Out of Time

by Monica McCarty

  Without papers they’d have to stay out of sight.

  “It’s a week to Beijing,” the senior chief pointed out. “Not counting the two days to Moscow.”

  “Sounds about right,” Scott agreed. “Or you can stay on until the end of the line in Russia and cross the Bering Sea to Alaska.”

  “Isn’t that just a little over fifty miles, LC?” Travis asked. “I can practically swim that.”

  They all laughed. “At its narrowest point,” Scott said. “But unfortunately where the train lets off”—he pointed to Vladivostok—“you’ll have to find a ship to take you.”

  “My vote is for London,” Donovan said.

  “I think what the LC is suggesting,” Baylor said, eyeing Scott, “is that we all head out from Moscow in different directions.”

  There was a long silence, which Scott confirmed with a nod. If they really were going to go dark, it was safer to separate. “We scatter and lay low until I can figure out what happened out there.”

  “What did happen out there, LC?” Miggy asked.

  Scott answered truthfully. “I don’t know, but someone tipped off the Russians, and none of us were supposed to make it out of there alive.”

  “Someone sent you a warning,” the senior chief said. It wasn’t a question.

  Scott nodded. “But that’s all I can say right now.”

  Baylor held his gaze for a moment. Clearly, the senior chief didn’t like Scott’s response, but just as clearly the senior chief realized he didn’t need to like it. Scott didn’t have to tell him anything. Eventually Baylor nodded, but Scott knew that rank and the chain of command wouldn’t keep the other man silent for long. Baylor was a pain in his ass, but the senior chief was one of the best operators he’d ever worked with. Scott respected the hell out of him, even if he and the platoon’s most senior enlisted SEAL didn’t always see eye to eye.

  Once Scott found out what the hell had happened out there and made sure Natalie was all right, he would come clean about the girlfriend at the Pentagon who had warned them.

  Spivak returned a short while later after securing a phone, some clothing that wasn’t going to win them any fashion awards, and most important to all of them right now, a couple of pizzas. Most of the toppings were unrecognizable, but they were so hungry no one cared what they were.

  “No salad or Parmesan cheese?” Donovan said. “Shit, Dolph, next time I’m coming with you.”

  Before Scott could grab a slice, Spivak handed him a newspaper. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  As Scott couldn’t read Russian, all he could see were the picture of the Russian president, Dmitri Ivanov; a map of the eastern side of the Ural Mountains where they’d been reconnoitering the gulag; and a satellite image of a massive explosion.

  But that was enough.

  He swore. “It’s out, then. I can only imagine what Ivanov is saying. A team of Navy SEALs sent in to ‘invade’ a sovereign nation? He must be calling for blood.”

  And war. After an American fighter plane accidentally strayed into Russian airspace and was shot down, Ivanov vowed the next incursion—accident or not—would be considered an act of war for which Russia would retaliate.

  “That’s just it,” Spivak said. “He isn’t. There isn’t a damned thing in here about us. They’re claiming the explosion was just a missile test.”

  The room was dead silent; Scott wasn’t the only one taking a few seconds to process what this meant.

  “Then we aren’t going to war?” Travis asked.

  “Not for this,” Spivak said. “And there isn’t anything in the world news, either.”

  Which meant that the US hadn’t gone public about their missing SEAL platoon.

  Retiarius had been effectively ghosted, with neither side wanting to fess up that the platoon had been there.

  It made horrible sense. Despite his belligerent threats and big words, Ivanov must have known that he would be seriously outmatched in a war with the US. By not acknowledging their presence, he could save face and avoid a war that no one wanted—not to mention savor the personal satisfaction of wiping out an entire platoon of Navy SEALs without the US being able to retaliate.

  There were plenty of hawks in President Clara Cartwright’s administration who were eager for war and the chance to put Ivanov in his place. The most vocal among them was General Thomas Murray, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the father of the pilot shot down by the Russians a few months ago. But the president had proved more cautious than her advisors, and Scott knew she would stay quiet to cover up their illegal operation and avoid a war in a situation that was already teetering too close to the edge.

