by Cindy Gerard
Rafe checked out the vehicle that sat several rows down from them. There were two men inside. “Recognize the car?” Rafe asked B.J., who shook her head and started filling her magazine.
“Doesn’t belong here,” she said.
“Let’s see if they want to play Follow the Leader.” Rafe pulled out of the lot and eased onto the street.
“Yep,” Reed said after they’d driven a couple of blocks and the Buick fell into the line of traffic behind them. “Bastards want us to lead them to Steph. Looks like it’s time for fun with Dick and Dickhead. Better buckle up, B.J.,” he added with a grin. “Nothing the Choirboy likes better than putting on his Dale Earnhardt face.”
Rafe punched the gas, swerved between two cars, and hung a quick left on a yellow light at the next intersection. They took the corner on two wheels as horns honked, brakes locked, and fists shook.
Couldn’t be helped. The streets were congested here. The last thing they needed was for bullets to start flying and for some hockey mom to catch a round.
“And?” Rafe asked as he barreled down a side street.
“And the guy can drive. They’re still with us.”
“Hook a left, then a right,” B.J. said, twisting in the seat to see how close the tail was. “Drive about a mile and we’ll get out of the thick of the traffic. If I remember right, there’s a block of condemned buildings, old manufacturing plants. Should be an alley we can pull into.”
“I love a woman who’s into showdowns.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Rafe said as he alternately gunned the motor and stood on the brakes as he maneuvered the two turns, “Reed has never met a woman he didn’t love.”
Reed swore after looking behind them. “Those SOBs are sticking like ticks. Like to know what they’ve got under the hood.”
They hit a series of potholes, jolting them against the seatbelts as Rafe flew through a red light. The nose of the big Suburban scraped the pavement when they hit another dip and he had to wrestle the wheel to keep the car under control.
“Up there,” B.J. said, pointing to the right.
Rafe slammed on the brakes, cut the wheel sharply right, and nosed the Suburban into the narrow alley.
Reed reached behind him into the cargo area and grabbed an M-4 assault rifle. He handed it over the front seat to Rafe and the three of them bailed out, took defensive positions at the front of the vehicle, and waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. The Buick roared past, slammed on the brakes, then backed up when its occupants spotted the three of them in the alley.
“Fifty yards?” Rafe asked, sighting through the M-4’s scope.
“Give or take,” both B.J. and Reed said at the same time.
“Piece of cake.” Rafe set the rifle to full auto, then emptied a full magazine into the Buick.
The concussion of sound was deafening as round after round pummeled the car, shattering windows, blowing tires.
“Jesus,” Reed swore, sticking a finger in his ear as they watched the Buick limp away as fast as the two flat tires could take it. “I’m going to be deaf for a fucking month.”
“Say what?” Rafe asked with a grin as they hauled ass back into the SUV.
“We gonna finish it?” Reed asked as Rafe pulled out of the alley.
Down the street, smoke billowed out of the shot-up Buick; sparks flew on the pavement as the metal wheel rims spun on ruined rubber.
“They’ve called reinforcements by now. Let’s just get back to Gabe’s and get Steph moved before they catch up with us again.”
They arrived back at Gabe’s apartment with a minute to spare on their twenty-minute limit.
“Any problems?” Nate asked when Reed called to let them know they were outside.
“Nah. But I am going to file a complaint with the city about the potholes,” Reed said, then laughed when B.J. rolled her eyes.
Two minutes later, Stephanie, flanked by the BOIs with guns drawn, hurried outside and into the cars and headed out of town to the safe house.
Testosterone. Testosterone. Testosterone. These guys had it in spades, B.J. thought as she sat with them at a huge oak table and observed their briefing session at the safe house. When they moved, they moved fast, as was evidenced by the fact that it had only been two hours since the lot of them had delivered Stephanie to the safe house with the precision of a well-oiled machine.
A military machine, B.J. couldn’t help but think as the three-car caravan had employed dozens of evasive tactics to ensure that if anyone was tailing them, they were subsequently lost in a sea of traffic and exhaust.
Jones had just arrived for the tail end of the briefing. The safe house was a small one-story ranch in the country, far outside the Beltway and well beyond the Maryland suburbs. It was isolated but defensible— the point men in the group had been busy and had assembled a small arsenal and enough ammo to ward off an invasion if it came to that.
As soon as they’d arrived Green and Savage had gotten busy placing trip wires and motion sensors around the perimeter to alert them to any unwelcome guests. Doc and Sam Lang had set up a laptop computer in the main living area, then connected it to the surveillance cameras that they’d mounted on all four corners of the rectangular house. B.J. had also noticed that the house was situated near a crossroads in the event they had to make a quick getaway. No one was going to get within one hundred yards of the place without detection.
