Jack Be Quick (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Fiona Quinn

  Finley lifted his gaze. “It’s the forensics information from Pavle’s cell phone.” He slid into a seat at one of the long conference tables and started sifting through the pages from the phone logs and texts. “Looks like they were able to access his email through his phone–they have it translated already.” He seemed impressed. But this was par for the course here at Iniquus. Time always seemed compressed once a contract was signed, it usually meant lives were on the line and every second counted.

  Lynx settled behind her lap top. “Hey, Gage, can you put up some notes on the white board for me?”

  Gage moved into place and picked up a blue marker.

  “So I’m going to do a quick Google search on St. Cyril and Methodius because – well who’s ever heard of them before?” She turned toward Steve and tilted her head.

  He shrugged in response.

  “Well here, right away I can tell you these guys are the patron saints of Slovakia. Steve, are the Zorics’ Catholic? Would their terror activity be motivated by religion?”

  Steve rubbed his chin. “The Zorics’ don’t go to any kind of house of worship. They present as atheists, both those that are here in America and those in Slovakia. Their drive is political power. Their politics are firmly attached to Russia and Russian Middle Eastern policy especially Hezbollah but they’re also pro-Iranian.”

  “Hmmm. Let’s see if we start getting matching pings – I’m attacking this puzzle like it’s a message to take action. I’m looking for repeated threads.”

  “Sounds good – I’m going to scan through this and see what leaps out at me.” Steve tapped the folder.

  Lynx toed her tennis shoes off, being barefooted helped her think. She caught Gage’s gaze. “These saints apparently devised the first alphabet to be used for Slavonic manuscripts. So these guys were intellectuals.” Lynx ran her finger down the page. “They arrived in Rome in 868, where they were warmly received. This was partly due to their bringing with them the relics of Saint Clement.” She tilted her head back and forth. She said the details aloud just to pick out any commonalities when she moved down the Saints list on the board.

  Gage dutifully noted the information.

  “It says here that Cyril felt his end approaching so he became a monk. He died fifty days later.”

  “Geezis.” Steve’s gaze fixed on the paper in his hand. He jumped up to slide the page into the projector so everyone could see the image illuminated on one of the three screens hanging in the room.

  “This is a series of four separate text messages that came in yesterday. The first phrase was written in English.”

  Let us prey. May the saints bless our endeavors. Amen.

  “The next three texts were written in Slovakian and translated in the forensics department.” Steve dragged his finger down the sheet.

  The time has come, my brothers and sisters.

  Great changes come at the price of great sacrifices.

  I believe though that our plan is sound, and all is being readied. Nothing should prevent our success.

  “That’s a green light,” Titus said.

  Everyone agreed.

  “February 14th 869 CE,” Lynx said.

  “What’s that?” Titus moved over to stand behind her where he could see her screen.

  Lynx pointed to the sections she was reading. “February 14th is the feast day of both Saints Cyril and Methodius.”

  Gage quirked a brow. “Today’s February 14th.”

  “Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.” Lynx said. But as soon as she saw the date, her heebie-geebies—her personal warning system—began to buzz. Either she or someone she cared about was in mortal danger. Too bad it was such an imprecise warning system. She had no idea whose life was on the line or how she could help.

  Lynx ran through the possibilities. Certainly, she was safe here at Iniquus Headquarters. Jack had come through his surgery with flying colors. The rest of the Strike Force team. . . well they were off grid right now, playing in a Middle Eastern sandbox. Her mind flitted to her fiancé, Striker Rheas, Commander of Strike Force. It was terrifying to love someone who went down range into the heart of the battlefield. Every day was a struggle with a low-level hum of life-or-death survival fear. Even though she had contact with the team and what “need-to-know” information about their missions she came into contact with – that didn’t help. Loving someone who lived with their foot poised over a mine and an AK pointed at their heads, was a physical and mental battle all its own. Loving someone who was in constant danger . . . well there was a reason why so few Iniquus operatives were married.

