The thump-thump of a helicopter grew louder.
Gray searched the skies, knowing it was too soon for the SEAL team to arrive—and he was right. A familiar military-gray chopper rushed across the treetops, coming from the direction of the main road. It was the same attack helicopter that had laid waste to the UNICEF base.
It seemed all of the hens were returning to roost.
A whistling rocket screamed from the chopper’s undercarriage, blazing a trail of fire and smoke. It streaked down and slammed into the hood of the Rover headed toward the forest. The truck flipped end-over-end—then exploded as it landed.
Gray crouched, stunned.
Overhead, gunfire chattered from the open door of the chopper’s rear cabin as it rushed past. A familiar figure hung out the door, pointing his weapon below.
Captain Trevor Alden.
Gray remembered his last view of the British soldier, manning the turret of the Ferret armored car, guns blazing. He must have somehow forced the chopper down and commandeered it for the British Special Forces. Then he’d come looking for them.
A decision the captain might still regret.
The second Rover, which had braked to a stop with the arrival of the helicopter, believing them allies, gunned its engine and raced across the camp. The chopper had to swing around, twisting in midair to bring its rockets to bear.
A soldier popped out of the Rover’s open sunroof, hauling and balancing the black tube of a grenade launcher on his shoulder. At such close range, the shooter could not miss.
Gray lifted his rifle, but the Rover zigzagged crazily across the fiery camp. He’d never hit the soldier holding the launcher. But he found something that wasn’t moving.
The second barrel of kerosene, blasted free by the explosion, lay on its side in a pool of leaking oil. The Rover, its driver focused above, sped toward it—or at least close enough. Gray couldn’t trust firing into the barrel itself. Despite what had been portrayed in movies, such shots seldom caused an explosion.
Instead, he needed to light the barrel’s wick.
Cocking his eye to the scope, he fired into a neighboring smoking section of floor planking. The wood exploded and rained fiery slivers across the pool of kerosene. Flames flared where they landed and chased across the oil’s surface, aiming for the leaking barrel.
The Rover then sped across and blocked his view.
Had he timed it—?
The explosion blew a fireball into the sky and shoved the truck to the side. Flaming oil blasted through the open windows, setting fire to everything.
Screams rang out.
A door fell open, revealing the hell inside.
Then the stockpile of grenades exploded within the cabin, shattering apart the Rover.
Gray ducked.
The helicopter dove away, churning through the smoke.
Straightening back up, Gray realized—after his ears stopped ringing—that all the gunfire had ended. He turned and saw Kowalski and Seichan enter the camp from the road, shouldering the thin form of Jain between them. The trio must have dispatched the last truck on their own, but not without a cost. The major limped on one leg, the other bled fiercely.
“She’s shot!” Kowalski bellowed.
Jain frowned up at him. “I’m fine. It’s your bloody body odor that might kill me before this little scratch.”
Still, Alden must have witnessed the injury to his teammate.
The chopper tilted to the side and sought a safe place to land.
Tucker also returned from the forest with his dog. Gray noted the eye of the camera facing him. His satellite phone was likely melted to slag inside the ruins of his smoldering shoulder pack.
The sting of the burn along his back flared as he searched the debris. He needed to communicate with Painter. This couldn’t wait. But the director had warned him that the audio pickup was crap on the dog’s video feed. Gray could not let this next message be misconstrued.
He found a piece of tent fabric, burned at the edges, and used the tip of a charred stick to write a short note.
He prayed it reached Painter.
8:44 A.M. EST
Washington, DC
Smoke obscured most of the view of the fiery camp. There was little else to see on the video, especially as the helicopter landed, stirring up a whirlwind of debris.
Painter wasn’t the only one to realize the same.
The defense secretary still stood beside Robert Gant with a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go,” Duncan said. “This is over, Bobby. Join your family. They need you now more than we do.”
Robert continued to stare at the monitor, but Painter suspected he didn’t see anything, lost in the depths of the tragedy.
Finally, a rattling sigh escaped him. He stared at Painter, but the fire there had snuffed out in his eyes, leaving only a dull grief. He looked a decade older than his sixty-six years. He simply patted Duncan’s side and exited without a word.
But the defense secretary was not done. He pointed at Painter’s boss, his voice stone-cold. “I would have a word with you, General Metcalf. In private.”
“I understand.” Metcalf cast Painter a withering glance.
The two men exited, but not before Duncan poked a finger into Painter’s chest. “I want a report on my desk within the hour.” He waved to the monitor. “And a copy of this feed. I want a full accounting of this tragedy … every detail on how this all went to hell.”
The two men exited, leaving Painter alone in the conference room.
On the monitor, the smoke cleared. Gray’s face swelled into the camera. His lips moved, but the audio was still down. Then Gray stepped back and lifted a bit of burned fabric into view. He had written something on it.
As Painter read the scribbled words, he stumbled forward in disbelief. He caught himself on the edge of the table.
How could this be?
He stared toward the door, ready to run out, to call the others back. He even took a step in that direction—then stopped, his mind working furiously, running various permutations through his head.
