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Given the woman’s resourcefulness, he had no more doubts.
She had to be working with Cruz. Rescuing the other passenger he’d seen would have to wait.
MIKI HUDDLED IN THE DARKNESS, shivering. What in the heck was she doing?
Her knees were bleeding and her cheek was bruised where she’d hit a rock during her blind flight. She was a photographer, not a secret agent, and she was way out of her comfort zone.
She heard a noise behind her, at the mouth of the cave. Pebbles skittered, echoing hollowly. With unsteady hands, she followed the narrow tunnel deeper underground, splashing through an icy pool.
More pebbles rattled. Terror drove her forward, stumbling over fallen earth and boulders, her feet bleeding. Abruptly the cave widened. She pressed on, leaning against the stone wall, following the sound of water. In her panic, she stumbled. Her ankle twisted and her head struck a ragged piece of limestone. Even then she tried to crawl forward, but the ground had begun to whirl.
Something splashed through the water behind her, and she lost her balance, going down hard. She was angry that she wasn’t faster, angry that she’d lost her favorite shrug.
Angry that she’d screwed up yet again.
A sharp pain throbbed in her forehead. She kept crawling right up until everything went black.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIKI AWOKE WITH SAND in her mouth.
She was flat on the ground, her clothing still damp. Her hands were behind her back now, aching in plastic wrist restraints. How much time had passed since her fall?
She tried to free her hands, and instantly felt hot canine breath on her face, a silent warning. Miki tried to clear her fuzzy thoughts, remembering her escape and the pursuit. Her wrists hurt, but by wriggling slightly she could relieve the pressure. Tilting her head back, she looked up, searching vainly for familiar constellations. With the clouds gone, the darkness was alive now, filled with glittering white specks that dotted a sky untouched by any other light. None of them meant a thing to Miki. She barely recognized the constellations back home in New Mexico.
She was on a beach somewhere. That much she knew, but nothing else. Wincing, she glanced carefully around and froze at the sight of the pale shape stretched out nearby.
A really huge dog. Some kind of retriever.
Now you’ve stepped into it, Miki thought. Fired, wrecked, ditched, then lost and half drowned. A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside her, but she cut off the sound, remembering Dutch’s final order.
Stay smart and stay alive.
The dog gave her no choice. She shuddered at the thought of sharp teeth lunging at her throat. Guard dogs were taught things like that. They could kill in seconds, according to Miki’s best friend, who trained service dogs for police and military units. Now Miki wished she’d paid better attention all those times Kit described how she trained her dogs.
If she ever got back.
Blocking a wave of hopelessness, she watched a dark shape feather across the moon. She recognized the leaves of a palm tree, and that meant she was still in the tropics. Given the silence, it had to be someplace remote. Since she’d come awake there had been no lights, either at sea or from passing planes.
Very remote, she thought grimly.
Her head began to ache, and she remembered bumping it back in the cave. Now her whole body throbbed along with her head, but pain or not, she had to do something before the creep in the wetsuit came back, even if one escape effort had failed.
But that left the dog. If she moved very slowly, she could try to make her way back to the water, since dogs couldn’t carry a scent over running water. She remembered hearing Kit say that.
Carefully, Miki eased onto her side. The wind rushed over her face, but she was certain the dog couldn’t hear her anyway. Her confidence growing, she moved another few inches.
Still no warning growl.
Her pulse hammered as she moved again, her face against the wind. She heard a sucking noise and sand skittered over her feet. The sound came again, and the blackness materialized into a column. Miki realized the man was back, her worst nightmare in the flesh. Over the slam of her heart she heard a soft groan that seemed familiar. The noise came from what appeared to be a large object.
Dutch?
Recognition made her try to stand. Had he actually found Dutch out in the dark water? She could barely believe it.
Her urgent questions were cut off by cold gloved hands at her mouth. “No noise,” he whispered. Kit felt him bend down, checking that her restraints were in place.
