He nodded back at the pair.
They were ready.
They were soldiers.
All three of them.
And they had their mission.
14
July 2, 8:01 A.M. EST
Washington, DC
Painter found himself back in the Situation Room. His boss, the head of DARPA, General Gregory Metcalf, had summoned him to this early-morning meeting. The other attendees gathered in the president’s private conference room.
General Metcalf was already seated. He was African-American, a graduate of West Point, and though in his midfifties, he was as sturdy as a linebacker. The general leaned his head toward his superior, the secretary of defense, Warren W. Duncan, who wore a crisp suit and whose stark gray hair looked oiled and combed into rigid submission.
The three remaining members of this intimate summit were all of one family. Two were seated opposite the military men. The First Lady, Teresa Gant, looked like a faded lily in a beige twill dress. Her dark blond hair had been piled neatly atop her head, but strands had come loose and hung along the sides of her face, framing eyes that held a haunted look. Next to her, resting a large hand on hers, was her brother-in-law, the secretary of state, Robert Gant, sitting stiffly, defensive. His steely gaze upon Painter hid daggers.
And the greeting from the final member of the group was no friendlier.
President James T. Gant stalked the far side of the table. With his usual crisp directness, honed from his prior years as the CEO of various Gant family enterprises, he laid into Painter.
“What is this about an attack on some hospital camp in Somalia? Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
Painter had suspected this was the reason for this sudden call to the White House. The intelligence communities were already abuzz in regards to this attack, further complicated by the involvement of British Special Forces. Painter had hoped to keep a lid on this smoking powder keg for at least another couple of hours, to keep its connection to Amanda’s kidnapping secret.
That wasn’t to be.
Warren Duncan put a nail in the coffin. “I heard from the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment. They said they had men in the field there, that they were assisting some covert American team.”
James Gant pointed a finger at Painter. “Your team.” He swung around, unable to hide his disgust. “Show him, Bobby.”
The president’s brother tapped a video remote and brought up a live satellite feed from the UNICEF hospital. The camp was a smoky ruin, pocked by mortar craters. Survivors rushed about, seeking to aid the injured, or kneeling over bodies, or trying to put out fires.
President Gant shoved an arm toward the screen. “You said to avoid shock-and-awe, to keep Amanda’s kidnappers from knowing they’d acquired a high-value target—my daughter!” This last boomed out of his barrel chest, making him sound like a Confederate general rallying his troops to a fight.
And, plainly, this was going to be a brawl.
With Painter as the punching bag.
“That looks like shock to me, director,” Gant said. “And I’m certainly not awed by such a ham-fisted operation as you’re running. Not when my daughter and unborn grandson are at risk.”
Painter bore the brunt of this tirade without breaking eye contact with the president. The man needed to vent, to lash out. He waited for the fire to die back, enough to let reason slip past the panic of a frightened parent.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Gant finished, running fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. His voice cracked on the last couple of words.
That was his opening. He kept his response just as blunt and direct. “Mr. President, the kidnappers know they have your daughter. I suspect they’ve known from the very beginning. For some unknown reason, she had been targeted for abduction.”
His statement both deflated the president and flared the fear brighter in his eyes.
“From this attack,” Painter continued with a nod to the wall, “and other incidents, it’s clear Amanda’s kidnappers have forgone hiding their knowledge. The boldness of this assault suggests two things.”
He ticked them off on his fingers. “One. The enemy must be spooked to act so brazenly, which suggests my men are closing in on her true location. Two. Amanda’s best hope for recovery lies with that same team.”
Support came from a surprising source. Painter’s boss cleared his throat. “I agree with the director, Mr. President,” Metcalf said. “We have no other assets available. Even the fast-response SEAL team in Djibouti needs a hard target—something we don’t have. As much as this operation has blown up in our collective faces, we have no other viable options for securing your daughter.”
Okay, it was lukewarm support, but Painter would take that from his boss. After bumping heads, the two of them had a professionally respectful but uneasy relationship. And Metcalf was savvy enough in Washington politics not to stick his neck out—at least, not out too far.
“But how do we know your team is still out there?” Gant asked, getting a nod from his brother at the table. “They might all be dead.”
Painter shook his head. “They’re not.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“From this.”
Painter stepped forward, took the remote, and tapped in an encrypted code. He’d preestablished the feed with one of the Situation Room’s watch team. On the wall-mounted monitor, a grainy video appeared, stuttering, full of digital noise.
“I apologize for the reception. I collected this feed via an ISR plane cruising at thirty-eight thousand feet above Somalia.”
Teresa Gant stirred enough to ask, “ISR?”
Her brother-in-law answered, “Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Basically, ears in the sky.”
“From there, I patched through the NRO satellite in geosynchronous orbit.”
Warren Duncan sat straighter. “This is live?”
“Maybe a six-second delay. I acquired the feed only half an hour ago.”
The president squinted a bit. “What are we seeing?”
The view was low to the ground, racing along a dirt track. Fleeting images of trees and leafy bushes flashed past at the edges.
“From the GPS coordinates transmitted, we’re seeing a road through the highland forests of the Cal Madow mountains.”
