“Negative,” she said quietly. “Stay put.”
Sam slid out from under the SUV slowly, eyes on the mark. The moment she heard the faint squeak of the iron gate to the garden, she rolled up and launched into a silent run. The gate hadn’t latched closed before she hurled through, slamming into the back of the man and knocking him over. As he threw his hands out to break his fall, Sam wrapped a gloved hand over his mouth, her gun jammed into his lower back. She straddled him on the ground, her head close to his. She could feel his rapid breathing as he struggled to get his wind back, his body stiff against the muzzle of her gun.
“I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth,” she whispered in Persian. “But if you make a sound, I’ll kill you.”
The man remained frozen against her, but as she released him, he twisted viciously, attempting to throw her off as his elbow came up.
He just grazed her head as she ducked, scissoring her legs up and over. Sam wrapped her legs around his neck as she swung him forward again, smashing his face into the ground in a tight lock, his neck trapped between her thigh and calf muscle.
“Not a wise move,” she tutted, squeezing her legs for good measure, making him groan faintly. He tried to shift away from the pressure she exerted with each flex and squeeze, his hands grappling ineffectually against her hold. He was really strong, she’d give him that, but she was a lifelong Judo practitioner, and he was no match for the pin.
As she pressed him facedown, Sam heard the clinking and scrapping of something metal against the courtyard cobblestone. In the dim moonlight filtering through the olive trees, she caught the glint of dog tags around his neck as he struggled. Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Who are you?” she asked in a low voice, switching to English. She loosened her choke hold around his neck just slightly, and he gasped a relieved breath.
“Sammy?” he croaked.
Sam froze against the choked whisper, eyes widening as she loosened her hold completely, releasing him.
She yanked the keffiyeh scarf off covering his neck and head, her fingers trembling a little from adrenaline and shock.
“What the hell?” Sam whispered, staring down at him. “Wes??”
*
Dec 20th—Evening
Nazar’s Compound in Herat City, Afghanistan
W E S L E Y
“Jesus fucking Christ, Wes, what the hell are you doing here?” Sam whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing in the moonlight. She touched her earpiece while he struggled to catch his breath. “I’m fine. Stand down,” she whispered to some unseen backup. “We have a friendly.” She stood quickly, offering him a hand up.
“Lemme guess: You didn’t expect to run into me scouting out your arch enemy’s evil lair?” Wes joked gingerly, rubbing his neck as his heart tripped a little at the sight of her. Sam looked a whole new level of intimidating in her commando gear, all camoed-up and ready to kick his ass.
“Were you here earlier today? Taking pictures when I came in here?” she asked, wiping a hand over her distressed brow, still staring at him in the darkness of the garden.
“That was you?” Wes whispered back. “Since when did you wear burqas?” he asked in confusion.
“Since being a female military operative carrying assault weapons is generally frowned upon in a traditional Islamic society,” she muttered low. “Wes, what the fuck are you doing here?” she asked again. “Are you here on a lead? Are you doing some kind of story on Nazar? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Wes stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. He felt the tension loosen from her body as she responded in kind, her arms wrapped around his middle in a brief, tight clinch until she seemed to come to her senses, stepping neatly out of his hold.
“I nearly killed you, you stupid sonofabitch,” she whispered furiously.
“Nah, you just choked me a little,” Wes smiled, reaching out to touch her face. He rubbed at the camo paint on her cheek with his thumb. “Never seen you all kitted out Platoon-style before, Sammy. You’re kinda hot when you’re trying to asphyxiate me with your legs.”
“Knock it off, Wes,” she replied, smacking his hand back. “I cannot goddamn believe you’re standing here right now.” She held her finger to her ear piece again, listening. “Shit,” she muttered. “We can’t have this conversation here. Leviathan patrols are doubling back.”
Wes picked up his camera bag as Sam peered through the gate. She signaled to someone and waited a few seconds before opening the gate and gesturing him to follow. They moved swiftly along the right side of the street in the opposite direction of Nazar’s compound.