Then sand squished and he drove her across the beach. She felt sand give way to dirt, the waves sounding muted behind her.
A light flickered and disappeared and his low voice came at her ear. “Four steps down.”
The first drop took her by surprise and she stumbled, her ankle twisting. Gloved hands caught her and she slammed against a hard chest.
A door hinge whispered. Light flared, blinding her. She could see the creep for the first time, his body covered by a black wetsuit and black gloves. He was carrying a pair of heavy night-vision goggles, and in the light his eyes snapped with command, somewhere between blue and gray. Miki couldn’t seem to focus, but when he undid her restraints and set her down, Dutch was at her feet, sickly white. A long gash ran down his right cheek.
“You got him,” she whispered, kneeling beside the pilot. She didn’t look up, gripping Dutch’s cold fingers. “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone could do that.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He tossed a silver thermal blanket over Dutch and tucked the foil around the man’s motionless body. As he moved his light, Miki saw that they were underground in some kind of small room. Near her feet were a large metal case and half a dozen tins that looked like MREs. The dog sat beside the case, ears erect, body alert. Spotting her sodden camera bag on the floor near Dutch, Miki reached out, but the dog seized the handle in its teeth and tugged it out of reach.
“Hey! What do you mean by—”
“No noise.” The man looked at his dog. “Sit.”
Instantly the powerful body dropped, Miki’s camera bag still between his front paws. The dog nosed the bag and suddenly flattened on the ground, his hackles rising.
The man spun around. “Target?” he said softly. “Alert.”
Target? All Miki had in the bag were clothes, a few sundries and her camera equipment. Everything was likely to be ruined from the seawater.
The dog sniffed the ground, sniffed Miki’s satchel, then laid one paw across the leather bag and didn’t move.
“Confirm.”
The dog sniffed her bag again, and the motion made something shift inside an inner pocket. There was a small pop and fragrance blossomed, filling the cramped space. Miki realized it was her best French perfume, the same fragrance she’d worn since she was seventeen, taken everywhere as a good luck talisman. Unfortunately, she’d been in a rush that morning and had shoved the bottle into an empty lens pouch rather than wrap it carefully the way she usually did.
Judging by the sharp odor, the bottle had just broken.
The dog sneezed loudly. For some reason this made the man angry. He flipped off his penlight, then opened the trap door, letting the dog race up the small wooden steps.
Miki started to blurt another question but one cold look stopped her. Her captor looked furious. Silent and controlled, he pulled a plastic bag from a black tactical vest near the metal case. His mouth set in a thin line as he opened the camera case, saw the overturned and now lidless perfume bottle. Quickly he closed the lens pouch and then zipped the bottle inside.
“What are you doing with my stuff?” she hissed. Since when was it a hostile act to wear nice perfume? Miki’s irritation swelled when he dropped her lens case and camera inside a larger plastic bag, then locked everything inside the metal case.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“No noise. No perfume or scent of any sort. You understand that?”
Miki stared at him, cold, tired and furious. The man was unhinged. Sure, he’d saved her and then gone back for Dutch at considerable risk to himself, but he’d also cuffed her. Now he was the perfume police? Maybe he was one of those neatness freaks she saw newspaper stories about, people who wash their hands fifty times a day and don’t let anyone touch their personal belongings.
The sudden sound of Dutch’s labored breathing made Miki forget about her expensive perfume. The pilot didn’t open his eyes as his lungs moved in strained bursts. Even to her untrained eyes it was clear that he was in bad shape.
“He needs a doctor,” Miki whispered.
Her rescuer raised two gloved fingers, tapped her mouth and shook his head.
Clearly, noise was another one of his problem areas.
She decided it would be best to play along. Right now he was her only contact with civilization, even if he appeared to be two tortillas short of a combo meal.
