Retribution (SSU Trilogy Book 3) (The Surgical Strike Unit) (41 page)

Thankfully, Elliot didn’t push for a better answer. Ignoring her trembling legs, Jenna followed him and the rest of her teammates outside where their trainers waited to review the afternoon’s exercise. One of a handful of privately-funded special operations groups that had sprung up in recent years, the Surgical Strike Unit, or SSU, had one of the best reputations for skilled operators in the world. Which meant their trainers accepted nothing but success.

The “terrorists” and the “hostage” moved into place in the center of the assembly area, then the senior trainer read out the statistics. Jenna had killed every one of her targets. She nodded, relieved that her nerves hadn’t affected her performance and proud that she hadn’t even hesitated this time. Not like during the exercise a month ago, when seeing the victim pinned face down under her attacker had thrown Jenna back to the night she and her family had been attacked. Trapped in memories, she’d lost awareness of the action around her. When the exercise had finished and the trainers turned up the lights it took them five minutes to bring her attention back to the present.

From his position in line with the other trainers, Niko mouthed “Good job” at her. Jenna managed a slight nod in response, then looked away before he sensed the panic his continued attention caused her.

Taking slow, deep breaths, Jenna told herself Niko wasn’t a threat. Besides, she wouldn’t see him again after today. Rumor had it that he’d been pulled out of deep cover in Afghanistan when his joint mission with the DEA had been compromised, but that Niko was headed back to Afghanistan the day after tomorrow to set things right.

So, all she had to do was avoid appearing too nervous for the rest of the afternoon, and she wouldn’t have to worry about his effect on her any more. Thankfully, no one else on the team threatened to break her reputation for being impervious to emotion. After two years of struggling to keep herself together so she wouldn’t be thrown out of the training program due to psychological instability, she couldn’t afford to have her suitability as an operator questioned now. Not with only four months until graduation.

“Hey, Thompkins, you shot out my knee again, you moron,” one of the trainees jibed. “I’m your partner, not a damn terrorist, man.”

Thompkins shot his roommate a one-fingered salute. “If you’d moved your lazy ass out of the way you wouldn’t have been shot.”

The man next to Jenna snorted. “Right. That’s what? Excuse number five hundred and twelve? Face it, you’re never gonna be as good as Paterson, here. Beat by a girl.”

“Yeah, she’s accurate. When she doesn’t freeze up and get herself killed,” Thompkins groused.

There was an awkward pause as everyone’s eyes turned to Jenna. “It only happened
once
,” she muttered, feeling her cheeks heat at the unaccustomed attention. Her teammates didn’t usually include her in their banter. “I’m not the one who just shot his partner for the second time this week.”

Thompkins blinked in surprise over her retort. Usually she kept her mouth shut.

“Ha! Don’t mess with Jenna, boys. She’s got bite.” Tracy Wardynski, the only other female in their training class, bumped her shoulder companionably against Jenna’s.

Jenna allowed the contact, although it hinted at a camaraderie she didn’t feel. The attack on her family had destroyed her ability to connect with others. Her heart was a cold, barren place with no room for anything but vengeance. Friendship was a risk she refused to take.

Yet she had to quell an inexplicable urge to glance over at Niko.

After the trainees and role-playing agents finished their reports, the senior trainer stepped to the center of the group, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Well done, team,” the trainer said. Then he gave them a dangerous smile that had all of them groaning. “Gear up and head to these coordinates,” he barked, reading off longitude and latitude. “You have half an hour to get there. Starting…now!”

Jenna typed the coordinates into her watch, then sprinted down the trail with the rest of the trainees.

Vengeance
, Book 1 in the SSU Trilogy, is available now. Keep reading for an excerpt of
Betrayal
, Book 2 in the SSU Trilogy.

Excerpt from
Betrayal

by Vanessa Kier

Friday, Afternoon

Branco River, Amazon River Basin

Upriver from Caracaraí, Brazil

K
ai Paterson stood at the bow of the souped-up fishing boat, staring at the jungle flanking the river. Humidity pressed against his skin like a lover. Underneath the boat’s odor of fish and diesel fumes he caught the jungle’s signature stench of rotten vegetation and sweet flowers. But his mind wasn’t on the present.

“Why do you get to go after the girl,” Rafe Andros had groused over four months ago, “while I’m left trekking in the woods with a bunch of smelly, foul-mouthed men?” A characteristic smile had teased the corners of his mouth.

Kai had laughed and lightly punched his brother-in-law and fellow Surgical Strike Unit agent on the shoulder. “Because you’re the ex-Ranger, my friend. You’re the one trained in covert rescue and assault. I’m just a scientist turned spy.”

Kai shook his head. Just a scientist turned spy. Right. Try scientist turned spy turned grieving son and brother turned ruthless killer turned…what? Hell. He didn’t even know who he was anymore.

He could only say one thing for certain. He wasn’t a quitter.

Two years ago he’d gone undercover in Dr. Nevsky’s lab, investigating allegations that in his quest to create superhuman spies and soldiers the scientist tortured and killed his subjects. Today Dr. Nevsky was dead, but his assistant Dr. Kaufmann carried on Nevsky’s program, continuing to elude the SSU while wreaking havoc with its agents’ lives.

Out on the river, a fish broke the surface then quickly disappeared into the murky water. Yeah, wasn’t that a metaphor for his life these days? Barely able to take a clean breath before he waded back into the muck.

Rafe had gone missing in action two months ago during a mission to shut down Kaufmann’s lab. Despite wanting to join the search for his missing friend, Kai knew it was his job to put an end to Nevsky’s legacy of horror. To do that, he had to find Nevsky’s daughter, former supermodel turned archaeologist Susana Dias.

