Hot Ice (31 page)

"Wheels up in one hour, gentlemen," Michael Wright instructed, his voice as clear as if he stood in the room with them. The computer screen blinked to life. "Destination: South Africa. Morales owns a mine. Depth 4,581 meters. The missile is there, people. Coordinates and satellite imagery uploading."

The computer screen filled with fast-moving images being downloaded to the hard drive.

"We believe this facility will have characteristics of Morales's beliefs," Wright told them. "Think biblical. Apocalyptic. Our analysts are working on this as we speak. We should have an educated idea of what you can expect ASAP. I don't have to be there to see all of you looking at your watches. We're as aware of this ticking clock as you are." Wright's voice was tight and controlled.

"Entry to the mine is said to be impenetrable without the information held on those disks," he added. "Rumor has it, without them, not even Morales can get in."

"He'll get in just fine if he was the one who took the damn disks from us," Bishop pointed out grimly.

"Maybe the
Black Rose
has them." Savage picked up Bishop's Coke can and drank.

"Makes no difference
who
has them," Hunt told them. "We'll be waiting at the front and back doors to greet all arrivals. Navarro and Daklin?" The best T-FLAC had in missile and toxic chemicals.

"Already dispatched," Wright confirmed as Taylor walked into the kitchen. "They'll be waiting on board. Their teams dispatched to Jo'burg airport with the—"

"Hold a minute," Hunt told Wright. "You can't be in here right now, Taylor."

"I've been listening for the past ten minutes," she kept coming, rounding the counter toward him, her expression serious and determined. "I have—"

"We'll be out of your hair in a few minutes," he told her impatiently. Didn't matter what the hell she wanted. She didn't belong here. "Wait in your bedroom till we're through."

"T minus forty-eight hours to get in and deactivate the missile, people," Wright's disembodied voice reminded them unnecessarily.

Two feet from Hunt, Taylor took her hand out of the front pocket of her jeans. Between her slender, agile,
thieving
fingers were two flat powder-dusted minidisks. She extended them to Hunt. "I believe these will help."

Chapter Thirty-one

"Christ almighty." Hunt plucked the small disks from Taylor's fingers. "She lifted two disks right from under our noses yesterday," he told Wright.

"And thank God she's even better than we gave her credit for," Wright said dryly over the speaker. "Transmit. Let's see what we have."

Not looking at him, Savage offered her handheld unit to Hunt. "Here, use mine."

Hunt already had his own specially modified PDA, out on the counter, and one of the minidisks inserted. He hit the transmit button. Encrypted. No surprise.

"Transmit the second one," Wright ordered. "Then stand down, I'll get back to you ASAP." The phone went dead.

Taylor, leaning against the counter sipping his coffee, looked quite pleased with herself. "Am I good. Or am I good?"

"You are, without a doubt, incredible," Hunt said tightly. "It would have been nice to have a heads-up before this, however."

"If Taylor hadn't taken them, we'd be screwed." Max pointed out the obvious as Hunt plucked his cup—his
empty
cup—from her fingers.

"Exactly," Taylor said. "Thank you, Max. You should all be thanking me. Turns out you're lucky I
did
take those disks." She tilted her head to look up at Hunt. The piercing pure blue of her eyes was almost unnerving in their intensity. "He's right and you know it. Without those disks you'd be—as Max so eloquently pointed out—screwed. The least you could do is—"

Stepping away from the subtle lavender fragrance of her, Hunt cut her off to address his team. "Two out of five doesn't necessarily mean we're any less screwed," he reminded them grimly. He ran a glass under the faucet, then drank the cold water as he marshaled his annoyance. Two steps forward, one step back.

God only knew, he
was
grateful she'd palmed the bloody disks. But he was also furious that she'd managed to nip them right under his nose. And, he thought, ire rising, that she'd felt the
need
to steal them back
at all
. He brought himself up short, lifted the glass to his mouth and drank again, letting the cold water soothe his tight throat.

He knew the two irritants were nothing more than his bruised ego talking. She'd outsmarted him, and she didn't trust him. His ego would survive. The fact that they
had
two of the disks was all that counted. He gave her a hard look. "Well done."

She beamed. "You are quite welcome."

The phone vibrated on the granite countertop. Hunt snatched it up. "St. John." He listened for several minutes, his blood slowly turning to ice. Everything in him went rigid as Michael Wright talked. This wasn't going on the speaker. The others watched him in silence. He turned his back on Taylor and his team and walked out of the kitchen.

"The answer to
that
," he said flatly, crossing the darkened living room, "is an unequivocal
no
."

Wright kept talking as Hunt strode down the hallway, pushed open the door to Taylor's bedroom, and slammed it shut after him. The room smelled of her. Lavender and sex. Promises and lies.

Hunt trusted Michael Wright with his life. But in this case the man was wrong. Dead wrong. He interrupted Wright's monologue again, this time to say through clenched teeth, "Yes, it was. And my prerogative to change it. Which I have. I said no bloody way. I won't do it."

After Wright responded, he said, "Because my feelings about women in the field are well document—Yes," he bit out. "I'm aware of that."

He didn't give a continental damn about what happened to
Savage
. "She's a specially trained operative and knows the risks… Yes, damn it. A.J. too. But not—"

Hunt's jaw ached because his teeth were clenched so tightly. "Yes," he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I realize this was the original… Maybe not.
Fisk
is here, he's—"

The door opened and Max walked in.

Hunt shook his head.

His friend plucked a broken drinking glass from Hunt's hand, then pressed a cloth into his palm, forcibly closing Hunt's fingers around it. Hunt gave his bleeding hand a mildly surprised glance, not realizing he'd broken the glass in his agitation. "That's absolutely bullshit, Wright.
Bullshit
. Are you telling me, in the entire T-FLAC organization, we don't have
one
fucking person skilled enough to get us through those seven levels? Not a one?"

After listening a moment, he interrupted again. "Why in the bloody hell do we
need
to
finesse
our way in?" he said, hanging on to his temper by a fragile thread as he got up to pace. Max stepped out of his way but stayed in the room.

"It would be more expedient to blast our way through those seven fucking levels than take the time to unravel all the gyrations built in to keep us out."

"Possible nuclear warhead?" Max mentioned dryly as Hunt passed him for the fifth time.

Hunt stopped, looked at his friend, then closed his eyes. "Yeah," he said flatly as Wright repeated the words. "Max just reminded me."

Chapter Thirty-two

Filled with nervous energy, Taylor hadn't been able to stand still and had busied herself making a fresh pot of coffee, and disposing of the take-out pizza paraphernalia.

He'd been furious that she'd lifted the disks, and she understood why he was annoyed. But she wasn't obligated to tell him that she hadn't known at the time whether she could trust him. And if he'd been annoyed before, he was absolutely
furious
during the phone call. She didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Neal Bishop introduced her to the others. Apparently, none of them had first names. Taylor did a lightning-fast assessment of Hunt's group. These were the people who would be with Hunt when he did whatever it was he was going to do.

She knew instinctively that Hunt would put his life on the line for them. Would they do the same for him?