Betrayal (SSU Trilogy Book 2) (The Surgical Strike Unit) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Retribution Excerpt

  Vengeance Excerpt

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Betrayal

  (SSU Trilogy #2)

  by Vanessa Kier

  *****

  Betrayal Copyright © 2013 by Vanessa Kier.

  Chapter 1

  Friday, Afternoon

  Branco River, Amazon River Basin

  Upriver from Caracaraí, Brazil

  Kai Paterson stood at the bow of the souped-up fishing boat, staring at the jungle flanking the river. Humidity pressed against his skin like a lover. Underneath the boat’s odor of fish and diesel fumes he caught the jungle’s signature stench of rotten vegetation and sweet flowers. But his mind wasn’t on the present.

  “Why do you get to go after the girl,” Rafe Andros had groused over four months ago, “while I’m left trekking in the woods with a bunch of smelly, foul-mouthed men?” A characteristic smile had teased the corners of his mouth.

  Kai had laughed and lightly punched his brother-in-law and fellow Surgical Strike Unit agent on the shoulder. “Because you’re the ex-Ranger, my friend. You’re the one trained in covert rescue and assault. I’m just a scientist turned spy.”

  Kai shook his head. Just a scientist turned spy. Right. Try scientist turned spy turned grieving son and brother turned ruthless killer turned…what? Hell. He didn’t even know who he was anymore.

  He could only say one thing for certain. He wasn’t a quitter.

  Two years ago he’d gone undercover in Dr. Nevsky’s lab, investigating allegations that in his quest to create superhuman spies and soldiers the scientist tortured and killed his subjects. Today Dr. Nevsky was dead, but his assistant Dr. Kaufmann carried on Nevsky’s program, continuing to elude the SSU while wreaking havoc with its agents’ lives.

  Out on the river, a fish broke the surface then quickly disappeared into the murky water. Yeah, wasn’t that a metaphor for his life these days? Barely able to take a clean breath before he waded back into the muck.

  Rafe had gone missing in action two months ago during a mission to shut down Kaufmann’s lab. Despite wanting to join the search for his missing friend, Kai knew it was his job to put an end to Nevsky’s legacy of horror. To do that, he had to find Nevsky’s daughter, former supermodel turned archaeologist Susana Dias.

  He had to admire the irony of cruel, amoral Dr. Nevsky fathering Susana Dias, the half-American, half-Brazilian beauty who’d graced the cover of every fashion and gossip magazine during Kai’s high school and college years. Unlike his friends, he’d never put her poster on his wall, but he still remembered how the hint of laughter in her large brown eyes made her seem approachable. As if she saw the world as a giant party and had been inviting him to join her.

  According to Susana’s background file, she’d left modeling behind years ago to enter the world of archaeology. Since then she’d made a number of significant discoveries and published several articles in prestigious academic journals, proving she was intelligent and insightful as well as beautiful. An intriguing woman. He looked forward to meeting her.

  Too bad he had to deliver the news that her father had used Susana as a human filing cabinet. Christ. Even knowing the lengths to which Nevsky went to keep his data secure, Kai still couldn’t believe the man had taken the microchip containing his project data and implanted it in Susana’s abdomen. No wonder they hadn’t been able to find the damn thing. There hadn’t been any record of Nevsky even having a daughter.

  But he did. Susana Dias. The woman whose mere image roused Kai’s desire for the first time in over two years.

  Unfortunately, Susana’s connection to Nevsky was a reminder of all Kai had lost because of the scientist and his microchip. His family brutally murdered. Kai falsely accused of killing not just his family, but Dr. Nevsky and of stealing Nevsky’s microchip.

  Reuniting with his sister Jenna, his only surviving family member, after proving his innocence, then being forced to leave Jenna in order to chase after Susana. And now Rafe was missing…

  “Dammit Rafe, you better be alive,” he muttered. Although knowing what Nevsky’s program entailed, Rafe would be better off dead than a victim of Kaufmann’s experiments.

  Kai shivered. The horrors he’d seen while undercover at Nevsky’s lab still gave him nightmares. Men so insane, so focused on the kill order given by their handlers, that they attacked their teammates with teeth and nails and fists, fighting like animals to the death. And then biting and mauling their opponent’s corpse until the ground gleamed red.

  Kai shook his head, but it was too late. The memories segued into coroner’s photos showing his mother lying in a pool of blood. Showing his fourteen-year-old sister, Isabel, with her throat gaping open from a knife wound, her hand reaching toward her twin.

  Kai clenched his fists and jerked his mind away from those pictures. He would not think about their deaths. Not here in the jungle, where his control was so thin. Where the sights, sounds and scents threatened to throw him back to the moment in an Indonesian jungle where he’d taken the life of the fifth of the six assassins who’d killed his family.

  Trying to block out the memories, Kai closed his eyes. But instead of the relief of darkness, he saw blood dripping off his hands onto the jungle floor while the body of the assassin twitched out its final seconds of life.

