EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3)

by CJ Lyons

  She nodded. “Do me a favor. Activate the GPS on your phone so I can keep an eye on you.”

  He activated the tracking app on both of their phones. Now they could keep track of each other, despite being separated. “If it stops for a long time over the MPs’ holding facility, will you smuggle me in a cake with a hacksaw?”

  “Comes to that, I’ll break you out myself,” she promised. “We’d better head over to your meet with Alice. I’ll drop you off outside the gate and then find someplace to take cover.”

  He hated to admit it, but her bad feeling about this was beginning to wear off on him. He was reluctant to let go of her hand long enough for her to get into the driver’s seat. Couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind. But there was no way in hell Alice could keep Rose’s presence on base a secret—not with all the press there and Rose’s face plastered all over the news.

  When she pulled up to the curb a short jog from the naval base’s main gate, there was no time for any true good-bye. No time to say what was in his heart. All Billy could do was grab his gear and jump from the van, then give her a farewell salute.

  First time ever that he’d gone into a mission feeling like his focus was divided. His duty was to the president and his country. But his heart was with Rose.

  <><><>

  Rose drove back to the park near the water. Seemed as good a place as any to make her next move.

  Not that she didn’t trust the Navy to locate one lone Coast Guard craft in the midst of an entire port bustling with activity. And certainly not that she didn’t trust Billy to save the president.

  But she finally understood what the Preacher’s people—what Teresa—wanted. Best way to stop them was to give them exactly that. With a little surprise.

  She carefully chose her gear. Changed from her fleece top and T-shirt into a polo top with buttons and then replaced the missing drawstring on her tactical jacket, the one she’d used as a garrote earlier. Felt like years had passed since this morning. Finally, she added her last antidote kit—fat chance they’d let her keep that, but it was good for a distraction as were her several concealed weapons. Then she made the call.

  “Rose.” Teresa’s voice sounded almost jovial. “I wondered when you’d be getting around to me. Busy day you’ve had, killing my family and all.”

  Rose still wasn’t sure if Teresa meant family as in blood or simply a shared obsession. Didn’t really matter. “I had no part in EZ’s death. Was he really your brother?”

  “Half-brother. Our father chose different mothers to give us each the traits he wanted cultivated.”

  How sick was that? “And the man EZ killed?”

  “You mean the man you left for dead.” A pause. “He was my husband.”

  Guess that upped the ante. “I want a trade. Me for my people.”

  “Right. And you don’t care about the toxin? You’re content to just let me walk away, do what I want with it?”

  Rose was relieved when Teresa didn’t mention Eve. Maybe she hadn’t heard her say Eve’s name after EZ died. “No. But that’s a separate negotiation. Right now we’re talking a straightforward hostage exchange.”

  “You know that no matter what happens, you won’t get to take the easy way out? Die a martyr’s death, a quick death?”

  “I know. But if it buys freedom for four innocent people, I’m willing to pay the price.”

  “Innocent?” Teresa’s tone was skeptical.

  “Me for them. That’s the deal. I see them go free, you do what you want with me.” If she’d been bargaining with the Preacher, it would have been a no-brainer. He’d readily have released her people in order to get Rose—then he would have immediately started scheming about how to take them back again so he could make Rose watch them suffer.

  Her only hope was that Teresa was as twisted as her father.

  “Deal,” Teresa said. “We’ll meet you at the Lafayette Pier in ten minutes. If you’re late, they all die.”

  <><><>

  “You do know the ceremony began twelve minutes ago,” Alice said as she drove them toward the pier where the commissioning ceremony was being held.

  Not Billy’s fault that the MPs had wasted time practically strip-searching him, relieving him of his weapons and the personal protective gear Rose had assembled for him. He felt naked; it was the first time he’d be walking around in a crowd unarmed in decades.

  The base was more than crowded; it was jammed with humanity. Seamen, their families, and civilians, all come to see the president bring the fleet’s newest vessel to life. That was basically the point of a commissioning ceremony, the crew running on board to breathe life into an empty steel hulk.

