Authors: Dee Davis
God, what a mess. And to top it off, in less than an hour, they were heading into what was quite possibly a trap.
He finished the last of his doughnut, wiped his hands on a napkin and leaned back in his chair, his gaze settling on Simone. "Tell me about the team."
Her head jerked up, her thoughts scattering at the sound of his voice. "What do you want to know?"
"The players, their motivations, anything you can think of that will help us prepare for what's to come." He kept his voice even, the district attorney deposing a witness. If nothing else, he was a master at hiding emotion.
Simone nodded, pushing away her half-eaten bowl of cereal. If it weren't for the topic of discussion and the Sig Sauer on the table, they could have been any normal couple having breakfast on vacation. "There were five of us that survived Sangre de Cristo. Me. Tate Montgomery, Bea Brasel, Mather Wilson, and Ed Hammond."
"Tell me about each of them."
She chewed the side of her lip, thinking. "In some ways we were a lot alike. We all came from nowhere. D-9 recruited off the streets for the most part. Desperate people with nothing to lose." She ran a hand through her hair, shivering from some forgotten memory. Obviously, she was still hiding something.
She'd had a life before D-9, but whatever that had entailed she clearly had no intention of sharing it with him. It was an old battle. He'd ask and she'd duck the question. Maybe things would have been different if he'd pushed early on. But he'd been so afraid that he'd lose her. And he'd told himself that her past didn't matter.
Hell, in a way, he was as much a liar as she was. The past did matter. He just hadn't wanted to face the elephant in the room until it was standing on his foot.
"You've never said what you were doing when they recruited you into D-9," he ventured, mentally steeling himself for her response.
"Nothing relevant." She shrugged, as usual deflecting the question. "In a lot of ways I suppose you could say my life began with D-9. Which is why it's important that you understand who the players are."
He contained a sigh. He'd interrogated enough witnesses to know when he'd hit a dead end. "So why don't you start with Mather," he said, picking a name.
"Mather was maybe four or five years older than me," she said, giving no sign that she was aware she'd won the skirmish. "She was a whiz with all things mechanical. Hell, she could fix anything. Build a space ship from a junk pile. And she had a knack for language. We were all trained to speak several languages, but Mather always nailed them. Spoke like a native."
"Do you have any idea where she might be now?" His mind shifted toward the situation at hand, trying to get a handle on the people Simone had called "family."
"Besides on the way to the rendezvous? No," she said, shaking her head. "Maurice didn't want us to know. Too tempting to contact each other. But I'd lay odds we were separated geographically as much as possible. So probably no one else in the Southwest."
"Narrows it down." Reece laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "Were you close with her?"
"Not as close as with Bea. But yeah, we shared pretty much everything. D-9 was a pretty rarified environment. When we were on a mission we depended on each other for survival. When we were home we depended on each other for camaraderie."
"What do you mean? Didn't you have other friends?"
"No." She shook her head, toying with her cereal. "We had our own compound. It kept our exposure limited."
"Sounds like a prison."
"Actually," she said, her expression darkening, "it was the alternative."
He wanted to ask her more, to probe into her past, but now clearly wasn't the time. "What about the others? You said you and Bea were close," he prompted, leading her away from painful memories.
"We were. As much of a sister as I've ever had. We had similar pasts, and shared the same insecurities. We even had some of the same dreams. I guess that gave us a bond. Anyway," she said, shaking her bead to clear her thoughts, "Bea was trained in ordnance. She can pretty much make a bomb out of anything. Disable one, too, if necessary. She handles explosives of all kinds. From hand grenades to chemical weapons. Whatever an operation called for, she could come up with something."
"She's the same age as Mather?"
"More or less. All the others were about the same, give or take a year or so."
"So three women and two men. Not what you'd expect."
"You sound like a chauvinist." Her mouth curved upward, the first sign of a smile that he'd seen since they'd talked last night.
"Nah, just basing my knowledge of subversive operations on fiction."
"James Bond."
"Well, I was leaning toward Jason Bourne. But you get the idea."
"We were actually split four and four. Joseph Clem, Natalie Oh, and Brian Hobart made up the rest of the team. They never made it out of Sangre de Cristo."
"Blue team."
