She placed the mug on the table next to a drone she’d been programming. “We have a problem.”
Simon’s forehead creased, as it often did when he was thinking about something. “Tell me.”
“If the drones are detonated in North Korea, won’t the North Korean government think it’s under attack, examine any fragments found at the scene and learn they were manufactured in the United States?”
“We were going to detonate them in a remote, mountainous region. It was my understanding that the markings on the drones had been removed.”
“They weren’t removed. Look.” She flipped over the drone to reveal the Pelican markings in the body. “Also, you can’t remove certain technology markers. Pelican has a distinctive way of lining up the rotors. Even their landing gear is unique. If the North Korean army gets hold of even a fraction of one of these machines, they’ll know where it came from, but maybe not the group that launched it.” She paced back and forth across the barn, her breathing escalating, until Simon took her in his arms.
The strength of his embrace pulled some of the worry from her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this mission was going to create more harm than good.
“I don’t want to cause World War Three,” she insisted.
“You won’t.” He kissed her gently and stared into her eyes. “Another dealer would supply drones with twice the explosive power and take out hundreds of people heading to a market or a school. Most guys in this game have no morals and no allegiances. You and I are charged with minimizing casualties and making it appear as though we are working diligently for our clients. Without our work, the world would be much more dangerous.”
“You’re right, but if this backfires–”
“If we don’t handle this transaction, then someone else will. There’s always someone who’ll fulfill any contract for the right price. An international incident would escalate the sale of arms throughout the world. A win-win for dealers. Let me talk with the explosives team, maybe they can figure a way to destroy the drone so effectively, the origin will be untraceable.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“I don’t know, but I trust them. You should too.” With another kiss, he walked out of the barn to locate his team.
Two hours after midnight, a tired crew had found the means to obliterate the drones. Acid.
Nothing was sexier to Simon than a woman in her element. Cassie took control of the drones, the men, and the technical aspects of the project. Her intelligence and leadership abilities shined through.
They had three days to arm the drones and three days to deliver them. They’d easily make the deadline if Cassie continued to work nonstop to get the job done. Simon tended to stay away from the manufacture of arms, but Tucker had been adamant about the need for modifications on these drones to prevent the situation from escalating out of control.
In all the years he’d worked with Tucker, the man had been adept at infiltrating certain situations to control the playing field without anyone knowing of their involvement. What Tucker lacked in field skills, he made up for in strategic mission planning. Still, something was wrong with this particular assignment. Too many things could go wrong. The businessmen they were selling to were not normal customers, the drones had to be armed before the sale, and Cassie was not the best trained agent, although her inner strength made her better than average.
When he arrived in the bedroom, Cassie was already in bed asleep, dressed only in his T-shirt. Her limbs stretched out in four directions as though playing a grown-up version of Twister. He wanted to wake her, but she needed rest. Tomorrow, they’d be testing one of the drones. One more week and this assignment from hell would end.
If everything worked as it should, she could retire from the field and remain safe in the background. Keeping her safe was paramount.
In the morning, they ate quickly in the farmhouse, and then Cassie headed out to the barn. She wanted to go over the logistics of the acid core in the explosives. A frightening mix of chemicals, but necessary in this case. Transporting them would be tricky. Simon would have to hire a specialized cargo plane to bring the drones into South Korea. From there, the crates would cross the border through holes in the security of the Demilitarized Zone between the two enemy states. One of the more risky jobs he’d perform. Simon preferred his transactions to occur in a neutral location.
Standing on the front stairs of the farmhouse, he watched the team follow Cassie’s directions. She had jeans and another T-shirt on, her ponytail flowing out the back of a San Diego Padres ball cap. She gestured for them to move a few crates out of the barn. She helped the men as they lined everything up for her to inspect. Their respect for her was obvious in the focused attention they gave as she spoke to them. She should be proud of how far she’d come.
He was certainly proud of her. There weren’t many agents who could have done what she’d accomplished in the last few weeks. A far cry from the timid creature he’d frightened that first night, especially after going through a traumatic event. Soldiers had left active service for less hardship. If he didn’t love her so much, and want to send her back to Oxford to live a quiet life with his family, she’d be his top pick as a partner in the future. Now, however, he wanted her as a different kind of partner.
Something moved in the woods behind him. He reached for his gun with his right hand and took a sip of coffee with his left. Son of a bitch. Dane, blending into the background in moss green and brown, leaned against a tree with his gun pointed directly at Simon.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Dunn.” He moved closer, lowering the gun as he walked.
“Didn’t you see the ‘No Trespassing’ signs? I put them up specifically for you.” Simon put away his gun as well. Dane wouldn’t shoot him, only torment him.
“Sorry, I can’t read French.”
“Might as well get you a cup of coffee.”
“Thanks. I prefer walks on the beach to schlepping through damp wooded areas.”
They clasped hands as old friends and headed into the kitchen before the team saw him.
“Did you follow the group I sent to pick up the drones?” Simon asked.
