The Sparks Broker, page 3
part #2 of S.A.S.S. Series
“Who is she?”
Moss glared at her, stepped closer. “Who are you?”
She dragged her lips back from her teeth, praying Maggie was picking up this conversation and had summoned backup from the outpost. But if Tactical was locked down and she’d crossed a national boundary line, odds for help were slim. She almost certainly would be stuck on her own.
“I asked you a question,” Moss shouted, and backhanded her across the face. “Who are you?”
Kate reeled on her feet. Her lip split and the entire side of her face stung. Tasting her own blood, she got her balance and glared at Moss. “Your worst nightmare.”
Moss involuntarily pulled back his hand to hit her again.
“Do it and you’ll die.”
He started, caught himself and stilled his arm midair. The gun wobbled, but he didn’t seem to notice; he kept staring into her eyes. Whatever he saw there convinced him. He lowered his hand and reclaimed his lost ground with a grunt. “Not saying yet, sir. But she’s got a smart mouth. Definitely a professional, judging by her attitude and her gear.”
“Well, bring the smart-mouthed professional in,” the Kunz sound-alike said, clearly impatient. “Try not to kill her, unless of course she gives you no choice.”
“Yes, sir.” Moss shoved the throat mike out of his way and then nodded at Kate. “You heard the man. You’ve got two choices. I don’t care which you pick. You can head down the cave and live, or refuse. If you refuse, I’ll shoot you now and spare myself some aggravation.”
If she went deeper into the cave, she’d never come out alive, and only an idiot wouldn’t know it. If she didn’t go, he’d shoot her here. Buying time, she agreed. “I’ll go, Moss.”
“Good.” He straightened and rolled his shoulder. “Move.”
Kate turned and began walking through the water, taking small steps. She needed time to think—and an opening when he was vulnerable to overtake him. But, hanging back, he wasn’t making it easy. She shortened her stride even more, convinced the moving water would conceal her tiny steps. Fortunately the current was swift. That should help give her cover.
Finally he came alongside her, his gun still raised and aimed at her chest. She inched her fingers down her body and curled them tightly around the handle of her knife. Firming her grip, she eased the blade up and out of its sheath.
Moss caught a hint of motion from the arrhythmic ripple in the water. Snarling, he snagged the rubber-tube casing looped around her neck and jerked it tight. Her dog tags jangled. “Don’t even think about it.”
Was this the opening she’d awaited? So close she could smell the sweat on his skin, Kate looked him right in the eye and nodded.
He relaxed and loosened his hold.
In a flash, she laid out a flurry of moves: knocked his hand with the gun, delivered a debilitating blow to his neck, slashed through his mike, severing his communications with the Kunz sound-alike, and then drove the knife into his stomach up to its hilt.
A direct hit.
Moss howled, deep and loud. The sound reverberated, echoing through the cave in waves. Kate spun out of his grip, turned and fled.
“Home Base? Home Base, do you copy?” Tugging on her headgear, Kate dove and swam hard and fast. “Home Base?”
No response from Maggie.
Terrific. Finally, Kate reached the mouth of the cave. She followed the markings she’d put down on entering, swam until she’d cleared the rocky protrusions, then surfaced.
Water streamed down her face. “Home Base?” She tried again, scanned the rocks for the C-273 black box.
It was gone.
Oh no. Moss? Another GRID member? The water’s action? It was high tide, totally possible. Pulling a fast visual, she saw no one. “Base?” Kate tried Maggie again.
Still no answer.
The last thing they needed was the C-273 communications device in GRID hands. Kunz would sell it to every hostile on the planet.
Her boat rocked on gentle waves about twenty yards to her left. Safer under water, she dove and swam toward it; the salt water burning her scrapes and cuts. Seeing the bottom of the hull above her, she stroked to the boats far side, again surfaced, then climbed aboard.
An engine’s roar split the silence. She darted her gaze toward the sound as she started her own engine. A boat rounded the tip of the finger of land and headed in her direction. She slapped the throttle in gear and hauled out.
