Lady Justice

by Vicki Hinze

  He had three more canisters: one in the holster, and two in his backpack. All were full.

  After a last look to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he left his cabin and went down two floors to the largest common area on the ship. On the far side, just down from a boutique, he ducked into an obscure alcove and then soaked the soles of his shoes. He paused then for a moment and hoped Cardel Boudreaux hadn’t used all of the Warriors’ luck on his leg of the mission.

  A woman walked by, holding the hands of her twin girls. Remorse pricked at Jaris. They weren’t as young as Cardel’s toddler—these girls were five, or maybe six—but they had pink ribbons in their hair and they were laughing.

  Jaris liked the innocence in the sound, and resented liking it. Don’t notice, he reminded himself. Noticing brought nightmares. Nightmares, regret. He’d learned that the hard way.

  He shut out the sights and sounds and smells of all the people in the busy lobby, and then left the alcove. It was time to get off of the ship.

  Dispensing a thin film of clear, odorless contaminant through the tubing in his sleeve, he saturated every handrail in his path and a tempting-looking luncheon buffet set out on deck.

  No one stopped him, or slowed his progress. He walked off the ship, then the dock, and made it to the U.S. border without incident.

  There, foot traffic was heavy, and people waiting to enter the country stood in long lines. The noon sun beat down on them, raising sweat and tempers. Jaris moved from line to line, scanning the customs officials’ uniforms, looking for his Consortium contact. Finally, he spotted him. Middle-aged and nondescript, he was wearing a U.S. flag pin on his lapel.

  Jaris stepped into the man’s line, and when his turn arrived, he handed over his new passport. “Blistering sun today.”

  “Blistering.” Recognition shone in the man’s eyes. “They say tomorrow will be hotter.”

  Certain now he had made the appropriate contact, Jaris passed over a canister from his backpack—a canister the official had been well paid to use to contaminate an imported shipment of fruit. What kind of fruit, Jaris was not told, which meant, in the foreseeable future, he would avoid eating any.

  The official waved him through, and he walked onto U.S. soil.

  The canister in his holster was now empty, and he had made delivery on another. Two down, and one to go.

  One that required only an afternoon walk through a few maize and cotton fields …

  Chapter Three

  U.S./Canada Border July 4

  Sebastian Cabot sat in his car at the Canadian border, too consumed by thoughts of his family and memories of his youth to spare any concern on getting caught.

  The trunk of his Chevrolet Impala was filled with contraband cans of pâté. Simply put, he was smuggling. He had made no declarations to the customs official but, if what the Consortium had told him proved true, he wouldn’t be challenged.

  After September 11, that alone was enough to scare the hell out of John Q. Public. But because there was more, it made Sebastian sick.

  He slung an arm over the steering wheel to cool the sweat from his armpit, and inched the car forward in line. Who would have thought that having a few celebratory drinks after winning the biggest case of his twenty-seven-year legal career would lead him to this? To Sebastian Cabot, attorney extraordinaire, friend of the court and champion of underdogs, smuggling pâté?

  And soon, to worse.

  His stomach slid into knots under his ribs. It was a tragic end to a life lived with purpose, but he was powerless to change it. The Consortium’s director and then its chairman had made that clear—and they’d hired an entire cell of Global Warriors to deliver the message proving it.

  He was not safe. His wife and their three children were not safe. Even his secretary, his second cousin, Oscar, whom he hadn’t seen in twenty years, and his damned dog were not safe.

  And there was only one way to make any of them safe again.

  “You’re clear to proceed, sir.” The official nodded.

  “Thanks.” Sebastian nodded back. The U.S. flag pin on his white golfing hat bobbed. Driving on, he headed south.

  By early afternoon, he was in California’s Napa Valley: the heart of wine country in the United States. He thought about pulling into a truck stop for an artery-clogging meal of the cholesterol-packed, fried foods he had avoided for the last three years under doctor’s orders—today he could eat anything guilt-free—but his stomach churned, and he decided against it. The work he was about to do had his system riled up enough without throwing it a grease-fest. So he drove on, to a vineyard, and then pulled off onto the shoulder of the road.

