Surrender to Temptation (Agent Lovers Series Book 1) (7 page)

A hearty smack to the shoulder pulled Gray back to the present. “Buddy,” Chris said, “I don’t know what you have planned for today, but I’m looking into—”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Chris opened the door and took the sealed envelope handed to him by a man in uniform.

“Looks like we finally got their files. I’m curious about what’s in them.” Chris turned away from Gray to open the envelope. “You think she’s pretty special, don’t you?” He opened the envelope, pulled out two files, then promptly put Liz’s file on a chair and sat on it while pretending to first delve into Jennifer’s documents.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gray forced himself not to react. His friend’s behavior rankled him, but made himself act as cool as possible. He knew that eventually Chris would have to get up from the chair—and he didn’t have to wait long. What Chris read in Jennifer’s file nearly blew him off his stool.

“You have to look at this!” The two men both quickly rose to their feet. Gray scanned Jennifer’s papers briefly, then seized Liz’s file and scrutinized it. When Gray looked to see which classification Liz was put under, he drew a noisy breath and looked at Chris, who was staring at the papers in his hands with huge eyes.

Gray had been under the assumption that Liz held either a SFSU-II or III clearance; most of the agents within the various secret Special Forces Units that Townsend commanded had one of these two security grades. Only one unit was an exception—and Liz and Jennifer belonged to it. To the
Dozen?
he thought.
Townsend’s Dozen?
They were TDAs?

That can’t possibly be true.
Gray reread the line in Liz’s file; there it was, in black and white. Definitive proof.

Gray couldn’t believe that his boss had recruited two women for the
Dozen.
There were obviously only twelve members in existence, if you didn’t count those like Chris and him, who had resigned and were still alive. Gray personally knew ten of the members who were currently active in the unit. Now he knew the last two as well. He twisted the microphone quietly in his hands and reached for the documents that his friend held, seeking further confirmation.

“My God,” Chris whispered. He appeared completely flabbergasted by what he’d just read. “I don’t get it. Never in my life would I have thought that Townsend would bring two women into the
Dozen.
How in hell did they both pass all of the tests so many tough guys have failed?”

“No idea. And I sincerely doubt they'd be willing to tell us.”

“Do you know what this means?”

Gray didn’t even bother to respond. They both knew very well what it meant to be an agent in
Townsend’s Dozen—
a friendly name for a unit that had no official domestic name, since it—like its agents—didn’t officially exist.

Liz and Jennifer weren’t members of just a “simple” task force; they were agents with the highest security classification that could be granted to an active agent. They were considered to be utterly trustworthy. If the need were to arise, they could bypass the President’s Secret Service detail and enter his bedroom without any problem.

“They’ve got their
license to kill,
” said Chris. “Just like we had.”

“We still have it,” came Gray’s terse reply.

“There aren’t many active agents with the SFSU-IV grade. Just the
Dozen.
How is it that we’ve never run into these two before?”

“I guess we just haven’t had the opportunity to work with them before,” Gray said. “Just the luck of the draw, I suppose. You know these aren’t the only missions we monitor with
eagle eyes
. We’ve had plenty of non-TDA missions to supervise, and there are plenty of other
eagle eyes
doing this same work.”

“We do have our fingers in a lot of pies,” said Chris. “Ready in every way when our help is needed!” He grinned and turned back to the monitor. “Looks like we’ll have to work hard to make sure they get through this in one piece. ”

“We always do. That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

“True.” Chris switched the microphone on speaker mode again to establish contact with the women. “Mesdames, we’ll be arriving in Cannes shortly. Powder your noses quickly, put on your eyeliner and enjoy your visit. Don’t forget your carry-ons!”

“Already done.” Jennifer smiled into Liz’s camera, showing them a face painted in dark camo colors. She drew her eyebrows together in a look of annoyance when she saw what her partner was doing. “Are you nuts? We don’t have time for that! Those things will kill you!” With a quick movement she snatched the cigarette that Liz held between her fingers and threw in onto the floor of the helicopter.

