Special Forces: The Recruit (Mission Medusa Book 1)

by Cindy Dees

  “Come inside. You can use the ship’s Wi-Fi to complete payment.”

  “Of course.”

  The CIA had set up a dummy bank account with four million dollars in it—the amount she was supposed to pay to Al Dhib. The payment would ultimately be blocked, of course. After she was clear of Al Dhib.

  As she stepped into the ship’s salon—a big room that stretched the width of the ship and had angled banks of windows stretching over the ship’s prow—she noted the black bubble of a surveillance camera overhead. This guy didn’t miss a security trick.

  Al Dhib sat down at a table in front of a laptop, but he surprised her by signaling a bartender to pour them drinks.

  “You don’t want your money now?” she asked, in a hurry to get this over with and get out of here before she could slip up or he could get the bright idea to quiz her again.

  “Let us celebrate our new business partnership with a drink first.”

  Crud. He was stalling. Why?

  What had she missed? Her instincts screamed that something was wrong. But everything had gone like clockwork. Why was he delaying like this?

  Nervous as hell, she sipped at the glass a man in an armored suit set down in front of her. “Wow. That’s really smooth whiskey. Better than the stuff we get in our country.”

  “It’s scotch, and I should hope so. That’s a Macallan single malt.”

  She shrugged. “I know guns, but drinks not so much. I’ll take your word for it.”

  He snorted. “You’re drinking a thousand dollars’ worth of scotch.”

  She looked down at the finger of alcohol in her glass. “Well, then, I shall certainly take my time and enjoy it.”

  “You should sip it slowly. Savor the aroma and aftertaste.”

  Oh, he was so stalling.

  Her intuition shouted at her to get the hell out of here before something went terribly wrong. She felt disaster coming. But she didn’t see what form it would take or what direction it would come from.

  Al Dhib refilled her glass for nearly an hour. She managed to nurse along her scotch and consume only about one glass of scotch for every three that he drank.

  Unfortunately, the more he imbibed, the more aggressive he got. Flashbacks of her mother’s drunk boyfriends crept into her mind and she shoved them back. She had to concentrate on this drunk.

  “You’re a good-looking woman,” he announced after tossing back yet another shot of the expensive scotch.

  She swore mentally. He was about to come on to her. Did she dare fend him off? Would that make him angry enough to shoot her? God knew the idea of letting him rape her held even less appeal.

  “Come. Sit with me by the window. Enjoy the view with me.”

  The view. Riiight. He was going to try to get inside her pants. Crap, crap, crap. What was she supposed to do now?

  Chapter 20

  “I’ve got audio!” Beau shouted over the roar of the boat motor.

  The entire team raced across the choppy ocean in a motorboat Webster had managed to scrounge up for them. Better were the black neoprene scuba suits they all wore, and the bulky UDV sitting like a beached whale in the back of the boat.

  They would go by surface until they got within, say, three miles of the Persephone. Just over the horizon from the yacht. Then Beau would motor in underwater with the explosives while Marco and Ray swam in behind him. The others stood by to improvise as needed.

  Marco cut the throttles abruptly. “We’re here. Time to walk the plank, Lambo.”

  He flipped off his teammate as he hefted his oxygen tanks and put the regulator in his mouth. He fell backward into the water and surfaced immediately to take the UDV and gear Torsten and Ray passed down to him.

  “Sound check,” Webster’s voice announced in his earbud.

  Beau tapped his ear and gave his teammate a thumbs-up. The good news was their earbuds worked under water. The bad news was these basic scuba suits didn’t allow for him to talk back to his teammates unless he surfaced and took the regulator out of his mouth.

  “Good hunting, Lambo.”

  Huh. Count on it. He was blowing Al Dhib to kingdom come tonight. And Tessa was damned well making it out of this op alive.

