Buch lesen: «Special Forces: The Spy»

Chapter 1

Relishing the morning sunshine pouring through her cozy bungalow’s kitchen window, Piper Ford poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table to catch up on current events. Of course, she didn’t bother with newspapers. Instead, she browsed the classified briefing she and her teammates got each day covering every hot spot in the world.

It was one of the best perks of being a Medusa. She loved knowing the dirt that few besides her all-female Special Forces team had access to. But then, she always had been a poli-sci geek. Even at West Point, she’d reveled in getting into political debates with her classmates and instructors.

Her cell phone rang and she picked it up. Her next-door neighbor was calling. Susan and her six-year-old son, Jack, had welcomed her warmly to the neighborhood when she bought this place a few months back.

Piper had a particular fondness for the little boy, and he for her. Jack was a cool kid—funny, curious and smart as heck.

“Hi, Sus. What’s up?”

“Hey, Piper. I’m stuck at the hospital. My day replacement called in sick at the last minute, and they can’t find a nurse to sub in. I’m stuck in the ICU pulling a double shift. But my babysitter can’t stay late this morning. Is there any chance you could run Jack over to his school on your way to work?”

“When does he need to be there?”

“Eight fifteen.”

The Medusas had training at nine, but it was only about a twenty-minute drive from the town of Houma, Louisiana, to their classified facility, Training Site Vanessa, usually referred to as the TSV. It was tucked next to the Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge, deep in the bayous of southern Louisiana.

“Yeah, sure. I can drop him off on my way to work. Will he be ready to go around eight?”

“He should be. Rosie feeds him breakfast, gets him dressed and packs his lunch. I really am sorry about the last-minute notice. You’re an angel. I owe you one.”

Piper laughed, “I’m hardly an angel.”

“Shrimp étouffée? My place, this weekend?” Susan offered.

“Deal. I’ll bring the wine.”

Piper dressed in jeans and a casual white oxford shirt, befitting her cover story of being a civilian historian researching pirate activity in this part of southern Louisiana.

She stuffed the daily intel brief into her backpack, along with her pistol, some basic survival gear she felt naked without and a uniform for running around in the woods with the Medusas. Vietnamese Special Forces instructors were in town this week teaching her and her teammates advanced jungle camouflage and ambush tactics—key skills for Special Forces operators like the Medusas.

Piper backed her little sports car out of the garage and pulled into the driveway next door. Susie’s salmon pink front door opened and Jack darted out, all restless energy. Piper pushed the passenger door open for him and waved at Rosie, the babysitter, who followed him out the door at a more sedate pace, locking it behind her.

“Thanks for taking Jack to school!” Rosie called. “I have a doctor’s appointment today in New Orleans, and I’m gonna be late as it is.”

“No problem!” Piper called back. As Jack tumbled into the car beside her, she admonished, “Buckle your seat belt, squirt.”

A bolt of envy for Susan and regret for opportunities lost shot through Piper’s gut at the sight of Jack. Longing for a child tugged at her—longing for a family of her own. She’d have thought she would be over the sense of hollow emptiness for the children she would never have by now, given the career she’d picked. But it turned out biological clocks were powerful little bastards.

It had been a trade-off, and she’d made her choice. She had arguably one of the coolest jobs on the planet. But the sacrifice in return was no time for a private life.

In point of technical fact, she supposed a personal life was possible. But that would entail finding a man who didn’t mind his partner being a lethally trained special operator, prone to running off at a moment’s notice to who knew where to face who knew what danger.

The only man besides her boss who even knew the Medusas existed at this point was Captain Beau Lambert, the Medusas’ operations officer. And her teammate, Tessa Wilkes, had that man locked down tight. The two of them were engaged and had set a wedding date next year. They made a great couple. Goo-goo eyes flew thick and fast whenever they were in the same room.

But that left her without any eligible prospects in the love department.

“I like riding in your car, Miss Piper.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cuz your car doesn’t have a back seat, and I get to sit in front.”

“When you get bigger, your mom will let you sit in front with her.”

“That’s what she says. I’m eatin’ as much as I can so I’ll get big really fast.”

“Patience, grasshopper. You’ll be all grown-up before you know it. Enjoy being a kid while you can.”