Dane shook his head. “Installed a GPS tracking device on one of the crates.” He sat at the wooden table and stared through the lace curtain toward the barn.
“I should have repackaged them. Live and learn.” Simon grabbed a chipped brown coffee mug that may have been in the farmhouse when it was built hundreds of years ago. With any luck, Dane would have lead poisoning and be stuck in bed for a few days. The man, however, had been granted more than nine lives, all healthy ones.
The American took the full mug and placed it on the table. “What the hell are you doing with my drones?”
“Making a sale. Same as I’ve always done. Jealous because the CIA demoted you to sales boy?”
A flash of irritation crossed Dane’s brow. “You can do as you please unless it harms my existence. If those end up with the wrong group and I’m blamed, I’ll hunt you down and destroy your operation.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be retired by then. After all this time, I’m surprised you didn’t investigate my final buyer before you sold me such amazing pieces of technology.”
“I thought you were selling them to the Serbians. You hid your tracks fairly well, except for one very beautiful partner.”
Simon held back the heavy emotions roiling in his gut. Don’t reveal anything. Only Cassie could get hurt.
“She’s my girlfriend, and she stays out of this.”
“Really? Then why was she flying the drones yesterday with a far more steady hand than the ditzy surfer girl in San Diego, who flew a drone on a suicide mission into the bay?”
So he’d been watching.
“Practice.”
Dane took a slow, easy sip of the coffee. “You’ve never taken such an extreme interest in a woman before. You never cared if they shared my bed one night and yours the next. It’s different with Cassie. Y
ou’re downright possessive. Got me thinking. What if her value to you was outside the bed? I ran some searches for Ms. Cassie Watson. Not much to go on. Then I mentioned to one of our engineers that a leggy blonde from the San Diego area crashed one of the more expensive drones. He laughed and said there was a robotics expert in General Dynamics several years back who fit that description, Catherine Wallace. Sound familiar?”
“No. Are you saying there are no other blonde women on the planet who work in robotics?” Damn. She certainly was unforgettable, and figuring out her identity in such a small community would be inevitable.
“Nice try, but Catherine, aka Cassie, is one of a kind. In fact, from what I’ve found out about her, she’d be an asset to Homeland Security. And yet, she’s not American at all. British with an American upbringing. As you boys would say, bloody brilliant. Convenient, too. You have an expert at your side all day, and a hot piece of ass in your bed at night.”
“Enough,” Simon growled.
“Since her passport says she’s American, I’m assuming she’s more my property than yours. Let’s see how far she’ll go to stay hidden in plain sight. I bet I can convince her to do anything to stay undercover. Anything.”
Simon pulled Dane off his chair by the front of his shirt. Just as quick, Dane’s hand reached out and grabbed Simon’s neck, squeezing hard enough to warn him off. Simon glared into his eyes, rage ripping apart his control. Dane needed to keep his distance from Cassie, because friendship or not, Simon would annihilate him and his career.
“Stay the hell away from Cassie or so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
A grin grew on Dane’s face. “Even more interesting.” He pushed off Simon, his breathing heavy. “Give my best to Catherine—I mean Cassie. I’ll be in touch.”
He waved back at Simon. The door closed and his cocky hide disappeared into the woods before Simon could fashion a comeback.
Chapter Nineteen
Three late nights, and limited meal breaks, caused Cassie’s energy levels to plummet. Before she pulled the covers back to rise, Simon had run a few miles, showered, and was out of the house. His stamina never declined. While she felt feeble this morning compared to him, she’d appreciated his strength and energy the night before. She needed to keep moving, so she dragged herself out of bed, showered, and forced herself to return to the barn. Today they’d test their creation. If it didn’t go well, they’d need to perfect the design over the next two days, potentially making them late for the drop off. An unacceptable conclusion to an already difficult assignment.
At least they’d found a way to minimize the possibility of tracing the drones to the U.S. The acid would be released backward into the drone as the explosive detonated outward. It should destroy as much of the carbon fiber frame and the software as possible, leaving a minimal amount of material for identification. Not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.
Seeing the test drone sitting in the field beside the barn, ready to launch, accelerated her pulse. Would it work? Would the local authorities be called after the explosion? Simon had assured her the location was an active blast site, but she’d never blown up anything before and had no idea the protocol involved.
“Good morning.” Simon waved her over. He displayed an interesting mix of bad boy and protector. A very alluring mixture. He wouldn’t touch her in front of the men, but they had to know where they both slept at night.
“Is everything ready?”
“Just waiting for the pilot. She looks fantastic today, by the way.” He smiled at her, but something was different. It had been like that since lunch yesterday. He acted extra protective, rarely leaving her side when she was out of the farmhouse. Her instincts told her to be on guard, because no matter how protective he was, especially since Jordan, he’d never been the clingy type. That meant there might be danger lurking that he wasn’t telling her about.
Will there ever be a time when he won’t have so many secrets?
But she knew the answer.
She spun around like a model displaying a new dress. “Thanks. I’m feeling fantastic today,” she lied.
