Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (7 page)

“If Yegorov tracks down the hospital in West Virginia that we mention in the Post article, he’ll discover you’ve been transferred to another location and then another. Records will be mysteriously misplaced.”

“Gee, you think of everything.” Mercy didn’t care if the agent picked up on her sarcasm.

“We try.” Margaret allowed a thin smile then rose up from her seat. “Now. We both need fuel to travel on. I make a wicked Denver omelet, and I’ve already checked your larder. It’s a go.”

Mercy didn’t feel much like eating, but then everything else in her world had veered out of her control. And so she let the woman feed her.

                                          7

The drive west, out of Washington, DC on I-66 toward the Red Sands training facility proved every bit as tedious as Mercy had foreseen. Margaret Storey was not a woman inclined toward light conversation, much less girl-talk. She gave Mercy a no-nonsense rundown of the modified training she’d receive during the next two weeks, after which she’d be flown directly to the U.S. Virgin Islands. “More details about the mission will need to wait,” she added then fell silent until they arrived in the rugged West Virginia mountains at a military-style compound, complete with guarded perimeter fence.

Mercy looked around anxiously as she stepped from the car. Most of the buildings were low structures, aluminum-sided bungalows or rustic log cabins. Once inside the fence, the place looked like any ordinary family camp site. Except there were no cars, campers or, at the moment, no people in view.

“Beyond those pine trees,” Storey said, pointing, “are the obstacle course and physical training grounds for stuff like hand-to-hand combat. A little farther off is a shooting range and God knows what else these days. Every time I come out here they’ve added something new. But I don’t suppose you’ll have to do any of that. You’re here to be classroom briefed—ways to communicate with your handler, how to lose a tail or follow someone without being seen, Lock Picking 101, some computer hacking tricks.” It all sounded pleasant enough to Mercy. Maybe the peace and quiet of a few weeks in the woods would be good for her.

Storey dragged Mercy’s wheeled suitcase toward what she called the barracks then up three creaking plank steps and inside. Mercy followed carrying her favorite Vera Bradley hipster bag and suddenly feeling she’d packed way too much. This looked like a sweats or jeans-and-t-shirt kind of place. She probably could have left her business casuals at home.

“You’ll hear a lot of military lingo. Don’t let it throw you. You’ll catch on fast enough.”

“Sure.”

Storey looked around the large open room lined with bunks, apparently found everything shipshape then said, “Looks like this unmade cot is yours. Wait here. Your instructor will be in soon. I’ll see you in two weeks. Good luck!”

“Thanks.” Mercy felt like a kindergartener who’d been dropped off for her first day of school.

She sat down on the narrow, lumpy cot and listened to the car engine starting up then tires grinding away over gravel—the sound of their departure fading away to nothing. The long room lined with steel-framed beds and puke-green lockers smelled of sweat and stale food with an undercurrent of natural pine from the surrounding woods.
This isn’t so bad,
she thought, but still felt vaguely sick to her stomach.

After a few minutes of silence, and no one appearing, she looked up at the nearest locker to see a little tin label frame about head high. In it, a card with O’Brien written in stenciled, black letters―her locker, apparently. She began unpacking.

She’d just finished folding the most utilitarian flannel pajamas she owned into the lower compartment of the locker when she heard heavy boot treads on the porch outside. The screen door opened with a squeal of hinges. When she turned a man in khaki shirt and pants was standing just inside the door, feet planted wide, fists on hips, looking every bit the Marine drill sergeant.

She swallowed. “Hi.”

He observed her with undisguised disgust. “Bull Daniels,” he grumbled.

Bull,
she thought, and nearly smiled.
Of course.
“Mercy O’Brien. Pleased to meet you.” She stepped forward and held out her hand. He ignored it.