  Lynx pulled her thoughts back to the present moment. She could do nothing to help anyone right now other than try to figure out why her warning system had gone off when she saw the date, February 14th.

  Steve yanked his chair up to her left, crowding in beside her. Lynx liked space to think. Her thoughts needed light and air, and she was getting neither with these two men looming over her. She called out, “Nutsbe, can you run this list and all of the permutations through the analysis software and see if it can find something interesting – I’m particularly interested in St. Basil’s since it’s the only one that is possessive – I’m thinking that might be a place rather than a thing – like St Basil’s Church or St. Basil’s grave.” Lynx hated using Nutsbe’s call sign – his fellow pilots had picked that moniker for him back in his pre-Panther Force days when he flew F-16s. Nutsbe’s birth name was Thaddeus Crushed.

  She looked at the board. “While you do that, I’ll Google St. Mogila, that’s a pretty obscure name.” She hammered her fingers into the keys. “Only one Saint Mogila. Saint Peter Mogila”

  “What’s his claim to fame?” Titus moved to a chair, and Lynx felt instantly better.

  “Hmm. He’s from a later period. In the 1620s, Mogila traveled to Ukraine. It says here that that’s when Poland annexed Ukrainian lands. . . he founded a church. . . settled in Kiev. This doesn’t seem pertinent. Pavle worked out of America. Right, Steve? He wasn’t involved in planning things in Europe?”

  Steve stuck his finger on the paper where he left off reading. “That’s right. There are family leaders in Slovakia, and they directed Pavle. And Pavle, in turn, instructed the family members here on the East Coast of the US. There are other family groups that have positioned in other parts of the country.”

  “So logically, since Pavle was in possession of this list,” she gestured toward the white board. “We’re concerned that it has implications to terrorist activity here in the Washington DC area where he was operating.”

  “And that could mean a direct terrorist attack,” Steve said. “But we have no information on his family actually engaging in anything even remotely like a terrorist attack. Their main objective was to fund organizations in the Middle East.”

  “But Pavle never got the message.” Lynx pointed out. “It came in after he was arrested, and you had confiscated his phone, right?”

  “The messages were received Sunday, February 13th at 12 hundred exactly. These are the only texts that came in after the raid.”

  “They originated from a burner phone?” Titus asked.

  “That’s what your forensics department notated.” Steve said. “The call, though, originated in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. It took a circuitous route from country to country until it was spoofed as a Pennsylvania Pizzeria.”

  “We need the CIA in on this, Steve. You were working with John Black and John Green. . .”

  Steve’s gaze travelled to the wall clock above the white board. “Green’s my contact in Slovakia. Black is here in Washington. I’d like to have a little more to hand them if I can.”

  Titus’s phone buzzed, and he moved to a more private corner of the room to answer it. Steve went back to his file. Lynx turned back to Gage who stood patiently by the white board.

  “Gage it remarks here that Kiev was not only the political and cultural center for the area but also an educational center. Mogila was part of a group
of intellectuals there. It seems they wanted to use Latin in the universities and there was retaliation against the teachers and educational facilities. Again with education.” She turned to look at her colleague who was working the computer searches. “Nutsbe, I’m just checking in on your parameters. Can run a search with education or school or university and each of the saints’ names?”

  Nutsbe scratched his nose. “Here’s an interesting ping – the ‘Slovakia and St. Clair’ search turned up that Brandon St. Clair is the chair of the Senate Arms Committee.”

  “What’s the correlate?” Lynx asked.

  “The document I’m looking at is a small article that mentioned that St. Clair was not available for comment because he was in a meeting with the Slovakian ambassador.” Nutsbe squinted his eyes and tapped at the keyboard. “I have another hit. This one is on the combination of ‘St. Clair and St Basil’s’. St. Basil’s Preparatory School. The senator gave a speech three years ago.”

  “Where’s the school?” Lynx asked.

