Mahmoud said practically nothing about his personal beliefs, but he made no secret of despising Americans, particularly military members.
Zane slipped the ring into his pocket. He was seriously grateful that chance had thrown a female soldier in his path this morning. What she was doing at some elementary school in a small town in southern Louisiana, nowhere near an active military base, he had no idea. Call it a small act of God that had gone his way.
Not that he was a whole lot happier about throwing a soldier to the lions than he would be about doing it to some random civilian woman.
But hed been forced to make the best of an impossible situation.
Of the four women cowering on the floor in the schools front office, shed looked to be by far the youngest and fittest of the bunch. Naming her as the target had been the least awful choice under the circumstances. Which wasnt saying much.
Honestly, hed feared that if he told the others he didnt see their target in the office, where she normally worked as an assistant principal, they would start shooting kids to get the woman to reveal herself.
Mahmoud was a cagey bastard and had barely shared any information with any of his men about this fiasco. Hed briefed the cell members only about an anonymous woman they were supposed to find and kidnap.
Zane hadnt thought it was enough detail to pass on to his superiors. Hed assumed Mahmoud and his boys would spend days or weeks finding the target, doing surveillance on her, picking the perfect spot to abduct her and then launching an operation to kidnap the woman.
Zane thought he had plenty of time to find out who the woman was, slip away from the other men and send a message to his superiors about this little operation. It galled him to have been outmaneuvered by a freaking terrorist like this.
Mahmoud also hadnt given the team any indication whatsoever that today would be the actual snatch.
Zane had been nearly as shocked as the teachers and kids of Southdown Elementary School when theyd piled out of the van for real, armed with actual weapons and ammunition.
Mahmoud had passed around a picture and name of the target, Persephone Blackwhoever the hell she wasin the van as they turned into the school parking lot. Zane hadnt even had time to send an emergency text to his handlers to let them know who the target was and that an attack was imminent before Mahmoud had ordered them out of the van and barged into a flipping elementary school, armed to kill.
The picture itself had been informative. It was fuzzy and taken from a distance. The woman had been with a man on a crowded street that looked like some place in Europe. She was looking over her shoulder at something, and the shot of her face had been snapped in that moment. For all the world, it looked like a surveillance photo taken by someone following the couple.
Did that mean Mahmoud and his men were in the US on behalf of some foreign government with an intelligence service of its own? Iran was the obvious candidate, given that they sounded like native Farsi speakers.
Regardless, they were some sort of black-ops team, and theyd proved this morning that they were not averse to using violence.
As soon as hed heard that the real target was out sick, hed known he had a big problem. Mahmoud and his boys wouldnt hesitate to shoot up a school full of little kids in retaliation for their victim being absent.
He felt really bad for this woman hed inaccurately fingered as the target. He glanced down at her, crumpled on the floor of the van at his feet, and silently vowed to make it up to her somehow.
One thing Zane hated worse than just about anything else was being forced into a no-win choice. And God knew hed faced one of those already today. He could either go along with assaulting a school, snatching a woman and scaring the hell out of a bunch of kids...or he could blow his cover, and throw away months worth of work gaining Mahmouds trust and worming his way inside what Zanes superiors believed to be a dangerous and violent sleeper cell.
Hed very nearly gone ahead and turned his weapon on his coconspirators to take them out this morning. The one thing that had stopped him was being in an elementary school. The possibility of an innocent child being hit in the cross fire was the only reason any of these bastards were still alive.
If he just knew who they were, he would end this farce right now.
He did know one thing about them. They would never say anything under interrogation. They were all fanatic enough to die before giving up even their names.
Hed lived and worked with Mahmoud and his fellow psychopaths for months, and he still didnt have any idea who they worked for or what their ultimate goal was. That was how closemouthed these men were.
Normally, Zane would pull the plug on an undercover op like this immediately and get the civilian victim out. Hell, he was on the verge of doing that very thing right now.
