Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  She caught her breath and ran her fingers over his smooth scalp. “I said I love you.”

  “Shit. Did anyone put money on ‘I love you’ from her?” Espi asked.

  “I was going to,” Bastian said.

  “‘Going to’ doesn’t count,” Pax said. “The pot is still mine.”

  Laughter bubbled up in Freya’s chest, and Cal wrapped his arms around her as she laughed. When she could speak again, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “I was trying to save your life.”

  “I know,” he said. “And if you ever pull shit like that again, I will dump your ass. We’re partners. But this time, I forgive you.”

  She brushed her lips against his. “Okay, then. Let’s get the civilians into the mine, then kick some génocidaire ass.”

  Cal nodded. “Time to get to work.”

  34

  Cal’s aunts and uncle went from hut to hut to explain why everyone needed to retreat into the old mine. As dawn broke across the sky, the children were tucked inside, clutching blankets and favorite items. The parents did what they could to convince them it was a grand adventure, but even the youngest among them seemed to know something was wrong. After all, the abandoned mine had always been off-limits.

  A skeleton crew of miners and mill workers remained in the village. They would go through the motions of starting their workday so the village would look business as usual. They’d retreat into the mine with the others when Cal gave the signal.

  Cal’s team was assembled in the mill, downriver from the village. The generators were silent for now. A quick inspection showed they had more than enough gasoline and diesel to fuel one part of Cal’s plan.

  Pax Blanchard and Carlos Espinosa radioed in from their recon mission with the news that at least four hundred soldiers had gathered on the other side of the river. Freya blanched at the number.

  “How did Lubanga gather so many soldiers this fast?” Cal asked. “I thought his most loyal men were in the east, near the border.”

  She frowned. So had she. “He must’ve been closer to staging the coup than we realized.”

  They waited for Blanchard and Espinosa to return so they could plan their next move. They wanted to strike before noon, but with only seven against four hundred, they needed to plan carefully.

  Both soldiers entered the mill, broad grins on their faces. “Good news,” Espi said. “As we were heading back, a vehicle drove up. We snapped some pictures.” He held up a digital camera. “This ugly mug look familiar?”

  Freya looked at the screen and felt dizzy. Shock. Relief. Vindication. They swirled together. “Lubanga,” she said, letting all those reactions show.

  She probably looked like some sort of rookie to the A-Team, with her emotions on the surface and making doe eyes at Cal. She wasn’t the cool operator she’d always strived to be when she’d worked with SOCOM. But as Cal had said—who knew how many days ago—this mission had gotten personal. How could she be expected to be reserved, cold-hearted Savannah James when Lubanga had threatened Cal’s baby cousins?

  She’d feared Jean Paul Lubanga wouldn’t show. But then, three hundred and fifty million was pretty good motivation. He needed to be certain the transfer went through and couldn’t trust a subordinate. The last time he did that, he’d lost the money.

  “This army isn’t exactly loyal, and their training is for shit,” Blanchard said. “They’re armed, but they don’t have much beyond guns in the way of gear, and I’m pretty sure some of these guys have never held an AK before. We aren’t seven against four hundred. I figure we’re seven against about fifty. But really, this is more of a chess match. To win, all we need to do is take the king. Lubanga has security, so in all likelihood, we’re seven against ten at best.”

  “Seven special operators against ten,” Espinosa said.

  The soldier earned a nod for including her in his count. She knew the men were aware she was SAD, but that didn’t mean they would automatically accept her as an equal. Yet they had. “I can live with those odds,” she said.

  “I’ve faced more daunting challenges taking my kids to Chuck E. Cheese,” Ripley said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “We can’t completely dismiss the fifty or so decent fighters,” Cal said. “Those guys will be génocidaires. They’ve been at war forever and lost their souls years ago. Their only rules of engagement are rape and kill. We can’t let them get past us and to the mine.”

  “We won’t let you down, Cal,” Ford said.

  “No fucking way they’ll get past us,” Espi said.

