Blue Forever (Men in Uniform) (16 page)

25

“It’s real simple,” Commander Quinn said after Kip had been talked into taking a seat at the table and accepted a cup of coffee from the kid with the ancient eyes. “We’re going to hijack the AUV you were supposedly sent to photograph. Then we’re going to take it apart and let you photograph it—for real this time—inside and out, and download all the juicy software that we don’t already have. Then we’ll put it back together all nice and neat, and send it back to its mama. With any luck, the PLAN—the Chinese navy—will never know we had it.” He actually grinned.

Incredulous, Kip glanced around at the six STORM operators. “Are you kidding me right now?”

Nope. They weren’t kidding him. Even the old guy, who definitely should know better, was looking pleased with the outrageous plan.

Kip let out a laugh. Then he laughed some more. He hadn’t heard anything so funny in years.

“You got a better idea?” Walker asked calmly, after Kip’s mirth had subsided to chuckles.

“Hell, no,” Kip said wryly, hands upraised in mock surrender. “I’m just a boots-on-ground grunt. What do I know from autonomous underwater vehicles?”

“Quite a bit, I’d wager, being in Intelligence,” Quinn returned evenly. “I served in the Corps and so did Zane. Jaeger, here, was in the South African NDF. We’re all pretty knowledgeable about AUVs, UUVs, ROVs, UAVs, and every other kind of Vs out there. So don’t even try that lowly grunt bit on us.”

Kip’s respect for them took an upward swing. “Fair enough,” he said, though still far from convinced. “But you don’t honestly think you can pull this off?”

“We do,” Quinn said. And proceeded to tell him how.

Ten minutes later Kip’s skepticism was waning. After twenty minutes he was nearly won over. Their plan was an elegant blend of old-school wits and high-tech savvy—totally dependent on the dexterity and skill of the operators and how well they coordinated their efforts as a team. Which was clearly outstanding.

He liked it.

Hell, he liked them.

Which shocked the snot out of him.

“Okay,” he said. “There’s just one little problem.”

“What’s that?” the big Southerner drawled.

“I can’t take the photos. My camera’s broken. Bad parachute landing.” He ground his teeth in frustration. He never had arranged to meet up with Jake to get the replacement. After learning the true nature of his mission, he hadn’t thought he’d need it.

The cute blonde popped out of her seat as if it had springs. “Oh, we got that covered.” She pulled a rigid aluminum case from under the table, set it down in front of him, and snapped the locks. “Figured you’d lost your equipment somewhere along the way.”

When she opened the lid it was as if a chorus of angels had gathered over her head and sang just for him.

Nestled inside the case on a bed of sleek black foam was a top-of-the-line Nikon DSLR, five insane interchangeable lenses, ten three-gig storage disks, and a whole mini-rack of assorted Koken filters.

Jesus
. The whole package must have cost well over fifteen grand.

“Holy shit,” he murmured, running his fingers reverently over the pristine equipment. The gear he got through MSOIB was good, but, wow. “This stuff is sick.” He looked to Quinn, a bit awestruck. “I actually get to use this?”

“It’s yours,” Quinn said with a flick of his hand. “Consider it compensation for the trauma we put you through this morning.”

Kip stared, not quite understanding. “You can’t mean—”

“And for the shitty way you were used and betrayed by the fuckers who set you up,” threw in the kid with the eyes. There was a fire burning in them that Kip recognized as fury-tinged empathy.

He suddenly wondered what kind of terrible betrayal the young man had suffered to put that amount of bitterness in them.

“Thanks,” he told Zane sincerely, then looked to Quinn. “I’m happy to help, but I can’t take this stuff, if that’s what you mean. I don’t like being in debt, and I’d definitely owe you.”

“Not me. STORM Corps. But that remains to be seen.” Quinn roused himself and strolled over to the coffee urn. “We’ll talk again when the entire PLAN submarine fleet is on our six and the torpedoes start whizzing past us like locusts.”

He might have a point.

