The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8)

by Brian Parker

  Through pre-planned arrangements, everyone except the newlyweds made their way separately to Peiroth, a bar inside the terminal that specialized in wine and beer. Grady and Hannah went to the restrooms, where he texted their contact that they were on the ground.

  He waited for a response—and then waited some more. After almost five full minutes with no response, Grady went out into the terminal hallway where Hannah waited for him. She leaned in close, slipping her hands under his coat and pulled him to her. Warmth flooded from her body into his and the smell of her newly applied perfume wafted into his nose, covering the scent of sweat from sitting on the plane for so long.

  “Everything okay, sweetheart?” she asked, laying on a Southern accent.

  “Yeah, darlin’,” Grady replied, adding his own crappy attempt at an accent to the conversation. “I texted our driver, but nobody’s replied yet.”

  “Let’s go get a drink then,” she murmured into his chest without releasing him.

  “Ah…” Grady said, trying to edge back away from her. There was nowhere to go; he was up against the wall.

  She squeezed him tight and whispered in her normal voice. “Just playing a part. Don’t get any ideas, Romeo.” Then she relaxed her hold and slid her arms out from around him. Her body heat was quickly replaced by the airport’s chill.

  He grunted as he pushed himself off the wall. “Where do you want to go for a drink, babe?” he said aloud. He didn’t think anyone was following them, but the terminal surveillance video would be examined in the coming months, so he thought it best to play the part fully.

  Hannah pointed toward the Peiroth, where the rest of their team was already sitting at the bar and at tables throughout the room. They walked over and waited until the hostess sat them at a table where they could see everyone except Akram Bazan. He was Muslim and typically didn’t enjoy being in bar settings. The team leader wasn’t concerned, though. Baz would show up when it was time to go.

  Grady was halfway through his second beer by the time his cell phone chimed, indicating an incoming text message. He hunched over the table and read the phone:

  “Welcome to Japan, Mr. Nelson! We have a black Lincoln Towncar waiting for you and your lovely new bride at the curb outside the International Terminal baggage claim.”

  Grady motioned for the waitress and asked for the check. When she was gone, he texted back:

  “Thank you. Did our luggage arrive safely?”

  “Of course, Mr. Nelson! We picked it up yesterday.”

  He typed a reply, hoping the person on the other end would understand that the remaining four members of his team needed to get to the US Army base, Camp Zama:

  “If I can’t find the Towncar, how will I get to the hotel?”

  “There is a hotel shuttle that runs every hour. If you can’t find me, look for a green shuttle marked Hokkaido Hotel.”

  “Good news?” Hannah asked loudly.

  Grady looked up from the phone, noticing that both Alex and Rob Carmike sat on opposite ends of the bar, but each had their head tilted toward the center of the bar to hear him speak. “Everything’s good, darlin’,” he laid on the accent once again. “There’s a green shuttle for the Hokkaido Hotel outside baggage claim. It only runs once an hour, so we should get on it before we get stuck here for another hour.”

  She nodded and slipped her hand through the strap of her small carry-on bag. He paid the bill in cash, thankful that the US Dollar amount was quoted as well as the amount in Japanese Yen.

  They followed the signs to the luggage claim area and exited through the doors to the frigid night air. Once again, Grady found Hannah’s arms wrapped around him as they sought the black Lincoln that their contact had told them about.

  “Get a room,” a familiar voice said from behind them. Grady turned to see Bazan leaning against the wall smoking.

  “Howdy,” Grady said. “Nice to meet you. I’m—”

  “Nobody cares,” Akram cut him off. The demolitions expert pushed away from the wall and snubbed his cigarette butt into an ashtray before walking back inside the baggage claim.

  “Well, that was rude,” Hannah muttered. Grady wondered if she was still playing the part or if she’d actually taken offense to what Baz had said.

  “Baz is… Well, Baz is Baz. He’s a good guy to have around when shit hits the fan.”

  She mumbled something that he didn’t catch, but Grady let it go. She’d get used to everyone’s personality quirks if she stuck around Havoc long enough. If not, it was best not to try to force it.

  “There’s the sedan,” he said, pointing at a car with a small, tasteful magnetic sign on the passenger door that announced it was from the Hokkaido Hotel—a fictional location—in both English and Japanese.

  Hannah glanced over their shoulders one last time before letting Grady lead her to the car. She’s not the type to let something like that slide.

  “Hiya, guests,” the sedan’s driver said with a thick Yorkshire accent. “Ow do?”

  Hatsuo watched the men leave from behind the bar and then pulled out his cell phone. Even though the three men tried to hide the fact that they were together by sitting at opposite ends of the bar and one of them took a table, he was certain that they were members of the same group. His job was to watch people and see how they interacted with one another, both for the safety of the other patrons as well as for his fellow workers. They’d arrived within minutes of each other, their subtle body language giving him clues as to their true affiliation with one another.

