CHAPTER 10
“What the hell have you done, Montero? You didn’t take vacation. You went back to your op, dammit!”
Josh Estes’ voice was low and furious. Ali hung onto her dissolving patience—what little she’d ever had in the first place. “I did what you’d do if your sister was in Azarola’s hands, Estes, so don’t scream at me. It won’t work and you know it.”
She seriously doubted he knew she’d been wounded in the firefight—and she wasn’t about to tell him. He was one of those anal types who had been ordered to be her handler because he, too, had Hispanic blood and was originally from the Sonora region of Mexico. Worse, he’d never been a case officer out in the field, so his world revolved around his glass-enclosed office.
She had immediately disliked him. He was an arrogant perfectionist, someone who liked to control others, and took great delight in doing so. And he didn’t like being talked back to in the same condescending tone he spoke to her. Too bad.
“I’ve had it with you,” Estes snarled. “You’ve gone rogue, Montero. You were not ordered down to Azarola’s area again. You were ordered to take your mandatory two-week vacation. You came back to Langley to check in and then take two weeks off.”
She snarled back, “Well, I decided to take my vacay in Sonora. Got a problem with that, Estes?” She saw Gomez nod in her direction, a sour smile on his face as he lifted his hand to her and turned away, leaving her to argue with her boss. Avana gave her a sympathetic look and followed his captain.
“You know, I have a real problem with one of my people ignoring one of my orders! I’m tired of you disobeying me, Montero. We don’t need rogue operators in the Company, and you’re one of them by your own choice. I’m sending a notice of termination to you as of today. You’re done working for the Company. The papers will be waiting for you when you get back to your apartment in Alexandria. You’re out of a job as of this moment.”
“Suits me, you asshole.” Staring at the sat phone, Ali cursed softly and clicked it off. Her mind whirled. She wasn’t rogue. The bastard hadn’t said where to take her two weeks of vacation. He hadn’t said, “Don’t do Sonora, Mexico.”
Cara . . .
Oh, Lady, what am I going to do? Who can I get help from? I’ve GOT to stay here and be José’s eyes and ears so we can rescue her.
Wyatt Lockwood suddenly filtered into her thoughts. She had worked with the Navy SEAL’s team in Afghanistan for two six-month deployments. At that time, she’d been part of a secret initiative created and brought to life by a woman Marine Corps general. She was the first female combat-experienced Army general, and wanted to prove that women who were combat trained could work successfully in black ops. Ali had been one of the volunteer women she had hand-picked to do just that.
Luckily, Ali had landed in SEAL units. She’d been a Marine Corps sniper, and damned good at her job, and they’d welcomed her with open arms. Snipers were a badly wanted force multiplier to be added to all black-ops units. There were far more requests for them than could be fulfilled. They were the rock stars of the military, but few and far between. Besides, Marines and SEALs got along just fine. Her thin, dark brows knitted momentarily.
Well, that was partly true. Her SEAL nemesis, Ram Torres, was a royal pain-in-the-ass to her most of the time. Too bad he had to be so sinfully good looking, a cocky bastard who wore confidence like it was a birthright. He knew he was a babe magnet and had once subtly hinted that she lusted after him. That pissed her off. She wasn’t about to drop into his arms—or his bed.
Pushing Torres’s image aside, she concentrated instead on Wyatt Lockwood, leader of that team. She’d never lost touch with him after leaving the Marine Corps three years earlier. The CIA had scooped her up and considered her a prize, familiar with her abilities and skills. Last year, Wyatt had called her and offered her a job at Artemis, the in-house Delos Charity security company. It was a top secret firm, not known at all to the outside world. Wyatt, because he’d been a Navy chief in the SEALs, had a gazillion networking contacts in the alphabet soup of black ops—CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, ATF, and on, and on—that was necessary to run a global concern like that. She turned down the job, wanting to go after and capture Azarola. Once she did that, she promised Wyatt that she’d come knocking on his door for a civilian job. He was good with that.
