Chapter Five #2
“Are you crazy, dude? That’s the end of life as he knows it. He can forget about finding out traitors and getting to the bottom of this mess we’re in. We don’t need him running around making promises he won’t keep.” Flyboy scratched his nose with his pen. “No, we want him just as he is.”
“True.” Sullivan leaned back. “So I gather I keep on doing what I’ve been doing, putting together the missing weapons puzzle, right? Jed?”
Jed blinked. Part of him had been listening to the conversation, but a part of him was busy registering that strange prickly sensation at the base of his neck. He’d felt it before—when he was looking down at Cummings’ body. What the hell was it?
He looked at his team. Everyone was at ease, throwing out ideas and speculations in their usual informal style. They were a tightly knit group. If anything was wrong, these men would all feel it. No, this feeling was uniquely his.
Sullivan was gazing back at him questioningly, waiting for his reply. They were used to his short pauses, so his little silence hadn’t been noticed. He caught Armando’s speculative gaze. Except by one. Armando was looking at him too closely. Did he have the same odd feeling too?
Jed double-clicked the remote. “Quick update. The missing weapons are showing up at odd places. The explosive device is in Macedonia. We just retrieved the SEED in Germany. What do you have for us at your end, Sullivan?”
Sullivan and Shahrukh were their weaponry and battle experts. Sullivan had connections with the West and Shahrukh, the East. The two of them worked well together, and in spite of very different demeanors, they had become very close friends, so much so that they were mocked as the twins at COMCEN.
Sullivan grinned and turned to Shahrukh. “Wait till they hear what we have.”
Shahrukh responded with a mere lift of his dark eyebrow.
“First, we’ll simplify each missing element,” Sullivan said, counting off with his fingers.
“An explosive device, practically undetectable. A decoder, one that’s being designed by quantum scientists.
The entire design of our newest flight simulator.
A captured and still missing spy plane. That’s just the big list. Shahrukh? ”
“With some help from T, we’ve traced certain monetary movements through off-shore accounts belonging to some of our suspects,” Shahrukh obligingly continued, his soft accent more pronounced than usual, betraying a little bit of his excitement.
“We matched dates and events. There’s an emerging pattern. ”
“Former KGB handlers and their leftover moles in different agencies,” Sullivan interrupted triumphantly.
“It seems that the fall of the Soviet Union didn’t necessarily mean the fall of the KGB powers. Through all these years, they’ve continued using their extensive network to collect intelligence for use to shore up their weakening base, waiting for the right time to push back,” Shahrukh said.
“As shown in the current CIA nightmare,” Sullivan finished up.
Jed looked from one man to the other. The “twins” made an odd couple, what with Sullivan’s cowboy attitude about everything and Shahrukh’s more introverted personality, but they shared an innate passion for history and old weaponry.
Jed had listened to them in deep discussion about the roles of knights and the different weaponry used in ancient war.
Every strategy was discussed; every role was replayed.
It was interesting to see the two men challenging each other in mental warfare and reenacting battle after battle from one side, then another.
To Jed, war was war was war. To his two teammates, war was some macho form of arts and crafts.
He’d often found himself marveling at how Sullivan could manage to bring in the coaching decisions of a recent football game to argue against one of Shahrukh’s more esoteric theories about a famous ancient battle.
And if talking strayed into a real difference of opinion, those two had been known to reenact a one-on-one fight right there at the gym. Sullivan always started it, of course. He was competitive like that. Shahrukh, Jed suspected, went along just to amuse himself.
“So where do you think this is leading?” he asked, ignoring the twinge to look at the entrance expectantly. The others would know soon enough. “Proposals?”
“We—”
The buzzing of the exterior door interrupted Sullivan. The commandos turned to look at the monitor above to see who it was. Usually it would be one of their own—T. or Diamond—but they weren’t in the country. Any other personnel, even de Clerq, would announce themselves through the intercom first.
Jed put down the remote in his hand. He already knew. It was Hell.
She pushed the interior door open, dark eyes sparkling, lips curled in a temper, all glorious raging Valkyrie.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” she paused long enough to announce, then stalked over and swung a fist at Jed.
