by Rachel Grant
Thirty minutes later, they had their direction. The truck was still moving south. They followed, moving slowly and taking breaks to make sure they remained thirty minutes behind. It was late afternoon by the time the tagged crate stopped moving. After two reports of no movement, they moved in on it, hiding their bike in the jungle two klicks away from the final coordinates.
They moved on foot. When they were a klick from their destination, they hid in the thickness of the jungle and waited. Night fell. Insects grew louder as the birds went quiet. A large cat or other creature made a sound in the distance.
They each donned their skintight night-op suits, and Cal helped Freya apply the dark greasepaint to her skin. His lips brushed over hers, and he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “When we get back to Camp Citron, I want you to put this suit back on just so I can peel it off you and fuck you blind.”
She smiled and kissed him but said nothing. What could she say? She doubted she’d return to Camp Citron as anything but a prisoner.
Cal’s adrenaline pumped as they waited for the midnight hour to roll in and they could inspect the so-called school.
He and Freya agreed it was time to call Captain Oswald and let his XO know exactly what was going on. He outlined the situation and gave the GPS coordinates of the crate. SOCOM could dive into that information and send a team to liberate the children if what they suspected was true.
They might send someone to arrest Freya and him, but that was a risk they had to take.
Before hanging up, Cal asked, “What are you hearing from CIA?”
“Not a word. I went around Seth Olsen, but no one on the food chain will talk to me.”
“Shit.”
“You’re sure she’s telling the truth? About the money? About the dead agent?”
Cal looked at Freya. Or at least, he looked in the direction where he knew Freya was. They had no light and weren’t wearing their NVGs—they needed to save the charge for the night’s recon mission. In the nearly absolute darkness, he couldn’t see her expression. She couldn’t hear his XO’s side of the conversation, but she could guess.
He knew Captain Oswald had to ask the question, but that didn’t mean he liked it. “Yes. She’s innocent. I’m innocent. We’re busting our asses out here trying to stop a coup and save some kids.”
“I hope you’re right, Sergeant.”
“I am, sir.”
“Report in after you locate the school. We need pictures. Preferably video. If the asshole is using children, we’ll bring him down.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was hard to approach a place in silence in the jungle. Freya knew that special forces from all branches of the military practiced that sort of thing often. She’d learned the skills herself when she trained for SAD, but she was out of practice. Djibouti didn’t have much in the way of jungles, and prior to this deployment, she hadn’t been in any jungle but the urban kind.
Ingrained lessons came back to her as she attempted to move with the stealth of a panther. At last they arrived at the perimeter of an encampment. Three long canvas tents—old military squad tents that probably dated back to the Korean War—were lined up side by side. There was another structure farther back, hidden in the trees. Was that the “school”?
The camp was quiet, but they remained on the lookout for guards. They separated to circle the squad tents, blow darts at the ready should they come across a patrol. They were both fast and silent, and reached the truck that had delivered the crates at the opposite end of the camp at the same time.
A whiff of cigarette smoke told her why they hadn’t spotted a sentry. With a hand signal, Cal indicated he’d caught the scent too and would take care of it.
Only one guard on duty and he was taking a break? But then, this place was so remote, they probably didn’t think they had much to fear except children escaping.
Cal was back by her side a moment later. “Did you tranq him?” she whispered.
He nodded and showed her the used dart before tucking it away. “I propped him against the bumper. He’ll think he dozed off while taking his break.”
“Perfect.” They didn’t want anyone to know they’d been here. Best not to spook the guards and have them do something drastic to the children before a team could arrive to liberate the kids.
If this was what they thought it was.
If they were way off base and this was really a school? Well, then they still didn’t want anyone to know they’d been here.
The guard would be out for at least a half hour. First, they scouted the squad tents, each entering from opposite ends. An adult male slept on a cot in front of the door. A tranq dart to the neck ensured the man wouldn’t wake while they searched. She retrieved the dart and glanced across the tent to see Cal also bending over a cot in front of that opening.
She walked silently down the center aisle between rows of cots stacked like bunk beds. Each cot was filled with a sleeping boy or girl. She guessed they ranged in age from eight or nine to fourteen.
This could actually be a school. They needed to check out the building on the other side of the trees, where there would probably be more guards. Cal snapped photos of the sleeping children with an infrared camera. They would delete them if they were wrong and this really was a school.
They peeked in the other squad tents, seeing a similar setup to the first. These were barracks, nothing more. She signaled for Cal to lead the way through the trees to the structure on the other side. There were no guards around the building, which turned out to be a mill.
Even though it didn’t surprise her, it still made her stomach twist. The children weren’t just mining, they were operating a mill. Before entering the structure, they needed to scout the area. Another clearing not far from the trees drew their attention.
They carefully approached the opening. It appeared that what had started out as an open pit mine had led to tunneling. Cal led the way down into the pit while she watched his six. In the pit, they found several mine shafts cut into the earth. The ceiling was low, the opening narrow—child height and width.