He covered his mouth with his hand.
There remained too many variables, too much unknown and unexplained. The truth revealed on the screen was too valuable to release without thought. But it was also a cruelty beyond words to remain silent.
Still, he slowly turned to the table, picked up the remote control, and switched off the monitor. He would have to edit away this last bit of video before he handed it off to Warren Duncan.
He stared at the dark monitor, judging if he was capable of doing this. But his job was to make the hard decisions, no matter who got hurt. And this was one of the hardest.
He pictured Teresa dissolving into despair and grief; he heard again her scream of denial, her railing against what could not be true.
In the end, the First Lady had been right.
Though the monitor was off, Gray’s last message still burned in his mind’s eye.
God, forgive me.
No one must know.
17
July 2, 3:48 P.M. East Africa Time
Airborne
Her senses returned like a bright light that slowly pooled outward, watery at the edges. She felt as if she were a swimmer rising from the depths of a black sea. Faces hovered over her. Voices spoke, muffled and indistinct. Her throat hurt, her tongue was dry, which made it hard to swallow.
“… Coming around,” a familiar voice said in a German-Swiss accent.
She made out the severe blond bob, the icy eyes.
Petra.
The horror of her situation swelled through her again, sharpening her senses as she surfaced into the cold, hard reality of the moment.
Another face leaned over her. A bright light flashed into her eyes, stinging, searing into the back of her skull. She shied away, turning her head.
She lay in a shallow box, cushioned all around. She heard the drone of jet engines, felt the vibration of flight.
“Pupillary response i
s good,” Dr. Blake said. “She’s tolerating the sedation well. What about the fetus, Petra?”
“Heartbeat and oxygenation continue to remain within normal parameters, doctor. With the wireless transmission from the fetal monitor around her midsection, we’ll be able to assess her condition from a distance after we land.”
“How long is the flight?”
“Another three hours.”
Dr. Blake’s face pulled away. “No need to revive her fully, then. For now, keep her lightly sedated with a propofol drip. We can send her deeper once we’re in final approach to land.”
“We should also allow at least fifteen minutes to secure the royal diplomatic seals around the coffin.”
Coffin?
Amanda turned her watery focus to the pillowed sides of the box. Fear spiked through her.
“You’re right, Petra. Even with all the palms and wheels greased by our benefactors, we don’t want any trouble going through customs with the casket. Luckily everyone now believes she’s dead.”
Dead?
Blake continued, “So no one will be looking for her. With everyone off our backs, we’ll finally have the time to deliver this baby safely. In another couple of hours, it will be good to wash the stink of the jungle off and return to a proper medical lab.” Footsteps retreated. “I’m going to the cabin bar. Can I get you a drink?”
“Water, with a sliver of lime.”
“Always the professional, Petra,” he scolded with an amused tone. “Stop fretting. We’ll have the package delivered by nightfall. Then maybe you’ll relax.”
Petra’s face loomed larger, her breath smelling of cinnamon and cigarette smoke. “I’ll relax once we have her fetus on the vivisection table at the lab.”
“I keep forgetting that’s your specialty, my dear. I thought I was skilled with scalpel and forceps … but you put me to shame with your ability to tease a body into so many perfect anatomical sections.”
“That’s the easy part,” Petra said, straightening up.
“Of course.” A small laugh accompanied his words. “Where you truly shine is how you keep those sections alive.”
Alive?
What did they mean? What were they talking about?
Amanda tried not to picture such a horror, but it filled her head anyway. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. She had known her baby was under threat—it was why she had fled the States—but she never imagined anything as horrific as this. It went beyond her worst nightmares.
I don’t want to hear any more.
Her silent plea was answered.
The creak of hinges rasped to the left. A dark shadow rose and fell heavily over her, shutting out all light and sound. The lid of her coffin had been closed.
Amanda shuddered in the blackness, praying that this casket truly became her coffin, that she’d suffocate before they landed. Better that than allowing her baby boy to suffer the atrocities planned for him.
… how you keep those sections alive …
Those dismaying words haunted the darkness—along with an all-consuming question.
Where are they taking me?
4:00 P.M.
Cal Madow mountains, Somalia
“She was definitely being held at the camp here,” Gray said, holding the satellite phone to his ear, reporting in to Sigma command. “Tucker’s dog confirmed Amanda’s scent before all hell broke loose.”
His choice of words was appropriate. He stared at the smoldering wreck of the cabin, at the fiery remains of the two Rovers. His other teammates were making sure no other enemy combatants remained a threat. Captain Alden’s helicopter rested across the way, engine idling, rotors turning slowly. A British medic from Alden’s rescue crew worked on Jain’s leg.
Kowalski looked on, concerned. Despite the differences in size and gender, the pair were two peas out of the same pod. A scary proposition. A female Kowalski.
Gray had retrieved the satellite phone from the big man’s pack. He didn’t know if Painter had received his frantic handwritten note and wanted to follow up as quickly as possible.