She nodded, the little lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes deepening with the memory.
"So tell me about Tate and Ed."
She nodded, absently playing with the dry cereal in her bowl. "Tate's a little bit older. Was a mercenary before joining D-9. I always got the feeling he'd had a lot more experience than he let on. Definitely an opportunist."
"He have a specialty?"
"Long-range shooter. A sniper really. Dead-on shot. The kind of guy who always has your back. I depended on him for a lot of things."
A surge of something Reece wasn't quite ready to acknowledge surfaced and died. But he made a mental note to check out Tate Montgomery. "What about Ed Hammond?"
"Great guy. Has a really dry sense of humor. Kinda like Martin in that the more nervous he is, the more flip he gets. And like Martin, he's a whiz with computers. Also communication. Handled everything logistical. He usually stayed behind the scenes, making sure we got in and out in one piece."
"So he wasn't in Sangre de Cristo?"
"No. He and Mather stayed behind in the jungle. Tate, Bea and I comprised Red team."
"And it was a bloodbath."
"I've never seen anything like it. And I've seen a lot" She crossed her arms over her chest, containing a shudder. "The region was volatile. We knew that. Expected bloodshed even, but this was beyond anything we could have anticipated. Up until the massacre, the Nicaraguan army had been disorganized, fighting what was left of the resistance without much enthusiasm, instead, allowing the guerrillas to retreat to the mountains. It was a combination of incompetence and arrogance. Everything seemed to be status quo."
"And then Santiago took power."
"Exactly. And he saw Ramirez and his organization as a real threat. Made it a priority to stop the man."
"Probably not a bad decision, all things considered."
"Well, I'd have to agree that Ramirez had the ear of the people. He was a very charismatic man. And he had U.S. arms thanks to his agreement with the CIA to turn evidence on the drug cartels, but I'm not certain that it was enough for him to really have been able to take power. I think Sangre de Cristo was more about the Nicaraguan government wanting to show its muscle. To send a signal to all revolutionaries that their interference would not be tolerated."
"With Ramirez as the sacrificial lamb."
"Yeah. And the people of Sangre de Cristo thrown in for good measure."
"But the U.S. wanted Ramirez alive."
She nodded. "Not that it did any good. Ramirez's men betrayed him. Santiago won the day, but nothing was accomplished. The junta survived even with the loss of their leader. Drug trade continued to flourish. And Santiago was brought down by the very men who put him in power in the first place. It was such a waste. All those people killed for nothing."
"Along with your friends."
"It's not the same." Her gaze met his across the table. "We knew the risks. Accepted them when we went in. Those children didn't sign on for what they got. No matter who their parents were. Reece, it was awful. Worse than any war zone I've ever seen. Dead bodies littered the street, sometimes piled two and three deep. Mothers clutching their children. Men forming human barricades around their families. There was so much carnage, the water in the gutters ran red with blood." She released a long, shuddering breath, the effort shaking her body. "I thought that only happened in movies."
"I remember the footage on television." He nodded. "Even third-hand it was frightening."
They sat for a moment, the silence of the mountains soothing.
"So what happened after that?" he continued, wanting to pull her away from the horror of her memories. "You mentioned quarantine."
"It was only supposed to be a debriefing. A couple of weeks of down time until the furor died down. At first we were glad of the break. Getting out of Nicaragua had been difficult. And we'd left behind some of our closest friends. It's like a platoon in the army. You know? These are the people you live with day in and day out.
"They fill every void in your life. They're your teachers, your friends, your students, your confidants, sometimes even your confessors. You love them, you hate them, you laugh with them, you cry. But above all else you know that they'd die for you. Give their life in an instant without thought if it meant that you went on breathing. That's not something you easily forget. And so losing Joe, Nat, and Brian was like having limbs amputated without benefit of anesthesia." She paused, wiping angrily at her tears.
"Which is why decompression was a good thing. For a while. But the powers that be had seriously underestimated the world's reaction to the atrocities at Sangre de Cristo. And instead of cooling down, D-9 stayed too hot to handle. Everyone was looking for scapegoats and our existence as a unit became a liability to the Company."
"Seems pretty cold."
"It's not a hearts-and-roses kind of occupation. We knew it was a possibility every time we went out. A compromised unit isn't worth anything to anyone."
