Feel The Heat

by Cindy Gerard

  “There’s a surprise.” Doc grinned at the big guy.

  Mendoza tipped back, balanced his chair on the back legs, and glanced B.J.’s way.

  Oh, yeah. Here it comes. They’re going to expect me to cook, she thought. But before she could formulate a semi-civil version of “bite me,” he surprised her.

  “Hope you like bacon and eggs. It’s my specialty,” he announced, bringing his chair back down to the floor and rising.

  “I’ll do the bacon,” Reed informed him, pushing away from the table. “You always burn it.”

  “I’ll take four eggs, over easy.” Doc put his order in with a lazy grin.

  “You’ve apparently mistaken me for a short-order cook,” Mendoza said over his shoulder. “You’ll eat ’em how I fix ’em.”

  But less than an hour later when the cooks served up heaping platters of bacon, toast, and eggs and a huge pitcher of orange juice, B.J. noticed that Doc got his four perfectly cooked, over-easy eggs.

  “Too bad you’re so damn ugly,” he informed Mendoza as he chowed down, “or you’d make some lucky woman a good wife.”

  “Better grab and growl,” Reed told B.J., “before these primates lick the platters. No such thing as ladies first with this crew.”

  “I’ll just … um … go get Stephanie,” she said, a little too fascinated by the sight of all that food and all those men and all the nonsense going on among them.

  You’d think they were in the midst of a party instead of a life-or-death situation. The good-natured insults kept flying as she walked out of the room. On one level she understood it. Humor was a coping mechanism for some people. And there was the fact that these guys had been through many fires together. Was there a point in time, she wondered, when it all became rote? That the idea of possibly taking a bullet, of taking a life, became such an integral part of their existence that fear no longer factored into the mix?

  No, she didn’t buy that and thought back to yesterday—God, was it just yesterday?—when she’d killed a man. A sick knot clutched at her stomach. No one could get used to that. Didn’t matter that it had been life or death.

  It had to be that way for these men, too, she suspected. No matter how much they’d done, how much they’d seen, how many times they’d escaped death, what they did would never become status quo. They were just better than most at concealing their nerves.

  What struck her most about these men, however, was that they seemed more like brothers than coworkers. In a fleeting moment of longing, she realized that, in part, it was the absence of that sense of brotherhood, of community, of belonging, that sometimes made her feel so empty inside.

  “Stephanie, come get something to eat,” she said from the open doorway of the computer room.

  “In a minute.” Stephanie’s head was down, and her good hand held a pen that flew over a stack of paper.

  “In a minute, it might all be gone,” B.J. warned her.

  If Stephanie heard, she ignored her.

  “Don’t be too long,” she suggested, then walked back into the middle of that sea of men.

  Not five minutes later Stephanie joined them, her fist full of papers, her eyes wide and alarmed.

  “Steph?” Nathan Black rose and went to her. “What is it?”

  She shook her head. Swallowed. “It’s bad. It’s really, really bad. I cracked the sub code on those communiqués Alan Hendricks dumped from the system,” Stephanie said. “And I kept finding the same references to Black Ruby.”

  “Black Ruby?” Nate’s brows knit together. “Sounds like a military project.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I needed to talk to my friend at the Pentagon.”

  Rafe glanced at Green, who had moved to the laptop and was checking the exterior cameras shots. The big guy had a very hard look on his face. Nothing new. But when Green glanced at Steph, Rafe saw more than generic concern. It was such a shocker, Rafe stared for a moment. Long enough for Green to catch him at it and immediately turn his gaze back to the cameras.

  “Ben was horrified when I asked him if he knew what it meant, because, according to him, Black Ruby is a top, top secret heat beam research project. He described it as Star Wars–type technology: an invisible heat beam that’s fired from a high-powered ray gun. It’s a totally non-lethal, invasive crowd-control device that can be used to disburse unruly crowds by producing a blast of heat so fierce people run from it, but it leaves no long-lasting effect. But there’s another application. It can act as a cloaking device.”

  “A cloaking device?” Rafe asked the question that was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. “For what?”

  It was B.J. who drew the disturbing conclusion. “The delivery and deployment of an E-bomb.”

  Silence. Total and complete.

  Everyone in the room stilled, their gazes switching from B.J. back to Stephanie as they digested the magnitude of the news.

  “Jesus,” Savage said finally.

  “You’re sure?” Black asked, even though his expression relayed that he already knew the answer.

  “I’m sure. The communiqués are from an IP address in Russia to someone somewhere—I still haven’t uncovered the destination—and they are all about Black Ruby and E-bomb technology.”

  “So they’re in the talking stage,” Gabe suggested.

  “Not just talking,” Stephanie said. “Assembling.”

  It was as if everyone in the room quit breathing.

