Betrayal (24 page)

Mark didn’t care about the crew. Or Jacie. This was partly her fault for bringing in the private soldiers and trying to double-cross him. He should have known her hatred of Susana was too fanatical to make her a trustworthy partner.

But if there was a chance Susana had survived…

He shook his head and told himself not to get his hopes up. It was possible Susana was dead. But if Paterson had helped her escape, then where would they go?

He asked the mercenary that.

“Depends. They fled inland, so eventually they’ll come to the highway. But that’ll take them a couple of days at least. I’d circle back to the Branco River.”

Okay, he could work with this.

He still had one contact within the SSU. If Paterson had radioed for help, his contact might be able to tell him the coordinates for their extraction.

“Where are you now?” Mark asked.

“Still on the river near her camp.”

“I want you to head upriver, toward Boa Vista. I’m going to find out where the woman is. If I’m right, you’ll be on a course to intercept.”

Sunday, Night

Amazon Jungle

P
eople were dying. Burning to death in front of her eyes. Crying for Susana to save them. Blaming her.

A man fell at her feet, his body charred and his throat slit. His eyes were open, revealing distinctive amber irises.

Kai!

Susana awoke with a scream dying on her lips.

For an instant she panicked, not knowing where she was. She sat up abruptly, her head bumping into and stretching the mosquito net. The hammock tipped to the left and she started to fall.

Something tugged on the wayward hammock, righting it.

“Easy, sweetheart. You’re okay.”

Kai. Alive.

She closed her eyes against a wave of relief so strong it scared her. She wanted to fling herself into his arms. Feel his warmth against her, just to reassure herself he was real. The impulse was so strong, she hugged herself to keep from reaching for him.

“Susana?”

“I…” Her voice came out husky and broken. “Just give me a minute. Nightmare.”

“Okay. As soon as you’re ready, we need to move out.”

She opened her eyes. It was barely light enough to see Kai standing beside her, but his jaguar’s eyes seemed to glow. She shivered.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” he said.

She wondered what he’d seen in her face to offer that promise. They both knew it was impossible to keep. If the helicopter came back and shot into the trees in the right spot, neither of them would survive.

Still, she gave him the words he needed. “I know. I trust you.” And despite, or maybe because, of the way he’d killed the mercenary, she realized it was true. Kai had killed to protect her. Twice.

His violence scared her. No doubt about it. Violence wasn’t something she was used to. Yet she trusted him to keep her alive.

Some emotion passed briefly across his eyes. Satisfaction? She had the unsettling feeling something important had just happened between them. She only wished she knew what.

She climbed out of her hammock.

Five minutes later, Kai held out her backpack and helped settle it on her back. His eyes held a silent apology as he handed her a nutrition bar.

Then he checked his watch and pointed out their new direction. As she took the lead, she munched on her breakfast. It was odd. She knew Kai’s main interest in her was the microchip. Yet he managed to make her feel she mattered to him on a personal level.

Technically, he didn’t need her alive to retrieve the chip. His care of her, the gentle way he’d held her while she cried, and his willingness to put his own life at risk to keep her alive, assured her he would never hurt her.

There you go again. Hoping that someone will love you.

Whoa. Love?

No way. She did not want Kai to love her.

See her as a person, not just a microchip carrier? Yes. Give her another round of mind-blowing sex. Absolutely. Develop an emotional attachment to her? No. Uh-uh. No way.

Yet last night, when he’d held her, she’d felt safe. Cherished.

Think of something else.

Unfortunately, what came to mind was the image of Jacie’s green eyes, smug with satisfaction as she described how she’d betrayed Susana. She swallowed past a bitter lump of betrayal.

Jacie had wanted Susana dead. Because of ambition. And Susana hadn’t suspected. She’d been doing everything possible to help Jacie’s career.

No, amend that. She’d been doing everything to support the career Jacie
claimed
to want. A false tale, meant to lure Susana into a false sense of security.

Susana felt the ragged remains of her confidence fluttering inside her. Once again she’d misjudged someone and been cut by betrayal.

