Special Forces: The Spy

Which would be ironic. That road would take them right past the unmarked turnoff to the Medusas’ secret facility, where her teammates were gathering for today’s training.

A sense of unreality washed over her. Surely, she was not being kidnapped by Iranian terrorists. This had to be a bad dream. It couldn’t be happening to her. Was that shock lowering its protective fog over her brain? It felt just the way her instructors had described it. Everything was happening at a distance. Muted. Not really touching her.

One of the men admonished the driver in Farsi, but she didn’t understand the command. In a second, she felt the vehicle slow down to a more sedate speed. Piper frowned. What on earth did Iranians want with her? She’d never had anything to do with that part of the world before—had never served or even traveled there and had no particular expertise on the region beyond reading her daily intelligence brief. What was going on here? She had to be missing something critical—

Something heavy smashed painfully into the back of her head, and she toppled forward as everything went dark.

Chapter 2

Zane Cosworth swore silently, wincing involuntarily as the terrorist calling himself Yousef clocked the woman prisoner on the back of the head with the butt of his AK-47. “Don’t kill her,” he snapped at the guy, the most volatile of the bunch.

“Shut up, Amir. I didn’t like how she was looking at me,” Yousef snarled back.

An urge to return the favor and clock the bastard upside the head made his hands twitch. Zane balled them into fists at his sides.

Amir was the name he’d used to infiltrate these SOBs’ sleeper cell. Not that they were sleeping after this morning’s little stunt.

They were a frustrating bunch, closemouthed and stingy with information for him, the new guy on the team. He was the only actual American among them, and he was convinced it was the sole reason he’d been brought on board. They called upon him to interact with other Americans and used him as their errand boy in any public situation where their accents might draw attention.

But that also meant he was completely expendable if he offended these guys or got in their way of whatever the hell their actual end goal was.

The team’s leader, Mahmoud, was definitely taking instructions from someone who communicated via encrypted cell phone, or occasionally via a Dark Web site that was even more heavily encrypted.

Rolling his eyes at Yousef, Zane leaned over the woman, ostensibly to check her pulse. He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand while surreptitiously slipping the ring off her fourth finger with his other hand and palming the piece. No way in hell could he let his compatriots discover that this woman was a West Pointer. If he was gauging Mahmoud correctly, the guy would kill her instantly.

Mahmoud said practically nothing about his personal beliefs, but he made no secret of despising Americans, particularly military members.

Zane slipped the ring into his pocket. He was seriously grateful that chance had thrown a female soldier in his path this morning. What she was doing at some elementary school in a small town in southern Louisiana, nowhere near an active military base, he had no idea. Call it a small act of God that had gone his way.

Not that he was a whole lot happier about throwing a soldier to the lions than he would be about doing it to some random civilian woman.

But he’d been forced to make the best of an impossible situation.

Of the four women cowering on the floor in the school’s front office, she’d looked to be by far the youngest and fittest of the bunch. Naming her as the target had been the least awful choice under the circumstances. Which wasn’t saying much.

Honestly, he’d feared that if he told the others he didn’t see their target in the office, where she normally worked as an assistant principal, they would start shooting kids to get the woman to reveal herself.

Mahmoud was a cagey bastard and had barely shared any information with any of his men about this fiasco. He’d briefed the cell members only about an anonymous woman they were supposed to find and kidnap.

Zane hadn’t thought it was enough detail to pass on to his superiors. He’d assumed Mahmoud and his boys would spend days or weeks finding the target, doing surveillance on her, picking the perfect spot to abduct her and then launching an operation to kidnap the woman.

Zane thought he had plenty of time to find out who the woman was, slip away from the other men and send a message to his superiors about this little operation. It galled him to have been outmaneuvered by a freaking terrorist like this.

Mahmoud also hadn’t given the team any indication whatsoever that today would be the actual snatch.