“Where’s your car?” she asked once they were a block down.
“Over there,” he pointed.
They jogged down the street, careful to weave in and out of the murky amber iridescence of the scant street lights dotting the road. Wes pointed to an old jeep parked behind a cluster of trees.
Sam crawled into the back, laying low.
“What are you doing?” Wes asked, surprised that she wasn’t getting in the passenger seat or at the very least, demanding to drive.
“Can’t risk being seen,” Sam muttered, hunkering down. “Who knows where Nazar has eyes.”
Wes got into the jeep, tossing his camera bag into the seat beside him. “Where are we going?”
“Shindand Air Base,” she answered succinctly. “You’ll stay out there with my team.”
Wes could almost hear her thinking, ‘Until I can ship your ass home.’ He grinned in spite of himself, pleased they’d found each other as he turned the engine over and u-turned back into the city. “Well at least let me get my gear from the hotel.”
Sam said something else into her earpiece before tugging it out and shoving it into her pocket. “Alright, seriously: What the hell do you think you’re doing here, copping a squat right outside of Nazar’s front yard?” she asked, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.
Wes shifted, picking up speed as he headed toward the distant glowing lights of Herat City. “Told you, Sammy. I came to help.”
“Wes, you could get yourself killed!”
He lifted a brow at her. “Sammy, this ain’t my first rodeo. I arguably have more experience in combat zones than you do, and I’ve been gathering information on targets for longer.”
“As a civilian,” Sam pointed out gruffly. “Dammit, Wes,” she sighed, yanking off her skullcap as she ran a frustrated hand over her hair.
“We’re being followed,” Wes said as he looked into his rearview mirrors.
“That’s just Simon.”
“Michaelson?” Wes asked. “He’s here?” He liked the straight-talking Brit. And given his impressive skills behind the wheel of a vehicle, Wes liked that the guy had Sammy’s back.
“And Rush, Talon, and Henri,” she sighed. “They’re pissed you’re here too.”
“Well, all I gotta say is after Rio, they should know I’ve got a proclivity for trouble,” Wes smiled, recalling their time together in the journalistic trenches.
“You don’t have a proclivity, Wes, you are the goddamn trouble,” Sam muttered. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to know why Nazar is here and when his next shipment into Iran is,” Wes answered.
“How do you know that?” she asked sharply.
“Got a man inside,” Wes replied. “Relative of a contact in Kandahar. He works in the facility Nazar set up to process the heroin near the border. Says they’re getting a shipment ready, making preparations to parachute pallets out of a cargo plane over Iran.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “They’re airdropping pallets of black tar over hostile neighbors?”
“Easier than getting through truck check points these days, I guess,” Wes shrugged. “The nomadic Baluchi tribesmen pick up the bundles before the Iranian police ever know they’ve landed.”
Sam absorbed that little piece of information. “Then why were you casing Nazar’s place?”
“I was tr
ying to get a bead on how he works, see if I could piece a timetable together,” Wes shrugged. “Why were you there?” Wes twisted around to glance at her, a real worry crossing his mind. “Please tell me you weren’t planning on hitting that compound tonight, were you?”
Sam shook her head. “We’re just doing surveillance, trying to figure out his patterns too. We’re going to target him on the road or at his processing facility.”
Wes met Sam’s eyes in the mirror. “My contact says Nazar’s real hands on. He’s been there each time they’ve loaded up the pallets for delivery. Likes to conduct inventory checks himself before they load the plane.”
Sam’s brows rose. “Does Nazar go up with the cargo?”
Wes had no difficulty imagining her shooting that plane right out of the sky with a shoulder-fired missile launcher.
“Afraid not,” he shook his head. “Nazar just watches the pallets get packed up and rigged with parachutes. I figure it’s because his facilities and the staff here are so new.”
“How many days have you been here?” Sam asked, her expression begrudgingly impressed.
“Afghanistan?” Wes asked. “Little under a week.”
Sam met his eyes in the mirror again. His heart swelled a little at the look in her eyes.
