Chapter 7: Compromised
Dr. Kristophe Lavigne was a small, slight French African, as different from tall, blond Alex as it was possible to be. Nevertheless, he greeted her with a great deal of unfeigned warmth. "Alex! It's so good to see you! How are things going?" He greeted her in the French tradition, with a hug and a kiss on each cheek, and if the Joes had any doubts remaining that Alex was still in love with the French doctor, they were dispelled by the sight of the blush on Alex's face.
"Going as well as they could be expected to, Kris," Alex said easily, her eyes shining happily. Her smile was the brightest Allie had yet seen on the lawyer's face; Alex was practically glowing. "Come and meet our new bodyguards. This is Tony Thompson."
Kris smiled politely as Alex introduced them, but his gaze lingered on Alex. There was—a slight uneasiness?—lurking behind the man's eyes, doubt and unhappiness. Seeing it, Lady Jaye was certain that Alex had been right, that he was being blackmailed into doing something he didn't want to do, and it was something to do specifically with this mission. And she guessed that Alex saw it too; Alex's eyes glittered with unshed tears, but her eyes and voice had a forced cheerfulness when she took Kris's arm. "Come on. I want to grab something to eat while Tony arranges our transportation." She let him away, still chatting, but her eyes looked sad.
"He's been compromised," Flint said as he turned to the team. '"Stay on your toes, people. Let's go grab our vehicle."
General Hawk had arranged for the jeep to be left at a UN-sponsored hospital in Sake; the vehicle had been flown to Entebbe, then driven to Sake while the Joes were on the civilian transatlantic flights. The UN representative looked askance at them but nodded when they showed him their IDs. "Mr. Thompson. We've been told to expect you." He led the way from the front desk to the rear lot of the hospital, and pointed them toward a slightly-battered jeep in a gated, secured parking lot.
There wasn't much on the outside to distinguish it apart from the other vehicles in the lot. Yes, this one was much newer, but driving it over rough road from Entebbe to Sake had put some wear and tear on it, and it didn't stand out as much as it would have if it had gleaming, untouched paint. What did make it unusual was the 'extras'.
Flint checked the dashboard glove box and found two small, snub-nosed small-caliber pistols. There was a larger handgun under the front driver's seat, and two under the front passenger seat. As Lady Jaye found when she checked under it. Brawler and Recondo were enthusiastic about the four large machine guns in the back, stashed in two hidden compartments over the rear wheel wells, and there was an even larger assortment of handguns in holsters stashed under the rear seats. Gung Ho looked positively cheerful as he strapped a matched pair of Desert Eagles to either side of his muscular torso, then shrugged into another of his trademark ubiquitous vests, which hid the weapons pretty effectively. Lady Jaye strapped a small automatic to her right thigh, then quietly fitted a small pouch with her own signature javelin heads to her belt. "There's plenty of wood out there to make javelin shafts," she told Flint as she fussed with her clothing, trying to hide the pouch. "They could come in handy. You never know." She silently thanked Hawk for including them; while they weren't traditional GI weaponry, they'd come in handy many times before, and when she'd approached him with the pouch and asked him to include it in the armament sent with the jeep, he hadn't denied her request. She'd carefully chosen these from among the different heads she'd created over the years; some had nets that could expand outward, entangling a pursuer; many of them were explosive heads, either set up to detonate on impact or to detonate after a preset time delay. All of which could be useful if things went south here.
As it looked more and more likely to do.
Flint was arming himself with a belt knife/multi-use tool, various handguns and semi-automatic pistols. Unlike her, he'd worn long baggy pants not only on the flight, but also once they'd gotten here to the DRC. Now she watched as a flat hunting knife in a thigh sheath was strapped flat to his upper thigh, tucked into a slit created in the pant fabric specifically for that purpose. Smaller pistols hid on his other thigh and in the hollows between his torso and arms, then, like Gung Ho, he shrugged into a button-down sleeveless shirt. By leaving the buttons undone, he could effectively reduce the visibility of the weapons (even if their size made them impossible to hide completely.) And Allie had to admit, the way the shirt hung on him somehow emphasized the play of muscles across his powerful chest. She smiled reminiscently.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Dash growled, catching her by surprise and sweeping her into his arms.
She giggled as she pounded his shoulder with her fist. "Put me down!"
"Me Tarzan. You Jane," he joked, playing off the sound of her codename.
Allie giggled again and pressed in close, cupping her hands under his chin. "I'll be fine, Dash," she said softly, seeing those worry lines at the corners of his mouth getting deeper despite the fact that nothing had happened to any of them yet. "You make sure nothing happens to you, too, okay?"
"Uh-huh," he said, not even listening.
She grabbed his head in her hands, making him look at her with those incredible warm eyes of his. "I'm serious, Dash," she whispered.
