By design, all this luxury came with no exposure. Any five-star hotel would have required documents and contact with a front desk. The opulent mansion had been booked via Airbnb. There had been no physical contact at all, just a fake credit card in a fake name with real money in the account, booked via a fake email address. Once booked, they’d been given the address, with the keys in a hidden lockbox just outside the gate. They’d been provided with the code to open the lockbox and they’d taken possession, and no one on earth knew where they were.
Antonov and his men had disabled the security cameras, the cars were kept in the underground garage, the pool was under a portico so not even drones could see them.
“Drink up,” Chamness motioned with his tumbler and Ivan obediently drank. The whiskey went down very smoothly. It should. Chamness had told him with pride that the bottle sold for four hundred dollars. And yet it went down like any five dollar bottle of vodka.
Chamness had been CIA and when they’d met in Afghanistan, he’d looked like anyone caught in a dirty, dusty, endless war. He’d looked like Antonov. Filthy, bearded, grime caught in every crevice of their exhausted faces, dust-covered boots, clothes that stank of old sweat. The only clean thing their weapons.
Two soldiers from developed countries fighting Bronze-age goatherds. And losing.
It had destroyed the Soviet Union and it was destroying America.
Antonov had been undercover as a Bulgarian military contractor and had been told that Chamness was corruptible. He’d facilitated shipments of heroin, which to Antonov didn’t mean corruption. You’d have to be crazy to be in Afghanistan and not be involved in drugs. There was nothing else, just stones and goats.
So Antonov had made a proposal that was irresistible and Chamness hadn’t resisted. Not for one second. He’d heard the plan and instantly embraced it.
The fact that it would lay a segment of his own country to waste didn’t stop him for a minute. Good thing, too, because Antonov had had strict instructions to terminate Chamness if he refused. No one could know about the plan.
Chamness definitely hadn’t refused.
No Russians were to be involved, except for Antonov and a few of his men sent for security. The bulk of the plan was to be carried out by Americans. American fingerprints all over the place.
A genius plan and perhaps the last shove necessary to push the Motherland’s oldest enemy right into the abyss.
He sipped the whiskey and looked out over the stressed-wood terrace and infinity pool, out past the wooded hills dotted with outrageously expensive mansions connected by winding roads full of late model luxury cars.
A sea of lights, an inverted starry sky. More lights on the ground than up above, colorful, beautiful. In the distance, he knew, were the skyscrapers of central Los Angeles, modern monoliths, lit up like spaceships.
A very pleasing sight.
Oh yes.
Though soon — in three days, actually — everything Antonov saw would be a wasteland. Or rather, Antonov wouldn’t be seeing it in person. They had set up cameras all along the perimeter of the house and at strategic places in trees overlooking vast stretches of territory, and he would be observing the chaos and panic and destruction in the flatlands below from a distance.
They would also remotely send up cubed drones and keep track of the devastation.
From outside the country.
In a sunny climate on a white sandy beach. Though lately he’d been thinking — maybe he’d be observing it from a room in the Kremlin.
In the last couple of weeks Antonov had had a very good look at how the idle rich lived and it wasn’t attractive. It was empty. He knew this was Lee Chamness’s ideal life, full of luxuries, with a staff quivering with eagerness to please. Every experience a peak experience. The finest food, the finest wine, the softest chairs, the silkiest sheets …
A world of soft down instead of iron will.
To his surprise, Antonov preferred iron to down. Preferred the company of disciplined men to the pampered and manicured and massaged men of Hollywood, who depended on a vast ecosystem of luxury and services to exist.
Just before the end of his war, Antonov had spent ten days in the Hindu Kush after his helicopter crash landed, pursued by savages. He’d barely survived but he had survived and was the stronger for it. Hard men, men he admired, treated him with respect when he had limped into the base, emaciated and dehydrated but alive.
He belonged to a fraternity of hard men, survivors, that no amount of money could get you into. You joined that club through sweat and blood and will. You couldn’t buy your way in.
So — maybe after all this was over, he’d be joining the ranks of the men organizing the new world order. An order where the iron men of Mother Russia reigned supreme and America was a vanquished country.
“Ivan.”
Even Chamness’s voice was weak — a languid treble. They were planning an attack that would bring the world’s pre-eminent superpower down and Chamness sounded like he was at a cocktail party ordering another mojito.
Antonov turned, his face bland, the contempt he felt nowhere visible. He merely raised his eyebrows in question.
“Captain Perry just reported in.” Chamness stopped to light a cigarette from a gold Cartier lighter, flipping the top closed with a light click and inhaling. Making the act of lighting a cigarette an exercise in style. The information regarding the progress of the ship was essential, but Chamness turned it into theater.
Antonov waited patiently. His patience would be rewarded. He didn’t answer, simply waited for Chamness to continue. They looked at each other.
“Everything on schedule,” Chamness finally said. “No problems en route.”
