by Norris, Kris
“Slader was part of that unit?”
Kam sighed. “He’d replaced a soldier who’d been injured—sent stateside. Slader’s clearance checked out. To be honest, I never suspected a thing. He acted like all the other guys. Was competent. Looking back, he arrived a week after I discovered the possible existence of that list. I should have realized he was a plant.”
“The guy had me fooled for months. Anyway, you went there, and…”
“Taylor set up a perimeter around the market where we were supposed to meet.” Kam pointed to Crow’s phone. “That guy showed up. He kept looking around as if he knew I had a team with me. But he never tried to bolt. We’d decided beforehand that we wouldn’t detain him right away, in case he was a middleman. Taylor thought it would be prudent to see what kind of intel he was passing, first—if we could use him. The man gave me a thumb drive, muttered something about keeping it safe, that it was critically important and could enlighten me—whatever that meant. But it was coordinates to Islamic bases we already knew about, most of which we’d dispatched. No traitorous intel, and definitely not this Judas list I’d been led to believe. I decided I’d run some encryption algorithms on it when I got back, just in case there was hidden intel on it, but—”
“But your squad didn’t make it back.” Crow raked a hand through his hair, glancing at Six. “How was Slader during the op?”
Kam frowned. “The men were hidden during the exchange, but I remember he was in the truck when we got back. Had mentioned he’d had to radio the base in order to keep up the ruse that we were on an info-gathering mission not connected to that list. I didn’t think much about it at the time…”
She inhaled, twisting to face Six. “Do you think he was calling McCormick?”
Six palmed her cheek, brushing his thumb along her jaw. “Hard to say if he’d risk calling McCormick from the field. Risk blowing his cover.”
“Oh, the bastard would risk it.” Crow. Voice harsh—edged with malice. “You want to know what I think? I think Slader was arranging for one of his rogue NCS units to intercept your truck. Tie up all his loose ends. Probably planned to return to that town. Hunt that guy down once he was in the clear. But that IED got to you, first.”
Ice sluiced through her veins as she looked at each man in turn. “Are you saying that IED saved my life?”
“Crazy, I know, but… If you haven’t gotten derailed along the route, I guarantee you would have been ambushed after that. That only Slader would have walked away. Just dumb luck he was the only other survivor.”
“So, there is a Judas list?”
Crow grunted. “Everything I say after this, stays in this room, right? No repeating it, even to Cannon or Colt unless their lives depend on it, understood?”
Six merely gave his buddy a raise of his eyebrow.
Crow nodded, glancing over at Gibson.
The Brit snorted. “Don’t look at me, mate. I haven’t got anyone to tell, other than Coen. And trust me. That bloke knows far more damaging information than you could dream up. Besides, he still has his top secret clearance. As do I.”
Gibson groaned when Crow scowled. “What? I might occasionally help out my Queen and country. So, just get on with it.”
Crow shook his head. “Brits. Okay, so when I first joined on with McCormick, I was given a list of several ‘assets’ my team was to actively pursue. People who were selling intel or items they shouldn’t be.” He held up his phone, again. “This guy was at the top of that list. Had been one of McCormick’s Most Wanted for at least a year.”
Six nodded. “This guy have a name?”
“Adam Bains.” Crow closed his eyes as he blew out a rough breath. “CIA Counterterrorism Officer Adam Bains.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I discovered after the epic shit show that Bains had been sent over to Afghanistan pretty much at the beginning of everything. Had been gathering intel on damn near every militant force operating in or near the area, since. Then, a couple of years ago, he intercepted a bunch of highly classified documents. And he realized someone was comprising a list of safehouses, operatives—the works—just like you’d suspected, Kam. Only, it wasn’t a Judas list. More like the Rosetta Stone of the intelligence networks of all Allied Forces.”
