CHAPTER 16
Ram caught sight of Ali down in the cafeteria at 0900 the next morning. He’d just arrived at work and had wandered into the room where many of the employees were just finishing up their breakfasts and starting their work day. And there she was, wearing a pair of jeans with a long-sleeved, pink t-shirt, covered by a lightweight, white denim jacket. Her hair was loose and she looked beautiful. How he longed to slide his fingers through those strong, silky black strands.
Tamping down his personal needs, Ram noticed that Ali had a huge plate of eggs and bacon with salsa on the side, and a short stack of pancakes. She was sitting by herself in a corner, and he felt for her. He was alone, too, and felt it even more keenly with her in the vicinity. It wasn’t Ali’s fault, it was his weakness and immaturity that had created the chasm between them.
He ambled over to the coffee area, grabbed a mug of strong, black Ethiopian brew and headed her way. He made sure she saw him coming, never approaching her from the rear as it would scare the hell out of her. He felt Ali sense him as he moved casually in her direction. She was ever the sniper, with strong intuition about anything approaching her before she could see it.
When she lifted her chin, sensing him with her invisible all-terrain radar, he saw her golden eyes grow warm with welcome. She wore no makeup, her mouth one of the most delicious parts of her strong, beautiful body.
“Can I drop by and say good morning?” he asked teasingly as he came to a halt at her table. Her firm skin was less tight across her high cheekbones and Ram saw fewer shadows beneath her eyes. She must have gotten some decent sleep, and for that, Ram was relieved.
“Sure,” she murmured between bites, “have a seat.”
He sat opposite her and enjoyed seeing her eat with such relish. Ops people tucked a lot of carbs away when they knew they were going out on a mission. Carbs, once ingested, converted to sugar and were extra energy for operators should they need it. “Looks like you got some shut-eye,” he murmured, sipping his coffee.
“I did. I didn’t think I would, but after a hot, soaking bath, I crawled into that bed and died.”
“Let’s use a word other than ‘died,’ okay?” he requested, trying to sound slightly amused about it. She licked her lower lip and his body went on alert. Damn. There was nothing that Ali did that wasn’t read as sensual or sexual by his hormone-ridden body. He cupped his hands around the mug, waiting for her to swallow the eggs.
“You’re right,” she agreed a moment later, picking up her coffee, sipping it. “I had a deep, dream-free sleep. It was incredible.” She looked around the cafeteria. “I think it’s the vibe here at Artemis. It feels warm and fuzzy to me, a homey kind of atmosphere. The kind you can snuggle into and feel surrounded by caring people. A big bird’s nest, if you will.”
“You’re right on all counts,” he told her. “That’s your intuition working again.”
“Really?”
He smiled a little. “Yeah, Artemis is run by Delos Charities. They, in turn, are supported by Turkish, Greek, and American families, all related by blood. Delos Shipping is the largest container-ship company in the world. Tal Culver-Lockwood once told me that the combined families are worth a hundred-billion dollars.”
Whistling, Ali said, “Wow, that’s incredible! When we were in the armory yesterday, I kept observing how this place was state-of-the-art and that no expense had been spared. Everything was top of the line.”
“It’s that way because the families can afford to buy the best.”
“And how long have you been working here?”
“Six months.” He saw her glorious golden eyes widen incrementally as she stared at him for a moment, as if his answer meant something important to her.
Ram wanted to ask what she was thinking, but he didn’t. Obviously, something he’d said had triggered something within her. Was it good or bad? Most likely bad, he thought sadly. If only they could erase their previous time together and start all over.
“And what’s your job here?” She spooned more eggs into her mouth and then slathered her pancakes with a healthy layer of mango jam.
“I’m a Senior Mission Analyst for Mexico,” he said. “That means I work in Mission Planning with Wyatt. We create the missions, evaluate the software he’s created for a mission, look at the angles and danger, as well as a lot of other factors, then put it together in the safest way possible for all involved.”