A soft gasp sounded from the entry door. DeAnne stood there, fresh and pink from her nap, bedroom-eyed from their lovemaking, and still damp from a recent shower. She’d changed into a pair of clingy black pants and a U.S. Navy T-shirt. His heart turned over in his chest at the sight of her.

“They’re shooting torpedoes at us?” she asked, her voice an octave higher than normal.

“Not yet, but give ’em time,” Zane said with a sardonic grin.

“Alex Zane!” Darcy scolded. “You’re scaring her!”

“No one’s going to be shooting at us,” Walker assured her. “They’re never going to know we’re here. Kilos are the stealthiest, quietest subs ever made.”

She looked more than skeptical.

“Hi, princess,” Kip said softly as he stood to put an arm around her, and kissed her hair. He hadn’t even realized he’d moved, and he certainly hadn’t thought it out. He’d just pretty much exposed their relationship to the whole team. Not that it would have stayed a secret for long—there was no such thing as a secret in such close quarters. “Have a good nap?” he asked her.

She gave a smile just for him. “Mm-hmm.” Then she looked a little embarrassed, glanced around, and asked, “What was that about torpedoes?”

“Just a joke,” Quinn said. “Grab some coffee and take a seat. We’ll bring you up to speed.”

“I’ll get it,” Kip volunteered, and took his own cup to refill at the same time, while Walker gave her the abridged version of the plans.

Kip worked really hard to keep a pleasant look on his face, and even somehow resisted putting a proprietary arm around her when he sat down again next to her. She’d told him she was not interested in Walker, and he believed her. But for some reason, those primitive, caveman instincts kept rearing up out of nowhere within him.

Mine. You’re mine now, DeAnne
.

With impeccable timing, just as Walker was finishing up laying out the plan, Darcy gave a whoop. “Yes! We’re in!”

Everyone came to attention.

She started typing furiously on her laptop. “Score one for Kapitan Romanov!”

Quinn strode behind her and peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Excellent. How long till you can get the intel we need?”

She shot Quinn an exasperated look. “Jeez, babe, give me a freakin’ minute or two!”

“Sorry, Zimmie. Didn’t mean to push.”

She harrumphed. “You’re forgiven. But only because you’re so damn cute.”

His eyebrows flickered. “I live to be cute, darlin’.”

Kip stifled a smile. Then changed his mind and let it break through. He slipped his fingers under DeAnne’s hair and caressed the back of her neck. These people were clearly consummate professionals, but he liked that they felt at ease enough to tease and show each other true affection without reservation. It felt relaxed. Real.

Or maybe a total fantasy.

He withdrew his hand. “So what happens now?”

Darcy gave the keyboard a final flourish. “I had one of the language experts at STORM Command throw together a translation macro so I could navigate to where I need to be . . .” She squinted at the screen and jetted out a breath. “I’ve got the AUV blue-water testing schedule. I’m pretty sure, anyway. DeAnne? Can you take a look and confirm?”

“Sure.” DeAnne left his side to sit next to Darcy and study the screen. “Yes. And it looks like the first test run is . . . tomorrow morning at high tide.” She glanced up. “Wow. They’re not wasting any time, are they?”

“All the quicker to spy on us,” Master Chief Edwards said grimly. “Clint, will we be ready for the intercept by morning?”

Walker’s lips curved with satisfaction. “Absolutely. We just need to upload the software and your sound library into our decoy AUV.”

“Sound library?” DeAnne asked as Darcy concentrated on downloading the files they needed from the PLAN computers.

Edwards sat back in his chair. “I was a sonar operator on submarines for nearly three decades. Nowadays it’s largely a visual and digital technology—the sonar tech identifies the ambient sounds around the submarine by their digital signature on a color monitor. But back in the day it was all about the ears and the headphones. The navy has an amazing collection of underwater sound recordings thanks to SOSUS. And I made a few myself during my time in the shack.”

“He’s being modest,” Walker said. “Chief Edwards has one of the largest private sonar libraries in the world. He has recordings of everything from rare fish noises to German U-boats from World War Two.”

