Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“Lucky? Lucky?”
Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up to find Kev gently shaking her. Her first instinct was to recoil; her second was to burrow her head into his chest and sob.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and Kev straightened. “Sorry,” she said.
“No problem. It’s been a long night for you.”
She glanced at her phone to check the time. “It’s six hours earlier in Hawaii. I’d be in bed right now.”
“Yeah, that time zone shift is always a bitch.”
She blinked at their surroundings. The truck was parked in a lot near a compound that would have looked nondescript were it not for the razor wire, antennas, and satellite dishes.
“Whoa, are these the new digs?”
Kev slid his hands over the top of the steering wheel. “This is it. The Church of Mendez.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “You guys don’t call it that to his face do you?”
Kev grinned. “No. But we do call it the playground. He seems to like that.”
He reached behind her seat and dug into the backpack he’d set there. Then he came out with a manila envelope and handed it to her.
“What’s this?”
“Your credentials.”
She turned the envelope in her hands before ripping it open. A HOT restricted access badge fell out, along with an ID and some other papers.
“Just when I’m sure nothing can surprise me.” She turned the badge over. “You knew I’d come.”
He shrugged. “Mendez was getting you back one way or the other. And you’ll need these to get inside.”
“I’m not active anymore.”
“Doesn’t matter. We operate our own access now. We’re deep black.”
“HOT was always deep black.”
He shook his head. “Not like this.” He popped open his door. “Come on. Mendez is waiting.”
“Wow, I don’t even get a shower first, huh?” She knew better, but it was still irritating to be called onto the carpet and expected to obey when she’d left that kind of life behind. No one ordered her to do anything these days, and she liked it that way.
But it seemed HOT could always drag you back in.
“He wants to see you. After that, I have no idea. But I’ll do what he tells me.”
“Apparently, we all will,” she said bitterly. And then she opened the door, looped the badge around her neck, and started for the gate. They passed through several layers of security and into the bowels of the building.
“It still smells new,” she grumbled as they passed through yet another door controlled by a cipher.
“We’re working on it.”
This building was prime, nothing like the facility at Fort Bragg. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’d just stepped into the NSA. There were lasers, huge monitors, infrared cameras, ciphers, eye and fingerprint scanners, and a computer that spoke to them as they walked through the mantrap.
The doors were thick steel that thudded shut as they went deeper into the facility. Finally, they came to a room with two guards stationed on either side.
Kev took her badge and handed it to the closest guy. “We’re here to see the colonel. This is Lucky San Ramos. She’s HOT cleared, level three.”
The guard turned and picked up a phone. A few moments later he dropped it and entered a code into the door.
It swung open and Kev led her through. Lucky ground to a halt.
Around her, giant screens ringed the room.
Computer banks sat in the center of the room, men and women busy at each as colored dots moved on the screen.
HOT strike teams out in the field. The dots lit up across several continents, and Lucky swallowed. It was surreal to be back on the inside after so long away.
And after the way she’d lost Marco. Poor Marco.
“You all right?”
She glanced up at Kev. He was watching her closely, and she told herself not to read too much into it. “It’s a little intense, but I’m okay. It’s been a while.”
He smiled as if to reassure her. “I know. But it’ll be fine.”
“So where’s the old man?” Because she wanted to get this over with now that she was here.
“The old man isn’t that damn old,” a voice boomed behind her.
Lucky spun to find Colonel Mendez, looking intense as always as he sized her up.
He wasn’t a bad-looking man, though she had no intentions of ever telling him that.
He was tough, tall and wiry, and had that same high-and-tight, salt-and-pepper hair he’d always had.
While the other guys grew their hair out of regs for missions, Mendez never did.
“Hello, sir,” she said, her old training snapping to the fore of her brain. No, she wasn’t in anymore, and she could probably get away with leaving the sir off. But why antagonize the guy?
“So you gonna help us out, huh? Damn patriotic of you, Lucky.”
Anger cracked through the veneer of her calm. “It has nothing to do with patriotism, I assure you.”
His eyes raked her face. “No, I guess not.” He held out his arm suddenly, as if he were a courtier at a ball. “Why don’t we go to the ready room and discuss everything?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped her arm in his. No one here was going to hurt her. She’d worked hard to get over her phobias, and she was going to have to work even harder now. Besides, if he wanted to play it that way, she could go along. For now.
