Edge of Reason (EDGE Security Series Book 2) (6 page)

Was he stupid or arrogant?

This had to be the CIA asset that Blackwell had spoken about. While most assets never received training, they usually had more sense than this. Her head tilted as she studied him and the area from the dubious safety of the trees.
 

The skin down her back twitched. Rhys had a matching frown on his face as he scanned the road and watched the way they’d come.
 

The man had no weapon that she could see—though anything could be hidden in the jeep. He looked back up the road, toward
 
the village.
 

She keyed her throat mic and barely breathed her words. “Doc, this is Valkyrie. Sitrep, over.”

“Valkyrie,” Doc responded. “Something’s not right. Almost at location. No lights. And the smell.”

“The smell?”

“Smoke and…death. I don’t have a good feeling.”

“Sitrep when you reach location.”

“Copy that.”

“Valkyrie, out.”

She took a deep breath. Something was very wrong. But would it affect her fact finding? With no further information, someone had to check this guy out and it would have to be her. She gestured to Rhys to stay and he shook his head, grabbing her arm.
 

He gestured.
Not safe.

Show me.
Did he see something she didn’t?
 

His frustrated grimace told her everything. He had the same feeling she did: something was off. But they couldn’t just abort the mission because they had a bad feeling.
 

She shook his hand off and signaled for him to cross the road further down, to come up behind the man, while Cat approached from their position.

Rhys nodded and took off.

Cat waited, counting her breaths. A shadow flitted across the road in the distance. Even though she’d been looking for him, she’d barely seen Rhys. The man by the jeep didn’t change position. She gave Rhys another minute to get to his new location before she crouched down and leopard-crawled through the tall grass.

She moved silently, stalking the man, holding motionless whenever he glanced her way. Within moments, she was close enough to see the beads of sweat at his temples. Rhys should be in position now. She studied the man, trying to pinpoint what made her uneasy.
 

The intel said his name was Madu Okeke, a local school teacher who worked with resistance against the Boko Haram. He was the right height, and a thick scar ran down his left cheek—given to him by one of the group’s enthusiasts, according to the dossier Cat had been given. Based on the number of cigarette butts on the ground beside him, either he was a chain smoker or he was very nervous.

Cat stood up slowly about ten feet from him. “Madu,” she whispered. She kept her gaze on him, feeling too exposed on this road, glad that Rhys was close and had her back.
 

He started, lowering the cigarette. “You are American?” His whisper was too loud on this quiet night.

“Yes. Do you have information for me?”
 

“You’re a woman?” He frowned. “You’ve come alone?”

She didn’t let irritation shift her focus. “Do you have information for me?”
 

He stepped back and raised the hand with the cigarette.
 

Every one of Cat’s instincts went on high alert.

“I’m sorry,” Madu whispered. He flung the cigarette off to the far side of the jeep.

A signal.

Shadowed figures surged from the trees on the far side of the road, north of the jeep.

“Ambush,” she shouted, diving for Madu. He was their only link to the senator’s son. Bullets ripped through the night. Something heavy hit her on the side, taking her to the ground before she could reach Madu.

Rhys.

“What are you doing?” she yelled over the barrage of gunfire.
 

“Saving your life,” Rhys said. “You’re welcome.”

“Get the fuck off me,” she snarled. “Where’s Madu?”

Rhys had his rifle in his hands firing back at the men running toward them. “By the jeep.”

“Warn Doc and Spooky.” She ran to the man who’d signaled the start of the ambush.

“Valkyrie!”

She ignored Rhys and slid in beside Madu. He groaned when she grabbed his shoulder. “Where’s Dr. Hutchins?”
 

Madu moaned. He’d been shot in the chest—there was no saving him, she knew. She shook his shoulder. “Answer me.”

“I’m…sorry,” he said. “Took…my family…”

He stopped speaking and his head lolled.

“Fuck.”

“Valkyrie. Time to go,” Rhys said.

“Roger.” She pulled a surprise from a pocket on her webbing and threw it into the jeep. Then, she sprinted back to Rhys while he covered her, keeping the ambushers back until she dropped beside him.

