“A box?” Sunny frowned. “Oh, you mean for poop.”
Trace nodded to the young crewman, who seemed only too happy to escape.
Trace realized he might have bitten off more than he bargained for. What was he going to use for kitty litter? And how was he going to hide the cat when his cabin steward came in to clean?
Just the same, he couldn’t help putting a protective hand around the kitten. Maybe he’d let Gina in on the secret. She would be able to come up with food and—
Trace looked up, sensing a change in the corridor. Energy seemed to snap around him. The cat meowed loudly and climbed up Trace’s chest to stare over his shoulder.
Trace gripped Sunny’s hand and turned, his uneasiness growing. They were half a mile off the coast, traveling past barren beaches and rugged, unpopulated mountains. Houses dotted an isolated cove, and small trawlers dotted the distant harbor. A short way inland a white truck raced along the road that paralleled the coast.
The energy changed, sharp and focused and churning.
And in that heartbeat, everything fell apart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A SENSE OF DANGER STRUCK Trace with overpowering force, drilling into his neck and chest. Sweat broke out as he watched the truck crawl like a white bug in the distance. But it wasn’t the truck he was worried about. It was something much closer.
Something that waited in shadow, hidden and lethal.
Only one stimulus caused this kind of response. Like every man in the Foxfire program, Trace had been equipped to respond to one specific threat.
Enrique Cruz.
But he was dead. Had to be dead.
Once again the oily energy skittered through Trace’s senses like a sickness that would not die.
He was certain. Somehow Cruz had escaped from death in the Pacific.
Cruz had once bragged that a military exercise wasn’t over until he said it was over. He had always been the first on the training field and the last to leave. The fastest and the strongest among the Foxfire operatives, Cruz had abilities that no one could match. If he had cheated death again, what would he be capable of now?
Another disorienting wave of energy cut across the corridor, slamming into Trace. Pain shot behind his eyes, bringing nausea in waves. He pushed a dial on his watch, reviewing precise GPS coordinates. A second button recorded the coordinates for later reference, so that Izzy could order a satellite flyover at the exact location.
“Mr. Trace?” Sunny stared up at him anxiously. “You’re sweating and you don’t look good.”
“I’ll be fine, honey.” They were almost at the youth camp now, and Trace was itching to be gone. In a matter of seconds his priorities had changed completely. Hunting Cruz took precedence over all other directives, even safeguarding the material in Tobias Hale’s safe. “Is your sister Cleo back inside?”
“Oh, that was Olivia. Cleo had her turn being sick yesterday.” Sunny gave the cat a quick pat and then ran toward the entrance of the children’s camp. “I’ll check to be sure.”
With growing impatience, Trace stood in the hallway assessing scenarios and probabilities. Sunny appeared, flanked by her two sisters. All three were staring fixedly at his chest.
He gently pressed the cat’s white head out of sight while the girls giggled and returned to camp. Meanwhile, the energy was fading. Trace tried to localize the source, but with his chips disabled, it was like looking for a black thread in a dark room blindfolded.
Was Cruz ashore in the white truck he’d seen? Or maybe traveling in one of the fishing trawlers in the cove?
He stared down the companionway, frowning, considering a third scenario. Could Cruz be somewhere aboard the ship right now? If so, had he picked up Trace’s presence yet?
Highly unlikely. With his chips inoperative, Trace wouldn’t stand out unless the two met face-to-face and Cruz was too smart to be wandering through any public areas.
He was watching for the elevator when he felt someone behind him. He spun around, silent and fast, his focus centered on maintaining flexibility and lowering his center of gravity.
Gina was staring at him oddly.
He tried to move past her into the elevator, but she blocked his way. “I can’t talk now,” he said.
“We’ll talk right now or I’m taking you to Tobias.” Her shoulders were stiff. “I just saw Sunny and she told me you were outside the camp. She said you’ve been watching her. I want to know why, and it had better be convincing.”
