Retribution (SSU Trilogy Book 3) (The Surgical Strike Unit) (34 page)

He smirked. “You’ll never find them in time.”

Rafe thought back to the attack on Susana Dias’s archaeological dig. The mission had been simple. Grab Susana Dias. Having been on the flight down to Brazil, Rafe knew the scientists on board had possessed enough chemicals to keep the men under tight mind control. Yet the men had somehow broken free. After dropping Rafe at his observation post near the dig, the men had killed their handlers, then returned to the dig the next night and used napalm to obliterate the site. They’d almost killed Kai and Susana.

No one knew why the men had attacked the site or what caused them to break free of the mind control. Rafe shuddered. He didn’t want to think about how much more damage a larger group of Kaufmann’s subjects could do if they raged out of control.

“Where is the attack taking place?” Rafe demanded.

Kaufmann shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t given their exact destination.”

“Bullshit.” Even Level 1 subjects were never sent off on a mission unsupervised. Kaufmann would have given the destination to the team’s handler.

Kaufmann gasped at another wave of pain. His eyes watered. “Please. Help me.”

As Rafe listened to those words a very strange thing happened. Kaufmann had been a trigger for fear and hatred since the moment Rafe had been captured. An all-powerful master. But now, as he watched Kaufmann suffer, Rafe saw him as just a man. A man with insane ideas and a total lack of compassion. A man who could be hurt. Who could be…no
was
…defeated.

“You’re not done talking yet,” Rafe informed Kaufmann. He motioned over two of his men. “Take him out of here. I want him in an isolated medical unit back at headquarters. And make sure Douglas is on hand to interrogate him.” Douglas possessed an uncanny ability to get information from prisoners without resorting to torture.

“Yes, sir.”

When they led Kaufmann away, Rafe felt a weight lift from his chest. For the first time since his capture he felt in control. As if he truly had his life back.

Across the cavern, Niko stepped out of the cellblock corridor carrying the front end of a stretcher that held one of Kaufmann’s subjects. The tight, angry expression on Niko’s face promised murder if he got within striking distance of Kaufmann. Luckily, the path Niko took with the stretcher led in the opposite direction from where Rafe’s men were escorting Kaufmann away.

After he’d placed the stretcher next to the line of other victims, Niko remained kneeling on the ground, head bowed. Then his fist slammed onto the tarmac.

Christ. Rafe started toward his brother. He hadn’t wanted Niko to see the cells where he’d been held. He’d wanted to spare his brother that pain. As he drew near, Niko climbed wearily to his feet and turned around.

The agony in Niko’s eyes threatened to undo Rafe’s veneer of calm. He cleared his throat. “So…” Rafe glanced toward the door to the cellblock. Felt shame tighten his throat.

“God damn, I don’t know how the hell you survived,” Niko said in Greek. His arms engulfed Rafe in a tight bear hug. “I knew it had been bad,” he added. “But, Jesus…”

Rafe heard the tremor in his brother’s voice and understood exactly how Niko felt. Rafe had experienced the same shock when he’d seen Alvarez’s dungeons, knowing that Niko had been tortured there whenever he’d disobeyed the crime lord’s orders.

Rafe tightened his arms about his brother. “Yeah, well, you and me, we’re tough sons of bitches.”

“Damn straight.” Niko laughed, thumped Rafe once on the back, then let go. “Just don’t let
Mamá
hear you say that.”

“Hey, I might be tough, but I’m not crazy,” Rafe countered.

Niko’s eyes flicked toward the cellblock door, then back again. “I’m proud of you, bro.” Then Niko stepped back, shot Rafe a salute, and returned to work.

Rafe took a good long look around the cavern and the SSU agents rounding up Kaufmann’s men. Yeah. There was a lot here to be proud of.

Walking toward Gabby, Rafe activated his comm unit. “Kai, how’s the data retrieval going?”

Kai’s response was a grunt, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. “Good thing we brought those hand trucks,” Kai finally replied, sounding out of breath. “This place is a data goldmine. Got some interesting notes from the main labs, but Grainger is still trying to break the security on Kaufmann’s private office. He says no one outside of the highest levels of the intelligence community is supposed to have access to this technology yet.”

