Double Vision (3 page)

What was his name? Forest? Framer?

Forester.
That was it. Forester. Nathan Forester.

Conditions wouldn’t improve substantially with his tactical help, but Kate would have slightly better odds of rescuing any hostages and surviving with—

Something slammed into her back.

Hard and huge, it knocked her off her feet, hammering her into the cave wall.

Her head collided with the saw-toothed surface. Her breath gushed out. The jagged rocks dug into her face and shoulder, slicing through her wet suit and skin, tearing her flesh. Salt water invaded the wounds, burning like fire. Seeing spots, her head swimming, she gasped for air.
Focus or die, Kate. Focus or die!

Warm blood washed down her face and arm, and she forced herself to stay conscious.

Focus or die!

Pulling on reserves, she harnessed her energy and fought until the spots started to subside and the truth dawned.

The wise move was no longer an option.

Blocking out the pain searing her face, arm, chest and thigh, she regained her footing and reacted on pure instinct. Choking the handle of her knife, she turned and swiped the air.

The fight had begun.

T
he knife slit a man’s neck, laying it wide open.

His thin lips pulled back in raw pain, revealing an extreme overbite. Definitely GRID. When held captive, Amanda had tangled with him. Though she’d had no name to attach to the man with the overbite—GRID had been very circumspect about identities—her description fit him perfectly.

A gurgle started in his throat. He palmed the wound as if pressure would help.

It wouldn’t; his jugular had been severed.

Pulsing blood spurted through his fingers to stream over the sleeve of his yellow wet suit and splash into the water.

His eyes widened in surprise. He reached for her and his knees collapsed. Bleeding out, he sank into the water and submerged.

“Hold it.” Another man shouted, more distant, from behind her. He leveled a .45-caliber pistol on Kate.

Seeing him in her peripheral vision, she stopped dead in her tracks, tucked the knife into its sheath below the waterline, then raised her hands just above her waist. This man, too, had been previously identified as a GRID operative, right down to his crew cut, thick neck and large ears.

Looking satisfied, the man Amanda had dubbed “Beefy” adjusted a mike and spoke into it. “Intruder at the gate. Repeat, intruder at the gate. Female.” He spotted her gear bag. “She looks American.”

Kate rolled her eyes, making sure he saw it. With luck, she’d instill a little doubt about that.

“Professional or recreational?” A man’s disembodied voice rippled through the cave, proving Maggie had been right. The damn thing was wired with surveillance gear. But apparently GRID only had audio capability. Otherwise the man wouldn’t have had to ask about her.

“I’d say professional, sir. She moves like she’s military.” Beefy nicked his lip with his teeth. “That’s an unverified assumption. No specific branch is evident or identified.”

The disembodied voice sounded again, its echo vibrating in her bones. “Is it Amanda West, Moss?”

Moss.
Kate rocked against the tug of the water. So Beefy’s real name was Moss. And that he’d revealed it signaled, in his mind, Kate wouldn’t be leaving alive and able to repeat it.

“No, sir, she’s not. This one is a blonde. Tall and skinny.” Moss raised the nose of the .45 and pointed it at Kate’s face. “She killed Parton, sir.”

Amanda had been the primary operative on the original mission, investigating GRID. She’d been inserted undercover and had exposed GRID’s black market weapon
sales and Kunz’s doubles. And she’d broken Moss’s nose. He wouldn’t likely ever forget her.

“How?”

“With a knife, sir,” Moss said. “She cut his throat.”

So he knew she had a knife. Why hadn’t he taken her weapons? Moss, Kunz, or any of his doubles, would love to kill any S.A.S.S. operative, especially Amanda—and Kunz damn near had. But she had narrowly escaped death and had won that battle, and Kunz had landed in prison for life. So this disembodied voice conversing with Moss couldn’t belong to Thomas Kunz. Yet it certainly sounded like him and, knowing his penchant for torture, that sent chills racing up and down Kate’s back. Soon she’d be added to his “kill on sight” list.

“Who is she?”

Moss glared at her, stepped closer. “Who are you?”

She dragged her lips back from her teeth, praying Maggie was picking up this conversation and had summoned backup from the outpost. But if Tactical was locked down and she’d crossed a national boundary line, odds for help were slim. She almost certainly would be stuck on her own.

“I asked you a question,” Moss shouted, and backhanded her across the face. “Who are you?”

Kate reeled on her feet. Her lip split and the entire side of her face stung. Tasting her own blood, she got her balance and glared at Moss. “Your worst nightmare.”

