“Me? No. I’m Catholic,” he insisted. “I used to be. It’s just that, well, I kinda believe a little of everything and most of nothing right now.” He sighed, his hand still very much connected to her ribs. “Guess I’m trying to figure everything out...” His words trailed away with his gaze. Now wasn’t the time to get psychoanalytical. He had a doctor back home for that. And a priest. And an old Indian medicine man. Hell. He even had a fortuneteller.
They’d all missed what Tess had nailed the moment he’d met her. The second they’d touched. Her singing “Amazing Grace” in the shower had all but done him in. She’d gotten under his skin and into his heart pretty damned fast.
Tess brought his gaze back to hers with a gentle finger against his jaw. “Tell me,” she ordered softly.
Lee grunted. “Tell you what?”
“Do you believe in the teachings of Buddha? You do, don’t you?”
He looked down on her, which wasn’t hard at this close proximity, their noses nearly touching, and her breath soft and warm in his face. Only the Humvee’s steady engine noise filled the space between them.
“I’ll tell you what I believe.” He nipped her lower lip, his other hand smoothing against her cheek to shield them from those dark observant eyes in the rearview mirror. “The Taliban is scared you’ll unite the tribes of the north with this descendant of Alexander, maybe the entire country. The last thing they want is someone with that kind of mystique and perceived power to stand up and challenge them and what they’re doing. You’ve got them running scared right now, and they don’t like it.”
“But think of it. Bringing an age-old legend to life would make this country take notice. A great warrior could offer this proud people hope if he’s the right man for the job,” she whispered. “And hope is a powerful magic.”
“These proud people have had centuries to rise up and save themselves. They always end up killing each other,” he said sarcastically. His mouth on hers ended the argument, savoring her sweet lips. She all but fell into his arms. There was something about kissing Tess Culver that felt like the first kiss all over again. A man could get lost in her body. Lee surely wanted to.
Eric interrupted as the Hummer lurched to a sudden stop. “Hey guys. We’re there.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lee looked into Eric’s worried eyes in the mirror. The man had something to say, but Lee gave him no time to say it. Instead, he pulled Tess out the door right behind him, glancing at the morning landscape for trouble. Out of Kabul didn’t mean safety by a long shot. If anything, they were more exposed in the open than in the city. A decent sniper didn’t have to get close to kill them.
“Where are we?” Tess asked.
“About to get our butts kicked if I know Alex,” Lee muttered.
Eric had parked alongside an Army-green eighteen-wheeler, a single trailer hooked behind it. The rig was running, but no driver sat in the cab. It had been situated off the beaten road between the crests of two small hills, one sheer stone, the other covered with scraggly pines and brush. More of the same trees downhill shielded them from view.
Alex motioned them forward as he climbed out of his Humvee. “You men okay?” he asked, those damn sharp eyes not missing the fact that Lee still held Tess by the wrist. “Any trouble?”
“No, we’re good,” Lee answered. “Is this your idea of a hotel?”
Alex nodded toward the side door of the rig. “Inside. Now.”
Lee couldn’t have been more surprised. Inside was an Army-style hotel, as in six bunks attached to the walls at the back of the rig, and a head-shower combination near the bunks. High-tech communication equipment dominated the entire front half. Several satellite recon images glimmered from computer monitors in choppy black-and-white contrast. A map of Central Asia covered the wall opposite the desks. The centrally located kitchen area completed the living quarters.
Rugged Junior Agent Hunter Christian manned one bank of computer monitors while easy-going Jordan Hannigan offered a half-salute from the other bank. “Hey guys. ’Bout time you got here.”
Hunter scrambled to his feet, cuffing Jordan as he reached past him to shake Tess’s hand. Hunter was the latest bad boy Alex had hired, a hardcore Marine who commanded others with a voice of steel. Dark-haired and tattooed from his wrists to who-knew-where, he gentled his normally harsh voice for the lady in the house. “It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Culver. I’ve heard a lot about your exploits. You’re quite a famous woman.”
Hmm. He’d said that without one expletive, an effort for the foul-mouthed repertoire he usually led with. Maybe there was hope for Hunter after all.
