The Hunter

by Gennita Low

  Steve slipped a hand behind Marlena’s waist. Hawk suspected it was to stop his wife from making one of her usual rude comments. “Thanks. Anything to stop you from assigning her to work with you as a married couple,” he said with a slight smile. “Did you get hold of T.?”

  Diamond’s eyes narrowed a little. “Have you seen her lately?”

  “I did a few months ago,” Hawk said.

  The other man pinned his gaze on him immediately. “We’ll speak more about your last meeting with her on the chopper. Leave the crates here. I’ll take care of it. The target weapon is more important.”

  “But we don’t have it,” Hawk pointed out.

  Diamond turned toward where he had come from. “You have twenty-four hours to find it,” he said. “We’ll get hold of Jed on satellite inside the chopper.”

  The older man moved as if he had been trained in jungle warfare. Hawk admired his fluid speed and eerie silence. Even hiking with his SEAL team, Hawk would hear certain sounds from weapons and clothing. He looked at Diamond’s back ahead of him and wondered at the COS commandos’ training program. He had to find out more, not just for Admiral Madison, but to satisfy his own curiosity.

  Not turning around, Diamond said, “You’re injured. I can hear you breathing. There’s fluid in your lungs. You’ll need medic care very soon or you’ll get an infection.”

  “I’ll take care of myself after the mission,” Hawk said quietly.

  “Good.”

  The chopper was military-issued. An armed man waited nearby, saluting Diamond as they approached.

  “Better you than me,” Marlena whispered to Hawk.

  “What?”

  “He’ll want to know every little detail about T. She’s determined to avoid him.”

  Hawk frowned. “Why’s that?”

  “You really don’t know?” She looked at Diamond talking to his man outside the waiting chopper. “He and T. had some kind of falling out and now she won’t see him. She’s my operations chief, so of course I won’t tell him anything I might know when he asks me.”

  Hawk shrugged. “I’ll tell him anything he wants to know about T. Somehow, I think she can take care of herself.” He studied Diamond for a moment. There was a certain polished danger around the man that reminded Hawk of T.’s elusive quality. “A woman like that is hard to catch, anyhow. More power to him.”

  Diamond turned at that moment. If he had overheard their conversation, he didn’t show it. “We have Jed on satellite. He’s at an international summit where we suspect this bomb was going to be used. It’s small and flat and can be hidden very easily in a tiny suitcase. It’s also totally undetectable because of its covering.”

  Amber had been right. That was why Jed McNeil was all dressed up on the video link. “But why this particular bomb?” Hawk asked. This had been bothering him. “Anyone can rig up a one.”

  “It’s the mother of all little bombs,” Diamond explained. “Virtually undetectable by all the modern sniffers. Because so many heads of state are attending this summit, it’s going to be very difficult to smuggle any arms or devices into the area. The surrounding streets have been cordoned off to stop vehicular suicide bombers. Air traffic has been reduced.”

  “Only a person who is authorized or invited can get in there, then,” Hawk said.

  “Yes.” Diamond turned. “Jed will fill you in on the details.”

  Hawk’s cell phone buzzed. “Hang on,” he said. Very few people knew his number. He frowned. It was Bradford Sun’s ID. “This is Hawk.”

  “Lily’s gone.”

  Hawk waved Steve and Marlena over. “What happened? Were you ambushed?”

  “No,” Brad said grimly. “She drugged me.”

  Hawk’s frown deepened. “What do you mean, she drugged you?” He looked up. All the others’ eyes were on him. “Tell me exactly what happened, Brad.”

  “We were followed to my place and, to give you and Amber more time, we decided to stay longer. Everything was fine, or so I thought, until she stabbed me with a needle full of some kind of powerful drug. Whatever it was damn near killed me. She nearly OD’d me. My housekeeper saved my life.” There was a pause. “She tried to kill me, Hawk.”

  “Are you certain it was her? We were drugged here, too. But it’s Dilaver who did it.”

  “I’m sure. We were sleeping in…my bed,” Brad said. “I…still can’t believe it.”