She knelt beside the machine and looked it over. Making alterations on the model was tricky, raising the chance of a problem and delays. “I’ve been having so much fun playing with my expensive new toys, I didn’t think about alternatives. Why are we altering these drones when we could have bought some Textron Battlehawks or Aerovironment Switchblades? They’re already armed and ready to go.”
“First, the battery packs won’t allow for the distances that need to be covered to get over the DMZ. Second, they fly like a plane, and we need them to hover for a little while for maximum impact.” He raised his eyebrow in a sexy manner, although he probably meant to look stern. “Finally, the U.S. government tracks the sale of armed drones more than they track the movement of large shipments of uranium.”
“Ah. Makes sense.” She made a few minor adjustments and then walked over to the table to grab the remote and the glasses. When she had everything in place, she gave him a thumbs-up.
“See that cliff over there?” He pointed to an outcrop of stones on the side of fairly steep mountain.
“That’s my target?”
“Just to the left of it is a small quarry.”
“I’ve seen it from earlier flights. It’s pretty active.”
“It’s closed today, due to a large payoff to the company president. They have a blasting permit and are scheduled to blast in about an hour.”
“You are thorough.”
“In everything I do.”
She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I’ll appreciate your thoroughness even more tonight.”
A grin lifted his face from gorgeous to decadent. “You’re insatiable.”
“And you’re complaining?”
“Never.” The spark of amusement continued to light up his face until one of the men turned the corner, then his expression fell back into a lighthearted scowl. Back to work.
Wearing the glasses that provided a view from the camera, she launched the test drone and flew it around for twenty minutes. The DMZ was approximately two and a half miles wide at the point where the businessmen wanted to stage the attack. She needed to ensure that the drones could travel at a low altitude for the requisite distance, even though it would never make the trip. She didn’t understand how the team had managed to place acid in a sealed packet released only upon detonation by the explosives, but she appreciated how the weight increase to the drone was minimal.
The drone hovered in almost complete silence over a small field halfway up a mountain pass. A deer walking nearby through a forest clearing showed zero reaction until the UAV traveled within three feet, and then it bolted. At the twenty-seven minute mark, she flew to the quarry. Large boulders and piles of smaller rocks sat on the edge of the cuts into the mountain. A picnic table and small hut made of scrap wood and a metal roof became potential victims in the middle of the stone area.
“There’s a small hut at the bottom of the quarry. I don’t want to destroy it,” she called out to Simon.
“Go ahead. I had one of the men check the site and remain nearby to keep anyone out. I’m curious to see the impact on a building. I’ll reimburse the operator for it. Money tends to create a high degree of forgiveness.”
She circled the area to make sure for herself that no one had entered the closed quarry without permission, and then lowered the machine a few feet to hover over the hut.
“Ready?” Simon asked.
She nodded.
The explosives team stood behind her, waiting to observe the fruit of their labor.
“In three. One, two, three.”
She detonated the explosive. The force of the blast could be felt at the farmhouse. Trees swayed, birds launched into the air, and a cloud of white smoke rose above the forest. The control fell out of her hand. And Cassie collapsed.
She ended up on the ground as though the Earth had shifted, leaving her feet with no place to stand.
Simon lifted her into his arms within seconds after the fall.
Being in his arms at that moment did nothing to calm her racing heart. She had always been a strong athlete, and losing her balance ticked her off. “I’m fine. I guess the blast knocked me over.”
“No. The blast wasn’t that powerful. You fainted. Did you eat today?” He tightened his grip on her and frowned. Being with Simon definitely had drawbacks—an overprotective man always ready to swoop in and handle things, when in reality she’d probably tripped.
“I had a banana and some orange slices.”
“If I have to force feed you, you’ll get adequate nutrition into that body of yours.”
She glanced over at the explosive team. They had jumped into their car, ready to go check out the effects of the blast.
“Let me down. I want to go with them.” She struggled against him, but he didn’t relent. Simon headed to the farmhouse. “Have some water and a piece of bread first. They won’t touch anything until we arrive.”
Simon watched Cassie drop and had to restrain himself from pulling the plug on the rest of the assignment. She’d been extra tired the past few days, and he feared she was putting too much into her work without adequately fueling herself. Any attempt to slow her down, however, would result in a fight he didn’t want to have. After a drink of water and a slice of bread, she looked better.
They drove out to see the results of their work in silence. The quarry was about twenty minutes away through winding dirt roads. Cassie sipped on a mug of tea and ate some Nutella spread over another piece of bread. When her tongue licked some of the chocolate from her lips, Simon almost swerved off the road. Damn, he craved her almost every minute, every second. She was a walking distraction, and love was a major liability in the field.
The team hailed them over to a clearing near the quarry. Ben stepped up to the car before they opened the door. He gave them a thumbs-up. Good. Simon needed a success. After Dane’s threats and Cassie’s fainting spell, the mission’s chance of success had decreased to unacceptable levels.
True Deceptions (True Lies) Page 18