Fever Zone (Danger in Arms, Book 1)

by Cindy Dees

  Mike powered down fractionally. He’d been in the business long enough to know that gut instincts were worth paying attention to. And her gut had been right, damn it.

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  Crap. He was back in her face, possibly even angrier than before, his voice low and charged. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. I never lied to you.”

  “Don’t split hairs with me. You didn’t tell me about your association with the PHP. And you damned well should have.”

  “Would you have trusted me if I had?”

  “I fucking don’t trust you now!” he burst out. “What has all of this been? A ploy to spy on the government on behalf of your family? Blood’s thicker than water, isn’t it, Piper?”

  Pain sliced through her. If their positions were reversed, she wouldn’t trust him, either. “Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not thicker than right and wrong. My family is doing something bad. Really bad. And I’m doing my damnedest to stop them. If I hadn’t blown the whistle on them, nobody would be watching them. Nobody would have any idea that they’re working for a terrorist.”

  Mike stared hard at her, his hand hovering dangerously near the deadly field knife in its sheath at his hip. “You do realize that every bit of intel you’ve ever given Uncle Sam on the PHP is now discredited, right?”

  “I’m sorry,” she tried in desperation. “I should have told you. I should have trusted you. I was wrong.”

  He was silent, stress tight across his forehead.

  “What was that under the tarp?” she asked in a blatant attempt to distract him and diffuse his anger and betrayal. “It looked like a big motor. Why did you insist on going back to have another look at it?”

  His jaw tightened and he said nothing.

  He wasn’t going to answer her? Did he distrust her so much, then? A hot knife of hurt pierced her, startling her. Since when did she care so deeply what he thought about her? They’d hooked up a few times, but that did not a relationship make. Right?

  Wrong, a little voice in the back of her head whispered to her.

  “Look, Mike. We could sit here and argue all night over whether I should have told you about my relationship to the PHP. The fact is I spotted my father and brother heading to Sudan. And I told the authorities. Now we know they have something to do with Yusef Abahdi. That’s more than we would have known had I not been tracking them on the side.”

  Mike shoved a hand through his hair. Exhaled hard. “You have to tell your boss. You have to let everyone running the op know. Now.”

  She stared at him in dismay. “Really? Is putting my mistake to rights more important than finding the virus and stopping Yusef from killing thousands of innocents?”

  “Your intel is discredited. You have to let the analysts know.”

  But it wasn’t discredited, dammit. She’d never been anything but honest and forthright in her reports on the PHP to her boss. She collected data and done her level best to be objective…

  Okay, Fine. She couldn’t technically be classed as objective where her own family members were concerned. Her relationship to the PHP might plausibly have put a slant on the reports, but in no way discredited them outright—

  “Make the call.” Mike held out his cell phone to her expectantly. She looked up at him in desperation but not even a hint of relenting cracked the granite façade of his expression.

  She took the phone. Silently, despairingly, she typed in André Fortinay’s office number. The receptionist patched her through to her boss’s desk.

  “Hi, André. It’s me. I have a confession to make. A big one. And it’s going to make you mad…”

  Her boss listened in grim silence as she explained her relationship to the PHP. He also listened in silence to her avowals on stacks of bibles that she had done her absolute best to be objective, fair, and honest in her reports on the group. At the end of her monologue, all he said was, “You’re off the case.”

  “Am I fired?”

  “To be determined,” was her boss’s terse response.

  “Okay. Fair enough.” She sighed heavily. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Save it. I have bigger problems on my plate at the moment. I’ll talk to you when you get back to D.C.” The line went dead in her ear. Oh, that was so not good. André was a European and the soul of courtesy at all times. But the man had just hung up on her. She was dead meat.

  Holding out his phone to him, she looked up at Mike bleakly. “Satisfied? I’m off the case and have undoubtedly lost my job. The career I’ve dreamed of most of my life is over.” She turned away sharply lest he see the tears gathering in her eyes all of a sudden. She tried the steel door and was dismayed to find it locked.

