Beyond Limits

Book : Tracers

by Laura Griffin

Genres: General Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

FBI agent Elizabeth LeBlanc is still caught in the aftermath of her last big case when she runs into the one man from her past who is sure to rock her equilibrium even more. Navy SEAL Derek Vaughn is back home from a harrowing rescue mission in which he found evidence of a secret terror cell on U.S. soil. Elizabeth knows he'll do anything to unravel the plot-including seducing her for information. And despite the risks involved, she's tempted to let him. Together with the forensics experts at the Delphi Center, Derek and Elizabeth are closing in on the truth. But it may not be fast enough to avert a devastating attack.

Release date: January 27, 2015

Publisher: Pocket Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Beyond Limits

Chapter One

Asadabad, Afghanistan

0300 hours

The night was all wrong for an op, but they were going anyway, and not a man among them disputed the call.

Lieutenant Derek Vaughn sat wedged between his teammates in the Black Hawk helicopter listening to the thunder of the rotor blades as he pictured the city below. The rugged outpost was hemmed in on either side by mountains. Even by Afghan standards, the place was a hellhole, frequented by opium traders, arms smugglers, and Taliban fighters with Al Qaeda links, including a group that had recently hijacked a caravan of aid workers on their way back from a medical mission in Badakhshan Province.

The hijackers had killed the drivers and taken three hostages, all aid workers. Two were Swedish, and one was American, and both governments were scrambling to resolve the crisis while keeping it under wraps. But the situation had dragged on, which wasn’t good. Derek had seen firsthand how TAQ fighters treated their prisoners, and the thought of what those people had likely been through made his blood boil. But he pushed away his anger and focused on his job.

“Five minutes,” the crew chief said over the radio.

Derek closed his eyes. He regulated his breathing. He recalled the map of the compound that he and his teammates had memorized during the briefing. Drone photographs had shown two buildings separated by a narrow courtyard. The hostages were thought to be held in the basement of one or both of the houses.

Or so they hoped. Tonight’s entire mission was based on a call traced to a phone believed to belong to one of the kidnappers.

One phone call. That was it.

Typically, deploying an entire platoon of SEALs required slightly more intel. But tonight wasn’t typical, not by a long shot. Sixteen days ago, the kidnappers had demanded five million dollars in ransom from the international relief org MedAssist. Nine days ago, they’d upped the ante to ten mil. Two days ago, negotiations had broken down, and twenty-four hours ago, MedAssist had received an e-mail. The attached video clip showed twenty-six-year-old Ana Hansson blindfolded and kneeling before the camera, pleading for her life just seconds before her captors slit her throat.

“Four minutes,” the crew chief said.

Derek pictured the two remaining hostages. Dr. Peter Lindh of Stockholm was forty-nine and had been in excellent health before his abduction. Hailey Gardner of Boston had just graduated from nursing school before taking a job with MedAssist. Her passport photo showed a pretty blonde with a wry smile. The photo had immediately reminded Derek of a different woman, a woman he’d been trying to get out of his head for months now. It wasn’t the blond hair or the smile but the determined gleam in her eyes that made Derek think of Elizabeth LeBlanc.

As if he needed a reason.

“Three minutes.”

Derek snugged his assault gloves onto his hands. Focus. Thinking about Elizabeth or anything else besides the op right now was a good way to get his ass shot off. Or one of his teammates’.

The crew chief slid open the door, and the roar from outside cut off all communication. Derek got to his feet and edged closer to the opening, where he could see the valley below bathed in silver. They were infiltrating under a full moon into hostile territory with scant intel to guide their assault. The odds were stacked against them, but Derek knew that every last one of his teammates relished this mission. They’d trained together, fought together, lived, breathed, and bled together for six long months of deployment. On this tour alone, they’d racked up more successful tactical operations than anyone cared to count. But it wasn’t every day they got the chance to rescue a civilian from the country they’d sworn their lives to protect and defend.

At the front of the helo, Derek’s CO held up two fingers. Two minutes.

