HOT SEAL Rescue (HOT SEAL Team - Book 3) (20 page)

“Be safe, Cody,” she whispered.

M
iranda watched
the ship growing bigger as the car she was riding in sped toward it. The harbor lights shone on a dull red hull. The top of the ship was black and white. The lights illuminated men on deck too. She tried to count them but it was impossible to get an accurate number as the car got closer and the top deck disappeared from view. She’d lost track at five.

The ship wasn’t the biggest one in the harbor, but it was still pretty big.

The driver stopped and turned to her. He pointed at the gangway leading into the side of the ship and spoke in broken English. “You go. They wait for you. When you done, Miss Dira send car.”

Not that it mattered, but Miranda asked anyway. “How will she know I’m ready?”

“She send car in morning. You wait.”

“And if Mr. Conti is finished with me at midnight?”

“You wait.”

Miranda rolled her eyes as she climbed from the car. Yeah, not waiting. Not hardly. Ian Black had driven her to Miss Dira’s brothel himself. She’d asked him point-blank why he was helping HOT if he’d been disavowed—and why they were accepting his help, even if they didn’t accept it without some suspicion.
Trust but verify.

He’d looked at her with that enigmatic gaze, and she’d known she wasn’t going to get anything out of him. He was a brutally handsome man, the kind that made women of all ages swoon. But he did nothing for her. Nobody but Cody did these days.

“Have you ever played with one of those Chinese finger puzzles? You stick your fingers in and then you can’t get them out, no matter how hard you pull?”

She shook her head. She knew what those were, of course, but she’d never played with one. And she didn’t know what the hell that had to do with the question she’d just asked.

“I’m still pulling, Miranda,” he’d said.

She hadn’t even been surprised that he knew her name. At that point, she’d expected it. “Maybe you have to stop pulling then.”

He’d grinned. “Yeah, well, maybe I will one of these days. Right now, I’m not ready to stop.”

“I’m not sure I understand a damn thing you just said. But I get the point. You’re stuck in something and there’s no way out just yet.”

“Maybe there is a way,” he said. “Maybe I’m not willing to take it.”

They’d arrived at the brothel then and a tall, dark-skinned woman walked out to greet them. Her name was Dira and she was gorgeous. She’d taken one look at Miranda and decided she was going to be a French hooker who’d just arrived in Jorwani. Miranda didn’t bother to ask how she’d supposedly arrived, but she got the idea it wasn’t completely willingly.

Disgusting thought, but there it was. Now she stepped up the gangway and walked onto the ship as a man motioned her forward. He gave her a rough pat-down, squeezing her ass as he did so. When he reached her breasts, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as he felt her up. She could elbow him in the stomach, whip around and knee his balls—but that wouldn’t get her where she needed to go. So she endured the groping and then meekly followed along as he led her into the bowels of the ship.

It was a confusing warren of passages. She thought about Cody and his team trying to find her in this metal monstrosity, and she hoped to God the tracker device worked this deep in the ship. Lucky had told her that HOT might not get a signal from her until they were on board.

Miranda peered into dark corners and passageways as they walked, trying to get a hint about the cargo that Conti was so keen on—and that Black wanted.

But there was nothing she could see, nothing that indicated what was so important to either man. If there were women on this ship, they weren’t being kept anywhere close to where she was headed.

They were still belowdecks when the man stopped at a door and rapped on it. A rough voice that she recognized told him to enter. He swung the door open to reveal a suite that looked like something from a cheesy porn set.

Dear God, Victor Conti was disgusting. The room was shadowed in pink light—a plus for her since it wouldn’t illuminate her face too much—and incense permeated the air. Conti was lying back on a large bed with black satin sheets, the burgundy smoking jacket he wore barely concealing his formfitting black briefs. She decided that was done on purpose. He’d very clearly arranged himself in such a way as to show off his assets—or what he considered his assets.

Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed it down.

“You can go,” he told the man, who bowed and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. At least it wasn’t locked.