  “If you’ll let me out of here, I’ll get out of your hair. Good luck, Mike. You’ve got to find that virus. There’s no telling how many people will die if it runs unchecked.”

  A big hand landed on the door above the latch. His arm stretched disturbingly close to her shoulder, and damned if she couldn’t feel his body heat radiating toward her back. Oh, God. Not only had she lost her career, her identity, but she’d also lost him. A black pit opened beneath her feet and she gave herself over to it, falling, falling. She’d lost everything. She had nothing—

  “Crucify yourself later,” Mike growled. “Right now, we have a terrorist attack to stop.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I’m off the case. Fired. Gone. Security clearances revoked, Need to know erased. I’m done.” She spared him a single anguished glance over her shoulder, but it was too much. If she looked at him anymore she was going to break down and sob like a baby. And she’d be damned if she cried in front of him. She turned back to the door, yanking futilely at the immobile latch.

  “In the meantime, Americans are dying.” His words pounded at her skull like hammers. “They don’t know it yet, but a whole bunch of innocent civilians have likely got viral time bombs ticking away inside them.”

  Did he have a point to make? Frowning, she turned under his arm to face him. The steel door was cold against her back. As unyielding as the man in front of her.

  “We’re agreed that the attack has already happened. Yes?” he asked rhetorically. She nodded at a spot somewhere in the middle of his chest, and he continued grimly. “We’re into damage control mode, then. We need to know where to concentrate medical resources before all hell breaks loose. Which means this is a race against time.”

  “I’m aware of all this,” she told him gently. “But it’s not my problem anymore. It’s yours, alone.”

  “I need your help, Piper.”

  Her stare snapped up to his. He didn’t look demented. “Come again?” she breathed.

  “I need your help. Like it or not, you’re the expert on PHP. You know more about them than anyone else in the intel establishment.”

  “But you said it yourself. You can’t trust me. Even if I am telling you the truth to the best of my ability, it’s bound to be skewed to some degree. None of my intel is reliable or actionable.”

  “But it’s the best we’ve got. And we’re running out of time.”

  “André all but fired me.”

  “Okay. Then you’ll just ride along with me for lack of any other ride to where you’re headed. You won’t technically be working with me. But I need you to get your head back in the game. Then let’s figure out where Yusef turned his virus loose. You can sort out your job or lack of one later. But right now, I need you.”

  Mike stared hard at her, and she stared back, weighing whether or not he meant any of it. Was this all part of an elaborate interrogation ploy to get her to spill her guts? Thing was, she’d already laid her guts on the table for him. She just didn’t know if he believed her or not.

  “Be square with me, Mike. Are you playing me or not? We’ve got no time for this.”

  “You’re right. We don’t.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t make a habit of working with people I don’t trust. But there is no one else. I need you to look
me in the eye and swear you’ll be dead honest with me from here on out. No lies. No evasions. About anything. No matter what I ask you, I need the truth to the very best of your ability to give it to me. That’s the only way this is going to work. I can’t work with you if you’re not honest with me.”

  She stared at him long and hard. Honest had never been part of her M.O. Ever since she could remember, she’d survived by hiding her true self. By being less like her mother than she really was. By pretending to agree with her father’s brand of madness. By hiding her dreams. Hiding her feelings. Hiding everything about herself.

  “Take it or leave it,” he prodded.

  She ought to walk away. To let Mike and the government flail through this crisis on their own. But she still felt a responsibility to do the right thing. To make up for her family’s crimes. To redeem her own reputation. She capitulated to that little voice all at once, abruptly, not daring to second guess the impulsive decision. “Fine. I swear to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from now on,” she blurted.

  “Can I believe you?” he challenged.

  She shrugged and risked a look up into his eyes. “That’s up to you. I can make your promises all day long, but what matters is how your gut answers that question.”

  He made a sound of disgust. And that was the problem with blown trust. Even if she one-hundred-percent kept her promise, he wouldn’t necessarily believe her.

