The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (120 page)

These men might not wear Brandt’s ring on their finger like she did, but they were equally bound to him. Having no other way to apologize, Rebecca just threw her sweaty, grimy, torn wedding-dressed self into Ricky’s arms.

He laughed, picking her up, swinging her around, so she was pointed in the direction of the private plane hangar. “That’s more like it.”

* * *

Brandt felt his body slosh over. Actually, not slosh. There was no water, yet that’s what it felt like. Had someone replaced his muscles with lumpy oatmeal? Or Jell-O, maybe Jell-O. Whatever the hell it was, it wasn’t responding to his mind’s repeated, urgent request to get up.
Now
.

The best Brandt could manage was to crack open his eyelids. He was on some kind of air cargo plane. Not US military. It felt Italian in manufacture. Although his brain was about a hundred times more functional than his muscles, he wasn’t about to ask it to come up with the exact make and model. Besides, it didn’t matter. The Disciples probably stole it from a maintenance yard or plane graveyard making the transport nearly impossible to trace.

His limited, ground level vision swept the area in front of him. Pairs upon pairs of combat boots were lined up. A tactical team. No great surprise there either. The Disciples were transporting him from South Carolina to somewhere
not
in South Carolina.

Even if he had full, or even minimal use of his limbs, he probably couldn’t figure that out. Not without one hell of a fight ending in a huge body count. One of those probably being his.

No, instead, he needed to concentrate on his tooth.

Closing his eyes and marshaling every reserve he had left, which wasn’t much, Brandt tried to clench his jaw. The best he got was his incisors barely grazing each other. That was not going to do.

Brandt clearly remembered the briefing by the scientists. They were so giddy. “All you have to do is chew,” they said, nearly giggling.

It sounded so fucking simple. Chew or, more appropriate in Brandt’s case, grind your teeth, and the motion fueled the transmitter. So simple.

So not happening.

“Just ten good chews and the activated transmitter will send out a burst with your coordinates.”

Ten good chews. Who couldn’t chew ten times? Apparently Brandt. Plus, come to think of it, what about if you had a ball gag in your mouth? How could you chew then?

Yeah, those were two scenarios the squints hadn’t thought of.

Knowing that his life depended on his ability to masticate, Brandt bit down harder. He nicked the side of his tongue, but who cared? Pain shot up from the broken shard of porcelain cap. Concentrating, Brandt bit down again and again and again. At least ten times, but nothing.

The first time he’d activated the tracker, the damn thing had given him a little jolt in the gum. Now nothing.

Ten chews his ass.

Clearly, that had been an optimistic number.

Taking in a slow, deep breath, Brandt prepared for another round of overriding a massive paralytic.

He could only hope someone was watching on the other end.

* * *

Davidson allowed the whine of the plane’s engines to soothe his jangled joints. The last few hours had not been kind to any of them. This was the fourth plane they had lifted, and Lopez was having a harder and harder time staying clear of any civilian or military’s radar.

But they needed to stay close to Charleston. To strike out in any one direction could cost them hours later if Brandt had been taken in the opposite direction. So they had stayed as close to the church as they could. However, word had clearly gone out that their team was AWOL. The Pentagon was probably spending as much time tracking down them as they were Brandt.

No one was taking the waiting harder than Rebecca. She sat across the aisle from Davidson on the twin-engine prop plane, her stained and tattered wedding dress a visible accounting of the hell they had all been through.

Her veil, the anchor of it so firmly tangled in her hair that the best they could do was cut off the shiny fabric, no longer flew in front of her face. However, it looked like some sort of mutant white tulle creature growing from her head.

She had been such a beautiful bride, for all of about two minutes.

And this waiting wasn’t aging well on her. She bit at her manicure, ripping the polish off until she could chew at the nail itself. If she didn’t stop soon, she’d have nothing but bloody finger tips to show for it.

Finally, it appeared that she couldn’t wait any longer. She unlatched her safety belt and pushed herself between Lopez and his copilot, Talli.

“We’ve got to do something,” she implored.

Equally frustrated, Lopez answered. “Tell me what to do, Rebecca,” the corporal said, turning to her, “and I’ll do it.
Anything
.”

