Spy High (35 page)

The last of my rage-fuelled courage
seeped away and my knees began to tremble in earnest. Who the hell
did I think I was and what the hell was I doing? I wasn’t Jane
Bond, Superspy. Hell, Jane Bond would have been smart enough to
tell somebody where she was going. I should call Kane and Hellhound
right now-

Orion stopped and I nearly ran into
him.

Fortunately he didn’t turn to look at
me as I blundered to a halt. To my right the lush fingers of
Skidmark’s marijuana crop reached for the sky. Behind it an
impenetrable tumble of fallen trees leaned against the hillside,
overgrown with ferns.

“I’m going to move to my left now,”
Orion said quietly. “You’ll need to follow closely.”

I hesitated. I could tell him to stop
right here; call Kane and Hellhound and wait for them to back me
up.

But he was already moving, and I
couldn’t afford to let him think I was doubting myself.

In a couple of fast steps I closed the
distance between us and clamped my fist on a handful of his hair,
jamming my gun into his spine. He went rigid and I hissed, “One
wrong move and you’ll be paralyzed from the waist down.”

“I understand.” His British accent was
very much in evidence. “Please stay calm. I promise this isn’t a
trap. There’s a door hidden behind that log pile. Moonbeam and
Karma are inside.”

“Slowly,” I grated.

We moved forward together, creeping
step by step around the corner of the pile and ducking into a rough
alcove formed by criss-crossed tree trunks. Even with my night
vision, I couldn’t see anything but tree trunks and dirt.

Orion stopped beneath the arch. “Aydan,
there is a door concealed behind that large tree trunk,” he said
evenly. “That’s where Moonbeam and Karma are. The control pad is
above these logs. There’s no other way to open the door. You’ll
need to either untie my hands or enter the code yourself.”

“Yeah, right,” I growled. “On the
ground, face-down.”

There was barely room for him to comply
in the cramped space. He managed a crumpled semi-prone posture and
I stood over him, debating.

I had no idea what to do next. No
matter what choice I made, I could visualize some disastrous
outcome.

I gnawed my lip, scowling. I could
second-guess this decision all night long. If I entered the code
myself there might be a booby-trap that would take me out and spare
Orion because he was lying on the ground. Or he might use a duress
code that would bring a squad of armed men down on me. If I freed
his hands so he could enter the code himself I was wide open for an
attack if he had any martial arts skills at all. I could probably
trank him again if he tried anything, but that would only delay the
inevitable.

And even if I waited for Kane and
Hellhound, the choices were the same, only we’d all go down
together. Not an acceptable risk.

“Don’t move,” I commanded, and trained
the trank gun on Orion while I fumbled a phone out of my pocket and
pressed the speed dial button.

“What’s up, darlin’?” Hellhound asked,
his rasp sounding clearly over the speaker in the enclosed space.
Damn, I should have used the hands-free. Too late now, unless I
wanted to put down my gun.

Not happening.

“Aydan?” Urgency filled his tone and I
pulled myself together.

“I have Orion.” My voice came out flat
and harsh. “We’re downhill north of the garage and he says Moonbeam
and Karma are being held in a room concealed under a brush pile.
There’s a control pad in the logs overhead.” I nudged Orion with my
toe. “What’s the code?”

“Five-one-niner-three-seven-seven,” he
recited without hesitation.

I repeated it to Hellhound, then added,
“Hold your position there. I’ll check in again in five minutes.” I
hung up on his protest.

Before I could lose my nerve, I punched
in the code, then swooped down to yank Orion up by the hair as the
door opened.

Warmth and light poured out, and my
night-vision headset adjusted to compensate. I shoved Orion forward
into the doorway, gripping his hair and jamming my body against the
pistol I still held in his back.

A moment later the scene inside the
room registered, and my grip on Orion slackened, my hand falling to
my side to dangle uselessly.

“Shit,” I croaked, and holstered my
pistol.

“Hello, dear,” Moonbeam said, looking
up from the console where she and Karma sat side by side,
apparently monitoring feeds from multiple security cameras.

On the opposite side of the large
control room, Skidmark pushed his rolling chair back from a desk,
swivelling to face us and grinning widely enough to show his gold
tooth.

