by Cindy Dees
“I’m asking whichever opinion you’re planning to act upon.”
She dropped her head and closed her eyes. “As desperately as I’d love to spend the rest of the night making love with you—”
Lips touched her forehead, silencing her. His kiss was gentle. Soothing. Absolved her of guilt. He followed up by saying, “One of the things I find most attractive about you is your strength. Don’t change. The right time for us will come along.”
She groaned and pulled away from him, flinging an arm over her face. “I am such an idiot,” she mumbled into the crook of her elbow.
A quiet chuckle from beside her. “You’re a lot of things, but an idiot is not one of them.” He paused. “But it is nice to know I won’t be the only one having trouble sleeping tonight.”
His forecast turned out to be true. In the wee hours he walked her back to her room where she tossed and turned. And when she finally did sleep, her dreams were steamy and sexual, robbing her of any decent rest.
When she awoke in the morning, Aleesha headed for the unofficial Medusa command post and was relieved to find the whole team there and awake as she slipped into the crowded room.
Vanessa looked at her closely. “Sleeping with the enemy now, are we?”
Aleesha pursed her lips. “Sleeping being the operative word. Michael had me brought up to his room last night. We were talking and then Viktor walked in, so I ducked into Michael’s bedroom for a couple of hours—” she added for emphasis, “fully clothed.”
Vanessa nodded shortly, taking her at her word. Thank God. “Learn anything interesting?”
“Yeah. Viktor’s taking this ship to Guantánamo and picking up all the terrorists being detained down there.”
Vanessa jolted. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Straight from the horse’s mouth. Michael and Viktor were talking about it.”
Vanessa looked slightly shell-shocked. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Cultivating Michael was a great idea. Any other bombs to drop on me?”
“Well, Viktor’s wife is aboard, she’s not the twenty-fourth terrorist and Viktor most likely hates her guts.”
Vanessa frowned. “We probably ought to find her. See if she can tell us anything useful about Viktor.”
“She may still be loyal to him,” Aleesha warned.
“True, but I still think it’s worth the risk.” Vanessa turned to Isabella. “Can you ask your network of maids to find her?”
Isabella nodded. Then the intelligence analyst turned a piercing look on Aleesha. “Are you okay? You’re spending an awful lot of time with the hijackers.”
“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Isabella replied, “You going to be all right with shooting them when the time comes? No sympathy pains?”
She frowned. Funny that her teammates were bringing that up so soon after Michael had talked to her about the very same thing. Were they seeing something that she wasn’t? Was she getting too close emotionally to the terrorists? Sure, the hijackers had taken on personalities and distinct identities in her head. And no, they wouldn’t be total strangers when it came time to kill them. But they were terrorists. Threatening to kill children. Hadn’t she just argued with Michael last night that he’d done the right thing to think of the kids first, even if it meant letting the ship’s officers be killed? Surely if he could do that, she could pull the trigger against the people who would actually kill the children if properly provoked.
Belatedly she answered Isabella. “Well, I’m sympathetic to Michael, of course. But I could kill the others.” Probably. No. Make that definitely. She could absolutely kill the others if she had to. Man, she’d done it this time. She was in big trouble. She gave up a silent prayer that it would never fall to her to pull the trigger. Thankfully, that wasn’t part of the plan.
Vanessa cleared her throat. “Speaking of Michael, we’ve got some news about him.”
Aleesha asked eagerly, “Did the Brits confirm his identity?”
“Yes, they did.”
Hallelujah. Now she could speak and plan openly with him as the rescue drew near. That would make her life so much easier.
“But there’s a problem,” Vanessa continued.
Aleesha watched her boss carefully. That was Vanessa’s “your dog has died” face. Crud. She waited for her boss to continue with whatever bad news she was about to impart.
“Michael Somerset was British SIS. But he’s not now. His employment with them was terminated.”
She felt like Vanessa had just punched her in the stomach. “When?” she managed to choke out.
“Two years ago. The Brits didn’t give us the details. Something about not following procedures. He was given the ax.”
