License to Love (An Agent Ex Novel)

  The aerial acrobatics had to look real. Rock was in essence trying to reproduce the effects of flying, as an actor does with a wire on stage. But hang a wire from the sky? Even Rock wasn’t that good. So he’d asked the CIA for a jet pack or two to help him out, even though he hadn’t been optimistic about convincingly camouflaging them. Rock had wanted it to look like the creatures were flying on their own power. A jet pack–powered alien was just too earthly and could be too easily proven to be a fake.

  The CIA had done Rock one better and provided him with top-secret developmental hovercrafts—one for Rock and Ty, one for Will, one for Jake, and one for Zach so he and Jake could leapfrog. Ashley had been jealous, but she had a different role to fulfill.

  Will would move with Jake and Zach and provide more smoke screens and laser magic to add to the effects.

  Even with the hovercrafts, it was risky, dangerous work done without a harness. With his knowledge of video games, Zach had choreographed the effects, which at times required Jake to jump between hovercrafts, which were being controlled remotely by engineers deep within Area 51. Timing, timing, timing.

  Rock’s version of extraterrestrials were sexy and scary, not funny-looking, long-necked creatures like ET. So he’d incorporated many of the traditional alien features into a handsome, athletic, warrior alien and his warrior lady companion.

  Masking the sound of the hovercrafts moving had been another obstacle, one that had been overcome by issuing Britt a muffler-free dirt bike, which she was immediately supposed to fire up once the alien was spotted. After that, Rock figured any hovercraft noise would be drowned out by the plethora of dirt bikes, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles that gave chase.

  Rock didn’t like performing stunts without built-in safety features, but he was up against it. The feats had to look real and Jake insisted he could do it. Rock, Zach, Will, and Jake had incorporated as many safety features and procedures as they could.

  As soon as the aliens landed, Rock was supposed to jump in the hovercraft with Ty and head for the main gate of Area 51 ahead of the pack. When they arrived, he’d be waiting for them, ready to reveal the illusion and stop the crowd from entering the perimeters. He just hoped he could go through with it.

  In the meantime, Lani, Tate, and Tal were stationed inside Area 51 waiting to apprehend Random, and any other RIOT agents, if they made an attempt to infiltrate the area.

  Randomly roaming cows were a problem in the surrounding area, especially at night. If you hit a cow, local law stipulated that you had to reimburse the owner. To give everyone more time, a herd of cows was going to be driven between the aliens and the alien watchers. Followed by a bunch of angry ranchers.

  Timing, timing, timing. It all came down to timing.

  Rock looked at his watch and then through his binoculars at the crowd in front of him. He took a deep breath and looked up just as a gigantic flying saucer appeared on the horizon.

  * * *

  Tate, Tal, and Lani waited inside one of the security stations inside the Area 51 compound with one of the area’s senior security officers, watching the security feeds of the installation and surrounding area and awaiting further commands. Now they knew everything the camo dudes did and more.

  Lani had dressed to once again alter her appearance. If anyone from RIOT saw her, or any of Rock’s fans that might be among the crowd of NUFOs, she couldn’t risk being recognized. A master with makeup, she’d deemphasized her Asian and African-American features, playing up her white characteristics. She wore a shoulder-length wig that hid her long, wavy hair. Dressed in camo dude gear, she looked like a camo dudette of Mediterranean descent. An Italian or possibly a Greek.

  “Front row seats for the show,” Tate said and laughed, leaning back in his chair and taking a swig of nonalcoholic beer. Nonalcoholic wasn’t Tate’s style, but real life wasn’t like Bond. He couldn’t just swill martinis until the ground rose up to smack him in the face. He, too, was dressed in the camo dude uniform. His eyes were blackened and he wore a fake beard for the occasion. “Now all we need is some popcorn.”

