Hot Ice (39 page)

"No kidding!" Taylor rested one hand on his broad shoulder—covered in the same fabric—and got her legs into the legs of the suit, pushing her feet through and wiggling her toes. The fabric felt odd, firmly hugging each part of her sensitized body as Hunt tugged it up and over her hips.

It was styled like the footies she'd worn as a kid, and he drew the top part up and over her naked shoulders. "Arm… other arm. Jesus," his voice was thick, "you have beautiful breasts." He drew up the zipper from her waist, slowly, his knuckles brushing the centerline of her body all the way up until he reached her chin, then he brushed her lower lip with his thumb. "Done."

Taylor lifted her arms up and down as though she were flying. "This is amazing! I feel… naked."

"Don't I wish."

She grinned, starting to feel the usual before-a-big-job rush of anticipatory adrenaline surge through her system. "Do I need my boots?"

"No. You don't need anything. I have your tools," Hunt told her, his normal taciturn self again as he swung the duffel back to his shoulder. "Let's go. The others are waiting."

There wasn't much of a climb to reach the mouth of the mine. The bright moon hung in the black sky, illuminating the shrubs and vegetation. Hunt wasn't being particularly stealthy, but it didn't matter, since the "natives" knew what was going on as they pretended to sleep. Taylor walked lightly beside him.

The dark shapes of his team came into view as they crested a small berm and Viljoen joined them. Because it was so bright, the team had positioned themselves to be completely hidden by the dense shadows from an enormous outcropping of rock and shrubs nearby.

"Okay," Viljoen said quietly, in his element because he was the mining expert on the team. He acknowledged Hunt with a brief glance before continuing. "What we have here appears to be room-and-pillar mining, you know? Unusual, 'cause mostly here in S.A. they have open-pit mines, not—
Ag
, never mind the lesson." He quickly reined himself in.

"So, what we're gonna find in there will be the typical low-angle adits connecting to some sort of horizontal access level," he finished.

The entrance was an unimpressive wooden structure. Only close inspection showed it was new construction, with heavy-duty metal bracing painted to blend in. From as close as twenty feet away the wood appeared to be part of the original 1970s mine.

"You didn't tell me I could've worn cool makeup," Taylor whispered to Hunt as they approached the rest of the team. They all wore cammy paint on their hands and faces.

"Only the people who'll be staying out here are wearing it," he said softly.

The smell of her, standing so close beside him, filled his senses. It was no longer novel to him, so he should be immune by now. Yet the very familiarity of it distracted him. Dangerously so. He took several steps forward and motioned her to wait.

"Who's inside?" he asked softly.

"Bishop, Savage, Navarro, and Fisk," Daklin told him. Hunt gave him points for not staring and salivating at Taylor in the skintight LockOut suit.

They'd retrieved their weapons hidden beneath the floorboards of the vehicles, and everyone else wore heavy artillery in cleverly crafted holsters—guns, knives, and ammo. But on Taylor there was nothing but the unbroken line of matte black material hugging every curve and hollow of her body. She might as well be naked and wearing a thin coat of black paint.

"I'm off with my team," Daklin said, sounding as though he were smiling, but no emotion showing on his face. "Anything you need before we split?"

Most of the team would remain aboveground, while Hunt, Taylor, Fisk, Viljoen, Coetzee, Tate, and Bishop went through the levels inside. "Keep alert for anything," he told the first away team led by Daklin. "If a snake of any sort so much as yawns—shoot it."

He was talking to thin air.

He looked up as four shadows blended from the pitch-black interior to the deep black of the shadows outside. "Fisk. What have we got?"

He was looking at Fisk, but preternaturally aware of the woman beside him. Hunt kept Taylor in his peripheral vision at all times, as though she might suddenly disappear.

Jesus bloody Christ, he did
not
want to take her in there.
All right, God. Here's the deal. Make this simple and quick. Make Taylor completely redundant on this op, so I can have her taken the fuck out of here, and I'll swear to kill Morales more quickly and humanely than he could ever deserve. Out. I mean…Amen
.

"Any chance you can open whatever it is on your own?" Hunt asked Fisk.

"He just tried," Savage told him. "He's never seen such a complex—"

"I can represent myself, thank you," Frank Fisk told her, then turned to Hunt. "We need Taylor."

"Savage?" Navarro called so softly, his words seemed like part of the barely there breeze.

The man was a woman whisperer, Hunt thought as Savage reluctantly turned. "Let Bishop—"

"You're my sharpshooter," Hunt told her. "I want you with them. Go."

She opened her mouth. Hunt waited. Her shoulders straightened and she raised her voice slightly so it would carry to her team. "On my way."

"Step lively then, beautiful," Daklin told her, melting into the shrubbery with the others.

Were you listening, God?

"Ready to rock?" Bishop pulled his hood over his hair and neck, leaving only his features visible, more for warmth than as a disguise.

"Let's do it," Hunt said grimly, taking Taylor's hand in his and walking with purpose.

