Page 87 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

The intel Oumar gave us is thorough. We now have the identities of the front company operating the ship that is planning to pick up the weapons, the port of transfer, and the location where the actual exchange will take place.

While Oumar is being seen by a doctor, I’m working with Graham, Hawke, and Lizzie, who is now well enough to be back at the office.

Rourke was right about the red tape, but it’s essential we validate the information as much as possible through satellite imagery and the CIA’s own intercepted transmissions and intel we have access to.

We have less than four hours to put a coordinated team together.

Hawke has connected with a trusted military liaison in order to get the SEAL team involved that is already deployed in the targeted area. The plan going forward is to ensure the SEALs have a window to hit the container without interference.

Three hours and twenty-five minutes later, I’m standing in the back of the ops room, my eyes fixed on a row of large monitors. On one screen, a live feed shows the port of Casablanca. Additional screens flicker with a mixture of infrared drone feeds, satellite visuals, and helmet cams.

Graham stands next to me, his arms folded as he shifts nervously from one foot to another. Lizzie is at the console, making sure we stay connected to the feed, while Hawke stands grim and quiet in the background.

All our nerves are on edge. We know all too well what will happen if things go south.

“Moving to breach the target now,” a voice crackles over one of the comms.

“If any of Oumar’s intel is wrong and we were sold out, those SEALs could be walking into a bloodbath,” Graham says.

“Too late to second-guess anything now,” Hawke snaps.

The SEALs have coordinated the raid with a group of uniformed port guards and local allies. We watch the live feed captured by a SEAL member’s helmet, the footage flickering with static, a blur of grainy, black-and-white night vision.

A second voice comes over the comms. “Bravo-1 in position. Moving to breach the target container.”

The feed on another screen shows two seals moving between stacked shipping containers. They halt, check the corners, and then approach a container marked Corvus Global Shipping .

“That’s the shell company,” I say quietly.

“Confirmed,” Lizzie says. “Registered in Cyprus.”

I watch, holding my breath as the SEALs plant a charge then stand back.

Next follows a muffled explosion as the doors blow inward.

The SEALs rush into the container. Through the night vision camera I can see long crates inside.

So far, everything is going according to plan.

One of the SEALs opens a crate and brushes off the packing hay to reveal a stacked shoulder-fired missile.

“We have visual confirmation of the weapons,” says SEAL one over the comms. “Dozens of portable, infrared-homing surface-to-air missiles systems.”

I watch the crates as they are being opened. Compartments of rifles, missile tubes, and NATO-grade Ordnance.

“Copy that,” says SEAL two. “Manifest confirmed.”

The men quickly pull two of the crates off the container, then place thermite charges in the remaining wooden boxes, enough to melt the metal and leave nothing usable. Timed triggers will ensure the charges won’t go off until the SEALs are long gone. Leaving behind no signatures. No trace.

“Team Bravo, fall back to waterline. Crates are on the sleds.”

“Well done,” Hawke says. “We just stopped a proxy war.”

I frown. Done for now. This might be a significant blow, but it’s not the end.

One of the screens switches, and I walk up to the monitor, locking eyes with a pixilated face.

Rourke.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Rourke says.

“You might have helped stop a war today, but don’t think for a second this makes us even,” Hawke says.

Rourke grins. “I never said it did.”

Hawke signals for Lizzie to cut the feed.

Lizzie bites her lip. “Before we celebrate, I just received verification on the ID of the woman who was posing as Mariam. Her name is Zahra Coello, and I looks like she was working with Ibrahim. I’m still working on details off the phone you brought back that was on her body.

GPS shows where she’d been the last twenty-four hours. ”

“And that’s significant because. . .” I ask.

“If she had Mariam, and her last location was with Mariam?—”

I grab my coat. “We might have just found her.”

The last few days have felt more like a script from a Hollywood spy movie, not my day-to-day life that is normally spent vetting people and translating information. While I’m praying Mariam is alive, the location has me concerned.

The Paris catacombs are located under the city, where most of the passageways were sealed off from the public decades ago.

Originally, they were limestone quarries, dozens and dozens of miles of tunnels, carved out to provide the stones to build the city, and then eventually abandoned.

Later, they were used to relieve overcrowded burial grounds that had become a public health crisis.

