Page 54 of Hot Intent

“Almost there,” Diesel shouted. “Radio the gate. Tell ‘em we’re coming in.”

“Roger that.”

A tall, heavily fortified fence loomed ahead, glinting silver in the starlight. The Jeep roared toward it, and at the last minute before they blasted onto U.S. soil, the helicopter peeled away from them. She could see individual rivets in its belly as it finally banked away and flew off into the darkness.

She was no expert on helicopters, but that was a military bird. Had the Cubans somehow found out she’d nearly reached Gitmo? How? Why did they care about her?

Oh, God. Had they captured Alex? Had hetalked? She shuddered to think what they must have done to him to get him to crack. Or was the ‘copter just a reaction to an American military vehicle going off the U.S. reservation?

“Do the Cubans buzz you guys like that often?” she asked as her pulse slowed a little.

“I ain’t never seen anything like it,” Johnny declared. “That was awesome. But you shoulda let me shoot ‘im, Sergeant Trucker.”

Trucker? Ahh. Now, the nickname Diesel made sense.

They drove onto what looked like a traditional American military base. It was already cleaned up from the storm, but with neatly stacked piles of firewood everywhere that looked wildly out of place. Most of the buildings appeared damaged to some degree, but they were neatly boarded up or tarped.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Diesel answered grimly, “Boss man’s gonna wanna talk with you, ma’am. You and I both know there aren’t any aid workers on this island from the U.S.”

André Fortinay groaned under his breath as his cell phone rang. He rolled over in bed and picked up his phone in the dark as his wife mumbled a sleepy protest. No phone call that came in at this time of night was good news. He recognized the incoming phone number with a jolt and sat up in bed. The director of the entire Cold Intent op.

“Fortinay, here. What’s up?” His voice was hoarse with sleep, but there was no help for it.

No greeting. Just a clipped voice in his ear saying, “Flash traffic has come across my desk in the past few minutes that Alex Peters and Katie McCloud have been picked up at Guantanamo. They’re requesting immediate transport to the United States.”

“Anything else in the message?” André asked cautiously.

“A request for instructions from the Guantanamo station intel chief.”

André winced. If his operatives were at Gitmo, things hadn’t gone as planned in Cuba. At all.

“They were supposed to get caught by the Cubans!” his supervisor burst out. “The girl was supposed to screw up the mission. What the hell happened?”

André sighed. He’d never liked that part of the plan. He happened to be fond of Alex. The young doctor had a great deal of potential if he were properly developed as an asset. André got why the CIA didn’t trust Alex further than they could throw him, but personally, he thought it was a mistake. For that matter, Katie was a decent girl. Patriotic. Kind. Good for Alex.

Aloud, he replied, “I told you from the start that you people were underestimating Peters and wildly underestimating the McCloud girl. She wasn’t supposed to make it out of Zaghastan alive, yet not only did she walk out of there, but she brought a newborn baby out with her.”

“Alex wassupposedto embarrass his father in Zaghastan. But that didn’t happen, either. Then you people said you could break him in field ops training. But no matter what you threw at him, he didn’t crack. Now this. How could Alex and the girl get out of Cuba like this? We told the Cubans exactly where they would be landing and when, for Christ’s sake.”

André winced. “The aftermath of the hurricane has made working conditions terrible down there. And the east end of the island is cut off from easy access?— “

“Be that as it may. The op is shot to hell and time is growing short. Roman Koronov’s star is on the rise. Rumor has it he’s on the short list to become the next director of the FSB. He’s got the ear of the Prime Minister and the President of Russia. His enemies don’t dare touch him.”

And yet, Operation Cold Intent dared to attempt discrediting him and destroying his career. The people behind the operation were using the man’s own son against him to bring him down, no less. If he were Koronov and ever got wind of that, he would be out for blood.

Of course, it was not his job to question the methods or ethics of this op. It was merely his job to run the operatives and keep his mouth shut. But the whole thing left a bad taste in André’s mouth.

Hell, maybe when this thing was over, he would retire from the agency and stick around Doctors Unlimited. Get it some real funding and keep the outfit going as a legitimate aid organization and not just a CIA front.

“What’s this I hear about a possible chemical weapons spill in Cuba?” his caller demanded.

“I’ve forward everything I know about it. Katie called me briefly to say that she and Alex had seen some suspicious deaths that Alex were the result of exposure to something like Sarin.”

“Is there proof?”

“I told them to get some and bring it out with all possible speed. The fact that they’re at Gitmo now makes me think they got their proof.”

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