by Gennita Low
SLEEPER
CROSSFIRE SERIES BOOK THREE
by
GENNITA LOW
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PUBLISHED BY:
Gennita Low
Sleeper
Copyright © 2011 by Gennita Low
Cover by HOTDAMNDesigns
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SLEEPER. Copyright © 2011 by Gennita Low. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Gennita Low e-books.
*This book was previously released by HarperCollins as Sleeping With The Agent Copyright © 2006.
* * * * *
DEDICATION
To Mother and Father;
to my Stash,
so many decoys but only one true one;
and Mike, my ranger Buddy,
whose generosity and patience are unequalled.
Love doesn’t consist in gazing at each other but in looking
outward together in the same direction.
—ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY,
MY FAVORITE WWII HERO AND VERY WISE MAN
CHAPTER 1
Mountain pass, Macedonia
Love’s like riding a wave, dude. Sometimes you fall on your face, even when the ride’s incredible, you know? All you have to remember to do is get up, get back on your board, and paddle out and meet the next big one.
Reed settled back against the shrub, one eye trained on the scope, arcing the night viewfinder across the midnight-dark landscape. Dead silence. Nothing moving. He put the scope down and looked up into the clear night sky.
The situation was code yellow, just a notch up from green. His SEAL team was out here in the cold Eastern European terrain going through a few quick practice runs before going out into the mountains of Albania for the real thing. He could hear the lazy banter between members of his team over his helmet intercom.
Reed kept silent. He always paid attention to what was being said but rarely joined in unless necessary. He’d always been like that, and, not understanding his reasons, the others at training camp had started calling him Joker for irony. The name had stuck.
He studied the constellations, searching for the North Star. It was Archer who had taught him to read the night sky, Archer who had given him his love of the ocean. Reed had been just a spoilt, wealthy, blond-headed surf-rat taking a break from boarding school when Arch had come along and shown him that there was more to surfing than name brands and bright-print baggy pants.
But Arch had been gone for a long time now. The man who had said those words about love hadn’t really followed his teachings. When his lover of almost thirty years had unexpectedly been taken from him, Arch had taken his surfboard and headed out for that “next big wave.” Or so he’d said. Except he hadn’t come back.
“We’ll be moving to Position Two when daylight breaks, over,” Jazz, his team commander, said over the helmet radio. He was relating position and sitch-rep—situation report—to Hawk, their co-commander through Satellite. Hawk was still in the military hospital recovering from an injury.
“How’s the river? Nice and cold?” Hawk asked.
“Why don’t you come and try it for yourself?” Jazz invited. “Oh, I forgot, you’re in a hospital skirt and can’t escape from the loony bin.”
Reed smiled as he heard the others chuckle. He and his team had visited Hawk just that morning, and after making sure their commander wasn’t suffering too much from his internal injuries, they’d all teased him about chasing the nurses around in his wheelchair while wearing nothing more than a white skirt.
“You’re just envious.”
“Of your hairy legs, yeah, of course.”
Reed had the utmost respect and admiration for both his co-commanders, two best friends who seemed to have an uncanny ability to read each other’s minds on and off the battlefield. He knew Jazz had been worried all these months while Hawk had gone solo undercover, especially when he’d disappeared and been presumed dead. But things had worked out in the end. Mostly. Two weeks ago, the bad guy was killed. The team was now going to destroy the weapon caches that Hawk had located before they fell into the wrong hands again. Only one thing was missing—some kind of explosive device trigger.
The Joint Mission between GEM and STAR Force SEALs had two objectives, and only one had been accomplished. Reed wondered about the missing weapon that was so top secret even his team didn’t know much about it. He was sure that even as his team focused on the hidden caches, someone else was looking for the device.
Tonight they’d had a more difficult time than anticipated at one end of the bridge, where the water had basically turned into cold, stinking mud. By the time they’d made it past the bridge, they’d pretty much been caked with the slime.
“Come on, Lieutenant, make an escape. You’d love it,” Jazz said.
“Pardon me, sir,” Cucumber chimed in, “but I think Miss Hutchens will object.”
Miss Hutchens was Hawk’s current love interest. Reed wondered how long that was going to last. His commander had a reputation with women—Catnip was one of his nicknames. But after being gone from the team all these months, Reed had felt a change in Hawk during their reunion. He guessed Amber Hutchens had a lot to do with this change.
Hawk chuckled from his end. “At the rate you guys were moving down there, I considered coming down to give you sloths a hand.”
Reed checked the surroundings again with the nightscope as he continued listening. The practice runs were to familiarize the team with terrain and weather, so whether the code was red or yellow, it meant doing everything—from rolling in mud to setting up lookout points to staying up in shifts—by the book. Still nothing out there.
“Sloths. Like slothful in the Bible?” someone asked.