The refrigerator and pantry were well stocked. One of the three bedrooms had been set up as an intelligence center complete with a desktop and another laptop computer, high-speed modems, and cloaking devices to keep uninvited cyber eyes from intercepting their communications. Stephanie was, at this moment, searching and analyzing the data on the flash drive she’d smuggled out of the NSA.
The entire setup was impressive, though how they’d managed to arrange this in advance of Stephanie’s arrival was baffling. Just another reminder of the expansive resources and network of Black’s operation and of the Tompkinses’ clout.
B.J. looked around, trying to get a better read on the men gathered there beneath an overhead light that was centered above the table. Outside the late-morning sun shone bright, but it felt more like evening inside. The shades were all drawn and the curtains all pulled tight.
Nathan Black made a formidable presence in the room. She judged the tall, and she suspected deceptively slim, man with the dark hair to be in his mid to late forties. His calm, controlled demeanor was that of a natural leader. The rough-and-tumble men sitting around the table clearly thought the former marine non-com officer walked on water and made it rain, and those men were no shrinking violets. He was all hard angles and intense eyes, except for a moment when Jones asked him about a woman named Juliana. He softened then—only a little—but B.J. caught it and the fact that this Juliana meant something special to both Black and Jones.
Wyatt “Papa Bear” Savage, she’d been told by Mendoza when he’d made introductions, was former CIA. He was a big, burly man with a soft southern drawl and a pleasant and unremarkable face most people wouldn’t remember. A highly desirable trait in a CIA operative or a black operator. Savage seemed more than content to occupy that background position.
At first glance Johnny Reed—whom the rest of them often referred to jokingly as Golden Boy or “dead bachelor walking”—appeared to be a lot of flash and swagger and little else. But the thing B.J. recognized was that this was an elite group of men. They would suffer no fools. That told her that there was much more to the former force recon marine than met the eye. She also recognized that the ridiculously flirty grins he occasionally shot her way were mechanisms he used to ensure that others underestimated him.
Luke Colter, whom all the guys called Doc or Holliday, was a former navy SEAL and the team medic. He had a tall, rangy cowboy look going on and was almost as big a flirt as Reed. But there was intelligence and passion behind his easygoing smiles and she had no doubt that he was, also like Reed, an invaluable member of t
he team.
Mean Joe Green—it seemed most of them had a nickname—was a hard one to get a read on. Like Savage, he was also former CIA. He was silent, thoughtful, and if his skin wasn’t so clear and she wasn’t certain that Black wouldn’t tolerate it, she would have sworn that the man was on steroids. He was built like an Abrams tank and without a doubt, she would not want to be on his bad side.
Aside from Mendoza and Jones, the final man at the table was Sam Lang. From what she’d gathered, Lang, former Delta and almost as tall as Jones, was no longer with the team. He’d retired recently to raise horses and babies in Nevada with his wife, Abbie. Apparently, however, Stephanie’s troubles had lifted the moratorium on his combat days. B.J. had gathered that he’d left a very pregnant Abbie behind and joined the team at Abbie’s insistence. It was yet another indication of how important the Tompkinses were to these men.
These were the men she’d been ordered to work with.
It could have been worse. Sherwood could have taken her off the case altogether. After Caracas, it wouldn’t have surprised her if he did. So she was grateful that she was still on board—if not resentful at the shift in power to Black’s crew.
“So,” Black said, after Mendoza had filled in the entire team with the sketchy details, “in a nutshell, what we know is that we’ve got stolen E-bomb technology floating around the world. We have a traitor at NSA who intercepted and hid cyber-traffic that should have been passed on to DOD alerting them to the theft of the technology. We know that the same traitor was most likely responsible for ordering the hit on Stephanie. We have Alan Hendricks, Steph’s supervisor at SI, acting suspicious, so we have to figure that at the very least he knew about the leak and was covering it up, or was involved in some way. But then Hendricks ends up dead, either deemed nonessential or a screwup by whoever is pulling the strings.
“What we don’t know,” Black went on, “is who’s pulling the strings and what they plan to do with the technology.”
“And when they plan to use it,” Mendoza added.
Nate looked grim when he turned to B.J. “Get Sherwood on the line. While I’d sure as hell like to give them a target and a date, it’s time for DIA to alert the Joint Chiefs that we’re facing the very real possibility of an imminent attack.”
An hour later, after Black and Sherwood had talked for the second time, Black said, “Here’s how it’s shaking down. Sherwood ran the info up the chain of command. With no established target, no established attack date, and no real handle on the viability of either the functionality or the method of delivery of an E-bomb, we’re still in fact-finding mode. DOD, however, will jump-start a covert top-security-level internal analysis, but they’re expecting us to continue to run our off-the-grid investigation.”
Which meant, B.J. knew, that everyone was relying on Stephanie to uncover something for them to work with as she continued to wade through those encrypted messages.
