06. Honor Under Siege - Неизвестный

“Who tipped Matheson?” Valerie asked. “We think he has friends in the Special Forces.” “Do we have a name?”

“Several possibles. I’ll brief you as soon as you are secure.” “Where do you want me to go?” “I want you to come with me now.” “Tonight?”

“If you go back, Roberts may lock you down and we won’t be able to extract.”

“What about my boat?” “We’ll sink it. It’s a good cover.”

“He came prepared.” Cam checked the digital readout on the electronic timer running in one corner of Felicia’s monitor. Henry had been on board almost five minutes. That was a long time for this kind of rendezvous.

“If she goes with him, he sinks the boat and she’ll disappear,” Savard said. “If she doesn’t agree to go, and he’s bad, he’ll sink the boat and she’ll disappear. Either way, he wins.”

“I need at least 24 hours to create a plausible cover with Roberts,” Valerie said. “I didn’t spend all that time getting close to her to lose my connection to her now. Even if I have to go deep undercover, I’ll still have a link to her.”

“She’ll never give you anything.”

“She already has.”

“What?” Henry’s voice rose.

Listening, Cam tensed. Valerie was playing a dangerous game. If Henry thought she already had important information, he might not let her go even if he wasn’t working with Matheson. If he was Matheson’s front man, all the more reason to take her now, or eliminate her.

“They’re close to identifying…”

Two miles away, Stark’s satellite image showed a new blip at the same time as Mac picked up a thermal flair five miles from Valerie’s boat.

“Christ,” Mac blurted. “It’s an SSM!”

Stark jumped to her feet. “Target?”

“Tracking!”

Stark grabbed her radio. “Hara, this is command one. Stand by to evacuate.”

“No!” Blair exclaimed, grabbing Stark’s arm. “What is it?”

“Missile.” Stark turned sharply to Mac. “Target. I need it now, Mac!”

Mac was already opening the comm channel. “Savard! Ship to ship missile, targeting Valerie’s boat. Forty seconds to impact!”

“Donaldson, mark,” Cam snapped.

“Roger.”

Cam switched to the open microphone on Valerie’s boat. “This is Cameron Roberts. You are targeted for a direct hit by an SSM. You have thirty-seven seconds. Evacuate your vessel.”

“She’s lying,” Henry shouted. “Stay right there!” “No,” Valerie said, “she’s…Henry, we have to…why are you drawing your weapon? There s no one…”

“Thirty-two seconds,” Savard called. “She’ll never disengage from Henry’s vessel in time, Commander.”

“Fire!” Cam ordered and Donaldson’s rifle cracked from just outside the cabin. Cam spun toward Savard. “Get us in there now.” “It’s going to get hot,” Savard noted even as she powered up the engine and shoved the throttle to maximum.

Cam didn’t answer, stripping off her windbreaker and vest as she ran from the cabin. She’d been wrong. They didn’t have thirty seconds.

Blair pressed close to Paula’s back, unconsciously gripping her shoulders. “What’s happening?”

“Time?” Paula shouted to Mac.

“Five… four… three… two… one…”

For a millisecond, the blip in the center of Paula’s screen doubled in size. Then it winked out.

After a minute of silence, Diane asked unsteadily, “Where’s Valerie?”

“We’ve lost the signal,” Paula said tightly.

“What about Cam’s?” Blair’s fingers dug into Paula’s shoulders.

Paula shook her head.

“Fine shooting, Colonel.” Matheson leaned against the rail of the boat, feeling a swell of satisfaction as a tower of flame climbed into the sky on the horizon.

“Thank you, General.”

“We’ve eliminated both problems at once,” Matheson said. “It’s time to rejoin our men and re-dedicate ourselves to our true mission. We have a war to win.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Is she… are they… Oh, God,” Diane whispered. “Get me a narrow-field, real-time image!” Paula ordered. She keyed her radio. “Hara, standby. Close the roads. No one in or out. Call in the backup units and position them on the shore and the perimeter.”

Blair realized she was still gripping Paula’s shoulders and forced herself to let go. She couldn’t move her eyes from the screen in front of her. She stared at the dark circle, willing an image to appear.

“Cam’s boat,” Blair asked hoarsely. “Cam’s boat should still be there, shouldn’t it? Paula?”

