Nathan didn’t seem to notice. “Kate, look.”
She rubbed at her chin and followed his line of vision.
Their boat was gone.
T
wilight threatened.
Kate gently kicked her legs, scanning the horizon one more time, but the boat hadn’t drifted or been carried by the tide.
It was nowhere in sight.
Her tired muscles cramped. She and Nathan had been at this for hours, treading water, working against the tide and current, trying to fight being swept out to sea. She glanced over at him. He was solemn, hurting and doing better than she. Off and on, she’d flirted with using emergency egress—the procedures were in place—but this close to GRID without a tactical team in place and ready to take down the compound could jeopardize the entire effort. They had to keep trying to get out of this on their own.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, about seven feet off her right shoulder. She strained to see what it was, but
the glare of setting sun conspired with her nearness to the surface of the water; she couldn’t make it out. Whatever the object was, it was dark, large enough to disturb her, and it was floating closer.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Nathan said. “If we aren’t rescued before then, we’re going to have a big problem.”
“The tide’s coming in. I feel the shift in the current. That will help.” It would aid them in drifting toward shore. “With luck, by morning we’ll be there.” If they managed to stay afloat that long. She lifted a weary arm and pointed. “Nathan, what the hell is that?”
He darted his gaze at Kate, then in the direction she pointed. “It looks like a…oh, hell, Kate. It’s a mine!”
“Don’t touch it.” Kate moved closer to him, positioning herself between him and the mine.
“What are you doing?” He reached for her arm and tugged her back.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m an explosives expert, remember? Let me see what it is. Maybe I can neutralize it.”
Roughly sixteen by thirty inches. Drab combat-green. A closer inspection had her skin crawling. “It’s a Mark 1. Pressure-sensitive.” Could the news possibly get any worse? “It’ll float for about an hour—buoy suspension. If we can avoid it until then, it’ll sink. We can float above and avoid it.”
Nathan stared at the distant water surface over her shoulder. “It’s got a lot of company. We can’t avoid all of them.” He spared Kate a glance. “Is there anything you can do?”
Soon the drift mines would be above and below them. “Not without equipment I don’t have. How many do you see?” Kate paddled away from the mine, giving it lots of space.
“I can’t count them all,” he said honestly. “If these suckers only float for an hour, you’d better check below to see what they’ve done there. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble and leave us a way out in an hour.” He reached over and pulled her closer. “Stay near me. I’ll keep you clear of them up here.”
“Thanks.” Kate pulled on her face mask, grabbed hold of Nathan’s arm, let her hand slide down the outer length of him, and sank below the surface. Holding firmly to his leg, she spun in a small circle.
Sheer horror flooded her.
Mark 3
mines were everywhere!
Shimmying up Nathan’s body, Kate broke the surface and tossed back her headgear. “They’re all over down there. Mark 3s—same as Mark 1s but they float suspended about thirty-five feet below the surface.” She pulled in a sharp breath. “Jesus, I’ve never seen so many mines in such a concentrated area. There are hundreds of them.” She scanned the water in all directions.
Panic flickered through Nathan’s eyes. The same panic Kate felt inside. “What are you looking for? We’ve got to get out of here. Fast.”
“These are launched from surface ships. I was looking to see where the damn thing is.” And whose it was. The choice had been taken out of her hands now. She had to invoke emergency egress.
“Does it really matter? If we don’t outrun these damn things, or some fish bumps into one, we’re going to be blown to bits.”
“We might.” Kate slid the zipper of her wet suit down to the middle of her chest. She rubbed at her neck, depressed the implanted chip activating an SOS in her personal tracking device. Yes, she was in a no-activation zone. But this was a warranted emergency.
She looked around them, counted fourteen mines then stopped. At most, she had Nathan had three minutes to get out of here. By the fourth minute they’d be dead.
“Kate! Let’s move it.”
“Don’t panic, Nathan,” she said, responding to his elevated tone. “You can’t afford the luxury.”
“Don’t panic?” Nathan looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “I’d say panic is warranted. Do the math, Kate. We’re going to be dead in—”
“Four minutes,” she said calmly.