He chose not to avoid it, only taking one step back and putting just enough distance to make sure the hit didn’t break his jaw. After what he’d done to her, he owed her.
HELEN SHOOK HER HAND, her shoulder stinging from the direct punch. Ouch. She hadn’t expected him to stay put like that.
All eyes were on her, of course. Couldn’t be helped. She was that pissed and this couldn’t wait. She looked at the man standing in front of her. Damn him. He wasn’t even rubbing his jaw, even though she’d decked him good. She could see a slight swelling starting up already.
She looked around again and casually shrugged. They all probably knew why she’d hit Jed McNeil, and if they didn’t, they would guess soon enough. Undoubtedly, they all had the same skills to seduce—she determinedly pushed away those thoughts and pulled out a chair.
“Sorry, please do continue.” She clenched and unclenched her slightly numbed hand. Damn, that hurt. “Since no one stopped me from entering, I’m assuming it’s okay to be listening in on you guys.”
There was a short silence. Then Flyboy spoke up, “We were just wondering where you were.”
Hell held his blue eyes for a long second. Of all of them, she’d considered him her friend. Now she wasn’t sure any more. How much was his friendliness an act?
“I was asleep,” she told him grimly.
She wanted to pound on the table, but it wouldn’t do to let them see her losing it. Not yet. Her main target was him. She returned her gaze to Jed McNeil, who calmly picked up a remote from the table.
Oh, he had been so damn smart, hiding behind Hades in those dreams. She wasn’t sure yet how he’d managed to do that but she knew it was him. There was no mistaking those light eyes.
When she’d woken up, she’d instinctively understood what her inner voice had been telling her.
She had mistaken her strange dream for what they called “lucid dreaming”, that state of consciousness she often had when she was aware that she was sleeping and dreaming at the same time.
Not only that, she had wrongly assumed she’d invaded Hades’ dreams again.
Half-awake and still aroused, she’d allowed her mind to drift in search of those hands and lips, letting it wander off as she slowly surfaced.
Then she’d experienced that odd dizzying sensation that she had had yesterday, catching a glimpse of dark hair and silvery eyes and this very room, before she was knocked sideways by the same blinding pain.
She knew—absolutely—bone deep, that Jed McNeil was Hades. It was too coincidental that twice now, when she’d managed to slip into remote-viewing mode while thinking of Hades, she’d seen him instead.
Fully conscious after the headache, she’d realized that it was not nighttime, which meant she and Hades weren’t doing their usual brain synchronization exercise.
She’d jerked out of bed and had barely taken the time to freshen up as her mind raged, denied, processed, denied, argued, and denied.
She’d rushed here without even remembering how she’d gotten there, as if she just knew where to find him, and strode through the main office past a group of operatives.
It now occurred to her no one had stopped her. Not that it would have mattered. She had been so angry she would have fought her way in just to see whether he was really here. Punching him felt so good, she was almost too giddy to do anything but sit here and savor it.
“Proposals?” Jed asked calmly. By now, a small cut had opened at the corner of his mouth.
She had to give it to him. He was one cool cat. He was looking at Sullivan as if nothing unusual had happened.
“Umm...how about a break?” Sullivan replied drolly, rubbing his chin.
Helen noted the amused gleam in his eyes, then cast her gaze at the others. Shahrukh was looking at his notes, a tiny smile on his strong lips. Flyboy was sniffing at a pencil as if it was some fine cigar.
She relaxed—just a little. She didn’t want to make things uncomfortable between herself and these men with whom she’d barely begun working.
There were seven of them to her one, not counting T, and she had to figure out what the dynamics were here and learn how to work it to her advantage.
Her own agency, GEM, was made up of mainly women and their modus operandi couldn’t be more different.
She had the feeling that working closely with these men was going to be eye-opening, to say the least.
“Do you need one?” Jed asked.
“Nope. But I thought you might need it to take care of that swelling before it gets too puffy. That could be problematic for the next assignment.”
Helen frowned. Ooops. She hoped she hadn’t caused more problems for any assignment. The fact that one of the Cummings had escaped had been her fault.
“Lucky she didn’t break your nose. Puffy eyes, man. It’s a major pain to sight a target from an angle.”
“He could always stand sideways and look out of his good eye.”