In fact, her condo was only five miles from the old farmhouse at the edge of Alexandria, Virginia, where Artemis was hidden behind its facade. For anyone driving by the immaculately kept 1850s three-story farmhouse, it looked like a producing farm to this day. There were huge hydroponics buildings everywhere on the property, along with a working crew who cared for the business. But inside the farmhouse, all changed at that point.
Wyatt had walked her through the five floors, two of them buried deep beneath what was once the old basement area. Those two below-ground floors were the heart of the busy five-story security firm. Ali had been amazed at how progressive they were, using the most advanced electronics in the world for their every need.
Delos Charities was underwritten by family members in Greece and Turkey that owned the richest container shipping company in the world. Their eighteen-hundred worldwide charities needed this kind of protection in today’s violent environment. Together, the families poured money into Artemis, making it one of the greatest security jewels any country could ever dream of having. And Wyatt had offered her a job that made her salivate. She could work with a man she respected and liked, in the most advanced cyber-electronics firm on the planet. That made her keen to take him up on that job offer at the right time.
Now, as she sat on the log, her arm aching like hell, dirty, sweaty, smelly, and angry, she decided to call him on her sat phone. The CIA couldn’t have cut off its use yet, she hoped.
“Wyatt speaking.”
“Wyatt, this is Ali Montero. Am I catching you at a bad time?” She looked at her watch. It was only 0900 here and 1300 back on the East Coast where he was located.
“Nah, I came in early this morning. Got an op going down at the moment and I wanted to stay close to the action here.”
“Good to hear. Listen, I need your help,” she said, and dove into the whole sordid story of her sister’s kidnapping by Azarola and how she’d just gotten fired by a jerk at the Company. When she finished, she heard Wyatt sigh.
“Listen,” he drawled, “we’re seriously upset that Cara has been kidnapped. She’s a Delos employee working with a grade school and kindergarten in Tucson, and it’s our responsibility to react to her capture. I want to assure you we’re working on a mission to get her out of there. But first, I’ve gotta tell you, Ali, you should’ve taken our job offer last year. You’re not a CIA kind of operator and I think you always knew that.”
“No, I guess I’m not.” She was heartened to hear Wyatt and Artemis were going to do something to help her sister. That was unexpectedly good news.
“Well, as my pal, Ram Torres, says, ‘Artemis is a place for wild-card operators who live outside the box.’ And that’s you.”
Grimacing, she muttered, “Torres is there?”
“Yeah, he joined six months ago. Oh, don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge against the guy? Even now? You haven’t seen him in how long?”
“Since working with your team, Wyatt, three years ago. Let’s leave it at that, okay? Can you help me get Cara out of there?”
“Well, I think I can. How about if we send a Delos jet out to Tucson, to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, later today to pick you up and bring you back east? Get a lift from your Mexican Marine captain and ask him to get their top Marine brass to fly you to Tucson in one of those Black Hawks we gave them. What do you think?”
“That all sounds good, but I’m asking for help for Cara, not myself, Wyatt.”
“I get that. I’m offering you a job if you want it now, not later, Ali. I’ve been a big fan of your black-ops abilities from the get-go. And frankly, getting fired by the Company is a medal you can proudly wear on your chest. Those boys wear their skivvies too high and too tight. They need to learn to go commando.”
Ali burst out laughing. It felt like a huge weight had just been lifted off her shoulders. “Lockwood, you’re the same rowdy SEAL, no matter where you work—in or out of the military.”
“I’m one of those wild cards by nature, Ali, just like you. But listen, seriously, I am offering you a job.”
“Can I have time to think about it? What I want right now is to get Cara the help she needs.”
“Of course, and we’ll support that first and foremost. As a matter of fact, Torres is heading up a team that’s going to be heading out your way in a couple of days to do just that. The CIA asked us to get involved in your sister’s case two days ago. I suppose Josh Estes didn’t tell you that . . . ”
Gulping, she whispered, “No, he didn’t say a word, the bastard.”
