Tuff Enough

by Samantha A. Cole

  Entering a stairwell, he took the steps two at a time to the next floor. Before opening the door, he activated the microphone on his comms unit. “Dusty. Chaos. I’m at the stairwell door.”

  “Copy that, Tuff,” Kyle “Chaos” Grant responded. “You’re clear.”

  Now that his teammates knew a friendly was making an appearance, Tuff wouldn’t be looking at any drawn weapons when he entered the hallway. Pulling the door open, he strode through, looked left, then right, assessing everything in mere seconds. Dustin “Dusty” Gibson and one of the on-site, armed guards were stationed at the elevator, which had been disabled from the main security office on the second floor. Marty “Sherlock” Holmes was in charge of the detail, with Tuff being second-in-command, and was down there, monitoring the surveillance feeds with the head of security.

  At the other end of the hallway, a guard stood with Grant at the door to the conference room. Tuff’s usual partner, Blane “Boots” Nelson, and Vinnie “Reaper” Burke were in the driver’s seats of two SUVs, sitting in a no-parking zone on the north side of the building. Since the company’s multi-level parking lot was across the street from the main entrance, the side exit was as close as they could get to the building without driving up on the sidewalk. The team had used Blackhawk’s contacts with MPD to make sure they wouldn’t be hassled by anyone on patrol or from the Miami Parking Authority. Hopefully, they’d be leaving soon and taking their asset back to the airport.

  As soon as their client was airborne on a long flight back to China, the BHS team would head over to the Miami International Airport Hotel, where they had rooms waiting for them. After changing out of their work clothes and gear, they’d head out for a few hours of late afternoon fishing, before hitting a bar in South Beach for some beers and dinner. In the morning, they’d meet an international flight from Munich that was transporting the very expensive, frozen sperm of four highly-sought-after German Shepard sires, which would be used to impregnate several bitches in BHS’s breeding program. Kat Michaelson had several clients already interested in the trained pups with the strong lineage that would result from the pairings.

  Striding down the hallway toward Grant, Tuff asked, “Think they’re almost done? We were supposed to be out of here an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, one of them came out to use the restroom about ten minutes ago and said they were wrapping things up.”

  Just as Grant finished saying that, the door next to him swung open and an executive in his mid-forties stuck his head out. “We’re done, gentlemen. You’re all set to escort Mr. Chin back to the airport.”

  Inside the boardroom, the thirty-seven-year-old man Tuff’s team was protecting closed the latches of his briefcase before picking it up and walking toward the door. Tuff held up his hand. “Mr. Chin, please give us just a moment to confirm we’re all clear downstairs and then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Of course,” he replied in mildly-accented English. While it was clear he was wealthy and well educated, his personality belied his outward appearance. Unlike the men he’d met with, who were wearing chinos and button-down Oxfords, Chin was dressed in a custom-fit, gray, three-piece suit. Tuff was positive the man’s shiny shoes cost at least $1500, while the Rolex on his wrist went for at least three times that amount. Yet, he’d been very polite to his security team and had even conversed and joked with them on the ride from the airport—something many assets couldn’t be bothered with. “I apologize for the meeting running so late.”

  “No problem, sir, it goes with the territory.” Tuff activated his microphone again. “Bones, Sherlock, we’re ready to move out. Are we clear?”

  Both men replied, “Affirmative.”

  Within two minutes, Gibson was in one elevator with two of the in-house guards, en route to the lobby, with Tuff, Grant, and their asset following in a second one. Gibson would meet up with Holmes and make sure the lobby and the side exit to where the vehicles were waiting were clear before they’d let their client out of the elevator.

  As the car descended, Chin used the fingers of one hand to respond to a text on his smart phone. He glanced at Tuff. “Mr. Tanner, since I won’t be using the main terminal at the airport, may I impose upon you to stop at any little shop that carries toys along the way? My daughter would like me to bring her home a present.”