“Don’t you like being a grown-up?”

“I do most of the time. But it’s a lot easier being a kid. And more fun.”

“My mama says you have a super boring job.”

Piper mentally snorted. If Susan only knew the truth. The poor woman would run screaming from Piper. She smiled serenely. “I like my job.”

“Lucky dog. I hate school. I suck at it.”

“You do not. I happen to know you rock at all your subjects.”

“School’s boring.”

“Maybe you’re just too smart for the first grade.”

“Mama says I’m smarter than my teacher.”

Piper laughed, “I can believe it.”

They pulled up in front of Southdown Elementary School, a dark redbrick building that Piper privately thought looked more like a prison than a school. As Jack jumped out, she called after him, “Have a good day. And behave yourself!”

He flashed her an impudent grin and dashed inside.

She made it nearly halfway to the TSV before she happened to glance down and spied a brown paper bag on the floor of the passenger side of the car.

Rats. Jack had forgotten his lunch.

If she hit the stoplights exactly right, she had just enough time to zip back to his school, run his lunch inside and make it to the training site on time. The Medusas’ commanding officer, Major Gunnar Torsten, had no sense of humor whatsoever when it came to tardiness.

Classes had started by the time she got back to the elementary school, and the drop-off area was deserted. Parking quickly, she grabbed Jack’s lunch and hurried inside. To the left of the front door was a large glassed-in office that looked like a reception area lined with institutional, Formica-topped desks. Several women sat at them. A little girl who looked about eight years old stood beside one, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

Piper stepped inside. “Is this where I drop off a lunch a student has forgotten?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just a minute.” The gray-haired woman who answered her went back to talking with the child. “Your mom says she’ll be here in ten minutes with your inhaler—” The woman broke off, staring at something behind Piper.

A flurry of movement in the hallway outside caught Piper’s attention out the corner of her eye. Something—someone—adult-sized had just run past.

Was there a problem?

As she turned to take a better look, a man dressed all in black with a black ski mask over his face burst into the office. Piper flipped into combat mode in a millisecond, her senses going on high alert and adrenaline rushing to all her muscles.

She noted several things at once. The weapon, held across the man’s body, was an AK-47 with an extended mag, and he handled it like he was familiar with it. He was a shade over six feet tall. Athletic in build. Moved fast and silently, rolling from heel to toe with each step. Like a Special Forces operator.

“Everybody down!” he shouted.

The three women at their desks started to scream, and the little girl awaiting the inhaler froze, staring up at the man in openmouthed terror, like a rabbit in front of a wolf.

Stunned, Piper dropped to the floor with the other women. She was unarmed, alone and had no idea how many more men like this there were already inside the school. Terror and panic exploded in her gut in spite of all her Special Forces training.

God. Not a school shooting. A worst-case scenario on all counts. Nonexpendables everywhere—children—completely unequipped to defend themselves from harm. Targets handily clustered together in classrooms. Limited egress points. Even more limited sight lines. Chaos guaranteed.

Tragedy guaranteed.

By force of will and outstanding training, she pushed back all the paralyzing feelings and focused on acting.

Surreptitiously, she eased her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and dialed 9-1-1 by feel. She stuffed the phone under her hip lest the armed man brandishing the AK-47 hear the operator ask what the nature of her emergency was and kill her before she could answer.

She eased her hip off the phone and shouted, “What do you want, barging into an elementary school with an automatic weapon like that?”

“Quiet, or I’ll kill you!” the man shouted back. “Where’s Mrs. Black?”

“She’s out sick today,” one of the other women quavered from the floor.

Piper eased back on top of the phone, praying the emergency operator had gotten the idea and called for the SWAT team. And the FBI and the National Guard and whoever else could be called.

Standoffs with kids caught in the middle were no picnic, but maybe when law enforcement got here, they could negotiate some sort of hostage release.

She calculated her options at the speed of light. She could probably take out the lone armed man—she did have all the necessary unarmed-combat training and the element of surprise on her side.

Question was, where were the other men she’d peripherally seen racing past, and how many of them were there? If she got the weapon away from this one, she could go hunting for the others...although hunting in a building full of children and teachers would be a dreadful environment for taking out bad guys. The odds of shooting an innocent bystander were far too high to risk.

