Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7)

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Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 22

by Lisa Marie Rice


  “What are you smiling about?” she asked.

  Start like you mean to go on, he thought. Make it a habit to tell the truth.

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I was thinking you’re going to give me a hard time when you realize I don’t always eat the way you’ve seen me eat up at the Grange. Healthy eating there is easy. It’s the only kind of food on tap. But on the job, I mostly eat junk food. I’m just saying this in the interest of full disclosure.”

  “Yeah?” That pretty face scrunched up in thought. “Well, that’s going to change, but you already know that.”

  “I exercise,” he said, in self defense. It was true. He was so used to keeping fit in the military that he just carried that over into civilian life. All the ASI guys did.

  She punched him lightly in the biceps. “I noticed.”

  “Want me to make a muscle for you?” Maybe that would earn him points.

  “Nah. I’ve felt your muscles. Remember?”

  He met her eyes, so filled with light. Oh yeah, he remembered. He remembered everything. Every touch and every sigh. He remembered touching her, everywhere. Her touching him, everywhere. Touching and kissing and making love.

  Something of what he was thinking must have showed on his face because she blushed lightly. Or at least her cheeks filled with color. It was good to know that he could make this tough woman blush. But above all, he liked seeing color in her face because he could all too vividly conjure up the vision of her face so close to death, skin gray and icy-white, lips blue with cold, the veins in her eyelids visible.

  Now that he knew who she was, now that she was so precious to him, the memory made him shudder.

  “Well, since we’re doing full disclosure …” She smiled at him and he smiled back. She wasn’t dead. She was right here, vividly alive. And all his. She cocked her head to one side, a mischievous light in her eyes. “Three, two, one … I can’t cook.”

  Matt kept a perfectly straight face. “At all?”

  “At all. I can boil eggs if I use a timer and I can slice and wash salad. I try not to eat processed foods so basically at home I eat salads and boiled eggs and slices of cheese and fruit. Which is not that bad a diet. There’s an organic food section in the hospital cafeteria. I’m hoping you can cook.”

  “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Told you that. I can do even less than you do. I can order in, and nuke whatever Isabel and her interns cook. I have a very big freezer.”

  “What a couple we are.”

  He stilled, looked at her suddenly unsmiling. Her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said.

  “Are we?” Matt asked softly. “A couple?”

  It was a question with weight. He’d saved her life and he was going to do his damndest to find her father. They’d had sex. In his world, that wasn’t a recipe for coupledom. He and his teammates had rescued hostages five times, and there’d been women among the hostages. He hadn’t once pursued any of the women. They were jobs. But he’d had sex, with a lot of women.

  Honor wasn’t a job. Honor was his heart. He’d found a woman who turned him on in all senses. He found it hard to keep his hands off her, he enjoyed being around her, he liked the way her mind worked. And — besides the wild attraction — she was a kindred soul. She too didn’t like how the world worked and in her way she kept trying to put broken pieces together. Not with a gun like he and his teammates did, but with the healing power of medicine. Her moral compass ran true, just like his.

  Are we a couple?

  Matt’s question hung there in the air.

  Honor ran a hand down his arm, finishing by linking her fingers with his.

  “Yeah,” she said pensively. “I guess we are. If you want us to be.”

  “I want that.” Matt met her eyes. Such beautiful eyes. Light gray, perceptive. She held his gaze steadily. “I want that … a lot.”

  “Even though I can’t cook.” There was a slight question in the statement. One he was happy to answer.

  “Even though you can’t cook. God invented microwaves for a reason.”

  “Even though I will bug you about your health.”

  It had been a long time since anyone worried about what Matt ate. “Yeah. I’m a tough guy. I can take it.”

  “Even though —”

  The pilot interrupted. “We’re landing, guys. Strap in.”

  Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by light turbulence that had her clutching his hand.

  So she was a nervous flyer.

