dark ops 3 - Renegade (28 page)

She leaned toward Dr. Drummond. “This must be such a proud moment for you.”

Dr. Drummond smoothed back a strand of wind-whipped hair. “Plenty of people had a hand in this over the years.”

“Still, I admire the genius you’re reputed to bring to your job. Those different insights from civilian science help fuel military progress at the most competitive level. I really respect that kind of cooperative effort to propel technology forward.”

Dr. Drummond’s eyes took on a faraway look as she watched the aircraft . . . no, wait. Her gaze seemed to be following Mason as he boarded the aircraft. She toyed with her silver necklace. “Some are more committed than others. It all comes down to who is the most dedicated to perfecting the science and carrying it through, as opposed to those who are more concerned with flitting through their lives with no regard for other people’s contributions.”

Something about the fire in her voice, the bitterness in the upturn of her lip combined with the enmity in her glare at Mason set off alarms in Jill’s mind as the engines roared to life, more of a low-drone whisper actually. This woman had a serious grudge beyond just professional tension.

And it appeared directed squarely at Mason.

Jill sifted through what she’d learned about the woman. Not much. The doctor was noted to be a genius and worked closely with them on secret test projects, such as this one. Dust swirled on the tarmac, gusting over them as the jet taxied toward the runway, lined up, hitched to a stop, and then. . . .

Whoosh, the plane swept up and into the horizon. Exhaling, Jill tried for a neutral, more conciliatory tone with the woman standing transfixed next to her.

“At least everything is coming together well today, so we won’t have a repeat of that awful accident last week.”

Dr. Drummond dusted off her clothes, even though she looked darn near perfect, given the gritty outdoor viewing area. “Sometimes it’s a win to discover the flaws in a test plan, even if it means the project fails.”

“I guess I understand in theory. But isn’t there a point when good is good enough?”

“Imperfections must be weeded out with all due diligence.” She adjusted her necklace obsessively again. “Nothing short of perfection is acceptable. You have to understand it’s all about precision. It’s my job, my mission to ensure every detail lines up. I right wrongs. I bring logic and balance to life.”

Okay, Jill was starting to get a little creeped out. This woman was seriously wired too tightly, her need for perfection obviously going beyond precisely slicked-back hair and a perfectly centered silvery charm necklace.

“I should go check in with the rest of security to see, uh, if there are any updates.”

Dr. Drummond clutched Jill’s arm in a skeletally thin grip. “Honestly, I used to admire Mason, not romantically, but as a decent human being. He never led anyone on. It’s obvious he’s still torn apart over his divorce.”

Surprise stalled her. “How do you know about his divorce?”

No one else around here had ever said anything about Mason being married before, which must mean they didn’t know, or she certainly would have heard the gossip.

Dr. Drummond arched a thinly plucked brow. “Apparently he told
you
. Now, that should tell you something.”

The observation stopped her cold. She’d been so caught up in what he hadn’t said, she hadn’t considered that for Mason, he’d already said a boatload more than he’d told others. “How did
you
find out?”

“Google, of course. Sometimes the simplest answer is the smartest. A good portion of his life is there on the Internet, thanks to his wealthy parents’ frequent appearances on the social pages. He’s rich, you know.”

“His
parents
are wealthy. He doesn’t take anything from them.” She admired his proud independence. She admired a lot about him.

Lee rolled a shoulder dismissively. “Giving away all that money from his folks? I guess he’s not so smart after all.”

Something more than curiosity kept Jill from walking away. Professional instincts perhaps? Or just a genuine defensiveness for Mason when someone judged him so harshly? Too harshly. “If he didn’t hurt you romantically, what did he do to make you dislike him so?”

Dr. Drummond’s blasé facade faded in a flash as she turned venomous eyes toward Jill. This wasn’t dislike. It was downright loathing. “He tried to torpedo my work a year ago.” Her chin lifted with condescension. “I can’t share all the details with you because of the classified nature of our work. Suffice it to say, I had invested my heart and soul into the project, and if my name’s going to be attached, it damn well better be perfect. It’s not fair they wouldn’t listen to me.”

