Forged in Fire

by Trish McCallan

  He, at least, had the benefit of the bond forming between them. He could sense her emotions when they touched. There was no duplicity in her. There was fear, yes. Sensual heat, yes. Confusion, absolutely. But no dishonesty.

  Cosky and Rawls didn’t have that advantage.

  Zane hated the idea of lying to Mac as much as they did. But he’d lie to the whole damn fleet if it kept Beth safe.

  Rawls was the first to break the throbbing silence. He scowled at the wall above Zane’s head, his face carved into the implacable mask Zane thought of as his the-shit’s-about-to-fly face, because he rarely saw it outside of battle.

  “Mac’s been in on enough of your—” Rawls glanced at Beth “—hunches. He’ll believe you without question.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.” Cosky studied Beth’s face intently, before scrubbing a hand over his head. “It would get that plane searched, and hijackers captured without bringing her into it.”

  “Who’s Mackenzie?”

  “Commander Jace Mackenzie. Our CO—Commanding Officer,” Zane explained as confusion registered on her face.

  Although Mac was more than their CO. He was one of Zane’s best friends. He’d served under the commander at HQ2 before Mac had reluctantly agreed to rank up and take a desk. He’d followed the man over to HQ1 and up to Coronado. Zane wouldn’t even be here, if it hadn’t been for Mackenzie. And in the twelve years they’d served together, he’d never lied to the commander. Never.

  Which was one of the reasons he’d be believed now.

  Son of a bitch. He didn’t like this any more than Cosky or Rawls did. It went against every instinct he had. But it was lie, or serve Beth up to some glory-seeking pencil-pusher out to make a name for himself. These kinds of cases drew publicity like fresh roadkill drew crows. They destroyed innocent lives.

  No way was he letting Beth take the fall for this. Even if that meant lying to his team.

  If he told Mackenzie about Beth and her nightmare, the commander would make a round of calls which would result in that plane being searched. But Mac would turn her in. During the best of times, he had little use for women—apart from the obvious. When it came to national security, he wouldn’t even hesitate. Nothing Zane said would convince the commander to withhold her name.

  Rawls cut loose with a curse sharp as a gunshot. “We better pray he never finds out about this. Otherwise we’re up shit-river.”

  Cosky stared at Beth for a long moment, before turning to Zane. “I won’t lie to him point-blank. If he asks me about your dream, I’ll tell him the truth.”

  Zane nodded. Neither man would have agreed to this if they’d suspected Beth was involved.

  “I don’t know.” Beth’s lavender eyes were brimming with guilt and worry. “How much trouble will you get into if you get caught lying?”

  Surprised, Zane turned his attention her. He’d given her an easy out, one that would take the responsibility off her shoulders. Yet she was worried how it would affect him and his men. Warmth spread through his chest.

  “None,” he assured her, which was another lie.

  If Mac found out about the switch, Zane would be in a shit-pot of hurt. He could protect his men by telling his CO that he’d misled them too. But who’d had the dream wasn’t the issue. The problem was withholding Beth’s name. Protecting a suspect in a terrorist attack was a court-martial offense. And Mac would consider Beth a suspect.

  When Beth didn’t look convinced, Zane reached out to stroke her cheek. He smiled when she didn’t pull away. “I’ll tell Mac the same thing you told us, so the meat of what I’m telling him is true.”

  She apparently assumed that meant Mackenzie would understand and forgive if the lie was exposed. The worry and guilt smoothed from her face. Zane let her believe it. It was amazing how that one deception kept bleeding into others.

  “So you’re in the Army?”

  Rawls chuckled, although it sounded forced. “Bite your tongue.” His gaze lingered on her mouth, and his grin eased into a more natural cast. “I’d be offended you’d confuse us with those dustbowl wannabes, if you weren’t so damn cute.”

  Zane stiffened. That son of a bitch better find someplace else to stare or he wouldn’t be flashing his killer grin again until the bones in his face knitted. He almost stepped forward to block Rawls’ view, when the absurdity stuck him. Christ, he was acting like an idiot. Rawls wouldn’t poach on a teammate’s woman. Once she was spoken for, she was off-limits.

