Beyond Limits Read online

  “On your feet,” Derek ordered.

  Sean shouldered his pack. “They said no prisoners.”

  “On your feet!”

  The kid stood grudgingly, proving he knew at least some English. Sean shot Derek a look before taking the prisoner by the arm and propelling him toward the stairs.

  Derek’s mind reeled as he looked at the papers strewn on the floor. He scooped up every scrap and checked the safe again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then threw his bag over his shoulder and raced upstairs. All the windows rattled as a Black Hawk swooped overhead en route to the landing zone. He glanced into the courtyard just as their EOD guy ducked out. He’d been setting the charge on the ordnance, and the look on his face told Derek it was about to blow.

  “Hey, what are you doing here? Haul ass!”

  Boom!

  Derek dropped to his knees as the house shook. Chunks of debris rained down from the ceiling.

  “Come on!” Derek yelled.

  They sprinted outside, where the last member of their team was holding security by the door. A few neighbors’ lights had come on. People peered through windows and leaned out from doorways.

  “Vaughn, where the hell are you?”

  It was Luke’s voice over the radio, probably already at the LZ, which was a vacant lot at the end of the street.

  “We’re half a click away.”

  They double-timed it toward the landing zone, pushing the prisoner ahead of them.

  “We got company,” Cole said over the radio as a truck screeched around the corner. It was a shit vehicle, but it was packed with armed men and had a .50-cal machine gun mounted to the roof.

  Derek grabbed Sean’s vest and yanked him out of the road. He pushed him down the alley leading to their alternate exfil route.

  “Vaughn, report! Where are you?”

  “Almost there.”

  The street smelled like sewer water. Trash swirled in the rotor wash as they neared the waiting helo.

  Rat-tat-tat.

  The gunner on the truck let loose with the .50-cal. His buddies with AKs were well out of range, but that didn’t stop them from spraying bullets.

  Derek rounded the building just in time to get a mouth full of dust. Mike was lifting the doctor into the chopper. Hailey had a SEAL on each arm, and they were practically carrying her, but she tore away from them and made a sprint for it. She flung herself onto the helo, and about a dozen hands reached out to pull her inside. Luke and Mike jumped in behind her.

  Rat-tat-tat.

  Derek and Sean ducked and sprinted while several teammates aimed over their heads and returned fire. The prisoner reached the helo first, and Mike pulled him aboard.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat.

  Sean crashed down behind him. Derek turned and hauled him to his feet. Noise drowned out the words, but Derek could read his friend’s lips and the panicked look in his eyes: I’m hit. Derek heaved him over his shoulder and stumbled forward. Bullets peppered the helo’s sides as Luke jumped down and helped lift Sean inside.

  “Go, go, go!”

  Derek grabbed the outstretched hands of his teammates as they seized his pack and yanked him aboard. His boots were barely inside when the Black Hawk lurched off the ground and lifted into the sky.

  * * *

  Texas Hill Country

  Three weeks later

  Elizabeth LeBlanc pulled over beside a sheriff’s cruiser and surveyed the scene. Based on the number of emergency vehicles, it was worse than she’d thought, and she’d known it was bad the moment she picked up her cell. Nothing good ever came from a phone call at 4:11 A.M.

  Humidity enveloped her as she stepped from her car. The air smelled like wet cedar, and the road was slick from a recent rain. An arc of yellow traffic flares marked off the right lane, where deputies and troopers milled around. Elizabeth studied the faces, looking for anyone familiar. Some of them were pulling the graveyard shift, while others looked as though they’d just rolled out of bed.

  Elizabeth crossed the road and made her way past the crime-scene van to a young trooper manning a barricade. She held up her badge. He glanced at it, then gave her a nervous look before letting her through.

  She made her way deeper into the whir of activity. The skeptical gazes of the uniforms followed her, but she ignored them as she analyzed the setup. They were on an isolated stretch of road between Del Rio and San Antonio. The landscape was hilly. Because of the speed limit and the narrow turns, most truckers opted for the highway, which meant traffic here was light during the daytime and practically nonexistent in the dead of night.