  Matt wasn’t. He’d flown thousands and thousands of miles strapped to a bulkhead webbing seat on C-130s. And if your time had come, there was nothing you could do about it. But he was perfectly willing to calm her nerves. He held her hand tightly as they approached the small landing field, which was lit up. The lights illuminated a grove of orange trees shuddering in the high winds.

  They came down slightly sideways, touched, bounced, touched again and rolled down the runway. A bumpier landing than usual.

  Honor’s hand in his was damp, trembling. Once the plane was rolling on terra firma, Honor pulled away slightly, sat up, rubbed her palms on her pants. “Thanks.”

  Matt was planning the next steps in his head but hit pause. “For what?”

  “For not making fun of me. I don’t like flying in general. That was something. I am not ashamed to say I was scared shitless. I’m sure you were laughing at me.”

  That pulled him right out of himself. “God no.” He leaned forward, kissed her cheek. “I wouldn’t make fun of you. Smaller planes experience turbulence more than larger planes. We weigh about a hundred times less than a Boeing 757. But no planes have ever gone down because of turbulence. The worst turbulence might make the nose go down maybe 20 feet, not more.”

  She looked at him. “Felt like a thousand feet to me.”

  “Yeah. But it wasn’t.”

  “I was imagining the pilot and co-pilot, sweaty hands on the — steering wheel?”

  He knew better than to smile. “Yoke. And no, their hands wouldn’t have been sweaty. They were probably deciding where to have dinner this evening.”

  “Oh.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Okay. That’s good to know.”

  A ping sounded in the air and the fasten seat belt sign winked off.

  “Here we go.” Matt reached over, unbuckled her belt, helped her get up. If she’d really had a fright, her legs would feel unsteady. Her adrenaline would have spiked and she’d now be in post-adrenaline shock.

  No problem. He had his arm around her waist. He’d keep her steady and he’d make sure to have a nice meal sent to her in the safe house. After a moment, she blew out a breath and he could feel strength flowing back into her.

  Matt was picking up their bags when the pilot appeared in the doorway of the cockpit. “Mr. Walker?”

  “Just Matt is fine.”

  The pilot nodded, held out a cell. “Call for you, Matt. They said they tried your cell but it was off.”

  Matt fished his cell out of his pocket. Dead. He’d turned it off automatically, didn’t even remember doing it. He took the cell from the pilot’s hands, nodding his thanks to the pilot. “Walker,” he said into the phone.

  “Matt.” He stiffened when he recognized Jacob Black’s voice. The man was a former soldier and a brother. But he was also a brother who was worth a billion dollars. Jake was an equal but as the book said, some were more equal than others. “You guys called it. I sent forty drones over the cliffsides and we hit the jackpot on the tenth cave. Not a jackpot anyone wants to hit, though. We went very deep into the cave and maxed out the dosimeters. In the meantime we found mini Geiger counters and put those on a couple of bigger drones and had readings of over seven hundred sieverts.”

  “Fuck,” Matt breathed. Seven hundred sieverts was death in thirty days. It topped the peak radiation levels at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

  “What?” Honor picked up immediately that someone was wrong. “Who is it?”

  “Hold on,” Matt
told Jake. “It’s Jacob Black. He sent his drones like you said. Found readings as high as seven hundred sieverts. That’s —”

  “That’s Chernobyl territory,” she said and he nodded. “So — what’s the theory? Your kids played in those caves? Put Mr. Black on speakerphone.”

  He did. “Is that your take, too, Jake ? That those kids somehow infiltrated the wrong cave and got massive radiation poisoning?”

  “Yeah. My guys sent those drones deep into the caves and they were equipped with lights. Deep inside the caves the radiation was at that figure, tapering off at the entrance. The kids must have gone exploring. Maybe went back day after day. Got exposed.”

  “Was there anything visible in the caves?” Matt asked. Was the source of radiation still there?

