“Who is the silent partner?” Zangar demanded to know. There was no hint of laughter in his voice now.
“The Russian mafia. They’ve already kidnapped Senator Leonard’s staff assistant and cut off her hand and delivered it to the senator. They mean business. The money that they gave him, he wants back, with the profit he was promised when the tariffs were lifted. You weren’t the only ones he let down. You’re not paying, so Devon’s bright idea is to kill you and renegotiate with the president of SA Investment Bank.”
“Why do they think that our bank president would negotiate with them?”
“It never hurts to have an American senator on the payroll.”
Zangar shrugged. “This is true.”
“How do you come by this information?” Amir demanded to know.
“We know who was hired to kill you,” Clint said easily. “For enough money, they talked. We will suggest they continue with their mission if you don’t do the deal with the people we represent.” Clint leaned back and crossed his arms.
“So you are telling us this out of the goodness of your heart?” Zangar asked skeptically.
“No, we want you around because we think you’re the ones who can pull off our deal. But at the same time, the fact that you’ve been played by the Wonder Weasel doesn’t give us a big feeling of security.”
“How would you suggest we handle the senator and his little worm?” Amir asked.
“Twist them harder. You have the power on your side if we take away the hitmen.”
“And all you want is us to consider doing business with you?” Zangar was still skeptical.
“Well,” Clint stretched out the word. “It would be nice for us to have a senator beholden to us as well. And I would like the lunch you promised.”
This time both Zangar and Amir laughed. “You are funny. I would like to do business with you. I would consider telling you even more than you already know about the senator, if your deal sounds lucrative.”
Clint pushed at Drake with the toe of his Italian leather shoe. “You awake yet?”
“Huh?” Drake said drowsily.
“You might want to get your ass up off the floor. We’re talking business and you’re going to miss lunch.”
Zangar gave a chin tilt to Thug Number One who took his foot off of Drake’s neck.
“Your plan?” Amir asked.
“You have the opportunity to make just as much money with us as you ever did with the senator. You realize the US can’t sell crude outside of the States and Mexico. Our employers are losing out big. We have a way to sell it internationally, but it requires your help.”
“You have a way to smuggle out the oil, to Kazakhstan?”
“That’s the beauty of the operation. At sea, we would just change over the tankers to Kazakhstan ownership. That allows us to ship overseas. There’s no need for the ship to ever go to Kazakhstan—it goes straight to the buyer. You take the money and funnel it back to the consortium. You’re just the men who can get this done for us.”
“That has possibilities,” Amir said.
Possibilities my ass. Amir was practically drooling. Good, if Drake and I can pull this off without fucking up our covers, all the better.
“The Russian mafia is going to be a small problem. Do you have any ideas on how that might be taken care of?” Clint looked back and forth between the two oligarchs.
“We just might have some old friends who can assist with that,” Zangar smiled.
23
By the time they got back to their hotel room, there were three new bugs to deal with. Clint decided to leave them as they were until they were ready to call Lydia and update her. At that point, he would again turn on the blocker.
First, he wanted to go over everything she had found in the WhatsApp chats and see if he agreed with all of her analysis on this deal and if there was anything else the little demon spawn was working on that needed to be stopped.
“I’m calling for room service,” Drake said. “Lunch sucked.”
“What are you talking about? It was great,” Clint grinned.
“Sure, for you. You didn’t have a headache from hell. I could barely eat, and that’s not like me.” Drake threw the room service menu at Clint and he grabbed it. He told Drake to order him a steak, then he hopped back to it. Drake placed the orders and managed to sit still and quiet for almost ten minutes.
“Whatchya doing?” Drake asked.
Clint shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows. Drake went to Clint’s suitcase, found the blocker, and turned it on. “Give. I missed shit while I was unconscious. So what are you doing?”
“I’m checking in with Lydia and seeing if weasel dick has any other side gigs going on that we should know about. I’m telling her about me making up the Russian Mafia connection.”
“Yeah, I heard that part, it was brilliant,” Drake grinned as he crouched in front of the mini-bar.
“I’m worried that part might blow up in our faces. They might have too many contacts in Russia and might find out it’s not true.”
“Sounded good to me, my man,” Drake said as he unwrapped a huge chocolate bar. “I especially liked the plan our supposed consortium came up with to sell crude oil worldwide. You have the makings of a supervillain.”
Clint grimaced. “Great, just what I want on my resume.”
“Clint, that’s really good news. Dude, your brain is at one-hundred and ten percent capacity of what it was before the explosion. That was classic Clint Archer in action.”
For just a second Clint allowed himself to feel good about what Drake was saying. He had felt pretty pumped as he’d come up with that shit off the cuff. It had seemed to impress the Kazakhstani men.
After Drake put in the order for food and ate some nuts and cheese from the mini-bar, he sat back down with his feet up on the coffee table. “So tell me what’s eating you. Is it Lydia? Is it this op?”
