She glanced over at his uncle, and Leo remembered his manners. “Olivia, this is my uncle, John. And whatever you have to say to me, you can say to him. Now, what kind of favor?”
She seemed hesitant to talk turkey in front of a full-on civilian. That was the closed-mouth, mum’s-the-word CIA agent he’d grown to know and…um…know. Then she shrugged. “The kind where you help me retrieve three capsules of sunken chemical weapons my supervisor and I inadvertently gave to an al-Qaeda faction.”
Shhhiiiiit!
And the theme for the day was definitely holding strong…
Chapter Three
7:46 a.m.…
Leo didn’t jump back or gasp at her words. He just got very still. Which Olivia suspected was the hardened operator’s equivalent of both of those reactions. And as mottled sunlight caught in his sandy locks—burning and brooding and laughing at her and the temptation she felt to take a step forward to run her fingers through the thick mass—she watched the jaws of the other four men sling open in horror, as if they were attempting to swallow the bomb she’d just dropped. Of course, since she was in the business of dropping literal and figurative bombs, their impersonations of Pez dispensers didn’t much faze her.
What did faze her was the fact that if propriety and professionalism hadn’t stopped her from giving in to the urge to reach for Leo, his acidic stare would have. Holy hell, even partially concealed behind his aviator sunglasses, that stare still threatened to melt the flesh from her bones. Okay, so she hadn’t exactly been expecting party hats and a welcome banner but—
“I have a question.” Leo’s deep voice sounded rough, like boulders crunching beneath the tracks of a tank.
A question? Well, all right, a question was good. Better than him yelling at her to get the hell off his front porch. “What’s that?”
“Do the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse know you’ve arrived safely on earth?”
“Ha-ha.” She blew out a breath, frowning up at him. Way up. Has he always been this tall? “Very funny. But I’m serious, Leo.”
“So am I, Olivia. Christ, what will you think to do next? Provide Pakistani warlords with long-range missiles tipped with nuclear warheads?” The way he thrust out his chin highlighted the scar there, the one that marred the perfection of his short-cropped beard. He had others, she knew. Scars. Like those on his knuckles and that big, puckered one on his arm.
Is that one new? She didn’t remember him having that back in Syria. And, yeah, maybe she was being whimsical, or maybe she was totally in over her head where he was concerned, but all those scars, all those reminders of a life lived on the edge, seemed to enhance rather than diminish his blatantly male appeal.
Sheesh, Mortier. You’re here for his help, not to ogle his abs.
Although, with him dressed in nothing more than low-slung swim trunks that emphasized the leanness of his waist and a tight, V-neck T-shirt that unapologetically delineated the bulging muscles of his chest and shoulders, ogling was pretty much a given. Still, she straightened her spine and did her best to push off her hormonal-woman hat so she could make room for her CIA-agent cap—which seemed to slip straight off her head anytime Leo was in the same room with her, the fickle, exasperating thing.
“Well,” she said, lips twisting, “let’s just say I won’t equip them with missiles and nuclear warheads unless I have a really, really good reason to.”
He glared at her, his jaw grinding so hard she fancied she could hear his teeth creak. “I half hope you’re kiddin’,” he growled in that delicious Southern accent of his. And, oh goody. There was nothing sexier than Leo going all big and badass… Whoops. There went her CIA-agent cap again. Damnit! “Scratch that.” He shook his head. “It’s a whole hope, because if you’re not, then I—”
“Cool your jets, sailor,” she assured him. “Neither I nor The Company have any plans to start selling hardware to Pakistani warlords. Hopefully, we learned our lesson about that back in Afghanistan in the eighties.”
“But givin’ chemical weapons to the folks who brought down the Twin Towers is okay?” He made a rude sound of disbelief that, had she not been looking at him to see his lips vibrate, would have made her wonder which end of him it had come from.