  “Negative. But something had been there, very definitely. There were truck tracks down to the first curve in the cave walls, then tracks of what must have been electric carts. Deep inside there’d been something stored there — there were round imprints in the dust where the dust wasn’t disturbed. Those round imprints went way way back into almost the heart of the mountain. Canisters, Matt. A lot of them. All gone now. One of my operators talked to the chieftain of a neighboring tribe and he said a convoy of trucks went by three weeks ago.”

  Matt breathed out slowly. “On their way here, I’ll bet you anything.”

  “Wouldn’t bet against you, Matt. I’ve got four operators on their way up to you from San Diego in a helo. With hazmat suits for you guys. They’ll be in touch soon.”

  He felt something ease a little in his chest. Dante was here and so was Luke. The ASI guys were almost here. The Black Inc operators were on their way.

  “We’ll wait here for them.”

  “Roger that. ETA forty mikes.”

  “Copy that,” Matt said and closed the connection.

  Inside an hour, a formidable team would be here.

  But shit happens and shit happened.

  He’d turned his cell on and it pinged. Felicity. He put it on speakerphone so Honor could hear.

  “Matt!” Felicity sounded winded, unusually agitated.

  “Hey. You okay?” Honor turned the cellphone towards her. Felicity’s agitated face appeared on the screen. “Everything okay with the twins?”

  “Great. Listen, bad news. I did a routine check of ports and the Maria Cristina landed an hour ago at Long Beach instead of its scheduled arrival tomorrow at the Port of Los Angeles. Hold on.” Honor turned a terrified face to Matt. The ship had already landed! “I grabbed some security cam footage. Honor, your father is there. You can see him at one minute forty-five seconds into the video I’m sending now.”

  Matt was horrified. Radiological material — no one knew how much but Jake seemed to think it was a lot — had just landed on US soil.

  The cell’s screen showed video footage. It must have been about an hour ago, at nautical twilight. The sodium-vapor lights along the waterfront were already lit enough to see a medium-sized modern cargo ship with the hold doors open and trucks rolling down the ramp and onto the pier.

  Truck after truck.

  They landed on the pier and turned right. Standing there, watching, were four men. Three had on either baseball caps or boonie hats and sunglasses, though it was nearly dark. They kept their faces down. The fourth man raised his face to the sky twice, after the man next to him bent to talk into his ear.

  Honor gasped. “Dad! That’s Dad!” As if to banish any possibility of mistake, her finger tapped on the screen right over the pale face that lifted to the sky. “Oh, my God. He’s there with them!”

  She sounded heartsick.

  Matt bent down until his lips touched her ear. “They told him to look up, honey. The other men have caps on and they’re keeping their faces down, but they told him to look up so he could be identified. He’s being framed.”

  She looked up at him, angry tears in her eyes.

  And another truck rolled out.

  Port of Long Beach

  Ivan Antonov watched the trucks roll off the boat and onto the pier, easy as anything. The sky was dark blue edging toward black, with the lights of Los Angeles a glow on the horizon.

  Soon those lights would be switched off and where there had been light would become darkness.

  He smiled. Such poetic thoughts, though he thought of himself as a very pragmatic man. You don’t change the course of history with poetry but with planning and foresight.

  Still. The thought of Los Angeles and the surrounding area switched off forever gave him a great deal of pleasure. The moment he and his men dumped the canisters of liquidized cesium-137 salts into the water supply and helicopters dispersed radioactive liquid over the city would be a major cut-off point, after which nothing would ever be the same. Like the attacks on Pearl Harbor, like the assassination of Prince Ferdinand, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  Everything changed forever.

  It pleased him so much to think of the panic. Americans became upset when their burgers weren’t cooked as they liked. There were stories of Americans calling their emergency number, 911, when a fast-food place ran out of ketchup. Any minor inconvenience was cause for panic. They didn’t have the iron discipline of Russians. No discipline at all, in fact. They would never have withstood the three-year siege of Stalingrad, as his countrymen had. Three years of starvation, of eating rats and sleeping in rubble during freezing cold winters, all the while resisting. No, Americans would have surrendered after day two of a siege.