Kate glanced back to see the other boat cutting across the whitecaps, spraying a wide arc and leaving a huge wake. Its sudden appearance hadn’t been a coincidence; it was clearly following her. From the size of its wake, that boat was a lot faster than hers. But who manned it? Iranian authorities or GRID?
She couldn’t tell, but either was equally bad. Her orders were to remain undetected, and she’d failed to do so. She sped up, opening the throttle until the engines screamed, and targeted the shore, determined not to end up captured and held prisoner. If the authorities took her into custody, it would create an international incident, she’d be tried for treason against Iran, and executed. If GRID caught her, she’d be tortured and killed or just killed. Either way, she’d end up dead.
The little boat shuddered with effort, but it was just too small. There was no way she could outrun the larger boat all the way to port. She’d have to create a diversion and hope they fell for it.
Kate darted a quick look behind her. The boat was gaining. Two men—no, three—rode in it. They were wearing black wet suits, not uniforms. Did that mean anything?
Wishing she knew, she scanned the shoreline for a safe place and spotted a clump of trees and sandy beach. A couple of large rocks littered the water. It wasn’t a great place to hide out, but it was her best shot.
Cutting off her dog tags, she looped half the tubing between the throttle and a hitch on the dash to keep the engine running wide-open. Stuffing the other half of the tubing and her dog tags into her pocket, she twisted the steering wheel to take a swing behind the rocks. GRID would think she’d hidden near them. For that reason, she would not.
Behind the cover of the rocks, her boat’s bow hit an angle that would track to the open gulf. She jammed the steering wheel with the emergency paddle, then dove off and swam under water toward the shore, praying the men chasing her would continue to follow the boat until she’d had time to disappear.
The water shallowed to waist-deep. She risked surfacing and spotted the boats. GRID had taken the bait and continued the chase.
Grateful for even a spare respite, she seized it. They wouldn’t be fooled long, but with luck, long enough for her to evade them.
Kate ditched her fins and tank in the water and hurried ashore, scanning the terrain for somewhere to hide. She’d love to just run for the caves—openings dotted the hills—but experience warned her she was too short of time to make it and the consequences of not making it carried costs too high to pay.
At the water’s edge, she snaked low to the ground, took cover in the clump of trees and then sank deeper into the brush. Still searching, she forced herself to pause and think. These trees were the logical dry-ground hiding place; they’d find her here. She had to find an illogical place to hide.
She ran on and reached an oblong clearing about three hundred yards across. A single large boulder sat on the far edge of it. It had to be at least eight feet wide. On three sides of it, a person could see forever. And that’s where she’d hide—in plain sight.
Well, almost.
Near the base of the boulder, under a natural ledge, she dropped to her knees and scooped out a shallow grave, dumped in her diving mask and then crawled inside. She smoothed the sand over her lower body. It would be hotter than the pit itself in the wet suit, but she didn’t dare risk removing it. She needed the added protection against scorpions and snakes, which happened to love the crevices of the rocks. Cool places to wait out the hot sun.
Buried to her chest, she pulled the remaining half of the tubing from her pocket. Putting one end in her mouth, she clamped down with her teeth and put the other end into an open notch under the edge of the boulder. She could intake air through the tube and it wouldn’t be easily spotted. Then she finished burying herself, punching outward from the inside, forcing the sand under the ledge to collapse over her hand.
The sand wasn’t uncomfortably hot, but if she’d been dry, she’d already be sweating. She just wasn’t deep enough to get to a stable, lower temperature. The grit against her eyes and nose irritated her, urged her to scratch, but she stayed put, didn’t move, and willed herself to relax and breathe.
A good forty-five minutes later, the sand around her vibrated.
Footsteps.
Her heart rate jackhammered into high gear, her nerves stood on end, hyper-alert. She’d had to stay shallow to keep the weight of the sand light enough to allow her rib cage to expand, to drag breath. If the lowlifes had a handheld thermal detector, she was dead. The sand covering her wasn’t deep enough to block the signal.
