by Cindy Dees
Abruptly a spray of sand shot up between her and Brian, peppering her in stinging grains. What was that? She slowed down, surprised.
Brian, ahead of the burst, kept going and pulled away quickly. Drat. She sped up to keep the gap from becoming too big.
Another burst of sand exploded on her right. Startled, she swerved left, almost into the surf. What in the world was that? Some sort of training charge placed in the sand for the SEAL trainees? Maybe they shouldn’t be running through this stretch of the beach. She stopped, frowning.
“Brian!”
He turned around, running backwards, but then ran toward her when he saw her stopped. “What?” he asked shortly. “You’re not wimping out already, are you?”
“Not even,” she retorted. “What are those little explosions in the sand?”
He scowled. “What explosions?”
“There were two of them. Like firecrackers. They made a little pop and blew up a bunch of sand.”
“I don’t hear anything but the ocean and you trying to avoid running.”
“Hey. I was doing fine. I feel good. But if there are land mines or something out here, we shouldn’t be running through them.”
“There aren’t any—”
Another burst of sand exploded right at her feet. This sand was wet and really hurt when it flew up at her.
“See? I told—”
“Dammit.” Brian took a running leap and tackled her with all the force of an NFL linebacker. His arms wrapped around her waist, he twisted in mid-air so they both landed on their sides. What little wind she had was knocked clean out of her. She lay there gasping for several seconds, absorbing the pain in her shoulder and hip. Thank God they’d been on sand when he did that.
“Hey!” she protested. “That hurt!” A wave washed up on the beach, getting her hair wet and salt water in her eyes. She sputtered and struggled to sit up, but Brian forcibly held her down flat.
“Someone’s shooting at you.”
She froze beneath him while terror ripped through her. “What? Who?”
“I have no idea,” he bit out. “Low-crawl out into the water until it’s deep enough to swim. Then head north along the beach. I’ll be beside you. Stay on the ocean side of me and use me for cover.”
And then it hit her. This was a training exercise. That’s why the “sniper” hadn’t struck her. She had to give Brian credit. He’d had her going there, for a minute. She didn’t relish going for a swim in the frigid water, but it was probably slightly less miserable than running for three more miles at a killer pace. It had turned out she was a natural swimmer, and she’d had no trouble meeting all the swim distances and times Brian asked of her.
“Okay, fine. We go for a swim instead. Can I at least take off my shoes?”
“Get your ass out into that water and start swimming.”
She jerked, stung. This grim, furious soldier was totally unlike any Brian she’d seen so far. “All right already.” She dragged herself down the beach on her elbows. The sand clawed at her, making for miserable, inch-by-inch progress. Then another wave came in, offering her a tiny bit of relief from the sand’s friction. She heaved forward another foot. No wonder sea turtles only came ashore to lay eggs. This was the pits!
Another popping noise and a grunt from Brian.
“You okay?” she panted.
“Ricochet hit me. Not serious.”
“You crawled over one of those charges?”
“Sophie…someone is shooting at us. With a gun. I was hit by a bullet.”
This had to be a training scenario. They were on a military base full of Special Forces soldiers. What numbskull would set up shop and starting shooting in this direction randomly? It was a recipe for suicide. Was Brian’s getting “hit” part of the scenario, too? They’d spent the past several days doing a fair bit of first-aid training. “Are you hurt, or do you want me to administer CPR to you out here in the water?”
She sensed his irritation without having to see it. Nonetheless, he answered crisply, “The bullet hit the sand first. Most of its velocity was bled off before it bounced up and tagged me. Besides, the shooter’s using a sound suppressor, so the round’s probably coming in sub-sonic to begin with. I’ll get a bruise, but I don’t think it broke the skin. I’ll let you know when the next wave hits it.”
The next wave? Ahh. Salt water. If there was an open wound, it would sting like fire. The next wave rolled in. “No sucked in breath of macho I-can-take-the-pain. You’re okay, then?” she asked as the icy water lifted her up onto her knees.
