Hot Intent (Hqn) (13 page)

She reluctantly conceded that his logic might be sound. But still, it rankled with her. She grabbed a spade and started shoveling beside him.

It took a solid hour of both of them digging to make a trench big and deep enough to lay the two bodies in. Alex searched the dead men briefly. He showed her their wallets, neither of which contained any kind of military ID.

Okay, fine. So his belt theory had turned out to be accurate. Still, it was a hell of a flimsy excuse for killing a man.

He tossed the wallets back on top of the corpses and took a pocketknife, the shotgun one of them had been carrying and a pouch full of shotgun shells. He started to shovel earth over the corpses.

She murmured a brief prayer for the dead men’s souls and then picked up her spade. Covering the bodies went fast. They tamped down the dirt and Alex spread dead grass and debris on top of the spot. By the time he was done, nobody would ever guess two men were buried there.

“Satisfied?” she asked grimly.

“We’re good to go. Let’s see if we can find the Zacara factory and figure out what the hell’s going on around here.”

*

A
LEX
WISHED
THEY
’
D
been able to take the moped as they walked through the iron gate and turned onto the main road headed north. But stealth was called for over speed in approaching the factory. And if his map was accurate, the Zacara plant was only about a mile away.

He shouldered the backpack, registering with shock a faint tremor in his hands. He was a surgeon, for Christ’s sake. His hands were steady under the worst of stressful conditions.

It wasn’t like he’d never killed before. The CIA had taken care of that in his advanced training. But waking up to see a terrified Katie wielding a pistol...to glimpse an armed man approaching her position...a criminal who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her—that had scared the living hell out of him.

He swore mentally. It was an experience he could do without repeating again. Ever.

The actual killing didn’t faze him anymore. He’d long ago accepted that he was a tool. If he didn’t kill a target he’d been sent to eliminate, someone else would be sent to do the job. The decision of whether or not a person lived was not his. It was, literally, above his pay grade.

If he ever attained enough rank to be in a position to give kill orders, then he could wrestle with his conscience to his heart’s content. But not now. The CIA went to great lengths to make its wet ops people understand this distinction. To teach them the mantra: No guilt. Make the kill and move on.

In this particular situation, his orders were clear. Stay alive. Find out what was being smuggled in or out. Once they knew, get out. And in his best judgment, staying alive had required shooting those two men.

Was he relieved to find no military IDs in their wallets? Hell, yes. But would he still have shot them even if they’d actually been soldiers? Absolutely. They posed a threat to the mission—and, furthermore, to Katie—therefore, they must be eliminated.

Katie had accused him of not reacting to shooting the looters. She was right that he’d felt nothing much about the actual act. What she was missing was the cold, hard terror that had provoked him to kill in the first place. For her. Without thought, without hesitation.

What was this willingness to do anything for another person? Was it love? The idea exploded inside his head, filling his entire brain with disbelief.

If so, it was a hell of a way to find out you loved a person. Somehow, he doubted Katie would be thrilled.
Oh, baby, I love you so much I’ll kill for you.
Nope. Not her idea of Prince Charming and happily ever after.

It damned well rocked his world, though. Had his father felt this for him? An unflinching willingness to kill for his son? Had the boy Alex just been too young and too naive to realize that, in his own way, Peter had loved him fiercely?

Katie hiked beside him for a few minutes. She broke the silence with, “Tell me again why we zoomed off to Baracoa with Oscar?”

His defenses went on full alert. Must evade this line of questioning. He answered casually, “The boy needed someone to take care of him. I know you. Had we not delivered him to his grandmother, you’d have insisted on hauling him around with us.”

“And?”

He winced. She knew there was more to it than that, dammit. “And we needed supplies for properly collecting and storing samples that might come under intense international scrutiny at some point.”

“What kind of supplies?”

“Sterile bags and test tubes that can be sealed in such a way that the seals must be destroyed to open the samples.”

“Because if there’s sarin in the samples, the United States is going to go crazy,” she declared.