He snapped photos with an infrared camera, just as he had the children. Then he changed the setting to video and whispered a narration of what they were viewing as he recorded the shaft, kneeling to record the first few feet of the tunnel.
Freya wondered if they could make it back here tomorrow and get footage of the children entering and leaving the mines. It didn’t get much more damaging than that.
They returned to the mill and slipped inside, startling a guard who’d been sleeping on the job. Another blow dart from Cal, and the man was dispatched. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember the encounter, or if he did, he’d think it was just a dream.
Inside, she spotted crushing stations followed by large vats. It was at the far end of the room that everything became clear.
Fine powder was spread out on trays to dry.
Horror filtered through her as she realized what she was seeing.
These kids weren’t mining diamonds. The powder was yellow—like mustard. The children were mining uranium.
29
Hours later, they were far away from the awful school, and Cal was feeling sick to his stomach about leaving the children there. This was the third fucking time in as many months he’d been slapped in the face with child slavery, but the other two times, he’d been able to do something about it. The children had been liberated. And he’d helped with that.
Tonight, he’d been forced to leave them. Tomorrow would be another day in the uranium mines. Literally.
Motherfucker.
They could have taken out all the adults holding the children there. They could have freed the kids.
But then there’d be no evidence implicating Fitzsimmons. No proof of what the asshole was up to. A team could show up in a few days, free the kids, round up the leaders, and take out the whole operation.
As Freya had said to him after the op in South Sudan, they might’ve saved fifty kids, but there was
nothing to stop the market from forming again. Without removing the men behind the market, there could be fifty more kids enslaved a few weeks later.
Freya believed in saving all the children—not just the ones who were enslaved now, but the ones who would be enslaved tomorrow. Sometimes that meant sacrificing. Not saving the kids in the moment, but returning with a plan.
Cal got it now, in a way he hadn’t been willing to see before. Sure, he’d understood in his mind, but he hadn’t been able to wrap his heart around it. And he’d thought Freya heartless for her stance.
Now, much as his heart hurt, he knew they’d done the right thing in leaving those kids. And he knew Freya was suffering for it just as much as he was.
It was the most horrible thing he’d probably ever done. The children worked in mines that weren’t ventilated, mining fucking uranium. They’d been breathing it in.
He took a deep breath. The air was thick with moisture. Jungle air. It smelled of earth and vines and leaves and rain. But it was air. Not uranium dust.
He knew they had to leave the kids, but he fucking hated it.
Freya sat next to him in the darkness. They’d finished setting up their tent in the remote, wild jungle, but they’d yet to climb inside.
They both wore their NVGs, giving off no light to reveal their location, and he could read her body language, knew she was struggling with the same demons.
A month ago, he hadn’t been able to read her. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to. But now he could, and he knew she paid the same mental price he did. He pulled off both their goggles and kissed her, then he tucked his face into her neck. “I misjudged you when we argued about the slave market. I get it now. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I thought you were cold, calculating. I convinced myself you couldn’t have a heart to make the decisions you were willing to make. I grouped you in with the agents who’d messed with my mom. They’d tried to sacrifice her for some kind of greater good that wasn’t good for anyone.”
“What are you talking about? The CIA messed with your mom?”
“I thought you knew about that. That it was in my file.”
“The CIA doesn’t have a file on you. We don’t monitor American citizens. We can’t. The only file on you I’ve seen is your service file provided by SOCOM.”
“The CIA has a file on my mom from when she dated my dad, before she moved to the US. They continued to monitor her long after I was born.”
“If such a file exists, no one shared it with me. She’s an American citizen now. The CIA can’t touch her.”
“Doesn’t mean they didn’t try.” He needed to go back to the beginning, tell her the whole story. “I assumed you knew my dad was CIA. His work for the US embassy in Kinshasa was his cover.”
He felt her body go rigid, then she relaxed against him. “I feel so stupid for not guessing that. It never even crossed my mind that your dad was CIA. His background isn’t mentioned in your service file.”
“He parted ways with the Agency before I was born. He ended up working for the State Department in a job that aligned with his cover from when he’d been CIA, so he never put CIA on his résumé. He wasn’t exactly happy with the Agency when he left. People in State knew his experience. He didn’t need to advertise.” Insects were chirping, and a mosquito buzzed around his face. “Let’s move into the tent,” he said. “And I’ll explain the rest.”
She crawled inside, and he followed her, zipping their little hidey-hole tightly closed. They rolled out their sleeping pads and inflated them, then lay down. It was her turn to sleep for a few hours, but he would tell her his story first. It was long past time he told her why he’d reacted so badly to learning she was CIA all those months ago.
“My dad met my mom at an event at the hotel she worked at in Kinshasa. It was a political thing, but this was Mobutu pretty much at the height of his power, so basically, it was a gathering of kleptocrats and their ilk. Dad was shopping for informants. Mom was trying to keep the staff—she was an assistant manager—from poisoning someone and causing an international incident. Dad witnessed some guy pinching her ass, and then the guy followed her when she left the party to check on the staff in a service area. Dad was concerned, so he tailed the guy and decked him when he got too handsy with Mom, and a few days later, she showed up at the embassy with a peanut butter mousse she’d made for him as a thank-you. They started dating, fell in love, and about a year later, the CIA decided to bring him back home to put an end to the relationship.