The only thing stopping him was that ring in his pocket. If the kidnapped woman was a West Pointer, maybe he could let this thing play out just a bit morea few minutes or a few hoursand get his answers before he called in the big guns to take these jerks down.
Thing was, if Mahmoud and company did work for Iran, they would only be replaced by another sleeper cell of trained killers when US authorities took these guys out.
Hence the urgent need to know who they worked for and what their end goal was. He didnt for a minute believe that kidnapping some woman from an elementary school was the primary reason this cell had infiltrated the United States.
They posed some much-greater national security threat. But what?
Nope, hed had no choice today. He had to throw this woman hed never seen before under the bus and maintain his cover a little longer. He hated it, and he would do whatever he had to do to protect her.
Just a little while, he mentally promised her.
The unconscious woman beside him moved faintly and then subsided again. Yousef had hit her way too damned hard if she was still out cold. Zane knew from long experience in the field that if she was unconscious more than a few minutes, she would likely be out for the next couple hours.
Patience, Zane. Now was not the time to make his move to rescue her. He was probably her only chance of survival. But he would get one shotand no more than one shotat rescuing her. He had to wait until she was conscious, able to move fast and willing to cooperate with him.
He hoped to God she understood his choice and one day forgave him for it.
Did it make him a dreadful human being that hed forced her into helping him figure out what these terrorists were up to? That hed potentially sacrificed this womans emotional well-being, and maybe her life, to save many more lives down the road?
Hell, he was already a dreadful human being. As an undercover agent, he deceived people and lied for a living. Hed even done criminal acts in the name of keeping his covers. He drew the line at hurting or killing innocent victims, although he was skirting dangerously close to that line today. Hell, sometimes he wondered if he was even one of the good guys anymore.
He owed this woman huge. When the time was right, he silently promised her he would find a way to save her from these men.
But how...and when...he had no idea.
Scowling, he leaned back beside her slumped body. He propped an elbow casually on his upraised knee. Anyone following us? he asked Bijan, the youngest of the crew, who crouched at the dirty rear window of the van.
He owed this woman huge. When the time was right, he silently promised her he would find a way to save her from these men.
But how...and when...he had no idea.
Scowling, he leaned back beside her slumped body. He propped an elbow casually on his upraised knee. Anyone following us? he asked Bijan, the youngest of the crew, who crouched at the dirty rear window of the van.
No. Were clear, the kid answered.
Zane had to give these guys credit. Theyd run the grab-and-go to perfection, managing their time on scene to the second and getting away moments before the first police car arrived. His certainty that they were military trainedmore specifically, Special Forces trainedintensified.
His concern for the woman intensified, as well. Men like this wouldnt hesitate to kill her if and when they figured out they had grabbed the wrong person.
He studied her face. She was pretty. Her hair was dark blond and her skin was smooth and slightly olive complexioned. The combination was unusual and striking. Her legs were lean in her blue jeans, and her shirt was currently twisted tight against some nice curves. Her fingers were long and slender with short, cracked fingernails.
Those fingernails surprised him. She looked put together enough to be the kind of woman to always have a perfect manicure. What did she do to beat up her hands like that?
Pull over at the next gas station, Mahmoud, the team leader, ordered Hassan, the driver.
It took a few minutes, but Zane felt the van decelerate. They pulled around to the side of a tiny rural gas station advertising with a hand-painted sign that it also sold beer, fishing bait and, more alarmingly, gator bait.
After a quick check to verify that the gas station had no surveillance cameras, Mahmoud and Yousef piled outside. Zane followed more slowly. The other men were already peeling off temporary decals on the side of the vehicle announcing it to be an air-conditioning service van. Meanwhile, Bijan used a screwdriver to change the rear license plate. When had these guys set up this van as a slick getaway vehicle?
Alarm slammed through him. Had they done it before hed joined the team? Or had they done it behind his back?
Odds were theyd done it recently. Which was freaking scary. It meant they still didnt trust him.
Which also meant that not only was his life in mortal danger, but the womans, as well.