For the first time in her life, Paula ignored the first daughter. Renée was on the boat that had suddenly disappeared. The thought sent a momentary surge of panic through her and she went completely blank. Then, as if changing a channel in her mind, picture after picture snapped into view and came sharply into focus. Beirut, the Cole, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania. Not one life. Not hundreds of lives. Thousands and more to come, she knew. And her part to play was here, today, and it would never be about one life again. Not even the life of the woman she loved.

“They’re there, somewhere, and we’ll find them,” Paula said steadily, because she had to believe it. “Mac, get me a picture of what’s going on out there and an open line to Renée Savard.”

“Yes ma’am,” Mac said, his voice rough with strain. “I’ll do that.”

“There’s debris in the water,” Savard shouted over the roar of the engine.

Cam leaned over the railing, narrowing her eyes against the icy spray and staring at the shiny black surface of the water. “Who’s got the wheel?”

“Donaldson. I need to be out here.” Savard raised the radio cradled in her hand. “I’ll direct him.”

Cam didn’t argue. She doubted she could get Savard to go back inside, and she didn’t have the time or inclination to persuade her. One hundred feet in front of them a geyser of flame spouted into the air, the engine fuel from Valerie’s and Henry’s boats burning. She should have expected something like this. Matheson would be a fool to leave a weak link like Henry alive, and Matheson was no fool. Henry had underestimated him, and so had she. She would not let Valerie pay for her miscalculation. She kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her holster, pulled her badge off her belt, and pushed everything into a bench locker.

“You can’t… the water is 40 degrees—Commander?”

“Tell Donaldson to head for the flames and to get all the lights focused off the bow. Move ahead slowly. Christ, we don’t want to hit her.”

“Commander—”

“She’s in the goddamn water, Renée, and I’m going to get her out.”

Savard shouted orders into the two-way. As the boat corrected course, Cam flung her head back, furiously trying to clear her vision. Oily smoke roiled from the flaming hulls, obscuring the surface of the water. The boats were no longer tethered to one another and huge sections wallowed in the waves. Burning fragments the size of refrigerators drifted as they slowly sank.

“There!” Savard pointed off to their right. “The dinghy!”

Cam jerked around and followed Savard’s arm. A capsized inflatable rubber dinghy bobbed on the water.

“The explosion probably upended it,” Savard cursed.

Cam stepped up onto the railing and dove into the water.

“I’m getting something now, Chief,” Mac said urgently as he continued to rapidly type. “It’ll just take a second to redirect the satellite focus.”

“Get me in as tight as you can.” Paula turned at a sound behind them. Hara stood in the doorway. “All clear?”

“Yes ma’am. Everything is quiet.” She glanced toward the monitors but said nothing.

“Run status checks every five with the team leaders,” Paula directed.

“Yes ma’am. I’ll take point on the shore.”

“Good.” Paula bent forward, peering at the monitor as if that would make the fuzzy images clearer. Without warning, the screen cleared and a sharp black-and-white image of a burning boat came into view.

Blair caught her breath, momentarily disoriented by the eerie sensation that she was watching news footage, the kind of images that were ubiquitous and somehow mind-numbing. But she felt anything but numb. Her nerve endings burned, and it felt as if her entire body were twitching. A red haze of fury and panic threatened to skew her vision, and she had to blink to focus.

“Can you tell whose boat it is?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Mac answered. “We’ll have a slightly wider field in just…there, there’s another vessel.” His voice drifted off as a partially submerged, smoking boat came into view. “We’ve got at least two vessels hit.” He touched his ear and frowned. “It’s Tanner requesting permission to begin search and rescue.”

Stark shook her head. “No. We don’t know that whoever sent the first missile doesn’t have another one ready to go. The commander’s boat is out there somewhere. Until we contact her, we keep this locked down. Tell Tanner to maintain her position. She is not to pursue any unknown vessel.”

Mac relayed the order.

“They might need help, Paula,” Blair urged. “What about the Coast Guard?”

“No. This is a Homeland Security operation. We don’t involve anyone else.”

“What if Cam’s boat was hit too?”

“If we confirm that,” Paula said, “I’ll send a team out from here.”

“How long can they last out there, if they’re in the water?” Diane asked.

Paula didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Find them for me, Mac.”

Cam didn’t think she’d ever been so cold. It was the kind of cold that went so deep it was an ache inside of her. She didn’t think about the pain but just swam arm over arm in the direction where she’d seen the dinghy. Valerie had been in it, she knew that she’d been in it. Henry was dead. She’d ordered him shot. Valerie was the only one who could have launched the dinghy.