Not
fair
? Lee sounded more like a six-year-old who got a smaller piece of cake at a party. Could all those brains and advancement ahead of time have left her emotionally stunted? Jill got the unavoidable sense that Lee’s adult genius had become a dangerous weapon when paired with childish pettiness.

Jill’s eyes hitched on the necklace, a round charm with circles etched smaller and smaller with a diamond in the middle. A swirl.
Like circles in the sand.

She resisted the urge to bolt the hell away.

A coincidence, right? Just a fluke that this woman wore a piece of jewelry with a pattern so similar to a signature marking Ferguson used. A marking he said he’d stolen from a random attack on Annette Santos. God, could Dr. Lee Drummond have been the original attacker? Annette had worked as a contractor in the same test squadron with Mason and Dr. Lee Drummond.

The brilliant engineer dropped her charm, keen discernment glinting. “You can stop spinning your theories around, and don’t bother denying what you’re thinking. I’m smarter than that. I can see perfectly well when someone has decided they’re out to get me.” Her smile curdled. “Like you are now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jill stalled, inching away, her hand sliding to her gun holstered to her waist. There were people all around them, even if they were too far away to overhear what was being said. They were on a military base, for heaven’s sake. There were security forces everywhere—granted, they were all more than twenty yards away, busy guarding generals and machinery. But it wasn’t like Lee Drummond could just up and leave. This woman couldn’t harm her.

Could she?

Dr. Drummond closed her arms over her tightly belted turquoise leather jacket. “Go ahead and try to call for help to stop . . . whatever it is you think I’ve done, using my secret clearance, a clearance that allows me to go anywhere, touch anything.” She leaned closer, her perfume thick and cloying. “And even if I had done something sinister like tamper with that imperfect plane so it won’t complete the testing, even set up an explosion perhaps, do you really think anyone would stand a chance of tracing it back to me? I am so much smarter than any of you.”

A bomb—in Mason’s plane. Her stomach plummeted to her boots.

She forced her voice to stay steady. “I can’t believe you’re telling me this.” Other than the fact that she’d seen crazed killers who reached a point where they needed an audience for their crimes. But it didn’t seem wise to mention that right now.

“Why wouldn’t I tell you? It’s your word against mine, hearsay, actually. In fact, if you run to the police and try to implicate me, I’ll vow it could just as easily have been you who set this up. Maybe you’re a crazy stalker striking back at him for all those years he didn’t notice you.” She smiled evilly. “Again, you forget who has the real brains here.”

And how damn horrifying to think the woman’s plan could actually work. Jill had to hope that need for an “audience” would cause some kind of slip. “How did
you
manage this?”

Dr. Drummond tapped the ID dangling from a lanyard around her neck. “Thanks to this, I can access anywhere, anytime, unsupervised. By the time the ‘incident’ is sorted through and they rule out terrorism, the evidence will point to Mason having screwed up. After all, look how he botched that drop a few flights ago. Very coincidental, don’t you think? He really should have gotten out of the way a year ago when I tried to tell them craft wasn’t
perfect
yet.”

Jill suppressed a shiver at the cold blast of evil emanating from the woman beside her. “Then let’s talk to them now, explain—”

“Enough. It’s too late for that. Production of this plane must stop altogether.” Lee assessed Jill’s uniform in a dismissive up-and-down sweep. “Now you have your little role to play in my drama. Go.” She flicked her fingers. “Go do your job, try to save the day. Telling you and watching you squirm has only made this all the more fun. I should have tried this technique with some other very rude people earlier.”

“You’re insane.”

“Take good care of that new doggie of yours,” Dr. Drummond said. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

Fear for Mason iced clear through to Jill’s spine all over again. She had to get a warning up to Mason and his crew that somewhere on board their plane, Dr. Lee Drummond had used her expertise and high-security clearance to plant a bomb.

“We have a what on the plane?” Mason tamped down the nauseating fear and tightened his focus, looking frenetically around the cargo hold for anything out of the ordinary.

