McKay regarded them for several moments before finally nodding. “Okay, I believe you. Truthfully though, I’m probably the only one in STAT who will. British intelligence is already on the phone wanting to know what the hell we were smoking. It won’t be long before people upstairs start questioning whether this mixed-supernatural-human-team concept was a good idea. Which means we’ve got forty-eight hours before this whole thing blows up in our faces. We need answers—fast.”
On each of her teammates’ faces, Jes saw the worry she felt at the possibility of the brass at STAT headquarters breaking up the team. Even Caleb, despite the laissez-faire attitude he seemed to have about everything, looked concerned.
“Understood,” Jake said.
Jes echoed that sentiment, along with everyone else.
“Good,” McKay said, and Jes was pretty sure she caught a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he hid it. “I want you packed up and on your way to Heathrow within the hour. Tickets will be waiting for you at the British Airways check-in counter for a flight to Cayenne, French Guiana. If Darby and those three men are planning to put something into space, I want to know what it is and be ready to stop it if necessary because I sincerely doubt they’re going to all this effort and expense to find water. I’ll have details on the space center and the bodies of the creatures you sent back before your team arrives in South America. Stay safe.”
McKay didn’t wait for them to respond before logging off.
Jake looked around the room, his gaze lingering on Jes, the determination in those dark eyes letting her and everyone else know he wasn’t going to allow STAT to break up the team. That this time, they were going to stop Darby from whatever heinous thing he was planning.
“Okay, you heard McKay,” Jake said. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 16
Kourou
“That’s our way in,” Jake said, pointing at the video footage of the space center their STAT drone had filmed early this morning that was currently playing on Misty’s laptop. “When the guards change shifts in the morning, there’s a five-minute period when no one is covering the eastern side of the facility. The helicopters are grounded for refueling then, too. That’s our window.”
“We get video on one morning’s shift change, and you’re willing to risk all our lives on the assumption that tomorrow they’ll do the same thing?” Caleb snorted. “I’m not sure if that’s ballsy or just plain stupid.”
Leaning back against the wall in Jake’s hotel room, Caleb frowned at the mile-long stretch of golden sand, rough scrub brush, and lush trees between the shoreline and the Ariane launch complex. Jake knew without asking that Caleb was doing the calculations in his head, trying to figure out how long it would take the team to run from the beach to the perimeter fence in the early morning darkness. If it were only Jake, Harley, and Caleb, the sprint wouldn’t be a problem. But with Jes, Misty, and Forrest in tow? Caleb was right. It would be risky as hell.
Jake leaned back in the leather desk chair, soft music and the sweet scent of the Victorian lilies drifting in from the pool area outside the window, as he studied the other members of the team sitting wherever they could find space in the room, be it the floor, bed, or even on top of the low dresser. Not only was the hotel where they were staying one of the nicest in Kourou, it was also less than two miles from the front gate of the space center. The rooms weren’t intended to accommodate this many people, though. Or all the equipment cases that had somehow ended up in here. Even though it was crowded, it was still nice having the team all together. Especially since there was no way of knowing how many of them would make it through tomorrow’s mission.
Jake bit back a growl.
Shit.
He needed to stop thinking like that.
But seeing the doubt on their faces and knowing they were all as uncomfortable with the whole thing as Caleb made it difficult to think anything else. He wasn’t thrilled with the plan either, but it was the best they’d been able to come up with.
Jake threw an extra-long look in Jes’s direction, where she was sitting on the bed, doing his best to not stare. That was easier said than done. Since they were trying to blend in with the other tourists at the hotel, they were all dressed like they were on vacation. Today, she wore a pretty flower-print sundress that left her shoulders bare except for two thin spaghetti straps and showed off her shapely legs. Even though they’d only been there two days, her perfect skin had a golden glow to it. And damn, did it make him want to lick her all over.
The thought immediately brought back memories of the night they’d shared in London. Unfortunately, they’d been going nonstop since they’d gotten here. When they hadn’t been doing recon on the space center, they’d been giving status updates to McKay or going over drone surveillance footage the support team had recorded for them. As much as he’d wanted to, Jake hadn’t been able to find time to be alone with Jes even for a minute. Besides the obvious desire to sleep with her again, he had this urgent need to hold her in his arms and tell her how he felt about her.
Because sometime between when they’d made love at that B&B in London and arriving in South America, he’d finally figured it out.
But now wasn’t the time to think about that.
“I agree that the plan isn’t ideal, but we’re going to have to make it work,” he said in reply to Caleb’s earlier comment. “The launch of those satellites is scheduled for sunrise tomorrow and we need to get inside that facility before they take off.”
Ryo Arsenault hadn’t been kidding at the news conference when he’d said the space center would have the most extensive security forces available. The huge launch facility was currently protected by a frigging army of paramilitary security forces, while members of the Guiana military patrolled the coastline and inland perimeter. There was also at least one armed helicopter in the air above the complex at all times. It didn’t help that Darby had replaced the aforementioned security forces with his own people. Jake recognized them from the party at Darby’s manor.
No one even tried to argue with Jake—not even Caleb. They all knew this mission was going to be suicidal. Then again, that was quickly becoming their specialty.
“So, just to make sure I have this right,” Forrest said from where he was sitting on the floor. “We take the boat along the coastline until we’re due east of the main launch complex, then wait until the guards change shifts, which is when we run a mile to the perimeter fence and hope no one sees us. Then, when we get inside the facility, we figure out what Darby and the Bilderberg people are up to, so we can somehow stop it. But that’s the part of the plan that we haven’t come up with yet. Am I getting this all right?”
“Well, when you put it that way, the plan doesn’t sound nearly as bad as I thought it did,” Jes said wryly. “Hell, we should be back before breakfast.”
Everyone laughed at that, Jake included. He would have made a quip, but Misty’s phone rang, interrupting him.
“It’s McKay,” she said, sliding off the dresser where she’d been sitting beside Harley to flip on the video teleconference computer on the desk beside the laptop.
McKay looked more rested than during their previous Skype call, but not by much. It helped that French Guiana was only an hour ahead of DC, so at least it wasn’t the middle of the night there. “Tell me you’ve found a way into the facility.”
