The Sparks Broker, page 4
part #2 of S.A.S.S. Series
“Code and authorization number?” the guy asked.
She riffled through her stuff. No bandages handy. Oh, just forget it. She snagged a pair of panties and shoved them against her head. “Bluefish One,” she reported, applying firm pressure and falling back onto her cot. “Authorization code BF one zero two ten...”
A click signaled verification of her identity and approval to transmit. Moments later Amanda answered the call. “Home Base secure. Go ahead.”
Half relieved it wasn’t Maggie, and ashamed for feeling that way, Kate swallowed a swig of water. “Hey, it’s me.
“Thank God.” The earpiece hissed; Amanda let out a held breath. “What happened to the C-273?”
“It’s gone.” Her stomach muscles clenched. The lab would have their noses out of joint for months over this. “I don’t know if it got washed out or if it was taken out, but it’s gone.” Kate took a breath. “Activate Big Brother right away.”
Each S.A.S.S. operative had a chip embedded under the skin in their nape. That chip allowed satellite tracking to wherever the operative happened to be on the planet. “We’ve got a colossal mess here. I need major backup immediately.”
“I can’t activate Big Brother,” Amanda said. “Wherever you are, it’s been designated a no-activation zone. Do not, I repeat, do not relay your GPS coordinates.”
“I did already.” In the cave, Maggie had plotted her. “Then was fine. Now isn’t.”
Kate understood the unstated message. Relay and you’ll be dead in five minutes. She was definitely in hostile territory. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she refolded the panties to expose a dry spot, then slapped them back against her forehead. If she couldn’t activate Big Brother to watch over her, then what was she supposed to do for assistance? She hadn’t been given a location and she’d arrived blindfolded. “Recommendation?”
“Tactical is on site. You’re under orders and authorized to rely on them for assistance. The major is expecting you to request through him.”
Maggie had asked Darcy to run a dossier on Major Forester, and Maggie had given Kate the bones. She needed a little flesh. “Skip the details and just give me the upshot.”
“He’s really quite interesting.”
Kate frowned. “Upshot. Please.”
“He’s a highly decorated career hard-nose.”
So she figured. “Is he going to divert Douglas’s tactical unit to me?” Her fingers wet, Kate frowned. She tossed the blood-soaked panties onto the dirt floor, grabbed a second pair and placed them against her forehead. Her legs tingled. She stretched out and elevated them on a bunched-up green blanket.
“Roger that.”
Douglas had done well at mopping up on their last mission. But this one was active; it would be much tougher, and he was a brash young guy. Trained, but without much battle experience. She needed seasoned help. This was GRID, and all of Kunz’s operatives were seriously seasoned. “You don’t understand.”
“What?”
Kate sat up straight and grabbed her water bottle from the dirt floor. She hated telling anyone this, but especially Amanda. Still, there was no easy way to do it, so she just blurted it out. “The Big Fish is not in the tank.”
Amanda would decipher that she was being told Thomas Kunz was not in Leavenworth.
A long hesitation settled between them, then, “Would you...would you repeat that, please?” Amanda reacted as expected. Her voice deepened, etched with a tremor that proved she was shaken up by the news. “I—I couldn’t have heard you correctly.”
She’d heard fine. After going through what she had with Kunz, Amanda didn’t want to hear Kate—not that she could blame her. Hearing demanded listening. Listening induced fear, and there was nothing Amanda West hated more than fear.
Not overly fond of it herself, Kate repeated, “The Big Fish is not in the tank.” Kunz wasn’t killed in the Texas explosion. He wasn’t taken into custody in the Middle Eastern compound and incarcerated at Leavenworth. That was the message, and it had Kate feeling queasy, too. “He’s here.”
“Alive?”
Amanda had gotten it, all right, and Kate could tell that it had rattled her to her toenails. “Alive and well enough to put me in his crosshairs.”
“Oh, God.” Kate’s friend, not her co-worker, reacted. The friend who had tangled with the sadistic monster and had been held prisoner by him for three months. She’d been tortured, and only God and Amanda knew what all that had entailed. “Are you sure?”
