Instigator (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 3)

by Fiona Quinn

  A nurse held out a clipboard, and they each scrawled their signatures across the discharge papers. They were a little lost as they walked out of the hospital room. Gator was wearing board shorts and flip flops that weren’t quite his size. She had on a Size XXXL t-shirt that she wore like a trash bag with a pair of flip flops that were way too big. They looked like homeless people. And they were of sorts. No ID, no money, no plan. They were headed for outside, so they could talk. Getting in touch with Iniquus was top of their priority list.

  They moved toward the emergency department exit when Johnna rounded the corner. She stopped in her tracks and stared at them. “Holy fucking shit,” she said. “It’s true.” She walked up between them, turned one-eighty, wrapped a hand through each of their arms, and started walking back out the door to a waiting cab.

  That was it.

  The only thing she said. “Holy fucking shit.” Christen thought that summed things up pretty well.

  Christen looked her over. She was pale despite her tan. She was cut and bruised, but otherwise looked fine.

  “Tell me about Blaze,” Gator said as she reached for the taxi door handle. He was braced to hear his bad news.

  “He’s pissed. He took a blow to the head and is being monitored. He ended up with a pretty bad concussion. The doctors won’t release him, and your company has ordered him to stay put.” She pulled the door wide and brushed her hand through the air to tell them to get in. “I told him you guys were safe and sound. I’m not sure he believed me. But, he’ll see for himself soon enough.”

  Christen scooted in to the far side. The marrow of her bones was tired. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling energetic again. She thought back to Nick of Time and his story about the SAS going hand to hand for four hours with the militants. They took a day to recoup, then got up and went to work. Yeah, but she was in the water for some twenty-two hours. She probably deserved a little longer recuperation.

  They drove in silence.

  Christen stared out the window. She’d lived to see another day. Go figure. She leaned forward to catch Gator’s eye and send him a smile. But he didn’t turn his head her way. Huh.

  She wanted to reach for his hand, but he’d crossed his arms over his chest and was tucked in tight. True, he was sitting in the back seat of the cab and he was a big guy without a lot of space. But still…

  When the taxi stopped, it was at a house in an upper-class neighborhood with a tall wall around it and an electrically powered gate. The gate swung open and the taxi stopped in the drive.

  Johnna and Gator both did a sweep to check the area. Christen figured if she was supposed to have died, she would have done it last night.

  She wanted to go in and get the debrief over with.

  ***

  There was no one in the place. Though it looked like someone lived there. Johnna gestured to the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m sort of in shock from the events. I was released from the hospital the same time you were.”

  Christen leaned forward.

  “It was dehydration from vomiting, bruising from the storm, and I wanted to get a tox report on my blood to see what Karl fed us. It certainly wasn’t Dramamine like he said it was.” She turned to Gator. “I was aware enough to know you lashed me to the bed, and that you made rounds to check on things. I will be writing that into my report. Above and beyond. Truly appreciated.” She was nodding along with her words. Emphasizing them in a way her tired voice wasn’t able to. “If I’d been left alone to my own devices, I honestly don’t think I would have made it through the night. I would have either drowned in my own puke, or I would have been tossed around the cabin like a rag doll. Thank you.” She looked from one to the other. “You look like shit. But I’m told you’re medically stable.”

  “Yes,” they said simultaneously. They’d slept the whole way to Singapore, but Christen didn’t think she’d recover until she’d slept for a week.

  “I’m sorry to press you. We think there’s a small window. Your team at Iniquus are anxious. I’m not sure they believe you’re safe.”

  She reached over to the laptop and pulled a keystroke randomizer from her pocket and put the code in. Up on the television in front of them came what looked like a planning room. Four faces pressed forward.

  Christen recognized Nutsbe.

  “I asked you not to lose the contact lens. You told me I could trust you with it,” he said.

  She offered him a weak smile in return. She wasn’t up to banter.