“Nothing big, I just want to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row for tomorrow’s meet. When we talk to Lydia tonight, I’m positive she’ll be able to give us all the backstory we need to make the bullshit I came up with solid. I just want to ensure that Amir and Zangar give us everything, and I mean everything, they have on the senator’s activities. We can’t leave a stone unturned if we want to double-back on them and give them the squeeze. I want them so goddamn scared of us that they’ll be puckered up at the idea of your tape being out anywhere. They need to know you are the Big Dog.”
Drake laughed as he finished up his food with some mineral water. Any kind of liquor wasn’t advised at this point, since they needed to be on top of their game at all times. Which just made Clint all the more pissed at himself for working too hard on the code.
Not smart.
“I’m going to turn off the blocker, we’ve had it on long enough,” Clint said as he bent to switch off the blocker. Then his phone rang before he could. He grinned when he saw it was his woman.
“Hey, Lydia, it’s three in the morning there, I just e-mailed you what went down in our meeting, I figured you could work on that while we were sleeping.”
“Yeah, I read it. That was damn good thinking. Now I want to talk.”
Clint took his hand away from the switch and settled back into the couch. “Okay, talk. I’m going to put you on speaker, okay?”
“Yep.”
“So what do you want to know?” Clint asked.
“Why was Devon going to arrange the hit? Why not just have the senator arrange the sanctions?”
“Beats me. As far as I’m concerned, these guys are on par with the Russian mob. I wouldn’t want to be on their bad side,” Drake said after he swallowed.
“It has to be that the senator can’t get the sanctions lifted, and he and weasel dick know it, and they know that there is no other alternative but a slow death if they fail for a second time,” Clint said thoughtfully.
“He’s the majority leader, why would he fail?” Drake asked. He was looking at his w
atch, obviously waiting for the food.
“Could it be someone in Congress or the DOJ has him under watch?” Clint mused.
“You know who would be good to ask?” Lydia sounded excited.
“Conroy,” Clint said. “I haven’t talked to him in over a year. Does he still know what’s going on in D.C.?”
“Are you talking about Declan’s guy?” Drake asked.
Clint nodded, but his focus was on his conversation with Lydia.
“He definitely knows what’s going on, especially now that he’s working with Liam McCallister. Between the two of them, they have D.C. and the Pentagon gossip covered.”
“Okay, go fishing,” Clint said with a smile. “If for sure Senator Leonard can’t deliver, then we know the reason for the hit on our new Kazakhstani friends. In the meantime, besides Devon’s ick, ick love life texts, what else have you found?”
“He’s a gambler. Plays poker. Loses. He needs this money bad. So when you said that the Russian mob was out after the Senator and him, you weren’t far wrong. It’s the American mafia that is out to get Devon if he doesn’t pay up soon. They too are being promised a piece of the senator. I’m telling you, the way Devon works, he has divided up that guy like a California sushi roll.”
Clint heard a knock on the door. “Hold on a minute, Lydia.” Drake got up to let the waiter in with the food. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the man took two covered trays off the crowded trolley and put them onto the table in their room. Clint motioned for Drake to come back to the couch. He wanted him to listen to this next part.
Drake signed the check and ushered the man out, then came back to Clint and the phone.
“So, we need to figure out why or if the senator can’t deliver on the sanctions to the Kazakhstanis,” Clint said. “If that’s what’s going on, then we know why they want them killed. But Drake will still be on the hook because the next thing you know he’ll be asked to kill mob guys who own his gambling debts.”
“Got that in one,” Lydia agreed.
“Fuck me. Can’t I just kill him and be done with it?” Drake complained.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Clint started to say.
“I can’t be listening to this. I don’t care if I’m using a secure satellite phone, I can’t be hearing this, so shut up Drake. The answer is no.” Lydia was getting pissed, and Clint was getting a hard-on. “Let me get with Conroy, I’ll find out what’s going on in D.C. In the meantime, you two stay safe. I love you guys.”
“But you love me more, right?” Drake asked.
“Ahhhhh, not really?” Then Lydia laughed.
“Love you, Clint.” Then she hung up.
Drake tilted his chin to the blocker, and Clint shut it off. They got up to get their dinner. As soon as Drake took off his lid, he started swearing. “Really? Who would order clam chowder while in Kazakhstan? Where the hell is my meal?”
Clint stared at his lid, hoping his steak and mushrooms were underneath. He uncovered it and found what looked like Kazakhstan’s version of SpaghettiOs. “Ah, damn. Me too. See if you can flag down the trolley guy. He’s probably giving our orders to someone else.”
But Clint was talking to thin air. Drake was already out the door. “Hey!” he yelled down the hallway of the hotel.
He heard Drake yell again, but this time it was different. He watched as clam chowder and SpaghettiOs spewed up into the air like they were spat out by geysers, then he was slammed to the ground. The splat of gooey mess hit him as he was scrambling to get back to his feet. He looked around the room in a panic.
Why was he seeing a concrete building?
Why was he seeing himself falling?
He was going to die.
“Clint!”
Someone was calling his name. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t know where he was. He was standing covered in red and white. Was that blood?
He smelled smoke.
“Clint, hurry. If they’re alive, they don’t have much time!”