Her phone rang right then. It was Sherwood again.
“We’ve got a name for the shooter,” she told the group, hanging up after Sherwood had filled her in on the positive ID. “Zach Loeffler. He’s in the system as a known gun for hire. They were able to trace him through ballistic matches from the slugs they recovered from his Steyr. It’s custom made and apparently his signature weapon.”
“Loeffler. Name sounds familiar,” Mendoza said thoughtfully. “We need to access our database, see what we can find on him.”
Black nodded at Reed. “Get Crystal on it.”
“Might be better coming from you,” Reed suggested.
Doc made meowing noises and punctuated them with a grin. “Pussy. The man is afraid of one hundred pounds of dynamite,” he informed B.J.
“Damn right I am,” Reed agreed without apology. “You’ve never seen my fiancée ticked off. I have. Right now, she’s royally pissed that we cut her out of this op.”
“Guess we know who’s going to wear the jockstrap in that household,” Doc added, to which Reed just flipped him the bird.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet,” Mendoza told B.J., “Crystal is soon to have the undesirable title of Mrs. Johnny Duane Reed. She’s also the newest member of the team. She took over the commo and security systems and is working on our data files.”
“Guys.”
Conversation around the table stopped when Stephanie walked into the room. B.J. couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for her. The dark circles beneath her eyes were evidence that both stress and fatigue were taking their toll. The tightness around her mouth relayed the pain her wrist must have been giving her, especially after she’d been working the computers.
“You okay, Steph?” Black rose and went to her, his brows drawn together in concern.
“I’m fine.”
Stephanie had just scored more points in B.J.’s book. She was far from fine but she was holding up.
“I might have found something,” Stephanie said, “but I’m not sure what it means yet. And I won’t know until I talk to a friend of mine, Ben Brommel, who works at the Pentagon.”
“Steph,” Black cautioned her.
“I know. You don’t want to take the chance of someone finding me through a phone call, but it’s critical that I speak with him. And Ben’s okay. I’d trust him with my life.”
Black looked from Mendoza’s concerned expression to the rest of the sober faces circling the table.
“I can get Sherwood to run a quick check on Brommel,” B.J. suggested, recognizing that they were waffling for Stephanie’s sake but knowing that time was critical.
“And waste more time,” Stephanie protested. “Look. Trust me on this. Ben is solid. Sic DOD on him if you must but do it later. I need to talk to him now.”
After a brief hesitation, she got a nod from Black.
“Use my secure phone.” B.J. handed Stephanie her cell phone.
“Answer no questions,” Black warned as Stephanie headed back toward the computer room. “And keep it as brief as possible.”
14
Ura!
Everything from her fingers to her toes and parts in between had tingled with alarm the first time Stephanie had read the translation over a week ago:
Ura. The Russian army battle cry traditionally thought to mean “Hurrah!” Coming from the Turkish word for “kill.”
Kill.
She’d known then … known deep inside that B. J. Chase had been right, that someone inside NSA was a traitor. She still couldn’t believe it was Alan. And that he was dead. That someone had tried to kill her. Her wrist throbbed and ached, reminding her she had reason to believe it and more.
It all seemed like a nightmarish dream. What she’d just uncovered after finally cracking the sub-code of the deleted messages were dozens of communiqués from a base in Russia to an address that she still hadn’t pinned down. There were still a lot of puzzle pieces missing but she had high hopes that Ben could give her the final one.
She drew a deep breath as she waited for him to answer.
“Brommel.”
She jumped when he finally came on the line. “Hey, Ben. It’s me.”
“Hey, you. How’s the spy business?”
It was a standing joke between them. He’d ask about her job and she’d reply, “The spy business is its usual virtual snore.” That was because day after day, week after week, month after month, decoding and deciphering reams of encrypted cyber-communications was about as far from playing spy as Ben was from being straight.
“I need your help,” she said. “And I need you to not ask questions. I’ve got a problem. A big one, and for now, I really need you to just trust me. I’ll explain everything later.”
“Okay,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “What do you need?”
She pulled some key words from the communiqués in question and read them to him. “Do these terms mean anything to you?”
“Jesus, Steph,” he whispered so tightly that she could visualize him, shoulders tensed, head low, as he hunched ove
r his cell phone. “Where the hell did you get that? No one—and I mean no one outside of a very tight, sworn-to-secrecy-or-they’re-gonna-die group—is supposed to know about that project.”
“Then why did I pick up the lingo on a coded communiqué that originated in Russia?”
Silence, then a weakly uttered, “Mother of God.”
Stephanie had no sooner left the tension-filled room than Reed asked cheerfully, “Anyone but me hungry?”
They were big, active men. Stood to reason they’d have big appetites, B.J. thought, and she very much doubted that any of them had had more than coffee for breakfast.
“I could eat,” Savage said.