Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (24 page)

The man with the familiar voice jerked Jennifer away from Nick and held her back pressed to his chest, giving her a sickening sense of déjà vu when his body odor overwhelmed her, just as it had in Dallas. He put his hand low on her belly and jerked her closer. His erection pushed against her butt, making her skin crawl.

Between the moon and the firelight, she could clearly see Nick’s expression freeze in place. He was staring at her, but his eyes had gone completely blank. She had no clue what he was thinking.

“Ernesto Vega wants you to know that he is not pleased. He wanted information you have not provided.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Nick.

“You certainly will be.” The man holding the gun on them seemed to be the one in charge. Jenny was relieved it wasn’t the man holding her.

“Take me to him, then.” Nick leaned against the truck. “I have the information he wants. We need to talk.”

The gunman in charge took aim at Nick’s head. “I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to save yourself.”

“I have the name he wanted.”

“Give it to me.”

“So you can shoot me and rape her?” Nick shook his head and laughed with a dark humor. “I don’t think so. I’ll talk only to Ernesto.”

The leader stared hard at him then back at Jennifer before nodding to “Body Odor.” Body Odor moved his hand from her abdomen and took hold of her wrist from behind. He twisted her arm back at an impossible angle and squeezed, while at the same time wrenching her fingers in a painful burst of agony. Gasping in surprise and anguish, she was amazed her wrist didn’t snap.

Biting her lip against the pain, she stared straight ahead, even as he let go and smoothed his hand down her body from shoulder to hip. She wanted to vomit when his hand slowed at her breast. Whispering in her ear in Spanish, he rubbed his fingers against her nipples. She was grateful she couldn’t understand whatever gutter phrases she was certain he was using.

Nick moved to walk toward them but stopped when the leader shoved a gun in his face. “I still won’t give you the name. What do you think Ernesto will do when you give him a ‘damaged’ woman and then tell him you lost the information he sent you to retrieve? Take me to Ernesto, or at least deliver me along with her. Let your boss decide how best to deal with my impertinence.”

“If you insist.” The lead gunman nodded.

The third man stepped up from the shadows. With no warning, he struck Nick in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle.

Chapter Twenty-One

Friday evening

N
ICK GRADUALLY WOKE
to darkness. The back of his skull throbbed in mind-numbing agony, even as his face rested on something soft. Fingers brushed his cheek. It took a moment for him to realize his head was in someone’s lap. He felt as if he was being rocked by a hyperactive child on a trampoline.

“You awake?” whispered Jenny. Her voice came from above him. There was a slight shifting beneath his head. His neck rested on her thigh.

He breathed the stifling air and took a moment to wish he were somewhere else. It had to be over one hundred degrees in here, wherever
here
was. A mechanical white noise muffled any clue to their location.

“You okay?” she asked, a bit louder this time.

He started to nod and remembered his head at the last minute, choosing to speak instead. He most likely had a concussion. “Yeah, think so.” His mouth was dry as dust, and his lips cracked with his answer.

She touched his face again.

The last thing he remembered was standing beside the truck at the edge of the camp and getting hit from behind. “Where are we? How long have I been out?” He had his suspicions but desperately hoped he was wrong. Now that he was acclimating, he could hear others in the darkness.

“They put us both in the back of an SUV and drove into the desert to meet a two-and-a-half-ton truck. You’ve been out almost a day. Scared me to death.”

“How long exactly?” His voice was stronger this time.

Jenny picked up his wrist and looked at his digital watch. “Maybe eighteen, nineteen hours? It felt like forever.”

He figured it had been a while, if his bladder was any indication. Eighteen hours meant it was now Friday night. “How many men are up front?” he asked.

“I saw three,” she said. “They stopped a few hours ago and gave everyone water.”

“I need you to be sure.”

She blew out a quick breath.

“It’s definitely three,” another woman said from the other side of Nick.

He started to turn his head and stopped himself. “How many people are in here with us?” he asked.

“Twenty.” The same voice answered.

“You think it’s that many?” asked Jenny.