"So they relocated you."
"There was talk of integrating us into other divisions, but we were all pretty burned-out, Ed in particular. He and Natalie were together. Strictly off-the-record, you understand, but the commitment was there. He took her death pretty hard. Anyway, bottom line, we'd lost our value. And believe me, we were always expendable. The only reason they went to such lengths to relocate us was the danger of our involvement in Sangre de Cristo coming to light. Otherwise I suspect we'd have been on our own."
"Not exactly severance and a pension plan." He wanted to ask more. To know why she'd chosen the life in the first place, but Martin stood at the foot of the stairs, his hair standing every which way, the dictionary definition of bed-head.
"So what? You all were just going to let me sleep through all the fun?"
"You needed your sleep." Simone's tone was soft, almost motherly. "And besides, you're not coming with us." Martin pulled a face but presented no argument, just walked over to the table and, after grabbing the box of doughnuts, sat down. "When are you planning to leave?"
"The sooner the better," Reece said, more than ready to get on with it.
"I want to check the weapons, and go over the map one last time. Make sure we've correctly identified all possible access points. I don't want to walk into an ambush."
She already sounded different. Her old life reaching out to envelop her. The Simone he'd known evaporating like water on hot pavement. "I thought you weren't worried."
"I'm not, really. But I can't discount the fact that someone has been chasing us all the way from Texas. And while we seem to have lost him for the time being, it could be that he's just waiting for the right moment."
"The rendezvous being the perfect hot spot."
She glanced up from the map. "I just want to cover all the possibilities."
He picked up the Glock and checked the magazine. After holstering the gun, he walked over to stand beside her at the map she'd spread out on the table.
It seemed Simone wasn't the only one being drawn into her old life.
THE VALLEY NARROWED toward the pass until the two sides almost touched, the river a line of quicksilver cutting between them. The undergrowth was thick, mosquitoes buzzing incessantly. The smell of pine permeated the air, the warmth of the sun barely penetrating their canopy.
If they hadn't known there was a trail here, they'd never have found it. When Simone's colleagues picked a rendezvous, they made damn certain not just anyone could stumble upon it. Reece dodged a low-slung branch, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was amazing how quickly it all came back to him—his days in Iraq, as well as his training stateside. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Although in all honesty he could have gone the rest of his life without revisiting the skill set.
He swatted at a mosquito and moved closer to Simone. "How much farther?" They'd had to leave the car behind, a move that concerned him should they need to make a speedy exit. However, there didn't seem to be much choice.
"We're almost there," Simone whispered, stopping to hold out the GPS with its blinking red dot. The readout indicated they were only yards from their goal, but the thickness of the trees obscured any kind of view.
"I don't like all the trees." He scanned the surrounding vegetation, trying to get a bead on whether they were alone.
"There's got to be a clearing." Simone set out again, following the GPS signal. He walked behind her, listening for anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed heightened out here. The hush of the canopy of trees making even the slightest sound seem amplified.
They'd been following a stream, crisscrossing it as they made their way up the arm of the valley. The river was still somewhere ahead of him, but he thought he could hear the rush of the water.
Without warning, the trees dissipated, giving way to a clearing covered with grass and wildflowers, the river tracing its way across the far border. The rains in Colorado had been extreme, the Rio Grande swollen beyond its banks, its waters muddy and churning. At least it meant no access from the east.
And no escape.
Stopping near Simone in the shelter of a huge blue spruce, Reece drew his gun. Better to be prepared. Simone nodded her agreement, pulling out the Sig.
"What now?" Reece whispered, moving deeper into the shadow. Anchored by the river, the meadow was bordered by the stream on their left and more trees to the right. Nothing moved except for the lazy swaying of wild iris and Indian paintbrush, the cacophony of color worthy of Monet or van Gogh.
"Whistle." Her eyes sparkled with amusement, and Reece realized that she was actually enjoying the situation. Or at least the moment.
Simone's whistle was so precise Reece almost expected a flock of birds to arrive. Instead, after three very silent minutes an answering whistle emanated from the opposite side of the clearing near the river.
"Ed."
"How do you know?"
"We've each got a different call. Sometimes it's the blinding glimpse of the obvious. You know?"
