Double Vision (4 page)

Kate shivered. Kunz was thinking torture, and he was a master at it. His reputation for gruesome violence was legendary. Amanda had reported a clinical accounting of what he’d done to her, but Kate had enough experience to fill in the gaps. The woman had suffered at his hands. Kunz did horrific things to people with information he wanted. Things like removing bones, performing amputations, hammering metal punches through eardrums. He
liked
inducing pain, the sadistic bastard. The more pain, the better.

Determined not to become one of his victims, Kate didn’t move, scarcely took breath.

Finally the voices faded and the vibrations of their footsteps grew faint and then ceased. Uncertain they really were gone, she hesitated to leave her hiding spot. They could be waiting for her. Setting her up. She didn’t think so. Instinctively she sensed their absence, but with Kunz waiting to torture her, she wasn’t taking any chances.

The afternoon heat grew almost unbearable. Itching and miserable, her throat parched, her entire body drenched in sweat, Kate longed to get up and move, but long years of discipline and training kicked in and kept her in her grave.

When the air taken in through the tube cooled and the heat subsided, she knew night had fallen. Quietly she lifted her head and her arm nearest the rock. Brushing the sand from her eyes, she opened them and scoured the starlit landscape for odd or unusual shapes.

Seeing none, she reared up, reveling in the cool breeze brushing across her. Swearing it felt better than sex, she smoothed over her grave in case she needed to use the tactic again, then checked her coordinates on her GPS unit. With her location confirmed, she began the hike back to the outpost.

Even if she moved at a good clip, it would take her the better part of an hour on foot to get to the outpost. She hoped she could make it. Already she was feeling exhausted and nauseous. Naturally she hadn’t carried her canteen with her on the dive, and she had developed several symptoms of dehydration. “Home Base?” She tried Maggie again through the face mask. Her throat raw and scratchy, she dusted caked sand off the mike and tried again. “Home Base?”

Still no response.

Either someone else had activated the C-273 communications device and Home Base knew any conversation would be monitored, or the damn satellite had been diverted.

Grimacing, totally drained, Kate moved, and kept moving, kept putting one foot in front of the other on the uneven ground. More than ever, she needed to contact Home Base and to warn Colonel Drake about what she’d found.

The woman was going to freak.

Comforted at knowing it, Kate walked on, her legs trembling, her stomach shaking. She’d hate to be the only one Kunz and his goon GRID operatives had given double vision.

A long and grueling hour later, Kate arrived at the small tent camp dubbed “the outpost.” A perimeter guard let her through with a snappy salute and a worried look. “You okay, Captain Kane?”

Douglas had cued someone she was coming. Word trav
eled fast in an outpost. So much for anonymity. She couldn’t muster even a throaty croak so she nodded—and stole the water bottle clipped to his belt. Taking in a long drag that cooled her parched throat, she screwed the cap back on and passed the bottle to him. “Thank you,” she said, then heaved on his boots.

He started to radio for a medic, but Kate stopped him.

“Ma’am,” he protested. “You need help. You’re dehydrated and your head is bleeding.”

“I’m fine. I can take care of myself.” She sighed and dragged a hand through her sand-crusted hair. “I’m sorry about your boots.”

“No problem. It’s not the first time,” he said, being really good-natured about it. “But I should get a medic to look at your head.”

“No, just drop it.”

“But, ma’am—”

“Drop it! That’s an order, Private,” she said, noting his rank sewn to his sleeve.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Because he’d tried to do her a good turn and he looked genuinely concerned, she softened her voice. “But thank you.”

His pinched lips spread into an easy grin, though worry still shone in his eyes. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

She moved on through the row of tents to the mess hall, where she snagged two liters of water and then two more and a packet of salt. She added the salt to one of the bottles, wary of drinking too much too fast and depleting the salt from her body.

She’d seen that happen once on a field maneuver and the guy had suffered seizures. Wanting no part of that, she stepped around a sandbag barrier and headed to her tent, weary to the bone.

