X-Ops Exposed Page 18

  He’d been hearing sporadic gunshots for the past few minutes, but by the time he got to the edge of the camp, near silence reigned. There was a lot of whimpering and crying coming from the people who lived there, but no sounds of fighting.

  He let his nose guide him, tracking the scent of smokeless gunpowder to the far side of the camp and back into the wood line. He picked up the scents of several men within a few more feet. It was difficult to describe how he knew it was the bad guys. They had a different smell to them—commercial cleansers in their clothing combined with the persistent stench of blood.

  Tanner passed three injured preppers as he tracked the intruders’ scents, one woman and two men. All of them were alive, but they were in too much pain to do much more than point farther into the woods as he ran past them. He kept going, knowing Spencer and the others would find the wounded people and get them back to the camp.

  He found five of the bad guys a mile later. They walked casually toward two large SUVs parked on the road, their weapons down at their sides as if they didn’t fear a counterattack. All the men wore military-grade tactical gear and night-vision goggles. Tanner frowned. They looked more like people the DCO would tangle with, not a group of preppers out doing their best to live their lives completely separate from the rest of the world.

  Four of the raiders were dragging two unconscious preppers behind them by their heels, bouncing their limp bodies across the ground like they couldn’t care less how much it was going to hurt the guys. Tanner bit back a growl as his fangs slipped out. He wanted to kill these assholes in the very worst way possible.

  A fifth man trailed slightly behind, like he was pulling rear security. Except it was obvious he wasn’t worried about anyone coming after them. He wasn’t even paying attention to his six.

  Tanner didn’t slow down as he caught up to the tail-end Charlie—the last guy in the group. Reaching around to grab the mounting post of his NVGs, he savagely twisted the man’s head around backward. The snapping sound was as loud as a gunshot in the relatively quiet forest but disappeared into the shadows like a ghost before the body had even hit the ground and the other four men had spun around to see what the hell happened.

  Tanner hoped for a few seconds of what-the-fuck confusion. But at least one of the remaining men knew what he was doing. He immediately ordered the others to drop the unconscious baggage they’d been hauling, then spread out and get to their SUVs fast.

  His inner beast growling in irritation, Tanner stepped out from behind the tree he’d been waiting behind and started popping off shots at the retreating figures. He hit two of them, though not mortally. Unfortunately, they all retained discipline, the injured duo laying down a heavy suppressive fire in his direction while the healthy ones helped them keep moving.

  Spencer and Malcolm showed up then, but the bad guys made it to their vehicles anyway. Tanner charged forward and put a few more rounds into one of the guys as the bastard clambered into the SUV. The instinct to chase after fleeing prey was tough to ignore—not to mention the desire to go after the shitheads and end this right now—but he wasn’t there to kill people; he was there to save some. At the moment, he was more worried about the two unconscious preppers lying on the ground in the middle of the crossfire than in getting revenge.

  He put enough rounds in the escaping vehicles to discourage them from stopping, then ran to the injured men along with Spencer and Malcolm. He knew there was something odd going on the moment he approached the deathly still men. Both were young and healthy, strong looking and in their late twenties. There were no obvious wounds on them, but they weren’t moving. Even their heartbeats were slow. Too slow.

  Spencer and Malcolm must have thought the same thing, because they looked worried as they kneeled beside the unconscious men. Tanner frowned as he realized he recognized both guys. He’d talked to them more than a few times since moving back to the forest. They were good people.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Malcolm whispered.

  Tanner was about to say he had no idea and that they should get both men back to Zarina as fast as they could, but then he saw a flash of metal buried in one of the men’s coats. Curious, he reached down and pulled a pencil-thick metal tube with a needle on the end. Even in the pitch blackness of the heavily forested area, he could see the little bead of milky white liquid dripping from the tip of the needle. He sniffed the air, not wanting to get too close to the stuff. He had no idea what it was, but it had a distinctly medicinal stench to it.