“I’m okay. Let’s go. You ought to be able to breast-stroke in this water.”
Her knees banged the bottom and every stroke included digging her fingers into the sand at the bottom of the stroke and pushing off. But in a few seconds, she was fully afloat and actually swimming.
“Head out to sea for a hundred yards or so. Beyond the breakers. Then turn right. And stay beside me,” Brian called over the roar and hiss of the surf.
Sophie did as he directed. Her feet were heavy and awkward in her running shoes, and her T-shirt stuck to her torso, impeding big arm movements. They swam in grim silence for several minutes.
She caught a glimpse of Brian’s face and nearly forgot to hold her breath as she went under water for a stroke. That was fear in his eyes. Pure, unadulterated, terror.
If he was afraid…then that meant… Her brain locked up.
This was the real deal. Someone was trying to kill one or both of them. The thought roared through her brain like an avalanche, annihilating every morsel of reality she’d clung to through this whole bizarre adventure. Who could possibly want to see her die? No one even knew she was here. She hadn’t been allowed to contact even her mother to let the poor woman know where she was.
Her arms and legs grew weary, and the cold was bitter. Shivering violently, she struggled to keep her limbs moving in some sort of productive way.
Was Brian really okay? It would be just like him to be mortally wounded and fail to mention it to her. He and his buddies took being macho to a whole new level far beyond any male she’d ever been around.
She pushed on through her abject fear, the teeth-chattering cold and the dismal realization she’d actually rather be running that four miles than suffering through this. Her arms had long since passed through fatigue to burning, to numb, to now just being so damned heavy she could hardly move them. Her brain was moving like molasses in a freezer. She held on to a single thought. She must keep going. Must not drown. Brian would be so disappointed in her.
But finally, even that thought failed her as the cold overcame all function.
“How much longer?” she gasped. “I’m done in.”
Brian glanced over at her and swore under his breath. “Let’s head in. Just relax, honey, and let the tide carry you.”
So relieved that she felt warm tears tracking down her frozen cheeks, she did as he directed. They drifted in to shore perhaps a hundred feet down the beach from a group of sand-covered SEAL students grunting through calisthenics in soaking wet fatigues and boots.
“Hey Rip!” someone shouted from that direction. “We’re a little busy here. Take your training elsewhere.”
Her feet touched sand, and with enormous relief, she stood up in the chest-deep water. She was never lifting her arms again as long as she lived.
Brian shouted back, “I need a six-man personnel security phalanx around my girl now! This is not an exercise. I’ve got a shooter a half-mile down the beach using a medium caliber, long-range rifle. Get a team down there ASAP and take him alive. I need to know who he’s working for. The shooter’s a probable amateur. Can’t shoot worth a damn.”
The response to his words was impressive. Men scattered in every direction, and in a matter of seconds, six black T-shirted BUDs instructors—all Navy SEALs—were in the water around her and Brian. The BUDs trainees raced down the beach, presumably to cut off the shooter from escaping by sea. Radios and cell phones were at every ear
, and three black SUVs peeled away from the SEAL administration building.
One of the SEALs shouted in her ear over the pounding surf, “We’re going to bring you ashore now. We may move you around a little roughly, but just relax and let us do our job.”
She nodded and shouted back, “Got it.”
A little rough didn’t quite describe it. The SEALs all but picked her up by the elbows and horsed her up the beach, hustling her across the sand at a dead run into the nearest structure, the students’ temporary sleeping quarters. It was crowded with canvas cots and smelled of dirty socks and sweat and salt water. Flinging aside beds and storage trunks, the team raced through the tent. A short pause at the back while a couple men took a look around outside, and then they were on the run again, racing her over to the administration building. At least it had solid walls.
Once inside, they took her directly to an interior office. A naval officer stood up from his desk when she came in. “Miss Giovanni. Have a seat. You’re safe now.” The guy turned to Brian. “Talk,” he ordered. “You’ve made quite a fuss.”