“Is that good?” she asked quietly, and Lee had the sudden urge to punch Hunter in the gut. For no reason. He just didn’t appreciate the longer-than-necessary handshake and the hungry look in the guy’s dark eyes.
Fortunately, Jordan was on his feet and extending a handshake by then, so Hunter had to release Tess’s fingers. “Morning, ma’am. Sorry ’bout that,” Jordan apologized. “It’s just that we’ve been twiddling our thumbs waiting on you and the guys to get here.”
“You have?” Alex slanted a wicked glare at his junior agent.
Lee pulled Tess out of the line of fire while Jordan choked up his big foot and explained—quickly—how busy he’d been while the boss was gone.
“I need your cell phones,” Hunter announced with an apologetic nod toward Tess. “Sorry, ma’am, that means yours, too. I need to make sure no one’s tracked you here.”
She shrugged and handed hers over. “It doesn’t work. It got wet.”
Hunter frowned. “What’d you do? Drop it in the bathtub?”
Lee caught the smile tugging at Tess’s lips. “Something like that,” she murmured.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Boss,” Seth muttered as he wandered into the back room and dropped his gear on the lowest bunk along one wall. “Not as nice as the hotel. Are we staying with you?”
“No,” came the definite answer. “You and Eric still have work in town, remember?”
Jordan relieved everyone but Alex of their weapons and gear. He stored the assortment inside a metal cabinet at the front door within easy reach. Lee allowed a twinge of relief. Knowing Alex, that cabinet would also be loaded with ammo and additional weapons, all readily available. Excellent.
“Where are the mummies?” Alex asked the moment Jordan secured the gear.
“Where’s the Crown of the Dragon Warrior?’ Tess shot back, and Lee grinned. They were back at square one again. Showdown. He couldn’t decide who’d just met their match.
“Let me show you something, Miss Culver.” Alex stabbed a finger into the screen Hunter had just resumed monitoring. “Do you know what that is?”
Lee peered over Hunter’s beefy shoulder with Tess. Hunter worked his keyboard to bring the image into better clarity. Obviously a satellite feed, it depicted what looked like a campfire with several figures hunched nearby. Two rectangular objects in close vicinity might have been jeeps or trucks. It was an obscure image on a grainy background at best.
“Looks like some kind of a camp. Who are they?” Lee asked.
“You tell me,” Alex answered, nodding back to Hunter and Jordan. “As soon as I learned of the mummified remains of Roxana, I had these guys pull a week’s worth of recon photos from specific areas along the highest habitable mountain ranges. You’re only seeing one shot. Look at the wall map.”
Tess’s breath caught, but all Lee saw on the map were the multitude of red stickpins in one specific area of the southern Hindu Kush.
“Every one of those pins is a camp full of soldiers just like these guys,” Hunter said. “They weren’t there a week ago, but now, this quadrant of the mountain’s western face is crawling with them.”
“That’s a major Taliban neighborhood,” Eric said, his finger in the middle of the pins.
“And it’s high in the mountains. Sheer rock,” Seth added. “There are no passable roads up there. They’ve all been
shelled. Only goats live up that high. Goats and Taliban.”
“And it’s damned near in Pakistan,” Lee breathed. The grand scale of the Hindu Kush was bad enough. Sheer stone mountains with lush hidden valleys offered nothing but a hard place to live and no way to travel unless a man planned to fast rope in. Getting out was another problem all together. Seth was right. Roads were few and rugged, more likely full of bomb craters.
This particular area straddled the border of Pakistan. The people living there were descendants of the same fierce tribes who’d resisted invaders for centuries, including the equally fierce bringers of Islam who’d forced conversion at the edge of a sword. The locals were known to kill trespassers at first glance, especially foreigners.
Tess had kept silent so far, but her face betrayed her. That area was important to her. Lee could tell.
