Risk of Exposure (Alpha Ops Book 6) (13 page)

A
bby strapped herself into the small helo that had come to extract them. Numbness pervaded her whole body. Her lower lip was the only thing moving, and she didn’t know if it was because she was really cold or was about to cry. She’d been forced on board. She’d resisted for a minute but then realized she was putting the pilot’s and the airmen’s lives in danger by being stubborn.

She wondered if he would forgive her, because she knew for a fact that he would never have left her. She wondered if she’d ever forgive herself.

As it was, Playboy was crouching on the floor of the helo, with no safety harness because there really wasn’t enough room for her in the first place.

They heard the explosions as the helo took off. She strained to see the impact the bombs had made, searching in vain, hoping to see someone run from the scene, but there was nothing. Just black smoke and the vehicles burning. Black ash floated into the sky, soiling the pristine white snow and the clear dawn sky.

As they banked away toward Belarus, something moved in the tree line. Her heart raced as she twisted in her seat to see. Had it been Mal? Russians? How would he ever get out if it had been a Russian? How would he have escaped the explosion?

Everything felt wrong. She’d made a bunch of wrong decisions. And Malone had been the victim of nearly all of them.

By the time they arrived in the forward operating base, the sun was fully up, making everything look cheerful and bright. Abby wanted everything to be dark and stormy—to match her mood.

As the helo powered down and she jumped onto the tarmac, Playboy ran over to a departing Apache. He shook a tall man’s hand and pointed back at Abby. The man nodded and swung himself onto the helo just as it was taking off. Another identical Apache took off behind it, and they both powered away in the direction of the explosions.

Havoc took her over to the small terminal building to have her signed in. Playboy was FaceTiming on his cell phone. She caught a glimpse of a baby on the screen. She smiled to herself. Everyone had someone to go back to.

He hung up. “Cute. How old?” she asked, nodding to the screen.

“She was born the week before I shipped out. Perfect timing, really.” A grin spread across his handsome face.

“Is your wife upset that you’re here?” she asked, wondering how these relationships worked.

He snorted. “She’s jealous I’m out here. She was spec-ops, ma’am, but now she’s in the same line of work as you. She wants to be here in the thick of it, trust me.”

“It must be nice to have someone who understands your job,” she said. How many people in the world were there who would understand anything about her work? Who would be allowed to?

“It is. Anyway, we’re grabbing some shut-eye before we get sent out again. I think you have to sign in here.” He pointed at a desk clerk who seemed to have a huge ledger book for people arriving and departing in front of him.

“That’s a little low-tech.” She smiled after giving him her name.

“With all the cyber-attacks the Russians have been perpetrating, everything here is done on encrypted phones or paper. He swung the book shut and reached in a cubbyhole. “I have a message for you, ma’am.”

As she opened it, Havoc poked his head out of a room. “Ma’am? The PJs that took off when we arrived—they’ve gone to find your friend. They’ll bring him back one way or the other.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He gave her a quick smile and disappeared again.

The note told her to report to the Ops Control, and after asking directions, she made her way through a warren of cold war–style bare concrete corridors.

She arrived in a large room that looked like it could once have been a school gymnasium. In fact, now that she thought about it, the whole place was probably an old school. She’d lay bets that the tarmac where the helo landed was a sports court of some sort.

She looked at the note again and said to the first person in uniform who walked toward her, “I’m supposed to report here?”

The woman looked at the note and nodded. “You’re here, ma’am. I’m just not sure who you’re supposed to report to. Maybe look around until you recognize someone?”

Awesome help. And then—God. Why was nothing going her way today? Her boss, the one she’d spoken so rudely to earlier, was looking her up and down with a surprised expression.

“Sir,” she said.

“I’m surprised you had the balls to actually come here, Baston. You’ve broken so many rules in the last week alone, I have no idea where to start.”

Heat and desperation rose in her body. “You could start by thanking me for alerting you to the decoy vehicles on the border. For risking my life trying to get the message back to Langley because as it happens nearly all the equipment you sent me with was three years out of date and virtually useless. You can thank my father for worrying about me—because he thinks I’m an aid worker—and sending out a former black-ops operative to keep an eye on me. I was off book, sir. Because there is no book for what I do. The only book there is, is one for the pen pushers at headquarters. The ones who follow the rules to a T and then go home for cognac and cigars every night. I haven’t even seen the USA for two years because you send me out from place to place. And I know, that’s my job, but it’s also my job to go off the book. I did what I needed to, to get the job done.”

As she paused for breath, she realized that everyone had gone quiet in Ops Control and all eyes were on them. Her boss’s face was so red, she could virtually see steam rising from its surface.