  He grabbed the UDV and twisted the throttle wide open. It pulled him along a dozen feet under the surface at a significant clip. He heard the faint rumble of an engine pass by overhead. That would be his teammates easing in closer to the Persephone to pick up Tessa’s video feed.

  “I have video,” Webster announced a minute or so later. “Our girl’s playing patty-cake with Al Dhib.”

  “What the hell?” Torsten asked, voicing Beau’s exact thought.

  “Looks like ole’ Hassan is getting handsy with our girl.”

  Son of a bitch! Beau twisted the throttle even harder, trying to eke out every inch of speed the UDV could give him. Al Dhib was definitely dying now.

  “And she’s up off the couch,” Webster described. “She’s got the pool table between her and Al Dhib.” A pause, then multiple chuckles erupted in Beau’s ear.

  Torsten interjected to explain, no doubt for Beau’s benefit, “She just told him she doesn’t like men.” More laughter. “That seems to have given him pause. She’s explaining now how penises are repulsive to her...in detail.”

  Beau couldn’t smile or else he would take in a mouthful of saltwater, but he was mentally grinning from ear to ear. That’s my girl.

  * * *

  Al Dhib was worse than any of her mother’s boyfriends, and some of them had been massive lechers. He was going on and on about how he had a magnificent penis and she would love it. He seemed to think he could convert her to liking men. What an egomaniac. She would be tempted to laugh in his face if that gold-plated pistol of his didn’t keep flashing from underneath his suit coat.

  She did her darnedest to act like she was actually enjoying this little game of cat and mouse. But all the while, a clock ticked in the back of her mind, a chilling reminder that something bad was going on around here behind her back.

  She could only hope this delay was also working to her advantage, giving Beau and the guys time to find a way out here. Assuming they could marshal the resources to get themselves out to sea on short notice.

  The salon door opened, and Baldy from the mansion stepped inside. “We have a problem, sir.”

  She swore silently. Here it came.

  “Perhaps, Ms. Sandoval,” Baldy said to her, “you would care to explain why your picture in the Interpol database does not match your face?”

  The little voice in the back of her head started chanting in a continuous stream. Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap...

  “You saw my dossier at Interpol?” she asked in surprise. Oh, hell. The real Maria Sandoval was on file at Interpol? How come that hadn’t come up in anyone’s research dossier?

  “I saw someone’s dossier. It wasn’t you.”

  She was at a loss. How the hell did she talk her way out of this one? Should she claim that her comrades had hacked Interpol and planted a photo of someone else in her place? She opened her mouth to do just that, but Baldy was speaking again.

  “And perhaps you could also explain why a photograph looking remarkably like you comes up in a facial recognition search, belonging to an American woman by the name of Tessa Wilkes?”

  “You’re American?” Al Dhib exclaimed, his voice vaguely slurred. “Who do you work for? The FBI? CIA? Who?” he demanded in a terrible voice.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she tried desperately. “Someone has set me up.” She devolved into frantic Spanish, insisting on her innocence and claiming that she’d been framed. She accused the Venezuelan government, the Venezuelan army, rival factions vying for control of the Parliament...anyone she could think of. Anything to keep these men occupied for a second while she came up with an idea—any idea—on ho
w to get out of this alive.

  “You will tell me who you work for before you die,” Al Dhib roared. “And then I will kill you myself.”

  He did realize, didn’t he, that telling a person he was about to torture that she was going to die anyway gave her no incentive at all to cough up information once the torture began?

  “I will use you like the lying whore you are, and then I will slit your throat,” Al Dhib ranted.

  Real panic slammed into her then. Not rape. It was the one thing she’d lived in terror of for most of her life. She’d managed to avoid it all this time, but the phobia was so ingrained that her mind completely froze.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and wished with all her might that she was somewhere, anywhere else, but here.

  Al Dhib’s man grabbed her elbows and yanked them behind her back while Al Dhib himself grabbed the neck of her tank top and ripped it down to her belly button.

  Nonononononononono...