With control panels, hanging gear, and packed pallets, there were thousands of possibilities. Even the smallest explosives could do lethal damage to an aircraft at this height and speed.

The colonel replied, “Yes, I said a bomb. I don’t understand all the whys or wherefores yet, but apparently somehow Jill Walczak found new evidence indicating that Dr. Drummond has either turned traitor or gone off the deep end. Regardless, she could be out to set you up, make it look like an accident that’s your fault. Jill’s theory makes a damn frightening amount of sense. Drummond even said something about having given her plan a test run a couple of flights ago, which leads me to believe the bomb must be on the pallet.”

His parachuting accident hadn’t been an accident after all? And Dr. Lee Drummond was setting him up? Hell, was this ever going to end? “Is Jill all right?”

“Fine, so far as I know, but we’ll be able to determine that much better if we land safely.”

“Capiche, Colonel.” The sooner the better.

“I’m sending Jimmy back to lend extra hands and eyes.”

“Roger.” Mason swung his attention back to the pallets.

Drummond. If only she’d been removed from the team when he’d expressed his concerns a year ago about her obsessions that bordered on bizarre. But that was irrelevant at the moment. He had a bomb to locate.

He walked gingerly around the pallets, checking, searching without touching. “Colonel, let’s just drop the pallets in the desert now.”

“We can’t,” Colonel Scanlon answered over headset. “With the software that’s running the airplane right now, we can only get the load out over the range. Ironically, that was put in there for safety. If we off-loaded it now, we would also be sending some sort of bomb out to wherever the wind took the parachute. It has to be in the range as originally planned for the drop. It’s faster and safer than returning to base, where we could blow up a crap ton of people.”

Mason glanced at his watch. How long before that thing went off? The aircraft hummed under his boots. Jimmy stepped into the cargo hold, his face somber inside his helmet.

They needed to act fast. “Colonel, any ideas on how the bomb is triggered? Is it on a timer or what?”

“We don’t know. Drummond is swearing Jill made this up, and if anything goes wrong, we should blame your girlfriend. We can sort through all that on the ground. Now, ready the load. Unless we learn anything new, we’re dumping everything.”

Not a chance in hell did he believe Jill was lying about anything. Mason started checking the pallets over, in each crevice, under tarps, but the sheer amounts made the task beyond any minute-long scan. Damn, damn, damn it! It could be anywhere, and it wasn’t like he was going to find a red X with a sign that said, Bomb Here.

Damn, he wished he had a second chance with Jill, to say he was sorry for being a jackass. Sorry for not reassuring her that he believed she was the most amazing woman ever to walk the planet, and hell yeah, that scared him. But if she would hang tough, he would sort out how to get past the fear. Because he was even more freaked out by the possibility of being without her, never getting the chance to know more about what kinds of tea she liked and exactly where she enjoyed being kissed.

All of which had become increasingly clear to him in the past two days of silence, and now came crashing down on his helmeted fat head as he faced the possibility of dying without seeing her again.

Think.
Stop freaking out, and definitely stop picturing Jill’s face. “Sir, I bet it’s not on a timer. If the flight had been delayed, it might have gone off on the ramp.” He thought back to working with Lee Drummond. She’d always planned for every contingency. She would never take an unnecessary risk. “I assume the bomber would want to get away with it, so it would have to look like an accident.” Or blamed on the person who loaded the cargo hold.

“That certainly makes sense to me. What would the trigger be then?”

Jimmy clicked on. “Maybe an altimeter. If we go above or below a certain altitude, it goes off?”

Scanlon keyed up. “I don’t think so. It wouldn’t look like an accident if we just blew up in flight. The airplane has been tested for years, and if it just blew up while we weren’t doing anything but changing altitude or opening the ramp, it would be suspicious. Vapor? Got any ideas?”

“How about airspeed?” Vince suggested from the front. “Like that movie with the bus. Go below a certain speed, and it blows.”

Mason eyed the cargo hold quickly, aware of the danger of each passing second. “It would have to be wired into the plane somehow to know the speed. There aren’t any off wires back there are there? Jimmy, see anything I’m missing?”