“Let’s get it over with.”
“Sergeant,” Mendez said, jerking his head at Kev. Kev preceded them through the operations center and into another room. Lucky blinked at the sight of Marco’s old teammates sitting at a table. They stood almost as one, a rippling wave of muscle and danger.
“Hey there, Lucky,” Matt Girard said, looking as handsome as ever. “Good to see you, chère.”
“I’d say the same, but, well, I think you guys probably know I’d prefer to be anywhere but here.”
His gray eyes were somber. “I don’t doubt it.”
She let her gaze wander around the table, said hello to everyone in turn.
There was Billy “The Kid” Blake, the computer whiz; Jack “Hawk” Hunter, the sniper; Nick “Brandy” Brandon, the spotter; Chase “Fiddle” Daniels and Ryan “Flash” Gordon, the intel guys—and two guys she didn’t know at all.
It hit her with a sickening thump that they were Jim and Marco’s replacements.
She glanced over at Kev, found him watching her, his gaze sharp. The other guys introduced themselves, and then they all sat down at a table.
Mendez wasted no time. “Al Ahmad’s been to France and Switzerland according to our sources.” He pushed a dossier toward her and called up a slideshow on the screen at one end of the room.
Lucky scanned the documents. It was nothing much, but Al Ahmad’s name had shown up in some intercepted cables. That wouldn’t have meant much, except that it was ibn-Rashad who seemed to be breaking the silence.
A power struggle in the Freedom Force? Anything was possible. With friends like ibn-Rashad, who needed enemies?
“Someone is accessing Al Ahmad’s accounts here in Zurich,” Mendez said, his cursor hovering over the name of a bank on a map.
“Weren’t those accounts closed when he died?”
“They were. But the NSA followed the money through various pipelines until it showed up again. New accounts, same bank. Al Ahmad is a bit superstitious, it seems.”
Yes, he was certainly that. As well as a psycho.
“So where does HOT come in?”
Mendez fixed his fierce gaze on her. “You’re the only one who has ever seen him. The only one on our side, that is. We need you to ID him in real time so we can grab him.”
Her heart thumped hard. Sweat pooled between her breasts, though she’d been cold since she’d stepped off the plane into the middle of winter.
“I don’t know that I can. I only saw his face once.
He always wore a keffiyeh and tucked part of it around the lower half of his face. But it fell away one day…”
She tried not to let her fear show. She could feel Kev’s eyes on her, feel him trying to imbue her with strength. Well, dammit, she didn’t need his strength. Didn’t need anyone’s. She had her own. She’d worked long and hard on finding it.
She sucked in a breath and gritted her teeth. “It’s possible, but I can’t guarantee it.”
Mendez looked grave. “You know what he sounds like, and that’s the key. He never gives the orders himself, always sends them through his lieutenants. We’ve never captured his voice… but you would know it if you heard it.”
“Maybe.” She shoved a hand through her hair. “I don’t know, but maybe. But how do you propose I do that? He’s smart and he’s not going to start making calls—or none that you can connect to him.”
“No, that’s true.” His gaze slid over the team.
“We could wait, try to capture his voice. We talked of getting recordings, transmitting them here for you to listen to. But he’s too careful.
We need boots on the ground, Lucky. We need the assets in place to take him once the ID is made.
We want you to go in with Strike Team 1. ”
She blinked at him, the chill in her bones creeping outward until she was certain she would freeze where she sat. It was everything she could do not to let her teeth chatter. They wanted to capture Al Ahmad, not kill him. And they wanted her to go with them.
Had Kev known this from the start? She didn’t look at him as she fixed her gaze on Mendez.
“I’m not an operator.”
“No. But you can be a teacher.”
“I’m not following you.”
Mendez tapped on the keyboard, and a new slide popped up. “He’s in Qu’rim.”
Her heart skipped. “Qu’rim is on the verge of civil war.”
The capital city of Baq was still untouched by the violence—but it was moving closer every day. There was rebellion out in the desert, pockets of unrest near the city. She might be out of the military now, but she could watch CNN International and Al Jazeera like anyone.
