiding. Maybe this guy’s using me to spread the word among the passengers to draw out whoever boarded the ship.”
And if either of the latter scenarios was the case, they had a problem. Vanessa’s gaze met hers. Her boss had come to the very same conclusion.
Aleesha frowned. “If they’ve figured out we’re aboard, it’s not safe for us to show ourselves among the passengers anymore. We’ll have to do all our surveillance by stealth.”
“Which will slow us down,” Misty commented.
Isabella shrugged. “I can gather most of the data we need from the cameras. It’s just going to be a matter of waiting for all the hijackers to show themselves. It’ll make getting a head count on the kids tougher, too. I can only get a partial view of the kids’ adventure area, so I can’t get an exact figure for how many kids are in that room to know if they’re all there. They could have some of the kids stowed in an area the cameras don’t cover, like a large suite or a spa.”
Aleesha said slowly, “I ought to be able to move around the ship openly for at least a little while. They think I’m a passenger.”
Vanessa grinned. “Yeah, and they may kill you the next time they see you after you slapped their wrists.”
Aleesha grinned. “My grandmama temporarily possessed me.”
Vanessa laughed. “I like her style. Thing is, it puts you in the position of being the only Medusa exposed to these guys. All the risk lands on your shoulders.”
Aleesha shrugged said shoulders. “Sometimes that’s the way it goes. You and Isabella walked into that hospital in Bhoukar to rescue Jack because you spoke Arabic while the rest of us stayed behind.”
Karen spoke up. ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.”
“This may all be moot. He may truly have approached me with no greater intent than to get me in the sack. The SIS line could’ve just been a lie to impress me and win my sympathy.”
Vanessa looked at her keenly. “Is that really what you think?”
And there it was. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. What did she think of Michael and his cockamamie story about being a British undercover agent?
She took a deep breath and let her instincts guide her. “I think he’s for real. And I think the contact with him is worth pursuing. Obviously, we don’t go into it blind and we take every precaution in case he’s actually working with the hijackers to catch the Medusas. As soon as we can, we ask the TOC to verify his identity. In the meantime, I keep contact with him. My decision, my risk.”
“All for one, one for all,” Vanessa replied lightly.
Well, there was that. The Medusas sank or swam as a team. If one of them took a risk, all of them felt like the risk was their own. They were more than a team. More than a family. They worked as one.
“I’m sure about this,” Aleesha insisted. “I can do it.” She glanced over at the TV monitor behind Isabella. It was trained on the children, settling down for bed. A faint sound of muffled sobs was audible over the feed. Oh, yeah. She could do this for sure.
Vanessa’s shoulders relaxed. Hallelujah. Her boss had made a decision. And from the worried wrinkle to her brow, she was going to let Aleesha have a go at playing out Michael Somerset.
Misty commented into the silence, “Well, if it’s a setup, they sure picked a hottie to approach you with.”
The others grinned in agreement. Now that they’d reached a consensus about how to proceed, they would all work together to make it happen in the safest, most effective way.
Aleesha asked Vanessa, “How do you want me to play this? Do you want me to approach him or let him come to me? If he’s legit, he’ll have to make contact again.”
Vanessa frowned. “Even if he’s trying to use you to draw out the team, he’ll have to make contact again.”
“Then why did he throw me out of his room like that? Why didn’t Viktor go along with the ploy to get close to me or at least stay the hell out of the room until Michael was done talking to me?”
Isabella piped up. “Maybe this Michael guy is telling the truth. Or maybe Michael was on duty when we came aboard and he’s frantically trying to cover his ass and catch us before Viktor finds out about his failure.”
Aleesha thought back. “He didn’t seem afraid of Viktor.”
Vanessa snorted. “You show fear to a predator like this Viktor character, and he’ll eat you alive. Which leads us back to the question of how you should play this.”
Working through possibilities, Aleesha said, “If he’s going to contact me again, he won’t be able to do it in a public way like he did before. Viktor was clear that Michael shouldn’t mess around with any of the passengers. He’ll have to come to me in a private place, like a stateroom.”
Misty nodded. “So, we find an empty room, wire the hell out of it, put a couple of us next door for backup, and we make it known to Mr. Hottie where you can be found.”
It sounded simple enough. Except she had a sinking feeling this would turn out to be anything but simple before it was all said and done.
Isabella spoke up, interrupting Aleesha’s thoughts as she planned her strategy for a next meeting with the mysterious Mr. Somerset. “We’ve got a check-in with the TOC in two minutes. I’d suggest you make the call, Aleesha. Wittenauer about popped a gasket when I made my last report that you’d disappeared with one of the hijackers.”
She winced. Oh, boy. The old man was not going to be a happy camper after sitting on that information for the past four hours. She sighed and nodded at her teammate.
Isabella reached for the radio. “I’ll make the patch.”
