Hot Ice (45 page)

Taylor found herself—she wasn't sure how—maneuvered right into the middle of the group. Protected on all sides by Hunt's guys. It was no problem for her to keep up with them. They weren't running flat out, just moving at a steady jog that didn't utilize too much energy before they'd need it. She was grateful that she kept herself in peak physical fitness for her job, because they didn't stop or slow down for more than ninety minutes.

Only to come to a solid wall of rock.

The narrow-gauge track they'd been following ran straight into the wall.

They spent precious minutes stroking the surface, looking for a way through to the other side.

"Here," Taylor called softly, finding an opening near the floor and going down on her stomach. She could see clear to the other side, some thirty feet away. She gulped at the sheer magnitude of where they were. That was a lot of rock.

"Stop right there," Hunt told her. She wiggled backward, looking at him over her shoulder.

"I think you'd better all follow me," she said, but she waited for him to give her the okay.

"Let Fisk reconnoiter first," Hunt told her gruffly.

She sat up, letting Fisk take the lead. When Fisk yelled, she slithered after him as quickly as a greased eel.

By the time the tunnel opened up into the vast cavern of Level Seven, she was slightly out of breath, and more than happy to stop. They all stopped at the entrance. It was a hell of a sight.

The vast cavern seemed to go on endlessly. A warehouse for Morales's madness. The space was piled high with wooden crates. Ceiling to floor. Row upon row. All neatly labeled and stacked in precise rows. Thousands of them.

Weapons. Ammunition. Explosives. Chemicals.

Both Morales's and Dante's Level Seven were reserved for assassins, tyrants, and warmongers.

And in the center of the man-made cavern, rising from an opening in the floor and continuing through the ceiling high above their heads, the
Mano del Dios piece de resistance
.

The missile.

Taylor had known it was there. Hell, she knew what a missile looked like. She'd seen the old Cape Canaveral launches on TV dozens of times. She'd never imagined she'd have the opportunity to stand less than a hundred feet from one.

Her eyes followed the sides of the gleaming red and white cylinder as it soared high above their heads and disappeared into a hole in the rock ceiling. This… thing was
enormous
.

"Phallic-looking, isn't it?" Savage asked, coming to stand beside her.

Completely bereft of speech, Taylor could only nod. Fear, vast and immediate, had grabbed her by the throat the second she'd seen it. She wanted to dash over to Hunt, grab his wrist, activate whatever it was, and see how many more minutes they had before this monster blasted out of the mine and left them all behind as bits of charcoal dust.

"Snap out of it, cupcake," Savage said.

Mouth dry, Taylor licked her lips. "How—"
Did they get that thing in here
?

Savage smiled. "Long to liftoff?" Another excellent question. The operative tilted her wrist, activated the watch, then looked at the missile. "Three hours, six minutes."

That didn't seem long enough to Taylor. She looked for Hunt. He was talking intently to a group of men, all of whom looked dead serious.

"You do realize," Savage said conversationally, jerking her chin toward the warehouse of boxes, "that just that shit over there could feasibly blow the African continent out of existence? The rocket is pretty much overkill."

Taylor shook her head. "TMI!" Too much information.

Savage patted her shoulder. "Keep out of the way, cupcake. I see a nice vantage point up there with my name on it. Feel free to join me."

The woman was way too chipper for Taylor right now. She looked where the T-FLAC operative was pointing. "Up there" was the first row of wooden crates with a direct visual line to the entrance to the cavern. Hunt had told her that Catherine Seymour, Savage, was one of the T-FLAC's top sharpshooters. She was going to climb twenty feet above the floor and sit and wait to pick off the bad guys as they came in.

Taylor knew she wasn't going to be anywhere near flying bullets if she could possibly help it. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass."

"Suit yourself, but keep an eye out for the bad guys." Savage jogged off.

"I'll do that," Taylor told empty air. "I most certainly will do that." She wondered where the safest place to do that might
be
.

Argentina?

Chapter Forty-eight

12:30 P.M.

Dante's Inferno

Level seven

"We're going to need at least a hundred more men in here to transpo this topside," Hunt told Viljoen. Daklin and Navarro had each taken their teams and gone to see what they could do about disabling the missile. They'd send one of their people back to him with exactly what they were dealing with—as soon as they knew themselves.

"
Ja
," Viljoen told Hunt. "I thought so. I have them on standby. ETA thirty minutes by chopper. Having them flown in, so we can start getting this shit moved outside. By then, the lorries will be here."

"Good. Let's see what we have to deal with here." Aware of exactly where Taylor stood, Hunt mobilized his team. Nobody needed instruction. And though he'd not worked with many of them, T-FLAC operatives were well trained and resourceful. They knew their business and immediately got to work in pairs, IDing contents of crates and sorting them for transportation to the surface.

"Anything I can do to help?" Taylor asked, coming up beside him.

