Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,36

them, lifted her hand, signaling stop, quiet and then down.

Crap.

Jules faded back with Alyssa, even farther into the shadows, getting even more intimate with the stankariffic dankness that hugged the tunnel’s sides and floor.

They waited there, silent and still—until Lindsey beamed herself back, directly in front of them. And okay, it was probable that she hadn’t actually used Starfleet technology to get from point A to point B. She’d probably used her feet and walked it, but she’d done so both silently and invisibly. It was damned impressive.

She crouched next to Alyssa, and, as soundlessly as possible, gave her report.

“We’re not alone down here. Someone else came through, maybe an hour ago,” she said. “Five of ’em, probably all male, carrying heavy packs and all going in the same direction. They came in via a different tunnel, but merged with our route about twenty feet back from where we are right now. I followed their trail for about half a klick and the good news is that they went past the turnoff to the oil tank. They either missed it or …” She shook her head.

“The bad news?” Alyssa asked.

“The way they went? It dead ends. There’s no access to the surface—no way out of here.”

Which meant, whoever they were, they were down here still.

“Is it possible they’re a second red cell?” Tess asked. She and Sophia had approached in order to hear Lindsey’s report.

Alyssa shook her head. “We’re not the ones being tested here. Tom would’ve told me if he were going to do that.”

“Could it be a security patrol from Nachtgarten?” Sophia asked.

“If so,” Alyssa asked, “why not guard the tank?”

“They may not know where it is,” Jules reminded her.

She looked at him sharply, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she was having a big eureka moment. But being Alyssa, she could tell from wherever she was in A-ha! Land, that Jules hadn’t yet reached the same thrilling conclusion. So she explained. “They’ll know exactly where the tank is after we lead them to it—and put what’s essentially a homing beacon directly on top of it.”

Jesus yikes. That would be very, very ungood.

“Break radio silence,” Alyssa ordered Tess, who was carrying their radio. Being a red cell, i.e. a group of make-believe and not necessarily wealthy terrorists, they’d been outfitted with less-than-high-tech gear. Instead of equipping each of them with radio headsets, they’d been given a single crappy Vietnam-era radio.

Tess fired it up, but then frowned. She fiddled with it, then frowned again. “Signal’s being jammed.”

Shit.

It was looking more and more likely that their unexpected company hadn’t come down here to play games. It was probable their mystery five had real C4 in their backpacks, and real bullets instead of rubber ones in their guns.

And the consequences of their actions would result in real, horrific death and destruction as opposed to the computer-simulated kind.

Alyssa reached for her cell phone—they all did. Jules’s phone had zero bars. No signal. Not down here in the first level of hell. “Anyone?” Alyssa asked. Tess, Lindsey, and Sophia also shook their heads after checking their phones. Nope.

Alyssa met Jules’s gaze. “Fall back,” she ordered. “We’re going out the way we came in. Lindsey, take the radio and run ahead. As soon as you can get a signal, I want an order going out to evacuate the barracks.”

Lindsey vanished as Alyssa looked at Jules and the two remaining Troubleshooters operatives. “Let’s move.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Whoa,” Dave said, leaning in closer to squint at his laptop’s screen as he sat at the dining table in the hotel suite they’d designated as the temporary Troubleshooters headquarters in Nachtgarten. “That’s … very weird.”

“What is?” Sam Starrett asked, because knowing Dave, he’d tell Sam anyway. He didn’t look up from surfing the TV channels, looking for something even vaguely entertaining and stopping on SpongeBob SquarePants—in German. That was kind of cool. Guten Tag, Patrick. Wie geht’s?

“I’m getting a signal,” Dave reported. “But …” He hunched over his computer, fingers flying across his keyboard.

Dave Malkoff was something of an oddball. He’d been working for Tommy Paoletti’s Troubleshooters Incorporated since nearly its inception, yet remained adamant about not wanting to be a team leader, which was fine but a little mystifying to Sam.

A former CIA operative, Dave sometimes took himself—and life—a smidge too seriously. He was one of those guys whose intellect was too big for his own good. He’d aced every test he’d ever taken—and a hell of a lot of good that had done