No Woman Left Behind (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I rubbed the back of my neck to work out the knots. “So, what language do they speak in the Central Republic of Africa? What if I can’t communicate with this elder?”

“The national languages are French and Sango,” Wills said. “I speak French, so I can help out as necessary. However, we’ll take a recording device to capture whatever he says, just in case.”

“Good idea.”

After another intense fifteen minutes of operational planning, the group split up. Hands took the SEAL team members who would be part of tonight’s actual operation for a mock run-through of the operation using a couple of empty barracks on the base. Gray and Captain Bischoff went to brief the CIA and NSA. Two SEAL guys, Jimbo and Boots, and a young guy with Naval Intelligence named Jason, stayed behind. Their responsibility was to prepare me for the jump, show me how to use the equipment, and to give me a final intelligence briefing.

Before we got started, we decided to hunt down the source of the bad smell we’d been enduring. Jimbo found it right beneath my chair.

“It looks like the fox took a crap under your chair,” he said.

I peered under my chair. “What?”

Boots handed him a plastic bag and Jimbo scooped up the poop, tying the plastic bag at the top. “That’s one weird animal.”

“Why did he do it under my chair?”

“True love, I guess. Or he’s marking you.” Jimbo laughed.

“Very funny. Ugh.”

After the bag had been disposed of and I put the fox out of my mind, we sat and got down to the serious business of war.

Unfortunately we started with the jump.

“You’ll be safely strapped to your partner for the jump,” Jimbo said to me. “So, you’ve really got little to do except hang on. Okay?”

I swallowed. “What if we get separated? I won’t have my own parachute, right?”

“You won’t get separated. No way. We’ll check, double-check and triple-check the lines. You’re the asset, so I guarantee you’ll be the safest one in the operation. Understood?”

“Intellectually, yes.”

“This is how it goes down. The teams will get a six-minute call. That means you have six minutes until jump. The pilot will open the ramp. You’ll line up with your partner. When the yellow light goes on, you’ll get the order to hang. That means you and your partner must get into position. The best position is with your toes hanging off the ramp so you don’t hit your shins on the way out. You will get the green signal to go and you’ll jump. That’s it. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.”

I stood up. “I have to use the restroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I found the bathroom and sat on the toilet lid, trying to calm my racing heart. I couldn’t do this. I knew myself. I couldn’t jump. The plan would be ruined and Elvis would die. All because my heart would stop the second I stepped out into space. I’d be dead weight—literally—and the plan would have to be aborted. Game over, just like that.

I cradled my face in my hands. I was a geek not Rambo. Yet somehow, some way, I’d have to find the strength to rise to the occasion. After all, history was littered with people who were ordinary until called upon to do something extraordinary. They somehow got past their fears and made a difference. I could do it, too, if only they were asking me to do anything other than jump out of a plane.

After a few minutes, I stood, splashed water on my face and returned to the conference room. Jimbo and Boots had spread out the equipment I was going to use.

“These are the pants you’ll wear,” Boots said, holding up a pair of dark blue cargo pants with small pockets up and down each leg. “Unlike the SEALs, you’ll be carrying only a few items. The pocket on your lower right thigh will have two hundred dollars in cash. Use it as a bribe or for whatever you may need if you become separated from the group. Remember, American dollars will go a long way in Africa.”

I nodded, figuring if I got separated from the group I’d be toast, but I appreciated the vote of confidence.

“These other pockets will hold a couple of power bars, energy gels, a tourniquet, a mini recorder and a small medical kit. You’ll have a belt to make sure those pants stay on. There will be a few more items that will attach to your belt, but I’ll talk about them later.”

He set down the pants and picked up something else. “This is your jacket. It’s water resistant and warm. On top of that, you’ll wear this.” He held up a vest. “These are bulletproof plates on a vest. It may be a little large for you, but it’s the smallest one we’ve got. It’s surprisingly lightweight and flexible, so it shouldn’t hamper your movement too much.”

“Will it stop a sniper rifle?”

“A sniper the caliber of Pentz?”

“Yes.”

“Unfortunately no. But let’s try it on now so we can tighten it and you can get the feel of it. Okay?”

I held out my arms and Jimbo and Boots put it on, adjusting some of the straps until it fit snugly. It was too big for me, but it wasn’t as heavy as I expected. After walking around in it, I was confident I could manage it. Especially since the alternative was going without.

We spent a lot of time discussing and playing with the super expensive hi-tech night vision goggles. My stress level went way down as I adjusted them and figured out all of the controls. After that we moved on to the communications gear attached to my helmet until I was confident I understood how to use it and when I was supposed to say something.

“By the way, your call name will be Alpha Star,” Jimbo said.