“Every now and then I like to indulge. I’ve already cut back for your sake. Anyway, it won’t be the cigarettes that eventually kill me, it’ll be your moaning and groaning.” Liz grinned defiantly at Jennifer and stuck a new cigarette between her lips. Jennifer ripped the pack out of her hands and trampled it under her feet.

“Are you nuts? That was my last pack!”

“Even better.”

With difficulty, Liz tried to suppress her burgeoning aggression. Jennifer just had to go and ruin the fun.

“Are you two always like this?” Chris sounded stunned by their exchange, given the dangerous mission ahead.

“Of course. It’s just the adrenaline,” said Liz. Jennifer remained silent, apparently irritated. They were off to a good start!

“I hate to interrupt your pleasant little chat.” Through the radio on their headsets they heard the soft laugh of the pilot, who obviously had been listening in on their banter. “But we’ll arrive in two minutes. Get ready!”

Liz and Jennifer took off their headsets, set them on the benches and prepared to exit the helicopter.

Because the helicopter couldn’t land in the target area, it had been determined that the two agents would have to rappel down into the woods. Liz and Jennifer strapped on their helmets and sit harnesses. Each of them threaded a rope through a fixed guide on their harness that was attached and secured separately inside the helicopter. Then they stood in front of the open hatch of the helicopter, holding the ropes in their gloved hands. The pilot held the helicopter in position over the unloading point and when he gave Liz and Jennifer his okay to jump, both hurtled down their ropes and disappeared into the dark of the night. When they reached the ground, they released themselves with practiced movements from the harnesses and disappeared into the thicket of the forest as the pilot turned his machine around and the soldier hauled in the ropes.

“You’ll find the bunker about ten miles west of you, behind a knoll,” Chris said. Tensely Gray and Chris watched the two women. Although it was pitch-dark out, the two moved through the unfamiliar area with unimaginable ease, as if they had practiced their assignment countless times before.

When they arrived at their target, they crouched between the trees and studied the situation. There was only a single gate, which was closed and secured with a solid iron chain.

Directly across from their actual target, the bunker, was a two-story, gray building. There was no movement there, and everything was dark within. The window panes had been shattered and tattered curtains fluttered in the breeze. The sturdy iron door was wide open, held only by a hinge on top. There were no guards to be seen. It appeared that all personnel were in the underground bunker, where the stolen missiles were being kept and could only be accessed by a narrow door on the side of it.

“Which of us gets to go knock?” Liz tipped her head in the direction of the bunker door and grinned so broadly, her teeth shone white in the darkness.

“Last time, I did it. It’s your turn. And we’re not doing
rock, paper, scissors
this time. You’re a shameless cheat and you don’t even have the decency to be embarrassed about it!”

“Party pooper!” Liz crept on her stomach over the ground all the way to the fence, carrying the compact HK MP7 in her hands. She used her survival knife to cut through the fence’s thin wire mesh at an inconspicuous spot hidden by the broad dark shadows of a dense leafy bush. Liz slipped through the hole she’d made and crouched on the ground while she waited for Jennifer.

Once Jennifer had reached her, Liz took the lead again. Sticking to the shadows of the trees and bushes, they crept toward the bunker’s entrance. They were a few yards from the door and Liz was just about to creep forward between two trees when she suddenly felt an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach that made her stop. She tilted her head slightly and looked directly into the tiny red glow of a motion sensor fastened at knee-height to the trunk of a tree. She had nearly tripped the sensor. Luckily it appeared that it didn’t register circular movements—only linear ones. Liz looked around and found the sensor’s receiver on another tree trunk. As long as nothing stumbled between the two devices, no alarm would be triggered.

“What kind of specialists wouldn’t know that this shit was lying around?” she said to Gray and Chris scornfully.

“Either the signal was very weak or it was covered up by something else and the satellite didn’t pick it up. Make sure you don’t trigger it!”