  On first glance, the three of them seemed to be as different from one another as could be. Obviously, the most different was the African, while the other two were pale-skinned; one with hair the color of straw, the other’s the color of dead leaves in the forest. But on closer observation, the three men walked with an easy, loose-jointed manner that belied their muscular frames. Many people came through Hatsuo’s bar, including baseball and football players, bodybuilders, tourists, and soldiers traveling to and from the mainland. The way all three of the men moved reminded him of the time that Matt Schneider, the mixed martial arts champion came through his bar. He glanced at the candid photo of himself and the fighter on the wall behind him. The martial artist exuded confidence and danger, while still being a likeable man. That is the feeling the three Americans had given him.

  Americans, for Hatsuo was certain that they were American, tended to treat airport bars as places where they could drink themselves into a stupor before getting on a plane or going to their hotel. Most passengers were innocuous, but at least once or twice a month, someone would become belligerent and the police would be called.

  These men did not fight or treat him with disrespect. Instead, they went out of their way to blend in. Their efforts to appear like tourists had actually highlighted their differences to him. They each had between two-to-three beers each before leaving his bar separately and heading toward the baggage claim area where the other Americans had gone after receiving a few text messages. Hatsuo grinned in spite of himself at the May-December relationship. The man with the unruly red beard looked old enough to be the woman’s father. The Japanese term for such a relationship was that the old ox was eating the young grass. The man must have money. In his experience, only men with lots of money got the beautiful young women.

  As he typed his message on the phone’s small screen, the thought occurred to him that the couple might have been with the other Americans as well. He paused and thought about the loud-talking man. The other three had seemed to listen to what he said, while pretending to be interested in the cricket match on the televisions. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that they were all together. The woman was probably his cover. His superiors would want to know that type of information.

  Hatsuo amended his message to say that five Americans had entered his bar, likely from the Washington, DC arrival flight only minutes before they showed up. They’d pretended to be separate and seemed content to drink until the older
man had announced loudly about the Hokkaido Hotel shuttle to his female companion. He’d never heard of the Hokkaido Hotel. The informant thought that was an important fact, so he added that information to the end of his report.

  He hit the send button, then put his phone back in his shirt pocket. As he wiped the bar with a damp towel, Hatsuo hummed to himself. It never occurred to him to wonder why there was a group of Americans traveling together, pretending to be separate. He only cared that he reported the information and would receive his stipend from the PSIA—the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan’s national intelligence agency.

  Hannah Dunn stared out the window of the sedan as they drove through the crowded streets. A light snow fell, reminding her of her childhood home in Northern Virginia and her hopes at every snowfall that school would be canceled for the next day.

  “You stayin’ a’ the hotel long?” the driver, a white guy with brown hair, asked in heavily accented English. She wasn’t any good with accents, didn’t have the ear for it, but she was certain that the man was from either some inner city dump in England where they barely spoke recognizable words, or from Scotland. Both of the choices offered her a small insight into what this alleged Hokkaido Hotel was: a front for the British Secret Intelligence Service.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Grady replied next to her. “What do you think, honey? Do you think a week is considered a long time when we’re talking about our honeymoon?”

  Hannah took the hint that he wasn’t ready to drop the cover; he must not be sure about the man’s level of involvement. She was new to this business, whereas her “husband” had been doing it for a long time, so she thought it best to follow his lead and leaned into him.

  “I wish we could stay forever!” she answered excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to come over here. I mean, you know, I love anime and manga of course, but everything… The bright lights, the culture, the history…it’s so exciting to actually be here.”

  She squeezed him in a sideways hug across his body and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for bringing me here!”

  “Of course, babe,” Grady replied.

  “Newlyweds?” the driver said, looking over his shoulder at Grady. “You’ll be havin’ some fun tonight then, lad.”

  Hannah put a hand up to her mouth and turned to look out the window, pretending to be embarrassed. She’d fucked a fellow pilot on a stretcher in the cargo area of his medevac bird in the middle of a dust storm with soldiers running close by as they sought cover from the dust. It’d take a hell of a lot more to embarrass her than some random guy hinting that a couple on their honeymoon would have sex.

  “How much farther?” Grady asked, ignoring the man’s jab.

  “Heh,” the driver said, making a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Excited, eh? Should be about thirty minutes or so.”

  The lights of the city began to fade as the car went further into the countryside. The tall skyscrapers were replaced by smaller, two- and three-story buildings, and finally by single-story homes set close together along the road with fields of some kind stretching out behind the houses. Hannah began to get the strange feeling that they were helpless in this man’s car. He could be a spy or an agent for any number of government entities that wanted to kill or capture American operatives. Neither of them had any weapons of any kind since they only had their carry-on bags and nothing else. Everything they needed for the mission was sitting on an Air Force pallet somewhere, doing them absolutely no good.

  She reached across and squeezed Grady’s thigh firmly. When he glanced her way, she tried to convey all of her fears in the frown and accompanying forehead furrow. He smiled and patted her hand on his leg. He didn’t seem to be concerned.

  The trip took the full half an hour that their driver had suggested. He pulled onto a gravel driveway that led through a field toward the distant mountains. A few miles down the gravel, they passed through a high chain link fence with razor wire along the top. The two guards stationed there did not attempt to stop the sedan, instead, they waived it through.