“He meant sloths, man,” Mink’s voice came over. “Those creatures don’t move more than an inch at a time or something. I read somewhere that it takes them a year to get down from a tree to have an annual crap.”
“Man, why don’t they just crap from the tree then?” Dirk asked.
Reed shook his head, a reluctant smile lifting the corner of his lips. It was a good thing no one else could hear their inane conversation. This was how his team was when they were semi-relaxed. Conversations like this reminded him of surfing. The ocean, too, had a language all its own, and the surfer had to pay attention to the ebb and flow of the tide as one rode the board and paddled out. Reed shook his head again. It’d been a while since he’d ridden the waves. He was missing it tonight.
“Do you think sloths have big balls?” someone lazily chimed in after a quiet lull.
“Ask Cumber,” Mink quipped back.
“Yo. Cumber, you awake?”
“I’m jerking off, scumbag. Go bother some other sloth.”
“You think if there were a Cumber Sloth he would take a year to jerk off to get an annual big O?” Dirk asked.
The suppressed chuckles came from different directions. There was another silence.
“Yo, Cumber.”
“I’m still jerking off.”
“I think a Cucumber Sloth would crap and jerk off at the same t
ime,” Hawk observed. “Who’s on lookout duty?”
“Joker,” Jazz replied. “He’ll be on for the next two hours.”
Joker, as Reed knew everyone expected, didn’t acknowledge. He rarely had anything to say anyway. Unless he saw something out of the ordinary, he usually stayed away from conversation of any kind. He would check in every hour.
“Talk to you next Satellite update then, sloth.”
“Yeah, don’t have too much fun with your girl there, over.” Jazz signed off.
Amber Hutchens was also in the hospital, transferred to the UN base in Kosovo along with his commander, still recovering from an almost-overdose of drugs in her system. Reed hadn’t met her, but from what he’d heard from Jazz and Dirk, she was beautiful, very smart, and incredibly brave because of her role in saving a bunch of girls who had been kidnapped from their respective countries. Which made him think of Jazz’s fiancée, Vivienne Verreau, who was also beautiful, smart, and brave. Where the hell did they find these women?
“Hey, Cumber, you still jerking off?”
“Nah, taking a crap.”
“Knock off, Stooges.” Jazz brought them back on task.
Even though he enjoyed the camaraderie among his team, Reed liked the silence the best. But then he’d known since childhood that silence was a great tool. One could learn a lot just by listening to adults. People said one thing when they meant something else, and he’d discovered that words could have double meanings, especially in the adult world.
Better to be silent. Pay attention. Watch and learn.
He was good at all three, and, with time, he’d also discovered an inherent ability to shoot with an accuracy that had earned him many medals. He’d worked very hard to become an asset in an elite team for the Navy, and then he’d been assigned to the covert Standing and Ready Force, a job he held proudly, something that was all his own doing. His accomplishments had nothing to do with his background, which was exactly how he wanted it.
He’d been gone for so long he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home. Was it a year or two? There’d been several tours to Afghanistan, Myanmar, South America, and now Macedonia. Of course, his family had probably visited those places too during his absence, except that they would have been doing a different kind of touring.
Reed smiled in the dark. He doubted his mother and father would be huddling against a shrub with a muddy jacket to keep warm. Or doing mock firefights, rehearsing with real bullets.
The practice runs tonight had two objectives. One, to reacclimatize the team, since they had just returned from an operation in the tropics. Two, to play out scenarios on how to approach the weapon caches they were seeking to destroy. Now that word had gotten out that Dragan Dilaver was dead, many of his enemies and other mercenary groups had started fighting over territory, as well as looking for Dilaver’s hidden caches. The SEALs had an advantage, of course. While undercover Hawk had befriended Dilaver and had gotten hold of all the coordinates to each weapons drop-off zone. All Reed and his team had to do was canvass each area and look for the caches.
The low humming of a motor alerted him that a vehicle was nearby, heading around the bend where his lookout point was set up. There was a small narrow roadway about ten meters below him, a winding, rocky path that led down toward one of the mountain passes, where notorious bands of mercenaries set up roadblocks to collect fees from travelers.
It wasn’t that late, and there were still vehicles passing through now and then, none of which looked like the Jeeps or trucks Hawk had told them were the transportation of choice for gunrunners. Reed radioed in each time, giving details of what he saw through the scope. They’d been ordered not to meddle or start any trouble during their practices, so as not to draw attention.
So far, nothing too unusual. Besides, they weren’t going to start anything when they weren’t anywhere near the targeted locations.
As a spotter, it could get pretty cold and miserable, especially if the ground was damp or if the weather decided not to cooperate. But this was a SEAL’s way of life—long periods of waiting before action, and practice run-throughs were taken just as seriously as the real thing.
