Code Name: Bundle!

by Christina Skye

  Max scowled into the wind. Whether he believed Cruz was irrelevant. The performance came first.

  He expertly tightened the rope around his leg to fine-tune his descent while Cruz watched from the edge of the cliff. Max cursed silently as gravel shot down, slamming into his head.

  “When are you going to wake up? Everyone in Foxfire is a guinea pig. Ryker will keep using you until there’s nothing left. Then he’ll toss you into the garbage, the same way he did me.”

  Max kept moving, closing his thoughts to the rogue Foxfire operative above him.

  “We need to talk, Preston. I’ll send a boat to get you. After that, if you’re still so sure you want to leave, I’ll let you go. No questions asked.”

  Like hell you will, Max thought grimly. He kept right on moving.

  “Not interested? In that case, I happen to hold one more playing card, and it would be a major waste for her to die.”

  Miki. How had Cruz found her so soon?

  Max thought of the set of pain pills missing from his medical kit. He’d only just begun to piece together the pilot’s betrayal. Miki wouldn’t have taken the pills, but Dutch could have. That meant he wasn’t nearly as weak or disoriented as he’d appeared. If Max hadn’t been so caught up in the grip of his lust for Miki, he might have made the connection sooner. Now she was Cruz’s hostage, and he wouldn’t let her live long.

  Max forced his mind to be cold and calculating, the way Cruz had become. The drum of a motor made him turn as a boat headed toward the beach. He could make out Dutch’s form, hunched over the wheel, but he couldn’t see Miki.

  If he’d harmed Miki, Max would rip him apart. But revenge would have to wait.

  “She’s a very resourceful woman. That’s one reason I chose her to be the recipient of one of my older chips. And her travel plans were exotic enough to pull attention away from my movements.”

  If one of Cruz’s chips was imbedded in Miki’s arm, that would explain her continuing pain and the wound that didn’t heal. It would also explain Max’s odd sensory disorientation and the nosebleeds that struck when they were close. Max knew that Cruz’s chips had been degrading during the months before his escape. The headaches and nosebleeds since coming to this island could be more signs of chip failure affecting both of them. In fact, Miki was damned lucky that she hadn’t had a more serious reaction.

  Not that Cruz would care about that. Everything was cold strategy to him. It had been his greatest skill in the Foxfire unit.

  Max’s eyes narrowed against the rain. He was fifty feet above the ocean now, his scuba gear and inflatable boat out of sight inside a small cave at the base of the cliff. He would be geared up and underwater in less than three minutes.

  At least that’s what Cruz would expect him to do, and expectation was everything.

  Max looked down at his watch, calculating possibilities. It would be one hell of a tight switch.

  He turned out of Cruz’s line of sight, opened the face of his watch and tapped a short burst of code using a button hidden beneath the LED screen.

  Showtime. Izzy would know exactly what the code word meant.

  After that he shoved a small red pill into place inside his lower gum, careful not to puncture its hard gel coating. He sure as hell hoped he wasn’t going to need it, but his orders were crystal clear. Get the weapon and get out.

  He wasn’t going anywhere with Cruz. Not alive.

  He turned back, looking up the cliff, letting his tension show. “I don’t see the woman, Enrique. Face it, your stooge Dutch was too weak to do anything after the pneumothorax from the crash. While we’re at it, I don’t buy that crap about the guidance system, either.”

  “No? Take a look over your right shoulder.”

  Max saw that the boat had stopped. Dutch was pulling someone onto the deck from the rear railing. The flash of bright red could only be Miki’s Hawaiian shirt.

  She must have tried to escape—and failed.

  Something dug into Max’s heart. He shouldn’t have let her get involved. As soon as he had confirmation that she was an innocent civilian, he should have gotten her the hell off the island, despite Ryker’s orders to ignore everything but the mission. Now it was too late.

  He took a deep breath and shuttered his mind, putting away all trace of emotion. He had no other choice. The best protection for Miki now would be a swift, deadly counterattack.