Her confidence had been torn before. By her mother. By Elena, who had lied to her, robbed her, and tried to destroy her reputation.

But after the hurt from each incident had faded, she’d regained confidence in herself and found someone new to trust, convinced this time the person would be worthy. That she’d chosen smarter. That this time she’d found someone to love and trust her as unconditionally as she did them.

Susana sighed and hitched the straps of her pack higher on her shoulders.

No matter how deep Jacie’s betrayal, she hadn’t deserved to pay with her life. Lose her job? Definitely. Spend some time in jail. Absolutely.

But bullets in the back? Too harsh a punishment.

Susana shivered and prayed the helicopter wouldn’t come back.

Monday, Morning

Amazon Jungle

“J
esus H. Christ!” Niko stared at the scorched wasteland that had once been Susana Dias’s archaeological dig.

Beside him, Jenna coughed.

“This is insane.” Charred bits of tent pole poked through piles of ash. A piece of partially melted hiking boot sole lay atop a glaring white shinbone. The back of a skull sat at an angle on a jumble of bones.

Heat rose from the ashes. The scent of death and smoke dissipated as a breeze carried the jungle’s rich perfume across the site. Underneath it all Niko caught the distinctive odor of accelerant.

Murder.

Had there been any warning? Was there any chance people had run to safety? Or was Kai dead?

He and Jenna had come in from the northwest. The area they’d walked through had been mostly untouched until just a few yards from camp. The fire seemed to have been stopped from spreading in that direction by a small creek.

The jungle to the east and south had burned. He couldn’t tell from here how far the devastation spread, but they’d seen no signs of survivors.

He pulled out his sat phone and dialed Ryker. Jenna started snapping photos with her phone’s camera.

“Kai’s alive,” Ryker informed him immediately. “The satellite still shows the signal from his tracking chip. And Rafe’s chip is transmitting again.”

Niko squeezed his eyes shut in relief, then relayed the good news to Jenna. Joy lit up her face and she made a victory sign.

“Rafe’s not far behind Kai,” Ryker continued. “I’m downloading their last recorded positions to your phone.” It was precisely for situations like this that Ryker had asked all his agents to submit to having tracking devices implanted under their skin, and Niko could only thank God for it.

Niko told Ryker about the fire.

“Ah,” his boss said. “That explains it. The satellite picked up an intense heat signal from that sector last night.”

Ryker paused, and Niko could imagine him pacing his office, calculating risks and possibilities. “Watch your six, Niko. Whoever ordered this attack won’t want any witnesses. And I think it’s safe to say they’ve decided to kill Dias and take the chip from her corpse.”

That’s the way Niko figured it, too. “I estimate we’ll catch up with Kai within thirty-six hours.”

“As soon as you’ve found them, signal Gonzales for the pick-up,” Ryker said. “Don’t try to reach the extraction point. If the helicopter has to hover over the trees and lower a sling to you, we’ll do it. I want you all out of there as soon as possible.”

“Will do.” Niko ended the call and opened up the phone application that monitored the tracking devices.

Both Rafe and Kai were heading northeast.

Bro, when I find you, please tell me you had nothing to do with this destruction.
Niko swallowed back nausea at the thought. Took a deep breath. Looked at his wife.

She glanced up from photographing a pile of charred bones. Her skin was pale, her mouth drawn in a tight line. She looked as sickened by this level of random destruction as he felt.

“Ready to move out?” she asked.

He wondered if, like him, she wanted to run away from here. If it even occurred to her Rafe could have done this.

God, I hope not.

But as Niko skirted the destruction, looking for Rafe’s trail into the jungle, he couldn’t help but think that only someone not thinking straight would wreak such annihilation.

Someone, say, like his brother, who’d been given drugs known to destroy reason and compassion. Drugs that resulted in highly aggressive behavior.

Monday, Midday

Washington, D.C.

“Y
ou told me this latest team was stable enough to send on a mission. And what happened?” Jamieson didn’t wait for Dr. Kaufmann to answer. “The men stole a helicopter and firebombed Dias’s dig, killing everyone! Do you have any idea what a disaster this is?” Jamieson felt wetness on his lip and reached up with a finger.