A figure emerged from the edge of the trees, moving fast toward their position, keeping low and in the shadows. Whatever fun Simone might be having with the situation, it was definitely not a game.
The clearing remained silent, and after waiting a few seconds more, Simone stepped out into the sunlight. Ed Hammond was close enough for them to see his features now. Hardened in the way only seasoned military personnel can be, he was tall and deceptively lean. His hair was thinning, but that was the only sign that he'd given even a passing nod to aging. Like Simone, he carried a handgun. Reece found himself wondering if an Uzi might not have been a better choice of weapon.
Simone reached Ed and the two of them embraced briefly, then began to talk, Simone's hands flying as she no doubt explained their adventures getting here. Catch-up finished, the two of them turned together, heading for Reece.
He held his position, resisting the urge to go into the clearing and meet them. Better to remain an unknown entity. If Simone was right and Baxter had summoned the remaining team, there were still three people unaccounted for. As well as the big man himself.
Despite Simone's seeming confidence in her comrades, Reece wasn't as convinced, and as such kept his gun trained on Hammond. They were about fifteen yards out when all hell broke loose, a volley of shots ripping through the clearing with a speed that could only mean a machine gun.
Feeling as if he'd manifested the damn thing himself, Reece tried to place the shooter, and settled instead for firing in the general direction of the gunshots, knowing damn well that he was out of range. Tamping down all emotion, he stopped firing, concentrating instead on Simone and Ed, now running for the comparative safety of the woods.
Simone had an arm around Ed, who was stumbling forward but clearly not capable of independent locomotion. Swearing under his breath, Reece ran out from his cover, wrapping an arm around Ed from the other side. Ed's eyes narrowed for a moment, his body tensing in defense.
"My husband," Simone said as they moved forward, Reece's added support speeding the process up considerably. "We can do full introductions later."
Ed nodded, and grimaced as another bullet found home. This one sent a spray of blood as it exited just below his collarbone. Ed dropped to one knee, his weight almost toppling them over.
His eyes closed, his face ashen, the contrast to the rapidly spreading bloodstain making it seem even more pale. Reece had seen mortal wounds before, and he recognized this one for what it was.
So did Ed Hammond.
His eyes opened for a moment, his lips moving soundlessly. Simone shook her head, obviously following his train of thought. "We're not leaving you here."
"Have to," was the mumbled reply, but Reece had seen that look in Simone's eyes before. She wasn't about to give in.
The shooter had stopped, probably to reload, or maybe to reposition himself. Either way, Reece knew they only had seconds. "Let go."
Simone opened her mouth to argue, saw the determination in his eyes and instead released Ed. She scooped up his gun, pocketed it, then pivoted to open fire with the Sig in the direction of the killer. Moving as quickly as he could, Reece grabbed Ed and threw the man over his shoulder, praying that adrenaline would give him the strength he needed.
Ed's weight made progress slower than Reece would have liked, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that if he stopped they were all dead. In what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes they reached the shelter of the trees, the graceful arms of the spruce dipping down to obscure them from view.
With Simone's help they slid Ed to the ground, and Reece felt his neck for a pulse. "I've got it, but I think we're losing him."
Simone bit her lip, her gaze traveling back to the now quiet clearing, the shooter no doubt reassessing his position. "We've got to get him out of here."
"What about the others?"
"There's no time."
Ed's eyes flickered open and he reached up for her wrist. "You need to find them. Danger. Too late for me." Their gazes held for a moment. And then Ed was gone.
Reece had seen people die before. But it didn't change the horror of watching a life slip away.
"No." The single word hung in the air, Simone's face contorting in the wake of her grief.
A bullet embedded itself in the trunk of the spruce about two feet from the top of their heads. The shooter had obviously found them again.
"Come on." Reece stood up, grabbing her by the elbow. "We've got to get out of here."
Simone resisted for a second, her eyes still locked on Ed, and then she was up and running, the two of them making their way back toward the Buick and escape.
The woods shook with the sound of a rifle report off to their left, followed immediately by another volley of machine-gun fire.
"Someone else is out there." Simone switched directions, twisting toward the sound of the rifle fire without breaking stride. Reece followed on her heels, cursing D-9 and the CIA in general, but no way in hell was he leaving her on her own.
