He shakes his head and walks into the room. There’s a long table with four people sitting at one end. Clive takes a seat at the head then he points at me. “Everyone, this is Angus ‘Archon’ MacKenny. Angus, this is everyone.”
Sean holds out his hand to a woman in her twenties. “I’m Sean MacKenny. This is my brother, Kyle.”
The woman looks up at Sean and then to Clive, who nods.
Tentatively, she holds out her hand. “I’m Sarina Tallisker.”
“No way,” I reply.
She grins at me. “Yes way.”
“The thing you did on the IRS was gold! So simple, so elegant. I wish I’d done it.”
Sarina goes red and looks embarrassed. “It’s what got me caught.”
“Really? That’s a damn shame.”
Clive clears his throat. “Very good, you have a mutual admiration society going on. Can we get on with it, please?”
Sarina grins at me, and I sit beside her.
Sean and Kyle remain standing.
“Why are you here, Archon?” asks one of the people sitting at the table.
“Were you all black hats?” I ask, and they all nod. “But now you work for the government?”
“It’s not like we had a choice. Work for Uncle Sam or go to prison. I’m small, petite even. I wouldn’t do well in prison,” replies one of the men at the table.
“I’m Angus.” I look at each of them, and they all look at Clive.
“Fine. Introduce yourselves.”
“DB Hooper.”
“George Smith.”
“Steve Irwin.”
The rest of the names mean little to me. The only reason I know Sarina’s name is because it was plastered across every chatroom for months. I’d heard she went to prison. I guess working for the NSA is better, but who the hell knows.
“Right, now that we all know who everyone is, let’s get to it.” Clive clasps his hands in front of himself and leans forward, looking at me expectantly.
“Wait.” All eyes go to Kyle. “We need some assurances first. My brother does not go to jail, and neither do we.”
“I’m not interested in either of you,” replies Clive, with a flick of his hand. “But Angus, here, has gotten away with things for far too long. I’m guessing you’re here because you need help. I’m prepared to help you, but I’ll want some assurances in return.”
“Such as?” asks Kyle.
Clive ignores Kyle and stares at me. “You will work for me.”
“You don’t even know what I have or what I want.”
Clive shrugs and repeats himself. “You will work for me.”
I look down at the carpet.
Is Tula worth all this?
Then I remember her warning. Locutus is a terrorist. He wants the locations of the bases. Find me.
Taking a deep breath, I nod. “Fine! I’ll work for you.”
Clive smiles. “Good. Now, what’s the problem?”
“Landru has been taken by Locutus. He murdered a friend of mine to get to her.” I look at Clive, who shrugs. “Landru thinks he’s a terrorist. She discovered some military bases in third-world countries that are running off-book experiments.”
Clive says nothing as he continues to stare at me. I break his gaze and look at the others seated around the table. “She contacted me via the dark web and left me a trail. I’ve traced it back to her location, but we don’t have the manpower nor the expertise to get in and get her out without getting her or us killed.”
A telephone behind Clive rings. His lips turn down as he stands and answers it. He says nothing, only nods his head as he listens to the person on the other end of the line.
“What the fuck is going on?” I ask Sarina.
“It’s all a game. I don’t think they expected you to come clean so fast. We’ve been tracking Locutus for a while.” Her gaze drops for a moment. “And you, too. You’ve been on their radar for six months. They’ve been working on getting something on you. Sorry, Archon, you’re in deep now.”
Clive hangs up the phone. “Come with me.”
We all stand, and he holds up his hand. “I just need Angus. The rest of you stay here.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” asks Sean.
“You don’t have a choice. You came here for my help. Now, stay. Sit.” He sneers at Sean and walks out of the room.
“He’s right… I don’t have a choice.”
“Like fuck you don’t. We can walk out of here right now.”
“And what happens to Landru?”
“Brother, I know you’re fond of the girl, but you don’t know her,” states Kyle.
“I do know her. I know she helped us when she didn’t have to. I know she trusted me enough to meet. I have to help her.”
“Fuck it.” We all look at Sean. “He’s right… we have to help her. We owe her.”
“She’s not family.”
Sean shrugs. “No, she isn’t, but she helped our family. Angus is right… we owe her.”
Not wanting to argue with them anymore, I stand and walk out into the hall. Clive is standing at the other end. Hurrying down toward him, he opens a door and walks through. When I enter the room, there are two other people besides Clive inside—a woman in her forties with short blonde hair and a man in his fifties with a scar that travels from his temple down his neck and disappears under his white, collared shirt.
There are forms on the table. The older man throws a pen toward the papers. “Sign them.”
“What are they?”
He shakes his head. “Sign them, and we’ll help rescue the girl.”
I pick up the pen and take a deep breath. Slowly, I pick up a form and look at it. I knew one day I might get caught, but I’ve always had contingencies. Turning myself in and working for the NSA was never something I’d ever contemplated.
The woman moves closer and places a hand on my arm. “I know what you’re thinking.” I look her in the eyes. “I do.” She smiles. “You’re thinking you can still find a way out of this. I want you to know, Angus, or do you prefer Archon?”
“Angus.”