Rebecca threw herself back into her seat, knowing that Lopez was right. There was absolutely nothing else to do but wait. She must have known that flying around in circles simply wasn’t Lopez’s style, either.

“Wait,” Levont said, pushing the tracking monitor toward them, “I think it’s pinging.”

“What do you mean
think
?” Lopez asked.

Davidson looked at the monitor. Rapidly, the screen was realigning itself, squeezing the search grid down and down again. “Something definitely is happening…But it’s not showing Brandt’s location.”

Rebecca leaned over, her stubby veil brushing Talli’s back. “Why is the screen doing that?”

“Doing what?” Lopez asked, clearly agitated that, at such a critical juncture, he still had to fly the plane.

Davidson watched as the map pulled in tighter and tighter, expanding the area covered to far beyond their search area. Then the screen took an abrupt leap to the right.

“Oh my God,” Rebecca breathed out.

“
What
?” Lopez demanded.

“He’s gotta be…” Levont started, then stalled.

The little light flashed brightly against the blank blue background.

“Which way do I turn?” Lopez begged, glancing over his shoulder.

But given that the blip was coming from somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there would be no turning anywhere.

Davidson took the map from Levont, readjusted it so that Lopez could see the coordinates, then put the screen in front of the corporal.

His mouth opened, then closed as Rebecca sobbed quietly in her seat.

“Well,” Lopez announced, starting his descent, “guess we are just going to have to steal a bigger airplane.”

* * *

Bunny sighed and crossed her arms, forcing the pout of all pouts onto her lips. But the guy across from her seemed to care less. Weird. That usually worked on most guys. Perhaps Lt. Daniel Prenner didn’t bat for her side. After the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” it was kind of hard to know.

“Brenda,” the man coaxed.

“It is
Bunny
,” she replied. “And I am telling you that you don’t have the clearance to hear my side of the story.”

“Corporal Lopez and the rest have gone AWOL after being ordered to stand down,” Prenner said as if that was going to surprise her. “You’ve got to know how much trouble they are in.”

Really? After Moscow, Slovenia, and Jordan, she should be worried about Rebecca and the rest?
Please
. Running around the American countryside avoiding MPs was like eating breakfast—in bed. Which is kind of why she didn’t grab that repelling line from the helicopter.

She’d grown to love Rebecca like a sister and Brandt like a brother-in-law, but chasing
after
the Disciples? That was sheer crazy talk. Whenever the Disciples were involved, you needed to run away—as quickly as you could.

Prenner hit a key on his laptop that started cell phone footage of her and Davidson’s kiss. “Clearly, you care for this man.”

Bunny shrugged. “He’s grown on me.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. There was something there, but between his aborted court martial, reinstatement, then five missions back-to-back, it had been a little hard for them to explore exactly the extent of that “something.”

She closed the laptop. “Just get me my CIA handler.”

Which was kind of weird to say. Her life had certainly taken a left turn since last year. During her graduate studies, the closest that she had come to interacting with the Central Intelligence Agency had been watching reruns of
Covert Affairs
.

Now she had her very own CIA handler.

“As I said,” Prenner stated very slowly, “Emily Jannus doesn’t exist.”

“Of course she doesn’t. Ugh.” This was going to be a very long night.

Then the door opened as a woman dressed in long black gown, her hair tucked into a sleek bun, strode in.

“This is a closed interrogation,” Prenner growled, but the woman put her hand out.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Emily Jannus.” The woman smiled, looking like she had just stepped into an elegant cocktail party. “And Bunny. So nice to see you again.”

Bunny scooted her chair over to make room for Emily, suddenly feeling underdressed for the occasion. Why did Mrs. Brandt have to go with peach?

“My understanding is that you have a few questions for Ms. Hollingford?” Emily pleasantly asked the lieutenant.

“My commander is
not
going to stand for this,” Prenner warned.

Emily chuckled. “Who do you think held the door open for me?”

An older man in full dress uniform stepped into the room, his chest bristling with medals. “I am afraid my hands are tied. We are to cooperate fully with Ms. Jannus, or whatever her name truly is.”