“Then don’t tell me not to panic. Let’s move.”
She rolled her eyes, making certain he saw it. “Just listen to me. The mines are going to encircle us. They’re above and below the water—there’s nowhere to go, Nathan.” She paused a moment for her words to sink in, then went on. “I want you to try not to move. Float on your back and fold your arms across your chest.” As she gave the instructions to him, she also followed them. “We can see the mines around us. We can’t see the ones below. This position will best limit our blind exposure. Remember, stay perfectly still.”
“I’ll sink.”
“As still as possible,” she amended. “It could be that the mines can bump into us and not detonate. It depends on the amount of pressure they’ve set.”
“The trigger is adjustable?” Some of the worry left Nathan’s face.
Kate regretted having to put it back. “Yes, it is. It makes the weapon system more flexible and that makes it a viable option for a greater number of uses. But don’t hang your hope on that, okay? I have a feeling GRID meant these mines for us, and considering someone stole the boat to make sure we would be in the water, the detonator setting is probably at low level.”
“Do you hear that?”
A dull distant drone thrummed in her ears. Relief washed through her. “Yeah, I do.” She’d summoned, but had no idea how Home Base would respond or with what. “It sounds like…a helicopter.”
Moments later, a Chinook rounded a distant knuckle, no more than a large speck in the sky. But its shape was distinct with the twin props at front and rear atop. Her mouth went dry and she tore her gaze from the aircraft back to the water. The mines were all around them now. If the triggers were set on system minimums, the Chinook was too late. There was no way they’d get out of this alive.
“Do you think it’ll see us?” Nathan asked.
With her face turned away from him, Kate smiled. It seemed crazy to smile in this situation, they were now in the most intense danger of all, but the little-boy hope in Nathan’s voice was so alien to the man she knew him to be, she just couldn’t help herself. “Yeah, you know, I do.”
She watched the chopper’s progress and tried to block out the fact that within three feet of her floated seven mines.
“They’re heading straight for us,” Nathan said, wonder in his voice.
“I’m sure it just looks that way. More than likely they’ve picked up the mines on their scanners and they’re investigating them.” The aircraft neared and Kate saw it clearly. It was a Sea Knight assault transport for combat troops.
“Kate,” Nathan’s voice sounded strained to the breaking point. “I’ve got about two feet and then we’re going to know the trigger pressure levels.”
“Ditto.” She watched the gawky-looking chopper move closer and closer until it was hovering right above them.
“I’m seeing a lot of heads up there.”
So was Kate. The side door was wide open and men filled the hole, peering down in the water. “It’s okay,” she assured Nathan over the roar of the beating props. “It’s a CH-46E. They have tons of room.”
“They’ve got at least a dozen on board.”
Kate scanned her memory. “It holds fourteen, plus the aerial gunners.”
The wind off the blades whipped at the water. Fortunately, that pushed the mines further away from Kate and, she prayed, Nathan.
A rescue ladder dropped out of the side of the chopper. Two men shouldered their way in to stand in the wide opening, monitoring Kate and Nathan’s location.
Kate lifted her arms, but the ladder was still just out of reach. Nathan grabbed hold of the ladder, then grabbed her by the hand and reeled her to him.
“Hold on.” He slid an arm around her middle, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I’ve got you, Kate. I won’t let go.”
Quickly removing her fins, her foot slid onto a ladder rung. She hugged Nathan tightly. “Okay. Okay, I’m good.”
“You sure?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
He smiled back. “Climb on up.”
“I can’t.” Worry flickered across his face. She didn’t like it, and wanted it gone. “You’ve got to let go of me, Nathan.”
“Oh.” He rolled his eyes back in his head, then smiled. “Details. Details. You’re such a nag about details, Kate.” He gave her a squeeze.
“Yeah, that’s me. Resident detail nag.” She squeezed back, her fingers digging into his side. “Um, Nathan. Let go now, okay?”
He released her. “Post-mission stress. Like the flirting.”