She smiles more broadly and nods. “Angus. We had you. Your little exploits over the past eighteen months, we had you. You infiltrated the U.S. Marshals in pursuit of your brother, Maddock. It was only a matter of time before we moved in and destroyed your life and probably the lives of your brothers. All of them. Even the farmer.” The smile disappears, she straightens her shoulders, and her gaze goes steely. “Sign the fucking forms, or I’ll go after everyone you hold dear. I don’t give a flying fuck about your girlfriend. Sign. The. Forms.”
Laughter bubbles up out of me, real side-splitting laughter. Tears run down my cheeks, and I point a shaking finger in her direction. “You know you almost had me.” I stop laughing and wipe my face, then I move into her personal space, my face only an inch from hers. “You never had me. Not even close. You blew it when you said you didn’t care about my girlfriend. If you’d been close to me, at all, you’d know she’s not.” It surprises me a little that they knew I had hacked the U.S. Marshal database looking for Maddock. I had flushed and deleted everything.
She scowls at me and steps back. “You still need our help.”
“You overplayed your hand.” I toss the pen on the table and let the piece of paper fall to the floor. Grinning at her, I turn and walk out of the room. I get halfway down the hallway before she walks out.
“Stop.”
I turn, and she’s standing there, one hand on her hip, looking all kinds of pissed off. She looks back into the room and nods, then walks toward me. “You will work for us.”
“You’ll save the girl?”
She hesitates. “We’ll try.”
“Not good enough.”
“It’s the best I can do. Come on, there’s a lot you don’t know.”
When we walk back into the room, only Kyle and Sean are in there. The computer nerds are gone. She walks in and sits at the head of the table, so I sit to her le
ft next to Sean.
“My name is Charlotte Manning.”
“No shit?”
A small smile slips across her face. “No shit.”
I grin and look at Sean, then Kyle, and they both shrug. “Come on! Do you two live under a rock? Charlotte Manning? She’s brought down more hackers than anyone. No one knows what she looks like or where she lives.” I point at her. “She’s a fucking ghost.”
“Can she help us?” asks Kyle.
“The base that your friend discovered is indeed a U.S. Army facility…” Charlotte pauses. “But they only provided the muscle. The facility was run by a private corporation that was supposed to be working on advanced research into rapid healing and battlefield injury management to create a super-soldier, but they discovered something else.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
She gives me a tight smile and nods. “Three weeks ago, one of these facilities was hit by, what we now believe, was a terrorist organization.”
“What did they get?” asks Sean as he sits up straighter.
Her gaze goes to Sean, and she nods at him. “The soldier.” Sean nods once. “As a result of the research, they created a bioweapon that targets genetic markers.”
“Such as?”
Charlotte looks at all of us, then back to Sean. “It is capable of targeting specific DNA.” Sean says nothing but continues to stare at her. Charlotte takes a moment, then continues, “It could detect a family bloodline. They could wipe out an entire family.”
“Fuck me,” mutters Kyle.
“The facility that they hit has the weapon, but they need to distribute it. It’s why they want the next target. Give us the location of your friend, and I’ll give you my word that we’ll try to rescue her.”
“You’re not interested in saving her. You just want your bioweapon back,” states Sean.
“The bioweapon is our immediate concern, but we’ll try to rescue the girl.” Her gaze comes back to me, and Charlotte sighs. “You don’t really have a choice. Who else can you go to?”
“Landru will not face criminal charges.”
Charlotte turns her head to the side and purses her lips. “What do I get?”
“You get your weapon and the bad guys.”
Charlotte shakes her head. “I want you.”
I glance at Kyle, who barely shakes his head in the negative, but I know if I don’t comply, Tula is as good as dead.
“I’ll do you a deal. Save Landru, and I’ll willingly come work for you.”
Charlotte Manning stands and walks into the hallway. We can’t see who she’s talking to, but she’s nodding and shaking her head. After a five-minute conversation, she comes back into the room. Her dark gray suit jacket is now unbuttoned. Charlotte leans on the back of the chair with one hand on her hip, her gaze landing firmly on me.
“The best I can guarantee you is that we’ll try. I’ll send in two teams. One specifically for her rescue and the other for the bioweapon and terrorists. Either way, you come to work for me.”
I nod, and Kyle pounds his fist down on the tabletop. “No.”
Charlotte smiles and straightens up. “Tell you what, Kyle. You let him do this, and I’ll forget about your old lady and the fact she falsified birth records.” Then she looks at Sean. “And I won’t look too deeply into Senator Towell’s suicide.”
Kyle and Sean both stand. My brothers aren’t to being threatened, not by anyone, including the federal government. It’s true, Kyle’s woman, Lola, had a son at home when she was young, and her junkie mother claimed the child. As for Sean, he was in the Senator’s home when he met his timely demise, but he didn’t kill him. The stupid bastard accidentally killed himself, but Sean was there to do the deed.
I stand, holding up my hands, then I extend one to Charlotte. “Done.”
Kyle growls as she puts her hand in mine.
“It’s done, brother. I’ll be fine.”
Sean pats me on the shoulder, and I know he’s already thinking of ways to fuck Charlotte Manning up.
