And Mike gave it. Like a moment of insanity, he had to have more, an eating kiss, his mouth trailing her throat, then back to her lush lips. God, she tasted good, he thought, and took ferociously with a hunger that shocked him and stole his strength and half his brain cells. Then the lusty comments from onlookers sank into his brain.
He drew back a fraction, breathing harder, and murmured against her lips, “That works for me. Heroic enough for you?”
“I feel your potential accelerating.”
He laughed softly and the broad smile changed his face so drastically, it made her giddy. “You can do that again.” She was very aware that he hadn’t let her go yet.
“If I do, we might need a room and a very big bed.” For a long time, he thought.
That sent a bolt of electricity down her body, settling low in her belly. “Oh, you wish,” she said, shoving out of his arms, yet it was a lousy protest. A couple of hours alone with him would sure make up for a disgustingly long time without pure male contact. The naked, hard, and ready kind.
“That’s all I got this week.” He let her go, but not before he stole another quick bone-melting kiss. Then his expression changed, his brows drawing down. “Whatever you’re doing here, don’t.”
She frowned for a second. “I could say the same to you. Archaeology, my ass.”
He showed her a pack of tools in a leather holder.
“Yeah, yeah, they look too new.” She didn’t believe him. He was nearby, in such an isolated area, already sent up a few flags, then tack on that he wasn’t ill equipped and he was a full blown contradiction. How many people carry explosives in their backpack? Other than terrorists, she added, taking a step back from him. She wondered why and how long he watched the police compound—mostly why—but she knew she was lucky to be alive after enraging a drug lord and nearly getting killed. She owed him.
She cupped his jaw, smiling, loving the way his gaze ripped over her face. Please don’t be a mercenary or something awful, she thought. “Nice meeting you, Mike.” She climbed onto the bus, stopping at the first step and hanging out. “Oh yeah—” His gaze flashed to hers. “Semper fi.”
The look on his face was priceless with surprise, and she laughed as she boarded the bus.
“I’ll be damned,” Mike muttered to himself, then thought of all the things he’d said to her. He wasn’t accustomed to being near a civilian on a mission, and that she had experience, at least with a weapon, said there was a lot more to Clancy McRae. Mike debated following her for some interrogation, but had easier ways of getting information on her. She was in the wrong place and the wrong time—yet evasive about why. He didn’t like cagey females. They always led to lies and broken promises.
He should know. His life was a complete secret. Sometimes, even to him.
Tunisia
Choufani sat back on his rear and stared at the rubble. He’d combed it for two days, trying to find more than melted and charred pieces of rifles. A nagging worked up his spine and he kept wondering why the faction was so secretive within its ranks.
His gaze moved over the warehouse, and the markers left by forensics. The Tunisian government had let several intelligence agencies inside to help. Choufani had a heated discussion with a Saudi intelligence officer who wanted total control.
Antone grabbed the trowel and pushed at the blackened material. All he needed was one small piece, a direction. The end certificate for the shipping on the crates was forged, its destination somewhere in Afghanistan. It never made it and he doubted it ever would have, considering the circumstances. The men were the Most Wanted and their movements tracked. But Choufani had a sneaking suspicion this wasn’t so simple.
They had died for the weapons. Not for the cause.
He tapped his fist against his lips, then looked at his single piece. More misshapen in its construction than from the explosion and fire. Under a microscope it showed the carved markings, but again was too disfigured to decipher. He pushed off the floor and crawled on his hands and knees, ignoring comments from the other dozen men in here examining and cataloging body parts and rubbish.
He heard his name and looked up. A man on the far side of the storage house gestured to him. Choufani pocketed the black chunk and stood, carefully crossing the area.
“Since you are searching so hard I thought you would want to examine this first.”
Choufani looked down. It was half a human body, the lower half, and missing its feet. He wasn’t amused, but noticed the trousers were relatively intact, and he bent to one knee, fishing in the pockets.
His gloved fingers grazed something and it crackled. He pried open the pocket and with tweezers caught the inside fabric and pulled. A scrap of folded paper, worked and worn, slid out. He unfolded it.
“Do we know who this man is?” he asked, reading the paper, then tipped it toward the light.
“No. There are more parts than people here.”
They’d have to wait for DNA testing but Choufani was hoping it was their leader. His gaze whipped over the sheet, nearly untouched by the flames. “Find out. As soon as you do, I need to know.”
Clasped between the tweezers was a lading order. It wasn’t all that significant, no names, no company of origin or destination, and probably forged. Arms dealers didn’t follow international laws, let alone leave a paper trail, yet when Antone shined his penlight over the paper, then under, he recognized a watermark.
Now he had something to track.
Ensign Durry positioned her cover just so on her office sideboard, then removed her jacket, careful to get the shoulders on the hanger so it wouldn’t crease before she turned to the stacks of paperwork. This was a waste of her talent, she thought, but the road to the goal. She logged on through the network of security firewalls, then started entering data. She wished people carried an iPod and she didn’t have to be a secretary. She had a degree in nursing, a minor in intel, and graduate work for the past three years in intelligence and code ciphering. Yet here she sat, transcribing medical records for Special Operations personnel. She sorted her stack by priority, then broke it down into groups.
