Duplicity by Vicki Hinze Page B

Area Thirteen to gather intel.”
    “Those too were O’Dell’s orders-you alone returning to Area Thirteen?”
    “Those, too.” Adam’s voice went tight, and he fought the same sense of confusion he had fought then. Now, betrayal overrode it. “No one was there. No support teams, no Omega team enemy-no one.”
    “No one?” Tracy straightened in her chair, her tone incredulous.
    “No one.” Adam bent down to inch a finger between his left ankle and the shackle. The damn thing dug into his flesh, making a sore spot. There was only one reason the shackles had to be so tight. Sergeant Maxwell was a masochist. “I considered the absence of support and human resources significant. Something had gone wrong. So I radioed Home Base on a secure channel, reported it, and notified them that my team was in Area Fourteen.”
    “Was the transmission acknowledged?”
    ” Yes, ” Adam said. “I received a “Roger, Alpha One’ response.”
    Keener still hadn’t lifted her pen from the table to jot down any notes on the legal pad in front of her. Adam had mixed feelings about that. She did look thoughtful, though, chewing at the inside of her lip. But why didn’t she ask any more questions?
    While not elated by her lack of curiosity, in a sense, he admired her restraint. The woman might be an incompetent attorney, but she was a good listener, giving him the opportunity to disclose everything he wanted to disclose before bombarding him with questions. He liked that. He didn’t want to like it, or anything else about her, but considering he had decided to trust her, finding some redeeming quality in her was a good thing.
    He continued his disclosure. “A B-1 bomber made a pass over Area Fourteen and then circled back toward the base’s flight line. For a minute, I worried that the bomber hadn’t gotten the change of orders. That, not knowing there were personnel in Fourteen, the pilot would drop his load.”
    “Drop his load?”
    She didn’t have a clue. Not a clue. “His bomb, or load of bombs,” Adam explained. “Live ordnance.”
    “Oh.” Understanding flickered through her eyes.
    God help him, she didn’t even know what a load was and his life was in her hands? Adam grunted. He was in major trouble here. Major trouble.
    “So the bomber flew by without dropping its ordnance.”
    “No, it dropped the ordnance, but not near my men. About five minutes after the run-ten since my radio call-my chemical alarm triggered. I checked and it was working properly so I tried to follow procedure and call it in, but my radio had blitzed out. Nothing I tried worked to repair it.” He returned to the window, too agitated to sit. “I’ll admit I didn’t waste a lot of time on it. I couldn’t. I knew I had to get to my men or they’d be exposed to whatever chemical had triggered the alarm. The wind was blowing southeast, somewhere between ten and fifteen knots-right toward them.”
    In his mind, Adam slipped back to that time. Back to running through the dense woodland, fighting prickly underbrush, fallen trees from last year’s Hurricane Ellie, the heat. God, the heat. It had to have been a hundred ten degrees inside that chemical gear. “Before I crossed over into Area Fourteen, I got sick. My vision blurred. I had difficulty breathing, and my chest went tight. I figured it was heat stroke, and I tried to keep going. I did keep going.”
    “So you got to Area Fourteen?”
    “Yes.” He rubbed at his neck with an impatient hand. “At least, I think it was Area Fourteen. I was so disoriented, I’m just not sure.”
    Skepticism clouded Keener’s eyes.
    He damned her for it. “I was disoriented, counselor.”
    :“I see.” She arched a doubtful brow.
    “No, I don’t believe you do.” Anger rippled his tone. “Not yet.” .
    She shifted in her chair and swept back her tangled hair with an efficient snap of her wrist. “What made you think you were in Area Fourteen?”
    This, Adam had hedged on deciding whether or