Okey dokey. So this was not going at all as planned. She knew she needed to take a step back and start over. Perhaps change tactics from brash and demanding to demure and pleading. Unfortunately, stepping back wasn’t something she did well. And demure and pleading? Sh’yeaaah. As if. Especially since the look on his face—the one that clearly telegraphed his belief that somehow this was all her idea and all her fault—lit a match under the kindling of her temper. Okay, so asking for his help had been her idea, but that’s as much as she was taking credit for.
“Yes, it’s okay,” she declared righteously, mirroring his stance and placing her hands on her hips. Bran dropped his arm from around her shoulders, backing away like perhaps she was one of the deadly chemical weapons they were discussing. “Especially considering we did it to catch a much bigger and, so far, largely elusive fish that has been threatening our national security for months or, more likely, years. And taking into account that if we didn’t do something fast, then—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Bran cut in, patting the air in the universal signal for her to slow her roll. “Let’s all take a T.O. here. We can go inside, maybe take a load off, and—”
Ignoring the man, she continued to face off against Leo. “For the love of all that’s holy, Leo, you know as well as anyone that when it comes to espionage, sometimes the wrong methods elicit the right results. So why don’t you stop busting my balls and let me explain what happened and how you can help me?”
One corner of his mouth twitched before he reached up to pull his sunglasses down his nose. He slid a slow, considering look up the length of her body. “Balls, huh?” he murmured, all deep and throaty and, holy hell…chill-inducing. Her antagonism leached out of her like radioactive waste from a dirty bomb. “And here you had me convinced that all you were packin’ in your pants was a firearm.”
She disregarded the heat that skittered through her veins when his hazel eyes skimmed over her skin. “I was trying to make a point,” she said. “And since I’m working on a short clock here, I’d like to get to it.”
“You mean you’ve got more information with which to blow our mindholes?” Wolf Roanhorse, who’d moved to stand beside Leo, lifted one dark eyebrow. Leo and all the SEALs of Alpha Platoon were warriors. But Wolf really looked like one, like something out of an old spaghetti Western. Of course, he didn’t dress like one—he was wearing shorts and a frayed T-shirt—and he certainly didn’t sound like one when he continued, “Good God Almighty, woman, I don’t think I want to hear it.”
Yeah, well, in a perfect world, she wouldn’t want to hear it either. But theirs was not a perfect world. Case in point: the missing chemical weapons. “Would it change your minds…er…mindholes about listening to my story if I told you there was half a million dollars waiting for you at the end of the tale?”
* * *
7:54 a.m.…
Leo didn’t realize he’d unconsciously let his gaze drift down the length of Olivia’s body, noting the soft flare of her hips, the tiny turn of her ankles, and the graceful length of her unpolished toes revealed by her plastic dime-store flip-flops until his eyes returned to her face and he was waylaid by her flinty, tough-as-nails expression.
“Were you paying any attention to what I just said?” she demanded, leaning against one of the kitchen’s old Formica countertops. They’d done as Bran suggested, retiring inside the house to stop Meat’s incessant barking and because Leo hoped more of his uncle’s hot, strong coffee would be enough to make even the most harebrained CIA scheme sound plausible. “Or were you too busy giving me dirty looks?”
Oh, he’d been giving her dirty looks, all right. But he suspected her definition of “dirty” and his definition of “dirty” were light-years apart. Although he reckoned it was
better all around to let her go on believing his heated perusal of her body had been derisive rather than desirous.
“I heard you,” he assured her. “I heard you say you began suspectin’ there was a mole or group of moles inside the CIA after that catastrofuck in Syria. I heard you say you’ve spent almost a year and a half tryin’ to draw them out. I heard you say that somethin’ suggested to you they might have contacts in Cuba.”
“Not might have contacts in Cuba. Do have contacts in Cuba,” she insisted. “As you well know, the photos taken of the prisoners from inside the detention center”—the ones that had been splashed across the news websites showing the prisoners shackled and chained, the ones that had outraged the international community—“were leaked to the press by a group of al-Qaeda extremists living and working in Cuba. But what you don’t know, what nobody knows is that those photos were proprietary to The Company. The only way those guys could’ve gotten their hands on the pictures is if someone inside the CIA gave them the digital files.”