  “But you already removed the president, right?”

  She turned a glare on him. Talk about steel. “Whisked him and the first lady away as they were getting ready to climb on board. That way it was out of sight of the crowd and the cameras. The Navy muckety-mucks are giving their speeches now, and then Senator Payne will take over. She was cool with that since she’s the ship’s sponsor and had to make a speech anyway.”

  “You have the TV cameras focused off the president’s absence?”

  “Yeah, thankfully their placements are under our supervision, so we had a bit of leverage there.” She paused. “Don’t have to tell you what kind of fool I’ll look if there’s nothing here. The kind of fool that ends up on the unemployment line. Know what I mean?”

  “You’ll be in good company,” he assured her.

  “No, I won’t. Because you’ll be behind bars.”

  As if he needed reminding. “Let’s focus on the task at hand.”

  “Hmm…ferreting out a possible biotoxin on the largest naval complex in the world and that today boasts a crowd of over ten thousand? Yeah, how exactly are we going to do that?”

  “You took care of your part, securing the president. Now trust me to do my job.” He kept his gaze moving, constantly scanning the crowd, the buildings, the vehicles, for anything out of place. They finally reached the pier where the crowd was even larger, children riding their fathers’ shoulders, women in pretty dresses cheering, flags waving, balloons… “Stop.”

  “What?” Alice put the car in park. They were at the front of the crowd at the forward set of steps leading up onto the ship towering over the crowd standing on the pier. She hopped out with one hand on her weapon, the other pushing through the crowd. “What did you see?”

  Billy pointed. Dangling from the side of the ship was a cargo net filled with balloons ready to be released. “Balloons. They’d make for a perfect vehicle. Float away, pop, then release the toxin.”

  “Except these won’t be floating. They’re filled with air, not helium—there’s some kind of helium shortage, I don’t know.” She keyed her radio, ordering her team on board the ship to examine the balloons.

  “Tell them to be careful. One drop of that toxin released into the air—”

  “They know the drill. Keep looking. What else?”

  He wished Rose was here. She was so much better at seeing the big picture, creating a coherent whole out of a crazy quilt of bits and pieces. He circled, seeing no threats in the crowd, then focused on the podium above them where the president was supposed to speak. “Give me your binoculars.”

  She handed them over. “Negative on the balloons,” she reported, tapping her earpiece. “No evidence of any toxin.”

  “Susan Payne is getting up to speak, ready to call the ship to life.” With that call, hundreds of sailors would run up the stairs to board their ship, lining up along the railing as the ship’s engines and her equipment roared to life. “What’s that guy bringing to her?”

  Alice didn’t need the binoculars. She had the ceremony memorized down to the second. “She’s taking over the president’s duty of setting the watch. He was supposed to hand a special ceremonial spyglass—telescope—over to the captain.”

  Billy remembered EZ. One tiny pinprick, and a few seconds later he was dead. He looked more clo
sely through the glass. “The Navy guy carrying the telescope is wearing gloves.”

  “Sure, he’s in dress uniform.”

  “None of the others are wearing gloves, and the president never wears gloves.”

  “Nope. He’s macho that way.”

  “Susan isn’t wearing gloves, either.” He thrust the binoculars back at her. “Tell your men to intercept that telescope. Susan isn’t a terrorist. She’s a target.”

  Chapter 31

  Luckily, the public pier was just a short ride down Hampton Boulevard, and Rose made it there on time. Not so luckily, the Coast Guard boat was nowhere in sight. Instead, there was a small motorboat with a canopy covering its deck parked at the public dock. Beyond it, the Lafayette River emptied into the Chesapeake Bay, their waters swirling a brilliant blue-green in the bright sunlight. There was a small chop, making the water sparkle.

  She glanced up at the cloudless sky, the only thing marring its perfection were a few seagulls flying past. Not a bad day to die. Especially if she stopped Teresa first.

  She hunched her shoulders. Not if. When.

