Chemicals. They were killing her with chemicals.
Oh, Adam, I failed. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Stop them, Adam. Stop them.
The spots before her eyes blinded her, and consciousness slipped away.
Chapter 31.
“You lost her?” Adam stared at Agent Seven in total disbelief. “What do you mean, you lost her?”
“I mean, they’ve taken her from the house.” Rushing past a desk in the Operations Center, Agent Seven grabbed a sheet of paper from the captain sitting at it. He scanned it, then tossed it into the shred stack at the end of the long, linear control desk. “We don’t know where. Not yet.”
The Ops Center never shut down; its missions ranged worldwide, and something was always going on somewhere, which evidenced itself in electronic wall maps with flashing indicators of current hotspots. Adam walked past three flashes-one of which was predictably in Iraq-while crossing the Ops Center to Agent Seven. When Adam glared down at the agent in the muted light, the dozen or so people working the current shift went quiet. “But she’s wired.”
“She was wired.” Agent Seven backed up a step you know as well as I do that even though we both opposed it, she insisted on going in alone. They found the plants, Captain.”
Adam crowded the man, and shouted, “And you didn’t move in?”
“The team did move in.” The agent’s shoulder banged against the wall, rattling the clocks above his head that depicted time in various locations around the world. “But we were under orders to hang back. By the time the team got there, they were -too late.”
Adam dragged a hand through his hair in frustration, let his head rock back onto his shoulders, and squeezed his eyes shut. He had to get past the anger and think. Where would they take Tracy? His stomach churning, his fear shoving massive amounts of adrenaline through his veins, he looked back at the agent. “We’ve got to find her now. They’ll kill her.”
Compassion flickered through the agent’s eyes. “Probably.”
“Captain Burke,” a woman called out.
Adam turned toward the sound and saw Janet. Her hair was windblown, her clothes rumpled. But most significant, the fingernails on her right hand had cracked off, and clumps of mud clung to the knees of her black slacks. “Where the hell have you been?”
General Nestler strode into the Ops Center looking like a volcano looking for a place to erupt. “We lost her?”
“I’m afraid so. Yes, sir,” Agent Seven responded, looking even more grim.
“Someone better have a damn good explanation. Failure now is not acceptable.”
Adam deflected Nestler’s heat from Agent Seven. “Janet, what were you going to say?”
A mixture of dread and relief clouded her eyes. She fisted her hand. “I disobeyed orders.”
“You did what?” Nestler glared at her, his expression as thunderous as his voice.
“I’m sorry, sir. I had to do it.” She licked at her lips. “I know Tracy. She’s a great lawyer, but she’s not Intel. We were expecting too much from her, putting her in a covert operation on her own. She just wasn’t capable of dealing with it. It was like expecting a kid to ride a bike before she’d been taught to crawl.”
Nestler kept his temper leashed, though he had to work at it, gauging by his grinding teeth and the veins bulging in his neck. “I realize we taxed Captain Keener, Janet.
But I wouldn’t have done it unless I felt certain she could handle it. You look at her training. I look at her life. The woman knows how to suffer and endure. She understands sacrifice. And her personal ethics give her the power to perform under impossible odds. She’s your friend, and you love her. I understand that, but I also understand that your feelings blind you to her true capabilities. It’s not all about training, It’s about will and determination. Courage, and wanting to survive. Now you tell me, in which of those areas do you find Captain Keener fails to meet standards?”
Janet’s gaze slid to the gray-carpeted floor, and her shoulders slumped. “None.”
He grunted. “Exactly how did you break orders?”
Janet looked at Adam and smiled. “I bugged their cars.”
Relief swam through Adam. Afraid to believe it, he quizzed her. “Whose cars?”
“Colonel Hackett’s and Paul Keener’s.” Janet’s cheeks flushed. “And Major O’Dell’s.”
Understanding the broken nails and rumpled clothes, the mud and windblown hair, Adam swept Janet up and planted a kiss on her cheek. “You’re wonderful!”
Nestler’s anger faded. “We’ll discuss this breach later, Janet. Right now, we need to get Captain Keener back into the nest.”
Janet nodded. “They’re at the gaschamber simulator.
