Shoot to Thrill (12 page)

A muscle ticked in her jaw, and she cleared her throat. “I believe the proper term is
extortion
. But I want you to know I have no problem taking care of you. It’s the plane ride I’m afraid of.”

Something clicked in his mind. Leaving the hotel that first night, she’d said she didn’t like cars. Both times riding in the SUV she hadn’t said a word, but sat curled up tight on the seat, trembling, her face pressed into his shoulder as he held her close. The first time he’d assumed she was terrified of what was happening, and tonight that she was vibrating from sheer exhaustion—he’d been that tired himself before. But now he didn’t think exhaustion had anything to do with it. It was terror, all right. But not of the gun.

As if reading his mind, she said in a stiff voice, “My parents were killed in a car hijacking. I’m petrified of getting into a vehicle of any kind. I’ve never even been in a plane.”

He finally understood what he should have seen that very first night. He stared at her for a long second, then turned on Forsythe, even angrier. “Let her go home. I’m
fine
. I don’t need a goddamn nurse.”

“It’s okay,” she intervened. “The panic attacks never last more than five or ten minutes. I should be okay then. Theoretically.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, slashing a hand through his hair. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He ground his teeth in frustration. “This is completely out of control.”

“Tell me about it. Still, I probably should have faced my fears a long time ago. Now I have a good reason.” She tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to see Egypt.”

He set his mouth in a grim line at her doggedness. And had to physically restrain himself from pounding Forsythe into the pavement. Instead, he turned and hit him where it really hurt. “You’re sending her home commercial,” he gritted out. “First class. Hotels, too.”

Forsythe nodded a faux-nice concession. “The least we can do.”

Kick did his best to make her comfortable on the transport, but there was really no such thing on a C-17 unless you were the pilot. He made himself hold her close when she started shaking and feeling dizzy, banded his arms around her when she balked and wanted to run, spoke soothing words to her as he coaxed her into a flip-down cargo seat and strapped her in, then held her twitching hands in an iron grip and made her breathe and count slowly backward from two hundred so she wouldn’t unbuckle and run screaming into the cockpit to be let out.

He’d seen veterans come home from war, and operators come home from particularly bad missions, with similar symptoms. PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. ET—emotional trauma. CIS—critical incident stress. The list went on. None of it good.

Hell, he probably suffered from some form of psycho-alphabet himself. His behavior over the past year hadn’t been exactly rational, when examined objectively and without the justifying influence of painkillers. The ZU psych had tried to get him to deal with his repressed anger, or at least talk about it, but talk was useless.

Action. That’s what
he
needed. He understood that now. Kick had to exorcise the devil who had done this to him and his dead team.
Abu Bakr.
Wipe the fucking bastard off the face of the earth. Nothing less would do. Then, if Kick survived, he would get out and stay out of this business forever. If he was killed, so be it. But better to die fixing the problem than to live like he’d been living for the past year.

But not Rainie. More death and destruction was not the remedy for her fears. She needed to be safe. And back home where she belonged. As far away from Kick’s violent world as she could get.

Forsythe could make all the promises he wanted. Kick wasn’t about to trust the fucker.

He wouldn’t rest easy until Rainie was wheels-up and oscar mike on a plane back to the States, and he knew for sure she’d be all right. Even though he had the growing feeling that when she left him,
he’d
be the furthest thing from all right, ever again.

SEVEN

ON
the plane, Rainie finally succumbed to an exhausted sleep. She’d been a walking zombie. Kick hadn’t realized she’d stayed awake through his whole detox procedure. Sweet Jesus, no wonder she’d fallen apart during takeoff, practically clawing at him to get away and escape the plane. After the worst was over, he’d made a thick nest of blankets on the narrow strip of uneven, grill-pocked metal floor between the cargo containers and the flip-up seats and compelled her to lie down. He’d ended up lying down with her, holding her under the warm covers as the panic attack subsided. Eventually the drone of the engines and motion of the plane worked their magic. And holding her had worked its magic on him. He was able to grab a bit more much-needed sleep himself.