She immediately took Gannon’s file off the top and set it aside. He was already active and she understood he was more in command than the generals. She remembered that flush of fear near him. Well, not really fear, but that she knew she could never hold her own around him. He’d turned her into a flinching fool when he wasn’t trying to be the least bit intimidating.
I bet he gets the job done, she thought, then opened the first file of a Marine on an active mission, status unknown. That could mean anything from MIA to top secret. Her clearance wasn’t high enough to know. Yet. She glanced at the name, Nathan Krane, then brought up the file. He’s one of Gannon’s, she realized when she added the data from his last physical. It was right next to the previous physical and mental health comparison that kept his mission status active. If it were any less, he’d be taken off the roster. A little spot in her heart ached when she realized that he hadn’t reported back yet.
Then she glanced between three-month-old data to the most current.
Her curiosity piqued by the vast differences in the scores made her turn to the short stack, and hunt down any other drastic changes in physical abilities.
At least now, she thought, the task wasn’t so boring.
Mike felt a sweet adrenaline rush.
No pack. No M16 or MP5, no team. Alone he worked faster, worried about his back and no one else. He ran hard, his gaze flickering down the alleys.
In the twilight dusk, Mike bolted through the streets, leaping piles of garbage and a kid’s rusty tricycle. Two blocks down, he stopped short, his gaze scanning his surroundings; then he made a sharp left between two buildings. At the end of the alley, he flattened to the wall and listened for footsteps. About a minute passed before he heard them, and as they came close to his position he stuck his arm out and clothes-lined Hector.
The young man’s throat impacted with Mike’s arm and Hector hit
the ground hard, flat on his back. He didn’t move.
Mike squatted beside him. “Why are you running from me, DeNegra?”
Hector gasped for air.
“Get up, that’s undignified.”
Hector stood slowly, then fell back against the wall heaving for air. He made a dash for escape, but Mike was there, his fingers wrapping his skinny throat and pulling him back.
“I don’t need this, you know it.”
“Sí, sí. You just scared me.”
“Like hell.”
“I’m not talking, not to you.”
“Why’s that?”
“People get killed around you.”
“Only the really bad ones. Talk.”
“What about? My mother, my sister?”
Mike squeezed. The town was barely a village on the border, lots of drug dealers and gunrunners in the mix with some good folk. Hector was slippery and saw everything. “I could give you to Gantz.”
Hector’s dark eyes flew wide. “No, no.”
Mike let go. “What did you see?”
Hector rubbed his throat, cleared it. “Nothing, there is nothing to see here. Look at this place, this town is barely alive.”
“That depends on your perspective.” While sunbaked and slow moving, there was more to Namballe than the killing heat. It was on the edge of a bird sanctuary, which didn’t mean much but attracted visitors to the clean, brightly painted town. A jumping-off point for a lot of tourist excursions up the Amazon. Easy place to get lost, he thought. For Mike, this was the nearest town to the last location of the UAV crash. The folks would have seen something. The chopper had crashed farther in somewhere east, but it would take a couple of days to reach the coordinates. Mike was interested in finding the Hellfires first and they had to be transported.
Mike took a step closer, and Hector’s eyes colored with fear. Giving Hector the once-over didn’t infringe on his moral standards. Hector was a petty thief and once tried to sell his little sister to him. Mike took his character from there.
“I’m hot, tired, and impatient, Hector.” Mike checked the slide of his latest acquisition. “The gun is new, I haven’t tested it.” He put it in Hector’s face.
“Madre de Dios.” The thin young man swallowed hard. “They sent out a group of men to the east,” Hector blurted.
“They?”
“The mayor, his brother, he’s the chief of police.”
Probably thought it was a chopper full of drugs since it wasn’t marked with any military insignia or paint.
“They did not find it.”
Good. One up on the locals at least.
“The explosion, we all saw. Big.” Hector added sound effects.
“Where’s the mayor and his little brother now?” Mike asked.
“They never came back.”
Mike frowned. “How long?”
“A couple days maybe.”
“No one’s gone to look for them?”
“Sí. The police, and they too did not come back.”
Mike had seen the memorials on the streets. Pictures surrounded by candles and crosses. What did they see to get killed? “The jungle is busy, huh?”
“Always. If not for la touristas we’d be bored to death.”
“I’m sure.” Probably picking pockets or helping sell a pretty European to the local guerrillas.
Hector thought Mike was someone dangerous, unsure if he was a good guy or not. Mike wanted to keep it that way. But he’d been in South America so often with the DEA, for a while he had a sweet little place in Belize. Some wreck diving, a lot of people who didn’t know him or weren’t pointing a gun in his face. Isolation from the dirty world. He’d bet Clancy would like it.
He sighed. Hell.
Mike slipped his weapon behind his back under his loose shirt, and inclined his head. Hector frowned, leery of leaving, then took a step away. “Get lost.”
Hector didn’t waste time.
Mike turned toward the village proper in time to see a hammer of a fist come barreling toward his face.