Alex watched her intently, too. “Is there something you’d like to tell me now, Miss Culver?” he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
When she didn’t speak, he did, his index finger tracing a small trail on the map. “A group of three men climbed this trail two days ago from this village.” He tapped the map an inch from his finger on the trail. “That was the day Monsieur Favreau met his death outside the museum. By all appearances, the men were local tribesmen. I don’t believe they were Taliban, but they could’ve been. They reached this point...” he turned to Tess, “and they disappeared. We could get no thermal readings. No satellite imagery. Nothing. Approximately, two hours later, they reappeared in the exact same location. At the same time, a helicopter landed at this point.” He indicated a precariously narrow ridge that in no way looked like it could support a landing pad.
Tess watched with wide eyes, holding her breath.
“I take it you already know who was in that helicopter,” Alex insinuated.
“Who?” She shook her head, all of her over-confidence on hold.
It appeared Alex finally had the upper hand. His eyes narrowed as if he were deciding whether to believe Tess or not. Lee felt the game shift. Alex might be a tough charger, but he also knew when to take a step back when his assumptions were wrong. He appeared to be doing just that. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Tess met him head on, her eyes full of questions but not deceit. “I need to speak with you and Lee alone.”
Alex didn’t have to ask. Eric, Seth, Hunter, and Jordan excused themselves and made a hasty exit. Only when the door had closed behind them did Tess blow out a deep breath. She shot Lee a tender glance. “How would I know who was in that helicopter? The only time I’ve been up there was with Monsieur Favreau. Jacque and I rode donkeys as far as we could, but then we had to climb the rest of the way on foot. And yes, there’s a cave hidden on the face of that mountain, Mr. Stewart. That’s why you thought those men disappeared. The entrance is impossible to see unless you know where to look, and it’s extremely difficult to reach. The mummies are hidden there, but no one else can know. I only trust you and Lee.”
“So this is where you believe the mummies of Roxana and Alexander IV are?” Alex asked. A look of awe settled on his features as he traced that trail again with the tip of his finger.
“No. That's where I know they are,” Tess said, stepping to Lee’s side as she corrected Alex. “Roxana and her son’s mummies are both there, many other mummies, too. Only a handful of the village elders are entrusted with this secret. That’s how they’ve been able to hide the mummies from the rest of world for more than two millennia. We cannot let this cave fall to the Taliban. They’ll loot it and destroy everything.”
Lee blew out a slow sigh. “It’s damned rugged terrain, Tess. You’d have to be a mountain goat just to live in the valleys.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Alex agreed. “These tribes are tough. They have to be to survive on sheer stone in some of these mountain valleys. They build their homes on vertical terraces, one on top the other. Even trees hang on for their lives at that altitude.”
“You’ve both been there?” Tess asked.
Lee couldn’t answer. That Alex didn’t either meant he wouldn’t. Black ops were black ops forever, and operators never told. As it was, they’d both said too much.
Lee offered an acceptable answer to pacify Tess. “We study a country’s topography in our line of business. There’s something you need to know. That pilot in the helicopter...” He let his sentence hang, wishing he didn’t have to dump another shock on her. Five deaths were enough. She didn’t need proof of her brother’s deceit, too.
“Yes?” Those violet blues lit up with anticipation.
He reached for her hand to lessen the shock. “It’s Clint.”
“My brother? No. He doesn’t know how to fly.” Her brows furrowed with disbelief. “Even if he did, there are no drug runners that high in the Kush. You can’t grow poppies or marijuana on solid granite. Why else would he go up there?”
Lee didn’t argue. It didn’t make sense to him either, but he knew Mother’s reputation for accuracy. If she’d said it was Clint Culver behind the stick in that chopper, then it was. Mother only offered definitive information after she’d verified, validated, and well, definitized. That Tess didn’t know this side of her brother was a puzzle Lee hadn’t solved yet.
She cocked her head, glancing at Alex then back to Lee. “You guys are full of shit. Clint’s not bright enough to fly a helicopter. He’s a dweeb. He’s... he’s Clint. You’ve seen him, Lee. Did he look like he could handle anything more complicated than his truck and a bong?”
Lee shrugged and let it go. He’d get to the mystery of Clint soon enough. For now, he had his hands full keeping Tess alive. “What’s the game plan?” he asked Alex.