He heard the words above the roaring in his head.
He jabbed at his clothes, trying to get the blood off him but only managing to smear blood and brains into the fabric.
Oh God.
He looked at his hand and the smell of clams hit his nostrils.
Clams.
Kazakhstan.
Explosion.
Drake!
He headed for the hotel door that was askew and slammed through it. There was smoke pouring out of a room at least six doors down. Drake must be in it. SpaghettiOs? Kids.
Clint ran as fast as he could to make it to the door.
“Drake!” he yelled.
He heard crying. The room was filled with smoke. It had to be a suite laid out like theirs. The table would be in the far corner near the window. He could feel the bite of the bitter winter air coming in, which was just making the fire worse.
Drake came out through the smoke carrying a small body. Please God say they’re alive.
“There’s a baby in the other room.”
Drake tried to hand off the injured child, but he was holding onto Drake like a little monkey, his arms and legs wrapped around him.
“I’ll go,” Clint said as he sped by them.
The fire was going to engulf the entire room and soon spread to the other rooms on the floor. Where were the sprinklers? Where was the alarm?
Just as he was thinking that, the sprinklers came on and frigid cold water doused him. He heard a young child or baby screaming at the top of their lungs as he opened the door to the bedroom. Not much smoke, so he easily found the crib. When he picked up the child, they squalled and squirmed and did everything possible to get out of his hold.
“Not now,” he muttered, as he plopped the kid onto the bed with the now-wet sheets. He swaddled him or her up, and made a run for the entrance to the hotel room. It was an inferno. It seemed to take forever to make it the four meters.
People were milling outside the room. A woman grabbed the child from Clint. Another woman was still trying to extract the child from Drake. “The parents?” Clint demanded.
“It’s too late,” Drake said as he finally handed off the child with a look of grief.
“Steak?” Clint asked.
Drake nodded.
Clint started toward their room. He knew that Drake would be behind him. They had outstayed their welcome and two kids were orphans because of it.
24
They’d taken the time for a camp bath in their room and changed their clothes. Drake and Clint’s eyebrows were both singed, and Drake was bleeding from his knee and his elbow where he had been slammed into the food trolley. The waiter, long gone.
Patched up and cleaned up as best as they could, they high-tailed it to the airport to catch the next flight out of Kazakhstan. They didn’t care that it was going to Chicago instead of California—anything to get them to America. Clint left Lydia a message about what was going on.
Not even seeing Drake stuck in a middle seat, squished between two equally large men could bring a smile to Clint’s face. Face it, he was still shocky from going through another explosion, and the idea of the mom dying in the explosion was killing him. Devon and the senator are going down!
He didn’t trust himself to close his eyes and get some sleep. He knew damn well he’d wake up with a nightmare, and the last thing they needed was Clint trying to take one of the passengers down in a choke-hold. Knowing this, he’d picked up five magazines at the kiosk at the airport before boarding the airplane. There wasn’t even one about cars or computers; all five of them were gossip rags.
God, what he wouldn’t give to be playing on his computer right now. Just playing. A video game, something that he and Lydia used to do all the time. He shoved his thumb and forefinger along the bridge of his nose. What was it that Lydia needed to tell him? Didn’t she know that he lived with life and death all day long? His priorities were straight. Loving Lydia was set in stone and nothing on God’s green earth was going to chang
e that. Unless…unless…she didn’t love him?
He swallowed, and it felt like shards of cut glass were coating his throat.
God, Lyd, just tell me.
He looked down at the magazine and started to read about who wore it best.
Lydia was reading the report of the explosion in the Kazakhstan local newspaper with a translation app. It was devastating. They still weren’t divulging the names of the victims, but they did say that two unidentified heroes had gone in and saved the two children, then disappeared. There were searches out for the two men so that they could be rewarded.
Sure there were. They just want to take them in for questioning, don’t you lie to me.
The guys should be landing in Chicago in three hours. Clint hadn’t booked them any further than that, probably just ecstatic to get the hell out of the country before another attempt was made on their lives. One that actually worked. Lydia had scored them tickets from Chicago to Palm Springs. No need for a rental car when they got there because they would be met with an oh-so-happy-and-not-happy welcome party.
Me!
She had nine hours to get to Palm Springs, and it was a four-and-a-half-hour drive. Enough time to try to figure out why Clint’s new best friends tried to off him. Now that Richards had solved the Satanic Voices case—Score Richards! —Lydia had time to focus on Alice’s case. Maybe she could bring Melvin in on things.
“It feels like an oven,” Drake groused.
Clint was so tired, he was having trouble walking a straight line, but even so, he had to agree with his friend. After the frigid temperatures of Kazakhstan, the sunny day and almost seventy-five degrees felt almost sweltering. This was not helping him to stay awake. But at least he hadn’t fallen asleep on any of the flights and had a nightmare. What’s more, he was pretty sure he knew everything there was to know about the Kardashians.
Since this was the first time they’d had an opportunity to really talk since they’d left Kazakhstan, they compared notes.
Her Unbroken Seal: A Navy Seal Romance Page 18