Crossfire

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  “You did what?” Quinn’s voice was incredulous as he stared at the lieutenant who had been in charge of communication with the local authorities.

  The man stood up and turned away from his communication console to face Quinn fully. He was a good three inches taller than Quinn’s six feet, and he took an aggressive stance. “Look, I had no idea he wouldn’t call back until his men were already heading your way. Besides, I didn’t get any information at all from him until right before I went off duty. That must have been about ten minutes before the incident.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us ten minutes beforehand that they were heading our way?” Seth spoke now, trying to bank the anger coursing through him.

  “I was off duty. Besides, by the time my replacement received your call, it was too late to do anything about it.” The lieutenant gestured with one hand. “It’s not like we had a way to contact the police once they were at the compound.”

  “Did you pass this information along to the person who relieved you?” Seth asked slowly, his voice deceptively calm.

  “The petty officer had the report to type up.”

  Beside him, Quinn’s dark eyes blackened. Quinn had personally checked with the communications office when Seth and Brent had requested assistance, and this man had buried the information about the police’s presence. Stepping forward, war blazing in his eyes, Quinn spoke in a low voice that vibrated with fury. “If we had known that the cops had come from Soto, their headquarters could have informed them that we had men on scene.” He took another step forward, and this time the lieutenant took a step back. “And don’t you think these men deserved to know whether they were shooting at police or terrorists?”

  “Well, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Lieutenant Kiefer said edgily. One look at Quinn had him taking another retreating step.

  Before Quinn could continue forward, Seth laid a hand on his shoulder and stepped between the two men. “Back off, Quinn.”

  “Get out of the way, Lieutenant.” Quinn’s intentions were transparent, and his intense anger had blocked the reality that fighting with this man was going to land him in the brig.

  “I said back off,” Seth repeated a little more sharply. “That’s an order.”

  Quinn stayed in place, but his posturing shifted ever so slightly, enough that Seth knew he no long intended to attack but was instead hoping that the other man would throw the first punch.

  “I suggest you teach your men a little more discipline,” Lieutenant Kiefer said arrogantly to Seth. “Picking a fight with an officer is a court-martial offense.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Lieutenant.” Seth nodded slowly. “Which is why it’s up to me to take care of this problem.”

  Quick as lightning Seth’s fist struck out, connecting with the man’s jaw. Lieutenant Kiefer fell backward, slumping down into his chair. Seth took two steps toward him, angling his head to look down on the man. “Don’t you ever withhold information from my squad again. Is that understood?”

  The lieutenant gave a weak nod, but Seth had already turned back to Quinn. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Quinn snapped to attention, gave a sharp salute, and nodded. “Yes, sir!”

  4

  “What’s all this about you striking a fellow officer?” Kel asked, frustration evident in his tone. “Seth, I sent you because I figured you were the only one I could trust not to get into a fight.”

  “Sorry, Commander.” Seth said the words, but both men knew that he didn’t mean them.

  “Sorry you hit the jerk, or sorry there were so many witnesses?”

  “Sir, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that one,” Seth said simply.

  “Come on, Kel,” Quinn interrupted. “The guy should be charged with dereliction of duty after not following through with the police that way.”

  “Which is exactly why I sent you to investigate,” Kel pointed out. “Now if we charge the guy, we’re likely to have him counter with charges against Seth.”

  “Don’t let that stop you,” Seth insisted, feeling somewhat like a teenager who had been sent to the principal’s office. “I’ll take my punishment if he takes his.”

  “If nothing else, I want to make sure he never provides intel for us again.” Kel massaged his temples as though a headache was building there. “I hate to break it to you guys, but the whole ship knows we’re all Mormon. We’re not exactly setting a very good standard by going around picking fights.”

  “He didn’t pick a fight.” Quinn spoke up to defend Seth once more. “He finished one.”

  The corner of Kel’s mouth twitched, but he quickly fought it. Then he shook his head. “At least one good thing came from all of this. Amy will arrive tomorrow morning.”

  “Amy’s coming?” Brent’s head whipped around at the mention of his wife, who also served as their unit’s intelligence officer.

  Kel nodded. “I don’t know who insisted that we couldn’t bring her on board in the first place, but whoever it is probably got chewed out for limiting our resources on that last op.” Kel then turned back to Seth. “As for you, you’re confined to quarters until I figure out how to handle this mess.”

  “Yes, sir,” Seth said, holding back a sigh. He knew that Kel had to give him some token punishment in case Kiefer tried to press charges against him, but it was annoying to be taken out of the loop of what was going on.

  Resigned to his fate, Seth made his way below deck to the quarters he shared with Brent Miller. He knew he shouldn’t have hit the other man, but his temper had erupted so quickly he hadn’t taken the time to consider the consequences. He was a big man, broad through the shoulders and standing a full six foot seven. Normally he took great pains to keep his temper in check, especially since he knew how lethal it could be when let loose. The news about the injured police officers had been enough to push him too close to the edge.