  * * *

  “Dammit!” Gunnar exclaimed as he watched the video feed from Tessa’s one remaining camera. Her eyeglasses had been knocked off in the scuffle as Al Dhib’s man forced her across the salon and slammed her face down onto the pool table. Her religious medal had slid around to the back of her neck and was pointed up at Al Dhib, leaning over her and leering.

  “She has panicked and frozen,” Neville announced.

  Gunnar swore violently. “How in the hell is her face still on the internet?”

  Webster answered apologetically, “If someone had told me she needed to be scrubbed from the internet I would have taken care of it myself.”

  He swore some more. “Our screwup is going to get her killed.”

  Beau’s voice startled him. Lambo must have surfaced to talk. “What’s happening to her? Talk to me!”

  Gunnar answered grimly, “Tessa’s in trouble. How much longer until we can blow the ship?”

  “A distraction,” Beau gasped. “Get the bastard’s attention off her. I’m still a hundred yards from the ship and have to set the charges.”

  “We could masquerade as pirates,” Gunnar bit out. “Keep Al Dhib and his crew occupied while you move in and wire the ship. Get going, Beau. We’ll keep them away from her until you signal that you’re done. Don’t make it pretty. Make it fast.”

  “Buy me ten minutes.”

  And then Beau was gone.

  Neville asked in dismay, “Can he wire the ship that fast? I thought he said it would take an hour.”

  “It would if he was stealthy and took his time. In the middle of a fire fight with lots of noise and nobody watching the proximity radar, he can zoom in, slap on the charges and zoom out.”

  “What if someone sees him?” Nev asked.

  “Then he’s in as much trouble as Tessa.”

  Gunnar ordered, “Hit the gas.”

  The boat all but leaped out from underneath him.

  * * *

  Tessa’s pants were down around her ankles, her shirt was in shreds and her bra hanging was loose around her neck when her survival instincts finally kicked in. She fought like a wildcat, but was hampered by the trousers tangled around her feet. The good news was Baldy and Al Dhib seemed to think they could subdue her with their fists and didn’t reach for their sidearms. The bad news was there were two of them and she was too panicked to think straight. Thank God her Krav Maga instructor had pounded reflexive defenses and strikes into her, for they were all that was saving her right now.

  She landed a solid blow to Baldy’s jaw that dazed him, and had just nailed Al Dhib in the nose when an urgent voice came over the ship’s loudspeakers.

  “We have an incoming vessel, high-speed. Appears to be pirates. All hands to the armory.”

  Baldy swore and staggered out of the room, and Al Dhib reached for his pistol.

  He swung it viciously at her and she ducked, but it still grazed the side of her head hard enough to knock her down. She played possum and pretended to be out cold, which wasn’t far from the truth.

  She saw Al Dhib’s expensive Italian loafers run out of the room. Silence fell around her.

  She grabbed for her necklace and yanked the medal back around to the front. “I’m alive,” she croaked.

  If those pirates were in fact Torsten and company, they were close enough to pick up the feed from her necklace. “I’m going to try to get off the ship and swim to you.” Clumsily, she pulled her pants back up and fastened them around her waist. As she struggled to sit up, she reached behind herself and awkwardly hooked her bra.

  She felt better now that she was partially clothed, at least. Although her jacket was gone and her shirt hung in tatters.

  She reached for the edge of the pool table above her. Her fingers wrapped round the felt-covered bumper and she dragged herself upright. But even that small a movement made the whole room spin violently.

  She threw up on Al Dhib’s pool table, and then sank back down to the floor in slow motion and toppled over onto her side. She would get up and leave in a few minutes. Her eyes drifted closed in spite of her best efforts to keep them open. She needed a rest. Just a little one...

  * * *

  Beau heard lead ripping into the water around him and flinched reflexively as he slapped C-4 charges onto the hull of the Persephone. Two more and he would be done.