“Tell me something. Wyatt referred to you as ‘bullheaded,’ sometimes . . . ” she shared a quick grin with him before eating the pancakes she’d just cut into. She saw Ram react to her smile. Granted, she rarely smiled around him, but she wanted to continue on this rickety trial-and-error approach to put them in a more positive spin with one another. She saw appreciation in his eyes for her smile, and something inside her began to melt.
He laughed. “Yeah, Wyatt makes no bones about me being like that, sometimes. I wear it as a badge of honor. The Mission Analysts were all hired by Wyatt. He wants to take advantage of the depth of our combat experience. We often sit around those tables tearing a rough draft for a mission apart and then putting it back together again. So far, in the six months I’ve been here, we haven’t lost anyone on a mission. I’d like to think it’s because our team makes it the safest op possible for those of us involved. Get the job done, then bring our people home safe and sound. And maybe,” he said with a shrug, “being bullheaded at times in some of those meetings has saved someone’s life.”
Ali gave him an intense, assessing look. What had he said that was making her react like this? Ram had his own intuition, which was just as powerful as hers, but in a different way. His skillset was in reading someone’s micro-expressions, their body language, listening to the tone of their voice, and putting it all together. Whatever he’d said seemed positive because for a split second, he saw something akin to satisfaction in her eyes—and then it was gone.
But it had been there. Her smile had warmed him as nothing else had so far. It was like a cherished gift, and it gave him the courage to probe a little.
“Okay now, why give me that look? What did I just say that got your attention?” He held his breath for a moment, knowing that Ali usually combusted on such questions from him—but she gave him another thoughtful look, instead.
“Yesterday I said that you had changed. I was wondering what you’d been doing the last three years since I last saw you in the team. Yesterday, you seemed . . . well . . . not so armored up, I guess.”
He could feel her searching, awkwardly reaching out to him, and he wasn’t about to squander the opportunity. Taking a huge risk, he leaned his elbows on the table, hands around his coffee cup, and held her curious gaze. “Funny, last night before I dropped off to sleep, I was thinking about how Artemis is a big, happy, sloppy sort of family. The people who own Delos are gung-ho on big families, too.”
“Yes, many Europeans tend to make family a priority,” Ali agreed, biting into her toast.
He nodded. “Since coming here, Artemis has been like a kind of family to me. At first, when I was sitting with the Human Resources folks, and they told me that, I didn’t believe them.”
She titled her head, curious. “Why not? I know there are some companies that value a familial environment for their employees over many other business models. Too many others are run on cold-blooded greed, out to screw their employees. This is sure a nice change.”
When he didn’t reply, she went on in another direction. “SEALs were a team. They were also a family of sorts for you.”
“That’s true,” Ram agreed, watching her trying to understand why he’d dodged her statement about families in general. The little vixen had an unerring GPS. She could tune into any conversation and get to the visceral core of it. Ram didn’t want her to ask him about his family, so he added, “I guess there are different types of families. Here at Artemis, Tal Culver-Lockwood, has really made it family friendly. They’ve put in a nursery for new mothers who want to breastfeed their babies, plus their own facility and privacy to do it at work. Tal has added a pre-school and kindergarten with licensed teachers so the parents can bring their young kids here for babysitting, as well as for education. They can visit them any time they want during their work hours.”
“Wow,” Ali said, “that’s wonderful! That’s so special. It’s something that I think other corporations should do for their employees. Having their kids here—not at some day-care center miles away—has to be a win-win for everyone.”
“Everyone is thrilled about it. Because Tal’s family has this tight relationship with their Turkish and Greek counterparts, she’s made it the same kind of environment here at Artemis.”
“I would think by now you’d have a family, Torres.”
