Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  He nodded. That worked. “Your name?”

  “Jamie Savage.”

  “Smart. So if I call you Sav, it will make sense. James too.”

  She nodded.

  He cocked his head. “What’s your real name, Sav?”

  She answered him with a look, and he couldn’t help but laugh. Two weeks ago, when Morgan Adler visited Camp Citron, he’d joined her and Pax in Barely North one evening. Savvy had been there too, and Morgan commented that she was more comfortable with being called Savvy than Savannah and asked why she’d chosen an alias she disliked.

  Savvy had replied, “I didn’t choose it. It was assigned to me.” It was one of the few times Savvy let any real emotion show, and he figured she’d been pissed about the alias. He’d spent too much time wondering why. But it wasn’t the sort of question she was likely to answer. Ever.

  “What’s our next step?”

  “Tomorrow we fly to Nairobi. From there we’ll buy a truck and drive to the park. We’ll spend the night there, then head to Dar es Salaam, which will take a day, maybe two. On Thursday, we’ll meet with Gorev’s associates. Friday is the big event.”

  Cal flipped through his passport, seeing stamps from all over the region. Savvy was thorough. “How the hell did you get the stamps?”

  “Stamps are easy. But you need to study them and remember where you’ve been. There are no Rwanda or Uganda stamps. Those can make crossing the border into DRC difficult.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to DRC?”

  She shrugged. “It never hurts to be prepared.”

  “And how are we going to pay for this? I’m guessing you don’t use a government credit card for covert ops.”

  She smiled. “The American dollar is preferred over the Congolese franc and Tanzanian and Kenyan shillings. We’ll have several thousand in cash on us when we set out. Plus Mani Kalenga has a rather large bank account—with accompanying credit card—in Nairobi. We’ll use that to purchase a vehicle when we get there and for hotel rooms over the first few days to conserve our cash.”

  He’d never really considered how undercover operators financed their missions without a trail that led right back to the Agency. Learn something new every day. “Are we going to be chipped?” he asked, referring to the subdermal tracking devices that had saved a few lives in the last two months.

  She shook her head. “No. We’re completely on our own for this mission. If we get in trouble, there will be no cavalry.”

  He’d expected that, but now, as he studied the passport and they discussed their itinerary, the isolation sank in. This was his first time going on a mission without Uncle Sam providing military flights to get him where he needed to be. Hell, he wouldn’t have his M4 or his uniform. He wouldn’t be a soldier at all.

  This required a different mindset.

  There would be no cavalry. No team. The men he trusted to watch his back wouldn’t be there. Savannah James would have his six, and he would watch hers.

  He hoped to hell she hadn’t been exaggerating about her training and skills.

  3

  It felt strangely like a bachelor party, this gathering of Cal’s team at Barely North the night before departing on an op with Savvy. He was the groom, out with his buddies, and the bride was nowhere to be seen. He’d say she was off with her friends, but Morgan and Pax were the only friends she had that he knew of, and Morgan was back in the US while Pax was sitting to Cal’s left.

  As with any good send-off, he received ribbing over the fact that he would be spending days up close and personal with a woman who’d shot down the advances of probably half the special forces operators—Army and Navy—on the base. Not a lot of the men at Camp Citron liked her, but that didn’t mean they didn’t want in her pants. It didn’t sit well with him that he was no better than the rest of the randy assholes.

  Bastian and Pax were quiet, even as they exchanged a look. They both knew Cal was one of the many who wanted her, but unlike the others, they also knew the attraction went both ways. Cal had few secrets from Pax, his roommate on this deployment, and Bastian had questioned him after witnessing a few choice encounters between him and Savvy.

  Pax genuinely liked Savannah James—but then, she’d kept him in the command center when Morgan was abducted and had enlisted his aid in tracking down the man who’d betrayed Morgan. Not to mention that Savvy had helped prevent Pax, Bastian, and Cal from facing court-martial after their AWOL rescue mission had been a success.