  And Beth was his. The only one who wasn’t aware of that fact was Beth.

  “I’m sorry. I just assumed.”

  “We’re with the Navy. SEAL Team 7.” Zane cocked his head and waited for her reaction.

  He rarely mentioned his profession to strangers, particularly women. Invariably they reacted in one of two ways. With distaste, as though the fact he was Special Operations dropped him into the same category as your average serial killer. Or they’d get this gleam in their eyes, something resembling sexual avarice, as though making it through BUD/S had endowed him with some mystical prowess.

  When her expression cleared, Zane relaxed. Until it occurred to him she might not know what being a SEAL entailed.

  “The SEAL program is the Navy’s version of Special Forces—” he started to explain.

  “I know,” she broke in. “Deployed from sea, land and air. I’ve read some… ah…” She coughed, her cheeks flushing pink. “…books that had SEALs in them.”

  “No kiddin’,” Rawls drawled, a mask of innocence plastered across his face. He braced his elbows on the shelving behind him, and eyed her with a lazy smile. “Can I borrow them? I’m always interested in seeing how the public views our profession.”

  When Beth’s cheeks blazed from pink to bright red, Zane’s eyebrows climbed. Maybe he should borrow those books too.

  “It occurs to me,” she blurted out, obviously trying to sidetrack them from her reading habits, “even if I cancel the standby listing, it will still show up when they run the passenger manifest. I’ll still be a suspect.”

  “Yeah, well.” Zane rubbed his chin, and tried not to look satisfied. “I’ve got a plan to make you look less suspicious.”

  Rawls started laughing.

  Zane snapped off a glare and turned his attention back to Beth’s suddenly leery expression.

  “Pay attention, Cosky,” Rawls drawled, managing to hold back the laughter long enough to force the words out. “We’re about to witness some of the finest rationalization known to man.” He started laughing again.

  Zane ignored him.

  Beth looked from Rawls to Zane, and back to Rawls. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  Fuck. He hadn’t intended to broach the subject like this, but any good strategist knew to regroup and redeploy. “The best way to clear you of suspicion is to give you another reason to be at the airport, spur of the moment, without your clothes.”

  Nervousness touched her face. Her eyes skittered to Rawls, who’d leaned back against one of the steel rungs of the shelving. He’d stopped laughing, but his shoulders still shook.

  “I’m definitely not going to like this,” she said to no one in particular.

  Zane barreled ahead. “We’re on our way to Hawaii for a teammate’s wedding. Cosky’s from Seattle. Since we’re on leave, we decided to head out early, do some hiking along the trails Cosky’s been bragging about, then fly out for the wedding. We’ve been hiking all week. We’ll tell everyone we met over the weekend and things got hot, fast. I asked you to come to Hawaii with me, but you were uncomfortable taking off with someone you’d just met. We argued. But this morning you changed your mind and decided to join me, so you listed yourself on standby.”

  He paused, studied her face. Was she buying his reasoning? With luck it wouldn’t occur to her that they could just claim she’d come to the gate to say goodbye.

  “To make this work, you’ll need to call your supervisor and request the week off.”

  Her gaze dropped
to his mouth, and her flush—which had faded—gained ground again.

  His body tightened. “That kiss set the stage. People will remember it. People will remember us.”

  The red in her cheeks eased, but she continued to look uncomfortable. No, she didn’t like the suggestion. Too damn bad. Her expression of discomfort shifted to resignation.

  She took a deep breath, let it out and her face turned stoic. “We’ll have to keep acting like a couple.”

  That stoicism seriously pissed him off. Was it really that fucking hard to act like she might be interested in him? Anger prickling, he didn’t try to sugarcoat his correction.

  “Not a couple. Lovers. Hot and heavy lovers. The kind so hungry for each other they’d fly to Hawaii without any luggage because they’d be spending all their time in bed.”