Brian repeated what he’d shouted to the SEALs, albeit in a little more detail, describing when and where the shots were fired and what direction they appeared to have come from.
Sophie was startled when Brian commented, “The weapon might be a bolt-action rifle. The shooter was taking single shots at thirty-second or more intervals. And all three shots were low of the kill zone.”
The commander snorted. “No wonder you said the guy was an amateur. Thirty seconds? And all three shots missed?”
Even Sophie knew thirty seconds was a long time to load a sniper rifle. She could do it in under fifteen, and that included carefully clearing the chamber and making sure the spent cartridge had been properly ejected. Heck, she even knew how to make a correction after the first shot for wind or sight alignment.
Brian pulled out his cell phone. Three guesses who he was calling and the first two didn’t count. Major Hollister was going to have a cow. How had Freddie Sollem found her? For surely nobody else on the planet had cause to kill her. Was the operation to train her compromised? Was Hollister’s own team infiltrated with an informant of some kind?
She wouldn’t want to be on his staff in about thirty seconds.
Brian had a short, murmured conversation with Hollister. He closed his phone and said wryly, “The boss just got a little busy. He’ll call us back in a while with where we go next. Until then, we sit tight here or wherever the SEALs want to put us. Sir, if you need your office back, we can move the subject.”
Herself being the subject in question, of course.
“Stay,” the commander replied, smiling. “She’s a hell of a lot easier on the eye than the folks who usually come in here. Besides, running the schoolhouse is pretty bland after field ops. I’m glad for the break in the routine.”
It was strange after their panicked swim and the frantic race up the beach to then just sit. And sit. Brian had warned her that the vast majority of his work involved crashingly boring surveillance or sitting and waiting. He wasn’t kidding.
Two of the SEALs who’d brought her and Brian here reappeared outside the office door with MP-7 submachine guns at the ready. They passed one to Brian.
She said grimly, “Any guesses as to who that was?”
“Nope.”
She retorted, “Aww, c’mon. Even I know who that had to be.”
“Could be some crazy out to make a statement to the U.S. military. Could be some kid high on speed with his dad’s gun.”
“Or it could be Freddie.”
Brian replied, “Not Freddie directly. He knows better than to risk coming to the United States. And he sure as hell knows not to shoot at a Navy installation crammed to the gills with SEALs. But I wouldn’t bet you a nickel it wasn’t one of Freddie’s flunkies.”
“If Freddie knows I’m here with you guys, getting trained, then does that mean the mission’s off?”
Brian didn’t answer. Didn’t look away from his weapon. But the back of his neck and shoulders went tight. He finally murmured, “Not my call. That will have to be reassessed.”
Cripes. To have gone through the past six weeks for nothing? What an awful thought—
Brian replied to her unspoken thought. “Even if the mission’s scrubbed, you needed this training. Until Sollem’s caught, your life is in extreme danger. Now that he knows we’ve talked to you he has to kill you, come hell or high water.”
He was kidding, right? Except logic said he wasn’t. Freddie had beat her to the punch. She was a marked woman. Great. Just great.
Chapter 10
Brian drove like a man possessed. The armored SUV ate up the miles as he and Sophie put San Diego far, far behind them. They had no guarantees that Sollem’s men weren’t staking out the airports in and around San Diego, so the decision had been made to drive to San Francisco, board a commercial flight using assumed names and head for their next destination. Since Sophie had likely been tracked to California in the first place on a military flight, Hollister had decided not to use another military jet and risk an information leak.
If only Sophie were done with her training! They had one more vital piece left, and he didn’t relish tackling it.
Sophie slept, no doubt exhausted by the excitement of the past few hours. The sniper had gotten away, Stoner and Scottie had hastily packed gear for them and brought it down to the SEAL compound, and Hollister had ordered the two of them to get out of Dodge.
