Final Target (SEAL Team Blackout), page 3
She cracked open her swollen eye and peered around. Through her blurred vision she made out impenetrable stone walls and a heavy metal gate trapping her inside. The only light came from a window somewhere outside of her prison, and that cast everything in a strange orange glow.
She pushed off the floor she was lying on and worked her sore, bruised body into a sitting position, which was pretty damn hard when her hands were chained together. She couldn’t stop shivering either. The stone was cold even in the hot climate Egypt was known for.
With a groan, she stretched her legs out in front of her. When she was hurled into the back of that van, she’d fallen on her knees. Her thin pants ripped and blood rimmed the edges of the cloth. After the interrogation, they tossed her in this cell.
For countless hours now, she’d been performing a head-to-toe self-assessment.
What she counted without the ability to look in a mirror was a throbbing spot on the side of her head and a swollen eye. Her lip was ragged inside from being smashed against her teeth. Pretty much everyplace that could feel stiff and bruised did.
The low rumble of male voices echoed through the stone hall to her cell. Growing up with four brothers, she liked to believe she was tough. But just the sound of those voices made her insides shrivel with fear.
The longer those men stayed away from her, the more time she’d have to find some strength. She was one interrogation away from her breaking point.
She was trained not to give up information if she was ever captured. They taught her how to avoid questioning or to tell lies that were as close to the truth as possible. She never thought she’d need such training, but ever since breaking things off with Crew, she’d been feeling off-balance. Not herself.
Her stomach clenched as the voices got louder, the footsteps closer. Then a loud clank sounded, followed by a soft grunting noise.
Her lips parted on a silent gasp. It sounded as if she had a neighbor and that person had just been tossed into their cell.
Tongue dry, she attempted to speak but failed. She tried again and managed to rasp, “Is somebody there?”
No one answered. Teigen tried again. “Is somebody—”
“I heard you,” came a wisp of a woman’s voice. A cough sounded, deep and watery. The woman was sick…or choking on blood.
A shiver ran through Teigen, and she drew her knees closer to her chest, huddling into what warmth she had left after lying in this chilly cell for… How many days had it been? Three?
“Are you okay?” Teigen’s voice gained strength from using it.
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Sophia Müller.”
“You’re German?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Teigen.” She stopped short of using her surname—maiden or married.
“American?”
“That’s right,” Teigen answered. “How long have you been here?”
“Nine months.”
Teigen stuffed her knuckles against her cut lips to keep a cry from bursting out. Nine months? She couldn’t stay here that long. She wouldn’t last a month.
Shaking with the tears she held trapped inside, she battled for a moment to master her emotions.
The woman went on, “I’m a scientist. I was working on a project for the past two years, but I was snatched the minute I left the base.”
Sucking in a breath, she steeled herself. “A project?”
“Yes. I was working on a new technology for missile accuracy.”
Her mind turned over this information. Did their captors target Sophia because they wanted details about her project?
Did they kidnap Teigen because of the top-secret information she was supposed to be handed back in that market? Or because of her skill?
She had to know more. “What is this place?”
“A house. People live upstairs.”
“Wait—they just live upstairs knowing there are people in cells down here? How many of us are in here, anyway?”
“A few more. But in this hall there are two—you and me.” She coughed again.
“You’re sick,” Teigen said.
“The cold got into my lungs about a month ago. Sometimes they take me outside and let me sit in a garden watched by an armed guard. I think they’re trying to keep me from dying.”
Oh god.
Teigen lifted her bound hands and dug her fingers into her eyes. They ached from crying. “Someone has to be looking for you.”
“No one has come for me. No one is coming for me.” Hopelessness echoed hollowly in her voice.
All the regret she’d tried to ignore spun through Teigen, creating a thick web she was caught in the middle of. She’d done this to herself by accepting the position with the CIA. She should have just kept her job doing simple translation work for government agencies and never gotten involved in dangerous missions or breaking codes.
It all happened so fast, though. One minute she was translating a bunch of pamphlets for the welfare office and the next she’d come across some scrambled files. On her own, she managed to find a pattern, decipher the file and send it to the correct place.
Then the next thing she knew, a CIA agent was cornering her in a parking lot and handing her a card with a number on it to call.
Her handler claimed the CIA planted the scrambled file just to see if somebody could crack it. In her opinion, it was a risky way to recruit workers, but the offer was too good to pass up and deciphering secret codes beat the dull work she was doing. Her husband Crew wasn’t the only person who could save the world from terrorists. He was a SEAL. It didn’t get more dangerous than that. What she did helped the government uncover dangerous plots and schemes, and she was proud to do her part.
Now look where it got her.
She had to get out of this. She wasn’t spending nine months locked in this cell waiting to be used and abused.
The heavy clomp of footsteps startled her from her dark thoughts. She curled into a tighter ball and scooted into the corner, hoping the shadows concealed her. But if they were coming for her, there would be no hiding.