“Ha! Told you she was law enforcement,
Rand!” he crowed. “You owe me fifty bucks! Look at you trussed up
like a Christmas turkey! So much for your fancy MI6 training. Ha!”
He turned his grin on me. “Girlie, as soon as he pays up, I’m
giving his fifty bucks to you to pay for the entertainment. That
was the funniest thing I ever saw.”

“Shut it, you old wanker,” Orion/Rand
snapped. He eyed me over his shoulder and wiggled his hands in
their bindings. “If you please?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, and cut the
ties.

“What happened to your shirt, Rand?”
Skidmark was in full cry again. “You cut off your sleeve to use for
a diaper when you shit your pants? Or is that a
nappy
like
you Limeys say?”

“Now, Skidmark, dear,” Moonbeam
remonstrated gently. “That’s really not fair. Storm Cloud Dancer is
obviously not run-of-the-mill law enforcement.” She turned her
luminous smile on me. “Are you, dear?”

“You saw the whole thing? Explain!” I
tried to sound authoritative but it came out more like a plea.

“Yes, we have surveillance cameras on
the bridge and at intervals along the road inside the commune.
Won’t you sit down, dear? We’ll tell you all about it.” She
indicated a desk chair.

“Uh… no… thanks, I’d rather stand,” I
lied, and leaned against the wall as close to the door as possible.
“I have less than five minutes before my check-in, so let’s make
this quick.”

“She told Helmand where the door was,”
Orion interrupted. “We need to do damage control. I’ll start.” He
turned to me and extended his hand. “Ian Rand. MI6. Five Eyes,” he
added as if that should mean something to me.

I shook his hand warily. “Okay…?”

Karma’s laugh boomed out. “Remember,
Rand, she’s just a bookkeeper.”

“Oh, yes, that’s very funny,” Orion
griped. “Ha, ha.” Then he apparently recognized my genuinely blank
expression. He frowned. “MI6,” he said slowly. “The British Secret
Intelligence Service…?”

“Yeah, I got that part,” I agreed. “I
watch James Bond movies.”

He winced.

“Sorry,” I added. “I just didn’t get
the four-eyes part.”

“
Five
Eyes. The international
intelligence alliance.”

Obviously I still looked as confused as
I truly was.

“The U.K., Canada, the United States,
Australia, and New Zealand,” he enunciated slowly. “Working
together to monitor and neutralize terrorist activities.”

My shock was wearing off, rapidly
turning to fury. Dammit, had Stemp been jerking me around for the
last four months? Surely he’d know about any joint operations like
this. And he sure as hell should know that his parents…

My mind reeled.

His parents were agents. Fuck me.

“Why the hell didn’t I know about
this?” I demanded.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Orion said,
his accent sounding slightly snooty. “Five Eyes has been active
since World War II, and has been widely known to the public since
the late 1990s.”

I shot him a glare. “I should have left
the fucking gag on you. I meant…
this!
” I jerked a hand at
the electronic equipment that surrounded us. “Why the hell wasn’t I
briefed?”

“Perhaps your security clearance…”
Moonbeam began tactfully, then stopped, maybe reading something in
my face. Or maybe in my goddamn aura.

“Oh,” she said. “You have a very, very
high security clearance, don’t you, dear?”

I didn’t reply to that, mostly because
I didn’t know how to without revealing much more than I wanted them
to know.

“Well, that explains a few things,”
Karma said. “Your lovers came up in our system immediately; Kane’s
cover as a police officer and occasional petroleum consultant, and
Helmand’s as a retired army corporal turned private investigator.
Then Rand dug into the classified records and discovered Kane’s
credentials as an undercover agent and Helmand’s Special Forces
weapons expertise. But no matter where we searched, all we found on
you was Aydan Kelly, a.k.a. Arlene Widdenback and Arlene Cherry;
bookkeeper, fraud artist, and part-time internet porn star.”

It was my turn to wince.

“So we speculated.” Moonbeam took up
the story. “Cosmic River Stone would have told us if he’d known
about your, er… line of work…”

Wait, they were agents but they didn’t
know their son was the director of clandestine operations in
Alberta?

I dragged my attention back to
Moonbeam’s narrative.

