Body Shot
Also by Amy Jarecki
Highland Defender
The Fearless Highlander
The Valiant Highlander
ICE
Hunt for Evil
Body Shot (Coming Soon)
Mach One (Coming Soon)
Body Shot
ICE
The Series
An International Clandestine Enterprise Novel
by
Amy Jarecki
Rapture Books
Copyright © 2017, Amy Jarecki
Jarecki, Amy
Body Shot
ISBN: 9781942442264
AISN:
First Release: August, 2017
Book Cover Design by: Dar Albert
Edited by: Scott Moreland
All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences.
To Monique Daoust, Anna Gibson, and AnnMarie Spiby for helping me with beta reads. Thank you for helping me catch the little things that mean so much!
Table of Contents
Body Shot
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Mach One ~ Chapter One
About the Author
Other Books by Amy Jarecki
Chapter One
Joint Regional Correctional Facility Southwest, Miramar
I’m free?
Henri’s gut whirred like a boomerang, though she showed no outward sign of triumph. That’s right. She kept her face expressionless. If only she could jump on the table and start dancing. But freedom came with a backhand so vicious, her thoughts darted in a gazillion directions while volts of wariness shot up her spine.
Yes, she’d expected this day to come. Eventually. But she also expected the news to be delivered by a Delta Force commander, an elite member of the United States Army. They owed her that much. Presently, she trusted the suit sitting across the conference room table less than she trusted the lamebrained attorney responsible for landing her in the pen.
A sergeant in the elite Delta Force counter terrorism unit, Henri had learned in the trenches to suspect first, question later. And her internal suspicion radar was firing on red alert. Still, ten years of ingrained military discipline prevented her from telling the windbag he was full of shit. Besides, her throat had closed. Hell, even her hands perspired.
WTF?
She wiped her palms on her orange coveralls.
I’m free, dammit. This guy’s not my CO. I could tell him to go to hell.
She closed her eyes and inhaled a calming breath. “Do you need my answer now?” He’d just dropped a bombshell, offering her some international job that would make use of her “special talents”. And it paid more money than she’d ever dreamed of earning. The rub? The suit refused to tell her where she’d be going or the details of what she’d be doing until she committed. What if he wanted her to murder someone? The man just sat there, his intense eyes staring at her from across the table. He was pasty, sweaty and overweight. Worse, agreeing to his clandestine request was like blindly slicing her palm with a dagger and dripping blood on a signature line just because her commanding officer told her to do it.
“Ja, that would be preferable,” he said. The man had introduced himself as Anders Lindgren and spoke with an accent that sounded Scandinavian. The fact he was sitting in a conference room in a highly-restricted military operation denoted some credibility, but that did zilch to lower Henri’s wariness meter. His face gave away nothing. Lindgren could pass for a seedy politician—the type who wouldn’t think twice about sending her tiptoeing into a minefield filled with IEDs.
“After all,” he continued, “until three minutes ago, you were still planning on being a guest here.”
Here, being military prison, a lifetime guest of Uncle Sam. Henri swallowed, forcing back bile bubbling up her esophagus. Two years rotting in a goddamned hellhole because of a setup by a terrorist who wanted revenge. A bastard who’d entered the US illegally for the sole purpose of murdering the Iranian Ambassador and pinning the kill on Henri. “Who figured out I was innocent?” she asked.
The corners of Lindgren’s mouth turned up. “We began to suspect you were framed when my expert came across certain...ah...internet chatter.”
“Where?”
“That’s classified.”
Pursing her lips and inhaling through her nose, Henri glanced at the folder he’d handed her. She’d wasted two lousy years of her life and, out of the blue, they admit to her innocence? Wasn’t she entitled to a few details? And why had the news been delivered by a foreigner? He wasn’t even military.
Lindgren inclined his head to the folder, still lying unopened on the table. “You’ve been given an honorable discharge. But your country and the world need you now more than ever.”
With a groan, she opened the cover and skimmed the top memo. “They’re not bothering to offer a return to my squadron?”
“The major felt it was time to move on.” Something in Lindgren’s tone told her he wasn’t giving the full story.
More lies.
Henri squared her shoulders. “What if I disagree?”
The man’s features pinched. “He said you’d be difficult.”
“Oh, yeah?” Every muscle in her body clenched. Was the suit’s collar buttoned too tight? Difficult? She was madder than a honey badger fighting a cobra. If it weren’t for the cameras in the four corners of the conference room, she’d reach across the table and slap the smirk off the dude’s face. “Tell me, Mr. Lindgren, who wouldn’t be bitter after spending two years behind bars for a crime she didn’t commit?”
He shook his head with a pinch to his brow. “Your situation is a grave travesty, indeed. But now that the truth has been uncovered, we see great potential in you.”