Derek pulled down his night-vision goggles, casting everything around him in a greenish hue. He checked his M-4, outfitted with a ten-inch barrel. The weapon was designed for close-quarters combat and had a suppressor to keep the noise down. He also had his Sig Sauer P226 in his thigh holster but didn’t expect to use it. Tonight was a straight-up, take-no-prisoners rescue mission. Get in and get out, hopefully before anyone realized they were there.

That was the goal, but everyone knew it wasn’t likely to become reality. And they were good with that. SEALs were trained to take whatever shit the mission threw at them and find a way to make a victory out of it.

The helo entered a hover, and the crew chief kicked out the rope attached to the fuselage. Both buildings had rooftop balconies. The pilot would drop off one group here, then the other on the neighboring roof, and each four-man element would assault down. Meanwhile, an armored Humvee would pull up to the compound and unload two more elements to clear from below.

Hit ’em from all directions, a classic SEAL tactic.

They stacked by size, with Derek first, followed by Mike Dietz, the team corpsman. Next was Cole McDermott, their best sharpshooter, who would man the roof. Luke Jones, another medic, would bring up the rear.

Derek grabbed the rope. Across the helo, Sean Harper grinned and shot him the bird.

Go time.

Derek’s palms burned as he slid down and hit concrete. Fifty pounds of gear on his back, but he hardly felt the impact as he sprang to his feet and sprinted for the door. They’d expected it to be locked, but the heavy iron grillwork added a complication. Derek grabbed his kit and crouched down to prep a breaching charge. Having been shot at through doors on more than one occasion, he’d learned to do it kneeling.

Brakes screeched below as the Humvee arrived on target. Derek heard a string of pops, like firecrackers, as the other teams dealt with the doors. So much for quiet.

“Going explosive,” Derek said, and everyone hunched down.

Pop!

The door burst open, and a barrage of machine-gun fire spewed through the gap. Derek rolled away, breathing hard. Even when you expected it, it was always a shock when bullets whizzed over your head. Luke laid down cover fire as Derek reached into the doorway and pulled away the ruined gate.

They darted through the opening, one, two, three, with perfect coordination born of years of training.

“Room one clear!” Luke shouted, tossing an infrared chem light to the floor to signal his teammates.

Derek darted past him and cleared the next room. A staccato of bullets echoed in the stairwell.

“This is Alpha,” Luke said over the radio. “Level two clear.”

“This is Bravo. Level one clear.”

Derek rushed down the stairs, stepping over a body as he joined his team. Two tangos lay dead in the middle of the floor, their AKs and chest racks beside them. Derek glanced around. Sleeping pallets, trash, empty food cans. The smell of cooking oil hung in the air.

Mike looked at him. “Notice anything funny?”

“No women, no kids.”

Taken with everything else, it confirmed their intel. This was no typical family home.

“This is Delta. House two clear, and we need Dietz over here ASAP.”

Mike rushed to answer the call, while across the kitchen, Luke kicked open a door.

“Basement!”

“Check for booby traps,” Derek said, following him down a primitive staircase carved from the rock. At the bottom was a door with a heavy-duty lock.

“Need your sledge,” Luke said.

Derek was already pulling it from his pack. They couldn’t use a breaching charge in case a hostage was being held on the other side. Derek swung back the hammer and gave the door a sharp whack, sending splinters flying as it burst open.

Luke ducked in first. Derek covered him. The room was dark and cold and reeked of urine. In the corner was a shadowy lump with a mop of blond hair. She wasn’t moving—not good news, considering all the noise.

“NVGs,” Derek said, shoving his night-vision goggles up. Their goggles and greasepaint made them look like alien robots, and they didn’t want to scare the hell out of her. Derek switched on the flashlight attached to his helmet as Luke reached to check her pulse. She flinched, then rolled over and suddenly started kicking and screaming like a banshee.

“It’s okay, ma’am,” Luke said. “Don’t be afraid.”

More shrieks and kicks.

“Hailey, it’s okay.”

She went still. Derek aimed the light at her as she cowered back. Dirt smudged her face, and the collar of her shirt was dark with blood. The nasty gash above her eye made Derek’s stomach turn.