“Ninety-nine percent. Unobserved audio confirmation with verified intercept.” Swinging from the technical to the nitty-gritty, Kate added, “A GRID operative called him by name.”
“But this can’t be. We’ve got his DNA.”
The panic in Amanda’s voice was all too clear. Kate couldn’t blame her after her experience and then what Kunz had pulled after his arrest, during interrogation. He’d relentlessly taunted her, mostly with heavy sexual innuendos. It’d nearly driven Amanda nuts. “Take a couple deep breaths and clear your head, okay?” Kate stopped short of telling Amanda she wasn’t thinking straight. “Joan warned us that substituting DNA isn’t a problem for Big Fish. He did it on every GRID operative he inserted.”
Dr. Joan Foster, an expert psychiatrist with extensive experience in psychological warfare tactics and specifically memory manipulation, had been taken hostage and forced to either cooperate and do all Kunz asked in programming GRID-doubled operatives to replace genuine U.S. government employees or watch her husband and child be mutilated and murdered. Kunz had already killed both her parents and her in-laws.
“But that was with captives.” Amanda was stretching, looking for any excuse to deny the truth.
Kate couldn’t let her. “It was. His goons did plastic surgery, substituted medical and dental records, biometric iris scans, fingerprints—any and every thing that could give us a positive ID on all of them. He successfully substituted DNA in our systems. What makes it any more difficult for him to substitute his own?”
A long silence played out. Kate waited, giving Amanda time to work through the emotions and to accept the truth.
“Geez, you’re right,” she finally said, still not recovered from the shock; her voice was thinner than a 3 mm detonator wire. “But I do have a way to prove whether or not the man locked up in Leavenworth is the real Big Fish.”
He had successfully fooled more than sixty known and separate employees and the circles of people around them, people who had been stationed in various U.S. installations around the world, the court—everyone. But Amanda had a way to tell? “How?”
“When I was in the compound, I bagged a coffee cup with his prints on it,” Amanda said. “I have no doubt that man drinking from that cup was the real Big Fish.”
Hope sparked in Kate and she sat straight up, swung her legs over the cot’s edge and planted her feet firmly on the floor. “That’s right, you did.” This could be their break. “Well, for God’s sake run it on the prisoner to see if we’ve got a match.”
“I’m on it. Will get back to you on that ASAP. I need to prime the test.”
The DNA test itself would take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to complete. But results came up in layers. If any layer didn’t match, they’d know right away the creep wasn’t Kunz. Actually, far sooner than they’d know if the DNA matched perfectly.
Kate tapped her fingers against her forehead. The blood flow from her head wound must be slowing down; her panties were still dry against her fingertips. Priming the test would take a few minutes now. Amanda had to call up the honchos in the need-to-know loop and get them patched in on the secure call: their boss, Colonel Drake; her boss, General Shaw, the OSI Commander at the Pentagon; and likely his boss, Secretary of Defense Reynolds.
S.A.S.S. operatives were active-duty Air Force but the unit functioned outside it. Carrying presidential-endorsed autonomy, S.A.S.S. answered directly to the Secretary of Defense. Reynolds had assigned General Shaw as a liaison and point of immediate contact as a courtesy to Colonel Drake. Occasionally she wanted a sounding board that didn’t carry the burden of a heavily scheduled, full-fledge secretary.
An intuitive sense of knowing crept through Kate and she swallowed hard. She couldn’t explain it, but she innately knew it to be the ultimate truth.
The decision next made by her superior officers would, by mission’s end, determine her fate.
Determine if she lived or died.
Chapter Three
Being the only woman at the small outpost had perks. Kate had a private tent. While waiting for Amanda to get back in touch, Kate lay stretched out on her cot, half dozing, half listening to the steady drone of wind and sand beating against the canvas. A storm had blown in, and it was a bad one.
“Captain Kane?”
Following the man’s voice, Kate turned to look toward the tent opening. She didn’t bother cursing, though she thought about it. Her backside was dragging. She needed rest. “Yes?”