“We need to talk,” Forsythe said, waking Kick when they were about halfway over the Atlantic.

“Yup.” He eased away from Rainie and got to his unsteady feet. Immediately he missed the comforting feel of her warm body snuggled in his arms. Jeez, when had he gotten to be such a wuss?

“I need to read you in on the mission,” Forsythe said.

Kick frowned, switching gears in a flash. “Read me in? What the hell? I thought
I
was the mission.”

“Not exactly.” Forsythe motioned to the front of the plane, to two jump seats located in a clear space behind the pilots. “We can talk better up front. Less noise. I’ve got your info packet and your gear stowed there.”

As Kick followed, a hard knot formed in his stomach . . . around the other one that was already there—the dull but incessant knot of craving for the drug that had been lodged in his gut since awakening from the detox. Reading him in on the mission meant there was a previously formed plan, involving other people. Which meant the objective had to be more complicated than simply him killing one terrorist.

He should have
known
he couldn’t trust a word the bureaucrat said.

In the forward section he spotted the field packs the guard had carried up from the SUV.
Three
of them. Bingo. Why hadn’t he put two and one together?

Seeing him look at the packs, Forsythe explained, “They contain MREs and water, extra clothes, a SATCOM, and a variety of tools and small weapons. In the duffel bags are sniper rifles you can choose from, a machine gun, and a shoulder-held RPG. Wasn’t sure what-all you wanted to take with you.”

Kick crossed his arms over his chest and pressed in on the sick ache roiling in his abdomen. “Who are the other two packs for?”

“Sit down, Jackson, before you fall over.”

“I prefer to stand.”

Forsythe shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He dropped onto one of the jump seats, nodding to the pilot who waved over his shoulder. “Here’s the deal. This is not a Company operation. For political reasons, it’s being run by STORM Corps. Technically, you’ll be working for them.”

“STORM Corps.”

Kick knew the STORM acronym stood for Strategic Technical Operations and Rescue Missions, a spec ops outfit similar to Zero Unit, except it was nongovernmental. Used mainly by private companies and individuals to recover and defend hostages and other assets, they were occasionally hired by governments—including the United States—to carry out ultra-sensitive or controversial special operations in locations where official government agencies couldn’t or wouldn’t go.

Kick’s anger notched down a degree or two. He’d never worked with STORM, but he’d heard good things about them from friends who had. Their reputation was sterling.

Forsythe picked up a briefcase. “You’re aware that ever since our investigations into September 11, CIA has had a special relationship with the Sudanese government in the war on terrorism. We can’t afford to jeopardize those tenuous ties should you or your mission be compromised.”

Kick barely stifled a snort of derision. “Yeah, I’m aware.”

It had always made him furious. Nathan Daneby and the other Doctors for Peace had lobbied hard for US sanctions against the fundamentalist government that promoted genocide against its own people and whose soldiers systematically raped women as a weapon of terror. Kick was physically sickened by the thought of CIA turning a blind eye, let alone having close ties to them. It didn’t surprise him at all that Jallil abu Bakr and his gang of al Sayika thugs had found safe haven there.

“It was our friends in the Sudanese government who tipped us off to abu Bakr’s recent entry into the country,” Forsythe said, sensing his harsh thoughts.

“Then undoubtedly they’ll be the ones who kill me when I go after him,” he said sardonically. His team had been betrayed in A-stan, so why not the Sudan, too? They’d never found the internal leak that had compromised the team on that last disastrous op. Which was why he was pretty sure this would be a suicide mission for him. Loose ends rarely lasted in his line of work.

But being under STORM Corps put a new spin on things. Maybe he had a fighting chance to get through this alive. Not that it mattered much . . .

For a split second his gaze veered to the woman sleeping aft in the cargo hold.
Don’t even go there
, he told himself, and forced his attention back where it belonged.

At some point Forsythe had opened his briefcase, and now held a thin file folder. Kick tried to focus.

“As always,” Forsythe was saying, “your specific task is to neutralize the principal, in this case abu Bakr. When that’s accomplished, the two STORM operatives you’ll be with will coordinate and direct an air strike to raze the enemy camp.”