“Give us the location.” I nod, and Charlotte smiles at me, making me think I’ve just done a deal with the damn devil. “You’ll enjoy being a white hat. It feels good to be on the right side of the law.”
“The same side that developed a bioweapon. Yeah, I’m sure he made the right decision,” sneers Sean, the sarcasm dripping off him.
Angus
Sean and Kyle went back to the MC compound while I got to sit in a room with Charlotte and a group of other white hats. They used satellites to see how many people were in and around the building where I had traced Tula’s message back to using my location software program.
“What’s Landru’s real name?” asks one of the computer hackers.
I shrug. “Don’t know. We only ever used our hacker names.
He smiles at me and nods. “Smart. Landru is smart. I believe you when you say she didn’t share her name, but you? You would’ve told her yours. Don’t lie. With all your family around, she’d know who you are.”
I nod. “Yeah, I guess.”
These people were all once like me, and maybe in time, I’ll be the good little robots they are, but I’m not there yet. My gaze is fixed on the satellite image of the compound in front of me. Charlotte has a headset on as she walks around the room, listening to the chatter of the tactical teams that are en route. It’s nighttime, and they’re gearing up to propel in from a chopper. I stand and pace back and forth in front of the screen.
“How long have you known Landru?”
I glance at the nosy fucker and shake my head. “Not long.”
“From the chatter on that site, it seems like you’ve known her for a while.”
I shrug and pay him no more attention. Instead, I fix my line of sight on Charlotte Manning. She nods and holds up a hand to me, then she takes off the headset. “They’re going in.”
I sit back down and watch as three helicopters fly into the compound. Charlotte flips a switch, and we can hear the soldiers as they sound off one by one.
“Can we speak to them?” Charlotte shakes her head. “How come there are three?”
She glances at me and then puts her headset back on. “Two teams for Landru.”
I frown at her. “Two teams?”
“She managed to find out all our secrets. I need to know how.”
I smile at Charlotte, and she ignores me, her mind firmly set on the mission.
“Echo team in place.”
“Bravo team in place.”
“Delta team in place.”
The sound coming through the speaker is crackly, and the entire team in the room has gone silent as they listen to the men proceed into the building. I’m holding my breath, waiting to hear any news of Tula. I haven’t used her actual name since I walked into the NSA building with my brothers. If I can protect her, I will.
There are six men on each team. All the men have cameras on their helmets, but we’re only seeing through the eyes of the team leaders. I’m sure someone somewhere can see everything, but we aren’t privy to that.
“Who’s getting all of the feed?”
The nosy hacker looks at me. “Army.”
“Are they in this building?”
“Why?”
“They might miss something. We should be looking at all of it.”
Charlotte leans over me and flicks a switch. Eighteen cameras fill the screen directly in front of me. It’s too much to take in all at once, so I close my eyes, take a deep breath, then check each camera feed one by one. They’re jogging in or holding positions. My attention is drawn to one man who has a dog, and even he has a camera attached to his gear. The dog pauses in front of a grate in the ground, his handler bends and pats him, the dog lays down, and he signals for everyone to give the grate a wide berth. Charlotte puts a headset in front of me as she walks past. I slip them on, and I’m listening to the command center as they issue orders to their special forces teams.
Charlotte sits next to me and po
ints to one of the feeds. “He’s third in line.” Then she points to another feed. “He’s Bravo team leader. These guys are the best of the best. His call sign is Boss, and occasionally, they refer to him as JT. He’s in charge of this operation. There’s no one I trust more in the field.”
It’s fascinating to watch as they move forward, and they tap each other on the shoulder to indicate if they are moving past each other. It’s like watching a well-oiled machine at work. Their feed shows them moving from room to room. They don’t encounter anyone or anything in their path.
After twenty minutes, JT’s voice comes over loud and clear. “This is team leader, Cap. We got nothing. There’s no one here. Are you sure the intel was good?”
Charlotte looks at me.
“It can’t be right. I traced the IP address to that location. It’s still online, so they have to be there.”
“Could they have fooled you?”
I point at the nosy fucker. “Your people double-checked me. She’s there. They’re all there.” I scrub my hand over my face. “Can I speak directly to the men?”
Charlotte taps a button on her headset. “This is Manning requesting to speak directly to the team leader.” She reaches up and taps a button on my headset. “You’re good to go.”
“Ahh, hello. To the guy with the dog, you there?”
“What the fuck is this command?” asks JT.
“Higher-ups requesting to talk to you. Tone it down, team leader,” replies a gruff voice over the headset.
“Dog handler, you there?”
JT turns, and his camera lands on the man and his dog.
“Dog handler here.”
“Your dog—”
“His name is Perses.”
“Sorry, Perses. He sat down before you entered the building. Why’d he do that?”
“Normally means explosives.”
“Could it be something else?”
I watch as he frowns at JT. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Underground facility?”
It’s weird watching the men talk to me but see it through the eyes of another person.
“Command, we’re going back for another look.”
“Roger, team leader. Proceed.”
When they get back to the grate, the other teams are surrounding it.
Spark of Deception: MacKenny Brothers Series Book 4: An MC/Band of Brothers Romance Page 8