“I’m Petty Officer Luke Jones, U.S. Navy.” He was already digging through his medical kit. “We’re here to take you home.”

Derek knelt down and looked the woman over. She held her wrist protectively against her body, and it was wrapped with a dirty scrap of cloth. Luke tore open a syringe as Derek peeled away the bandage to reveal an oozing green wound with bone jutting through the skin.

Derek glanced up at her. “We’ve got a helo coming to give you a ride.”

“You’re . . . American,” she rasped.

“Yep.” Derek got rid of the filthy-ass bandage as Luke prepped the shot. “Hey, your Bruins are doing pretty good. We plan to get you home in time for the Cup.”

She made a wet, choking sound, and Luke darted him a look. He’d meant to distract her, not make her cry.

“Five minutes!” someone yelled from upstairs.

Derek’s radio crackled, and he got to his feet. “Alpha, this is Delta. We need Vaughn or Jones over here.”

Derek rushed back upstairs, checking his watch as he went. He’d known Sean since BUD/S training, and he could tell by the tone of his voice that something was very wrong. Probably the hostage. A cold feeling of dread gripped him at the thought of losing another one.

In the courtyard, one of his teammates was building a pile of guns and ammo. The heap of AKs, chest racks, and RPGs took up most of the space. Another pair of guys had already started SSE—sensitive site exploitation—which meant confiscating any potential intelligence, along with fingerprinting and photographing casualties and their weapons, not only for ID purposes but also so that if the mission came to light, the enemy couldn’t claim they’d killed a bunch of innocent civilians.

Inside the second building, the SEAL pulling security directed Derek toward a stairwell leading to the basement. Someone had slapped a chem light on the wall with duct tape.

The cavern smelled as rank as the other one. Remnants of a wooden door lay on the floor. Mike emerged from a chamber with the doctor slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“He’s alive,” Mike said, answering the unspoken question.

Derek stepped out of his way. “We been on target too long, bro. Need to speed it up.”

“Vaughn, get over here.”

He followed a narrow corridor and almost stepped on a pair of legs jutting out from the wall. A young man was seated on the floor with his hands zip-cuffed behind him. He wore loose-fitting pants and high-top sneakers and was fifteen, max, but his eyes already had the flat, battle-hardened look of a warrior.

“Found him in the tunnel.” Sean nodded toward a passage that connected the house to who the hell knew what. The tunnel system here was like a rabbit warren.

Derek spotted a workbench littered with electrical wires, nails, several jars of black powder—all bomb components. He scanned the rest of the room, and his gaze came to rest on a large safe in the corner. It was a serious box, definitely imported, and would have been a major pain in the ass to get here.

Now Derek understood why he’d been called over. He glanced at the kid and tried to remember his rudimentary Pashto.

“What’s the number?” Derek asked in Pashto, because he didn’t know the word for “combination.”

The kid didn’t answer.

Derek pointed the stock of his gun at the safe. “Open it.”

The kid looked away, sullen.

“Fuck this.” Sean reached for his kit and got out some C-4.

Derek stepped over to check for booby traps. He didn’t see any, but there was only one way to know for sure. Sean set a small charge, and they crossed to the other side of the room. The burst reverberated through the cavern, and they rushed back over.

“Shit, look at all this.” Sean pulled out a stack of papers, singed around the edges and still smoking. He flung it to the ground and stomped the fire out as Derek reached in and pulled out a notebook computer.

“Two minutes,” the CO said over the radio.

Derek cursed. Even with the extra minutes they’d built into the plan, they were running behind.

Sean was already pulling out his mesh bag, which they carried for this purpose. Some of the papers were in English, but Derek didn’t take the time to read them as he jammed everything into the bag. He reached in and snatched a thumb drive as Sean grabbed another batch of papers. Loose pages fluttered to the ground.

His teammate held up a sheet. “Hey, look at this.”

“No time to read. We need to move.”

“It’s a map.”

Derek glanced at it. It was in English, with notes scrawled around the edges. Derek scanned the street names. His blood ran cold. He looked at Sean.

