Identity: Unknown. Suzanne Brockmann

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was off the scale, in part because many of their wives simply couldn’t take the strain of being left behind again and again and again, waiting and worrying.

      “I’m never getting married,” Lucky murmured to Wes as they went down the steps that led to the beach.

      “You and me, Luck,” Wes agreed. “Unless Ronnie decides to leave the captain. Or am I already too late? Have you already started marking your territory in a big circle around her? No offense, Lieutenant, sir, but that kiss was just a little too friendly.”

      Lucky was stung. “I was just saying hello. I’d never—”

      “You’d never what, O’Donlon?” All six feet and four dangerous inches of Joe Cat materialized from the mist that was blowing in off the Pacific. One second they were alone and the next he was breathing down their necks. How the hell could a man built like a professional football player do that?

      “I’d never hit on your wife,” Lucky told his captain bluntly. There was no point in trying to hide the truth from Joe Cat. Somehow he’d find out—if he didn’t already know. That’s why he was the captain. “I’d never, ever, ever hit on Ronnie.” Lucky shot Wes a disbelieving look. “I can’t believe you think I’d do something that low, Skelly. My feelings are seriously hurt—”

      “What’s happening, Captain?” Bobby interrupted.

      Joe Cat motioned towards the ocean. “We need to walk,” he told them. “We really should be talking in a secured room, but getting one would raise too many eyebrows, and that’s the last thing I want to do.”

      Whatever this was, it was bigger than Lucky had imagined. He stopped giving Wes dirty looks and focused on what the captain was saying.

      But Joe was silent until they were next to the breaking surf. The beach was deserted and misty, the setting sun hidden behind clouds.

      “I’ve been doing some work for Admiral Robinson,” Joe Cat finally told them, his voice low. “Acting as a liaison for one of his longhairs who’s out on a black op for the admiral’s Gray Group.”

      Longhair was the name given to any SEAL who might need to blend in with a dangerous and motley crowd of terrorists and mercenaries at any given moment. He had to go on top-secret, extremely covert “black” operations, where a man with a military haircut would stick out like a sore thumb. And once that man stuck out, he would be one very dead sore thumb.

      So these covert op SEALs got tattoos. They pierced their ears. They didn’t shave for weeks on end. They dressed in what would have been known as “grunge” in the early nineties. And they grew their hair very, very long.

      Of course, when it came to longhairs, the captain should talk. He wore his own hair in a thick, dark braid down his back. When he shook his hair out, he looked like a pirate or maybe a really wild rock star—and absolutely nothing like a highly decorated, extremely well-respected captain in Uncle Sam’s Navy.

      “The admiral’s off doing diplo-duty in a place where it’s impossible to get a secured telephone line,” Joe Cat told them curtly. “I can’t even report to him that as of twenty-four hours ago, his SEAL missed his weekly check-in. And frankly, I’m concerned. Apparently this guy’s better than a clock when it comes to check-ins. So I’ve got to go out to New Mexico to try and track him down, and I need a team to watch my six.”

      New Mexico? What the…?

      The captain looked at Bob, then Wes, then Lucky. “I’m looking for volunteers here. This will be a black op as well—completely off the record, no paperwork, no acknowledgement of the situation by any of the top brass. If you choose to come along, you’ll be paid, but not in the usual way. In fact, you’ll have to take leave so your whereabouts can’t be traced.”

      It sounded like some serious fun. “Count me in, Skipper,” Lucky said, and Bobby and Wes were only nanoseconds behind him.

      Their captain nodded. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

      “Who’s the little lost SEAL we’re tracking down?” Wes asked. “Anyone we know?”

      “Yeah,” Joe said. “You worked with him six months ago. Lt. Mitchell Shaw.”

      “Oh, man,” Bobby said in his basso profundo, voicing exactly what Lucky was thinking. “He’s gonna be hard to find if he doesn’t want to be found, Cat. He’s a chameleon—good with disguises. The admiral once told me that he nearly pulled the hair off a little old lady, thinking she was Mitch under cover.”

      “What’s a Gray Group operative doing in New Mexico?” Lucky asked.

      “This is top-secret information I’m about to give you,” Joe told them seriously. “It goes no further than the four of us, understood?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Joe sighed, turning to squint out at the ocean for a moment. “Remember that break-in at Arches?”

      Last year, the security at Arches Military Testing Lab in Colorado had been breached and six canisters of Triple X had been stolen. Lucky, Bobby, Wes and Mitch Shaw had all been part of the team that located and destroyed the deadly nerve gas. Yeah, they remembered that break-in all too clearly.

      “The Trip X nerve agent wasn’t the only thing taken,” Joe Cat continued grimly.

      Wes ran his hand down his face. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

      “Plutonium,” Joe said. “Enough was taken to make a small nuclear weapon.”

      A small nuke. Great.

      “Shaw was working to track it down,” Joe Cat continued. “He was following a lead both he and Admiral Robinson thought was probably empty. That’s why he was out there alone. The bulk of the Gray Group’s manpower is working from the other end—finding the potential buyer seemed easier than finding the plutonium in the haystack. But now that Shaw’s gone missing, I’m not sure what’s going on.”

      “New Mexico’s a big state,” Bobby commented.

      He was right. And if Mitch was working a black op, he wouldn’t have broadcast his whereabouts to anyone. “How the hell are we gonna find him?”

      “Shaw was carrying ten counterfeit hundred-dollar bills,” Joe answered Lucky. “Admiral Robinson implemented a technique used by the spooks at the Agency—apparently his wife’s a former agent. See, how it works is if some bad voodoo goes down and the agent—or SEAL in this case—is eliminated by the opposition, that funny money tends to go into circulation. It makes sense, right? An agent is hit and his or her body disappears. But if you’re the guy who did the hit, you check pockets for weapons or cash. No point in sinking that in the quarry with your victim’s earthly remains, right? So the money changes hands, so to speak. In the past, this method has occasionally been effective enough to track all the way to the killers. Once they start spending the money—as soon as it’s ID’d as fake—it’s like a big red flag gets dropped.”

      “Are you saying you think Lieutenant Shaw is dead, sir?” Wes swore sharply. “I liked the guy.”

      “I don’t know what’s up with Shaw,” Joe told them.

      “But one—and only one—of his counterfeit hundred-dollar СКАЧАТЬ