The vibrations grew stronger and muffled voices joined them. “No tracks through here, Mr. Kunz.”
“She didn’t just disappear into thin air.” Kunz sounded more than a little annoyed.
Shock ripped over Kate. She knew that voice too well to be fooled. She’d done an audio study from a S.A.S.S. intercept the CIA had verified to be Kunz. This man was not a Kunz double.
He was Kunz.
She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it—or all it implied. Maybe her ears were playing tricks on her. The sand could be distorting more than expected. Maybe being hypersensitive, she was skewing things, manifesting her worst fears.
She told herself all that and more, but the fact of the matter was, she didn’t believe any of it. He was Kunz. And that terrified her. Because if the real Thomas Kunz was here, then the Thomas Kunz in Leavenworth was a double...
The truth slithered over her, then seeped in. Unbelievable! He’d done it to them again. He’d passed off one of his doubles as himself.
“You’re certain she wasn’t Amanda West?” a second man asked.
“Positive. She was a tall, skinny blonde. Long hair. Streaked. Her face was pretty messed up from hitting the rocks, but the woman definitely was not Amanda West.”
Disappointment lurched through Kate. That was Moss talking. Obviously his stab wound hadn’t been fatal or even debilitating.
Venom filled his voice. “West broke my nose. I’d know that one anywhere.”
“This one sounds like Captain Katherine Kane,” Kunz said, “S.A.S.S.’s explosives expert. She bombed my former Iranian compound to rubble, thinking I was in it. Cost me a fortune.” He sneezed, then added, “Find this woman and bring her to me—alive, Moss. Let’s see if it’s Kane, and exactly what S.A.S.S. knows about our operation here.”
Kate shivered. Kunz was thinking torture, and he was a master at it. His reputation for gruesome violence was legendary. Amanda had reported a clinical accounting of what he’d done to her, but Kate had enough experience to fill in the gaps. The woman had suffered at his hands. Kunz did horrific things to people with information he wanted. Things like removing bones, performing amputations, hammering metal punches through eardrums. He liked inducing pain, the sadistic pig. The more pain, the better.
Determined not to become one of his victims, Kate didn’t move, scarcely took a breath.
Finally, their voices faded and the vibrations of their footsteps grew faint and then ceased. Uncertain they really were gone, she hesitated to leave her hiding spot. They could be waiting for her. Setting her up. She didn’t think so. Instinctively she sensed their absence, but with Kunz waiting to torture her, she wasn’t taking any chances.
The afternoon heat grew almost unbearable. Itching and miserable, her throat parched, her entire body drenched in sweat, Kate longed to get up and move, but long years of discipline and training kicked in and kept her in her grave.
When the air taken in through the tube cooled and the heat subsided, she knew night had fallen. Quietly she lifted her head and her arm nearest the rock. Brushing the sand from her eyes, she opened them and scoured the starlit landscape for odd or unusual shapes.
Seeing none, she reared up, reveled in the cool breeze brushing across her. Swearing it felt better than anything else in the world, she smoothed over her grave in case she needed to use the tactic again, then checked her coordinates on her GPS unit. With her location confirmed, she began the hike back to the outpost.
Even if she moved at a good clip, it would take her the better part of an hour on foot to get to the outpost. She hoped she could make it. Already she was feeling exhausted and nauseous. Naturally she hadn’t carried her canteen with her on the dive, and she had developed several symptoms of dehydration. “Home Base?” She tried Maggie again through the face mask. Her throat raw and scratchy, she dusted caked sand off the mike and tried again. “Home Base?”
Still no response.
Either someone else had activated the C-273 communications device and Home Base knew any conversation would be monitored, or the satellite had been diverted.
Grimacing, totally drained, Kate moved and kept moving, kept putting one foot in front of the other on the uneven ground. More than ever, she needed to contact Home Base and to warn Colonel Drake about what she’d found.
The woman was going to freak.