The elevator doors hissed shut.
“Sunny was mistaken. I was simply taking a walk,” Trace said calmly. He reached around and pressed the elevator button. “We can discuss it later, after I make a call.” The elevator doors swung open.
Gina’s eyes narrowed on his face. “Are they in some kind of danger?”
“I can’t discuss it now.” His voice was low, but the edge was growing sharper.
Gina stepped back. “I want answers. If Carly or her family is in danger, Ford needs to know that. He’s a Navy SEAL and he could help.”
Complications.
The last thing Trace needed right now.
“Trace, did you hear me?”
He moved past her into the elevator. While she was still staring at him, Trace unzipped his jacket, pulled out the squirming cat and pressed him into her arms. “Take care of Sunny’s cat for me, will you?”
The white kitten burrowed against Gina’s chest. “A cat? I can’t have a pet aboard ship. Hey, stop licking me—”
The elevator doors closed, cutting off her protest.
INSIDE HIS CABIN, Trace pulled out a small titanium suitcase and shot the bolts. His encrypted satellite phone housed in molded plastic was the latest model, to be used only in critical circumstances.
Anything that involved Enrique Cruz counted as a critical circumstance.
He listened to a brief hiss of static, followed by three short clicks as the call was rerouted to another secure location. More static cut across the line.
“Ace Pizza. What’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem.” Trace didn’t bother to identify himself. There was no need, since he was the only person who would use this secure phone. “Our man is back.”
The sudden silence felt heavy. Neither man mentioned Enrique Cruz by name.
“You saw him?”
“No direct sighting, but a definite sensory response triggered with multiple distortion. It’s our man, I’m sure of it.”
“The King is in the building,” Izzy said coldly. “Location and condition?”
“Condition unknown.” Trace punched a button on his watch and passed on the GPS coordinates he had recorded earlier, along with the details of his sensory response.
Izzy’s tone was brisk and precise. “Dizziness. Nausea. Visual distortion. How severe?”
This was the voice of a medical authority talking, and Trace considered his answer accordingly. “Twenty-five-percent disruption. Performance ability affected but only temporarily.”
“Duration of attack?”
“I didn’t clock it. I’d say three minutes.”
“Any significant observations ashore?”
Trace heard the fast click of a keyboard. Every detail would be carefully recorded for transmission to Lloyd Ryker, Foxfire’s head.
“A small cove with a rocky beach. Probably ten small motorboats and five fishing trawlers visible. Four houses near a little adobe church. I saw a white truck moving south along the beach. The truck felt important, but that is speculation.”
“Understood.” More typing. “Any localization aboard your ship?”
“Not that I could sense. I’d say it was more of a protective move, not an attack. With my enhancements disabled, I would assume I’m off the radar to the man in question,” Trace said carefully.
“That is correct, as far as we know. But I’ll be phoning back within the hour, so stay within reach of this phone.”
“Will do.”
Trace flipped off the
satellite phone and looked out at the shimmering line of the ocean. Clouds were piling up in the west. The sun was hot overhead.
And Enrique Cruz had reappeared.
Some part of his mind refused to accept that his old teammate was still alive. He had watched Cruz’s chopper explode in a fireball though Cruz’s body had never been recovered afterward. Given the violence of the final explosion, the lack of a body had not seemed significant.
Trace schooled his thoughts to absolute calm. What happened next would not be his decision. The most important thing he could do now was stay flexible and alert, while preparing for every possible scenario. Given the importance of the material Tobias was chaperoning, an attack there zoomed to the top of Trace’s scenario list.
Somehow Cruz could have caught wind of the new technology and decided to go after it. If so, Trace would have to fight without any of the skills that he had come to rely on. In short, he would be a flea squaring off with a tiger.
FUBAR.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LLOYD RYKER WASN’T HAPPY to be disturbed. From what Izzy had seen, few things seemed to make Ryker happy.