After giving him an exaggerated roll of her eyes, Henri tuned the man out. She read the damned papers, including the details of her discharge and a letter from the President, first apologizing, then explaining that he wanted her to follow the Scandinavian. The President? She examined the signature. How the hell was she supposed to know if it had been forged? She held the paper up. “Is this authentic?”
“It is.”
No.
No matter how sober the suit looked, Henri wasn’t about to trust him. At the rear of the folder was a paycheck with the notation “two years’ back pay”. Great. Pra
ctically half of it was taken out for taxes. She swiped a hand across her mouth and stared at the figures. With this much money she could go home and restart her life. The other alternative? Go to God knew where with this pompous stuffed-shirt? Because the commander-in-chief of a country that had stripped her of her rank, thrown her to the wolves and locked her in a cell suddenly said, “Oops, sorry, you can have your Medal of Honor back now”?
No fucking way.
She shoved the chair out from the table and stood. “Sorry, sir, but the letter says I’m a free woman. I’ve been discharged with two years’ back pay and the only place I want to go is home.”
Not waiting for his response, Henrietta Soaring-Eagle Anderson tucked the folder under her arm, marched past Anders Lindgren and out the conference room door.
Chapter Two
“Please ensure your tray tables and seatbacks are in their locked and upright position,” the flight attendant’s buttery voice announced over the jet’s intercom.
What felt like hurricane-force wind whipped and jerked the 65 passenger CRJ700 jet around like it was a glider.
“Lord save us!” cried the woman beside Mike Rose as she grabbed his arm with both hands.
Chuckling under his breath, he rubbed his eyes while trying not to roll them. The woman held on with the strength of a sumo wrestler, her face white as bed linens. That’s why Mike hadn’t politely unwrapped her fingers from his bicep. The turbulence was nothing to him. He’d touched down in far worse conditions than this windstorm. On occasion, he was known to hop off a transport between bursts of enemy fire. He even had a few battle scars to prove it.
Danger came with the job and it wasn’t for the weak at heart like this bird with the iron grip.
Stealing a glimpse out the window, he leaned away from his terrified seat-mate. Bloody oath, he hadn’t been this far west in yonks. Years ago, he’d attended a joint US/British training session at Area 51 in Nevada, the sort of barren terrain he was expecting. But this Utah town was different. With few trees in sight, the crags surrounding Saint George looked more Martian than Earthlike. Though stark, the cliffs and rock formations held a beauty all their own as if the town had been erected in the middle of an offshoot of the Grand Canyon.
Mike was a Scot, Highland born and bred. After university he’d joined the SAS, but he’d been an ICE asset for the past eight years—headquartered in Iceland. Neither Scotland nor Iceland was known for balmy weather and the further the plane descended, the starchier his collar grew. Brilliant. It was May and the outside temperature was in the high eighties according to the flight attendant’s pre-takeoff announcement. Unheard of in Mike’s neck of the world.
He checked his watch while the floor rattled with the lowering of the plane’s landing gear. The ICE-issue mini-computer read eleven p.m.
The woman beside him tightened her grip as the plane tottered. “Holy heck, why don’t we just land already?”
“The local time is one minute after four p.m.,” announced the flight attendant.
After switching the display to Mountain Time, he patted the woman’s hand and twisted his arm free. “Not accustomed to flying are you, ma’am?”
She shook her head. “I don’t like turbulence.”
The wheels touched down with barely a jolt. Nice work on the pilot’s part, especially given the gusty wind.
Mike glanced out the window at the small, regional terminal. “Och, it looks as if you’ve survived this wee flight.”
The woman cringed. She looked to be middle-aged with a friendly face. “I’m sorry for grabbing you.”
“Not to worry. You can count on me to lend an arm any time.”
“It’s quite a sturdy arm at that.” Leaning in, she gave him a quizzical stare. “Are you English?”
Bloody hell, he sounded about as English as an Afrikaner. “Scottish.”
“Really? My ancestors were Scottish.”
“Aye?” Now why didn’t that surprise him? Practically everyone in America could claim Scottish heritage—but that’s what bolstered the Highland’s tourism industry so he tried to seem interested.
“What brings you out to Saint George?” she asked.
“Meeting a friend.” Not exactly the truth, but close enough. At least he was meeting someone, then hightailing it back to headquarters for his next assignment.
“Golfing?” she continued to probe. Now they were safely taxiing, the woman developed a yen for a chat. “Or is it mountain biking? You know Saint George is the mountain biking capital of the world.”
“That so? I’ll have to give it a go.” Honestly, Mike would rather be mountain biking than on this bloody assignment. It was a waste of his time and a waste his skills. Why they’d picked him for this detail was a quandary. Sure, the Head of Field Operations, Garth Moore, had said no woman could resist Mike. But he knew Garth was just feeding him a line to stroke his ego and get him to board the plane.