“I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking at HQ,” he growled, “but you, lady, are a fucking disaster waiting to happen.” He turned around, reached into a wooden cabinet to his right, retrieved a short stack of fabric items and thrust them into her hands. She looked down—navy-blue gym shorts and a matching T-shirt. “Change, Ms. O’Brien. I hope you brought athletic shoes or hiking boots. I’ll meet you outside.”

“Wait!” she called to his departing back. “I’m here for classroom briefings only.” But he was already out the screen door. It whacked shut behind him.

“Nice to meet you too, sir,” Mercy muttered. She unfolded the shirt to better see the letters printed on the front.
Spywear.
She smiled. “Cute.”

After Mercy donned her fashionable new outfit she laced up the Asics she’d brought from home, stowed her luggage under the bed and her discarded travel clothes in the locker. She noticed there were no padlocks on the lockers. Either people here were extremely trusting or the penalty for theft so steep no one in their right mind would think of stealing.

Outside in the dirt yard, she met Daniels who motioned to her then immediately started walking. His strides were long and authoritative—the commander-in-chief on his way to inspect the troops—chin thrust forward, arms pumping at his sides. She had to jog to keep up with him.

“Maybe it would be helpful if we clarified a few things before we get off track here,” she said, trying to sound pleasantly cooperative as she hustled along beside him.

He grunted, glowering straight ahead as they passed another cluster of unmarked buildings and started down a path through the woods, still within the fenced compound. She wondered how many acres belonged to Red Sands.

Mercy cleared her throat. “Agent Storey said that I would be here for two weeks of strategy sessions and classroom instruction. It was my understanding that would be the extent of any training.”

“Is that so?”

Mercy huffed out an irritated breath. “Mr. Daniels. Sir.”

He turned then stepped in front of her. “One thing you need to understand, O’Brien. I’m in charge at this camp. If I say it’s a stupid, half-ass idea to throw an agent into the field without the proper training, then it’s a stupid, half-ass idea. I’m not signing off on your paperwork until I think you’re ready. Got that?”

She stared at him, aghast. “I, well, I…” She honestly didn’t know what to say.

“Got a cell phone on you?” he said.

“No, Agent Storey said I couldn’t use it here.” She had explained that it would be an easy way for the Tambovs to track her down, so she’d left it at home.

He unclipped a phone from his belt. “Here, use mine. Storey’s on speed dial—number eight. Call and tell her that whatever deal you made with her is off. You don’t want anything to do with Red Sands.”

“No!” Mercy stepped back, shaking her head, refusing to take the phone he held out to her. Her pulse throbbed in her throat. “I
need
to do this.”

He studied her expression for a long moment, eyes narrowed, jaw working, temple pulsing. “You only think you do.”

“I know I do,” she stated firmly. “If I don’t, it may cost the life of someone very dear to me. I don’t see that I have a choice.”

He looked away for a moment, into the trees or at nothing. Then he re-clipped his phone over one hip. “Fine. The suits may be willing to stick you in the middle of shit without training, but I won’t have it on my conscience.”

She hitched up an eyebrow, conveying her doubt that he had one.

If he noticed, he ignored her. “Here’s my version of the deal. I’m the boss here. You do what I tell you to do.” He shoved a finger at her chest. “You make it through two weeks, I send you on your way. You drag your tail, refuse to follow the program, flunk out—I see that Ms. Storey and her bosses know you’re a screw-up and will be more trouble than help to them. Got that, missy?”

She gritted her teeth, forcing herself to take two slow, deep breaths to loosen the cramping in her chest. “Got it.”

“Good. Now move out.”

They arrived at the obstacle course. It was a place she would soon view with the trepidation and horror of a medieval prisoner approaching the rack.

Thrown in with seasoned recruits who already had God-knew-how-many weeks of grueling training under their belts, Mercy made frantic, often futile (and, she suspected, comical) attempts at each physical test. She attacked impossibly high walls in an effort to scale them, crawled through dank tunnels, clumsily leapt muddy gullies. The other trainees, encouraged by Bull, taunted and sneered at her, singling her out as their most hopeless recruit.

