Torsten replied heavily, “We never did get a confirmation of death.”
Beau leaned forward from the back seat and ground out, “That’s because nothing but matchsticks and the occasional chunk of meat were left when I was done blowing up that bastard’s yacht.”
Tessa frowned at their boss. “Why does someone think Haddad may be alive?”
Torsten huffed, clearly as unhappy as she and Beau were. “A rumor has surfaced that the Haddad network may be doing some sort of big secret deal with a Middle Eastern nation. The source apparently has it on good authority that Haddad himself is expected to close the deal. It’s possible that one of his flunkies has taken over the business. But there’s also a very small chance that the bastard is back.”
“What country is this deal with?” she asked.
“Rumor places the deal in Iran.”
“For what kind of weapons?” Beau asked quickly.
Tessa wasn’t sure that mattered. The Iranians were dangerous enough with the weaponry they already had. Although she supposed the last thing anyone needed was for that country’s leaders to get their hands on something high-tech and truly deadly.
“No idea,” Torsten replied.
“It’s not like we have a ton of human information sources on the ground in Tehran,” she commented. “If someone outside its borders could figure out who’s making the sale and what the cargo is, we’d have a better chance of finding out what the Iranians are getting their hands on.”
Appearing to give himself a mental shake, the major replied, “Not our problem, today. Right now, I need us to focus on finding Piper.”
“Of course, sir.” But curiosity about what a dead arms dealer was selling to a country like Iran continued to niggle at the back of Tessa’s mind.
They parked in front of the one-story building that was their communications facility and operational headquarters for Training Site Vanessa, named for Brigadier General Vanessa Blake, the founder of the Medusas over a decade ago.
Their headquarters squatted on stilts and looked like every other ramshackle fishing shack in this part of Terrebonne Parish. Notable only was the building’s lack of windows, and the unusually bulky storage shed under the center of the building.
In reality, that shed disguised the elevator shaft down into the underground/underwater bunker that housed the heart of their ops center. The aboveground building mainly disguised antennae and receivers for the equipment below.
They piled into the elevator and stood in silence as it whooshed them down into the bunker. The door opened into the perpetual twilight of a room crammed with computers and monitors.
Rebel sat at her communication console and typed quickly. In just a few seconds, she reported without looking up from her screen, “Piper’s phone is still at the elementary school where it was this morning.”
“And her backup locator signal?” Torsten asked.
“It appears stationary about fifty miles west of here,” she reported. “Reporters are saying a group of masked men were seen coming out of a white air-conditioning company van and heading into the elementary school. They left in the same vehicle. Presumably with Piper in tow.”
Major Torsten left Rebel to man the ops center in case Piper called in, and loaded Tessa and Beau into his Hummer. They drove west, paralleling the murky waters of Bayou Black to the GPS coordinates Rebel had given them for Piper’s backup locator signal. It turned out to be coming from a crappy little 1950s-era gas station in the middle of nowhere.
The gray-haired Cajun man inside the station swore he hadn’t seen any woman fitting Piper’s description all day. When Tessa showed him a picture of Piper on her cell phone, the attendant declared her hot, but again denied having seen her. Tessa was inclined to believe him.
Torsten called Rebel to confirm they were at the right place, and she was adamant that their position locators were literally on top of Piper’s. And it was still pinging.
They fanned out to search the area, and after a minute or so, Tessa spotted a glint in the gravel at the corner of the building. She bent down and picked up Piper’s West Point class ring. The one with the locator in it.
“I found her ring!” she called out.
“Don’t move!” Torsten ordered immediately. He knelt down, examining the dirt between himself and Tessa. After a moment, he moved off to his right, toward the side of the building. Using his finger, he drew a rectangle on the ground. “Tire track. Recent,” he commented, continuing to stare at the dusty clay.
Beau moved forward to join him in staring at the ground. He had a sniper’s outstanding eyesight and was the best tracker of all of them.
“Looks like three men,” he murmured. “They milled around beside the vehicle.”
Torsten nodded. “And one walked over there to the corner of the building and back, close to where the ring was.”
“Did he drop it, maybe?” Tessa asked.
Beau answered grimly, “I don’t see any tracks small or narrow enough to be Piper’s. These are all men in boots.”
“Agreed,” Torsten muttered. “I don’t think she dropped it as a bread crumb for us.”
“Either way,” Tessa commented, “we know she was headed west a couple hours ago.”
Beau crouched and studied the dirt a bit more, adding, “It looks like some of the tracks lead over to this burn barrel.”
Tessa detoured around the footprints to stare into the rusty container at the pile of light gray ashes inside. It didn’t look like it would hold any clues to Piper’s whereabouts.
Torsten moved over beside her to gaze into the trash barrel, the contents of which were smoking lazily and stank of burnt plastic. He gingerly poked around in them.
“Do you see anything, sir?” she asked hopefully.
“Nope. Just ashes. If the guys in the van dropped anything in here, it’s gone.”
Damn.
Torsten moved away from her and pulled out his cell phone.
“Where’s Piper now?” Tessa asked logically.
Beau looked up grimly from snapping pictures of the tracks. “I think it’s safe to say she was kidnapped. Which leads to the even more salient question. Why her?”
They stared at one another grimly. Were the Medusas compromised?
How? Practically no one knew of their existence, let alone what their real mission was supposed to be. The only—deeply buried—paper trail that led to the team vaguely referred to it as an environmental research group.
“Back in the Hummer,” Torsten ordered briskly. “We’re going to New Orleans.”
“What’s in New Orleans?” Tessa ventured.
“An NCIS field office. It’s time to bring in the big guns to track down Piper and figure out what in the hell is going on.”
She wasn’t about to voice the idea that, if Torsten had listened to her and Rebel earlier, Piper’s kidnappers wouldn’t have such a big head start on them. Torsten looked like he was probably having that thought all on his own, without her having to say it.
They climbed back into the Hummer in silence, and Torsten stomped on the accelerator, blatantly ignoring any notion of speed limits as they raced toward New Orleans at nearly a hundred miles per hour. No doubt about it, the boss was definitely more worried than he was expressing aloud.
They all were.
* * *
Zane goose-stepped the