Deadline

by L. T. Ryan

  Deadline

  a Jack Noble novel

  (Jack Noble Book Eleven)

  By:

  L.T. RYAN

  Copyright © 2016 by L.T. Ryan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. For information contact:

  ltryan70@gmail.com

  http://LTRyan.com

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  Note: Full table of contents available at the end of the book or through your e-reader’s menu.

  Start Reading

  Other Books by L.T. Ryan

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  Jack Noble Series in Order

  The Recruit (Short Story - Free for newsletter subscribers)

  Noble Beginnings

  A Deadly Distance

  Thin Line

  Noble Intentions

  When Dead in Greece

  Noble Retribution

  Noble Intentions Betrayal

  Never Go Home

  Beyond Betrayal (Clarissa Abbot)

  Noble Judgment

  Never Cry Mercy

  Deadline

  CHAPTER 1

  The sedative they injected into me prior to boarding the Gulfstream G650 knocked me out cold before the flight from Texas to who the hell knew where departed from a private airfield somewhere north of Dallas, Texas. I’d been there twice before. Both times while working for Frank Skinner and the SIS. It seemed fitting that we used it as the first step on a journey to see Frank, presumably for our final meeting.

  Waking up hours later as the jet touched down, I felt the full hangover effect of the knockout drug. At least it made it easy to forget about everything that had happened over the past few days.

  To forget them.

  To forget her.

  Especially her.

  It was futile to dwell on it. The FBI had made Reese McSweeney vanish. She was out of my life. Again. Somehow I always figured we’d meet again. We had one shot. And we’d blown it.

  Nothing new there.

  We should’ve left Texline when we had the chance.

  I sat in the rear seat of the sedan with an agent on either side. The windows were blacked out, and a divider separated us from the front. I couldn’t see a damn thing. The Feds weren’t much for conversation, either. They didn’t even crack a smile at my recent bad dad joke repertoire. It made it difficult to ascertain where the hell we were. The end destination had been made evident by my brief conversation with Frank. Based on that, I figured we were somewhere in Northern Virginia.

  Frank had been placed in charge of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Special Operations Group. Didn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to assume that my escorts were his men, and that we were en route to his office.

  One of his offices, at least. The kind of place the rest of the world assumed was a farm, but underneath the barn or the house was a labyrinth of Agency offices and interrogation rooms. I, like others before me, would learn my fate there.

  What did Frank have planned for me? We’d last seen each other a few months ago. Our farewell consisted of me holding a pistol to his head. The only thing that stopped me from pulling the trigger was that my daughter, Mia, stood thirty feet away. I saw the fear in her eyes. She hardly knew me as a father. I sure as hell didn’t want her to remember me as a monster. So I let Frank live. I knew then that it was a mistake. Things weren’t the same between us, and hadn’t been for years. Tension escalated every time we were near each other. I could’ve ended it there. I should’ve ended it.

  I assumed, since my identity had been exposed while in Texas, it had landed me on a watch list. One that Frank had access to due to his position in the CIA. He used resources to determine the credibility of the report, then acted on it. At least he’d left me enough time to clean up the mess in Texline.

  I had to be prepared for other outcomes of our pending meeting. I’d pissed off plenty of people over the past decade, and performed enough shady deeds for even shadier individuals that any city, state, or federal agency would want to bring me in. Frank was the only one with a solid motive, though.

  Instinctively, I glanced at the side window as the vehicle slowed to a stop for the first time in over an hour. The blacked out glass revealed nothing. One of the men, a bald guy with bushy eyebrows and a tattoo behind his right ear, glanced at his phone. He leaned forward, made eye contact with his partner. They both nodded.

  We were close.

  A wave of panic traveled through my body, numbing my fingers and toes. I took a deep breath, relaxed my arms, legs, chest and abdominal muscles. The feeling slipped away. I had no control over whatever was about to happen. My job moving forward was to react. Whether that was to an attack, or just information, was to be determined. I prepared for either.

  The ceiling vents stopped spitting out cold air. In its place was a warm stream that smelled like gasoline and oil. The men squeezed in close to me. If I started to move, they’d know.

  The vehicle turned left and right a few times. I pulled up a mental map of Langley, tried to match our changes of direction with streets, and the accompanying buildings, training facilities, housing. I recalled what was underground as best I could. And hoped that we wouldn’t end up down there. It was an exercise in futility. We could have been back in Crystal River, Florida. The turns would line up the same. It was impossible to tell with any accuracy.

  The guy with the tattoo lifted his phone to eye level and poked at it with his index finger. After a minute, he lowered it, grasped it with both hands, and typed out a message with his thumbs. He used his hands to block the screen from view. For a few moments the haptic feedback tone was the only sound inside the car. We’d come to another stop. The engine idled quietly.

  I counted the seconds in my head. Thirty, fifty, ninety. Tattoo played on his phone, no longer hiding the screen. No need to. Angry Birds was hardly anything to conceal. At least if he was twelve it wouldn’t be. His partner stared straight ahead. I didn’t bother to ask what was going on. They weren’t going to let me know.