Reed adjusted the intercom mic. “Sir, I hear another vehicle approaching. Will see it in approximately sixty seconds, over.”
“Keep me updated, Joker, over,” Jazz replied.
“Yes, sir.” He saw the headlights hit the darkness of the woods first. Then the vehicle turned into view. “It looks like a van. It’s slowing down, over.”
“Are you sure?”
“Affirmative. It’s almost to a stop.”
“Team A, code orange,” Jazz ordered.
“Standing and ready, sir,” came several answers over the mic. A vehicle stopping in the middle of the night could mean anything in these parts.
“Joker, give us any unusual details,” Jazz said. “I want to know why they’re stopping.”
“Sir, I think you should come here, over,” Reed answered as he looked through the scope. This…wasn’t what he’d expected.
Soon he heard sounds near him, and Jazz crawled over to his side. “What is it?”
Reed handed his commander the night viewer. “Women, sir. Many of them. And from what I can gather, they’re taking a piss.”
Jazz arched his eyebrows at Reed’s words. Silently, he turned in the direction Reed was pointing. He looked through the night viewer. The driver hadn’t bothered to turn off the headlights, so it was easy to recognize the female silhouettes moving back and forth. “They’re armed,” he murmured.
“Not all of them,” Reed said. “Three of them are. The others come out two at a time and disappear into the bushes nearby. So far, three pairs, so that makes six girls plus those three. Nine.”
“Eleven now,” Jazz corrected, still looking. “All women.”
“Yeah, and not too concerned about how dangerous it is to stop in the middle of nowhere with the headlights shining for everyone to see.” Reed could only shake his head. He didn’t know who these women were, but it was foolhardy to be driving this late and stopping here on this particular road. He pulled out his night-vision binoculars. “They don’t look like tourists either, not with those weapons.”
“The blonde standing in front of the vehicle is the leader,” Jazz noted.
Reed turned his binoculars on the figure. The woman was taller than the others and held what looked like a small Uzi with the easy assurance of someone who knew how to use it. She was saying something to the two heading back, probably urging them to hurry. At least someone down there knew about the danger.
He adjusted the binoculars, pushing on the zoom button, for a closer look. The woman had shoulder-length blond hair she was flicking back impatiently with one hand. She turned to look upward in the direction of the lookout point, an uneasy expression on her face. She seemed to stare directly up at him, as if she knew someone was up there. A watchfulness replaced the impatience and she cocked her head, listening to the night, looking for clues.
Reed knew she wouldn’t be able to see him and his commander. They were hidden in a natural niche on the side of the mountain, in the shadows of shrubs and trees. But it was still uncanny the way her senses picked up something from their particular spot.
“She can feel us,” Reed said.
“She’s probably nervous. I would be, too, with so many women under my care,” Jazz said. “Bet they’re illegals. Wonder what country she’s heading to.”
Travelers with the right papers and enough cash using the mountain passes could easily move from Kosovo to Macedonia to Croatia to Albania without being asked too many questions. They could be smugglers, mercenaries, ordinary folks looking for a new life, runaways, even reporters doing some independent work. There was nothing surprising about a group of armed people traveling these roads.
“What do we do?”
“Nothing.”
Reed looked away from the binoculars for a second. “Nothing?” he echoed. That was very unusual coming
from his commander. Jazz Zeringue had a soft protective core where women were concerned. Usually he would be the first to run off to help any females in trouble. But then, the women below didn’t look like they needed any assistance.
“There’s not much we can do. They are plenty nervous right now. What are they going to do if we show up suddenly?”
A group of men. In uniform. In the dark. “They’ll get the wrong idea,” Reed agreed. He imagined a bunch of screaming women running around in the woods. “So we just let them continue down the pass? They’ll meet up with some mercenaries sooner or later.”
He returned his attention to the scene. Well, a bunch of women screaming, minus that one. The blonde looked cool and steadfast as she gave out calm orders. The last of the girls returned to the vehicle. Then she turned and nodded to the two with her, and they made their way into the bushes while she stood guard.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Jazz asked. “We’re heading off tomorrow, so we can’t actually follow these women to their destination. I can radio back, but by the time anyone shows up, these ladies will be long gone. There are hundreds of illegals moving back and forth in these parts, Joker.”
Jazz sounded concerned, but he was right. There was nothing they could do. Reed wished he could somehow help the women. He didn’t care whether they understood the dangers ahead or not or that they were armed. They were no match for the firepower of a group of hardened criminals.
He looked down toward the vehicle for a few seconds. “They must have good reason to be doing this alone,” he finally said, reluctantly disengaging his personal interest. It was an easy thing for a sharpshooter to do, but then, he hadn’t needed much training to learn how to switch off his emotions. “I’m betting they know what they’re doing and that they’re prepared as best as they can be.”
