That was it. The letter was unfinished and that was as far as she’d gotten.
Of course, he knew he was the stupid thing she’d done. He didn’t have to be a genius to figure that out.
Jones backed away from her table, more disturbed by the fact that she was leaving the island and going to Africa where she’d talk night after night with some priest named Ben than the fact that she considered her affair with him to be stupid.
It was stupid of her to have anything to do with him. He knew that and was actually a little relieved that she knew it, too. Maybe on some level she honestly knew that he wasn’t this hero, this “kind” and “gentle” man she’d written about in her letter.
He sat down on her bed, then lay back, his feet still on the floor. Her sheets and the bright-colored spread smelled like Molly. He stared up at the inside of the tent, the news that she was leaving rolling around in his head, making him feel things he didn’t want to feel.
Angry.
Hurt. Why hadn’t she told him she would be leaving soon?
Yeah, like he ever told a lover that he wasn’t planning to stick around.
Except she was Molly. She was supposed to be here, in this village, working tirelessly to help these people forever. Wasn’t she?
He was the one who was supposed to leave.
Fuck.
He sat up and opened the book that he was still holding, opened to the place where Molly had used a leaf as a bookmark and started to read, willing to do damn near anything to silence his disturbing thoughts.
We danced until four a.m., and I pretended to drink too much champagne.
That was my big mistake, I realized far too late. And the truth was, I didn’t just pretend to drink too much. I actually did imbibe somewhat more enthusiastically than I usually did, hoping it would give me the courage I needed to look up at Heinrich von Hopf as we danced at the Supper Club, and whisper, “Take me home with you tonight.”
It didn’t. I couldn’t get the words out.
He brought me to my apartment in a taxi, saw me to my door, and quite gracefully eluded my clumsy attempt to pull him inside.
That was the best I could manage in the seduction department.
“You’ve had too much champagne. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow,” he murmured before he sweetly kissed me good night and practically ran down the steps to the waiting cab.
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
I paced. I cursed. I gnashed my teeth. I groaned, imagining what it would be like when Hank was charged with espionage and brought to trial. I imagined seeing pictures in the newspaper of him hung, a black hood on his head, his body limp and lifeless.
God, I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want him to die.
But if I didn’t turn Hank in, if I continued to let him work for Nazi Germany, God knows how many American lives would be lost.
Yet I loved him. I still loved him. The words I’d told him just a few hours ago had been the truth, bitter as it was.
I put on a pot of coffee and drank it all.
By the time the sun came up, I knew what I had to do.
It was the most difficult decision I’d ever made in my life, but I was an American.
And this was war.
I threw on my evening coat and, still wearing my gown from the night before, I went out into the cold morning air and took the subway—an indirect route as usual, in case anyone was following me—to the FBI headquarters in Manhattan.
Ken opened his eyes, instantly alert in the ghostly light of the predawn, with an awareness prickling the back of his neck, telling him that he was not alone.
Yeah, duh, obviously he wasn’t alone. He was sleeping in a camouflaged blind, invisible to most of the world, with his arms around Savannah von Hopf. She’d turned toward him in the night, nestling her blond head beneath his chin, throwing her leg across his. But she wasn’t why he’d woken up.
Snick.
There it was again. The barely discernible sound of someone or someones trying to move soundlessly through the jungle.
Scuff.
Pop.
Yeah, there was definitely more than one person out there. Probably three. And as far as moving soundlessly went, they pretty much sucked at it.
He saw one, two, yeah there were definitely three men in complete jungle cammo gear. He watched through the holes in the brush he’d cut to hide them while they slept. The uniformed men were almost on top of them.
Snick. Pop. Crshh. The sounds were louder—Ken couldn’t believe Savannah didn’t wake up.
He did move soundlessly, then, shifting Savannah in his arms, so that one hand was free. He used it to cover her mouth. God forbid she start talking in her sleep.
Of course, his hand over her mouth made her jerk awake, but he moved her head so that she could see him, so that she was looking directly into his eyes. His mouth was close enough to hers so that he could press his finger against his own lips in the universal gesture for silence.
She nodded, her eyes wide, and he took his hand from her mouth, pointed out toward the jungle. Held up three fingers.
There was a flare of fear in her eyes as she nodded again. She understood what he was telling her. She looked out through the branches that hid them, got a glimpse of an AK-47, then closed her eyes, tucking her head back against his chest.
He could hear her work to keep her breathing slow and steady—no doubt she was remembering how loud her breathing had been last night when she’d started hyperventilating.