“Copied from Smithsonian recordings,” Edwards qualified with a chuckle when DeAnne’s brows went up at the U-boats. “I’m old, but not
that
old.”

Suddenly there was a loud ping from Darcy’s laptop and she literally jumped back. “Whoa.”

Quinn was instantly back at her side. “What happened?”

“The signal cut off.” She stared at the laptop. “It shouldn’t have done that. The files were not quite finished downloading.”

“What does that mean?”

“Damn!” She looked up, her expression not happy. “It means they must have found the thumb drive.”

As one, every set of eyes turned to the big clock on the wardroom bulkhead. It read 3:27.

“When was Nikolai’s tour of the base supposed to end?” Walker asked.

“Four o’clock,” Darcy said apprehensively.

Even Kip understood the implications. And they weren’t good.

Nobody had counted on the Chinese finding the thumb drive before Darcy could download the needed files and wipe it clean and harmless. Ten minutes, max, start to finish.

Something must have gone terribly wrong.

“We have to get Nikolai out of there,” DeAnne said anxiously, rising to her feet. “How do we reach him?”

“I don’t think we can,” Quinn said with a frown. “I doubt they let him keep his cell phone inside the base.”

Jaeger had been quiet as usual this whole time. But now he looked up from his computer screen and somberly said, “It’s too late. They just arrested him.”

26

Everybody started talking at once. Except Bobby Lee, who ignored the heated discussion, his eyes getting narrower and narrower as the cogs turned inside his head. Darcy was terrified. Because she knew exactly what he was thinking.

His team. His responsibility.
Leave no one behind
.

And he’d do it, too, with or without the team’s agreement.

“I’m going in.” Quinn’s three clipped words cut through the cacophony like a machete.

Darcy’s heart sank. Sometimes she hated being right.

“Baby, that’s crazy,” she argued. “What will you do? Grab him in court? Break him out of jail?”

“If I have to. Romanov was helping us. We take care of our own. You know that.”

She did. True, not too many of the countless rescue missions she’d taken part in were for their own operators, but STORM had never left any of its people out in the cold. There had been a few prison sentences—including Marc Lafayette on her own disastrous first joint mission—but as soon as the political fallout had settled, STORM had negotiated or bribed every one of its people to freedom. Marc had gotten out after just a year of a twenty-five-year sentence.

But this was different. Nikolai Romanov didn’t work for STORM. He was also a Russian national, and the case was bound to attract massive international attention. Especially on top of the “American spy” media hoopla.

“You’re just one man, Bobby Lee Quinn,” she reminded him, “and your blond head will stick out like a damn sore thumb. You don’t think they’ll see you coming a mile away?” She didn’t even want to think about what could happen to him if he was arrested.

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, stubborn as the Alabama mule he was.

“I’ll go with you,” Major Llowell announced, surprising everyone into momentary silence.

“What? You can’t go back there!” DeAnne exclaimed. “If they catch you in China, they’ll—” She clapped a hand over her mouth, a groan of distress escaping between her fingers.

Oh, yeah, Darcy thought. She had it bad.

The major reached out and stroked DeAnne’s hand with his thumb. “I know. They’ll do to me what they’ll likely do to Captain Romanov if someone doesn’t help him. Could you live with that? Letting him twist in the wind?”

DeAnne blinked, her eyes glistening. Darcy could tell she badly wanted to say yes, but those expressive eyes gave away her good heart.

Before she could say anything, Zane jumped in. “Don’t put yourself in danger, Major. I’ll go with Quinn. You stay here with your lady.”

For a nanosecond Llowell didn’t move a muscle.

Darcy winced inwardly. She knew he was reacting to the “your lady” part. But frankly, she was more worried about Zane’s neck than Llowell’s commitment issues.