  Even though he was standing on the deck of a boat months after the kill, Kai felt an echo of the hot, primitive satisfaction that had surged through him as he’d stared down at the body. He remembered throwing his head back and letting loose an inhuman cry of triumph that scared birds into flight and scattered a colony of monkeys.

  His heart pounded in remembered exhilaration.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Kai opened his eyes and shook his head. The act of vengeance had stripped him down to his very core. Revealed that underneath his civilized, intellectual veneer lay the primitive urge to protect and avenge his loved ones, even if it meant killing in a manner that horrified his cerebral, law-abiding side.

  Yet if anyone hurt his loved ones again, Kai wouldn’t hesitate to kill.

  Unbidden, another image of Susana Dias flashed into his mind, bringing a surge of sympathy for the woman whose life he was about to disrupt. For all he knew, she didn’t even know Nevsky was her father or that she carried the microchip.

  He sighed. In the end, it didn’t matter. He’d do whatever necessary to get her to the SSU so the chip could be surgically removed. At that point, though, Kai’s mission became personal. He intended to destroy the chip, no matter what his boss Ryker might say about the data having potentially beneficia
l applications.

  He stared at the sunlight shimmering on the water, imagining the heat of the sunlight burning all unwanted thoughts from his mind. For a peaceful moment he found the still, quiet place inside himself he’d once been able to access so easily. His muscles slowly relaxed.

  Yeah, he could do this.

  He inhaled deeply, but the putrid odor of decaying flesh from a dead animal on the riverbank sent him into a coughing fit.

  Ah, hell. Just like that, chaos tumbled back into his mind.

  No! He gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to give in. He could do this.

  Think only of the mission. Find Susana Dias. Destroy the microchip. Finally end the cycle of pain and death.

  Piece of cake. Right?

  Kai squeezed the wooden railing until his knuckles turned white. Of course right. He was strong. So what if the jungle roused the savage part of him he didn’t even want to acknowledge? He could control himself. Complete his mission. Become the man he used to be.

  Couldn’t he?

  Chapter 2

  Friday, Afternoon

  Amazon Jungle

  Upriver from Caracaraí, Brazil

  “Suse, the supply boat’s here.” Susana Dias’s assistant, Jacie Black, unzipped the screen door and stepped inside the tent. “The captain says the food and fuel crates have been damaged,” she continued, “but he doesn’t know how seriously.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Susana snarled, slapping her hands down on the table and surging to her feet, the map she’d been studying rolling closed with a snap. “May fire ants crawl down the throat of whoever’s doing this.”

  At Jacie’s smirk, Susana tried to calm down. But dammit, between the vandalism and not finding any evidence yet that Amerinis had indeed been built here, she had reason to let loose her volatile temper.

  Her team had been under attack since the second day on site. At first the incidents had been annoying, but harmless. Dirt shoveled back into a pit that had taken hours to uncover. Bags of artifacts disappearing. A few threatening notes that she hadn’t taken seriously because they’d been so B movie—leave now before the spirits seek revenge—and her fame inevitably attracted a crackpot or two. But then the attacks had escalated. Several days’ worth of food supplies had been ruined, leaving the camp on reduced rations for the past week. The boat used for fishing had been damaged beyond their limited ability to repair.

  When news came in yesterday that the supply boat was going to be late because of engine malfunction, the mood around camp had turned downright grim. Most of the crew had just come off another long project with her, with only one precious week of downtime behind them. They’d agreed to the tight turn-around only because they knew Susana had been obsessed with finding the fabled city of Amerinis since she’d been a girl.

  Yet the lack of adequate rest meant her crew had started this assignment more on edge than usual. Like prisoners awaiting release, they’d been counting the days until the next food delivery, tired of filling out their meals with fruit scrounged from the jungle. If rationing continued much longer, she feared she’d face a full-blown mutiny. Some superstitious crew members were already talking about leaving, afraid of further angering the local spirits.

  She needed to find the temple of Amerinis to take their mind off such nonsense. Unfortunately, she suspected they were digging in the wrong spot.

  “I’ll be down in a minute to take a look,” she told Jacie. “Don’t say anything to the others until I see what the damage is.”

  Jacie raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “All right,” she said in the tone that indicated she was just humoring Suse. “At least there’s one piece of good news.” She tossed a small bundle on Susana’s worktable. “The mail came.”

  “Hallelujah.” The last two mail deliveries had never arrived. After meals, mail distribution was the highlight of the crew’s day.

  As Jacie backed out of the tent, Susana quickly flipped through the stack of new mail. It was mostly personal letters she’d read tonight before she went to bed, but at the very bottom sat a pretentious cream envelope with gold embossing. The return address was a law firm in Moscow.

  Hmm.

  She slit the envelope open, pulled out the top sheet, and quickly scanned it.

  We apologize for not contacting you sooner, but due to the circumstances surrounding your father’s death, the American authorities did not notify us until recently that he was deceased. Per the instructions in your father’s will, we are forwarding to you the enclosed envelope.