  The driver pulled the car around a circle drive in front of a large house, with several different rooflines, all of them curved, and terminating in a high peak. In the darkness of the night, the tiles looked to be a gray terra cotta that overlapped each other, similar to what she was used to seeing in Florida when she’d fly down to conduct operations with the 7th Special Forces Group at Eglin Air Force Base.

  Two more guards, men in tailored suits holding what looked to be suppressed H&K MP7s, approached the car. One went around to Grady’s side of the car, while the other went to her door and opened it.

  “Welcome to the Hokkaido Hotel, ma’am,” the guard said in what she guessed was a formal English accent, one that Hannah had heard countless times throughout the years from British actors and actresses.

  “Thank you,” she replied, accepting the man’s offered hand. She put a slight amount of weight on his wrist as she stepped out of the sedan. His arm didn’t budge.

  Grady joined her quickly and they followed their escorts up the walk. The odd driver called after them, “Remember, no snogging in public, laddie!”

  “Go on, you old arse,” the man who’d helped Hannah from the car laughed, his accent as thick as the driver’s now. He cleared his throat and replied in the formal accent once again. “Sorry, ma’am. He’s harmless, really.”

  “It’s okay. I’m used to dealing with men who act like idiots,” she scoffed.

  The man nodded, but didn’t say anything further as he escorted them inside the residence.

  The doors opened up into a massive great room. The interior of the house reminded Hannah more of a luxury hotel than a clandestine British compound. White marble tile stretched as far as her eyes could see, not her choice for a type of flooring, but it certainly had an appeal for those obsessed with cleanliness. Oversized chairs clustered in groups around low tables, creating several areas for conversation.

  Despite the late hour, a few men and women in suits rushed across the great room, traveling from one closed door to another. “Impressive, right?” the guard asked, flashing a smile that seemed to transform his already handsome face into that of a male model, making Hannah wonder just where the hell the Brits got such nice-looking guys. American soldiers, for the most part, were fairly mundane, but both of these guards were easy on the eyes. She glanced at Grady. He was handsome, in his own way, but that stupid fucking beard…

  “When’s the rest of my team getting here?”

  “The last one was picked up at the airport a few minutes ago, Mr. Harper, and they should arrive within the next couple of hours. We only have the one hotel van, so the driver had to make multiple passes to get everyone.”

  Hannah watched Grady nod his head. “Drinks?” their host asked.

  “Do you mean real drinks or tea?”

  “Tea is a real drink, Mr. Harper. However, I am asking if you would like to go to the sideboard for a whiskey—or a wine, Ms. Dunn?”

  She gritted her teeth. “I’ll have a whiskey as well, sir.”

  He smiled and led the way to a small alcove where a wooden credenza with a black marble top held several crystal decanters of liquid ranging in color from clear to deep red. The man selected an amber liquid and set it on the countertop as he ducked low to retrieve 3 glasses from behind a sliding door. He put those on the counter and poured two fingers of whiskey into each glass.

  “Now,” their host replied, handing a glass to each of them before turning back to pick up his own. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Major Ralph Alcock of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service. My role here at the Hokkaido Hotel, indeed, globally, is to protect the Crown, both proactively and retroactively.”

  “SAS, huh?” Grady grunted. “I thought you looked familiar.”

  “Pardon me?” Major Alcock replied.

  “I’m ninety percent positive that we worked at the same FOB in Afghanistan, or maybe we ran into each other in East Timor. I can’t
remember which, but you look very familiar.”

  The major looked him up and down, then did the same to Hannah. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harper, but I don’t seem to remember you.”

  “It’s alright,” Grady chuckled. “American SF guys like to blend in. My job is to look like everyone else.”

  “Yes, well… Are you still in the military?”

  “Sure, why not?” Grady lied.

  If the major caught on to his sarcasm, he didn’t let it show. “So we know each other, of a sorts, I suppose. As I alluded to, my role is to assist you with your mission to repay our common enemy for the assassination of Ambassador Kellogg.”

  Grady ducked his head down into his shoulders and looked around. “Jesus, Alcock!” he blurted out.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Harper. The staff of the Hokkaido are all in the employ of the Commonwealth, most are MI-6 in some form or fashion—even I’m not sure as to everyone’s status. Rest assured, however, that we are free to discuss any and all matters openly with no fear of discovery.” He paused. “Although, you and your team should try to do a better job of blending in. We’ve already gotten word from the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency that you were in country.”

  Grady grunted in acknowledgement. “The bartender, right?”

  Alcock shrugged. “I don’t know. Obviously, the PSIA doesn’t share their sources with us. Just try not to look so…special forces-ish.”

  Grady looked down at his chest, the muscles visible through the shirt he wore. “We can’t all be blessed with the genetics of a soccer player, Major.”

  The Brit smiled awkwardly. “Right. Are we in agreement that we don’t need to pussyfoot around and can get right down to business?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Grady said. “Where’s Groves?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Simon Groves,” Grady restated. “Where is he?”

  “I’m not sure that I know to whom you are referring,” the Brit said with infuriatingly perfect grammar.