by Cindy Dees
Piper leaned close to whisper to him, “Is this who you heard behind you, or is there another one tracking you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they use earpieces?” she asked.
He glanced down quickly and realized that in what remained of Hassan’s ear there was no earbud. Piper used the tip of the rifle to turn his head. There was no listening device in the other ear, either.
“They trained with earpieces and mikes,” he replied under his breath.
She nodded. “One of the others may have already found Hassan and taken his earpiece so we can’t eavesdrop on them. He would have headed back toward the others rather than be out here alone with both of us.”
“Barn?” Zane asked tersely. Poor Irv must be losing his mind hiding out with his chickens and hearing all the gunfire.
“Roger that,” she breathed.
Piper took off ahead of Zane. He probably ought to offer to take point, but she was the Special Forces soldier who trained in armed combat every day. As an undercover operative, he had the training, but he didn’t use it often. He ran around in the woods like this at his recurrent field ops training only every other year. He wasn’t ashamed to let the better soldier lead the way.
They met no opposition at all as they headed for the barns. They’d almost reached them when Piper froze in front of him. The two of them were right at the edge of the woods, where it came within about a hundred feet of the nearest long barn. Close enough to smell the odor of a thousand chickens.
* * *
Three armed men came around the far side of the barn. Zane recognized Yousef, Bijan and Osted. All three looked bloody and battered. Twigs and leaves stuck to their clothes, and Bijan was limping badly. Yousef was holding his weapon weirdly, like he had an injured arm or hand.
Yousef raised his AK-47 and fired a short burst through the end of the barn, peppering the big metal sliding door with bullet holes.
Piper eased down to a crouch, rifle ready, and Zane mimicked her. When Yousef loosed another burst, Piper fired her weapon at him, and Zane did the same an instant later.
All three men pivoted and shot wildly at the woods. Spooked, were they?
Behind them, the big sliding door opened without warning, squeaking violently. The men started to turn toward it, then pivoted back as Zane and Piper fired again at them.
And then a cloud of frantic chickens swarmed out of the barn, some running, most flapping and flying, all of them panicked.
Osted screamed and took off running back around the barn, and Yousef wasn’t far behind. Bijan followed more slowly because of his limp, but appeared no less freaked out by the attack of the flying chickens.
In the distance, Zane heard the thwacking of a helicopter. It got louder rapidly as he and Piper advanced toward the now open barn door.
“It’s me, Irv!” Piper called before approaching any more closely. “Are you okay in there?”
“Bastards shot at my chickens!” Irv bellowed.
It sounded as if he was headed toward the other end of the barn, and Zane risked peering around the door. Sure enough, the farmer was charging down a long concrete aisle, brandishing the teeny handgun threateningly in front of him.
Zane sprinted after the farmer and Piper spun into the barn behind him, pausing only long enough to shove the big door shut again.
Zane caught up with Irv a dozen feet from the front door and grabbed the farmer in a horse-collar tackle, throwing his arm around the big man’s neck to stop him. Urgently, he whispered in Irv’s ear, “Don’t go out there! That’s an army gunship and it’ll kill anyone who moves outside with a weapon in hand.”
Piper caught up with them, panting hard. “Have you got a cell phone on you, Irv?”
“Yeah, but coverage is spotty out here. Middle of the barn’s your best bet.”
She grabbed the phone he held out and took off running. When she reached the middle of the barn, she placed a quick call and talked into the device urgently for a few seconds. She ran back to them.
“Gunship’s been told we’re in here. They passed a message to come out with our hands over our heads. They’ve killed two targets on the ground and the third one has fled into the woods on the other side of the road. They were instructed not to pursue him, but rather to stay here and provide support to us.”
“Thank God,” Zane said fervently.
He laid down the shotgun and made sure Irv did the same with the pistol. Piper put the Remington beside the other two weapons, and then all three of them stepped outside. They were met with violent downwash from the chopper that all but knocked them off their feet. Irv’s baseball cap flew off his head. The farmer started to grab for it, but Zane barked, “Let it go.”
“Oh. Right,” Irv grumbled.
The chopper hovered over them for perhaps two minutes before moving off to hover over the woods across the road from Irv’s destroyed house. A second helicopter, this one a Huey with a police paint job on it, landed between the house and the barns.
A man in full body armor raced out of it and over to the three of them. “Your names?” he demanded, weapon trained on them.
“Piper Ford, Zane Cosworth and Irv Smith,” she shouted over the noise of the choppers.
“I wasn’t told about Irv Smith!” the cop yelled back.
The farmer bellowed, “I own this place! Or what’s left of it!”
“He’s with us!” Zane shouted.
The cop waved all three of them over to the helicopter and loaded them aboard. Three other fully armored and armed police were inside, and it was a tight squeeze. Piper ended up sitting on Zane’s lap, and Irv sat on the floor. The aircraft lifted off the ground and swooped away from the house quickly.