“Jesus, Wes, you’re one helluva investigative journalist,” she remarked. “You’ve got just as much intel on this guy as local intelligence has, maybe more.”
Wes shrugged. “Let’s just say I was abnormally incentivized to get information on the situation.”
“You could have been caught or killed, Wes,” Sam chastised, her expression darkening. “I can’t believe you’re taking a risk like this.”
“Well I wasn’t going to leave you hanging, Sammy,” Wes replied, reaching back behind his seat to grab her hand. He squeezed it hard, looking at her in the mirror as he drove into the city. “I learned my lesson the first time. A man stands by his woman when she needs him the most.”
“I’m not your woman, Wes,” Sam replied, though she squeezed his hand back. “And you’re not my man.”
Wes’s smile glinted in the moonlight. “Not yet, Sammy. Just not yet.”
Chapter 27
Dec 21st—morning
Heathrow Airport, London
J A C K
British Airways Flight 296 floated briefly over the tarmac as if suspended by a wire just before touching down, the huge engines of the Boeing 777 roaring as the jetliner gradually slowed along the slushy, rain-soaked tarmac.
“Love London; hate the weather,” Mitch muttered from the first-class seat behind him.
Jack looked out at the hazy, gray mist coating the windows. “No such thing as bad weather, Mitch. Just soft people,” he replied, feeling like the weather matched his mood perfectly. “This is nothing compared with Chicago.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Mitch answered.
As the jet taxied to the gate, the pretty flight attendant who’d been flirting with him the entire flight leaned over his seat, offering him a hot towel and glass of water. Jack accepted both gratefully, feeling a little groggy as he wiped his face down. Jack was careful to divert his attention from her provocatively unbuttoned top.
She was aggressive, he’d give her that. She’d even blocked him on his way to the bathroom during the flight, offering more than just a look down her blouse. It would have been so easy to push her into that cubicle, lift that navy skirt and fuck her senseless, lose himself for a little while. But in the brief moment he debated just letting himself go, Sam’s dark eyes flashed across his mind. He was heartsick and lonely for her. And Jack knew with complete certainty that no amount of foreign pussy would alleviate the kind of longing he felt. And so he’d gone into that little cubicle on his own, popping painkillers like Pez, hoping to numb out for a little bit—just long enough to sleep a couple hours and not hurt in that midnight oblivion somewhere over the dark waters of the Atlantic.
“We’ll check into The Savoy first,” Mitch said, interrupting his reverie. “We’ve got a couple hours to get cleaned up and ready for the Leviathan board meeting.”
“Has anyone seen or heard from Lightner since we took over majority share?” Jack asked as they disembarked.
“No,” Mitch shook his head. “I checked messages when we landed. No word on whether he’ll be there.”
“I don’t like it,” Jack ruminated. “He won’t take this lying down. We should make sure they double-down on security.”
“I already hired the best guys to do it,” Mitch answered with confidence.
“Who’d you hire?” Jack asked as they stepped off the jet bridge.
Four men in impeccable business suits moved forward as if they’d materialized out of thin air, flanking them in a strategic arc as passengers flooded into the gate area.
A ginger-haired man as tall as Jack stepped forward first, extending his hand. “Jack Roman?” he asked in a crisp Oxford accent.
Jack nodded curtly, eyes narrowing as he took in the slim gun holster outline around the man’s shoulders, and the balanced, precise posture that came from years of training.
“Ian McCall,” the man introduced with a perfunctory shake. “Welcome to London. Carey Nelson sends his regards.”
“You’re with Lennox Chase,” Jack said flatly, slanting Mitch a look. Mitch simply shrugged, unrepentant.
“I am,” Ian nodded. “I head up the London office.”
“And do you typically greet clients at the airport?” Jack asked dryly, noting the similar countenance of the men with him.
Ian gave the barest hint of a smile. “Only when they’ve just taken down our number one competitor,” he replied before introducing them to the men in their security detail. “We’ll escort you to the hotel and then to Leviathan’s headquarters for the Board of Directors meeting,” Ian explained.
