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“Besides that,” she replied carefully.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You were way more tense than usual even before we thought anything was wrong with Piper...sir.”
He exhaled hard and turned his eyes back to the road. “I got an intel report last night.”
“And?”
“It indicates that Abu Haddad may not be dead.”
“What?” she and Beau squawked simultaneously. The two of them had by a hair escaped dying in the explosion that had killed Haddad last year. The international, and very illegal, arms dealer, had to be dead! His entire yacht—and everyone on it—had been blown into bits not much larger than her finger. Beau had set the charges himself.
Torsten replied heavily, “We never did get a confirmation of death.”
Beau leaned forward from the back seat and ground out, “That’s because nothing but matchsticks and the occasional chunk of meat were left when I was done blowing up that bastard’s yacht.”
Tessa frowned at their boss. “Why does someone think Haddad may be alive?”
Torsten huffed, clearly as unhappy as she and Beau were. “A rumor has surfaced that the Haddad network may be doing some sort of big secret deal with a Middle Eastern nation. The source apparently has it on good authority that Haddad himself is expected to close the deal. It’s possible that one of his flunkies has taken over the business. But there’s also a very small chance that the bastard is back.”
“What country is this deal with?” she asked.
“Rumor places the deal in Iran.”
“For what kind of weapons?” Beau asked quickly.
Tessa wasn’t sure that mattered. The Iranians were dangerous enough with the weaponry they already had. Although she supposed the last thing anyone needed was for that country’s leaders to get their hands on something high-tech and truly deadly.
“No idea,” Torsten replied.
“It’s not like we have a ton of human information sources on the ground in Tehran,” she commented. “If someone outside its borders could figure out who’s making the sale and what the cargo is, we’d have a better chance of finding out what the Iranians are getting their hands on.”
Appearing to give himself a mental shake, the major replied, “Not our problem, today. Right now, I need us to focus on finding Piper.”
“Of course, sir.” But curiosity about what a dead arms dealer was selling to a country like Iran continued to niggle at the back of Tessa’s mind.
They parked in front of the one-story building that was their communications facility and operational headquarters for Training Site Vanessa, named for Brigadier General Vanessa Blake, the founder of the Medusas over a decade ago.
Their headquarters squatted on stilts and looked like every other ramshackle fishing shack in this part of Terrebonne Parish. Notable only was the building’s lack of windows, and the unusually bulky storage shed under the center of the building.
In reality, that shed disguised the elevator shaft down into the underground/underwater bunker that housed the heart of their ops center. The aboveground building mainly disguised antennae and receivers for the equipment below.
They piled into the elevator and stood in silence as it whooshed them down into the bunker. The door opened into the perpetual twilight of a room crammed with computers and monitors.
Rebel sat at her communication console and typed quickly. In just a few seconds, she reported without looking up from her screen, “Piper’s phone is still at the elementary school where it was this morning.”
“And her backup locator signal?” Torsten asked.
“It appears stationary about fifty miles west of here,” she reported. “Reporters are saying a group of masked men were seen coming out of a white air-conditioning company van and heading into the elementary school. They left in the same vehicle. Presumably with Piper in tow.”
Major Torsten left Rebel to man the ops center in case Piper called in, and loaded Tessa and Beau into his Hummer. They drove west, paralleling the murky waters of Bayou Black to the GPS coordinates Rebel had given them for Piper’s backup locator signal. It turned out to be coming from a crappy little 1950s-era gas station in the middle of nowhere.
The gray-haired Cajun man inside the station swore he hadn’t seen any woman fitting Piper’s description all day. When Tessa showed him a picture of Piper on her cell phone, the attendant declared her hot, but again denied having seen her. Tessa was inclined to believe him.
Torsten called Rebel to confirm they were at the right place, and she was adamant that their position locators were literally on top of Piper’s. And it was still pinging.
They fanned out to search the area, and after a minute or so, Tessa spotted a glint in the gravel at the corner of the building. She bent down and picked up Piper’s West Point class ring. The one with the locator in it.
“I found her ring!” she called out.