“Guys, move it!” someone yelled down the stairs.

Derek glanced at his watch. They’d been on target way too long. He glanced at the kid. In a matter of hours, this house would be looted and abandoned. In a matter of minutes, this guy would be in the wind.

“On your feet,” Derek ordered.

Sean shouldered his pack. “They said no prisoners.”

“On your feet!”

The kid stood grudgingly, proving he knew at least some English. Sean shot Derek a look before taking the prisoner by the arm and propelling him toward the stairs.

Derek’s mind reeled as he looked at the papers strewn on the floor. He scooped up every scrap and checked the safe again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then threw his bag over his shoulder and raced upstairs. All the windows rattled as a Black Hawk swooped overhead en route to the landing zone. He glanced into the courtyard just as their EOD guy ducked out. He’d been setting the charge on the ordnance, and the look on his face told Derek it was about to blow.

“Hey, what are you doing here? Haul ass!”

Boom!

Derek dropped to his knees as the house shook. Chunks of debris rained down from the ceiling.

“Come on!” Derek yelled.

They sprinted outside, where the last member of their team was holding security by the door. A few neighbors’ lights had come on. People peered through windows and leaned out from doorways.

“Vaughn, where the hell are you?”

It was Luke’s voice over the radio, probably already at the LZ, which was a vacant lot at the end of the street.

“We’re half a click away.”

They double-timed it toward the landing zone, pushing the prisoner ahead of them.

“We got company,” Cole said over the radio as a truck screeched around the corner. It was a shit vehicle, but it was packed with armed men and had a .50-cal machine gun mounted to the roof.

Derek grabbed Sean’s vest and yanked him out of the road. He pushed him down the alley leading to their alternate exfil route.

“Vaughn, report! Where are you?”

“Almost there.”

The street smelled like sewer water. Trash swirled in the rotor wash as they neared the waiting helo.

Rat-tat-tat.

The gunner on the truck let loose with the .50-cal. His buddies with AKs were well out of range, but that didn’t stop them from spraying bullets.

Derek rounded the building just in time to get a mouth full of dust. Mike was lifting the doctor into the chopper. Hailey had a SEAL on each arm, and they were practically carrying her, but she tore away from them and made a sprint for it. She flung herself onto the helo, and about a dozen hands reached out to pull her inside. Luke and Mike jumped in behind her.

Rat-tat-tat.

Derek and Sean ducked and sprinted while several teammates aimed over their heads and returned fire. The prisoner reached the helo first, and Mike pulled him aboard.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

Sean crashed down behind him. Derek turned and hauled him to his feet. Noise drowned out the words, but Derek could read his friend’s lips and the panicked look in his eyes: I’m hit. Derek heaved him over his shoulder and stumbled forward. Bullets peppered the helo’s sides as Luke jumped down and helped lift Sean inside.

“Go, go, go!”

Derek grabbed the outstretched hands of his teammates as they seized his pack and yanked him aboard. His boots were barely inside when the Black Hawk lurched off the ground and lifted into the sky.

Texas Hill Country

Three weeks later

Elizabeth LeBlanc pulled over beside a sheriff’s cruiser and surveyed the scene. Based on the number of emergency vehicles, it was worse than she’d thought, and she’d known it was bad the moment she picked up her cell. Nothing good ever came from a phone call at 4:11 A.M.

Humidity enveloped her as she stepped from her car. The air smelled like wet cedar, and the road was slick from a recent rain. An arc of yellow traffic flares marked off the right lane, where deputies and troopers milled around. Elizabeth studied the faces, looking for anyone familiar. Some of them were pulling the graveyard shift, while others looked as though they’d just rolled out of bed.

Elizabeth crossed the road and made her way past the crime-scene van to a young trooper manning a barricade. She held up her badge. He glanced at it, then gave her a nervous look before letting her through.

She made her way deeper into the whir of activity. The skeptical gazes of the uniforms followed her, but she ignored them as she analyzed the setup. They were on an isolated stretch of road between Del Rio and San Antonio. The landscape was hilly. Because of the speed limit and the narrow turns, most truckers opted for the highway, which meant traffic here was light during the daytime and practically nonexistent in the dead of night.