“O’Halloran was certain about the sensory phenomena? You believe it indicates Cruz is in the vicinity?”
“I’d give it a ninety percent probability, sir.”
“How close?”
“Impossible to say yet.”
“Any problem with our man? He’s still field capable, I take it?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
“Then I want Dakota prepped and sent in as backup. Bring him up to speed and have him ready to fly within the hour.”
“Understood, sir.”
“We need absolute deniability on this whole situation. Is that clear, Teague?”
A pause. “Understood, sir.”
Ryker cleared his throat. “Anything else you need to tell me?”
“No, sir.”
It was a lie. Although the source was unclear, for the past month Izzy had been receiving garbled messages on his computer. One week earlier he had received a coded e-mail, short and to the point. The message listed the street address of his mother’s home outside Baltimore, along with her precise times of leaving and returning. Whoever had sent the message wanted Izzy to know that his only existing family was under close surveillance. Furious, Izzy had called in a favor from an old friend on the local police force. Although she didn’t know it, his mother’s house was now under round-the-clock protection.
Despite all his searches, Izzy had no more to go on. He had traced the message to a public Internet café in one of the busiest neighborhoods in Singapore. The computer time had been purchased in cash. The proprietor had noticed nothing strange about the Caucasian man who had rented the Internet time, and no camera surveillance was available.
Dead end.
“Notify me when Dakota is outbound for Mexico. And see what you can pull from satellite coverage of that area. I want to know every speck of dirt on that white truck. Is that clear?”
“Already on it, sir. We should have the first visuals within the next fifteen minutes.”
“Excellent. I don’t need to remind you that the man is dangerous, Teague. He nearly killed you in New Mexico.”
Izzy was highly unlikely to forget that encounter. Cruz had broken several of Izzy’s bones and attacked Trace O’Halloran’s sister. Izzy wasn’t going to let the man escape again.
“Call me as soon as you’ve gone over the satellite feeds. I’ll expect a complete report by 0400 hours.” Ryker didn’t wait for an answer, and the line went dead.
Instantly, Izzy went to work, scrolling through maps of Mexico to pinpoint the GPS coordinates Trace had given him. He was in the middle of searching police reports from the area when he heard his incoming e-mail program chime softly.
More orders from Ryker already?
But the incoming message wasn’t from Ryker or anyone else whose e-mail address Izzy recognized. The content appeared to be gibberish.
He stared at the screen.
Then he typed in a line of code. The letters shifted continuously in seemingly random patterns as a powerful program went to work analyzing the message for all possible word strings. At any other time Izzy would have felt a deep sense of pride that his newest program decrypted the message in less than three minutes.
We’ll be sure to say hello to Marietta.
The single line of text blinked ominously, jolting Izzy to his feet. If he didn’t act fast, someone very close to him would die.
He stared at his gray metal desk and the secret files stacked in neat, organized rows. He saw the new encryption equipment he was building on a nearby table. He registered the half-eaten tuna sandwich next to a cup of coffee that was rapidly growing cold. And he had the jarring sense that his whole world, the normalcy of his life as he knew it, had just spun on its axis and fled.
Which was exactly what happened whenever Enrique Cruz hit the scene, he thought grimly.
But he swore the people he loved would not get hurt by Cruz’s treachery. He reached for the telephone in the corner of his desk, then stopped, his eyes on the blinking red lights that registered calls through the facility’s general phone system. Frowning, he pulled his personal cell phone out of his pocket.
He didn’t need to look up the number. He had known it by heart for years.
She answered on the second ring, sounding breathless. “Hello?” Izzy’s eyes softened at the sound of the voice, low and smooth and cultured. “Teague residence.”
He frowned. No matter how many times he told her not to answer with her name, that the world was a dangerous place and you didn’t give away information unless you had to, his mother was still southern and a creature of manners.
She didn’t argue. She simply did what she wanted.
