Heart of Danger (6 page)

“What about her car?”

“Not transmitting. Transponder dead.” Baring’s lips clamped closed in disapproval.

Baring had petitioned to put trackers in staff cars, too. But most of the staff had electric cars, which would soon become mandatory in California anyway. All cars were run by microchips which were hackable with just a little effort. There Lee definitely ruled against Baring. An external tracker on a car would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong, particularly when any car could be hacked as long as it was running.

All eCars had transponders which allowed them to send out an emergency signal.

So Catherine Young’s car was somewhere out there, but not running and the transponder was dead.

Lee drummed his fingers on the console, once. It was all he allowed himself. No one knew better than he the importance of keeping body language serene.

“Did you check the cameras in the lab?”

“Yessir.” Even in the hologram, Lee could see Baring’s color change, face becoming ruddy. “Of course.”

“Anything untoward happen yesterday?”

“It didn’t seem so. Sir.” Baring’s jaw muscles tightened, as if he’d been questioned.

Then again, what would Baring know? He wasn’t a scientist. He couldn’t follow any of the researchers’ work.

“Did she seem . . . agitated in any way? Did she do anything different?”

Lee watched Baring’s disembodied head. Even just a few years ago there was half a second’s delay in holographic telephony, sometimes making conversations surreal. But Arka had state-of-the-art technology and Baring reacted in real time. “No, sir.”

“Who was she working on yesterday?”

“Number Nine, sir,” Baring replied.

Lee felt that prickle of coldness once more.

Baring had no idea who Nine was. It was a good thing that Captain Ward had always worked in the shadows. Only a handful of people were familiar with his spectacular military career. Baring was ex-military but he came from infantry. What Ward did had always been above Baring’s pay grade.

This was nothing. And yet . . . Catherine Young disappearing after working on Ward was not good.

Ward was the key, Lee was sure of it. They were so close, so very close. SL-57 hadn’t worked, but each successive iteration brought them closer to their goal. A virus-borne cocktail of hormones and chemical stimulants to neurotransmitters and muscle enhancers was being fine-tuned. Currently, the protocol to enhance intelligence and speed of reflexes caused fulminating dementia in most patients, but they were closer to understanding the cause and reversing the effect. SL-58 was being tested. Right now, in fact.

It had been a top secret government project known by the harmless name of Strategic Leadership that Lee had run under the orders of General Clancy Flynn, the money coming from a black fund Flynn controlled. Flynn was retired now, CEO of a private security company. Lee knew that Flynn wanted to create an unstoppable private army via SL.

Flynn was funneling private money into Arka’s research at the Millon Labs. He was pumping close to ten million dollars a year into Lee’s project. Flynn’s projections were of one billion dollars profit the first year, and double that within three years once the project was viable.

But Lee had no intention of letting Flynn get his hands on SL once it was perfected. Millions of vials of the first effective doses were going straight to the People’s Republic of China to be manufactured on an industrial scale and administered systematically to the seven million troops and the forty million reserve troops of the PLA. It would become literally unstoppable. China would be unstoppable.

When the secret program began seven years before, it had been given the anodyne and generic name of SL for Strategic Leadership. But Lee knew that SL stood for Shen Li.

Warrior.

He’d hoped, for symmetry’s sake, that the brain of a warrior would give him and his country the means to conquer the world. It would be fitting. Captain Lucius Ward was one of the best warriors America had ever produced.

But perhaps it was not to be. Pity.

He would wait for another day or two for Dr. Young to show up. If she didn’t, he would terminate the Captain and autopsy his brain and move on. The formula was close.

China’s time was almost here.

In a few hours he’d be watching test results of a beta version that just might be the right formula. If it worked, he was months away from his goal, a triumphant China.

Mount Blue

“Well, what the fuck do we know about her, besides the fact that she’s smart and enjoys really good tacos?” Nick Ross asked. His dark, hard face was as expressionless as Mac’s own.

They were in Mac’s study, watching Catherine Young on his 3D monitors.

“Well, we know she’s a babe,” Jon said cheerfully. “What?” He opened up his hands when Mac and Nick turned to him. “She
is
a babe. That hair, those eyes, those boobs . . .”

