Special Forces: The Recruit (Mission Medusa Book 1) Read online

  Marco and Ray would try to stick close by, however, so if things went to hell in a handbasket, they could charge in to the rescue. In theory.

  All of their planning was theoretical. In truth, none of them knew what she would face when she walked into that meeting, and they all would be winging it. Including her. Especially her.

  She spent the day practicing speaking in her mother’s Venezuelan accented English. She fell into it easily, although it felt strange that one of the more embarrassing aspects of her childhood should turn into a useful asset like this.

  She washed her hair and let it air dry into a curly mass typical of a Venezuelan native. Torsten handed her a plastic bag of clothing flown in from Venezuela for her, and she reeled at the scent of tonka beans that rose from the fatigue pants and tank top. Her grandmother’d had a tonka tree in her backyard and used to crush the beans and rub the juice on her wrists. It smelled of newly mown hay, grassy, sweet and herblike.

  Even underwear had been provided for her. She pulled on the cheap cotton panties and bra and donned the clothing along with her own combat boots. A high-tech GPS locator had already been sewn into the bra underneath the latch hooks. She threw on a crappy, olive-drab fatigue jacket to complete the leftist insurgent look.

  She was unarmed, which felt exceedingly strange after the past few months. But she would undoubtedly be frisked and possibly metal scanned. Two micro-camcorders were hidden on her—one in the pair of metal-rimmed eyeglasses Torsten handed her, and another in the religious medal she wore on a short chain around her neck. An image of Our Lady of Coromoto, the patron saint of Venezuela, graced the cheap trinket.

  By midafternoon, preparations were complete.

  And then came the waiting.

  For the first time today, she slowed down enough to think about last night’s catastrophe with Beau, and about Torsten’s shockingly reasonable reaction to catching them in flagrante delicto.

  Why hadn’t Beau made a point of speaking to her privately today? Even if just to ask her how she was doing? He hadn’t even asked what Torsten talked about alone with her last night. Wasn’t Beau even curious?

  When faced with a choice between his career and her, had he already dropped her like a hot potato? Was Torsten right, after all? Had her affair with Beau been nothing more than a cheap fling?

  It dawned on her that she’d strayed way, way off focusing on the mission. This was exactly what Torsten had warned her about last night. She had to keep her mind engaged and entirely locked in on the mission to come. She had no room to think about anything else. Not if she wanted to live to see another day.

  Torsten had insisted that she not be alone today. She looked around the living room and the lethal men lounging around her. They were all pretending not to watch her, but they were failing miserably. “Anyone got some headphones I can plug into my phone?” she asked. “I forgot to pack mine.”

  When everyone responded in the negative, she shrugged. “Then I guess you all get to experience the Tessa Wilkes, ‘Get From Mile 20 to the End’ running-a-marathon playlist.”

  The guys groaned until she started her music, slamming heavy metal with a driving beat that would pump up a dead man. She dropped and starting doing push-ups, sit-ups and burpees to work off some of the excess adrenaline making her too jumpy to sit still. Not to mention a little sweat would inject the right amount of sour stink into her clothing.

  Neville laughed. “Give the lady full marks for taste in music.”

  “What? You thought I would listen to dentist office music?” she demanded between sets of exercises. “Do I look like your grandma?”

  Nev snorted. “You’re as un-granny as any female I’ve ever seen.”

  Marco’s cell phone rang, and she cut off the music. Into the abrupt silence, he listened intently, then repeated an address. He finished with, “Right. See you in an hour.”

  Torsten unfolded a big satellite map of the entire city of Marrakesh on the dining table at one end of the room, and everyone clustered around it. They would have only a few minutes to assess the meeting location and deploy their team to best protect Tessa.

  They’d called it correctly. Al Dhib wanted to meet with her at his palatial estate.

  Tessa leaned down to examine the satellite image closely. “These look like cameras mounted on top of the light poles.”

  Torsten used a magnifying glass to look where she pointed. “I do believe you’re right. Good eye. We have to assume Al Dhib will have state-of-the-art security. Motion detectors, heat sensors, high-end biometrics for entry into any building. The works.”

  Low groans rumbled around the table.

  Torsten continued, “Tessa, if it goes to hell, you’ll help us out a lot if you can make your way outside the main house. We’ll all be carrying trackers for the GPS in your bra. Take whatever evasive measures you need to, and we’ll come to you.”

  She nodded briskly.

  Beau made eye contact with her for the first time all day. He murmured, “We’re going to devolve into discussions of ingress and egress routes that don’t involve you. Now would be a good time to put on your game face.”

  She nodded, relieved that he was at least acknowledging her existence. She moved across the room and sank onto a low hassock, legs crossed in front of her, the backs of her hands resting on her knees.

  Closing her eyes, she counted down from ten to one. Released the tension from her body muscle by muscle. Her mind started to stray, and she ordered herself to think of nothing but the darkness behind her eyelids. As she relaxed and quieted her mind, she gradually achieved a state of readiness to function at optimal efficiency.

  Perhaps a half hour passed before Beau’s voice intruded quietly on her meditation. “Time to go, Tessa. Are you ready for this?”