  The front passenger door opened. The vehicle dipped to the right, then rebounded, swayed side to side for a few seconds. I strained to hear footsteps, couldn’t make out any. The inside of the vehicle must’ve been soundproofed. What else was the car used for? Transporting foreign dignitaries? High profile refugees and asylum seekers? Double crossing agents coming over to our side?

  Our side.

  Made me want to laugh and puke at the same time. I’d reached a level in intelligence where there were no sides. No good versus evil. Just a bunch of bad men doing bad things all in the name of an ideology that no one at the top believed in anymore.

  And for a guy like me, one that worked on the inside, and outside, who sold himself to the highest bidder and was willing to do any job, none of it meant anything. Give me an order, pay me enough, and I’d execute any command, and any person.

  But the truth was that used to be me. Now, I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I’d reached a point where my only goal was to drift and disappear with Mia. I realized we should have left together, rather than taking a few months to let things blow over.

  It all led to me stuck in the back of a government sedan, parked outside of God knows where. Presumably I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to figure that part out.

  The rear passenger door opened, and I squinted in anticipation of sunlight flooding in. Didn’t happen. Dim yellow fluorescent light was the flavor of the day.

  Tattoo
exited the vehicle first. He stepped out, turned, leaned in, then gestured with his pistol for me to follow him. His partner remained seated, hand hidden inside his jacket. I climbed out and glanced around the parking garage. There were two similar cars parked there, and a Mercedes in the corner. Couldn’t fit much else in there. It was smaller than I expected, which meant we were near one of the less frequently used offices.

  The kind of place few people like me walked into, but when they did, they were brought out in a body bag. If they left at all.

  Four agents boxed me in and led me forward. It wasn’t until we neared the steel doors set into concrete walls that I recognized where we were.

  It wasn’t Langley.

  Hell, it wasn’t in Northern Virginia, either.

  They’d taken me to New Jersey. And I stood in the parking garage of the now-defunct SIS headquarters.

  CHAPTER 2

  We walked through the hallway, and into a series of memories. Ones I’d fought to forget over the years. For all the good we did during my time in the SIS, there was no fooling anyone that we were a bunch of choir boys. We had been able to operate without restriction Stateside, and elsewhere. Rules rarely applied to us. I’m sure that made Frank Skinner an appealing candidate to head up the SAD-SOG. He’d run a similar operation with a much smaller budget, and much less backing from the politicians. He was unstoppable now.

  The carpet in the corridor had been ripped up in favor of concrete. Chemical-laden air blew through the oversized vents in the ceiling. Overhead lights hummed and blinked on and off at irregular intervals. I figured they hadn’t been on since the SIS was dissolved. Of course, I had to question whether it had been shut down after all.

  Walking past my old office, I thought of specific missions we’d run. The faces of men, women and children we’d saved. Agents, and friends, we’d lost along the way. The six-by-nine room now stood empty, save for a vacuum cleaner in one corner. Judging by the floor, I doubted anyone had ever used the machine.

  We stopped short of Frank’s office, which was next to mine. Tattoo knocked on the door, waited a second, nodded, then entered. Two of the remaining agents left us. Coffee, maybe. Readying the interrogation room, perhaps. I hoped it didn’t get to that point because it didn’t appear Doc’s office was occupied anymore. Who’d set their broken bones once I was through with them?

  Tattoo emerged from the office, looked past me, nodded at his partner.

  “Skinner will see you now.” Tattoo took a step back, gestured at me like I was a plane making my way toward the runway. He guided me toward him, then into the office.

  Frank remained seated behind his desk. He offered no greeting or handshake. One hand remained on the chair’s armrest, the other hidden beneath the desktop, presumably gripping a pistol so tight his fingers turned white. His neutral expression gave nothing away. I might die in the next five minutes, or he could ask me to assassinate a politician in Colombia.

  Despite the chair next to me I remained standing.

  “Good to see you, Jack.”

  Was it? I responded with a slight nod. Nothing else.

  He lifted his hand from the armrest and gestured toward my waist. “You mind?”

  “They checked me out half a dozen times, Frank.”

  “I’m sure they did. How about you humor me. Please?”

  I lifted my shirt a couple inches, turned around. “Good enough?”

  “Sure.” He scooped a pen off the desk, aimed it at me. “Have a seat.”

  I sat back in the chair, rested my head against the glass window. It was bulletproof, and when the light in the frame was switched on, no one from the lobby could see in. It’d saved Frank’s life once. Unfortunately.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  I’d taken that posture in this very office a hundred times in the past. Don’t know that I was ever comfortable in here. Still, I nodded at him.

  “Little,” Frank said, talking to his agent. “Close the door for me.”

  Tattoo reached in and pulled the door closed.

  “Little?” I said. “Guy’s built like a tank.”