Zane had been nearly as shocked as the teachers and kids of Southdown Elementary School when they’d piled out of the van for real, armed with actual weapons and ammunition.

Mahmoud had passed around a picture and name of the target, Persephone Black—whoever the hell she was—in the van as they turned into the school parking lot. Zane hadn’t even had time to send an emergency text to his handlers to let them know who the target was and that an attack was imminent before Mahmoud had ordered them out of the van and barged into a flipping elementary school, armed to kill.

The picture itself had been informative. It was fuzzy and taken from a distance. The woman had been with a man on a crowded street that looked like some place in Europe. She was looking over her shoulder at something, and the shot of her face had been snapped in that moment. For all the world, it looked like a surveillance photo taken by someone following the couple.

Did that mean Mahmoud and his men were in the US on behalf of some foreign government with an intelligence service of its own? Iran was the obvious candidate, given that they sounded like native Farsi speakers.

Regardless, they were some sort of black-ops team, and they’d proved this morning that they were not averse to using violence.

As soon as he’d heard that the real target was out sick, he’d known he had a big problem. Mahmoud and his boys wouldn’t hesitate to shoot up a school full of little kids in retaliation for their victim being absent.

He felt really bad for this woman he’d inaccurately fingered as the target. He glanced down at her, crumpled on the floor of the van at his feet, and silently vowed to make it up to her somehow.

One thing Zane hated worse than just about anything else was being forced into a no-win choice. And God knew he’d faced one of those already today. He could either go along with assaulting a school, snatching a woman and scaring the hell out of a bunch of kids...or he could blow his cover, and throw away months’ worth of work gaining Mahmoud’s trust and worming his way inside what Zane’s superiors believed to be a dangerous and violent sleeper cell.

He’d very nearly gone ahead and turned his weapon on his coconspirators to take them out this morning. The one thing that had stopped him was being in an elementary school. The possibility of an innocent child being hit in the cross fire was the only reason any of these bastards were still alive.

If he just knew who they were, he would end this farce right now.

He did know one thing about them. They would never say anything under interrogation. They were all fanatic enough to die before giving up even their names.

He’d lived and worked with Mahmoud and his fellow psychopaths for months, and he still didn’t have any idea who they worked for or what their ultimate goal was. That was how closemouthed these men were.

Normally, Zane would pull the plug on an undercover op like this immediately and get the civilian victim out. Hell, he was on the verge of doing that very thing right now.

The only thing stopping him was that ring in his pocket. If the kidnapped woman was a West Pointer, maybe he could let this thing play out just a bit more—a few minutes or a few hours—and get his answers before he called in the big guns to take these jerks down.

Thing was, if Mahmoud and company did work for Iran, they would only be replaced by another sleeper cell of trained killers when US authorities took these guys out.

Hence the urgent need to know who they worked for and what their end goal was. He didn’t for a minute believe that kidnapping some woman from an elementary school was the primary reason this cell had infiltrated the United States.

They posed some much-greater national security threat. But what?

Nope, he’d had no choice today. He had to throw this woman he’d never seen before under the bus and maintain his cover a little longer. He hated it, and he would do whatever he had to do to protect her.

Just a little while, he mentally promised her.

The unconscious woman beside him moved faintly and then subsided again. Yousef had hit her way too damned hard if she was still out cold. Zane knew from long experience in the field that if she was unconscious more than a few minutes, she would likely be out for the next couple hours.

Patience, Zane. Now was not the time to make his move to rescue her. He was probably her only chance of survival. But he would get one shot—and no more than one shot—at rescuing her. He had to wait until she was conscious, able to move fast and willing to cooperate with him.

He hoped to God she understood his choice and one day forgave him for it.

Did it make him a dreadful human being that he’d forced her into helping him figure out what these terrorists were up to? That he’d potentially sacrificed this woman’s emotional well-being, and maybe her life, to save many more lives down the road?