A fine sheen of sweat rose on Miranda’s skin. It was disgust, pure and simple. But she had a role to play and she was going to play it. Because HOT was extracting this dirtbag tonight thanks to her willingness to stand here with a tracking device.

“What’s your name?” Conti asked.

Miranda only smiled. She’d been told to pretend she didn’t speak English. That worked for her.

Conti swore as he climbed to his feet. “Ah yes, Dira said you spoke no English. Fresh off the boat from France, she said. But she also said you’d know what to do.”

He came over and walked around her very slowly, studying her. Then he reached out and took her chin between his fingers and turned her face this way and that.

Her heart pounded, but she worked to keep her face smooth and calm.

“Very pretty,” he said. “Very pretty.” He started to untie his robe. “I want to see that mouth wrapped around my dick, pretty girl.”

Come on, Cody and the gang. Don’t make me do this.

She grabbed for the tie of his robe and slipped it open. Conti’s eyes gleamed. “Yes, baby, that’s what I want.”

But she didn’t stop there. She made a game of it, pulling the sash all the way from the robe and holding on to it. She could tie him up with this thing. But how soon should she do it? If she disabled him now, what if HOT didn’t show up for another hour? Fuck, she hated being out of the comm loop, but there’d been no way to keep her in it.

She just had to trust that they were coming.

* * *

T
he SEALs slipped
into the Zodiac boats that would take them to the harbor. Cody slung his pack onto the floor in front of him and waited impatiently to be under way. Some of the Alpha Squad operators were coming with them and planned to split off to find the cargo while the SEALs secured the ship and went after Conti. Though SEALs were typically considered to be the combat swimmers, in reality all Special Operators went through combat-swim training—which meant the Army guys were perfectly capable of keeping up on this mission.

The rest of Alpha Squad would be waiting at the docks. The Brandons, both expert snipers, were on overwatch duty, tucked into a building overlooking Conti’s ship. From there they could report on the number of men on deck as well as eliminate any threats that cropped up while the team was infiltrating the target.

The boats fired up and they motored off into the night. Cody could see the harbor lights up ahead, and he knew which ship was Conti’s. The harbor wasn’t that big, thankfully, and Conti’s ship was docked in an area by itself.

The wind was cool on his face, but not cold. Jorwani was temperate for most of the year with both a rainy and a dry season. Fortunately, it was the dry season.

He thought of Miranda. Of that kiss. Hell, of every touch over the past couple of days. He’d been so fucking mad at her, and yet he’d wanted her too. He’d been determined to have nothing to do with her, and then he’d buckled at the first sign that Money might be trying to get into her panties.

No way in hell. That was
his
pussy. His mouth. His body. His, well,
everything
. He was learning to go with the flow of that idea, though he wasn’t sure how long it would last. But right now, it showed no signs of going away anytime soon.

He tried not to think of the danger she was putting herself in tonight, but he couldn’t quite block it out. The last time they’d faced off against a foe, she’d died. It hadn’t been real, of course, but this time—hell, this time it was all real. The foe. The danger. The possibility that she could die. He wasn’t going to be there to protect her from Conti, at least not for the first few minutes. What if the man recognized her?

He told himself that wasn’t very likely. She had red hair. She had green eyes. She’d been wearing a shitload of makeup tonight that made her look different than usual. Conti would have to be damn good to notice she was the same woman in the little amount of time he was going to be with her.

But even if he did—fuck, Miranda was a professional. She could take down an assailant lightning fast. He didn’t doubt her skills—but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

The boats entered the mouth of the harbor and skirted along the edges, getting as close to the ship as they dared. They cut the engines, and then everyone slipped into the sea with their waterproof packs on their backs. They were each wearing a Rapid Diver system, which was attached to a harness and capable of providing them with twenty minutes or so of air without taking up the kind of space ordinary scuba equipment would. Twenty minutes would allow them to swim underwater to the ship and surface undetected.

When they reached the ship’s fire line, Cody slipped out of the harness for the RDS and stowed it against the hull. Everyone else did the same. If they had to exfil by water, they could retrieve the devices and go. But the plan was that Ian Black’s men would collect the devices when they took control of the ship.