Mendez looked grave. “Yes. But Baq is still safe at the moment. The airport is held by troops loyal to the king, and the king is secretly working with the U.S. on security. We’ve been sending arms for months now.”
Lucky clenched her hands into fists in her lap. “This is beginning to sound completely insane.”
“I’ll grant you that. But Qu’rim is important. More important than many people realize.”
He brought up another screen, and her heart nearly stopped. “Uranium,” she breathed. “They have uranium.”
Around the table, the guys looked grim. “Yeah,” Mendez said. “They have a mine. And it’s in our best interests to protect that. Should the rebels succeed—well, the balance of power could shift in the region. And that would not be a good thing for us.”
She felt numb. “I thought this conflict was about fair treatment. The poor taking from the rich and all that.”
“That’s what they want you to think. But it’s far more than that. The Qu’rimis have an enrichment program. So far, they claim it’s for peaceful means, but in the wrong hands…” He shrugged.
“You think Al Ahmad has something to do with this.”
His eyes flashed with approval. “Yes. The rebellion started a little over a year ago, and things have steadily gotten worse. He’s there. And he knows that if the balance shifts, he’ll be in a prime position. Qu’rim has chemical weapons. Al Ahmad wants them.”
“Holy shit.”
“Precisely.”
She drew in a deep breath. If Al Ahmad had anything to do with this, if he got his hands on chemical weapons, if he got control of the uranium… it was a terrifying scenario with disastrous consequences.
“What do you need from me?”
Mendez leaned forward, his eyes sparking with intensity.
“We need to know who Al Ahmad is, and we need to get him so we can put an end to the Freedom Force. For that, we need you. If it could be done any other way—” He slapped a hand on the table and she jumped.
“But it can’t. We need boots on the ground, ready to take him. We need you.”
He turned back to the screen and pulled up another slide before she could say anything.
“This is the scenario. Baq is still doing business as usual, and there’s a demand for English teachers.
You speak several dialects of Arabic, and you would be able to fit in as an instructor.
Naturally, you will be accompanied by your new husband. ”
She startled, but she didn’t think Mendez noticed. If any of the guys were uncomfortable, they didn’t show it. Except Kev. He seemed… stiff, angry.
And then Billy shot Kev a look, and Lucky revised her estimate. That was at least two guys uncomfortable with the idea. Three if you counted her.
“The rest of the team will be there in various capacities. You won’t be alone. And Sergeant MacDonald will be with you 24/7, no matter what.”
Her heart squeezed tight. Kev didn’t say a word, but she sensed this was news to him the way his shoulders drew back even tighter than before. If she did this, she was going into Baq with Kev as her husband. Kev.
My God.
Lucky concentrated on what Mendez was saying. “And how am I supposed to find Al Ahmad in the midst of all this chaos? Baq is huge, and if he’s busy fomenting rebellion in some of the more remote quarters of Qu’rim…”
“He has a daughter. She goes to school in Baq.”
Lucky’s heart nearly stopped. That monster had a child? Oh dear God. A chill washed over her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. “If you know all this, how can you not know who he is?”
Irritation flashed across his features then, but she knew instinctively that it wasn’t directed at her.
Mendez was very proud of his brainchild and very protective of their accomplishments.
The fact HOT couldn’t find the most dangerous terrorist in the world and neutralize him did not sit well with the colonel.
“I wish I could tell you that. But he’s careful. Paranoid. He does everything through intermediaries. We don’t know who his daughter is, but we know she is in a very exclusive school for girls. The students are daughters of the wealthiest, the most privileged of Qu’rimi society.”
“I’m not a teacher.”
“You speak the dialect. And you speak English. It’s all that’s required. Many of the people who sign on to teach English in Qu’rim are nothing more than native speakers. You at least have more than that going for you.”
“And won’t they be suspicious when I show up speaking the language?”
He shook his head. “We’re working with the king and certain high-placed people in his command. There will be no questions.”
Lucky closed her eyes and tilted her head back.
This was not what she’d expected—and yet there was no way she could refuse.
Everyone at this table was counting on her.
And more than that, her nation was counting on her.
If Al Ahmad and the Freedom Force gained control of the uranium mine—or Qu’rim’s chemical stockpile—the consequences would be catastrophic.
“All right,” she said softly. “Tell me what I have to do.”