“Could you step out here, please?” He’d elevated his voice to be heard over the racket Mother Nature had stirred up.
“We’re in the middle of a sandstorm,” she said, stating the obvious. Step out? The guy had to be joking.
Fearing he wasn’t, which meant he had to be a lunatic, she snagged her fatigue pants from the floor beside the cot, shoved her legs into them and tugged them up over her hips. “I’m decent. Come on in.” She tucked in the hem of her drab-green T-shirt and quickly fastened the button at her waist.
“Captain!” He cranked up the volume and it had nothing to do with the noise outside; he was ticked. “Fall out.”
Only an idiot would miss the authority sharpening his tone. It startled her as much as his insistence to come outside. Whoever this guy was, he well better outrank her, shouting at her like an idiot. If he didn’t, by the time she got through ripping him a new backside for his lack of respect, he’d well wish he did.
She shoved back the tent flap. “What is wrong with you?”
“Sir,” he added. Flying sand beat at his short black hair and the side of his angular face. His eyebrows knit in a skin-creasing frown. “And absolutely nothing is wrong with me, Captain. I need to speak with you.”
Oh, spit. “Out here?” Okay, so he was a major and she’d have to eat the butt chewing clogging her throat. But why stand out in the sandstorm to hear what he had to say? Sand swirled all around them like a thick cloud of choking dust, niggling at her throat, torturing her eyes. It could only be worse for him. Her back was to the wind. She cupped her hand to protect her eyes.
“I don’t go into women’s tents,” he said, blunt and un-apologetic. “Personal policy.”
Ah, self-preservation. Making himself invulnerable to claims he’d compromised any female subordinates. Definitely a cover-your-back policy. Having mixed emotions about that, Kate stepped further outside, and stiffened against the pelting sand, her hands dangling at her sides. Finally able to, she read the name tag sewn just above his left pocket. Forester. Douglas’s highly decorated, hard-nosed career commander.
“Major Nathan G. Forester, Captain. Outpost commander.”
“Captain Katherine Kane, sir.” She extended a hand, but he didn’t shake it. She waited a moment, but when it became clear he had no intention of touching her, she withdrew it. “Feel free to call me Kate.”
He stretched his lips in a semblance of a smile. “A couple things to discuss with you.”
She waited.
“First, keep your clothes on.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t bother denying it.” He looked more disappointed than ticked, and he was plenty ticked. “And don’t ever again strut around my post in a towel.”
“I do not strut, Commander, and I was being considerate.” She sniffed. “There’s only one shower and there was a line six-deep waiting to use it.”
“I don’t care what the circumstances were, Kane. Spend the fifteen seconds to throw on your clothes. Got it?”
She nodded. “Is that it?”
“Sir,” he reminded her again. “I’ll let you know when you’re dismissed. Until then plant yourself right where you’re standing.”
She held her tongue and waited. It’d been far too long a day for this nonsense—and she’d address this rioting junkyard dog as sir the very moment the pit froze over and C-4 stopped exploding.
“General Shaw’s put me on alert and ordered me to assist you here.”
Oh, great. Fabulous. He’d slow her down and have her going nuts within an hour. And that innate feeling she’d had about her fate? She might as well put a bullet in her head right now. “I guess I’d better brief you then.”
“It isn’t necessary.” He shoved a hand into his pants pocket. It was fisted.
He clearly wasn’t happy about this order to assist her, either. “I’m afraid it is necessary, Major.”
“Your commander is Colonel Sally Drake, action officer and commander of S.A.S.S., correct?”
He’d already griped about the shower non-strut to Colonel Drake. Even greater. More fabulous. Kate slumped. Maybe with a little luck, she’d get a chance to shoot him. “That is correct.”
“Then we’re covered, Captain Kane.” He changed topics without so much as a pause. “My men are disciplined. They conduct themselves with integrity and their focus needs to stay right where it is—on their mission. Your parading through the post more naked than dressed doesn’t do a...”