“I counted heads before they put me on. It was light when I was loaded. We’re all very cozy here.” The woman speaking, whoever she was, had an accent like Leland’s. She sounded like she was from the deep South—Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia—definitely not Texas. “Although how many of them are still alive is questionable. Some of these girls have been in transit for over a month.”

“Where are they from?” asked Nick.

“Benin, Mali, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Mexico. The ones from overseas have been travelling the longest and are in the worst shape.”

“What about you? How long have you been here?” asked Nick.

“I joined the party a few hours before you two did.”

“Who are you?” Jenny asked.

“I might ask you the same thing. You’re not the usual cargo, I can tell. They made a special stop for you.”

“My name’s Jennifer Grayson.” She volunteered the information before Nick could stop her.

The woman paused a beat before replying, as if the news had startled her. “Nice to meet you. My name’s Sassy, Sassy Smith.”

Smith?
Nick tried to focus on figuring out if he’d ever heard of a Sassy Smith, but his head was so muddled he wasn’t sure if the name rang a bell or not. His gut said the woman knew more than she was telling.

But his own bell had been rung so hard earlier, he didn’t trust his own judgment. He smiled before realizing that his head injury might be somewhat serious if he considered that idea amusing.

“How did you end up here, Sassy?” Jenny’s voice was calm and low.

“That’s a long story.” Sassy’s answer was vaguely reminiscent of Bryan Fisher’s when he didn’t want to talk about something.

“It appears we have time,” said Nick.

“Who are you?” asked Sassy.

“My name’s Nick.”

“Well, Nick, do you have a last name, or is that a one-name moniker like Prince or Cher or Lassie?”

Nick snorted a laugh along with Jenny. He was surprised when she answered for him. “Oh, he’s definitely a rock star.”

Sassy chuckled with them both.

“How’d you end up here?” Nick repeated Jenny’s question.

“I’m a freelance reporter. A contact mentioned some trouble Dr. Grayson was having.”

Dr. Grayson.
How did Sassy know that Jenny was a doctor? He got the impression the two women hadn’t spoken much before now since Jenny didn’t appear to know Sassy’s history.

“What are you doing here in Africa?” he asked.

“I’ve been working on a story about the crossover between drug and human trafficking in Mexico.” Sassy paused a minute before continuing. “I think I may have stepped on some toes.”

“What makes you think that?” Nick couldn’t get a bead on Sassy Smith. Something about her seemed off.

“As soon as I talked to my source, I was busted. And for the record, all your questions make this feel like an inquisition.”

“Who was your source?” Jenny asked.

“Did you two practice this beforehand?” Sassy muttered. “I’m a reporter. I don’t share sources.”

Nick sighed, frustrated he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to recognize all the implications of what Sassy was telling them. Something was right here in front of him, and he couldn’t see it.

“Why do you think this has something to do with your story?” he asked, ignoring Sassy’s snide comments.

“Ever since I started asking questions about a drug and trafficking crossover, even before I got here, someone’s been following me.”

“Who?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s not the cartel,” said Sassy. “It’s too . . . smooth. They wouldn’t bother hiding their tracks like this.”

“Do you think it’s government?” asked Nick, intensely curious with a growing feeling of dread as pieces of the puzzle started coming together.

“Maybe,” said Sassy. Something in her voice still sounded wrong. He didn’t know a thing about her, but he didn’t like it. “I can’t be su—”

“Why are you telling us this?” interrupted Nick. “You don’t know us or a thing about us.”

“Actually, I do know about you. You’re back here and not riding up front. I figure that means you aren’t one of the bad guys.”

“You’re a reporter. You don’t strike me as someone that naïve,” said Nick. “Why are you really telling us this?”

There was a long silence before she spoke again. “Because you’re Bryan Fisher’s partner, right? You work for AEGIS?”

Finally, Nick got it, the thing he hadn’t been able to grasp. Bryan was how Sassy had known Jenny was a doctor.

“I met with Bryan yesterday at a café in Niamey. We traded information, and he left in a hurry. He wouldn’t tell me why, just said he had to talk to someone right away. I think maybe he was coming for you.”