Her clothes were sheets of ice dragging her down. Her arms and legs were heavy. It was hard to move. So much smoke. Black acrid stinging smoke that singed her already swollen throat and clouded her eyes with tears and salt. Cold.

Her hand struck an object and she tried to grab it, but it floated away. She rubbed her face against her frozen sleeve. The dinghy. A wave crashed over her head and she went under. It was a relief to be out of the smoke. Her throat felt momentarily soothed until she reflexively took a breath and water flooded her lungs. She gagged, vomited, then clawed her way to the surface. She broke through and sucked in a lungful of tainted air. Coughing, she tried to swim and managed only to keep her head above water. Then she saw it again. The dinghy. From somewhere deep inside, she found another ounce of energy. Valerie was there, she knew she was there. Valerie had launched the dinghy.

Cam pushed herself toward it. She had sent Valerie out here alone. She would not let her die alone. She found the nylon rope that circled the dinghy and tried to hold on to it with frozen fingers. When it popped away from her she gave up trying and sluggishly circled it, her muscles slowly turning to lead.

For an instant, she thought she imagined the white form floating next to the dinghy. When she reached out, her fingers were too stiff to grasp the ghostlike figure. Closer now, she could make out Valerie’s wrist wedged underneath the encircling rope on the rubber life raft. She had tethered herself to it somehow.

“Valerie,” Cam croaked. She got a mouthful of water and spat it out angrily. “Valerie!”

Cam struggled to release Valerie’s wrist from the twisted lines. The instant Valerie’s arm slid free, she started to sink beneath the surface. Cam couldn’t grip her clothing, but she managed to get an arm around her waist and pulled her against her body.

“Valerie, it’s Cam. Swim. You have to swim.”

Cam couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, and for a fraction of a second she felt the way she had when Blair had been exposed to a potentially deadly toxin. The floodgates she kept securely locked against loss and despair broke open and the pain was so crippling she was momentarily paralyzed. They went under together, Valerie clasped in Cam’s arms.

“Command One, do you read,” Felicia’s voice filled the room.

“Felicia,” Mac cried. “Status. Status report. Are you—”

“… engaged in search and rescue. Any sign of incoming?”

“Negative.” Mac switched channels and the original wide-angle view came into focus. “Advise evacuate area as soon as possible.”

“Roger, as soon as rescue is complete. Do you have visual?”

Mac turned to Paula who was staring at the speakers as if she were trying to see through them to Felicia and the others.

“Felicia, this is Stark. We have debris from two vessels…no survivors identified.”

“Thermal scans?” Felicia asked sharply.

“Nothing,” Mac said, “but if Valerie’s in the water, she’s probably too cold already.”

“We have two in the water. Do you read? Two.”

“Who?” Paula inquired urgently.

Blair didn’t need to hear the answer. She already knew.

Cam didn’t have the energy to fight. The cold in her bones had dissipated, and so had the pain. Her body was strangely heavy, yet weightless at the same time. She couldn’t see, but the sharp smoky sting in the air was gone. She wasn’t in the air. She was underwater.

She was underwater, and Valerie was with her. Valerie wasn’t moving. What had Blair said to her? She’d made her promise something. Cam was so tired and it was so hard to think.

Promise me. Promise me you won’t sacrifice yourself for her.

That’s right. She had promised Blair. Promised her not to die for Valerie.

A surge of adrenaline shot through Cam, electrifying her. She’d promised not to die for Valerie, but she hadn’t promised to let her die. What had she said? No one was going to die. She tightened her grip on Valerie and kicked. The surface seemed very far away.

And then she felt it—Valerie was kicking too. Neither one of them was going to give up without a fight.

“Mac’s got a thermal body pattern in the water,” Felicia announced, hurrying from the cabin to join Savard on deck.

Renée strained to see through the smoke, arcing the floodlights back and forth. “Over there—two in the water, twenty yards off to the right. Help me lower the life raft.”

“I’m coming with you. Donaldson can handle the boat.”

Renée nodded and between the two of them they unlashed the life raft from its deck moorings, disengaged the lock on the pulley, and swung the small boat out over the water. Felicia hit the switch for the motor and as the inflatable raft lowered automatically, she grabbed two PFDs from a nearby locker. She tossed one to Renée and pulled hers on.

“There are two more clipped inside the raft for them.” Felicia swung her leg up and over the railing. “Let’s get them the hell out of the water.”

“Great idea,” Renée shouted and followed her over the side and down the ladder.