Bunny’s CIA handler just bent her head at a cute angle, demurring to the fact Emily wasn’t her real name but not giving any further details. Turning her attention from the men, Emily smiled at Bunny.

“Now, why don’t you catch me up?”

“Well”—Bunny looked to the officers, not sure how much she could say in front of them—”the wackos kidnapped Brandt.”

Emily pulled out a small tablet device and queued up the keyboard. “That much I know.”

“Then it got weird,” Bunny said, nodding to the army men. “Apparently, the military tried to pull Rebecca and Brandt’s team from the pursuit.”

“That I hadn’t heard,” Emily stated as she typed rapidly.

“Of course, they disobeyed those orders.”

Emily’s eyebrows went up. “Of course.” She turned to the general. “Why would you pull a highly decorated Special Ops team from the search for one of their own?”

“The order came from above.” Bunny noted that the general would not meet Emily’s eyes. “Directly from the DoD.”

“See?” Bunny asked. “Weird. It makes no sense unless…The wackos have someone pretty high up.”

“What are you insinuating?” Prenner asked.

It was Emily who answered, though. Her breezy manner evaporating. Replacing it with a cool confidence. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have high enough clearance for me to even approach that question.”

Prenner bristled as Bunny gave him a well-deserved “I told you so” look. The lieutenant looked ready to lash out, but the general intervened, indicating that Prenner should leave. “Regs are regs.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Emily continued. “I meant
both
of you.”

The general’s brow creased, but he seemed too much of a professional to sputter in front of the CIA agent. Before they could turn from the room, Prenner’s cell phone buzzed. He read the text, then flashed the message to the general.

For a moment, they didn’t look like they were going to share.

“Gentlemen?” Emily asked. “Do I need to call my director?”

With a soul-deep sigh, the general’s shoulders sagged. “Brandt has been located.”

Bunny sat up straight in her chair. This was the best news since…well, ever.

“And?” Emily prompted.

“It looks like he is heading to the Congo.”

Emily turned to Bunny, but she shook her head. “I have no idea why the wackos would take him there.”

Prenner cleared his throat. “I think I might know.” All eyes turned to the lieutenant. “That was the location of Brandt’s last mission.”

Still, it made no sense. Bunny vaguely knew Brandt and Davidson had been on the African continent, but it had sounded like a routine mission. Nothing that ran afoul of the Disciples.

“I think I’ve heard enough,” Emily said, rising from her chair. “I’ll be taking care of Ms. Hollingford.”

The men didn’t argue, but neither did they part to let them leave.

“Prenner goes with you,” the general stated. Emily went to open her mouth, but he continued. “Otherwise, I
will
call your director. Then he will have to call a meeting at the White House with the Joint Chiefs. I take it you don’t want to wait that long?”

A frown crossed over Emily’s lips, then curved up into a smile. “Prenner it is.”

With that, the men parted, and Emily whisked Bunny out into the hallway, with the lieutenant close behind. Their heels clicking on the tile floor, Bunny asked, “Where are we going?”

Emily grinned. “The Pentagon, of course.”

Right. It involved Brandt and Rebecca, so of course it involved the Pentagon.

Duh.

CHAPTER 4

══════════════════

Outside of Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo

May 27, 5:05 p.m. (CAT, Central African Time)

Brandt’s head banged against the Jeep’s window. Just add that to his collection of bruises. His body wanted to sink back into a drugged haze, but his mind had other plans. The next time the Jeep dipped into a huge hole in the dirt road and bounced out of it, Brandt braced, demanding that his muscles obey.

And they did. Well, at least a little bit. The paralytic must have been wearing off. Obviously, the Disciples were prepared for this fact since they had zip-tied Brandt’s hands and feet.

Squinting his eyes open, Brandt took in his surroundings. Actually, he took in the enemy number first and foremost. Besides the driver and the ever-so-pleasant Disciple, there were three other men in the Jeep. All black. Not just black, but with ritualistic face scars. These weren’t just any mercenaries. These men had been carrying a weapon since childhood. They had been boy soldiers who had grown up to be highly trained mercenaries.