  “I think they’ve been drugged,” he said. “Tranquilized.”

  Tanner checked the second man and found a similar dart.

  “Holy crap.” Spencer growled. “They were darted like frigging animals in a zoo.”

  While Spencer and Malcolm picked up the unconscious men and headed back to the Pyramid camp, Tanner searched the man he’d killed, hoping he’d find an ID. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any on him. In fact, he didn’t have a damn thing in any of his pockets. That, along with the military buzz-cut hairstyle and the army infantry badge tattooed on the left side of the guy’s chest, told Tanner everything he needed to know. The guy was former military for sure, which meant he could be a mercenary or even a fed. The gear and submachine gun were certainly top-of-the-line stuff that the government might issue.

  Back at the Pyramid camp, Tanner discovered the rest of Chad’s men had arrived and were loading the injured preppers into the backs of the pickup trucks. He glanced at the blond woman he’d seen out in the woods earlier. She’d been hit in the shoulder and was bleeding badly. It looked like a serious wound, and they made sure she was in the first vehicle heading back to Chad’s camp. Other than the hair color, the woman didn’t resemble Zarina at all, and yet she reminded Tanner of her anyway.

  Swallowing hard, he turned away, watching as people ran around the camp, helping the wounded and consoling crying children even as they packed up to move everyone to Chad’s camp. Tanner wondered if they realized how lucky they’d been. They’d gone up against five heavily armed men who were much better trained and equipped than the preppers would ever be. If those men had wanted to, they could have killed every man, woman, and child in this camp.

  But for some reason, all they had done was tranquilize and drag away two of the healthiest males, like they’d been culling the fittest members of the group. Or merely trying to scare the shit out of these people by showing they could walk right in here and waltz out with anyone they pleased.

  Another possibility suddenly occurred to Tanner, freezing his guts. What if this had been nothing more than an elaborate distraction staged to get everyone running in the wrong direction? If so, it had worked, because at that moment, most of the men from Chad’s camp were here instead of protecting their own place.

  Shit.

  Tanner almost went through a total shift right on the spot at the realization that he’d left Zarina nearly defenseless.

  “Get everyone loaded up as fast as possible, then get them back to our camp,” he called out to Spencer as he ran for the forest. “I’m going there now.”

  Worry filled Spencer’s eyes. “Is something wrong?”

  Tanner knew why the hybrid was concerned. If Zarina was in trouble, so was Lillie. He didn’t answer. Instead, he ran, letting his body shift in an effort to gain every ounce of speed he could muster.

  Chapter 9

  “Yes, sir, I’m aware I was out of my jurisdiction,” Chase said calmly into his cell phone. “But the people shooting at me didn’t seem to care about the fact that they weren’t allowed to kill me while I’m outside Oxford County.”

  Tate bit his tongue to keep from laughing. The deputy had been on the phone with the sheriff for the past ten minutes as they sat in the patrol car in a store parking lot off Highway 101. To say the conversation had not gone well was an understatement.

  Apparently, one of the cops on the scene at Joanne Harvey’s resi
dence had called Sheriff Bowers and given him a fairly good rundown of everything that happened, including the parts about the machine-gun-wielding bad guys, the shattered living room window, and the shredded bulletproof vest. Chase had tried to downplay the severity of the incident, but the sheriff had been in no mood to be pacified. He definitely didn’t find any of this amusing, no matter how much sarcasm Chase dumped into his explanation.

  “No, sir, I don’t think this is funny,” Chase said, his jaw clenching. Bowers had been grilling him hard, and it was obvious the deputy had taken about as much as he could handle. “But if I remember right, Sheriff, you’re the one who told me to keep an eye on Agent Evers and his investigation. When he decided to go first to the medical center in Scarborough, then Joanne Harvey’s house, I had to go with him even if it was outside our jurisdiction. I never expected to get into a shoot-out.”

