Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Flashpoint

  Suzanne Brockmann

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to the usual suspects: Ed Gaffney, Eric Ruben, Deede Bergeron, Pat White, and Lee Brockmann. Thanks also—and always—to Steve Axelrod, who is a different kind of agent than are Decker and Nash, but a super one just the same.

  A giant, glittering, sequin-covered thanks, complete with fireworks and a thousand-voice “Hallelujah Chorus,” to my editor Shauna Summers. Working with Shauna is a wonderful gift.

  Thanks to Linda Marrow and everyone at Ballantine for getting this book into my readers’ hands as quickly as possible.

  Thanks to Michelle Gomez for providing a mountain of information about Kaiserslautern, Germany; to Karen Schlossberg, for letting me borrow Eric on her birthday and at other inconvenient times; and to fellow author Alesia Holliday for being brave enough not just to climb into the minivan with us, but to treat us to a trip to Graceland, too. (Thank you. Thank you very much.)

  Thanks to Tina Trevaskis for being way overqualified and incredibly awesome and reliable.

  Thanks to Reserve Navy SEAL Chris Berman for giving my readers a chance to meet a real hero, and for those terrific calendars available at www.navysealscalendar.com. But my biggest thanks to Chris is for having the patience, kindness, and sensitivity (oh, he’s shaking his head now!) to take a large group of my readers—some who haven’t ventured down this path ever before—on a journey to physical fitness. I’ll be there in spirit when this group attends Chris’s Navy SEAL Women’s Fitness Camp (www.navysealswomensfitness.com) in California this June!

  Thanks to the gang on the bb and to all my reader and writer friends, new and old.

  When I write fiction, I can’t read fiction. It’s more than just a fear that I’ll end up sounding like someone else. It’s because I’m one of those readers who, when I start a good book, can’t put the darn thing down until I reach the end. (And then it’s 3:00 a.m. and I’ve written zero pages of my own book!)

  But I can and do read nonfiction while I’m writing, and I’m particularly fond of WWII military history. During the course of writing Flashpoint, I went on a binge with the men of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division—both Able Company as well as Easy Company’s famous “Band of Brothers.”

  Their exploits and sacrifices during WWII have nothing to do with Flashpoint and everything to do with my staying sane while writing this book.

  With that said, a special thanks to Dick Winters and his men, to Tom Hanks and his men, to my son, Jason, for the great Christmas gift, and to Patricia McMahon for picking up that copy of Don Burgett’s Currahee! several years ago because it looked like something I might like to read someday.

  Last but not least, thanks to my daughter, Melanie, for the wonderful poem and for making me so proud!

  As always, any mistakes I’ve made or liberties I’ve taken are completely my own.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  LATE SPRING

  MARYLAND

  Before tonight, the closest Tess Bailey had come to a strip club was on TV, where beautiful women danced seductively in G-strings, taut young body parts bouncing and gleaming from a stage that sparkled and flashed.

  In the Gentlemen’s Den, thousands of miles from Hollywood in a rundown neighborhood north of Washington, D.C., the mirror ball was broken, and the aging stripper on the sagging makeshift stage looked tired and cold.

  “Whoops.” Nash turned his back to the noisy room, carefully keeping his face in the shadows. “That’s Gus Mondelay sitting with Decker,” he told Tess.

  Diego Nash had the kind of face that stood out in a crowd. And Nash obviously didn’t want Mondelay—whoever he was—to see him.

  Tess followed him back toward the bar, away from the table where Lawrence Decker, Nash’s longtime Agency partner, was working undercover.

  She bumped into someone. “Excuse me—”

  Oh my God! The waitresses weren’t wearing any shirts. The Gentlemen’s Den wasn’t just a strip club, it was also a topless bar. She grabbed Nash’s hand and dragged him down the passageway that led to the pay phone and the restrooms. It was dark back there, with the added bonus of nary a half-naked woman in sight.

  She had to say it. “This was just a rumor—”

  He pinned her up against the wall and nuzzled her neck, his arms braced on either side of her. She was stunned for only about three seconds before she realized that two men had staggered out of the men’s room. This was just another way for Nash to hide his face.

  She pretended that she was only pretending to melt as he kissed her throat and jawline, as he waited until Drunk and Drunker pushed past them before he spoke, his breath warm against her ear. “There were at least four shooters set up and waiting out front in the parking lot. And those were just the ones I spotted as we were walking in.”

  The light in the parking lot had been dismal. Tess’s concentration had alternated between her attempts not to catch her foot in a pothole and fall on her face, and the two biker types who appeared to be having, quite literally, a pissing contest. Not to mention the unbelievable fact that she was out in the real world with the legendary Diego Nash . . .

  They were now alone in the hallway, but Nash hadn’t moved out of whispering range. He was standing so close, Tess’s nose was inches from the collar of his expensive shirt. He smelled outrageously good. “Who’s Gus Mondelay?” she asked.