As those thoughts darted through her mind, the armed man did an odd thing. He strode over to the little girl, grabbed her by her upper arm, glanced around, then led her over to a tall wooden coat cabinet against the wall.

He opened the door, pushed her inside and said low, “Stay in there until the police come for you and don’t make a sound until then.”

Piper stared, so confused she momentarily forgot her terror. Did the intruder just save that little girl? Why on earth would an armed assailant do something like that?

He shut the closet door just before two more men raced into the office, dressed like him and similarly armed. Terrorist the First nodded tersely at his buddies.

What in the hell was this about? What did a bunch of men, attired and armed like bank robbers, want with a freaking elementary school?

“Where is she?” one of the newcomers demanded in Farsi. Piper’s Farsi wasn’t fluent, but that was definitely what she’d heard. These guys were Iranian? What on earth did they want here?

The terrorists commenced walking around the room, examining each of the women cowering on the floor. One screamed as an assailant grabbed her shoulder and lifted her up enough to see her face. These guys were looking for somebody? This was a hell of a violent and aggressive way of finding whoever they wanted.

The terrorists reached Piper, and she stared fixedly at their combat boots. Steel toes, nylon uppers, flexible rubber soles, quick-don zippers. Special operators’ footwear.

Was this some sort of exercise aimed at her? The Medusas did some wild stuff in the name of training, but surely they wouldn’t scare the hell out of a bunch of kids and teachers. Nah. This was the real deal.

A hand grabbed her shoulder roughly and threw her over onto her back. She rolled with the shove, not resisting. Unfortunately, the roll exposed her cell phone, and one of them kicked it away from her with his foot. Reflexively, her hand went out to retrieve it, but she froze as she made eye contact with the kicker.

Clear amber eyes stared down at her, the color of a fine cognac. They were hard eyes, but they didn’t contain the rage or fanaticism she’d expected.

He glanced at her outstretched hand splayed on the floor and did a double take. She swore mentally. Clearly visible on her fourth finger was her West Point class ring. In her guise as a civilian historian, she told people it had been her father’s, but it was actually hers.

The man’s eyes lit with recognition as he spied the chunky ring and its dark green central stone.

Dammit.

“Here she is!” he called out to the others in Farsi.

What? These men were here for her? How on earth did they know who she was? Nobody knew about the Medusa Project. It had been resurrected from ashes less than a year ago, for crying out loud.

Everyone had been led to believe the program was defunct and the military had abandoned the idea of training and equipping a team of female Special Forces operatives after the second Medusa team was wiped out in a mission gone terribly wrong.

The other two masked men grabbed her by her arms and hauled her upright. Adrenaline roared through her body, and it took all the discipline she had not to lash out and fight for her life against these men. She was hopelessly outgunned, and three on one was not the kind of odds she wanted to take into a fistfight.

She was a good hand-to-hand fighter, but she wasn’t invincible. Martial artists won against three attackers only in the movies. Carefully choreographed and scripted movies. Not real life. Not in an elementary school full of children.

“You’re sure this is her?” one of the other men asked the terrorist who’d hidden the little girl.

He stared at her indecisively. His gaze strayed to a telephone sitting on the desk beside her, to the exit door and then back to her face. He exhaled hard. Regret glinted in his stare. “Yes. That’s her.” His voice was a rough baritone and sounded stressed.

Who in the hell did they think she was? Who were they?

Her only play was to delay these guys as long as she could. Give the police time to respond to her call.

“Who are you?” she demanded in English. No way was she giving away that she understood anything they were saying to one another. “What do you want with me?”

She didn’t see the blow coming. A fist plowed into her jaw from the right side, snapping her head hard to the left and making her see stars. Dazed, she stared at the first man—the one with golden eyes—wincing silently in front of her.

Gingerly, she poked her right cheek with her tongue. No teeth felt loose, but the inside of her cheek was shredded. She opened her mouth, flexing her jaw experimentally. It didn’t feel broken.

Well. That didn’t go as planned. Dazed, she stared at her attackers. Real fear for her life flowed through her. She registered it, cataloged the emotion and forcibly pushed it down. She had no time for fear. Not if she wanted to live. And not if she wanted to protect the kids in this building.