Zach’s voice came over her earbud. “Valkyrie, we hear gunshots.”

“Enemy contact,” she said. “We need you. Our location.”

“On our way. Keep the party going.”

“Copy that.” She turned to Rhys. “Go. I’ll cover.”

He hesitated a fraction of a second too long.
 

“Now, sailor!”

“Roger.” He took off while she lay down, suppressing fire.
 

Twenty meters away, he dropped to a prone position and began shooting.

She sprinted to him, careful to stay out of his line of fire. She dropped and shot the tangos who’d almost made it to the jeep.
 

“Reloading,” Rhys shouted.
 

“Copy,” she said. She pressed her mic. “Doc. ETA.”

“One minute.” From Zach’s breathing she knew he was running full-out. “A truck. A dozen tangos. Incoming.”

Fuck. They had reinforcements.

“Copy that.” Rhys had finished reloading and was keeping the enemy back. They had superior firepower, but limited ammo. “Let them get to the jeep,” she told him.
 

He frowned, but stopped firing. The men scrambled up from where they’d been huddled on the ground and ran toward Cat and Rhys, screaming death.
 

“Valkyrie?” he asked.

“Three, two, one,” she said. An explosion rocked the jeep and thundered against their ears. A second explosion, louder than the first, lit the night with fire and shrapnel as the gas tank blew.
 

Rhys grinned at her. She grinned back.
 

“We’re on your six, Valkyrie,” Doc’s voice said in her ear. “Looks like you’re having fun, but company’s on its way.”
 

“Party’s over,” she said. “Provide cover, Doc.”

“Roger that.”

She and Rhys stood and raced for the trees, where Marc and Zach waited shooting at their pursuers. The truck couldn’t follow them into the trees. She signaled for silence, and they ran north and west. Their NVGs allowed them to dodge trees and brush, and to see their pursuers stumbling in the dark with just a few flashlights.
 

It wasn’t long before they’d lost all pursuers. The team slowed but still continued to jog as they made their way north. With the slower pace, they each caught their breath and sipped water as they ran. When they’d put five kilometers between them and the last sighting of the enemy, Cat let them rest.
 

“So what the fuck?” Marc asked, after sucking hard on the hydration tube attached to his ruck.
 

Cat scowled. “It was a trap. The asset was compromised.”

“Did you get any information?” Marc asked.
 

“No,” she forced herself not to look at Rhys. “He was shot before he could tell us anything. What about the village? Anything?”

“It was a fucking slaughterhouse,” Marc said.
 

“What?”
 

“The village is gone,” Zach said softly. “If anyone survived they’ve run off.”

“Tell me more.”

Zach looked at his feet and swallowed. “It was…”

“It was a massacre,” Marc said bitterly. “Mostly men and old women…and kids, all shot or hacked. The houses burned.”

She looked at Zach. “Women and girls?”

Zach nodded. “From what we saw, it looks like they took them.”

Fuck. She turned away to try to control her rage at the thought of what had happened to those innocent people, the families destroyed, and what the women and girls taken were going through right now. And she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
 

She swung back. Rhys stood next to her, his hand outstretched as if he had been about to pat her back. Did he think she needed comfort? She scowled at him and stepped away.
 

“We’ll add it to the report when we get back.” She brought out her GPS and oriented herself. “Time for a ruck march, boys.”

The Griffon helicopter circled the roof of the E.D.G.E. building in Montreal. Cat could see Blackwell waiting for them on the roof. This would not be good. Neither she nor Rhys had spoken much since they’d made the exfil yesterday. They’d been flying almost nonstop to get back to Montreal. Usually after a mission the team would be rowdy, ribbing each other, and after cleaning their gear, they’d head to the operator’s lounge for a quick debrief and beer.
 

Instead, her team sat silent and sullen. The simple mission that should have built camaraderie with their newest member had instead splintered the unit. She needed to get a handle on this fast or she’d be pulled as leader—and maybe even from E.D.G.E. itself.
 

That wasn’t an option. She grit her teeth. She would make this work. Somehow.

