Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2

by J. L. Saint

  Roger disconnected with Paul and called Mari.

  “Roger?” She sounded distraught.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s unbelievable. My brother Fahran and my sister Maisa are here.”

  “You have a sister and a brother? You’ve never mentioned them.” An uneasiness tingled over Roger’s skin.

  “Yes. I, uh, haven’t spoken of them because… It’s hard to explain. When Neil brought me to America from Afghanistan, I chose to forget…everything…” Her voice broke on a painful note that said volumes to Roger. All was not well with Mari and her family. She cleared her throat and continued before he could ask her what she wasn’t saying. “I can’t believe they are here to see me.”

  “They’re on post?” Roger stood, fully alert and headed out the door of his office, truck keys in hand.

  “No. I must go to them at the Holsten Inn in Fayetteville. They left a message for me.”

  Red flags waved in Roger’s face. “This is a trick. Dugar’s trying to draw you out.”

  “No. I know it’s Fahran and Maisa. Only they could have written what I read. Will you take me to see them? Please.”

  “I’ll be right there and we’ll talk. I don’t like this at all.” Roger moved like the wind to get to Mari. Part of his concern didn’t involve her family or her wanting to leave post, but that she’d gotten the message in the first place. He thought he had alerted all channels that mail, calls and any other communication to Mari had to be screened by him. He didn’t want Dugar to even remotely touch Mari’s life again.

  By the time he made it back to his apartment and saw the note, his uneasiness had mushroomed to warning signals and Dugar didn’t have anything to do with it. Mari was the source. The note was authentic, but his gut told him she was holding back more than she was saying. Pain was too mild a word for the strain he saw in her eyes. He wanted to understand what had happened in Afghanistan but it seemed too horrible for her to share with him. She’d been through so much. He couldn’t believe she was only twenty-four years old. It seemed surreal to him. Then again, Neil had only been a year or so younger than Roger was. Had Neil known about her family? “So, you haven’t spoken to your brother and sister since you left Afghanistan?”

  “No. There was a family…rift…and I did not try and find them after Neil…helped me.”

  “They wrote they are so glad to see that you’re alive and so sorry over what happened. What happened? What made them think you were dead?”

  Mari turned away from Roger and picked up the picture of her and Neil that Roger had brought to her. She couldn’t look into Roger’s piercing blue gaze and answer his question. He saw too much. She didn’t want to lie to him, but how could she tell him that her father had banished her to a cell and left her to starve to death when her family fled the village?

  Roger would want to know why. Then she would have to tell him what the men in her village had done to her. She knew she didn’t have to fear Roger’s condemnation, but she had no doubt Roger would be outraged on her behalf.

  Neil had been and Roger was even more…aggressively passionate about things than Neil.

  Neil had not only blamed her father for his cruelty but had blamed her whole family. To him there was no excuse for what they let happen to her. He believed her mother, her brother and her sister should have done something to intervene. Helped her escape or something. Neil just hadn’t understood. There was no place to escape to and for anyone of her family to go against her father’s decisions would have brought a severe punishment, if not the same punishment, upon themselves—a family’s honor in her culture was everything. Right now, Mari couldn’t imagine Roger feeling any less angry than Neil had. That would jeopardize her chances of seeing Maisa and Fahran today.

  She gazed out at the wind chimes on the balcony, wishing the wind could carry her to a different place where the harsh realities of violence and pain had never entered her life. That she was a child again, dreaming of a life full of love and happiness, laughing with her twin sister as they tricked her brother, helping her mother. She desperately wanted to see Maisa and Fahran. She wanted to know about her mother and part of her still cared to know if her father was well too.

  Based on all the things tumbling around in her heart, she only told Roger some of her story. “I was still at our home when our village was attacked. I was sick. My family was not at home. Neil found me and carried me from my home just before it was demolished by a missile. There had been a rift between my family and me and I did not try and contact them after I recovered. I thought they would not have approved of my marriage, but maybe I was wrong since they have come here to see me.” She turned around and set the photo of her and Neil back on the shelf then faced Roger. “Being able to see my family…it’s something I never thought possible and I can hardly wait…”

  Roger inhaled and ran his fingers through his dark hair.