  Chapter Four

  Commander Jace Mackenzie dropped the telephone receiver into its cradle and threw himself against the backrest of his company-issue, hard-as-a-rock desk chair. The metal and plastic shifted beneath his weight, squeaking like a rabid hamster on a wheel.

  So, some cocksucking motherfuckers thought they could grab one of America’s passenger planes, did they?

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw, a cold, hard grin tugging at the edges of his mouth. Those fuckheads were in for a major surprise. In a contest between three of his best men and six cold-blooded killers, he’d bet every single cent he owned on his boys. Zane and company would nail those motherfuckers to the wall and hold them there until the FBI and Homeland Security swept in for clean up.

  Slowly, the grin faded. It never paid to settle into complacency. The second you considered a situation under control it exploded in your face with the fury of a fucking H-bomb. He’d seen it happen too many times. Some poor schmuck who’d relaxed at the worst possible moment and got his ass handed to him in the midst of a raging firestorm. God only knew how many good men he’d lost through the years because they’d let their guard down when they should have ramped it up. Second chances out on black ops were rarer than an honest woman, and death lurked behind every foreign grain of sand.

  Mac wasn’t afraid of death. Hell, you couldn’t afford fear in his line of work. Fear paralyzed faster than a round to the spine. Besides, there were some things worth dying for. Forget that clichéd crap of love and the American Dream. Love wouldn’t buy you a handful of stale peanuts. As for the American dream—that sucker had long ago withered into selfishness and a sense of entitlement. For every poor sod who appreciated the sacrifices endured in mosquito-infested swamps while your brothers-in-arms disintegrated into bloody chunks all around you, there was some other motherfucker burning the American flag.

  Still, while the U. S. of good ol’ A had a host of problems, when it came right down to it, this country was worth the sacrifices made for her.

  Mac believed that with every fiber in his heart, as did the men he served with, but then they were a special breed, his warriors—a dying breed, he sometimes thought in his darker moments, which was the big difference between him and Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters. Winters didn’t have black moments. Moments in which he wondered when those motherfucking terrorists, domestic or foreign, would stop trying to hijack American jumbo jets full of innocent people.

  Scowling, Mac glared at the phone.

  Zane Winters was one of the calmest, rational, but surprisingly intuitive men he’d served with. One of the few people, on a very short list, Mac trusted implicitly. Hell, Winters had been the one who’d talked him into stepping up and accepting this fucking desk job—which also happened to be the only grudge he held against the guy. As for those freaky visions of his … well, fuck. They’d saved their asses more than once.

  So if Zane said something was going to happen on that plane, then something was going to happen. He’d been on the receiving end of Winters’ intuitive flashes enough to trust his LC’s judgment. Yeah, this might be the first time his buddy had actually dreamed an event, and hell yeah, that might make it even freakier than normal, but if Winters said there were guns on that bird, and six men intending to grab it and divert to Puerto Jardin, then Mac would get the FBI and DHS out there pronto.

  Because Zane Winters didn’t lie.

  Which made it a fucking bitter pill to swallow knowing his best friend had just spent the better part of the past five minutes lying to him.

  Oh, he didn’t doubt for an instant that there were guns stashed beneath those seats and six motherfuckers intending to escort the passengers into the afterlife. No, he didn’t doubt the bulk of what his LC had told him, but something about that conversation didn’t ring true.

  Winters wasn’t the only one with kickass intuition. And Mac’s bullshit meter, which had been fine-tuned through the years, had warped into the red zone. Although what, exactly, he was picking up on, he didn’t have a clue.

  Staring down, Mac picked up a pen and glared at his stained, battered and scuffed steel desk. His one and only contact in the FBI had retired the previous year, which meant he had absolutely nobody to call from the Rolodex in his mind. However, he had HQ1’s secret weapon a push button away.

  He reached out to punch the intercom button as the conversation with Zane played through his head. Something niggled at him, but he couldn’t put his damn finger on it and considering the plane was due to lift off in an hour, he didn’t have time to pin it down.

  “Get hold of someone from the FBI,” he said the moment he heard the door open, “and not some fucking junior agent. I need someone with clout, someone who can get things done.”

