Page 19 of Heart of Danger
Only it turned out he wasn’t frozen, he wasn’t locked. It’s just that his body didn’t want to dissipate that heat. He could move, and he did. A short, emphatic shake of his head.No.
“Okay.” Jon let out a long breath. “Standing down. We don’t like it but we’re standing down.”
He jerked his head up, then down.Yes, stand down.
“You are grieving,” she said softly, that luminescent, hypnotic gaze never leaving his eyes. “Grieving badly. There is such sorrow in you, it swirls around like black smoke. You were betrayed by a man you loved like a father. A man you trusted wholeheartedly. Everything you knew about this man led you to believe he would die rather than betray those who trusted him, and yet—he betrayed you. Formoney. It hurts your heart even to think of it.”
His hand had jerked slightly under hers and she exerted a slight downward pressure.
It was ridiculous. She was a small woman. Slender, even fragile. Her hand was almost half the size of his. The idea that she could force him to keep still was ludicrous. And yet here he was, utterly incapable of moving even an inch away from that glowing light grey stare, her small hand tethering his.
“You’re hurting.” she whispered. “So much. And you can’t show it because…” she tilted her head, as if listening to something, though her eyes never left his. “Because people count on you. And you’d rather die than betray them the way you were betrayed.”
He couldn’t move. Nothing moved except his lungs. He felt as if she were flaying him alive, but painlessly. And at the same time, for the first time in his life, he knew someone else could see inside him.
He’d worked a lifetime to keep his inner thoughts secrets. As a child in brutal foster homes, most thoughts or desires led to beatings. And later, in the military, nobody gave a fuck what he thought or felt about things as long as he did his duty, and he liked it that way just fine.
Except Lucius. Lucius had seen into him. The pain rose helplessly, like black tidal waters, choking him. It never stopped. A year and it could still ambush him.
“So sad,” she whispered. “You’re so sad. And yet under the smoke burns love, and duty. You’re determined to protect your people. A life where you can’t protect the innocent doesn’t make sense to you. You’d die to keep them safe.”
Her words were a distant flutter, the sound hummingbird wings might make if amplified. They barely registered. What registered was this hot melting…something that going on inside him. For the very first time in his life he felt a connection to someone that was blood and bone deep. It was nothing like the loyalty he felt to his men or to Lucius. That had a different flavor, was something else entirely. However strong his ties might be, there was a definite place where they ended, and that was his skin.
Here there were no boundaries, none. He could feel his heartbeat—slow, steady—and hers—light, hammering, almost frantic. He was inside his own skin and inside hers.
It was crazy. Was he drugged after all? He hadn’t felt the prick of a needle, but maybe there’d been some kind of contact patch…
Her soft voice continued, her eyes a light hypnotic silver. “You’re worried that I’m a danger to you. That somehow your enemies have found you and that I am their representative. I don’t know how to convince you that who sent me was no enemy of yours. And that I don’t represent any danger to you or…” she tilted her head slightly, watching him. “Or to your men.” Suddenly she whipped her head around, hair whirling out from her head then falling back onto her shoulders. “They’re watching us. Listening. Ready to come in to save you if I put you in danger. And yet—” She lifted her hand. “The danger doesn’t come from me.”
It all stopped. Dead. And it was like being dead. Where before there had been emotions swirling, bright and warm, heat and light, almost like a carnival going on inside him, now inside it was still and silent. Like a light switch being thrown. A switch that turned him off.
She was still watching him steadily, sadness and knowledge in her silvery gaze.
“I’m not anyone you should fear, Mr. McEnroe. Or should I call you Mac?”
CHAPTERFOUR
SAN FRANCISCO—ARKA HEADQUARTERS
The room was dark,the computer monitor bright. It was noon Zulu time and Sierra Leone time. Though it was a chilly January evening in northern California, in Sierra Leone it was a hot day.
Lee looked down like God from images of Clancy’s company, Orion Enterprises, piggybacked off Keyhole 25. Clancy himself was in the fancy company headquarters building in Alexandria, Virginia. Today, SL-58 was being field tested. Orion had administered 50 ccs of SL-58 to each operative, the dose calibrated to last at least 48 hours. Well over the time it should take them to make their way from the diamond mine 500 miles in the hinterlands of hell to hell’s own port, Freetown.
The mine was very rich, the path to market incredibly dangerous. There were not one but two rebel armies camped out in the jungle, marauders living off terrified villagers and hijacked convoys. So far, one convoy in three made it intact to Freetown. A 66% loss was unacceptable, even for the richest diamond mine in the world.
The Amsterdam-based diamond consortium had hired Orion to provide security for the diamonds and Clancy had promised the moon to the consortium in exchange for five million dollars a trip. Considering the haul on each trip was worth roughly five hundred million dollars once the diamonds were cut and set, the consortium had agreed. But Orion had one chance. If this convoy went the way of the others, it could kiss the contract goodbye.
Lee wasn’t interested in diamonds or even the money, though he would get a substantial bonus if this convoy and successive convoys were successful. The bonus would help him speed up his plans.
This was a trial run in another sense, too. A state-controlled Chinese mining company had found a huge deposit of iridium, the largest in the world, in Burundi. No one else knew of the deposit.
With access to plentiful iridium, China was guaranteed to be the world leader in microchips for the next two decades. The mine was even deeper in the hinterland, in the no man’s land where artificial lines on maps meant nothing.
If SL-58 turned out to be successful for Orion, it could be administered early to the Chinese troops who would set up a convoy to take the mined iridium east to the Indian Ocean, then by ship to China.
Lee’s main monitor had shown the Orion convoy starting out at first light. A Unimog in front and another at the rear guarding the central security truck carrying a vault with 5 kg of uncut diamonds.
Three vehicles, including the armored truck carrying the diamonds. All heavily armed, each vehicle with a mini-gun firing 50 caliber bullets at the rate of a thousand a minute. Flynn had said they were carrying more than 50,000 rounds of ammunition.