He wasn't capricious, never had been. He didn't have premonitions, or psychic dreams, or extrasensory perception, but he trusted his gut instincts implicitly. They'd never failed him.

In all his years as a T-FLAC operative, Hunt had experienced everything from motivational hatred for the scum he dealt with to anticipation and interest when he was on an op. But now, as he walked toward the rickety-looking entrance to the Blikiesfontein mine, Taylor at his side, he felt intense fear. In his thoughts, in his gut, in his impervious heart.

Suddenly, he wished he'd never met Taylor.

He cursed himself for his dogged persistence in tracking her down.

And he felt profound guilt that he'd caved and permitted her to accompany T-FLAC,
him
, to Africa.

Because his gut was telling him what he knew in his bones.

Quite simply, Hunt knew, he was going to be the death of her.

Chapter Forty-two

The passageway sloped gradually, and the deeper they walked, the narrower it became. Surprisingly, there was no musty smell inside the mine. In fact it smelled of dirt, and was not unpleasant. The area immediately surrounding them was illuminated by the powerful flashlights each of the men carried. They were also all armed to the teeth.

It was pitch-dark. Fortunately, she had no fear of either darkness or confined spaces. But she was having a hard time adjusting to the outfit she wore. It was so insubstantial that she felt naked, and had to run her hand down her hip or touch her sleeve to be sure she was wearing anything at all.

She and Frank Fisk walked side by side as they followed Bishop and Viljoen. Hunt, Coetzee, and Tate brought up the rear. The situation was a little surreal. Her heartbeat was delightfully fast, as it always was preceding a job. Clearing her mind so she could focus was
de rigueur
at this point, as well.
Focus
.

"Here's what we've got," Fisk told her as they walked briskly through the tunnel. "No safe, per se, simply the door and the mechanism embedded in solid rock. No markings to ID it, but it's an Allied 763."

"The big guns right off the bat," Taylor said, her pulse racing pleasurably at the anticipation of the challenge. She all but rubbed her hands together in expectation. "1998 DV model, do you think?" The year that particular model had been perfected. "When did you say Morales bought this place, Daan?"

" 'Ninety-eight," Viljoen said over his shoulder. "Watch your step. There's a big dip right here, you know?"

"It's possible he had the latest, greatest installed right away," Taylor said, "but not probable." She turned to Fisk. "What month was the new DV763 model released? June of that year, right?"

"Yeah," Fisk agreed. "So it's likely the '96 model. Ever cracked one of those?"

"Actually, I managed to get into the '98 model last year." She smiled when Fisk gave her a goggle-eyed stare of admiration. "Morales had it installed in one of his Spanish warehouses. It was a bitch. And worth every penny of its hefty asking price."

"Impressive," Fisk murmured.

"Fortunately for me, because of its remote location I had an entire weekend to fool with it. And trust me, it took that long."

Too bad Morales had moved the Blue Star diamonds somewhere else that very week—a little detail that had stolen some of the thrill when she opened the safe, only to find the treasure gone. But she'd at least had the professional thrill of having defeated a safe that "couldn't be cracked." Anything could be cracked if one had the time and patience.

"Did you do an ultraviolet scan, or dust it for prints?" Taylor asked as they walked. Sometimes it was almost too easy if there was a keypad. The owner's fingerprints gave away the combination. After that, figuring out the order was pretty much child's play.

"Clean." Fisk grabbed her elbow as she took a misstep. "The '96?"

"Thanks." The tunnel curved slightly and dropped at least another six or seven feet in a sharp declining slope. She was grateful for his quick save. "Twice," she told him, mentally bringing up the schematics for Allied. "The first time I did a '96 it took me about four hours. I sweated bullets for every one of those 240 minutes."

The Petersons had been asleep upstairs. She'd been accompanied in the study by the family's two Doberman pinschers, who'd watched her every second and then followed her to the French doors, stubby tails wagging, as she walked out with the Fabergé eggs that had been stolen from a British royal three weeks before.

Dogs always liked her.

"The next time it took a smidgen under three." Not great, but not bad either. The Burmese sapphires.

"Kurt Peterson then Lorenzo Jordan," Hunt said grimly behind her. "Two more of the terrorists you're so fond of pissing off. You certainly like to live dangerously. Know what either of those two would have had done to you if they'd even
suspected
you'd robbed them?"

"Well, they
didn't
know it was me," she told him cheerfully. "And even if they did, who could they tell? They'd both acquired their treasures illegally in the first place."

"Here we are," Viljoen said, stepping aside for Fisk and Taylor, but keeping the high beam of his flashlight on the seven-foot-high titanium door embedded in the solid-rock walls. Fisk's small computer sat on the floor at the base of the door.

"It
is
a '98 DV763," Taylor confirmed the second she saw the handle on the locking mechanism. She indicated the computer. "That didn't work, did it?"

She assumed Fisk had used software to run a sequence of numbers until it hit the right combination. Unfortunately, on this particular model they'd taken high-tech theft into account and programmed in a firewall to block access.