* * *
They landed at a state police barracks about fifty miles away, and Zane grinned as Irv declared, “Well, hell’s bells, that was a fun ride! Can I get a ride home that way?”
The police led the farmer off to take his statement, and tried to separate Zane and Piper to get statements from them, too.
But Zane objected. “Sorry, gentlemen. This mess is above your pay grades. I’ll be happy to give you my supervisor’s phone number in Washington to confirm that, of course.”
“Same with me,” Piper said regretfully. “Although I’ll have to give you a different phone number.”
The police still insisted on putting Zane in an interrogation room and Piper in another until their identities were confirmed, which actually pissed Zane off to no end. He hadn’t been apart from Piper for days now, and he hated not being with her.
What was up with that? He never got attached to people. Never mind that they’d made love last night and he felt closer to her than he had to anyone in years.
Cripes. When had he fallen for his hostage?
While he sat there staring at himself in the two-way glass, he had plenty of time to wonder about it. That, and what in the hell he was going to do, now that he had fallen for Piper.
His grim reflection gave him only one entirely unhelpful answer. He was screwed.
* * *
Piper hated being away from Zane. He’d been her only source of support and safety for days, and she felt naked and vulnerable with him gone to who knew where. He was probably sitting in another interrogation room like this one, thanking his lucky stars this mission was over and he could get back to his regular life.
Now that they were both safe, where did that leave them? Did they still have a relationship? Or was everything that had happened between them purely a reaction to the crisis they’d been caught in? Had any of it been real?
Doubt speared through her.
Major Torsten had been blunt in their classroom instruction for advanced prisoner-of-war training; weird things happened to people under that extreme amount of pressure. The brain did all sorts of bizarre things to protect itself from the
unimaginable, including normalizing crap that was no way normal.
Was that what she and Zane had done? Had they been attracted to each other and formed a relationship rather than face the horror of what they were both experiencing?
For she had no doubt that being undercover with violent terrorists had been fully as stressful as being their prisoner had been. Except he’d lived in that environment for months. She’d been under that kind of pressure only for a few days, and it had pushed her to the breaking point and beyond. What would it have been like not to have been rescued for months?
Her mind shied away from even thinking about it.
So where did that leave her and Zane?
Had they shared a one-night stand of pure relief? Had their connection been based only on fear and mutual survival?
A police officer poked his head in the door, interrupting her mental spiral. “You’re still refusing to write up a report for us?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t. The information in it would be classified if I wrote it down. I’m sure the military will give you a redacted version of my formal report if you ask for it. Can I go now? Or can I at least make a phone call?”
“Some dude’s here to pick you up, anyway. Wearing a military uniform and scaring the hell out of the rookie cops. C’mon.”
She leaped to her feet and followed the cop eagerly down the hall. “Big blond guy? Eyes like ice?”
“That’s the one.”
“That’s Major Torsten. And he doesn’t scare you?”
The cop grinned at her. “Semper fi, ma’am. Once a marine, always a marine. Guys like him and me get along just fine.”
They rounded the corner into the squad room and Rebel and Tessa raced over to hug her tightly. She might or might not have shed a few tears of relief in the midst of the hugs at seeing her teammates again.
Major Torsten came over at a more measured pace. “Welcome back, Captain Ford. I hear you acquitted yourself well.”
She shrugged modestly and started to speak, but then caught sight of Zane coming around the corner. His gaze riveted on her immediately, and she nodded slightly at him. A smile lit his eyes but didn’t escape to the rest of his face.
Thank God. He cared about her at least a little. Or at least he was prepared to be civil to her. That was better than nothing. Right?
God. If only she knew him better. Then maybe she could guess where his head was at.
She made the introductions quickly, using no last names, given that a bunch of police without security clearances surrounded them.
Torsten said to Zane, “Can I give you a lift to the nearest secure telephone?”
Zane nodded. “That would be helpful.”
Piper piled outside with the others and jumped in a big Hummer Torsten had obviously commandeered from someone local. Zane ended up in the front passenger seat, and she ended up stuffed in the back of the vehicle as far from him as it was possible to get. Had Zane engineered that? Or maybe Tessa and Rebel had tacitly arranged it.
Either way, it felt strange to be this close to him and yet feel so far away.
“Any chance we could get something to eat?” Piper asked. “We ran out of food a while ago.”
Without comment, Torsten drove them to a diner and loaded them both up with tall stacks of pancakes, and then they headed to a regional airport and boarded a small business jet.
“Where to, sir?” the pilot asked Torsten as they approached the plane.
Major Torsten turned to look at Zane. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get my debrief from you two first, and then you can give your full debrief to your people, Zane. I expect yours will take some time, since you were embedded with those men for the long term.”
Piper interjected. “We have a more pressing problem than debriefs.”
Everyone turned to stare at her.