“Right.” Kate let him have the lie and took one last look at the water.
Hundreds of mines littered the surface and hundreds more lurked in the clear water just below it. GRID didn’t just mean to scare them away from the cave. It didn’t just mean to slow them down from exploring the cave.
It meant to kill them and to buy itself a healthy chunk of needed time to clear out the compound before anyone else could contemplate an attack.
And, damn it, it looked as if GRID had succeeded—but only with half their goal.
While Forester glad-handed their rescuers, Kate contacted Home Base to notify them of the mine dump and to put high priority on getting minesweepers in to clear the area.
Maggie manned the desk. “Okay, Bluefish, I’ve put it in the system and Intel is working the chain.”
Every minute that passed was in Thomas Kunz’s favor. Enough time and he could have GRID clear the cave of any evidence of a compound. The hostages, if they were there, would be moved to yet another undisclosed location.
“Damn it.” Kate mumbled her feelings on that thought and leaned back against the vibrating side of the chopper. “We need uninterrupted observation on the landside of those hills, Home Base.”
“Understood, Bluefish, but we’ve got three high-priority target missions currently under way. We don’t have—”
“Find a way, Home Base. Or get ready for a Fourth of July that will light up your world.” That was the phrase. The one that cued Maggie on the weapons cache. Kate prayed her instincts were right or she was going to be in
deep and serious trouble over the claim. It was logical, to be sure. The compound, the chatter about bio and chemical weapons. The boats riding low in the water and high when they arrived in port. Every bit of it fit.
But it wasn’t conclusive proof.
And she’d just warned Home Base that it was.
Colonel Drake would have her rank for breakfast and her ass for a snack.
“Roger that, Bluefish. I’ll get Intel on it and resources claimed right away.”
“Thanks.” Kate shut down communications and opened her eyes.
Nathan sat on a bench beside her, but spoke to a small group of men seated beyond him. “We were damn lucky you guys came along when you did.”
That remark snagged Kate’s full attention. He had no idea she’d summoned the chopper by activating her locator system. The crew did a double take, but Kate silenced them with a warning look and a few telling words. “It was a blessing, all right. We were at the point of no return.”
They got the message and played dumb. “What happened to your boat?” a sergeant with more stripes than Kate had ever seen on his sleeve asked.
Kate took that opportunity to shut down questions. “A couple opium freaks stole the damn thing.” She turned to Nathan. “Commander, you should get that theft reported.”
“Right,” Nathan said before moving toward the cockpit.
One of the crew, dressed in fatigues with his face greasepaint-smeared, sat beside Kate. Her mind was on a thousand things, mainly on getting the mines cleared before Kunz could clean out the compound.
“Hello, Kate.”
She swung her gaze around to really look at the guy. It took a long second for recognition to sink in. When it did, she gasped. “Gaston?” What the hell was a CIA double agent doing in
this
Sea Knight?
Maybe it wasn’t a U.S. Sea Knight.
Her stomach sank to her knees. Oh, no! No, it couldn’t be that. Adrenaline streaked through her like the tail off a comet. She swallowed hard as she watched Nathan walk back toward her, looking calm and content.
He had that luxury. He didn’t know Gaston. He didn’t know Gaston worked for the CIA, or that he’d been undercover and inside GRID for over a year. Nathan didn’t know Gaston had been at the Iranian compound when Kate had blown it up and Douglas and his tactical team had handled the mop-up operation.
And Nathan had no idea that, gauging by all the signs, they had just been rescued by the very people trying to kill them.
GRID.
K
ate unsnapped the strap on her knife sheath.
“Wait.” Gaston stayed her hand, brushing it off her thigh. “It’s not what you think.” Leaning forward on the bench, he crossed his hands at his knees.
Nathan walked up, tense and frowning. “Kate?” He looked straight at Gaston. “Everything okay?”
She stared at Gaston, wishing she knew how to answer that honestly. He shot her a look telling her that she was fine. Since she had no choice, she went with it, giving him a warning glare that she’d better be right, and then swung her gaze to Nathan. “Everything is fine.” She managed a thin smile.