  Gator said, “This is D-day, my swim buddy. D-day, on your left is Jack McCullen, team second in command, then my commander, Striker Rheas, and that there’s Lynx. She’s the one I told you about. Lynx—” he said and his voice caught and broke.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said and emotions caught hold of her face. Her muscles tensed against it, but her skin flamed pink as tears filled her eyes. She brushed her hands over her face as if to rearrange it into the stoicism of the men. She was wholly unsuccessful. “I know. I know all about it. All of it. The rattlesnake. The cliff. The pledge. I know. But right now, you’re safe and so is D-day. So far so good. We’ll figure things out one step at a time.”

  That was cryptic as hell. But one thing that wasn’t a mystery was that these two loved each other deeply. Only, it wasn’t the kind of love she’d been afraid they shared. This one felt like a deep accord, a long and intense friendship. Bigger than family. But not his wife. By the way Striker turned to her and rubbed a hand up and down her arm, and the loving gratitude he got in return – that was the committed couple relationship. Christen was relieved. A little.

  If Gator would just look at her. He hadn’t looked at her since the drink on the boat.

  Nutsbe tapped at his computer and the scene changed: there were white boards covered in colored magic marker behind a table with a row of chairs. Now it looked to Christen like she was attending a business meeting.

  “I wanted to share some of the puzzle pieces I’ve been putting together.” Lynx was really young looking, early twenties, maybe. She had long blond hair and a sweet, girl next door kind of feel to her. In no way did she look like she should have as much power as she obviously held in that room. It made Christen curious.

  “The pressing question is what happened on the yacht, why were Johnna and Christen drugged?” Lynx asked. “Why was Christen thrown into the water? And to get there, I want to start at the widest part of the funnel of activity that ended up with Christen and Gator in the water.”

  Damned. Every single person in the room was looking at her like she was about to show them the holy grail. Something about this woman had earned their respect. Big time.

  “Perfect,” Johnna said.

  “There are four kidnapping/terrorist events that we are looking at prior to the attack on Christen Davidson. One in Paraguay. Steve Finley from the FBI.” She stopped and looked at her watch. “I expect him here any second.” She looked at the door, then continued. “Steve was able to identify one of the leaders of Paraguayan kidnapping crime as Gregor Zoric, also called Medved’, or the Bear. To that end, Christen picked up a conversation in Arabic between Gregor, Nadir and the sheik, and we translated. Gregor said, ‘The sanctions bill died in the US Senate committee, as we knew it would after we lost our leverage.’” Lynx was reading from her board. She turned toward the camera. “The leverage being the students who were kidnapped and the committee leader being their grandfather.” She turned back to the board. “Nadir responded, ‘I’m not sure how to work around this obstacle. But we’ll have to find a way.’ Gregor answered, ‘Yes. A very surprising turn of events. If my instructions had been followed to the letter, all would have gone as planned. The persons who made the decisions to include the teacher have been punished.’” Lynx let her gaze take in all the listeners. “We believe the teacher he’s referring to is Suz Malloy. Okay? That’s crime number one, then the Bowman kidnapping is two. Three, the Ngorongoro terror attack and kidnapping the scientists. We’ll get to those in a second.”

>   “And four?” Striker asked.

  “An attempted kidnapping of William Davidson, Christen’s father,” Lynx said.

  “Wait,” Striker said, “I thought he was the person of interest.”

  “He was,” Lynx said “And he may still be. But we learned some very interesting things from Christen’s foray into the spy game.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Christen

  Monday, Safe House, Singapore

  Lynx lifted a finger and a picture filled the screen. “From satellite imagery, these are still shots of the attempted kidnapping of William Davidson.