  He smiled. “I don’t think that will be a problem. I highly doubt anyone would be waiting in one on the off chance your daughter wanted you to bring her something. I’ll let the team know once we’re in the vehicles, and then I’ll locate a store nearby.”

  “Thank you.”

  While he had no children, Tuff couldn’t help but think about bringing home a new toy for Meat. Of course it would have to be from a pet store and something the pit bull wouldn’t rip apart in the first few minutes. Not only was Tuff missing Chet, but he was missing the big lug too. Meat was much more comfortable around him now, along with a few of the men Chet worked with, but he was still a little aggressive when strange men or someone he didn’t know well approached. Chet was working on that, and Kat Michaelson had invited her to bring Meat to the Trident compound one day, where they could work on socializing the dog more in a controlled setting. At least Tuff didn’t have to worry about Chet and Meat’s safety with the head of the dog fighting ring behind bars again. Tuff was certain he’d been to blame for the dognappings and the damage to Chet’s vehicle that night, but he agreed with Isaac Webb about the murders of Chet’s friends. While they wouldn’t put it past Martinez to use violence to get what he wanted, since Terry hadn’t been fostering one of the rescued pit bulls, it didn’t make sense for the bastard to go after him. That, and that no one else had been injured when the two dogs had been taken from their foster homes.

  The elevator dinged, announcing their arrival on the first floor. When the door opened, Chin tucked his phone back into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, then followed Tuff and Grant out into the lobby where they turned left. Tuff let the asset pass and got behind him while Grant led the way. Holmes was waiting at the side door. Gibson was already outside, waiting by the first SUV that Chin, Tuff, and Grant would climb into. Holmes and Gibson would ride with Burke and follow the others.

  Due to several round, concrete barriers spaced a few feet apart along the curb, and an extra-wide sidewalk, there was about twelve feet between the exit and the first SUV with its closest rear door wide open. Unfortunately, at that time of the evening, there were people bustling up and down the side street of the business district. Some were heading to the railway station two blocks over, while others were walking home from work or heading to dinner or a night out on the town. Taxis, trucks, and cars were driving down the one-way street, and several bicyclists were cruising by. Exiting the building, Tuff, Grant, and Holmes surrounded Chin, escorting him to the waiting SUV.

  The roar of a small engine caught Tuff’s attention. Turning his head in the direction it was coming from, he saw something very out of place. A motorcycle was speeding down the sidewalk, instead of in the street, headed straight toward them. From that point, everything seemed to go in slow motion. Gibson yelled, “Gun!” at the same time Tuff saw the helmeted driver of the bike aim a black handgun at Chin. As Holmes, Gibson, and Tuff drew their weapons, Grant got between the threat and the asset, practically shoving Chin into the backseat as the assailant fired his weapon three times.

  There were far too many innocent pedestrians screaming and confused about which direction they should run in for the team to return fire. Tuff barely dove out of the way in time as the heavy motorcycle came right at him. Holmes managed to pull a young woman out of the way as the bike flew past them. Burke exited the rear SUV with his gun drawn and his cell to his ear, yelling at a 9-1-1 dispatcher that shots had been fired, and they had a man down. Rolling to his feet, Tuff stomach sank as he saw Grant on the ground, blood squirting into the air from his neck. Tuff lunged forward to render aid, slapping his hand over the arterial wound, as Holmes started barking out orders. “Gibson! Bur
ke! Get the asset out of here!”

  The men had been jumping into the back of the first vehicle, sandwiching an uninjured Chin between them, as soon as their team leader had said their names. Every man knew what his role was if the shit hit the fan—the asset was to be protected at all costs. Nelson floored the accelerator before the doors were even shut, taking Chin to a predetermined safehouse until arrangements could be made to safely get him out of the country. Holmes and Tuff would take care of their injured teammate.

