Retribution (SSU Trilogy Book 3) (The Surgical Strike Unit) by Vanessa Kier Page B

good in the position of director.
    Ryker raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I like it? Trust me, I have to work to stay calm and polite. I do it because we need support like his if we’re going to stay in the game. You’ll get the hang of it.” Ryker poured himself a cup of coffee, added one cube of sugar, then perched on the edge of his desk.
    “So, give me your impressions of Dr. Montague.” Ryker’s lips smiled around the rim of his coffee cup as he sipped. “Or should I say, of your little scientist?”
    Rafe rolled his eyes. The SSU’s gossip mill worked faster than the speed of light. Scary thing was, he did think of Gabby as his. But he’d die before he let his teammates know that.
    “We scared her pretty bad,” Rafe admitted. “Unless she’s a world-class liar, I believe her when she says she had no clue Kaufmann was running a second program, and that she only switched sides in order to save her life. Still, we should keep an eye on her.”
    Ryker nodded. He took a long drink of coffee, then stared over Rafe’s head. The hairs at the back of Rafe’s neck stood up as he sensed Ryker struggling with some piece of information.
    “I knew her father,” Ryker finally said.
    “What?” Rafe straightened. “I thought she was an orphan. Raised by her aunt.”
    Ryker shook his head. “After your team left on the mission, I finally realized why the satellite photos of her looked so familiar. She reminded me of a guy I knew in Vietnam. Dan Reagh. So I had the research department dig deeper into her background. Sure enough, she’s his daughter, although someone went to great lengths to hide their connection. Her social security number is under Gabrielle Montague, which is her mother’s maiden name. The small county where she was born only just joined the internet era and put all their old records online, which allowed our research team to locate her birth certificate and her parents’ marriage certificate. They also found a death notice for her parents, killed in a car accident when Dr. Montague was twelve. That’s when she went to live with her aunt.”
    Ryker tapped his index finger against the ceramic handle of his coffee cup. “Her father was part of a black ops group operating during the Vietnam War. I’d heard rumors of their group long before I met Reagh. Whispers about men who poisoned entire villages, but made it look like disease. Of opposition leaders dying from sudden heart attacks. And of the soldiers who could go for days without sleep and still remain sharp at the end, no matter how many miles they’d travelled to complete their secret missions.”
    Ryker stared into his coffee. “I met Reagh in the medical ward of one of our bases. We’d both been injured. But while I spent most of those first days in a drug-induced sleep, the nurses claimed Reagh never slept and never took his meds. His injuries were worse than mine, so I figured the nurses were exaggerating due to a misplaced case of hero worship. No man could endure the pain of such burns or such deep wounds.” Ryker shook his head. “But it was true. I saw Reagh go into a berserker rage when they tried to force meds on him. They finally had to knock him out and restrain him in order to give him the antibiotics that saved his life.”
    A chill slid down Rafe’s spine. No—
    “They must have given him a tranquilizer, too, because when he woke up, he was mellow. We spent a lot of time talking. He never said too much, but reading between the lines, he was terrified of taking any medicine because of the side effects of the drugs given to his unit. Some of the drugs were pills, some were injections, and other side effects came from inhaling the fumes of the chemicals they handled on their missions. He said the drugs made them all crazy and was afraid that if he didn’t get out, he was going to end up dead. Because if the drugs didn’t kill him, the government would, to stop him from talking about what they’d ordered him to