Cody waited his turn to go up the fire line. He climbed hand over hand and slipped over the railing and onto the deck. Everyone got out their night vision and comm equipment. They inserted microphones and ear pieces and surveyed the area with their scopes. Next, weapons were removed from waterproof bags and everything stowed for their return.

“Brandy, we’ve reached the deck. Report,” Viking said into the mic.

“Copy, Viking. Three male skinnies on aft deck, starboard. Smoking. How copy?”

“Viking copies all. We’re going to put them to sleep and go below. You got a read on Juliet Whiskey?”

Juliet Whiskey—JW—was Miranda. Cody’s heart thumped.

“Not since she went below. We’re too far from the signal.”

“All right. Viking out.”

“Roger that, Viking. Good luck.”

Viking shot a look at Blade, who was fiddling with his radio equipment. “Got her,” Blade said. “Signal’s faint, but it’s enough.”

They’d known this could be a problem with the steel hull deflecting the signal, but at least they had enough to go in and get her.

“Let’s get the skinnies,” Cage said. “Camel, with me.”

The two of them ghosted away toward the aft deck, two others headed toward the bridge, and the rest of the SEALs started toward one of the metal doors that led into the ship’s interior. If Conti expected invasion, he’d have had his men set up funnels and trip grenades to warn them of intruders. But nothing in the intel Ian Black had gotten indicated that Conti had reason to believe a team of American military Special Operators was on their way to get him.

Still, they would follow their training and slip through the passageways carefully, looking for trip wires and bolted doors that funneled them into a specific path where they might be ambushed.

And then, once they got through all that and found where Conti was trying to get his freak on with Miranda, they were going to take that motherfucker down and bring him to justice.

Cody only hoped they got there fast.

“
E
asy
, baby,” Victor Conti said as Miranda slipped the sash around his neck playfully. She smiled when she did it, rubbed her breasts against his chest, and tried not to vomit at the evidence of his arousal. His hands slipped to her waist, his fingers skimming her bare midriff, and it was everything she could do not to knee him in the balls just yet.

“Take off everything but your panties,” Victor told her. His grip on her tightened as she tried to step out of his embrace. She met his eyes, forced herself not to look as disgusted as she felt. And then he glided his hands up and grasped the edge of her top. She had a choice now. She could let him slide it over her head or she could stop him.

“This, off,” he said, raising his voice in that way people did when they thought speaking louder would help someone who didn’t understand the language magically comprehend what they were saying. “And this,” he continued, sliding a finger to the waistband of her skirt.

She smiled as if she understood what he meant. She took a step back, both ends of the sash still in her hand. She could jerk him forward with that, knock him off-balance while aiming a knee at his head. She’d grab the back of his skull and slam him into her knee. If it didn’t knock him out, it would certainly disorient him long enough for her to restrain him.

She tightened her grip on the sash—and there was a sudden rap on the door. It made her jump, and Victor swore. He jerked the sash from her hands and whipped it around his waist, tying the robe closed again.

Goddammit, she’d lost her advantage.

“This had better be good,” he barked.

Miranda sashayed toward the bed, scoping out the room while Victor was occupied. The door opened and someone came in. She didn’t look at him as she let her gaze slide over the room. Looking for possible weapons.

“We’ve got a potential problem,” a voice began, and Miranda’s insides turned to liquid. She spun before she could think about what she was doing, her gaze landing on the man who’d come into the room and stood there talking to Victor Conti.

Mark?

“We found water on the deck,” he said.

“So?”

“Well, it hasn’t rained,” the man who could not be Mark Reed, but most certainly was, said. “And the only water is below us.”

“Intruders? From the water?” Conti seemed genuinely confused.

Miranda was more so. How could Mark be standing here? How could he be
alive
and how could he be working with Victor Conti? Or
was
he working with Conti? Maybe he was on assignment too—

No, it wouldn’t go down like that. Would it?

“Special Operators, Victor. A military team.”

“Jesus Christ,” Conti swore. “What about the fucking cargo? They want it, don’t they?”