  She walked down the pier, hands held wide out to her sides. A man jumped from the boat and nodded to her. The only other people in sight were two old men farther upstream, under a highway’s bridge, fishing alongside concrete pilings. They seemed very intent on not paying attention to anything or anyone other than their fishing rods.

  No signs of her people. The Lafayette widened here where it emptied into the bay. The only thing on the water was a large dredging vessel—a strange combination of a ship’s hull on the bottom combined with cranes needed to raise and lower the dredging blades and hose on top. It resembled a large, bionic tugboat: ungainly and ugly.

  Rose slowed her gait. She’d seen a dredging operation once before: dune restoration after Hurricane Sandy. That dredger had sat three miles out in the ocean, cutting up sand, sucking it into a vortex, then propelling it in a slurry mixed with salt water at high speeds down a large hose that ran miles below the water until it reached the beach. There, the slurry emerged in a geyser of sand and water, hundreds of gallons a minute, gushing from the hose.

  This dredger was twice as large as the one she’d seen working oceanside—yet this was a small river. Why would it need such powerful equipment?

  An image of the naval base and city’s topography filled her mind. Wind from the west. Toxin stable for twenty minutes. LD50 of three-mile radius… She stumbled on a loose plank as Teresa’s plan came into focus.

  Diabolical and so simple. Teresa could sit safely on the dredger miles away from where the slurry emerged from the underwater hose, the toxin propelled into the air, spreading out over the entire base and city.

  And this was just a test run, Rose was certain. If the toxin worked as planned, no doubt Teresa would be not only selling it to the highest bidder, but also threaten to poison water supplies, dump it from weather balloons, spray it via crop dusters. Heck, add it to any irrigation system or sewage reclamation project, and you’d cripple a city.

  She ran out of dock and time. “Where are my people?” she demanded of the man waiting at the motorboat.

  He laughed and handed her a phone while holding a gun on her.

  “I need to see you let my people go,” Rose said into the phone, whipping her head around as if searching all directions. “Where are they?” The dredger wasn’t too far away, maybe a quarter of a mile, but she saw no movement on board. Tried hard not to stare at it, didn’t want to tip her hand.

  “Change of plans,” Teresa said.

  “No. Me for my people. Period.” She hoped she wasn’t playing it too forceful—her corpse wasn’t going to get the job done. She needed to be taken alive onto the dredger.

  The man handed her a pair of binoculars, pointed to the dredger. Three figures emerged from the cabin at its center. Teresa, a man and, between them, Eve. Rose bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  “That was your deal,” Teresa said, raising a pistol and holding it to Eve’s head. “Here’s mine. You surrender now, and you get to say good-bye to your daughter before you die. You don’t, and you die now, and I’ll do to her everything Grigor did to you, but I’ll keep her alive to suffer for twice as long. Maybe longer if I like the way she screams.”

  <><><>

  The destroyer’s crew stood at attention in straight rows in front of the steps leading up to the ship. Several craned their heads to stare at Billy as he pushed his way through them. Secret Service agents flanking the steps closed ranks and stopped him. Alice caught up, talking frantically into her radio, grabbing him by the elbow as her men waved them through.

  Together, they ran up the steps just as a shout came from the podium above them. When they arrived, Susan was on the deck, her limbs thrashing in a seizure, blood frothing from her mouth and eyes. The telescope, a polished brass antique, lay at her side.

  “Don’t touch that,” Billy yelled to a sailor reaching for it. “Do not touch anything.” He ran to Susan’s side. Her eyes fixed on him, but he doubted she could see—at least he hoped she couldn’t. He hoped the toxin worked so fast that she didn’t feel anything.

  Her body stopped convulsing and fell limp. He reached for her hand, felt for her pulse. Nothing.

  “She’s gone,” he told Alice, who was busy securing the other dignitaries and the crime scene. “And we’re out of time.”

  “No word from port security on this Coast Guard vessel you reported. We need more intel, Price. Some way to know where they’ll be attacking next.”

