Bloodline (Sigma Force #8)

Gray needed that expertise.

“There’s a mission,” he said. “You would be well paid.”

“Sorry. There’s not enough gold in Fort Knox.”

Gray had prepared for this attitude, readied for this eventuality. “Perhaps not, but when you left the service, you stole government property.”

Tucker faced him, his eyes going diamond-hard. In that gaze, Gray read the necessity to speak warily, to play the one card he had with great care.

Gray continued, “It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours to train a war-service dog.” He dared not even glance toward Kane; he kept his gaze fixed on Tucker.

“Those were my man-hours,” Tucker answered darkly. “I trained both Kane and Abel. And look what happened to Abel. This time around, it wasn’t Kane who killed Abel.”

Gray had read the brutal details in the files and avoided that minefield. “Still, Kane is government property, military hardware, a skilled combat tracker. Complete this mission and he is yours to keep, free and clear.”

Disgust curled a corner of Tucker’s lip. “No one owns Kane, commander. Not the U.S. government. Not Special Forces. Not even me.”

“Understood, but that’s our offer.”

Tucker glared at him for a long breath—then abruptly leaned back, crossing his arms, his posture plain. He was not agreeing, only willing to listen. “Again. What do you need me for?”

“An extraction. A rescue.”

“Where?”

“In Somalia.”

“Who?”

Gray sized up his opponent. The detail he was about to reveal was known only to a handful of people high in the government. It had shocked him when he’d first learned the truth. If word should somehow reach her captors—

“Who?” Tucker pressed.

Kane must have sensed his partner’s growing agitation and let out a low rumble, voicing his own complaint.

Gray answered them both. “We need your help in rescuing the president’s daughter.”

3

July 1, 11:55 A.M. EST

Washington, DC

Now the real work could start.

On the lowest level of the West Wing, Director Painter Crowe waited for the Situation Room to clear. The whole process was a carefully orchestrated dance of power: who left first, who acknowledged whom, who exited together or alone.

It made his head spin.

Painter had spent the entire three-hour-long strategy session seated outside the inner circle of the White House. The top-tier officials took posts in the upholstered leather chairs clustered around the main conference table; that included the White House chief of staff, the national security advisor, the head of Homeland Security, the secretary of defense, along with a handful of others. It was a closed meeting: no assistants, no deputies, no secretaries, only the top brass. Not even the Situation Room’s around-the-clock watch team was allowed admittance.

The secrets discussed here were restricted to as few ears as possible.

At the start of the meeting, Painter had been introduced as a representative of DARPA, which raised a few eyebrows, especially the gray ones of the defense secretary. Dressed in a conservative suit, Painter was a decade younger than anyone here, his dark hair blemished only by a single lock of white hair, tucked like a feather behind one ear, heightening his mixed Native American heritage.

No one questioned why the president had summoned Painter to this closed-door meeting. Few of them even knew about Sigma’s existence, let alone its involvement here.

And that was the way the president wanted it.

So, Painter had sat silently in one of the lower-tier chairs away from the main table, observing, taking a few notes, both mental and typed into his laptop.

President James T. Gant had called everyone into the morning’s briefing to get an update on the status of his kidnapped twenty-five-year-old daughter, Amanda Gant-Bennett. It had been twenty hours since the midnight attack on her yacht. The boat’s captain had managed to get out an S.O.S. on his marine radio, even disabled the engines, before the raiders boarded the boat, slaying all on board, including the woman’s husband. Gruesome pictures of the aftermath had been shown on several of the video panels on the walls.

Painter had studied the president’s expressions as those images flashed past: the pained pinch at the corners of his eyes, the hardening of his jaw muscles, the pale cast to his face. It all seemed genuine, marking the terror of a father for a lost child.

But certain details made no sense.

Like why his daughter had been traveling under a fake passport.

That mystery alone cost them critical hours in the search for the missing girl. Responding to the S.O.S., the Seychelles Coast Guard had immediately reported the pirate attack, detailing that American citizens had been involved, but it was only after fingerprints had been lifted from the yacht’s stateroom that a red flag had been raised in the States, identifying the victims as the president’s daughter and her husband.