As soon as the chopper landed, before the rotors had even started to slow, she jumped off with a wave to the crew chief and went to meet Lieutenant Colonel Blackwell, whose dark eyes scoured her. He jerked his head behind him, indicating she should follow. He turned without a word and strode inside.
 

Cat handed her rifle to Zach before following him to E.D.G.E.’s private elevator, where there was no chance of a civilian seeing her in her BDUs, and down to his office. He didn’t say a word or in any way indicate what he was thinking. Blackwell was stone faced at the best of times, but somehow this was worse. Inside his office, he sat behind his desk and she came to attention. She stared at a spot over his head and waited.

He let her stew in the silence for a moment. “At ease, Captain,” he said. “Report.”
 

She relaxed her stance, placed her hands behind her back, and told him what had happened without any excuses.
 

“What went wrong?” Blackwell asked. “How did the asset get killed?”

“I failed to protect him from the militants, sir.”

“I’m sure you did your best, Valkyrie.”

She could just leave it at that, but she felt she needed to own the whole debacle. “Sir, I think we could have saved the asset and gotten information if I’d been a better leader.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “How so?”

“I let Petty Officer Lafayette get distracted, sir.”

“Distracted? By what?”

Her muscles tensed as she decided how to answer this, and then went with the truth. She sighed. “By protecting me, sir.”

“Explain.”

She shrugged. “He obviously hasn’t worked with women in such situations, sir.”

“That shouldn’t compromise his training, Captain.” He sighed. “Do you think you can handle him?”

Her hands curled into fists behind her back. This was her challenge to overcome.
 

“Yes, sir. I’ll work with him.”

“You realize as soon as we have more information we’ll need to send a team back to rescue Dr. Hutchins. Should I brief Bravo team?”

“No, sir,” she said. “I can handle this. My team will be ready.”

Someone coughed behind her. “Excuse me, sir. May I say something?”

Cat stiffened. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rhys stand at attention beside her. What was he doing here? Had he come to report on her? Shit. Maybe she should have left him back in Nigeria.

“At ease. Both of you,” Blackwell said with a sigh. “Tell me, Petty Officer Lafayette, what happened on this mission. Why was the asset killed?”

Cat waited for Rhys to throw her under the bus. It’s what any number of soldiers had done in similar situations. It hadn’t happened as often once she’d made it into special operations, and not at all at E.D.G.E., but it was a pattern she was used to. Some men just couldn’t handle a woman on their team, and they made their issues her problem—one she had to figure out in order to make things work. Was Rhys one of those men?

“It was completely my fault, sir,” Rhys said. “I take full responsibility.”

“What happened?” Blackwell growled.

Rhys hesitated. “Captain Richards is right. I haven’t worked with women before. I need to adjust my thinking. I let my doubts get in the way of the mission.”

Blackwell waited a long moment before speaking. “I’m very disappointed. The captain is a valued member of E.D.G.E. You need to remember that, or this might not be the place for you. I’d hate to think we made a mistake recruiting you. Dismissed.”
 

“Sir.” Rhys caught Cat’s gaze. She could read the concern there and frowned at him. She didn’t need his protection. He turned and left the room.

“Valkyrie,” Blackwell said. “You are an excellent operator. I believe you can also be an excellent leader, but I need you to get a grip on your team. If you can’t handle them, then I’ll find someone who can.”

The rest of the team waited in the staging room.
 

Cat dumped her gear before snagging a chair at the long table. She disassembled her rifle alongside the others, bending her head over it as she cleaned the barrel. Zach and Marc spoke quietly about their plans for the night.

She lost herself in the intricacy of the detailed cleaning, inspecting each piece before rubbing it down with gun oil and cloths. The work soothed her, and she let her mind wander.

“I’m sorry.”

Cat looked up. Zach and Marc had left and Rhys sat across from her, his rifle in one piece, his cleaning complete. She cocked her head. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

Like her, he’d stripped off the outer layer of his BDUs and sat in an olive green t-shirt. His biceps flexed when he ran his hand through his overly long, sandy-blond hair.