“Major Forester,” a young lieutenant came up behind Nathan. Unlike the others, he wore no greasepaint. His face was clean. “The captain wants a word with you, sir.”
Nathan nodded, then walked toward the cockpit.
Deliberately separating them? Kate slapped her hand back on the sheath. “Okay, Gaston,” Kate whispered, “you’ve got five seconds to answer me. Are these people GRID or American?”
He did a quick check to make sure that no one else was within earshot. “American,” he whispered back. “I’ve been extracted.”
Suspicion still ran rampant through her. “How do I know you’re you?” It was a reasonable question. Kunz had doubled U.S. employees in virtually every segment of government service. The CIA definitely wouldn’t be exempt. And Gaston had been with GRID for a long time. In a year, he’d surely had many opportunities to screw up and blow his cover. Lord knew he had been able to report very little to Langley, though in fairness she had to admit that wasn’t for his lack of trying or taking risks. It was Kunz’s fault. He kept everything humanly possible to himself, keeping even his own high-ranking GRID members in the dark. As long as their fat paychecks kept coming, apparently they could not have cared less, though she couldn’t say that applied to his new second-in-command. Since Amanda had killed his old one, Paul Reese, S.A.S.S. assumed Kunz had replaced him, but so far, the new mystery man’s identity had remained under their radar.
This was S.A.S.S.’s main problem with fighting an enemy who wasn’t fighting for a cause. GRID operatives fought for greed, and Thomas Kunz kept them well fed and dumb. With that, they were happy.
Considering what they were doing—selling weapons to anyone with the money to buy them and who’d pay for them in the cursed American dollar—being in the dark probably helped some of them sleep better at night. Unfortunately for Kate’s side, it also meant anyone who
wanted money could be an enemy, and that left the door open to Kunz recruiting a lot anonymous people with no history or previous arrests to help tag them. “Well?” she asked Gaston again.
“It was an emergency extraction, Kate.” Gaston looked half embarrassed, half furious. “Moss was suspicious of me. He has been for a while, but when I lost the black box, that was proverbial nail in my coffin.”
“Meaning?”
“He took his suspicious up the ranks to a guy named Marcus Sandross.”
Already, Kate didn’t like this. She’d never heard of the man. “Who is he?”
“Kunz’s new right-hand man. I don’t know where he came from. Interpol had nothing on him. All I can tell you about him is that he’s so vicious he makes Paul Reese look like a gentle kid that played at being a terrorist.”
That rattled Kate. Paul Reese had been a greedy, bloodthirsty bastard. A coward himself, but he could sure issue the orders for others to commit horrendous atrocities.
Gaston leaned closer, then dropped his voice even lower. “The first day Sandross was with my cell, he killed three operatives.”
Was that unusual? Gaston’s tone made it seem extremely out of the ordinary. “For what?”
Gaston sent her a look that said it didn’t really matter. Sandross would have used any excuse; he was establishing himself as a hard-ass. “One wasn’t paying attention when he was talking. Another slumped while standing in formation. The third one happened at lunch. A guy spilled a glass of water. Sandross shot him and kept right on eating.”
Definitely making a point. This guy needed to be re
ported to Home Base. Kate added it to her mental list, which was unfortunately getting to be quite lengthy. Considering it prudent, she’d restricted comments on the chopper to the urgent and essential.
Studying the faces of the men around her, she wondered if Darcy had come across anything in the intel reports on this Sandross guy. “Do you have art?” she asked, seeking a photo of the man.
“No. Kunz is more than a little camera shy. Carrying one inside GRID is an automatic death penalty. I couldn’t risk it with Moss already suspicious. But I’ve reported a physical.”
“What is it?”
“Medium height, medium weight and build, medium-brown hair and eyes. No visible scars or other identifying marks.”
“Hell, you’re describing half of the men in the U.S., Gaston.” Frustration crawled through Kate. Why did it seem the bad guys got all the breaks? “There has to be something distinct about him.”
