“I see.” It was all she could get out. She should have looked ahead, should have known he would be capable of walking away without a backward glance. She kept her eyes on his face, hoping for one small sign that she’d meant the same things to him that he had to her. “Good luck then, Jack.”
He turned away from her, an abrupt motion, and walked out the door. Not once did he look back. Briony knew because she watched him through the window, all the way, until he was out of sight. She sat on the bed until dawn, unmoving, without a single tear, feeling numb-frozen-feeling as if he’d torn out her heart and taken it with him. She felt a fool for even thinking they had something special. Jack took her gift of love and trust and flung it back in her face. She stayed very still-very small-wishing she could just disappear. She stayed there on the edge of the bed until Jebediah pounded on her door to tell her it was time to face the day and another performance.
CHAPTER 6
Twelve hours earlier…
The Special Forces GhostWalker team gathered together in the California home of Lily Whitney-Miller, daughter of Dr. Peter Whitney. They grouped together in the war room, where they met regularly, knowing the room was impossible to bug.
“Do we know if he’s still alive?” Kadan Montegue asked as he spread the aerial maps of the Republic of the Congo across the table.
“If there’s one person who has a chance of escaping the rebel camp and making it out of the jungle alive, it’s Jack Norton,” Nicolas Trevane replied.
“General Ekabela is the most bloodthirsty of all the rebels in the region,” Captain Ryland Miller added with a small sigh. “The general’s troops are mostly veterans in combat. Most of his men were in the military before everything went to hell there.”
“It seems to me, as long as I can remember, it’s always been hell in the Congo,” Nicolas said. “Ekabela had done more damage to that region, destroying entire villages and towns, committing genocide, but he’s as elusive as hell and well funded.”
“He controls the marijuana traffic and has major backing by someone here in the U.S. None of his prisoners have ever lasted more than a couple of days. He’s particularly ruthless when it comes to torture. Ken Norton was in bad shape and they’d only had him about ten hours. Ken’s still in the hospital,” Ryland pointed out. “They nearly skinned him alive, not to mention sliced his body into tiny pieces. If Ekabela has Jack, he has only a few hours to escape before they do worse to him.”
Kadan tapped his finger on the map. “Ekabela is on the move. He isn’t going to take any chances with Jack. What the hell was that senator thinking, flying over the Congo in the no-fly zone? And what was some hotshot military scientist doing in a region as hot as the Congo?”
“That’s just the thing,” Dr. Lily Whitney-Miller said. She stepped out of the corner where she’d been observing the GhostWalker team as they met together for the briefing. “The small jet that was shot down in the Congo is the same plane that landed at the airport outside of New Orleans when Dahlia’s home was attacked.”
“What’s even more interesting,” Ryland said, “is that Ekabela didn’t kill the pilot or the scientific team. And when Ken Norton’s squad went into the Congo to rescue the senator, Ekabela was waiting for him.”
Kadan held up his hand. “You think Ekabela was tipped off that the GhostWalker team was conducting a rescue? How would that be possible?”
Ryland nodded. “I’m sure of it. Ken was able to get the senator, the research team, and the pilot out. Why would Ekabela keep the pilot alive? He wasn’t worth anything at all.”
“Of more significance,” Lily added, “the plane went down with supposed engine trouble, yet no one was injured, and Ekabela didn’t have the pilot and research team tortured and killed as he normally does with anyone not of monetary or political use to him. The rebels were waiting to ambush the rescue team. Even with that, the GhostWalkers were able to pull out the senator, and everyone else, although in the process, Ken Norton was captured. Ekabela didn’t waste any time torturing Ken.”
“Even of more significance is the fact that the rebels went for Ken-singled him out. That’s how he was cut off,” Logan Maxwell added. He was the only member of the SEAL GhostWalker squad present. Ken and Jack Norton were both members of his team. “They were waiting for him. I was there. They could have fought to keep their prisoners, but they were more interested in acquiring Ken.”
“Specifically Ken? Not just any GhostWalker?” Lily asked.
“Specifically Ken,” Logan reiterated. There was sudden silence in the briefing room. Members of the GhostWalker team sank into chairs around the table. “Who could have tipped Ekabela off?”
“I don’t know how much you know about Dr. Whitney’s original experiment, when he first began to use human subjects for physical and psychic enhancement,” Lily said to Logan.
“Jesse informed us, ma’am,” Logan Maxwell admitted. “We know he took orphans from overseas, all girls, and enhanced them first. After perfecting his technique, he enhanced the first team.” He gestured around the room to encompass the men and women. “And then ours.”
“Everyone, including me, believed my father, Dr. Whitney, was murdered. We no longer are certain that’s true. We suspect not only that he is alive, but that he has enhanced his own personal army and is conducting experiments with the sanction of someone in the military and someone very high up in the government. We believe there is a conspiracy to engineer the perfect human weapons and that conspiracy involves my father, perhaps the senator you rescued, and definitely members of the military and/or other covert government agencies.”
Logan looked around him. “This place is a fortress. How could Whitney, or anyone else, get ahold of your plans? Or our plans, for that matter. It was my team that came up with the plan to rescue first the senator and, then again, Ken Norton. They were waiting for us when we went in after Ken. Jack provided covering fire, took a hit, and went down. He signaled us to get out of there, and frankly, if we hadn’t, we’d all be dead. Ekabela wasn’t playing games; he wanted us dead. And they wanted Jack. We’ve tried twice to rescue him or recover his body, but they’re moving camps so fast our information is always hours late. General Ekabela definitely tried to kill all of us, and he’s had traps in every camp we’ve hit. Fortunately we’ve managed to avoid them.”