“Okay, fine,” Leo relented. “So, since you and your supervisor were convinced the double agent had connections in Castro-ville, you all decided to cook up this crazy, idiotic plot to plant a too-good-to-be-true bit of Intel in a Company memo with the hopes that said double agent would take the bait.” He glanced around the kitchen at his friends. “Is it just me,” he asked the SEALs, “or does this reek of a case of the Mondays?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Olivia demanded, looking around the room.
“There’s a saying the Teams like to use,” Mason explained, which surprised Leo since Mason lived by the motto, “A quiet man is a thinking man.” It was usually a miracle if they could get two sentences out of the guy. “It goes a little something like: You tell me our intelligence community is fuckin’ shit up, and I’ll tell you it’s Monday.” His quintessential South Boston accent made “our” sound more like “ah.”
“Lovely.” Olivia’s flattened expression broadcast quite clearly how much she enjoyed that little anecdote. “The point is…” she said, impatiently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Leo remembered the texture. Spun silk that was cool to the touch. “Even though I can’t take credit for the idea—it was Director Morales’s brainchild—I wholeheartedly approved of it. And it may’ve been crazy, but it certainly wasn’t idiotic.
“They did take the bait. They passed along the Intel to their assets just the way we hoped they would. And last night the cameras in the warehouse—which were, in fact, in perfect working order despite us alluding otherwise in the memo—recorded those very same assets breaking in.” When it became clear that no one had anything to say to Olivia’s little monologue, she jutted out her stubborn chin and finished with, “So, how’s that for a case of the Mondays, huh?”
Despite himself, Leo felt one corner of his mouth twitch. Even though she had an exterior that looked no more threatening than a vanilla cupcake, her inner core was made of pure, tempered steel.
“Question,” Uncle John said from one of the wooden, ladder-backed kitchen chairs. Other than the times when his fingers seemed as if they wanted to dance toward the closed zipper of that big, black duffel sitting in the middle of the table—talk about an elephant in the room—he was casually sipping his coffee and looking for all the world to be completely unruffled by the presence of a CIA agent talking about moles, terrorists, and missing chemical weapons. But, like always, Leo wasn’t sure if his uncle’s placid expression had more do to with the fact that the guy was imperturbable by nature, or the fact that he liked to partake fairly regularly of the crop of Mary Jane he had growing out behind the house.
For my glaucoma, his uncle insisted, though Leo was pretty sure the old man didn’t have glaucoma.
“Shoot,” Olivia said, downing the last of her chicory coffee. Leo couldn’t help but admire the smooth, delicate arch of her neck, and wondered what it would be like to kiss that spot just above—
“If you and your boss were workin’ alone,” Uncle John said, “outside CIA channels because you have no idea who the mole is or how high up in the chain he or she or they may be, then how did you coordinate with Guantanamo?”
The question quite effectively ripped Leo’s wandering brain back on track. Thank Christ! He poured himself the last few swigs of coffee from the pot, lifted his mug, and downed the tart brew like it was a shot of cheap whiskey. It burned just about as well and tasted about half as good.
“Morales is old friends with the general there,” Olivia said, her tone all about the easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
“Ah”—his uncle nodded—“okay, I’m beginnin’ to get it.”
Well, that made one of them.
“So, why the hell didn’t you and Morales have the Gitmo guys apprehend the radicals then and there?” Leo demanded. “Why let ’em load the weapons on a boat and set sail?”
“That was the plan.” She threw her hands in the air. “But a riot broke out in the prison, and the guards around the warehouse were called in to help subdue it. In the mix-up and chaos, the radicals were able to grab the case with the chemicals and escape.”
“You reckon the riot was the mole’s doin’?” his uncle asked. “A distraction?”
“Morales says no.” Olivia shook her head. “He thinks it was just bad friggin’ timing and worse friggin’ luck. A true-blue case of Murphy’s Law.”
Wow. This entire plan was rating a ten out of ten on Leo’s Fucked-Up scale. And something in his demeanor must have told Olivia as much, because she frowned up at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she grumbled.