Ram felt an invisible hand grip his heart so hard it was actually painful. He tried not to overreact, which he’d always done in the past with Ali. Especially that first deployment. On the second one, they got along better and he didn’t know why because he hadn’t changed at all. But Ali had and she began treating him differently—better, maybe. Ram could never explain why Ali had changed toward him, but she had. It brought a lot more peace to the team on that second deployment, that was for sure. “No . . . I haven’t found the right woman yet to settle down and have kids with, I guess.” He saw her eyes grow cloudy for a moment, felt sadness around her, but he didn’t know why. Why that kind of reaction?
“In my family,” she said softly, “we were very loving, always hugging and touching,” she admitted, cleaning up the last of the pancakes on her plate. “I was really lucky to grow up with Cara in that kind of setting. And I know how important it is to have that kind of nurturing surrounding for any child.”
Ram gave her a deadpan expression. He wasn’t opening up that door.
“I guess I find it surprising you don’t have someone in your life, is all. I know at J-bad you had women constantly drooling over you, hanging off your arms, always wanting you.”
Again Ram shrugged, took a big gulp of his coffee, nearly burning his tongue. Setting the mug down, he muttered, “There’s a certain kind of woman who wants to bed a SEAL. You know that. It’s the word SEAL that does it. Doesn’t mean there’s anything other than sex between the two of us. Those women were caught up in a fantasy, an ideal. And no man is either of those things when reality hits the next morning.”
“Mmmm, true,” she agreed, pushing her plate aside. “So, you aren’t with anyone right now?”
Shocked at how personal she’d suddenly become, Ram hesitated. Ali was never like that with him those years they spent together. He figured she was trying to be ‘nice’ to him, being social and all. Okay, he could play along with that because there could be no dissention between them on this mission. “No. My time here at Artemis pretty much takes up my life. I like what I do. We’re on constant call 24/7 in case an op goes sideways, or a new one springs up at one of the eighteen-hundred Delos charities around the world. I like my work, Ali,” he said, smiling. “It feels good to be a part of a family-like team here.”
She nodded and sipped her coffee, watching him over the rim.
He felt uneasy over the look she was giving him. Ram hadn’t wanted to talk about family, but here they were at ground zero, and he wasn’t about to say a word about his.
Setting the mug down, Ali said, “I feel that Artemis has been good for you, Torres. You’re not as hard and disconnected as you were on our SEAL team.”
Under the old Ram reaction, he supposed he’d have taken the gauntlet Ali just threw down at his feet, picked it up, and gone at her with an equally visceral and verbal reaction. But he didn’t because there was an odd, unnamed emotion in her eyes he couldn’t decipher. He felt her tentatively reaching out to him, maybe with that same invisible olive branch they’d exchanged yesterday when he’d embraced her and let her cry in his arms at the airport. That had shocked the hell out of him, but he wasn’t sorry he’d done it because he’d always ached to have Ali in his arms. Ram just wasn’t prepared when it did happen. “I wasn’t the best person in the world to be around then,” he admitted slowly, his voice low with apology. “Maybe I just needed a different environment, like Artemis, to grow up in,” he joked weakly. “I don’t really know.”
“I think Tal has created a really safe place for everyone here. I don’t see angry, stressed people in the halls or in their offices. I see people who are smiling, laughing, or joking, instead. I haven’t seen strain in their faces, either,” she said, touching her own. “Unlike my own,” she said, making an unhappy twist of her mouth.
“You’re right in your observations about this company,” he confirmed. “But your job, as I understand it, is vastly different according to what Wyatt told me yesterday. There’s no safe place for you 24/7. You might have a Mexican Marine company stationed at a nearby village, but they can’t be there to immediately help you if things go sideways. That’s the highest kind of stress an operator can have. From reading your background report, you’ve been on this op for two years as a field operator.”
“Yeah, well my job sort of came to an end a few days ago. Since you have my dossier, did you read where the CIA just fired me for being rogue?”