Yes
, he thought.
Go outside and wait for those choppers
. Hunt desperately needed to touch her, to run his lips over the worry lines between her lovely eyes, to feel the beat of her heart beneath his fingers, to assure her that everything was going to turn out all right. He did none of those things.

"If I asked that you go back topside accompanied by some of my people, would you do it?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation, her gaze steady, "I would. If you asked me to. But I'd rather stay here until you leave."

Jesus.

It had made him nervous as hell watching her wiggling into that small hole. And he'd been frankly floored when she'd done as he'd ordered.

Taylor Kincaid was a woman who kept her promises.

He resisted touching her. "I'm not leaving until this is done."

She gave him a small smile. "I know."

His people were crawling all over the place, their black-clad figures melding into the darkness between the crates. High above the cement floor, Savage had taken up point. Beside her, three shadowy figures were setting up automatic weapons. Weapons that could not be used down here on the main floor because of the ammunition and chemicals contained in the crates.

When it came down to it, they would have to fight hand-to-hand. Unless Morales was even crazier than Hunt thought, and didn't give a damn if he blew himself and his people up.

He tried again. Wanting Taylor to make the decision on her own, but acknowledging she'd worked just as hard on this as his other team members. She deserved to be in on the payoff. But, Jesus bloody Christ. He didn't want her anywhere near Morales and his insanity.

"It's crazy to stay down here. You know that. Morales will be here any minute. We're counting hours, not days, for this all to turn to shit."

"Then tell me how I can be the most useful, and go and do whatever it is you plan to do." She reached up and pressed two fingers against his mouth. "I'm not stupid. In fact, I'm sensibly scared of this whole situation. I won't be doing anything either foolish or heroic. I promise."

He brushed a kiss to her fingertips, wanting to hold her in his arms and beg her to leave. "Why don't you go over there and work with Tate. I need to look around. Something still doesn't feel right to me."

Taylor cocked her head. Most of her hair had come loose from the band around her ponytail and was now wild and every which way after being tugged at by the rocks as they'd come through the wall. She looked so sexy, Hunt wanted to swoop her up in his arms and—Bloody hell.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, smiling. "You have to go to work. Go." She waved him off with the back of her hand, but when he turned to leave, she grabbed his arm. "Hunt?" Her voice was suddenly dead serious. "Don't do anything overly heroic yourself, okay? Promise me."

He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. More would be dangerous. Everything about her begged to be touched. This was neither the time, nor the place. "Stay out of trouble," he told her without answering. Then walked away.

"No, you big moron.
You
stay out of trouble!" Taylor said to his retreating back. Of course he didn't hear her, and if he had, he was ignoring her warning.

Half an hour later Taylor was clambering up and around the crates with Tate, calling out the information stenciled on the boxes as he inputted them into his wrist PDA when Hunt called her down.

"I have something that will interest you far more. Come down and I'll show you."

"You okay for a bit?" Taylor asked Tate.

"Sure. Go. He's the boss." He laughed when she made a face and started to protest. "No, really. Go. We have enough people. We're covered."

Released from duty, she climbed down the mountain of wooden crates. She decided she'd rather not know the contents of some of them. There was an area that Hunt, Daklin, and Tate had decided should not be touched until another hazmat team arrived with more suits and equipment, and she was fine and dandy with that.

Hunt reached up and took her hand to help her down off the last crate.

"What do you want to show me?"

"You'll have to wait and see."

Curiosity sparked, Taylor followed him across the cement floor. Morales had constructed a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. No one could get in or out without those codes. It was diabolical and brilliant. But now she'd seen it, experienced it, lived it. She'd like to see sky and smell fresh air pretty soon.

"Oh. My. God!"

Hunt had pushed open a tall mahogany door, ushered her inside, and closed the door behind them. Taylor did a slow turn, trying to take everything in.

"I found the lights and fired up the music. Wanted you to get the full effect."

Taylor turned around slowly. "The effect is pretty freaking incredible."

The room was large, beautifully lit, and filled with paintings hanging against a backdrop of rich, red, African Padauk, a rare wood. One of the homes she'd robbed had reported to their insurance company, and hence the newspaper reports that the thief had destroyed the walls of their study, paneled in this rare and expensive wood. Not true. And bad press.

"This is hideous enough to be a Picasso." Taylor approached the butt-ugly painting.

"Stolen from the McGills the day after they brought it home from Sotheby's in '89. Valued at forty-three million."

She whistled as she moved down to the next painting bathed by special lighting. "Van Gogh's
Irises
. Forty-nine million. That Renoir over there? Seventy-eight."

There were sculptures from sculptors she'd never heard of. Hunt was familiar with many of them. Once she heard the names, Taylor could fill in the blanks. Many of the pieces in Morales's fantastic collection were on Consolidated Underwriters' lists of retrievable objects.