by Cindy Dees
She stared down at the mounds of food and her stomach roiled, revolting at the idea of eating. She poked at the food with her gold fork, pretending to partake of the rich fare. Al Dhib ate in silence for several minutes while she took minuscule nibbles she hoped passed for eating.
Her host spoke abruptly. “Tell me, Ms. Sandoval. Does Arturo still have that lovely mistress of his? Consuela?”
She looked up at him, startled. There was nothing in the VRM dossier about Arturo having a mistress, let alone a wife or family. Crap, crap, crap. What the hell was she supposed to do now?
* * *
Beau lurched as Al Dhib asked about the VRM leader’s mistress. He knew the VRM dossier nearly as well as Tessa did. And there hadn’t been a word in it about the enigmatic leftist’s personal life.
Al Dhib had effectively found a way to trip her up. She was going to die. Terror roared through him, along with a visceral need to save her from harm.
“She’s busted,” he said urgently. “We have to get in there and pull her out.”
Torsten was equally terse. “She hasn’t answered the question yet. It’s possible she’ll guess correctly.”
“It’s a fifty-fifty guess,” Beau retorted angrily. “Are you willing to bet her life on those odds?”
Torsten stared back at him bleakly. “I don’t like this any better than you do. But we can’t get to her in the next ten seconds or so. This is going to play out faster than we can get to her. Faster than even Marco and Ray can get to her.”
“God damnit!” Beau exploded.
Helplessly, he turned his gaze back to the monitors. The last thing in the world he wanted to see was Tessa’s death. But by God, if Al Dhib shot her, Beau was watching it and burning the memory into his brain to hang on to for as long as it took to catch Al Dhib and kill him. Slowly. And painfully.
Agony ripped Beau’s gut apart as the moment played out before him. Tessa’s two cameras were utterly still, which meant she’d frozen at the unexpected question, too.
He reached out and laid his hand on the cold, hard monitor in front of him, desperate to connect with her. To let her know she was not alone when she died.
A single, exquisitely bright thought filled his mind.
I love you, Tessa.
And then his heart shattered into a million crystal shards of agony.
Chapter 19
Tessa stared down at her plate, seeing nothing. This was it. Her life unquestionably hung in the balance. She chose correctly and lived, or she chose incorrectly and died.
Images and memories from her life passed through her mind—the moment Beau told her she was going to be a Medusa, finishing her first marathon, graduating high school at the top of her class, arguing with her mother’s boyfriends, hiding in a closet as a little girl. And further back—summers in Venezuela with her abuela, her grandmother, a tiny woman no more than four foot ten with wise, sad eyes and a fiery spirit.
A memory of her abuela ranting against the violence that drove Tessa’s mother to emigrate to America popped into her mind. Her granny had accused the president of Venezuela of being corrupt and making a power grab and the leftist opposition of being no better. Arturo Xaviero had been a young political firebrand back then. What had her grandmother called him?
Tessa had repeated the word and her grandmother had gotten angry. Told her never to say it again. El maricon.
She’d since learned that was an extremely offensive version of calling a person gay—
Tessa’s gaze jerked up to Al Dhib’s across the golden table. She said briskly, “I’m sorry. You must be mistaken. Arturo does not have a mistress. Nor does he have a wife, for that matter. He’s gay.”
* * *
Beau exhaled gustily along with all the others in the van as Al Dhib resumed eating.
“Son of a bitch,” Torsten muttered from behind Beau. “How did she know that?”
Beau answered, “She spent time in Venzuela as a kid. She must have heard it somewhere.”
He watched in profound relief as Al Dhib presented a decidedly more relaxed expression. The quizzing stopped, too.
“After supper we will take care of the mundane financial details of your purchase,” Al Dhib declared.
A chorus of quiet cheers went up in the van. She’d done it. Tessa had convinced her host she was the real deal.
Torsten murmured, “I thought she was a goner when she hesitated like that. But damn, did she ever pull that iron out of the fire. Nicely done.”
“You say that like you didn’t think she could pull it off,” Beau commented sourly.
“You never know until someone actually comes under fire. Hell, Beau, you didn’t think she had it in her when I assigned you to train her.” Torsten added reflectively, “And to think I worried you two would have too much animosity toward each other for her to learn what she needed to know.”
Beau shot a wry glance at his boss. They both knew that hadn’t happened.
“You made a decision yet?” Torsten asked quietly.
Beau winced. He didn’t have to ask which decision the boss was referring to. Beau and Tessa both had yet to choose between each other and their careers.
How could she not choose the Medusas over him? She’d spent practically her whole adult life working toward this dream. And now she was going toe to toe against one of the most dangerous men in the world and holding her own like a pro.
He didn’t begrudge her the choice. In fact, he encouraged her to follow her dream. Huh. Who knew he was not only capable of love but also of self-sacrificing love? He didn’t associate either emotion with himself.
Yet another reason to be grateful to Tessa. She’d unlocked his heart and shown him a whole new side of himself. Hell, even the idea of kids, a dog and a mortgage didn’t freak him out anymore. If he didn’t know better, he would say she’d helped him grow up.