  “These communiqués are filled with orders for components, tweaking of applications, and progress reports,” Stephanie continued.

  “Were you able to determine the status of their progress?” Nate asked.

  She swallowed hard. “They’re nearing the end of the testing stage.”

  “How can that be? It wasn’t more than two weeks ago when those specs for the E-bomb showed up in Afghanistan.”

  “They may have only been found two weeks ago, but it looks like the technology and the Black Ruby technology were both stolen over a year ago. Maybe longer. Many of the messages I’ve been decoding started twelve months ago. That’s how long Alan was hiding data.”

  “Steph—have you found a target?” Rafe’s heartbeat drummed in the silence.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know where,” she said. “But I do know when. Seven days from today.”

  The tension in the room was suddenly so thick a chain saw couldn’t have hacked through it.

  “So, we have unknown terrorists, a known target date, an unknown target, and the technology to launch an E-bomb that could cripple the entire electronic grid of a major city,” Black summarized into the silence.

  “It’s worse than that,” Stephanie said. “Remember the blackout of 2003?”

  Everyone remembered. A cascading blackout destabilized the Niagara-Mohawk power grid as far north as Canada and as far west as Detroit and Cleveland.

  “Millions of people were without power for several days,” Nate said.

  “Take that times one hundred if whoever is behind this manages to use an E-bomb to take out that same power grid, or any one of a number of grids that provide electricity to the U.S. and Canada,” Stephanie said. “Virtually everything electrically powered will be dead. Forever. There’s no coming back. No repairs. No possibility of getting the power grid back online.

  “One bomb, in the right place, could shut down half the country. Think about it. Airports. The stock exchange. The Internet. All finance. All computer records. Gas pumps.” The list that came to mind was staggering.

  “Who the hell is behind this?” Gabe’s face was beet red with anger.

  “It wasn’t Alan Hendricks,” B.J. concluded. “He was just a chess piece they were pushing around the board.”

  “Someone higher up then. Someone with a high level of security clearance and a reason to sell out their country,” Lang put in quietly.

  “A reason?” B.J. said, sounding disgusted. “Money is always the reason.”

  Stephanie shook her head. “I still can’t believe the
re could be a traitor inside our ranks.”

  “And yet, Alan Hendricks was in it neck deep,” B.J. pointed out.

  “We’ve got to look at a higher level,” Nate said.

  “Lots of special interest groups out there lobbying. Lots of foreign money making its way into greedy hands,” Reed agreed.

  “B.J., call Sherwood again,” Nate ordered. “Fill him in on what Steph discovered so he can pass it on. And Steph, we need the destination IP address. We need to know where those communications are going. What can we get you to make things happen?”

  Stephanie looked uncomfortable.

  “What is it?” Black pressed.

  She hesitated. “If I had encryption software, this would go a lot faster.”

  “No way can we breach NSA security,” B.J. said, reading the minds of everyone in the room.

  Stephanie met B.J.’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have to. I’ve got software loaded on my laptop at home. It’s just something I use to practice with. But it would be too dangerous to go get it.”

  “Would it help you?” Black asked.

  She gave a reluctant nod.

  “Where do we find the laptop?”

  “On it,” Rafe said after she’d told them where it was. He grabbed an extra magazine for his Sig, along with a set of car keys. “Chase, you’re with me.”

  Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was blowback from going head-to-head with a paid assassin yesterday and playing hide-and-shoot with the goons in the tan Buick earlier this morning, but B.J. felt as jumpy as a kid at fright night at the movies.

  Holding her Glock in a two-handed grip, she followed Mendoza cautiously down the hallway on the fourteenth floor of Stephanie’s D.C. apartment building.

  It had to be the fourteenth floor, she thought grimly. Everyone knew it was really the thirteenth floor. It wasn’t that she believed in any of the unlucky number thirteen crap, but with the way her luck had been running lately, this was an additional strike she didn’t need going against her.

  “Here it is,” Mendoza said, reaching the door to apartment 14G. He produced Stephanie’s apartment key from his pocket.

  B.J. drew a bracing breath, then, gun held low, hustled to the opposite side of the door and flattened her back against the wall. Mendoza gave her a nod, then carefully turned the key. The tumblers made a soft thudding sound and the door slid open half an inch.

  “On my go,” he mouthed, drawing his Sig, then, with a final cautious glance, he started counting backward from three.

  On one, he kicked open the door and charged inside. B.J. followed as they quickly checked the foyer. The apartment was dark, lights off, drapes drawn.

  “Clear.” Mendoza hitched his head toward the living area.

  They moved in together, guns drawn, him high, her low, ready to shoot if they met resistance. B.J.’s heart thudded hard and fast.