  Lani scowled at him. “Since when do you eat popcorn, caviar boy?” She hated being out of the magical action. Her fingers tingled with energy and she had a hard time forcing herself to stay seated and focused on the feed. She wasn’t audience material. She was a showman to her core, a performer even when she had a gun in her hand. Waiting was for cowards and expectant fathers. Now more than ever, with her baby’s life on the line, she wanted to be in the heart of the action where she could do the most damage. She much preferred performing sleight of hand and illusions and front-of-the-stage action.

  Her gaze bounced between the feeds before her—the all-night party the NUFOs were throwing, the various hangars and secure areas of Dreamland, as Area 51 was colloquially known, and Rock and his operation and team.

  She resisted biting her lip. Everything hung on Rock and the rescue team poised to save Stone. She tried not to think about what was going on in upstate New York. Jack Pierce, the CIA assassin she’d helped recover after he’d been blown up, was the sniper on the rescue site charged with taking out Stone’s captors. He was the best in the world. If anyone could do it, Jack could. She had complete confidence in him. But it was her baby’s life on the line and she was a mother and she was worried.

  She tried to focus on her mission. She should be with Rock. She was his able-bodied assistant and his superior in the intelligence community. She wanted to be with him more than anything. Until death did they part. If something went wrong today, parting was going to happen one way or another. She hoped death wasn’t part of the equation, but it was a real possibility.

  As a showman, she trusted and respected Rock above anyone else. She never doubted he could pull off the illusion. If RIOT or Sol didn’t somehow interfere. She had a bad feeling about things. RIOT was involved. Rock was an entertainer, not a secret agent, not a fighter. If he got into trouble …

  And so she cooled her jets, surrounded on all sides by technology that put jets to shame. And waited with Tate and Tal for Archibald Random, and any other RIOT agents who showed up, to make RIOT’s next chess move.

  Given the chance, she’d gladly grab Random. Whether she could restrain herself from killing him once she had him and forced him to order Stone’s release was the question. With Random dead, Lani’s problems would be over. Except for maybe her court-martial and a lifetime jail sentence for screwing up national security. The Agency would have her head for not allowing them the opportunity to mine Random’s brain for all his twisted plots.

  The camo dudes and the internal security squads throughout Dreamland were on high alert. As Lani watched the screens, she could almost feel their nervous anticipation. Despite the warning signs that trespassers would be shot, when was the last time one of them had actually fired their weapon?

  Tate’s cell phone buzzed. “From the tower.” He picked it up, listened, made a few murmurs, covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and relayed the news. “A plane just left Vegas bound for Dreamland. It has clearance.” His gaze bounced between his fellow agents.

  Lani’s heart raced. “Now? In the middle of our operation? That’s quite a coincidence. What’s the explanation? Midnight contractors who want to get a jump on the day shift?” She was being sarcastic and from the looks on their faces, her fellow agents knew it. “Random?”

  Tate shrugged. “Could be.”

  Damn it all, does Tate always have to understate things and be so calm?

  Lani didn’t like this, not at all. It was too bold. As the senior field agents for this mission, they had command authority. She meant to use it. “Instruct the tower to call out the guard planes. Have them escort the plane out of our airspace to Edwards and let the air force deal with it there. If the plane’s legit, they’ll comply without complaint.”

  Tate nodded. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Tal just grinned and nodded.

  Tate removed his hand from the phone’s mouthpiece and wa
s just opening his mouth to relay the orders to the tower when the chief appeared on their top-secret command stream security feed, which also appeared in the tower, stopping Tate before he could issue the order.

  “Hang on,” Tate said into the phone. Though he didn’t need to. The tower would be watching the chief, too.

  Emmett was seated in his office with his shirtsleeves rolled up, looking calm and relaxed. Then again, the chief never lost his cool. He was unflappable and indefatigable.

  “Sorry to be so late to the party.” The chief laughed, sounding like the chief. “Given the excitable state of those NUFOs partying in the desert, I’m sending in a team of riot squad specialists. Just in case. They’ll arrive within the half hour.

  “We don’t want an incident on our hands. Give them a friendly welcome.” He blipped off and the direct line command screen went dark.

