Aimpoint

by Candace Irvin

  "Excuse me?"

  "Yeah, I know. You've done your thing for the provosts at Baumholder and Wiesbaden."

  And Grafenwoehr, Landstuhl, Stuttgart and Kaiserslautern—but who was counting? Evidently, not Brooks.

  Nor was she thrilled with the way he was now eyeing her naked face, basic braid, and minimally tailored suit. Especially when he offered up his first eager nod since he'd barked her through the door of his office. "Yup. I've changed my mind. Shit, I should've approved it yesterday. Well, I'm doing it now. Go slap on some lipstick and a tight skirt, and get that bastard's attention. You've put out for the rest of Germany; it's about time you put out for us."

  The implication behind that double entendre was deliberate and ugly, and Brooks knew it. She ignored it. She knew full well he wasn't so much as pissed at her, as stinging from that gun-shy comment. Because he knew who it had been really directed toward. Just as he also knew that, deep down, it fit.

  But she'd make him pay for it. In people.

  "And Agent Jelling?"

  "Take him. It's not like I want him touching anything else around here."

  Go for broke. "And Special Agent Ellis?"

  Yet another nod.

  Hallelujah. It seemed miracles were still possible in her world.

  "But Ellis is strictly emergency backup; that's all. I don't like that woman, and I don't trust her. The way you collect these lost souls baffles the hell out of me."

  Oh, for Christ's sake. Mira had been exonerated years ago. Heck, it was why she'd turned her back on the Navy's mea culpa and its offer to reinstate her into its nuclear power program and joined NCIS instead. It was also why Mira understood Regan and her own motley collection of demons in a way no one else could.

  She opened her mouth to defend her friend, but her boss spoke first.

  "Doesn't matter. Ellis and her considerable baggage are not my problem, so long as you keep her away from me. According to her CO, Ellis will be here by zero six hundred, whether I approve or not. You might as well abuse her. The woman can do research on the fly with Jelling. Hell, she can even hold your virtual hand in the ladies room while you're out and about doing your thing to reel in LaCroix. But she does not go near him. Nor does Jelling. I don't want either of them fucking this up. Understood?"

  She bit down on her tongue and nodded.

  Brooks was still livid enough that he'd find a way to revoke Mira's assistance. No matter who'd approved it.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then get to work, Chief. Give me what every other post's provost has been raving about on this side of the Atlantic. But be goddamned vigilant. Because if you're right and your performance is off, by even a fraction of a whiff, we'll have a nightmare on our hands. Not only will LaCroix be tipped off, but anyone else he may be working with will be in the wind, never to be seen again. At least not by us. So find an in with that asshole and get what we need, and do it soon. Before the bodies start piling up—in Munich or elsewhere."

  Regan nodded crisply and scooped Platt's phone records off the desk, then turned around to exit the office. She was halfway to her own when her phone rang.

  Mira's name flashed across the screen as she retrieved it. "Speak of the devil. I understand you'll be landing in time for breakfast tomorrow. Need a ride?"

  "Yes. But there's another reason for my call—and it's not good."

  Regan juggled the sheaf of papers in her hand as she elbowed her way through the door of her office. She didn't mind that Jelly was absent for his first official briefing since that fiasco. She had bigger worries.

  Somehow, she knew what had happened.

  LaCroix. "He called Platt's phone, didn't he?" The one NCIS and the DC Metro Police had confiscated when Scott Platt had been brought in and booked into a cell to keep his uncooperative mouth from doing a one-eighty and flapping open long enough to tip off his good buddy LaCroix.

  "Ten minutes ago."

  On a Friday? At fourteen hundred? They were six hours ahead of the East Coast, making it eight in the morning on Platt's end. Worse, it was a deviation from their Saturday/Sunday call pattern.

  One that did not bode well.

  Regan dumped the phone records on her work table and picked up the folded square of paper Jelly had addressed to her. "Did LaCroix swallow it?"