  Everyone else chimed in with agreement.

  “So what’s the plan?” Freya asked.

  As Assistant Detachment Commander, Chief Warrant Officer Sebastian Ford was technically head of this mission, but no one turned to him. This was Cal’s op. “We need a diversion,” Cal said, “to get the green troops scrambling.”

  Ford nodded. “Bring our odds down to seven to fifty.”

  “The hillside above the troops is loose from the rain,” Espi said. “I wish we had C-4. We could cause a mudslide. Bring the hill down on them.” Espinosa was the team’s senior engineering sergeant. His specialty was building and demolition, which was why he’d been sent with Blanchard on the recon mission.

  “The mining operation has explosives,” Cal said. “My uncle is the overseer. He can set it up for us. Any risk to the mine if we do this?”

  “Nah. Opposite sides of the stream, pretty far apart. The blasting they do in the open pit mine would be more dangerous to the old mine, and that’s been going on for years.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” Cal said. “You and my uncle can talk about where to set the charges.”

  “Hot damn,” Espi said. “This is gonna work.”

  “So we freak out the rebels by bringing the hillside down. Then what?” Freya asked.

  They had their maps laid out on the table. Cal pointed to various points on the village side of the river. “I want Rip over here with a grenade launcher. He’ll have a good angle on troops fleeing in this direction and can cut off the path of anyone trying to slip around to get to the mine.”

  Ripley nodded.

  “Ford, I want you with the M2 over here. You’ll have a good angle on the river, and the range is right. No one crosses the river from here south.”

  “Will do,” Ford said.

  As weapons sergeant, this was Cal’s specialty, selecting where to position munitions and assigning arcs of fire. “I’m going to be up here with the M107.” He’d selected a position that overlooked the river and would be armed with his sniper rifle.

  “You’ll take out Lubanga from there?” she asked.

  He nodded. “But not until the army is subdued. Because once the leader is dead, there is no telling what the soldiers will do.”

  “How do we subdue the rest?” she asked.

  He grinned and glanced around the mill. “I think we can improvise a few more weapons with the supplies on hand here. Blanchard and Goldberg, you’ll be armed with those.”

  Espi would be busy with Cal’s uncle setting up the explosives. So that left only her without an assigned weapon and role. Was Cal planning to leave her out?

  “Blanchard and Goldberg will bring on the firestorm,” Cal said. He glanced at her and smiled. “Vultures will feast.” He delivered the words with televangelist bombast, then added, “Odds lowered to seven to ten.”

  “Dibs on the extras. I can take out at least three,” Espinosa said.

  Goldberg jabbed him in the ribs. “Dude, Savvy’s taken. Stop trying to impress her.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked to Cal. “What about me? Where will I be?”

  He grinned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. So not a professional-ops sort of thing, but Goldberg’s lame joke practically begged him to stake a claim, and she didn’t mind the gesture at all. She’d actually kind of longed to be the touchy-feely type, but had never met a guy she wanted to be touchy-feely with. Who knew it was less about her pers
onality than the relationship itself?

  “I need you to draw Lubanga and his best soldiers out,” Cal said.

  She cocked her head. “Sergeant Callahan, are you saying you want me to be bait?”

  “Yes. You up for it?”

  She grinned and nodded. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  35

  The countdown clock was running. They’d agreed to strike ninety minutes before the time Lubanga had set, to let him know exactly who was in control here. In two minutes and twenty-eight seconds, Cal’s uncle would blow up the hillside above the encampment. That would keep a good number of the troops busy while Espi set off charges along the perimeter, driving the men toward the river to escape collapsing hillside.

  Cal could only hope the rest would play out according to plan.

  They’d cut the timing close. It looked like the soldiers were mobilizing to move in on the village. Another ten minutes and they’d be crossing the river en masse to round up their hostages.

  Thirty seconds before go time, they each chimed in on the radio, confirming they were ready. Uncle Frederic reported first, Cal last. They were ready.