“Probably.” Mark’s gaze suddenly swung to her, and she realized she’d been moving toward his voice the whole time. Trying to get a better look. Trying to explain what her eyes said was true but her heart insisted could not be.

His brows drew down as he studied her. And then, before she could react, he whipped his gun from its holster and aimed it at her.

“Not another step,” he growled.

“How?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Wait just a fucking minute,” Victor demanded. “You speak English? Who the hell are you?”

“She’s CIA. You’ve met her before—though she’s supposed to be fucking dead.”

Victor’s head swung her way.

“Say hello, Miranda,” Mark said. “And then you’re going to have to tell me precisely how many operators there are and what the plan is.”

Her entire body shook, but not from fear. From fury. She clenched her fists at her sides and wished like hell she could wrap her hands around his throat. Her eyes stung with tears, and her heart— Oh, her heart hurt like it had never hurt before. Which pissed her off even more because she knew, didn’t she, just how treacherous people could be? She’d learned in four years at the CIA that nothing was ever quite what it seemed.

“I mourned you,” she said, ignoring his command to say hello. “I loved you, admired you—and you did
this
? Why? Why are you here with—with this
asshole
?”

Victor growled and took a step toward her.

“Not yet,” Mark grated. “We need her. She could be our ticket out of here.” To her he said, “I guess we’re both good at faking death. And whether you believe it or not, I was sorry you died.”

Miranda laughed. It was a bitter sound. He hadn’t really answered her, though she hadn’t expected him to. “You aren’t getting out of here, Mark. There are two teams—TWO—coming for you. They aren’t going to quit, and they aren’t backing down.”

It didn’t matter if she said it. He already knew she wasn’t here alone. And maybe knowing there were two teams would give him pause. That was a lot of Special Operators, each and every one a deadly killing machine.

He cocked the pistol then, but she didn’t flinch. Then he swore and dropped it to his side. He couldn’t kill her, not yet, and they both knew it.

“Shoot her!” Victor shouted. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

“If she’s alive, we have a chance. Dead, they’ll fucking kill us both.”

Victor subsided, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“Do you want to know who’s coming?” she asked, feeling like she was sitting on a stick of dynamite that was about to explode. The adrenaline and fury pumping through her was potent. She felt like she could do anything—
anything
. But she was also smart enough to realize that she couldn’t—or not yet anyway. But she could stall him.

Take your time. Keep talking. Wait for Cody.

Cody. Why did she think of Cody instead of HOT? It hit her that she thought of him because she had utter faith he would come and help her. He wouldn’t let her down, not like everyone else in her life had—not like Mark clearly had. He would come and he would help her make this right.

“I imagine it’s SEAL Team Six,” Mark said. “Or Delta.” He sounded bored.

Which meant she took great delight in telling him the truth. “Wrong. It’s HOT.”

He seemed to stiffen for a second. “Fucking hell.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Are you wearing a device?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“Search me if you want. You won’t find anything because there is nothing.”

The bio-tracker was invisible, a thin slice of clear film that contained a transmitter and adhered to her skin. The transmitter was good for twenty-four hours, at which point it faded away.

“She was searched,” Victor said. “Before she was brought in. There’s nothing on her.”

Mark lifted his head as if he were listening for something. Miranda strained to hear anything other than the sounds of the ship, but there was nothing.

He lifted the gun again, pointing it at her. “We’re getting out of here.
Now.
”

* * *

“
J
uliet Whiskey is
on the move.”

Cody’s gut twisted. “Where the fuck is she going?” he asked before anyone else could.

“Can’t quite tell yet,” Blade said. “Away from us though.”

Viking spoke into his mic. “Brandy, did you copy?”

“Copy,” Brandy said. “Nothing topside yet. We’ll let you know.”

“Thanks. Viking out. Richie, you any closer to that cargo?” he asked the Alpha Squad commander.

“About to blow the door,” came the reply. “You need time?”

“Yeah. Ten mikes should do it.”

“Copy. Ten mikes until we blow the door. Richie out.”

Fucking hell. Ten minutes to find Miranda and stop Conti—and a whole lot of passageway left to navigate.