On the screen, the view zoomed up to a pair of legs, then the face of a small black boy. Audio was even worse, cutting in and out.
“… here … over by … hurry …”
The boy fled from the camera, racing away with the exuberance of youth.
“Who’s filming this?” the defense secretary asked.
Painter allowed a moment of self-satisfaction. “One of my newest recruits.”
3:08 P.M. East Africa Time
Cal Madow mountains, Somalia
Kane chased after Baashi.
“Come see!” the boy exclaimed and skittered to a stop. His arm pointed toward the jungle, to a rutted track that cut off the main road.
If you could call it a road, Gray thought.
His team had been hiking into the highlands for the past forty-five minutes, leaving the ambush miles behind. They had returned to the gravel road after giving the murderous choke point a wide berth.
Gray kept a continual ear out for the growl of truck engines behind him as he set a hard pace into the heart of the mountains. Slowly over time, the gravel under his boots gave way to dirt, then, once into the misty highlands, to nothing more than tire tracks worn into the sandy silt.
Soon, the arid lowlands were a forgotten world. Here, verdant high meadows rolled down into valleys filled with misty forests of junipers and frankincense trees. And all around them, like broken dragon’s teeth, jagged peaks thrust toward the sky.
“That Shimbaris,” Baashi said, pointing to the highest peak in that direction. It looked like a toppled skyscraper covered in emerald forest. “They say the bad doctor in Karkoor valley. That way.”
Tucker crouched at the turnoff, picking up clods of freshly turned dirt. “Been recent traffic through here. Mud tires.”
“The Land Rovers at the roadblock,” Gray said, meeting his eye.
They were on the right path.
Gray turned to the boy. “I want you to stay here, Baashi, off the road, hidden entirely out of sight. You don’t come out until you see one of us.”
“But I help!” he said.
“You’ve helped enough. I told Captain Alden I’d protect you.”
Seichan pointed a finger at the boy’s nose. “And you promised him you’d listen to us, right?”
The two of them sounded like scolding parents—and got the usual sullen teenager response. Baashi sighed heavily, crossed his arms, expressing his disappointment with every fiber of his being.
With the matter settled, the boy went into hiding, out of harm’s way, while Gray and the others headed down the shadowy turnoff, a tunnel made by a canopy of woven branches. They’d not taken more than a few steps when Major Jain called from the rear.
“Hold!”
Gray turned; the British soldier still stood at the edge of the main road in the sunlight. She held a hand up, then pointed it toward her ear.
Gray cocked his head, listening. He first heard Kane, rumbling deep in his throat, sensing something, too. Then in the distance, echoing off the surrounding peaks, the deeper groan of truck engines.
“Company coming,” Kowalski said.
Jain ducked off the road and into the shadows to join them.
Tucker grimaced. “Must’ve found the boy I tied up.”
“Or they’ve had enough killing for one day,” Kowalski said.
“Or they’re looking for more,” Jain added.
Kowalski grimaced. “You had to say that, didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “No matter how you cut it, boyo, we’re bloody screwed.”
Gray couldn’t argue with her, but they had no choice. They had to forge ahead, find Amanda, and do their best to survive.
“Let’s go.” Gray pointed his arm forward. “Tucker, I want Kane’s eyes and ears ahead of us. I’ve had enough surprises for one day.”
Tucker gave a curt nod and went to his dog.
They hurried down the road, staying at the periphery. The forest to either side offered better protection, but the dense growth would slow their progress, make too much noise.
Right now, he needed to put some distance between them and the approaching trucks.
“We can’t do this on our own,” Seichan said, striding fast next to him. “A guarded camp ahead of us, mercenary soldiers behind us—not great odds.”
Gray had already come to the same conclusion. He had to trust his gut that Amanda was here, that there was a reason for such lethal and overt reaction to their presence in the mountains. He shifted his shoulder pack and removed his satellite phone.
It was time to call in the cavalry.
That meant reaching Washington.
Gray dialed up Sigma command, hoping the quantum encryption built into the phone would keep the call from reaching the wrong ears. After a long moment and a series of passwords, he heard a familiar voice.
“Commander Pierce.”
Gray let out a hard breath of relief. “Director, I believe we’ve found where Amanda was taken. I’m not sure she’s still here, but as a precaution, we should mobilize SEAL Team six to my coordinates, so they’re ready when—”
“Already done,” Painter said, cutting him off. “I got approval from the defense secretary a few minutes ago. The SEAL team is en route to your position with orders to engage only if the president’s daughter is positively identified. They’re about forty minutes out.”
Forty minutes? That may be too late.
Confirming this, the roar of engines in the distance grew steadily louder. Amanda didn’t have forty minutes.
A disconcerting question rose in Gray’s mind. “Director, how do you know our position?”
“We’ve been monitoring your progress for the past half-hour.”
How?
Gray searched around him, then saw Tucker send his shepherd running ahead, hugging the forest’s edge.
Kane …
Tucker must have left his dog’s camera running since the roadblock.
“It was Kat’s idea,” Painter explained.