Kate tuned him out. After the day she’d had, she had one nerve left. It was raw and ragged, and Forester was strumming it. Worse, he was gorgeous, and looking at him—even when he stood ranting—stirred her in a way she didn’t want to be stirred by any man. For the first time since her split with Alan DeVane, a very talented surgeon who’d have to be neutered to be faithful, her attention had been snagged and held. Alan had been her one and only serious relationship ever, and it had been a mistake. Maybe she just needed a few more mistakes to numb her to reacting to men like this one.
She gave him a slow second look. No, that wouldn’t help. Forester had too much going for him: great build, midnight-black hair, gorgeous blue eyes and a hard face that had known a lot of laughter and sorrow. He intrigued her. Serious shame he shattered the package’s appeal by having the temperament of a pig. Speaking strictly from a hormonal sense—a woman alone for more than a year couldn’t help but often speak strictly from a hormonal sense—Kate could overlook his oinker attitude but she couldn’t overlook the wedding band on his left finger. That kept rein on her hormones as nothing else could.
Gaining the appropriate distance, she turned her tone stiff and formal. “I appreciate your concern and your assistance.”
He frowned at her, clearly ticked and wanting her to say something, anything, to give him just cause to unload more on her. He wiped at his eyes with a forefinger, then flicked the sand onto the ground. “Conditions here are also tough enough without having half the brass in Washington crawling up my back and down my throat. Next time you want help from me, Kane, leave your clout at home and just ask.”
“I did not pull an end run around you, Major. I was satellite linked during the entire phase of my operation.”
“In the future, link yourself to me. This is my operation and it’s critical. You come in here and screw things up, and you’re going to get a lot of good people killed. My people. If that happens, I’ll shoot you myself.”
With her pride pricked, Kate glared up at him, grains of sand stinging her ankles and knees through her pants. “I’m not a rookie, Major, and I’m very good at my job.”
“Glad to hear it.” He shifted on his feet, turning his back to the brunt of the blowing sand. “Colonel Drake asked me to relay that the DNA on the prisoner didn’t match. He’s a double.” A hand at his brow protecting his eyes, Forester scanned behind him, then looked back at her. “I take it you know what that means.”
“Unfortunately, I do.” It meant Kunz was on the loose, which had to be sending shock waves throughout the system. Frustrated and frightened, Kate accepted that S.A.S.S. had already once believed they’d killed the man only to have him resurface. Then until today, they’d believed he was alive but neutralized, serving a life sentence in Leavenworth. Now, they discover the truth. Thomas Kunz was alive and well and running loose somewhere on the planet.
How many doubles did he have, anyway? And had it been one of them she’d encountered earlier while in the grave? Or was that Kunz the real McCoy? The voice seemed to match, but what if that too, had been altered? It wouldn’t have to be perfect to fool the human ear. With Kunz’s surgical and medical teams, S.A.S.S. was learning the hard way that very little remained impossible for him.
And that news might just scare her most of all.
“Your operation has been upgraded to a Code Two,” Forester said, certain he’d left her to her thoughts long enough.
Kate nodded. A Code Two was one step out of a full-scale attack. A Code Two mission authorized operatives to function outside normal Homeland Security perimeters and channels. Restrictions imposed were minimal, and the operatives gained a lot of procedural latitude.
“Why?”
“Excuse me?” She looked up at Forester.
“What happened to warrant the upgrade?” The heat had left his tone and his eyes no longer sparked anger. Worry had replaced it.
“Have they put you inside the need-to-know loop?”
He nodded. “Don’t worry, Captain. My security clearance is higher than yours.”
Kate doubted it, but Colonel Drake had brought him into their circle, so Kate could tell him as much as she thought he needed to know. “Can we talk inside? My ankles are pitted.”
He looked down at swirl of sand. “No, but we will talk in my office at the command post. Grab a jacket and boots or the rest of you will be pitted, too. And what happened to your face? It looks like raw meat.”
Surely he wasn’t just now noticing the cuts, scrapes and bruises. Then again, it’s hard to see what’s in front of you when you’re looking at everything through an angry red haze. “Kissing rocks.”
