by Cindy Dees
Very slowly she reached for her throat mike and breathed, “I’ve got company. You see anything?”
Isabella’s voice came back hushed, although nobody would hear her if she shouted through the custom-made earpiece that fitted entirely inside Aleesha’s ear. “Nada. Proceed with caution.”
Aleesha snorted mentally. No kidding. She eased forward, doing her best to blend in with the contours of the walls. She slipped her pocket periscope out of its pouch and peered around every corner before she advanced. One more fat pipe to get past, and then she’d be at roughly the spot where she’d seen that quick movement.
She slid the end of the periscope around the curve of the pipe. There! A shadow on the wall ahead! She strained, listening hard. A bare whisper of sound carried to her, but it was hard to tell over the noise of the engines grinding on either side of this central passage. The shadow moved. Shifted. Separated into two distinct human outlines. Was it a patrol?
Not likely. Whoever these two were, they’d been standing stationary down here for nearly five minutes while she’d approached them. And they were definitely talking. Who in the world was it? Could there be some sort of conspiracy among the passengers to rescue themselves that the Medusas hadn’t gotten wind of? If so, she desperately needed to know about it and stop it before it interfered with the SEALs’ plans tomorrow.
She had to get closer to the pair in front of her. But how? She looked around. There was squat for cover if she tried to slide around the pipe that now hid her. She glanced up. But…
There was a gap between the rows of pipes overhead. If she could wedge herself up there, she might be able to slide forward far enough to hear what the people were saying. She jumped up silently, catching a wrist-size pipe with both her hands. Here’s hoping it could support 140 pounds of special operator. Slowly, she pulled her feet up over her head in a grinding abdominal crunch that hurt like hell. There. Her right foot hooked over a small pipe about two feet from the one she hung from. She looped her left foot over the same pipe. Carefully, she pulled herself up, twisting to come parallel to the pipes and stretching out along the steel spaghetti that lined the ceiling.
She reached over her head and pulled herself forward a few inches. Her shoulders began to ache as she held herself up without any support under her torso, using only her legs and arms to brace herself against the ceiling. Another few inches. And another few. Her shoulders felt like they were on fire. Oh, man. Spider-man could have this job.
One more careful pull forward, and the pair below came into sight. She nearly let go of the pipes and fell as she spied a man and a woman conversing urgently. The woman had her back turned to Aleesha, but there was no mistaking the shoulder-blade-length blond hair and curves of a female.
The blonde was speaking to one of the Frenchmen, François, in a language Aleesha didn’t recognize. After hanging out around the terrorists for the past two days, she’d guess it was Basque, the ancient tongue of the Pyrenees that bore surprisingly little resemblance to French or Spanish.
Even though she couldn’t understand what they were saying, the way in which they were saying it spoke volumes. They were having an argument. And more to the point, it wasn’t a spat between lovers. This was an intense disagreement between two equals. The woman was an equal to François?
Had she done it? Had she found the twenty-fourth hijacker? Except the information they’d gotten from TOC indicated that Mrs. Dupont was a slightly overweight brunette named Susan. C’mon. Turn around, lady. Let me see your face. But the blonde continued to hiss at François, her back squarely to Aleesha. Dang it! The woman was right in front of her and Aleesha couldn’t get a decent look at her. She had to find some major identifying feature the SEALs could use to find this woman when they cleared the ship tomorrow.
The woman’s blond hair was straight. Dry. Like she washed it too often—or maybe swam a lot. She had a tan that corroborated the swimmer theory. What else? Average height and a lean build, her arms muscular. Not a hell of a lot to go on. The woman raised her hands, gesticulating in frustration. François wasn’t going along with whatever his companion was saying.
Something metal glinted in the low light. The woman’s watch. Aleesha started as she recognized the model—an expensive, stainless steel diving watch with a built-in depth gauge and dual faces, one for telling time and one for tracking the length of a dive.
