Collateral Damage: Silent Warrior, Book 1

by J. L. Saint

  Lauren snapped her head up. “In Lebanon? That’s where you were hurt. That’s where you saw Bill.”

  “Yes. My Delta team went in to rescue the women.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. His expression was haggard. He was clearly struggling with something. Then he met her gaze head on. “Bill was there and…I killed him. Shot him to death with a spray of bullets from my machine gun. He died at my feet.”

  Lauren reared back at the harsh ugly reality of the situation and Jack’s hard voice. She’d understood Jack had a job to do. Bill had been involved in something bad. But…Jesus…couldn’t Jack have told her this before now? Her entire world spun in turmoil, one of horror and pain over the reality of what Bill had done and just how he had died.

  Jack had come to her asking about Bill. He hadn’t necessarily deceived her, but… “You killed Bill. You didn’t tell me.”

  “Guilty. There’s no excuse for what I let happen between us. I did try and tell you. I am no better of a man than Bill was. I’m sorry. I suck at relationships anyway.” He stood. “We’ve got to go to the post. The CIA and NCS will be there shortly. They are going to have more questions than you can answer and they are going to turn you and your sons’ lives inside out. They will leave nothing unexposed until they’ve reached the bottom of the cesspool Bill was in. I’m going to do what I can, but it’s going be rough.”

  Pain slashed through Lauren even as her mind spun from the revelations about Bill. Jack’s knife went deeper than Bill’s betrayals. That was it? That was all Jack was going to say about them together. That he sucked at relationships anyway? Lauren met Jack’s gaze disappointed for the first time since he knocked on her door. “You’re boiling everything we shared down to, ‘I’m sorry and I suck anyway’?” Anger bubbled inside of her. She wanted to yell, but clenched her teeth instead. “What was it, Jack? Pity fucks for a deceived widow?”

  He looked as if she’d punched him, which only made her feel worse. “Yeah. It was what it was.” He collected the computer and left the room, his back and manner as hard and cold as steel.

  Lauren fisted her hand against her aching heart and fought the burn in her eyes and her gut. She didn’t need Jack. She didn’t need anything but her sons back in her arms to protect them and someplace to disappear. She had a life to rebuild for them and come hell or high water nothing and no one was going to stop her from doing that. It occurred to her as she left the kitchen that she hadn’t asked who Bill had worked for. If her husband had been the intermediary then someone had to be calling the shots and that someone just might be the SOB after her.

  Jack and Weston were waiting at the door. Lauren grabbed her purse and waited until they were in the car to ask some of the questions starting to perk in her shocked brain. Weston and Jack were in the front, she sat in the back.

  “Who exactly did Bill work for?” she asked. “Is BioLogics behind all of this?”

  “BioLogics was nothing but a cardboard front for a bigger entity,” Jack said.

  “What entity?”

  “We’re still trying to piece that together,” Roger Weston said. “In the diary of information, Bill called the man he worked for as The Man with the Yellow Hat.”

  Lauren frowned. “You’re kidding. As in Curious George?”

  “Yes.” Jack shifted quickly her way. “Do you have any Curious George books in your house?”

  “Yeah. One or two I think. The boys are into Thomas the Tank Engine, so we rarely read Curious George.” Eyes wide, her voice rose as her vision literally turned red. “You think Bill put evidence in his sons’ books that people would kill for?” Rage curled deep into her gut.

  Jack and Roger shared a look.

  “You need to tell her,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  Weston continued, “Considering the scope and ramifications of the terrorists acts detailed by your husband—”

  “No,” Lauren interjected. “Just call him Bill. Makes my stomach turn just a little less acid.”

  “The President is ordering a joint agency task force to investigate this.”

  Jack spoke up. “Which means they could be raiding your house now, looking for evidence, looking for clues. Looking for the identity of his employer.”

  Before they reached Bragg, Roger Weston received a call asking for him to bring her and Jack to a different place.

  “I don’t like this,” Jack said as they drove up to the private residence just outside Fayetteville. Two men dressed in black and carrying guns guarded the gated entrance.

  “Where are we?” The queasiness in Lauren’s stomach intensified.

  “A National Clandestine Service hideaway.”

  “Like that helps.” Lauren looked at Jack, incredulous. “I’m going into the lion’s den. One out for blood.”

  “I’m right here with you.” Jack looked back and met her gaze as they drove through the tall gate and up the wooded drive. Emotionally he was as distant as when he marched out of the kitchen, but he was holding to his promise to protect her. “Just tell them the truth about everything and you’ll be okay.”

  “You obviously don’t read the news,” she said.

  “I do. Maybe I should have said I’ll make it okay.”

  “Don’t promise.” Weston’s voice was thick with something dark and painful. “Sometimes making things okay isn’t possible. All you can do is the best you can.”

  The trees broke to reveal a plantation-style Southern mansion with armed guards out front. Queasy turned into a sour knot of nausea as Lauren exited the car and a hard-nosed, bald man with the personality of a hundred-pound bowling ball barreled out of the house and began shouting orders.