“Mom, it’s Izzy. Everything okay?”
“Well, it certainly is now, honey. I was just thinking about you. Those bulbs we planted together last year have come up and I’ve never seen a prettier sight.” She laughed, a soft ripple of sound. “Of course, the sight of you carrying your suitcase home for a visit would be a prettier sight still, but I won’t say that. How are you? I’ve got a feeling you’ve made some new electronic discovery or broken a new code since we last spoke. Am I right?”
She was, but Izzy couldn’t tell her the details. Now that he was certain she was safe, he cut through the preliminaries. “I’m fine, Mom. But I need you to do something for me. I want you to go up to Maine and visit Uncle Harris. No questions.”
His mother’s laughter rippled. “Go to Maine now? Why, honey, the gardening season is just starting. I’ve got the whole backyard to finish—”
“Mom, please.” Izzy’s voice took on an edge. “I need you to do this for me now.”
A silence fell. He heard the sound of ceramic as if she had rested her favorite teacup on a fragile plate. “Now?” she repeated the word, thoughtful this time. Not frightened, but measuring. “So something is wrong,” she said quietly. “Are you hurt again, honey? If something has happened to you, you need to tell me.”
“I’m fine. I’d tell you if anything was wrong. I promised you that, remember?”
“But something bad has happened.”
“Mom, I’ve got to concentrate. I’ll probably have to travel on a moment’s notice, and I need to know that you’ll be safe.”
Izzy’s uncle Harris was an ex-Delta man with highest-level sniper training. Half a dozen of his military friends with similar training were now retired and scattered through the area. Oh, yes, Izzy’s precious mother would be safe in Maine.
But first she had to get there.
“Honey, I can’t just—”
“We agreed, Mom. I don’t ask often. When I do, you need to leave. Go to Uncle Harris.”
“It’s something very dangerous then.” She didn’t sound frightened, simply put out by the disruption of her schedule. “Very well. I’ll check the airline schedule tonight, then finish my new mulch. I should
be packed and ready to go by morning.”
“Now.” Izzy’s voice was firm. He didn’t want to betray his fear, but he needed her compliance. “Don’t pack, don’t plant more flowers, don’t put away your tea. Take your purse and go next door. Ask Elias to drive you straight to the airport. You have the credit cards I left you. When you get there, stay in a public area and buy the next flight to Portland.”
Silence fell. His mother took a little breath. Now there was a hint of worry in her voice. “It must be something very unusual. Are you safe, honey?”
“Mom, I’m fine. But you need to go now.”
“Very well, I’ll leave with nothing but the clothes on my back. I can see Elias out in his yard now. That’s funny.”
Izzy felt a wave of cold skim knifelike across his neck. “What’s funny?”
“There’s a man with Elias. A man in a courier’s uniform. He’s holding a box and pointing to my house. But I haven’t ordered anything.”
Fear raced to the base of Izzy’s stomach, so tight he couldn’t breathe. “Do not accept any packages. Get your purse and go straight out the back door. Stay behind the rose hedge and walk to Elias’s side porch. Are you listening to me, Mom? No matter what happens, do not get near any package of any sort.”
“Oh, yes, honey. I’ve seen the movies. It could be an IED, couldn’t it?”
Improvised explosive device.
Somehow on his mother’s lips, the definition sounded neat and tidy, like a home bread-making unit. Except that Cruz wasn’t into baking.
Only into ripping lives apart.
Izzy held the phone tightly. He had to talk his mother through this. There would be no time to summon help. “Mom, do you have the cell phone I gave you for Christmas?”
“Of course I do, honey. I keep it upstairs in that nice little box you gave me.”
Izzy suppressed a curse. He’d given her the highest technology available, and she used it as a doorstop in her sewing room.
He took a deep breath. This is exactly why you didn’t deal with family: because family clouded up your vision, tangled your emotions and generally turned all your logic skills to shit.
Code Name: Bikini Page 18