She had to get these men outside, into the range of armed law enforcement officials, but slowly enough that said officials could get here before these guys fled.

“You’re sure it’s her?” the third man asked doubtfully in Farsi. “She doesn’t look much like her picture.”

“Yes, yes,” Goldeneyes snapped back in Farsi. “Blonde. Tall. Thirty years old. And she does match the picture. These Western women wear a lot of makeup and it changes how they look. I’m used to that, and you’re not. I’m telling you it’s her.”

With that declaration, Goldeneyes apparently sealed some sort of fate for her. The other two men nodded, accepting his word.

What picture? Part of becoming a Medusa was having her life scrubbed completely off the internet. Completely off. A team of cybersecurity experts did the initial wipe and then maintained continuous scans for any new images that might pop up. Even official public records were scrubbed. She did not exist in cyberspace.

So, how did these guys know her, let alone have a picture of her? She certainly had no idea who they were.

Belatedly, her mind working a couple steps slower than normal, she mentally corrected him. She was twenty-seven years old, not thirty, thank you very much.

In the distance, sirens became audible. God bless the 9-1-1 operator. She’d called in the cavalry, after all.

“Time’s up. Let’s go,” Jaw Puncher bit out.

The men hustled her out into the hallway. She briefly considered making a stand right there in the entrance, but they had AK-47s, and one blow from the butt of one of those would knock her out cold. She would just as soon stay conscious if she could. Also, there were all those kids just down the hall. She had no way of knowing if there were any more armed men in the building, and she dared not provoke these guys to start shooting.

She did her best to slow the men down, though, shortening her steps and resisting moving forward between them in the guise of being too zoned out to do anything but shuffle along drunkenly.

Irritably, they overpowered her and shoved her outside into the parking lot. More sirens were audible now. Lots of them. Unfortunately, they still sounded a half-dozen blocks away.

Goldeneyes stepped up close behind her and bodychecked her hard but not painfully, shoving his hip into her lower back, helping the other two men throw her into a white step van. She tumbled to the floor, slamming hard into its metal ribs. Gasping for air, she noted a fourth man darting out of the building to join them. A fifth man drove, pulling away from the front door with a hard lurch of the van.

One of the men snapped at the driver not to leave tire tracks, and the vehicle lurched again as he slowed down abruptly.

Fear bubbled up again in her throat, momentarily choking her.

She did the four-step breathing technique she’d been taught. In. Hold breath and count to four. Out. Count to four. In...

It took several breaths, but calm prevailed once more over her panic.

Okay. She was being kidnapped. Major suckage.

But there had been multiple witnesses. Law enforcement would put out an APB for this van in a few minutes. Houma was a small town deep in the bayou country, which meant there were only so many roads these men could travel in between the copious waterways.

This would be okay. An hour. Maybe two. A standoff, perhaps. With her, a trained Special Forces operative, on the inside. She would be the police’s secret weapon when it came time for a rescue. All she had to do was stay conscious and keep her wits about her. Trust her training.

The van pulled out of the parking lot and turned right. That would be south on Maple Street. They went straight for what she estimated to be five minutes, and then they turned left. A few minutes, another right turn and then they accelerated to highway speed. Maybe Bayou Black Drive heading west out of town?

Which would be ironic. That road would take them right past the unmarked turnoff to the Medusas’ secret facility, where her teammates were gathering for today’s training.

A sense of unreality washed over her. Surely, she was not being kidnapped by Iranian terrorists. This had to be a bad dream. It couldn’t be happening to her. Was that shock lowering its protective fog over her brain? It felt just the way her instructors had described it. Everything was happening at a distance. Muted. Not really touching her.

One of the men admonished the driver in Farsi, but she didn’t understand the command. In a second, she felt the vehicle slow down to a more sedate speed. Piper frowned. What on earth did Iranians want with her? She’d never had anything to do with that part of the world before—had never served or even traveled there and had no particular expertise on the region beyond reading her daily intelligence brief. What was going on here? She had to be missing something critical—

Something heavy smashed painfully into the back of her head, and she toppled forward as everything went dark.