Spittle. He’d been reduced to a slavering maniac. He scrubbed his mouth with his handkerchief. But the action did nothing to quell the cold snake of panic wending its way through his gut.

Dr. Kaufmann’s failure could very well spell the end of Kerberos.

“I believed the issues with aggression and judgment had been sufficiently dealt with,” Dr. Kaufmann replied. “The entire team shouldn’t have become so violent. And the men should have been incapable of thinking up such a plot and carrying it out. Their handlers should have possessed sufficient control to stop such an action. Once the team has returned, we’ll take blood samples and see where we went wrong.”

Jamieson didn’t bother explaining that he’d authorized a cleanup crew to fly down to Brazil and eliminate Kaufmann’s men before they could tell anyone else what they’d done. And his team would do whatever was necessary to alter the site of the fire to make it look like an accident. Maybe disguise the fire as a propane explosion. Or an airplane crash.

Anything to hide what really happened.

Jesus Christ. They’d killed over two dozen innocent people! If word of this got out, it would cause an international incident.

At the very least, there was going to be an investigation. Which might eventually tie the men involved back to Kaufmann. Jamieson knew that, if pressured, the self-important scientist wouldn’t keep his mouth shut about who funded his project.

The chip had to be retrieved now, while the cleanup was going on. Before anyone started nosing around.

“The situation is actually quite fascinating,” Kaufmann continued. “I thought we’d sufficiently wiped out all memories of the men’s prior lives. But obviously one of them recognized that the helicopter was an old military model, complete with weapons. A prior mission’s order must have interfered with our programming, causing one or more of the men to convince the others that stealing the helicopter and using it to kill Susana Dias fell within the parameters of their current mission.”

The scientist hummed thoughtfully. “We’ve clearly underestimated the strength of our mind control protocol. After we gave them their mission commands, the subjects should not have been able to improvise. Particularly not regarding the use of deadly force. More tests will need to be run.”

Jamieson twisted his handkerchief into a noose. “Forget your damn research. We’re facing a real risk of exposure. Susana Dias is the host of a popular television show on the Adventure Channel,” he explained with what he considered commendable patience. “The film crew was on site. Even if the Brazilian government doesn’t investigate, the network executives are bound to go to our government and demand an accounting of what happened. Are you beginning to see the size of the problem you’ve created? This isn’t something we can easily brush under the carpet.

“Plus, Susana Dias is still alive and running free in the jungle somewhere. Tonelli hasn’t checked in, so we can’t count on him bringing us the microchip. And your men are so unstable, they’re likely to destroy both Dias and the chip. That’s if they catch her before Paterson takes her back to the SSU!”

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The imbecile on the other end of the telephone didn’t understand the fine line Jamieson walked in order to keep his position of power.

He stared at a print of the Mona Lisa hanging to the left of his desk, barely aware he was gripping the phone receiver so hard, his knuckles had turned the color of his preferred vanilla ice cream. He’d always thought that Mona Lisa was a woman who possessed many secrets and knew how to leverage those secrets. That she smiled because she’d recently completed a successful power play. Right now, he wished he had so subtle an ally.

Dr. Kaufmann didn’t understand the meaning of the words nuance and subtlety. Genius hadn’t given the scientist the ability to understand that sometimes the obvious move was the wrong move for many hidden, yet critical reasons.

“Tell me again why you sent Rafael Andros after Dias,” Jamieson demanded.

“We need to test the power of our imprinting with this latest batch of drugs. Adros proved to be a very hard subject to get under control initially. He’s made satisfactory progress since then, but only a real-world test can prove whether this formula is worth continuing.”

The pride in Dr. Kaufmann’s voice annoyed Jamieson. The scientist clearly had no clue they were on the brink of being exposed. Arrested. Tried for murder. Not just for the attack on Dias’s dig. But for the deaths of Andros’s teammates and all the unmourned former soldiers and law enforcement agents who had entered Kaufmann’s lab and been buried anonymously.

If Andros broke free of his conditioning and returned to the SSU, he could expose Kaufmann’s program. Andros knew names. He could recognize faces.