Crow took another swig of his drink, shaking his head as he leaned back. “Of course, McCormick claimed Bains was one of these rogue agents. That he’d hacked into a number of databases—obtained the information. That we needed to stop him from selling it. With all the different agencies exposed, he could have divided it into chunks. Made billions while singlehandedly toppling governments. Hell, countries.”
Six gave Kam a squeeze, letting his hands fall to her hips. Could he sense her dread? Had he puzzled out what she was thinking with his sixth sense? Because the way this was shaping up, she’d inadvertently helped Slader track Bains down.
Six sighed, as if whatever he was going to say next hurt. Actually caused him pain. “You think that drive Bains gave Kam had that list on it. That it was encrypted within all that other useless information.”
Crow shifted forward, looking as if he’d rather be pacing. “We chased Bains all the way from Afghanistan back here—to Seattle, actually. He told me later that he’d set up a number of safehouses across the country but hadn’t expected us to storm the first one he’d used. That happened around the time you guys were dealing with McCormick. When we apprehended him, Bains had wiped all of his drives but one. Of course, he wasn’t stupid. Had a virus set to destroy everything as soon as we forced him to access it. I only got a quick look at a chunk of the information on it, but damn… He had everything.
“Slader was pissed when the drive literally blew up in our faces. I think Bains had hoped to use the whole thing as a distraction—allow him to escape while we were busy dealing with the smoke and fire. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. And once Slader had gotten a glimpse of what Bains knew, he was determined to get the other man to reconstruct the files for him. We headed out, with Bains in tow. Ran into some heavy resistance—freaking mercenaries I later discovered Slader had sent after us—and split up. I went with Bains and Slader—my team acted as decoys. We were supposed to rendezvous at a train platform later that night.”
Six grunted like he had in their room in Vegas. “You didn’t make it, did you?”
“That fucker, Slader, shot me in the shoulder, then drugged me. I can only assume he kept me alive to take the fall for the rest of my team getting hit. Spin it to look like I was the double agent. Had hired those assholes. I woke up a few days later in some black ops site. They didn’t even pay attention to me, but they did question Bains. Repeatedly. The guy was hardcore. Refused to give Slader the information. He was in a cell beside mine when he wasn’t being—interrogated.”
Crow stared down at the coffee table, shoulders tensed. Hands fisted. “Bains wasn’t conscious much, but we talked whenever he was. One night, he got all anxious. Maybe he thought he was close to breaking, I don’t really know. But he told me there were other copies of the list. That he’d hidden them, and that I had to make sure Slader didn’t get his hands on any of them. Poor bastard passed out before he could tell me how to find them.”
He looked up at Six. “He died in the night. Slader went ballistic. Trashed everything. Kept ranting about how he’d gotten so close. He was raging around the cells when one of his subordinates came up—whispered something. After that, he vanished. Just disappeared. Like someone had flicked a damn switch. I suspect it had something to do with McCormick’s arrest. I’m sure Slader needed to ghost before the rest of the CIA caught up with him. I was liberated a few weeks later—decided to stay with the CIA on a new JSOG unit in an effort to track down the other copies of that list. Haven’t had any luck…until now.”
“Damn…” Kam shook her head. “This is all my fault.”
“Honey.” Crow sighed. “You couldn’t have known what you were getting yourself or that unit into. This is all on Slader, not y
ou.”
“But I could have questioned Bains more. Made him explain what he meant by the disk being ‘critically important’. That it could ‘enlighten’ me. I didn’t make the connections like I should have.”
“Did you tell Taylor and his unit that the trip had been a bust?”
“They knew. But they also knew I planned on running more decryption programs when I got back to base.”
Crow frowned. “What I don’t understand is why would Slader be after a thumb drive that was destroyed in an IED attack? Especially if you’d already confessed that you hadn’t found that list on it.”
“Yeah, about that…it wasn’t destroyed. I put the damn drive in my pocket.”
Crow sat up a bit higher. “Did Slader know that?”