Alex still suffered PTSD from his two-year ordeal of torture and abuse at the hands of terrorists. He was doing a lot better now, especially after marrying his longtime secret crush last year. But he still had moments of panic, freezing up at the least appropriate times. True, they hadn’t found him for a while curled up on the floor in a fetal position after a bad night, but he had yet to be allowed out on a truly dangerous op. Such as breaking someone out of a secure Chinese prison.

“Nope,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “You haven’t been cleared for hazardous duty yet. Bridger would have a fit.”

“This is an emergency,” Zane argued. “I can handle it.”

Quinn regarded Zane assessingly for a long moment, glanced at Llowell, then blew out a breath. “All right. Against my better judgment, you can both come. I have a feeling I’ll need all the help I can get.” He then turned to her. “Zimmie, can you spare Jaeger to coordinate field communications? There’s no radio and cell phone contact with a submarine when it’s submerged. We’ll have to bring in surface support.”

He was asking her because she was in charge of home base operations. But last-minute adjustments were par for the course. It was why there were always six on a team. It gave them wiggle room.

She nodded tightly. “Jaeger’s clear to go.”

She wasn’t going to repeat her objections about Zane, but she was not happy with Quinn’s decision to take him into the field. In her mind, that was a recipe for disaster.

Turning to Walker and Edwards, she asked, “With Jaeger gone, can you two handle the com for your part of this shindig?”

They both nodded. “No worries.”

“Let me go with you,” DeAnne said to Quinn.

Seven sets of eyes cut to her. A day for surprises, for sure.

“I can help,” she said. “I speak the language. I—”

“No,” Quinn responded.

At the same time, Llowell said, “
Hell
, no.”

“But—”

“Out of the question,” said Quinn emphatically.

“Over my dead body,” Llowell added, making DeAnne scowl fiercely at him. But she clamped her mouth and didn’t argue.

Darcy was glad. There was no point in arguing with a brick wall. Make that
two
brick walls.

She gave the woman a sympathetic ghost of a smile.

And hoped to hell Llowell’s words weren’t prophetic.

* * *

“I can’t believe you would do this!”

An hour later, DeAnne was pacing in the corridor while Kip bent over his belongings, spread out over their bunk, repacking his rucksack. She was furious with him for volunteering, but more than that, she was afraid. Deathly afraid.

Deep-seated memories of her father going off to his various wars, sometimes coming back in pieces, clawed at her insides. Memories she hadn’t thought about in decades. From back when she was a girl and still thought the moon and stars rose in his cocky smile. Before the protective wall her mother had constructed around her crumbled, and unvarnished reality set in.

“They’re going to find you and put you in prison,” she muttered, pacing back in the other direction. “You know that, right?”

“Nobody’s going to find us. Quinn and Alex are clearly pros. I trust this team almost as much as I trust my own unit.”

Speaking of which . . .

“And where
is
your unit, by the way?” she demanded. “I would’ve thought they’d pick you up by now.” If they had, he wouldn’t be running off on this harebrained scheme. “You did contact them, didn’t you?”

Of course, if they came for him, he’d be gone from her life for good.

He peered over his shoulder at her. “How did you know that?”

She snorted. “Please. I told you my father was a Marine. I know exactly how you people operate.”

On second thought, his unit of macho Marines probably wouldn’t be able to resist joining in the dangerous mission, thereby escalating the risk even more. And maybe starting World War Three.

He turned around and regarded her as she paced. “So we’re back to the Marine thing, are we?”

She halted, folding her arms across her twisting stomach. “Kip, we never really got past it.”

She felt ill. How had she gotten here? How had she let him get under her skin like this? How had she allowed herself to fall so fast and hard for the man? A man who hit all her wrong buttons.

And all the right ones . . .

They stared at one another for a long moment, her heart aching so painfully she thought she might die right there.

He turned back to his packing. “Then it shouldn’t really matter to you if they do catch me.”

She wanted to kick him. “Don’t be a jerk. We just spent the night making love. Of course it would matter to me. A lot.”

For a nanosecond, his shoulders tightened. “But not enough to get over your ridiculous childhood issues, it seems.”