  “Bethesda, Maryland. But here’s the part you need to hear. His granddaughter was a kindergarten student there.”

  Lynx moved over to stand behind him. “Follow that lead – what’s her name?”

  “In this photo Senator St. Clair is standing with a family of three children. The article says, ‘Second-grader Rebeca Levinski and her brothers enjoyed a lovely day, listening to their grandfather speak about the importance of respecting each other for their differences.’ There are three children in the photo with Brandon St. Clair.” A couple of swift clicks on the keyboard and the image was projected onto a screen for everyone to see.

  “Another ping,” Nutsbe said, tapping more keys. “It’s coming off the directive for ‘schools and St. Mogila’ – good catch on that one, Lynx. Looks like in March 1939, Hungary wanted to take over more territory from the newly established Carpatho Ukraine. But the autonomous section of Czechoslovakia wouldn’t allow that to happen. Aryan terrorists attacked St. Mogila’s School in Czechoslovakia. They went in and shot some of the children, then held the students and faculty in the cafeteria for days with their parents outside, trying to at least get food and water to them. Some days later, the school was exploded children and all. The threat was that this kind of terror would continue if the region tried to remain autonomous. So they joined Hungary throughout World War II.”

  Steve was standing, wiping his hands over his face, then leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  Titus moved up in front of Steve and planted his knuckles on the table, leaning his weight onto them until they were eye to eye. “You have more on this.” It wasn’t a question – it was a command to fill in the blanks.

  Steve took a step back and spoke to the room. “The assault on St. Moglia’s didn’t work by blowing up the children.” Steve’s skin lost its color. He had been pushing himself without breaks for over a week, trying to cross all the Ts on the Zoric takedown. He hadn’t looked well even before this last bit of news. Whatever was going through his mind now seemed to lick at the last of his vital energy. “One of the Carpatho-Ukrainian leaders was a power-hungry sociopath. He didn’t care for anyone or anything except his sons.”

  “Were his children or grandchildren in the school?” Lynx asked.

  “Worse. His children were taken from the school. The school was merely a smoke screen, hiding what the terrorists were doing. They kidnapped the leader’s children and held them, using their pain as leverage throughout the war. Allowing for untold atrocities to take place.”

  “I know it probably doesn’t make a difference to this narrative – but what happened to the children? Is there any way there is a familial correlate?” Lynx asked.

  “They were killed when Hitler suicided.”

  “So never rescued?” Lynx asked.

  “No one knew they were gone – everyone assumed they were victims in the school.”

  “But their father. . .”

  “Was under duress and didn’t let anyone know. The children were being held in Berlin–if there was an attempt to rescue them, it was off the records.”

  “And you know this how?” Titus asked, rocking his weight back into his heels.

  “It was one of the case studies we looked at in one of my counterterrorism classes,” Steve replied.

  “Okay, no waiting. Get Black and Green on the phone now.” Titus said.

  Lynx leaned over the computer desk. “Nutsbe, can you get a roster of the students at St. Basil’s? Maybe also check the birthdates for the two boys and see what grade they might be in. Titus we should get eyes on the Levinski home.” She checked the clock, zero seven fifteen hours. “The children should be just about ready for their ride to school. Could a few Panthers head over? If they go now, we could get the children in sight before they leave.”

  Titus turned and pointed at three men: Thorn, Brainiack, and Dagger. They jogged out of the room. He pointed at Nutsbe. “Text them the address.”

  “Roger that.” He tapped his phone. Then moved back to his work at his keyboard.

  “What are you thinking, Lynx?” Finley asked.

  Lynx moved over to the board and took the marker from Gage. She wrote parenthetically next to each saint.

  “St. Cyril and Methodius.” (when)

  “St. Mogila” (what)

  “St. Basil’s (where)

  “St. Clair” (why)

  “The who . . . that’s missing. And the end game. If I’m seeing this correctly, we’re looking at an attack today. But we might be lucky. Perhaps taking down Zoric on Friday night before he got the green light means that whatever this is—,” she tapped the board, “Has been thwarted.”

