by Melissa Good
Kerry came up to her and leaned on the console, peeking at the screen before answering. “He didn’t say that, just wanted to know if you had any hints.”
One of Dar’s eyebrows lifted. “He couldn’t just call and ask?”
“Um.” Kerry fiddled with a button on her shirt, then peeked up from under pale lashes. “He didn’t want to chance the cell?”
“Uh-huh. And he had to send you to ask?”
Kerry’s lips tensed, masking a smile. “I volunteered.”
Ah. Dar felt an absurd contentedness. Kerry had come to check up on her. Mom was bringing her milk. Next thing she knew, she’d be in a rocker with someone putting a shawl over her shoulders. “Tell him to try an extended packet size on TCP/IP—look for an added four-byte segment.”
“Oh.” Kerry got up. “Okay, I’ll go tell him. Thanks, Dar.” She started for the door, but paused as she heard Dar get up to follow her.
They walked together past the consoles and edged out into the hallway.
“Everything else going all right?” Dar asked in a low voice. “We’ve got the transfer going here, Ker. I estimate another twenty minutes, and we’ll be done.”
Kerry looked up and down the hallway. “I don’t know. This place is giving me the creeps today, Dar. Dad went off a little while ago, and 244 Melissa Good he hasn’t come back yet. It’s just too quiet.”
“Yeah.” Dar exhaled. Okay, so maybe she didn’t come to check on me.
“Maybe he’s just scoping the place out. He knows his way around, and he can take care of himself, so there’s no point in worrying about that.”
“Hmm.” Kerry folded her arms. “Any sign of that petty person?”
“No,” Dar stated. “No sign of just about anyone, except for the two console ops in there. Everyone else must be watching the war games.”
“Mm.” Kerry murmured again under her breath. “You okay?” she finally asked. “You took your sling off.”
“Had to type,” Dar explained. “I’m all right. It’s just sore.”
Kerry once again looked up and down the hallway, then she leaned foreword and very gently kissed Dar’s injured shoulder. “Be careful.”
One hand lifted and rubbed Dar’s belly. “I worry about you.”
And then she turned and strode back down the hallway, the twitch of her shoulders indicating her awareness of Dar’s watching eyes.
Which weren’t precisely on her shoulders, despite the situation and the ache in her arm, and the worries that were now running through her mind. Boy. Dar couldn’t help the observation: she’s got a sexy walk. It had a little swagger to it, a gentle roll to her hips and a muscular strength that Dar found very, very attractive. She watched her lover until she turned a corner at the far end of the corridor, then she sighed and returned to the ops center.
“Ms. Roberts?” The console operator stepped into her path. “Are you part of this exercise, ma’am? I was just wondering... We weren’t told to expect you, and Dave and I figured you got stuck in just for a challenge. Are we right?”
Exercise? Dar stopped and eyed her warily. “Are you talking about the war games?”
The Navy tech exchanged glances with her partner. “It’s not a war game, really. It’s a security drill,” she replied. “You mean you didn’t know?”
“Security drill? At the gate they told us it was a SEAL exercise,”
Dar stated. “Graduation for some new teams.”
The sailor named Dave got up and trotted over. “Well, yeah, but they’re graduating from the Urban Warfare School,” he explained eagerly. “They’ve got to counteract a terrorist infiltration of a critical operations center.”
“Crit—” Dar glanced around. “You mean here? This is the target?”
The woman tech nodded. “Yeah, we were expecting the terrorists.
We thought you were them when you came in, but then we fi—”
The door slammed open with a loud bang, and the room suddenly filled with grungy-looking men in green-and-brown fatigues. “Don’t move! Don’t move!” the one in the lead screamed, brandishing an M16.
“Get back against the wall, you pigs!”
Dar felt the situation explode out of control with frightening speed.
Two of them men rushed at her and grabbed her arms, causing her to let Red Sky At Morning 245
out a startled yell of anger and pain. “Cut that out!”
The man on her left slammed her against the wall and leaned against her. “Shut up! Shut up, or we’ll kill you!”