  The tires turning on the loose, dry dirt raised a little dust cloud. He waited a moment for it to settle, looked up and then down the asphalt road. Heat rippled off it in waves. The entire area seemed desolate. No people. No cars, or trucks. Nothing in sight except row upon row of lush grapevines basking in the hot, summer sun.

  Sweating profusely, Sebastian gave in to his foul mood. He didn’t want to be doing this. The only saving grace in this whole side trip to hell was that, after it all happened, he wouldn’t see the disappointment in his family’s eyes.

  His whole life he’d heard the kind of warnings now playing in his head. The conscience tugs that had kept him in church on Sundays; in the band in high school, when he wanted nothing more than to quit; when he avoided drugs in college, even though everyone short of God was experimenting with them; and in law school long after he wanted to drop out.

  Then, those warnings had helped keep him on the straight and narrow.

  Now, nothing could help him, or save his ass.

  He got out of the car and opened the trunk, and then the first can of pâté. He didn’t give himself an antidote injection. There wasn’t one. Not that it mattered.

  Stooping low, he used his pocketknife to empty the tin onto the ground, among the grapevines. His stomach clutched. How many years of sweat and dreams—how many lives was he destroying?

  Son of a bitch, he hated this. He loved his country and the people in it. But who would believe that now? He was a smuggler and a saboteur. Call a spade a spade. He was a traitor.

  He blinked hard, his chin trembling. What difference did it make what anyone else thought? His wife and kids meant the most and they would hate him. Yes, this was wrong, but the bottom line hadn’t changed. As much as he loved his country, he loved his family more.

  His chest tight, he closed his mind, shunned the guilt, and moved on to the next vineyard. And then to the next, contaminating them one by one with the tainted pâté.

  When he had emptied the last tin, he tossed it back into the trunk. It clanged against the others, bled dry and hollow. Sebastian slammed the trunk lid shut, got back into the car, and then drove north, into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

  His conscience nagged at him. Merciless. Unrelenting. Each tin contained millions of biologically engineered grape lice, which would demolish the grapevines from the roots out. By the time the poor growers realized they had a problem, they’d have lost seventy percent of their plants—and the grape lice would have spread to even more vineyards.

  The California wine industry would be crippled, if not destroyed.

  And European vineyard and wine stocks would soar, generating significant profits for the Consortium.

  Sebastian didn’t personally know any of the Consortium members, much less its chairman or director, but he hated them all. They considered themselves a profitseeking, strategic alliance of international businessmen, but they were a self-serving group of terrorists who would manipulate anyone by any means necessary to achieve their financial goals. What they were forcing him to do proved there was no limit to the amount of damage they were willing to inflict, or to the number of lives they were willing to crush. The bastards had no consciences, no morals or ethics, and no mercy.

  And most terrifying of all, they had forced him to be just like them.

  Sebastian mopped at his throbbin
g forehead. If only he could go back …

  Regret and resentment burned deep in his gut. He hadn’t had a single drink since that night, yet his abstinence changed nothing. He had tried everything; there was no way out. The Consortium had him by the short hairs and the chairman had offered Sebastian only one option that kept his family alive. Only one. And though it went against everything he had believed in and had worked for all his life, he had taken it.

  God forgive him, he had taken it.

  Near Lake Tahoe, the temperature plunged. He cranked down the air conditioner to warm up, pulled out his phone, and then dialed the number he’d been instructed to call.

  “Yes?” A man with a thick European accent answered in a clipped tone.

  The chairman. Clamping down on the steering wheel, Sebastian glared into the taillights of an eighteen-wheeler on the road in front of him. “It’s done.”

  “Very well.”