  He tightened his rope, peering through the rain. When he looked back at Cruz, he had shielded his mind completely. In the last months, Foxfire’s science team had worked night and day to come up with a way to disable the man who had once been their strongest and most deadly member. Max hoped the mental shields he had been taught would hold Cruz off temporarily.

  “Assuming I’m willing to talk, what’s in it for me, Enrique?”

  Cruz didn’t move, a black slash against the churning gray clouds. “Name your price. Power, wealth, fame—any of them can be yours. I’ll send a boat for you and we’ll discuss it.”

  Max glared up through the rain. This was the opportunity he’d been seeking. He wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Careful, he thought. Cruz was vicious, but he wasn’t stupid. “For starters, I want the woman. But after that I want a whole lot more. You’re asking me to sell out my country, remember?”

  “Your country already sold you out, Max. You’re just another lab animal as far as Ryker is concerned. Once your chips start failing, he’ll throw you into confinement, too. He’ll test you night and day the same way he did to me.”

  Max didn’t believe a word of it. Ryker wasn’t a madman, only driven. He didn’t make decisions without scrutiny, although Max couldn’t remember the last time anyone from D.C. had come to inspect the lab—even the public parts of it.

  “I don’t care about Ryker or the suits back in D.C. If I do this, Enrique, I’m doing it for the money.”

  “And for the woman,” Cruz said coldly.

  “That, too. And if you’re lying to me, I’ll kick your ass all the way back to San Francisco.”

  Cruz didn’t move. “I’m not lying.”

  As Max dropped the final feet to the cave entrance, his old teammate sent a wave of energy after him, rippling like smoke across the face of the cliff and burning down his spine. It was a basic distortion, part of Cruz’s Foxfire training, but the effect was stronger than expected despite all of Max’s new shields.

  The cliff face seemed to catch fire and flame outward, ringing Max in heat.

  An illusion, he knew. A sign of power meant to intimidate him. But it was one more proof that Cruz was changing, taking on strengths far beyond his original enhancements.

  Max was about to walk into very deep shit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MIKI WAS CAUGHT, her lungs burning, and in seconds she would pass out. Something gripped her leg, a slimy creature from the sea bottom she had been unlucky enough to disturb. Fighting her fear, she jackknifed vainly, searching for whatever was holding her ankle.

  A black form loomed into view in front of her and she shot back in terror.

  Huge, bulging eyes. Black and webby hands. Long, black body.

  The snare left her leg, and two hands locked around her waist. As Miki sputtered and dug at the water, she realized she was looking at a man in full scuba gear. Suddenly she was surrounded by five more men. One of them pulled off his rebreather unit and slid it into her mouth, hovering nearby while she took shaky breaths.

  It felt like a bad dream. Miki’s eyes closed and the world faded to gray. So tired. So cold…

  Something grabbed her, shaking her hard, and she came awake with a start, fighting the hands locked on her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, the masked face was back.

  Creepy, she thought dizzily. Now he was holding a tiny waterproof light and some kind of plastic underwater writing slate. He tapped Miki’s shoulder, then wrote on the slate with what looked like a big waxy crayon.

  Friends.

  Okay, this was abso-freakin
g nuts. Shuddering, Miki looked around her, ringed by big bodies and high-tech black wetsuits. She tried to work out the details, but she wasn’t having much luck.

  The man wrote on the slate again. Only one word this time. Max?

  Miki realized he was holding the wax pen out and waiting for an answer. With shaking hands, she gripped the slate and wrote quickly.

  Went to island. Looking for something important. Said hidden near palm tree on cliff.

  The man whose breathing gear she was using nodded and then passed the slate around to the others. Miki wished she could see their faces clearly, but even through the murky water she sensed their intense focus and intelligence. One of the other men passed the leader his own breathing unit, and Miki gave a mental head slap. She made a move to pull out her mouthpiece and return it, but the man shook his head, motioning her to keep it. Then he held the slate in front of her again.

  Gone how long?