Aleesha dared not move any closer or else she’d bring herself right into François’s line of sight. She tried to push herself backward a few inches, and her shoulders knotted into useless masses of pain. Crap. She couldn’t move. Now what?
Fortunately, François and the blonde only snarled at each other for a few more seconds and then moved off. Aleesha clung to the pipes for as long as she could, and then, with a grateful grunt, dropped to the floor, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. Her arms felt like overcooked noodles.
She reached for her throat mike. “Where are they?” she murmured to Isabella.
“They split up. He’s heading away from you toward the forward staircase. Just passing point Alpha One now. She went up the mid-ships staircase. Approaching Echo Six. Is walking down the hall.”
“Can you get a good look at her face?” Aleesha asked urgently. “It’s not Viktor’s wife. The only other woman who’d be able to move freely during curfew is the last terrorist.”
“The resolution’s not all that hot on these cameras. If I was back at the office I could enhance the picture, but I don’t have that kind of capability here.”
Damn. The mystery terrorist’s identity was threatening to remain secret. “Get a room number on her at any rate. Maybe we can track down her identity through the cruise company headquarters.”
“Roger, wilco,” Isabella replied.
Wilco was short for “will comply,” and Echo was their shorthand for Deck 5. But all the terrorists had commandeered rooms on Deck 9. Definitely masquerading among the passengers, then. “I did make out a few details about her,” Aleesha murmured. Quickly she relayed the sparse details she’d been able to gather on the blond woman.
“Copy,” Isabella murmured moments later. “You’d better get on with your hunting.”
Right. Hiding places for the kids. In the excitement of spotting François and the last terrorist, she’d completely forgotten for a minute why she was here. Sloppy. She knew better than to let her mind stray into tunnel vision where she focused on only one thing at a time.
She moved forward quickly now, assured that this area was deserted, or else François and the blonde wouldn’t have chosen it for their secret meeting. The narrow passage opened into a much larger room filled with four cylindrical, steel structures that looked like miniature oil storage tanks. Except in this case it was water they held.
Something rustled, and she dived for cover behind one of the giant tanks, which was easily fifty feet across. She froze, listening to the silence, interrupted only by the rumbling of the ship’s engines, which was more faint in here. Another distinctive rustle and some quick chewing noises. She released her breath in disgust and stood up straight. The Grand Adventure had a mouse.
As she moved, her elbow banged painfully against the wall of the water tank beside her. Aleesha frowned at the hollow metallic clang that echoed throughout the chamber. That was odd. A tank full of water should give off a dull thud. She knocked on the tank again with her knuckles. That hummer sounded empty.
She walked around the side of the tank and, tucked away in the back, facing the hull of the ship was a small, round hatch at about knee height cracked slightly open. She knelt down and peered inside. Empty. She pulled out a flashlight and shone it inside. Its beam was swallowed up in the cavernous blackness. Intrigued, she crawled all the way into the tank. It was completely dry inside. Must be broken or down for maintenance or something.
Oh, yeah. It was perfect. It would be a tight squeeze for four hundred people, but they were children. They could all get in here. She shone her flashlight up toward the ceilin
g and was relieved to see another larger hatch in the center of the dome above, and better yet, it stood wide open. The kids would have plenty of fresh air.
She backed out of the tank, taking careful note. The second tank on the left. She pushed the low maintenance hatch completely shut, but for good measure, pulled out a piece of chalk and drew an inconspicuous line down the side of it.
She had the lounge and the water tank—two hiding spaces down and one to go. She mentally reviewed the ship’s blueprints with a sinking feeling in her stomach. The only other place the Medusas had found that was remotely suitable was a large conference room on Deck 9, right in the heart of the rooms the hijackers had commandeered for themselves when they took over the ship.
“Adder, you up for a challenge?” she asked Isabella.
“What’ve you got in mind?” came the wry reply.
“Guide me up to that conference room on Deck 9.”
“Mamba, are you nuts?” Isabella squeaked. “That’s about fifty feet from Viktor’s suite.”
