The Sparks Broker, page 7
part #2 of S.A.S.S. Series
Forester nodded. “The Navy intercepted and ran a topical search on three vessels, but they didn’t find any contraband. Nothing illegal.”
“Then there has to be another explanation.” The ships couldn’t be carrying weapons. If they hadn’t put into port, and the Navy hadn’t observed the vessels off-loading cargo onto another ship, where could it have gone?
“I’m not ready to consider that this isn’t the explanation. Neither is Douglas,” Forester said. “The vessels the Navy searched rode low in the water, obviously weighted down. Nothing illegal was found on the topical. Yet when they reached port and underwent a thorough search, all three of the ships were riding high, not low, in the water.”
“How did the captain explain the difference?”
“He couldn’t.”
“Played dumb?” That, unfortunately, often worked. Can’t get blood out of a stone.
“The naval inspectors weren’t sure he was playing.”
“Someone had to have a hypothesis.”
“They had no idea.” Forester shrugged. “The Navy didn’t have a 360-degree visual on the ships, but if anything was dumped off, divers didn’t spot it. What we know is that no cargo washed up on the shore.” He rubbed at his nape, pondering again, and his left eye started to flicker. “Douglas felt certain the crews were dumping and later retrieving weapons, anyway. Though he had no idea how they were doing it.”
Kate rolled this all over in her mind, waiting for the puzzle pieces to find their proper slots and fall into place. When they had, huge gaps still riddled the puzzle. “Did any proof surface later? Anything that could explain the oddity?”
“No.” Forester stood and began to pace. He’d apparently thought about this a great deal and that he couldn’t figure out what was happening frustrated him. “No hard evidence of anything we could attribute to any of the ships was located.”
“Then whatever they dumped had to be liquid.” Which raised some pretty scary possibilities. Some chemicals never break down. The water would be contaminated, killing anything in it and they could get into the saline conversion systems that refined the water to make it potable. Drinking water would be a thing of the past; they’d have to import it.
“I thought of that, too,” Forester said. “But we ran water samples and they came back normal.”
Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Then Douglas had to be right—unless they released air.” Which could also be laced with deadly contaminants.
“Air samples were clean, too.” Forester paused near the center tent pole and looked back at her over his shoulder. “Douglas was monitoring another low-riding boat when he disappeared, Kate. I authorized it and signed the order.”
“Oh, boy.” She could’ve condemned him, but from the look in the major’s eyes, he was slamming himself more than enough for both of them. “Why?”
“Because of this classified information he had, Douglas considered it essential to the security of our troops. We have 150,000 men and women in theater, Kate. How could I refuse to authorize it?”
She stared at him, long and hard. “You couldn’t.”
He swallowed hard. “What if GRID does have him? After all you’ve told me about what they do, this doubling business...” He stopped and shook, before stuffing a tightly clenched fist into his pants pocket. “What have I done to him?”
Kate searched for the right words, but concluded there weren’t any. It was the burden of every senior officer who sends those under his command into harm’s way. Responsibility. Fear for their safety. Guilt. More guilt. And still more.
Such a burden of an emotion, guilt. It doesn’t care where it hangs its hat, it’ll settle on anyone’s head that isn’t covered.
“Commander, look—”
“Nathan,” he said softly. “Call me Nathan.”
“Okay, Nathan.” She walked over, clasped a reassuring hand to his biceps. “You did your job. Douglas is in a dangerous profession by choice. He isn’t a lamb you led blindly to slaughter. You need to remember that—and to believe that we’ll find him.”
“But when we do, will it be him or one of GRID’s doubles?” Forester’s frustration escalated. “I mean, Kunz was in Leavenworth. Arrested, tried and convicted, and it wasn’t even him. How will we know Douglas is Douglas?”
Kate scanned for a way. “We’ll use the bag of sand. Only Douglas would know he sent me the bag of sand.”
“Unless he tells them.”
