Renegade: Special Tactical Units Devision (STUD) Book 3
Page 2
Dec had wondered what this modestly dressed woman was doing on what he thought of as his beach.
A middle-aged tourist, he’d decided, who’d wandered away from the usual tourist haunts. It was a little surprising because even though the law said that beaches weren’t private property, this one pretty much was. The string of cottages was about it in both directions. There were no bars nearby. No shops. Plus, the tides were too strong for most swimmers.
The woman’s back was to him. She was looking out to sea. And, yeah, she was delicate-looking. Petite was maybe the better word—five three, five four, with lustrous brown hair streaming down her back.
His gaze had dropped lower.
Maybe she wasn’t middle-aged. She was slender, but she had a sweetly rounded ass. Nicely curved hips. Long legs. He wondered if she looked as good from the front as from the back.
Only one way to find out.
He’d swung his legs out of the hammock and sauntered across the sand towards her. When he was five, six feet away, he cleared his throat and said, “Hi.”
She’d spun towards him, mouth open, eyes wide with fear, one hand clapped over her heart.
Shit. He’d startled her.
When he was twelve or thirteen he’d found a small songbird—a wren, he’d later learned. The wren hadn’t been visibly hurt, but something had surely damaged it. It had stared up at him, wide-eyed and trembling. Dec had bent down, carefully picked it up and held it until it was recovered enough to fly away.
Would this woman fly away too?
Crazy, but he hoped she wouldn’t.
“Sorry,” he’d said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No. You didn’t. I mean—you did. Perhaps a little.”
Her English was perfect, but he could detect the faintest accent. French? Not French. Something a little more exotic.
“See any dolphins yet?”
“Dolphins?”
“I figure you’re looking for them. They come to this stretch of water very often. It’s the wrong season for Grey whales and too late for Blues or Humpbacks, but the dolphins are almost always a sure bet.”
“I haven’t actually been looking for anything in particular. I just—I found this place last week. I love how quiet it is.”
So she’d come here while he was in Iraq.
He’d nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
“And the ocean… It looks so peaceful.”
Dec had thought of what swam beneath the blue surface of the Pacific: sharks, Morays, things that stalked and hunted and killed.
“Looks can be deceptive,” he’d said.
Crap. His back-from-the-desert bitterness had hit the wrong note. She went from looking startled to looking wary.
“I meant,” he’d added quickly, “there are some strong currents off this beach. You shouldn’t swim here alone.”
“Oh. Oh, I didn’t come to swim. I’m just walking, that’s all.”
Her gaze had softened. Man, her eyes were unusual. Not brown. Not green. Hazel? No. Topaz was more accurate. Yeah. That’s what they were. A rich, deep topaz set in an exquisite oval face. The rest of her was exquisite, too. Gently rounded breasts, a slender waist…
Suddenly, he’d realized he was staring. And she was blushing. And, like the wren, getting ready to fly.
Dammit, he was an idiot.
“Well,” she’d said, “it’s been nice meeting you, but I have to—”
“We haven’t met,” he’d said quickly, holding out his hand. “I’m Dec. Declan Sanchez.”
She’d hesitated. Then she’d put her hand in his. He could still recall the electric shock that had hummed through him at her touch.
“Oh,” she’d said, laughing a little.
Could something so simple tell you that your world was about to change?
Because it had. She had changed it. Forever. It was still changed, even now, months later, months since he’d met her, weeks since he’d discovered the depth of her lies, her deception…
A bright beam of light swept over the night-black beach. Dec swung around and threw up his hand against the blinding glare.
“Who’s there?”
“Me. Nick. For crissakes, dude, it’s as dark as the inside of a heifer out here. Didn’t you ever hear of electricity?”
“What the fuck would you know about heifers?” Dec said, laughing as Romano came towards him.
Romano, who had grown up in Brooklyn, laughed along with him.
“It’s what a guy I went through BUD/S with used to say. And he would have known for sure. You know. He was from flyover country.” Nick reached Dec and jerked his thumb back towards the cottage. “Checked out the territory. Saw it was clear of blondes.”
“Yeah.” Dec cleared his throat. “Dude. Thanks for bailing me out.”
“Hey,” Nick said, “what’re friends for if not to do a little bailing every now and then?”
“Yeah,” Dec said again. “See, the thing is—”
“The thing is,” Nick said, “by the time we get back to your place, Olivieri will have eaten all the pizza, Sullivan will have polished off the beer, Maguire will be checkin’ for hidden stashes of chocolate, and Spanos will be emptying your refrigerator.”
“The whole unit’s here?”
“You got it.”
“And you brought pizza?”
“Comfort food. Of course.”
Dec felt his throat constrict. “Dude. I don’t know what to—”
Nick clapped Dec on the shoulder. “We don’t wanna starve to death or die of thirst, we’d better get our asses moving.”
“Yeah. Right.” Dec hesitated. “Nick?”
“You try thanking anybody, dude, we’ll take you for every dime you’ve got when we sit down to play poker.”