  “Ironic, right?” Frank placed his other hand on top of the desk. He’d left the pistol mounted to the underside. I glanced down at the steel divider preventing me from accessing the weapon. Frank leaned over his forearm. “Jack, what the hell happened down in Texas?”

  I waved my hand in front of my face to disperse the smell of his aftershave. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “Can’t tell you the feeling in my stomach when your name flagged. I mean, there’s only a handful of people in the world who would show up on that report. Damn, we hadn’t had anything come up on it in three months. I’ll tell you what, Jack, it scared the crap out of everyone around that table. It went all the way to the top. You were included in a daily briefing that usually ends up with someone dying.”

  “That’s why I’m here? My time’s up?”

  He gnawed on the end of his pen, shook his head.

  “Then why mention it?”

  “The meeting? Just thought you should know.”

  “And Texas?”

  “Curious is all. I’ve been getting texts keeping me in the loop about a massive weapons deal supposedly going down soon. There’s four different agencies collaborating on this. The FBI, Homeland, DEA, one of those Texas groups. It’s supposed to be huge. Hearing we’ll take down one of the largest terrorist cells in the southwest.”

  I said nothing.

  He twirled the pen between his fingers, index to pinky and back. “Earned yourself a lot of goodwill with this, Jack.”

  “That’s great.”

  Thinking about Texas led my thoughts to Reese. Frank had always been perceptive to the inner workings of my mind. Today was no different.

  “I understand witness protection had to get involved. Someone you knew, right?”

  I held his gaze for a few seconds, wondering where he was headed with this. “Yeah, old friend of mine. Met her during the Brett Taylor mission. Remember that?”

  “I do, and I know about Reese McSweeney. Maybe I can pull some strings.”

  “I figured I was here to die.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  I straightened in the chair. “How so?”

  “The past is the past,” he said. “That’s how I feel, at least. I understand why you acted the way you did. If the roles were reversed, I probably would have put a gun to my head, too. You had me dead to rights. But you let me live. And, Jack, I’m grateful that you didn’t go through with it. Now, don’t you think I’ve totally forgotten about it. I may understand why. I may thank you for not killing me. But I can still get pissed thinking about it. And remember, I could provide enough testimony to put you away for ten to twenty, at a minimum. And we both know you wouldn’t last long in a cage.”

  “So that’s it, huh? You don’t care, but you do. You’ll use everything you have against me, unless you won’t.” I placed my arms on the table, leaned forward. About a foot of air separated us. I could smell the ham sandwich he had for lunch, and the beer he washed it down with. “Listen up. I’ve got just as much on you, if not more. We can both go down, for all I care.”

  Frank leaned back, spread his arms with his palms facing me, smiled. “Sorry, that came off as a threat, didn’t it? That’s not how I meant it. I really am over the whole thing.”

  I was growing tired of the game. He was beating around the bush about whatever it was he wanted, making not so subtle threats toward me.

  “OK,” I said. “Then my answer’s no.”

  Frank laughed. “No to what?”

  “Whatever the hell you’re about to ask me.”

  “Let’s walk, Jack.”

  Given the confines of the SIS headquarters, taking a walk was never a good thing. I had little choice at the moment, though.

  We left his office and headed down the hallway away from the entrance. All the other offices were dark and empty. Same with the interrogation rooms. Frank
and I had spent a lot of time in them, sitting on the same side of the table.

  Obviously Frank no longer operated out of this place anymore. No one did. Not regularly. Perhaps it had been left in place for situations like this. Or worse. With the building now being off the grid, it could be used to deal with hostiles in a certain way. One that the politicians generally frowned upon.

  The lights in the stairwell barely functioned. They illuminated the area enough to make it down the stairs, but that was about it. There could’ve been someone hidden on the first landing, and I wouldn’t have seen them.

  The first sub-level smelled the same as it had five years ago. Which is to say it smelled like two week old squid nachos. We stopped in front of the meeting room where the team used to get together weekly and before any large missions. I expected to be greeted by some of Frank’s SOG agents. He reached inside, flipped a switch and the lights cut on. The room was empty.

  He took a seat at one end of the large conference table. I sat on the opposite side.

  “Other than Texas, what’ve you been up to?” he asked after settling in.

  “That’s why we came down here?”

  “Things were getting a bit intense upstairs. Figured a few minutes hanging out and catching up might help.”

  “I’ve been drifting. Nothing more, nothing less. Saw my family for a day, left without saying goodbye, and started driving.”

  “Poetic.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I lost track of you after you left Florida,” he said.

  He was about to bring up his next bargaining chip. I hadn’t fallen for his threat to turn on me in court. Mia was his ace, though. I wanted nothing to happen to my daughter, especially because of me.

  Frank continued. “I know you left without your daughter.”

  I clenched my jaw, shook my head.

  “What?” he said.

  “Don’t say it, Frank. You can hold whatever you want against me, but so help me God, if you bring my daughter or family into this, I will unleash every ounce of my fury against you. Neither of us will leave this building alive today.”