That his boss’s icy blue eyes were hooded should’ve been a clue there was another power struggle coming. Alex turned on Tess. “Where’s the reliquary?”
“Safe,” she answered.
“As safe as those mummies?” Alex nodded toward the map.
“Yes,” she declared evenly. “There’s no way—”
Alex flipped the switch on another monitor that portrayed an army of Taliban soldiers thundering down a dilapidated staircase. “I had Eric and Seth plant a few of Mother’s Tattle Tales after your first little heist,” Alex said by way of commentary. “Remember where you hid the reliquary?”
Lee recognized the location. He’d been inside that building years earlier. Those stairs led to the lower level of the derelict Darul Aman Palace. The soldiers on the screen all carried handguns and rifles. Lee recognized the man leading the charge, too. Turik. Shit. She’d hidden the reliquary where Nizari and his soldiers wouldn’t think to look for it, only now—they were.
“Is this live?” she asked, the tips of her fingers tight on Lee’s forearm.
He glanced at his boss’s somber face. This wasn’t a live feed. Turik already had the reliquary. Damn.
“No! No! No!” she growled, but the answer was emphatically yes. She shoved away from Lee and whirled toward the door. “I’m leaving. I have to...”
Alex let her go, not missing a beat. “This is how we’ll get the reliquary back, Lee,” he said, while he retrieved a roll of architectural blueprints from the side of Hunter’s desk and unrolled them for Lee to follow along. “It’s now in a safety deposit box at the Central Bank of Kabul. Our friend Turik stashed it there. By midnight, I’ll have the box number. Come daylight, we’ll go in and retrieve it.”
Lee nodded. Looked like he’d be robbing a bank instead of mountain climbing.
Tess glanced over her shoulder, her hand already on the doorknob. “He put it in a bank?”
Lee caught a smirk flitting across Alex’s face as he kept ignoring her. “You won’t be going in through the front door.” He pointed to the plans. “You’ll enter through the neighboring building, here, at this shared wall. It needs to be quick and dirty. Jordan’s your EOD guy. He’ll handle the explosive charge that will put you right inside the downstairs vault.”
Lee nodded to confirm
his agreement, one eye still on Tess. “Right. Got it. Jordan’s damn good. Should be a quick in-and-out.”
“Fine. I’ll go,” Tess ground out as she stalked back to the desk. “You’re not doing this without me.”
Alex didn’t spare her a glance when she peered around him to the blueprints. “Meanwhile,” he continued, “I’ll run interference and maintain vigilance topside. Have I missed anything?”
Just the violet-blue daggers that Tess is throwing at you, Boss.
Lee lifted the blueprints off the desk to study the architectural design of the bank building. It didn’t look like a tough job. The shared wall ran the length of the north side of the Central Bank of Kabul. It wouldn’t take much SEMTEX. Once the wall was breached, they’d be inside the vault. Then it was just a matter of removing the right lockbox and disappearing before the locals showed up.
“Just keep the police off our butts,” Lee answered, sure that Tess was dying to take charge. “There’ll be an alarm inside the vault. Jordan will need to use a light touch so we don’t make too much noise. Do he and Eric already know about this?”
“I have a better idea,” Tess said, like either of them was listening.
Alex continued ignoring Tess. “Get ready, Lee. You’ll go in before sunup.”
“Can do,” Lee answered, thoroughly enjoying the cat-and-mouse game. Alex did know how to play off Tess’s pride.
“Will you two pay attention? I said I have a better idea, guys,” she demanded. The cocky cat burglar was back with a vengeance, and she was pushy, too, especially when Lee lifted the plans over her head and out of her reach. His height made for one aggravated, but determined short woman.
He leveled a stern eye at her, enjoying how he and Alex had reeled her in. “You’ll join us on one condition, Miss Culver. I’m running this op. Me. Only me. You’ll follow my orders every step of the way or you’re grounded, is that clear?”
When her eyes changed to flashing cobalt with sparks of amethyst, his heart stuttered. That she managed alluring and belligerent at the same time reeled Lee in, too. Damn. How was he ever going to get control?
Lee (In the Company of Snipers Book 12) Page 18