  Pax had never been burned by Savvy’s ruthless ends-justify-the-means ways. CIA couldn’t be trusted; it was a basic fact of life.

  What Cal didn’t understand was Bastian’s take on the woman. Sure, the court-martial thing counted in her favor, but aside from that, Bastian had plenty of reason to dislike Savvy.

  Cal lowered his voice under the din of the conversation and asked Bastian, “Why aren’t you pissed at her, Bas? She manipulated you and Brie, and then she nearly got you both killed.”

  Bastian shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “She was right. I needed to get Brie to open up, and we needed to go after Drugov.” His eyes darkened. “The guy was plotting genocide. I’m not the kind of person who loses sleep over the ethics of killing baby Hitler. Hypotheticals of that sort are bullshit, but the gist is this: if you have foreknowledge of a mass murder, terrorist strike, or genocide, you act.

  “Savvy unearths that foreknowledge. Her work gives us a chance to act. And she’s got a helluva instinct for ferreting out information. None of us will receive medals for mopping up at Desta’s compound, and my role in taking down Drugov will never be acknowledged, but I’m going home from this deployment knowing I helped prevent a genocide. That’s more than enough for me.” Bastian cocked his head. “I think the real question is why are you so bothered by her?”

  Pax leaned in. “I want to know that too.”

  Cal frowned. He just had to open his big, stupid mouth. He sighed and gave them the truth. “She’ll sacrifice anyone.”

  Bastian nodded. “Yes. Even herself.”

  And that right there might be the root of the problem. Possibly, his thoughts toward Savvy leaned more toward fear for her than anger at her. Did she ask others to do more than she would be willing to do in their place? He didn’t think so.

  She’d wanted him to hit her and expected him to have to do worse when they were in Dar.

  They were leaving tomorrow on a mission together, and she might sacrifice him in a heartbeat. Or herself. And he wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  He glanced up as the door to the club opened, and there she was. She scanned the room and caught his gaze.

  “Shit. Fun’s over,” Sergeant Stockton said in a cold voice from the far end of the table. “Cal’s missus has arrived.” He spoke loud enough for everyone—including Savvy—to hear.

  “Shut it, Stock,” Pax said. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “Too late,” Bastian said. “He was born that way.”

  Savvy stopped dead in the middle of the room. Her gaze bounced from Stockton to Cal.

  He cast a glare at Stockton, and then nodded for Savvy to join them. “What’s up, Sav?” he asked, putting warmth into his voice. It was one thing for him to have concerns about Savvy and quite another for one of his teammates to disrespect her, especially on the eve of a mission.

  Savvy gave Cal an anxious look as she took the empty seat across from him at the table. “Sergeant Callahan, there’s a change in our itinerary. A C-130 transport is departing tomorrow afternoon for our Forward Operating Location in Kenya. We’ll take that flight instead of flying commercial.”

  Bypassing customs to enter Kenya was ideal, but the Manda Bay FOL was on the coast and isolated. “How are we going to get from Manda Bay to Nairobi?”

  “Charter flight.” She glanced at the other men at the table. “I’m sorry to disturb your evening, but I wanted to let you know we won’t be leaving at the crack of dawn.”

  Considering he wasn’t likely to sleep more than the
minimum required during the coming op, a last night of decent sleep was welcome. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  She stood. “Have a good night.”

  “Stay, Savvy,” Cal said. “Have a drink. Relax.”

  She glanced toward Stockton. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your fun.”

  “My fun was ruined when Stockton showed up,” Cal said.

  “Fuck you, Callahan,” the soldier said.

  Cal flipped him off without glancing in his direction, his gaze fixed on Savvy. She worked hard to conceal it, but he sensed her insecurity. She could act on an op, and inside SOCOM, she was always cold composure. But here, in a social situation that required her to be herself, she faltered. She cared about what he and his team thought of her.

  Interesting.

  She dropped back into the chair and took Cal’s drink. “Gin and tonic?” she asked after giving the contents a sniff.

  He nodded.