“Alpha
Star
? Really?”

He grinned. “You’re the asset, remember?”

“Right.” It was a lot of information thrown at me at once, but I didn’t have time for a full-fledged SEAL course—not that I would have survived one—so this would have to do.

Boots picked up a gun from the table and held it out to me. “Ever used one of these?”

“Not exactly. My boyfriend gave me a 9mm for Christmas, but I’ve only had time for a couple of lessons.”

“You’ve got a smart boyfriend.”

“You have no idea. Anyway, he says trouble follows me like a stalker. Given the situation I’m currently in, he has a point.”

Jimbo laughed. “I’d say that’s the understatement of the century. Well, I’m glad you’ve at least got some idea of what to do with a gun. That’s a start. This is a SIG Sauer pistol. Let’s practice going over the procedure for loading and firing it. You’re not expected to have to draw or use it during the mission, but we aren’t sending you in unarmed.”

When we finished the weapons training, Jason, the naval intelligence analyst, had his turn with me. He handed me a small laptop in a special carry case.

“We don’t know how Broodryk will play this, but in case you need a keyboard, it’s all here. It’s got nothing sensitive on it. If you have to, you can leave it behind. We’ve got a program to wipe it remotely, but if you want to shoot it up, you can do that, too.”

I couldn’t
ever
imagine shooting a computer, but we do what we have to in the name of national security. He gave me a final rundown of what we might expect Broodryk to do and how they would be tracing any wireless signals coming out of a forty-kilometer radius.

“If he’s watching in real-time, we’ll find him,” Jason said confidently. “We’ll lock on the coordinates.”

“I can’t imagine he’d be that stupid, but never say never.”

I looked up as Gray walked into the conference room. “We’ve been ordered to catch a few hours of sleep before we muster,” she said. “You finished here?”

I glanced at Jason, who nodded. “You’re good to go unless you have any questions.”

“Nope.” I shook my head and stood, stretching. My nerves were jangling so much I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep a wink, but I definitely needed some fresh air and distance from the testosterone.

“They just threw a hell of a lot of information at you,” Gray said as we headed back to the barracks. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Lexi?”

I sighed. “Probably not. There are so many variables to this operation that calculating a success percentage rate is impossible.”

She sighed. “Cyber terrorism. The new frontier.”

“I wish that’s where Broodryk would have kept it. But he wants me out of my element, so here I go. It’s so far beyond my comfort zone it’s comical, except it’s not.”

“He wants a show. Cyber terrorism isn’t flashy enough. No one would understand a damn thing you two would do. It’s too complicated. But guns, death, torture and kidnapping, now those are things every psychopath can get behind.”

“Lucky me.”

“Just keep in mind that the SEALs are a team—a unit. You have to figure out how to be part of that team and not just the asset if you want to succeed. You guys need each other. Everyone has a vital role. You can’t be a loner in this, Lexi. You have to trust them and they have to trust you.”

“That’s going to be hard when Hands thinks he’s babysitting me.”

“You’ll have to change his mind about that.”

“How? I’m a total klutz who is afraid of heights and spiders. Even worse, I might be a danger to all of them and myself with a loaded weapon in my hand.”

She smiled and patted my arm. “Just be a team player. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it and offer assistance when you can. That’s what it means to be on a team. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

There wasn’t much more she could say, so we grabbed our stuff and hit the showers. When we returned, we stripped down to our T-shirts and undies. It was hotter than hell despite the supposed air conditioning unit. The oversized fan they had put in our room didn’t help much either.

Although certain I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink, I passed out the moment my head hit the pillow. Given my anxiety and the overload of information my brain was processing, it was no surprise that I dreamed—and dreamed big.

I stood alone in the middle of the desert. My heart was pounding as if I’d just run a mile at full dash. I turned slowly in a circle, looking for something, all the while knowing that although I couldn’t see anything but shimmering sand,
it
was out there stalking me.

I froze in fear. Where the hell was it? The sun was blinding me. I couldn’t see a freaking thing. Then I felt it. It swiped my cheek with its hairy, spindly, arachnoid leg.

A desert spider!

I wasn’t dreaming anymore. The alarms in my head clanged, waking me with fierce insistence. When I came to full consciousness, it was in panic mode with adrenaline pumping like crazy through my veins.

I pushed the spider off my face and promptly fell out of the bottom bunk, my legs tangled in the sheets. I didn’t have far to fall, but the momentum knocked the breath out of me, leaving me unable to scream for help.

I heard something scuttle away, so I groped along the floor for a weapon and found my boot. I threw it in the direction of the noise, but it landed somewhere on my bed with a quiet thump. I debated going for my gun, which was currently next to my backpack on the table, but it was in the opposite direction from the door and I didn’t want to shoot Gray by accident.