“But Dad had his own ideas and had asked my mom to marry him and move to the States. She was reluctant. She had a good job in Zaire—she was fluent in English, French, Lingala, and could speak enough other Bantu languages that she started off as a translator for a hotel, and when she showed aptitude for managerial tasks, she moved up the ranks. It was hard for women to get jobs like she had in Zaire, and even harder for someone with only a high school education. She knew she’d have a tough time getting a job at all in the US, let alone in management. But she loved my dad and knew he couldn’t stay. She didn’t know he was CIA. Hell, he wasn’t supposed to get seriously involved with a foreigner. And he certainly wasn’t supposed to bring her back as his wife.
“Mom finally says yes, and Dad submits all the paperwork required for her to get a green card and things. He’d already reported his relationship up the line at work, but everyone ignored it until he let his boss know he planned to marry her. That’s when they called him home.”
Cal closed his eyes, thinking of how his parents told this story. The way his mother laughed and his father’s anger spiked. Mom had grown up in a dictatorship and expected the government to be shit, while Dad had been idealistic—pretty crazy when Cal thought about it, considering he’d been in the CIA—but somehow, that idealism had remained intact until the CIA tried to destroy the love of his life.
“Basically, they yanked him back to the US and tried to convince him that Mom was a honey trap. They did everything they could to keep him from bringing her to DC, but he’d done something they didn’t expect—he married her before leaving Kinshasa. And, wouldn’t you know it, he’d also gotten her pregnant. With me.”
Freya leaned on his shoulder in the dark. Her lips brushed his neck, and he wondered if the way he felt right now was anything similar to what his father had felt all those years ago, when he’d been yanked away from his pregnant bride and his employers began a campaign to convince him she was a spy for Mobutu, looking to land a prime spot in DC so she could report back on CIA operations.
“Now, I know the CIA’s concerns weren’t unfounded in a general sense. Yes, there were honey traps out there, looking to land green agents. But my dad wasn’t green, and my mom wasn’t honey. She had zero connections within government. My parents were quite simply crazy in love. My dad ended up quitting his job. As I said, he got a job with the State Department. Coworkers there helped him with the legal wrangling that finally got my mom to the United States just three weeks before I was born. My dad later found out that one of the reasons the CIA objected to his marrying my mom—aside from the fact that she was black and he was white, which was an issue raised a number of times—was the fact that they’d wanted to use him as a honey trap for some East German woman. They’d planned to send him to Berlin when he finished his assignment in Zaire.
“Dad spent the last thirty-plus years griping about how the CIA doesn’t give a damn how they use people. I was fed a steady diet of ‘individuals don’t matter’ and ‘they’ll sacrifice anyone without a second thought.’ Between his anger and the shit the CIA has done in places like this, I grew up with a…somewhat skewed view of the Agency.”
He’d never really put it into words before, had never actually faced his bias until the day he met Savannah James and felt an instant charge. Then he’d learned she was CIA, and he’d felt a crushing disappointment. Which he’d proceeded to take out on her, as if it were her fault. “I really am an ass. I’m sorr
y.”
She’d been silent as he spoke, only her touch in the pitch-dark tent gave him a hint as to her reaction—small kisses and the teasing of fingernails on skin. Now her hand stroked his chest. “You know, I enjoyed the zing of sparring with you. You couldn’t hide the attraction any more than I could. You weren’t as bad as you think you were. And I wasn’t exactly sweet to you either. It went both ways.”
He smiled. “Probably because every time I saw you, I wanted to pin you to the wall and kiss you. And then you’d say something provocative, and I just wanted to possess you more.”
“And I wanted to be pinned and possessed.”
He was rock hard and ready to go. But the last time they’d kissed, they’d been so caught up in each other, they’d been slow to react when soldiers invaded the camp. As far as they knew, they were safe here. But it was a risk they couldn’t take. “When we get back to Camp Citron, I’m going to spend at least forty-eight hours in your CLU pinning and possessing you.”
She laughed. He loved her laugh. It was warm and joyful. How had he ever convinced himself she was cold and unfeeling when she had that laugh?
He slid a hand under her top and cupped a breast. He could stop there. He wasn’t an addict. He stroked the nipple into a point, and her breathing changed. Jesus, and this was just touching her breast. If he slipped a hand in her pants…
He pulled back and took a deep breath. “You should go to sleep. I’m going to report in to my XO. Tell him what we found tonight.”
“Tell him tomorrow we’ll go back to Mbandaka and charge the modem. Then I’ll be able to upload the video and photos.”
She’d attempted to do that the moment they’d stopped to set up camp, only to find the satellite modem was dead. She’d managed to load the images and video to her computer and a USB drive. They had backups.
Tomorrow, the world would see what Fitzsimmons’s ministry was doing to children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