  “All clear.” Mendoza shoved his Sig into the belt at the small of his back after they’d cleared the rooms one at a time.

  “But hardly clean,” B.J. said after flicking on a light switch.

  “Jesus,” Rafe swore when the overhead light illuminated the shambles.

  The room had been thoroughly and ruthlessly trashed. Sofa cushions slashed, lamps broken, artwork ripped from the walls.

  “Think they were pissed?” he muttered.

  “Or desperate.” B.J. holstered her Glock in the leather sheath beneath her arm.

  “Moment of truth,” he said, and headed for the bedroom.

  B.J. followed, stepping over the debris as he walked straight to the clothes closet and the heavy metal safe that sat askew on the floor.

  “Looks like when they couldn’t crack it, they tried to drag this sucker out of here,” he said. “Bad boy must weigh close to a thousand pounds.”

  “Here’s to distrustful women everywhere,” B.J. said, and watched Rafe work the lock with the combination Stephanie had given him.

  “Hurry it up,” she said, her nerves and her sixth sense working overtime. She’d had too many close calls lately.

  One of these times, her number was going to be up. “It couldn’t have been that long ago that the bad guys were here. I’m betting they’ll come back with some C-four. They’ve got to figure there’s something in that safe of use to them.”

  “Not anymore.” Rafe grinned as the last tumbler clicked into place and the safe door swung open. A laptop computer was tucked inside, along with what looked like insurance and other legal papers. “Jackpot.”

  He grabbed the laptop and closed up the safe. “Let’s go—”

  Boom, boom, boom!

  B.J. didn’t think. She just reacted. She threw herself on top of Rafe, knocked them both to the floor beside the bed, and drew her Glock.

  “Stay down,” she ordered when he groaned. “I said, stay down, damn it,” she repeated, driving a knee into his back, and with the Glock drawn, levering herself up high enough to see over the bed, the only barrier between them and the bedroom door.

  On the floor, Mendoza was gasping in pain as he rolled to his side and into a ball. “Can’t … brea … the…”

  Whoops. He must have landed on the edge of the laptop and had the wind knocked out of him when she’d pushed him down. Which meant she was on her own until he recovered.

  Boom, boom, boom! rattled the walls again.

  B.J. ducked down, then belly crawled to the foot of the bed, where she could get a clear shot at the door.

  Then she waited, adrenaline zipping through her blood.

  But nothing happened. No guys with guns burst through the door. No AK rounds shredded the mattress.

  Boom, boom, boom!

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, finally realizing the source of the noise.

  She hauled her sorry self upright, walked over to the window, and hooked a finger on a drapery panel, pulling it aside. Looked like lunch break was over on the high-rise construction site across the street.

  Boom, boom, boom! reverberated through the apartment again as the heavy-duty equipment went about the business of transforming steel girders and cement and rerod into living space.

  A low curse from the bedroom jarred her back to Mendoza.

  “Crap.” She walked back into the bedroom, knowing she’d never hear the end of this. “You, um … okay?” she asked carefully as he levered himself up to a sitting position.

  He slumped against the wall, gingerly rubbing his chest with the heel of his hand. “I didn’t hear any shots.”

  “Yeah… well. False alarm.”

  He shot her a dumbfounded look. “Say again?”

  She lifted a shoulder, saw the pain still drawing his face tight. “Construction. Across the street. Sorry.”

  He glared at her.

  “I’m a little tense, all right?” she pointed out in her own defense.

  “Like I’m a little pissed?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Like that.”

  “Do me a favor. Next time you want to play conquering heroine, warn me first so I can get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  He grunted.

  She held out a hand. He grasped it and she helped him to his feet. When she would have let go of his hand, he held on tight.

  “I’d say this makes us even for Caracas.” His dark eyes flashed before he finally let go, retrieved the laptop, and stomped toward the door.

  Yeah, she thought, working hard, suddenly, to suppress a smile. Maybe they were even now.

  They made the trip back to the safe house in record time and record silence. All the while, she thought about the look in his eyes—hard and hot and she wasn’t sure what else. She thought about the strength of his hand, how he’d held hers, how her skin still tingled from his touch.

  One look at the BOIs’ grim faces, however, was all it took to ground her back in the reality of traitors, national security threats, and an unavoidable ticking clock.

  “Thanks,” Stephanie said when Rafe handed her the laptop. />
  “What else can we get you?” Nate asked.

  “Time,” she said grimly, because she knew as well as the rest of them that time was the one thing they didn’t have. “I could use some help charting and recording,” she added.

  “Mendoza—that would be you,” Nate said.

  “I can help, too.”

  When Green also volunteered, it surprised everyone in the room—possibly everyone but B.J. because she’d seen the look in Green’s eyes when he’d thought no one was watching.