“…when you arrived so obviously
traumatized, we first assumed you had been a victim of some violent
crime…”

“
They
assumed that,” Skidmark
butted in. “
I
said if you’d been mugged or raped you
wouldn’t be wandering around in the woods alone at night.”

“How did you know about that?” I
demanded. “Nobody ever…” My voice faded as Karma pointed to a large
video screen displaying a map of the commune. It was peppered with
small dots, evenly distributed in the area of the encampment. A few
dots moved slowly, scattered in the vicinity of the main building
and latrines.

The dots looked a lot like the one on
the tracker in my pocket.

“You’ve tagged everybody.” I stared at
the screen. Sure enough, five dots were clustered at the garage.
Right where we stood. Goddammit, now I knew why my tracker had
shown Orion at the garage all day but I couldn’t find him.

“The bracelets.” I barely squelched the
urge to shout. “You’ve tagged the fucking Earth Spirit bracelets.
‘The protection of the Earth Spirit’, my ass!”

A phone vibrated in my pocket.

“I have to get this,” I said. “I’ve
missed my check-in.”

“You can’t tell them about any of
this,” Moonbeam said urgently. “You mustn’t blow our covers.
Please!”

I stared at her for a moment, my mind
spinning. Then I punched the Talk button.

“I’m here. I’m fine. Sorry I missed the
check-in,” I said.

“What’s happenin’?” Hellhound
demanded.

“I’ve found Moonbeam and Karma…”

Moonbeam shook her head, giving me an
imploring look.

“They’re fine,” I added. “And Orion is
cooperating. I’m questioning him now.”

A moment of silence hovered on the line
before Hellhound spoke. “Ya want help with the cleanup when you’re
done?”

“No cleanup this time,” I assured him.
I threw out the first idea that occurred to me. “Orion didn’t want
to kidnap Moonbeam and Karma but the renters forced him. He led me
right to where they were being held and I’m figuring out what to do
next. I’ll call you when I have the whole picture.” I changed the
subject. “What’s new on your end? Have you had a chance to try
disabling those charges on the bridge?”

A sudden movement made me look up.
Everyone wore expressions of chagrin. Moonbeam shook her head
violently and Karma drew a vigorous finger across his throat.

Hellhound replied, “Nah, but now that I
know you’re okay I’ll go check-”

“Uh, hold off on that for now,” I
interrupted. The almost-palpable relief in the room indicated I’d
said the right thing. “I, um… I don’t want you to get close to them
until we know what the renters are up to. If they decide to blow
them while you’re down there…”

“They can’t blow ‘em if I disable ‘em,”
Hellhound argued.

“I know, but I don’t want to take a
chance while those trucks are over there,” I countered with no
logic whatsoever. When he began to demur, I spoke over him. “Sorry,
Arnie, it’s…”

I nearly blurted out ‘Stemp’s orders’,
which would not only have been a lie but also would have outed
Stemp to his parents if they didn’t actually know what he did.

“…just a gut feeling,” I finished
instead. “Let me finish questioning Orion first.”

“Okay, darlin’. I’ll tell Kane. Check
in again in ten minutes.”

“Okay.”

I hung up and glowered around the room.
“Spill it. All of it.”

Everyone began to speak, but Karma’s
deep bass won out. “The three of us…” He gestured to himself,
Moonbeam, and Skidmark. “…began this commune in 1968, looking for…”
He glanced at Moonbeam, and I got the distinct impression he was
editing the story already. “…a peaceful retreat,” he finished.

I did the math. That was the year Stemp
had been born.

“We were joined by several like-minded
people, and the commune has grown modestly in the decades since
then,” he continued. “The three of us had…” he hesitated again,
choosing his words carefully. “…played various covert roles for the
allies in Vietnam around the time the conflict with the United
States was escalating. But even though we retired to civilian life
and sought peace and solitude, we couldn’t turn our backs on our
obligation to our countries.”

“They’re Canadian; I’m American,”
Skidmark interjected.

“The rented land has served various
groups over the past decades,” Karma continued as though Skidmark
hadn’t spoken. “Due to its isolated nature it has been attractive
to militia groups and occasionally to home-grown terrorists. When
we discovered the first terrorist training camp decades ago, we
reported it through our old intelligence contacts. We were
instructed to continue our surveillance role.”