“There is,” Gaston agreed. “His temper.” Worried, and not bothering to hide it, Gaston looked over at Kate. “I only know one other man alive who loves to kill as much as this guy, Kate. Only one.”
Disgust rippled through her, turned the taste on her tongue bitter. “Thomas Kunz.”
Gaston nodded.
Kate remembered Nathan finding the black box in the water outside the cave, the red bow wrapped around it. “You made sure Forester found the C-273.”
“If the C-273 is that black box near the cave, then yeah. Well, actually, I was making sure you found it. I knew you’d be back for it.” Gaston smiled. “The red ribbon was a nice touch, don’t you think?”
“Hmm.” She’d thought Kunz was lording it over her actually. “So GRID didn’t get access to it?” Kate was afraid to dream it.
Gaston shook his head. “I was pulling guard duty, posted outside the cave. I saw you attach the box to the rocks. I went back and removed it. That’s what landed me in hot water with Moss. When you went into the cave, I didn’t warn him. I thought you might get lucky and take him and Parton out, since there were only two of them.”
She nearly had. Unfortunately, Moss had escaped with a gut wound. “You were on the boat that chased me?” Kate didn’t know how to feel about that, so she just waited to hear his explanation.
“No, I was dragging Parton’s dead ass back to a second boat.”
“The one dropping the mines.”
“I don’t think so.”
Then there were three GRID vessels out there and yet she and Forester hadn’t seen any of them. They could’ve come and gone while they were under water, though, so that need not be significant. “Is there a GRID compound at the other end of that cave?”
“Maybe,” Gaston admitted. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never been allowed anywhere near it. Today is the first day I’ve been permitted to dive there, and it wouldn’t have happened now except that Sandross got the flu.” Gaston shrugged, lifted his palms upward. “You know how tight Kunz holds the reins. No one knows anything about an operation—even when it’s over. Only what’s essential for their part in the current mission.”
Kate leaned against the wall of the chopper, letting the vibrations massage the exhausted muscles in her back.
“So if you weren’t there, working at the compound, what were you doing?”
Again, Gaston checked to make sure no one was listening. They weren’t. The men were busy gabbing between themselves and keeping an eye out down below. It was post-mission decompression. Premission, they’d been in focus mode. You’d have been able to hear a pin drop. Now, the drone of chatter combated the drone of the chopper props.
“Two suspected GRID operatives were aboard a vessel the Navy searched late this afternoon,” Gaston said. “Before word came down through the chain of command to hold them, the men were gone. They disappeared not far from where we found you. No sign of another vessel, no sign of them in the water. They just weren’t there anymore.”
Divers intercepted them, she figured. What else could it be? She asked the clean-faced guy for a drink of water and then looked back at Gaston. “So you’ve had a busy twenty-four hours, too.”
“Oh, yeah.” The bags under his eyes proved it.
Still not sure she had Gaston and not a double, she held back, keeping her distance and her information to herself. But she thought she knew now who had attacked her and Nathan in his tent.
Red ribbon on the box. Red scarf.
Black box found and returned in the water. Black box supposedly stolen from the compound. Douglas hadn’t done it to prove he’d changed sides. Gaston had fired on her and Nathan.
The question was, had he meant to kill them?
The tent pole had been cut in two near the top of the tent, but nearly everything inside had been shattered and
destroyed. Still, the gunman had fired a lot of rounds into the sand, endangering no one.
“Commander Forester and I will check things out,” she said, reserving opinion until she had time to absorb all the facts. “I’ll let you know if we come up with anything.”
Still unconvinced that Gaston truly was Gaston, she searched for a way to prove it, and finally lighted on one. She dropped her voice yet another pitch and then put him to the test. “Exactly where are we?”
“Don’t answer that.” Nathan glared down at her, not bothering to even pretend to be subtle or not be disappointed. “You know better, Kate.”
She hadn’t heard him return. Now he towered over her. She glared at him. She did know better, which meant he should have given her credit and known she had a damn good reason for asking.
“Walked right into the middle of that one, Kane.” Gaston laughed. “Not that I could tell you, anyway.”