  She could tell he didn’t want her to do this, and she waited, feeling as if her heart and her future hung in the balance. And maybe they did in more than one way. Last night had been the most restless night of her life. She kept reliving what prompted her flight into the bedroom. The memory and feel of Roger’s body against hers. The heat of his arousal. The scent of his cologne. The warmth of his mouth pressed to hers. She slid her gaze over him now, absorbing his full effect—a forbidden pleasure that made her heart thunder at her daring.

  He exuded power with an impatient, raw edge that urged her to soothe the crease in his brow, to ease the tension in his broad shoulders, to see a smile curve his lips and light his eyes. She’d only seen glimpses of the man behind the tightly controlled demeanor of his Delta commander role, and as much as she hated herself for feeling this way, she wanted more. She wanted to run her fingers through the waves of dark hair feathering back from his face and curling slightly at his collar. She wanted to know what would have happened if she’d met the tentative brush of his lips against hers last night with the full force of the want she didn’t dare to give in to.

  “When?” Roger asked.

  Mari blinked and snatched her gaze to his face. “When?”

  “When do you want to go? There is so much happening that I’m not sure I can take you later, but we can do it now. I don’t want anyone else taking you and going alone is not an option.”

  “Let me get dressed.” Mari hurried into the bedroom and put on her abaya and hijab. After coming to America with Neil, she’d stopped wearing the totally enveloping burka that had covered her heavily from head to toe and had adopted the abaya and hijab. Now as she put on her outer garments her hands shook. She smoothed the black gown over her rounding stomach and the baby growing inside her. Since the note had arrived, she’d been bubbling with hope and so wanting to see Maisa and Fahran. But now that the moment had come, she realized she’d changed a lot since her cell in Afghanistan, more so than even when she’d been attacked and left broken to die.

  A fissure of worry wormed into her heart. Was she only inviting more rejection and pain by seeing her family? Surely they came here because it was as they said in their note—they wanted to see her and were sorry about what had happened.

  She drew a deep breath. Whether they rejected her even more or welcomed her with open arms, she had to know how they’d fared from the war in her country. She had to know what had brought them to America.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Outskirts of Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  Dugar considered this to be his luckiest day ever. He’d put twelve notches on Sugar’s stock butt since this morning—one dead agent, eleven migrants—and had a good feeling he’d be adding number thirteen shortly. He was on that towelhead bitch’s trail and as soon as she stopped, he’d look her in the eye and then blow her head off.

  He hoped that fuckhead-spy Bean was rolling over in his cave grave because Dugar’s killing days weren’t over at all. Taking out that migrant trash this morning had left him pumped and ready to start a one-man war against the illegals
sucking his country dry. Sugar had mowed them down before they could hide.

  He’d read an article about how the I-95 corridor was crawling with the crop-picking aliens and just as soon as he tied up loose ends with the bitch ahead and with Slayer’s ass at the camp, Dugar was going to whoop ass on a road trip the world would never forget.

  It was the best thing he could do to honor Lloyd. “Daaaammn.” He smacked the steering wheel and nearly bit through his bottom lip at the rage twisting him inside out. There was no way Lloyd killed himself. Bean had to have killed Lloyd. And he must have found Lloyd’s secret account of his relationship with McVeigh and Lloyd’s retirement plan information.

  That’s how Bean knew stuff. It wasn’t because Lloyd had told Bean stuff he hadn’t shared with Dugar.

  One thing Dugar knew for sure, Bean had played him for a fucking fool. And just as soon as he returned to camp, Dugar was going to pump Bean’s corpse with a shitload of bullets.

