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“Katie McCloud?” a voice said out of the darkness behind the headlights. “Come with us.”

Thank God. That man’s English was as American as apple pie.

How on earth did he know her name, though? She had no identification on her to indicate that was her name, and she hadn’t used it once while she’d been in Cuba. Regardless, they had the big-ass guns pointed at her. They won.

She stood up hesitantly.

The voice turned out to belong to a tall African-American man wearing a lot of stripes on his arm. A senior non-commissioned officer, then. He said gruffly, “Technically, we’re not supposed to be out here, so if you’d get in the vehicle quickly, ma’am, we need to get back to base.”

As if on cue, a radio crackled from inside the Humvee. “Return to base, Diesel. We’ve got Cuban forces inbound to the area. A crap-ton of ‘em.”

The other soldier, a whipcord lean kid with a classic, Marine-buzz haircut, took her by the arm and hustled her to the Jeep. She hadn’t even finished fastening her seatbelt before the vehicle Y-turned in the road and accelerated back in the direction it had come from.

“Shit, Diesel. Look at that radar!” the kid exclaimed.

The driver glanced at a circular green screen mounted in the dashboard. She couldn’t see the display from the back seat, but the man said over his shoulder, “Who the hell are you, lady? It looks like half the Cuban Army is headed this way. They comin’ for you?”

She sincerely hoped not. “I’m a nurse. A medical aid worker. I came down here to help out after the hurricane.” Best to stick to her cover story until she knew who these guys were.

In hopes of distracting her captors from who she was exactly, she leaned forward and asked, “Why aren’t you technically supposed to be out here?”

“That’s the deal with the Cubans,” Diesel bit out. “We stay on our side of the fence. They stay on theirs.”

“Did you come out looking for me?” she asked, curious.

Diesel started to say something, but the sound of a helicopter approaching fast interrupted him. It got loud fast. And then it got really loud.

“Fuckers are buzzing us,” the younger soldier shouted over the noise. “Want me to pop a cap in their asses?”

“Keep your gun in its holster, Johnny,” Diesel bit out.

It seriously sounded like the chopper was coming in for a landing on the roof of their Jeep.

“Almost there,” Diesel shouted. “Radio the gate. Tell ‘em we’re coming in.”

“Roger that.”

A tall, heavily fortified fence loomed ahead, glinting silver in the starlight.

The Jeep roared toward it, and at the last minute before they blasted onto U.S.

soil, the helicopter peeled away from them.

She could see individual rivets in its belly as it finally banked away and flew off into the darkness.

She was no expert on helicopters, but that was a military bird. Had the Cubans somehow found out she’d nearly reached Gitmo? How? Why did they care about her?

Oh, God. Had they captured Alex? Had he talked ? She shuddered to think what they must have done to him to get him to crack. Or was the ‘copter just a reaction to an American military vehicle going off the U.S. reservation?

“Do the Cubans buzz you guys like that often?” she asked as her pulse slowed a little.

“I ain’t never seen anything like it,” Johnny declared. “That was awesome. But you shoulda let me shoot ‘im, Sergeant Trucker.”

Trucker? Ahh. Now, the nickname Diesel made sense.

They drove onto what looked like a traditional American military base. It was already cleaned up from the storm, but with neatly stacked piles of firewood everywhere that looked wildly out of place. Most of the buildings appeared damaged to some degree, but they were neatly boarded up or tarped.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Diesel answered grimly, “Boss man’s gonna wanna talk with you, ma’am. You and I both know there aren’t any aid workers on this island from the U.S.”

André Fortinay groaned under his breath as his cell phone rang.

He rolled over in bed and picked up his phone in the dark as his wife mumbled a sleepy protest. No phone call that came in at this time of night was good news.

He recognized the incoming phone number with a jolt and sat up in bed.

The director of the entire Cold Intent op.

“Fortinay, here. What’s up?” His voice was hoarse with sleep, but there was no help for it.

No greeting. Just a clipped voice in his ear saying, “Flash traffic has come across my desk in the past few minutes that Alex Peters and Katie McCloud have been picked up at Guantanamo. They’re requesting immediate transport to the United States.”

“Anything else in the message?” André asked cautiously.

“A request for instructions from the Guantanamo station intel chief.”