  “An informant,” he said tersely, the muscle in the side of his perfect jaw jumping. “He’s on the Agency payroll, but lately I’ve been wondering . . .” He shook his head. “It fits that he’s here, now. He’d enjoy watching Deck get gunned down.” The smile he gave her was grim. “Thanks for having the presence of mind to call me.”

  Tess still couldn’t believe the conversation she’d overheard just over an hour ago at Agency headquarters.

  A rumor had come in that Lawrence Decker’s cover had been blown and there was an ambush being set to kill him. The Agency’s night shift support staff had attempted to contact him, but had been able to do little more than leave a message on his voice mail.

  No one in the office had bothered to get in touch with Diego Nash.

  “Nash isn’t working this case with Decker,” Suellen Foster had informed Tess. “Besides, it’s just a rumor.”

  Nash was more than Decker’s partner. He was Decker’s friend. Tess had called him even as she ran for the parking lot.

  “So what do we do?” Tess asked now, looking up at Nash.

  He had eyes the color of melted chocolate—warm eyes that held a perpetual glint of amusement whenever he came into the office in HQ and flirted with the mostly female support staff. He liked to perch on the edge of Tess’s desk in particular, and the other Agency analysts and staffers teased her about his attention. They also warned her of the dangers of dating a field agent, particularly one like Diego Nash, who had a serious 007 complex.

  As if she needed their warning.

  Nash sat on her desk because he liked her little bowl of lemon mints, and because she called him “tall, dark and egotistical” right to his perfect cheekbones, and refused to take him seriously.

  Right now, though, she was in his world, and she was taking him extremely seriously.

  Right now his usually warm eyes were cold and almost flat-looking, as if part of him were a million miles away.

  “We do nothing,” Nash told Tess. “You go home.”

  “I can help.”

  He’d already dismissed her. “You’ll help more b
y leaving.”

  “I’ve done the training,” she informed him, blocking his route back to the bar. “I’ve got an application in for a field agent position. It’s just a matter of time before—”

  Nash shook his head. “They’re not going to take you. They’re never going to take you. Look, Bailey, thanks for the ride, but—”

  “Tess,” she said. He had a habit of calling the support staff by their last names, but tonight she was here, in the field. “And they are too going to take me. Brian Underwood told me—”

  “Brian Underwood was stringing you along because he was afraid you would quit and he needs you on support. You’ll excuse me if I table this discussion on your lack of promotability and start focusing on the fact that my partner is about to—”

  “I can get a message to Decker,” Tess pointed out. “No one in that bar has ever seen me before.”

  Nash laughed in her face. “Yeah, what? Are you going to walk over to him with your freckles and your Sunday church picnic clothes—”

  “These aren’t Sunday church picnic clothes!” They were running-into-work-on-a-Friday-night-at-10:30-to-pick-up-a-file clothes. Jeans. Sneakers. T-shirt.

  T-shirt . . .

  Tess looked back down the hall toward the bar, toward the ordering station where the waitresses came to pick up drinks and drop off empty glasses.

  “You stand out in this shithole as much as I do wearing this suit,” Nash told her. “More. If you walk up to Decker looking the way you’re looking . . .”

  There was a stack of small serving trays, right there, by the bartender’s cash register.

  “He’s my friend, too,” Tess said. “He needs to be warned, and I can do it.”

  “No.” Finality rang in his voice. “Just walk out the front door, Bailey, get back into your car, and—”

  Tess pulled off her T-shirt, took off her bra, and handed both to him.

  “What message should I give him?” she asked.

  Nash looked at her, looked at the shirt and wispy lace of bra dangling from his hand, looked at her again.

  Looked at her. “Jeez, Bailey.”

  Tess felt the heat in her cheeks as clearly as she felt the coolness from the air-conditioning against her bare back and shoulders.

  “What should I tell him?” she asked Nash again.

  “Damn,” he said, laughing a little bit. “Okay. O-kay.” He stuffed her clothes into his jacket pocket. “Except you still look like a Sunday school teacher.”

  Tess gave him a disbelieving look and an outraged noise. “I do not.” For God’s sake, she was standing here half naked—

  But he reached for her, unfastening the top button of her jeans and unzipping them.

  “Hey!” She tried to pull back, but he caught her.

  “Don’t you watch MTV?” he asked, folding her pants down so that they were more like hip huggers, his fingers warm against her skin.

  Her belly button was showing now, as well as the top of her panties, the zipper of her jeans precariously half pulled down. “Yeah, in all my limitless free time.”

  “You could use some lipstick.” Nash stepped back and looked at her critically, then, with both hands, completely messed up her short hair. He stepped back and looked again. “That’s a little better.”

  Gee, thanks. “Message?” she said.

