Tinderbox (Flashpoint Book 1)

by Rachel Grant

  “How long until we get where we’re going?” she asked as he escorted her back inside.

  Kaafi merely grunted, making it clear he had no intention of answering her.

  They stayed at the house for the rest of the day, Kaafi leaving periodically and returning. She suspected he was driving to a location that had cell coverage. From his manner, she figured he was waiting for instructions.

  It seemed these men weren’t followers of Desta, but hired freelancers. Kidnappers contracted to deliver her to the warlord, part of the local economy.

  She imagined their résumés: a list of the number of victims they’d abducted; the number of successful payouts; a boastful paragraph listing their skills with knives and guns and the ability to terrorize convincingly. They might include a fee schedule. Kidnapping without injuring the victim probably cost more. Did they bill for overtime on jobs like this? Was there a bonus for avoiding Imperial entanglements?

  Several times throughout the long, hot morning, the third abductor, who’d rode in the front of the vehicle, paced the small house and argued with Kaafi and Saad. Early in the afternoon, the angry abductor left with Kaafi but didn’t return. She wondered if the man had completed his part of the job, or if Kaafi had decided he didn’t want to split the bounty three ways. He’d killed François without hesitation. She had no doubt he’d kill another partner.

  There was no food at the kidnapper’s layover, just water. Late in the day, Saad left and returned with bread and beans. He gave her a small portion, and she forced herself to eat, knowing she should be starving after over twenty-four hours without food, but she had no appetite and just prayed she’d keep the food down.

  The sun was high in the sky the following day when Kaafi returned from another of his trips and announced they were leaving. Back in the SUV, Morgan settled in her seat, not bothering to ask how long the drive would be. No one had answered any of her questions so far. She’d given up asking.

  This time, they drove north. She gathered this from the angle of the sun and was baffled as to why they’d backtrack, not daring to hope they were returning to Djibouti.

  It was several hours after sunset when they arrived at yet another ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere. They hadn’t crossed the border, but they’d driven long enough that she’d wondered if they were close. They repeated the bathroom ritual, followed by being tied up inside. This kidnapper’s nest, however, lacked a built-in restraint system, so she was bound to a heavy chair. She slept sitting up, but after two nights of fitful sleep, she was just tired enough to at least drift in and out of consciousness.

  Throughout the ordeal, she thought of Pax. His training was such that he could probably sleep standing if he had to. Her headache worsened with each minute, and she was beginning to think she was actually feverish, not just overheated from the stagnant, unrelenting humidity.

  Was Pax losing his mind now that she’d been gone for over sixty hours and the tracker hadn’t been used? Was he running himself ragged trying to find her, or trapped on the base by his XO?

  Did he know she loved him? Would he find any peace in thoughts of their time together, or would her death render him unable to treasure the memories? Had her father told her mother the truth about why he’d gone to Djibouti? She’d give anything to spare Pax, her mother, and her father the agony they must be feeling.

  Her head throbbed even as her belly churned. She tried to tell herself the fever was really a heat rash, but she didn’t believe it.

  Hopefully, tomorrow they’d reach Desta’s—perhaps he was in Ethiopia after all, and the excursion into Somalia had been an attempt to throw off any followers. Maybe tomorrow she’d reach her final destination and could wake the tracker, giving her parents and Pax one glimmer of hope. Perhaps she’d find hope again too, because at this point, she’d left all hope of survival at the border.

  Cal dragged Pax out of the command center sometime after midnight on the second day, reminding him that he’d be shut out of everything if he wasn’t functional. It didn’t help that he’d made his feelings for Morgan so obvious.

  Pax feared once he left the room, he’d be shut out and wouldn’t be allowed to return, but Cal had a point. Pax needed sleep so he could present himself as ready for action. He needed his XO to see him as a Special Forces operator, not a man who was falling apart because his woman had been taken.

  So he slept—a full, deep six hours—then worked out, showered, and ate. During that time, Cal planted himself in the command center, ready to alert Pax if there was news, good or bad.