  Lieutenant Kiefer never even realized Seth’s fist was coming his way until it was too late. Then again, there was only one other occasion when he could remember someone recognizing his intention and stepping in to stop a fight before it happened. A slight grin softened his features. Vanessa Lauton had been at least a foot shorter and more than a hundred pounds lighter than him, but she had muscled her way between Seth and his would-be opponent on his first day at his new high school.

  Seth felt the familiar bittersweet tug in his chest as he thought of Vanessa. It had been nearly six years since he’d seen her, but rarely did he make it more than a day or two without some thought of her surfacing. He tried to fight back the memory, but it flooded through him anyway.

  “Let’s go!” The burly teen standing in front of Seth punched his fist into his palm and narrowed his eyes. Tough Guy was the star heavyweight of Seth’s new high school. He was a few inches shorter than Seth, about six foot four, and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds.

  Seth tried a diplomatic approach as a crowd started forming in the school parking lot. “Look, man. I don’t want to fight you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have been talking to my girl.” Tough Guy took a step forward.

  Seth balanced on the balls of his feet, like a boxer waiting for the bell. “You want to narrow it down for me?”

  Tough Guy’s first swing was expected and easily avoided. Seth ducked and stepped back as he considered whether to give diplomacy one more chance or if he should just take care of this guy. His years of martial arts training told him to fight only as a last resort. His life of hard knocks taught him that sometimes it was the quickest course of action.

  Seth evaded a second punch as his hefty opponent stumbled forward when he missed yet again. This time when he turned, Seth saw the fury in the other boy’s eyes. Resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to walk away from this one, his right hand curled into a fist.

  To his surprise, at that moment a dark-haired, dark-skinned girl stepped right between them and slapped both hands on the wrestling champ’s chest. “Back off, Leonard.”

/>   “He started it,” Leonard protested.

  “How, by breathing?” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.

  “Stay out of this, Vanessa.” Leonard tried to push her hands away, but she didn’t budge. “He was talking to Marcy.”

  “Oh, grow up,” Vanessa scolded. She turned to look at Seth, her eyes narrowing. “Did you want to fight him?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Good.” She nodded and turned back to face Leonard. “Go home, Leonard.”

  “I should have expected this from you,” Leonard sneered. “Standing up for your kind.”

  “Is that your way of saying that I’m black?” She looked down at her arms as though noticing their color for the first time. “Wow, I am black.” She looked up at Leonard again, her eyes dark. “What will my father say when he finds out?”

  “Shut up, Vanessa.” Leonard pulled free of her grip by stepping back. He pointed a finger at Seth. “Stay away from Marcy.”

  Seth shrugged as Leonard slammed into his truck, gunned the engine, and let the tires squeal as he pulled out of the parking lot. Slowly the crowd dissipated, and Seth looked down at the girl standing in front of him.

  “Well, this was definitely a first,” Seth muttered as he dug his keys out of his pocket. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a girl stand up for me before.”

  “Don’t take it personally. I didn’t want Leonard to get suspended before the meet tomorrow.”

  Seth’s eyebrows winged up. “School loyalty?”

  Vanessa laughed, her features softening. “Family loyalty.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “The idiot that just tried to pick a fight with you is my cousin.”

  “Yeah, I can see the resemblance,” Seth said sarcastically. Then he shook his head and let out a short laugh. “And I thought it was tough being the new kid.”

  “Honey, you don’t know the half of it.” She put her hands on her hips and nodded at his car. “Since my ride just left without me, any chance you can give me a ride home?”

  “You sure you trust me?”

  Vanessa stepped back and looked at him as though studying a complicated puzzle. “Yeah. You don’t look like the type that wants to start any trouble.”

  Seth had stared at her, surprised by her perception. He had given her a ride home that day, and the next. Within a week, they had become practically inseparable. She had been both his girlfriend and his best friend during his last two years of high school and throughout college. She was also the reason he hadn’t been able to bring himself to date anyone for more than a week or two. No one else had ever measured up.

  With a shake of his head, Seth managed to pull himself out of his memories and back to the present as the door opened. He swung his legs over the side of his bunk when Quinn walked in.

  “Anything new?” Seth asked.

  Quinn nodded. “Yeah, but we’re not sure what.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The admiral wants to meet us in our boardroom ASAP.” Quinn motioned for Seth to follow him.

  “Are you sure he wants me there too?”

  “He especially wants you.” Quinn nodded. “Kel said he mentioned you by name.”

  Seth gave a shrug. “Let’s go find out what he wants.”

  * * *

  Vanessa slipped off her sandals and stepped onto the cooling sand. A few palm trees were scattered along the edge of the shore before the beach opened up into a narrow stretch of sand. The sun hung low in the sky, and dinner would begin shortly, but Vanessa needed a few minutes to herself before going back to work.

  She often wondered what was harder, pretending to be someone she wasn’t or enduring day after day, night after night, surrounded by so many people. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people particularly. She simply needed her alone time too. In this assignment, with her cover job as resort manager, she rarely had a minute to herself. The few she did find were often spent spying on the guests and Halim.