But he looked competent as he knelt to check out Dutch, cleaning the gash at the man’s stubbled cheek and unbuttoning his shirt to check for other trauma. Miki thought the pilot’s chest looked odd, slightly concave, and the deep bruises streaking his ribs made her breath catch.
Deftly the man checked Dutch’s pulse, eye reflexes and temperature, then put away his black case and medical supplies. Oddly, he never removed his black gloves.
Too weird, Miki thought. At least Dutch appeared to be stable now. She retreated to the far wall, waiting tensely. Though her nursing skills rated a negative ten on a scale of one to five, at least she could provide some kind of moral support to the pilot.
Over her head paws scraped against the trap door, and Miki heard a dog’s muffled sneeze. Was the dog bothered by perfume, too?
Hit by a sharp wave of dizziness, she closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t throw up, wincing as her stomach continued to gurgle and churn. She’d swallowed seawater nonstop after the crash and now her feet and ribs ached. Exhausted, she leaned back against the underground wall, her eyes closed despite her efforts to keep them open.
It felt as if a week had passed since they’d left the beachside hotel in Bora Bora, with Vance muttering and complaining about every delay and expense. Now he was dead, his body lost somewhere at sea. Miki shivered, aware of how close she and Dutch had come to dying with him.
A scraping sound brought her around with a start. The small room was quiet, both candles out. “Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.
There was no answer.
She rose and felt her way along the wall past Dutch’s cot. Fumbling, she found the four steps beneath the sloping entrance. With shaky fingers she searched for the metal door, pushing upward until the hatch squeaked, rising slowly to reveal a gray bar of predawn sky above angry clouds.
But before she could savor her little taste of freedom, a dog’s face appeared at the door’s edge. He sniffed intently, and his mouth curled, baring his teeth.
Miki shut the door quickly. The creep was gone, but he’d left the dog as a guard. Probably he kept the poor Lab underfed to make it hostile. She hated people who were vicious to animals. If he hurt the dog in any way, she was going to make him very sorry.
Assuming she was still alive by then.
CHAPTER FIVE
ENGINE TROUBLE.
A plane crashes at sea. Two survivors in the wrong place at the wrong time. Coincidence?
“FUBAR.” Max spoke softly, scratching Truman where he liked it best, behind both ears. The Lab had been edgy from the first moment Max had carried the woman out of the water. But then had come her escape and now the perfume accident. The woman could have slept with Cruz in the last five hours, but Truman wouldn’t be able to pick up a trace due to the perfume’s mix of volatile oils, sterols and alcohol overwhelming his keen sense of smell.
Max had found the woman slumped over beneath the ridge after she fell and hit her head during her escape.
Once she was secured, he’d thoroughly searched the plane wreckage and floating debris, but found nothing useful beyond camera equipment in a watertight bag and some clothes. He’d checked the identification he’d found on Dutch, and the passport and U.S. driver’s license looked genuine, though good forgeries could be deceiving. The woman’s ID had eluded him in the limited time he’d had to search at sea. He couldn’t risk using a light after full dark. It would have shone like a neon sign against the water. Why couldn’t women just carry their IDs in their back pockets the way men did?
Shaking his head, he moved behind a line of trees and fingered his satellite phone. He couldn’t chance a real transmission this close to Cruz’s island, but three short bursts would let Foxfire HQ know that he was safe and his reconnaissance was proceeding as planned. Longer communications would wait until he accessed secure equipment at sea. He’d have to deal with his two new arrivals according to his own judgment for now. Since both were possible hostiles, Truman would keep them contained underground where they couldn’t do any harm.
Neither one carried weapons or communication devices—Max had checked carefully before bringing them back to shore. The pilot was in poor condition, his lung compromised, but Max’s mission was clear. He had to stay quiet, stay out of sight and track the stolen weapon guidance system. Cruz wasn’t going to escape a second time—not on Max’s watch.