Sill following the sound, Simone wove her way between branches and undergrowth, ducking low to keep out of the line of fire. Reece followed suit, marveling at the fact that she so effortlessly had resumed the habits of her old way of life. Of course, being a moving target was extra incentive.
The ground at his feet spit rocks and dust as the machine gunner found them again, the only thing keeping the shooter from a sure hit the maze of spidery-armed pine trees that surrounded them. A branch a few inches above Reece's head splintered with impact, underscoring the thought. He dropped to the ground, crawling forward on his elbows until he pulled up beside Simone, who had found temporary shelter behind a lichen-covered boulder.
"You think there are two of them?" He whispered, his eyes searching the forest ahead of him for any sign of their assailant.
"No. I think he's just fast."
"What about the rifle fire?"
"Got to be someone from D-9. Unless I'm mistaken, the rifle fire was meant to draw the shooter away from us."
"So your man knows we're out here?"
She nodded. "Probably saw us in the clearing."
"All right. So what next?"
Simone frowned. "We try to find the rifleman. If I'm right, he's pinned now that he's made himself known. We need to figure out a way to give him the chance to withdraw."
"But that puts the bastard right back on our trail again."
"He's already there," Simone said with a shrug, throwing a branch in the air to demonstrate.
Pine needles rained down on them as the branch exploded above them.
"With damn good aim."
"I think we'll be better off if we split up."
"No fucking way."
"Reece, this isn't the time for emotion to get in the way."
"I'm not leaving you."
"If we want to get out of here it's our best option. Just hear me out."
He nodded, swallowing back his anger. She was right. They needed to stay clearheaded if they were going to get out of this in one piece. And that meant no me-man-you-woman bullshit. Especially considering said woman's time in black ops.
"Okay. Here's what I'm suggesting. I'll head east, toward whoever it is with the rifle. You'll cover me until I'm at least out of immediate range. I figure the shooter will follow me. So you give it a few more minutes and then head back for the car."
"What the hell good is that going to do?" He clenched a fist. "And don't tell me to go for help." This role-reversal shit was hell on a guy's ego.
To her credit, she smiled. "I wasn't going to say that. What I want you to do is bring the car to me. You can follow the stream. The trees are less dense there, and though it won't be good for the Buick, it's a tank, so it ought to make it. I'll grab whoever it is out there, and we'll start heading your way. With a little luck you'll get to us before the shooter does."
He nodded his acceptance but grabbed her hand before she could go. She turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised in question, but he shook his head. "Just be careful out there, okay?"
They stayed for a moment, neither of them willing to break the contact, the bond between them overriding superficial things like separation and divorce. Then with a muffled groan, he pulled her into his arms, his mouth crushing against hers, their kiss part combustion and part goodbye.
She pressed against him, her hands tangling in his hair, her need as desperate as his own. For a moment there was only the two of them, bound by the touch of their lips, and then she pulled free and sprinted into the woods.
Reece popped up and fired a couple of rounds into the trees. The shooter returned fire as Simone disappeared into the undergrowth. Reece fired again, then dropped back behind the rock, waiting. There was an answering volley, and then silence. Nothing moved.
Counting slowly to ten, he waited another two beats and then ran out from behind the rock, heading back the way they'd come. The gunman had obviously followed Simone, just as predicted, the silence assuring Reece that he hadn't found her.
Yet.
Spurred on by that thought, he raced through the undergrowth, mindless of the tree branches cutting and scratching as he ran. The Buick was just where they'd left it, and he slid behind the wheel, jamming the keys into the ignition. The engine roared to life as he shifted into gear, gunning the car as he headed for the stream.
It was small but rocky, tumbling through a series of basins until it reached the Rio Grande. Choosing the bank over the rockier bottom, he kept the car right at the edge of the water, swerving to avoid bigger trees and smashing through saplings.
The bottom of the car scraped against the rocky bank, but Reece ignored it, keeping his mind focused on the fact that Simone needed him. Nothing else mattered.
Not the fact that she had a secret past. Not the fact that she wasn't the woman he'd married. And certainly not the fact that they weren't married anymore.
Right now all that mattered was keeping her alive.
*****