  “My family—”

  “Will be safe, Mr. Cabot. In our line of work, keeping one’s word is essential. Your debt is paid—provided you stick to the terms of the agreement.”

  Sebastian broke into a cold sweat. “Done.” He disconnected, drove on for twenty minutes, and then dialed a second number.

  A Cayman woman answered in a crisp voice. “First Island Bank.”

  “I need to verify a deposit, please.” He waited until she put him through to a second woman, and then made his request, adding the account number.

  “And the account owner’s name, sir?”

  “G. D. Cabot.” Sebastian revealed the name of his wife, Glenna, and then added the additional personal information that would be requested to prove he had authority on this account.

  “Yes, Mr. Cabot,” the woman said. “A five-million-dollar deposit was credited to your account today. Certified funds.”

  That was it, then. “Thank you.” Sebastian hit the end button on the phone, considered calling his wife and kids, but then thought better of it. A call home wasn’t on the list, and who knew what dangers the Consortium or their Global Warriors would attribute to an unscheduled call. They could feel Glenna or the kids were a threat.

  No, as much as he craved hearing Glenna’s voice, Sebastian couldn’t risk it.

  But he wished he could. She had the most soothing voice he had ever heard. He had married her for that voice. When nothing else could, it relaxed him.

  Soft-colored memories of happy times flowed through his mind, bittersweet in the way of good things ending. They’d had a good marriage, good kids, good everything. And he’d lost it all because of one night. One night, and one too many martinis …

  Remorse and soul-deep regret gnawed at him, warred with dark, sharp-edged resentment. Sebastian stiffened in his seat, clamped hard on the steering wheel until his fingertips turned numb, drove on down the winding roadway. Steep cliffs lined the road. Twice, so far, he had seen pretty waterfalls. The next one he saw—

  Bridal Falls. Off to his right. At least a hundred-foot drop.

  He pulled an image of Glenna and the kids on the sailboat last summer from his memory, holding it fast in his mind’s eye. He stomped down on the accelerator. The car lurched, ripped through the guardrail. Metal crunched, glass shattered, and the car sailed out, over the gorge.

  Moments stretched into lifetimes and a strange noise filled his ears. His own primal weeping.

  As the Impala plunged and tumbled, crashed into tree branches and trunks and sharp rocks, it burst into flames.

  The Consortium had issued an ultimatum.

  Sebastian Cabot had followed his orders explicitly.

  Including the order to die on impact.

  Chapter Four

  Washington, D.C. Friday, July 5

  “You’re busted, Lieutenant Gibson.”

  Senior Special Agent Gabrielle Kincaid stalked around the conference table, as rigid and tense as only the infuriated Queen Bitch of the highly skilled Special Detail Unit of the Secret Service could. She stopped behind him, just off his left shoulder, and then bent low and with a growling whisper put the question to him.

  “How does it feel … to know … that you … killed seventeen civilians, three seasoned SDU operatives, and two FBI agents?”

  Gibson bowed his head, looked down from the copper-lined wall in the top-secret Home Base headquarters conference room to the scarred table that had seen too many crises and even more ass-chewing debriefings. He didn’t dare to answer. In his days as a security monitor at Home Base, Gibson once had seen her boil. It wasn’t an experience he was eager to repeat, much less to instigate.

  Mildly put, Agent Kincaid did not suffer in silence.

  “You know … we’re America’s last line of defense,” she said from behind him in a tone that raised the hair on his neck. “Our missions are critical to the nation’s safety. They require total and complete anonymity—absolute secrecy. There aren’t a hundred people in the entire country who know SDU exists, and that’s essential to our effectiveness.” She paused, lowered her voice a decibel, and added, “This was training, Gibson, but if you’re going to survive the transition from active duty military to SDU operative, then you’d better get one thing clear … in your head … right now. SDU is a stealth operation. You never, never, sacrifice its secrecy. Good agents who have devoted their lives to this unit have popped cyanide or been killed by other good agents in this unit to protect it. That’s a fact of life here. Burn it into your brain if you have to, but don’t ever forget it again.”

