LITMIR.BIZ

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hit the escape key. The computer screen went dark just as a uniformed figure staggered through the doorway.

      Instantly, the two dogs lunged at his throat. Blood sprayed as the soldier fell, jerked once, and lay still in a crimson pool.

      The big dogs turned. Their ears pricked forward as they stepped delicately over the body on the tile. Awaiting Cruz’s next command.

      The din grew, every cage open and every animal freed. A gorilla shuffled past, his eyes sullen and watchful. Cruz’s silent command was sent and received. The animal lurched forward, unaware that he was about to face a wall of bullets. The second he cleared the double doors, shouts exploded in the hallway, drowned out by gunfire.

      More animals poured out after the gorilla.

      Quickly, Cruz flipped off the lights and crawled inside a red bin with a warning logo stenciled on the lid. The underground facility’s medical waste was collected like clockwork. For once the well-oiled procedures would work in Cruz’s favor.

      The worker in charge of transporting medical waste had negotiated hard: thirty thousand dollars for the initial transfer—with ten times more to come as soon as his hidden passenger was safely delivered outside the grounds.

      The irony didn’t escape Cruz. In the government’s eyes, he was no more than medical waste, the end product of an expensive and highly experimental program using human genetics to shape superior tactical capabilities.

      But Cruz had gone rogue.

      And though his captors didn’t yet realize it, their experiment had been a stunning success.

      CHAPTER ONE

      WOLFE DIDN’T MIND the tarantulas. Even the rattlesnakes left him with only minor discomfort.

      It was the naked women, with their bloodred lips and leather masks, who really annoyed him. They studied him like tigers facing raw meat, then scraped their long nails across his chest.

      He didn’t move, wouldn’t give them the pleasure of a response.

      Which only made them dig harder. Tattooed skin brushed his arms. When their breasts teased his mouth, Wolfe Houston decided enough was enough.

      He drove everything out of his mind—tarantulas, rattlesnakes and tattoos. With stronger focus, he picked up the slap of liquid against metal walls, the only sound in his darkened containment area. Here in the bowels of the building, there was no time and no light. In these insulated compartments, collectively called the pit, fiberglass walls sealed out noise, smell and external vibration.

      A high-tech digital tomb.

      After one day inside, most men lost their bearings. After three days, most men lost their minds. Only a few had the ability to endure the silent death of the containment unit.

      Wolfe Houston was one of them.

      He was well into the fifth day now, and his hallucinations were intense. Sensory deprivation amped up all his senses until he could have heard a fly walk across the ceiling near his head—if a fly could have breached the security of the pit. At the same time Wolfe was acutely aware of the other men floating in nearby units. Men from different backgrounds, each with different training and skills, over time had come to form one finely honed tactical team.

      If the public knew their skills, they would have been called supermen—or monsters. Each of them had the power to read energy or transfer images into apparent reality with the sheer force of the mind. Most of them had never suspected their unusual skills before the government identified them through arduous testing. After long months of sweating and swearing and fighting together, they had become a silent, deadly team called out when everyone else—from Rangers to SEALs—had failed. They were tougher than tough, trained to deploy when the government’s highest security was threatened, and so far they had never failed on a mission.

      Wolfe wondered how long their record would remain unbroken.

      He closed his eyes, rocking gently on the cool gel inside the hermetically sealed unit while ghostly tattoos writhed above him. As the images grew sharper, he slid into level-three hallucinations, feeling his psi ability shoot beyond all his previous limits.

      The naked blonde trailed crimson nails toward his groin. Distantly, he felt his body respond and wondered if she was a hologram projection or whether she’d been pulled from the deeper recesses of his mind, stirred to life by the extended sensory deprivation.

      Wolfe, are you there?

      The silent question swam into his thoughts, sent by his second-in-command. Trace O’Halloran had guarded Wolfe’s back more times than either man could count, and Wolfe had always repaid the favor.

      Right next to you, O’Halloran.

      One question. You got the same woman in there as the one that’s crawling all over me? Platinum blond, probably five-seven?

      What’s she wearing?

      Nothing but oil and tattoos, looking damned fine.

      Wolfe felt the brush of naked thighs. So the blonde wasn’t his own private fantasy. That meant she was one of the new training constructs, designed by Lloyd Ryker, the facility’s civilian chief, to test mental focus and physical response. No doubt Ryker’s sensors were picking up every detail of his team’s heart rates and body temperatures right now. The man had made surveillance a high art form.

      Sounds like you’ve got her pegged, Trace.

      I’d like to do more than peg her, boss.

      Not allowed.

      Wolfe felt the energy of Trace’s laughter. Hell, I’ve never seen tattoos on a woman’s nipples before. Wouldn’t that hurt? I mean, think about getting tattoos on your—

      You know the drill, Trace. Put all the details in your report—nipples and everything else. Don’t leave anything out or they’ll ram it down your throat in the follow-up evaluations.

      I always thought sex was supposed to be private.

      Wolfe grinned into the darkness. Welcome to Foxfire, Lieutenant. In here your thoughts are noisy and sex is as public as it gets. Don’t tell me you’re complaining about having a knockout babe with her hands wrapped around your joystick while she test-drives your cruise control.

      Complaining? Who, me?

      Wolfe felt his thoughts blur. When his own illusory companion licked her way expertly toward his belt, desire sucker punched him hard. He knew there were no rules, no fouls, no time-outs when Ryker set up the game. Dark and twisted training scenarios were his specialty. Some people said they reflected Ryker’s own fantasies.

      Wolfe didn’t have an opinion one way or the other.

      Hell, boss, this one is too hot to handle. That mouth of hers is doing real damage.

      Red lips closed with unerring skill. Wolfe felt his brain oozing out his ears. Closing his eyes, he slipped deeper into theta, blanking out the construct of the blonde with the velvet mouth.

      You feel that, boss?

      Wolfe picked up a faint vibration from outside the pit. The blond vision faded pixel by pixel as he shaped his concentration into a tight line and slammed it toward the distant intrusion.

      I make it Sector Three, Trace.

      That’s just what I’m reading.

      Alarms on Levels Four through Seven. Ryker’s on his way down here right now.

      Any idea why, Chief?

      Not a clue.

      Drifting in the darkness, Wolfe considered the images he’d just picked up. Training sessions down in the pit were never interrupted—not for any reason. To Wolfe’s knowledge, three men had cracked during their training because of too-abrupt transition. If Ryker was headed downstairs to interrupt a psi immersion, all hell must have broken loose.

      Since hell happened to be Foxfire’s

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