  The bitch ahead made a quick right turn and Dugar nearly wrecked the ’57 Chevy following her around the corner. Then he had to slam on his brakes because she’d stopped dead in the road. A split second later the door opened and a man armed with a rifle barreled out of the car. The man’s eyes had Dugar’s death warrant in them. Dugar didn’t even think twice, he grabbed Sugar and shot right through the damned windshield, unloading the magazine. When he finished, his windshield was gone, the man was on the ground, and the car ahead was shot to hell.

  Dugar saw a car come up behind him. He shoved the Chevy into gear and gunned the engine to get the hell out of Dodge. He hoped the bump he went over as he U-turned was the body of the SOB he’d shot. He whipped the Chevy around and made the forty-five minute drive to the Viper’s camp in twenty-three minutes, cussing and screaming the whole way as bugs flew in his face and mouth. His eyes were so dry from the wind and shit that he could barely see.

  The bitch had tricked him, fucked him over just like Bean had. He was going to get her if he had to bomb every inch of Fort Bragg’s two-hundred-and-fifty-one square miles. The post might be the biggest shit around but that didn’t mean it was impenetrable. He’d plan. Hell, he’d already stockpiled all the military-grade shit he needed. Timothy McVeigh’s mark in history would be trumped by Frank Dugar.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Atlanta, Georgia

  1000 hours

  “He’s on the corner!” Rico said just as Angie passed the intersection of Monroe Drive and Piedmont Avenue.

  “Who?” In the middle of traffic, she couldn’t just lock her breaks.

  “The homeless man we’re after.”

  “How did you recognize him so fast?” Angie signaled, turned the next corner, and went around the block. She glanced into her rearview mirror several times just to see if someone followed. Nothing. Her uneasiness had eased some, but hadn’t left.

  “He’s wearing a Green Beret cap and pushing a grocery cart packed with his belongings. I hope he’s the only one out on the streets wearing that cap.”

  “A friend of mine who works in a shelter downtown says that vets make up almost half of the homeless and most won’t accept any long-term help.”

  “It’s understandable.”

  Angie glanced over at Rico. His tight-lipped answer surprised her. He didn’t look her way but kept his gaze focused on the people they passed. “Why is that?”

  “Disillusionment, trauma, or just no longer interested in living the way society wants them to. Maybe a combination of all three.” He shrugged then winced, telling her that despite last night’s sensual odyssey, he was in pain. “It’s a slippery slope. Men come back from war damaged physically, mentally, emotionally. They man up to the demands of life around them, but slowly lose ground until they reach a point that they can’t hold down the fort any longer. War has changed them forever, but family, friends, and even the soldier himself expects to be the same person he was before. It isn’t possible.”

  “Okay, I can see how, but why turn away from help once it’s offered?”

  “Maybe help comes too late or with too many stipulations. The changes they’d have to make to reenter society would only put them back in a vicious cycle of failure.”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?” Rico nodded to the parking lot of a gas station ahead. A man wearing a green beret stood with three other men who appeared to be living on the streets as well.

  Angie parked the car and swallowed the lump of emotion knotted in her throat. How much of Rico’s response had been personal? She knew he was very frustrated with how slowly his recovery was going, but did he actually think he was failing because of it?

  He exited the car quickly. She snapped off the engine, grabbed her computer and followed. She knew he was anxious to speak with Sarge, but Rico had been uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation too.

  “Sarge?” Rico approached the group of men with his hands empty and visible.

  “Depends.” The man turned to face Rico. The other men moved closer to Sarge, closing ranks.

  “Officer Morrow sent me.”

  “Then I might be Sarge. What do you want?” He leaned closer and narrowed watery-green eyes at Rico. “I remember you from yesterday.”

  Sarge wore the honored military cap—a symbol denoting Army Special Forces—at a dignified angle over buzzed gray hair. Angie took a closer look at the man. He had a cleaner, neater look than the other men whose unkempt long hair needed about a dozen washings.

