Operation: Recruited Angel (Shepherd Security Book 2)

by Margaret Kay

  Near the door to the office Schmidt pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Safe and sound.”

  “I’m sorry I intruded on you and Whitney. I heard you kissing. That was why I remained behind the shipping container.”

  “It was no intrusion, my lovely. I have physical relations with all my assistants.”

  “And they all know?” Madison asked, again, not having to fake her reaction.

  Schmidt laughed. “We are all adults, are we not? And we are all sexual beings. You American’s are far too repressed and uptight. If it feels good, what harm is there?” He pressed a kiss to her lips. “I have been told I have a gift for bringing multiple orgasms to women. Care to test that yourself?”

  Madison cringed inside but forced a pleasant expression. “It’s something I would have to give some thought to. I’ve never had relations with my boss. It’s seen as taboo, you know.”

  Schmidt laughed again. “Maybe if Van Joosten kept his assistants satisfied, he wouldn’t lose them to me. Ask any of your fellow assistants. They will tell you if you accept my affections, you won’t be disappointed.”

  Was this guy for real? Madison thought. She smiled at this outrageous situation. Schmidt thought she was smiling in delight. He kissed her lips again and ran his hand up her leg. “Whoa,” she said, taking a step away. “I said, I had to think about this. I need some time.”

  “Of course, my lovely. I am a patient man.” He took hold of her hand and pressed a wet kiss to her palm.

  She reentered the office and went directly to her desk. She stabbed out a message to the team. “I have to get back out there and see what is in that container. I’ll want backup.”

  “We’ll launch the thermal imaging drone,” came the text reply from Cooper. “I’ll advise when it's deployed, and we have a clear view of heat signatures. Ops will take over. The three of us will move into position. If the plates are there, call us in.”

  “Affirmative,” she replied.

  “Your battery shows low in your comms, Xena,” BT’s voice came into Madison’s ear. “Replace your battery.”

  “Affirmative,” she replied. She grabbed a spare battery from her purse and popped the comms out of her ear. Holding it on her lap, she changed the battery. “Battery changed, are you reading me okay, Ops?”

  “Affirmative,” BT’s voice replied.

  Ten minutes later she got the go ahead. The drone was in position and Ops had a clear feed. She kicked her heels off and slid on a pair of soft soled flats. She was the only one left in the office. She slipped out the door and into the warehouse. The lights had been turned down. Half of them were off.

  “Got a Tango, southwest corner,” BT said.

  She soundlessly crept around several containers, keeping herself in the shadows as much as she could. She made her way towards the container that had been open, where Schmidt, the unknown male, and Whitney had been. It was quiet, eerily quiet. Whatever the Tango in the southwest corner was doing, he was doing it silently. Madison glanced at her watch. It was past six. Who was it and what was he even doing there?

  “Tango is on the move in your direction Xena, go around to your left.”

  Madison ducked left and into a darkened corner. She heard footfalls. She steadied her breathing as she pressed herself against the cold, hard wall behind her.

  “He’s moving past your six, hold still.”

  She waited for what seemed an eternity. She was sure who ever it was could hear her every breath, each of which were loud in her own ears, along with the rush she heard as her blood pumped through the arteries in her neck.

  “You’re clear, resume your course. The Tango has moved several rows of containers over,” BT said.

  Madison arrived at the door to the destination container. “It’s closed up tight,” she whispered. “It’s going to make a hell of a racket when I open it. Do we know who our Tango is?” With her luck, it would be an armed night watchman.

  “Negative, but hold tight,” Coop’s voice came through her comms. “Entering now. We’ll provide cover while you search.

  “I’ve got another Tango, entering from your three o’clock. Xena, take cover, now,” BT’s voice warned.

  Madison ran to the side of the container just as Whitney entered the warehouse from the same direction she had come earlier. Madison knew if she’d seen Whitney, there was a good chance, Whitney had seen her too. “Fuck,” she mouthed silently.

  “Move, Xena, the Tango is closing in on your location.”

  Cooper snuck up behind Whitney and pressed the barrel of his .40 into her back. “You’re going to want to freeze right there.”

  She raised her hands into the air, her perfectly manicured fingers pointing to the ceiling.

  “Control, I have Tango number two secured.”

  “Xena, move back into position.”

  “Roger that, Control,” she whispered. She stepped back into sight.

  “You?” Whitney spat.

  “Control, what is the location of the other Tango?” Coop asked.

  “Still in the southwest corner.”

  “Jax, check on that,” Cooper ordered.

  “Roger,” Jackson acknowledged.

  Madison searched Whitney. She had a .9 mm in the waistband of her pants, which Madison relieved her of. Cooper zip-tied her hands behind her back and then led her over to the door to the container.

  “Where is it?” Madison demanded. “Is it in here?”