What country she was in, she didn’t have a clue. Could be Iraq or Iran or any of several other Middle Eastern countries. The outpost’s location was classified and she’d been flown in blindfolded, which wasn’t an unusual event since the start of the war on terror, but it never failed to give her the willies. It gave everyone in the field attached to Black World operations the willies. But some of their allies didn’t want it advertised that they were allies. So the U.S. accommodated them.

She downed another liter of water, snagged some clothes and crossed the post to the showers. Until she got cleaned up, she’d never revive.

Stepping into the drab-green fiberglass stall, she cranked the spigot and washed off the grit and salt. Reveling in the water sluicing over her body, she thought about the sheer joy of feeling clean. Only once before had she felt as joyful. The day she’d successfully stopped a chemical attack on the White House.

“Hey, you gonna be in there all night?”

Kate looked over and saw half a dozen men lined up, waiting to use the shower. The fiberglass shielded from their view a swath between her shoulders and thighs. “Give me a minute. I spent half the damn day buried in sand.”

That they understood. And for the next ten minutes, until she finished her shower, not one of them said a word or showed the least sign of impatience.

Kate wrapped herself in a towel and departed. “Thanks,” she said, walking past them.

“Any time, ma’am.”

Amazingly, none leered. But then, for that small segment of time, they’d forgotten rivalry and seen the “Outsider” as one who endured. As one of them.

She returned to her tent, switched the towel for a T-shirt
and panties, then broke down her headgear. Pulling the throat mike into position, she collapsed onto her cot with yet another bottle of water. Her legs felt like limp noodles. Her arms weren’t much better. If she didn’t get hydrated quickly, she was in for a wicked night of muscle cramps and spasms that would have her bent double.

Staring at the dim, bare bulb hanging from the center of the tent, she tried Maggie again. “Home Base?” Kate said. “Home Base, do you copy?”

“Identify.”

A voice. Not Maggie’s. Male. “I need a satellite link to Colonel Drake at S.A.S.S. headquarters.” Blood trickled down her face. The damn cut on her forehead was bleeding again.

She was going to have to get up. Not giving into a sigh was just more than she could manage, so she let one out with gusto and rolled off the cot, then stretched for her gear.

“Code and authorization number?” the guy asked.

She riffled through her stuff. No bandages handy.
Oh, to hell with it.
She snagged a pair of panties and shoved them against her head. “Bluefish One,” she reported, applying firm pressure and falling back onto her cot. “Authorization code BF10210.”

A click signaled verification of her identity and approval to transmit. Moments later Amanda answered the call. “Home Base secure. Go ahead.”

Half relieved it wasn’t Maggie, and ashamed for feeling that way, Kate swallowed a swig of water. “Hey, it’s me.”

“Thank God.” The earpiece hissed; Amanda let out a held breath. “What happened to the C-273?”

“It’s gone.” Her stomach muscles clenched. The lab
would have their noses out of joint for months over this. “I don’t know if it got washed out or if it was taken out, but it’s gone.” Kate took a breath. “Activate Big Brother right away.”

Each S.A.S.S. operative had a chip embedded under the skin in their nape. That chip allowed satellite tracking to wherever the operative happened to be on the planet. “We’ve got a colossal mess here. I need major backup immediately.”

“I can’t activate Big Brother,” Amanda said. “Wherever the hell you are, it’s been designated a no-activation zone. Do
not
, I repeat, do
not
relay your GPS coordinates.”

“I did already.” In the cave, Maggie had plotted her.

“Then was fine. Now isn’t.”

Kate understood the unstated message.
Relay and you’ll be dead in five minutes.
She was definitely in hostile territory. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she refolded the panties to expose a dry spot, then slapped them back against her forehead. If she couldn’t activate Big Brother to watch over her, then what was she supposed to do for assistance? She hadn’t been given a location and she’d arrived blindfolded. “Recommendation?”

“Tactical is on site. You’re under orders and authorized to rely on them for assistance. The major is expecting you to request through him.”

Maggie had asked Darcy to run a dossier on Major Forester, and Maggie had given Kate the bones. She needed a little flesh. “Skip the details and just give me the upshot.”

“He’s really quite interesting.”

She frowned. “Upshot. Please.”

“He’s a highly decorated hard-ass.”