  Several armed guards from the computer company came running to help. One of them fell to his knees next to Tuff, with a first-aid duffel. He immediately began pulling out sterile gauze pads, ripping open the packages, and handing them to Tuff, who’d been using his bare hands to try and stem the flow of blood. The other two bullets had hit Grant in the back and been stopped by the bullet-proof vest he’d been wearing under a light-weight jacket. All the team members had been wearing them for this very reason—they never knew when a job was going to go FUBAR like this one just had.

  Holmes and the five other guards stood watch over them, keeping an eye out for the assailant in case he came back to do more damage, and prevented any lookie-loos from getting gruesome videos or photos of the injured operative. Lying on his stomach, Grant was conscious and gasping for air but wasn’t moving otherwise. It finally clicked in Tuff’s head that his teammate could be paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet must have sliced through his spine before nicking his carotid artery. Grant had lost far too much blood, and the approaching sirens couldn’t get there fast enough for Tuff, who was doing all he could to save his friend and teammate. He didn’t want to risk further damage by rolling Grant onto his back without the proper equipment the medics would be bringing.

  “T-Tuff?”

  He barely heard Grant’s voice over the commotion around them and leaned down to hear him better. “Yeah, Chaos, I’m here. Help’s on the way. We’ll get you out of here as soon as we can.”

  “T-Tell Bec . . . Becca . . . I . . .” He coughed up blood, and it spattered on the concrete. Several police cars and an ambulance came screaming onto the scene, and Tuff had to lower his head even more to hear Grant. “Tell her . . . I . . . love her . . . s-so sor . . . sorry.”

  The retired Marine was dying, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop it. Grant knew it. Tuff knew it. So did everyone with military or law enforcement experience around them. Tuff had been in this position too many times to count, mostly in combat on the other side of the world. He knew better than to give Grant false platitudes that everything would be all right, that he’d pull through. They wouldn’t be any comfort to the dying man. Tuff told him what he needed to hear—that his fiancée would know his last thoughts were of her. “I’ll tell her, Kyle. I’ll make sure she knows how much you love her. Your folks and brothers too. I’ll tell them all.”

  His eyes filled with tears as Grant let out his final breath seconds before the medics pushed through the crowd to work on him. Even though there was nothing they could do for the man, Tuff moved out of their way. They had to at least try to save him, but the looks on their faces said they didn’t have much hope.

  Getting to his feet, Tuff stared at his hands, covered in his friend’s blood. Holmes stepped over to him with his cell phone in hand and an anguished look on his face. “The asset’s secure. Chase and Irv are on their way. We have to give our statements to the cops—they’ll keep Kyle’s name out of the press.” As black-ops agents, with military and government clearance, they often had their names withheld from reports and press releases for classified reasons. While this had been a private security detail, Chase would do whatever he could to make sure Kyle’s name was kept quiet, so his fiancée and family didn’t have to deal with the onslaught of reporters knocking on their doors. It wouldn’t be the first time they gave the press a fake name and identity and probably wouldn’t be the last.

  Unable to find his voice just then, Tuff nodded as he watched the medics’ futile efforts as they placed Grant on a backboard and then a gurney before continuing CPR on the way to the back of the ambulance. Already, in his mind, he was trying to figure out what he would say to the man’s fiancée and parents—Chase and Irv would go with him to do the notification, but Tuff would tell them Grant’s dying words. He was dreading the moment when they would learn he was never coming home. Turning, he strode back into the building, needing a few minutes to gather himself before his rage and sorrow overtook him.

  An image of Chet flashed through his mind. He had to break things off with her. Tuff could never let her go through what Becca Reyes and the Grant family would be going through by the end of the day. He cared too much for her to engage her in a relationship where she might, very well, get the notification he wasn’t coming home someday.

  Unable to stop himself, Tuff punched the nearest wall.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What’s next?” Chase asked, glancing at a piece of paper in front of him with the meeting’s agenda on it.