  Nutsbe cleared his throat. “The granddaughter is in fifth grade, Mrs. Peabody’s class. The boys are twins in first grade hang on. . . Mrs. O’Grady’s class and Miss Molloy’s class.”

  Lynx turned from the board the pen held mid-air. “Wait. What’s that last teacher’s name?”

  “Gillian S. Molloy.”

  Lynx’s gaze caught on Titus. “That’s Suz. That’s Jack’s fiancée.”

  3

  Suz

  8 a.m., Monday, February 14th

  St Basil’s Preparatory School, Bethesda Maryland

  Suz was exhausted and distracted that morning as she got ready for school. That it was Valentine’s Day had completely slipped her mind as she dressed for her mood rather than the occasion, choosing all black.

  When she unlocked her classroom door, though, she was greeted with bright red and pink decorations and the new reading words carefully lettered and posted behind her desk — words that meant love to her students: hugs, family, home, safe. . . Suz picked up a sheet of stickers that lay on her desk, ready for her to use on the kids’ workbook pages that day, and she tapped a few hearts onto her turtleneck sweater. It was the best she could do under the circumstances – all she had energy for.

  The kids filed in, filling the classroom with excited chatter.

  “Good morning, bright and shining faces. You look very happy today. You would think that it was a special day or something.” Suz smiled down at her first graders. They plunked gifts and cards on her desk, then went to hang up their coats. It was a blustery winter day. The temperature hovered in the upper twenties, and there had been warnings of possible snow. The children worked to untangle themselves from their layers of outerwear. Suz waded into the crush to help with buttons and stuck zippers.

  “Miss Molloy, I want to give out my cards,” Michael held up a crushed paper bag. Suz was sure his mother had handed it to him in pristine order, but Michael was a rough and tumble kind of guy. Suz was a little surprised the bag had made it to school at all.

  She raised her voice. “Class, after I take attendance you can distribute your Valentine’s cards to the student post boxes, okay?”

  Her class was only sixteen strong today. It was a particularly bad flu season this year, and four of her students were out sick. She should have called in sick he
rself and had a substitute cover for her today. By the time Suz had left Jack at the hospital and climbed into her own bed, heartbroken by her decision and her loss, she couldn’t sleep. All she was capable of was lying there feeling miserable. The long night left her exhausted and not completely in command of her emotions.

  She watched the kids running around, making their deliveries and a wave of melancholy washed over her. She wanted kids of her own. A bunch of them. But she also wanted them to have a father who was around for them. Yet another reason why she couldn’t marry Jack. She bent over and pretended to pick something up off the floor as she surreptitiously swiped a tear from her cheek.

  This is just fatigue, she tried to convince herself. “For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together,” she muttered as she lifted her head to find out who was tapping on her shoulder.

  “I lost a tooth last night.” Miranda opened her mouth wide and stuck a finger in the open gap. Her mother had pulled the wisps of Miranda’s silk-fine hair into pigtails and tied them in pink ribbon to match her jumper.

  “Oh that’s so fun! I can already see your adult tooth trying to pop through. Did the Tooth Fairy come?” Suz pulled her enthusiasm out of thin air. Losing a first tooth was a huge deal to these kids, and she wasn’t going to mope and bring Miranda down.

  “Yup!” Miranda danced off and Jenny stepped into her place. “Miss Molloy, can we read stories this morning? I want to know what happens next to the Velveteen Rabbit.”

  Suz actually felt relieved. It was a good idea. She’d settle the kids on the floor with hearts and flowers coloring pages to build their finger muscles and fine motor control while she read to them this morning. This afternoon, one of the room-moms was coming in with a little party she had planned. The kids would play games and open their Valentine’s cards then. Suz would make it through today and let the principal know she wasn’t well. That would give him plenty of time to arrange for a substitute.