Hell, he was already a dreadful human being. As an undercover agent, he deceived people and lied for a living. He’d even done criminal acts in the name of keeping his covers. He drew the line at hurting or killing innocent victims, although he was skirting dangerously close to that line today. Hell, sometimes he wondered if he was even one of the good guys anymore.

He owed this woman huge. When the time was right, he silently promised her he would find a way to save her from these men.

But how...and when...he had no idea.

Scowling, he leaned back beside her slumped body. He propped an elbow casually on his upraised knee. “Anyone following us?” he asked Bijan, the youngest of the crew, who crouched at the dirty rear window of the van.

“No. We’re clear,” the kid answered.

Zane had to give these guys credit. They’d run the grab-and-go to perfection, managing their time on scene to the second and getting away moments before the first police car arrived. His certainty that they were military trained—more specifically, Special Forces trained—intensified.

His concern for the woman intensified, as well. Men like this wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if and when they figured out they had grabbed the wrong person.

He studied her face. She was pretty. Her hair was dark blond and her skin was smooth and slightly olive complexioned. The combination was unusual and striking. Her legs were lean in her blue jeans, and her shirt was currently twisted tight against some nice curves. Her fingers were long and slender with short, cracked fingernails.

Those fingernails surprised him. She looked put together enough to be the kind of woman to always have a perfect manicure. What did she do to beat up her hands like that?

“Pull over at the next gas station,” Mahmoud, the team leader, ordered Hassan, the driver.

It took a few minutes, but Zane felt the van decelerate. They pulled around to the side of a tiny rural gas station advertising with a hand-painted sign that it also sold beer, fishing bait and, more alarmingly, gator bait.

After a quick check to verify that the gas station had no surveillance cameras, Mahmoud and Yousef piled outside. Zane followed more slowly. The other men were already peeling off temporary decals on the side of the vehicle announcing it to be an air-conditioning service van. Meanwhile, Bijan used a screwdriver to change the rear license plate. When had these guys set up this van as a slick getaway vehicle?

Alarm slammed through him. Had they done it before he’d joined the team? Or had they done it behind his back?

Odds were they’d done it recently. Which was freaking scary. It meant they still didn’t trust him.

Which also meant that not only was his life in mortal danger, but the woman’s, as well.

The underlying tension that always hummed in his gut when he was undercover ratcheted up violently. He didn’t like this. Not one bit. Was he a prisoner in this van, too? How fine a tightrope was he walking with Mahmoud and his men? He’d been useful to them as long as they were trying to keep a low profile and not be noticed by the locals. But if they’d completed their mission, these men would go to ground or flee the country and not need his services any longer.

His intuition screamed that he was blown. That it was time to bug out.

Normally, he never went against his gut feelings. Over and over through the years, his gut had proved to be right. And right now, it was telling him in no uncertain terms to abandon this operation immediately. The feds had plenty of ammunition to arrest these men and put them away for a very long time after this morning’s stunt in the elementary school.

The authorities might never figure out what Mahmoud’s primary goal had been, but at least this particular terror cell would be off the street.

However, the woman changed everything. Zane couldn’t possibly bail out now. Not as long as these men held an innocent woman captive. An innocent women he had put into these violent men’s hands.

He mentally swore. He mustn’t do anything to arouse these guys’ suspicions. The danger of staying in this undercover assignment drove home hard, a punch in the gut that left him gasping.

Too tense to be still one more second, Zane walked around behind the van, pretending to stretch his legs. “Can I help with the signs?” he asked casually.

Mahmoud wadded up the last of the adhesive vinyl and tossed it in a trash can. He shoved a cigarette lighter down into the barrel, and a thin stream of smoke commenced rising from its contents. “No. We’re finished. As soon as Osted gets out of the bathroom, we’ll go.”

Zane nodded slowly, trying to look impressed. “You guys are good. I’m grateful you let me learn from you, almuelim alhakim.” He dropped in the Arabic phrase meaning “wise teacher” to gauge Mahmoud’s reaction.