  Sitting on the other side of the BHS owner’s desk, Ian Sawyer consulted his own list of topics he’d wanted to cover with his business associate. “Next, I need you to head to D.C. with me next month to finalize everything with the NSA. Once everyone signs on the dotted line, we’ll be able to patch you into our interface. Cookie will have to monitor all requests and the resulting intel—the brass wouldn’t budge on that. You and I can figure out what it all works out to in trade later.”

  Trident Security had hit the jackpot last year when they’d been able to lure one of the top computer geeks at the National Security Agency into the private sector. With TS’s high-clearance levels and black-ops government contracts, one of the perks of the deal had been Nathan Cook could maintain his access to the NSA’s mainframe computers. Since Chase had similar contracts with Uncle Sam, he’d approached Sawyer and the bigwigs in Washington about gaining access to information that could be vital for missions. After months of negotiations, and everyone at BHS going under the proverbial microscope, they’d finally gotten the thumbs up. Instead of money constantly going back and forth between BHS and TS, as the latter company grew over the past few years, the owners usually kept track of who owed what, and it was usually paid back in personnel, equipment, intel, or anything else they could come up with.

  “Okay—I’ll have Shannon get Colleen on the phone and let them set up the meetings and travel details.” He made a few notes on the paper to have his secretary contact Ian’s. “Anything else?”

  Ian tossed his leather-covered day planner onto the empty chair next to him. “Last thing I’ve got is my dipshits want to challenge your dipshits to a softball game sometime in the next month or two. It was Egghead’s idea, and from there it spread like a bad breakout of VD. I did nix his suggestion for what the losers would have to do, though, because I wasn’t taking any chances—don’t ask.”

  Chase chuckled. “I won’t, but—”

  A knock at his door, followed by it swinging open, cut off what he’d been about to say. Irv strode in, being the only person in the office who wouldn’t have waited for permission to enter. The six-foot-five retired Green Beret was frowning, but there was no urgency in his demeanor. He stopped behind the empty guest chair and rested his hands on the back of it. “Sorry for the interruption, but Tuff just banged out again. Told me to keep him off the schedule until further notice. When I tried to talk to him, he told me to fuck off—sounded a tad drunk, so I’ll let it slide until he’s sober enough to feel the pain I plan to inflict upon his ass.”

  “Fuck,” Chase murmured, running a hand down his face.

  Raising an eyebrow, Ian asked, “Hasn’t been back to work since?”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “Nope.”

  It’d been over two weeks since Kyle Grant’s funeral, and, as expected, BHS’s operatives and support staff were still mourning, but Tuff had taken it the hardest. Chase understood how his employee felt. He’d had several men die in his arms over the years, bot
h in and out of the military—unfortunately it came with the territory. He also knew that if he allowed Tuff to wallow in his sorrow for too long, he might never get over his misplaced guilt and return to the job he loved and needed.

  Chase was a tough-as-nails boss but cared about every one of his employees—from the operatives down to the cleaning staff that came in at night under the watchful eyes of security guards—to give them some leeway with their personal lives. He also knew when to tighten the reins. He’d already lost one good operative this month and wasn’t about to lose another to unwarranted guilt. He’d read the reports, backward and forward, and debriefed the entire team over several days. Irv and the intel staff had gotten the surveillance videos from every available camera within a two-block radius of the shooting. The BHS team had done nothing wrong. They’d gotten the asset out of there alive. Chase wouldn’t have done a damn thing different if he’d been the team leader on that detail. It’d been just lousy luck that only five out of the six operatives had made it home. It was also a fluke that his and Sawyer’s teams had already tracked down the Russian-born assassin, who was wanted by most international government agencies, and had handed him over to Deimos, a blacker-than-black-ops US agency. They would dispose of the body once they’d tortured some intel out of the fucking bastard. The only reason the BHS operatives hadn’t done it themselves was because Deimos was sanctioned—in other words, it wouldn’t be murder.