  Implicit in his question was a warning that this was her last chance to back out. And it was also a plea not to go. Not to put her life in danger.

  “You know I have to do this, Beau. If not for me, for all the women who come after me.”

  He sighed. “Just...don’t die.”

  She laughed a little. “I will do my level best not to.”

  His gaze met hers, and his blue eyes were turbulent with worry, pride and affection. But mostly worry.

  She stared back, trying to convey silently her gratitude for all the training he’d given her, the confidence he’d instilled in her...and the love he’d shared with her.

  Time stopped for a second as if even the universe knew they’d earned this moment. They gazed into each other’s souls, and a lifetime’s worth of happiness, of words of love unsaid, of could-have-beens passed between them. A home. Laughter. Friends. Family—children and grandchildren. A legacy of unshakeable love to last for generations.

  All of it was right there in his eyes for the taking. And so completely unattainable. Torsten had made her choice clear last night. She could have all the things Beau offered to her or she could be a Medusa. But not both.

  Not both.

  Was she choosing the right thing? Would she live to regret this moment, this choice? Or would she die instead and never get a chance to spend long years wondering what her life would have become if she’d chosen everything Beau was silently offering her.

  The spell broke, and time resumed its normal path through the heavens.

  Her chance had passed. The door closed between them.

  He nodded miserably at her.

  She murmured, “Keep your head in the game, Beau. I may need you before this night is over.”

  “I’ll be there for you. Count on it.”

  Torsten spoke up from just beyond Beau. “We’ll all be there for you.”

  She nodded as knowing settled in her gut. They would, indeed, be there for her. Six of the world’s most highly skilled warriors had her back. And she had theirs.

  This was it.

  S
he said briskly, “All right. Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 18

  Ray drove, and she and Marco rode in the back of a piece-of-crap Land Rover that had to be older than she was. They pulled up at a guard shack outside the Al Dhib estate, and she donned her eyeglasses and the hidden camera in them.

  Marco murmured into his audio feed, “Stone walls. Sixteen feet tall. One foot thick. Electrified wire at the top. Rotating security cameras placed at hundred-foot intervals. Two guards at the gate. AK-47s. Collar microphones. Earpieces. Body armor. Two guards visible patrolling in front of the mansion. Asphalt driveway...”

  She tuned out the details he continued to relay to the team. She was Maria Sandoval, Venezuelan Resistance Movement member and lieutenant to Arturo X, leader of the VRM. Somewhere in the jungles of Venezuela, the real Maria Sandoval was blissfully unaware that Tessa had appropriated her identity for this evening’s meeting.

  Channeling her mother, Tessa muttered under her breath to herself in accented English, locking in the dialect one last time.

  Ray parked in front of a humongous white stucco palace, and one of the armed guards opened the vehicle door for her. “Welcome to the Oasis,” he said.

  She stepped into the grand foyer and stopped to gawk. After all, a revolutionary from the poor streets of Venezuela would be impressed. If she wasn’t so nervous, she would be blown away by the opulence around her. Gold gilt, crystal chandeliers and marble polished to a mirror sheen were everywhere.

  She muttered to Marco in Spanish, “A whorehouse would be embarrassed to look like this.”

  He snorted. Then he said, “Look sharp. Here come the security boys.”

  “If you would come with us...” one of them intoned.

  She started to follow a team of four heavily armed men in suits that looked made with integral body armor into a room just off the foyer. But a man with a shaved head gripped her elbow. “Not you. You’ll come with me.”

  Crap. Two feet inside the front door and she was already being separated from Marco and Ray. Marco shot her a brief look of chagrin as she shrugged up at the giant bald man and mumbled, “Whatever.”

  She was taken down a hallway and shown into a small room lined with computer monitors and more armor-suited men seated before them.

  No surprise, the bald man asked her to remove her army jacket. He passed the garment to another man, who ran a metal detector over it meticulously. Without being asked she spread her feet and held her arms out at shoulder height.

  Baldy frisked her, and as he grabbed her breasts, she made eye contact with him and grinned suggestively. He seemed a bit taken aback. Score one for her.

  A metal detector was run all over her as Torsten had expected. Hence hiding her cameras in the two visible pieces of metal on her—the eyeglasses and necklace.

  She was surprised when Baldy asked her to take off her combat boots and provided a set of soft felt slippers for her. “Worried about the floors?” she asked the man.

  “Boots can be weapons,” he replied shortly.

  He was not wrong. On the feet of a martial artist like her, she could smash a man’s face to pieces with a well-placed kick. Not that she was a whole lot less lethal barefoot. She could break concrete blocks with her bare feet.

  The army jacket was passed back to her and she shrugged it on.

  “This way.” Baldy led her back to the foyer and up one of two sweeping staircases. A room literally thousands of square feet in size sprawled in front of her. Across the vast space, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looked out upon a blazing sunset. It was toward these Baldy led her.

  The sun was blinding. Al Dhib must be over by the window. Which meant this was a tactic to put her at a disadvantage in meeting him. He could see her, but she was too dazzled to make out his face. Jerk.

