Catalyst: Flashpoint #2

by Grant, Rachel

  If someone made a list of the worst possible women for him, Gabriella Stewart Prime would top it.

  But the flirting had come so naturally. If he listed all the things she’d been through in the last forty-eight hours, flirting with her was just about the most inappropriate thing he could imagine. Except getting a hard-on was even worse.

  He was so fucked. If his XO found out about any of this shit, he’d catch hell. Brie was the daughter of one of the richest men in the world. His CO, XO—hell, probably all of SOCOM—would believe he’d hit on her for that reason alone.

  The idea made his skin crawl. Who her father was made his skin crawl. Everything about this situation could make him a spokesperson for eczema cream.

  He scanned the horizon. With starlight undiminished by light pollution, he could see a fair distance. To the north were the oil fields that were grinding back into production in spite of the civil war. Some believed the oil companies supported keeping the war going because it meant less oversight, and more concessions. They paid smaller fees to the government because they had to provide their own hired army to protect their operation.

  Armies that could protect a slave market?

  A basic truth: countries in Africa were being used and abused by foreign corporations as much today as when slave ships had transported people to the New World.

  He needed to keep his anger at Prime Energy front and center. Brie might not be part of the company—or even her family—anymore, but she was still a Prime. No matter what name she called herself these days. If he held on to that, it might prevent him from doing something stupid—like kissing her again.

  Like caring for her.

  “Bastian?” Brie whispered into the darkness, uneasy that she’d woken and found herself alone.

  A moment later, he was at her side. “You okay?”

  Relief flooded her. “Yes.” She sat up. “How long did I sleep?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Nearly six hours. Go back to sleep.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “No. I’m good. You should sleep now. You can get four hours, instead of only two.” Clouds had rolled back in, and the night was deep and dark. “We missed the rendezvous.” She’d known they would, but somehow, having the appointed time come and go felt more final.

  “Yeah. But that’s not a bad thing. It means they’ll send a team to search for us.”

  “Do you think…we should stay here? Wait for them to find us?”

  He dropped onto the plastic beside her. “Fuck if I know. We had to take a different route through the grassland. We’re miles away from where they’ll start searching.”

  “But they’ll see the flooded road…”

  “All the roads are flooded now. They won’t know when we went off course. And they won’t find our truck. Won’t see our tracks. There was too much rain.” He looked up at the sky. “And there’s more to come.”

  He was silent a long moment. “I think they’ll expect us to make our way to the main road. They’ll search for us along the corridor.”

  “They won’t…assume we’re dead, will they?”

  He shook his head. “No way would my team let anyone write me off.”

  She smiled at his conviction. “I’m glad to hear that, because I’m pretty sure my family would happily declare me dead.” She was thankful for the darkness that hid the expression she couldn’t control in the raw wee hours of the morning. She didn’t want him to know that the knowledge that her half brothers didn’t care about her still hurt.

  She didn’t want anyone to know she still longed for a family connection. There had been good times with Rafe and Jeffery Junior. When she was eight, she’d been certain she had the best big brothers in the world.

  Unable to put weight on her foot, she abandoned the sheet for Bastian’s use and sat with her back against a tree. From there, she could see him stretched out on the tarp and keep an eye on a full one hundred and eighty degrees of hillside and swamp.

  She was impressed by his ability to lie down, close his eyes, and instantly go to sleep. She couldn’t imagine the sort of training a person went through to be able to do that. That was some serious control.

  She watched the even rise and fall of his chest as she attempted to process what had transpired over the last two days.

  Watching Bastian sleep was a pleasure she hadn’t expected. His handsome face relaxed and didn’t look upon her with the disdain he’d shown at Camp Citron, or the pity he’d shown after he saved her. Best of all, he didn’t resemble the brutal façade he’d shown as a slave buyer.

  More than anything, she’d like to forget how he looked in that role. But the image was burned into her brain. It hadn’t been him. It wasn’t his nature. She knew that. But still, he’d terrified her.

  So instead she thought about the soldier she’d flirted with just before going to sleep. She’d guessed he was a player from the moment they met. And now from their conversation tonight, he’d confirmed her assessment, meaning they had a player history in common.

  She’d always avoided serious relationships, even before she’d so badly used Micah and then found she’d begun to care for him. After Micah, she’d built a wall around her heart. She wouldn’t risk caring for a man ever again. It was too dangerous.

  Four hours after Bastian lay down on the mat, his eyes popped open in an impressive display of the same body mastery he’d demonstrated in going to sleep. Dawn was breaking across the sky, which had clouded over with thick, dark storm clouds, casting the morning in gray light. They shared an MRE for breakfast, and then she tentatively tested her ankle, using a cane Bastian had fashioned for her in the middle of the night. The pain had eased somewhat, and with the cane for leverage, she could walk at a decent pace.

  It would work.

  But then, it had to.

  They set out within fifteen minutes of Bastian’s waking, continuing down the muddy road on the path Brie had memorized while staring at the map. The road had drained somewhat after the storm abated, and only an inch or so of muck covered the slick surface. In addition to the cane, Bastian had also made sandals for her using the insoles from his boots, broadleaves, and paracord. The makeshift sandals worked well enough to protect her feet from sharp pebbles and other debris buried in the muck.

