Risk of Exposure (Alpha Ops Book 6) (12 page)

“Okay, but we better stay at your place. Tanoff and Brigda have my apartment address.”

“Fine.” And, unusually, it was. And even more unusually, he was suddenly concerned about her seeing the bare mattress on the floor, the uncultured magazines—to put it politely—and the trash he’d just thrown on the floor.

She started punching keys on the phone. “This is so much cooler than my sat phone. That pisses me off.”

“Don’t blame you,” he said, grinning in the darkness. He wanted to tell her how amazing she’d been, but he didn’t want to sound surprised that she had in fact rescued herself. To do that would be to admit he’d questioned her abilities, which he hadn’t really. Dammit, things weren’t this complicated with the guys in the Regiment.
But then,
a sneaky voice in his head said,
you weren’t in love with any of them.

She’d started talking on the phone, staccato bursts of information that covered the armored vehicle fake-out and the short time they were hostages. She listened to someone talking back—words Mal couldn’t make out. She grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to go back. Turn around. Back to the border.”

He carefully turned the vehicle around; as close as they were to the place where he’d taken an unseasonal dip in the ice stream, he didn’t want to dunk the whole car in it too.

“Oh shit,” she said to the person on the other end of the phone. “Okay, we’ll sort that out afterward.” After a few more affirmative answers, she hung up.

“They already have Special Forces in the air, so instead of dropping a battalion, they’re dropping a couple of guys who will rig the rest of the other armored vehicles to blow. They’re going to look for us at the drop point, so we better get back before they think we abandoned them.”

“What was the ‘oh shit’ comment about? Sounds like something I should know.”

She smiled at him, but then her face dropped a little. “Tanoff and Brigda, as well as her son and the rest of the local police force, are all anti-Russian. If we’d told them the truth, they probably could have helped us.”

He laughed. “You can’t go spilling your guts about your op to anyone just in case they’re friendlies. Come on, you won’t even tell your dad about your job. Why would it be okay to tell your fake employers too? Especially since they had all the guns.”

She grinned. “They didn’t have all the guns for long, though, did they?” She held up her hand for a high five.

He shook his head and said, “Man, you Yanks and your guns,” knowing it would piss her off.

She gave him a fake stern stare and shook her hand at him, still waiting for the high five. He rolled his eyes and slapped her hand. She whooped and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. He’d never been on an op like this. Never.

“Okay, here we are,” she said as they approached the glade of trees where their initial foxhole had been.

He drew to a stop and turned off the engine. There was no sign of anyone. They turned to each other and shrugged and then slowly got out of the vehicle. “Maybe we beat them here?” he said, looking at the sky.

“Doubtful,” she replied. “Playboy!” she shouted, the suddenly loud noise making him jump.

“Jesus, Abby. I’m not sure how I feel about you calling me that, to be honest.”

It was her time to roll her eyes. “Havoc! Playboy!” she called again.

“Okay, stop that. You sound as if you’re calling your dogs in for the night.”

“She kind of is, sir.” A voice came from his feet and this time he did jump—literally.

Two men in combat snow gear got up, right in front of him, like they hadn’t nearly given him a heart attack.

The one who had spoken introduced himself as Playboy, and asked, “Who’s the ranking?” Mal didn’t bat an eye, just pointed at Abby and shook his hand. He wondered about the guy’s call sign and for one irrational moment he fought not to step between Abby and the unreasonably handsome guy. Irrational because he knew you didn’t choose your own call sign—they were assigned, and not usually for the obvious reason.

The second one, obviously Havoc, shook hands with both of them. “Seems we have a contrary mission, ma’am. We took off with one mission and seem to have jumped with another. Can you fill us in?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ve been surveilling this border area for months, waiting for any real sign of aggression that couldn’t be blamed on Russian-backed rebels. These armored vehicles arrived yesterday, maybe the day before that. They seem to have taken advantage of the blizzard, parked them here and left the scene.”

“So there are no troops here?” Havoc asked as he checked his tablet computer.

“Nope,” Mal said. “I went up and down the line of vehicles last night and there was no one here. Judging by the lack of footprints in the snow, I think they’re long gone.”

“And you are…?” Playboy asked with a grin.

“A civilian who was accidently roped into this cluster-fuck by her.” He pointed at Abby, who just grinned.

Playboy, trying to hide a smile, looked at Abby and then back at Mal. “I can see that happening, sir.” He turned back to Abby. “Do we have a working theory on what these are doing here?”

“I think they’re a distraction. I think they knew we would spot them eventually and send paratroopers and infantry to hold the border. I think the Russians are planning something bigger, elsewhere on the border.”

Havoc nodded. “As we were jumping, I wondered where the tanks were. The Russians have a lot of tanks—more than the US—and they are scary beasts. If they were planning on invading from here, their tanks would be the first over the border.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Mal, do you want to tell them about Athens?”