“Exactly.”

“Why else?”

He pretended to concentrate on scanning the deserted countryside in hopes that she would get distracted and move on.

“Why else did you go to Baracoa?” she pressed.

Nope. She was not going to be distracted today. “I needed time to think,” he tried.

Expectant silence came from beside him.

He sighed. “As you no doubt noticed, my father called. I don’t know how, but he got wind of what we were going to find when we came up here. He called to check up on me. To see if I found any...unusual...deaths.”

“How did he know about those?” Katie exclaimed.

“I assume the Cubans told him. Or he’s got a mole in the Cuban government who slipped him the information.”

“Okay, so the Cubans know there was a chemical spill out here. How do they know that?”

He shrugged. “Satellite imagery, maybe. Or a local observer has reported in to Havana. Or there’s a military presence in this area.”

“Wouldn’t the military try to evacuate the locals if there was a chemical incident?”

He answered grimly, “Not if their orders were only to protect the chemicals or to hide the evidence of their existence.”

Katie stumbled a little. “If that’s so, then we’re in serious danger. And maybe those were real soldiers back there.”

And she’d made the leap of logic he’d been hoping to avoid her taking. Dammit.

“Is
that
why you shot them?” Katie demanded abruptly. “They were doing a cleanup job and would have taken us out?”

He ground out in a moment of bald honesty, “I killed them so they wouldn’t kill you.” Yes, there were myriad other reasons for a preemptive strike on those two men. But at the end of the day, he’d killed to protect her.

Katie was silent. At long last, she murmured slowly, “I guess I can live with that.”

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She might not fully understand, but at least she accepted what he’d done. Sometimes, he was grateful she’d grown up in a family full of warriors. There were some things the uninitiated just didn’t get about men like him or her father and brothers.

He paused and turned to face her. “I would never kill anyone if I did not deem it absolutely necessary. Can you believe me?”

She stared up at him doubtfully for a moment and then exhaled hard. “Yes. Of course I believe you.”

He swept her into his arms and kissed her deeply. Her arms looped around his neck and her lithe body stretched against his deliciously. If they weren’t seriously pressed for time, he would lay her down right here and now and lose himself in her body.

“God, I’m addicted to you,” he groaned against her sweet mouth.

“Good thing,” she murmured back. “I’m totally addicted to you, too.”

Something possessive and primitive surged up inside him. He needed to make this woman his and never let her forget it. He contemplated throwing caution to the wind, stripping her clothes off her and having his way with her.

“We’d better go.” She sighed regretfully. “Work first. Play later. Isn’t that what you always say?”

He swore under his breath, and she laughed lightly. “Just promise me that someday you’ll truly cut loose with me.”

“Ahh, Katie. You know not what you ask.”

“Show me?” she replied hopefully.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His entire being was galvanized by the notion of losing all control with her. Of turning loose the beast within completely. God, it was tempting. As if his current corner of hell wasn’t tortuous enough. If he destroyed her innocence, there wouldn’t be a pit of fire anywhere in hell deep or hot enough for him.

The scattered ruins of farms began to cluster more tightly together, and they approached an abandoned village. It was right on the coast and they had to circle wide around the clustered houses to avoid the standing water and mud that filled the main street and hulls of buildings.

“Where did all the people go?” Katie asked reflectively.

“They had plenty of advance warning that Giselle was coming. They went across the island to stay with friends or relatives or to shelters inland.”

“I thought most of Cuba inland was impassable jungle.”

“The mountainous terrain is the problem. The jungle itself isn’t that bad,” he commented.

“You’ve seen it, personally?” she asked sharply.

“Not on the approved conversation list, Katie.” To soften the sting of that, he added, “Any online satellite map of the island will show you what I’m talking about.”

He angled their steps back to the main coastal road. The silence of the place was eerie. There were no cars, no people, no birds, nothing to disturb the quiet swish and roar of the ocean. Even the trees that normally would have rustled in the breeze were mostly destroyed.