  “Tell Decker to stay put for now,” Nash ordered. “They’re not going to hit him inside. Don’t tell him that—he knows. That’s what I’m telling you, you understand?”

  Tess nodded.

  “I’m going to make a perimeter circuit of this place,” he continued. “I’ll meet you right back here—no, in the ladies’ room—in ten minutes. Give the message to Deck, be brief, don’t blow it by trying to tell him too much, then get your ass in the ladies’ room and stay there until I’m back. Is that clear?”

  Tess nodded again. She’d never seen this Nash before—this order-barking, cold-bloodedly decisive commander. She’d never seen the Nash he’d become in the car, on the way over here, before either. After she’d made that first phone call, she’d picked him up downtown. She’d told him again, in greater detail, all that she’d overheard as they’d headed to the Gentlemen’s Den. He’d gotten very quiet, very grim, when his attempts to reach Decker on his cell phone had failed.

  He’d been scared, she’d realized as she’d glanced at him. He had been genuinely frightened that they were too late, that the hit had already gone down, that his partner—his friend—was already dead.

  When they got here and the parking lot was quiet, when they walked inside and spotted Decker still alive and breathing, there had been a fraction of a second in which Tess had been sure Nash was going to faint from relief.

  It was eye-opening. It was possible that Diego Nash was human after all.

  Tess gave him one last smile, then headed down the hall toward one of those little serving trays on the bar. God, she was about to walk into a room filled with drunken men, with her breasts bare and her pants halfway down her butt. Still, it couldn’t possibly be worse than that supercritical once-over Nash had given her.

  “Tess.” He caught her arm, and she looked back at him. “Be careful,” he said.

  She nodded again. “You, too.”

  He smiled then—a flash of straight white teeth. “Deck’s going to shit monkeys when he sees you.”

  With that, he was gone.

  Tess grabbed the tray from the bar and pushed her way out into the crowd.

  Something was wrong.

  Decker read it in Gus Mondelay’s eyes, in the way the heavyset man was sitting across from him at the table.

  Although it was possible that the wrong he was reading was due to the four beef enchiladas Mondelay had wolfed down at Joey’s Mexican Shack twenty minutes before meeting Decker here.

  But Deck didn’t trust Mondelay any farther than he could throw him. And something about the sound of the man’s voice when he’d called to set up this meeting with Freedom Network leader Tim Ebersole had made Decker leave early enough to follow Mondelay as he left work, and to trail him over here. But aside from the Shack, Mondelay hadn’t made any other stops before arriving at the Gentlemen’s Den. He hadn’t talked to anyone on his cell phone either.

  Mondelay gestured for Decker to lean closer—it was the only way to be heard over the loud music. “Tim must be running late.”

  Jesus, Mondelay had a worse than usual case of dog breath tonight.

  “I’m in no hurry,” Decker said, leaning back again in his seat. Air. Please God, give him some air.

  Gus Mondelay had come into contact with the Freedom Network while serving eighteen months in Wallens Ridge Prison for possession of an illegal firearm. The group’s name made them sound brave and flag-wavingly patriotic, but they were really just more bubbas—the Agency nickname for homegrown terrorists with racist, neo-Nazi leanings and a fierce hatred for the federal government. And for all agents of the federal government.

  Such as Decker.

  Even though Deck’s specialty was terrorist cells of the foreign persuasion, he’d been introduced to informant Gus Mondelay when the man had coughed up what seemed to be evidence that these particular bubbas and al-Qaeda were working in tandem.

  Those insane-sounding allegations could not be taken lightly even though Deck himself couldn’t make sense of the scenario. If there was anyone the bubbas hated more than federal agents, it was foreigners. Although the two groups certainly could have found common ground in their hatred of Israel and the Jews.

  So Dougie Brendon, the newly appointed Agency director, had assigned Decker to Gus Mondelay. Deck was to use Mondelay to try to work his way deeper into the Freedom Network, with the goal of being present at one of the meetings with members of the alleged al-Qaeda cell.

  So far all Mondelay had given him were leads that had gone nowhere.

  In return, Decker sat with him night after night, watching emotionally numb women gyrate unenthusiastically in one sleazy strip club after a
nother where he was assaulted by crappy rock music played at brain-jarring decibels. He, of course, paid for the drinks.

  Mondelay made the come-closer-to-talk gesture again. “I’m going to give Tim a call, see what’s holding him up,” he said as he pried his cell phone out of his pants pocket.

  Decker watched as the other man keyed in a speed dial number, then held his phone to his face, plugging his other ear with one knockwurst-sized finger. Yeah, that would help him hear over the music.

  It wouldn’t have been quite so awful to sit here if only the DJ played some Aerosmith every now and then.

  Or if the strippers or waitresses in this place bothered to smile—Jesus, or even scowl, for that matter. But their perpetually bored expressions were depressing as hell. They didn’t even bother to be pissed at the fact that they were being exploited.