  Her goal was to get to the truth as quickly as possible so she declined their offer of an attorney, but soon regretted that she didn’t take them up on the delay. She had no idea how hard it would be. Her rage at Bill grew and became a solid ball of something close to hate as she underwent grueling hour after hour of questioning. The NCS bowling ball with the official title of SOO and insisted on being called “director” was relentless, repeating questions, discounting her answers, and prying into every second of every minute of her life from the moment she met Bill until today. Her and Jack’s investigation into Bill’s activities had been taken over by heavy-handed men with little care for or interest in her as a person. She was a means to an end to them.

  She had to give Jack credit. He didn’t leave her side and he put his face into the NCS man’s face every time the man stepped out of line. Jack had almost come to blows with the man several times. Once had been at the onset, when they’d been determined to interrogate her alone, and Jack informed that wasn’t going to happen. She’d either be with him or she’d postpone until she found an attorney.

  Six hours? Seven? Eight? She’d lost count. They supplied caffeine and food and water, but her throat was still raw from the strain and her mind punch drunk.

  Finally they slid a piece of paper in front of her and Jack and asked her if she knew what it meant. Her eyes were blurry by this point and she had to blink it into focus. Then she read the words on the page and dread gripped her by the throat.

  …the real prize will be won when green world burns and Earnhardt, Jrs win the race with the super formula in their tanks.

  “OH MY GOD.” Lauren grabbed Jack’s arm, reeling, her heart slamming wildly in her chest. Even her vision blurred. “The boys’ birthday presents! Bill sent them Dale Earnhardt, Jr. race cars. Surely he didn’t put something inside them. Please. God. No.”

  Jack pulled her into his arms, but she could barely feel him against her.

  “We’re done here,” Jack told the man. “The boys are in Disney World with a Delta teammate and their godmother. The cars are with them.”

  Lauren practically bit through her lip; her fear for her sons was all consuming. Jack pulled out his phone.

  “Shit, I have a missed call from Rico. Do you all have a cell jammer set up?” He hit voice mail. The men only shrugged.

  �
��I have Collins’s sons. I’ll call back. Maybe.”

  The bottom fell out of Lauren’s entire world, pain and terror ripped her apart.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  1600 hours

  Jack grasped Lauren’s shoulders as she reeled. His gut clenched, sickened with dread. If someone had Lauren’s sons, odds were Rico was dead.

  “Matt. Mitch.” Every breaking crack in her heart wrenched painfully in her whispered cry. She grabbed the front of his shirt, looking into his eyes. God she’d been through so much, how could she take more?

  The depth of terror in her gaze matched that in his heart.

  “Who, Jack? Who has my sons?”

  “I don’t know.” Having to say those words killed him. He’d failed to keep them safe.

  Lauren pushed back from him and faced the hard-nosed NCS SOO who asked everyone to call him Director as if he were the only official in existence. The ass probably didn’t want people knowing his name.

  Lauren’s devastation erupted into rage. “While I’ve been telling you every damn detail of crap that doesn’t matter, my children were kidnapped!”

  She balled her fist and slammed it down on the paper. “Where did this come from? Why didn’t you show it to me earlier?”

  “It was the fax sent from Bob Cantrell. My men have been looking for a code.”

  A man stepped into the room. He left the door open and Jack tensed as he assessed the stranger’s aura of lethal power and rage hidden beneath a thin veneer of civility.

  “The fax sent THIS MORNING?” Lauren sucked in air, drawing Jack’s attention back to her. She was livid and he couldn’t blame her in the least. He knew how things worked when it came to investigating and interrogating acts of terrorism, and even he was enraged at the delay in seeing the fax. A delay that may have cost Rico his life.

  Before Jack could speak up, Lauren’s anger exploded and Jack thought she’d plow her fist into the SOO’s face. “Code!” she yelled. “My sons are now kidnapped because you delayed hours and hours before showing me this! I’ll tell you code. The cars are the birthday presents Bill sent the boys and the ‘real prize’ must mean what someone is murdering people to get and ‘green world’ doesn’t have ‘the’ in front of it, so we aren’t talking the earth but a particular place or—Jack!”

  Lauren turned to him, her eyes wide, incredulous. “GreenWorld! Could Bill be referring to the corporation the man on TV owns? The one with the new fuel and the primate preserve? The man with the chimp?” Her eyes widened. Do you think he is the man with—?”

  Jack’s pulse raced. “The yellow hat?”

  “Good. Damn good,” the stranger said in a Scottish accent. Jack in no way liked the man’s assessment of Lauren.

  The director turned to the stranger. “Rash, about time you arrived.”

  “Just in time.”

  “You already knew who the man in the yellow hat was?” Lauren’s outrage was gale force.

  “No.” Rash’s expression was coldly harsh. “I’ve discovered Andreas Miles is Juan Pablo Menendez, but hadn’t made the connection to the mastermind behind Bill Collins’s account of the worldwide meltdown.”