  Whitney gazed at her defiantly. Madison opened the container door. It opened with a loud clank, followed by the squeak of the hinges, which echoed through the warehouse. The container was stacked full of boxes.

  “Make it easier on yourself. Which is it in?” Cooper asked. “We’re going to go through them all. We’ll find it.”

  “Knock yourselves out,” Whitney drawled unimpressed, bored even, not the response Cooper and Madison would have guessed she’d give.

  In the southwest corner, by an exterior door, Jackson found Heinrich Schmidt. “I’ve got our target. He’s loading boxes into an SUV with diplomatic plates. Permission to engage?” Jackson whispered.

  “Affirmative,” Cooper replied.

  “Freeze,” Jackson said, stepping close to Schmidt. The crimson trace of his sights shone brightly against Schmidt’s crisply pressed, white dress shirt. He had his assault rifle trained on Schmidt. Overkill for the situation, yes, but intimidating.

  “I have diplomatic immunity,” Schmidt announced. He didn’t even raise his hands.

  “I don’t care. I’m not a cop. Now get them up.”

  Schmidt raised his hands out to his sides. He looked bored.

  Cooper shoved Whitney into the shipping container and closed the door, locking it. He and Madison rushed to the southwest corner. Whitney screamed and swore, her muffled voice echoing through the warehouse.

  “You?” Schmidt questioned in recognition when Cooper and Madison came into view.

  Cooper’s lips formed a smirk. “They say that a lot around here.”

  “I have diplomatic immunity. My car is sovereign territory of the German Consulate, which means it’s an act of war if you touch it.”

  Cooper laughed aloud. “You think we care about that? Are my plates in those boxes? I bought and paid for them and you stole them.”

  “You are not going to believe this,” Yvette’s voice came through their comms. “Just got the DNA report back. Heinrich Schmidt shares paternal DNA with Ben Van Joosten. Their half-brothers.”

  Cooper laughed out loud.

  Schmidt’s confused stare watched him.

  “Brothers?” Madison repeated. “You and Ben Van Joosten are brothers?”

  “Half-brothers,” Schmidt clarified. “He’s the bastard spawn between my father and his whore of a mother.” His voice was incensed, laced with loathing.

  “Shouldn’t you be angrier with your father than with Ben?” Madison asked.

  “My father was no match for her spread legs. He was a romantic who fell under her spell.�
��

  “Says the womanizer who is sleeping with his four assistants. Guess this apple didn’t fall too far from his father’s philandering tree,” Madison replied. “So why are you out to ruin Ben because of it?”

  “If it weren’t for his birth, my father could have given up that tramp. It crushed my mother, drove her to take her own life, ruined my family.”

  “This was about daddy issues? Seriously, this is bull-shit!” Madison spat. “I can’t believe we wasted our time on this bull-shit!”

  “What do we do now, Coop?” Jackson asked.

  “Get Van Joosten down here.”

  Sierra

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that was all it was about. I’m damn glad they didn’t have a container full of women destined to be sex-slaves in one of those containers to go along with the stolen antiquities, because that thought did cross my mind,” Madison said.

  The three men laughed. Doc brought the beer bottle to his lips. “I have to tell you, Madison, the same thought went through my mind a couple of times too.”

  Madison glanced out the window of the Lear at the twinkling city lights that grew smaller before her very eyes. She drained her beer. “As soon as the captain says we can move around, I want another.”

  Cooper unbuckled his belt and came to his feet. He grabbed four more from the small refrigerator, swaying with the plane as it banked sharply to head west, towards home base. He handed them out after he retook his seat.

  His eyes swept over Madison. She changed out of the short slut-skirt as soon as they boarded the plane. She wore blue jeans and an army sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She still looked beautiful. He knew he had to find a way to push away this attraction he felt for her. He was all too aware of how close he came the night before. He’d nearly kissed her, again.

  “What are you smiling about?” Madison asked him. She stared at him, returning his smile.

  “Just thinking about Van Joosten’s reaction to you after he reached the warehouse, and we told him Schmidt was his half-brother,” he lied.

  Madison laughed out loud. “I seriously can’t believe he wants to have some sort of brotherly relationship with Schmidt. The man was out to completely ruin him.”

  Cooper laughed. “You told him he was fucked in the head.”

  “He is,” Madison insisted.

  “We had Schmidt by his nads and Van Joosten let him off the hook,” Jackson said, still in disbelief of how it went down.

  “Neither has any family left. Their it. I get it,” Cooper said.

  “Well that mission was a total bust, a complete waste of our time,” Madison complained. Then she sucked in another long pull of her beer.

  “It was a successful mission. We solved the case, proved it was Schmidt that was stealing from Ben. The agency got paid. It doesn’t get any more successful than that,” Cooper argued.

  “No one got hurt or killed and there were no women in shipping crates,” Doc added.

  “Except for Whitney Marks,” Jackson clarified with a laugh.

  The others joined him in a hearty chuckle.