"I will, Allie." He captured her lips with his, in a kiss that had just enough passion behind it to remind her how much he loved her, but not enough to awaken her body.
"Ahem," came a voice from behind them, and they broke off the kiss, to see Gung Ho, Recondo, and Brawler hovering around the back of the van. Recondo was staring at something very interesting on the ground; Brawler had found an absolutely fascinating insect on the rear window of the jeep. They were studiously trying to ignore Flint and Lady Jaye; Gung Ho was making no such effort. Lady Jaye felt a blush color her cheeks as she broke off her embrace with Flint and climbed into the front passenger side of the Jeep. "Come on, let's go," she said, fumbling with her seatbelt to hide her reaction.
"Sure let's go," Gung Ho said with cheerful blandness. "Let's go find you two a room." Brawler and Recondo burst into outright laughter at Lady Jaye's glower and Flint's glare as they headed out of the parking lot.
"So how are you and Severine doing?" Alex asked as she and Kris walked away from the Joes. She knew they'd picked up on his stiffness and she was pretty sure they knew, as did she, that Kris was compromised. She could see the sadness and the conflict in his eyes; he didn't like what he was doing, but for Severine and Dena's life, he would betray Alex. It would hurt to betray someone he'd worked very closely with for this long, but he would do it to save his wife and daughter.. And she understood that, respected that, even as her heart pounded in her chest. With the Joes and Kris helping her on this suicide mission, she'd known she had a chance of making it out of here alive. With Kris compromised…
This would be her last trip into the DRC. She knew she wasn't going to make it out of here alive. Clancy had known Alex had gotten under Zimurinda's skin. By making her a part of a very conspicuous information-gathering operation, he'd set her up; Zimurinda wouldn't be able to pass up the opportunity to capture her, and with Kris blackmailed into delivering Alex, a team of five American GIs wouldn't be able to stop the Army of the DRC from getting their target. And as Clancy had told her, when Zimurinda had Alex, then the UN forces would pinpoint the location of the camp via the implanted transmitter Alex carried under her scalp, just behind her left ear, and then strike in an attempt to wipe out Zimurinda's camp and capture the Colonel. It was something that Alex had wanted for a very long time; for him to pay for what he'd done to Shandi, to her brother and mother and father, and to countless other children women, boys and men in the DRC.
But Clancy hadn't been entirely truthful with her. Alex had been checking for any sign of the larger, surrounding military forces that Clancy had promised her would be waiting out thereto sweep in at the moment of her capture, and there had been none—and these soldiers didn't seem to be aware of any other operation than their own. Alex knew now that she wouldn't live to see the Colonel behind bars, wouldn't be able to see the peace on Shandi's face when someone told her Zimurinda had been caught—he'd haunted the little girl's nightmares for a long time now. Alex wished it could be her; she'd wanted that for a very long time—but there was little chance she'd survive Zimurinda's camp. Not intact, and not sane. She knew that they would torture her, horribly, and that by the time the UN forces got there, if she was alive she wouldn't be in any condition to appreciate it.
And now with the knowledge of her own certain death weighing down on her, a new worry; the Joes. Lady Jaye, in particular, and all of them in general. Despite her initial distrust of them because of their supposed connection with Clancy, Alex was now certain they were entirely in the dark about the whole big picture, that they didn't know even the half of what she knew. They were innocents and they were about to be drawn into this deadly chess game being played out with Clancy moving pieces around the board for his ends. Alex would have to make sure they weren't captured with her. Had to make sure they made it out, if only to carry the news of her death home with them. To New York, to her friends at the DA's office, and particularly, her detectives at the Special Victims Unit. Don Cragen. Elliot. And especially Olivia. They would miss her—God, but she would miss them too. She'd written a letter, three days ago while waiting for her 'escort' to arrive at Goma International; written it to Olivia, explaining the situation and begging her friend to understand. She'd written it knowing that she would send it only when she was certain there was no hope of her leaving the DRC alive. That time was now.
She slipped it into a mailbox on a street corner with an aching heart, knowing that by the time it reached Olivia she would be dead, then pushed all her regrets and everything aside. She had to focus on her job, focus on what she had to do instead of what was going to happen, because if she stopped to think too hard about it she'd chicken out and tell the Joes everything. And she was certain that if she did, they'd scrap the mission, pull her out with them, and she would never return. But that wouldn't accomplish what she'd set out from the Hague to do; while she didn't like Clancy's methods, using her to get Zimurinda, she understood that this was in all likelihood, the only chance they would ever have to get him again. There'd been one attempt to arrest him already; he'd fled into the trackless wilderness of North Kivu and set up camp there. The only way to find him was to let herself be captured with the implanted tracker; it would lead them to Zimurinda's hideout and it would be over. For him, as well as for her. And Alex found, strangely, that she didn't mind the thought of her own death as long as she could take him down.
She supposed that made her obsessed. Fine. She was obsessed.
