Free Fall

Screens flickered and shifted with feeds of everything from jungle perimeter to the rusted chain-link fence. Jose imprinted every detail in his brain. Nothing could be tossed aside as inconsequential.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Smith continued, scratching his jaw along the beard they all grew when undercover in-country for any length of time, “I trust I don’t need to stress how important it is that this rescue goes off without major incident. With the vice president’s wife coming for a goodwill visit at the end of the week, security is crucial.”

If there weren’t civilian students involved in the kidnapping would they have left Stella there to die in the interest of preserving “security”? His fist clenched around his sobriety coin in his pocket. He was the first person in a long line of family alcoholics to make it this far in AA.

“Sergeant James.” Mr. Smith turned his attention to Jose. The frozen image of Stella fast forwarded. “Here’s the part that brought you here today.”

Stella hitched her hands on her hips, her face directed right at the nano bug. “I really could use some Jose Cuervo.”

The CIA agent clicked the remote again and again, skipping to different frames where she repeated over time… “Jose Cuervo… Jose Cuervo… Jose Cuervo…”

Cuervo. An ironic reminder of a bad encounter with a bottle of the tequila, and due to his name Jose, the call sign stuck. Jose “Cuervo” James. He forced himself to concentrate on the deceptively bland CIA operative in charge of the whole operation.

“We looked into her file and your name—or rather your call sign—caught our attention. We realized the two of you worked a mission together six months ago. Our files indicate you became more than friends.”

So much for their attempts to keep the relationship secret. Apparently big brother really was watching.

“Yes, sir,” he answered simply, catching a look from his fellow teammate out of the corner of his eye.

He’d been paired with Tech Sergeant Gavin “Bubbles” Novak, the least chatty PJ in their squadron, but the best medic. Bubbles had also been there the day Stella had pulled them out of the Gulf of Aden.

A wave from one of the techies drew their attention back. The main screen filled with Stella in “real time.” His mouth dried at the thought of seeing her now, so vibrant he ached to step into the image with her. The screen showed a door opening in Stella’s cell.

Shit. Why did they have to sit around here with their thumbs up their asses reviewing footage? They needed to get to her. Now.

A guard tossed another limp body on the floor, the resulting groan from the guy the only sign that their latest inquisition had left the student alive. The guard’s shaved bald head gleamed from the bare lightbulb swinging from the ceiling. He wore camouflage pants and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut, no military rank visible. Ammo straps crisscrossed his chest. A rifle hung over his shoulder.

A blade was sheathed at his waist in a belt holding more bullets.

Stella’s eyes went wide with perfectly played innocence and horror. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll tell you everything I know. Can I just have some water first, please?”

The guard hooked his hand on the strap of his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. “We want to know who you are.” His accent was clearly local, Somali most likely. “Why were you and your fellow spies on our property?”

“I’ve told you already. My name is Stella. I’m a foreign exchange student. These are my friends in the same program, but we’re all from different schools. We were on a day trip when you found us, a study on ways to improve distribution of food during a famine. We only wanted to help.” She backed step by step until she bumped a table of ancient pottery. “I’m begging you, can I just go home?”

“You must think we are very stupid.” The bald guard blocked the doorway out. “I do not like to be insulted.”

“I don’t like being taken captive.” Her hand slid to the table, her fingers closing over a broken handle off a cup. She tucked the remnant into the back of her waistband. “I want to call my embassy.”

She tugged her T-shirt as if for emphasis, effectively hiding her makeshift weapon. Pride filled him. Damn, she was amazing.

His mind raced back to the first time he’d seen her when he’d hauled himself out of the sea and into the rescue boat. She’d been at the wheel, holding the boat steady against the hammering waves, unbending with the wind tearing at her fiery red braid. There’d been bullets, a blown up chopper, and blood streaking down her face.

Not a romantic meeting by any stretch.

Their sprint through the marketplace to the embassy had left them both weary as hell, wrung dry by the job. Afterward, he’d found her on the embassy roof, grieving for the aircrew of the downed chopper. That explosion had shaken him more than a little too.

He’d been planning to have his one cigar a month to decompress. He’d taken up smoking when he kicked the booze, then had to kick nicotine as best he could. One cigar a month when stress got to be too much wasn’t the best option, but it didn’t drag him back under the way one drink would. So he carried a Cuban smoke in his pocket at all times. He’d had it half out when he stepped onto the roof… and then he’d found Stella.

He hadn’t smoked a cigar since.

Their attraction had been immediate. Explosive. Their five-month affair had been frenetic as they “dated” wherever their paths crossed on missions and assignments throughout the Horn of Africa and farther along the Eastern region, even over as far as Uganda. They’d lived on the edge, drunk on an edgy attraction that provided a greater high than could be found in any bottle.

Until they’d crashed. Broken up. Ripped each other’s heart out.