Moss involuntarily pulled back his hand to hit her again.

“Do it and you’ll die.”

He started, caught himself and stilled his arm midair. The gun wobbled, but he didn’t seem to notice; he kept staring into her eyes. Whatever he saw there convinced him. He lowered his hand and reclaimed his lost ground
with a grunt. “She’s a little smart-ass, sir. Definitely a professional, judging by her mouth and her gear.”

“Well, bring the professional little smart-ass in,” the Kunz sound-alike said, clearly impatient. “Try not to kill her, unless of course she gives you no choice.”

“Yes, sir.” Moss shoved the throat mike out of his way and then nodded at Kate. “You heard the man. You’ve got two choices. I don’t care which you pick. You can head down the cave and live, or refuse. If you refuse, I’ll shoot you now and spare myself some aggravation.”

If she went deeper into the cave, she’d never come out alive, and only an idiot wouldn’t know it. If she didn’t go, he’d shoot her here. Buying time, she agreed. “I’ll go, Moss.”

“Good.” He straightened and rolled his shoulder. “Move.”

Kate turned and began walking through the water, taking small steps. She needed time to think—and an opening when he was vulnerable to overtake him. But, hanging back, he wasn’t making it easy. She shortened her stride even more, convinced the moving water would conceal her tiny steps. Fortunately the current was swift. That should help give her cover.

Finally he came alongside her, his gun still raised and aimed at her chest. She inched her fingers down her body and curled them tightly around the handle of her knife. Firming her grip, she eased the blade up and out of its sheath.

Moss caught a hint of motion from the arrhythmic ripple in the water. Snarling, he snagged the rubber-tube casing looped around her neck and jerked it tight. Her dog tags jangled. “Don’t even think about it.”

Was this the opening she’d awaited? So close she could
smell the sweat on his skin, Kate looked him right in the eye and nodded.

He relaxed and loosened his hold.

In a flash, she laid out a flurry of moves: knocked his hand with the gun, delivered a debilitating blow to his neck, slashed through his mike, severing his communications with the Kunz sound-alike, and then drove the knife into his stomach up to its hilt.

A direct hit.

Moss howled, deep and loud. The sound reverberated, echoing through the cave in waves. Kate spun out of his grip, turned and fled.

“Home Base? Home Base, do you copy?” Tugging on her headgear, Kate dove and swam hard and fast. “Home Base?”

No response from Maggie.

Terrific.
Finally, Kate reached the mouth of the cave. She followed the markings she’d put down on entering, swam until she’d cleared the rocky protrusions, then surfaced.

Water streamed down her face. “Home Base?” She tried again, scanned the rocks for the C-273 black box.

It was gone.

Damn it.
Moss? Another GRID member? The water action? It was high tide, totally possible. Pulling a fast visual, she saw no one. “Base?” Kate tried Maggie again.

Still no answer.

The last thing they needed was the C-273 communications device in GRID hands. Kunz would sell it to every hostile on the planet.

Her boat rocked on gentle waves about twenty yards to her left. Safer under water, she dove and swam toward it; the salt water burning her scrapes and cuts. Seeing the
bottom of the hull above her, she stroked to the boat’s far side, again surfaced, then climbed aboard.

An engine’s roar split the silence. She darted her gaze toward the sound as she started her own engine. A boat rounded the tip of the finger of land and headed in her direction. She slapped the throttle in gear and hauled out.

Kate glanced back to see the other boat cutting across the whitecaps, spraying a wide arc and leaving a huge wake. Its sudden appearance hadn’t been a coincidence; it was clearly following her. From the size of its wake, that boat was a hell of a lot faster than hers. But who manned it? Iranian authorities or GRID?

She couldn’t tell, but either was equally bad. Her orders were to remain undetected, and she’d failed to do so. She sped up, opening the throttle until the engines screamed, and targeted the shore, determined not to end up captured and held prisoner. If the authorities took her into custody, it would create an international incident, she’d be tried for treason against Iran, and executed. If GRID caught her, she’d be tortured and killed or just killed. Either way, she’d end up dead.

The little boat shuddered with effort, but it was just too small. There was no way she could outrun the larger boat all the way to port. She’d have to create a diversion and hope like hell they fell for it.

Kate darted a quick look behind her. The boat was gaining. Two men—no, three—rode in it. They were wearing black wet suits, not uniforms. Did that mean anything?

Wishing she knew, she scanned the shoreline for a safe place and spotted a clump of trees and sandy beach. A couple of large rocks littered the water. It wasn’t a great place to hide out, but it was her best shot.