The guy nodded shortly and looked vaguely less irascible than usual, acknowledging the compliment.

Zane guessed they were assets of VAJA—the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. But they never talked politics, not even in the most general of terms. They talked about European soccer and the weather for the most part. And such a degree of operational discipline scared the living hell out of him.

He strolled to the corner of the cinder-block building and, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, surreptitiously dropped the woman’s class ring on the ground. There. One piece of evidence showing her to be a soldier erased. Now he just had to make sure she didn’t have some other form of ID on her—dog tags, or maybe a wallet with a military ID in it.

For that matter, he needed to get rid of any identification she had on her. He had to keep up the ruse of her being Persephone Black for as long as he possibly could. Until both he and the woman could escape. Everything depended on it.

Including his life. And hers.

* * *

Tessa Wilkes eyed her boss cautiously. Major Gunnar Torsten was not a happy camper this morning. He barked, “Still no answer on Piper’s phone?”

“No, sir,” Rebel McQueen replied from her post at the ops center’s communications panel. “I pinged her phone’s locator function, and it puts her in Houma.” Which was the nearest actual town to their secret training facility.

“Where in Houma?” Torsten demanded.

“Um, at an elementary school.”

“What in the hell is she doing there?” he snapped.

Rebel didn’t answer and instead threw Tessa a distressed look. She felt Rebel’s pain. Torsten was usually a stern guy and all business, but this morning he really had a burr up his butt. Catching the silent plea for help, Tessa sighed and spoke up. “Do you want me to go fetch her, sir?”

“No! But I damned well want to know why one of my highly trained, supposedly responsible operatives has gone AWOL.”

Rebel spoke from her console again, muttering, “That’s odd.”

Everyone looked at her. She glanced up and started. “Oh. Um, I just pinged her backup locator. The one in her class ring from West Point. It’s not in Houma.”

“It had better be headed this way at a high rate of speed,” Torsten ground out.

Man, the boss had seriously woken up on the wrong side of the bed today. Not that he was ever tolerant of screwups. He was fond of saying that seconds were the difference between life and death. He wasn’t wrong, of course.

Rebel reported, “Her secondary locator is moving away from us on Bayou Black Road, heading northwest. It’s about fifteen miles west of here.”

Tessa, the first member of their new Medusa team and more at ease with Torsten than Rebel, leaned forward. “Something’s wrong. Piper would have called one of us if she had a problem and couldn’t get here on time. And she would never go AWOL.”

Torsten huffed in irritation. “We can’t wait any longer. Our Vietnamese instructors are only here for a few days, and I need you to learn as much as you can while you have access to them. Fall out, ladies.”

Rebel and Tessa stood, trading worried glances with one another. It was supremely unlike Piper to blow off required training, and even more unlike her not to check in with someone. A note of worry started to vibrate low in Tessa’s gut.

The major led the way to the reinforced steel door disguised to look like weathered wood siding, unsealing it and stepping out into the morning’s steamy heat. Tessa fell into step beside Major Torsten.

She said soberly, “Sir, I’m worried something has happened to Piper. You taught us to listen to our intuitions, and mine says she’s in some sort of trouble. I think one of us should go look for her.”

He frowned, but at least he didn’t rip her head off. “I’ll take your intuition under advisement. If Piper doesn’t show up in the next hour or so, I’ll go looking for her myself.”

Yikes. Piper was in a heap of trouble.

Chapter 3

Piper regained consciousness slowly. Her head throbbed painfully, and it didn’t help matters that every time the van hit a bump in the road, the metal floor bounced underneath her temple, whacking her head again.

Her lips were dry, and her bladder was full, which meant she’d been out for a while. A couple hours, possibly. Dang it! They could’ve changed directions a dozen times without her knowing. She had no way of knowing where she was now!

A sense of disorientation swirled around her. As if she was completely disconnected from the real world. It was scary as hell, and she had to force herself to lie perfectly still until her breathing settled back down and the panic attack passed.