The punks he’d killed. It must be. And the timing was right. But then, something odd occurred to her. She asked slowly, “This may sound stupid, but does Michael know he’s been terminated?”
Vanessa frowned. “I’m sure he must.”
Aleesha disagreed. “I’m not so sure. He told me he’s been in deep cover for two years. He hasn’t had contact with anybody at SIS except through one-way dead drops.”
Vanessa said slowly, “I think you should break off contact with him.”
Aleesha jolted. No way! “That makes no sense! I’ve cultivated him thoroughly. You just said yourself how useful he’s been. He’s doing whatever I ask him to and nothing he’s told us has proven inaccurate.”
“You’re not thinking objectively,” Vanessa retorted.
Aleesha rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t take objectivity to know this guy can still be helpful.” An ugly sensation rolled through her gut and she took a moment to identify it. Desperation. Oh, dear. She sighed. “Okay, I admit that I’m too close to this guy to make a completely objective call. But dammit, he’ll help us. I know it as sure as I’m standing here.”
Vanessa stared at her for a long time and Aleesha stared back, miserable.
Finally her boss spoke. “I’m going to catch a ration of crap over this, but my gut says he’ll help us, too. Don’t tell him he has been terminated. Let him continue to think he’s one of the good guys.”
Aleesha replied quietly, “He is one of the good guys. He’s doing his damnedest to keep those kids alive.”
“Right,” Vanessa shrugged. “Just watch your six. It’s still possible he’s setting you up.”
No, it wasn’t. They’d just spent half the night in each other’s arms. Sharing comfort. Sharing trust. And it hadn’t been about sex. It was about two human beings connecting in an elemental way. He was fine. She knew it, dammit! But the harder she tried to convince herself of that, the more uneasy her gut became.
Jack looked up from the schematic of the Grand Adventure as someone across the ops center called out his name. Now what? This place had been a complete zoo ever since Isabella had radioed in Aleesha’s latest report that the hijackers were heading for Guantánamo and its prison with the intent to empty the joint. JSOC was frantically adjusting the timetable on the rescue plan. A thousand more terrorists could not be allowed to board that ship. They’d never rescue the remaining hostages alive if that happened!
“Colonel Scatalone, it’s the Adventure Cruise Line calling. They need to speak to you.”
He picked up the phone at his elbow and nodded at the duty controller to send the call over to him. The receiver clicked.
“Colonel Scatalone here,” he said.
“Hello, this is Les Lewis. I just got a call from the harbormaster in St. Thomas. He wants to know why the Grand Adventure missed its port call there. Apparently, the local merchants get annoyed when a big ship doesn’t show up.”
“What did you tell the guy?” Jack asked tersely. General Wittenauer had specifically instructed the cruise company’s executives not to reveal to anyone that the ship had been hijacked.
“I told him we rerouted the ship to avoid Hurricane Evangeline.”
“Good thinking. Did he buy it?”
“He griped about
the hurricane passing well north of the Virgin Islands and that the Grand Adventure was plenty clear of it. I told him the captain was trying to avoid rough seas and didn’t want to sail into the eastern Caribbean.”
“Well done. If somebody like that calls you again, tell him you’ll forward the call to the right person in the company, and send them to me.” The longer the Grand Adventure was missing in action, the more strident those phone calls were going to get. In three more days, when the Grand Adventure failed to return to its home port and let off its passengers, the jig would be up. But until then, silence was an enormous ally. The last thing he needed was a flotilla of paparazzi lurking around the Grand Adventure in floating bathtubs trying to get a scoop and giving away what his teams were doing to the hijackers.
All five SEAL teams should have arrived onboard the tack force of Navy ships that was trailing the Grand Adventure. They’d finalized the last details of the plan last night based on the intel from the Medusas. The Medusas would have twenty-four hours to put the last pieces of the support puzzle into place, and then the rescue would commence.