They’d lost precious hours because of the confusion.

And it could cost the girl her life.

James Gant stood at the door to the Situation Room and shook the hand of the last man to leave. It was a two-handed shake, as intimate as a hug. “Thanks, Bobby, for twisting the NRO’s arm to get that satellite moved so fast.”

Bobby was the secretary of state, Robert Lee Gant, the president’s older brother. He was clean-shaven, white-haired, with hazel-green eyes, a distinguished elder statesman, sixty-six years of age. No one questioned that he’d properly earned his position—even pundits from the other party wouldn’t raise the charge of nepotism for this cabinet-post assignment. Robert Gant had served three administrations, on both sides of the political divide. He’d been an ambassador to Laos in the late eighties and was considered instrumental in reopening diplomatic ties with both Cambodia and Vietnam in the nineties.

And now he served his younger brother with equal aplomb.

“Don’t worry, Jimmy. The NRO will have a satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the Somali coastline within the hour. I’ll make sure no stone is left unturned. We’ll find her.”

The president nodded, but he seemed unconvinced by his brother’s promise.

As the secretary of state exited, Painter found himself alone with the leader of the free world. The president ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, then rubbed the palm over the rough stubble on his chin. The man hadn’t slept since word had reached him. He still wore the same clothes, only shedding the jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. He stood for a moment, straight-backed, lost in his own thoughts—then he finally sagged and pointed to another door.

“Let’s get out of this damned woodshed,” he said, using the nickname for the Situation Room. With the departure of his executive team, his Carolina drawl grew thicker. “My briefing room’s right next door.”

Painter followed him into a more intimate chamber. Another conference table filled the room, but it was smaller, abutting against a wall with two video screens.

The president dropped into one of the seats with a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the entire world rested on his shoulders. And, Painter imagined, sometimes it did. Only this day was worse.

“Take a seat, director.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Call me Jimmy. All my friends do. And as of this moment, you’re my best friend, because you have the best chance of finding my girl and grandson.”

Painter sat down, slowly, warily, feeling some of that weight of the world settle on his own shoulders. That was the other concern. Amanda was pregnant, in her third trimester.

So what was she doing in the Seychelles, traveling under false papers?

The president’s ice-blue eyes bore into him. The force of his charisma was like a stiff wind in the face. “In the past, Sigma saved my life.”

And they had. It was one of the reasons Painter had been summoned by the president to participate in this search.

“I need another miracle, director.”

At least the man understood the gravity of the situation. For now, the Somali pirates had no idea whom they’d kidnapped. As far as they knew, Amanda was just another American hostage. But if they should ever learn her true identity, they could panic and kill her, dump her body in the closest crocodile-infested river, and wash their hands of the situation. Or they’d hide her so well, bury her in some godforsaken hole, that any hope of rescue would be impossible until their demands were met—and even then she might be murdered. The head of Homeland had offered a third, chilling possibility this morning: that she’d be sold to some hostile government, used as a pawn to leverage some concession from the U.S. government.

So, the goal was clear: Find Amanda before the kidnappers learned the truth.

“What’s your take on this morning’s briefing?” the president asked.

“Your team has the larger picture covered. I wouldn’t do anything differently. Move a fast-response team into the region, be ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Coordinate with CIA assets across the Horn of Africa. But until we get a new satellite feed of the Somali coast, we’re operating blind.”

In cross-referencing the time of the attack with the logs of satellites passing over the Indian Ocean, they’d managed to download a fleeting view of the actual kidnapping. The resolution had been poor, but they could make out the yacht and the raiding vessel. It had fled east after the attack, heading for the African coast. But unfortunately, within an hour, the ship had passed out of satellite range, so the exact location where it made landfall was unknown. It could be anywhere along the East Africa coast, but Somalia—notorious for its rampant piracy—was the most probable base of operations. A new National Reconnaissance Office satellite was being commandeered and shifted to help search for the missing ship along that rocky coastline.

But that wasn’t their best hope.

Painter continued, “Sir, we need boots on the ground there. Our highest probability for a success lies in a surgical extraction, to drop in a small search-and-rescue team under the radar.”