  Which made any survivors inconvenient, to say the least—to both sides.

  Scott stayed up most of the night planning their exfil and searching for any news from Washington. He didn’t need much sleep, and even with the lack of rest the past few days, he slept only a few hours.

  By dawn he’d taken over watch from Miggy and was sitting by the window overlooking the footbridge to town, eating a piece of leftover pizza and surfing the web again for anything new. He would kill for a cup of coffee right now. Coffee and this time of day reminded him of Nat. Those lazy mornings when they could sit on her tiny balcony in the early hours while the city was quiet, drinking coffee and talking. . . . He’d never guessed that something so small and seemingly simple could make him so happy. That was how he knew he wanted to grow old with her. God, he missed her. He needed to hear her voice and make sure that she was all right.

  Knowing that Russia censored media and the Internet, he was careful about search terms, but none of the big European news agencies or Al Jazeera was reporting anything. He decided to take a chance and try a few US newspapers. He doubted the Russian surveillance was that broad, but he’d be getting rid of the phone soon anyway.

  New York Times, nada. Washington Post, same. DC Chronicle . . . his stomach dropped and all the blood slid from his face.

  No . . . oh God, no!

  He wanted to turn away and pretend he’d never seen it. If he didn’t see it, it couldn’t be true.

  But there was the headline in cold black-and-white: DC Staffer Killed in Fiery Car Crash That Shuts Down Freeway for Hours. The story didn’t add much, except the name and what she did: Natalie Andersson, executive assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, was killed in a car crash last night when her car careened into the cement underpass of the Southeast Freeway on 4th Street SE in the Capitol Hill neighborhood where she lived. Excessive speed is believed to have caused her car to explode. Ms. Andersson was killed instantly.

  Scott put down the phone, unable to breathe. His chest was on fire. His eyes burned. The ring that he’d had in his pocket for the past month because he hadn’t found the “right” time to give it to her, felt like an unbearable weight dragging him under. After losing eight men, he thought he was numb, but the pain eviscerated him with excruciating savagery.

  Oh God, Natalie, baby. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Her words rang in his head. Both our lives . . .

  He had no doubt she’d been killed because of him. Because she’d warned him.

  And he’d never even told her he loved her. He didn’t even know why.

  That wasn’t true. He hadn’t told her because he wasn’t sure she felt the same way. And now . . . now it was too late to hear her tell him that she did.

  For the first time in his life, Scott wanted to put his face in his hands and bawl like a baby. But he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to get his men the hell out of here and find whoever was responsible for this. There wasn’t a place they could hide where he wouldn’t hunt them down.

  And then he’d make them pay.

  One

  McLEAN, VIRGINIA

  AUGUST 17

  He’d been honey-trapped.

  S
cott sat at his recently acknowledged sister’s dining room table, feeling as if he had the word “sucker” tattooed across his forehead. No one was saying it, but he knew that was what they were all thinking.

  Kate, the aforementioned sister, was looking at him worryingly; her ex-husband and his ex-chief, Colt Wesson, wouldn’t meet his eye (although Colt was probably grappling with his own demons right now); the recently arrived senior chief Dean Baylor was looking pissed off (which admittedly wasn’t unusual); and the always-ready-with-a-wisecrack John Donovan had fallen into a rare contemplative silence. Brittany Blake, after being kidnapped and nearly killed, was resting in one of Kate’s guest rooms, or she’d likely be thinking it as well.

  How could they not? It was true. Scott had just had it confirmed from her compatriot’s—or should he say comrade’s—mouth right before he’d been killed. His girlfriend, Natalie Andersson, aka Natalya Petrova, had been a Russian spy who’d passed on the information that had gotten eight of Scott’s men killed. For almost three months he’d been mourning her and thinking of her as their savior, and all along she’d been the one responsible for their mission being compromised.