Hollister was up to his eyeballs in alligators, trying to figure out how in the hell Sollem’s man had found Sophie and whether or not they had a leak in the unit. Brian would bet his last dime that nobody on or associated with their team had leaked the information. They were good people, one and all.
Sollem’s man had to have tracked Sophie from Utah to California somehow. Maybe one of Freddie’s people had seen him drag Sophie out of her parking lot. The location had been far from secure. If that was the case—and it seemed the likeliest scenario—the thought of how close a call Sophie’d had with an untimely demise made him sick to his stomach. He’d gotten to Sophie maybe only hours or minutes before Sollem’s henchman.
His cell phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. “Ripper here,” he said quietly, not to wake Sophie.
“It’s Cowboy.” Hollister. “Where are you?”
“Approaching L.A.”
“Will you make it through there before traffic gets bad?”
Brian grunted. “Traffic’s always bad in L.A. We’re ahead of rush hour, but it’ll still be slow.”
“I’ve got seats for you on the 6:00 a.m. flight out of San Francisco to Calgary.”
“Canada?” Brian responded, surprised.
“You said you wanted to take her skiing, right? It hasn’t snowed much in Colorado this year, and I don’t want to take her back to Utah. That’s what the bastard will expect.”
No need to ask who the bastard was. Sollem.
“Banff has forty-eight inches of base and more snow on the way. And they have a couple brutal downhill-racing runs like you asked for. You’ve got a room under the names of Roger and Dawn Jackson.” He added dryly, “I figure it’s not a stretch for the two of you to pose as a married couple.”
Brian didn’t deign to respond to the comment. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to rise to the bait.
Hollister continued, “I’m working on pulling in a team of operatives to help you with bodyguard duties. When I’ve got them nailed down, I’ll let you know. I’m trying to have them in place before you two get to Calgary, but it’ll be close.”
“I can handle her solo. She knows the score and is cooperative.”
“Nevertheless, I want you to have backup.”
Brian laughed. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for the help. But I’ve got it covered until you can get someone into place.”
“What’s your status?” Hollister asked.
“I’m good for now. I’ll drive until we’re close to San Franc
isco and then stop at a motel and grab a few hours’ rest. I’ve got the cash Stoner brought me, so we’re okay on that score for a while.” They ought to be on fifteen grand in greenbacks. It allowed them to avoid credit cards and leaving any kind of traceable trail.
“Have you looked at the identity packages Stoner gave you?”
“Not yet. Are they the Roger and Dawn Jackson legends?”
“Yup. I kept them simple. No need to muck up the situation with a complicated cover story. Sophie’s not experienced enough for that.”
“She’s pretty smart, sir.”
“Thank God. Speaking of which…” Hollister hesitated.
Foreboding exploded in Brian’s gut.
“We need to seriously consider pressing ahead with the mission even if Sophie is compromised.”
“What?” Brian squawked. “But that’d be suicide—” He broke off as Sophie stirred in the seat beside him. He continued more quietly. “Are you nuts? We can’t ask that of a civilian.”
“You tell me what I’m supposed to do, Brian. I’ve got a global terrorist about to strike multiple targets with nuclear weapons. Even if he doesn’t create a radiation disaster, he’s going to royally screw up the economy. How many people will die in the economic upheaval and general panic to follow?”
“But you’re asking Sophie to—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.
“Die?” Hollister finished grimly. “That’s entirely possible. I need you to ask her the question. Explain the risks to her. Convince her to at least consider it.”
“I need more. I want hard intelligence data on Sollem to show to her.”
“She doesn’t have the knowledge to make a useful risk assessment.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be,” Brian replied hotly. “If I’m going to ask this of her, she deserves the facts. All of them.”
Hollister replied, “Stay chilly, bro. Keep your head in the game and your emotions out of it.”
He was way past that point. But he dared not say so to his boss. Doing that would be a one-way ticket off this mission in about two seconds flat. He subsided into stony silence.