  "I think so. Hell, I hope so. The Intensive Care Unit nurse we had manning Platt's phone was nervous, but I'm pretty sure she pulled it off. She threw in enough medical jargon to stump me. If we're lucky, her critical accident and coma story bought us some time. How much, we won't know unless LaCroix decides to call via the hospital's main line to confirm. If he does, the rest of the unit's nurses and physicians are prepared to back her up. But if some unsuspecting doc from another floor walks by and picks up that phone, the cover story could fall apart and fast."

  The clock was ticking then, in more ways than one. "Understood."

  "How's it going on your end?"

  Regan sank into the metal chair at the table. "Not as well as I'd hoped, but it's getting there. Brooks shot down the tap and tail again, but he's regrown his pair enough to finally decide to send me in. I've got some research and planning to do, but I'll have my cover identity worked up before you arrive."

  "I'll let you get to it, then. See you soon. Wish it was under better circumstances."

  "Ditto."

  Regan hung up the phone and opened the note Jelly had left.

  Went home to grill Ava. Not even going to try to lie. We both know she won't say a word.

  Back soon—J

  Jelly's tactic was sound. But since Brooks wouldn't agree—especially with his current, added, ire toward her fellow agent—she took the time to walk the note over to her shredder. She fed the hungry beast and headed for her desk.

  With the basics of her cover already churning through her brain, she phoned Public Affairs next.

  Unfortunately, Terry Vaughn wasn't in.

  She left a message for the stalwart captain who'd covered for her brilliantly on several missions before—albeit on posts other than Hohenfels and nearby Vilseck, including a war zone.

  After hanging up her second call in twice as many minutes, Regan turned her attention to her laptop. She fired up the computer and clicked through the security protocols to access LaCroix's official Army record. She'd need to study his entire career history, as well as his performance evaluations, before she finalized her cover details with Terry anyway.

  But this particular file would have to be absorbed quickly.

  In light of the unusual timing of the sergeant's most recent stateside call to Platt's phone, the stakes had been raised even higher than those she'd just conveyed to Brooks.

  Several pages into LaCroix's personnel record, they shot into the stratosphere.

  Sergeant LaCroix wasn't just the real deal. He'd all but crafted it.

  And it was born of C4, det cord and so much more. Before Special Forces had tapped LaCroix on his shoulder to invite him into the hallowed brotherhood, he'd been a sapper. But not just any sapper. LaCroix was so good at constructing both complex bombs and simple, impromptu explosives, he'd been tasked with teaching his fellow combat engineers at the Army's Sapper Leader Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

  Whatever his pending target might be, it appeared the man wouldn't even need a brick of C4 and handful of blasting caps to obliterate it.

  Ice crackled along Regan's spine as she read one particular write up.

  Sergeant LaCroix is an outstanding soldier and unsurpassed as a sapper. Though young, he possesses an uncanny and unparalleled ingenuity in crafting field-expedient explosives. I have the utmost faith in Sgt. LaCroix's ability to link up with any indigenous force to which he's assigned and quickly teach them to rig bombs with whatever's on hand. If the materials don't exist, Sgt. LaCroix will create them—and the results will be devastating.

  The enemy will never see him coming.

  The evaluation had been filed six years earlier. Since then, LaCroix had completed
the SF Q Course and donned the vaunted green beret. As Special Forces, he'd gone on to serve four more tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, where he'd undoubtedly honed those innate, deadly skills of his to a terrifying proficiency.

  And there was Hohenfels.

  If LaCroix was up to no good, he had plenty of places right here in his own backyard to prepare for it. Far too many for CID to search.

  Hosting the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, the forty thousand acre Army installation was the second largest combat maneuvering facility for US troops in Europe. Hohenfels' often unforgiving topography was riddled with thick forests and deep, often inaccessible ravines—wet and dry.

  And that wasn't the worst of it.

  With the JMRC training roughly twenty-two hundred soldiers a day—sixty thousand last year alone—the installation's instructors and students chewed through a staggeringly large supply of munitions.