Aleesha waited while Isabella dialed in the next secure frequency from a list on a one-time-use pad. The intelligence analyst checked the freq, and only when she was sure it was clean did she pass Aleesha a pair of clamshell earphones.
“Go ahead, girlfriend,” Isabella murmured. “And good luck.”
Yeah, right. Aleesha took a deep breath.
Bud Lipton’s front chair legs slammed to the floor and he pointed up at the window where Jack stood beside the general. Jack glanced up at the big wall clock. Well, his girls were punctual, at any rate. Their call was on time to the second. A good sign. Teams under duress didn’t have the luxury of operating with such exactitude. They’d call in whenever they could. Jack reached over to a wall switch and turned on the speakers, piping the radio call into the briefing room.
“Hey, Romeo, this is Juliet.”
That was Aleesha’s voice. Thank God. An unfamiliar weakness in his knees surprised him. Lord, he hated this behind-the-scenes command crap. Give him a gun and a team any day of the week over this nail biting. “That’s Mamba herself,” he murmured to Wittenauer.
“Where ya been?” Lipton asked casually. “Your old man was worried.”
A light laugh from Aleesha. “The floc
k of mother hens wasn’t too happy, either.”
A green light went on in the console, indicating that the frequency was still clear, even after their test transmissions. “Line’s clear. Report,” Lipton snapped. “And this had better be good.”
Aleesha answered briskly, “One of the hijackers approached me. Said his name is Michael Somerset and he’s British SIS under deep cover with the hijackers. I need that verified ASAP, by the way. He says he wants to use me as a conduit to the passengers to relay a message that he’s going to try to reclaim control of the ship and they should sit tight. This guy could be for real or he could be a plant by the Tangos to draw out whoever boarded the ship last night. I don’t believe he has any idea who I am.”
Wittenauer lurched and Jack gaped. SIS? Well, that would be a hell of a development. He gestured to one of the techs in the pit below, holding his hand to his ear, mimicking a phone call. The tech nodded and dialed what was undoubtedly British Intelligence.
Aleesha continued, “We’re going to play out the contact for now. I’ll do it alone with the team backing me up. If he’s who he says he is, the inside information we could get would be invaluable.”
No kidding. Reliable insiders were, bar none, the best source of real-time intelligence data a Special Ops team could hope for. It was risky though. Damned risky. The general shook his head in the negative, running a finger across his throat. Wittenauer wasn’t going to let the women do it.
“Speaking of which, I met the leader of the whole shooting match. Calls himself Viktor and has a French accent.” She then rattled off a perfect description of the guy. Even without a sketch artist translating her words to a picture, Jack could see what the guy looked like as clear as a bell. The SEALs who would infiltrate the ship would memorize her description and keep a special eye out for him.
Even Lipton couldn’t help but give a positive response. “I copy. Good work.”
Jack lifted the receiver off the telephone hanging on the wall beside him and transmitted over the frequency, “Stand by for a minute, Mamba.”
“That you, Scat?” Aleesha retorted, clearly surprised.
“Yo. Hold on a sec.”
The general glared at Jack. “Don’t even think about it. They’re on their first mission, dammit. They’re no way, no how, ready to infiltrate some terrorist outfit. Not with the stakes this high.”
“Then when, sir?” Jack asked with quiet intensity. “When is there ever going to be a mission where the stakes aren’t high, where the Medusas can get field experience without exposing themselves and innocents to risk? You either trust the fact that I trained them properly to do their job or I didn’t.”
“This isn’t about you, Jack. Every last one of them is untried. They’re babes in the woods!”
Jack snapped back, “Go ahead and say it, sir. They’re women.”
“Don’t give me that crap, Jack. I went to bat for them. If I hadn’t backed them, there wouldn’t be a Medusa team today.”
“Then let them do their job. You didn’t create them to sit on a shelf and look pretty while the real world passed them by. You sent them in to do this job. So let them do it—their way. You and I both know missions always go to hell when the desk jockeys try to run the op. If Mamba wants to play this guy, then let her. It’s her neck on the line. Not yours.”
Wittenauer scowled. “No, it’s only my stars on the line.”
Jack shrugged. “What’s a little tin compared to all those women and kids on the Grand Adventure?”
Wittenauer swore under his breath. “All right, dammit.”
Jack squeezed the bar on the underside of the phone receiver that activated transmission. “You’re green-lighted to make the play, Mamba.”
Lipton’s head whipped around below, looking up in disbelief at him and the general through the window. Another closet chauvinist showing his stripes. Didn’t think the girls could pull it off, huh?
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” Aleesha retorted dryly, her voice crackling a bit over the radio.
Jack grinned. “Go git ’em and give my best to Viper.”
“Roger, lover boy.”
Chapter 12
Aleesha fidgeted on the couch in the dark. Waves broke against the ship’s hull, the only sound interrupting the deep silence of the ship. The rhythm of the sea was seductive, luring her toward sleep as minutes stretched into hours. The sleep-deprivation exercises Jack had put the Medusas through early in their training suddenly made sense as she sat there fighting off an urge to doze.