  She squinted her eyes nearly shut and kept her gaze pointed down at the floor to protect her vision.

  “You may look up now,” Baldy instructed her.

  She lifted her gaze to the man standing before her. Hassan Al Dhib looked like his picture. Gray-haired. Distinguished. Wearing a perfectly tailored Italian suit that probably cost more than her annual salary.

  But what the picture failed to convey was the massive presence of the man. He oozed power and violence. He might as well have a neon sign over his head flashing “Danger.”

  Wariness coursed through her, and a surge of adrenaline made her edgy as hell. She waited for him to speak first.

  “Welcome to my home, Ms. Sandoval.”

  She nodded cautiously.

  Al Dhib continued, “I have to admit, I was surprised that Arturo X sent a woman to do this deal.”

  “Why? Because you think I can’t make a business negotiation?” she asked in accented English.

  “Because I expected his man to inspect the merchandise.”

  “You think a woman can’t shoot a gun?” she retorted. “My people do not have the luxury of letting our women sit at home to cook and clean. We all must fight if we are to overthrow the dictator who has taken our country from us.”

  Al Dhib made a noncommittal sound. The bastard was probably selling weapons to the Venezuelan government, too. Ever since international sanctions had been slapped on the country’s president, intel reports said the country’s military had turned to the black market.

  “Sit,” he ordered, gesturing at a chair beside his. She mentally rolled her eyes as she realized her chair was several inches shorter than his and forced her to look up at him.

  She watched Al Dhib pick up a plain manila envelope lying on a table beside him. He opened it and pulled out an official-looking document. She spied the crest of the Ecuadoran military and asked, “I assume you found our End User Certificate to be in order?”

  He picked up a cell phone from the table. “We shall see.” He dialed a phone number and shifted into effortless Spanish. It became clear immediately that he had called someone in the Ecuadoran government.

  But it was also clear he had not called one of the phone numbers included on the certificate itself.

  Oh, crap.

  * * *

  Huddled in the back of a step van parked two blocks from Al Dhib’s home, Beau and Torsten watched the monitors showing Tessa’s camera feeds. Beau looked over at Torsten in alarm.

  Torsten muttered, “Please tell me your certificate went through proper channels and can be authenticated.”

  “I told the generals to file the document for real. Anyone who would normally sign off on an EUC should have seen this one.” Beau winced. He hated a “should have” coming anywhere close to Tessa’s life.

  Beau glanced at Marco’s and Ray’s camera feeds. They were still stashed somewhere on the ground floor of the mansion too damned far away from Tessa to get to her before Al Dhib whipped out a gun and shot her if his phone call didn’t go well.

  A hand landed on his shoulder. Torsten. Steadying him and silently reminding him to keep his shit together. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. He had to believe Tessa would pass through this moment of crisis.

  * * *

  Tessa held her breath as the call concluded. She relaxed every muscle in her body and mentally prepared herself to dive at Al Dhib. The only place she wouldn’t get killed immediately would be in too close a proximity to him for his security men to risk shooting.

  Al Dhib said, “All right, then. It’s always a pleasure doing business with you, my friend.”

  He pocketed his phone and looked up at Tessa. “The paperwork is in order.”

  She felt like a balloon with the air slowly leaking out of it as the moment of crisis drained away. “Then we’re clear to proceed?” she asked her host.

  “No need to be in such a hurry. In this country we take our time with business. Get to know our partners before we rush into deals. You will have supper with me. We’ll talk. Drink a little wine. The
n we’ll talk business.”

  “My men will be hungry,” she tried, in hopes of getting Marco and Ray brought up to join them.

  Al Dhib didn’t swing at the ball she’d lobbed at him. “I’ll have food sent down to them,” he answered shortly.

  “Fine.” Ahh, well. It had been worth a try.

  Al Dhib snapped his fingers and a veritable army of servants rushed out of who knew where and laid out a feast that would feed at least twenty people.

  She glared down at the long dining table and then up at her host. She bit out, “Such waste.”

  * * *

  Torsten swore behind Beau. “She can’t afford to piss him off. He doesn’t trust her yet.”

  Beau had already gotten that memo. The way Al Dhib studied her with hawklike intensity spoke of a man still assessing his foe. But it wasn’t like they could tell her to back off. They hadn’t been able to risk an earbud being discovered, and she’d gone in without sound.

  And that had been a good call. The scan she’d been through earlier would have picked one up for sure.

  Al Dhib replied sharply, “How is this waste?”

  Tessa looked up at her host. “This is enough food to feed a village in my country. Children are starving in the streets in my home.”

  “You live in Caracas?”

  She snorted. “Hardly. I do not care to be arrested and shot.”

  “Where’s your headquarters again?” Al Dhib asked.

  Here it came. The quizzing to see if she was legit.

  “Outside Solano.”

  “Ahh. So you have to pass through Capibara to get to Colombia?”

  “No,” she replied. “Capibara is north and east of Solano. There are no major cities between our camp and the border.”

  “Of course.” Al Dhib gestured at his servants to fill her plate and his.