A bulky sheriff’s deputy was eyeing her from across the crime-scene tape, and Elizabeth pegged him for her guy. He waved her over to the inner perimeter.

“Special Agent LeBlanc?”

“That’s me.” She held up her creds, but he didn’t even look.

“Jim Perkins. Thanks for coming out.” He gave her charcoal pantsuit a quick once-over and lifted the yellow tape so she could duck under. “Watch your step there.”

She followed him down a steep slope. The ground was muddy, and she chose her footing carefully, wishing she’d gone with boots instead of flats.

“Still no ID?”

“Only the cell,” Perkins said. “He’s got you on speed dial, so we figured he’s one of yours.”

He’d said the same thing over the phone, but Elizabeth had been too groggy to do more than jot down GPS coordinates. Did he mean one of her fellow agents? One of her confidential informants? As she’d rushed out the door, she’d thought about notifying her SAC. But her boss didn’t like her, and she doubted he’d appreciate being called out of bed in the middle of the night over a CI.

“When you say ‘speed dial,’ you’re talking about his call history?”

“Contact list,” Perkins corrected. “Only two numbers listed, and yours was on top.”

Elizabeth’s chest tightened. “What about physical description?”

“Hispanic male, medium build, mid- to late thirties.”

He’d just described half the men in her office. Her anxiety continued to build as they neared a white van nose-down in a ditch. The vehicle was illuminated by klieg lights and swarming with crime-scene techs.

Elizabeth halted in her tracks. A line of golf-ball-size holes perforated the van’s side. What on earth kind of gun would it take to do that?

She knew a man who could tell her. Derek Vaughn would know the make, caliber, and capacity of whatever heavy-duty weapon it was and no doubt how to use it, too. But Derek wasn’t on hand to talk to her about guns or anything else, because he was across the world fighting terrorists. Her heart gave a little lurch at the thought.

They drew closer to the van, where the cargo doors stood open as a pair of CSIs dusted them for prints. Elizabeth recognized the forensic photographer crouched beside the driver’s door snapping a picture of a body hunched over the steering wheel.

Perkins tromped past the van and led her into some scrub brush. Another set of klieg lights had been erected in the middle of the woods, casting eerie shadows over the rocky ground.

“Near as we can tell,” Perkins said over his shoulder, “someone ran ’em off the road back at the S-curve. They Swiss-cheesed the vehicle, killed the driver, then went after the passenger when he tried to make a run for it.”

They picked their way through oak and mesquite trees, staying away from the path designated by crime-scene tape. With every step, her sense of foreboding grew. This was no quickie drive-by. Someone had stalked this victim deep into the brush.

“?’Bout a hundred yards, give or take,” Perkins said. “Looks like they wanted to make sure he got dead.”

The victim was sprawled facedown in a clearing. Bullet holes riddled his body, and his left arm was twisted behind him at an odd angle. An ME’s assistant in white coveralls knelt nearby, jotting notes on a clipboard.

Perkins exchanged words with the sheriff as Elizabeth eased closer, trying to see the face. She dropped into a crouch.

The victim’s eyelids were half-shut. Flies buzzed around his nose, and a line of ants had already established a trail up his neck and into his mouth.

She closed her eyes. Bile welled up in her throat.

“You know him?” Perkins asked her.

“Manuel Amato,” she said.

Thirty-seven. Convenience store owner. Father of five.

She’d been so certain he was one of the good guys. How could she have been so wrong? Maybe her SAC was right. Maybe everything that had happened in recent months had taken a toll on her not just physically but mentally, too. Maybe she was losing her edge, losing her judgment. Losing everything that had earned her this job in the first place.

She lifted her gaze to the sky, where the first hint of dawn was peeking over the treetops. A half-moon glowed overhead, reminding her of summer mornings in Virginia, when she’d get up before sunrise to wait by the back door, hoping to intercept her dad as he left on one of his fishing trips. He’d take her along in the skiff and make her bait her own hook and show her how to cast the line so it wouldn’t get tangled in the shallows.