She had no way of knowing if Michael knew or cared where she was. She’d worn a brilliant red dress to supper that even a blind man could’ve seen. Michael didn’t make an appearance at the meal, but hopefully he spotted her, either in person or on the ship’s security cameras, as she strolled around the ship afterward. He’d better have spotted her, darn it. She’d hiked the whole ship in high heels in the name of being seen. She’d waited until the last minute to go into the empty stateroom the Medusas had wired for this meeting, and had made absolutely sure one of the hijackers saw her enter it. The TOC had checked the ship’s manifest and found this room one deck down from Michael’s suite and conveniently near the elevators. She’d used her master key to get in. If Michael didn’t know where to find her now, it was because he didn’t want to know.
Midnight came and went with no sign of him. Doubt began to creep into her thoughts. Had she been wrong? Was his story about being British SIS a ruse after all? As the night stretched on, her doubts intensified.
She jerked to full combat alert a little after 2:00 a.m. That was a noise outside the door! She moved fast off the couch, leaping into the open closet just inside the door. She eased out of her high-heeled shoes in the cramped space, balancing lightly on the bare balls of her feet. She wasn’t about to break her neck trying to subdue an intruder in heels. It might work on television, but not in the real world.
The door eased open a few inches, then it flew open fully. A tall, male form slipped inside quickly and closed the door fast and silently behind himself.
Aleesha jumped him from behind, her arm around his neck in a crushing hold that should have cut off his wind. The man grunted in surprise, then dropped to the ground, dragging her with him. He rolled over on his back, slamming her into the wall in the narrow confines of the stateroom. She let go, jumping clear of his attempt to trap her beneath his body weight, then she pounced on him, her forearm planted on his throat. He grabbed her fist and twisted, forcing her chest down over his face. Dang, he was fast. Strong, too.
Rather than try to brute force him, she would have to subdue him with superior skill. As he continued to twist her arm, she went with the movement, burying his face in her chest while she rolled around to the top of his head. Enough of this crap! She grabbed his ear with her free hand and gave it a vicious twist. He sucked air sharply between his teeth and after a moment, let go of her fisted hand. She took advantage of his momentary weakness, tucked her shoulder, and executed a partial somersault to land squarely in the middle of his chest. With a whoomp of expelled breath he went still beneath her.
Her hands went around his throat, but as he continued to lie there quiescent, she refrained from choking him unconscious. Damn, that had been close. Another few seconds and he’d have had her. She kept her hands around his throat just in case. No sense underestimating his willingness to fight dirty. She panted hard, still catching her breath. Now what was she going to do with him?
Without warning, he began to shake beneath her hands and between her knees. The bastard was laughing again! She peered down closely at him, finally able to make out his features in the dark. Michael.
Between gasps of silent laughter he choked out, “Uncle.”
She let go of his throat and sat upright in disgust, planting her buttocks on his stomach. She panted hard after their wrestling match. Jerk. He’d given her all the fight she could handle and now he was laughing at her. Was that his idea of a fun date or something? She doubted she
’d catch him off guard like that again, and surely the next time he wouldn’t underestimate her skill. She might have taken him this time, but she wouldn’t want to bet her next paycheck on doing so again.
“Any chance you can get off me so we can talk, or are you the type of woman who likes to dominate her men?”
She scowled down at him. “A, you’re not my man. And B, I have no interest in any man I can push around.”
Damned if his eyes didn’t glint up at her in amusement. “Thanks for the dating tip.”
He wished. She pushed to her feet and offered a hand to him in silence. He took it, and as she tugged him to his feet she warned, “Don’t make me regret seeing you again.” He was a heavy man for the lean profile he cut. Densely muscled, then. Fit. But she already knew that from the fight he’d just given her.
He continued to grip her hand, pulling her disturbingly close to his big, warm body. He murmured, “You couldn’t hide from me if you tried. I can find you anywhere on the ship, even without the red dress and the sexy sashay in front of the cameras.”
She glared into the black caverns of his eye sockets. “Wanna bet?”
“Exercise class is over. It’s time for you to uphold your end of the deal.”
“What deal?” she retorted.
“The one where you tell me who you really are. I just spent all evening going through the ship’s passenger database. Funny thing, but it includes the bitmap of the ID photo of every passenger ID card.”
Her stomach sank. She knew what was coming. She prepared her muscles to attack again, to subdue this guy long enough so she could get away.
“And, lady, you’re not a passenger or crew member of this ship.”
She stared at him in silence. What could she say? If she claimed it was a mistake, he’d know she was lying. She tried to waylay him by saying, “Maybe I be a mermaid?” in her sexiest Jamaican accent.
He ignored the comment and continued, his voice low and urgent. “You came aboard last night, didn’t you? How many of you are there? Are you SEALs? Delta Force? Please tell me you brought enough firepower to knock these bastards out.”