“Move it, Princess!” Bull’s voice rose above the agonized grunts of her classmates. “You got lead in those dainty tootsies?”

Because she was in decent physical shape from her runs through Rock Creek Park and twice-weekly lap swims at the Washington Athletic Club, the drills didn’t kill her. Eventually she clawed, cursed, and scrambled her way over nearly every wall put in front of her. To hell with form!

Later that day came spy-craft classes. These included instructions on how to observe a target without being noticed and techniques for losing a tail. She also learned how to set up and mark a dead drop where she could leave information for her handler or another agent. In an age of Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones, leaving a hand-written note seemed as obsolete as a crossbow. But she was assured the time-honored dead drop was far less vulnerable to unwanted tracking by electronic surveillance.

Her first night in the barracks she attempted to make friends with the other trainees. They mostly ignored her.

She didn’t understand why they should ostracize her until one of the women, whose elegant, dark features hinted at both Asian and African descent, angrily tipped her off. “Here we are suffering through two fucking months in hell to get or keep jobs we need in this shitty economy…and
you
waltz in here like a debutante on holiday. This is just a game to you!”

“It’s not like that at all,” Mercy insisted, shocked at the bitterness behind the woman’s words.

“The hell it isn’t,” one of the male trainees said, not quite under his breath.

Surrounded by belligerent strangers, she hardly slept at all that first night.

Day Two was dubbed Crash & Burn—aka defensive driving. After watching two trainees spin out and smash their vehicles into barriers on the private track, Mercy managed to avoid all walls, spiky road hazards, and dummies that represented unfortunate pedestrians. She loved speed, felt her blood tingle when she floored the accelerator. No speed limits here. No cops. Mercy tore around the course until her heart thrummed at decibels matching car engine’s.

At the finish line she leaped joyfully from the driver’s seat of the junker Camaro and pumped her fists triumphantly in the air. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Cut the crap,” Bull snarled. He climbed into the passenger seat and clamped his teeth down on a black cigar. “Put your helmet back on, Princess. Now, do it again. This time in reverse.”

She stared at him. “Drive the car backward through the course?”

He puffed out a cloud of foul smelling smoke. Her eyes burned and watered. “Right. And no fucking turning around to peek.”

She climbed back into the car, feeling far less victorious. “How am I supposed to see where I’m going?”

“Use your fucking mirrors.” He strapped himself in. “Now gun it!”

She gunned it.

By the time she was halfway around the course, she’d knocked over half the cones, killed one pedestrian-dummy, and seriously crunched the right rear bumper. The familiar jeers rose up from the bleachers where her barracks mates awaited their turn, meanwhile reveling in her misery. Mercy fought back tears of frustration, gripped the wheel fiercely, refocused.

Her fresh concentration paid off. By the time she reached the fake cement barricade and metal spikes, she was veering around obstacles like a video of Dale Earnhardt on rewind. NASCAR had nothing on her! She grinned so hard she felt her face might crack.

“Again,” Bull said.

“Again?” Her hands were still shaking from her last effort.

“This time drive forward. But put this on.” He handed her a black fabric blindfold.

She stared at him. “But I can’t—”

“Shut up and follow orders. I’ll talk you through the course.” She narrowed her eyes at him. He smirked. “Trust me.”

Fine,
she thought.
It’s not my car, and you’re in the death seat.
She adjusted the Velcro strap to fit the mask snugly over her face. The world went suddenly dark. She eased her foot onto the gas.

“Floor it,” Bull snapped. And she did. “In ten seconds, sharp U-turn right and keep driving. Count three then make a quick left, exactly ninety degrees. Left again. Fast stop.”

And so it went for what felt like an eternity but might only have been the most terrifying ten minutes of her life. Even though she was wearing a padded suit and helmet, by the time Bull finally told her she could stop she felt bruised and achy from the erratic turns and sudden jolts that threw her body repeatedly against the door, steering wheel, and transom of the car.