  The measured footsteps across the room paused, as though he’d managed to startle the old goat for a change. Mac glanced up, hoping to see surprise on that weathered face, but not a chance. His assistant, Radar, had his intractable image to preserve.

  “What division?” Radar asked. With his ears sticking out the way they did, and his triangular face and thickened, earth-toned skin, he looked like a bat that had been staked out to dry in the sun.

  Mac tapped the pen against the top of his desk. “Counterterrorism. Out of the Seattle Field Office. I need someone on that line ASAP.”

  “Perhaps you should contact Captain Gillomay first?” Radar offered bluntly.

  Yeah, no doubt he should—the proper channels and all that shit—but then he would have to explain. While Gillomay had heard of Zane’s neat little trick, he hadn’t been on the receiving end of the visions, which meant there would be some convincing to do as well. Rear Admiral McKay, on the other hand, had firsthand experience with Zane’s flashes.

  “There isn’t time. I’ll inform McKay after the FBI’s rolling.”

  Radar’s thin lips pursed, but he merely nodded, pivoted with military precision and retreated into the quarterdeck with his customary economical stride.

  Mac watched him go. He’d inherited the old goat from his predecessor. While he wasn’t completely certain how Radar had earned his nickname, he suspected it had something to do with the old “M*A*S*H*” sitcom. Like his namesake of the television show, his assistant had an uncanny ability to read his mind and know exactly what Mac was going to need and when he was going to need it. If anyone could get hold of a top-ranking FBI official, it would be Richard Anderson, aka Radar, HQ1’s secret weapon.

  As he waited, Mac continued glaring down at his desk. From what Zane had described of the hijacking, it sounded like the same crew who’d grabbed that plane down in South America. Too bad the details had been so sketchy. No description of the men in question, since they’d butchered all the first-class passengers once the ransom had been paid.

  The intercom buzzed and Radar’s raspy voice came through the machine. “John Chastain, Senior Agent in Charge of Seattle Field Office’s Counterterrorism Division, is holding on line one.”

  Mac glanced at the clock above the door. It had taken Radar less than a minute to get someone on the phone. That had to be some kind of record. He snatched the receiver up and punched the button.

  “Agent Chastain?
This is Commander Jace Mackenzie, HQ1 out of Coronado. We’ve got a big problem in Seattle. Sea-Tac airport to be specific—Flight 2077, Seattle to Hawaii. We’ve just received intel indicating this flight is about to be hijacked.”

  Dead silence greeted this declaration.

  Mac hardened his tone. “I’m not fucking with you. This is good intel. Fresh as a fucking daisy. This bird is about to be jacked, the guns are already on board and we’re running out of time. Liftoff’s in seventy minutes. Boarding starts in forty. You need to get on the wire, get this flight delayed, and get someone out there to search that plane.”

  He paused, listened for a few seconds, his pen tapping against the desk with increasing frequency. “I’m fully aware of how difficult it is to smuggle guns on board an airliner. I’m also aware that no matter how difficult, it can be done. Those guns are on board. They’re about to be used on a plane full of American citizens. Somebody needs to get their asses out—”

  Breaking off, he tossed his pen onto the desk and threw himself back in his chair. It squawked violently beneath him. “That long ago, huh? You including 9/11 in those statistics? Yeah? Well, maybe you better check with your buddies in DHS before making stupid-ass assumptions.”

  He scowled at the rising voice on the other end of the line and broke in. “A flight out of Argentina was hijacked last year. Our intel indicates it’s the same crew. You drop the ball on this, you go down for it.”

  After listening for a moment, he gave a sharp nod. “Glad to see you’re finally showing some fucking sense.” He barked out a derisive laugh and rolled his eyes. “You go right ahead. Oh, and Chastain? As coincidence would have it, three of my best men are booked on that flight. If anything happens to them and I do mean anything, I’m going to rip your lungs out through your ass. You’ll be using them as a fucking umbrella.”

  He listened a second, shook his head, and massaged the tight skin across his forehead. Dealing with arrogance and stupidity left him with a headache.