“But why do you want to keep Amanda’s survival a secret?” Gray asked, questioning again the need for such a cruel deception. “I understand the fear of an intelligence leak. But to keep the president and his family in the dark … it must be killing them.”
“It is, but the administration—if they suspect she’s still alive—will insist on bringing all forces to bear in finding her. And look how that turned out this time around. For Amanda’s sake, we’ve got to restrict this knowledge to as few ears as possible.”
Gray took a deep breath. It was a ballsy move on the director’s part, but it made brutal sense, especially in light of his own suspicions. He shared them with Painter. “Director, I’m almost certain that events here were purposefully staged to make it look like Amanda was killed.”
“Why do you think that?” Painter asked.
“The woman in the bed. She was blond, the same size and body shape as Amanda. From the distension of the uterus and belly, she was obviously once pregnant, possibly an equal number of weeks along. But more incriminating, when I removed the oxygen mask, I saw her mouth was a bloody ruin. Someone didn’t want Amanda’s dental records pulled to identify the charred remains.”
Painter remained silent, digesting the information.
“Even the rushed C-section suggests the same conclusion,” Gray said. “I think they feared any fetal remains might not match those on record from Amanda’s prenatal exams.”
Painter’s voice grew hushed at the horror of it all. “So they cut out the baby.”
“Exactly. And disposed of it to cover their tracks. I also smelled an accelerant soaked into the bed. I think that’s what the last soldier was doing here, prepping the remains. They wanted to assure the body was burned so thoroughly that no DNA could be extracted. But we caught them off guard before they could complete their task.”
“Why would Amanda’s kidnappers go through such effort?” Painter asked, but it sounded more like he was pondering the question, thinking out loud.
Still, Gray answered. “They obviously wanted to throw off anyone still looking for her. If the world thinks she’s dead, the hunt ends here.”
“True. But I fear our enemy is even smarter than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. They knew you were closing in, forcing their hand. They had to move her, but they turned the situation to their own ends. Staging Amanda’s death—but also achieving another goal.”
Gray’s mind raced alongside the director’s line of reasoning. He knew everything that had befallen Painter at the White House. He suddenly understood. “The enemy was able to blame Amanda’s death on our operation.”
“At least partially.”
As Gray considered who might have such an end goal, his blood went cold. There was only one organization harboring such a vendetta against sigma.
“Director, are you suggesting the Guild is somehow involved in Amanda’s kidnapping?”
Gray felt his vision narrowing, picturing his mother’s casket lowering into the cold dirt.
“Commander Pierce, we don’t know that for certain. But either way, it gives Sigma a black eye—if not a fatal blow.”
Gray knew that had been an ultimate goal of the Guild for years. They had tried multiple times to destroy sigma, once even leading an assault upon their headquarters.
He closed his eyes.
Have I played right into their hands here, done their work for them this time?
“What are we going to do?” Gray asked.
“Your mission objective remains the same. To find Amanda. That’s all that matters at the moment.”
Gray choked down the anger that flared inside him. He forced his fingers through his hair, triggering a twinge of complaint from his blistered back. The director was correct. He had to stay on mission, which meant answering one all-important question concerning Amanda.
Where to begin
looking for her?
Painter voiced the same question. “Were you able to get any clue from inside the cabin, anything that might point to where they were taking Amanda?”
Gray stared at the smoking pile of debris. “We didn’t have any time. She could be anywhere.”
Painter let out a long sigh—not in defeat but in renewed determination. “Then we start from scratch. We’re not giving up. I’ll see what I can do at my end. You and Captain Alden canvass any locals in the area. Someone must know something. In the rush to evacuate, something might have fallen through the cracks.”
Gray agreed. The enemy clearly hadn’t expected his team to arrive at the camp so quickly—if at all.
“Pierce!” The call came from Tucker.
He turned and found the man waving to him from the road that exited the camp. Tucker stepped aside to allow a small figure to run into view. It was Baashi. Gray had last seen the boy diving into the forest after almost getting shot.
Seichan had gone out to look for him.
She appeared steps behind him, dragging a prisoner with her, clutching him by the shirt collar as he stumbled alongside her.
Gray spoke into the phone. “Director, I’ll call you back in a few minutes. We may have caught a break.”
Signing off, he strode over to the group. Captain Alden headed over there, too.
Seichan met Gray’s eyes as he reached her. “I found Baashi leading this kid back out of the forest, heading our way.”
Baashi vigorously nodded. “I tell him you all good.”
Tucker looked pale. “It’s the same boy I jumped earlier by the creek.”
Gray saw he was right. It was the child Tucker had strangled and hog-tied. So the bound boy had been discovered by the enemy. No wonder the crew had hightailed it back to camp.
“Kid must’ve fled during our attack on the third truck,” Seichan said. “But Baashi tracked him in the woods and convinced him we were okay.”
From his wide, scared eyes, the new boy must be wondering if he’d made the right decision.
“Mr. Trevor!” Baashi burst out brightly and ran to meet the British captain as he joined them. He patted Alden on the chest and spoke to the other boy. “This the man I tell you about.”
Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel Page 15