Dar struggled out of pure panicked instinct, wrenching her body around and shoving off from the wall, throwing her surprised attackers back as she twisted, ignoring the pain. One grabbed for her again and she swiveled, lashing out with a kick that caught him in the gut as she tried to move away from the second one.
Something exploded against her head, and she was barely aware of slamming against the wall as her knees buckled and darkness quickly overcame the stars in her vision. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.
Chapter
Fifteen
KERRY WAS AWARE of every creak of wood and every scuff of her boots against the tiled floor as she walked down the hallway. The atmosphere was getting creepier and creepier every second, and she had to keep herself from looking around nervously as she walked.
C’mon, Kerry, she finally told herself in irritation. Stop acting like a terrorist is going to jump out of every doorway.
As she passed the next one, a shadow shifted and suddenly engulfed her. Kerry reacted by letting out a yell, which was half muffled as a hand clapped itself over her mouth and strong hands grabbed her.
“Hey...hey...kumquat...relax.” Andrew’s voice almost made her go completely limp. “Stop that hollerin’, willya?” Cautiously, the ex-SEAL
released his hold and looked anxiously at her. “You ain’t hurt, are you?”
“No.” Kerry leaned against him in relief. “Sorry, this place is just making me nuts. Where’ve you been?”
Andrew awkwardly patted her back. “Just checking things.
Somethin’ ain’t right here. Saturday’s quiet, but not like this is.”
“So I’m not just imagining things?” Kerry said. “Okay, let me go tell Mark what Dar said to do, then we can come back here and see if we don’t want to just cut this all short.” Kerry started down the hall with Andrew ambling along beside her with his loose, powerful stride.
“What do you think is going on?”
“Ah do not know.” Andrew’s head was swiveling back and forth, watching everything. “Haven’t found anybody t’ask.” He glanced at her. “Dardar all right?”
Kerry looked behind her. “I think so,” she answered. “She seems okay. Tired, though. I think her arm’s hurting.”
“Aw.” Andrew patted her shoulder. “She’s a tough kid. Don’t you worry.”
“That’s true.” Kerry sighed. “I just wish this was over— Hey!” She found herself suddenly grabbed and yanked back into a doorway, with a large, warm hand covering her mouth.
“Hush,” Andrew barely whispered. “Don’t you move none.”
Kerry nodded in understanding and stayed perfectly still. The doorway in which they were standing was dark, and she could almost Red Sky At Morning 247
feel the shadows reaching around her, but she couldn’t hear anything, and she wondered what, exactly, they were hiding from.
Then she saw the soft, gray, almost indistinguishable reflection on the tile floor, inching toward the gap where the door met the hallway.
She strained her ears, but she still couldn’t hear anything, though she could see that tiny shadow moving closer and closer. Puzzled, she looked up at Andrew’s face, able to see only the utter stillness there, save for the faint flaring of his nostrils.
The shadow slipped closer and closer, and Kerry felt her breathing increase. She glued her eyes to the edge of the doorway and almost jumped when the edge of a rifle barrel cut the straight line. Oh, my God.
>
Kerry clamped her jaw shut so her teeth wouldn’t chatter. She felt Andrew’s body shift behind her and sensed the tension that came into the arms he had wrapped loosely about her.
The barrel moved forward, further away from the door than she’d first thought, and now the hands and body of its wielder came into view. It was a young man of medium height, dressed in fatigues, his eyes flicking nervously up and down the hallway.
Surely, Kerry’s mind screamed, surely he’d look right at her.
But he didn’t. He kept going, and before she could relax, another man edged into view, moving with careful silence. This man was taller and thinner and had a scruffy beard. Then more of them moved past—
six or seven in all, Kerry had lost count—before the last one, a huge bear of a man, crept past. They were wearing backpacks, and their clothes had a well-used air about them. Kerry’s nose twitched as the scent of gun oil came to her.
Andrew waited almost an entire minute before he eased past Kerry and very slowly edged his head around the doorway. Then he relaxed and scowled. “What in hell’s that all about?”