He couldn’t imagine ever finding another woman like her. And he highly doubted any woman would ever fire his blood like she did.
He watched the meal with Al Dhib wind down, and the arms dealer ushered her into an office. It was smaller in scale than the rest of his home, and more utilitarian. Piles of papers littered his desk—many looked like manifests for cargo shipments via sea, and Beau spied gun catalogs beside a pair of laptops.
Al Dhib waved her into a chair in front of his desk. “So, Ms. Sandoval. Let us transfer the funds for your purchase and conclude this business.”
“Uhh, I don’t think so,” Tessa drawled.
Beau lurched.
“What the hell is she doing?” Torsten blurted.
Beau looked over his shoulder grimly. “I have no freaking idea.”
* * *
Tessa studied Al Dhib intently. He was acting exactly like a man who thought he had the upper hand—smug, condescending and eager to rip off the woman seated before him.
What kind of revolutionary would she be if she blindly handed over millions of dollars to this man without even asking about the equipment, let alone examining it for herself?
If Al Dhib was going to buy her cover, she had to act exactly as if she was who she said she was.
“I beg your pardon?” Al Dhib asked warningly.
She held out her hands deprecatingly. “Millions of dollars may mean nothing to you. But to my little group, this is a great deal of money. We have worked very hard to gather it from the sweat and blood of small farmers who raise and process coca by hand. We have had to scrape together every penny I’m going to hand over to you.”
“I understand, of course.” Al Dhib looked irritated, but he could just get over it. He didn’t get to run roughshod over her. Plus, it would really lock down the DEA’s case against him if she could get Al Dhib and a crate of weapons on camera together.
It hadn’t been part of the plan to demand to see guns, but she was nothing if not an overachiever
.
“I want to see the guns,” she demanded bluntly.
“What? You know about firearms?” he scoffed.
Her eyes narrowed. “I know from the butt of the weapon that peeks out of your suit coat now and then that you’re carrying a titanium-gold Desert Eagle, likely a modified four-forty Cor-Bon. I also know a four-forty Cor-Bon weapon shoots a fifty-caliber round, necked down to four-forty dimensions. It provides the punch of a fifty-cal without the recoil of one.” She paused for a heartbeat and then added, “Shall I continue?”
Al Dhib leaned back in his chair, grinning. “Well, well, well. The little girl has teeth, after all. I was beginning to wonder.”
She shrugged humbly, wary of getting too forceful with the man. He was still a chauvinist and still a killer. And he was the guy with the fancy gold-plated pistol, while she was completely unarmed.
“Are you familiar with the weapon mounted on the wall behind me?” he challenged.
She glanced over his head and let her eyes widen as if she was impressed. Which, in fact, she was. “That’s a Holland and Holland Double Deluxe Rifle. All handmade. Price tag starts at around a quarter-million dollars and goes up from there. Designed for hunting big game with a double shot so the hunter doesn’t have to stop to chamber a second round if a dangerous animal is charging him. Although an excellent weapon, an equally fine performing weapon can be had at a tiny fraction of the cost.”
“Can you shoot as well as you can recite statistics?” Al Dhib asked, his tone acerbic.
Whoops. She backpedaled quickly. “Oh, no. I just studied guns so I can buy the best we can afford. We’re too poor to make a mistake and provide our fighters with inferior weapons.” She added, “This is why we came to you. Your reputation and that of the equipment you sell precedes you.”
Al Dhib nodded regally and looked mollified. Thank goodness. He leaned forward and punched a button on an intercom speaker. “Prepare my helicopter. We’re going to visit Persephone.”
Alarm slammed into her. They were leaving the estate? But this was where her teammates were deployed. Her safety net was here!
“Uhh, I have no desire to go visit anyone—” she started.
“You wish to see the merchandise, yes?” Al Dhib snapped. “I’m taking you to see it.”
She leaned back in her chair, disgusted with herself. Dammit. She’d gotten too cute, and now she was going to be completely without cover.
* * *
Everyone in the van was elbows and assholes, scrambling to figure out who the hell Persephone was and where this mystery woman was located. The call for a helicopter had prompted Torsten to order all of his men back to the step van to regroup.
Beau’s heart lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. Tessa was being whisked away from their protection as he watched, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
“I’ve got it!” Webster announced. “The Persephone is a yacht owned by one of Al Dhib’s shell companies.”
“Get me schematics of the yacht,” Torsten bit out.
Webster typed like crazy for several seconds then leaned back in satisfaction. “Got ’em. Downloading now. The yacht was featured in a naval architecture magazine a while back.”
“We’re out,” Marco murmured under his breath. “Driving toward the front gate now. They actually kicked us out. Made it easy.”
“Where’s the Persephone berthed?” Torsten demanded.
Webster typed again. “She’s registered at the port of Essaouira.”
“Let’s roll,” Torsten ordered. “It’ll take us a while to catch up with her overland. Every minute head start we can get will help.”
Beau flinched. But if Webster’s information wasn’t accurate and they headed for the wrong port, they would lose precious time that could mean the difference between life and death for Tessa.