Anger heated her neck and flooded her face. She shrugged and slid Forester a chilly half smile. “No offense, Major. Just doing my job.”
He wasn’t amused, and still didn’t see that she’d had just cause for requesting the information. “Ask again,” he said, “and I’ll do mine and court-martial your ass.”
Gaston grumbled a curse.
Kate turned up the wattage on her smile. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “The major and I actually get along very well. We have a lot in common.”
Nathan looked more stunned than Gaston.
By a hair, Gaston managed to keep his chin up off the floor. “You’re kidding.”
He clearly remembered that Kate didn’t get along well with anyone. She always held back and went it alone. She
was damn prickly around other people, and Gaston as well as most others thought she liked it that way. Truthfully, she did. Alone was safer. She was used to it. And being just like every other human being on the planet, she liked what she felt most comfortable with. Everyone opted for whatever felt normal. Not that Gaston or anyone else knew what her normal was like, or ever would know. “Kidding? Me?” She gave him a look that said he should know better. “No, I’m not kidding. Not at all.” She spared Forester a look laced with unbridled challenge. “Isn’t that right, Major?”
Nathan looked mortified and, considering his policy about female subordinates, she imagined he was mortified. Apparently the few breaches he’d indulged in with her weren’t destined for public knowledge. “Um, yeah. Absolutely. We have a lot in common.”
Definitely uneasy as hell. But he covered for her. And Kate decided right then that he might be a pig, but he was a pig who’d stepped over his own personal/professional line to back her up.
It was the nicest thing any man had ever done for her.
And that she was deeply touched was also a secret that would never be told.
The last twinkles of dusk lay on the sand at the outpost. The temperature was cooling, as it did at night, and the wind was no more than a gentle stir.
Men with shovels were scattered throughout the encampment, still digging out from the storm, hollowing the drifts that blocked tent openings and the shower stall. Walking by with Nathan at her side, she glanced over. Sand had blown inside and half covered the waist-high spigot.
Nathan’s order for the men to prepare to bug out hadn’t been ignored. Everywhere Kate looked, there were stacks of boxes. But moving day apparently hadn’t yet arrived in the form of orders coming down from headquarters reassigning the unit to a new location. The outpost was functioning on a war footing, meaning it was ready, willing and able to exercise any interdiction orders that might come in.
Near the command post, Nathan slowed his steps. “Kate?”
He’d been awfully quiet since they’d left the chopper. She looked over at him and waited.
A frown creased his brow and he shoved a fist into his pocket. “What do we have in common?”
“What?” He sounded odd, maybe even a little wistful, though it was hard to imagine Nathan Forester wistful. She didn’t have to imagine that he felt he was under pressure about this, though. His left eye’s twitching proved it.
That surprised Kate. “Oh, you’re talking about what I told Gaston on the chopper.”
“Well, yes.” Nathan’s frown deepened and his footsteps slowed even more. “I am.”
She let him see amusement in her eyes, turned her voice caustic and laced it with sarcasm. “One thing comes right to mind. It isn’t pretty, but it’s accurate, I think.”
That had him curious, and she preferred that over wistful. “More often than not, we want to shoot each other.”
He stared at her a long second, then chuckled. “I should have known.”
“Gee, Nathan. You look relieved.” She feigned a frown, but her heart wasn’t in it. “If I were the sensitive type, I’d think you didn’t like anything about me.”
“But you’re not.” He stopped outside the command post. “So, being a nonsensitive type, what do you think?”
“Truthfully, I have no idea.” He was a complicated man. Who could decipher him? And around him, she felt complicated, too. “Sometimes I think we connect. Sometimes I feel like we’re from different planets. But most of the time, I just don’t know what to think.”
“Neither do I,” he confessed. “You annoy me, Kate. Actually, you infuriate me—and you rub my nerves raw.”
That hurt. More than it should. “Don’t hold back, Forester. Tell me what’s really on your mind.”
He stilled, stared at her long and hard, then sighed as if he had just gotten godawful news. “I like you.”