He grinned a little. “Yeah, I read it yesterday with Wyatt. He laughed his ass off about it and so did I.” And then quickly added, “Not laughing at you, but at the Company, who continually does stupid things with their agents out in the field. Just because you took your two-week vacay back to where you were working your op hit them wrong, is all. You think outside the box—they don’t. Theirs is a really anal organization and it’s tough for someone creative like you to fit in. But I think you knew that going in, yes?”
“I did. My sister had been captured right when I was to take those two weeks off. Damned if I was going to step down and go gallivanting off to a Hawaiian island or something. I had to be back in my hiding place above Azarola’s fortress watching her and giving Captain Gomez the daily intel. By being there, I’ve been an asset, but the Company didn’t see it that way. So screw them.”
“You have been an incredible asset,” he agreed, feeling emotional as he saw tears appear in Ali’s eyes. And just as quickly, they disappeared. Ram couldn’t put himself in her place as much as he wanted to. He had no siblings, no emotional connection to his family whatsoever. He knew how close Ali was with Cara and the rest of her family. She had a big set of titanium balls as far as he was concerned to be able to handle her worry and anguish about her little sister under these types of circumstances. “We’ll be leaving in less than six hours,” he said, trying to make her feel less stressed. Ram wasn’t sure it was relieving any of her stress, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“I know,” she choked, looking down for a moment, struggling to push her feelings aside. “I can hardly wait.”
*
Ali breathed a sigh of relief as the Air Force C-130 Hercules took off from Joint Base Andrews. It was 1500, or three p.m. They were airborne and headed for an airstrip thirty miles east of El Paso, Texas. There, they’d land and transfer to a black, unmarked C-130. The transport would then fly under the radar across the border to a dirt strip in Sonora, Mexico. The C-130 was chosen because it could take off and land in pretty inhospitable conditions, such as on dirt strips in the middle of nowhere, and still get the job done. She noticed that the Herky Jerky, as they all referred to it, had tail markings, and a number. However, their ride on the black C-130 near El Paso, would have no markings whatsoever to identify it by country or by a special number given to every aircraft by FAA regulations.
That bird was a CIA-owned plane and Ram had told her that bit of intel earlier while they were making sure all their weapons bags and other gear was loaded onto the pallet to board the transport aircraft.
Ali had nodded and smiled to herself. She might no longer be a CIA operative, but she was getting a flight from the Company, anyway. She knew Lockwood had big-time connections with the CIA and wasn’t surprised that he could sweet talk them out of this border-crossing C-130.
The noise in the belly of the four-engine turbo-prop, with its whistling engines, was tremendous and she clapped on a pair of protective earphones like everyone else on board. They held an ICS, intercom radio system plug-in, and were connected with everyone else on the plane. As soon as they hit an altitude of thirty-thousand feet, everyone left their nylon seats, got up, and moved around. There was a toilet on board as well as a water and coffee dispenser area.
Ali’s mind and heart were squarely on Cara. How was she? What was happening to her? Was she getting enough water to drink? Were they hydrated or being left to grow weak without adequate water being given to them? Were they being given enough food? She took a deep breath and strode down the metal aluminum deck toward the coffee dispenser area just below the cockpit. Up ahead, Ram was situated between the pilot and copilot, sitting on the check seat. Ram was the leader of this mission and he was busy with a flood of details. She knew full well that a mission was always in a state of flux, and Ram had to be on top of the changing situations in the air as well as on the ground.
She filled her Styrofoam cup only halfway and put a lid on it because of the possibility of in-flight jostling from hitting unseen air pockets. Their gear was on a pallet and fastened in place with nylon cargo straps. It was then held down by chains on the floor points in the center of the aircraft. They’d land at the no-name dirt strip based on GPS coordinates where Captain Gomez and his company of Marines would be waiting for them. At that time, the pallet would be rolled off the aircraft and into a military truck for transit. Ram had already made sure she’d gotten the hourly updates on the female hostages from the two Marines who were presently manning her hide above Azarola’s fortress. From what the Marines could see, Cara and her three friends had not been bothered by any of the men. It appeared they were given adequate water and trays of food three times a day.
