The Warrior Code (2 page)

Nope. Tent’s a standard two-person one
. So w
here’s the other person?

The woman rose from cover and made her way cautiously to the camp, a stout branch in her hand as a weapon.

He heard her call out something, the words indistinct, and saw her brace herself for a fight-or-flee move depending on the response to her call.

There wasn’t a response. The tent lay still.

She waited for some more time, and when the tent showed no sign of speech or movement, abandoned all caution and ran to it. She jerked it open, poked her head inside, then withdrew it and looked around.

She walked around the camp in small circles, calling out loudly. She went in the tent again and came out with something in her hand. She held the phone to her ear for a few moments and put it down in disgust when she didn’t seem to get a signal.

He drifted closer to make out who or what she was calling out for.

Brown flash. Edge of his vision. Too late.

‘Don’t move. I have a gun trained on you.’

He moved, though, the slightest turn of his head to take the speaker in.

He stared, and for once his impassive face deserted him.

The person pointing a gun at him was a young woman. Brown haired, five-foot-seven tall, with a slim build that was athletic and muscular.

Identical to the woman he had rescued and had been following.

He saw her face tighten as she looked behind his shoulder, and her eyes widened.

Her twin’s ahead of me. Someone else behind me!

‘Down,’ he shouted and dropped to the ground. He twisted his body to land on his shoulder, just in time, as a bullet split the air where his head had been. A second one buzzed angrily a couple of inches above him.

His Glock came up without conscious thought, became an extension of his arm, his eye sought and found the sight, the sight found the attacker.

His first shot went wide, the second made the attacker duck, his third creased his shoulder, and the fourth killed him. His shots rolled like thunder in the cloudless sky.

He flowed to his feet, approached the fallen man warily, at an angle that would draw any return fire away from the women.

No return fire came. No other attackers came.

He didn’t move.

He relaxed after a long moment when nothing pinged his radar. He holstered his gun and searched the body.

Nothing on it. No papers that said John Thug. He found a phone, but it was dead. He slipped it in his pocket and picked up the attacker’s gun by its barrel

A Sig Sauer P226. A professional’s weapon.

He dropped it and turned to the women.

Their gun was pointing at him.

Chapter 3

‘I’m the one who saved you from that dead guy. Helped her, as well.’ He gestured in the direction of the woman he’d followed.

The two stood together, both of them clad in jeans and outdoor boots, the one with the gun in a flannel shirt, the one he’d followed wore a pullover. They styled their hair similarly and were of the same height and build, with green eyes under dark brown hair, and were healthily tanned. Probably in their late twenties. Their nails were trimmed short, neatly, and they didn’t wear any rings or jewelry of any kind. Nothing that was visible.

They weren’t exactly identical, but only a close study revealed their differences.

The one he was pursuing had fuller lips and her nose flared just a bit more than her twin’s. Details that a quick, casual glance wouldn’t spot.

The twin he’d followed nodded briefly at her sister, confirming what he’d said. They studied him in silence. He was tall, a shade over six feet, brown eyes, brown hair cut short, a lean athletic build, and moved with a fluidity that they had never seen before.

‘Why did you follow her? Who the hell are you exactly?’ gun woman asked him. Hostility edged the wariness in her eyes.

‘I’m a hiker like you. I was woken up at night by the sound of shots, followed them, saw your sister was in trouble, rescued her, then followed her to make sure she’d reach your camp safely.’

Gun woman laughed incredulously. ‘Hiker like us? Man, no hiker or tourist I know handles a gun like you did, or acts the way you did. You certainly aren’t a cop on holiday or else that’s the first thing you’d have told us. You’d better start talking.’

Zeb curbed his impatience.
They’ve no reason to trust me.

‘My name is Zeb Carter. I was in the Army, which is where I picked up those skills. I work as a security consultant in New York now.’ He paused. ‘If I wanted to do both of you harm, do you think we’d be standing around talking like this?’

‘Can you prove who you are?’

