Into the Storm (32 page)

Tracy cried even harder.

In the motel room, Sophia was back under the blankets of her bed, wearing a ski cap on her head, reading a book. Her eyes widened as she saw Tracy, but to her credit she didn’t make a horrified face.

“I smell,” Tracy sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

It was the refrain of the evening.

Tracy was sorry, Izzy was sorry, Jenk was sorry, Lindsey was sorry. Everyone was sorry. She was certain that Sophia, although she’d yet to speak, was pretty damn sorry, too.

Lindsey closed the door behind her and got to work.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

D
ARLINGTON
, N
EW
H
AMPSHIRE
S
UNDAY
, D
ECEMBER
11, 2005

I
n the morning, Jenk found Lindsey out in the parking lot, in the area where his cell phone had worked when they’d first arrived yesterday. She had obviously managed to get a signal, because she was talking on her phone, and he slowed his steps slightly, not wanting to intrude.

But he only had a few minutes, and he needed to thank her.

Sophia had told him that Lindsey had swapped rooms with her last night. Sophia had gone to Lindsey’s room to sleep, while Lindsey stayed and babysat Tracy.

“No,” he heard Lindsey say. “No, Dad, it’s okay. Really.”

She was talking to her father. Jenk was on the verge of clearing his throat to get her attention, when she forced a laugh.

“Christmas is just another day to a writer on deadline, right?” she said into her phone. “Don’t worry, I’ve got lots of friends, I’ll…draw names from a hat.” She laughed again, but to Jenk it sounded so brittle. “That’s right and…Oh, you do? Oh. Okay, then I’ll talk to you next week, if not…Yeah, I’m great, yeah…Okay. Love you, too.”

She shut her phone, but she didn’t move. She just stood there, breathing, her back both to him and the hotel.

“Everything okay?” Jenk finally asked.

Lindsey jumped, looking over her shoulder at him, but then turned away again, to wipe her eyes. “Yeah.” She hadn’t been breathing; she’d been trying not to cry.

Holy shit. Jenk took a step toward her.

“It didn’t sound okay,” he said. “I mean, from what I overheard.”

When she turned around again, she’d actually managed to fabricate a smile. “Just my weekly phone call to my father.”

“During which he canceled your plans for Christmas?” Jenk guessed.

She shrugged, an exaggerated sitcom actor move, complete with
what-you-gonna-do-about-it
face. “It’s not like I wasn’t expecting it,” she lied.

“That’s crap, and you know it,” he said. “Because this is, what? Only the second Christmas since your mother died?”

Her smile didn’t falter. “Wow, you really pay attention when people talk to you, don’t you?”

Lindsey had told him she was just a kid when her mother first got sick. “How many years did you do that?” he asked her now. “Keep smiling for your mother’s sake?” Putting a positive face on a bad situation, always being cheerful and upbeat, must’ve become her default mode.

But she just laughed.

“Lindsey, you don’t have to do it anymore,” Jenk told her. “She’s gone. You’re allowed to look sad when someone asks you about her passing.”

“Wow, Dr. Mark, isn’t it a little early in the day for psychoanalysis?”

She started to walk away, shaking her head, but his temper flared. She was still fucking smiling, and he just could not let this or her go.

Jenk blocked her path. “Hide what you feel—or better yet, don’t acknowledge that you feel anything at all. That’s much easier, huh?”

She gave him a big, exaggerated sigh. “I had a long night. Will you please just…back off?”

“Last Christmas must’ve really sucked, huh?” Jenk said. “Your first holiday without your mother? And now your dad’s hiding—probably because he can’t stand to be near you and your
everything’s okay, we can just pretend Mom’s gone to Bermuda
attitude.” He snapped his fingers at her. “Come on, Linds, let’s hear you make a joke now. Where’s the snappy comeback? Make it a good one—don’t disappoint me.”

But her smile had finally vanished. “That was an awful thing to say,” she whispered.

He’d pushed too hard and gone too far. It was obvious that she actually believed it might be true, that her father couldn’t stand having her around, and Jenk’s anger instantly evaporated.

“Look, I was just trying to hit a nerve, which I’ve obviously done,” he told her. “I’m sure it’s not about you—his canceling your plans. I mean, she wasn’t just your mother, she was his wife and lover, and it’s gotta be incredibly hard for him, too.” The look on her face made his stomach hurt, and he couldn’t help himself. He reached for her. “My point is that you’re allowed to feel sad. When your mother dies, you’re allowed to—”

Lindsey sidestepped. “You must really hate me,” she said as she hurried back toward the motel.