Drug and mind manipulation therapy. He could tell them. “Remember the flirting?”
Forester frowned.
“We can use that. We can act as if Douglas and I have a thing. If he goes along with it, we know he’s not Douglas. If he doesn’t, then we’ll know he’s himself.”
“Seems rather simplistic.”
“Who cares?” she said with a huff. “Will it be effective? That’s all that matters.”
Forester looked at her hard, as if he’d only now noticed she wasn’t just a woman some man—Douglas—might desire but also a soldier. “It might.”
She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or insulted, so she settled for neither. “Okay, then.”
Forester nodded. “Kate,” he started, looking as if the words he was about to say choked him. “I haven’t been easy on you. But I want you to know I appreciate your help.”
The words had cost him. Nathan Forester was a proud man. But he was also practical and realistic, and Kate was grateful for it. “You’re welcome, Nathan. We’ll visit the site—”
Gunfire erupted, spraying the tent.
Chapter Five
Nathan shoved Kate down to the sandy floor, shielding her with his body.
With adrenaline gushing through her veins, Kate struggled against his weight, her hip grinding into the gritty dirt, stretching to grab the edge of the cot. A partial sheet of plywood was wedged behind it, blocking a hole blown it in from the previous attack. If she could snag it, it would give them a little more protection...
Gunfire erupted constantly: sand sprayed, fragments exploded. Dangerously close. Automatic weapon. Submachine gun.
“Soviet?” Nathan rendered his opinion on the make.
“No.” She involuntarily jerked. “German.” The timing was a dead giveaway.
The gunman swept a line of fire two feet in front of them. Sand scattered, stinging her wounded face, her arms, even her legs through her clothes. Nathan took the brunt of it and the sting had every muscle in his body tight, his face contorting.
Stretching, trying again, she let out a deep groan and her fingers locked on to the green Army blanket. She jerked with all her might.
The blanket went lax.
The cot tumbled over them.
The plywood fell, slapping Nathan across the back. His breath swooshed out; Kate felt it in her chest.
Bullets continued to rip through the width of the tent, loud and piercing, showering sand, bursting everything in sight. The center pole took a direct hit. Wooden splinters flew like targeted arrows and the top of the pole collapsed.
The tent caved in.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Nathan rolled off her and motioned to the hole in the canvas the plywood had been blocking. “This way.”
She hand-signaled Nathan to crawl on his belly. Even on his haunches he was too tall for the collapsed tent; he’d be an easy target. Down on her haunches, using the plywood as a shield to protect them both, she inched toward the hole. The gunfire continued to storm from behind them.
At the tent’s edge, Kate snagged Nathan’s gun, darted a quick glance outside into the darkness. Convinced by the shots a single gunman was launching this attack, she squinted, strained, but trying to see through the wind-driven sand was an exercise in futility. Her stomach flipped, and so did her attitude. Visuals sucked, and that was bad—and good. It would be equally hard for the gunman to spot them. She signaled for Nathan to trail her.
He inched to a duffel bag, pulled out a second gun and followed her lead.
The firing suddenly stopped.
“Gone?” Nathan whispered.
Kate shook her head. The jerk’s gun had jammed or he was reloading.
Seizing the opportunity, she scanned the immediate vicinity. She dipped the nose of her gun, signaling Nathan to go left. When he nodded, she headed to the right. Her blood thrummed in her temples as sweat poured down her face, between her breasts, soaking the back of her shirt. The bullet’s spray pattern had been right to left. The gunman had to be to her right.
Another rat-a-tat spray of bullets fired.
So much for the jam theory. The jerk was active again, continuing to drop a deluge of bullets on the tent. Whoever this was, he wanted to make sure she and Forester were dead.
The rapid-fire bullets sounded like a series of taps. It couldn’t compete with the howl of the wind or the noise of the sand beating against everything in sight. That howl had her ears ringing so loudly that if Nathan was calling her, she wouldn’t hear him.
