The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (111 page)

“No, no, no, no, no,” Aunush repeated, trying desperately to make the words true. That heretical whore could not be the Disciples’ John the Baptist. She just couldn’t be.

“Yes,” the master answered, smoothing back Aunush’s hair. “At least you will die knowing that all your efforts weren’t for naught. The Messiah will arise before the earth circles the sun.”

Aunush pulled tighter into a ball as the master presented her boot. The sight sickened Aunush. She’d only indulged the master’s fetish to further her position with the sect. Now that there could be nothing gained, why should she give the master such pleasure?

Spitting on the leather, Aunush took solace in only one thought as the master kicked her square in the teeth, shattering incisors.

Dr. Rebecca Monroe’s life would be far more pained than Aunush’s death.

# # #

COVERT

CHAPTER 1

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Brandt stopped as their new point man, Levont’s, hand balled up into a fist. Brandt didn’t even complete his step. He stood, balancing on one foot, waiting, listening for why the point man had called them to the halt.

Tension rippled through his muscles. Brandt shouldn’t be here in the steamy African jungle. He should be home, in the humid Southern summer, getting ready to marry Rebecca. But no, some tribe had to find a lost Nazi mine.

And not just any mine, but one with enough uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb. Hence the urgency of their mission, and why they hadn’t even disembarked from their plane in South Carolina before getting shipped out to the Congo. The nearest other rapid response team was in Turkey, busy on the Syrian border. Hence why Brandt and his team were needed here.

Levont’s hand relaxed, then snatched up into a ball again. Okay, that was enough. This was the fifth time they had stopped in as many steps. Once again, Brandt missed Svengurd. The tall Swede had been rock solid. None of this stop-start kind of crap. And even though Harvish was by no means a great point man, he had saved their lives in the end. So Levont had some pretty big shoes to fill, and just about now they didn’t seem to fit quite right.

Carefully, Brandt made his way past Davidson, Talli, and Lopez to come shoulder to shoulder with Levont. The dark-skinned man’s fingers swept from his eyes out into the jungle.

At first, Brandt didn’t understand what the man was looking at, until he spotted a hint of orange. Was it a flower? Then it moved, the color disappearing behind a wall of green. Guess Levont
did
know what he was doing.

“They’ve been tracking us for about a half a mile,” Levont whispered.

It didn’t make sense, though. If the figure was a member of the tribe guarding the uranium, they would have sent up the alarm, not quietly tracked them through the jungle, let alone while wearing orange, of all colors, while doing so.

Perhaps it was a curious villager? They didn’t have a single second to delay in searching for someone who did not want to be found. Not if Brandt’s team wanted to make their evac time. And Brandt very much wanted to get home.

With a nod, Brandt gave the order to move forward. Levont took point, but that orange color flashed again. This time, though, looking closely between the fronds, Brandt saw that it was a little girl tracking them.

He went to take a step forward, but the girl put a hand up, cocking her head to the south. Sure enough, the sound of footsteps drifted up from the path. His team abandoned the game trail and hid amongst the dense foliage.

Machine guns slung over their shoulder and dressed in jungle camouflage, soldiers ran past them. If the girl hadn’t warned them, they might have been discovered by a random patrol.

By the time the soldiers had trotted by and his team came out from the bushes, the girl was gone. Levont looked to Brandt. Should they try to follow the girl? They should, of course. She could raise the alarm back at the village. Although, somehow, Brandt didn’t think they needed to worry about that. If she wanted to get them caught, all she had needed to do was sit by and allow the soldiers to find them.

Brandt indicated toward the village and Levont set out. Lopez, Talli, and Davidson passed by Brandt, each giving him a curt nod and approval to his decision. Not that he needed it, he thought as he brought up the rear. He didn’t run his unit on popularity, yet his men would still follow him into hell. Actually, if you factored in Rome and Jordan, they already had.

He hoped the Congo wouldn’t be quite that brutal.

The key word there was “hoped.”

* * *

The deck bucked and rolled under Rebecca Monroe’s feet. Rain lashed at her face, soaking her hair. She clung to the guardrail as if the metal could somehow save her. They were being hounded, and if they got hit before they made shore…

For once, it wasn’t a secret millennia-old cult they were running from, but an Arctic storm. One that threatened to ram them right into Iceland’s western shore.

Bunny stepped up next to Rebecca, pulling her hood around her face, clearly trying to keep her hair from getting drenched—a task Rebecca had long ago given up.

“We could still head back to South Carolina,” Bunny playfully suggested.

“I’ll take the storm, thank you very much,” Rebecca replied.

With a sigh, Bunny nodded. “Me too.”

You would think that, with her wedding less than a week away, Rebecca would be thrilled. And she was. She was thrilled to be marrying Brandt. The wedding, however? That was turning out to be as problematic as their escape from Jordan. Her mother-in-law-to-be was on a rampage to make Brandt and Rebecca’s wedding page-one news in Charleston.

Which meant that Rebecca had to fit into a dress a size too small by Friday. Which, apparently, meant no carbs or fats, even while surrounded by southern cooking. It just wasn’t fair.

“Heard from Brandt?” Bunny asked.

Rebecca shook her head. The boys had barely touched down from Uruguay when they were called out again, despite their all being on leave. They were supposed to make contact at 8am and 8 pm whenever possible. They had missed this morning’s call, though. It happened.

She patted Bunny’s hand even though her own stomach had done flip-flops when the call hadn’t come in. “They’ll be fine.”

Rebecca wasn’t sure of Davidson and Bunny’s relationship status. Actually, Rebecca was pretty sure neither did they. After the debriefing in London, Davidson had been whisked away, only to return, months later, as part of Brandt’s team again. And the men had been on the go ever since.