  Anger was starting to seep into Chase’s voice, but Tate knew it wasn’t only the third degree he was getting from his boss that was pissing the deputy off. A lot of it probably had to do with the fact that he and Chase had spent the next hour buried in questions, giving answers no one quite believed. A little while later, Bowers had called.

  “It’s fortunate I did go with him,” Chase added, “or it’s likely Joanne Harvey and Agent Evers would be dead right now.”

  Tate snorted. The way he remembered it, Chase had been the one close to getting snuffed, not him.

  “No, sir, there’s no one else in the car with me,” Chase said, shooting Tate a look that blatantly suggested he keep his opinions to himself. “Evers called it a night, so I’m heading home… No, I still have no idea exactly where this is all going. All I can say for sure is Bell was involved with some very bad people, and it got him killed.”

  When Chase finally hung up several minutes later, he stared silently out the windshield for a while, likely contemplating how much trouble he was going to be in when his boss figured out Chase had been lying his ass off about almost everything, including the part about him heading home now instead of out to Bell’s second residence. The one nobody but his personal research assistant had known about. Yeah, lying to your boss like that could get a cop fired pretty damn quick.

  After another moment, the deputy put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway, heading toward Lewiston.

  “We’ll be crossing the Androscoggin River in a few miles,” Chase said. “We should see the turnoff for Bell’s after that.”

  Tate nodded. After rescuing Joanne Harvey from her attackers, the woman had been more than willing to tell them everything she knew about Dr. Bell, including the fact that the man had two homes. The small apartment near the medical center was where he spent most of his evenings after work. It was the address he listed on all the hospital paperwork and the only place associated with his name from a property tax perspective. Joanne had been there many times and told them it was essentially nothing more than a place to sleep. However, Bell had a much bigger home outside Lewiston where he stayed when he wanted to get away from everything. The house had been owned by his parents and was currently managed by a trust set up in their names. That’s why no one at the hospital knew about it. Apparently, no one else did either, since Kendra hadn’t come up with anything on it. Joanne was sure Bell was in a relationship with someone but said he’d been a very private man and she respected that privacy.

  “Okay, let me see if I have this right,” Chase said. “There are these shifter creatures in the world that are half human, half animal. They look completely normal but have all these incredible abilities, not to mention fangs and claws. This guy who jumped on me at Joanne’s house and just about ripped me apart was a shifter, right?”

  The deputy was clearly handling this better than Tate thought he would. “Batting a thousand so far.”

  “Then there are hybrids, people who psycho doctors like Mahsood tried to turn into man-made shifters thanks to financial backing from rich, powerful people like Rebecca Brannon,” Chase continued. “With Bell’s background in genetics, I’m guessing you think he and Mahsood were working together on one of these hybrid projects?”

  Damn, this guy was quick. Tate had touched on every one of those subjects but hadn’t tied them together in the neat bundle the way Chase already had. But before Tate could tell the deputy he was impressed, the cop spoke again.

  “You said hybrids can have control issues, which probably means a hybrid wasn’t responsible for Bell’s murder, since he was tortured, not butchered. That leaves us with the shifter who attacked me or the one on the stairs you told me about. Unless you think Rebecca’s daughter did it. Is she a shifter or a hybrid? I’m guessing a hybrid since Mahsood was experimenting on her.”

  “Actually, Ashley’s a coyote shifter,” Tate corrected. “But beyond that, you nailed everything else. I gotta say, you’re processing this much better than I thought you would, and I’d already pegged you for a pretty sharp cop.”

  Chase let out a snort. “I’m a marine. Improvising and adapting to our environment is what we’re trained to do. But if Rebecca’s daughter is already a shifter, why was Mahsood experimenting on her?”

  “To figure out how her shifter genes work and take DNA samples from her,” Tate said. “Rebecca and Mahsood have had Ashley locked up in that mental facility outside Old Town since the girl was a teenager. She’s in her midtwenties now.”