Hearing Nestler order Agent 7 to get the MPS and a team over there stat, Adam hit the door to the Ops Center running, praying Tracy was still alive. She couldn’t die without knowing he loved her. He couldn’t lose her now. She was the only woman in his life who had ever really loved him-and she didn’t even know Abby was alive.
God, please, don’t make me carry not telling her on MY conscience forever. Please!
“Tracy awakened sprawled on the concrete floor. Her jaw ached, her shoulder throbbed. What had happen Hackett had hit her.
She cranked open an eye and winced against the bright light. Shifting slightly, she bumped into a tire and tried looking again. A red fender. The car she and Adam had taken out to Area Fourteen to retrieve the canister. He’d put it inside the chemical-simulator chamber to decontaminate it. With it inside, the chamber was crowded.
Oh, God. They’ve brought me to the gaschamber simulator-to kill me.
She looked down at her feet, wishing for her Pooh slippers. She desperately needed an attitude now. Instead, she saw black heels, her black sheath, hiked up on her thighs.
“She’s awake.”
Randall? She shot a glance at the window in the chamber door. Though it was closed and locked, his voice carried inside’. Odd, that. But it did, and it was him. And er, she saw the red light flashing on the past his should control panel’s desk. She rolled onto her side, setting off an explosion inside her head. They’d drugged her, but clearly not with retrosarid. Thankful for that, she grabbed the wheel well under the front fender of the car and pulled herself to a sitting position for a better look through the window. Inside the hangar, she saw them all: Randall, Hackett, O’Dell, and Paul Keener. And Randall, of all people, was armed with a pistol.
“It’s gone too far,” Hackett said. “We have no choice, Gus, we have to kill her.”
Paul nodded his agreement. “The sooner the better. They’ll be looking for her.”
O’Dell shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We kill her, and the OSI will be all over us. They know too much. I say we cut our losses and run. We can be out of the States within the hour.”
Hackett blew up, losing even the facade of control.
“We have to have this project, Gus. Quit fighting it, and push the goddamn button.”
Tracy looked up the walls to the ceiling, saw the metal pipes leading to the silver jets that would spray lethal chemicals into the chamber. Claustrophobia set in, and she broke into a sweat.
At the simulator control panel, O’Dell firmly crossed his arms. “I’m not doing it, sir.”
“Spare me from idealistic incompetents!” Paul lifted, then dropped, the heel of his hand.
The button ]it up.
Pressure hissed from the jets.
Tracy gasped. She was going to die. To die!
“No.!” she screamed out. “No!” She clawed at the wall, at the door, beating against the safety glass she would never break. Gasping, she held her breath, desperately scanning for something, anything, that could get her out of the chamber alive.
Her gaze came to a dead stop on the red panic button. When she had first seen O’Dell in the chamber, he’d been shaming a lieutenant for pushing it.
You’ve got the tools. Trust your gut, and use them.
She could push the button. But unless one of them pushed the green button outside the chamber, she’d contaminate half of the base.
And she’d still be dead.
Just like Adam’s men. Just like Reuger’s men.
She had to choose., She could take them all with her, but the airborne chemical would contaminate innocents, too. Or she could die, and trust Adam to demand justice.
She had to do the right thing. She did have the tools. Faith, honor, devotion to duty, an oath to protect and serve. She didn’t want to die. God, but she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. But she couldn’t kill innocents. Even if a miracle occurred and she survived, in killing innocents and breaking her oath, she would already be dead. Reconciling herself, regretting that she’d never told Adam she loved him, she stopped fighting and sat on the hood of the car.
The car! Had Adam left the chemical gear in the car?
She slid down, rushed to the window, and looked into the backseat.
It was empty.
But Randall was screaming. “What the hell is she doing at the car?”
Trying not to breathe, her lungs burning, begging for air, she cupped her locket in her hand. She was hearing them not through the door, but through the jets. How could that be?
“Why did she stop fighting it?” Randall sounded stunned.
‘ “Maybe it’s not working.” Hackett looked into the chamber.
It took everything she had in her, but Tracy smiled at the bastard. She couldn’t get out of here alive, but she could make them think she was going to. She needed a key to the car. Adam would leave one with it. He prepared. He always prepared. Where would he put it?
She checked under the floormat. Too obvious. The visor, glove box, and under the hood.