“I don’t know. He was in pretty bad shape by the time we reached that base. But… I never did find out if there was more on that drive. Nothing showed up after running the first batch of decryption algorithms. I thought it really was nothing more than old intel. I had planned on running one last program, just to be one-hundred percent sure. But it wasn’t exactly DoD approved. Something I’d enhanced from a friend of mine. I was in the midst of preparing everything when…”
She inhaled. Shit, how could she have forgotten? Been so damn dense? More proof she’d never really gotten over that event. That it had scarred her far worse than she’d ever admitted.
“When?”
She let her shoulders droop. It really was all her doing. “I had to leave before I got a chance to start the decryption. And since I didn’t want anyone knowing I was using an unsanctioned program on secure intel, I used that same program to lock down the contents until I got back—could run it in private. A program even Ellis probably couldn’t hack. But I was reassigned then transferred. I never saw that drive, or its data, again.”
She palmed her face in her hands. “I didn’t worry too much because the chances there was something else hidden within that useless intel was so remote. Especially after all the other programs didn’t reveal anything. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“In hindsight, that was probably a good thing. If McCormick had discovered you had a copy of that list, he would have sent men after you, and you either would have ended up like Ellis, or dead. And he would have gotten the information.”
“I don’t understand. If Slader knew the drive hadn’t gotten trashed, why wait until now to come after me? I was on my own for months before I joined Cannon’s crew. An easy target.”
Crow nodded. “True. But, I assume you reported that there wasn’t any hidden intel on that drive?”
“Of course. I hadn’t, technically, unearthed any, yet.”
“So, Slader had no reason to question it until he discovered that Bains had made other copies. Which wasn’t until after that run-in you all had with McCormick.”
Six groaned. “Shit. That explains why they suddenly upped their surveillance of you after we rescued Ellis at the pier. Why they’d stopped previously. They’d probably just been covering their asses before. Then, when Crow’s team started actively hunting Bains, there wasn’t any reason to keep tabs on you—not when they didn’t have any proof there was more information on that drive. But then everything goes sideways, and now… You’re their only chance at getting their hands on that information.”
Crow leaned forward. “Can you still access that drive?”
“The actual drive, itself, is probably locked away in some kind of military storage facility. And before you ask… No, I don’t know which one. It could still be on a base in Afghanistan for all I know.”
“And the files from it that you were going to run that program on—the ones you locked down?”
“Probably archived.”
“But still inaccessible to anyone, but you?”
“Theoretically. But even I can’t access that information from out here. I was removed from their system after retiring, and the DoD has impressive firewalls. I’m not sure even Ellis would get through.”
Crow tilted his head slightly. “What about from inside those high security walls?”
Kam frowned. “Do you mean if I was on a base? Already inside their database?”
Crow nodded.
“Well, yeah. That’s different. If I were already in their system, accessing the archives wouldn’t be that hard. I know how they’re structured. Wouldn’t have to sift through a ton of other information to find it.”
“And you can unlock it from this virtual vault you put it in when you left?”
“Sure.” She stared at Crow when the man just sat there, smiling. “You think that’s what those men were trying to do? Abduct me so they could take me onto a DoD base?”
“Wouldn’t have to be a military base, honey. I’m sure any one of McCormick’s black ops sites have some kind of link into the required databases. McCormick has connections you wouldn’t believe. Getting military clearance would be a damn walk in the park for him.”
Six grabbed her waist and lifted her to her feet, following behind her. He retrieved the pistol from the table—handed it to her. “That’s it. Now that we’ve confirmed McCormick is ultimately behind this, we’re going someplace safer. One he doesn’t know about. In case this Slader asshole knows everything McCormick does.”
Six was already moving, dragging her behind him. “I’ll call Cannon. See if Jericho can get us access to one of the Marshal service’s safehouses. That’s probably our most secure option.”
“Actually, I was thinking we should distance ourselves from the Marshal service.” Crow stepped in front of them—kept them from pushing past. “Just in case Slader’s had someone infiltrate it since they were instrumental in taking McCormick down. Thought we’d try an organization that’s a bit farther reaching.”