A quick elbow jab to his side brought him back to the present. He looked sharply at his team bud—Tech Sergeant Gavin “Bubbles” Novak—nodding toward the images again. Screen three filled with a male stretched out on the floor, a student beaten to a pulp for information who appeared to be hanging on by a thread.

Stella knelt beside the pummeled student, her hands going to each wound as if to make sure to document every injury for the rescue team watching. Her gaze was so intense.

Something tugged at him, but he couldn’t pinpoint what. From her position, her back to the enemy’s camera, she clearly meant to hide something from her captors watching. She stared up into the bug, her blinking strange, erratic. Was she drugged? He watched closer, searching, slowly realizing…

Holy crap, there was a pattern.

Jose held up a hand, snapping his fingers for attention. “Agent Smith, get a close-up on her face there. Do you see? She’s blinking.”

“Yeah, and your point, Sergeant?”

“She’s blinking Morse code.” The longer he looked, the more certain he became. “Like the Navy pilot captured during the Vietnam War. He blinked ‘torture’ in a televised interview.”

“And you think she’s doing that now.”

“Stella’s a code breaker. You know that from her file. But you wouldn’t know she talked about stuff like that all the time.”

They had talked about it. And that had to be why she’d hedged her bets in trying to get him here to watch the footage. A long shot? Maybe. But her situation called for extreme measures.

Jose sat up straighter. “And there. She’s tapping her fingers, but always away from the bad guy cameras.”

“Tap code? Like the language the Vietnam prisoners used to talk to each other from cell to cell?”

“Right. She’s trying to communicate, to give us as much information as possible.” Damn it. If they’d seen this earlier, the information would already be decoded. Now… “Who knows what else she may have uncovered?”

Mr. Smith scratched his bristly chin. “Weighing the risk of waiting against missing some info she may be sharing, we can’t afford to delay. You’ll go in and we’ll feed her messages to you as we unlock them,” he said with surety, but his forehead creased with concern. “Is your personal baggage with Agent Carson going to present a problem?”

How much did Smith know? The breakup last month had been bad. It had hurt like hell—still did. But it had been quiet as well as permanent. He’d come to grips with the fact he would spend his life without her.

But he could not, would not, accept a world without Stella Carson in it. “I’m as focused as I’ve ever been. I know my job and I’ve been tasked to get all the hostages out alive.”

“That’s what I needed to hear.” Smith turned from the image of Stella on the main screen. “Gentlemen, time to roll.”

Jose stole one last look at the only woman he’d ever loved, soaking in what could be his final glimpse of her alive. The door behind her opened again. She pressed her back to the wall. Fast. Her eyes alert.

A captor with hard muscles and harder eyes walked inside, tossing another unconscious student in a heap in the corner. He paused in front of Stella, one lip lifting in a sneer.

“Once we finish with the last of your friends, you are next.”

Jose’s fist closed around the coin. Bloody hell.

***

She was next.

Next to be tortured.

Next to be killed?

Time was running out for a Hail Mary rescue. That didn’t mean she intended to go down without kicking in some teeth on her way out of this world. Sure, the local government had asked for international help in dealing with the warlords, but that wouldn’t guarantee her presence would be actively acknowledged. Field operatives disappeared sometimes. It was a hazard of the job. Would these stone walls become her funeral crypt, entombing her here with other dead bodies and priceless artifacts?

The door closed, giving her a temporary reprieve to search the room, to prepare herself and hopefully launch more warnings. When she’d identified the nanotechnology surveillance equipment, she’d allowed herself to hope her messages would get through in time. And if not? She’d relayed as much information as possible. Some might not have noticed her blinking and tap codes, but she’d bargained on Jose remembering their conversations. She’d scrambled for every idea possible to leave clues that she needed him brought in to watch the surveillance feed.

Had he seen her?

Regret chewed her gut over the way she’d ended things, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same. Even if they weren’t meant to be together, she’d hurled horrible words at him and those could be the last she spoke to him. Was there a chance to tell him if he was on the other end of that video feed? Would he recall the good times between them, their exotic dates over to Queen Elizabeth National Park and up into Egypt? Heaven knew she would never forget the sound of his laugh. His easygoing approach to life, the way he cared for the people around him had drawn her to him from the start.

She pressed her hands to her eyes, dizzy from lack of sleep and minimal food. What if she was hallucinating about the whole mini spy drone? Charlotte’s Web up there could be wondering what the hell was going on. And damn, she really was crazy if she focused on anything other than doing everything possible to get out of here. It wasn’t just her life on the line.

She blinked a final Morse code in the direction of “Charlotte.” Details about the guards and discussions she’d overheard, everything possible to protect the rescue team coming in. Would it be enough to help an extraction team before her turn at the inquisition?

She’d taken her fair share of knocks from her three big brothers while playing basketball, football, and pretty much any other sport, because if she didn’t join them, she got left behind. She’d always punched right back. She’d held her own with her fists, fingernails, and whatever else she could lay her hands on. She would do the same here.