  She took a sip.

  “Hey,” he said with a laugh. “I said have a drink. Not my drink.”

  She smiled and set the glass in front of him. “I’m not staying, and I’m not drinking. I’ve got a stack of reports to read and details to memorize before we get to Dar.”

  “You can read on the flight. Stay.” He meant it. He wanted to see her relax. He wanted to spend a few minutes with the real woman, not the façade she presented. He wanted to get a fix on who she really was before they set out tomorrow.

  He nodded to the waiter, who quickly came to the table. “Can I get you anything, Ms. James?”

  She started to say no, but Cal shook his head, and she relented. “Vodka martini, please.”

  “Shaken, not stirred?” Stockton asked with a sneer.

  This time, it was Savvy who flipped him off, clearly tired of the James Bond joke.

  It occurred to Cal that as a SAD/SOG officer, technically, she was licensed to kill, or at least, she could be sent on black op assassination missions. And she’d claimed to have killed for Uncle Sam when they sparred earlier today, but she could just have been blowing smoke. Was the last name James a tongue-in-cheek nod to 007? But then, she’d said her name had been assigned. Would someone in the Operations Directorate of the CIA give a SAD operator a name that referenced the fictional MI6 spy and sometime assassin?

  Behind Savvy, the big-screen TV, which played CNN when there wasn’t a big sporting event going on, flashed with “Breaking News” and the official portrait of Senator Albert Jackson appeared on the screen. A little more than two weeks ago, Jackson had been in Djibouti for a ceremony on the aircraft carrier USS Dahlgren to honor the special forces teams that had rescued Brie Stewart—AKA Gabriella Prime—from South Sudan. According to Bastian, Jackson was Brie’s creepy “Uncle” Al, an old friend of Brie’s father, Jeffery Prime, and the senator had made the trip only to garner some positive PR from Brie’s ordeal.

  When the flight deck of Dahlgren appeared on the screen—footage of the ceremony—Cal called out, “Turn up the volume on the TV.”

  The news segment showing the nearby carrier had caught several patrons’ attention and the room hushed as the volume was raised. Savvy and the others with their back to the TV turned in their seats. The chyron on the bottom of the screen said, “Senator Albert Jackson implicated in oil price fixing scandal with America’s Prime Energy and Russia’s Druneft.”

  The camera zoomed in on Brie Stewart as she delivered her speech from the flight deck. Bastian stood behind to her left with a group of sailors. The senator was behind her to the right with the carrier group’s admiral and carrier’s captain. Bastian’s gaze was fixed on Brie, and anyone who knew him could see the man had it bad for the woman.

  Fortunately, feelings between the two of them went both ways. Two days ago, Brie had departed for the US, and right about now, she was probably settling into Bastian’s apartment near Fort Campbell.

  A sailor seated in the middle of the room, who clearly didn’t know the story of Bastian’s involvement with the former oil heiress turned aid worker and definitely didn’t realize the soldier was in the room, whistled at the screen and said, “I hear there are sex videos of her online from back in her Princess Prime days. Goddamn base firewalls. I want to see that rich bitch on her knees.”

  Bastian was out of his seat before Cal could stop him, but fortunately, Espinosa planted himself in front of Bastian and gripped his shoulders. “The fuckhead isn’t worth going to the brig.”

  After a few incidences in which special forces—Army and Navy—had scuffled with sailors and marines, the base commander had instilled a zero-tolerance policy for fighting among troops. Circumstances didn’t matter. The fact that Bastian helped stop a genocide less than a week ago didn’t matter. If he threw a punch, he’d land in the brig, just like everyone else.

  Bastian struggled against Espi’s hold.

  The seriously stupid sailor turned to see the commotion behind him, then glanced back at the TV, and must’ve recognized Bastian as the soldier on the screen in crisp ACU and green beret. He laughed, obviously feeling safe thanks to the skipper’s policy and Espi’s hold. Probably wanting to look like a hotshot in front of his friends by baiting a Green Beret, he said, “You’re the guy who rescued Princess Prime? Did you tap that? I hear she’s a prime piece of ass.” He laughed at the obvious pun.