  Susana sank onto her chair, staring blindly into space. Her heart pounded in a slow, ominous rhythm.

  No. This couldn’t be true. Her father had died in a car crash in the States when she was ten. Her normally unemotional mother had wept with relief, having lived in daily fear that the man she’d run from when Susana was just a baby would find them, even hidden away on a series of ranches deep in the heart of the Amazon.

  According to this, her father, one Dr. Mikhail Nevsky, had been alive until two years ago.

  She shook her head. Was this letter an attempt by the saboteur to mess with her mind? No, the thick cotton paper and embossed letterhead appeared legit.

  More importantly, did she want to know what the letter said? Her mother had refused to talk about her father except to say he was an evil man who’d fooled her into thinking he was one of the good guys.

  What could he possibly have to say that Susana would want to hear? But even as she moved to toss the letter aside, her curiosity got the better of her. Part of what drew her to archaeology was the thrill of solving puzzles from the past. Much as her gut told her to ignore the letter, she just couldn’t let this mystery go unsolved.

  Taking a deep breath, she slowly unfolded the two remaining sheets of paper.

  Dear Daughter, she read. Her lips pursed on a flare of anger. How dare he claim her as daughter when—

  Crack! The ground shook under the impact of something heavy crashing to the ground.

  Susana leapt to her feet. “What now?” She threw the letter toward her bed and bolted from the tent.

  “Damn.” One of the thick wooden supports holding the canopy over yesterday’s excavation had collapsed. “Was anyone hurt?” she demanded as she slid to a stop next to Jim Delano, the man in charge of the dig’s interns.

  “No. Everyone’s either in their tents or taking siesta in the jungle.” He gestured to the two kapok trees where some of the crew members had settled against the buttressing roots.

  “Suse, you’d better take a look at this,” Erika Rhodes called, pointing to a broken section of two-by-four.

  Susana’s heart sank. Please let it be rot.

  But no. The piece had been sawed through. “Maggoty son of a putrefied goat!” The collapse of the heavy canopy was the first act of sabotage that could have seriously hurt someone.

  “Jim,” she pushed out between lips stiff with anger. “Where are Celio and Mateus?” The two guards didn’t seem to be having any luck at deterring or catching the guilty party.

  Jim looked around and shrugged. “Probably down at the dock guarding the supplies as they’re unloaded.”

  “I want you to work up a schedule for all of us to take turns patrolling the site. I’m not going to give our enemy another chance to hurt someone.” She stared off into the trees. “But I’m damn sure not going to run, either.” She’d dreamed of finding Amerinis since she’d first heard the stories of the city built by warrior women. Even if the television crew from the Adventure Channel wasn’t expected the day after tomorrow she still wouldn’t give in to the demands to leave. This dig was too important for her to tuck tail and run.

  “Make certain those posts are bagged as evidence, then put them in my tent. And send two of the interns down to the supply boat. The captain should have that new load of timber we requested for shoring up the next phase of excavation. I want this canopy back up before dinner.” She glanced around the dig, wondering if the culprit was among her crew. Hoping her gr
owing suspicions were wrong.

  “I’ll tell the cook to prepare something special tonight in celebration. In the meantime, I’m going down to inventory the supply crates.” Turning away, Susana grabbed her sunglasses and hat from her tent, then strode down the path toward the river.

  As she pushed through the thick jungle humidity, she jammed a wayward lock of long dark hair back under her hat and wiped her brow with her bandana. Even though her long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants were the latest in breathable material, they’d long since given up the fight against the water-logged air and clung to her sweaty skin like plastic wrap. The clothing designers wouldn’t be happy with her report, but she certainly wouldn’t be giving these new fabrics her endorsement.

  As she rounded the bend, the camp’s temporary pier came into view. From this angle, it appeared the squat, heavy supply boat tied up at the dock was so crammed with crates it would take on water and sink at any moment. But that situation wouldn’t last long. The captain stood on deck, feet planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed over his thick chest, scowling as he supervised two interns unloading a stack of two-by-fours.

  Susana glanced around, then frowned. Where were the damn guards?

  “Got some damage on a crate,” the captain grumbled in Portuguese as she approached.

  “Where?” she asked, walking up the warped piece of plywood that served as a gangplank.

  He jabbed his thumb toward the back of the boat.

  Following his direction, she moved past the cabin to a stack of crates draped with a canvas sheet. Lifting up the heavy covering, she gave the crates a quick once-over.

  Huh. The six wooden crates appeared undamaged from the front. Maybe the damage was on the other side. She sidled between two crates, leaned slightly over the railing and turned her head to check the rear of the crates.

  That was strange. The backs were also undamaged. Maybe these were the wrong crates. She straightened up.

  Something hard slammed into the back of her head, knocking her stomach-first into the railing and driving the breath from her body. Another blow caused her vision to dim. Then a shove between her shoulder blades pushed her over the side.