“I don’t,” he said, following. “Will you just wait? Come on, slow down.”

“Just stay away from me.”

He caught her arm. “Lindsey—”

She spun to face him. “Stay
away
from me!”

And, terrific, there Commander Koehl was, out by the SUVs, putting on his gloves. Lindsey’s shout had most definitely caught the commanding officer’s attention.

She ran for the motel, and this time, as Koehl watched, Jenk stayed put. “You’re allowed to grieve,” he called after her again, “and you’re allowed to show it.”

Lindsey didn’t look back as she dashed up the stairs and unlocked the door to her room.

“Oh, yeah,” Jenk said, in a voice she couldn’t possibly hear, particularly after she’d slammed the door behind her. “And thanks for helping Tracy last night.”

This was supposed to be fun.

Scrambling around in the woods, playing the terrorist equivalent of the big bad wolf, kidnapping their own little Florence Nightingale, and creating challenges for the rescue team was supposed to be amusing.

Yet Dave had never seen Izzy Zanella as quiet and subdued as he was this evening. During their drive to this cabin—part of what had once been a thriving Girl Scout camp a dozen miles north of the haunted hunting lodge—Izzy had been positively silent.

There was trouble brewing in Afghanistan. Team Sixteen’s CO had received a heads-up phone call earlier in the day, advising him as to the impending likelihood of the SEALs being called in. It was possible that that news had created Izzy’s extra-crunchy coating of grim.

Their exercise had been delayed while several temporary sat towers were installed. Despite the fact that they’d come to this remote part of New England to train without any communication devices, they’d all come out tonight with radios or—for the civilians among them—their cell phones in their pockets. The alternative was to cancel the exercise, hang at the motel, and wait for the phone to ring and the SEALs to deploy.

Still, Dave was betting Izzy’s mood was less than effervescent for other reasons.

“Can I get you anything?” Izzy asked Tracy now, as she sat in a straight-backed chair near the cabin’s roaring fire, pink mittens still on her hands, her arms belligerently crossed.

She shook her head as she continued to study her sturdy white nurse’s shoes—part of her costume, intended to make her escape more difficult through the darkness of the woods. “No, thank you.”

Izzy stood there for several long moments, glancing over to where Dave was listening to the rest of their mock terrorist cell—Decker, Gillman, and Lopez—trying to second-guess when and where and how the rescue attempt would come.

Izzy lowered his voice, but Dave’s ears were quite good. “Look, we’re not going to have a chance to talk when—”

“Thank God,” Tracy said.

“I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry—”

“
Don’t,
okay?”

Izzy turned away, but then turned back, his voice sharper now. “You know, I tried my best to deliver exactly what you wanted—exactly what you asked for. I’m sorry I was too good for you.”

Tracy made an insulted sound, and probably would have said far more than he wanted to hear if Dave hadn’t stopped her. “Prisoner! No talking.”

She closed her mouth, attempting to incinerate Izzy with her eyes, as he slammed out the door. “Checking the perimeter,” he announced.

Decker looked at Lopez. “Go with him.”

Lopez followed.

There was going to be no better time than this, so…

Dave wandered toward Tracy. “You warm enough?” he asked, as Decker glanced over at them.

She was, quite obviously, still steamed from whatever she and Izzy had been discussing.

“My feet are cold,” she told him curtly, and he put down his weapon so he could throw another log onto the fire.

But Gillman stopped him. “Will you please just move her closer? I’m dying here.”

Their jackets were cold-weather versions of the cammie-print BDUs they’d worn during their last exercise in California. There were sensors in them that would register their status as living or dead, and they were required not only to keep them on, but to keep them zipped. This was a definite problem for Dan Gillman, who must’ve been descended from Himalayan Sherpas or maybe Eskimos. The man was never cold.

“Switch with Lopez,” Decker ordered, as Dave gestured for Tracy to stand up.

As Gillman clattered out the door into what for him must have been the refreshing coolness of the subzero evening, Dave leaned closer to Tracy. “The door to the left of the fireplace is unlocked. When I give you the signal, go straight behind the cabin—toward the road.” A rescue team would be back there, but there was no way to tell her that as Gillman’s footsteps faded.

Because Dave knew that Decker had very good ears, too.