Kate blew out three puffed breaths to steady herself, hugged the canvas to her back and stretched tall, then she moved. The gunman was aiming low, assuming they’d be belly-crawling in the dirt. Upright, at worse, she’d end up with a blown-out ankle or shin wound. At best, he’d miss.
She turned a corner and nearly bumped noses with Nathan. The barrel of a gun shoved deep into her stomach. “Don’t shoot!”
Nathan jumped, swerved the nose of the gun away from her. “Jesus, Kate.”
Realizing how close she’d come to getting killed, she started to shake and tried hard to refocus. “See anything?”
“Sand.”
“Same here.” She grimaced, turning her attention to the gunfire. “Timing’s changed.”
“He’s shooting shorter.”
“Out in front of the tent,” she stated. Now why would he deliberately drop good ordnance into the sand?
The gunfire abruptly stopped.
Kate caught a glimpse of something red and charged after it. It moved through the blinding sand haphazardly, but she kept a fix on it from one end of the outpost to the other, never losing sight of it.
It’s a trap. It’s a trap. He’s leading you out into it, Kate. Stop!
She pulled to a halt near the showers, taking cover more from the sand than the gunman. Sliding behind the drab-green stall wall, she dropped to her haunches. The rippled fiberglass had been worn nearly smooth by the sandstorm. Letting her forehead rest against it, she caught her breath. The blowing sand had made it almost impossible to breathe during the run, and her lungs were in full protest.
Forester caught up to her and dropped beside her, his chest heaving, his face raw and red from the grating sand. “Did you lose him?”
“It was a trap.” Still trying to regain her breath, she looked over at him. “He was leading me out of the outpost.”
“What warned you it was a trap?”
She took in a gulp of air, let it out and felt their breaths mingle. “How many times have you seen anyone wearing red here?”
He thought about it, then blinked hard. “It was a trap.”
She nodded. “GRID members are a mixed bag of nationalities. Kunz doesn’t want patriotism or religion interfering. He wants loyalty only to him and money. The shooter couldn’t be local.” Locals wore only black or white. That had clued Kate to her general location the first day here. “He didn’t know red would flag him as an outsider.”
“Could’ve been a deliberate ploy,” Forester said as he stepped over her, turned on a shower, and rinsed off the sand caked on his face. The red in his skin deepened, hot and wind-burned and sand-scrubbed. “Possibly a local insurgent who wanted us to think he was an outsider.”
“Who knew which was your tent? Attacked only it?” Kate shook her head at him. “That’s not working for me.”
He turned grim, slapped the shower tap and shut off the water. “GRID.”
“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “But something’s still weird about it, Nathan.”
He hiked up his eyebrows, asking without words. “Remember when he shortened his aim?” Nathan nodded and she went on. “He laid down at least fifty rounds in the sand in front of the tent. Why would he do that? Just waste bullets?”
Nathan’s left eye twitched. “I don’t know.”
“Me, either.” She stood. “But I think it’s important.”
He stood beside her. “I believe you’re right.”
“But why?”
Nathan tilted his head. “Maybe he didn’t want us dead? Maybe he wanted someone else to think we were dead?”
That possibility shed an entirely different light on the event. And opened doors on new possibilities that definitely needed to be explored.
“Let’s go back, see if we can find anything to help us figure out the details on this.”
“Okay.” Kate turned to follow him.
They walked back toward the tent. About halfway, Kate felt the distinct shift in the wind. The weather was finally calming down.
The tent was totaled. What hadn’t been shot up was sand torn. Taking a look around, Kate verified the spray pattern.
“Where was he firing from?” Whispering, Nathan looked left and then right.
So did Kate. “He was in motion the entire time. The bullet pattern was consistent, but the trajectory constantly altered.” She treated the area as a crime scene and walked the grid anyway, but she wasn’t so foolish as to think she’d find a solid lead to the gunman. Whipped for hours by violent, unrelenting winds, the entire outpost was sheathed in a heavy cloud no vision gear known to man could penetrate. Any leads were as gone as he was, swallowed by the sand.
