Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(122)

“Keep moving,” the Chinese operative ordered. “We have a plane to catch. I’ll have you in Beijing and under my thumb before the day is through. Not that anyone will care. You’ve been disavowed. So sad for poor Mr. Smith. The Agency was all you had, and they let themselves be conned by a junior handler. I believe you know the man. You kept him out of active fieldwork. He was so easy to turn. Hate can do that to a man. When McDonald needed help getting rid of you, my man inside the Agency was more than willing to comply.”

“Fucking Karriker.” Scotty Karriker had been too weak for fieldwork, but he’d been right on the line testing wise, and Ten had been forced to make the call. He hadn’t liked Karriker’s psych reports, but the kid had friends on the inside, so Ten hadn’t been able to remove him completely.

Someone was getting a visit from an old friend when Ten got back to the States.

“Get him in the vehicle,” Lei ordered. “I think I’ll let some of my agents have fun with you on the way home. Jiang? Would you like to slowly rip the American’s balls off?”

Ten stopped, his whole being sparking with something very much like hope. Tag might have been the mighty warrior, able to take down man after man in battle, but Ten had been the chess player, and if there was one thing he did well, it was recruiting the right people for the right job. Every person who’d ever led a team knew that placing the right operative in the right place, at the right f*cking time was essential.

A woman stepped up and she drew back her hood. Jiang Kun was a slight figure, her beauty obvious among the rough men she was surrounded by. She’d become one of China’s most deadly operatives.

And her real name was Kayla Summers, daughter of Freddy Summers and Jim Gayle, who had adopted her after her mother had her smuggled out of the country. Kayla had been born a twin when China’s birth rules allowed for only one child. Her sister, Kun, had stayed behind with their mother and eventually she’d become an MSS agent. When Ten discovered Jiang Kun’s connection to a brilliant undergrad at Stanford, he’d recruited Kayla. When Kay had found her sister, she’d turned her, making arrangements to bring her back to the States.

And when Jiang Kun had been killed, Ten Smith had killed her assassin before he could verify the job and Kayla Summers had taken on her sister’s life. She was the most brilliant double agent he’d ever had.

The last time he’d seen her in person had been from the top of a cliff in Goa, India. She’d been gathering information on the king of Loa Mali. Unfortunately, so had a rogue CIA agent Big Tag had been hunting. She’d helped them out then, too.

Her lips curled up in a cruel smile. “I think I would love to cut his balls off. Do you remember what you did to me back in Phuket?”

She’d been captured by the police and Ten had risked himself to get her out of there before she could be tortured. He’d offered to let her come home then, but she’d refused.

He’d bumped into her and slipped a gun into her bound hands.

Shit. This was going down now.

“Yes, I remember. I remember every minute of it,” Ten vowed. Sweet, sweet adrenaline started to pump through his veins. It was two against five, but they had the element of surprise in their favor.

She shoved him against the SUV, slamming him hard enough to rattle his teeth. It was also enough sound and motion to cover the fact that she pressed a small semi into his hands.

Too bad she couldn’t have undone the damn cuffs, but a man worked with what he had.

“She’s going to make you pay,” Lei said.

Summers leaned, in whispering. “Two shots forty-five up and at your six.”

The world slowed as his training took over. Calm was needed. The adrenaline was a rush, but if it wasn’t accompanied with an almost Zen-like calm, then he was nothing more than an animal fighting for survival, and he wanted to be more.

He wasn’t an animal. He was an artist.

The minute Summers moved back, he brought his hands up forty-five degrees from his spine and straight back. He didn’t need to see to shoot. He pulled the trigger twice as the world around him exploded in gunfire.

Summers brought up her assault rifle, quickly taking out the two men in front of her.

Ten whirled around, kicking out and catching Lei with his mouth hanging wide. The operative brought his rifle up but stumbled back as Summers took him out.

The jungle was suddenly overbearingly silent.

“I want a f*cking hot dog.” Summers put a hand on her hip and her dark eyes narrowed. “I want a hot dog that I know is made of beef and not some weird found-it-in-the-street beef or someone’s kitty cat. More than that, I want some freaking iced tea. Is that too much to ask? A little ice. A little sugar. And a taco. I miss tacos and goddamn margaritas.”

Kayla Summers wanted to come home.

“I will throw you a coming home party you won’t ever forget, Kay. I promise. I’ll spring for some barbecue if you’ll get these cuffs off me.”

She frowned at him. “So you can go after that girl?”

“So I can go after my fiancée.”

“Holy shit. Hang on. This * had the keys.” She kicked Lei’s corpse and said something in Cantonese that Ten thought was the equivalent of calling the man a limp dicked penis head who couldn’t find a clitoris with a compass. But he was rusty. It could have been a very nice good-bye. Summers quickly had him out of the handcuffs and then was going through the dead man’s wallet. “So you’re getting married. That’s awesome.”