  Tate went back to the phone. He was scowling as he hung up. “The tower says they have their orders. The chief outranks us.”

  “Shit.” Tal swore beneath his breath. “If that really was the chief. Anyone else notice he was kind of vague and didn’t directly acknowledge us?

  “On the other hand, if that was Random, damn that was too easy. A mask or a bit of plastic surgery, steal a few fingerprints, maybe fake a retina scan, and he’s in, impersonating the chief and giving orders. He even sounded enough like the chief to fool us. Of course, he could have been using sophisticated voice-altering software to imitate the chief’s voice.”

  “What I want to know is, if that was Random, how did he get the chief’s clearance code and break into our feed?” Ty was scowling.

  “Exactly the question on my mind,” Tal said. “If that’s the case, we have a traitor in our midst.” He paused. “Let’s get the chief on the horn and straighten this out, find out whether that was really him we just saw.”

  Tate’s jaw was set and his eyes hard and serious for once. He shook his head. “If Random has the capability to break into our telecommunications system, what’s to say he doesn’t have the ability to intercept and reroute our calls back to himself? How can we trust that we’ll get the real chief?”

  Tate continued frowning. “I say we revert to our standing orders and consider ourselves chiefless until this mission is over. Remember—the chief gave strict orders that if he should appear at Area 51, to ignore any commands he gave and immediately arrest him. I’d say a video feed is the same thing as an appearance.

  “We may not be able to get the tower to comply, but we ignore orders and proceed.”

  Lani nodded her agreement. Tal agreed, too.

  “What if that plane is carrying a bomb or weaponry that can be used to take control of Dreamland?” Lani asked the question that was on all of their minds.

  “Tal and I will go to the tower to wait for the plane and arrest anyone on board until we can get a bomb squad to clear the plane,” Tate said.

  “And if they come in firing?” Lani asked.

  Tal shook his head. “They won’t. Not if their goal is to steal something from inside here. We’ll fake a welcome and then nab them.”

  The boys were right. Lani reluctantly agreed with them. “Does it bother anyone else that Emmett seems to be on a first-name basis with Random? And they’re both very familiar with each other. Too familiar. How could an imposter know, and mimic, the chief’s mannerisms so uncannily? It’s not like the chief’s a high-profile public figure.” Lani stared at her fellow agents, watching their reactions to her question carefully.

  Tate was shaking his head. “No, it doesn’t bother me. Don’t let this imposter get to you or disrupt your loyalties, Lani. He’s trying to mess with our heads.

  “Remember this, Emmett has had personal run-ins with that bastard over the years. Rumors abound that they were once friends. Until Random stole the chief’s girl, the love of the chief’s life.”

  Lani frowned. How in the world did Tate know all this stuff? He was better at ferreting out gossip and intel than any woman Lani had ever known, including her mother.

  Tate, though, was a different kind of agent. Privileged and from a well-connected and powerful family. His father had been a senator and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And a spy who’d served with Emmett’s predecessor. Tate had known Emmett since he’d been a boy. Their families were friends.

  Connections! Lani thought with some scorn. She’d worked her way up and into the Agency on her own, with no help from anyone else. She was proud of her accomplishments, but she wasn’t a true insider like Tate.

  The thought, though, of Emmett scorned in love was both preposterous and funny. She had to fight not to smile or laugh out loud at the ludicrousness of it. Emmett in lust, sure. He liked women. He’d had his share. He’d been a notorious womanizer during his spying days. These days he kept his affairs under wraps.

  But vulnerable and in love? And losing out to another man? No way.

  No matter how Lani tried, she couldn’t imagine any woman preferring the villainous Random to the chief. Not unless she was a blackheart of the darkest kind herself. The chief would never fall for an evil woman, would he?

  If this purported woman existed, and wasn’t some bit of urban CIA espionage myth, it was unthinkable that she could have fooled the master mind reader into believing she was on the side of good. Not unless she was a genius herself and a supervillain. Or had somehow changed course from good to evil midstream.