He reached slowly for his wallet and extracted his card and tossed it to them. The girl he was following caught it, read it, raised her eyebrows silently and held it forward for her twin to read. Gun woman skimmed it swiftly, looked back at him, and lowered the gun slowly.

He caught the card when it was tossed back and, after putting it away, asked them, ‘What’s this all about?’

Their body language, the way they half turned to each other, told its own story. The walls were lowered but not so much that they trusted him fully.

‘We don’t know,’ admitted gun woman. The other woman started to speak and closed her mouth when gun woman nudged her.

Zeb said patiently, ‘I
am
who I said I am. You can call the Army’s liaison office and confirm my details on that card I showed you. I totally understand that you can’t trust me fully. In other circumstances, I would have left you two alone and minded my own business. But these are not ordinary circumstances. It’s not every night that I come across a woman being chased by some hoods at night in the middle of the most famous national park in the world. However, we don’t have much time. If I knew what shit I stepped in, it would help me understand what to expect.’

He stopped, surprised by his own verbosity.

‘She’s telling the truth,’ pursued woman said. ‘We really don’t know who those guys are or why they attacked us–’

‘Why did you say we don’t have much time?’ gun woman cut in.

‘This guy was part of the group who chased her, I presume?’ Zeb looked at them, and when they nodded, he continued. ‘In that case, don’t you think the others will be coming back? Don’t forget your sister evaded them at night, and they’ll want to set that right. No loose ends.’

Gun woman whirled round and strode to the tent. ‘He’s right. Let’s get outta here, Beth,’ she called over her shoulder.

‘Wait,’ Zeb said.

She paused and turned back. The tone of voice he’d used made most people wait.

‘Call the park rangers. We need to close this or else we’ll be swimming in it deeper than we are now.’

She returned his gaze, and he could see her working it out, her twin too. ‘Once the rangers are here, those other guys will keep their distance?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. We have
some
time. Dead guy’s companions will be waiting for his call, maybe for another hour or so, since it’s still early. They won’t risk calling him, since they know he’s supposed to be following you. A call to his phone might give him away.’

They fidgeted for a while as they pondered it. Gun woman squared her shoulders after a moment and headed back to the tent.

‘Phone’s dead. I have it here.’ Pursued woman stopped her.

‘Then we’re screwed,’ gun woman muttered. She looked at Zeb. ‘You have a phone?’

Zeb slid the backpack off his shoulders, reached inside, and handed her a phone.

‘Never seen such a phone before,’ gun woman said, examining it briefly.

She dialed 911, explained the circumstances and hung up. ‘They’ll be here as quick as they can. They asked us not to leave the scene.’

He rested his backpack in the shade, took a swig of water from his canteen, and offered it to them. ‘You ladies have names?’

Gun woman pointed at her sister – ‘Beth’ – and at herself – ‘Meghan.’

He looked at them, awaiting more, and when none of them said anything, kept on watching them. Patience was second nature to him.

Beth finally broke the silence. ‘Beth and Meghan Petersen. Sisters obviously. Meg’s older but not by much. Meg runs a design consultancy in Boston, and I work with her.’

‘Just the two of you camping?’
No parents, friends, boyfriends, husbands?

Meghan answered his unasked question. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, in case you haven’t noticed. Besides, we can look after ourselves.’

He’d noticed they hadn’t flinched at the firing, hadn’t reacted at the sight of the man dying; she’d held the gun in a firm, sure grip.
They’ve handled weapons, know self-defense, and have been in some heavy situations. How come?

‘What kind of security consultant are you? Software? Viruses and hacking, that kind of geek stuff?’ Beth asked him.

‘Nope. I work with companies and people, advise them on personal security.’

‘A bodyguard?’

‘Sometimes.’ He didn’t elaborate.

Zeb was an ex-Special Forces operative who worked in an agency that didn’t exist and reported to a boss who answered only to the President.

A boss who held the nebulous title of Director of Strategy. Clare, his boss, had founded the agency to undertake exothermic missions that no other Special Ops or deep black ops agency in the country’s defense and intelligence setup could or would undertake. These exothermic – their term for extremely high risk, high threat, deniable – missions included infiltrating terrorist gangs, retrieving stolen nuclear or biochemical weapons, taking out rogue heads of state, neutralizing threats that sheltered in friendly nations.