Mike didn’t consider himself a lady-killer. In fact, it was the other way around. The lassies always found a way to pull the trigger on him. And after the last messed up affair, he’d had enough of the fairer sex to last a lifetime. And it had been too convenient for ICE that he’d been between assignments. Mike would rather be hunting terrorists any day.
But as the boss, Garth usually got what he wanted, smooth talking or nay. And then, of course, the schemer had tipped the scales by placing a wager. He’d bet a hundred quid that Mike would fail this mission. Och aye, that riled him.
Failure was not in Mike’s vocabulary. And with a hundred quid on the line, he couldn’t fail. No bloody chance.
The rental company didn’t have much of a selection of hire cars and after settling for the only four-wheel drive on the lot, Mike pulled up the address he’d keyed into his GPS app. Aye, he was jetlagged, but there was no use wasting daylight. And the sooner he accomplished his mission, the sooner he’d be back to ridding the world of evil with an extra hundred pounds in his pocket.
It took about a half-hour to drive across town and out to the country—as the crow flies, about forty miles east of Area 51. When he turned onto the sparse residential area of the Shivwits Paiute Reservation, weatherboard houses didn’t surprise him. The place looked much the same as the satellite images he’d examined. The yards were filled with red dirt and sagebrush. Some homes were caravans and others looked to be no larger than two-bedroom units, but there weren’t many. He turned left at the second block—a nondescript road posted as 3765 North. It only had one house the same matchbox size as the others. He rolled to a stop and checked out the place. There was an old Chevy truck parked out the front. Beneath the caked-on dirt, it appeared to be white.
Mike checked the rearview mirror and raked his fingers through his mop of red hair. His effort didn’t result in much success. It sat there like it always did—thick and unruly. At least he’d had it cut before he’d left Iceland and he no longer looked like a pirate. He slipped off his black wrap-around sunglasses but after a gander at a pair of overtired and bloodshot eyes staring back at him in the mirror, he decided to leave them on.
Before hopping out of the car, he noted an advertisement for a local restaurant on the jacket of his hire car agreement and committed the name to memory—the Black Bear Diner. The silver Jeep Laredo already sported a sheen of red dust. Mike didn’t care. He’d experienced far worse conditions in Syria just a few weeks ago. Tugging down the sleeves of his starchy sports jacket, he strode to the door and gave it a solid knock. A television shut off. Footsteps lazily pattered across the floor before the door cracked open, held by a security chain. The face peering up at him, however, looked nothing like his target. Round and careworn, the woman blinking with big brown eyes was far older and heavier.
“Good afternoon, madam.” Mike bowed his head respectfully. “I’m looking for Miss Henrietta Anderson.”
The woman’s eyes widened just enough to express surprise and recognition. “She’s not here.” Aye, this was the auntie for certain. Mike had memorized t
he details Henri’s file which included a much younger picture of this woman, Anderson’s only claimed next of kin. The file included a picture of the lassie’s father as well, but that slimy piece of shite hadn’t made contact with his daughter since she was a wee child.
As the door started to close, Mike slid his foot into the gap. “I beg your pardon, madam, but I just flew over eight thousand miles to meet with Miss Anderson and I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more information.”
“I-I don’t know anyone by that name.” The fear filling the woman’s eyes betrayed her.
Liar.
“Och, I’m afraid acting isn’t your strong suit, madam.” He pulled out his phone and, with a few flicks of his finger, tapped on a picture of the auntie with Anderson, taken twelve years past. “This is you, Chenoa, standing beside your niece. You are her only claimed next of kin. Miss Anderson was honorably discharged by the army three months ago and headed here. And dunna tell me I canna see her. I’ve come all the way from Scotland for this meeting, and I’m no’ about to tuck my tail and head for home without having a wee conversation.” Mike gestured to the chain. “And if you think that bit of metal will protect you from the likes of me, you are sorely mistaken.”
The woman tipped up her chin as if daring him to try something. “Are you threatening me?”
“Nay. I’m speaking my mind is all. Now please, call the lass. I’ll have my say and be on my way.”
“She’s not here.”
Exercising restraint, he cracked his knuckles rather than breaking the damned chain. “Where is she?” he asked, his voice as calm as the pleasant expression he cemented on his face.
“Someplace no white man will ever find her.”
Mike heaved a sigh and pocketed his phone. “I might be white, but I’m no’ the enemy.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I aim to offer her a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“One that will make good use of her talents.”
“She had a job like that and ended up in prison on false charges for two years.”
“Aye, but I can guarantee her immunity—ongoing immunity.”