Dec nodded. Smiled. Thanking these guys, these brothers-in-arms who stood up for each other, just wasn’t done. They were family. They were always there for each other. They could count on each other the way he’d once stupidly imagined he could count on a woman…
Hell. Why go back to that? It was old shit, gone and best forgotten.
“Finally,” Danny Sullivan said when Nick and Dec reached the patio. “Just when we were afraid the broccoli and tofu were gettin’ cold.”
Everybody laughed. And life was okay again…
Until an hour later, when all their smartphones went off at once. The laughter, the sound of cards hitting Dec’s kitchen table, died. The men of STUD One exchanged quick, tight glances as each reached for his phone.
“You guys together?”
It was the voice of their CO, Captain James Black.
Six “yessirs” echoed through the room.
“Sanchez?”
Dec automatically shot to his feet. “Sir.”
“Put me on speakerphone. The rest of you, shut off your phones and listen.”
Five phones were turned off.
“Everybody hear me, loud and clear?”
Six more “yessirs” filled the room.
“I want you all at base in thirty minutes.”
Thirty minutes? When they’d just returned to the States forty-eight hours ago? The men looked at each other even as they pushed back from the table.
“Thirty minutes,” James Black warned. “You’re shipping out at zero three hundred.”
“Sir,” six voices snapped.
“Details when you get to Condor.”
CHAPTER TWO
Twenty-eight minutes later, the members of STUD One stood at attention in their CO’s office.
“At ease,” he said, and the men relaxed. “I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re heading out so quickly after what we can all agree was an, um, an interesting mission.”
A faint sound of laughter.
“I won’t bullshit you. This is going to be tough. I know, they always are—but this time the rules will be a little different. You’re going in with minimal backup. If you’re caught or captured—”
The men looked puzzled. There
was nothing different in that. They’d gone this route before. If they were caught or captured, they’d be on their own. If you were a STUD, that was often how it went.
“What’s different is that this job, more than most, has big—and I do mean big—international complications. Stein will brief you in greater depth in a couple of minutes. For now…” Black switched on a computer. A map appeared on a large monitor. At first, it could have been a map of any place in the Middle East.
He jiggled the keys.
The view narrowed. Mountains. Deserts. Borders. Turkey. Syria. Iraq.
The view narrowed again. Dec stared at a dot that was its focal point. He could hear the sudden thud-thud of his heart.
“This, gentlemen,” Black said, “is the kingdom of Qaram. It’s small, rich in natural resources—everything but oil. And though it is considered a U.S. ally, that allegiance has been less than solid for some time now.” He paused. “Still, as I said, it is an ally. And now an incident of some importance has taken place that directly affects Qaram—and, by extension, us.”
An incident.
Dec tore his gaze from the map and looked at his commanding officer. In Special Ops talk, an incident was not good. It was a term that covered anything from hostage taking to plunder, rape and murder.
“A diplomatic party travelling from Qaram to the neighboring kingdom of Tharsalonia was attacked. Some are dead. The rest are being held hostage.”
Black touched the keyboard.
Click.
A new image appeared. Video of a man on his knees.
“Shit,” someone whispered.
A pistol was pressed to the back of the man’s head. An off-screen voice spoke in accented English.
“I am the Deliverer. I bring what Fate has decreed.”
The pistol fired. Blood, bone and bits of flesh filled the screen.
“As you can see,” Black said calmly, “the situation is deteriorating at a rapid pace.”
Another click. A man’s face. Resolute expression, but with a large bruise on his forehead.
“The American ambassador to Qaram. He’s a member of the party that was attacked.”
Click. Another photo, this time of a woman. Middle-aged. Clearly terrified.
“The ambassador’s wife.”
Click. A guy in his thirties, bloodied mouth, cold eyes.
“An undersecretary from our Embassy.”
“You mean, one of our spooks,” said Sullivan.
“If we had spooks,” Black said, straight-faced, “yeah, this guy probably would have been one of them.”
Would have been. Would have been…
“Shit,” somebody said. “The guy who was executed?”
Black nodded. “Yeah. That was him.”
A final click. A final photo. Soft curses, and five heads swung towards Dec.
Dec looked like a man who’d just been struck by lightning.
That was sure as hell how he felt, because that final photo… That photo was of Annie. Annie, dressed in some kind of long-sleeved gown, her face dirt-smeared.
Dec felt the room tilt.
“Sanchez? I believe you know this woman.”
Dec tore his gaze from the picture. “Yessir,” he said hoarsely.
Black looked at the other men. “I think you all know her. Correct?”
Five voices mumbled their agreement.
“As Annie Stanton,” Black said. “But, as we all know now, she is not Annie Stanton, she is Princess Anoushka, the daughter of the former king of Qaram and the niece of its current ruler, King Cyrus.”
Dec could hear the drone of his CO’s voice, but all he could think about was Annie. Annie, laughing up at him. Annie, in his arms. Annie, trembling as he caressed her…
Olivieri jabbed an elbow into Dec’s side.
“Sanchez?” Black said. “Are you with me?”
Dec swallowed hard and shot to full attention. “Yessir.”
Black gave him a long, careful look. Then he turned that same look on the rest of Unit One.