“Don’t move!” Torsten ordered immediately. He knelt down, examining the dirt between himself and Tessa. After a moment, he moved off to his right, toward the side of the building. Using his finger, he drew a rectangle on the ground. “Tire track. Recent,” he commented, continuing to stare at the dusty clay.
Beau moved forward to join him in staring at the ground. He had a sniper’s outstanding eyesight and was the best tracker of all of them.
“Looks like three men,” he murmured. “They milled around beside the vehicle.”
Torsten nodded. “And one walked over there to the corner of the building and back, close to where the ring was.”
“Did he drop it, maybe?” Tessa asked.
Beau answered grimly, “I don’t see any tracks small or narrow enough to be Piper’s. These are all men in boots.”
“Agreed,” Torsten muttered. “I don’t think she dropped it as a bread crumb for us.”
“Either way,” Tessa commented, “we know she was headed west a couple hours ago.”
Beau crouched and studied the dirt a bit more, adding, “It looks like some of the tracks lead over to this burn barrel.”
Tessa detoured around the footprints to stare into the rusty container at the pile of light gray ashes inside. It didn’t look like it would hold any clues to Piper’s whereabouts.
Torsten moved over beside her to gaze into the trash barrel, the contents of which were smoking lazily and stank of burnt plastic. He gingerly poked around in them.
“Do you see anything, sir?” she asked hopefully.
“Nope. Just ashes. If the guys in the van dropped anything in here, it’s gone.”
Damn.
Torsten moved away from her and pulled out his cell phone.
“Where’s Piper now?” Tessa asked logically.
Beau looked up grimly from snapping pictures of the tracks. “I think it’s safe to say she was kidnapped. Which leads to the even more salient question. Why her?”
They stared at one another grimly. Were the Medusas compromised?
How? Practically no one knew of their existence, let alone what their real mission was supposed to be. The only—deeply buried—paper trail that led to the team vaguely referred to it as an environmental research group.
“Back in the Hummer,” Torsten ordered briskly. “We’re going to New Orleans.”
“What’s in New Orleans?” Tessa ventured.
“An NCIS field office. It’s time to bring in the big guns to track down Piper and figure out what in the hell is going on.”
She wasn’t about to voice the idea that, if Torsten had listened to her and Rebel earlier, Piper’s kidnappers wouldn’t have such a big head start on them. Torsten looked like he was probably having that thought all on his own, without her having to say it.
They climbed back into the Hummer in silence, and Torsten stomped on the accelerator, blatantly ignoring any notion of speed limits as they raced toward New Orleans at nearly a hundred miles per hour. No doubt about it, the boss was definitely more worried than he was expressing aloud.
They all were.
* * *
Zane goose-stepped the woman into the cabin as gently as he could. “Piper,” she’d called herself. After a brief stop in the bathroom, he followed Mahmoud’s order to take her downstairs into the basement and secure her.
The cellar was dirt walled and windowless, cool and dank smelling. He led her over to a four-inch steel pipe running vertically up one wall and pulled out the pair of handcuffs Mahmoud had handed him.
He looped them around the pole and then carefully snapped her wrists into the cuffs. He made sure they were tight enough that she couldn’t slip out of them, but not so tight that they hurt her.
Zane brought over an armload of blankets and spread them out on the ground beside her. “It won’t be the most comfortable place you’ve ever slept, but it’s dry and you’ll be warm enough.”
“Why are you doing this for me?” she asked under her breath.
Why indeed? If he was one of the bad guys, he ought to be roughing her up, scaring the living daylights out of her and terrorizing her into unquestioning cooperation with him and the other men. But she was the innocent victim in this scenario, and he was the criminal who’d put her here.
He had already considered telling her who he was in hopes of gaining her trust and cooperation. But he’d reluctantly ruled out revealing his true identity to her.
If—when—Mahmoud and Yousef got around to torturing her, which Zane had no doubt both men were sadistic enough to enjoy doing, he really needed her not to blurt out that he was an undercover CIA agent. People in the midst of torture would say or do just about anything to make the pain stop. He dared not give her a grenade that she could lob to save herself.