  He risked a glance at her. “It was just a momentary lapse.”

  Dressed appropriately in sleek black, she tossed her sun-bronzed hair back from her face and glared at him. “Then you also know that if you had one of these momentary lapses on an actual mission, everyone in the unit—including Commander Conlee and every single operative currently on missions worldwide—would be killed. Inside of twenty-four hours, all evidence that SDU existed would be eradicated. All evidence, including us.” Her green eyes burned nearly black with disdain and fury. “I’m not ready to die because you’re sloppy or incompetent and are having momentary lapses, Gibson.”

  Gibson’s stomach heaved and stuck somewhere in his ribs. “It won’t happen again, ma’am.”

  “It can’t happen again.” She walked around the table, leaned across it, and planted her spread hands on its scarred surface. “Understand this, too. My first obligation is to the security of the United States. You screw up again and I’ll kill you myself.”

  How could anyone so beautiful be so vicious and merciless?

  Her partner, Maxwell Grayson, would say it was God’s sense of compensation and balance, but Gibson considered it more likely God’s twisted sense of humor, reserved to make men crazy—or His secret weapon, used to scare them spitless. Either way, Gibson believed her every word from his toenails up. It was common knowledge in the unit that if Gabby Kincaid said something, you could take it to the bank and cash it. Or, in his case, to the graveyard and bury it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ll be back in two weeks to either bust you out of SDU or to certify your final training mission. I have no mercy, Gibson. Remember that and be prepared,” she warned him. “Now, get the hell out of my face.”

  Gibson wasted no time leaving the conference room. He felt shamed and scorched and totally pissed off at her for being unforgiving, and at himself because he had screwed up and created a need for it. He knew better.

  Special Agent Maxwell Grayson stood leaning against the hallway wall. He straightened and then clasped Gibson’s shoulder in an unspoken gesture of sympathy. “Rough one, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Gibson looked back, grunted. “I’ve got a debrief with Commander Conlee next, and I’m not sure I’ve got enough ass left for him to chew.”

  Conlee wouldn’t have to chew; Gabby had done a thorough job. But that was her job and vital to Gibson’s training. “You’ll probably survive it.” Max nodded to lend weight to his words. “She’s tough—” />
  “She deserves her reputation,” Gibson interjected with feeling.

  Max could disagree, but Gabby wouldn’t appreciate it. She’d worked hard around the unit to earn her unofficial title, “Queen Bitch,” and even harder to keep it—it was essential to her high-risk performance. No one had called her that to Max’s face, but Gibson had just come close. She must have really worked him over.

  Rightly or wrongly, Gabby made an all-out effort to be hypercritical of other agents’ job performances. In the last six years, she had alienated everyone in the unit except Commander Conlee and his second in charge, Jonathan Westford. Both relationships were atypical, and being her professional partner had told Max nothing. But being her personal friend had told him plenty that Brad Gibson and the others didn’t know. “She’s my partner, Brad. Show a little respect.”

  “Sorry.” His face reddened and the pulse at his throat throbbed. “She just gave me a really hard time.”

  “Kiss her feet for it,” Max said in all earnest.

  Gibson’s surprise had his jaw hanging loose. “What?”

  “She’s hands down the best active operative in the unit,” Max told him. “What she rips you a new one for can—and probably will—save your life down the line. It has others, including mine. That’s worth remembering.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re right and I’m wrong. But, man, she’s as subtle as a tank.” Gibson dragged a hand through his short, spiky hair. “At this point, I’ll be amazed if I get down the line without her killing me first.”

  “There is that.” Max bit back a smile and stuffed a hand in his pocket. “Consider it an opportunity to rise to the challenge.”

  “I could strap my ass to a booster rocket and not rise high enough to please her.” Resignation flickered over Gibson’s face. “She meant exactly what she said, didn’t she?”