Her jaw dropped in outrage. “
My
issues? This coming from a man who hasn’t spoken to his own family in over ten years?”

He paused in tying up the rucksack and drew in a deep breath. “Touché.” He finished up and turned to face her, slinging the pack’s strap over his shoulder. “I guess we both have things to work through before we could ever make a go of a relationship. It’s probably just as well I’m leaving. If I stayed, I’d never be able to keep my hands off you, and that would just make everything harder in the long run.”

Tears prickled behind her eyes. “Just because we’re not right for each other doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, Kip. Because I do.”

His eyes softened. “I know, princess. And I care about you, too. Far too much to do either of us any good.” He gave her a sad smile. “Come here.”

He opened his arms and she went into them, feeling the moisture spill over her lashes, wishing her feelings could spill out as easily. How she wished she could tell him how she truly felt. But he was right—neither of them was ready for this. Telling him would only complicate matters even more.

So instead, when he gave her a long, intense, parting kiss, she opened herself, wrapping her arms around him, and kissed him back. She poured into it all the passion and emotions she held inside, telling him with her kiss how much she’d grown to love him.

“Please, promise me you’ll be careful,” she whispered.

“I promise.” He kissed her forehead. “And we’ll be back with Captain Romanov before you know it.”

She prayed he was right.

But she had an ominous feeling about this mission. She couldn’t even begin to guess how they would carry out the rescue, but it was going to be insanely dangerous. Her arms slid down his torso a bit, colliding with the gun and holster tucked against his ribs, which only drove home the bad feeling with deadly certainty.

With a final kiss, he pulled away, and guided her toward the ladder to the upper deck. The sub-speak chatter on the overhead com punctuated the silence between them as the crew brought the submarine to the roof. She could feel the pressure in her bones when the angle of their ascent rose acutely, the sub’s nose slashing through the water toward the air above. Kip gathered her and held her in his arms while they broke the surface and leveled off, so she wouldn’t stumble and fall. Then they climbed up the ladder to the main deck.

Bobby Lee Quinn, Rand Jaeger, and Alex Zane were waiting for Kip at the foot of the barrel ladder leading up to the conning tower, gear bags at their feet. Darcy stood nearby, along with a couple of men from the submarine crew.

“We’re just waiting on word from the helo,” one of them said as Kip approached.

“You sure you ladies are up for this?” the other submariner teased the men with a grin.

DeAnne sidled in next to Darcy and murmured, “Up for what?”

Darcy pulled a face. “Harness lift up to the helo. Quinn didn’t want to wait for a boat pickup.”

Harness lift . . . ? DeAnne’s eyes widened. “Yikes.”

Darcy waved it off. “All in a day’s work for my guys. Yours, too, I’m guessing.”

DeAnne would be totally freaked out if she had to be airlifted into a helicopter that way. But Darcy was probably on target about Kip, judging by the singularly unconcerned look on his face at the prospect.

“Want to go topside and watch?” Darcy asked, her eyes alight.

Heck, no
. “Um. We can do that?” DeAnne managed.

“You know, in case one of them falls in and we need to toss him a life preserver or something.” At her horrified look, Darcy laughed and bumped shoulders with her. “Just kidding.”

An announcement came over the com that the helo was approaching, and to proceed with the disembarkation. After going through a safety checklist, one of the crewmen scampered up the barrel ladder and cracked open the outside hatch. A waft of fresh air swept over DeAnne, and she realized how hot it had gotten inside the sub. Outside, the temperature must be at least eighty degrees, but the breeze felt cool on her skin.

At the crewman’s signal, Jaeger started up the ladder.

Quinn gave Darcy a quick, hard kiss. “Catch you on the flip side, baby,” he murmured, and then he was climbing, too.

Kip turned to DeAnne, hesitated, then gave her a tight hug. “I’ll see you soon.”

She nodded, hugged him back, and watched him disappear through the hatch, her heart lodged painfully in her throat.

And fought down the terrible, inexorable feeling that this would be the last time she would ever hold him in her arms.