  Jesus. Hawk didn’t need Brad to paint a picture of what had happened. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s happening. Amber and the bomb are missing, too. Look, I’m meeting my contact via video and have to go, but I’ll bring this up. We’ll figure out what’s happening here. I’ll call you as soon as we have a game plan. Are you doing okay?”

  There was a short bitter laugh from Brad. “Barring the fact that I’m still at the hospital, I suppose I am.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hawk said again.

  “Not your fault. I should have gone after the details in her file more. I had a gut feeling about her CIA background, so I did another check with another source. I found out recently that she was saved by the CIA after being abused for two years in the whorehouses, and the file mentioned that she was part of Program Precious. I had assumed that was the name of the rescue operation, but now I’m not too sure. You do have CIA connections, right? Maybe you can find out what this program is and get a tie-in. There’s something wrong with her, Hawk. I woke up when she answered her cell phone. I thought it might have been you or Amber calling. Then she stabbed me with that thing and…she was muttering the same line over and over again.”

  “What was it?”

  “It’s that poem. ‘Things fall apart’…do you know it?”

  Hawk took out a pen and jotted down the line. “That’s it? Things fall apart? I think I know it. Sounds familiar.”

  “It’s from a famous poem. I swear I heard her saying that line as I tried to understand what was happening.”

  “Okay. Keep your phone by you. I’ll be in touch.” Hawk ended the call. He turned to Diamond. “There’s another woman missing and I think she’s betrayed Amber and me.”

  “Give Jed the details.”

  Hawk and the others climbed into the huge chopper. There were two systems technicians, in familiar fatigue greens, working and monitoring the computers.

  “We’re clear, sir,” one of them said.

  “Good.”

  The large LCD screen was state-of-the-art. Jed’s image was clearer than the one Hawk had talked to on Amber’s laptop. Now he could even see the flecks of silver in the other man’s eyes in the close-up. He was back in his usual faded jeans jacket but the background was a sumptuously decorated hotel room. His expression remained impassive as Hawk gave a detailed account of the state of the crates and Brad’s phone call.

  Hawk waited after he was done. He was getting used to Jed McNeil’s odd long silences. The others standing with him must be, too, since they kept quiet. He always had a feeling that Jed was computing and simplifying, because when he spoke up after these silences, he always seemed to be able to reduce to bare bones the most complicated facts.

  Jed looked down and Hawk could heard him shuffling some papers. “The summit meeting took place successfully, with only one minor incident. A woman was caught with an exploding device. It wasn’t our target weapon,” he said quietly. “Computation of seventy-five percent success of our operation, but that’s without the detail of Llallana Noretski. The woman in custody was obviously the decoy Greta mentioned to Amber Hutchens in their meeting. Llallana was the one going in with the bomb.”

  “But the note demanded the target weapon and if they had it, why take Amber?” Hawk asked.

  It was just a trick of the camera setup, but Jed’s light eyes seemed to turn colder. “McMillan, you like Miss Hutchens. It’s the only way to get you to do what they want—that is, go back to Velesta without finishing your mission. Meanwhile, Llallana takes off to the summit with the bomb.”

  �
�One question. How’s Lily going through all the security without a pass?”

  “There’s a very famous art exhibit unveiling in eighteen hours. I’ll let you make a guess as to who might be part of the entourage.”

  Hawk took a deep breath. “Too coincidental.”

  “There was a reason they didn’t kill you, Mr. McMillan. While you’re busy saving Miss Hutchens, the bomb will go off. You can’t be at two places at the same time.” Jed looked down at his papers again. “Granted, there’s something else going on here that would explain Amber’s girlfriend’s motives. Bradford Sun dug up something important that had been left out of previous classified files. Project Precious.”

  “Brad said he thought it was a CIA-headed operation to rescue underage prostitutes.”