“I know,” Bunny answered, then smiled. “But can you imagine if they hadn’t been called away? We never could have escaped the mother-of-the-Bridezilla.”

Bunny was so right. The men’s departure had made it far easier to hop on a plane to Reykjavik. Rebecca could remember reading the latest issue of the International Genome Project and finding the article, “
The Found Tribe of Dann: Did the scales of justice migrate as far as Newfoundland?”

The Disciples were still out there. Unlike the Knot, which had been routed, the Disciples had melted into the night, hiding, apparently waiting for their moment to strike again. Rebecca would prefer to get the upper hand.

Which is why the article had sparked such an interest. Bunny had been reading through the same journal and ran into Rebecca’s room to share the information. They had both deduced the same thing. Someone, besides Rebecca and Bunny, was searching for the Disciples’
messiah
.

Iceland seemed like a long shot for finding an ancient Jewish sect, but if a trip to the northern isle got them out of the house until the wedding, so be it.

“We should get inside,” Bunny urged as the boat pulled closer to the dock.

“No, I’m going to stay out here,” Rebecca said, perhaps a bit too sharply. Out here in the fresh air, the rolling and rocking of the boat was fine. Inside, though? Seasickness didn’t even come close to describing it. “I promise not to be thrown overboard.”

Bunny chuckled as she turned away. “You better. I am not explaining to Brandt, or his
mother
, how I lost their bride.”

Somehow, Rebecca thought that Mrs. Brandt would be the more difficult of the two.

Rebecca shooed Bunny inside. “Go, before your Louis Vuitton gets wet.”

Bunny put up no argument as the door to the deck shut behind her. Rebecca watched as the boat held steady just outside the dock as the waves roiled all around them and the wind whipped from all sides. Then a large wave lifted the boat up and into the slip. They didn’t even hit the bumpers. These descendants of Vikings knew their boating.

* * *

Levont held up his fist again, and this time, Brandt didn’t complain. The guy had proven himself. The point man crooked his finger, asking Brandt to come to the front of the line. He obliged.

Through the filter of wide fronds, Brandt could make out the small village in front of them. Really, it was a tiny shanty town thrown together with scrap wood and corrugated tin roofing. The population was doubled by gunmen, and tents made of animal skin were erected along the periphery.

Finding a fortune’s worth of uranium had created a mini-boom town. Although Brandt doubted that the villagers saw this as any kind of boom. It was the local chieftain who hoped to profit from the discovery, not the villagers.

It was common knowledge that Hitler had had mines in the Congo, searching for the fuel he needed to create his A-bomb. Their exact locations, though, were highly secret. And the one mine that had produced enough weapon-grade uranium? Supposedly, only ten people in the world knew where that was located.

Except for the workers, of course. Knowing first-hand what Nazi rule would feel like, the villagers had risen up, killed their guards, and caved in the mine. This had effectively stopped Hitler’s A-bomb in its tracks.

Flash forward sixty years, and now the uranium was up for grabs again, and the United States’ enemies—and even a few allies—were on the hunt for it.

“I’ve got thermal imaging online,” Lopez said, handing Brandt the tablet.

The feed was sketchy, since the satellite wasn’t directly overhead yet. Just about all eyes had been pointed at the Middle East. Why should anyone be scouting over the western jungles of the Congo?

The reds and bright yellows of the villagers stood out against the dark screen. Although Brandt wasn’t interested in them. He was much more interested in the small scattered readings around the periphery of the village.

Those were
not
villagers. Those were other teams dispatched to either obtain the uranium or blow the mine, depending on which side of the nuclear line they fell on. Given that weapons-grade uranium was the single most limiting factor in building a functional nuclear weapon, many, many countries had joined the party in the Congo.

Iran, of course, was here. A
Quds
team—Iran’s special forces—had been the first to head south to Africa. As soon as their wheels had lifted off, the Israelis had been right behind. The Quds didn’t go anywhere without a Mussad team ghosting them. Brandt doubted the Israelis even knew what they were going after—they just followed them on principle.

Then, of course, Egypt and Saudi Arabia had each sent a team. Probably the only Middle Eastern country not represented was Syria. Not that they didn’t want the bomb, they just didn’t have the luxury of sending any teams. The only other oddball team that had been dispatched to the area was from Brazil.

Supposedly, they had sworn off nuclear weapons in the 70s, just as they were on the cusp of developing them. Apparently, signing several dozen treaties hadn’t stopped them from wanting to be a player in the nuclear game. Or perhaps it was just the military that had wanted the Uranium and dispatched the BSO Brigade. The Brazilians had a long history of military coups, and they had a functioning centrifuge. Not good.

“My bet?” Lopez asked. “Those are the Turks.” The corporal pointed to a set of six dots in the jungle. Seven sat around one central dot that was larger than the others.

“Why?”

“Obviously, they are using a flameless heat source…”

Probably a heat stick. They were all carrying one. The fuel cells were hot enough to boil water without a flame to give you away. “And your point?”

Lopez grinned. “Making coffee, of course.”

Brandt did not even grin at the supposed joke. Although he wouldn’t mind some of that syrup-like coffee right about now.

“He could be right,” Levont said, then rushed on. “Not about the coffee, of course. But they do have the best seat in the house.”

About that, Brandt couldn’t argue. The team in questions had taken the high ground. In theory, the Turks should have been allies—however, despite being in NATO, they had their own aspirations for a nuclear weapon. Especially now with the unrest in Syria.

“They were the first with wheels up,” Levont explained. “And the Turks have a mining facility just to the south of here, which means they may have advanced intel of the area.”

Brandt nodded.

He didn’t like having so many guns here. Even if many of them were allies.

Brandt had a bad feeling about the mission, but kept it to himself. No need to worry the others. He was worried enough for all of them.