  There would be a great story in that, if it were true. The human mind was a delicate machine. It reacted to pain and stress and loss in unexpected ways and tipped toward mania at the slightest provocation. At least some people did. Then there was always greed as a motive for change.

  “That has to be pure fiction. Emmett in love? Can you imagine?”

  From the looks on their faces, none of the boys could, nor wanted to.

  As entertaining as the story of Emmett’s love life might have been, Lani forced her thoughts back to the mission at hand. “The plane will be here soon. We’d better move. You boys have guests to greet.”

  Tal nodded and picked up his gear, including his sniper rifle.

  “I have a bad feeling about this.” Lani couldn’t help it. Call it a woman’s intuition, but she had the feeling something was going to go wrong. She just hoped Rock could handle it if it did.

  “We have an advantage, Lani. Random doesn’t know we know he’s trying to impersonate the chief.” Ty’s logic was sound.

  But Lani remained uneasy. “I still don’t like it.” Lani shook her head. “What is Random’s real goal? What is he trying to steal?”

  Tate shook his head. “None of us have a need to know, therefore, none of us does.”

  “Yes, but aren’t you curious?” she asked Tate.

  He shrugged. “You know what they say about the cat? And curiosity didn’t work out so well for Pandora, either.

  “Here at Area 51 you check that kind of curiosity at the door. Hell, everyone here has the highest clearances in the country. But that doesn’t mean squat as far as broad knowledge of an operation.

  “The reason Area 51 has been so successful at keeping and being kept secret all these years is because no one asks questions. Pilots fly planes and report the data without knowing why. The guy who designs the engines has no idea who’s designing the navigation systems or what the payload is. No one ever writes anything down and only a handful of people have the whole plan in their heads.

  “It’s best that way. No one person can give away the operation.”

  Yes, Lani knew how security worked. She knew the rationale and it was all logical. Still …

  She smiled at Tate and teased, “You don’t think there really are aliens here, do you?”

  He shrugged and arched a brow. “I just told you—only a handful of people know the whole plan for this place.”

  Tate received a message from the tower.

  “Our UFO has arrived. It’s buzzing the mailbox as we speak. Let’s hope our young magician makes it to the
gates before the crowd gets him.”

  Lani’s breath caught. The illusion Rock was performing with his protégés was more dangerous with more potential to go wrong than any of them liked to admit. Jake and Ashley were as brave as any war heroes. If the crowd, which was supposed to be worked into a frenzy, caught them and discovered their deception, there was no telling what they’d do. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t be good. Think lynch mob.

  Let the illusion begin.

  Rock was good, the best magician around, but the stakes and the degree of difficulty for this illusion were just too high. And no matter how hard she tried, Lani couldn’t get rid of her feeling of apprehension or keep her mind off the rescue that was going on on the other side of the country.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Damn, that UFO is awesome.

  Rock stared, actually gaped with his mouth open, as the UFO appeared out of nowhere from the distant horizon, sneaking up on the partying NUFOs and the desert without a sound. How fast did that thing have to be flying to just suddenly materialize? Rock was no aerospace engineer, but he knew it had to be damned fast.

  At first glance, the thing was a literal flying saucer. Radiating, pulsating lights. Emmett had not been joking when he’d said he would give them exactly what they needed and it would be impressive.

  Rock stared at the hovering monstrosity, dumbstruck. That man could build something like this was almost incomprehensible. He had an instant of doubt. What if the chief is lying? What if this is a real alien craft? What if Area 51 really is an alien testing site?

  The saucer shape is not the ideal aerodynamic shape for flying, not in a gravity environment, anyway. And not for a craft using a propulsion engine. Ever seen a saucer-shaped bird, for example?

  And everyone knows you need a pointy rocket to pierce the atmosphere and get into outer space. At least, man has traditionally needed one.

  The beauty of the saucer, however, was that it was aerodynamic in any direction, assuming propulsion could be from any direction and not from a rear-mounted engine or the flapping of wings. Perfect for outer space.