Unsurprisingly, it had been harder to find a corruptible Navy officer than a CIA official. Antonov’s partners had had any number of sailors ready and willing to do off- the-books navigating for shockingly small amounts of money, but Antonov also needed an officer. A man who could command a container ship. He’d finally found one, Lieutenant Commander (retired) Marcus Perry, who was undergoing a vicious divorce. He said his wife was making off with his house, half his pension and his balls.
He’d leaped at the opportunity to make a million dollars over the course of two weeks. He had an inkling of what the ship was carrying but had demonstrated exactly zero interest.
Half the promised amount was in his name in an overseas account and that was all he was interested in.
If the American authorities backtracked to the source of the attack, they would find the bridge of the ship covered with the fingerprints of a retired Navy Commander and his American crew. Several of them had been recruited from disgruntled and cashiered CIA agents.
An American presence was the most important thing. The blame would be cast on homegrown terrorists. It would be vastly destabilizing. Even better, homegrown terrorism with an establishment pedigree — the Navy. And the owner of a well-known boutique shipping company. Antonov was delighted that a former Navy Commander would be considered one of the authors of the most vicious attack on American soil in history. Casting the attack on Pearl Harbor in the shade. It would throw the American government into a state of crisis like no other event in their history.
Alas, Chamness would never be investigated. He made that a condition of his help with Al Rashid. Chamness was clever and understood the basics of the plan immediately. He also immediately covered his ass, as the Americans said. He would cooperate, sneak the material out from under Al Rashid’s misshapen nose, help on the ground, at a cost. Fifty million dollars and Antonov’s word as a gentleman that his role would never be divulged.
Antonov had had no intention of keeping his word until Chamness had said that hard evidence — video footage and voice recordings — of Russian involvement was already in the hands of a lawyer, and that if he didn’t send a message to the lawyer once a week via encrypted email, the information would go straight to The Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Le Monde.
Possibly sparking off a war.
Antonov and his backers wanted America brought low, not retaliating. Reluctantly, Antonov arranged for Chamness to have safe passage and agreed never to seek him out afterward. He was certain Chamness had his own post-apocalypse plans and that he was going to live out his days in luxury in some sun-dappled paradise.
The thought was irritating.
“Are the trucks and agitators ready?” Antonov asked.
“Oh yes.” Chamness’s mouth lifted in a half smile. Waiting. Was he expecting praise for doing his job? The job he was being paid millions to do?
Antonov gave a brief nod and walked out of the room.
God save him from weak men.
The Grange
Everyone left. Honor’s hands had started trembling, eyelids drooping. Matt had abruptly stood up and sent everyone packing.
Her memory was coming back and she had more of a sense of who she was. She knew that this weakness wasn’t normal. She had images of herself working well past exhaustion, yet still completely functional. She didn’t do weakness but here she was, knees trembling, almost unable to walk a straight line, as if drunk.
She stopped halfway across the Great Hall on the way to what she now considered ‘her’ room and swayed. Her body was almost completely out of her control.
She hated it, but was helpless to do anything about it. The exhaustion was mental and physical and there were no reserves in her. None at all.
“The hell with this,” Matt said and swung her up in his arms.
It should have been awkward but it wasn’t. Her arms found themselves around his neck, forearms lying along the strong muscles of his shoulders. The instant he lifted her, her body relaxed, certain that he could carry her.
He could.
“I can walk.” It came out a whisper against his corded neck. Her lips were so close to his skin she could feel the heat. Smell him. He had an amazing smell, like iron and leather, with a touch of wood smoke. There was a big fireplace with a huge burning fire in the Great Hall.
“No. You can’t.” He strode across the Great Hall as if she weighed nothing. “I’m surprised you stayed upright as long as you did. You gave everyone a lot to go on but you were hanging on by sheer grit. You’re never going to recover if you push yourself this hard.”
All she heard was that she gave his friends a lot to go on, even if she didn’t really remember everything that she’d said. That was really weird. She’d managed to get through medical school just fine. Medical school was essentially one long test of memory — and an ability to see blood without feeling queasy.
This fog in her head was awful, but fighting it didn’t help. It only made things worse.
Matt bent his knees, pulled back the covers with her in his arms, and lay her on the bed. She tried to sit up in bed but didn’t have the strength.
“Here,” he said and pulled her gently up against the pillows he stacked against her back.
Honor instinctively put her hand out, palm up. And he took it, settling into a chair he hooked with a booted foot. The contact was electric, like she’d been plugged into a socket. Strength and heat surged through her and shocked her awake, as if she’d been sleeping.
Matt settled in the chair and looked like he had no intention of getting out of it soon. His eyes were riveted on her face.
She studied him, as if seeing him for the first time. He looked so rough, sitting there, legs splayed, torso leaning slightly forward. His hair was too long and unruly, curling darkly around his face and touching his broad shoulders. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and faded jeans and hard black boots . Dressed for construction, or maybe combat, since he was a soldier. Or had been one.
Metal and Jacko treated him with easy friendliness but he kept himself a little apart. He spoke of the company, ASI, as if he were part of it, but if he was, why wasn’t he going to work? When he saved her life, he’d been fishing. The day she ran away from her captors and was rescued had been a Tuesday. It was Friday now. She’d asked, because there wasn’t anything up here to mark time’s passing.