  Though stooped with age, she could tell from Sarge’s bulk and grizzled expression that he’d been a force to reckon with on and off the battlefield.

  Rico nodded. “Good. If you can remember me then I hope you can remember some other things as well.” He pointed to the gas station’s quick mart. “Can I buy everyone coffee and sandwiches?”

  Sarge stiffened his back. “Why?”

  Rico studied the man a moment. “A number of reasons. First is code. Where I grew up, you didn’t ask anything without offering something.”

  Where had he grown up? Angie suddenly realized that she knew about Rico’s life from the point he entered the military at eighteen, but before that, nothing. Well, other than he’d said he’d been born in Miami, Florida.

  “Then I’ll accept only if I can tell you something worthwhile.”

  “Fair. You remember seeing me chase someone out of the park yesterday?”

  “Not likely to forget it. Felt like I was back in battle. The gunfire. A man running for his life and you ready to kill. What do you want to know?”

  “Did you see two women in burkas pushing a stroller?”

  Angie held up the picture of the women on her computer screen. Sarge bent down to look at it. “I did. They walked to the curb and got into a taxi waiting there.”

  “What company?”

  “Checker Cab.”

  “The company should have a record then.”

  Sarge shook his head. “I wouldn’t barge in asking questions, if I were you. The driver turned down two people looking for a taxi before he gave the women a ride, like he was waiting just for them. He wears a Yankees baseball cap. The boys and I here were just discussing whether to tell Officer Morrow about what I saw.” Sarge pointed to one of the men standing with him. “Deets says a Checker cabbie who wears a Yankees cap always hangs out in the Varsity’s parking lot around midday. Can’t be many Yankee cabbies in Braves country, right?”

  The man Sarge indicated didn’t speak or look up. He only nodded, causing his stringy hair to fall across his dirt-smudged cheeks. He kept his gaze angled down, making it almost impossible to get a look at his face. He wore visibly soiled, rumpled mismatched clothes. From the man’s deference to Sarge, she got the idea that Sarge was the leader of the group.

  Angie studied Sarge’s face again and decided there was a lot more going on with the man.

  “The Varsity?” Rico frowned.

  Angie closed her computer. “Georgia’s world famous dr
ive-in greasy spoon. It’s on North Avenue and Spring Street. Not far from here.”

  Rico pulled out his wallet.

  “You keep that for now,” Sarge said. “And when you can come back and share that coffee and sandwich, we’ll be glad to accept. Consider that our code.”

  Rico pocketed his wallet and held out his hand to Sarge. “You’re on just as soon as I get to the bottom of what happened yesterday at the park. If you see Officer Morrow, tell him the same thing that you told me, okay?”

  Sarge shook Rico’s hand. “We’re going that way now.”

  The other men backed away from Sarge making it known they weren’t going to let Rico into their space.

  Rico smiled. “I appreciate all of the help and I’ll be back.”

  Angie waited until they were in the car and driving through traffic before speaking. She had no doubt Special Agent Gibson had reached Piedmont Park and wondered if the FBI was really following them, just waiting to pounce. Visions of The Fugitive ran through her mind. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re not going to call Agent Gibson are you?”

  “And tell them what?” He sighed and pressed his palms to his temple. “Two women wearing burkas and men’s sneakers got in a cab?”

  “Sarge said the driver had turned down other people.”

  “It is possible the women had hired the man and he was specifically waiting for them. Then again, if they were the snipers, the cabbie could be in on the plot.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “Check out the Varsity and see if the cabbie is there.”

  “We may have a wait. It just opened, but folks usually hit here around eleven to eat.” Angie pulled into the Varsity parking lot off Spring Street and then drove around to the other side of the building and parked in the back corner of the near-empty two-acre lot. No cabbies yet. No anyone as far as she could tell, though a dark blue sedan pulled into the parking lot too but then drove across and pulled out onto the road, clearly avoiding the red light at the corner.