He leaned in close and said in a very low voice, “All this talk about your job is laughable, because it’s up to me if you still have one. And let me tell you, as of right now, it’s not looking good.”

Her heart plummeted. He was firing her?

“There is a transport for Baltimore leaving in twenty minutes. You no longer have clearance to be here, so make sure you’re on it. Otherwise I will cut you loose outside the security of this compound and you can make your own way back home. I hope you have your passport.”

She didn’t, and it didn’t take her long to realize being in the capital of Belarus with no money and no passport was not the best idea. She nodded and left the room; the closer she got to the door, the more the chatter around her got louder. Dammit. She daren’t risk staying here.

If the PJs found Malone, they’d look after him. Her being there wouldn’t change that.

She went back to the guy she signed in with and signed out again. He directed her to a C-130 that would take her back stateside. Before she returned to the flight line, she slipped in through the door the two airmen had disappeared through. She just had to cover her bases.

Havoc was asleep on a bunk, one arm draped over his eyes and his iPhone earbuds in. She unapologetically nudged him. He awoke immediately and was alert in a way that only someone who’d slept in a war zone and had to wake up ready to pull a trigger was. He pulled out his earbuds. “S’up.”

“I’m being sent back stateside. Please make them keep looking for Mal…Merchant. Don’t let them give up.” She scribbled her email address down on a postcard he had sticking on the wall by his bed. “Email me if they find him.” She grimaced. “Either way.”

He nodded. “The PJs are the best. They won’t let you down. I promise.”

She squeezed his rock-solid arm. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he replied, already plugging his earbuds back in. But as she tuned to go, he ripped one out again. “Oh, he told me to pass this message. He said to tell you that you might have to file his final report with your father? Does that make sense?”

Tears seeped out of her eyes. She nodded and turned away.

Mal staggered into the trees, desperate for shelter after the bombs had been dropped. His vision and hearing were seriously fucked up and all he knew was that he had to find cover until his faculties returned—assuming they would sometime this side of the queen’s next jubilee.

He found what felt like the foxhole he’d been in with Abby. Abby. She was going to be pissed off that he hadn’t said goodbye or anything. In truth, he wanted to hold her until the world stopped. Or until the ringing in his ears stopped. Jesus. Those five-hundred pounders were brutal. And he’d been a scant few meters away from the blast zone.

He closed his eyes, put his hands over his ears, and concentrated on his breathing. His chest hurt, so he wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that he’d broken a few ribs. His arm hurt too—like a motherfucker—but he didn’t care. He’d need both arms to get out of this in one piece, so he chose to ignore the fact that he might be injured.

After a few minutes, the roaring in his ears subsided a little, but he knew he couldn’t rely on his hearing to figure out if the Russian fucking army was closing in. He walked out of the glade, trying to remain upright, but with his ears fucked up, his balance was all over the place.

He made it as far as the armored truck they’d borrowed. He crawled in for some respite from the cold wind. He slumped in the driver seat and saw that Abby had left some dollar bills in it. Nothing like using psy-ops on your enemy. But inside his aching brain, he knew that taking it just a little further might at least pause the invasion.

He dug out a pencil and a notepad from one of the storage areas in the vehicle and drew a crude map. He used arrows and a passable drawing of a Russian flag to show the movements of the Russian troops.

At the bottom of the map he drew the stars and stripes, and the union jack, and the European flag, with the words “we’re waiting for you” in Russian. He attached the map to the headrest by anchoring it with his knife. That should give them food for thought.

He started the engine and winced as it reverberated through his body. He parked it about a hundred meters inside the Russian border and left it with all its doors open. That should get their attention.

He returned to the glade and took cover in their foxhole again. He needed to recuperate for a few minutes before trying to walk back to town. He knew the airmen had said they’d send someone for him, but he knew he wasn’t official, and that despite their good intentions, they might not be able to. He wasn’t going to wait around and see what kind of mood the Russians were in.

He grabbed the airmen’s protective clothing and buried it in a snowdrift, not wanting to leave anything incriminating visible. As he stepped out with the intention of making it to the main road, he heard a
wop-wop
in the distance. Stepping back into the trees, he scanned the sky. It could be the PJs they’d promised, but it could also be the Russians’ advance team.

The helo was coming from Belarus airspace. Once he had it in his sight and saw the markings, he stepped out. The Apache didn’t hesitate. It fell from the sky at an alarming rate, leveling off when it was mere feet from the ground. Holy hell, that pilot had balls of steel.

Someone jumped out and ran toward him.

“Good morning. My name is T.S., and I’ll be your rescuer today. Can you walk?”

Cocky bastard. Mal grinned and nodded, but as they made their way to the aircraft, it seemed to move farther and farther out of reach. The last thing he saw was T.S. motioning someone inside the helo, and then he checked out.