Savannah was smart and she was tough, and damn, he was proud of her for somehow knowing that she should breathe steadily, for having the instincts to look away from the men who were searching for them.
Ken had absolutely no doubts that those three Rambo wannabes were hunting Americans. Hunting them.
He held onto Savannah for a long time after they’d vanished into the jungle to the north, finally letting her go when he was sure there was no one else out there, and that these clowns hadn’t doubled back.
She untangled her legs from his, lay back in the dirt, and exhaled a long, shaky breath. “I think I was hoping they wouldn’t ever get out of their helicopter.”
“I don’t think those guys were from the helicopter.”
She looked at him. “Then who were they?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her face brightening. “Maybe they can help us.”
“Yeah, those weapons they were carrying were standard Welcome Wagon issue.” Ken unfastened the side pocket of the cargo pants she was wearing and took out his knife, putting it into her hand. “While I’m gone,” he told her, “take off these pants and cut the legs off like you said last night—so we can use ’em to carry the dynamite. Use that little sewing kit you’ve got in your bag to stitch up the bottom ends and—”
“Wait a minute,” she shifted around to face him. “While you’re gone . . . ? Gone where?”
“I’m going to follow these guys. See where they’re going, hopefully see where they came from. It could take a while. As in hours. Maybe even all day. You need to stay here, stay hidden. Don’t leave this blind for anything. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—”
He pulled the Uzi toward her. “I’m leaving this with you. Here’s what you need to do to fire it.” He showed her. “Squeeze this—but not unless you really mean it, all right?”
She didn’t look happy. “Ken—”
“Try not to kill me by mistake when I come back.”
“You mean it’s okay if I kill you on purpose?”
“Very funny.” The fact that she was able to joke made him feel better about leaving her there alone. With the sun coming up and the light getting stronger every minute, she would be fine. He reached around to the other pocket in the pants she was wearing, took out the power bars. “Eat these if you get hungry. Give me a sec, and I’ll get you a couple coconuts so you have something to drink.”
“You know, Ken
ny, maybe you should just keep going,” Savannah said, turning slightly to face him.
He glanced at her, and she was watching him with those eyes, her face completely serious.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he told her tightly.
She didn’t let it drop. “You can go get help and then come back for me.”
“Nope.” He made an opening in the branches and wriggled out into the jungle, taking a few seconds to admire his handiwork. He was a computer specialist and he didn’t consider building blinds—places to hide in the forest or jungle—as one of his strengths, but this one was damn fine. You really had to know what you were looking for to find it.
Savannah poked her face out of the hole in the branches. “Ken—”
“Nope,” he said again, handing her first one and then another coconut. “If I’m going to follow those guys, I better move.”
“Be careful,” she said, her eyes and mouth worried, her hair a mess of curls around her face.
Ken leaned over and kissed her. It was a stupid thing to do, but he didn’t really think about it. He just did it. He’d just spent the night holding her, and it somehow seemed appropriate to kiss her before he walked out of their bedroom—so to speak.
It was kind of like kissing a fish, though—she was completely caught off guard. Okay, it was like kissing a sweet, warm fish that he wanted to have sex with more than just about anything.
The worst of it, though, was right afterward, when what he’d just done lay there between his realization that he shouldn’t have kissed her and her expression of complete surprise.
“Sorry,” he said shortly, then covered her up with the branches. He got the hell out of there before she could tell him for the seven thousandth time that he was a jerk.
That he already knew.
“Bhagat.”
“Sir, it’s Locke,” Alyssa said into the telephone. She was standing in Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok’s office in the Team Sixteen building in Coronado. He’d shown her there so she’d have privacy to make her phone call, and then vanished.
“What’d you find out?”
“A little too much nothing,” she told her boss, who was now on the other side of the Pacific. “We’ve interviewed Paoletti and Starrett and just about all of the other SEALs in Team Sixteen with the exception of John Nilsson, who’s out of the country. But no one here even knew Savannah von Hopf’s name. Only Starrett knew that Karmody had recently—and I mean extremely recently—met someone and begun an intimate relationship.”
“Intimate?” Max interrupted.
“Sexual,” she defined. “Karmody also didn’t mention Indonesia to anyone—not even Starrett, whom he spoke with only hours before leaving San Diego. I don’t think he knew he was going until the last minute because he was completely open with Starrett about certain other details of his relationship. My guess is that Savannah used sex to make sure Karmody’d be willing to follow her anywhere.” She paused. “With your permission, I’m going to withhold that theory from Rose von Hopf.”
“Good idea.”