Chapter 15
Late that afternoon, Aleesha was escorting the last reluctant group of mothers out of the kids’ area after their fifteen-minute visits when a maid sidled up to her in the hallway. “Viper needs you now.”
The maid moved off, pushing a cleaning cart down the hall.
Viper, huh? What was enough of an emergency to make Vanessa send a message through the underground network of crew members? With Viktor’s wife still unaccounted for, it was a huge risk. Aleesha nodded at the surly hijackers who’d over-seen the mother-child visits. They’d scowled over the entire proceeding, obviously convinced it was a bad idea to let the moms and kids see each other. But, as she’d forecast, the visits had been hugely therapeutic to both groups of hostages.
One of the hijackers, an American, actually nodded back at her. Son of a gun. Even the nasty Americans were thawing toward her.
She strolled nonchalantly out of the kids’ area and headed downstairs toward the crew quarters, carefully refraining from breaking into a sprint to more quickly find out what was so blessed important. Thankfully, over the last day the hijackers had relaxed the restrictions on movement around the ship, and the hostages had settled into a cooperative, yet passive, routine. Studiously ignoring the security cameras overhead, she slipped into the Medusas’ headquarters. All of the team’s other members were there.
“What’s up?” she asked. “I came as soon as I got your message.”
“We just got off the horn with the TOC. The rescue timetable has been moved up. We’ve got to take the ship back before it gets to Cuba and picks up a thousand more terrorists.”
No kidding.
Vanessa continued, “All the SEAL rescue teams are in place and they’ll come aboard as soon we finish a few final preparations.”
Aleesha added dryly, “And then, of course, there’s the small matter of the hurricane that’s bearing down on us.” She knew she was on a hell of an op if the imminent arrival of a hurricane didn’t even rank as one of the team’s top concerns.
Vanessa was speaking again. “Tonight Jack needs us to find three or four good hiding spots for the children. The hidey-holes need to be spaced throughout the ship. Ideally, all the kids will fit into one reasonably defendable location. Right before the op goes down, the Medusas will take out the guards around the children and move the kids to get them out of the line of fire. As soon as the kids are safe, the SEALs will make their run and board the ship.”
It made sense to move the children. But where in the world were they going to find hiding places for four hundred children? The hidey-holes would have to be the size of a large room and would need to be quickly accessible from the kids’ adventure area. To be defendable, each spot would need to have only one or two entrances. Heck, even finding one hiding place that fit the bill would be a challenge.
Aleesha asked, “Anyone got any brilliant ideas on where to hide the kids?”
Vanessa smiled without appreciable humor. “Nope. We’ve picked out a few possibilities on the blueprints, but someone needs to take a look at them in person. That’s why we need you to go out tonight and scout out some spots.”
Aleesha frowned. Move around the ship at night? A dangerous proposition with the eight-o’clock curfew still in place. As far as she knew, the hijackers’ instructions were still to shoot on sight anyone out of their rooms after eight. If she got caught, Viktor could very well kill her just to spite Michael. Cameras were everywhere. She’d never be able to move around undetected.
Isabella spoke up. “Michael’s pulling watch duty on the bridge from midnight till 4:00 a.m. I heard a couple of the hijackers talking about a schedule change earlier today. Apparently Viktor’s mad that Michael might be fooling around with you and put him on that shift to cool his jets.”
Why did she suddenly feel like a teenager at summer camp caught in a boy’s tent after lights-out?
Isabella continued, “The good news is you’ll be able to move freely around the ship without worrying about the cameras. Unless, of course, you’ve outlived your usefulness to Michael and he’s ready to turn you over to his boss.”
“Gee, that’s a cheery thought,” Aleesha retorted.
Isabella grinned at her.
As far as Aleesha knew, she hadn’t outlived her usefulness. Michael seemed convinced she was still his direct link to the rescue team. Aloud, Aleesha asked, “And what if I run into one of the roving foot patrols? I’ve made friends with some of the hijackers, but some of them would still shoot me without thinking twice about it.”