So far.
That could change in a heartbeat and Ali knew it, dreading such a text from the Marines. She knew there would be nothing they could do if something did happen to one or all of the women. The Marines couldn’t give away their hide position. Even if they wanted to help, they were two men against forty drug soldiers who lived and worked within that fortress. The odds were not in their favor, knowing they’d both get killed. Instead, all they could do was helplessly watch if someone decided to rape the women. It would be horrible for them to watch without being able to intervene. The Marines were the best military group Mexico had. They were used to rescuing kidnapped hostages—not sitting by helplessly, watching such an assault.
Once back in her nylon webbed seat, she plugged into the intercom radio system to listen to the pilots or Ram talking to someone else. At one point, he switched to Spanish and she recognized José Gomez’s voice on the radio transmission with him. He was giving Ram an update on the hostages. So far, so good. They were being left alone. She prayed to the Lady of Guadalupe, Mother Mary, to continue to hold those four women safe until they could get there to rescue them.
There wasn’t much to do on the flight itself. Like a typical military aircraft, it only offered the bare necessities.
The riveted aluminum floor shivered beneath her booted feet, the vibration of the turbo-prop engines moving constantly through her body like subtle, rippling, invisible waves. There was nothing fancy about getting a lift on a military flight. Ali wanted this flight to be over, to be on the ground, riding in one of the military trucks toward Azarola’s mountain fortress.
There were so many narrow, winding dirt roads in the Sierra Madre Mountains. And José knew all of them because he and his men had tramped them for the last three years. That was a comforting feeling for Ali. She was glad to have the back up of José and his men. The captain was a known resource to her, someone she could completely rely on in an emergency.
She didn’t see Ram coming down out of the cockpit until he chose a nylon seat two down from where she sat. He pointed to the dial, indicating they should go to a private channel to speak to one another, not overheard by the rest of the crew. She switched.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Remember that weather briefing yesterday? That chubasco, coming up the west coast of Baja on the Pacific side?”
Frowning, she said, “Yes, what about it?” Chubasco was the Spanish word to describe a heavy rain downpour. But for them, that included the hurricanes or cyclones, as the weather service referred to them, when they hit the Baja area of Mexico.
With a grimace, Ram said, “It’s suddenly turned east and it’s going to plow into Baja, go across the Sea of Cortez and hit Sonora. Right now, it’s a category two, but the forecasters are saying once it hits land on the Baja Peninsula, it will bring it down to a one.”
“I’ve been there through two chubasco seasons,” she said, “and that storm can pick up more power and punch once it makes it into the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez. That could bring it back up to a category two, so the weather forecasters are probably in error. I would count on it being a two, maybe even a three if the conditions are right.”
Nodding unhappily, he said, “The forecasters said that, too.”
“Rain isn’t all bad, nor is the wind,” she said more to herself than him. “It will cover us, make it tough for Azarola’s soldiers to hear us or see us coming. Everyone, except for the sentries doing security walk-arounds inside the fortress, will hide inside where it’s dry.”
“You’re right. I just don’t like the idea of rain, is all, for other reasons. Randy Cross can’t fly the Raven drone in that kind of high wind and erratic weather. We’re blind with no eyes in the sky.”
“Yes, but we have two Marines in my hide with look down, shoot down capability. They can still see inside the fortress and they have infrared goggles to help us locate the drug soldiers, if necessary. So, it’s not as bad as you think. They can become our eyes and ears if necessary.”
“That’s true, but that Raven would have given us so much more intel. Those Marines, as valuable as they are on that perch hide of yours, are stationary. They only have line-of-sight in one position, not all positions like the Raven could have given us.”
“It’s going to make infiltration more dangerous,” Ali agreed, “but it’s better than nothing. Plus, they have the sentry pattern outside down, so we’ll know when to move or remain still.”
