“When did he leave?”
“Anoche.”
God dammit. Last night. He’d left last night. Wanting to kick something, Kong rumbled in annoyance as he stood and looked around the group. They’d be questioned further, but he was willing to bet they wouldn’t get anything from them on Godwin’s whereabouts. He was in the wind. Again.
Like the others from Legratia, Godwin had been locked up after the raid. Unfortunately for Kong, the guy had inside information on an organized crime ring the government had been itching to take down. They’d made a deal, Godwin had sung, and his sentence had been commuted. As soon as he’d gotten a chance, Godwin slipped the leash and managed to get out of the country. It had taken Kong years to find him.
With a bitten-off expletive, he stormed away. Hours. He’d missed his target by hours. Seething, he looked around as ifthe answer to his dilemma was hidden somewhere in the dense jungle that surrounded the camp. Was it just bad luck or had Godwin somehow known they were coming? Had that call he’d gotten tipped him off?
Through his earpiece, he heard everyone checking in. The prisoners were secure. Perrin and Jace were guarding the perimeter. Leo was checking for any laptops or phones they could mine for data later.
“Looks like they tried to destroy them, but I think we can salvage some.”
That was good news. Maybe they’d find something that would lead him to Godwin. With a grimace, he shook his head and got back to work.
Heading to one of the larger tents Kong ducked through the flap and looked around with a low whistle. He saw Javelins, Stingers, crates of missiles, mortars and shells, grenades, and rifles. Lots and lots of rifles.
Squatting down next to a wooden crate of spanking new M4s that still had that fresh-from-the-factory smell, he looked at the name emblazoned on the side: Cleary Industries. A glance around told him pretty much everything here had originally come from Cleary – one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the United States – and a heavy investor in the now-defunct Resurrection Project. Kong’s lip curled with disgust.
Those Resurrection bastards had been experimenting on soldiers. Reporting them killed in action so they could take them and upgrade them with bio-tech. Making them into weapons. Not only that, the scientists were fucking with those soldiers’ heads too, wiping their memories, putting chips in their brains to take away their free will – leaving them little better than automatons – unable to deviate from an order once given. Black Bay had a hand in taking that shit down. Grady, one of Kong’s best friends, had been among those upgraded soldiers. One of many who were now being rehabilitated at Black Bay.
Cleary was a piece of shit.
A memory niggled in the back of Kong’s head…
Someone entered the tent and he looked over his shoulder as Erik asked, “What have we got here?”
Kong had been thrilled when he’d heard Erik had approached the general recently about going on missions. The male wouldn’t even leave his apartment at Black Bay for the longest time. One of the experiments, when they’d been held at Legratia as children, had been to test the weapons potential of a toxin one of the genetically engineered females – Lark – produced naturally in her venom glands. Erik had been the first test subject and he’d been sprayed in the face with a full, concentrated dose. His ability to heal had kept him alive, but he’d still been left horribly scarred. The skin on one side of his face was permanently pink and marked with pockmarks and deep channels that resembled melting wax. It had also impaired his vision on that side, the once turquoise iris now clouded with milky white.
The scars on his face were nothing though compared to the scars the male carried inside. Kong thought he’d never come out of hiding, so this new willingness to finally join them on missions left him wanting to constantly hug the male in gratitude. Not that Erik would appreciate that. The perpetually surly bastard would probably shoot him – though shooting him might very well bring an honest-to-God smile to the guy's face, so the pain might be worth it.
Erik slung his rifle and flipped the lid on one of the crates, peering inside before he moved on to the next. “Isn’t it odd that all of these are from Cleary?”
Kong grunted. “I don’t remember hearing any chatter that a shipment had been stolen.” If Cleary had reported the loss as he should have – especially a loss of this magnitude – Black Bay would have heard. He’d have to double-check though. He didn’t monitor that shit, nor was he made privy to every detail their intelligence team picked up.
Erik knocked his knuckles on one of the crates. “These guys had ties to terrorists. You think Cleary is supplying them?”
Kong wouldn’t put it past the guy. Cleary was an opportunistic bastard who didn’t care who he stepped on to make a buck. His heavy investment in Resurrection had proved that. War was profitable, especially for a man who made weapons for a living, and he probably lost a big chunk of money when Resurrection was shut down.
Had Godwin been working for Cleary?
He mulled that over as the question returned to his brain – had Kong been unlucky or had Godwin been tipped off that they were coming?
Why leave the weapons to implicate Cleary though?
Unless Godwin had panicked. He wouldn’t have cared what happened to his boss so long as he saved his own ass. After all, he’d flipped on that crime organization and according to the chatter Kong had picked up on the deal, he’d been closely related to several of the higher-ups.
But if Godwin had been warned they were coming, it meant they had a leak. That niggling sense in the back of his mind returned. Kong narrowed his eyes. This mission was black-ops and he trusted everyone at Black Bay. Except… They now had a spy in their midst, didn’t they? A so-called neutral party the government had insisted be inserted at Black Bay to keep an eye on the Resurrection soldiers and the AI that monitored them.
A woman who turned out to be not so neutral after all. She had a direct link to Cleary. She was, in fact, Cleary’s daughter. While at Black Bay, she was restricted to Resurrection and ORION only, her access to other areas limited, but while everyone did their best to be careful around her, she may have overheard something. Had she gotten wind of their op and let Dear Old Dad know? Had he, in turn, warned Godwin?
Katherine Knox may not use her father’s last name, but Lark had done some digging when the civilian woman had first arrived and she’d discovered that little undisclosed nugget. While they’dreported the information to the general, they hadn’t informed Miss Knox that they knew. They had let her keep her secret, but maybe it was time he had a little chat with Katherine Knox.
Kong had kept his distance from her because he scared her – the day she’d arrived at Black Bay she’d been so afraid of him, she’d fallen on her ass and screamed her head off – but this was important. And while it turned his stomach to see fear in any woman’s eyes when they looked at him, he’d bury that response deep if it meant stopping a threat. Because if his hunch was correct, August Cleary was looking to start a war.
Chapter Two
Katherine smoothed her handsover her khaki skirt and took a deep breath to try to calm the nervous fluttering in her belly. She was heading to the mess hall for lunch and she always got nervous whenever she was around a lot of people. She’d been at Black Bay a few weeks now, but she still didn’t quite have her bearings. She blamed her father for that. If he’d just given her more information, she might have done things differently.