  It didn’t matter that she’d warned him and been killed. She’d been lying to him. Using him. Fucking him for information.

  Shit, that hurt. Betrayal curdled in his gut like acid, eating away at him mercilessly.

  He’d had no clue. She’d deceived him and betrayed him in the worst possible way, and he’d been ready to put a ring on her finger. A ring that would have taken him away from the team that had been his life. If Scott had that damned ring with him right now, he’d throw it as far as he could into the Potomac, which ran outside Kate’s swanky town house.

  When he thought of how he’d held on to it like some sort of precious talisman, refusing to sell the Easter egg–sized diamond even when he desperately needed cash as he made his way out of Russia . . . it made him want to slam his fist through the table and turn the fine mahogany into kindling. Scott was an expert at controlling his emotions, but right now they’d been pulled too close to the surface and stretched taut to the snapping point. His pride hurt worse than the patched-up shoulder where he’d taken a bullet a few hours ago.

  For the first time in his life a woman had made a fool of him, and Scott didn’t know how to handle it. It was a bitter pill for any guy to swallow. For a SEAL officer whose job it was to see things like this coming a mile away, who was supposed to be smarter and savvier than everyone else, it was the worst kind of humiliation.

  Kate had tried to warn him, but Scott hadn’t wanted to believe it. He’d defended Natalie, even when the coincidences piled up. Russian birth and adoption that she’d kept secret? So what? There were thousands of kids adopted from Russia—were all of them suddenly suspected spies? Phone contact with the same guy who’d targeted the reporter writing stories about “The Lost Platoon,” and who also happened to be born in Russia and came to America via the same adoption agency as Natalie? Not enough.

  But when that same guy, Mikhail “Mick” Evans, kidnapped Brittany in an attempt to capture and kill John Donovan, all Scott’s doubts had been put to rest. Brutally.

  He could still hear the bastard’s taunts as Scott tried to question him. “She played you like a fool. How long did it take for her to get in your bed? A few hours? And you never suspected a thing. Man, it was almost too easy.”

  Scott had wanted to kill him. But Donovan had done it for him after Scott had been shot, and Mick had turned a gun on Kate.

  For almost three months, Scott had been busting his ass trying to figure out what had happened out there and how their mission had been compromised, while his men had been forced to scatter across the globe and go dark. He’d looked into everyone who could have known about the mission, followed leads that went nowhere, and searched for motive or anything suspicious that could lead him to figuring out who was responsible for the deaths of eight of his men and the woman he’d loved.

  But the person responsible for feeding the information to Russia about their mission had been right there in front of him the whole time. One of their own hadn’t betrayed them; the leak had come from a Russian mole. His Natalie. No, Natalya—and definitely not his.

  Maybe he should be relieved. He had an answer. The Russians were responsible. There wasn’t anyone on the inside waiting to take them out. His men could come out of hiding.

  But nothing could lessen the bitter sting of betrayal that filled him with anger and shame.

  Sucker.

  “If you won’t go to the hospital, at least let me call my doctor,” Kate said. “I’m sure he will be discreet.” She paused, staring at him in earnest. “You don’t look good, Scott.”

  Not surprising since he felt like shit. But the pain from the gunshot wound was the least of it.

  He and Kate had known they were brother and sister for almost three years, but it was still strange having someone worry about him. Scott had been alone for a long time. His parents had been killed in a boating accident when he was in his first year at the Naval Academy. Actually his father had survived for a few days, which was how Scott had learned that he wasn’t his biological father. He’d needed blood and their blood types had been incompatible.

  Scott’s seemingly idyllic family and happy childhood had been built on a bed of lies. The man whom Scott had loved and admired more than anyone in the world—who’d left Scott the family fortune—hadn’t been his biological father. The discovery had devastated him. Scott had been angry at everyone—at everything—but especially at his recently deceased mother. How could she have betrayed his father, her husband, like that?