Torsten snapped, “Ray, Marco, fall in behind the van.”
In a matter of minutes the Land Rover pulled in behind them. As the van accelerated away from Al Dhib’s estate, Beau thought he heard the thwocking of a helicopter retreating in the distance. God dammit! They were losing her.
Hang on, Tessa. We’re coming for you.
* * *
Tessa watched Marrakesh, and her team, fall away behind her. The vast, black expanse of the Moroccan piedmont stretched away below her. The flight took under an hour, which wasn’t reassuring. It could be several hours before her teammates caught up with her.
The problem was, every minute they were out of range of her was another minute where the transmissions from her cameras weren’t being picked up and recorded. Even if she got Al Dhib and a honking crate of guns together in the same room, if no one was there to record her transmissions, this whole bonus trip would have been for naught.
The helicopter slowed and swooped down toward the coast. A city came into sight, and beyond it, the black sheet of the Atlantic Ocean. They raced across the water, and the shore disappeared over the horizon. Of course. The bastard parked his yacht in international waters. The helicopter slowed even more, coming to a hover above a sleek white yacht, similar in scale to Al Dhib’s oversize home.
“Good grief. How big is that boat?” she asked, her nose practically pressed against the window.
“Four-hundred-eighty feet,” Al Dhib answered proudly. “She has her own missile defense system, two helicopter pads and her own integral submarine.”
She glanced over at her host. “A submarine? That must make smuggling easy.”
“I move small shipments of weapons aboard the Persephone, but I never cross into territorial waters. I’m no fool. I have no wish to be arrested.”
The helicopter settled smoothly onto the deck of the yacht. She stepped out, glancing around in dismay. She was all alone out here. Totally on her own.
* * *
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Beau groused over Webster’s shoulder.
“Are you looking at the same road I am?” Web snapped without taking his eyes off the ribbon of crappy concrete. “These potholes could tear an axle off this bucket, and then would where your girl be?”
“She’s not my girl,” Beau retorted quickly.
“Yeah, right. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.”
Beau huffed. “Whatever. Just get us there as fast as you can.”
“I’m on it, bro. She’s my teammate, too.”
Beau moved into the back of the van where the others were quickly planning an approach to the Persephone. Satellite imagery they’d obtained from the NSA showed the yacht to be parked just outside the international boundary of Moroccan waters.
Torsten was on his phone, yelling at someone in Arabic. He was trying to obtain scuba gear for six big men on short notice and in the middle of the night. If he could pull that off, Beau would declare him an outright miracle worker. Gun hung up the phone and joined them in staring at the yacht schematic.
“How would you go about blowing it up?” Torsten asked.
Beau replied, “Are we talking just sinking it, or turning it into matchsticks?”
“Both.”
He considered the vessel. “To sink it, we would have to punch major holes in each segment of the ship.” The Persephone had been built with three watertight bulkheads that would close in the event of a leak in any one section of the ship.
“And to make a flying debris pile of it?” Torsten asked grimly.
“It would take thirty, maybe forty, kilos of explosives placed at a dozen locations on the hull to guarantee getting the job done. But,” Beau warned, “everyone on board would die.”
“I’m thinking about blowing it after we get Tessa off it. Could you make that happen?”
Beau considered. As the team’s resident ordinance specialist, he had the most training in placing underwater charges. “It would take me upward of an hour under the
hull to rig it all, but it’s doable.”
“Do we have that much C-4 with us?” Torsten asked him.
Beau grinned. “I’m not a former Boy Scout for nothing. I came prepared.”
Torsten nodded. “If Webster can roust up a UDV or two, I’ll allocate one to you and your toys. First order of business will be to get you out to that ship and get it wired to blow.”
A UDV was an underwater dive vehicle—a bullet-shaped gizmo with an engine, propellers and handles or a seat to drag along a diver behind it at two to five times the speed a human could swim.
What was Tessa doing now? She’d pushed Al Dhib pretty close to the edge of pissed off in the guy’s office. She had to be careful, or she’d be dead before he could get to her. Careful, baby. Tread lightly around the lion, or else he’ll eat you alive...
* * *
Tessa hefted an AK-47, examining its firing pin and ejecting and inserting an empty magazine several times. It looked like Russian military issue, and this particular weapon had seen some action. The firing pin was worn but serviceable. It had been filed some, undoubtedly to prevent it from hanging up and causing a misfire. The action of the mag was smooth—someone had worked on this weapon, probably in combat conditions—to maximize its performance.
Where had Al Dhib gotten his hands on this stuff? The presence of weapons like this in the hands of a mercenary like Al Dhib, who would sell them to absolutely anybody, made her shudder inside.
She had to stop him.
“The weapons are as promised, yes?” Al Dhib challenged.
“Better than promised.”
“Does that mean you are ready to complete the purchase now?” Al Dhib asked in a faintly aggrieved tone.
“I am. Truly, I apologize for my caution. I never doubted you. But this is the first time we’ve done business. You understand. My superiors were cautious. Perhaps henceforth, we can do business over the phone, and I won’t waste your valuable time with quality control checks.”