Whimpering, I crawled to the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar. I pulled it open and stepped into the living room, trying to calm my racing heart so I didn’t pass out.

When I heard a clicking sound on the floor behind me, I dashed for the safety of the living room half bath and flung open the door.

Shocked I saw Gray, minus her T-shirt, sitting on the sink with her legs wrapped around Hands’s waist as she kissed him. The SEAL was completely naked and braced against her.

Gray saw me first, her eyes opening so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. She pushed at Hands’s shoulders. He stepped back, our eyes meeting in a moment of uncomfortable clarity. If certain death in the form of a desert spider wasn’t waiting back in my room, I’d have hightailed it back there. Technically, that might have been the better option. As it was, I might well have been facing certain death standing by the bathroom. The murderous expression on Hands’s face darkened to purple when Gray buried her face in her hands in mortification.

At that exact moment, something furry brushed against the back of my leg. I gave a gurgled shriek and stumbled forward, promptly tripping over the doorsill. I stretched my hands out to grab something to keep me from hitting the floor.

Too late, I realized what I had seized. Even though I let go quickly, Hands screamed like a girl and went down hard with me.

As we made impact with the bathroom floor, something furry squished beneath my right hip.

The spider had followed me in the bathroom!

“AAAAAAAGH,” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hands rolled sideways, clutching his privates as Wills and Hulk skidded to a stop at the bathroom door, guns drawn.

“What the hell—” Wills said, looking between me, Hands and Gray. “What’s going on here?”

Hands staggered to his feet, still holding his package. “Lexi tried to unman me.”

I crawled away, coming to my feet next to Gray at the sink who stood covering her bare breasts with her hands. “That’s not an accurate description of the situation. It was an accident. I had no idea you and Gray were even in here...together. I would have knocked, but I was just trying to get away from a spider.”

“A what?” Hands growled.

I pointed over Hands’s shoulder. “Spider. Big. On the floor behind you. I just fell on it.”

Wills looked confused. “This is about a spider?”

“Yes. There.”

Wills and Hulk crowded into the bathroom next to Hands who turned around. Both men still had their guns at the ready. I couldn’t see the spider, but I didn’t have to. My imagination filled in any blanks.

There was a moment of complete silence as the men stared at the floor.

“Holy crap,” Hands finally said. “Is that what I think it is?”

Wills nodded. “Yep.”

I didn’t understand why they were standing around looking at it. “I told you it was monstrous. Kill it now. Make sure it’s dead.”

Hands gave me an incredulous look over his shoulder. “You thought this was a spider?”

“On. My. Face.” I pointed to emphasize the significance. “While I was sleeping. It was big enough to potentially suffocate me and possibly poisonous to boot.”

Gray tiptoed over to Hands and peered between him and Hulk to see what was on the floor. She turned around to stare at me, her eyes wide.

“Oh, no.”

Unfortunately my brain chose that moment to unfreeze from its primal fear lock. I realized, with ill-timed lucidity, the absurdity of the situation. There were five adults smashed into a small bathroom. Hands was stark naked. I was dressed in only a T-shirt and panties. Gray had picked up her T-shirt and slipped it on, but she, like me, wore nothing else but panties. The two other guys were in their boxers only. We hardly knew each other, but here we were up close and personal.

Gray sighed. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

Her hair was completely messed up and her cheeks were bright red. It was embarrassingly obvious to all what she and Hands had been doing in the bathroom, especially when she tossed him his underwear.

Hands gingerly pulled on the underwear. He glared at me. “What exactly happened, Keys?”

“I told you. I felt something on my face while I was sleeping.” I shuddered. “A spider like the one we saw earlier.”

“It wasn’t a spider.”

“It felt like a spider.”

Hands, Wills and Hulk stepped out of the bathroom, and I saw my attacker at last.

Fennie.

The fox lay on its side, stiller than a desert night without a breeze.

“Fennie?” My eyes widened in astonishment. “What’s that fox doing here?”

Wills looked up at me. “Not much now. It’s dead.”

“What?”

Wills put a finger to the fox’s throat. “I don’t feel a pulse.”

Hands smacked a hand to his forehead. “So, on the night before the big mission, the asset attempts to disable the team leader, then kills the Captain’s beloved fox. There’s a couple of operational aspects we didn’t anticipate.”

I shook my head violently. “No, this is all a mistake. I thought it was a spider.”

Hands’s glare intensified. “Do I need to remind you that you’re on
our
side?”

“This is all a terrible misunderstanding.”