Playboy’s eyebrows rose. “Sir?”

Fuck it. “Sure. Okay.” He turned to Playboy. “Firstly, don’t call me ‘sir.’ I was never an officer. You can use my call sign, ‘Merchant.’ Secondly—”

“Merchant is your call sign?” Abby asked with a grin.

“Really? You have Playboy and freaking Havoc here and you’re questioning
my
call sign?”

“Ma’am,” Havoc said. “I suspect his full sign is ‘Merchant of Death.’ Am I right, sir?”

“You don’t know him like I do. It’s probably Merchant of Venice,” Abby said.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” Mal replied, trying hard not to laugh.

“As if you could. We both know, for sure, that I can take you,” she said, hands on her hips.

“Unless you lose your weapon to me, that is.”

“Um, guys? I don’t want to interrupt whatever this is, but— No, in fact, I do want to interrupt. Athens.” Playboy looked pointedly at Mal.

“Right. We caught some Greek anarchists in bed with the Russians. They’d been planning to kidnap a Russian minister
and
blow up their own embassy. When they were being interrogated, one of them admitted that those things were planned as a distraction. Maybe this is more of the same.”

They all jumped at the sound of Mal’s satellite phone, which showed how on edge everyone was, despite the friendly chatter.

Mal picked up the call and handed the phone to Abby. As he did, Havoc’s radio started to squawk.

A
bby’s boss was on the line. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“Whose phone is this?”

Crap.
“Um, sir? It’s a long story and we’ve got some bombing to do here.” She was so getting fired.

There was silence, as if he couldn’t believe her impudence. She wouldn’t blame him because she couldn’t either.

“Is it encrypted?” he clipped.

She turned to Mal. “Is this encrypted?”

He shrugged. “If by ‘encrypted’ you mean near impossible to understand, then I’d say yes. It took me a week to figure out how to send a text.”

“Unclear, sir. But it’s the only usable phone I have. The one I was issued died within twenty minutes of freezing temperatures. It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to avert war or anything important like that.” Wow. Where had the obedient operative gone? A mere week with Malone and she’d started talking like him. She kind of liked it. Especially imagining her boss’s face turning beet red as it did when he was blustering.

“Okay, Baston. Rein it in.” Abby pictured the alarm in his eyes as he wondered if she was going rogue.

“Yes, sir,” she said, unable to keep the smile out of her voice.

“Anyway. You were right. We just got intel from Paris. A few weeks ago, the Russians accidentally assassinated one of their own ministers as he was trying to pass us some information. Our Paris office just decrypted the information. The real troop movement is occurring on two fronts: from the Crimea northward to Kiev and through Belarus to Europe. But rest assured, they will be coming back for those armored vehicles, and probably soon.”

Her eyes darted around at the column of vehicles and then at Malone joking around with the two airmen. “Any idea how long we’ve got?”

He scoffed. “I’m not an analyst, dear. You should be in contact with your own for operational intel.”

She wanted to reach through the phone…“I can’t. The phone the CIA issued me died in a matter of minutes. If I hadn’t found this one, none of you would have known anything until the Russians were knocking at the door of Minsk.” She realized she was shouting and looked around. They were all watching her, Malone smiling, the other two apparently in shock. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize, so she just hung up and called Kate.

“Oh my God, get out of there!” Kate said as she picked up the call.

“What?” Abby asked, putting her finger in one ear as if that would help her understand Kate’s yelling.

“The Russians are about ten klicks away from you. They’re coming back for their vehicles. I’m watching it on the infrared satellite feed. You have to go.”

Abby could see Kate pacing up and down in front of her desk as she did when she was agitated. “How many are coming?”

“Abby. It looks like at least seven to ten thousand boots on the ground. Get out of there.”

“Okay. On it.” She hung up and faced the men. “We’ve got incoming.”

They all looked into the peaceful sky.

“Not that kind of inbound—that kind of inbound.” She pointed deep into Russian territory.

“Ma’am, did you mention Belarus?” Playboy asked.

“Yes. The Russians are planning to advance on Kiev from the south and Belarus from the east. Their plan is to push through, taking back the old soviet republics, and after that I don’t know. Poland, Romania, Czech Republic. I don’t know how far they’ll get if we don’t delay them long enough to get NATO troops mobilized.”

Playboy and Havoc looked at each other. “We mobilized out of Minsk, ma’am. Our whole battalion is there, along with our unit of TACPs.”

Abby nodded. “Tell who you need to tell, although I’m sure the information has already reached the forward bases, but just to be sure, you better warn them.” In fact, the CIA wasn’t well known for sharing intel, but she found it hard to believe they would keep information like that secret. The airmen took off to contact their people.

Malone stood before her. “You all right?” He didn’t touch her in front of the airmen and she was thankful. She needed to be professional and she had a sneaking suspicion that if he hugged her, she might just break down. Tension buzzed between them.

