Chapter Twenty
So far so good. Even at half a dosage, Helen could feel a big difference.
The pain was gone, or at least, she didn’t feel it.
Maybe it was from being nagged by a headache for the last few days, but the sudden lack of tension felt incredible.
Undistracted by pain, she could think in whole paragraphs again.
She didn’t need to distract herself by taking notes.
“Hell, status.”
The sudden sound of Jed’s voice through the earpiece made her shiver with sudden awareness.
Thanks to the serum, she’d been crouching in this position for over an hour now without feeling a darn thing—not the discomfort of her position, not the heat that was making her shirt damp, not any normal need to stand up and stretch at all—and he managed to cut through its effect and disrupt her sense of calm watchfulness by just saying her name.
She peered through the binoculars, checking the auditorium below. “On time,” she said. “I see the diplomats on the stage. It’s heavily guarded.”
With the presence of so many important heads of state, the whole place had been swept by sniffing dogs and detectors, double-guarded with metal detectors at checkpoints as well as security cameras at every possible angle, looking for snipers and suspicious-looking packages.
The American contingent had brought their own operatives, but had been told to keep out of the way of Macedonian security, which didn’t want any interference from outsiders.
Nonetheless, Helen was quite sure there were plenty of other “outsiders” from Interpol, Europol, and other outfits walking around here.
No one wanted an international incident. Or at least, on the outside.
There was a decoy out there somewhere and the package given to him at Lake Matka had convinced Jed there was a connection with Deutsche International.
While they were busy going through exit points, Hawk had reported in again.
She hadn’t been close enough to hear the conversation, but whatever was happening at the SEALs’ end was serious enough to warrant Jed making several calls as they walked out of their room to head to their positions.
Just as she’d turned to leave, he’d grabbed her hand in the middle of a call, and said briefly, “It doesn’t matter that this is a decoy. It means they’re still waiting out there for the real thing. Do you remember those CIA faces we saw?”
She’d immediately understood him and nodded.
“I’ll keep an eye out for them.” He’d squeezed her hand and let it go, but she felt his gaze following her out the door.
It was while outside, with the crowd and noise, that she had first noticed something different.
Sometimes the people she was observing glowed.
That was the best word she could come up with to describe it.
It only happened intermittently and the sight usually dissipated after a few seconds.
So taking the serum before she was undergoing remote-viewing downtime caused wonky perception.
But that was to be expected, right? She didn’t have time to analyze it right now, but when she had some time, she’d sit down and make a list of all the odd reactions she had while using SYMBIOS 2.
Dr. Kirkland had wanted to experiment using the serum before an RV session anyway, so this decision to use the serum now should give him an idea.
Of course, they hadn’t thought of spontaneous remote viewing.
She looked through her binoculars again. Frowned.
“Where’s Number Nine going, over?” she asked. Jed hadn’t said anything about moving out of position.
“He’s going down to the underground parking lot. Weber’s meeting him there,” Heath replied.
“Weber from Deutsche International?” She remembered the name from the last mission. Weber was one of the top guys at Deutsche International where she’d retrieved the SEED decoder. What was D.I.’s connection with all these missing weapons?
“Yes. He had someone pass a note to Jed. Jed says to give him fifteen minutes and not to move out of position. All eyes on entry and exit points. Stay in position, Hell.”
It struck her as strange Jed would leave when the decoy could strike at any time right now. What was in the note given to him?
“Affirmative,” she said.
But something just didn’t feel right to her.
They’d all agreed that, decoy or not, someone was planning to make a statement against this group of leaders gathering here today.
The first shot, the one today, was meant to distract from the bigger target, which they were hoping to avert once Hawk took care of business at his end.
“One thing at a time,” Jed had said, as he laid out the initial plans.
Why did he choose to go off to the underground garage without more than furtive instructions to Heath?
“Is his comm. device on?” Hell asked.