Questions peppered her mind almost too fast to catalog. Where was she? Who were these guys? What did they want with her? How much danger was she in? Where were they taking her? Would she have a shot at escaping them? Did they plan to kill her? Was this even real?

Cautiously, she cracked her eyes open and saw black pants and black combat boots. It hadn’t been a terrible dream. She really had been kidnapped. The weight of panic landed on her chest again, and she struggled to control her breathing.

She could just lie here pretending to be unconscious...but just then the van hit a big bump and slammed her head hard into the floor.

Ow.

She probably had a concussion already from the blow that had knocked her out. No need to exacerbate the stupid thing. Piper pushed against the floor with both hands, sitting up groggily. At least none of the men stopped her from doing so.

The ski masks had come off, replaced by baseball caps pulled down low and dark sunglasses. Drat. She still wouldn’t be able to identify her kidnappers in a lineup. She felt the weight of their stares upon her and did her best not to freak out and start screaming hysterically.

Whatever this was, whoever they were, she had to keep her wits about her, watch, wait and seize the opportunity to escape when it presented itself. And surely one would. She had to believe she would have a chance to get away, eventually.

Be calm. Breathe. Relax.

She did her level best to settle into the state of loose readiness that Major Torsten stressed over and over was absolutely necessary to peak performance.

At least they hadn’t tied her up. It was a small victory, but she knew from her POW training that those were all a hostage could hope to achieve.

Choking fear bubbled up in her throat unbidden, and she stomped it down hard. She had no time for that. This was a battle of wits and wills, and she needed all of hers. In the meantime, maybe she could figure out who these guys were, why they’d grabbed her and where they were going.

Pitching her voice to be polite and diffident, she asked, “Who are you?” A little rapport with her kidnappers could never hurt.

They stared back at her in stony silence. One of the men was seated beside her, between her and the driver. Which ruled out her making a dive for the steering wheel and maybe putting the van in a ditch.

“Why did you kidnap me?” she added.

Still nothing.

She debated starting up a one-sided conversation with these men to provoke them to talk, but ultimately decided she would be better served acting scared to death and letting them lead the conversation wherever they wanted to.

She craned her head to peer out the front window and saw a ribbon of interstate highway stretching away in front of the van. The sun seemed to be overhead, so she had no means of working out what direction they were going. But it confirmed she’d been unconscious for a while.

She realized her elbow was lightly rubbing the arm of one of the bad guys. Based on his build, she thought it might be Goldeneyes. Subtly, she shifted away from him. If she wasn’t mistaken, she heard him exhale in irritation. What did he have to be irritated about? She wasn’t his freaking girlfriend. And she wasn’t about to cozy up to some homicidal terrorist.

Except, when they finally stopped at a rest area near a truck stop, that same homicidal terrorist was the one who helped her out of the van and steadied her elbow for a second while blood flow returned to her legs. Yup. Definitely Goldeneyes. He was the tallest and broadest of shoulder of the whole bunch.

He muttered in unaccented English, “Don’t try anything, or my companions will shoot this place up and kill everyone here.” Oddly enough, he sounded almost apologetic when he made his threat. What was the deal with this guy?

He also was the one who guided her over to the ladies’ restroom, parked outside the door and said gruffly, “Two minutes, and then I’m coming in after you.”

She went inside and checked quickly to see if there were any other women in there whom she could ask for help. The place was empty except for her. Damn.

But there was a window on the far end of the long bay of toilet stalls. She eyed it critically. It was small and high, but she might be able to squeeze through it. At least it was worth a try.

She climbed up on the nearest sink to the window and punched her fist through the screen covering it. The actual window was mounted on a hinge that swung out, and she forced it wide-open. It was awkward aiming her arms through the small opening while jumping up, but she managed to land her waist on the sill. Pushing against the outside wall with her hands and kicking her legs, she wriggled through.