André winced. If his operatives were at Gitmo, things hadn’t gone as planned in Cuba. At all.

“They were supposed to get caught by the Cubans!” his supervisor burst out. “The girl was supposed to screw up the mission. What the hell happened?”

André sighed. He’d never liked that part of the plan.

He happened to be fond of Alex. The young doctor had a great deal of potential if he were properly developed as an asset.

André got why the CIA didn’t trust Alex further than they could throw him, but personally, he thought it was a mistake.

For that matter, Katie was a decent girl. Patriotic. Kind. Good for Alex.

Aloud, he replied, “I told you from the start that you people were underestimating Peters and wildly underestimating the McCloud girl. She wasn’t supposed to make it out of Zaghastan alive, yet not only did she walk out of there, but she brought a newborn baby out with her.”

“Alex was supposed to embarrass his father in Zaghastan. But that didn’t happen, either.

Then you people said you could break him in field ops training.

But no matter what you threw at him, he didn’t crack.

Now this. How could Alex and the girl get out of Cuba like this?

We told the Cubans exactly where they would be landing and when, for Christ’s sake. ”

André winced. “The aftermath of the hurricane has made working conditions terrible down there. And the east end of the island is cut off from easy access?— “

“Be that as it may. The op is shot to hell and time is growing short. Roman Koronov’s star is on the rise. Rumor has it he’s on the short list to become the next director of the FSB. He’s got the ear of the Prime Minister and the President of Russia. His enemies don’t dare touch him.”

And yet, Operation Cold Intent dared to attempt discrediting him and destroying his career. The people behind the operation were using the man’s own son against him to bring him down, no less. If he were Koronov and ever got wind of that, he would be out for blood.

Of course, it was not his job to question the methods or ethics of this op. It was merely his job to run the operatives and keep his mouth shut. But the whole thing left a bad taste in André’s mouth.

Hell, maybe when this thing was over, he would retire from the agency and stick around Doctors Unlimited. Get it some real funding and keep the outfit going as a legitimate aid organization and not just a CIA front.

“What’s this I hear about a possible chemical weapons spill in Cuba?” his caller demanded.

“I’ve forward everything I know about it. Katie called me briefly to say that she and Alex had seen some suspicious deaths that Alex were the result of exposure to something like Sarin.”

“Is there proof?”

“I told them to get some and bring it out with all possible speed. The fact that they’re at Gitmo now makes me think they got their proof.”

Of course, dealing with that would be way above the pay grade of Operation Cold Intent. He could practically hear the caller’s mental wheels turning over how this complication would affect the op at hand.

“If Alex brings out this proof, he’ll be a hero in the West. Koronov could spin it to his advantage. See how brilliant and successful my son is. He learned it all from me.”

His boss’s voice had taken on a bitter tone. André had long suspected that a personal vendetta lurked somewhere behind this op.

“Alex Peters must not get credit for this discovery. Whatever proof he’s found of chemical weapons must be separated from any association with him.

My team will work on creating another credible origin story for the information.

In the mean time, Alex and the McCloud girl must be distanced from the intel. ”

André’s gut rumbled a warning at him. How was that going to happen? By killing them? The question popped into his head as a rhetorical one, but as soon as it did, he knew it to be a distinct possibility.

Easier said than done, though. Not only had Alex survived his training, but he’d so outperformed anyone’s expectations—which had been pretty damned high to begin with—that the agency was sharply split over what to do with him.

The original plan was merely to use him in Operation as Cold Intent to wreck his old man.

But now, a number of senior supervisors in the agency wanted to anoint him the super-spy of the next generation, while another faction wanted to throw him in the deepest darkest hole the agency could find and never let him out.

Those people’s problem with him was that the CIA’s control of Alex Peters was tenuous at best. He was a maverick at heart and didn’t appreciate being jerked around.

He would play nice and share his toys with the other children if, and only if, he saw a good reason for it.

Fuck with Alex Peters, and he’d fuck the CIA back. Hard. And without hesitation.

Making a run at Alex and Katie to kill them could backfire spectacularly. Particularly if the girl were successfully killed and Alex survived. Which was, in his opinion, the likeliest outcome.