  A bulky sheriff’s deputy was eyeing her from across the crime-scene tape, and Elizabeth pegged him for her guy. He waved her over to the inner perimeter.

  “Special Agent LeBlanc?”

  “That’s me.” She held up her creds, but he didn’t even look.

  “Jim Perkins. Thanks for coming out.” He gave her charcoal pantsuit a quick once-over and lifted the yellow tape so she could duck under. “Watch your step there.”

  She followed him down a steep slope. The ground was muddy, and she chose her footing carefully, wishing she’d gone with boots instead of flats.

  “Still no ID?”

  “Only the cell,” Perkins said. “He’s got you on speed dial, so we figured he’s one of yours.”

  He’d said the same thing over the phone, but Elizabeth had been too groggy to do more than jot down GPS coordinates. Did he mean one of her fellow agents? One of her confidential informants? As she’d rushed out the door, she’d thought about notifying her SAC. But her boss didn’t like her, and she doubted he’d appreciate being called out of bed in the middle of the night over a CI.

  “When you say ‘speed dial,’ you’re talking about his call history?”

  “Contact list,” Perkins corrected. “Only two numbers listed, and yours was on top.”

  Elizabeth’s chest tightened. “What about physical description?”

  “Hispanic male, medium build, mid- to late thirties.”

  He’d just described half the men in her office. Her anxiety continued to build as they neared a white van nose-down in a ditch. The vehicle was illuminated by klieg lights and swarming with crime-scene techs.

  Elizabeth halted in her tracks. A line of golf-ball-size holes perforated the van’s side. What on earth kind of gun would it take to do that?

  She knew a man who could tell her. Derek Vaughn would know the make, caliber, and capacity of whatever heavy-duty weapon it was and no doubt how to use it, too. But Derek wasn’t on hand to talk to her about guns or anything else, because he was across the world fighting terrorists. Her heart gave a little lurch at the thought.

  They drew closer to the van, where the cargo doors stood open as a pair of CSIs dusted them for prints. Elizabeth recognized the forensic photographer crouched beside the driver’s door snapping a picture of a body hunched over the steering wheel.

  Perkins tromped past the van and led her into some scrub brush. Another set of klieg lights had been erected in the middle of the woods, casting eerie shadows over the rocky ground.

  “Near as we can tell,” Perkins said over his shoulder, “someone ran ’em off the road back at the S-curve. They Swiss-cheesed the vehicle, killed the driver, then went after the passenger when he tried to make a run for it.”

  They picked their way through oak and mesquite trees, staying away from the path designated by crime-scene tape. With every step, her sense of foreboding grew. This was no quickie drive-by. Someone had stalked this victim deep into the brush.

  “ ’Bout a hundred yards, give or take,” Perkins said. “Looks like they wanted to make sure he got dead.”

  The victim was sprawled facedown in a clearing. Bullet holes riddled his body, and his left arm was twisted behind him at an odd angle. An ME’s assistant in white coveralls knelt nearby, jotting notes on a clipboard.

  Perkins exchanged words with the sheriff as Elizabeth eased closer, trying to see the face. She
dropped into a crouch.

  The victim’s eyelids were half-shut. Flies buzzed around his nose, and a line of ants had already established a trail up his neck and into his mouth.

  She closed her eyes. Bile welled up in her throat.

  “You know him?” Perkins asked her.

  “Manuel Amato,” she said.

  Thirty-seven. Convenience store owner. Father of five.

  She’d been so certain he was one of the good guys. How could she have been so wrong? Maybe her SAC was right. Maybe everything that had happened in recent months had taken a toll on her not just physically but mentally, too. Maybe she was losing her edge, losing her judgment. Losing everything that had earned her this job in the first place.

  She lifted her gaze to the sky, where the first hint of dawn was peeking over the treetops. A half-moon glowed overhead, reminding her of summer mornings in Virginia, when she’d get up before sunrise to wait by the back door, hoping to intercept her dad as he left on one of his fishing trips. He’d take her along in the skiff and make her bait her own hook and show her how to cast the line so it wouldn’t get tangled in the shallows.