  Jed shook his head. “Negative. This was a super-classified project. Very short summary—it’s short for Project Precious Gems. The last word sounds familiar to you? The CIA wanted trained operatives with the same talents unique to GEM operatives, except totally under its control. GEM, as you know, is independent, and the CIA was interested in finding out its secrets. Project Precious failed in copying or modifying NOPAIN, the GEM system, but things don’t go to waste in the CIA. Project Precious has morphed into what I know is a sleeper cell program. Trainees aren’t exactly operatives; they are embedded with sleeper commands that are activated with a repeated phrase.”

  “Things fall apart,” Hawk muttered. He was beginning to feel the whole cloak-and-dagger world ought to explode with a certain undetectable bomb. Lily—a sleeper? He couldn’t even wrap his head around it right now. “So she’s been around Amber all these years waiting to be…activated?”

  “She probably wasn’t aware of it, or only vaguely. Sleeper commands come in slowly, each one triggering the operative into a deeper state of awareness. By the time she’s fully activated, she’ll be ready to finish her assignment.”

  Hawk shook his head in disgust. “I don’t even want to know how they did this to Lily.”

  “Project Precious Gems picked up victims who are ideal for this type of program. Sleeper cells are manipulated through their emotions—hatred, fear, and a deep belief in a cause. I don’t have to point out Lily Noretski has all the requirements.”

  “She’s heading your way, then,” Diamond interjected at this point to Jed.

  “Apparently. I’ll be at the art show.”

  “Get T. to bring the other weapon.”

  Jed’s lips quirked. “I’ll let you know as soon as I take care of Llallana Noretski and have the device in my hands.”

  Hawk understood what “taking care of” meant. Jed was Number Nine, the one who finished the job. “I’ll head off to Velesta now,” he said grimly. There was nothing he could do to save Lily. He could only pray that all these crazy calculations were wrong, that it was somebody else.

  “Do what it takes to wrap up,” Jed said. “Diamond, there’s a message in your decoder for you. Hawk, any questions?”

  He was going back to Velesta for one thing and one thing only. “Permission to take care of Dilaver,” he said.

  “He’s no longer an asset,” Jed said, and nodded to someone off-camera. The screen went blank.

  “This chopper will fly you to an airstrip by Velesta,” Diamond said. “While we’re on the way there, you can brief me on T. and your activities with her.”

  Hawk didn’t say anything when Marlena winked at him as she passed him. “Stash and I will go to our seats and map out an attack plan,” she said.

  The helicopter was faster than any he had ridden on. He didn’t bother to ask questions about permissions and international borders. Let them take care of those details. He had a personal war to wage against a certain Slavic warlord and he knew it would just be him, Steve, and Marlena. Three against a small army. He refused to think of what was happening to Amber. He and Steve were SEALs and they would get Dilaver one way or another.

  After answering Diamond’s questions to his satisfaction, Hawk looked outside the chopper. He frowned. A familiar blue.

  “That’s the ocean we’re heading toward,” he said. “We aren’t heading to Macedonia.”

  “We have to make a stop,” Diamond said.

  “I don’t have much time,” Hawk said, getting impatient. Amber. “Turn back now.”

  “I suggest you sit down and wait. Fifteen minutes won’t make any difference at this point.”

  Hawk resisted the urge to punch Alex Diamond and ruffle up his nice white shirt. He didn’t care for waiting fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes could mean getting to Amber in time before…He looked down at his clenched fists. Save energy. He needed to direct his anger for the battle.

  The helicopter landed and Hawk was the first to jump out. The first thing he noticed was the smell of the ocean. Fresh. Clean. Something that he had missed a lot the last few months. Then his eyes followed the direction Diamond was heading.

  Waiting by the beach was a very familiar sight. A rubber ducky, the boat with which SEALs transport inland from a larger ship or submarine. And by that boat, six very familiar men. Jazz. Cucumber. Mink. Zone. Dirk. Joker. His brothers-in-arms were here.

  For the first time since he had woken up from the drug, Hawk felt a measure of relief. Oh yeah. This was going exactly as he’d prayed for.

  “Thank you,” he said to Diamond, then approached his team. They saluted him and he snapped back a salute. “About time. Where’s Turner?”

  “He’s out of commission for a while. We need you back for a wedding,” Jazz said. “Best man’s missing.”