“Jon . . .” Nick let out a long breath, an attempt at restraint.

No one would believe that Jon Ryan could be anything but Surfer Dude. Sun-streaked blond hair, laid-back ’tude, a weakness for truly garish Hawaiian shirts and women, he was as lethal as Mac or Nick, but it didn’t show.

Men instinctively moved out of Mac’s way and out of Nick’s way, but they always underestimated Jon and were always really really sorry afterwards. If they lived long enough to be sorry.

“She says she’s treating the Captain,” Mac reminded them quietly, and it was like a large, dark stone dropping into a pond. “He’s alive and he’s close, according to her. He’s not sipping tropical drinks in Bali and he’s not living upriver in the Mekong and he’s not in Tajikistan.” Some of their favorite speculations because Lucius was intimately familiar with those places. Like he was intimately familiar with Colombia, Sierra Leone and the more remote islands of Indonesia. If it was tough and remote, Lucius knew it. Their speculations that he might be in Bali with a couple of women and a mansion had been tinged with bitterness because that new deluxe life would have been bought with their lives.

“Hot or not, we’re going to have to get more intel from her. She’s lying about the Captain but she knows something and we’re going to have to find out what.” Nick’s voice was low. He looked each of them in the eye. “By whatever means possible. Though I wouldn’t advise trying to fuck it out of her. No time for it, not even for you, Jon.”

Jon breathed out a sigh of regret. None of them was capable of hurting a woman, but Jon had seduced his share of intel out of women.

Not Mac. Women didn’t fall for Mac. Women didn’t even like looking at him. One look at his face and they either ran screaming or decided he was good for one thing and one thing only—a fuck. After which they were gone.

Fine by him. He’d been born ugly with big, irregular features. An opponent who’d had a boot knife and slashed his face open with it had scarred one side of his face, and then the Arka fire that had burned the other side of his face had taken care of the rest. Most people flinched when they saw him the first time. They avoided looking at him as if looking at him could cause them harm like that Greek lady with the snakes for hair who turned anyone who looked at her to stone.

He’d had a hard life and it was reflected in his face. Mac didn’t give a shit. In the military, he did what he had to do and he did it well, and what he looked like didn’t make any difference at all to the outcome. The only time he thought about it was when he was undercover, because he was memorable. Not in a good way.

“Mac might have better chances than I would,” Jon said, waggling his eyebrows. “With that handsome mug of his.”

“Cut it out,” Mac growled. They didn’t have time for this.

“No, dude. I mean it.” Jon suddenly turned serious, the expression odd on his good-looking face. Mac had watched him hosing opponents with his charm, wielding that bright and merry smile while slipping in the knife. His face wasn’t made for seriousness. Seeing him so sober and serious was strange. “The chick likes you.”

Mac didn’t surprise easily but he felt his jaw unhinge slightly, then snapped it closed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The chick?” Jon insisted. “The lady doctor? The one you just spent an hour interrogating? ’Member her? The one we’re watching now?”

“Can it, Jon.” Nick’s voice was low with menace.

“She digs you,” Jon continued as if Nick hadn’t spoken. “Man, she looked at you like you were smokin’ hot.”

Mac made a sound of exasperation. Jon liked to razz on him but now wasn’t the time. On the monitor, the woman had finished the juice drink and was polishing off the last of the peach pie. Man, she must have an amazing metabolism to eat like that and stay so slender. Either that or she’d been starving.

At the thought, a slight worm of unease went through him. He was hard, yeah, but he wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t a happy thought that she might have been hungry while he was interrogating her. Starving a woman . . . well that officially made him a prick.

He was a badass but not a prick.

“Shit, look at that chick eat,” Jon said. “Nice manners, but she’s packing the stuff away.”

“She was hungry,” Mac said curtly.

“Yeah.” Jon nodded. “For you.”

“Fuck off, Jon.” Nick gave Jon’s shoulder a sharp blow. “We don’t have time for this. The fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Hey, man, I’m serious. Wait, wait! Let me show you what I mean.” Jon reached over and touched the screen, dragging his index finger from right to left, rewinding. “Where . . . there it is! The moment Mac takes her hood off.”