“As I was saying, the woman is at the center of this situation.”
Click. Another photo came onscreen. It showed a domed building backed by high mountains. Long black limos were parked in a circular driveway.
People were grouped in the driveway.
A couple of dozen ramrod-straight soldiers in fancy uniforms. The embassy spook. The American ambassador and his wife. Half a dozen women in long dark robes.
And Annie.
Correction.
The Princess Anoushka, standing in the center of the group of women, her expression grim, her chin uplifted, the light of defiance shining in her topaz eyes.
“It’s a wedding party,” Black said. “The princess was traveling to Tharsalonia, where she was to marry the Tharsalonian king. Halfway there they were attacked by a group of bandits who like to think of themselves as liberators. They’re not. They’re killers.”
Dec heard a roaring in his ears.
Annie, on the way to her wedding. Annie, pledging herself to another man. Annie, his Annie…
Except she had never been his Annie. She’d never been a woman named Annie at all.
For reasons he knew he would never comprehend, she’d chosen him to take part in a game. And when she’d grown bored, she’d walked away.
No warning. No explanation, not even when he’d run into her at the wedding of Chay Olivieri and Bianca Wilde.
That was the day Dec had learned that Annie Stanton, grad student in computers, was really Princess Anoushka, daughter of the dead king of Qaram.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he’d said.
Her answer had been meaningless.
“You never asked,” she’d replied.
Yeah. Right. He never had. Shit, why would he have asked? What would he have said? Are you really who you say you are? Yes, that would sure as hell have been a question a guy would ask of a woman he’d been—he’d been becoming fond of.
Dec’s jaw tightened.
Okay.
No problem.
He’d survived her disappearance from his life. The truth of her identity. Now he’d found out she was getting married. So what? And so what if she’d never wanted to talk about anything that even hinted at permanency…
They were all staring at him.
His CO. Andy Stein, the guy who generally gave briefings before missions. Sullivan and Olivieri, Spanos and Maguire and Romano, the men who were his brothers. His family.
These were the people who mattered, not some woman who’d passed herself off as the epitome of truth and innocence when all along she’d been a goddamn liar.
He had no feelings for her. None. He hadn’t been good enough for her? Well, no. Not when it turned out she was royalty.
Big fucking deal.
She had her life. He had his. And his life was right here, with these people.
He drew a deep breath and said, as if Black’s news had been no more earth-shaking than a weather report, “And we’re to intervene.”
Black’s grim expression softened.
“Yes.” He paused. “Sanchez. I understand you had a fairly close relationship with her.”
“We knew each other, yessir.”
“I’m designating you Alpha on this mission. If you have a problem with that, speak up now.”
“No problem at all, sir,” Dec said crisply.
“Good. Excellent. I didn’t think you would. Stein? Take over.”
Andy Stein adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he got to his feet.
“Okay, guys. Here are the basics.”
He gave them longitude. Latitude. Weather, now and for the next few days, including the reminder that weather in the Copper Mountains was never really that predictable. He told them how and where they’d be inserted, how and where they’d be extracted.
Then he paused.
“You’ll have some advantage here, Sanchez,” he said. “Because you know the princess. She’ll be predisposed to trust you.”
“See,” Stein said, “the thing is, she’ll probably want to do what she thinks is best for her country. For Qaram. For us, that’s a secondary issue. We want what’s best for the three remaining Americans.” He paused. “And for our own international interests.”
“Wait a minute,” Dec said. “The captain said there were four Americans to begin with. How’d he reach that number? The ambassador and his wife. The embassy guy, but he’s dead. By my count there were three to start, and now we’re down to two.”
“Technically, there were four. Seems the princess has dual citizenship. Her father was Qarami, but her mother was born in Connecticut.”
Dec’s mouth thinned. What else hadn’t he known about Annie Stanton?
“Has there been a ransom demand?”
Stein took off his glasses, blew on the lenses, polished them against the front of his shirt, then plopped the glasses on and pushed them up the bridge of his nose.
“Yes. But meeting it wouldn’t be in our interest.”
Dec nodded. “What do they want? Arms? Planes? Drones? Good old USA dollars?”
“Dollars for the ambassador and his wife. But for the the princess…” Stein hesitated. “They won’t talk ransom.”
“Because?”
“Because they want to use her for political leverage.”
“How?”
Stein bent over the computer and touched a couple of keys. The photo of the embassy guy being executed appeared onscreen.
“The shooter, the guy who calls himself the Deliverer—Well, he isn’t one of the bandits that captured the bridal party.”
Dec got a bad, bad feeling. “Then who is he?”
A bearded, narrow face filled the screen. The eyes were cold, filled with evil.
“Fuck,” somebody said.
They were looking at Altair Amjad, the leader of one of the most vicious terrorist groups on the planet.
CHAPTER THREE
Her Royal Highness, Princess Anoushka of Qaram, the woman who had once been Annie Stanton, sat shivering on the dirt floor of a wooden shed high in the mountainous no-man’s-land that stretched for miles along the border between Qaram and its neighbor, Tharsalonia.