Colonel Jansen was just leaving for home when a knock stopped him. He continued putting on his Alpha blouse. “Enter.” He fastened the belt as a man stepped into the office. “Good Lord, don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not really.”
“Can’t this wait?” His wife would give him hell if he missed another family dinner.
“The Libyan prisoner assault?”
Jansen froze for a moment, his arms falling to his sides. “Continue.”
“The team confiscated a great deal of information, but one piece has us stumped.” The CIA officer pulled something from his pocket and placed it on the table. In the evening light, it seemed to glow with fractures of gold.
Jansen picked it up. It looked almost like a totem pole, crude big-eyed faces carved into the rectangular block no larger than his palm. “Looks like something they sell to tourists.”
“Our assessment as well. Finding the seller is next to impossible since most locals sell handmade souvenirs all the time. We’ve tested the components. It’s a very hard plastic. Most statuary like that is made from resin and painted. This is solid color.”
“It looks like it’s broken.” Jansen ran his thumb over the jagged corner.
“Yes, but it’s a very precise break.”
Intentional? Jansen rolled the piece in his hand, thinking that Gannon needed to see this. “So, the question is, what is something from a South American street vendor doing in the hands of four wannabe suicide bombers?”
Seven
Mike pushed through the door of the large house, and as a guard came running down the hall he raised his weapon. “Not a good idea.”
The guard stopped, looked at his comrade. Mike held him off the floor by the back of his shirt.
“Don’t bother telling him I’m here.” He aimed again when the guard put the radio to his mouth. “He knows.”
Mike walked, dragging the unconscious man across the slick, tiled floor and down the hall. Business is good, he thought as he passed large oil paintings and pieces of sculpture he was sure were stolen from a museum. Mike walked through the last doorway.
August Renoux sat behind a desk. Relaxed, his hands across his large stomach, his eyeglasses on the top of his bald head, what little hair the arms dealer had was long and fuzzy gray. It gave him the unkempt look of a professor. Unsuspecting. Pretty clever for a man who marketed Chinese tanks and Russian attack choppers for a living. He should be in jail, but he was slick enough that he’d evaded doing time for over thirty years, running to the nearest country without extradition treaties with the U.S. With his duel citizenship, American and French, he skated the rim of international law, selling arms, and while he had to have the approval of the U.N. National Security Council to do it, someone had their pockets greased. His business was war and conflict, same as Mike’s, yet Renoux profited.
Mike’s pay would cover the electric bill for a place like Renoux’s.
He released the shirt, and the man dropped to the floor with a hard thunk. “One of yours, Renoux?”
“I told him to just see what you were up to.” Renoux’s gaze flicked to Mike’s red jaw. “Pardonnez-moi.”
“Well, since we’re sharing, you won’t mind talking.”
“Business is good. Not great, but good.”
Did everyone intentionally miss the point today? “After pissing off the Peruvian military?”
“Our transaction was perfectly legal.”
“Legal? A trash drop to a government? You aren’t that stupid, Auggie.”
Dropping weapons by parachute from a plane practically sent out an invitation for theft. A degree off on the coordinates and a miscalculation of wind speed, and the trash drop of arms meant for the military fell into the Colombian cartels or whoever was hanging around. Mike figured it was a scam to force the Peruvians to order more to arm themselves like the enemy. One reason Mike was surprised to see him here living like a king.
“Why
the hell do you want in my business, Renoux? Or have you forgotten?”
Renoux went perfectly still for a moment, a piece of food on its way to his mouth. “Of course not, but where you Americans go, there is often a group who might be interested in my products.” He popped the fried pepper into his mouth, grinning. “And that airdrop, I had End Certificates, and the arms arrived where they should. What happens after that is not my concern. Besides, if I wanted to sell to the Colombians, which I do not, small arms are not worth it to me.”
Mike didn’t believe that for a second. He’d blown up enough munitions that were dropped from choppers or jets flying over a conflict area. Arms dealers were all about the money, taking no sides. Unlike in the U.S., Russia, and China, the biggest arms dealers in the world, very few shipments fell into the wrong hands. It was hard to stop weapons from killing innocents when there were so many out there and people were willing to supply the worst of mankind with it. Terrorists were armed—some better than Mike.
Renoux supplied the demand.
“Tell me about the explosion.”
“Ah, that. It was at night and several witnessed it, as you know.”
That told Mike that the crash was farther southeast. Intel was looking in the wrong place, but what had the power to throw a half-ton aircraft off course?
“Who’s out there, Renoux? Someone killed the mayor and his family.” Before Clancy arrived, he thought.
He shrugged. “In those mountains? There are tribes still there that have not progressed in the last thousand years.”
“Convenient to blame, huh? And considering they are still there and alive, seems to me it’s the way to go.” Mike raised his gun and cocked his head. “I’m really not here to discuss anthropology.”
“Or you’ll what? Call the police?”
Mike pulled the hammer back. “I don’t need the police, Auggie.”
The fat man swallowed hard. “There are rumors. Sightings.”
“What kind of sightings?” Mike’s first thought was alien landings or ghosts, both bullshit.
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