“True.” He pushed his fingers through his short hair. “Still, it’s a mixed bag.”
“What’s new?” she asked drily.
He grinned. “True. No op goes down like it should. We’ll adjust.”
“I’m more worried about Cara and the women in that cage. I wonder if they’ll take them inside when the bands of the chubasco hit their area, or not?” Ali’s heart beat once, hard, fear running through her. If the women were indoors, the soldiers might paw at them, rape them, pass them around if Azarola didn’t already have buyers for them. Ram must have seen it in her face.
“Don’t go there,” Ram warned her, his voice gruff. “Just keep saying your prayers to the Lady and see all four of them in her embrace and light. Judging from the photos and video we’ve seen of the cage, it’s very well protected by those tarps. I’m hoping they don’t move them indoors, which would make it even tougher—and more dangerous—to rescue them. It’s a moving chessboard at this point with the weather making this unexpected turn.”
Stunned by his caring, Ali turned away, afraid he’d see the tears rising in her eyes. They were so close to her sister now, and yet so far away if something happened to those hostages. Never had Ali felt so damned helpless. And Ram was right about the danger to themselves if they were taken inside the fortress. Anxiety nearly overwhelmed her.
And then, the impossible happened.
Ram laid his hand lightly on her tense shoulder. “Ali? Keep your focus. Do what you have to do to stay on point.” He squeezed her shoulder gently and then released it, got up, and walked toward the cockpit once more.
Gulping, her throat closing with tears that ached to be released, Ali fought it all down and “put it back into the kill box,” as the SEALs would say. Her flesh tingled where Ram had placed his large hand. She could feel his support, which was amazing to her. What was happening between them? She didn’t know because her emotions were on a collision course with her over-active mind and tortured imagination. Ram had been right: stow it. She couldn’t afford to go there. Instead, Ali had to look at the positives: the chubasco was going to move inland, and the rain could hide their movement into the fortress. But so much could go wrong, too.
For a moment, she dwelled on the fact that Ram had touched her in a very human way by comforting her. Somehow, he sensed what she was going through and had awkwardly reached out and tried to help her—oddly, it had.
She was feeling so scared for Cara, knowing that she could be drugged, unconscious, and then raped and sodomized over and over again by drug soldiers standing in line to take their turn. Just Ram’s light touch, not sexual, not suggestive, but simply one human trying to console another, blew the rest of her construct about him apart.
She couldn’t let the situation dissolve her focus. Ram was right: she needed to stay on point to what was actually occurring around them. The weather had changed. She knew that any chubasco came in bands of rain and wind. In between, the sky might be rainy looking, but it wasn’t going to be a downpour, either. The wind would die down, too.
Ali knew they had a rough blueprint of the inside of Azarola’s fortress. But it wasn’t perfect because no one other than Azarola’s men had been inside that place except for her that one time when she’d discovered the tunnel. They’d be going into a huge unknown and it amped the danger up ten times more than if the hostages were kept in that outdoor cell.
Randy Cross would be up in her hide with those two Marines. He would have to decide upon the chaotic weather conditions in a given time frame, and whether to try and fly the Raven or not. A good gust of wind could smash it into a tree, or worse, end up dropping it into the fortress itself. And if that happened, they were in deep trouble because the drug soldiers knew a Raven drone when they saw one. They’d know there was a black-op team nearby and the mission would blow up on them. No, Randy wouldn’t take that kind of risk, putting the team in jeopardy like that. Instead, he wouldn’t fly the drone at all.
She felt antsy, anxious, and wanted to be on the ground, not in the air. Standing, she began to slowly pace the length of the C-130, moving around the anchored pallet, head down, thinking. The other operators were all standing around, too. Ali saw similar expressions on their face and knew they were cataloging the list of endless possibilities once they arrived at the op. That damn weather had just turned their mission upside down and inside out. Dammit!