“The real Persephone Black is still out there, somewhere. And by now, it’s entirely possible that Mahmoud and his boys have been informed that the woman they kidnapped was not her. Forgive me for feeling a special connection to her after experiencing what was meant for her, but I think we need to go find her with all due haste and secure her safety.”
Torsten nodded tersely. “What about you, Zane? Do you want to come with us, or do you need to get back to your people?”
Piper’s gaze shot to Zane’s face. She saw it. The moment of hesitation.
Her heart fell, thudding to the ground somewhere in the vicinity of her feet.
He said emotionlessly, “I’d better come with you. I’ll feel responsible for Mrs. Black if something bad happens to her.”
Right. Responsibility. That was all he’d felt toward Piper, after all. He was a naturally protective guy. Which made him a decent human being but also meant what they’d shared had been nothing more than general compassion. Nothing personal. He’d just been comforting the exhausted, cold female and making up for any trauma he’d caused her.
The knife twisting in her gut served one purpose, at least. It told her she’d actually had some real feelings for him that extended beyond mutual survival or clinging to safety in the midst of terror. Not that those feelings meant a damned thing now that the two of them were back in the real world.
Well, hell.
An urge to cry made her eyes burn and the back of her throat tight.
She was not going to break down!
She fought back the urge. I’m just overwrought—whatever that actually means.
“Captain Ford makes a good point,” Torsten declared. “Zane, where did your group’s surveillance of Mrs. Black indicate that she can usually be found?”
“We did no surveillance at all on her. We just barged into that elementary school to snatch her.”
“Then that’s where we’ll start.” To the pilot, he said, “We need to land as close to Houma, Louisiana, as you can take us.”
The pilot nodded. “It’ll take us a few minutes to write up and file a flight plan, and then we’ll be out of here.”
It was a cool morning, and they all lounged in the back of the airplane with the door open while they waited to take off.
Piper asked no one in particular, “Where do you suppose Mahmoud and Yousef took off to after they fled the firefight?”
Torsten responded tersely, “They had better be on their way out of the country. The manhunt that’s about to go after them will be the end of them if they don’t get the hell out of Dodge.”
Piper looked over at Zane sharply. “Did you give their identities to the police?”
“Yes. Along with surveillance pictures of them that I uploaded to the cloud before they took my cell phone away. The authorities have the photographs and a list of every fake ID I saw any of them use.”
She nodded in satisfaction. “I hope they die horribly.”
One corner of Zane’s mouth turned up sardonically. “I hope so, too, personally. But professionally, I’d love to get my hands on one of them and force him to tell me exactly what they were in this country to do.”
“Kidnapping Piper wasn’t their main objective?” Torsten bit out.
Both Piper and Zane shook their heads. Zane added, “She was definitely a side job. They were collecting resources slowly and methodically while training together as a team to hone their skills.”
“What sort of training?”
“They ran all kinds of armed-assault scenarios. Along the lines of a hijacking or taking over some space filled with civilians to use as hostages.”
That sounded scary.
Piper spent part of the hour-long flight trying to imagine what target she would go after if she were part of an Iranian sleeper cell specializing in taking hostages. The problem was not coming up with targets. The problem was narrowing down the possible list.
Chapter 14
It was early afternoon when they landed at Houma-Terrebonn
e Airport with a bump onto the runway that woke Piper from a deep, disorienting sleep. Fortunately, her Medusa training had prepared her to go long periods of time with little or no sleep and to wake instantly on full alert even when exhausted. Which she was.
They deplaned and climbed into the Hummer Beau Lambert had driven over to the airport to meet them. He sat in the driver’s seat and Tessa and Rebel sat in the back. Obviously, Torsten had spoken with him from the plane, for as soon as they were in the vehicle, Beau took off toward Southdown Elementary School without having to be told where to go.
They arrived at the school and pulled up in front of it. As they approached the front door, the police officer lounging in a chair beside it went tense. His hand drifted toward the revolver at his hip.
But thankfully, when Torsten pulled out his military ID and asked the cop to escort them to the office of the assistant principal, Mrs. Black, the guy relaxed.
A wave of déjà vu rolled over Piper as she turned left into the glass-walled front office. Had it been only a week ago that she’d walked in here with Jack’s lunch? It felt like a lifetime.
She didn’t look over at Zane. What must this feel like to him? Last time he was here, he’d been brandishing an AK-47 and terrifying women and children.
Torsten told the receptionist, “We’re here to see Mrs. Black. It’s urgent.”
“Um, I’ll let her know you’re here,” the woman said nervously.
A tall, pretty blonde who actually did look a bit like Piper stepped out into the large room. “Who are you?” she asked a tad sharply.
“Major Gunnar Torsten, US Army. We’re here in connection with last week’s school invasion. Can we speak in private?”
“All of you?”
Torsten shrugged. “If you’d be more comfortable, I can pare it down to, say, three of us.”
“Please do.”
Torsten nodded at Piper and Zane, who followed him into Persephone Black’s office, while the others stayed outside in the main area. Zane closed the door behind them.