So what was an obviously super fit and capable man doing fishing on weekdays up in a luxury mountain retreat?
He had a tension about him which she recognized. She sometimes had the same tension, and it came from a job that pushed you to your maximum limits.
There was a story there and she wanted to know it.
Because the truth was, she was attracted to this man. Really attracted. When he touched her, it was as if she were being brought online after being shut down. It had been a long time since she’d felt this tug, she knew that. At the moment, she couldn’t actually remember any of her former lovers, not in any detail.
She knew every detail of his face.
He was sitting next to her and they watched each other. It wasn’t embarrassing, though with someone else it might have been. He fascinated her and she clearly interested him.
There were lines in his face that gave him character but that also looked recent. From his body and the way he moved, he was still a fairly young man, but his face looked older, as if he’d been through hard times.
Honor was used to understanding people at a glance. Everything about a person who came into the ER was potentially vital information, so besides using her instruments, she checked eyes and the movements of hands and body. Matt wasn’t giving her much, though he seemed perfectly healthy. Stronger than most people, actually. But he was always so still when he wasn’t doing something and he was hard to read.
He wasn’t a happy man, though. That much was clear. There was some trouble there.
“Can I ask you a question?” Her eyes never left his.
“No problem.” Matt’s voice was deep and calm. “Ask me whatever you want.”
He let go of her hand and opened his hands on the blanket, as if catching a question. Ask me what you want. An invitation. He took her hand again.
Oh, God. She’d felt cold and bereft for the short time he wasn’t touching her. Once her hand was safely in his again, she felt warm and safe and alive.
Her sense of well-being was now defined by physical contact with Matt Walker.
Another Matt Walker side effect was that he calmed her mind. Since gaining consciousness, Honor had tried and tried to probe the past two weeks, trying to overcome retrograde amnesia.
There were tantalizing glimpses but they came with a price. The more she concentrated, the sharper the pain in her head. At first, it was a popping sound, distracting and unpleasant. But soon it turned into a loud buzzing in her head. Painful if tolerable, at first. But the more she tried, the harder she focused, the greater the pain until there was nothing but sheer agony so intense she thought her heart would burst.
But not while Matt Walker was touching her. Crazy. With her hand in his, the piercing pain abated until it was a distant nuisance and she had a sense that maybe those lost days could be hers again. That the impenetrable wall separating herself now — broken and beaten — from the Honor of before could be breached.
The pain was bearable as long as he was touching her.
He was tough and unkempt and looked nothing like what a Guardian Angel should look like. Guardian Angels should at least shave once in a while, shouldn’t they?
But there it was. Some broken bits of her soul were soothed by this rough man.
He didn’t say anything, just watched her. Didn’t fidget, didn’t ask what she wanted. No, he was completely still and just held her hand.
“Why did Jacko ask how long you were going to sulk up here?” She’d overheard Jacko asking Matt.
The question was blurted out and Honor was mortified. She wanted to gently probe, find out more, find the answer in a roundabout way. Ask discreetly.
This was so unlike her. Or she thought it was unlike her.
“S-sorry,” she mumbled, knowing her cheeks were red. Which was strange enough in itself. Honor never blushed. She’d seen it all in the ER, nothing shocked or embarrassed her.
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br /> Under the black scruff covering his face, she discerned a line running down his lean cheeks.
“Are you asking whether I’m sulking or why I’m sulking?”
It might or might not be a smile. Just to be safe, she smiled back. The dents deepened. “Both.”
He gave a deep sigh. “Well, I don’t like to think of it as sulking but it’s true, I’m fine up here on my own, without seeing other people —” this time the smile was a full one, his lips curving upward, “— present company excepted.”
She nodded.
“My separation from the Navy was … not a happy one and I’m taking some time off just getting my head around some stuff. Don’t know if that makes sense to you.”
Honor nodded again, eyes never leaving his. “Makes a lot of sense to me,” she whispered. And it did. Something had happened to her, too, that she had a hard time wrapping her head around. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was, and trying to remember was like driving spikes into her own head, but whatever it was had been serious, and had made her deeply unhappy.
Matt’s gaze sharpened. “Are you remembering something?”
Blood and tears and shattered bodies … Honor’s eyes closed but she could still see terrifying scenes on the inside of her eyelids. A little girl looking up at her, blinking …
The pain was so strong she wrenched her hand out of Matt’s and held her head as if her hands were the only thing keeping her head from exploding. A moan escaped her.
“Hey. Hey.” Matt kept his voice low and gently pushed at her shoulders until she was leaning back fully against the pillows. “Don’t push it. I was reading up on ketamine and the side effects aren’t fun. You need to let time do its work and to wash it out of your system.”
Honor turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. “I feel … a sense of urgency. And I also feel like if I push it, my head will explode.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. So the answer is to relax and let things come to you.”
Honor frowned. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 10