  Miki frowned and tried to remember.

  Not sure. Less than an hour.

  The man wrote quickly. Need your help.

  Miki shivered with cold, treading the murky water. If she died now, who would miss her? Who would remember her for touching a life or changing the world in any way? That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? People said that everyone had a gift, and you were supposed to find that gift and use it fully before you died.

  Right now it looked as if she had a ninety-ten chance of dying, and she’d done nothing of any importance in her life. This was her chance.

  She nodded at him.

  He wrote another line. Will be very dangerous.

  He hadn’t finished writing when she grabbed the board from his hand, crossed out the last line and scrawled in big letters.

  YES.

  One of the other men swam closer and squeezed her shoulder, giving a big thumbs-up. If the whole scene hadn’t been so surreal, and if she hadn’t had a mouthpiece locked between her trembling lips, she might have laughed.

  But the danger ahead was anything but funny, and now the lead man was writing on the slate again, while one of the others pressed something heavy into her hands.

  When she looked down, the slate said, Kevlar vest. Put it on under your shirt.

  After Miki pulled her shirt back on over the black protective vest, he nodded and gave her arm another reassuring squeeze.

  Max needs you. Can you do this?

  She didn’t hesitate, nodding hard.

  Behind the dark masks, six sets of eyes probed her face, and she sensed how closely they were weighing her strengths and weaknesses. She wanted to scream that she was tough and they could count on her, that she’d anything to help Max, but they wouldn’t hear and probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. Then the man nodded at the others and she knew the decision to trust her had been made. He wrote one more line on the slate.

  Can you keep a secret?

  MAX SAW THE SPEEDBOAT surge around the bottom of the cliff, just the way Cruz had promised.

  But they were going to play the last act by new rules. Ignoring the boat, Max slipped back into the water.

  Ten minutes later, he dumped his breathing gear in a rocky crevice at the far side of the island. He hid his sealed rifle and removed a revolver from inside a waterproof case, then sprinted into the trees.

  It wasn’t hard to locate Cruz’s camp. An hour before, there had been no signs of life here, but there was no more effort to hide. Now lights burned above the jungle and Max heard the rumble of machinery.

  He made his way silently through the outskirts of the camp, where a dozen men unloaded crates with what appeared to be satellite communication equipment. There was no sign of Cruz, but his energy trail was strong, focused near the beach.

  A twig snapped behind him. When Max turned, he was staring into Wolfe Houston’s face. Why in the hell was the new Foxfire team leader here in the jungle?

  “Be careful.” Wolfe frowned, bending closer. “He’s unstable and probably paranoid. You saw Ryker’s medical reports during the briefing. You know what you have to do.”

  Max kept his body relaxed as he laughed. “Nice job, Cruz. You almost had me believing you. But you made one mistake: Wolfe trusts me. When he gives an order he knows I carry it out without any further instructions. That’s where you gave yourself away.”

  The man before him seemed to flicker, shifting colors like a photographic negative taking on tones and dimension in a chemical bath.

  In a span of seconds Max was staring at the gaunt, powerful features of Enrique Cruz, not Wolfe Houston. Cruz looked sick, Max thought. He also looked deadly.

  Max’s gun was drawn, pointing at Cruz’s head. “Where is she?”

  “You’d put a woman above your mission? Ryker would have your ass and all the rest of you for that.” Cruz pointed through the trees to the edge of the beach. “The boat will be here shortly and she’ll be kept in confinement until I decide what to do with her. Dutch turned out to be very useful, managing to get hired in Hawaii at the last minute.” Cruz’s mouth twisted. “You broke one of Ryker’s rules when you got emotionally attached.”

  “Maybe I’ve decided to set my sights higher than Ryker’s rules. But as I said, you’ll have to make it worth my while.”

  “If you join me, there’s nothing we can’t do. I’ll let you have the woman, for a start.”

  Max stood for a long time, staring into the rain. The timing was crucial now. Cruz wouldn’t expect an easy capitulation. “You almost tempt me, Enrique. But the answer’s still no. It’s not enough.”