Casting about desperately for an alternative, André said, “What if we separate Alex and Katie? Alex has personal feelings for the girl and we can leverage those to get him to hand over whatever proof he collected. And, we can…pressure…him to go along with whatever alternate explanation for the information you folks cook up over at Langley.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

He added, “It would have the side benefit of weakening Alex. He and his girlfriend are turning out to be a more effective team than anyone anticipated.”

His boss’s response, when it came, was brief. “Do it. Break them up.”

Alex lounged in the chair as much as it was possible to lounge in an interrogation room. The man who’d just stepped through the door looked highly frustrated. Poor Jarhead. This guy had so wanted to rough him up a little.

“Come with me,” the Marine bit out.

Alex followed the guy down a long hall. Given that the two of them were alone, he was obviously no longer considered a hostile threat. Too bad. He would’ve enjoyed knocking this guy’s lights out. Sanctimonious know-it-alls had always irritated the crap out of him.

Alex was reunited with his meager personal belongings—his wallet, knife, and emergency medical pack. Funny how naked he felt without the compact kit of supplies. It was as if his identity as a doctor was tied to that black rucksack.

“You’re really a doctor?” the Jarhead finally asked.

“Yeah,” Alex muttered as he signed the receipt for his stuff. “My associate—the nurse I told your colleagues about—is supposed to show up here with a bag of medical samples for me in the next day or two. Has she checked in with the base, yet?”

“You mean the hot babe the MP’s picked up outside the fence a little while ago? The Cubanos were right tweaked that she made it onto the reservation. Sent half the damned army after her, the way I hear it.”

Praise the Lord. She’d made here safely. His knees actually felt a little weak at the news. “Is she all right?” Alex asked sharply. “I need to see her.”

“Cool your jets. She’s okay. Gotta fill out some paperwork explaining what the hell she’s doing down here without us knowing about it. And the MP’s sent her bag over here, already. Lemme go get it.”

Alex was so relieved he could bust that Katie was safe. But in the next breath, suspicion bloomed in his gut over why they hadn’t let her come join him.

The guy plunked the backpack onto the counter hard enough that Alex’s heart jolted in alarm. “Easy does it with that” he snapped.

“Who are you, anyway?”

“Just a guy doing a job,” Alex answered wryly as he picked up the bag. “One last favor and then I’ll get out of your hair. Can you point me at the base hospital?”

“Yeah, sure. Two-story white building. Long. Kinda H-shaped. It overlooks the bay.” He gave Alex detailed instructions on how to get there, apologized for not being able to leave his post to give him a ride.

The dude seemed to have forgiven Alex for not being a bad guy he could rough up. Eager to get away from the young Marine’s overblown brand of macho, he slipped out into the night.

The hospital wasn’t hard to spot. The building, indeed, was snowy white, not to mention it also had electricity. He walked in the front door, identified himself as a doctor, and followed the signs to the lab.

A technician in a white lab coat looked up from a centrifuge as he entered. “Can I help you?” the guy asked.

“Do you happen to have a gas chromatograph?”

“Sure do.”

“I’m going to need to use it. And do you have any chemical weapons detection kits in here?”

That got a slower response. “Yesss. Why?”

“I’m going to need whatever you’ve got. Then, I’m going to need a sealed room to work in.”

“Umm, who are you?”

His guy-doing-a-job line clearly wasn’t going to work on this fellow. He opened up the bag. “I’m the guy who gets to test all these samples to see if they’re chemical warfare agents. It’s going to take all damned night, too. You wanna stay and help and maybe get exposed to some nasty shit?”

The tech answered hastily, “No, that’s okay. We’ve got a reverse air-flow room back there. I’ll need your help moving the chromatograph back there, though. Sucker’s heavy.”

It took the two of them nearly a half-hour to horse the equipment Alex would need into the smaller lab. But he finally donned a disposable plastic chemical suit and went to work.

He was deeply conflicted about what he hoped the tests would show. On the one hand, he would love his diagnosis of the sick Cubans to be right, out of professional pride. But on the other hand, he would give anything to be wrong.

His life and Katie’s were going to get so complicated he didn’t even want to think about it if the results came back positive for Sarin or some other lethal chemical agent.

He set up the first sample and put it in the machine. In a few seconds, the machine beeped completion of the test. He took a deep breath and looked at the read out.