“Now, darlin’, don’t you go accusin’ me of thinkin’.”
She ignored his attempt at levity. “You’re already sticking the knife of judgment in me and twisting. But I’m telling you, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Morales covered his bases and his ass. He had the general at Gitmo attach tiny tracking devices to the underside of the chemical capsules in the event that worse came to worst and the radicals were able to escape. Morales was keeping an eye on them, monitoring their every move.
“As soon as it looked like they were going to make landfall, he planned to board their boat in a blaze of glory, seize every last one of them before they had a chance to make a Mayday call or alert the traitor or traitors, and then interrogate them until they gave up the identity of the double agents or told us where we could find the fuckers.” She winced, glancing surreptitiously over at Leo’s uncle. “Um, excuse my French, sir.”
“Is ‘fucker’ French?” Uncle John’s eyes widened theatrically. “Well, I’ll be damned. I never knew.”
She grinned, her slightly crooked tooth winking at Leo as surely as a Duval Street hooker. What is it about that tooth, anyway? Why did it do things to his boy parts?
“Well, now I have a question.” Bran spoke up for the first time since they’d retired to the kitchen. He was leaning against the softly humming refrigerator, arms and ankles crossed, his usual jovial expression devoid of any sign of humor. Despite all the years Leo had worked alongside Bran, he’d never gotten over how quickly the man could go from cutup to cutthroat. It was as if he had an internal switch. Right now, that switch was flipped to the Badass Navy SEAL position.
“Considering you and Morales were working alone on this deal, flying completely under the radar, how did you expect to apprehend eight… You did say the warehouse footage showed there were eight radicals, right?” Olivia nodded. “Okay, so how did you guys plan to take on eight men all by yourselves? Are you both pazzo?” He circled a finger around his temple to illustrate the word.
“Not us,” Olivia assured him. “When the radicals escaped on the ship, Morales contacted one of his many civilian sources and enlisted the help of hush-hush private contractors to come in and do the heavy lifting.”
Contractors. Leo knew the type. Former spec-ops guys who’d decided there was more fun to be had—and definitely more money to be made—hiring out as non-military-affiliated operators.
“You are
n’t talkin’ about Black Knights Inc., are you?” he asked, referring to the group of guys, some of whom were Navy SEALs from his old platoon, based in Chicago and operating what was supposed to be a custom motorcycle shop. In reality, the big warehouse on Goose Island was just the front for their covert government-defense firm. For chrissakes, it was like Hells Angels meets 007 up there.
“Who?” she asked, frowning.
“Never mind,” he told her. “Forget I asked.” And he should have realized Director Morales would not have tapped Black Knights Inc. for this mission. Morales was avoiding all government channels so as not to alert the mole or moles, and given that BKI reported directly to the president and his Joint Chiefs… Right. Probably not a good idea to get them involved.
“The guys we hired work for Titan Corp.”
“Never heard of ’em.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she continued, waving a dismissive hand through the air. “They were in New Orleans waiting for Morales to give them an approximate heading when the signals on the tracking devices suddenly stopped moving. Ten minutes later, the pressure gauges indicated the capsules were sitting in nearly two hundred feet of water. So either the terrorists chucked the CWs overboard for some reason, which isn’t likely. Or the boat sank, which is what we suspect.”
“Isn’t it possible the tangos simply tossed the tracking devices overboard?” Wolf asked, falling back into old habits and using military slang to refer to the terrorists. “The simplest answer usually being the right one?”
“Nope.” Olivia shook her head emphatically. “If they’d screwed with the devices or removed them from the capsules, we’d have known.”
“How’s that?” Leo asked, trying really hard not to notice how the sunlight cutting through the kitchen windows bathed her in a warm, golden glow, picking up the subtle auburn highlights in her otherwise black-as-midnight hair.
“Those tracking devices are the latest to come out of the science and technology department back at Langley. Not only do they have heat sensors, pressure gauges, and the ability to connect to all satellites everywhere—foreign and domestic, civilian and military—but they’re also about the size of one grain of rice.”
Hell or High Water Page 5