Page 24 of Surge

“Oh.” Her smile wavered, then recognition seemed to hit her. “Yes—nice to see you again.”

Why did he take so much pleasure in her not immediately recognizing Zim?

Daniels indicated to the spook. “That is Bryan Caldwell with the Central Intelligence Agency. His intel is driving the mission.”

Delaney’s eyes widened, but she smiled and shook his hand. “Mr. Caldwell.”

“Just Caldwell,” Spook said.

“Nice to meet you.”

Garrett stiffened. The smug man with the graying hair and ski-slope nose was nice to meet? She’d regret those words by the end of the mission.

“And you met Walker.” Daniels waved in Garrett’s general direction.

Thompson gave him a nod. “Hello, Master Chief.”

Huh. He’d been ready for a confrontation. “Thompson.”

Daniels looked around at each of the group one by one, his gaze finally resting on Thompson. “Stay frosty.” He strode out of the room.

Surge jumped on the empty seat and everyone laughed.

“Zim is a SEAL,” Garrett said, “but he also has a couple of degrees in science—chemistry and biochemical.”

“Right,” Thompson said with a smile at the comms specialist. “You created the scent tin for the lipid to help train Tsunami and Surge.”

“Exactly.” His grin was unabashed. “Glad you remembered.”

“Down boy,” Garrett said. “We’ll use his chemistry skills on the op. Caldwell will?—”

“I’m sorry—chemistry for what?” Thompson asked, as though he hadn’t been in the middle of a sentence.

Garrett swung his arm toward Zim. “Go ahead.” He didn’t need to actually lead the briefing, right?

Zim grinned and wrote the chemical symbols on the whiteboard. “We are looking for sulfamic acid and potassium cyanide. The terrorists we’re after are processing them into vials.”

Delaney’s face puckered. “The specialized lipids . . .”

“Yeah. Without that special formula, he’d just find sulfamic acid and potassium cyanide, not the Sachaai’s cache in particular. And we really need to stop these guys from using that chemical and killing more people.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s so smart and ready to work,” Thompson said.

She seemed like she was trying to convince somebody . . . Herself? Or him?

Garrett cleared his throat. “Caldwell’s CIA skills mean he’ll be our overwatch, monitoring from the safe house.”

Caldwell locked his hands behind his head and nodded to his laptop on the table. “Technology and terrorist chatter. My two skills. And they’re what is sending us to Singapore after Sachaai.”

“Sa . . .?” Thompson asked.

Garrett fought the urge to stifle her constant interruptions, but she did need to catch up on the info, and the team did need to gel.

“They’re a terrorist group who have been doing some serious damage around the world,” Caldwell responded. “Intel chatter says they want to use these specialized chemicals to attack America and keep us from interfering with their jihadist goals in Pakistan.”

Thompson nodded at Caldwell. “Thanks.”

Garrett waited for more questions from her, but when the silence gaped, he went on. “Okay then. The plan is for me to go undercover and meet one of the small-fry Sachaai to procure a sample of the capsulized chemicals. From there, Surge can lead us to their stash in Singapore. We’ll send that intel to the CIA and they’ll interdict.” He rapped the table. “We’ll hit the ground running, so sleep up on the C-130. We leave for Singapore at zero-five-hundred tomorrow.”

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