She nodded.

“You think they’ll mind that we borrowed their car? Should we stick it back with a note and some petrol money?” He looked back toward the column of vehicles.

“Maybe. I mean it’d be rude not to. Got any rubles?” She couldn’t help but grin at the way he could ease the tension in any given situation, including those that ended up in her wanting to shoot out his kneecaps.

“Nah. And I guess dollars might insult them, right?”

She snorted a laugh. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”

The airmen came back. “We’re destroying these vehicles. Want to put yours back in line? You better hurry; we’re dropping five hundred pounds of shit in about six minutes.”

Abby ran to the armored vehicle, cursing the idea of having to walk back to town again. And pass the orphanage. She rolled her eyes to herself. There might not be a Ukraine at all in about half an hour.

She drove it back into its place in the line and got out. And then she did tuck a dollar bill under the seat. If they inspected the remains of the vehicles, it might just confuse them. And then she had a better idea and drove the vehicle out again, parking it by the trees.

“You want to keep a souvenir?” Havoc asked as he took out two small metal boxes from his backpack.

“I’ll explain later,” she said, watching the two men do their thing.

Malone seemed entranced by them. She went to stand beside him. “What are you watching?”

“Me, ten years ago. I was pretty good at parachuting behind enemy lines, setting up laser targets for aircraft to lock on to, before they unleashed merry hell on the bad guys. Just so you know, the trick is to escape the area before the explosion.” He took her hand in his, still looking at the airmen setting up their lasers.

“I’m not sure we have time to escape,” she said, coldness seeping through her body.

“Probably not.” He breathed in a puff of vapor as he squeezed her hand.

 Mal watched as the two TACPs arranged their lasers and called in the strike.

Havoc messed with his tablet and then got on the radio. This took Mal back, way back, to when his only motivation was serving queen and country.

“B-one Avenger, this is Havoc.”

“We read you, Havoc. We are one-four klicks from the target zone.”

“Copy. Target is vehicles, marked east and west with lasers. Require a starburst pattern, five hundred pounds at a time. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative, Havoc.”

The radio went silent. Playboy spoke. “Our extraction is one klick away to the south. I have instructions to bring you, ma’am. But I wasn’t given any instructions about him.” He nodded to Malone.

“He’s coming with me,” she said.

“Ma’am. There isn’t enough room. As it is, you’ll be taking us up to our payload max. Literally there won’t be room for him.”

“Then I’m staying,” she said with her eyes on the lasers that Playboy had set up. “What just happened? The light on one of the lasers went out.”

Havoc and Playboy started running toward the laser as they heard the faint sounds of a plane overhead.

“Shit,” Mal said. “That is not good.” His mind was made up. In fact, it wasn’t. He didn’t make a conscious decision; it was already formed in his head as the right thing to do.

He sprinted to keep up with the airmen. When he reached their side at the laser, the tripod had collapsed, leaving the laser in the melted snow. “I’ve got this,” he said.

“With all due respect, sir, this is our job.”

“With all due respect, you need to get Abby and get out of here. There is intel and ability in her that will help you win this war. I’m just a squaddie. Expendable. You have to leave me here anyway.” He knew Abby was stubborn enough to stay here in front of a mighty movement of ten thousand Russian troops.

Before they could argue, he cracked open the metal box with his hands and took out the tiny frequency laser pointer. “What’s its range?”

Playboy winced. “About eight meters.”

“So which of you is going to essentially commit suicide here tonight, or are you going to let me do this one thing for”—
her
—“the war effort?”

“Who are you?” Havoc asked.

“Ex-SAS. She’s the most valuable part of this equation. Followed by you two. If there’s a war, you will be needed. I won’t. Go. Get her to safety.”

Havoc ripped off his protective equipment. “Lie down. Hold the laser on the side of the truck nearest to you. Dig yourself in.”

Mal took a breath of relief. They understood. And Abby would, too, eventually.

“Tell her that I said she’d have to write my final report to her father for me.”

“Okay, dude. I have a good feeling about this, though. I’m going to send a pararescuer back for you. He’s the best, and his call sign is T.S. Don’t forget that,” Playboy said as he draped his own protective jacket over Mal’s head.

“I won’t.”

“Just hold steady, and you should be fine.”

“Like a rock.”

Havoc kicked him lightly with his foot. “We won’t forget this, Merchant. We’ll go get your girl to safety.”

Mal could barely hear him over the sound of the incoming aircraft. The noise soothed him, made him feel as if he were finally doing the right thing. Abby would be safe. This part of the world would be safe for now. And the young airmen would be safe.

He kept his eyes on the laser to make sure it didn’t waver, but all he saw was Abby. If he survived this, if the world survived this, he was going to get her. Her father, her job be damned.

He felt the boom of the first explosion, then the second, rattling the ground he lay on. Then he heard nothing.