So she figured. “Is he going to divert Douglas’s tacti
cal unit to me?” Her fingers wet, Kate frowned. She tossed the blood-soaked panties onto the dirt floor, grabbed a second pair and placed them against her forehead. Her legs tingled. She stretched out and elevated them on a bunched-up green blanket.

“Roger that.”

Douglas had done well at mopping up on their last mission. But this one was active; it would be much tougher, and he was a brash young guy. Trained, but without much battle experience. She needed seasoned help. This was GRID, and all of Kunz’s operatives were seriously seasoned. “You don’t understand.”

“What?”

Kate sat up straight and grabbed her water bottle from the dirt floor. She hated telling anyone this, but especially Amanda. Still, there was no easy way to do it, so she just blurted it out. “The Big Fish is not in the tank.”

Amanda would decipher that she was being told Thomas Kunz was not in Leavenworth.

A long hesitation settled between them, then, “Would you…would you repeat that, please?” Amanda reacted as expected. Her voice deepened, etched with a tremor that proved she was shaken up by the news. “I—I couldn’t have heard you correctly.”

She’d heard fine. After going through what she had with Kunz, Amanda didn’t
want
to hear Kate—not that she could blame her. Hearing demanded listening. Listening induced fear, and there was nothing Amanda West hated more than fear.

Not overly fond of it herself, Kate repeated, “The Big Fish is not in the tank.” Kunz wasn’t killed in the Texas explosion. He wasn’t taken into custody in the Middle Eastern compound and incarcerated at Leavenworth. That was
the message, and it had Kate feeling queasy, too. “He’s here.”

“Alive?”

Amanda had gotten it, all right, and Kate could tell that it had rattled her to her toenails. “Alive and well enough to put me in his crosshairs.”

“Oh, God.” Kate’s friend, not her co-worker, reacted. The friend who had tangled with the sadistic monster and had been held prisoner by him for three months. She’d been tortured, and only God and Amanda knew what all that had entailed. “Are you sure?”

“Ninety-nine percent. Unobserved audio confirmation with verified intercept.” Swinging from the technical to the nitty-gritty, Kate added, “A GRID operative called him by name.”

“But this can’t be. We’ve got his damn DNA.”

The panic in Amanda’s voice was all too clear. Kate couldn’t blame her after her experience and then what Kunz had pulled after his arrest, during interrogation. He’d relentlessly taunted her, mostly with heavy sexual innuendos. It’d nearly driven Amanda nuts. “Take a couple deep breaths and clear your head, okay?” Kate stopped short of telling Amanda she wasn’t thinking straight. “Joan warned us that substituting DNA isn’t a problem for Big Fish. He did it on every GRID operative he inserted.”

Dr. Joan Foster, an expert psychiatrist with extensive experience in psychological warfare tactics and specifically memory manipulation, had been taken hostage and forced to either cooperate and do all Kunz asked in programming GRID-doubled operatives to replace genuine U.S. government employees or watch her husband and child be mutilated and murdered. Kunz had already killed both her parents and in-laws.

“But that was with captives.” Amanda was stretching, looking for any excuse to deny the truth.

Kate couldn’t let her. “It was. His goons did plastic surgery, substituted medical and dental records, biometric iris scans, fingerprints—any and every thing that could give us a positive ID on all of them. He successfully substituted DNA in
our
systems. What makes it more difficult for him to substitute his own?”

A long silence played out. Kate waited, giving Amanda time to work through the emotions and to accept the truth.

“Damn it, you’re right,” she finally said, still not recovered from the shock; her voice was thinner than a 3 mm detonator wire. “But I do have a way to prove whether or not the man locked up in Leavenworth is the real Big Fish.”

He had successfully fooled more than sixty known and separate employees and the circles of people around them, people who had been stationed in various U.S. installations around the world, the court—everyone. But Amanda had a way to tell? “How?”

“When I was in the compound, I bagged a coffee cup with his prints on it,” Amanda said. “I have no doubt that man drinking from that cup was the real Big Fish.”

Hope sparked in Kate and she sat straight up, swung her legs over the cot’s edge and planted her feet firmly on the floor. “That’s right, you did.” This could be their break. “Well, for God’s sake run it on the prisoner to see if we’ve got a match.”