  “Crap, that’s cold.” Chase frowned. “Also puts her at the top of the suspect list. I know I’d be pissed as hell if my mother locked me in a mental institution for a decade or so and had doctors experiment on me. Mahsood in particular would be first in line for an ass whooping.”

  “I agree,” Tate said. “But unfortunately, I get the feeling Mahsood is the kind of man who makes lots of people want to whoop his ass. Ashley might have killed Bell as a way to get to Mahsood, but it could just as easily have been those people at Joanne’s place, whoever the hell they were. All I can say for sure about them is they’re definitely hired guns, either paid by someone wanting to kick-start their own hybrid program or slow down Rebecca’s. Bottom line, we don’t know enough to jump to conclusions about any of our suspects yet.”

  Chase nodded and fell silent. They both stayed that way as they crossed over the river and turned onto Highway 126, then headed east.

  “One thing you didn’t mention, and maybe you can’t talk about it,” Chase said, glancing at him. “This part of Homeland you work for. All you do there is hunt down shifters and hybrids and kill them?”

  Tate hadn’t expected that question, and it took a second to regain his balance. Some of it had to do with the barely hidden tone of disapproval in Chase’s voice, but most of it had to do with the fact that hunting down rogue shifters and hybrids is what Tate and his former team had spent a good portion of their time doing. It was something that needed doing, but it wasn’t always a job Tate necessarily liked.

  “The people I work for don’t go out of their way to hunt down shifters or hybrids and hurt them. In fact, it’s the reverse,” he said. “We look for these special people, because they make damn good agents. But I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes these special people do bad things just like anyone else. When that happens, people like me are sent out to deal with them, because the normal police aren’t equipped to handle them.”

  “Have you ever had to kill any of them?” Chase asked.

  There was no point in lying. It seemed like an odd question for a former marine, especially one who’d seen as many deployments as Chase. “Unfortunately, yes. But only when there was no other option. You have a problem with killing?”

  “Yeah.” Chase looked at him, his expression carefully devoid of emotion. “Only a sociopath kills without remorse or regret.”

  Tate locked eyes with the other man for a few seconds before Chase turned his attention back to the dark, tree-lined highway. “And?”

  “And I�
��m wondering if you look at these shifters and hybrids as something less than human and therefore somehow easier to kill?” Chase answered. “Because while only a sociopath enjoys killing, in my experience, the world is full of sociopaths.”

  It wasn’t until that moment that Tate realized how much Chase reminded him of Landon Donovan, the current deputy director of the DCO and former Special Forces captain who had a habit of asking pointed questions and leading the way when it came to doing the right thing, even when it came at a steep cost.

  “I have a friend who’s a two-hundred-and-seventy-pound bear shifter and another who’s a coyote shifter and sarcastic as hell. I have another friend who’s a big hybrid, and he’s totally terrifying when he loses control. I don’t judge people by the shape of their fingernails. I judge them by their character,” Tate told him. “Yes, I’ve killed shifters and hybrids, as well as regular humans. But every one of them died for a reason, and that reason always included keeping someone else safe.”

  More silence reigned before Chase finally looked at him again, the corners of his mouth edging up.

  “I think we’ll get along just fine then,” he said.

  Tate blew out a breath. “Thank God. Because that’s what I’ve been worrying about the entire night. The thought that we might not get along brings tears to my eyes.”

  Chase chuckled and turned into a driveway.

  Five minutes later, Tate was picking the lock on the back door of a big two-floor colonial. Red brick, black shutters, and nice landscaping. No wonder Bell kept this place off his official records. The taxes must be a bear.

  He pulled his weapon as he led the way inside. Beside him, Chase did the same. A quick sweep of the house told them no one was there. Tate holstered his gun as he wandered back into the kitchen. The place was neat and tidy, right down to its pristine chandeliers. No shock there. Bell’s office had been spotless, too.