Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(8)
He didn’t know it—and a part of her, a cowardly part, hoped he’d never find out—but that body bag was all her fault…
As it happened any time she thought about that catastrophic mission, a wave of unremitting guilt washed over her, the force of which was almost enough to drop her to her knees. Then Director Morales spoke up. “Why Anderson?” he asked, and she was able—just barely—to focus on the question and the problem at hand while pushing the paralyzing remorse to the back of her brain.
Compartmentalization. It was a handy skill. One just about every CIA field agent learned to master lest one day they find themselves eating a bullet from their own service weapon. And considering her background, she was better than most at keeping things locked away in safe, separate emotional cubicles.
What had she been doing? Oh yeah. She snapped her fingers. Underwear.
Turning toward her dresser while balancing her cell phone between her shoulder and her ear, she told her boss, “Because he’s the best deep diver on the planet. And considering that the pressure gauges on those tracking devices say the package is sitting almost two hundred feet below the surface, we can’t take a chance with anyone but the best. Plus”—she sweetened the pot—“Leo is already in Florida with his very own salvage boat.” So sue her; she’d kept tabs on him.
“By my calculations, he can reach the package in four hours once he pulls anchor, which might be faster than we could find other divers and scramble the equipment they would need to go down and do the retrieval. And if all of that doesn’t convince you, how about this? By using Leo, we can still maintain radio silence within government ranks. And that just might let us get out of this mess without alerting the traitor or traitors to the fact that we’re on to them. It might give us a chance to set another trap.”
She figured that last bit was just the impetus her supervisor needed to give her the go-ahead. And cue the music…
“What makes you think Anderson will agree to this?” Morales asked.
“You mean besides him being a patriot, and that turning down a request for help from his country goes against his very nature?”
“Yes”—Morales’s tone was skeptical—“besides that.”
“He needs money.” And, okay, so she’d really, really been keeping tabs on him. That was her nature. She was a spy, after all.
If that’s what you have to tell yourself…
For the love of—Fine. So, the truth was she couldn’t seem to forget about him or what had happened on that arid plateau. And even if she hadn’t realized it before now, she’d been looking for a way to help him. Looking for a way to—not make up for it; she could never make up for it—maybe balance the scales a bit. Put some providential change back into her karma bank. And put some actual change back into Leo’s real bank.
See? It’s win-win!
“Money for what?” Morales asked.
“To pay for equipment, fuel, and all the other expensive crap that I suspect comes with searching for a four-hundred-year-old sunken ship.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, and Olivia held her breath. Then, finally, “How much do you think it’d take to convince him?”
Hip-hip-hooray! And since the CIA was in the business of carting around briefcases full of cash to pay off warlords, rebels, and mercenaries, she didn’t feel the least bit hesitant to tell her supervisor, “Half a million dollars would probably do it. Keep them in the black for a year or so.”
Without missing a beat, or likely batting a lash, Morales said, “Fine. I’ll have the cash waiting for you…where?”
She shot an imaginary fist in the air. “Reagan National Airport. As soon as I hang up with you, I’ll request that one of my local assets have a private jet waiting for me on the runway there.”
“You and your assets.” She could almost hear Morales shaking his head. He liked to tease her and say she collected informants, snitches, and sources the way a squirrel collected nuts.
“You know me, sir. I figure it’s better to have a bird in hand and two in the bush.”
He snorted. “I’ll meet you there and bring along an additional signal locator, as well as a secure satphone.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, checking the time on her glowing digital alarm clock. “With drive time to the airport and flight time to Key West, I figure I’ll be on the ground in sunny Florida around daybreak. If you could have a floatplane ready to take me out to Lieutenant Anderson’s family’s island—”
“Done,” Morales interrupted her, never one to use ten words when one worked just fine. She was in the process of shoving clean bras and panties into her go-bag when he added, “But I’m only giving you twenty-four hours. After that, I don’t care that we’ll blow the top off this operation”—and likely blow the top off their reputations and careers—“I’m calling in The Company big guns and doing whatever it takes to get back those chemicals.”
“Roger that,” she said as she threw her toiletry kit into the black duffel.
“And, Agent Mortier?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. We don’t know what happened out there. It’s entirely possible you could find yourself surrounded by unfriendlies. Since I can’t use the satellites to track you, I’ll be flying blind.”