All three men turned to the monitor, though Mac didn’t know what the hell he was looking for. He’d been there and hadn’t noticed anything. All three watched as Mac held open the door and ushered a hooded Catherine in with a hand to the small of her back.

Now
that
he remembered. Vividly. Sleek muscles, narrow waist, some really nice smell as she walked past him. He rarely touched women except for sex. It had felt nice and he’d squashed the thought immediately. Until she convinced him otherwise, this woman was the enemy.

“There!”
Jon shouted, and tapped the screen to freeze it. “What?” Nick asked, baffled. Mac frowned and leaned closer to the monitor, trying to figure out what Jon saw. He looked at the tableau, his frozen self with the hood in his hand, holding it high, having whipped it off the woman’s head, her hair gently raised from the friction with the hood forming a halo around her head. She was looking straight at him and the screen save caught that second in which she first had a glimpse of his face.

Dispassionately, Mac had to recognize that the woman was truly beautiful. One of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Gorgeous light gray eyes, high cheekbones, full mouth. It was a bone-deep beauty, the kind that could never fade. She’d be a gorgeous centenarian. Whatever makeup she might have started the day with was long gone, though it wasn’t a face that needed enhancement. It could have done with some color, though. She was white as ice.

Other than that . . . what wasn’t he seeing?

“What?” Mac echoed.

“Her face, goddammit!” Jon tapped the screen, his finger making a little thud on the glass right over the image of her face. “Look at it!”

Mac and Nick stared at the screen, then at each other. What the fuck?

Jon gave a snort of disgust. “Jesus, observation skills zero, both of you. You know what I’m seeing? Nothing! That’s what I’m seeing.”

Mac and Nick glanced at each other again. Mac shrugged. “Hell if I know what he’s talking about.”

“She’s not afraid, you asshole!” Jon shouted. “I defy any human being, let alone a woman who is by all accounts a geek and is certainly not an operator, to be kidnapped, taken somewhere unknown, have the hood whipped off unexpectedly and see your face and not shit herself with fright. Come on, you know what you look like. God knows you use it often enough to intimidate. It’s not working with her.
Look, goddammit!
”

Mac looked. The screen shot showed Mac with his war face on while Catherine Young looked straight up at him. Her face showed exhaustion, vulnerability, tiredness. But not fear. No fear at all.

“Dude.” Jon turned to Mac. “You’re terrifying. I know you and know you’re one of the good guys. But shit—sometimes you scare
me
! Think about it. She’s not scared. She’s not taken by surprise by your ugly scarred mug. So—either she already knows what you look like or she falls into instant love. And I opt for Door Number One.”

“He’s got a point, Mac,” Nick said slowly, eyes riveted to the screen. “No offense, but how can she see you suddenly and not run screaming? Particularly since basically she’s your prisoner? Can she—does she know you?”

That one Mac could answer. “Never seen her before in my life.”

“Then—there’s something there we’re not seeing, not understanding.”

The three men were silent.

“She saw a photo of you somewhere,” Nick said slowly. “That’s the only thing I can think of. That’s why she was prepared.”

“Negative,” Mac shot back sharply. “We’re fucking
ghosts.
”

No way. Lucius had ruthlessly destroyed all documentary evidence of their existence in and out of the military. And when the Captain did something, he did it thoroughly.

“Unless . . .” Jon began, a frown of concentration between his blond eyebrows.

“Unless?”

“Well, crazy as it sounds, she’s saying the Captain sent her.” He held up a hand. “Wait. I’m not saying she
was
sent by Lucius, I’m just saying
she’s
saying Lucius sent her. And, well, just about the only explanation I can come up with for her reaction when she sees you for the first time is, ahm . . .”

“Lucius described me to her.” Mac kept his voice flat. “She knew what I looked like because Lucius told her what I look like. Which would mean that she’s right. Lucius is in Palo Alto. And in trouble.” He gritted his jaw muscles, looked at his teammates. “Code Delta.”

The meal was so good it might even be worth getting offed afterwards.

Catherine would have sworn her stomach was so knotted up she would barely be able to choke down a few bites, but at the mere smell of the food, her stomach simply opened up like a door.