Cutting off her dog tags, she looped half the tubing be
tween the throttle and a hitch on the dash to keep the engine running wide-open. Stuffing the other half of the tubing and her dog tags into her pocket, she twisted the steering wheel to take a swing behind the rocks. GRID would think she’d hidden near them. For that reason, she would not.

Behind the cover of the rocks, her boat’s bow hit an angle that would track to the open gulf. She jammed the steering wheel with the emergency paddle, then dove off and swam under water toward the shore, praying the men chasing her would continue to follow the boat until she’d had time to disappear.

The water shallowed to waist-deep. She risked surfacing and spotted the boats. GRID had taken the bait and continued the chase.

Grateful for even a spare respite, she seized it. They wouldn’t be fooled long, but with luck, long enough for her to evade them.

Kate ditched her fins and tank in the water and hurried ashore, scanning the terrain for somewhere to hide. She’d love to just run for the caves—openings dotted the hills—but experience warned her she was too short of time to make it and the consequences of not making it carried costs too high to pay.

At the water’s edge, she snaked low to the ground, took cover in the clump of trees and then sank deeper into the brush. Still searching, she forced herself to pause and think. These trees were the logical dry-ground hiding place; they’d find her here. She had to find an
illogical
place to hide.

She ran on and reached an oblong clearing about three hundred yards across. A single large boulder sat on the far edge of it. It had to be at least eight feet wide. On three
sides of it, a person could see forever. And that’s where she’d hide—in plain sight.

Well, almost.

Near the base of the boulder, under a natural ledge, she dropped to her knees and scooped out a shallow grave, dumped in her diving mask and then crawled inside. She smoothed the sand over her lower body. It would be hotter than hell itself in the wet suit, but she didn’t dare risk removing it. She needed the added protection against scorpions and snakes, which happened to love the crevices of the rocks. Cool places to wait out the hot sun.

Buried to her chest, she pulled the remaining half of the tubing from her pocket. Putting one end in her mouth, she clamped down with her teeth and put the other end into an open notch under the edge of the boulder. She could take air in, but the tube wouldn’t be easily spotted. Then she finished burying herself, punching outward from the inside, forcing the sand under the ledge to collapse over her hand.

The sand wasn’t uncomfortably hot, but if she’d been dry, she’d already be sweating. She just wasn’t deep enough to get to a stable, lower temperature. The grit against her eyes and nose irritated her, urged her to scratch, but she stayed put, didn’t move, and willed herself to relax and breathe.

A good forty-five minutes later, the sand around her vibrated.

Footsteps.

Her heart rate jackhammered into high gear, her nerves stood on end, hyperalert. She’d had to stay shallow to keep the weight of the sand light enough to allow her rib cage to expand, to drag breath. If the bastards had a handheld thermal detector, she was dead. The sand covering her wasn’t deep enough to block the signal.

The vibrations grew stronger and muffled voices joined them. “No tracks through here, Mr. Kunz.”

“She didn’t just disappear into thin air.” Kunz sounded more than a little annoyed.

Shock ripped over Kate. She knew that voice too well to be fooled. She’d done an audio study from a S.A.S.S. intercept the CIA had verified to be Kunz. This man was not a Kunz double.

He
was
Kunz.

She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it—or all it implied. Maybe her ears were playing tricks on her. The sand could be distorting more than expected. Maybe being hypersensitive, she was skewing things, manifesting her worst fears.

She told herself all that and more, but the fact of the matter was, she didn’t believe any of it. He was Kunz. And that terrified her. Because if the real Thomas Kunz was here, then the Thomas Kunz in Leavenworth was a double.…

The truth slithered over her, then seeped in.
Damn it!
He’d done it to them again. He’d passed off one of his doubles as himself.

“You’re certain she wasn’t Amanda West?” a second man asked.

“I’m sure. This was a tall, skinny blonde. Short, curly hair. Her face was pretty messed up from hitting the rocks, but the woman definitely was not Amanda West.”

Disappointment lurched through Kate. That was Moss talking. Obviously his stab wound hadn’t been fatal or even debilitating.

Venom filled his voice. “That bitch broke my nose. I’d know West anywhere.”

“It sounds like Captain Katherine Kane,” Kunz said,
“S.A.S.S.’s explosives expert. She bombed my former Iranian compound to hell and back, thinking I was in it. Cost me a fortune.” He sneezed, then added, “Find this woman and bring her to me—alive, Moss. Let’s see if it’s Kane, and exactly what S.A.S.S. knows about us.”