“And what organization would that be?”
Crow looked over at Gibson. “I was hoping your agency might have a local stronghold we could set up shop in. Less of a chance McCormick or Slader would know about it.”
Gibson’s mouth didn’t even twitch. “And what agency would that be?”
“I might have only gotten a quick look at that list, Miller, but your name’s on it. While you were with the SRR once upon a time, you’ve been MI6 for at least fifteen years. Maybe more. Still are, from the sounds of it.”
Gibson clenched his fists, eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s a real cock-up. Did that prick, Slader, see my name? Gonna send some of his chums to my flat? Not that it would end well for them, but… I don’t want Coen or Finley hurt in the crossfire.”
“I doubt it. Bains had the information sectioned by organization, and Slader was focused on the homeland side of things for the few brief minutes we had access before the drive blew. I went through MI6 and Interpol. Wanted to get an idea of how screwed our allies would be if the list got sold to the wrong people. Besides, my gut tells me Slader will be focused on Kam and anyone standing between him and her. He won’t go looking for more targets that aren’t directly in his line of sight.”
“Still…” Gibson had a phone out, was already dialing as he scanned the area. “Coen. There’s a situation. Yeah, this wanker, Slader, might know I’m MI6. And until I can prove otherwise, we’ll assume he does. So, I want you to take Finley and Jonah and get your arses to Spokane. I don’t care what you bloody well tell them, just do it. I’ll call you, again, when it’s safe. And mate, watch your damn back.”
He cut off the call, cursing as he pressed closer to the window—staring down at the back of the warehouse.
Six inhaled then gave Crow a shove. “Shit. We need to move. Now!”
“Relax, Six, I’ve got a place…” Gibson paused, still staring outside. “Well, bugger. I hate to be the harbinger of bad news, chums, but… We’ve got company.”
Chapter Thirteen
Damn it. Six shouldn’t have let Crow stop him. Not when he’d gotten a feeling something was off. That whatever tech Slader’s goons had used to track him and Kam to the warehouse district—traffic cams or a drone—the
y’d also used it to piece together that he’d had his team return to the office. One McCormick had attacked before. Sure, they had taken the long way back—and had parked the Jeep inside. But it obviously hadn’t been enough.
And now, they were paying for Six’s hesitation. For not listening to the one asset that had saved him countless times. That was raging out of control—showing him images of blood and death. Bullets and explosions. Not really time leaks. More like snapshots of all the possible outcomes—the consequences if he made the wrong decision.
Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going to let Kam get hurt—Crow or Gibson, either. There was still time. Still resources. Six had escaped from here once before. Had taken a bullet, but they’d gotten away. And he’d kept Ellis safe. Colt, too. Six would do the same for Kam and the others. That’s the only way this was going to play out.
Gibson muttered under his breath, reaching into a pocket and removing a couple of cells. He looked at Six and Crow then tossed them over. “I took the liberty of getting you each a burner. After our last encounter with McCormick, I figured things would ultimately go sideways, and you’d all end up knowing exactly what I did.”
He sighed at Kam’s arched brow. “Sorry, love. It’s safer if you don’t have anything that could be tracked, however remote that might be. Besides, there isn’t a chance we’ll be leaving you alone.” He focused on Six and Crow. “There’s a secure location programmed into the map. It’s one of mine. Completely off-grid. Not even MI6 knows about it.”
The man rummaged through another pocket then threw Six a set of keys. “My truck’s a couple of blocks over. Northwest. White Toyota. You three take it. Leave me the set for that hunk of rubbish you’re driving, Crow. I’ll take care of these blokes then meet you there.”
“Forget it.” Six dragged Kam forward with him as he got up into Gibson’s face. “We don’t trade lives. There’re two sets of stairs down to the main floor. You and Crow go right. We’ll go left. Just try not to shoot me in the ass, okay?”