“I don’t know, but it was seriously creepy,” Kerry told him, peering down the now empty hallway. “Hey, maybe they’re Cuban terrorists!”
Andrew allowed a tiny snort of laughter to emerge. “Not hardly,”
he said. “C’mon, kumquat, let’s get us back to that there closet. I figger we’ll find out what’s up soon enough.”
Ain’t that the truth. Kerry shook her head, and they started down the hallway. She’d taken maybe ten paces before she stopped dead, a fist clenching her heart. “Oh.” A sense of panic filled her and she turned, evading Andrew’s outstretched hand as she launched into a headlong run.
THERE WAS A moment’s frozen silence. Then the lead terrorist pulled the wool mask off his face. “Shit,” he panted hoarsely. “It’s a civ!”
Ceci, frozen in shock for several long heartbeats, now surged into motion. She ducked between two of the men and shoved a third out of 248 Melissa Good the way. “You stupid pigheaded son of a bitch clueless useless excuse for jarhead buttholes.” She dropped to her knees beside Dar’s very still, slumped figure. “I should pull your damn privates off.” Anxiously, she touched her daughter’s face, which was pale and relaxed.
“Shit,” the lead terrorist said. “What do we do, Sarge?”
The second man who had come in fingered his rifle. “Just stay where you are. We’ve got our orders.”
“What?” the man who’d taken his mask off objected. “Are you crazy? This ain’t part of the orders. This is a fucking civ!”
“You don’t know that,” the sergeant snapped back. “What if they are? They could be part of the gig, you know that. They said there’d be something unexpected. This is it. So shut up and just go over there.” He turned and looked at the rest of the room. “You all just sit your asses still and keep your mouths shut.”
“Dar?” Ceci patted Dar’s cheek gently. “Hey, Dardar?” The pet name felt strange on her lips, but she ignored that. “C’mon, kid, open your eyes, hmm?”
For a far too long instant there was no response. Ceci patted Dar’s cheek again, and this time her daughter’s eyelids fluttered in reaction, sliding half-open to expose dazed, pale blue orbs. Much to her consternation, Ceci found herself babbling in near panic. “Hey, munchkin, c’mon...you okay?” The eyes tracked to her and fastened on her face, then blinked and opened a little further. “Dar?”
“Urmf.” It felt like a building had fallen in on top of her. She just wanted to let her eyes close and go back to sleep. It was quieter there, and it hurt a hell of a lot less. But someone was shaking her, and she had a sneaking suspicion it was her mother, who would just keep on shaking.
Always had.
“Okay.” Dar fended off the prodding. “Okay...okay...I’m awake...Jesus...” She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them fully, blinking until her mother came fuzzily into focus. Her face was suddenly cupped between Ceci’s hands, and she could feel the tremor in them. A faint, but distinct feeling of surprise filtered through her admittedly half-conscious mind.
“Here, see if you can sit up,” Ceci urged. “I think the brainless wood chip back there just clipped you.”
The terrorists were nervously deploying around the room and had herded the two console operators over in the corner where Dar and Ceci were. They hadn’t yet seen Dar’s two techs, who were prudently hiding behind the large twin drive arrays from which Dar had been transferring data.
Okay. Dar managed to get upright and took stock of herself and the situation. Her head hurt like hell. Her arm hurt worse. Her dignity was screaming in mortal agony. Her mother, for God’s sake, was petting her like a kitten.
Red Sky At Morning 249
Jesus! What the hell could happen next?
A wild yell punctured the room, and the door was flung open. The terrorists whirled and brought their guns up, screaming warnings as a disheveled blonde figure stumbled into the room, looking around frantically. The man closest to the door leaped at her only to be intercepted by a tall, menacing shadow that grabbed him, disarmed him, and tossed him against the wall in one long, sweeping motion.
“Awright,” Andrew’s voice boomed out. “Y’all stay still, or figure yourself Swiss cheese.” With a solid, scary sound, he cocked the big black shotgun the man had been carrying, then lifted it and aimed it at the biggest guy there, a man half again his weight but about the same height as he was.
“Dar!” Kerry bolted for her.