Vanessa nodded. “That’s why we’ll put you on a radio with Isabella. She’ll track your movements with her monitor, keep an eye out for Tangos approaching you, and will call you if anyone’s coming.”
All well and good until she got caught. If the hijackers found her wearing a high-tech military throat mike and radio setup, they’d know she was an infiltrator for sure. She’d be so dead. Not to mention the Medusas’ existence aboard the ship would be revealed. No telling what Viktor would do.
But then, danger came with the territory. They were trained to do this sort of thing—in fact, they’d trained a very similar scenario just a couple months back with Jack roaming around a training building playing bad guy while they avoided him using surveillance cameras and radios. Tonight should be no sweat.
But when midnight came and Aleesha actually stepped into the hallway, she was definitely sweating. There was something about sneaking around alone in a hostile environment that made her tense. At least when she was on patrol with the whole team, she knew she had plenty of alert eyes around her and backup if something went wrong. Tonight she was on her own. Sure, Isabella had two hundred electronic eyes around the ship. But these hijackers were unpredictable. No telling what Viktor might pull out of his hat.
Aleesha adjusted her utility belt, slung low on her hips over a pair of navy linen capri pants and a matching navy polo shirt. It felt extremely strange to be wearing her gear over civilian clothes. But, the Medusas had decided that in a pinch she could ditch her gear and pretend to be going to Michael’s room. That was, assuming she didn’t get caught in, say, the engine room. In that case, she was hosed.
Isabella murmured in her ear, “You’re clear to take the forward stairs up to Deck 7.” Vanessa wanted Aleesha to check out one of the deserted discotheques.
She slipped into the empty, dark club. “Too many doors,” she murmured into her throat mike. “Four big entrances.”
After an all-clear from Isabella, she moved down the hall to a bar nestled in the prow of the ship. Now, this had possibilities. It would seat about fifty adults. Surely several hundred kids could cram in here. She spied a door behind the bar and moved quickly to check it. Locked.
Crouching among the glasses and bottles of liquor, Aleesha murmured, “Where does the door behind the bar go? Is it just a storeroom?”
“Standby one. I’ll che
ck the blueprints,” came Isabella’s impassive response. Then, a minute later, “Yup. Small storeroom. No other exits.”
“Then I think we have a winner. The Cabana Lounge on Deck 7 has two entrances, each one opening onto a hall that runs aft along either side of the ship. We’d need to barricade the doors, and they’re both double doors that swing inward by the way, but it’s doable.”
“Roger,” Isabella murmured. “Time for you to skedaddle. A patrol of two Americans just went to Deck 7. They’re at the other end of the ship, but headed your way. Exit into the starboard hallway and head down the forward stairs.”
Aleesha jumped into motion and did as Isabella directed. On a maneuver like this, it was all about trust. Isabella was the absolute best when it came to real-time image analysis.
Aleesha made her way down to Deck 2, not far from where Isabella was operating, in fact. After a brief pause for Isabella to check the area, Aleesha slipped down a short connecting hall to the crew staircase to Deck 1 and the bowels of the ship. Generally the hijackers didn’t patrol down here. Generally.
“Proceed aft with caution. I don’t have full coverage into some of the side nooks and crannies.”
Great. It was dimly lit down here with only a few widely spaced bulbs in wire cages. Although everything was uniformly painted light gray, the thickly clustered pipes, wires, valves and bulky fittings made it look much more like a really clean factory than a cruise ship. The ceiling was very low—not much more than six feet high. It, in combination with the narrow, winding passageway, pressed in on her in a surprisingly claustrophobic fashion. The throbbing beat of the engines gave this space an almost womblike quality.
Given Isabella’s inability to see behind every pipe, Aleesha shifted into room-clearing mode. She spun around corners fast and low, knife at the ready, her senses on high alert. Anyone down here was bound to be a bad guy, so she didn’t have to make a threat assessment. If it moved, kill it. Or at least neutralize it quickly and silently.
She’d hadn’t been down here long when a swift movement far ahead in the gloom froze her in place. Aleesha peered off into the distance, but saw nothing.