  They were so risk averse. This would be a no man’s land forever.

  “Sir?” Antonov turned to see one of the truck drivers, a young man from Novosibirsk. Siberians were born and bred tough and Antonov had made sure to recruit from the north. These men knew exactly what they were carrying and were being paid accordingly.

  However each and every one of them carried American ID and they were dressed in clothes bought at Old Navy and Target. If they died, there would be nothing to identify them as Russians. Not even military tattoos. Antonov had recruited men whose bodies were sterile.

  They were also brave.

  It would have been far too risky to have men driving trucks in hazmat suits. The exposure had been carefully calculated. It was a different team of men from those who had driven those trucks onto the ship. The ship’s crew was mainly American, the captain American and they hadn’t been told anything. These drivers, who had been waiting in a comfortable safe house in Los Angeles for weeks, would be very amply compensated for a short period of exposure. The canisters were encased in lead containers. They would reach a warehouse not too far from the major water pumping station. They would don hazmat suits and mix the salts in water to make a liquid. The liquid would be loaded onto tanker trucks and four helicopters whose cargo bays had been equipped with tanks.

  Most of the radioactive liquid would be dumped into the pumping station, while the helicopters would criss-cross Los Angeles, dumping radioactive water. Helicopters flew all the time, they wouldn’t be stopped. By the time authorities noticed that massive amounts of radioactive material had been dumped in the Los Angeles water basin, and all over the city, the trucks and helicopters and the men would all be long gone. The men would disappear forever, millions of dollars richer.

  Antonov looked over at Simon Thomas. Thomas, on the other hand, would be immediately suspected of organizing the attack. People who knew him might protest his innocence, but who would believe them? There would be documents attesting to Quest Line Shipping’s massive debts. He’d facilitated the shipment every step of the way. His fingerprints — quite literally — would be all over the attack.

  Antonov had on a baseball cap and was dressed in American clothes. There was absolutely nothing to distinguish him, in terms of appearance, from an American. The same with the crew. He never looked up, but told Thomas to look up every few minutes until darkness fell. The security cameras would have captured his pale worried face many times.

  Lee Chamness was waiting for them at
the staging area. They’d be operating in the dark, everyone equipped with night vision goggles. The security cameras all along the route had been disabled.

  In and out, leaving devastation behind.

  The last truck rolled off the ship. Ten trucks, each carrying two hundred canisters. An even ton of radioactive material. Enough for a very small Armageddon. Certainly enough to lay waste to the City of Angels.

  Excellent, for a night’s work.

  Small airfield, Los Angeles

  Jacko and Joe Harris, who had been teaching combat firearm techniques to the San Diego SWAT team and had rushed up, arrived two minutes later on a helicopter. Matt called it a helo. There was a large black SUV already parked on the tarmac.

  Jacko and Joe descended from the helicopter with two heavy bags that clanked. Matt unloaded a heavy bag from the back of their business jet that clanked, too.

  She was not loaded for bear. She wasn’t loaded for anything and she didn’t want to be. All she wanted was to be near her father. Or at least in the same city. Just in case.

  They were fitted with what Matt called ‘comms’. A tiny bud in the ear that transmitted surprisingly clearly. You switched it on and off by tapping the tragus.

  And now their well-organized plan had been shot to shit.

  “Fuck!” Matt looked like he wanted to punch something. “Felicity! Someone needs to call NEST headquarters now! These fuckers are rolling!”

  “Negative, Matt.” Felicity’s voice was super clear. Not agitated. Sad. “Someone already has. Turns out budget cuts have decimated NEST. They only have three active teams and two have been called out.”

  “Fuck.” That was Jacko’s basso profundo. “False calls. What about the third one?”

  “In Maryland. They’re in the air but it will take them eight hours to get here.”

 

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