  “We need to talk about the market,” Bastian said. “It’s important we go over it so you remember the details. The longer we wait, the more muddled your memory will become.”

  She knew he was right, and saying it aloud would help set the memories. But damn, she didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to remember. But who knew what was important, what piece of information would help the CIA figure out who ran the market?

  “How long were you inside the market before I showed up?” he asked.

  “Two hours? Maybe three?” The time was hard to judge, because every minute had felt like a lifetime.

  “We should probably go back to the beginning—like who grabbed you, for starters.”

  She told him about the Nuer man who’d initially found and abducted her and sold her to the market. She went on to describe the men who examined her in the tent and told him about the one who worked for Druneft, who had worked for Prime Energy years ago.

  “Did he recognize you?”

  “I don’t think so. But maybe. I was a little shaken up in general. My impressions could be off.” She frowned. “But he’s not the only person in the market I recognized. One of the guards—the guy who fell on me after you slit his throat—his face was familiar. I think he was a toady for a former South Sudanese general named Lawiri. General Lawiri showed up at our facility about two months ago, full of bluster, trying to claim the food supplies to feed his army.”

  “Whose side is he on, the president’s or the vice president’s?” Bastian asked, naming the two major factions in the civil war.

  “That’s the thing. Neither. He’s trying to raise his own army. I heard his band was beaten back by rebel fighters and he fled the country.”

  �
��Where did he go?”

  “No idea. But I’m almost certain the guard whose throat you slit was one of Lawiri’s bodyguards.”

  11

  Savannah James paced the main room of the temporary building that housed SOCOM headquarters at Camp Citron. The mission had gone to shit the moment Bastian got Brie out of the market. Now they’d lost Bastian and the oil tycoon’s daughter, and it looked like an entire A-Team had gone rogue and opted to save the children in the market. At least, she assumed that was why they’d missed their rendezvous and they’d been cryptic about the reason.

  She couldn’t blame the men for showing their humanity, but it seriously messed up the State Department’s publicly stated position that they would not get involved in South Sudan’s civil war. If it turned out government or rebel forces controlled that swath of land, then the US had just taken sides in the conflict.

  Savvy’s ass was the one on the line if the intel she’d been gathering was bad. She didn’t give a fuck about her ass over the safety of children, but she’d been hoping to get assets in place in the market to determine the leadership structure and take covert action to destroy the people who were behind the operation, ending the practice for good. As it was, the market would probably spring up again elsewhere and more children would face the auction block.

  It was a choice between saving fifty children or thousands. Now, if this market had been destroyed, they might never know who was behind it.

  Special Forces Operational Detachment Bravo, better known as the B-Team, was the headquarters element of the Operational Detachment Alpha—A-Team—currently deployed in South Sudan. Savvy watched as the B-Team worked frantically to coordinate with the A-Team to establish a new exfiltration point. But the team was scattered and claimed to be hampered by yesterday’s storm.

  Ripley had reported that weapons being auctioned in the arms hut had exploded, and in the ensuing chaos, the children had made a break for freedom. No one on the B-Team believed any weapons had miraculously exploded without aid from someone on the A-Team. Savvy’s money was on Espinosa. He was the demolitions guy. But Cal was a weapons sergeant.

  The team’s silence in the aftermath had lasted several hours, likely because they couldn’t be expected to follow orders they never received. But where the hell was Chief Ford? Savvy knew he wouldn’t risk the primary objective of rescuing Brie Stewart. Aside from being a hundred percent team player, Bastian was wound tight when it came to the oil heiress.

  Savvy had observed the two of them in Barely North, and she’d followed him outside the club and witnessed him kissing the woman in the dark. Two days ago, Savvy had watched his face as the identities of the USAID workers were revealed. For one instant, she’d seen stark fear in the Green Beret’s eyes.

  Bastian Ford might not have a clue how he felt about Brie Stewart, but Savvy was damn certain it wasn’t anything approaching hate.

  She had no doubt he’d give his all to rescue Brie, and had told his captain as much before they deployed. The man had given her the same disgusted, slightly appalled look she often received when she meddled in military affairs, but she’d been right on the money. Captain Durant had even admitted that Bastian had requested to lead the search mission.

  She was damn good at reading people, and SOCOM loved the intel she provided, but hated it when she applied her insight to their soldiers and SEALs.

  Tough shit.

  She was here to do her job, no matter how uncomfortable it made the big boys with fancy and explosive toys.

  Now she stared at one of those toys—a large screen filled with the satellite image map of the market and surrounding area. She willed it to reveal Bastian and Brie’s location, but try as she might, sheer will had never produced intel on the spot like that.

  They’d lost hours of surveillance yesterday in the rain, and today the landscape was different after the network of roads surrounding the market had flooded.

  Where had Bastian and Brie gone? Were they on foot, or had they made it out of the marshland in time?

  How long had Brie been in the market? What had she witnessed in the time she was there? If what Savvy suspected was true, Brie may have recognized people. Either locals she’d interacted with in her work for USAID, or the long-shot hope that she’d seen someone affiliated with Kemet Oil or Prime Energy.