That was why the sound of an engine in the distance made him grab Katie’s arm, drag her off the road and frantically pull dead palm fronds over them.

A military jeep rumbled past with four armed soldiers seated in it. It retreated from view, and in the ensuing silence, Katie grumbled, “Fine. They had belts.”

The corner of his mouth curved up slightly.

“Now what?” she murmured.

“If my map is correct, the Zacara factory should be just around that bend in the road ahead.” A rocky bluff jutted out into the surf, and the coastal road wrapped around its base to disappear from sight.

“Let me guess,” she said dryly. “We get to go over the hill and not around it.”

“You’re learning, grasshopper.”

By his standards, the hike was a walk in the park. No one was hunting him, the temperature was reasonable and he only had a quarter mile or so to go. After his arctic-, desert-and jungle-combat survival and evasion training, this was child’s play.

He led the way at a moderate pace, seeking the easiest route for Katie and pausing often to let her catch her breath. She’d obviously been working out hard while he was gone, for she was significantly stronger than the last time they had to hike a long distance. When they got out of Cuba, he’d love to test the limits of that new strength and endurance in bed with her.

Finally, the factory came into view below. It was a sprawling collection of big, industrial buildings with block walls. Here and there, the roofing material was peeled back to reveal steel I-beams. That was pretty sturdy construction for a simple cleaning supply facility.

The big, circular tanks he’d expected, and which no doubt held the raw chemical ingredients of the products Zacara produced, stood in rows on a big platform on the landward side of the largest building. One was tipped over, lying on the ground below the others. From here, he couldn’t see if any of the other tanks were damaged. All of them appeared rusted to one degree or another. The combination of metal tanks and salt air was a sure recipe for corrosion. It lent credence to an innocent explanation for the chemical poisoning deaths he’d observed. Lord, he hoped it was as simple as an unfortunate chemical spill caused by crappy storage tanks and a hurricane.

He hunkered down to watch the plant and was surprised by the lack of movement. If this was, indeed, ground zero for a secret chemical weapons facility, he would have expected soldiers to be milling around or at least patrolling periodically.

“Looks deserted,” Katie commented as the shadows lengthened around them. The ocean began to calm beyond the factory.

“It’s too deserted,” he replied.

“Like a trap? Why would someone set a trap way out here? Who would they expect to catch? No international aid groups are allowed near here. From what I can tell, the Cuban authorities themselves have yet to reach this area after the hurricane.”

“We should wait till dark. An ounce of caution is worth a pound of cure.”

“Learn that at Harvard?” she retorted.

“My father used to say it. He wasn’t wrong about everything, you know.”

That silenced little Miss Mom and Apple Pie. She still struggled to wrap her brain around a world where Uncle Sam wasn’t only a short step down from holy. He sighed. Uncle Sam was his employer now. He supposed he was obliged to show a little loyalty to the Stars and Stripes.

Katie muttered, “We’ve been here all afternoon. If someone were patrolling the area, we’d have seen them by now. My guess is the soldiers or workers who would normally be here have been sent out into the countryside to help the locals. I say we go down there, get whatever samples you want and get the heck out of Dodge. It’s going to get pitch-black out here and we’ll miss something important if we wait any longer.”

He sighed. “Fine. Pass me the bag.” She did so, and he pulled out what he’d spent nearly twenty-four hours straight performing surgery in Baracoa for. A small, handheld sensor that was preprogrammed to sniff for various chemicals in the air. Civil defense agencies all over the world had them. The physician in charge of the Baracoa emergency room had been reluctant to lend this one out but hadn’t been able to pass up the services of a top-notch trauma surgeon in return for it.

They had moved him from patient to patient to perform the difficult portions of a dozen surgeries, while another surgeon opened and closed for him. He’d never done so much work so fast in his life. It was assembly-line medicine at its best. However, they’d completely cleared out every surgical case in the entire hospital. He’d even performed a simple coronary bypass and repaired a hernia before it was all said and done.