“What the hell is she doing?” Randall asked.
Paul glared at her through the window. “Don’t worry. The woman is mechanically inept. She can’t hot-wire the damn thing.
Light-headed, she dragged her fingertips along the underside of the bumper. She had to do everything possible to give Adam and the team time to find the men here. Her hand bumped into a small metal case. A magnetic metal case.
Pulling it away from the bumper, she slid open its little top. A key. Feeling an enormous sense of satisfaction, she raised it so the men gawking at her through the window could see it, then got into the car and cranked the engine, seeing little reason to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning.
“It’s not working. She should be dead,” Hackett insisted. “O’Dell, check out those controls before the crazy bitch drives out of there and sends us all straight to hell.”
“Something’s not right,” O’Dell said, sounding frantic. “The oxygen-leavel reading inside the chamber is normal.
“How the hell can that be?” Hackett ran over to the controls and looked for himself.
Tracy revved the engine, not believing it, not daring to breathe.
Yet Adam had been here. He’d disposed of the biohazard gear they had contaminated.
I showered at Environmental and made a few simulator adjustments.
He had told her that. He had! But surely he hadn’t rigged the chamber. That would have been a Monumental undertaking, taken more time than he’d been gone from the bunker.
But he could have rigged the control to give a false reading.
Paul stood, arms crossed, an assbred smirk twisting his mouth. “She won’t drive out, Hackett. Her conscience won’t let her. She knows she’ll kill half the people on base. And that, my idealistic sister-in-law would never deliberately do.”
Tracy raced the engine. Foot on the brake, she yanked the gearshift into Drive.
“The hell she won’t,” Hackett shouted. “O’Dell, turn the goddamn simulator off and get her out of there now.”
Tracy warred with herself. Should she warn O’Dell to clear the air first?
He spared her the decision; the green light lit up. sweet air swarmed through the chamber and Tracy cracked open the window, felt it breeze over her skin.
She glanced at the clock imbedded in the dash. Though it seemed that hours had passed, in truth, it had been just over a minute. She got out of the car.
The chamber door opened. She stumbled out, bumping into Randall, who dropped his gun. She dove for it. Caught in a tangle of flailing arms and legs, she felt the trigger, and pulled it.
A shot sounded.
The men backed away, and Tracy rolled to her feet, took aim on them.
They raised their hands. Hackett looked sour. Randall, stunned. O’Dell, resigned. And Paul, amused.
“Tracy, don’t do this,” Paul said. “You’re only prolonging the inevitable. You can’t win.”
She hated him. With conviction. “You’re a disgrace, Paul Keener. I’m so grateful Matthew isn’t here to see this. I’d rather he be dead than to see what you’ve become.”
Paul narrowed his eyes. “You always were difficult.”
“Difficult?” Rage poured through her, set her hand to shaking. From the corner of her eye, she noted the chamber door. “Get in there. All of you.”
“Stay where you are,” Paul said, cocksure, confident. “She won’t do it.”
No one moved.
She fired the gun, shot Paul in the foot. “Move your asset.. Now.”
The men shuffled into the chamber, Tracy locked them inside, and then walked to the control panel.
“Jesus Christ, she’s going to gas us!” Randall screeched.
Her chest heaving, Tracy set the gun down on the simulator control panel, then held her hand above the red button and stared down at it. One push. Just one push, and she could rid the world of all of them.
“Keener,” Hackett called to her. “You kill us and you lose everything.”
She looked through the window at him. “Yes, sir, I do. But the world gains.” Could she do it? Should she?
She didn’t want to kill anyone, but if ever anyone deserved to die, it was this sorry-ass group of men. “We all know I’m too young and idealistic. Maybe it would be worth everything to spare the rest of the world from all -of you.”
“Tracy, please!” Randall shouted. “Darling,” Paul added. “I’m all the family you have.”
“Yes, and you were going to kill me, you bastard.”
” If only you had married me, then none of this would have had to happen.”
“Shut up.” Hackett glared at Paul. “She’ll know soon enough what a greedy bastard you are. Don’t antagonize her.”
Bent over the panel, her hand flat on the metal casing beside the button, she looked up through her lashes at Paul. Marry him? Marry him?