They were supposed to take care of two main problems, sink holes and the surplus of dead bodies. Not exactly a place where I want to be.

And if Mariam has been shut up inside one of the tombs. . .

The stone walls are wet and our footsteps echo as Graham and I maneuver through an abandoned street-level entrance that is hidden behind a boarded-up storefront.

My headlight catches the steel grate leading down into the catacombs, and I can see that the chain that secured it has been cut.

We keep walking, headlamps flashing on the walls as we descend down narrow stairs and unearthly silence through the maze of forgotten tunnels.

Definitely not your typical tourist site.

The city might be noisy above us, but here it’s absolute silence.

“Be careful,” Graham says. “There’s our way down.”

He descends the steel ladder, and I follow him down the narrow shaft.

“Remind me why we didn’t wait for the tactical team?” I ask once we reach the bottom.

Graham doesn’t have to answer. We both know why. If Mariam is here, she’s been without food and water potentially for days. We can’t afford to wait to get permission to go after her.

I shiver, trying not to think about the fact that I’m surrounded by layers and layers of bones beneath the bustling streets of Paris.

There are signs that people have been down here recently like empty liquor bottles and cigarette stubs. I keep walking past a wall with graffiti. I hear dripping water and the clatter of stone from a tunnel nearby.

Graham holds up his hand, and I stop. I shiver in the darkness, straining to see what’s ahead of us.

She’s sitting in a side alcove, next to a crumbled wall. Graham signals for me to go to her while he makes sure there isn’t someone else around. I check her breathing, grateful she’s alive, though she’s clearly dehydrated. Her hands and feet are zip-tied.

“They told me no one was coming. I thought I was going to die down here,” Mariam says, barely able to get the words past her dry throat.

I quickly cut off the zip ties and help her sit up. “They were wrong. You’re safe now. We’re here to help.”

I pull a water bottle from my backpack and give it to her.

“Drink slowly,” I tell her, helping her to hold the bottle. I find a thermal blanket and wrap it around her.

“My name is Samantha. I know Oumar. It’s okay. It’s over.”

She looks like Zahra. Enough so that I can see why they thought the plan to infiltrate and find Oumar was going to work.

Thankfully, it hadn’t.

“There’s no one else here,” Graham says, coming back to where we are.

“Where is Oumar?”

“He’s at a safe house.”

“And the woman who brought me here?” Mariam asks. “She threatened me. Told me that if I didn’t tell her everything, they were going to kill Oumar.”

I hesitate. “She’s dead. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

There’s just enough light to catch the fear still in her eyes. She’s unconvinced, I’m sure, that it’s over.

“Can I see Oumar?”

“We’re going to take you to the hospital. Make sure you’re okay, but yes. After that, you can see him.”

She touches a dark bruise on her face. “I’m fine. I just want to see him.”

Graham carries her back through the tunnels to the surface, where we take her to a doctor who won’t ask questions. Any explanations we give him are brief. If anyone asks him, he’ll say we’re simply good Samaritans who heard someone in distress and helped. No one will ever know more than that.

It doesn’t take long for us to put the rest of the pieces together. Zahra—like Ibrahim— was sent to look for Oumar. While Mariam didn’t know Oumar was working with the CIA, she did give Zahra my phone number and other pieces of information that Oumar had given her in case of an emergency.

While there are a few physical injuries she’ll have to deal with, worse is the emotional trauma from being kidnapped and held hostage. From believing that Oumar was dead. And from feeling guilty over giving up the information he’d given her.

I try to convince her that Oumar is okay, but she doesn’t believe me until we’re finally able to take her to him at the safe house. I watch as he pulls her against him and holds her.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she says, sobbing into his chest.

I’m grateful their story didn’t end the way mine did. Grateful they still have a chance of making things work.

Oumar turns, his arm still around her as Graham and I stand in the entrance of the small apartment with a guard hovering in the background.

“Thank you,” Oumar says. “For everything. I—we—owe you our lives.”

“It’s been a good day,” Graham says.

“I’m sorry for what you both went through,” I say, “but a lot of lives were saved today because of you.”

When we leave a few moments later, I realize how exhausted I am.

I glance up at the dimly lit window of the safe house as we step out onto the street, heading back to Graham’s car.

I’m not sure what will happen next other than they will disappear.

New identities. A new life. They’re safe, and for the moment, that’s all that really matters.