Oh. Dar’s tired mind sighed. That’s what could happen next. Do yourself a favor, Dar. Don’t imagine anything else.
“TELL ME AGAIN what this all is?” Andrew stood, with his hands on his hips, glaring at the hapless leader of the “terrorists.” “Them people out there sent you all in here?”
“Look, sir.” The bear-like soldier had both hands empty and held out in abject defense. “It’s the training exercise. They told us to come in here and take hostages.” He looked around. “We came in here and took hostages. They weren’t supposed to fight back.”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed. His voice lowered in pitch. “You saying it was my kid’s fault she got hurt?”
“N...no, sir.” The soldier shook his head. “I’m saying we got surprised, and Niles over there got kicked in a place that really needs ice, if you know what I mean.”
Andrew threw a glance at the tallest soldier, who grimaced and crossed his legs gingerly. “What comes next?” he asked, though he had a pretty good idea. “Them youngsters outside come git you?”
The man nodded. “We’re assigned to hold them off. I’ve got explosives and extra ammo in those packs. We’re supposed to blockade the room and maintain a defensive perimeter.” He hesitated. “Sir, they told us they were going to throw in some unexpected things. I thought...” He glanced over to where the rest of the “hostages” were seated. “I thought they were part of it.”
“Uh-huh.” Andrew gave him a very disapproving glare. “Well, I’m fixing to end this here exercise right quick. Don’t you go nowhere.” He shouldered the shotgun and turned toward the door, only pausing when he heard Dar’s cell phone ring. “Now what?”
“I’ll get that.” Kerry slid the phone out of the holder clipped at Dar’s waist and opened it. “Yes?”
I can answer my own phone. Dar protested, but the words never emerged, and she was content merely to listen. It was easier to think 250 Melissa Good that way.
“Mark...Mark...wait...slow down.” Kerry’s voice sharpened and took on urgency. “Hold on...ho— What?”
“Give me that.” Dar took the phone from her and listened to the chaotic sounds from the other side. She let out a yell. “MARK!” The chaos continued, then subsided.
“Boss...boss...this place is going nuts. We gotta get outta here,”
Mark yammered. “Some half-ass wackos came into that com center and trashed it! We hid in the punch down closet.” His voice went muffled.
�
��Get down, Brent. You fucking jerk, get your fucking head down before I kick it off!”
Ah. Dar took a breath. He’s learning my management style. “Mark, calm down. Were these military guys? They’ve got some war game crap going on in here.”
“I don’t know what the fuck they were.” Mark sounded unusually panicked. “They had guns, Dar. They fucking shot the Ethernet hub.”
Dar frowned and glanced up at Andrew, who had crossed over to kneel at her side. “Are they supposed to be firing live rounds?”
“Hell, no.” Andrew removed a shotgun shell from the gun he was carrying and showed it to her. “Dummies.”
“Can dummies blow holes in electronic equipment?”
“No way.” The terrorist leader had also come over. “We’re not supposed to break anything—in fact, my CO told me if I dented any of these machines, he’d take ’em out of my paycheck for the next twenty years.”
What the hell was going on? “Mark, stay right where you are,” Dar ordered into the phone. “Don’t take any chances. If those idiots are shooting real bullets, you three stay put until we figure out what the deal is.”
Andrew nodded. “Good idea.”
“Yeah.” The terrorist scratched his jaw and agreed.
There was a scuffle, then the sound of a slamming door, and it got more or less quiet. “Okay,” Mark panted. “We’re in here, but let me tell you, boss, I’m bucking for a bonus after this.”
Dar let her breath out with a soft grunt. “You’ll get it.” She folded the phone and let it drop onto her thigh as her eyes lifted to Andrew’s.
“Dad, what the hell is this?”
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” the terrorist leader offered. “I don’t think they really shot anything up, ma’am.”
Kerry shook her head. “No. The man on the other end of that phone isn’t someone who makes things up or panics for no reason,” she disagreed, putting a hand on Dar’s forearm. “If he says they were shooting, they were.”
Ceci cleared her throat. “Does that mean they’re coming here next?”