A low moan escaped from her prison neighbor. The sound shot terror through Teigen.
Were they coming for her or the scientist?
Panic fluttered in her chest.
The feet stopped in front of Teigen’s gate. She forced back a cry with her fist.
“Get up!” her captor snapped in Arabic. “We have more questions for you.”
Teigen could sit here trembling in fear or get up and face it like a strong badass who’d taken a risky job with the CIA.
He unlocked the gate and started toward her.
Before he grabbed hold of her and dragged her out, she swayed to her feet, head held high and her spine erect. But when she didn’t move to leave, he latched his steely fingers around her arm and hauled her out of the cell.
When they threw her in here, Teigen hadn’t noticed the scientist in the cell beside hers, but she had barely been conscious.
As the man shoved her ahead of him, she glanced through the bars and saw a woman crumpled on her side in one corner on a thin mattress. At least she had a few scraps of cotton to lie down on—Teigen didn’t.
Their eyes met through the bars. “Any advice?” Teigen asked.
Sophia twisted her face into the dingy mattress as she responded, “Yeah. Try to protect your head.”
THREE
Crew was the first guy off the transport. Time to get this party started.
Egypt always had a unique smell in the air. Exotic. It brought to mind half a dozen other times he’d been in the country, fighting for Blackout. Because Abubakar often traveled from Nigeria to Egypt, Blackout had a lot of contacts there, and they’d smuggled more than one hostage across the border.
After the long flight and a long, hot ride across the city in a cramped van with his teammates, he needed to stretch his legs. He was so damn ready for someone to point him in the direction of the fight.
He was halfway to the building before Lena caught up to him and grabbed his shoulder.
He cast a glance down at her. She was tall for a woman at almost six feet, and those long legs were fast.
“You need to slow down, Mustang.” Her voice was pitched low.
He shrugged and continued toward the door of the small, slightly modern building. “What for? We’re all going inside, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but you can’t make up your own rules. And you’re going to get yourself—and us too—in trouble if you don’t follow protocol.”
He slowed his steps in sync with hers, allowing Sparrow, Bishop and some of the others to stride ahead of them and reach the door first.
Mustang cocked a brow at Lena. “Happy?”
“Better, but you could lose the attitude too. You’re starting to get on everyone’s nerves with your Rambo act.”
Ignoring that, he put on some speed, leaving her behind, and entered the building. Sparrow was already talking to their contact, a guy by the name of Aarons they’d met in the States. He didn’t go by that name in this country, though.
Bishop waved the team closer, and they gathered around. Lena eyed Crew but didn’t offer more advice he didn’t want. He had nothing against any of his teammates, but all this concern they were showing him rubbed him wrong. He didn’t need them to tell him how to act or keep from getting in trouble—again.
After Teigen dumped him, he’d gone a little off the rails and ended up getting grounded by Big Papa Sparrow and forced to sit out a mission. But that was in the past.
Aarons glanced around the group. “No time for a sit-down briefing, men. We need to address this situation immediately.” Behind him, a screen lit up with a shot from a camera. The image was distorted, as if snapped through a fisheye.
Aarons continued, “This image was taken from a small camera our agent was wearing. You can see here”—he clicked to another screen—“that she was cornered in the market in Port Said by three men.”
He clicked through three more screens, each revealing a headshot of the kidnappers. “You’ve probably seen them on the wanted posters.”
Everyone on the Blackout team nodded. Those guys were known affiliates of Abubakar’s, and the team memorized every face.
Aarons flipped to another screen. “This is footage from a camera on a building near the spot where our agent was taken. Here, you see they’re putting a hood on her.”
The woman could have been any nationality. She was average in all ways and wearing the business casual dress that many people in Port Said wore. And with the hood on, they couldn’t use hair color as a way to distinguish her from any other woman in Egypt.
“Here you see where they find her camera and rip it off.” Aarons flipped quickly through several more screens, the last one a shot of the ground.
“But we have views of the van they put her in from cameras all over the city.”
“Do you have a definite location?” Sparrow asked him.
“No. But we know the direction they went and narrowed it down to the building where we believe she’s being held.”
More photos. Mustang studied the building from base to roof, his mind already working over how to get inside before the terrorists suspected a thing.
“The building was an abandoned government project. Nothing else is out there.”
“The perfect place to hold a prisoner. No one around for miles,” Sparrow added.
Aarons clicked back to the shot of the woman wearing the hood. Anyone could see she was fighting for her life, but with three against one, she didn’t have a prayer of getting free.
“All right, Blackout, let’s plan this extraction.” As Sparrow walked them through their arrival at the abandoned bunker and assigned them their positions, Crew’s gaze kept wandering back to the photo of the agent.
He was never into art, but his mom had dragged him and his brothers to enough art museums that he was able to break down a painting. Or in this case, break down a photo.
The woman’s panic was evident in the way her arms and legs were splayed outward. But determination stiffened her spine. She meant to cause harm to any of the men bundling her into the back of that van.