  A staggering supply to which a trusted, outstanding sapper-turned Special Forces sergeant first class with an uncanny and unparalleled ingenuity in crafting field-expedient explosives would surely have been entrusted with near-unfettered access.

  Brooks was right about one thing. Dicey didn't begin to cover this case.

  She had to find a way to get close to LaCroix, and now. Because if they didn't have an entire team of savvy, adaptable agents trailing behind the man, twenty-four seven, ready to take him down before he managed to place that bomb, they'd never find it.

  Not until it was too late.

  2

  Regan took a sip from her drink as she glanced at the mirror dominating the wall behind the counter of the off-post Bavarian bar. Between that oversized reflective surface and the etched-glass belly of a perfectly positioned grandfather clock across the room, she had a clear view of tonight's quarry: Sergeant First Class Evan LaCroix.

  This was supposed to be the meet.

  Their meet.

  And yet, the sergeant was still glowering into his stein of beer, as he had been for most of the night. Despite her CO's backhanded phrasing, Brooks had been dead on about one thing. After three years as an MP and four more with CID, this was nowhere near her first time dangling from the proverbial hook. But it was the first time her target was more interested in his booze than in the bait.

  Irritatingly, his friend wasn't.

  From her vantage point, Regan caught the latest lingering assessment from LaCroix's behemoth of an escort. She ignored it, just as she'd ignored every other stare from the interloper since his arrival ten minutes earlier.

  Instinct warned her she wouldn't be so lucky with the local off her right, doggedly edging closer until he'd reached the padded stool beside her. "Kann ich Ihnen ein Getränk kaufen?"

  Regan infused her brow with wholesale confusion as she turned toward the twenty-something beanpole. "I'm sorry; I don't speak German."

  Liar. She might not be fluent, but she'd picked up enough to know when she was turning down a drink.

  Fortunately, the beanpole bought the brushoff and melted away.

  Thank God.

  Relief churned right back into frustration as Regan aimed another bouncing glance at the ornate grandfather and its reflective belly. She'd swear LaCroix was avoiding her. Worse, the colossus beside him was still sizing her up.

  She was certain when the hulk leaned over to say something to the sergeant, then nodded—toward her.

  LaCroix glanced up from his phone and stared at her for all of two seconds, before jackknifing to his feet.

  Shit. Had she been made?

  Scratch that. She relaxed. Her cover was intact.

  That wasn't recognition biting into the sergeant's flushed features. Hell, LaCroix's attention wasn't even focused on her. He was glaring at his phone again. As his grip shifted, she could make out the dim glow of the screen as it flashed amid the clock's generous belly. A text bubble. One that had succeeded in extracting the only emotion she'd seen in the sergeant this entire Sunday evening—fury.

  "Fuck!"

  The hulk grabbed LaCroix's arm amid the sudden silence and pointed stares from the surrounding tables, clearly hoping to ease the sergeant back into his seat without creating more of a scene than he already had. LaCroix shook his friend off. Panic threaded through Regan as he swung away from the table. But instead of storming out of the bar, the sergeant stalked deeper within.

  The pockets of German chatter and clinking of steins and glasses resumed as LaCroix turned into the hall that lead to the latrines.

  Once again, her relief was short-lived. This time, as the only soldier whose interest she had succeeded in hooking tonight stood as well.

  He was headed straight for her.

  All too quickly, the behemoth had cut a path through the sporadically populated tables to stand beside her at the bar. Make that, tower over her. At six-three, easy, he rivaled the beanpole she'd shot down earlier, but with an added eighty pounds of muscle. Every ounce of which appeared to have been forged in the cauldron of combat too, judging by the trio of inch-long scars digging into the left edge of his darkly stubbled jaw, not to mention the thicker pair that tangled all the way down his neck to end somewhere beneath the collar of his black pullover. And that didn't account for the mottled rope feeding up his right forearm.