He had to admire the irony of cruel, amoral Dr. Nevsky fathering Susana Dias, the half-American, half-Brazilian beauty who’d graced the cover of every fashion and gossip magazine during Kai’s high school and college years. Unlike his friends, he’d never put her poster on his wall, but he still remembered how the hint of laughter in her large brown eyes made her seem approachable. As if she saw the world as a giant party and had been inviting him to join her.

According to Susana’s background file, she’d left modeling behind years ago to enter the world of archaeology. Since then she’d made a number of significant discoveries and published several articles in prestigious academic journals, proving she was intelligent and insightful as well as beautiful. An intriguing woman. He looked forward to meeting her.

Too bad he had to deliver the news that her father had used Susana as a human filing cabinet. Christ. Even knowing the lengths to which Nevsky went to keep his data secure, Kai still couldn’t believe the man had taken the microchip containing his project data and implanted it in Susana’s abdomen. No wonder they hadn’t been able to find the damn thing. There hadn’t been any record of Nevsky even having a daughter.

But he did. Susana Dias. The woman whose mere image roused Kai’s desire for the first time in over two years.

Unfortunately, Susana’s connection to Nevsky was a reminder of all Kai had lost because of the scientist and his microchip. His family brutally murdered. Kai falsely accused of killing not just his family, but Dr. Nevsky and of stealing Nevsky’s microchip.

Reuniting with his sister Jenna, his only surviving family member, after proving his innocence, then being forced to leave Jenna in order to chase after Susana. And now Rafe was missing…

“Dammit Rafe, you better be alive,” he muttered. Although knowing what Nevsky’s program entailed, Rafe would be better off dead than a victim of Kaufmann’s experiments.

Kai shivered. The horrors he’d seen while undercover at Nevsky’s lab still gave him nightmares. Men so insane, so focused on the kill order given by their handlers, that they attacked their teammates with teeth and nails and fists, fighting like animals to the death. And then biting and mauling their opponent’s corpse until the ground gleamed red.

Kai shook his head, but it was too late. The memories segued into coroner’s photos showing his mother lying in a pool of blood. Showing his fourteen-year-old sister, Isabel, with her throat gaping open from a knife wound, her hand reaching toward her twin.

Kai clenched his fists and jerked his mind away from those pictures. He would
not
think about their deaths. Not here in the jungle, where his control was so thin. Where the sights, sounds and scents threatened to throw him back to the moment in an Indonesian jungle where he’d taken the life of the fifth of the six assassins who’d killed his family.

Trying to block out the memories, Kai closed his eyes. But instead of the relief of darkness, he saw blood dripping off his hands onto the jungle floor while the body of the assassin twitched out its final seconds of life.

Even though he was standing on the deck of a boat months after the kill, Kai felt an echo of the hot, primitive satisfaction that had surged through him as he’d stared down at the body. He remembered throwing his head back and letting loose an inhuman cry of triumph that scared birds into flight and scattered a colony of monkeys.

His heart pounded in remembered exhilaration.

Shit, shit,
shit
.

Kai opened his eyes and shook his head. The act of vengeance had stripped him down to his very core. Revealed that underneath his civilized, intellectual veneer lay the primitive urge to protect and avenge his loved ones, even if it meant killing in a manner that horrified his cerebral, law-abiding side.

Yet if anyone hurt his loved ones again, Kai wouldn’t hesitate to kill.

Unbidden, another image of Susana Dias flashed into his mind, bringing a surge of sympathy for the woman whose life he was about to disrupt. For all he knew, she didn’t even know Nevsky was her father or that she carried the microchip.

He sighed. In the end, it didn’t matter. He’d do whatever necessary to get her to the SSU so the chip could be surgically removed. At that point, though, Kai’s mission became personal. He intended to destroy the chip, no matter what his boss Ryker might say about the data having potentially beneficial applications.

He stared at the sunlight shimmering on the water, imagining the heat of the sunlight burning all unwanted thoughts from his mind. For a peaceful moment he found the still, quiet place inside himself he’d once been able to access so easily. His muscles slowly relaxed.

Yeah, he could do this.

He inhaled deeply, but the putrid odor of decaying flesh from a dead animal on the riverbank sent him into a coughing fit.

Ah, hell. Just like that, chaos tumbled back into his mind.

No!
He gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to give in. He could do this.

Think only of the mission. Find Susana Dias. Destroy the microchip. Finally end the cycle of pain and death.

Piece of cake. Right?

Kai squeezed the wooden railing until his knuckles turned white. Of course right. He was strong. So what if the jungle roused the savage part of him he didn’t even want to acknowledge? He could control himself. Complete his mission. Become the man he used to be.

Couldn’t he?

Betrayal
, Book 2 in the SSU Trilogy, is available now.

About the Author

V
anessa Kier has been creating stories in her head since childhood. Now she writes romantic thrillers, using her worst-case scenario thinking to put her characters through the emotional wringer. When she’s not writing or listening to music, she works as an accounting manager, writes the occasional Tech Talk column for her local RWA chapter's newsletter, and takes long hikes in the nearby hills.

For more about Vanessa, please visit her website www.vanessakier.com.

Acknowledgments

O
nce again I’d like to thank my critique partner Virna DePaul, my editor Valerie Susan Hayward and my proofreader Angela Pike. Thanks also to Frauke Spanuth of Croco Designs for creating another awesome cover.

Most of all, a huge thank-you to all the readers who have made this series a success!

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, brands, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Retribution
Copyright © 2013 by Vanessa Kier

Excerpt from
Vengeance
Copyright © 2013 by Vanessa Kier

Excerpt from
Betrayal
Copyright © 2013 by Vanessa Kier

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express permission of Vanessa Kier.

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