  The countdown reached zero and a blast sounded in the distance. Military timing, delivered by a civilian, giving Cal a fierce surge of family pride.

  He zoomed in on the hillside with his high-power binoculars. The hillside shook but didn’t collapse, just as Uncle Frederic predicted. The man knew his job, and Espi was no slouch either. A second explosive detonated, and this time, the hill gave way. First came mud, then rocks and trees. The slide gained momentum as uprooted trees rolled down the hillside. Debris flowed like liquid, a massive wave of soft earth, hard rock, and a jagged tangle of vegetation.

  Shouts echoed across the river. First in warning, then in fear. From Cal’s perch above the river, he could see it all. Some men went to drag their comrades out of harm’s way, while others fled left or right, out of the direct path of the mudflow.

  Espi’s secondary charges went off, redirecting the fleeing men, sending them to the river, in the path of mud and rolling logs that were gaining speed.

  On this side of the river, Freya stepped from the cover of jungle and approached the gently sloping bank. Across the water, men screamed and ran toward her.

  Lubanga would have given strict orders not to shoot Freya. Without her, he couldn’t access the bitcoin key. If she were shot and the key went down the river… Lubanga couldn’t risk that. This might be a small, shallow stream here, but it met with a much larger river that flowed into the Congo River. If she dropped the key, it could go all the way to Inga Rapids, forever lost in the world’s largest and deadliest whitewater.

  That Freya didn’t give a damn about the money was another risk for Lubanga. She could watch the USB key disappear without shedding a tear for the lost millions. Lubanga had to tread carefully if he wanted to recover the money, which explained the drastic ultimatum of holding an entire village hostage. And he’d chosen not just any village, but Cal’s family.

  Cal would have protected any community, anywhere, with the same ferocity. But the fact that this was family, targeted because of him… Yeah. This fucker was going to die.

  Freya wore body armor and a Kevlar helmet as she marched toward the river. Cal’s heart constricted at seeing her standing so exposed, but he couldn’t exactly tell her to sit in the corner while the men did the work. There were a dozen reasons for her to take this role, and only one objection he could think to raise: because he loved her.

  But she loved him too, and she wasn’t playing that card to tell him to stand down. Her job scared the hell out of him, but his was just as risky. If this relationship was going to work—and it would—he had to accept her work in the same way she accepted his.

  So there she stood, in the most vulnerable position, waiting for Lubanga to show his ugly face.

  Freya was miked, but he didn’t need that to hear the collapsing hillside and screams in French, Lingala, and a half dozen other Congolese languages. “It’s her!” a man shouted, and Cal saw a group of men at the river’s edge, eyeing Freya.

  AKs were lifted and pointed at her, but one man put his hand on the barrel of the man next to him and shoved it down. “Shoot her, and the general will kill us.”

  So Lubanga had given himself a rank. Not surprising. It was what wannabe dictators did.

  Freya lifted the bullhorn they’d gotten from the open-pit mining operation and her voice projected across the valley. “Jean Paul Lubanga, step forward if you want my bitcoin key.”

  She raised a hand. Dangling from her fingers was quite possibly the most valuable USB drive in the world. They’d toyed with the idea of using a different drive as a decoy, but Freya’s key was distinct in that it had a built-in thumbprint reader. Professional grade. Lubanga might be suspicious if he saw a cheap keychain shaped like a comic book character.

  Lubanga’s men were probably zooming in right now and taking a picture of the drive, noting that it was high-tech and required two-factor authentication.

  A man broke apart from the crowd of soldiers and stepped to the riverbank directly across from Freya. Less than thirty feet separated them. His shout carried across the water to her microphone. “Give me the drive, Savannah.” His voice and the emphasis he put on the name had Cal zooming in with his binocs.

  Shock filtered through him. He hadn’t thought Seth Olsen would dare show up here. This didn’t make sense. He’d exposed himself. There was no going back from this.

  Was it possible the CIA was supporting this coup?

  As if Freya could read Cal’s thoughts, she whispered over the radio, “I am so fired.”