“Make sure you tell that to Ryker. It will help him narrow his search for Kaufmann’s boss.”

While Rafe filled Kai in on the situation with Kaufmann and explained about the team that had already deployed for the anniversary demonstration, Rafe motioned for Lynch to move Gabby out. “I’m going to send the guard that attacked Kaufmann to you. Maybe he’ll know of a way to breach Kaufmann’s security. We have to discover the location of the men.”

“Good. We need a break.”

“Assuming he can get you into the office, what’s your estimate on when we can blow this joint?”

“Give us another hour,” Kai said. “We’ve been planting the explosives as we go, and we’ve only got one more room in addition to Kaufmann’s to check.”

“The subjects all out?”

“Yeah. Fuck.” There was a wealth of emotion in that word. Sympathy. Anger. Horror.

Great. First Gabby, then Niko, now Kai had seen where he’d been held.

But his friends didn’t pity him. They admired him for surviving. Understood his torment a little better.

As for Rafe, with Kaufmann in custody, maybe now his sleep would be nightmare-free.

K
ai nodded to the man on his left, then slowly pushed open the inner door to Kaufmann’s private lab. Kai’s team had donned biohazard suits when they saw the symbols on the exterior door. The danger was confirmed when he spotted equipment necessary for handling volatile and deadly biochemical agents. Ten minutes later, after reading the labels on the bottles and jars, then skimming through the research notes, Kai’s stomach dropped, even though Ryker had warned him to be on the lookout for something like this.

This hidden lab wasn’t part of the regular program. It was far worse.

Notes described what amount of finished product had been introduced into various water samples, then each sample’s toxicity was given a rating from Mild Gastric Pain to Severe Organ Failure. Time from exposure to death was charted alongside major and minor symptoms. Skin samples treated with the agent sat in various states of degradation upon microscope slides. Photos of people with burns and bloody boils on their skin crowded a cork board.

One whole chart listed the optimal amounts of product per gallon of water in order to kill populations starting at twenty and rising to two hundred thousand people.

Christ. They could wipe out entire cities with just a liter bottle of this stuff. While the notes indicated that gallons had been produced, all that remained here were a few partially filled vials of the components of the deadly agent, plus ten test tubes of Agent Styx that hadn’t finished maturing before the staff evacuated.

Kai motioned to his companion and they started the slow, meticulous process of safely packing everything up for shipment to the SSU.

Each carton got a similar label: Agent Styx. Highly toxic. Hazmat suit required.

Chapter 29

R
afe stared out the helicopter’s open door, watching an inferno devour Kaufmann’s compound. His team’s expert placement of the explosive had ensured that nothing would remain.

Dios
, he needed to hold Gabby so desperately. Wanted to see for himself every mark Kaufmann had made on her skin and heal it with his kiss. Needed just to hold her and inhale her scent and know from the warmth of her body pressed against his that she was alive.

One brief hug and a few kisses didn’t come close to satisfying him. And he hated knowing that after days of captivity she’d been herded away by other members of his team, all strangers to her. She should have been given weeks off and treated to every sort of pampering her heart desired instead of being put back to work before she’d even had time to heal.

He
should be the one pampering her.

When he’d realized that Gabby would be returning to Georgia without him, he’d nearly thrown a fit. He’d thought Gabby would accompany him back to Oregon.

Instead, Ryker had explained that Gabby had knowledge of the chemical agent Kaufmann’s men would use in the anniversary demonstration. Only the Georgia facility had the necessary protections to allow Gabby to safely handle the chemical while she tried to develop an antidote.

As the helicopter zoomed forward, Rafe felt the connection to Gabby growing dimmer with distance. And the rage he’d worked so hard to tame started to rise. He hated being separated from her. Balling his hands into fists, he clamped his teeth together and wrestled his anger into submission.

Because he would not lose control in front of his team.

But he swore that when this was all over, he’d spirit Gabby away to some tropical island and spoil her for at least a month.

Kerberos Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

J
amieson looked at the useless bank of computer monitors, his fists clenched in rage. The one monitor that mattered at this moment, the one showing Kaufmann’s compound, was blank. Four hours ago Kaufmann had sent a garbled message. He’d stated that his compound was under attack and that he’d ordered an evacuation.

Not a word since.