  “Tessa’s down,” Torsten announced in his earbud. “She’s alone in the salon, and she was able to tell us she’s alive, but we’re guessing she passed out. She’s lying on the floor and not moving.”

  Beau swore. If his panic could possibly get any worse, it just did. Over his head, separated only by a thin layer of armored steel and fiberglass, Tessa was hurt. Helpless. And he could practically reach out and touch her!

  The final charge was placed.

  He was supposed to swim away from the Persephone now. To leave Tessa behind to exfil on her own. But she was down. No way was he leaving her. Nobody ever got left behind on his watch...especially not the woman he loved.

  He swam for the aft portion of the ship and the swim deck that jutted out behind the vessel. As he rose to the surface, he spotted a man standing on the white fiberglass deck, firing some sort of automatic weapon.

  Kicking hard, Beau shot up to the surface, broke through and grabbed the guy by the ankle. He gave a mighty yank and flung the guy into the water, using the counter-momentum to propel himself onto the deck. He landed on his belly and rolled onto his back, reaching for his pistol in one fluid movement.

  The hostile he’d thrown into the water surfaced about eight feet away, spluttering.

  Beau double tapped his pistol, planting two rounds in the guy’s face. The hostile slipped under the water, and an oily black slick of blood gathered in his place.

  Beau scrambled to his feet, kicked off his fins and raced into the ship on bare feet. Another double tap from his pistol, and a hostile running toward him went down. Beau ran up to the guy, put one round in the back of his neck and scooped up the guy’s AK-47. He paused long enough to throw the shoulder strap over his head and grab a spare ammo magazine out of the dead man’s belt, and then he was off and running in search of a staircase.

  Webster’s schematic came to life around him, and Beau frantically counted crossing passages.

  The entire ship abruptly went dark, and he yanked up his NODs—night optical devices—from around his throat to cover his eyes. The passage jumped to life. Mistake, boys. Men like him were most at ease in darkness. Al Dhib’s men had just handed the tactical advantage to him.

  He heard footsteps coming and ducked into the room beside him, an empty stateroom. He wasn’t here to play Rambo and take down an army single-handedly. He was here for one reason only: to find Tessa and get her the hell off this bucket.

  Footsteps pounded past and faded away. He ducked back out into the hall. There. The staircase he was looking for. He race
d up it. Thankfully, all hands appeared to be out on deck raining lead down on his teammates, and the ship’s interior was deserted.

  He slipped across a foyer and into the salon. There. Beyond the pool table, a human shape on the floor.

  He sprinted over to Tessa’s side and knelt beside her, gathering her into his arms. “Baby. It’s me. Open your eyes, sweetheart.”

  Her eyelids fluttered faintly.

  “I know you hear me, Tessa. You have to wake up. We need to get out of here so none of our guys get hurt.”

  He’d chosen his inducement well. A threat to her teammates had her eyes slitting open sluggishly.

  “Beau?” she rasped.

  “In the flesh, darlin’. Can you stand?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Let’s try.” He helped her to her feet, and she looped her arm around his neck while he hung on to her waist. “God, you feel good,” he muttered. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to hold you again.”

  “Me, neither.” She sighed.

  “C’mon. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

  “Literally?”

  He glanced down at her. “Yeah, actually. As soon as we leave the ship, it’s wired to blow.”

  “Sweet. Can I mash the button?” she murmured.

  He smiled a little. “I think you’ve earned the privilege.” He passed her the detonator and she tucked it in her pants pocket.

  “They tried to...rape me...fought back...stopped them...then pirates...that’s us, right?” she mumbled as they stumbled across the salon together.

  “Yes. We’re the pirates. I don’t care if you were assaulted or not,” he declared. “All that matters is you’re alive. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

  “Ditto,” she replied, smiling back at him fuzzily.

  “Here’s the thing, Tessa. I can carry you, or I can cover our retreat with this AK. But I can’t do both. Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”