  He’d never given much thought to the man she’d cheated on his father with or the fact that Scott might have half siblings somewhere. He never would have known if Kate’s ex-husband’s jealousy hadn’t led them to the truth.

  “I’m fine,” Scott assured her. “This isn’t the first time Colt has had to patch me up.”

  Rather than reassure her, the mention of her ex-husband’s doctoring made Kate look even more upset. But she didn’t need to worry about Colt using his old corpsman’s skills for bad. Whatever reason Colt might have had to want to kill Scott was gone. The only person Colt looked like he wanted to kill right now was himself. Which was good. After what he’d done to Kate, the bastard deserved to suffer.

  Colt had thought Scott and Kate’s unusual closeness was because they were having an affair, and he’d only just learned that they were actually brother and sister. For years Colt had hated Scott—blaming him for the destruction of his marriage—but now Colt was facing the truth. There was only one man responsible for the mess Colt had made of their lives, and it wasn’t Scott.

  “What now, LC?” Baylor looked at him, asking the question that was foremost on all of their minds.

  The six survivors had been in hiding since their mission had gone bad, and Scott knew how anxious the guys were to get back to the land of the living and the frogman work that they all loved.

  “Now that we know where the leak came from and who was behind it”—i.e., Russia and not someone inside—“we don’t have to play dead. I will contact command and explain what happened. They can decide how they want to handle our sudden reappearance.”

  In an attempt to quiet the public interest roused by Brittany’s “Lost Platoon” articles, equating the missing platoon of Navy SEALs from a secret team with the famous Lost Legion of Rome, the navy had recently announced that a platoon of SEALs had been killed in a training exercise.

  Baylor and Donovan looked relieved by Scott’s pronouncement.

  Colt not so much.

  “You sure that’s a good idea, Ace?” Colt asked with that lazy drawl that belied the savvy operator whose mind was always working every angle. Colt wasn’t a part of their team anymore, but he still worked for the military in some kind of clandestine unit that Scott didn’t know much about—did
n’t want to know much about, as he was sure it was of questionable legality.

  It was the first time Colt had used Scott’s call sign in over three years. But if his former friend thought Scott was going to forgive and forget all that had passed between them, he was out of his mind.

  Colt had been the senior enlisted man in Team Nine when Scott had joined as a young lieutenant. Colt had showed him the ropes and taught Scott everything he knew about being a SEAL. To most people their friendship didn’t make any sense. Scott was by the book and believed in rules. Colt didn’t. But somehow they’d jelled. Scott had looked up to him as an older brother, which made Colt’s accusations and turning on him even more unforgivable. How could Colt think he would ever do that to a teammate and a friend?

  Scott and Kate hadn’t betrayed Colt; Colt had betrayed them.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Scott said. “Technically we’ve been AWOL since the explosion. Without a good reason to not come forward, we could have a hard time explaining ourselves.”

  Or defending themselves against a court-martial.

  “I wouldn’t be so ready to make a reappearance,” Colt said. “Not until you learn the extent of the damage done by Mick and Natalie. We don’t know what Mick was able to pass on to his superiors before he was killed. We also don’t know the extent of their cell here in Washington. I suspect it was a small one since the guys Mick had with him when he took Brittany were more hired thugs than professionals. But that isn’t to say there isn’t someone else out there. Who else knows there were survivors? Mick found out about Donovan, but what about the rest of you? You guys are safer dead than alive.”

  “You think they might come after us again?” Donovan asked.

  Colt shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think it will be easier to find out why they went after you in the first place if you all stay dead.”

  “They went after him to shut him up,” Baylor said. “The Russians don’t want any survivors showing up to ruin their nice little story about what happened out there. Ivanov won’t want to appear to be avoiding the war that he vowed to start if there were any more ‘incursions.’”