“Sir, we have a backup satellite coming online in four…three…two…one…”

The screen lit up. Jamieson took one look at the collapsed building that had been Kaufmann’s compound and wished the damn satellite had stayed out of operation. At least the President wasn’t here to witness the failure,
again
, of Kaufmann to keep his program safe. By the looks of it, not a single building remained intact.

Jamieson didn’t have to see the attackers to know they’d been sent by the SSU. Kaufmann should never have insisted on taking back Dr. Montague. He should have recognized that the SSU would attempt a rescue.

The cold hand of fury threatened to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. The fool. The utterly naïve, incompetent fool! He hoped Kaufmann was dead, because the thought of the scientist being interrogated by the SSU gave Jamieson chills. He didn’t delude himself about the chances of Kerberos and the demonstration remaining a secret for long under that scenario. Kaufmann was weak. He’d spill everything he knew, then try to manipulate the situation so Jamieson took all the blame.

All his plans, ruined! Because Kaufmann couldn’t manage to keep his mind on security instead of his damned research.

Thank God the team for the demonstration was already en route. There was still a chance Jamieson could prevent this disaster from reaching the President’s ears. It would be the biggest bluff of his lifetime, acting as if Kaufmann’s program was fully intact, when in fact everything had been destroyed except the backup files Jamieson had insisted be stored off site in case such an event occurred.

He needed to find a replacement for Kaufmann. But he couldn’t worry yet about how he was going to find a scientist capable of filling Kaufmann’s place. First he had to make certain that no other security threats loomed. Had someone on this end betrayed the compound?

Jamieson pivoted on his heel. “Major,” he said to his head of security. “I want a report on what went wrong at the compound, delivered personally by you no later than seven o’clock tonight. I also want to know if the SSU has taken prisoners, and if so, if Kaufmann is among them. Have an assassination squad on stand-by.”

Jamieson didn’t wait for agreement. He stalked out of the room without another word. The major would obey or risk death. In fact, in addition to killing Kaufmann and any of his surviving staff, it might be necessary to eliminate every man who’d witnessed the destruction of the lab, just to make certain the President didn’t learn of the disaster. Kerberos could not be tied to such a failure.

Jamieson strode down the corridor toward his office. When he read the report from his communications expert that was sitting on his desk, Jamieson shook his head. It looked like Tonelli was going to have to die earlier than he’d planned.

M
ark Tonelli awoke to the feeling of cold linoleum beneath his cheek and a pounding in his head.

“Ah, I see you’re finally awake.”

Every cell in Mark’s body froze at Jamieson’s deceptively mild tone.

Damn, damn, damn. The word resonated inside his skull with the rhythm of his headache.

What had he done to give himself away? More important, how was he going to get out of here alive and get back to Faith? The questions gave him something to focus on besides the pain in his head, and the pressure at his wrist and ankles from zip ties.

He had no illusions about Jamieson’s plans for him. His hands and feet were bound. Duct tape covered his mouth. Four men stood guard around him in what looked to be a small kitchen, although it was a place Mark had never seen before.

Even though most of his intelligence work was done in restaurants or meeting rooms, Mark had maintained his survival instincts, the ones that had kept him alive on the streets of Moscow as a boy. A good thing, since the hunt for Nevsky’s microchip had put him in more physically dangerous situations these past few months than he’d experienced in years.

Adrenaline pumped through his system, sharpening his mind and heightening his senses.
He took note of the distance between him and his guards. Jamieson and one of the guards were the closest to the only door. What he needed to know, but couldn’t tell from his position on the floor, was whether or not the guards were normal, or Kaufmann’s monsters.

It would be better if—

Jamieson knelt down in front of Mark, extending his palm to reveal Mark’s father’s little bronze horse. For once, Mark didn’t look at the miniature with longing or a burning anger. Instead, he just felt sad.

“You’re as much trouble as your father was,” Jamieson said conversationally. “I was able to stop your father before he revealed my name to the investigating committee. Don Marrone was more than pleased to order the hit in return for my arranging for certain pending charges to be dropped.” He shook his head. “I had hoped your time on the streets of Moscow would wear away all that moral superiority your father instilled in you. Yet here you’ve betrayed me just as surely as your father.”