At least Truman had recovered from the initial shock of the perfume cloud on his hypersensitive nose. Max opened a zipper on his vest and pulled out a bag. Immediately, the Lab pushed closer, sniffing the plastic eagerly until Max gave him the beef treat inside. The dog was superbly trained, his medical enhancements as sophisticated as those that Max had been given, but a dog was still a dog. Beef treats were special.
When his own stomach growled, Max dug into a different pocket and pulled out a fat gray bar that looked like chalk. Tasted like chalk, too, Max thought wryly. The components were carefully selected by the Foxfire medical team to provide minimum bulk and maximum nourishment for high-energy work. Max didn’t particularly mind that the bar would be his major food source until he finished up his work here.
He wasn’t used to fine living or creature comforts. He’d never had a normal life as a child since he’d spent most of his boyhood in institutions. Not until he was adopted at the age of ten did he find out how it felt to have a normal family—if you could call his spit-shine admiral father “normal.” He smiled at the thought of the bossy, demanding man who’d taken him in, taught him discipline and given him pride in his successes. Work was his life now, just like the Admiral’s.
He still called his adoptive father “Admiral” and he knew the grizzled old veteran was probably worrying about him right now, though he’d never admit it.
A faint line of pink marked the horizon to the east. Max figured he had thirty minutes until full light, which would give him time to swim out to the derelict Japanese gunboat that rode atop a nearby reef. The support people at Foxfire had managed to slip in a radio transmitter and emergency water, along with food stores and ammunition. If necessary, Max could hole up there indefinitely, keeping Cruz’s island under covert surveillance.
No one had counted on two civilians plummeting out of the sky in the middle of the op zone. But as a SEAL, Max was trained to expect the unexpected, so the show would go on. He wouldn’t worry about the woman with the expressive eyes or the body that was tempting in all the right places, even buried beneath soggy jean shorts and a baggy Hawaiian print shirt.
Come to think of it, why was she dressed like a college student on spring break? How could a college student afford the expensive camera and lenses that he’d seen in her leather bag? He’d have to search for her ID again later while she slept.
First he had to swim to the reef and complete a secure transmission back to HQ. After that, he’d stockpile more medical supplies, transferring them from the beached gunboat to the underground bunker. If the pilot took a turn for the worse, Max wanted to be ready. He was no surgeon, but he’d had training in field medicine and Izzy Teague would brief him on what to expect from lung complications.
After a final scratch and a touch command to his new best friend, Max slipped on his breathing gear and headed back to the water.
“YOU’VE GOT WHAT?” Lloyd Ryker, the head of the Foxfire research program, sounded worried.
“Two civilians from a ditched Cessna, sir. Vehicle ID number Alpha seven—one—niner—four—two—zero. The pilot’s passport reads Jase Van Horn, and the woman called him Dutch. He’s in bad shape, sir.”
Ryker muttered a few choice words. “I’ll put our tech man on when we’re done. He’ll handle the medical end. What about the woman?”
“Not much to tell. Blonde hair, maybe five foot ten. Speaks English like an American and seemed pretty strong for a woman.”
“No ID?”
“None that I could find, sir.”
“And there’s been no sign of your target?”
“Not yet.” Max sensed Ryker’s growing tension that Cruz hadn’t been sighted.
“Did your friend show any scent alerts for these two?”
He meant Truman. “Nothing that was clear. He was edgy, and he checked out the woman briefly, along with her bag. Before he got very far, a bottle of perfume broke inside her case. That pretty much blew any hope of a clean scent.”
“Accident?” Ryker snapped.
“Unclear.”
“No weapons on either of them?”
“No, and no communication devices,” Max said tightly.
Ryker drummed his fingers loud enough for Max to hear over the static. “They could be civilians, but you are to treat them as hostiles until we have confirmation of their aircraft number and passports. We’ll have an answer by your next check-in. What happened to their Cessna?”
“I drilled the pontoons and sank it, sir. Figured we didn’t need any floating debris to trigger alarms.”