For some reason, knowing how hard she fought left a hollow in his gut. He had to twist his gaze from the image. He focused on Sparrow.
His commanding officer leveled Crew in a look. “No heroics. We work as a team.”
Goddamn, he hated being singled out like that. He may not feel himself right now, but that didn’t mean he’d lost the ability to follow orders.
He stared back at Sparrow until he gave Crew a slight nod.
Then Sparrow turned to Aarons. “Anything you want to add?”
“Yeah. We don’t want an international incident on the news. We just want our agent. Don’t blow up the place, either—there are likely other hostages being held there.”
“Remember, we need the woman to use the code word I shared with you on the flight. If you ask someone and they don’t answer correctly, you move on, Blackout. No exceptions. Got it?” Sparrow looked from one special operator to the next until he met Crew’s gaze again.
He nodded that he understood. “Copy that.”
“Good. Use the facilities before we load up and head to that bunker. You’ve got five minutes.”
Everyone split off to use the restroom. Since there was no gender separation on Blackout, Crew ended up waiting for Lena to exit the bathroom stall before he could use it.
When he came out, the rest of the guys had left the restroom—all but Lena.
He strode to the sink to wash his hands, avoiding her stare. “You have something else to say to me?”
“I just want to make sure you’re good to go on this op, Mustang.”
He paused in lathering his hands with soap. “If you’re implying I’m going to go ‘Rambo,’ as you called it, and get the rest of my team killed, you can quit worrying. I’m fine.”
“You don’t act fine.” When she folded her arms over her chest and gave him that look, he wondered how she had ended up here instead of being somebody’s mother.
He rinsed his hands and shook the water off. “Look. My wife left me. It’s no big deal, okay? I hadn’t even seen her in months.”
She didn’t respond, and that made him swing toward her. He wished he hadn’t—her eyes were too full of compassion.
“I’m finished with this conversation, and for the record, we won’t be having it again. Copy?”
“Copy.”
He walked outside and boarded the transport. Lena slipped into another vehicle taking them to the bunker, and he was relieved as hell not to have her harping on him anymore about his wife or his behavior.
He wasn’t a live grenade—far from it. He was as in control as the rest of them.
And now that he had even less to live for, he could focus on his duty. Today, it was finding that special agent with the same damn safe word Teigen used in the bedroom.
What were the chances? Maybe good. For all he knew, a lot of women used wasabi for more than a way to season their sushi.
He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and stave off all the images bombarding him. But he kept his hand fisted on his knee and watched the buildings fly by the window.
He was in control, dammit. And he was determined to show his team just how much.
* * * * *
Teigen poked her tongue around her mouth, feeling for loose teeth, but all she tasted was blood.
Protect your head. Sure. Great advice. Not that easy when her wrists and ankles were both tied so tight that if she fell off the chair her attackers sat her in, she’d only wiggle around on the floor like a worm left out on a sidewalk.
What kind of advice was that, anyway? The scientist—Sophia—had looked pretty terrible too. Teigen ran over the image of her in her mind, focusing on her face. Though she was ill and looked horrible after nine months of captivity, her face really wasn’t bruised and battered. Teigen couldn’t say the same.
The two men who’d been interrogating Teigen for hours now paced in front of her. Their questions were all the same. Their threats as well. Tell them why she was in the market or they’d kill her.
So far, she hadn’t given them what they wanted and they hadn’t acted on their threat. She was feeling a little cocky over it. They might have beaten her, but it could be worse. Much worse.
A pair of dark eyes bored into hers. There were no sparks of humanity in their depths. They were black holes burning into her like evil suns.
He took a step toward her, and she braced herself for the next blow. It hit with tremendous force, nearly rocking her chair backward. She clamped her lips to hold back the cry they wanted from her.
“Who were you meeting in the market?” His demand came with the sharp sting of a snakebite.
She was beginning to break down.
She couldn’t. Would not.
Head spinning with pain and mouth filling with fresh blood from her cheek that had been smashed against her teeth countless times now, she lifted her head and stared straight at him.
“I told you. I’m in business. I was there to buy jewelry. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I wasn’t meeting anyone.”
“You know something!” His roar echoed through the room and her bones and into her brainwaves. Her training informed her that yelling was a tactic to break a person, and she never wanted to hear another person raise their voice again.
“You were there to meet a person. Who was he?”
She wagged her head back and forth more to get away from the pain than in answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then why did you speak to us in several different languages?”
Her stomach flexed, thick nausea filling it. “I speak several languages for my business. I travel all over the world to buy jewel—”
His knuckles sank into her stomach, cutting off her words and forcing all the air out of her lungs.
She doubled over, clinging to the edge of consciousness. Why didn’t she just give up and tell him everything? Why hold back? Sure her handler instructed her not to give up anything about the files she was meant to be cracking, but were they worth her life?