  She added soberly, “Even if you don’t believe me, we still have a crisis on our hands. And I still know more about the PHP than anybody on earth who’s not an actual member.”

  He swore under his breath. She would take that as an acknowledgment that she was right. He asked heavily, “Did you find anything in the plane to indicate where it might be headed?”

  “There were navigation maps of Idaho, Nevada, and southern California,” she answered. “How do those link up with what you found in the back of the plane?”

  “Alarmingly,” he answered dryly. Still not going to tell her what had been under that tarp, huh? She elected not to push him for details just now. He was being pretty prickly at the moment. Maybe later, after she’d restored his trust in her, he’d tell her what he’d seen. Maybe. He didn’t exactly strike her as the forgiving type.

  Mike asked her abruptly, “Did you see anyone in the compound you didn’t recognize? Someone new?”

  She thought back to the cluster of men who’d captured her and Mike. “Yes. Tall guy. Dark, full beard. Wore the black parka with the hood. I might have seen him the last time I observed the compound, but he’s the only person I don’t know by name or recognize on sight.”

  “No idea who he is?”

  She shook her head. “None.”

  “He was the guy who frisked me,” Mike commented. “I thought he might be an ex-cop, given how efficiently he searched me. Too bad we don’t have a picture of him to run through the FBI facial recognition data base.”

  She frowned. “I might have one. Last time I was in Idaho, I took a bunch of surveillance pictures of the PHP compound. I might have caught him without realizing it. If he has grown that beard in the last six months or so, I may have him on film and not even know it. I sent all those pictures to Doctors Unlimited before I left for Sudan.”

  “Can you call DU? Have the pics sent to the FBI?” Mike asked tersely. “Get the boys there looking for a guy who matches our description and get an ID on him?”

  “Yeah, sure.” It took her a few minutes to contact an IT guy at Doctors Unlimited and have him forward the pictures. She pocketed her phone and nodded at Mike. She, too, felt the weight of time slipping by. Somewhere, a lethal virus was incubating. Growing. Coiling like a viper getting ready to strike.

  “What the hell is your family up to?” Mike growled as he paced the confines of the room.

  If only she knew. Speaking of family…“Have you checked in with your brother-in-law recently? Maybe he has picked up a money trail on Yusef.”

  Mike shrugged and pulled out his cell phone. He surprised her by putting it on speaker and setting it on the table between them. Alex Peters picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, Mike. I was about to call you.”

  “You got something for us?” Mike replied quickly.

  “Maybe. What can you tell me about El Noor? Did you ever personally see him while you were in Sudan?”

  Mike glanced over at her questioningly and she shook her head in the negative. “Neither of us ever saw him. There were a lot of rumors about him, and we saw his guys plenty. They wore black berets and kicked butt whenever they showed up. Why do you ask?”

  Alex’s scratchy voice replied, “I did a little digging, well, a lot of digging, actually. I’m not convinced he actually exists. Someone is paying the bills and fronting a group of thugs in Khartoum, but I don’t think there’s any such warlord living in Sudan.”

  Piper’s jaw dropped.

  “Who is he, then?” Mike asked, sounding as shocked as she felt.

  “Good question. The money trail is as sophisticated as anything I’ve ever seen. Shell companies, accounts in tax havens, nesting corporations, the works. This guy doesn’t want anyone to know who he is or where to find him. One thing I know for certain: he’s no garden variety warlord from the slums of Khartoum.”

  Piper leaned forward. “So you’re telling us that the PHP guys and Yusef Abahdi are working for someone outside of Sudan who only pretended to be this El Noor guy in Khartoum?”

  “That’s the gist of it. El Noor could be anybody. No telling who he wants to target or why.”

  Mike interjected, “But we do know the guy is probably financing some sort of terrorist attack in the United States. Probably a biological attack, and probably on a good-sized city.”

  Alex answered, “And we know El Noor paid for a helicopter that the PHP took delivery of.”