When Clare became the first female director of the agency, she’d overhauled the agency to make it smaller, completely deniable, have the smallest possible administrative footprint, yet have the best operatives.

The agency worked with handpicked private military contractors, whose first allegiance was to the agency. They could take on other assignments when they weren’t on agency assignments, as long as those missions didn’t conflict with the national interest or jeopardize any agency mission.

This structure was born one evening when she’d gone for a drink with her closest friend in downtown Washington D.C.

Cassandra and Clare had studied together at Bryn Mawr and had ended up working in the political jungle that was D.C. Cassandra had started her career as a Foreign Service specialist in the State Department and had ended up being the aide to the Secretary of State before retiring from politics and pursuing a career in academics. Clare had started her career at the agency as an analyst.

During the evening, Clare saw a man waiting outside the bar, a man who seemed to become part of the street, around whom pedestrian traffic bent itself and flowed.

Cassandra saw Clare’s glance and laughed. ‘That’s my superhero brother, Zeb, waiting for me,’ she explained when she saw Clare’s raised eyebrows. ‘Zeb was Special Forces. He’s now a private military contractor, does security consulting, and he wouldn’t like me mentioning anything more.’ She laughed again when she realized how ridiculous that sounded. Clare had the highest security clearances and reported only to the President.

An intrigued Clare pulled Zeb’s file, whistled at the clearances required, and sobered when she read the contents of the file. She asked around discreetly and heard that he worked by his own rules, a tight moral code that meant he did not wage war on women and children, and didn’t accept any assignments that went against the country’s interests.

She asked him to join the agency the next day.

Zeb refused and counter-proposed that he form a team of elite operatives that the agency could call on. She mulled it over only for a few moments before green-lighting it, trusting in Zeb’s judgment to pick operatives who had a similar code to his.

The agency was born.

The President had once, in jest, referred to her team as her
Warriors
. The name stuck.

Zeb saw that the women had distrust back in their eyes and told them his cover story. ‘Most of the people or organizations I work with are high profile. I advise them on how they can reduce risk as they go about their life or work. Guarding them is only part of it.’

Meghan looked past him at the body. ‘You’ve done this before?’

Zeb shrugged. ‘You do what you have to while on a job. What about you two? What’s your backstory?’ He looked at Beth. ‘You’ve really lost your memory?’

She nodded, her eyes searching his to see if he believed her. ‘Yeah, like I said, why else would I spin such a story?’

He didn’t push it, allowing them to tell him in their own time, their own way. If they felt like it.

‘How did all this happen?’

Meghan frowned. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. We came to the park yesterday afternoon, with a group of people we knew, via the south entrance. We split away from them and came here; they proceeded ahead. They were going to rendezvous with some others near Lower Geyser Basin. We know this spot well; have been here before with our folks several times. We made camp by evening and didn’t see anything suspicious. I don’t know if we were followed.’

‘Late at night, I had to go… about two or three hundred feet away. When I was away, I heard the sounds of running, more than one person, and after a while the sounds faded. I rushed back to camp and saw Beth was gone. I hollered and searched around the camp, found nothing. Started searching in widening circles – Dad taught us that – still found nothing, and then I heard shots.’

‘I made a beeline to them. I was maybe halfway there or so, I heard her running back, and before I could call out to her, I saw her heading back. The way she was moving, I thought someone might be following her, so I held back from calling out.’

I didn’t detect her. If she was a hostile, I’d have been toast.

‘You haven’t seen these guys before?’

Both of them shook their heads.

Meghan looked at her sister. ‘What happened when they took you?’

‘I was sleeping one moment; the next moment, when I woke, one guy had a hand over my mouth and had flung me over his shoulder like a sack. I didn’t have time to shout or struggle, and by the time I realized what was happening, these guys were covering ground fast. I struggled and punched the guy carrying me, with my elbow, the other guy just hit me with his gun, and I passed out.’