  Christen saw her father hunkered in the corner, Gator was taking a blow to his cheek; that explained his bruise. Blaze was blocking punches from two men, and there was a man on the ground. “Tibor Zoric. Gregor’s nephew.” She pointed to one of the men near Blaze with his face exposed. Another photo flashed up. Gator had the guy who punched him in a headlock and was putting him out. “Ivan Sworski.” She pointed first to the one in the headlock then to the guy on the ground. “Marco Kis, is the guy who’s lights-out. The fourth man is, as yet, unidentified.”

  Well, now Christen understood the warmth that her dad had shown Gator and Blaze. they’d saved him from the attack. Hell of a coincidence though, that they were near this scene right when they were needed. This stank of a CIA manipulation – but Christen couldn’t put her finger on how all of that would have unfurled.

  “Gator,” Lynx said. “I have some questions about the day that you saved William Davidson from being kidnapped.”

  Christen’s body tensed.

  “You’re at the restaurant. Blaze sent me the video of you walking in.” She nodded at Nutsbe, and Nutsbe brought a screen down and a video played. It was her father and Daniel in a restaurant. Was she going to see someone trying to hurt her dad? Christen wasn’t sure she was up to that at this moment.

  Gator sent a quick glance her way. Just enough, it seemed to draw some conclusion, then he watched the action play out on the screen. Daniel got drenched and her dad was yelling at him.

  “It’s this part here, that I’m interested in. It’s hard to tell from the video. Nutsbe can you play it slowly that part just before the waiter comes out?”

  The video played again. “Here,” she said. “It looks like he’s holding your dad up. Keeping him in the area where you’re standing, waiting. Daniel turns his head and sees the waiter with the tray. He steps forward. There. See that? It looks to me like he’s flipping the tray onto himself. That he had planned this event. Do it again, please, Nutsbe.”

  While it played again, Christen could see exactly what Lynx had seen. It looked completely different than when it had played the first time.

  “It’s interesting,” Gator said, “because I blocked the door to keep them from coming through. But the driver and Daniel both knew how to get around back since they had to circle the block over and over, there was no place to park a car that long. They knew Davidson was on a terrace.”

  “When they couldn’t get through the door, at least one of them should have driven around to help their boss,” Jack said.

  “They didn’t get off the X the entire fight. It was me and Blaze and the four kidnappers. Then when the door was unblocked, they popped through like avenging angels.”

  “And Christen, you observed Daniel engaged in oral sex with Gregor,” Lynx said.

  Christen felt herself blanch.

  “Don’t worry I’m not going to play the video of that one. We have no way of telling what that relationship is about. It could have been a whim. Weird kind of whim to have with the storm going on. But that’s thankfully not where I was focused. It was interesting that your eyes were getting droopy. You were having trouble keeping them open. It means that the drugs were affecting your system. Red, was feeling the effects, too. We could see it in her camera lens, but it didn’t seem from the video that either Gregor or Daniel were affected. Did you see them take the medications?”

  “Gregor, yes. I saw him swallow them,” Christen said. “Karl asked security not to take them because they could cause drowsiness.”

  “Maybe his size stopped them from having the same effect as they had on Christen and Red,” Striker suggested.

  “Let’s let that simmer, we don’t have a tox report yet.” Lynx said. “D-day, if you don’t mind I have a question for you.”

  Christen sat still.

  “Before your audio was turned on, when you returned to Ruffles the day that you spent at the beach, you snuck away from Gator and Blaze and followed Nadir and the Sheik outside. You sat on a bench, and I’m assuming used the fact that you had not yet been introduced to them to hide that you were eavesdropping.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your file says that you are a fluent Arabic speaker. Can you tell us what they said?”

  “The Sheik was telling Nadir that Russia had discovered that the US allies in Five Eyes were intercepting comms from Davidson Realm. The Sheik had approached my father with the information and my father said that he had already set up sophisticated jamming equipment and there would be nothing they could pick up. It would make things a little difficult for the guests because there would be no communications of any kind. But this would help keep everyone safe. Each guest would be searched for any recording devices, they would be removed, and returned at the end of their stay. While uncomfortable in some respects this should comfort them in others. There could be no spying of any kind while we were there.”