  But if Brie had recognized anyone, certain players would be all the more anxious to take her out before she could return to Camp Citron and share what she knew.

  Savannah’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the ID.

  What the hell?

  Why was the A-Team satellite phone calling her number?

  She glanced around the room. Given SOCOM’s general distrust of her and her methods, this call wasn’t a mistake. The A-Team wanted to talk to her, and they didn’t want their B-Team to know.

  She stepped out of SOCOM headquarters and into the heat of the Djibouti morning to answer the call. “Why the hell are you calling me and not SOCOM?” she said without preamble.

  Sergeant Cassius Callahan’s deep, rich voice triggered a reaction she neither wanted nor would admit to. “We need your help, Savvy.”

  A slight jolt spread through her at hearing him use the nickname she’d been given by Morgan Adler a month ago. Pax and Bastian had started using the nickname, but this was Cal’s first time calling her Savvy. It made no sense that Cal was under her skin. She didn’t understand it. He disliked her as much as the rest of SOCOM. The only man who was friendly to her was Pax, and that was because of her role in aiding the search for Morgan last month.

  The very fact that she felt any sort of reaction to Cal’s voice was not good. She prided herself on maintaining a cold distance. Given her job, she didn’t have friends. Sure, she created a false sense of security to get people to talk to her, but she kept her heart locked down tight so she didn’t have to feel bad if—when—people got hurt.

  People like Brie, who seemed nice enough but who was doing a risky job in a risky place and who had agreed to feed Savvy intel, making her job that much riskier.

  “What’s going on, Cal?”

  “We managed to get most of the kids to the river, where they were lucky and found some boats they could take to islands in the swampland. But we’ve also got an orphaned girl and boy, both around fourteen. You need to find a way to get them out. Fast. They’re starving and won’t survive the swamp.”

  “The CIA isn’t in the business of humanitarian aid.” God, she sounded like the coldhearted bitch everyone believed her to be. But what he asked was impossible.

  “They have intel you’ll want to hear. They weren’t up for auction; they’re market slaves. They worked there—and have been there for months. They speak English, Arabic, and a few of the local languages.”

  Excitement trilled through her. “That changes things.”

  “Yeah. We figured.”

  His judgmental tone cut to the core. “I caught hell with my superiors and the American embassy because of the girls you saved from Desta last month. And not only did I not complain, I managed to find every one of those girls’ families and came up with the budget to send them home. It’s easy to make a decision to save someone in the moment when you don’t have to deal with the fallout, Sergeant. Without my help, those girls would have been dumped back in Somalia to be preyed upon again.”

  Cal cleared his throat. “That’s why we took most of the kids to the river. There were nearly fifty. The youngest couldn’t have been more than eight.”

  Her eyes teared. She was glad she was outside and facing the building, where no one could see her reaction.

  Not that anyone would believe her tears even if they saw them with their own eyes. No one believed she had a heart. Hell, everyone but Pax and Morgan would probably assume she’d taken the call in the midst of chopping onions.

  She kept her reaction out of her voice. “You’re sure the kids can provide actionable intel? You aren’t lying to force my hand?”

  “Of the two of us, S
avvy”—he said the name with an emphasis that bordered on sarcastic—“I’m the one who never lies.”

  It’s my job to lie. She wanted to say the words aloud but didn’t. If he couldn’t see it, it was his problem. Hell, half the time, she figured he didn’t believe they were on the same side.

  “Can you help us and get these kids out of here?” he asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Send me photos, names, tribe and clan affiliation. I’ll also need dates—as near as they can guess—estimating how long they’ve been in the market.” She could probably get them priority clearance so they could fly to Camp Citron with the team. “But Cal, we need Brie Stewart. Where are Brie and Bastian?”

  “We don’t know. They got out of the market. That’s all I’m certain of.”

  “Could they be dead?” She had to ask the question.

  “Hell no.” Cal grunted with annoyance. “Bastian’s a damn tough soldier. There’s a reason he’s second-in-command. He won’t fail.”

  “Then why the hell hasn’t he checked in?”

  “Fuck if I know. Something must’ve happened to his radio. But don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  “Where would he go? Where would he take her?”

  “Brie’ll know how to find allies in the smaller villages. They’ll aim for one of those and probably try to hitch a ride to Juba.”

  “We’ll focus the satellites on the smaller villages and look for activity.” They’d already been doing that, but still it was nice to have the theory confirmed.

  “What about the kids?” Cal pressed.

  “I need to make some calls. Send me the info, and I’ll get back to you.”

  The sun burned through the clouds and turned the water from yesterday’s rain into vapor, making the air thick and unbearably humid. In the heat, rain would be a welcome relief, no matter what it did to the roads. In spite of the cane, Brie’s limp became more pronounced as she walked, but there was no helping it. She had to walk, and it had to hurt.

  It was noon by the time they reached the outskirts of a small village Brie was familiar with. The population had averaged about fifty people, but if word had filtered south about the food stores being burned, it might have been abandoned. Locals, especially along this corridor, had counted on being able to receive food from USAID during the rainy season.