  Perkins pulled a notebook from his pocket and started writing. “So, I take it he’s one of yours, then?”

  She stood and looked down at the body, and a sudden wave of loneliness swamped her. There was no one to show her how to do anything this morning. And it was going to be a long day.

  “Ma’am?”

  She looked at him. “Yes, he was one of mine.”

  * * *

  It was full-on rush hour by the time Elizabeth reached the city, so she crossed Starbucks off her list, although she sorely needed caffeine. Even without the call-out, she’d had a bad night. Most of it had been spent curled on her sofa, flipping channels and determinedly avoiding CNN as she downed chamomile tea, which was supposedly a natural sleep aid. After weeks of drinking the stuff, she’d discovered it worked great when accompanied by Ambien.

  She pulled into the bunker-like parking garage and found a space. Flipping down the vanity mirror, she checked for any telltale signs of fogginess. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin sallow. She smoothed her ponytail and fluffed her new bangs. She’d had them cut a few months ago in an effort to hide her scar, but she wasn’t crazy about the look. A little too schoolgirl, which wasn’t helpful. As a five-four blonde, she already had enough trouble getting people to take her seriously.

  She flipped up the mirror, disgusted. She had more important things to worry about today than her appearance. Such as her boss’s reaction when he heard about Amato.

  Her stomach tightened with nerves as she rode up the elevator. Manuel Amato was just the latest in a string of mistakes she’d made since joining the task force investigating the Saledo cartel. The brutal crime ring was making inroads into Texas and had a hand in everything from drug smuggling to money laundering.

  Amato owned a convenience store in Del Rio, across the street from a warehouse that was being used as a drop-off point by sex traffickers. He’d given Elizabeth’s team a tip that had panned out, and since then she’d been cultivating a relationship with him and trying to persuade her SAC to let her use him as an informant. Her boss had resisted. She had persisted. Amato was a family man, a business owner, an upstanding citizen who was active in his church. Most important, he’d wanted to help.

  After weeks of dogged efforts, Maxwell had finally given Elizabeth the green light, and she’d paid a visit to Amato to lay out the deal. Since then, she’d been awaiting his call. But that call would never come, because her promising new informant had been murdered while moving a load of coke for Saledo or one of his rivals.

  The elevator slid open. Elizabeth made her way toward her cubicle and saw Maxwell talking to a pair of agents outside his office. He’d probably heard by now. Would he dress her down at the staff meeting or call her into his office beforehand?

  He spotted her, and the grim look on his face told her he’d received the news. Elizabeth changed course, bracing herself for a blast of criticism as she approached.

  “Sir, I need to talk to you about—”

  “Save it. You’ve got a visitor.” He tipped his head toward one of the men standing nearby.

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  She blinked at him, taken aback. “Gordon. What—”

  “Feel free to use my office,” Maxwell told him, then gave her a sharp nod. “We’ll talk later.”

  Gordon watched her, his look unreadable. He was based in Washington, but if he’d spent the morning on an airplane, you’d never know it from his immaculate suit and shiny wingtips. Agents who worked for him sometimes called him “Wall Street,” and she hadn’t figured out whether it was because of his clothes or because his all-business demeanor reminded them of Gordon Gecko.

  He gestured toward the empty office. “After you.”

  Polite as always. She stepped inside and felt a chill down her spine as the door thudded shut. She glanced through the window into the bullpen and caught the baffled looks of her coworkers, who were obviously wondering why the Bureau’s newly promoted assistant director of counterterrorism wanted to see her.

  Gordon tucked his hands into his pockets and stepped past Maxwell’s desk. He had an athletic build, good posture. His salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed short, as she remembered it. Despite the demands of his job, he took care of himself.

  He turned to look at her. “How have you been?”

  She started to say “Fine” but remembered something else she’d learned about him a year ago. He was a human lie detector.

  “Busy,” she said.