  “And you brought this to Johnna’s attention?”

  “She said that wouldn’t be a concern with our equipment.”

  Johnna cleared her throat. “Before we walk any farther into the data, I am just going to take a second and remind everyone that the CIA is an intelligence gathering community. We don’t arrest. That’s not our goal. We observe. We document. We get that information to the people with the authority to act. We have observed a pattern emerge on the global playing field that is both interesting and concerning. On this mission, it was our objective to add more data to those observations.”

  “To that end, I’ve put together some thoughts,” Lynx said and pointed to the white boards crowded with information.

  There was a ding at Nutsbe’s computer. “Incoming. This is from Blaze’s comms. He must not be lying in bed, letting the nurses mop his fevered brow. Huh. It needs translation. Did any of you know Karl spoke Russian?”

  “I did,” Johnna said. “He practices with Daniel. Is that who he’s talking to?”

  “I don’t know. Here we go, the computer has it worked out.” He tapped a key, and they heard Karl say, “This problem is monumental. Your family has been fucking this up. Fucking this up. Fucking this up. The entire Virginia bunch are arrested on trafficking charges in DC.”

  Nutsbe stopped the tape and said, “There was a major arrest of the Zoric family members in DC last February.” He tapped the computer to continue the robotic voice of the translation software.

  “Which meant the team didn’t have the manpower to support the attack on the school,” Karl said. “They get nutso-crazy and decide to kidnap a school teacher who was engaged to a fucking American G.I. Joe. Your camp in Paraguay is destroyed. All the men who were training for our assignments are fucking panther food down there. Then I find out that the Bowmans were rescued. That was supposed to go on for months. Months of angst and hand ringing. The scientists who were kidnapped out of the Ngorongoro hotel, that was supposed to go on for months, to create the fear that we needed. We need people to be terrified. Terror creates pathways to wealth. You put too much trust in Momo. Momo was supposed to take my father. Dad was supposed to die without his damned chemo. The horror of knowing a man was out there without his meds, living in a hovel…sympathy was supposed to be on my side. Political goodwill should have been on my side. But fuck, Momo gets himself killed, and you send in the clown squad to pick up my father.”

  Nutsbe hit the button and stabbed a victory hand into the air. Th
ere were grins all around.

  “What?” Christen asked bewildered.

  “That’s a mighty fine piece of evidence right there,” Gator said.

  “Ah.” Christen didn’t understand all of the ramifications, but it did indeed seem that Karl had just dug his grave.

  “Go on, what else is he saying?” Johnna leaned forward in her excitement.

  Nutsbe tapped the key.

  “Had Blaze and Gator not been out on the terrace—”

  “Who’s talking to Karl?”

  Nutsbe played a snippet from the original. “That’s Gregor.” He tapped an arrow and they were listening to the translation again.

  “All would have gone as planned. Have you asked yourself through all of this why the men, who happened to have fighting skills and close protection certification, happened to be on the terrace at that exact moment? I have. There’s a rat in our pantry.”

  “Well put out rat poison and kill it.”

  “This is not going as planned, but there is some good. Your sister is dead first. With her out of reach at the Army Base in Iraq, we couldn’t figure out a way to remove her first. But now it’s done. Congratulations.”

  “Yes, I’d rather not have had to ride through the storm to give myself an alibi but at least I can tick that off my list. It’ll make a hell of a news conference when I break down in front of the camera. Everyone will think warmly of me and my brotherly affection. It might even make up a little bit for my not getting that publicity for concern over my father. Not as much. Not the same. But something that makes me look good.”

  “Your father can be enticed back to Tanzania, and we will get him the second time. Or…”

  “Or?”

  “Your father is in frail health. Perhaps hearing of your sister’s sudden death, he will experience a rapid and unsurvivable decline. On the island, without the quick action of medical intervention. This could mean a second devastation for your family.”