“An air strike on foreign soil?” Kick whistled. “Ballsy. No wonder you brought in outside help.”

“Not help. Deniability. It’ll be made to look like a Sudanese government raid. Clamping down on terrorism and all.”

“Yup. I’d buy that,” Kick said.

Forsythe ignored the sarcasm. “There’s a small plane standing by in Cairo, waiting to take us south to the border.”

“Us?”

“You and me.”

“And what happens with Rainie?” Kick asked.

“Miss Martin will have a room at the Hilton and an open ticket to JFK waiting for her. Yeah, yeah, all first class.”

He wondered how she’d do in the infamous Cairo traffic, which was kind of like Rome on speed with no rules and five times more cars. He wished he could be there to help get her through it.

No. He didn’t. She wouldn’t want him there. She’d made that clear enough.

Different worlds.

And she was right.

Forsythe rose. “Why don’t you check out the gear in the packs, make sure everything you need is there. Then get some more sleep. You’ll need it.”

“Yup.” Kick reached down for the guns in the duffel.

“Oh. There’s one more thing.”

Naturally.
He looked up as he unzipped the bag.

“There’s been a new lead in the investigation into who might be responsible for getting your team ambushed in Afghanistan. We think we have our man. The evidence is fairly convincing.”

Kick froze where he stood. His fingers spasmed around the assault rifle he held in his grip. “Who?” was all he could manage to squeeze past the sudden grenade lodged in his throat.

Could it be he’d finally learn the truth? He’d give anything to find out the identity of the person who had betrayed them. Had caused the deaths of five good men, including his best friend, Alex Zane.

Because that person was a walking dead man.

Wordlessly, Forsythe handed him the file, then strode away.

Opening up the cover, Kick’s heart pounded so hard in his chest it was painful.

But that was nothing compared to how it thundered when he saw the eight-by-ten photo that stared back at him from inside. It was a telephoto shot of two men. One of them Kick recognized immediately from A-stan. White-haired Abbas Tawhid. An old-school fundamentalist and real scumbag, he was a known associate of abu Bakr . . . was his right-hand man in al Sayika, in fact. But it was the other man in the photo, to whom Tawhid was passing a small packet, that made Kick’s heart leap to his throat in agony.

It couldn’t be.
He felt even more sick to his stomach, like he’d swallowed knives.

But it was. Clear as day.

The second man was his own good friend.

Nathan Daneby.

THE
Sultan of Pain.

Mary, Mother of God.
What was he doing here?

Pig’s insides turned to water as the sound of the hated voice came closer and closer.

The voice of his worst torturer.

A
real
torturer, not these other murdering, raping clowns who thought they knew what the word meant. And maybe they did, to some people.

Not to him. He knew better. He’d met the man. Abu Bakr, the guards called him. But to Pig, he’d always be the Sultan of Pain.

Hopeless despair filled his chest. The cold, vicious brute used to appear at camp regularly to interrogate the man he’d christened Pig, until he’d finally convinced him he didn’t remember anything. Which he really didn’t. Other than the bloody memories of excruciating pain the Sultan left behind.

After that, the bastard had stopped his visits. And then had come the long blackout when they must have drugged and moved him because he’d woken up in a completely different camp. Nothing had been the same. Not the hovels, not the food, not the people. Not even the smell. But as fucked-up as things were here, he’d been grateful. Because the Sultan was gone.

But now it seemed his luck had run out.

He didn’t resist when the guards came for him. It was useless to try. He was starving. His body was weaker than a baby’s. What was the point?

They made him walk, as always. Step by painful, breathless, near-sightless step. When he reached the dark silhouette of a building he’d never been in before, they jerked him to a stop. Surreptitiously, he strained to see something. Anything. But his eyes refused to focus. It was all just light and shadow.

The Sultan approached, speaking in urgent tones to another man. Pig drew in on himself, prepared his body for the first blow. But the men swept into the solid structure without so much as a glance in his direction.