  “What about a small, fixed wing airplane?” Mike asked. “Did El Noor buy one of those for the PHP?”

  “What kind of plane?” Alex asked.

  Piper supplied, “A Cessna 210.” She rattled off the tail number, adding, “But that number may be a fake.”

  Alex sounded distracted as rapid typing fired off behind his voice. “Lemme look into it. I’ll call you back.”

  “Roger,” Mike bit out. The call ended.

  She stared up at him. “Did you see anything in Khartoum to indicate that El Noor wasn’t real?”

  Mike frowned. “There was something…” His voice trailed off. “I’d have to review my scope footage…”

  Whoa. His gun sight also recorded video? Her scope hadn’t been anywhere near that high-tech. He picked up the telephone receiver mounted on the wall and asked for a laptop computer to be brought into their room right away.

  It took a few minutes to get him connected to the Internet, but in short order after that, Piper sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, watching him fast forward through video telemetry from Khartoum.

  “Here it is,” Mike announced.

  She recognized the dusty street. From the angle of the sun that would have been a morning shot. Mike slowed the footage down to normal speed. A group of men in El Noor berets piled out of a Jeep in front of a store and disappeared inside—

  “Hey! I recognize that!” she exclaimed. “That’s from the day we met. They dragged out that shopkeeper and beat him to death. You must have taken this footage right before I spotted you.”

  “And I spotted you back,” Mike retorted. “Here’s the piece I was looking for.”

  She looked at the screen and flinched as one of El Noor’s thugs slammed a rifle butt into the shopkeeper’s skull. “God, that’s violent.”

  “And efficient. Watch the precision with which these guys kill their target and then pummel his corpse into hamburger.”

  It was nauseating to witness again, but in spite of feeling sick she leaned forward to watch the attack more closely. Now that he mentioned it, Mike was right. Those guys were military in their precision. Each
punch and kick was targeted with incredible efficiency. Minimum effort for maximum damage.

  “Is that Krav Maga they’re using?” she asked.

  “A little hard to tell, since Krav Maga is based on an actively resisting opponent. But that would be my guess,” he replied.

  “Where did a gang of illiterate Sudanese kids from the slums learn sophisticated Israeli self-defense tactics?” she murmured. A flash of white at one of the attackers’ throats caught her attention. “Wait. Go back. What was that?”

  “Where?” Mike asked.

  “Pause it…right…now.” She pointed at the screen. “See there? This attacker’s throat is weird. It’s white.” And it didn’t look like a scarf or piece of clothing at the guy’s collar.

  Mike highlighted the section of the shot and enlarged it. “Lemme see if I can enhance the pixilation on this.”

  It took a minute for the computer to clarify the rough edges of the screen shot, but when it finished, Mike lurched back hard in his seat while she just stared.

  The white patch was skin. Which was to say, the dark skin of the man’s face was make-up. The picture showed clearly where the make-up smudged and smeared at the guy’s collar, revealing definitely Caucasian skin at the base of his neck.

  “Look at his facial features,” she breathed. “His bone structure. He’s European, not African.”

  “What the hell is El Noor doing, using white guys who know Krav Maga to impersonate a Sudanese street gang?” Mike demanded.

  “I guess we have our proof that El Noor is a whole lot more than a Sudanese slum lord.”

  Mike nodded. “If he can credibly fake an entire street gang, he’s fully capable of orchestrating a major terrorist attack.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That’s a question for later. Right now, we have to figure out where he’s launching his attack.”

  She stared at him. “Do you think El Noor is pointing Yusef Abahdi and—“her voice hitched a little, “—my family at the same target or at two different targets?”

  “Good question.” Mike frowned at her, obviously thinking hard. “We think Yusef has already launched his attack. And that airplane looked ready to go, to me. Whatever your…the PHP…is planning seems imminent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I got the impression your father was trying to delay us. Like he planned to keep us at the compound for a day or two.”