“Like I said, a challenge. But he won’t be in his room tomorrow. Especially if he thinks something is up. He’ll go to the bridge. I bet none of the hijackers will be anywhere near their rooms once the shit hits the fan.”
“Good point,” Isabella replied. “But right now I place half of them in suites all around that conference room.”
Aleesha shrugged at the security camera she happened to be passing right under. “So, you’ll be careful and I’ll be quick. It’s all good. Let’s do it.”
“Okay,” Isabella replied, back to her usual emotionless, professional self. “Head up the midship staircase…”
Aleesha had to duck into a linen closet once and use her master key to dive into staterooms twice before she made it up to Deck 9. The second time, she startled the hell out of a sleeping woman and barely managed to identify herself and quiet the woman. There was, indeed, a fair bit of terrorist activity on Deck 9 as 4:00 a.m. and a shift change neared. She only had a few more minutes with Michael at the cameras, and then she’d have to disappear.
“Into a room, Mamba! Patrol heading aft straight at you, distance three hundred feet and closing fast.”
Aleesha dived into a stateroom yet again. Empty! She leaned against the door, breathing hard as two pairs of footsteps moved past. Man, that had been close.
“Coast is clear,” Isabella murmured a few minutes later. “Proceed to primary target.”
Aleesha slipped back into the hall. She glided past Viktor’s room, holding her breath in spite of herself. Then, a silent sprint on the balls of her feet and she was there. She turned the door handle carefully and eased into the conference room. It wasn’t as large as she remembered on the blueprints. Then, squinting in the dark, she made out what looked like a closed, folding room divider. She dared not pull out her flashlight to take a better look, but she did move over to the wall and pull it back a tiny bit to peer into the space next door. That was more like it. With this wall folded back, there’d be plenty of room for the kids. Each section of the room had a single door leading out into the hall. No problem. There’d be at least two Medusas with the kids and available to cover the exits. Assuming it wasn’t bolted down, the conference table dominating one end of the space could be used to block one of the doors. If that didn’t work, there were plenty of big, leather armchairs.
Okay. She had her three hiding places. Time to get out of here.
“Problem, Mamba. I just spotted Michael leaving the bridge.”
Crap. Now why had he gone and done that? He’d surely been tracking her movements all night on his banks of cameras and knew she was still out here. He’d have known that if he left his post he’d trap her in here. Whoever’d taken over must have put him in an awkward situation where he couldn’t stick around for a few extra minutes without raising suspicions. Nonetheless, that didn’t change her predicament. She was stuck in here until daylight and the lifting of the night curfew.
Damn! She might as well settle in and get comfortable. She was going to be here a while. She crawled under the conference table, pulling the chairs in behind her to disguise her presence.
It sure as hell wasn’t comfortable lying on her side in between chair legs and the hard pedestal of the table, but it beat the hell out of cold, sticky mud in the pouring rain. And, compliments of Jack Scatalone, she knew exactly how that felt.
She started violently a few minutes later when an abrupt flood of light into the room announced someone’s entrance. Please God, let it be Michael, or at worst a patrol that would poke their heads around for a moment and then leave. Her heart lodged in the back of her throat and she clutched the knife hidden in the pocket of her pants.
The door closed, plunging the room into darkness once more. She held her breath, assessing the silence enveloping her. Was she alone or not?
“It’s me,” said a quiet male voice. “You can come out now.”
Praise the Lord. Michael. She crawled out on her hands and knees and took the hand he held down to her. He yanked her sharply to her feet and pulled her roughly against his chest. His eyes were glowing twin embers, glaring furiously at her in the near total dark.
He growled, “What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, roaming around the ship like this? Is the rescue going down now? Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you trust me? What aren’t you telling me, Aleesha?”
Chapter 16
Oh, God. Busted. She wasn’t supposed to tell him anything sensitive, now that his status as a good guy was in serious doubt. Crap. He was way too smart for her to bullshit. He’d sense his change in status in a heartbeat. What the hell was she supposed to say?