“I bet the Leviathan security team will just love having you guys there,” Mitch drawled, humor in his eyes.
“We actually know quite a few of them from the service,” Ian admitted. “As you can imagine, the sort of business we’re in is actually part of a fairly small universe.”
“I’ll just bet,” Jack muttered, turning on his phone so he could see the most recent log of Samantha’s whereabouts from Jaime’s app. He saw the red dot on Herat, wondered briefly at what she was doing and if she was okay. “Does Sam know you’re here?” he asked Ian without looking up.
“No,” Ian shook his head. “We’re radio silent at the moment. Carey is heading up all aspects of the Human Asset Protection Division at the moment.”
“So she doesn’t know I own Leviathan Risk International now?”
“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Roman.”
Mitch sent Jack a look, amused. “Jack, I’ve got a feeling you’ll know exactly when she finds out. Sam’s either going to kiss you or knock you out.”
Jack noticed Ian suppress a chuckle.
“With a woman like Samantha,” Jack conceded. “You can never tell.”
*
Dec 21st—2:06pm
Knightsbridge, London
R O X A N N E
Lucien Lightner was an exceptionally-cunning sonofabitch and a worthy opponent, she’d give him that. Every time Rox managed to hack off a limb, like a lizard that loses its tail, he seemed to grow another back. Lightner may have grown back every limb she’d cut off, but she’d burned the man pretty good. In the space of two weeks, he’d lost his wife, his favorite mistress, his reputation, and his company. Yet somehow, he still managed to crop up again and again under a handful of assumed identities and with an impressive stockpile of untraceable cash. It would almost be exasperating if she wasn’t enjoying trying to best the elusive bastard so damn much. She just thanked her lucky stars he hadn’t dropped the phone she’d cloned in France. Listening in on his calls made keeping tabs on him considerably easier.
Rox watched as Lightner stepped out of his secret pied-à-terre off Hyde Park, turning up the collar of his Mackintosh against the da
mp weather. He was a handsome man in a hawkish way, with a mane of white-blonde hair, a lean build, and a kind of ice-cold elegance about him. He glanced casually in both directions before slipping into a glossy Bentley Continental GT. As the car drove away, Rox pulled into the light stream of traffic a few cars behind him, pulling on the winter cap she was wearing over her curly blonde wig. In spite of the rain, she kept the windows of the rented Fiat open a little, partly because she was burning up under the puffy winter jacket that made her look bigger than she actually was, and partly to keep the windows from fogging up in the clammy humidity that seemed to drench London nine months out of the year.
When Lightner’s phone rang, Rox plucked her Bluetooth earpiece out of her handbag, turning it on so she could listen in.
“Sir, the board meeting is happening in an hour.”
“I’m aware,” Lightner answered succinctly. “I’m on my way in.”
“Is there anything I should prepare? Anything I should say to the board members who are asking after you?”
“Just that I’ll be there,” he replied, hanging up.
As she tailed Lightner from a safe distance, she noted that he was driving toward the City of London, the country’s financial center. Like New York’s Wall Street, the City occupied a shockingly small amount of space, considering the nearly unfathomable amounts of money that passed through the companies that operated there. The square mile of land formed the nerve center of international currency and trade.
Rox watched Lightner pull to a smooth stop at the light just outside of the Bank Station entrance to the London Underground. As lunchtime crowds shot out of the terminus, she briefly lost sight of the Bentley. When the crowd finally began to thin, Rox frowned when she realized he’d already passed through the intersection. There were too many cars ahead of her to catch the light.
She began to edge forward a little, cursing the crowds she had to pause to avoid. She craned her neck, catching a glimpse of the Bentley as he parked slightly to the side of the road a couple blocks ahead. Rox saw a blonde man approach the car and slip into the passenger seat, but couldn’t see any details in the rain. Rox tilted her chin up, trying to get a better look as she wondered what the hell Lightner was up to.
Complicated Creatures: Part Two Page 28