A
bby’s flight back to DC was not a treat. Normally when she was heading back stateside she was excited. This time, every second she was slipping farther away from Malone, her heart died a little. And her soul cringed with the knowledge that she’d left without even knowing if he was okay. What kind of person did that? The kind of person who was under orders. She should have fucked the orders.

She realized how stupid she’d been giving Havoc her email address. He wouldn’t email her about a classified mission, and she also hadn’t asked him to give her contact details to Mal either. Where had her head been?

She didn’t eat or drink the whole flight, not that there was a lot on offer. It was a military transit plane with virtually no one on it. She guessed most everyone was going in the opposite direction, and the plane was just heading back to Baltimore to pick up more troops.
She
should be going back. Even though she knew others were better equipped, she only wanted to go look for him.

Numbness had set in by the time they touched down at BWI. She was met at the plane by a company guy, who was escorting her to Langley, the CIA headquarters. She tried not to think about what her boss had said before she left, but facing the facts, she’d brought a civilian—no matter how capable—into an international espionage situation. No one did that and got away with it.

The escort met her eyes in the rearview mirror of the sedan. “I hear you may have averted a big European war?” he said.

“I doubt it. Delayed it, maybe.” She looked out the window, hoping to signal that she didn’t want to talk.

“Maybe you’re getting an award,” he said.

She looked at him. “More like a box with all my personal belongings in it.”
Stop talking to me.

“No way. You’re a hero.”

Her thoughts went back to Malone. No,
he
was the hero. He was the one who risked his life to destroy the Russian equipment that would hopefully leave the advancing Russians backpedaling.

“My boss doesn’t think so,” she murmured.

“But maybe
his
boss thinks so. I have directions to take you to Director Walker’s office.” His eyebrows rose as if to say,
How ’bout that, then?

“Director Walker?” She looked at her clothes. She’d gotten rid of her snowsuit when she’d gotten on the plane. But that meant she was wearing jeans that had been dried out twice and a sweatshirt that had seen better days. Shit. She’d heard he was a very “proper” man, concerned with manners and decorum. She had neither going for her right now. Oh well. If you’re going to get fired, may as well be from the guy at the top.

She should have been thinking about how to worm her way out of being terminated, but all she could think about was Malone. Maybe he was just lying out there, injured in the snow? What if the Russians found him before the PJs did? Maybe he died alone. Maybe he’s already back in town living it up at the nearest bar, taking home some lovely Ukrainian for some comfort. Dammit. She’d never been one to indulge her imagination, but she couldn’t rein it in.

She was shown straight into the director’s office when they arrived at Langley. She stood awkwardly, not wanting to plant her dirty jeans on any of the elegantly upholstered chairs. For God’s sake. Can’t they just fire her by text or email and let her get on with her life? Not that she had a life to get back to. Not even an apartment. And how did you fill in your résumé when you only had classified things as your work experience? Shit. She was in more trouble than she thought.

Director Walker entered with purpose. He held his hand out and said, “Abigail Baston?”

“Yes, sir.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Please, sit down,” he ordered.

“I’d rather not, sir. I’ve just come in from the field, and I didn’t get a chance to change clothes for a couple of days—one of which was spent in a foxhole.”

“Quite. I hear you also ripped your immediate superior a new asshole.” He raised his eyebrows at her.

She couldn’t get past the fact that the director of the CIA had just used the word “asshole.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be. I’ve been trying to do it for years. Besides, we’ll need that kind of straight-talking for your next assignment. You’re needed in Turkey.”

Turkey. Shit, that was huge. She wasn’t fired. She suddenly felt pounds lighter. Turkey was such an important strategic mission, it could only be a promotion. But then her excitement seeped away. Her world was still not right.

“Sir. A civilian was involved in my last op. I had to leave him. Can you tell me if he’s okay?” She stopped shifting from foot to foot, searching his face for a clue. A hint about what had happened to Malone.

“No. You should leave it alone, young lady. Occasionally we have to use all the resources at our disposal. And you did that admirably. But you have to be able to walk away too. And this is one of those times. You can’t get involved with the people you meet while undercover. It will kill you as surely as a bullet. Shake it off and move on. You have two weeks to recalibrate. Read our geo briefs on Turkey. And then ship out to your new job. Keep moving. If you stop, you’re dead.” He swiveled in his chair and looked out the window.

“Yes, sir.” She turned to go.

“My best operatives in the field are women. Twenty years ago, you weren’t even allowed in the field. The world changes, Ms. Baston. You have to keep moving with it.”

“Yes, sir.”

He continued to stare out at the landscaped gardens beneath his office window, so she took it as a dismissal. She left.