“I’ve called the Los Angeles office.” There was a framed picture of a pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman on the senior chief’s desk. It was his wife, Teri, who was a helo pilot for the Coast Guard. In the photo, she was leaning over the edge of a hot tub, looking directly into the camera’s lens. The look in her eyes and on her face was a mixture of desire and pure love.
Alyssa had to move to the other side of Wolchonok’s desk. Looking at that picture made her acutely aware of everything that was missing in her own pathetic life.
“They’ve sent a couple of agents to LAX to talk to the airline personnel,” she continued. “See if anyone recalls Karmody and Savannah getting onto the plane. See if there was anything unusual about them in any way, see if he seemed at all coerced, or maybe drugged, or . . . I know I’m reaching here, but—”
“No, that’s good,” Max said. “Reach away. Did you get into Karmody’s apartment?”
“Sam had a key.” Alyssa silently cursed herself for slipping and calling him Sam. Starrett. She had to call the man Starrett. Make it sound as if he were just another source of information for this case. “Karmody’s got a house—two bedrooms, one of ’em filled with computers. He’s the team hacker, you know. A real gear-head.”
“I’m familiar with his talent. What’d you find?”
“He’s got a prototype of a tracking system running on one of his computers. He’d activated it before leaving San Diego. We managed to get a fairly accurate readout of his trail through Hong Kong, into Jakarta. He left the Jakarta airport either via boat or helo. But we lost him shortly after that, over the open ocean. At first we were thinking this wasn’t good news—that he was thrown over the side of the boat or something, but Sam—” Shit. “Starrett messed around with the program—came up with some kind of satellite error message, which hopefully means Karmody’s still alive. We’ve got the general direction he was heading, though—which could really help. I’ve downloaded everything, including the program. A copy’s already on its way to HQ, I gave a second to Tom Paoletti, and I’ll be hand delivering a third to you.”
“Good job,” Max said. “The New York office just got access to Savannah’s phone records—she received a call from Jakarta on Wednesday. It’s likely that was the ransom request—except the call was made from Alex’s hotel room. We’re sifting through hotel security tapes—see if we can’t ID whoever went into that room and made that call.”
“Wow,” Alyssa said. “Is this going to turn out to be easy?”
“Please God, I hope so,” Max said.
“Commander Paoletti has already called in a team,” she told him. “They’re ready to go wheels up at your go ahead. He thinks it would be worthwhile to get some men who know WildCard Karmody out into that jungle. He’s probably trying to call you right now.”
“Actually, I’ve just been told Paoletti’s on hold. Is there anything else you need to tell me before I take his call?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Uh, oh,” Max said. “Seeing Starrett was that bad?”
She had actually been thinking about the intimate details of WildCard and Savannah’s relationship. “No, sir. That was no problem at all,” she lied smoothly.
He laughed. “You know, I almost believe you.”
“Sir,” she said stiffly. “Commander Paoletti’s waiting for you.”
“I know,” Max said. “Alyssa, I’m sorry I had to ask you to go there.”
“Sir, I’m a professional and—”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still sorry. Now get your ass on a plane back to L.A. I’ll see you when you get to Jakarta.”
With a click of the connection, he was gone.
Alyssa hung up the phone and went looking for Jules—and came face to face with Sam and Mary Lou Starrett out in the hall, outside of Sam’s office, which was several doors down. Neither of them noticed her and she ducked back into Wolchonok’s cubby hole.
“What are you doing here?” Sam said. Alyssa could hear him quite clearly.
Mary Lou had managed finally to change her shirt. She sounded nervous, her voice a little wobbly, as if she were really upset. “When you called, you said you weren’t sure how long you’d be gone and I . . .” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to see you before you left. I thought you might want to say good-bye to Haley.”
Alyssa peeked around the corner—sure enough, there was Sam’s little baby, tucked into one of those carriers that doubled as a carseat.
“She’s asleep,” Sam said flatly.
There was silence for a moment, but then Mary Lou said, “Yes, she is. Just like you usually are the few hours you’re actually ever home.”
Sam sighed deeply. “I got things to do before we go wheels up. This is not the time for—”
“You talk in your sleep,” Mary Lou interrupted him. “Did you know that?”
“Shit.”
“Do you know what you say
?”
“Jesus, Mary Lou—”
“You say, Alyssa,” Mary Lou said, and Alyssa cringed. Oh, Sam . . . “ ‘Oh, Lys . . . Don’t go, Lys . . . Alyssa, oh, God . . . oh, yes . . .’ “
“Aw, fuck.”
Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control Page 29