Tracy’s eyes were wide as Dave moved her chair closer to the fire. “Sit,” he ordered, and she sat.

A squad of SEALs, led by Lieutenant Jacquette, was getting ready to approach the cabin where the hostage—Tracy—was being held.

Lindsey’s team—led by Commander Koehl himself—was on the verge of moving into another position at the rear of the cabin.

They’d all dug in a little deeper a few minutes ago, when Izzy and then Lopez and Gillman had come out for an evening stroll. Both the SEALs and Koehl’s team were well out of range, but they all still kept their heads down.

It wasn’t long, though, before all three “terrorists” went back inside, the cabin buttoned tightly shut again.

“Lindsey, got a sec?”

It was, of course, Mark Jenkins. She’d been avoiding him successfully all day, ever since his attempt at playing pop psychologist outside the motel.

“No,” she told him now, “and neither do you.”

It was ridiculously close to go-time, and he glanced over his shoulder at Lieutenant Jacquette, who was having one last conversation with Tom and Koehl.

“Look,” Jenk said, “I just wanted to—”

“You need to go,” Lindsey said.

“—see if you maybe wanted to come home with me for Christmas,” he finished, then dashed off to join his squad.

Lindsey stood there, staring after him. What on earth…?

“Linds.”

She looked up to see Alyssa Locke gesturing at her. Great, caught with her thumb up her butt by Tom’s second-in-command.

They were on the move, so Lindsey shouldered her weapon and followed, focusing all of her thoughts and energy on the task at hand.

She could not think about Mark Jenkins—or his invitation home for Christmas. Instead, she took it and compartmentalized it. It was what she’d trained herself to do—to push unwanted thoughts and feelings away and focus only on the problem she was currently facing.

If there was one thing she was very good at, it was compartmentalizing.

With all distractions locked away, Lindsey became the night, breathing with it, moving silently, soundlessly.

Shots were fired. Two separate bursts from an automatic weapon.

She dropped to the ground along with the rest of her team, which was probably unnecessary, considering those gunshots came from inside that cabin.

Crazy Dave Malkoff went postal.

He swung his weapon around and blew Decker, their Red Cell leader, away. Just
rat-a-tat-tat.

“I heard Decker talking to Tracy,” Dave shouted as he did it. “He’s a plant, a mole. He’s working for the enemy!”

Tracy made squeaking sounds, mittens up over her ears. She’d probably never heard a weapon being fired at such close range before, and Izzy found himself standing stupidly in front of her. Like he was going to protect her from the pretend bullets or something.

Although chances were that, even if he did save her life, she’d be pissed off at him for getting too close to her in the process.

“What are you looking at?” Dave was screaming at Gillman, like some kind of serious sociopath. “Are you working with him?”

“No,” the fishboy said, but damned if Dave didn’t just,
blam,
shoot him, too.

Izzy looked at Lopez, who looked over at Izzy. Both of their weapons were up and trained on Dave’s back. Not that he seemed to care, but he
did
put his arms up, his weapon now loosely held in one hand.

Izzy knew exactly what Lopez was thinking. They’d just lost two-fifths of their team. They could pull their triggers and make it three-fifths.

Danny, meanwhile, was making WTF noises, despite being dead.

“Yeah,” Dave said, much calmer now. “I knew you weren’t working with him. I just don’t like you, Dan.”

Decker was already sitting down, his back against the wall, his eyes closed, and Gillman went to join him, making a big show of unfastening his jacket, taking it off, and tossing it onto the floor at Tracy’s feet.

“At least I don’t have to worry about heatstroke anymore,” he said, as she gratefully wrapped it around her ankles.

“You boys make up your mind yet about whether or not to shoot me?” Dave asked Izzy and Lopez, “or would you rather listen to my plan for winning this whole thing first?”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Tracy said.

“Silence,” Dave ordered, turning to glance at her but being careful not to turn too far.

Izzy shook his head. This was pathetic. “Dude, you know what’s
really
not going to happen? Us winning. What, are you gonna drag Tracy to Canada or something stupid like that? It’s freezing out there. We’re seriously outnumbered, and she’s completely unskilled—”

“I’m now moving, gentlemen,” Dave said as he did just that, heading away from them, “toward my rucksack by the front door.”

Izzy exchanged a glance with Lopez again. Was Dave trying to sound like some James Bondian villain on purpose, or had a screw really come loose? They both shifted automatically, keeping him in their faux–kill zones.