  A soldier again, Pax walked to the command with renewed energy. The workout had done as much good as the sleep and meal to rejuvenate him. Morgan had been gone sixty-eight hours. Surely the tracker would ping soon. It had to.

  He knew the stats, provided by Savannah James. Every tracker involved in a successful extraction had been triggered within seventy-two hours. A few—including Yemen—had been triggered between seventy-two and ninety-six hours, but none of those abductees had survived. For the odds to remain on Morgan’s side, the number crunchers believed they needed a lock on her location within the next four hours.

  But Pax wasn’t a number cruncher. He was a soldier. He didn’t give a fuck about the odds or how these scenarios had played out in the past. If—when—they got Morgan’s location, nothing would stop him from bringing her back alive.

  Some young officer who was probably fresh out of school stopped Pax at the entrance to the command center. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, you aren’t on the approved list.”

  Shit. This was what he’d feared would happen. He’d been locked out. He glanced into the room and met General Adler’s gaze. The man’s look was shuttered. Pax wondered if he’d tried to intervene but had been denied.

  Generals were rarely denied, but then, this general’s admittance into the room was also tenuous. His daughter had been taken, and he had no intel to bring to the conversation. This was one hundred percent emotion for him. It was a testament to his rank that he was in the room at all.

  Behind Pax, a woman said, “Step aside, Lieutenant, and let Sergeant Blanchard in.” Pax turned to see Savannah James giving the young officer a steely stare.

  “I can’t,” the lieutenant said.

  “You can, and you will. He has valuable intel on the inner workings of Dr. Adler’s project. We need him at the table.”

  Pax wondered why the woman was lying to get him in the room, but he was grateful. He knew she and Morgan had sparred in the gym more evenings than not in the past weeks—Pax was the one who’d suggested they work out together in the first place—and Morgan had described her as a developing friend. Not that any spook allowed real friendship.

  As far as this mission went, James held no rank, had no tangible authority. Yet, it was her chip implanted in Morgan’s arm. CIA technology, under CIA control, giving Pax the feeling the CIA operative was calling more shots than he knew.

  He didn’t even know if the woman was an analyst or a case officer. He’d originally assumed analyst, and yet he thought she managed assets outside the base, which was a case officer’s job.

  The lieutenant manning the door looked to the SOCOM commander for help.

  The commander frowned at Savannah James. “He’s out, James. This is too personal for him.”

  James crossed her arms. “He’s in. One of the mercenaries Sergeant Ripley detained during the kidnapping finally broke. He admitted one of Dr. Adler’s field workers was an informant. Sergeant Blanchard knows the guy from the days he was in the field with her. I need to know everything I can about Mouktar Clouet so we can find him and bring him in.”

  Mouktar?

  Ah shit. When Morgan learned of his betrayal, she’d be devastated.

  Pax nudged the lieutenant aside and made a beeline for the conference table at the rear of the room. “Get Ripley in here too,” he said to James. “He might know where the weasel lives.”

  “I’ve already summoned him,” James said as she dropped
a stack of files on the table. “Mouktar ditched the cell phone the Navy gave him, which tells me he knew we’d figure it out eventually. But odds are he slipped up somewhere. We’ll find him and shred his ass along with his brain.”

  “We need to talk to Charles Lemaire,” Pax said. “He’s the one who hired Mouktar and all the field crew.”

  James gave Pax a calculating smile. “I was thinking after this meeting, you and I should pay Lemaire a visit. You’ve met him a few times. I want your take on his demeanor.”

  At last, he was being given a job. A purpose. He’d been drowning from the moment Morgan’s desperate phone call had ended, and Savannah James had thrown him a lifeline. “That would be my pleasure, Ms. James.”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t the calculating smile he was used to seeing. This was her true smile, the person behind the agent. “Please, call me Savvy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Charles Lemaire looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. A point in the bureaucrat’s favor, in Pax’s mind. The man raked a hand through his hair after he settled behind his desk. “I’ll do anything I can to help you find Dr. Adler,” he said. “Everyone in the department has been devastated to learn of her abduction.”