Perkins pulled a notebook from his pocket and started writing. “So, I take it he’s one of yours, then?”

She stood and looked down at the body, and a sudden wave of loneliness swamped her. There was no one to show her how to do anything this morning. And it was going to be a long day.

“Ma’am?”

She looked at him. “Yes, he was one of mine.”

It was full-on rush hour by the time Elizabeth reached the city, so she crossed Starbucks off her list, although she sorely needed caffeine. Even without the call-out, she’d had a bad night. Most of it had been spent curled on her sofa, flipping channels and determinedly avoiding CNN as she downed chamomile tea, which was supposedly a natural sleep aid. After weeks of drinking the stuff, she’d discovered it worked great when accompanied by Ambien.

She pulled into the bunker-like parking garage and found a space. Flipping down the vanity mirror, she checked for any telltale signs of fogginess. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin sallow. She smoothed her ponytail and fluffed her new bangs. She’d had them cut a few months ago in an effort to hide her scar, but she wasn’t crazy about the look. A little too schoolgirl, which wasn’t helpful. As a five-four blonde, she already had enough trouble getting people to take her seriously.

She flipped up the mirror, disgusted. She had more important things to worry about today than her appearance. Such as her boss’s reaction when he heard about Amato.

Her stomach tightened with nerves as she rode up the elevator. Manuel Amato was just the latest in a string of mistakes she’d made since joining the task force investigating the Saledo cartel. The brutal crime ring was making inroads into Texas and had a hand in everything from drug smuggling to money laundering.

Amato owned a convenience store in Del Rio, across the street from a warehouse that was being used as a drop-off point by sex traffickers. He’d given Elizabeth’s team a tip that had panned out, and since then she’d been cultivating a relationship with him and trying to persuade her SAC to let her use him as an informant. Her boss had resisted. She had persisted. Amato was a family man, a business owner, an upstanding citizen who was active in his church. Most important, he’d wanted to help.

After weeks of dogged efforts, Maxwell had finally given Elizabeth the green light, and she’d paid a visit to Amato to lay out the deal. Since then, she’d been awaiting his call. But that call would never come, because her promising new informant had been murdered while moving a load of coke for Saledo or one of his rivals.

The elevator slid open. Elizabeth made her way toward her cubicle and saw Maxwell talking to a pair of agents outside his office. He’d probably heard by now. Would he dress her down at the staff meeting or call her into his office beforehand?

He spotted her, and the grim look on his face told her he’d received the news. Elizabeth changed course, bracing herself for a blast of criticism as she approached.

“Sir, I need to talk to you about—”

“Save it. You’ve got a visitor.” He tipped his head toward one of the men standing nearby.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

She blinked at him, taken aback. “Gordon. What—”

“Feel free to use my office,” Maxwell told him, then gave her a sharp nod. “We’ll talk later.”

Gordon watched her, his look unreadable. He was based in Washington, but if he’d spent the morning on an airplane, you’d never know it from his immaculate suit and shiny wingtips. Agents who worked for him sometimes called him “Wall Street,” and she hadn’t figured out whether it was because of his clothes or because his all-business demeanor reminded them of Gordon Gecko.

He gestured toward the empty office. “After you.”

Polite as always. She stepped inside and felt a chill down her spine as the door thudded shut. She glanced through the window into the bullpen and caught the baffled looks of her coworkers, who were obviously wondering why the Bureau’s newly promoted assistant director of counterterrorism wanted to see her.

Gordon tucked his hands into his pockets and stepped past Maxwell’s desk. He had an athletic build, good posture. His salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed short, as she remembered it. Despite the demands of his job, he took care of himself.

He turned to look at her. “How have you been?”

She started to say “Fine” but remembered something else she’d learned about him a year ago. He was a human lie detector.

“Busy,” she said.

He lifted an eyebrow, then turned to study Maxwell’s ego wall, which featured his Princeton diplomas, along with several framed photos of him rubbing elbows with VIPs: the FBI director, a few senators, the Texas governor.

“Have you been following the news out of Af