  He recognized Ford’s laugh. Ripley was slower on the uptake, but then, he couldn’t see who stood at the river’s edge from his position. “What’s going on?”

  “Freya’s boss is here,” Cal answered. “This could mean we’re fighting…” Shit. “The CIA?”

  “What the fuck?” Goldberg chimed in.

  “Yeah. The fuck,” Blanchard said.

  “CIA wants Lubanga?” Ford said. “Did they learn nothing from Hussein and Mobutu? And…a dozen other assholes?”

  “Frey—” Cal said. It was weird using her first name when he’d slipped into military protocol with everyone else, but he didn’t think of her as Lange, and she was no longer James to him either. He hoped she understood he meant no disrespect. “Do you think Evers was assigned the mission so he could deliver a USB drive with CIA money to Lubanga? Could the CIA have been trying to snipe him from Russia?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Of course, if that was the case, then why the hell had Olsen told her to kill Lubanga?

  What was the real order—copy the hard drive, kill the man, or finance the coup?

  “Are there American operators out there?” Ripley asked. “SAD, like James—er Freya?”

  “I don’t think so,” Freya said.

  “You got anything more than gut instinct to go on there?” Blanchard asked.

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t matter if CIA is involved,” Cal said. “We may not have official rules of engagement, but don’t forget, these assholes are targeting civilians. Children. Babies. Lubanga brought four hundred soldiers here. If we hadn’t struck first, they’d have moved into the village and taken everyone hostage.”

  “Burn them all,” Espi said.

  The others echoed the sentiment.

  Seth Olsen shouted across the river. “Stand down. The CIA is behind me. Behind the general.”

  Cal watched as Olsen slowly waded across the river, moving ever closer to Freya.

  “The US doesn’t support mining uranium to sell to Syria,” she responded. She took a step back from the bank, then halted. Cal guessed she realized she was retreating and stopped herself.

  The asshole had been manipulating Freya for years and probably believed he had her programmed, his to command. It could take years for her to work through and understand all the ways Seth Olsen had use
d her. And Cal would be right by her side, holding her hand as she did the hard emotional work.

  “The Agency will look the other way,” Olsen said, midriver now. “With over twenty trillion up for grabs, they can’t afford not to.”

  “It’s not up for grabs. It belongs to Congo.”

  He shrugged. “The current regime isn’t protecting the resources. Up for grabs.”

  “You talk about the CIA as if it’s one person. As if it’s you. But I know dozens of operators, analysts, and directors who will fight your kind of corruption.”

  “Those people are leaving the IC in droves. It’s so easy to drive the idealists out of the intelligence community. The ones who stay are easily manipulated. All you have to do is tell the trainers to assault them. Take away their control over their bodies.” Olsen stood just twenty feet from Freya now, calf deep in the shallow river. “Then you let them cry. But everyone knows a woman who doesn’t fight—especially one who’s been trained to kill with her hands—can hardly claim she was raped.”

  She took a step toward him. Cal could see Olsen had rattled her. “I was threatened with losing everything I’d worked for. I’d devoted my entire life to the CIA.”

  Cal could see Olsen’s smirk through his binoculars. “A woman with your strength? You’d have fought. Obviously, you saw the advantage of fucking him but didn’t want it known you screwed your way to the top of your training group. So you cried rape. You even had me convinced, until you went after Harry because he could expose your lies.”

  That must be the story Olsen had given the CIA after he’d backed her with Captain O’Leary at Camp Citron. As they’d suspected, he’d backtracked, changing the narrative to make Harrison Evers the victim.

  “Fuck you, Seth,” Freya’s voice showed annoyance and not the strain Olsen had obviously been attempting to trigger. She’d been sucked in for a moment, going on the defensive, but now his grip on her was gone.

  That’s my woman. Forged from steel. Harder than a diamond.

  “What do you possibly think you can get out of this?” she said. “You’re fronting a shitty army of untrained rebels. What did you promise them?” She waved the USB key. “Because without this, no one is getting paid.”