“Well, even if they try to sabotage our mission, we’ll undertake it personally, so no worries about that. But I need to see you. We need to get you integrated into our team before they leave on that operation. The only thing I’m worried about is you getting along with Torres. He never got along with you, although he became less grouchy after I warned him to start including you as a team member. You two were at each other’s throats all the time on my team at first. I had a helluva time keeping you two apart when we had downtime until I told him to treat you as an equal or I was going to kick him off my team.”
“Yeah, I remember it was a real love-hate relationship.” Wiping her brow, she said softly, “I’ll come back on that Delos flight, Wyatt. I’ll work with Torres for my sister’s sake. This isn’t about me and him. I’ve grown up a lot more since I was on your team. Nothing is more important to me than getting Cara to safety. I-I’m just so torn up about this. She’s my only sister. I love her.”
“I know,” he soothed, with his comforting Texas drawl. “And we have your back and we have Cara’s back, too. What I need is for you to fly back here to put the wheels in motion that you’re working for Artemis. It sounds like Captain Gomez has an eye on Azarola. We’ve worked with the Mexican Marines on a number of ops in the past, and I’ll put a call in to him as soon as I get off this sat phone with you and bring him in on the op we’re going to initiate. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear you’ll be a part of it. We can use a friendly face down there. And the Mexican government has already approved our mission plan, so we’ll be wheels up in forty-eight hours. But I have to get you acclimated to this team of ours. Fair enough?”
Tears stung her eyes, and her voice went wobbly. “More than fair, Wyatt. I’ll be a good team member, I promise. I won’t make myself a pain-in-the-ass to Torres, either. This is about my sister. My poor parents are going crazy over all this. They feel so helpless and out of control.”
“I understand. Get your Captain Gomez to fly you across the border to Davis-Monthan. Once that’s arranged, call your parents and tell them what’s going on. I’ll have one of my mission assistants, Jay, stay in touch with your parents and keep them updated as our op goes down. It will help soothe their anxieties.”
“Wyatt, you’re an angel in disguise . . . thank you . . . you have no idea how much this means to me. I’ll do anything you ask of me. I just want Cara back safe and sound.”
He chuckled. “Well, don’t give away the farm, Ali. You’re a known entity to me and I really hope you’ll enjoy becoming part of the Artemis family. We can use someone of your quality.”
“Even if I’m a rogue, according to the Company now?”
Wyatt laughed that rolling Texas laugh. “I think that when you meet the rest of Torres’s team on this op, you’ll feel right at home. All I ask, Ali, is that you cool your jets regarding Torres.”
“Is he married? Settled down?” she blurted out, suddenly.
“Oh, darlin’, he’s as much of a wild card as you are, so the answer is no. He’s single, footloose and fancy free, as we say in Texas. No grass grows under that boy’s feet.”
Ali almost smiled. “Can you send me an encrypted email regarding the op and the people assigned to it, with some background on each of them? I want to know who I’m working with. It will give me a good use of my time on that flight back to see you.”
“Good idea, I’ll have it sent right away. I’ve still got your email address in my system.”
“I’m surprised.”
“Don’t be. It’s a software app that brings up a yearly, ‘please consider working for Artemis’ request I’ve been sending you. Looking at it right now, I see we’re two days shy of sending you that yearly reminder.”
Grinning, Ali said, “You’re incredible, Wyatt. I’m so glad I turned to you for help after getting fired on the spot.”
“Well, we’re gearing up to rescue Cara and those other three women. I’m sure that, because you’ve had eyes on them at Azarola’s villa, you’ll add a lot of useful eyes-on intel to our last mission briefing at Artemis. It will be extremely helpful, Ali, believe me.”
She nodded. “Have Captain Gomez send all my photos I’ve taken of the fortress to you, too. You’re going to need them. You’ve probably shot satellite photos of Azarola’s place, but mine are from a lower and different angle. It might help you in deciding how to get in to reach the hostages.”
“You’re right. I’ll do that. Safe journey. I’ll have one of my operators pick you up at Davis-Monthan once you land there this evening.”