  At Cruz’s signal, four of his men drove Max to the ground and cuffed him. Cruz hit Max hard. With his hands tied, Max felt the blow slam through his jaw and whip his head back. Blood spurted into his mouth and down his neck.

  “I’ll ask you again. Join me.”

  Max kept his face expressionless. “Not interested without more inducement. And just for the record, you were a rotten leader. You started liking the power and the ability to give orders, and you were afraid that someone would take that away from you. The day you put your own power above the safety of your men was the day you stopped being a leader worthy of my respect. You’re nowhere close to being the man that Houston is.”

  Cruz hit him again, and this time Max managed to fall forward, away from the grip of the man in a faded camo uniform. Max grabbed at Cruz’s arm, hormones and sweat burning into his awareness, painted through layers of adrenaline and more hormones. Max had each detail etched into his memory before Cruz shoved him away.

  Now he had the information he needed, torn from those moments of physical contact. This was why Ryker had sent him, so he could read and record every detail of Cruz’s physical and mental status. The weapon guidance system was valuable, but nothing in comparison with upto-date information about Foxfire’s rogue leader.

  Max shielded his mind as Cruz squatted in front of him. “Something’s different.” Cruz touched Max’s forehead and cursed. “You’re blocking me, Preston. How?”

  Max didn’t answer, thinking of the rain and Miki’s warm body. Thinking of their rough and primitive mating beneath a veil of water. He kept his mind deep in those moments, and through that energy he blocked Cruz.

  “They’ve done something to you. Is it a new chip? Tell me, Preston.”

  Max leaned forward and spat coldly on the sand. You are a dead man, his mind whispered back, letting Cruz hear.

  Not without my revenge complete. Cruz’s eyes were like streaks of mud as he dug into the pocket of his vest and held out what appeared to be a black penlight. “I doubt you’ve seen this before. It was one of Ryker’s favorite toys before I got away. He was testing a way to make our chips migrate slightly, using magnetics. I don’t need to tell you how painful it is.”

  As he spoke, Cruz pressed on the barrel.

  Pain stabbed through Max’s neck like living slivers of glass. He felt the muscles at his shoulders clench.

  Cruz triggered the unit again. Max had to bite back a curse as the chip in hi
s neck infiltrated deeper, tearing through tissue and nerves while the pain went on and on and rain hammered the beach. “Join me.”

  Max’s cold answer didn’t change, though Cruz repeated the order again and again, each time driving Max’s chips deeper. Twenty minutes later, his face streaked with blood, he blacked out.

  MIKI WAS CAUGHT SOMEWHERE between terror and a raw adrenaline high. In a gray blur she watched waves pound against the beach. What was she doing here facing bullets and pretending to be brave? She wasn’t cut out for heroics.

  Maybe not, but she wasn’t backing down and she wouldn’t screw up. Max and Truman both needed her. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.

  “Do you have everything straight?”

  The man who had written on the slate was at the wheel of Dutch’s boat, wearing Dutch’s clothes. The pilot was tied up and sedated, out of sight below the deck. In the heavy rain no one would notice the change.

  Miki smoothed the torn shrug covering her shirt and nodded. “I remember.”

  “Good. It’s going to get physical,” the man who called himself Dakota said. “It’s got to be convincing but I’ll keep you out of range as much as—”

  “To hell with staying out of range. Do whatever you need to do so you can get to Max,” Miki said fiercely. “But once you’re on the beach, they’ll realize you’re not Dutch.”

  The man steering the boat smiled faintly. “I’ve got a few tricks of my own, ma’am.”

  The old Miki would have hammered him with questions.

  The new Miki zippered her mouth and focused on staying calm so she could give the best performance of her life. Dipping her hand into the boat’s wake, she drenched her face and hair. The cold would help her focus.

  Ahead of them on the beach a man pointed, running over the sand with a walkie-talkie pressed against his ear.

  “You ready back there?” The question was low.