“You think?” she considered mumbling. She squatted down, set her submachine on the ground and slipped the strap of her backpack from her shoulder. She rummaged around inside it and pulled out a small, wooden box. Liz looked around for possible adversaries and shouldered her backpack again. Then she gave Jennifer, who had just moved up behind her, a signal to follow. Cautiously they climbed over the motion sensor’s invisible light beam and immediately took cover again so as not to be detectable by the cameras. Taking care to stay out of the cameras’ monitoring range, Jennifer ran to the bunker’s entrance and positioned herself near the door. Even if someone were to come out now, they wouldn’t immediately notice her and she’d have the advantage of surprise.

***

Liz turned a small crank which moved a mechanism inside the box she held. Gently she placed the box in front of the light barrier and ran to join her colleague. Each pulled out the shoulder stock of her HK MP7 and waited—weapon at the ready—for the door to open as the wind carried the soft, happy melody of a children’s song toward them.

“Can you tell me what they just did? Are they creating a diversion with that?” Chris whispered. He looked at his friend. Gray shook his head and answered just as softly, without taking his eyes from the monitor. “Probably. That’s not part of their standard equipment. It looks like a toy.”

***

The soft melody faded away just as the head of a clown shot out of the box, right into the light barrier. The door of the bunker was thrown open moments later and two armed men appeared. They peered in the direction of where the alarm had been triggered. There they discovered the colorfully patterned box with the playful clown’s head teetering back and forth, as if laughing maliciously. They looked at one another, perplexed.

“If you want, you can hold it.”

The men spun around at the sound of Liz’s taunt. Before they could even think about raising their weapons, they dropped, unconscious, to the ground, struck by quick, targeted blows.

Liz and Jennifer turned to the door, their submachine guns raised and pressed tightly against their shoulders. Just as they were about to go down the stairs, two more adversaries emerged from the bunker in front of them, each armed with a hand grenade launcher. It appeared that they were counting on finding an entire battalion outside the door.

Liz and Jennifer jumped to the side looking for cover as the grenades whizzed past them. When the projectiles flew into the forest and exploded, the two women exchanged resigned expressions. Then Liz looked accusingly into Jennifer’s camera. “Didn’t you say that these guys were equipped with machine guns at the most? That was no machine gun. They’re shooting at us with RPG-7s! Russian anti-tank weapons!”

“Those had to have been stashed in their hideout a long time ago. For as long as we’ve been watching by satellite, we’ve never seen any weapons with that kind of clout. We’ll immediately request a larger team. Who knows what else they have up their sleeves. It’s time to pull back. The mission is dead. You’re not equipped for it. You wouldn’t have any chance!” Gray said.

“Forget it!” said Liz. “They know the score now! We have to see it through, or they’ll immediately move the missiles out of our reach—maybe even out of the States. We’re already here now, so we’re going to have to deal with this!”

“I think so too.” Jennifer unfastened a grenade from her gear, pulled out the security pin and threw it into the still open door of the bunker. She and Liz ducked for cover again as splinters and rocks flew passed them.

“I said pull back!” Gray swore into the headset microphone as he followed the action on his monitor. “Immediately! That’s an order!”

“By the way, boys, you might want to read our files a little closer next time. Then you’ll be better prepared for our issues with authority. That must be noted in there somewhere. Our boss should have mentioned that.”

“Is that what you call it?” Jennifer threw Liz a curious glance. “’Issues with authority’?”

“Just another way of saying we’re not team players. Why do you think they stuck you and me together of all people? Birds of a feather.” Liz gave a soft laugh and threw a second grenade into the bunker. Again, fragments flew by their ears.

“Damn it, Agents Gibson and Langer! You’ve been given an order!” Gray moaned and glanced in Chris’s direction, as if he could somehow do something about it. Chris shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows and made a helpless face.

“Lt. Colonel Blackwood has given us an order,” Jennifer pointed out the obvious in a bored tone.

“Really? Someone should have made it clear to him that we’re not very good about following orders when we’re out in the open.” She snickered. “That must be in our files too.”

“One last time! Your order is: immediate retreat.” Chris repeated the order that Gray had already given repeatedly, forcing his voice to stay calm.

“One last time,” said Liz. “Forget it!”