Of course it was. If anyone had the brains to find them without raising an alarm, it was Kat Bryant. She had proved countless times to be an elusive and crafty spider when it came to the intelligence web.
“Kat set up a passive search algorithm, set to the wireless frequency of the dog’s camera. Nothing that would trigger any alarm bells. We could watch over your shoulders without giving away your location.”
Gray was grateful for the covert support, but it also made him vaguely uneasy. In the future, he’d have to make sure to circumvent that ability if he wanted total privacy.
“Audio is bad, though,” Painter finished. “Cuts in and out, so keep that in mind. We can see you, but not always hear you.”
“Got it.”
Ahead, Tucker came running back toward him.
That had to mean trouble.
“Have to sign off,” Gray said.
Painter’s voice went hard. “I can see why. Go. But be—”
Gray cut him off before he could warn him to be careful.
It didn’t need to be said—shouldn’t be said. It was like wishing an actor good luck instead of break a leg.
Tucker came up, breathing hard. “Another Land Rover is blocking the road ahead, counted six men around it. Another handful in the camp.” A worried frown creased his face. “Look at this.”
Tucker held up his phone, displaying a dog’s-eye view of the facility.
A large tent-cabin, raised on pilings, stood in the middle of a cold camp. Around it, ash pits marked old bonfires. Garbage, rusted stakes, oil stains, along with a few collapsed tents, abandoned in haste, were all that was left of a large campsite. A few shreds of camouflage netting still draped from the trees at the forest’s edge, but that was it.
“Looks like most of the camp bugged out already,” Tucker said. “I’d say no longer than an hour ago.”
Gray felt the pit of his stomach opening to despair.
Were they already too late?
“But I did see shadows moving inside that cabin,” Tucker offered. “Someone’s still there.”
Seichan overheard. “Maybe they left their victim here, fearing reprisals, and scattered.”
Gray grasped at this thin hope.
Kowalski joined them. “So, what are we doing?”
Jain stood at his shoulder, bearing the same question on her face.
They needed a plan from here.
He ran various scenarios in his head. “We can’t risk panicking the remaining soldiers. We also don’t want to needlessly expose ourselves to the enemy combatants if Amanda has already been moved. We’ll do her no good dead.”
“Then what?” Kowalski asked.
Gray turned his focus upon Tucker. “We need to see inside that cabin.”
15
July 2, 3:24 P.M. East Africa Time
Cal Madow mountains, Somalia
Tucker lay on his belly with Kane at the edge of the forest. Forty yards of open space stretched between his position and the cabin. With men milling at the entry road and three more soldiers scavenging the grounds ahead for anything of value, any attempt to cross here would be readily spotted.
Even a dog on the run.
Tucker stared through his rifle’s scope, studying the terrain. A lone soldier pushed a dented wheelbarrow past his field of view, stopping occasionally to pick something out of the discarded debris.
The radio scratched in his ear. It was Kowalski, reporting in from his post down the road, acting as rear lookout. “Company has arrived. Trucks—three of ’em—are reaching the turnoff.”
The rest of the team—Gray and the two women—had crept forward through the forest and lay in wait several meters from the lone Land Rover that guarded the ruins of the camp. They all waited for Tucker’s signal. If Amanda was in the tent, they’d ambush the vehicle, trusting the element of surprise and the cover of the jungle to overcome the enemy’s superior odds. If Amanda wasn’t here, they’d all retreat into the woods and regroup.
Gray spoke with a note of urgency. “Tucker, now or never.”
“Still, not clear,” Tucker whispered under his breath.
Thirty yards away, the man with the wheelbarrow picked up a sleeveless DVD, judged it, then flung it away with a flip of his wrist.
It seemed everyone was a critic.
Keep moving, asshole.
“Tucker,” Gray pressed, “the other trucks are turning and heading this way. You’ve got two minutes, or we have to start shooting and hope for the best.”
Tucker stared at the AK-47 slung over the soldier’s shoulder as the man continued sifting through the debris.
I’m not going to send Kane out just to be killed.
Tucker flashed back to that painful moment in Afghanistan. He again felt the pop of his ears as the rescue helicopter lifted off, felt the rush of hot air. He had been clinging to Kane, both bloodied by the firefight, by the exploded ordnance. But Tucker had never taken his eyes off Abel, his partner’s littermate, who’d knocked them both clear before the buried IED detonated. If Kane had been Tucker’s right arm, Abel was his left. He’d trained them both—but he’d never readied himself for this moment.
Abel raced below, limping on three legs, searching for an escape. Taliban forces closed in from all directions. Tucker strained for the door, ready to fling himself out, to go to his friend’s aid. But two soldiers pinned him, restraining him.
Tucker yelled for Abel.
He was heard. Abel stopped, staring up, panting, his eyes sharp and bright, seeing him. They shared that last moment, locked together.
Until a flurry of gunfire severed that bond forever.
Tucker’s grip tightened on his rifle now, refusing to forget that lesson. He had a small black paw print tattooed on his upper left shoulder, a permanent reminder of Abel, of his sacrifice. He would never waste another life like that, to send another dog to certain slaughter.
Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel Page 13