“Apparently you fell on Fennie,” Wills said. “Squished him flat as a pancake. Maybe that’s what was on your face and you just imagined it was a spider.”

I started to hyperventilate again. “Oh, God. This can’t be happening. I knew that fox had it in for me. It pooped under
my
chair. Why was Fennie in my bedroom in the first place?”

Gray sighed. “I bet it was the beef jerky in our packs. Mine was partially eaten.”

“How did he even get in here?”

“Good question,” Hulk said. “How
did
it get in?”

Wills walked over to the door. It was ajar. “Who was out last?”

Gray closed her eyes and raised a hand. “Damn it. I’m sorry. It must have been me. I couldn’t fall asleep so I went swimming. I was trying to come in quietly but I ran into him.” She inclined her head toward Hands. “He had just come in from a debrief on potential sniper locations and we, ah, got distracted and...” She cleared her throat and looked away.

We all knew what came next. Could this situation get any more awkward?

Wills closed the front door while Hands knelt next to the fox.

“So, boss, what are we going to do?” Hulk asked him.

Hands lifted his head and looked pointedly at me. “Protect the asset. It’s all about the mission.”

Wills whistled. “Dude, you’re going to do a run around on the Captain?”

“You got a better idea?”

I crossed my arms. “I’m sorry. I had no idea, I swear.” I stared at the fox, feeling worse by the minute. I hadn’t meant to kill it, but accidents happened. They just happened to me a lot more often than seemed fair by life’s standards.

Hands picked the limp fox up by the tail. He was starting toward the door when I scrambled to my feet and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to dispose of the evidence.”

“You can’t just dispose of it. You’ve got to tell the captain.”

“We leave in just over one hour for a complex operation. I’d prefer not to have him distracted. Or you, for that matter.”

“You can’t do this alone. I’m coming with you.”

“What?”

“I killed it—Fennie—by accident, of course. But he’s dead because of me. I can’t let you just dispose of it. It’s not right. Please.”

Hands blew out a breath. “You’ve got fifteen seconds to get a pair of pants on.”

“What about you?”

“What you see is what you get. I’m not really feeling like putting on pants at the moment.”

I winced, remembering how hard I’d grabbed his privates. “Right. Sorry about that. It looked like a handle in my peripheral vision.”

He growled, so I dashed back to the room and grabbed a pair of camouflage pants, shoving my legs in. I would have stopped to put on my boots, but I was afraid he’d leave without me, so I ran back barefoot while zipping my pants. Wills tossed a flashlight to Hands. He caught it one-handed while standing by the door, still in his underwear, holding the fox by the tail.

“Let’s go, Keys.”

We strode out into the night. There was absolutely no wind, but the moon was bright, lighting our way. The ground heated my bare feet. I tried not to think of the spiders that might be out there waiting to bite my toes. I had to run to keep up with Hands and his long strides, even though at five feet eleven inches I’ve got pretty long legs.

“Don’t we need a shovel?” I asked him.

“I’ll find a sandy spot.”

“Don’t you worry someone will see you in your underwear?”

“Time is of the essence and we’re just going here behind the barracks.” He slid a sideways glance at me. “Besides, no need to be embarrassed. You’ve now seen me naked.”

I tried to make things right. “Look, Hands, I apologize for interrupting you and Gray, then grabbing your penis. It was an instinctive reflex as I fell. I guess it hurt.”

“You think?”

My attempt at smoothing things over was not working. Plus, my feet were hot and I was really concerned about stepping on a spider in the dark. I wished Hands would let me carry the flashlight, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to ask him, given that he didn’t seem in a very agreeable mood.

Hands stopped at a sandy spot behind the barracks. “So, Keys, you want to know why they really call me Hands?”

“Because you’re a good sniper?”

“That’s not all I can do with my hands.”

“Oh. You’re making a reference to your sexual prowess.”

“No, I meant I am licensed to kill with these hands.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“If we weren’t on the eve of one of the most important missions of my career and I weren’t so damn mad at you, I’d actually think that was funny. You’re a danger to all of us. You have no idea how risky this mission is and the focus we need to have to complete it. This is not a good start. You can’t screw us up or we’re all dead.”

“Look, I know you think I’m incapable. But I
can
complete the mission. You have to believe me.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then sighed. “Well, now that I think about it, you single-handedly—pun intended—took me out of action in more ways than one
and
killed the commander’s beloved pet at the same time. That’s pretty impressive. You might yet make a decent SEAL.”

“Sailor?”

Hands spun me around so quickly I nearly fell down. He stood partially behind me, the fox hidden between our bodies.

I stiffened in surprise. “C-Captain Bischoff? How...nice to see you.”