  As the mission was over ahead of schedule, Shepherd ordered them to the Silo, so Madison could get acquainted with their black site. The Lear touched down in the wee hours under the cover of darkness at the remote landing strip in the middle of nowhere. Mother met the arriving jet with a black SUV. Per protocol, the Lear lifted back off within seconds of its arrival.

  Greetings passed between the men on Alpha Team and Mother. “Madison Xena Miller, this is Danny Trio, Mother,” Cooper introduced.

  Danny Trio smiled warmly as he shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Madison. I’ve heard a lot about you.” His eyes shifted to Cooper. “You do realize Xena has dark hair, don’t you?”

  Madison laughed. “It’s nice to meet you too. I caught your team’s raid on the Compton warehouse. Nice work.”

  “Thanks,” he replied, shrugging the compliment off. He ran his fingers through his thick, black hair, pushing the wavy, long locks from his forehead. On the underside of his forearm, Madison saw the script letters that ran its length. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out what it said, though.

  They all climbed into the SUV and Mother drove them to the barn that sat atop the Silo. “We’re making progress with Juan Carlos, thanks to Razor. With the right cocktail of truth drugs and his old friend’s presence, Juan Carlos has finally given up a few of his contacts.”

  “That’s great news,” Cooper said.

  Mother laughed. “We let Juan Carlos catch a glimpse of Razor a couple of times over several days as we moved the prisoners around. Then we put them in cells beside each other.” He paused and laughed again. “Razor has him convinced they’re in the underground facility at Gitmo.”

  All the men laughed. Madison’s thoughts however, drifted to Anthony. She wondered how he was. She hoped he had regular check-ins with Lassiter over the past couple of weeks that he’d been back under as that former persona he was so dead-set against becoming again.

  Her thoughts were cut short when the vehicle’s headlights shone on a barn they were approaching. The door rolled open, and the SUV drove inside the dark interior. The door immediately closed behind them. Mother tapped on the computer display on the console and the floor descended, lowering the vehicle.

  Through the windshield she watched the SUV get swallowed by what looked to be solid stone walls lining the shaft. If she was claustrophobic, she’d be freaking out. As it was, the closeness of the walls all around them made her uncomfortable. The walls gave way to a large room which opened up before her eyes as the vehicle continued to descend. The headlights illuminated the cavernous space. The stone walls were black, rounded, cut out of the rock.

  When the platform met the floor, overhead lights switched on. Through the car’s window’s Madison saw the room they were in and the four other vehicles parked there. The SUV pulled forward and parked beside the other vehicles. She followed the others and got out. Looking up, she saw the domed ceiling, which was at least forty feet up.

  She pulled her thoughts back and followed the others who stepped to the rear of the SUV to grab their gear. From there, she followed them to the shining steel elevator doors that looked very out of place against the rock wall. Mother pressed his hand to the onyx scan pad, and the doors opened. Within, he did the same. He pressed the number one. Buttons with numbers one through five were on the panel.

  The elevator descended quickly as though it was gaining speed to travel thirty or more floors. When its doors opened, a stark white hallway lay before them. Madison followed the others out, squinting against the bright, fluorescent overhead lights.

  A few steps forward, a hallway on the left was the destination. “Private quarters are down here,” Cooper said.

  “Put her in four, Garcia’s room. He’ll be in the prison cell the next few nights while you’re here,” Mother said. He remained at the entry into the hallway by the elevator.

  For some reason the idea of Madison in Garcia’s quarters grated against Cooper, as irrational as he knew that thought was. It wasn’t like Garcia would be in there with her and there were only eight private rooms. She had to be quartered somewhere.

  He showed her the unlock code Garcia used and swung the door wide for her. “Stow your gear and meet back by the elevator,” he grumbled and then went to the door across the hall to his own quarters and entered his code.

  It was a small room, maybe eight by eight, with a queen-size bed, a bench at the foot of the bed, built-in shelves and drawers and two doors that lay side by side. One was a small private bathroom with a shower stall, the other a small closet. Madison sat her bags on the bench.

  She pulled the door shut and returned to the hallway by the elevator.

  “We figured you’d be hungry. Lambchop cooked up some breakfast,” Mother said as he led them down the hallway.

  Halfway down on the right side were a set of glass double doors. She saw Anthony within, seated at a tab
le. His face was bruised and battered. Mother entered a code on the keypad and the doors slid open.

  Garcia turned his head and smiled at the sight of his team coming into the galley. Immediately, he saw Madison’s worried expression and cursed. Mother should have warned her. Damn.

  Madison rushed ahead of the others and wrapped her arms around him as he stood. “Anthony, what happened to your face?”

  He chuckled, knowing he was a sight. “Had to look the part of a prisoner. No worries.”

  Her fingers lightly skimmed over one of the bruised areas. “That’s not makeup. That’s a real bruise.”