  “Even Imbert?” Pax asked. “Ripley said your natural resources minister was irritated our military was providing her with security.”

  “Ali Imbert is sexist, but he’s no traitor,” Lemaire said.

  “What makes you say that?” Savvy asked.

  “He is Djiboutian. He cares about his country.”

  “In my experience,” Savvy said, “the most successful traitors are the ones who believe their actions are patriotic. In Djibouti, that means clan first, then country.” She paused and leaned forward, her calculating smile fixed on Lemaire. “What clan is Imbert?”

  “Issa,” Lemaire said.

  “Etefu Desta is also Issa,” Savvy said.

  “As is half of Djibouti,” Lemaire said, clearly angry. “I am Issa. But I put Djibouti before my tribe.”

  “Which makes you unique,” Pax said.

  “You don’t believe me?” Lemaire glared at him. “Who are you to judge me, Sergeant? You are an American Green Beret, touted as having the best military training in the world, and yet you and your team couldn’t even protect one woman.”

  Pax held back the snarl and refrained from going for the minister’s throat. Charles Lemaire had no idea what hornet’s nest he toyed with in taunting Pax. It didn’t matter that Ripley had been in charge of Morgan’s security detail when she was taken. Pax blamed himself, for the simple reason that she was his. He should have protected her. Period.

  What kind of soldier couldn’t protect his woman? He wasn’t worthy of the woman or his Special Forces tab.

  “How did you find and hire Mouktar Clouet?” Savvy asked.

  Lemaire faced the CIA operative. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just answer the question, Charles.” The way Savvy said the minister’s first name could give a man chills. And not the good kind.

  “His name was given to me as someone who spoke English and wasn’t averse to hard labor.”

  “Who gave you his name?” Savvy pressed.

  Lemaire let out a heavy sigh. “Ali Imbert.” He glared at Savvy. “As the natural resources minister, he maintains a list of field workers who work with foreign contractors. There was nothing untoward.”

  Savvy gave the man a tight smile. “I don’t think that’s for you to decide, Charles.”

  Morgan guessed her fever ran around one hundred and three by the time she reached Desta’s base of operations, making her entrance a blur as Saad and Kaafi dragged her inside, not because she resisted, but because she was too weak to walk.

  Neither man seemed to believe she was ill, and they clearly weren’t versed in nursing enough to recognize that she couldn’t fake a fever of this magnitude, but she was too sick to care.

  One thing about being grossly ill, it squelched her fear over having been kidnapped to a negligible level. She couldn’t think about fear when all her energy was focused on the agony of being dehydrated with a stomach bug. She was too sick to give a damn what sort of harm they intended to inflict upon her.

  She was led to a stark cell. No windows. A cot. No blanket, no pillow. A hole in the floor in the corner to serve as toilet, while a large bolt in the center was attached to a long, thick chain with a metal cuff at the end.

  All Morgan cared about was the cot. It was stationary, unlike the SUV. It was softer than the chair she’d spent the night in. She lay on the cot as the woman who’d led her to the room attached the cuff to her ankle.

  She closed her eyes and promptly lost the battle with her belly. She tripped over the chain and didn’t make it to the hole in the corner in time.

  The woman said something to the guard in an angry tone. The man argued back.

  Morgan crawled over the chain and finally reached the hole, where she emptied her stomach.

  Spent, she made her way back to the cot and collapsed again. Several minutes later, the woman reappeared. She placed a damp cloth on Morgan’s forehead and cleaned the mess on the floor.

  A bowl to catch the vomit, should she suffer another bout of vomiting, was placed next to her. She promptly filled it.

  At some point, the cuff on her ankle was removed. The woman must have won the argument with the guard. The woman came and went, bringing Morgan water to drink and more damp rags to cool her head.

