Page 47 of Hot Intent

“I can do three. I’ll go in,” he announced. He started stripping off his clothes in a pile beside her.

“As much as I love sex with you, now’s not exactly the time?—“

He cut her off. “I don’t want my clothes getting contaminated.”

She threw him an alarmed look.

“Count two minutes in your head and then call out,” he directed her. “If I’m not out in four minutes, hold your breath, and come drag me out.”

“Are you sure we should be doing this? It seems really dangerous.”

“That would be the point, wouldn’t it?” he commented as he moved forward naked, eyeing the door.

It looked like some sort of mudslide had come through this steep area, for the door was badly dented as if boulders had slammed into it. If the mudslide had happened early in the hurricane, later rain could have washed the evidence of it away. A big, horizontal bar that looked like part of the locking mechanism was twisted and broken. It was this he focused his attention on. He took one last deep breath and moved forward to try lifting it. It moved a little, but was too heavy for him.

He backed up to her side. “I need your help.”

She took a deep breath and moved forward with him. By both of them planting their shoulders under the bar and lifting with their legs, they were able to prize the bar free of a broken bracket. It thudded onto the dirt at their feet. The door behind them gapped open a little. A black abyss yawned beyond.

They both backed up and breathed again.

Alex grabbed handfuls of plastic bags and test tubes, nodded at her to begin counting, and moved forward carefully.

Katie positioned herself outside so she could point their high-powered flashlight into the darkness. It was enough for him to see stacks of barrels mostly filling the space. Labels in Arabic script, which he couldn’t read, were visible. Next trip in here, he’d take pictures of those.

Careful to avoid any puddles at the bases of the barrels, he took air samples near the barrels with his plastic bags and sealed them. Katie called a two-minute warning, and he filled a couple of test tubes from the puddles on the floor before he started tosee spots before his eyes. He backed out quickly, and when well clear and facing into the wind, took a bunch of deep breaths.

He passed Katie the test tubes and bags. “Cover these completely with duct tape, and label them with the time, date, and GPS location.”

She worked on that while he pulled out his cell phone and got ready to go in again. Three more times he went inside the bunker to pull samples. The last time, he actually pried barrels open and very carefully dipped samples of the liquid contents.

Modern chemical poisons were generally most lethal in an aerosolized form and inhaled. Blistering agents that relied on skin contact were harder to disseminate and less effective on a large scale, hence had gone out of fashion.

The rational part of his brain informed him in no uncertain terms that taking these samples was madness. But it was also his job. Better that he risk his life and potentially save thousands of other people from harm or death, right?

But at the cost of Katie and Dawn’s lives? It was time to get the hell out of here.

Maybe they should pretend they’d never found the bunker and get on with their lives like his father had told him to. He didn’t for a minute doubt that Roman would follow through on his veiled threat to kill Katie and Dawn if proof of the existence of this bunker’s contents got out.

But the United States really did need to know these chemicals were here. No way would America tolerate chemical weapons in the control of a hostile foreign government so close to its own soil. If all those barrels contained some sort of chemical weapon, there was enough in this bunker to wipe out most of the major metropolitan areas in the United States.

He was deeply undecided as to how to proceed. For now, he would collect the damned samples. There was still time to destroy the evidence. If there was a way to both give the UnitedStates the evidence and also protect his family, he had yet to figure it out. He’d threaded some tricky needles in his day, but this might be the one that was too much for him.

With an admonition to be careful with these ones, he passed the last test tubes to Katie to seal up and label.

When she finished, he said, “If you could pick up my clothes, I’m heading to the beach for a bath.”

“You do realize how silly you look prancing around out here buck naked,” she commented.

He made a face at her. “That’s me. The starkers spy.”

She laughed and followed him as he picked his way down the rocks to the ocean, which was brutally cold. He hoped the salt water would help neutralize any chemical residue on his skin. Katie tossed him a bar of soap, and he scrubbed his skin until he felt raw all over. After washing his hair and rinsing it out with salt water, He climbed out of the water, shivering. He was just making his way up the jumble of man-sized boulders when a man-made sound rose over the surf. He swore under his breath as he leaped from rock to rock.

“Run,” he ordered Katie low and urgent. “Into the brush. Hide.” Crap. He’d been afraid there might be some sort of alarm system in or around the bunker. He’d hoped the storm had disabled it, but apparently not. If nothing else, someone might have been watching the bunker from a satellite.

Katie raced across the road and into the scrub with him hard on her heels. A pick-up truck with two soldiers in the cab and three heavily armed men in the back drove past. Fast.

Those didn’t look like just any soldiers. They were big, physical, and carrying their weapons—AK-47s—like extensions of their arms. If they weren’t Special Forces, he was losing his mind.

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