  “Been missing too many damn weddings. Won’t miss this one,” Hawk said. “Are we ready?”

  “Standing and ready, sir!”

  24

  “I know you can hear me, Amber,” the voice whispered in her ear. “I know you hate me and I’ll have to live with that. But I need you here. Hawk will come for you and that will keep him from following me. I didn’t give them that high a dose, so he and his two friends can get back here in time. But just in case…I’ve made sure that you don’t feel anything. I know what it’s like to have your legs spread out while they maul you one by one and I don’t want you to feel the pain and anguish I did. I don’t have time to get more of the stuff that puts you out, but this will work just fine.”

  Amber felt a jab in her arm. Tied up as she was, she had never felt so helpless. Her eyes flew open and met Lily’s dark ones, except they didn’t seem like her friend’s eyes at all. There was a far-off look in them, as if she weren’t really looking at Amber.

  “Dilaver will rape you,” Lily told her matter-of-factly, “and Hawk will kill him. I’ll finally get what I want—the bastard gone. Meanwhile, I’ll be at the art show and I’ll wipe out the rest of those bastards who think they can run the world by selling weapons and women. I’ll show all the CIAs and World Health Organizations and humane watch-dogs how it’s done. They think they run everything, but they are wrong.”

  Although her mouth was taped, Amber tried to say something. The sounds she managed to make were weak and took too much effort. Lily shook her head.

  “You can’t do anything, Amber. No one can stop this. I have to do it. Things fall apart, you see. Even friendship. The ceremony of innocence is drowned. There is anarchy. I will destroy the slouching beast. It is my duty and my revenge.”

  Amber blinked. The drug must be affecting her. Lily was murmuring some familiar lines that sounded like one of her father’s speeches when he preached. Things fall apart…yes, she remembered now. It was Yeats, her father’s favorite poet. Her brain was getting addled. She was hallucinating Lily talking like her father.

  “That’s right.” Lily’s voice was growing soft and drifting. “Don’t fight the drug. Let it take you somewhere so you won’t see or feel anything. I wouldn’t wish that on you or anyone. I don’t want you to end up like Tatiana. If Hawk is too late, you won’t remember more than blurred images. No pain. Not like me, always remembering the pain. Always seeing their faces in my head
. I wouldn’t want you to not let Hawk or Brad or anyone make love to you again without feeling like you’re a helpless victim. I wouldn’t do that to you. This way is better. You won’t need to constantly want to be in control of everything, even sex.

  “Listen to me. Hawk is coming for you. There is hope. Don’t let me down, Amber. You and he belong to each other. Maybe I’m selfish, but I don’t want you to think of Brad. Just remember, what they do to you is nothing. Dilaver will be killed and so will every one of those bastards who hurt us and our girls. You will finally be one of us, Amber.”

  Amber shook her head, but even that felt like it took too much energy. It made everything spin around, as if she were at the edge of being drunk. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant at all. Part of her mind was screaming, trying to stop what was happening, but the floating sensation was so soothing, so relaxing. She wanted to tense up. But why? It was nice not to feel anything. She knew what was coming. Dilaver. His men. And she should be…She didn’t even feel it when Lily kissed her forehead.

  “Things fall apart. The blood-dimmed tide is loose. I must do this, Amber.”

  “The countryside looks like the Middle Ages here,” Jazz noted. “Oxen-drawn carts and wooden wheels. Not quick enough transportation to the city. Look at those walls. Are they guarded? Once we’re inside, we have to find transportation to the target area.”

  Hawk looked at his best friend. It was definitely good to stand beside him again. He had missed the easy camaraderie between them. His fake “friendship” with Dilaver only emphasized how much his friend meant to him.

  Jazz was the strategist in their team, always mapping out a plan of attack, always looking for the weakest points of the enemy. With his quick foresight, he protected his team from surprises ahead of them.

  “Dilaver has chosen one of his favorite kafenas for the exchange,” he told his team quietly. “Not the compound, which is fortified by an even bigger wall. What does that tell you?”

  “He wants you to get to him easily,” Cucumber replied.