“Yes, but he can’t listen in here because he’s going to be busy talking, Hell. He’s switched to using de Clerq for all emergencies and updates. If anything happens here, de Clerq will let him know.”
That made sense. This way he wouldn’t be distracted by all the communications going on by every sector and if they needed to get hold of him, they could pass the information on quickly to Drew de Clerq, who covered the operations from Center through satellite.
“Something’s happening down there,” one of the other operatives noted.
She trained her binoculars on the circular stage and saw a flurry of movement at one corner. Some of them had that weird glow she’d been seeing, and she couldn’t quite focus on their facial expressions. She blinked several times.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Hang on. Something coming in from de Clerq.”
Due to earlier prep work, de Clerq would be able to tap in on certain peoples’ private conversations.
This move was to enable them to know the actions of the different groups of security detail taking place around them to lessen the chance of getting into each other’s way.
Eight Ball, COMCEN’s computer, could pretty much give instantaneous translations of several languages and conversations at the same time, thus upping their chances to pick up any anomalies and incidences.
COMCEN had no intention of allowing any other agencies to get their hands on the trigger, if it made it to Skopje.
“The Macedonian security just caught a woman strapped with explosives trying to enter,” de Clerq reported. “She claimed to be from a separatist arm of the KLA and was after the Kosovo representative here.”
“Think she’s the decoy?”
“Eight Ball calculated it at eighty-five percent, seeing that Dragan Dilaver is KLA and Greta is probably partly affiliated.”
All this seemed to connect with everything the injured Hawk had told them in the earlier uplink Helen had listened in on. Dilaver was a KLA man and of course, if Greta was sending a decoy ahead, she would use a KLA agent.
“So if this is the decoy, and we have the trigger, is our mission over?” she asked.
“We don’t have the trigger yet, Hell,” de Clerq replied.
“Hawk McMillan recently reported in that he was close but hadn’t gotten to the dropped crates yet.
Also, he’d been sabotaged, so Jed had sent Number One down to help retrieve the trigger immediately.
Stay in position while I report in to Jed. ”
So that was what Jed had been on the phone about earlier.
How many missions was the man taking care of in his head?
One foot in Skopje, one hand in Velesta, one eye on her, the other eye on various other targets, one finger in some kind of deal with someone in Deutsche International—he was the walking, talking multitasking robot.
Not last night.
Helen grinned. Okay, there were moments when he was actually human.
Despite his facade, there was much more to this exasperating man than the cold, ruthless commando he showed on the outside.
She was intrigued by all the things she’d discovered recently, and she planned to find out more.
It was strange, how he turned from a make-believe naked avatar into a real live person, and she was comfortable with both.
Well, as comfortable as one could get with a man such as Jed.
It would never be easy, she realized that now, especially at moments like this, when the thought of him made her...
she frowned, lifting one hand...glow. What the hell. She was glowing.
She waved her hand, watching the trail of light that the motion created.
She looked at the crowd below. Now that she looked for them, those odd flashes of colors she had seen earlier were more pronounced, but instead of dissipating like before, they hung, like color bubbles, around some of the people.
Was it the serum affecting her perception? She hadn’t seen any glow like this that first time she’d used it, but a one-time usage didn’t mean anything conclusively. Besides, this time, she was using it before a remote-viewing session, so she wasn’t totally exhausted mentally and physically.
She looked down and studied herself. Yes, she was definitely emitting some kind of glow.
Now that she was concentrating on it, she could feel some sort of charge.
Heat. It didn’t feel dangerous. In fact, it felt natural, a part of her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sensation.
It was enjoyment. Satisfaction. What was giving her these feelings?
She projected her senses outward, the way she did when remote viewing, looking from the inside.
Jed in bed with her last night. His body on hers as he took his time pleasuring her. She could feel the orgasm that rocked her, the same powerful surrender, except this feeling was...a memory.
Suddenly, like channels crossing wires, she saw Jed walking with another man toward a waiting limousine. Her senses screamed, warning of danger.