Comforted at knowing it, Kate walked on, her legs trembling, her stomach shaking. She’d hate to be the only one Kunz and his goon GRID operatives had given double vision. And she didn’t even want to think about how he’d discovered she had been the sparks broker who’d taken down his last Iranian compound, or how he had identified her.
A long and grueling hour later, Kate arrived at the small tent camp dubbed “the outpost.” A perimeter guard let her through with a snappy salute and a worried look. “You okay, Captain Kane?”
Douglas had cued someone she was coming. Word traveled fast in an outpost. So much for anonymity. She couldn’t muster even a throaty croak so she nodded—and stole the water bottle clipped to his belt. Taking in a long draw that cooled her parched throat, she screwed the cap back on and passed the bottle to him. “Thank you,” she said, then heaved on his boots.
He started to radio for a medic, but Kate stopped him. “Ma’am,” he protested. “You need help. You’re dehydrated and your head is bleeding.”
“I’m fine. I can take care of myself.” She sighed and dragged a hand through her sand-crusted hair. “I’m sorry about your boots.”
“No problem. It’s not the first time,” he said, being really good-natured about it. “But I should get a medic to look at your head.”
“No, just drop it.”
“But, ma’am—”
“Drop it! That’s an order, Private,” she said, noting his rank sewn to his sleeve.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Because he’d tried to do her a good turn and he looked genuinely concerned, she softened her voice. “But thank you.” His pinched lips spread into an easy grin, though worry still shone in his eyes. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”
She moved on through the row of tents to the mess hall, where she snagged two liters of water and then two more and a packet of salt. She added the salt to one of the bottles, wary of drinking too much too fast and depleting the salt from her body.
She’d seen that happen once on a field maneuver and the guy had suffered seizures. Wanting no part of that, she stepped around a sandbag barrier and headed to her tent, weary to the bone.
What country she was in, she didn’t have a clue. Could be Iraq or Iran or any of several other Middle Eastern countries. The outpost’s location was classified and she’d been flown in blindfolded, which wasn’t an unusual event since the start of the war on terror, but it never failed to give her the willies. It gave everyone in the field attached to Black World operations the willies. But some of their allies didn’t want it advertised that they were allies. So the U.S. accommodated them.
She downed another liter of water, snagged some clothes and crossed the post to the showers. Until she got cleaned up, she’d never revive.
Stepping into the drab-green fiberglass stall, she cranked the spigot and washed off the grit and salt. Reveling in the water sluicing over her body, she thought about the sheer joy of feeling clean. Only once before had she felt as joyful. The day she’d successfully stopped a chemical attack on the White House.
“Hey, you gonna be in there all night?”
Kate looked over and saw half a dozen men lined up, waiting to use the shower. The fiberglass shielded from their view a swath of her body between her shoulders and thighs. “Give me a minute. I spent half the day buried in sand.”
That they understood. And for the next ten minutes, until she finished her shower, not one of them said a word or showed the least sign of impatience.
Kate wrapped herself in a towel and departed. “Thanks,” she said, walking past them.
“Any time, ma’am.”
Amazingly, none leered. But then, for that small segment of time, they’d forgotten rivalry and seen the “Outsider” as one who endured. As one of them.
She returned to her tent, switched the towel for a T-shirt and panties, then broke down her headgear. Pulling the throat mike into position, she collapsed onto her cot with yet another bottle of water. Her legs felt like limp noodles. Her arms weren’t much better. If she didn’t get hydrated quickly, she was in for a wicked night of muscle cramps and spasms that would have her bent double.
Staring at the dim, bare bulb hanging from the center of the tent, she tried Maggie again. “Home Base?” Kate said. “Home Base, do you copy?”
“Identify.”
A voice. Not Maggie’s. Male. “I need a satellite link to Colonel Drake at S.A.S.S. headquarters.” Blood trickled down her face. The cut on her forehead was bleeding again.
She was going to have to get up. Not giving into a sigh was just more than she could manage, so she let one out with gusto and rolled off the cot, then stretched for her gear.