As much as Zane would like to put her mind at ease and tell her he was one of the good guys, he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until the two of them were out of here and clear of Mahmoud and company.
Her eyes were big and dark as she stared at him, revealing for a moment the fear that she was valiantly holding at bay. God, she was brave. Admiration for her coursed through him.
“Get some rest,” he said gruffly.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
“I’ll take you upstairs to use the bathroom in the morning. If you have an emergency before then, let me know.” He bent down and deposited a bottle of water and a protein bar on the floor next to the pole. “There’s a drink and a snack right here, where you can reach them.”
He headed toward the stairs and his hand lifted toward the light switch.
“Could you please leave the light on?” she asked.
“Of course.” His hand fell to his side. He hated leaving her alone down here with her fear and uncertainty, but Mahmoud and the other men would be suspicious as hell if he hovered over her like a worried mother hen.
He hurried up the steps before he could lose his resolve.
“She tied up?” Hassan asked when he emerged into the kitchen.
“Yup. Not going anywhere.”
Hassan nodded and set a TV dinner on the table for him. Turkey and gravy. Not his favorite, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not with so much on the line.
Zane ate about half the bland meal before asking around a mouthful of pasty mashed potatoes, “What does Mahmoud want with the woman?”
Hassan shocked him by actually answering. Whether it was because the man already knew that Mahmoud planned to kill Zane, or because Zane had actually earned some trust today by participating in the kidnapping, he had no idea. “She’s the wife of some guy that our employer needs to do something.”
“So she’s being held as leverage, then,” Zane commented neutrally, leaping all over Hassan’s rare chatty mood. “Got it. Keep her alive. Reasonably healthy. Just maintain control of her.”
Hassan grunted in what Zane took as an affirmative.
“Do we know who her husband is?” Zane asked.
“Above my pay grade.”
“And who exactly ordered the kidnapping?” Zane pressed.
“Above your pay grade.”
He grinned and shrugged at Hassan. “Sorry. It’s hard for me to keep operating in the dark all the time. At some point you guys are going to have to learn to trust me.”
“I think you’re okay. Don’t take it personally. Mahmoud always plays everything close to his chest.”
“Thanks, man.” Zane got up and carried his empty dinner tray over to the trash can and tossed it in. “Tomorrow, you gotta let me go to a store and get us some real food if we’re gonna be here awhile. That crap tasted like cardboard.”
“No lie,” Hassan laughed. “I’ll ask Mahmoud in the morning.”
“You want me to guard the prisoner overnight?” Zane offered.
“Don’t you want to take shifts or something?” Hassan blurted.
“I don’t mind doing it tonight. You drove most of the day and could use some rest. I can sleep at the foot of the stairs. It’s not like she can get loose and go anywhere.”
“You show admirable dedication to the work, my friend.”
He shrugged and made eye contact with Hassan. “Just trying to prove myself to you guys. But you’re tough nuts to crack.”
Hassan grinned and merely dipped his chin at the compliment, reverting to his usual taciturn self.
By the time Zane went back down to the basement, the woman was curled up on her side next to the steel pole, nested in the blankets like a puppy. She was out cold. Exhausting day she’d had. He pulled one of the blankets over her gently.
Rough day for him, too. He unrolled the sleeping bag he’d carried down here and spread it at the bottom of the steps. His offer to stay with her was a two-edged sword, of course. Not only did it keep Piper from escaping, but it kept the other men from paying any extracurricular visits to her, as well.
Confident that she would be out cold for hours to come, he closed his eyes, knowing that sleep would claim him immediately. It was a combat trick he’d learned during his stint in the army, fresh out of college. When he’d never known when or where his next chance to sleep would come, he’d become expert at napping anywhere on a moment’s notice.
* * *
A painful kick in his ribs woke Zane up sometime later. He tensed to do violence before he remembered where he was. He threw off the sleeping bag and rose, silent and fast, to his feet. Yousef was grinning at him and looking pleased with himself.