The underlying tension that always hummed in his gut when he was undercover ratcheted up violently. He didnt like this. Not one bit. Was he a prisoner in this van, too? How fine a tightrope was he walking with Mahmoud and his men? Hed been useful to them as long as they were trying to keep a low profile and not be noticed by the locals. But if theyd completed their mission, these men would go to ground or flee the country and not need his services any longer.
His intuition screamed that he was blown. That it was time to bug out.
Normally, he never went against his gut feelings. Over and over through the years, his gut had proved to be right. And right now, it was telling him in no uncertain terms to abandon this operation immediately. The feds had plenty of ammunition to arrest these men and put them away for a very long time after this mornings stunt in the elementary school.
The authorities might never figure out what Mahmouds primary goal had been, but at least this particular terror cell would be off the street.
However, the woman changed everything. Zane couldnt possibly bail out now. Not as long as these men held an innocent woman captive. An innocent women he had put into these violent mens hands.
He mentally swore. He mustnt do anything to arouse these guys suspicions. The danger of staying in this undercover assignment drove home hard, a punch in the gut that left him gasping.
Too tense to be still one more second, Zane walked around behind the van, pretending to stretch his legs. Can I help with the signs? he asked casually.
Mahmoud wadded up the last of the adhesive vinyl and tossed it in a trash can. He shoved a cigarette lighter down into the barrel, and a thin stream of smoke commenced rising from its contents. No. Were finished. As soon as Osted gets out of the bathroom, well go.
Zane nodded slowly, trying to look impressed. You guys are good. Im grateful you let me learn from you, almuelim alhakim. He dropped in the Arabic phrase meaning wise teacher to gauge Mahmouds reaction.
The guy nodded shortly and looked vaguely less irascible than usual, acknowledging the compliment.
Zane guessed they were assets of VAJAthe Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. But they never talked politics, not even in the most general of terms. They talked about European soccer and the weather for the most part. And such a degree of operational discipline scared the living hell out of him.
He strolled to the corner of the cinder-block building and, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, surreptitiously dropped the womans class ring on the ground. There. One piece of evidence showing her to be a soldier erased. Now he just had to make sure she didnt have some other form of ID on herdog tags, or maybe a wallet with a military ID in it.
For that matter, he needed to get rid of any identification she had on her. He had to keep up the ruse of her being Persephone Black for as long as he possibly could. Until both he and the woman could escape. Everything depended on it.
Including his life. And hers.
* * *
Tessa Wilkes eyed her boss cautiously. Major Gunnar Torsten was not a happy camper this morning. He barked, Still no answer on Pipers phone?
No, sir, Rebel McQueen replied from her post at the ops centers communications panel. I pinged her phones locator function, and it puts her in Houma. Which was the nearest actual town to their secret training facility.
Where in Houma? Torsten demanded.
Um, at an elementary school.
What in the hell is she doing there? he snapped.
Rebel didnt answer and instead threw Tessa a distressed look. She felt Rebels pain. Torsten was usually a stern guy and all business, but this morning he really had a burr up his butt. Catching the silent plea for help, Tessa sighed and spoke up. Do you want me to go fetch her, sir?
No! But I damned well want to know why one of my highly trained, supposedly responsible operatives has gone AWOL.
Rebel spoke from her console again, muttering, Thats odd.
Everyone looked at her. She glanced up and started. Oh. Um, I just pinged her backup locator. The one in her class ring from West Point. Its not in Houma.
It had better be headed this way at a high rate of speed, Torsten ground out.
Man, the boss had seriously woken up on the wrong side of the bed today. Not that he was ever tolerant of screwups. He was fond of saying that seconds were the difference between life and death. He wasnt wrong, of course.
Rebel reported, Her secondary locator is moving away from us on Bayou Black Road, heading northwest. Its about fifteen miles west of here.
Tessa, the first member of their new Medusa team and more at ease with Torsten than Rebel, leaned forward. Somethings wrong. Piper would have called one of us if she had a problem and couldnt get here on time. And she would never go AWOL.