Not likely
, thought Nick. Instead he asked, “So, what happened?”

Sassy leaned forward as she spoke, directing her voice toward him. “I headed back to my hotel after the meeting, but I was picked up on the street in a van before I got there. They blindfolded me. I was on a plane for a while before I was put on this truck, then you two joined us.”

“What did you tell Bryan?” asked Nick.

“I consider him a source.”

Of course she did. Nick gritted his teeth and counted to ten, twenty, then fifty, before speaking. “I know you don’t want to share that information with me, but if we stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of this, I need to know what’s going on.”

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the white noise of the truck’s engine and the occasional mutter or moan from other women in the truck.

“I told Bryan that the Vegas and Riveras were definitely working together smuggling drugs and women across Africa. I showed him a map that I’d gotten from a source outlining the cartel’s trafficking routes. There was a stop at a place near Ingal. Bryan got fairly torqued when he saw it.”

Nick thought through the attack on the dig site. While several people had known they were headed there, no one had known the exact timing.

Shit.
Just like that, things that had been out of focus and fuzzy started to crystallize. Nick had been blind.

As much as he hated to consider the possibilities, he had to. Could Ernesto Vega’s suspicions about government and AEGIS involvement in last month’s attack on the Rivera compound and the vet clinic be true?

There wasn’t any way to know for certain at this point. Nick sure as hell didn’t like to think about it, but he’d be foolish not to consider the possibility that someone within AEGIS or close to their organization was dirty.

Could it have been Bryan? Maybe. Maybe not.

It certainly was more than a possibility if Hollywood was telling reporters about them. God, he didn’t want to believe that. Why would the man have given up Jenny’s name? Nick supposed there could have been any number of reasons, but he couldn’t think of one that didn’t have unpleasant implications.

The only way anyone could have known about Nick and Jenny being at the Paleo-Niger dig at that particular time was if someone with an inside track to AEGIS had told them. Just like the only way anyone could have known about Nick and Jenny being at the hotel in Niamey was if they were being fed information by someone privy to their plans. Could it have been the same with the brothel in Tenancingo?

Nick had left a message via the SAT phone as they’d arrived at the dig site. But Bryan had checked in with Gavin and Leland both when they arrived at the hotel in Niamey. Nick had called as they’d landed in Mexico before going into the brothel in Tenancingo.

Indisputably someone at AEGIS, or someone with access to AEGIS information, was selling them out.

But who was it?

Bryan? Leland? Gavin? Marissa? Someone else with a connection to AEGIS? It seemed impossible and unthinkable on all counts. Still, cartels could offer too much money to assume anyone was incorruptible.

Whoever it was, Nick had to discover who was dirty now, or at least eliminate possibilities before he reached out for help again.

J
ENNIFER COULD FEEL
Nick’s tension ratcheting up as Sassy spoke quietly beside her. She was zip-tied at her wrists and chained to the truck wall behind her with about two feet of steel. Her fingers were on Nick’s cheek, but she couldn’t get as close as she wanted with Sassy’s head bent over her lap. It was hard to hear over the truck’s engine and the woman was whispering, bowing forward by Nick’s face. Eventually, Sassy tilted back, done with her part of the conversation.

Jennifer leaned down to Nick and lowered her voice. “What did she say? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He tried to sit up but couldn’t.

Jennifer wasn’t sure if it was getting hit in the head that had him so out of it or if it was what Sassy had told him that kept his head in her lap. He wasn’t chained to the side of the truck like she was; he was simply handcuffed with zip ties, but he seemed almost incapacitated.

He reached for her hand and held it to his lips, despite his shackled wrists. She drifted down as close to his face as possible. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He kept hold of her palm and kissed her fingertips again.

“Is it okay for me to be scared?”

She felt his smile against her hand. “I’d think you were a little crazy if you weren’t scared,” he said.

“Where do you think they’re taking us?”

“Not sure. Could be Algeria. I imagine they want to deliver these women first. They’re going to need a port for that or a cargo plane and a secluded airstrip.”