Bloodline (Sigma Force 8)

And, plainly, this was going to be a brawl.

With Painter as the punching bag.

“That looks like shock to me, director,” Gant said. “And I’m certainly not awed by such a ham-fisted operation as you’re running. Not when my daughter and unborn grandson are at risk.”

Painter bore the brunt of this tirade without breaking eye contact with the president. The man needed to vent, to lash out. He waited for the fire to die back, enough to let reason slip past the panic of a frightened parent.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Gant finished, running fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. His voice cracked on the last couple of words.

That was his opening. He kept his response just as blunt and direct. “Mr. President, the kidnappers know they have your daughter. I suspect they’ve known from the very beginning. For some unknown reason, she had been targeted for abduction.”

His statement both deflated the president and flared the fear brighter in his eyes.

“From this attack,” Painter continued with a nod to the wall, “and other incidents, it’s clear Amanda’s kidnappers have forgone hiding their knowledge. The boldness of this assault suggests two things.”

He ticked them off on his fingers. “One. The enemy must be spooked to act so brazenly, which suggests my men are closing in on her true location. Two. Amanda’s best hope for recovery lies with that same team.”

Support came from a surprising source. Painter’s boss cleared his throat. “I agree with the director, Mr. President,” Metcalf said. “We have no other assets available. Even the fast-response SEAL team in Djibouti needs a hard target—something we don’t have. As much as this operation has blown up in our collective faces, we have no other viable options for securing your daughter.”

Okay, it was lukewarm support, but Painter would take that from his boss. After bumping heads, the two of them had a professionally respectful but uneasy relationship. And Metcalf was savvy enough in Washington politics not to stick his neck out—at least, not out too far.

“But how do we know your team is still out there?” Gant asked, getting a nod from his brother at the table. “They might all be dead.”

Painter shook his head. “They’re not.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“From this.”

Painter stepped forward, took the remote, and tapped in an encrypted code. He’d preestablished the feed with one of the Situation Room’s watch team. On the wall-mounted monitor, a grainy video appeared, stuttering, full of digital noise.

“I apologize for the reception. I collected this feed via an ISR plane cruising at thirty-eight thousand feet above Somalia.”

Teresa Gant stirred enough to ask, “ISR?”

Her brother-in-law answered, “Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Basically, ears in the sky.”

“From there, I patched through the NRO satellite in geosynchronous orbit.”

Warren Duncan sat straighter. “This is live?”

“Maybe a six-second delay. I acquired the feed only half an hour ago.”

The president squinted a bit. “What are we seeing?”

The view was low to the ground, racing along a dirt track. Fleeting images of trees and leafy bushes flashed past at the edges.

“From the GPS coordinates transmitted, we’re seeing a road through the highland forests of the Cal Madow mountains.”

On the screen, the view zoomed up to a pair of legs, then the face of a small black boy. Audio was even worse, cutting in and out.

“… here … over by … hurry …”

The boy fled from the camera, racing away with the exuberance of youth.

“Who’s filming this?” the defense secretary asked.

Painter allowed a moment of self-satisfaction. “One of my newest recruits.”

3:08 P.M. East Africa Time

Cal Madow mountains, Somalia

Kane chased after Baashi.

“Come see!” the boy exclaimed and skittered to a stop. His arm pointed toward the jungle, to a rutted track that cut off the main road.

If you could call it a road, Gray thought.

His team had been hiking into the highlands for the past forty-five minutes, leaving the ambush miles behind. They had returned to the gravel road after giving the murderous choke point a wide berth.

Gray kept a continual ear out for the growl of truck engines behind him as he set a hard pace into the heart of the mountains. Slowly over time, the gravel under his boots gave way to dirt, then, once into the misty highlands, to nothing more than tire tracks worn into the sandy silt.

Soon, the arid lowlands were a forgotten world. Here, verdant high meadows rolled down into valleys filled with misty forests of junipers and frankincense trees. And all around them, like broken dragon’s teeth, jagged peaks thrust toward the sky.

“That Shimbaris,” Baashi said, pointing to the highest peak in that direction. It looked like a toppled skyscraper covered in emerald forest. “They say the bad doctor in Karkoor Valley. That way.”

He thrust his arm again toward the rutted track off the main road.

Tucker crouched at the turnoff, picking up clods of freshly turned dirt. “Been recent traffic through here. Mud tires.”

“The Land Rovers at the roadblock,” Gray said, meeting his eye.

They were on the right path.

Gray turned to the boy. “I want you to stay here, Baashi, off the road, hidden entirely out of sight. You don’t come out until you see one of us.”

“But I help!” he said.

“You’ve helped enough. I told Captain Alden I’d protect you.”

Seichan pointed a finger at the boy’s nose. “And you promised him you’d listen to us, right?”

The two of them sounded like scolding parents—and got the usual sullen teenager response. Baashi sighed heavily, crossed his arms, expressing his disappointment with every fiber of his being.

With the matter settled, the boy went into hiding, out of harm’s way, while Gray and the others headed down the shadowy turnoff, a tunnel made by a canopy of woven branches. They’d not taken more than a few steps when Major Jain called from the rear.

“Hold!”

Gray turned; the British soldier still stood at the edge of the main road in the sunlight. She held a hand up, then pointed it toward her ear.

Gray cocked his head, listening. He first heard Kane, rumbling deep in his throat, sensing something, too. Then in the distance, echoing off the surrounding peaks, the deeper groan of truck engines.