  The arm currently heading her way with an equally large, scarred paw attached to its end. "Captain John Garrison, US Army Special Forces."

  And that confirmed it.

  She pushed a slight smile to her lips, not bothering to infuse it with sincerity, much less interest. "A soldier."

  "Guilty as charged."

  Agreed. But of what else? Plotting a terror attack?

  Because his barhopping buddy was. The more she'd dug into LaCroix's life these past two days, the more certain she'd become. There was something off about the man, and it didn't have anything to do with who LaCroix preferred to screw.

  Although she wasn't here to hook this man, the two had seemed awfully close at that table. And both were SF.

  Was the captain in on it?

  The unmet paw finally retracted. A moment later, its unfazed owner used that same paw to lift her leather shoulder bag from the seat beside her. He carefully settled the bag on the bar before commandeering the now empty stool with a finesse the beanpole would've envied, had he stuck around. Hell, it even impressed her.

  Regrettably, the captain's interfering interest did not.

  She had until LaCroix returned to get rid of him.

  Unfortunately, he'd leaned closer. "So, you're American. Civilian? Or are you stationed at Hohenfels, too?"

  She fielded the captain's curiosity with her own. "Special Forces? Am I supposed to be impressed?"

  "Trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be. At least not today."

  An intriguing response, made more so by the shadows that momentarily flickered amid the depths of that steady stare. Both succeeded in ratcheting up her suspicions. And there was his name. Garrison. She'd come across it while prepping for tonight. John Garrison wasn't just Special Forces, he was LaCroix's former A-team leader. Not to mention, he and LaCroix resided in the same apartment complex.

  "And your name is…?"

  Regan fielded that question with silence.

  "Ah, a woman of secrets."

  He had no idea.

  The captain met her noncommittal shrug with a nod—and raised her a slow smile. "I don't mind."

  Odd. Most men did—especially the ones she ended up arresting. No matter how gigantic they were.

  This one shrugged. "I'm a patient man. Persistent." The smile strengthened, causing a deep, dimpled fold to cut in on the right. "Motivated."

  Perhaps. But, he wasn't as persistent as her. Definitely not as motivated. Without the glut of her so-called life lessons to draw upon, how could he be?

  And there was the date on the calendar. The one relentlessly whittling down to Oktoberfest.

  For the first time since he'd entered the bar, she studied the captain. This close, his hair app
eared lighter than she'd first thought. More a medium brown. His jaw was too hewn and squared-off to be handsome, his brow and cheekbones too raw and prominent. He was arresting, all the same. No doubt because of that enormous frame. Those intimidating shoulders and bulging biceps. Hell, every inch of the man was intimidating, and she was not easily intimidated.

  The scars didn't help. They made him appear harder. Aloof. In the end, it was that deep fold that saved him.

  Until the man's innate arrogance kicked back in. "Well?"

  Her name. Damn. He was persistent.

  Where the devil was LaCroix?

  For that matter, where was Mira? The woman should've put in an appearance by now. Though Brooks had remained firm on her friend's backup-only status, Regan wouldn't have thought anything could've kept her away. After an entire weekend holed up at CID along with Jelly, combing through every facet of LaCroix's life, Mira was as anxious as they were to get this operation going. To take the sergeant down.

  Regan glanced at the door to the bar as it swung open, ushering in a group of rowdy locals with cheeks ruddy enough to suggest all were well past ordering their first round of the night. No NCIS agents in sight.

  And still no sign of LaCroix.

  Surely he'd managed to pee by now. Or was LaCroix on his phone? Responding to that rage-inciting text? Plotting his end game.

  And, damn it, did it involve six million innocent people?

  Resigned to the wait—barely—Regan returned her attention to the steady stare that had been focused on her up close and from afar these past twenty minutes. If she stalled any longer, she risked converting the interest still brimming within into annoyance—and absence. While she certainly needed the latter, Garrison just might be insulted enough to drag LaCroix off with him.