The hair on her arms ruffled and something important nudged at her. Niggling. Niggling.
Then it hit her full-force. “Nathan?” She stopped and faced him, her head tilted to keep her face out of the wind. While no longer violent, it still pinged sand that stung through her clothes like thousands of tiny needles. “Where are your people?”
Not one soul had responded to the gunfire.
Chapter Six
The sixty men in the outpost under Nathan’s command were safe.
In the mess tent, they ate. In the recreation tent, they read, teamed up and played cards, waiting for the sandstorm to end so they could resume their search of the caves for the weapons cache. In the command post, they rushed about, conversing via satellite link, radio and field phones with Search and Rescue, trying to get more information on Douglas.
There wasn’t any.
So far, there’d been no sign of him anywhere, Riley reported. “Search and Rescue is fighting the storm, too, sir.”
“But they’re flying over water,” Nathan rumbled.
“Yes, sir,” Riley said, thumbing his clipboard. “The sand isn’t a problem so long as they’re away from the shoreline, but the wind is kicking their backsides.”
Nathan seemed more, not less, irritated by Riley’s remark, so Kate interceded to take the heat off the owl-eyed clerk. “By regulation standards, the choppers should be grounded until the weather clears.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s true, sir.” Riley nodded at Nathan. “The pilots were ordered to return to base. The choppers were grounded. But the pilots all claimed they had communications malfunctions. The orders didn’t get to them.” Appreciation funneled through Kate. She’d done the same thing herself, more than once. “They don’t want to abandon one of their own.”
Nathan swung a level gaze on her. “They don’t want to discover later that he was under their noses and had died because they’d given up on him.”
“That, too,” Kate agreed. She certainly understood the complex emotions that went into making the call to quit. Too many times, she’d dealt with that demon in similar situations. Regret, like guilt, was a merciless wretch.
Riley frowned at Nathan. “Sir, do you think they have a chance of finding him?”
Nathan hesitated. “I’m sure they’ll do everything they can.”
Innately, Kate knew that Search and Rescue didn’t have a prayer of finding Douglas. Not until Thomas Kunz decided he wanted Douglas found and he had his GRID minions release him. But Riley looked so worried. She couldn’t violate security to share her near certainty on what had happened to Douglas, which meant she couldn’t reveal her honest opinion on this. Yet she didn’t want to lie to Riley.
“They might get lucky,” Nathan said, sparing her.
She shot him a grateful look. “Riley, did you hear gunfire a few minutes ago?”
Surprise widened his eyes. “There was gunfire in the outpost a few minutes ago?”
“Never mind.” Kate looked to Nathan, who silently shared her concern.
That was it then. No one at the outpost had heard the gunfire or seen anyone wearing a red scarf in the outpost.
Nathan turned for his cubicle. “Captain Kane.” He nodded toward his office. “Please.”
Kate followed him.
He sat behind his desk and motioned for her to take the visitor’s chair. When she sat, he leaned forward and dropped his voice. “I can’t believe that in a group of sixty men not one heard a submachine gun fire off a couple clips.”
“I believe them, Nathan.” Kate leaned toward him, held her voice just above a whisper. “We’ve been inside, out of the storm, a full fifteen minutes, and my ears are still roaring. Out there, I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face. Even inside the tent and looking out, vision was impaired just beyond the edge of the tent. The gunfire sounded like light hammer taps.”
“But a perimeter guard, someone, should have seen something.”
“They’re inside, out of the storm.”
“So you don’t think it was an inside job?”
“No, I don’t. Your men would know better than to wear red.”
“Okay.” Nathan weighed all they’d been told and a strange look crossed his face. “Riley,” he shouted loud enough for Riley to hear him from his desk.