While she frantically tried to think up something to draw his attention away from the subject at hand, Michael shoved her backward without releasing her. Her thighs slammed into the conference table and she fell across its glossy surface, only narrowly missing cracking the back of her skull on its hard surface. Michael followed her down, pinning her in place with his body weight and his hands on either side of her head.
“Start talking.”
“Do you think this is really the place for that?” she asked lightly. Anything to distract him. To buy her time.
His eyes narrowed. “What’s going on? Have the SEALs boarded the ship?”
“You just got off the cameras. You tell me,” she replied assertively. Maybe in this case the best defense would be a good offense.
Michael stared down at her speculatively for a moment. “They’re not aboard yet, but they’re coming soon. You’re making final preparations.”
Damn, he was good.
“So, what’s the plan?” he demanded.
She stared up at him doubtfully. If he’d been playing her this whole time, that would be exactly the question he’d ask now. Was he a plant by Viktor? Were Viktor’s suspicions about her and Michael all an act to lend credibility to his second-in-command’s claims of being an undercover good guy? After watching Viktor operate for a few days, the bastard was fully capable of running a devious game like that. Hell, he had a female terrorist posing as a passenger, didn’t he?
“Look, Michael. I don’t know exactly what the plan is, nor do I know when or even if it’s going to happen.”
He loomed close to her, hesitated for an instant, and then his mouth mashed against hers, their teeth clicking together. His tongue invaded forcefully, startling her into fighting. This wasn’t about sex. It was all about power. And probably about keeping her from shouting out in frustration at being physically subdued. Fury erupted in her head.
But Michael was big and strong, and he had her arched backward over this damned table and pinned down like a bug on a board. She wrestled against him to no avail. His hands shifted, gripping her upper arms painfully, his thumbs digging into the groove between her biceps and the bone. After a few seconds she realized her arms were more or less useless, compliments of the highly effective nerve pinch he’d just used on her.
She heaved upward in despe
ration, but all that earned her was the crushing weight of his body smashed against hers, holding her down by main force. She’d known this guy would be tough in another fight, and she hadn’t been wrong. She’d let her guard down and not seen a move like this coming. It was her own damned fault. She’d trusted him. Trusted their relationship. She’d forgotten that he was the enemy, and he’d taken ruthless advantage of it. Resigned to her physical defeat, she stopped fighting.
Michael’s mouth eased up, his tongue sliding smoothly across hers. Oh my, that felt good to her, all dark and wet and intimate, the kiss throbbing between them and taking on a life of its own. His tongue plunged deep and then retreated. He did it again. And again. Man, that felt like great sex. Her body responded accordingly, her breasts suddenly aching and her private places going swollen and hot.
Was this a ploy? Was he playing her to get her to talk? Except, with his tongue coaxing hers to come dance and his lips moving across hers like a rapacious conqueror, there was no way she could talk. He wanted her. And he was man enough to let her know. Ah, Michael. Dark, angry, noble Michael. He was going to be devastated when he found out the Brits had fired him.
Two years of his life he’d spent in hell withViktor—two years. And for what? Termination without a pension for doing a deadly dangerous and soul-sucking job? It just wasn’t fair. She realized her arms had come up around him, offering him solace he didn’t even know he needed. And something inside him changed. Tension released and he relaxed against her, opening up, both physically and emotionally. The hot, wild tangle of tongues and limbs unfolded into something smooth and sophisticated, a silky slide of skin on skin, lips on lips. His hand caressed her hair the way she’d wanted him to for a while now. She returned the favor and trailed her fingers down his neck, savoring the corded muscles that betrayed his power. He was a killer. But in the name of good and right. A man who could meet her on her own terms, on her turf, and stand as her equal. She might not have been in this game for long, but she’d bet there weren’t a whole lot of men who could do that. The emotional strength he must have, to do what he’d done, took her breath away. And here he was, letting her inside that cast-iron fortress. Inviting her in. Beseeching her in. How could a girl say no?