  A moment later, the man’s face slammed into the table and his feet were swept from beneath him. He dropped to the floor, and Savvy pinned him on his stomach as she wrenched his arm behind his back. “Shut up,” she said to the moaning sailor. “I’m trying to watch the news.” She wrenched his arm higher, then leaned down and said just loud enough for everyone in the now-silent room to hear, “I’m not in the skipper’s chain of command. I can do as I please. So shut the fuck up before I do the women of this planet a favor and cut off your balls.”

  The sailor went silent, and Savvy faced the TV screen, completely disinterested in the man pinned under her knee. “Rewind back to the beginning,” she commanded, and the bartender with the remote did just that. Damn, Cal didn’t even know the big TV had a DVR. Or maybe Savvy’s commanding tone conjured it.

  The CNN report recounted Senator Jackson’s close ties to the Prime family that had culminated in his recent trip to the carrier to thank the military for Brie’s rescue. From there, it detailed his ties to recently deceased Nikolai Drugov. The news gave the public version of Drugov’s death: seven days ago, while sailing off the coast of Morocco, the oligarch had been gunned down by his own crew. The ensuing investigation revealed several incidences in which Drugov had conspired with the also recently deceased Jeffery Prime—the oil tycoon had died three days ago due to complications from a stroke—to fix oil prices, and now it appeared Senator Jackson had been implicated, conspiring to control oil prices back when he was the CEO of a Texas-based oil company before he’d entered politics.

  It had only been a week, and already the Drugov dominos were starting to fall. And it was the woman who’d just dropped a sailor without breaking a sweat who’d set that investigation in motion.

  He owed Savvy respect. She was brilliant at her job. It wasn’t even her fault that he hated her job and the organization she worked for. Plus, for the most part, she used her skills for good.

  The report shifted to an evangelical televangelist whose business dealings with Drugov had been exposed in the last twenty-four hours. The news was moving fast as all of Drugov’s deals were coming to light.

  The Reverend Abel Fitzsimmons—a guy Cal had never heard of but who apparently had a big following in the Bible Belt—had used charitable donations to invest in Drugov’s South Sudan operation. The guy wanted in on the oil business? In South Sudan?

  The reverend had issued a statement that all funds paid to Drugov had been for a charitable cause involving girls and sanitation. What the hell? It sounded like Fitzsimmons had been investing in Brie’s period panties. He’d ask Savvy about that at the first opportunity.

  But the next part of the report really g
ot his attention. Questions had been raised about money the evangelical minister had sent to DRC, supposedly for a school, but a reporter delving into the story was unable to confirm the Mission School had been built. This brought to Cal’s mind allegations that had been made against Pat Robertson in the late 1990s and which gained attention again with the release of the 2013 documentary, Mission Congo. The minister had been accused of using charitable donations intended for refugees fleeing the Rwandan genocide to mine for diamonds. There’d even been talk of building a school, but the documentary presented evidence the school never educated anyone. Was Fitzsimmons attempting something similar?

  Did this have anything to do with the lead they were following to Dar es Salaam? Jean Paul Lubanga, had control of Congo’s mining industry, all mining claims went through him. It would be just like Savvy to tell Cal only one part of the mission, leaving out the true target of her intel gathering.

  But then, Abel Fitzsimmons was American. The CIA couldn’t investigate him. That was the FBI’s job.

  Much as he disliked the CIA and their methods, he had to admit, if investigating Fitzsimmons was the main goal, he was in. Anyone who took advantage of the desperate plight of the people of Congo deserved to burn.

  His mother was from DRC. He’d visited and spent time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins who’d survived the nightmare that began with the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He had cousins who’d died in the massacre of a small village before Mobutu was ousted in the First Congo War. Others who’d been raped and later starved to death or died from disease during the Second Congo War. And two who’d been conscripted to fight while still children.