  He dropped Susan’s hand and stood. She’d been a friend—he’d doubted her motives, doubted her loyalty, yet she’d been a friend. And he’d let her down. Saved the president, yes, but because of his doubts, because he didn’t have the answers fast enough, he’d let her down.

  “I don’t know anything,” he told Alice.

  “You knew enough to come close to stopping them here,” she argued. “You know these people, what they want, how they think. Where, Billy? I can’t evacuate anyone until I know where it’s safe to send them. Who will they target next?”

  He stared across the bow into the sun hanging low over the water. “I wish I knew.”

  <><><>

  Rose handed the man the binoculars and the cell phone. As she brushed past him to jump onto the small boat, she fumbled her landing to distract him as she slipped her own cell into the duffle he stashed the binoculars in. He merely laughed, threw the bag onto one of the cushioned seats, and leapt on board behind her.

  “Hands,” he ordered. He yanked her wrists behind her and cuffed her, then thoroughly frisked her, removing her knives, the antidote kit, and the set of lock picks she’d stashed. He didn’t find anything important, but she hid her smile.

  Three minutes later, they were on board the dredger. He shoved Rose into the cabin on the foredeck, grinning like he’d brought home a champion marlin.

  “Told you she’d go for it.”

  “Get the boat back before anyone notices you, but be ready to pick us up when I give the order,” Teresa told him. He left, but that still left three more men on board the dredger. Rose had faced worse odds.

  “Take the cuffs off,” Teresa ordered one of them. “Having her hands free isn’t going to help her, and she knows that. Don’t you, Rose?”

  Rose said nothing, trying to gauge the atmosphere on the dredger. It was obvious that Teresa had been waiting a long, long time to lord it over Rose. What better way to show Rose how superior Teresa was, what little threat Rose posed, than to remove the cuffs?

  Didn’t matter. Rose was prepared to get out of the handcuffs no matter what Teresa decided, but she needed Teresa to feel in charge, so she merely nodded meekly.

  “You sure?” one of the men asked.

  Teresa’s smirk was all the answer Rose needed. “Don’t worry. She’s not going anywhere. She doesn’t want to go anywhere, not without her daughter. If she tries anything Eve dies.”

  Her men complied, freeing Rose from her
cuffs. Teresa waved them from the cabin.

  “So, you’re the last one,” Rose said. Teresa jerked her chin up defiantly. “EZ said there were three of you left, the Preacher’s real children, but that was before he knew about the man I killed last night. With him dead, there’s only you.” She smiled at Teresa. “And then there was one…”

  Teresa didn’t take the bait. “One more than there will be left in your family, Rose. Don’t worry, though. You’re not going to die here with them. You get to come with me and watch.”

  Like hell she would. “Let me say good-bye, first. You owe me that.”

  Teresa’s eyes blazed. She slapped Rose so hard that she stumbled off balance. About damn time. Rose raised her hands to rub her face, allowing them to linger against her chest as if she were catching her breath. She used the movement as cover while she slipped the plastic handcuff key clipped to the bottom button of her polo shirt out from beneath the placket concealing it. Squeezing it between her fingers, out of sight, she turned back to Teresa.

  “I owe you more than that,” Teresa said.

  “My people?” Rose stood tall, calm, daring Teresa to accept her challenge.

  Finally, Teresa gave a curt nod, beckoned to one of her men, and he escorted Rose below deck. The lower deck had several compartments sealed off with watertight hatches. One had a window in the door, but she couldn’t see through it from her angle. Behind it, the noise of a powerful engine could be heard. Not the kind of motor that would propel a boat, more like the whirling of a jet or powerful turbine.

  That room had to be the compartment where the sand sucked up from the bottom was propelled into the pipe and sent out miles away to land. Which meant that was the room where the toxin would be added to the slurry.

  The guard yanked her in the other direction to a forward storage compartment. The ceiling here was lower and the hatch half the size of the other doors. He undid the levers locking it and swung it open.