“We gotta move faster,” Cody said.

Viking blew out a breath. “Yeah. But we can’t fuck up and let them know we’re coming either.”

They fanned out and continued through the passageways, searching for trip wires and locked doors. But everything was clear. It didn’t take an especially large staff to run a ship of this size, which was also good for them so long as they steered clear of the crew areas. Still, if they ran across anyone, they’d restrain them. Most of these people were hired sailors doing a job. There was no need to kill unless threatened.

“She’s moving topside,” Blade said.

“Fucking hell, there’s a helicopter coming in for a landing.” It was Brandy’s voice over the mic. “Do you copy?”

“Viking copies.”

“Richie copies.”

Cody started moving toward the stairs as fast as he could go while still maintaining the perimeter.

“Disable the bird. Repeat, disable the bird.” It was Richie’s voice giving the order to shoot the helicopter. But Cody wasn’t taking a chance. Neither was his team. They were all with him, ghosting through the ship and up the flights of stairs that would take them back to the top.

“Blowing the door, Viking,” Richie said.

“Roger that,” Viking replied.

It didn’t matter if there was noise now. Conti was attempting to escape and taking Miranda with him. Cody swore under his breath even while he prayed she was okay. She had to be okay because she was moving—but son of a bitch he’d been right that Conti might figure out she was the same woman who’d come after him in Vegas.

He had to get to her before Conti did something. Cody bounded up the last few steps and stopped to listen. He could hear the helicopter’s rotor beating the air—and then there was a ping and a whine and the motor sputtered.

“It’s a hit,” Brandy said over the mic.

Cody and Money went first, kicking the door open and clearing the area in front of them. The rest of the team followed. They moved across the deck toward the helicopter pad, guns aiming at the wounded bird and the people standing beside it.

A man threw his arm around Miranda and hauled her back against him, the barrel of his pistol wedged against her temple. Cody’s blood turned to ice, but he didn’t stop moving until he was there on the pad, gun aimed at the man’s head.

There was another man on the pad. Victor Conti was wearing a robe that gaped open to reveal black briefs. He brandished a pistol as if he believed it would stop them, but there was no way he was a threat. The dude with Miranda was the threat.

Conti didn’t have the pistol for long. Cody was aware of Money closing in—and then he was on top of Conti, disarming him and binding his wrists behind his back while Conti screamed insults and death threats.

“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” Money shouted above the noise of the helicopter and the screams of Conti.

The dude holding Miranda backed them against the helicopter and waited for the attack. Every instinct Cody had told him to take the shot and eliminate this asshole. It was a shot any one of them could take blindfolded—but he didn’t squeeze the trigger just yet. What if this guy was someone of value? Someone high up in Conti’s organization they could use in a game of prisoner’s dilemma?

Tell this dude that Conti had blamed him for everything and maybe he’d turn on his boss. It was a classic maneuver and one that worked more often than not.

The helicopter’s motor sputtered and whined before dying suddenly. The rotors still whipped the air, but they were slowing.

“You can’t win this one,” Cody said to the man. “Best to put down the weapon and let her go.”

“Not happening, Cody McCormick,” the man said, and Cody stiffened involuntarily. How the fuck did this guy know his name?

He heard Camel growl something under his breath.

Miranda’s head was tilted back, the column of her throat exposed above where the man had an arm around her collarbone. She didn’t look scared at all, which freaked him out just a little bit. Yeah, he knew she was an agent—but he expected more emotion out of her. Instead, she looked calm. A cold finger of dread tickled his spine as he remembered where he’d last seen her look so calm in the face of danger. That day in the desert. Right before she’d walked out in front of the truck and faked her own death.

“Jane,” he growled at her, reminding himself to use her false identity. “What the fuck is going on here? Who is this guy?”

* * *

M
iranda gazed
at Cody in his sexy wetsuit, rifle slung over his chest and currently aimed in her direction, and felt numb. Mark’s arm around her was tight. The gun at her temple was no longer cool to the touch, but warm where it made contact with her skin.