  She sometimes wondered whether she would have gained more trust by now had she developed more than a working relationship with Akil’s trusted advisor. Deep down she knew she couldn’t take the chance. Even though Halim was often charming and witty, he was also ruthless. Besides, she didn’t think she could handle the emotional or moral dilemmas that would follow such a decision.

  The fact that Halim was so overprotective also worried Vanessa. As he had that morning, he often stepped in when he felt she wasn’t being treated well. He also went to great lengths to keep her out of the loop when it came to his role in Akil Ramir’s business. She couldn’t be sure whether he didn’t trust her or whether he felt that weapons deals and terrorist plots were not suitable activities for a woman.

  With another glance at the building where Halim was meeting with some of the new arrivals, Vanessa decided to take this rare opportunity to relax. So far the day had been a wash as far as finding new information. Hoping that her luck was about to change, she reached for a lounge chair on the beach and angled it so that she could face the beach as well as the building where Halim was.

  She sat down and shifted her gaze to the water. The Caribbean Sea was calm and peaceful, the crashing of the waves drowning out the sounds of the resort behind her. She watched a boat loaded with tourists cross into her view. The same boat sped by every day, once in the morning as it headed out for Saona Island and then again as it returned in the evening.

  As she watched the families on board, she felt a familiar pang of loneliness. At times like these, she wondered why she had never settled down, or at least tried harder to find someone to settle down with. She supposed she already knew the answer to that. She had set her sights too high. Throughout high school she hadn’t dated at all—until Seth Johnson had moved to town.

  A wave splashed up onto the sand and over her feet, and a pang of guilt speared through her as she thought of how things had ended between them. She’d gone after him to explain, but he had left town before she managed to catch up with him. Vanessa pushed those thoughts aside, instead choosing to remember their early days together.

  Seth had been such a breath of fresh air when he moved to town. He hadn’t looked at her like the other boys at school did. Most of the people she had gone to school with saw her as one of two things: Leonard’s cousin or the dark-skinned girl who had a white daddy. The war between the States may have ended more than a century earlier, but in her hometown in Georgia, memories lasted for generations.

  It didn’t matter that her father was originally from the North, or that her grandparents were immigrants from Morocco rather than descendants of African slaves. People in the little town had only seen one thing: dark skin.

  They hadn’t been treated poorly, per se, just differently. Then again, her grandparents had never been terribly comfortable speaking English, and her mother wasn’t much better. Since her father had learned French while serving a mission in Switzerland, he was perfectly content to speak French in the home instead of English, a fact which was never understood by their neighbors.

  When Seth had moved to town, he hadn’t seen her family as a bunch of foreigners who had invaded his territory, but rather had been fascinated by her unique family history. She had only known him a few days when she found out that he too spoke French, thanks to spending much of his childhood in New Orleans. Within a few weeks, he realized that although her grandparents spoke French, they preferred speaking in Arabic. Eager to learn a new language, Seth had insisted on learning a few phrases in Arabic, quickly endearing himself to her grandparents.

  She often wondered if her decision to pursue a career in intelligence had stemmed from her early exposure to different languages and cultures, or if it had been the influence of Seth’s uncle, Patrick. A retired naval pilot, Patrick had taken over Seth’s care when he was young and had raised him as his own son. By the time Vanessa had met Patrick, his health was failing, but his stories always fascinated her. His unwavering patriotism was compelling, and she knew that his influenc
e had been the reason Seth had accepted the Navy ROTC scholarship when he graduated from high school.

  She wondered what Seth would think now if he knew she worked for the CIA. She hadn’t ever considered such a career while in college. In fact, one of the reasons she had continued her education was because she hadn’t yet decided what to do with her life. When a recruiter from the CIA had shown up as she entered her last year of graduate school, her professional goals had clicked into place. If only her personal life would follow suit.

  Vanessa let out a sigh, wishing she could go back in time. She didn’t know what she would have done differently, but . . .

  The sound of a door opening broke into her thoughts. She barely resisted the urge to adjust her dark sunglasses as her eyes shifted toward Halim and the three men who exited the building with him. Halim hesitated a moment when he saw her. He then lowered his voice fractionally even though he was speaking in Arabic, a language he believed Vanessa didn’t understand. Lina’s family had stopped speaking it after moving to France decades before.

  “I assure you, we will have the shipment ready for you,” Halim assured the man to his left, who Vanessa recognized as Tod Zimmerman, a regular at La Playa.

  “Three weeks,” Zimmerman said, anxiety humming through his voice. His eyes were close-set, and they shifted from side to side, reminding Vanessa of a caged animal looking for the chance to break free. “The antiaircraft guns must be in place before the new helicopters are delivered.”

  “Relax, my friend. We won’t need those guns.” Halim’s mouth curved into a smile. “The Americans don’t know anything about our plans.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Halim gave Zimmerman a knowing look. “Let’s just say I have friends in the right places.”

  5

  “Your team is being tasked with a special assignment.” The man who stood in front of the room wasn’t in uniform, but instead wore a business suit. The admiral had introduced him as Rick Ellison from the CIA.