  Dimly, she was aware she should trigger the tracker now that she was in Desta’s lair, but she had just enough brainpower to know that she needed to be certain the man was here and that there was cell coverage.

  She had no idea if she had a simple flu bug or something more serious. Her breathing was shallow as her eyes drifted closed. She could only hope she would wake again and would have the energy to do what needed to be done.

  Ninety-six hours passed without a signal from Morgan. Pax continued to work the government angle, trying to find Mouktar, determined to find out who was really behind Morgan’s abduction and why, but he was aware that Savvy, who had great faith in statistics, was losing hope.

  Morgan was now outside the successful range. If she were rescued now, she’d be an outlier. Unquantifiable.

  Savvy wasn’t the only one with doubts. Pax knew ninety percent of the SOCOM brass had mentally written off Morgan as dead.

  Pax would never do that. He didn’t know a combat soldier who would take statistics over eyes on the ground.

  He had to give Savvy credit for going after Lemaire and Imbert like a bulldog. Pax learned she’d long suspected Imbert of playing for either Desta, the Chinese, or both. He wondered if she’d latched on to Morgan to get access to Imbert.

  It was hard to guess the woman’s motivation, but her goal, in this at least, was pure: to bring Morgan back.

  “Why did you fixate on Imbert?” Pax asked, early on the fifth day. “Nothing in his background stands out.”

  “He has a sick kid,” she said in an emotionless voice. “The boy needs Western medicine or he’s a goner. If I were the Chinese, he’s the one I’d target.”

  Pax met her gaze. “You mean you did target him, but he didn’t bite, no matter what carrot you dangled. So you figured the Chinese beat you to him.”

  She shrugged. “I’m good at my job, but the Chinese probably locked him up before I was in-country. Blame my predecessor.”

  “How is Imbert’s son?”

  “No one has seen him in months. Either he’s in China or he’s dead. Given that Imbert hasn’t betrayed his handler, I’m thinking the boy’s in China and responding to treatment.”

  Imbert’s loyalty would last as long as his son’s health. “What makes you think he’s not aligned with Desta?”

  “I think he is, to a certain degree. But Desta can’t cure cancer. Hell, Desta can’t cure a hangnail. The warlord is nothing but a weak puppet with big dreams.”

  “According to my CO and everyone in charge at Ca
mp Citron, Desta is the next great evil. The Osama bin Laden of East Africa.”

  She shook her head. “He aspires to that. His end game is simple: he wants Eritrea back in the Ethiopian fold. And he wants to be the dictator at the helm. If that happens, my job is to bring him in line. Akin to Saddam Hussein in the eighties—before the Iraqi dictator invaded Kuwait.”

  “Back when he was the US’s bitch?”

  “Exactly. Right now, Desta is a wannabe dictator up for grabs. His army is thin and supporters in Ethiopia weak. His only hope is to recover Eritrea, giving Ethiopia a coastline again, so they won’t be dependent on Djibouti for their port. But Eritrea is no closer to being annexed by Ethiopia now than it was five years ago. Desta is looking for a foothold, and aligning with China is one way he could achieve his goals. I think China is arming him and gave him that nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse generator you found in his Yemen stronghold last year.”

  Pax did a double take. “You know about that?”

  “It was our tracker in the hostage’s body. I know everything about Yemen and that success.”

  “That mission was a failure. The hostage died.”

  “That mission was a success because you found the EMP, and it was destroyed in the drone strike before Desta could use it to obtain highly advanced US equipment and sell it to China. The hostage knew finding and destroying the EMP was the end goal.”

  Pax reared back. “He was bait? Why weren’t we told this?”

  His anger didn’t faze her in the slightest. “It was classified.”

  “Is Morgan bait? Was this planned all along so you could get Desta’s location?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean we won’t seize an opportunity here.” She spread her arms wide to encompass the command center. “And don’t think I’m the only person in this room who feels this way. If Desta has taken Morgan, this is our chance to save her and make the power-hungry asshole our bitch, not China’s.”