  He lifted an eyebrow, then turned to study Maxwell’s ego wall, which featured his Princeton diplomas, along with several framed photos of him rubbing elbows with VIPs: the FBI director, a few senators, the Texas governor.

  “Have you been following the news out of Afghanistan?”

  She cleared her throat. “You mean the hostages?”

  “Yes.”

  “The newspaper said they were rescued by NATO forces.”

  The paper hadn’t specified what type of forces. But since meeting a SEAL team last summer, Elizabeth had been paying close attention and had learned to read between the lines. A team of commandos storming a compound and plucking civilians from the hands of Taliban insurgents? The mission had SEAL written all over it.

  “Many of the details weren’t made public.” Gordon turned to face her. “The team that conducted the raid recovered some interesting info during their SSE sweep.”

  SSE. She racked her brain.

  “Sensitive site exploitation,” he provided.

  “You mean computers?”

  “A laptop, a thumb drive. The information there was surprisingly minimal, but they also collected a cache of papers, including several detailed maps of Houston.”

  Houston. Not D.C., not New York, but Houston, Texas. Elizabeth’s palms felt sweaty and she tucked them into her pockets. “What’s in Houston?”

  He smiled slightly. “You mean besides six million people? Three major sports venues, a world-renowned medical center, a Christian megachurch.” He sat on the edge of Maxwell’s desk. “Not to mention the corporate headquarters of some of the world’s largest energy companies.”

  She clamped her mouth shut. Maybe she’d look less ignorant if she let him talk.

  “It was a take-no-prisoners raid,” he continued. “However, when the commandos saw this cache of intel, they grabbed a young man who’d been subdued, hoping some of our CIA guys could persuade him to talk.”

  “Did they?”

  His mouth tightened. “He’s no longer cooperating.”

  What did that mean, exactly?

  “And unfortunately, after poring through all the intel, our analysts believe the terrorists planning the attack were not in the compound when the raid went down. As far as we know, they’re still at large.” He paused and watched her. “Homeland Security’s staffed up a joint task force to investigate this potential plot and interrup
t it.”

  Elizabeth’s mind was reeling. She’d admired Gordon since the day she’d met him, both as an investigator and as a leader. The thought of working with him again made her giddy and nervous and terrified all at the same time.

  He stepped closer and gazed down at her.

  “Your SAC says you had a rough spring. He thinks you’re not up for this assignment.”

  Anger welled in her chest.

  “If you join my team, I need to know that you’re one hundred percent. Are you?”

  “One hundred and ten. Sir.”

  He held her gaze, the human lie detector. Her heart thudded so loudly she could hear it. Time seemed to stretch out. He glanced at his watch. “Be at San Antonio International Airport in two hours. Pack light.”

  Relief flooded her. “We’re going to Houston?”

  “California. Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, to be precise.” He crossed the room and reached for the door. “We need to interview some SEALs.”

  Chapter Two

  It felt good to be back in the water after six long months in the mountains, where the air was so thin it made his lungs burn. Derek was trained to operate in all environments—sea, air, and land—but having grown up on the Texas coast, he’d always preferred the sea.

  He glided through the water, moving mostly by instinct. It was just after sundown. The currents and boat traffic of San Diego Bay churned up sediment, and visibility was for shit. But Derek liked to work by feel. He was under the belly of the ship, skimming his hand along the hull in search of his objective.

  He felt a tug on the line attaching him to his partner. Luke emerged from the shadows, holding the glowing attack board, which showed their depth and their precise location to within a meter. Luke signaled him. Twenty meters to go investigating the hull of this boat, and they still hadn’t located the explosive. Derek checked his dive watch and kept swimming. He’d be damned if a crew of jarheads was going to beat him to the punch.

  Tonight’s training op came to them courtesy of an ongoing rivalry between Jeff Hallenback, Derek’s CO, and a Marine commander who’d been one of his classmates at the Naval Academy. Each team was searching a guided-missile destroyer much like the USS Cole, which had been attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists while docked in Yemen. The objective was simple: find and disarm a timed explosive device hidden somewhere on the boat. May the best team win.