  “Menendez?” Jack searched his memory. “The infamous drug lord who disappeared Jimmy-Hoffa like ten years ago?”

  “One in the same.”

  Jack clenched his teeth, fighting a wash of pain and guilt. He prayed Rico and Angie were alive, but odds of that with Menendez were bad. The drug lord had built the bloodiest, the most ruthless cartel in all of South and Central America. He’d been responsible for the deaths of thousands over his twenty year reign and toward the end, Menendez had a chimp, a chimp known as Murderous George. Jesus. They had to get to Matt and Mitch fast.

  Lauren shook her head. “Why would the chimp-loving billionaire take Matt and Mitch?”

  Jack cursed. “GXP.” He picked up the faxed letter from the table. “‘The real prize will be won when green world burns and Earnhardt, Jrs win the race with the super formula in their tanks.’ With the oil market in chaos, the biofuel will be worth billions. If Collins worked for Miles and stole the formula, my bet is Miles wants to trade the boys for the GXP formula.”

  “But he already has it now if he has the boys,” Lauren cried.

  “He doesn’t know that,” Jack said. “We’re likely the only ones who do.”

  “We need to locate Andreas Miles.”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” the SOO said. “We’ll handle everything from this point. We’re already looking to confirm Miles’s coordinates. He left Florida thirty minutes ago, destination Brazil according to the flight plan.”

  “He could fly anywhere if he knows we’re onto him.” Jack said.

  “We’ll take care of it. You and Mrs. Collins can take a break,” the SOO said.

  “Excuse me.” Lauren put her face in the man’s. “Did you just say I can take a break? My children are kidnapped and YOU WANT ME TO TAKE A FREAKING BREAK! What are you going to do to get my children back?”

  The SOO blinked. “Ma’am, we’ll do everything we can when the time is right. We lack concrete evidence. For now, we’ll be observing Miles’s every move.”

  “What about my children? The right time is now.”

  “We are doing all that we can to locate them. Until we know more, there isn’t more that can be done.”

  Jack slid his arm around Lauren’s shoulders. “Come on.”

  “Jack, I can’t just walk away. My children are—”

  “I know.” He urged her firmly out the door. He was so angry he thought he would lose it. The right time to get Matt and Mitch back would be the moment Menendez/Miles landed his plane, before the bastard had a chance to hide them anywhere. And Jack for damn sure knew who the right men for the job were and it wasn’t the CIA or NCS or anyone else. Delta trained day in and day out for this sort of situation.

  Think, Jack told himself, clamping down on his emotions. He had to keep his head cool.

  Commander Weston was there. “You won’t believe—”

  “I heard,” Weston said. “Follow me.” He headed back through the richly decorated house to the double doors leading to the driveway and their car. He stopped by a fountain in the foyer where water spewed from the beak of a swan into a pond surrounded by fragrant flowers of bright blues and deep reds. The warmth of afternoon sun, the suburban ambience of the décor, and the rich comfort surrounding him might as well have been props for a Hollywood set. He had an uneasy feeling about everything.

  Weston’s voice was barely above a whisper when he turned to Jack. “You’ve got to back down. I see the fight in your eyes. We’ve been officially relieved of this situation. I got the call just after we arrived.”

  “What does that mean?” Lauren said.

  “Means we aren’t going to be invited to the party,” Jack said, bitter. “We’re out of the investigation and when they take down Miles and rescue your sons, we won’t be in on the action.” Jack frowned at Weston. “That’s it. You’re not going to push back on this one? You’re going to let them shut us out? We’re the right men to get her sons out.”

  Weston ran a harried hand through his hair as he exhaled. “Orders are orders, DT. This comes all the way down the pipe from the President. Paul is calling for an international crisis summit to be held to deal with the fallout. NCS needs believable proof that Menendez is behind it and they can’t make a move on him until they have it.”

  “They can have the investigation, Commander. I’m talking about her children and getting them out of there before they’re collateral damage in all of this.”

  “You’re too emotionally tied to this one, DT. We have our orders.”

  Jack clenched his fist and bit back another retort. Weston wasn’t going to change his spots. He always towed a hard policy line. Jack was usually in agreement with his commander when it came to following orders, but ever since he woke up in the hospital, Jack and orders were not getting along. And neither was his memory, something about t
he Rash guy bugged him. “Who is Rash?”

  “Rashid McGuire. CIA. Was in charge of the Alvardo Rescue in Columbia. Haven’t heard anything about him in the decade since. I get the idea he’s running the show. Heard from the guards that Rash already led a raid on the corporate offices of BioLogics and GreenWorld Corporation before dawn today.”

  “Alvarado? Wasn’t that the family on vacation, who were kidnapped and murdered?” Lauren asked, frowning. “There was no rescue. The drug cartel slaughtered them all even though the family paid the ransom.”

  Jack met Weston’s gaze. They both knew what went down in Columbia. The ransom hadn’t even been attempted yet. The CIA had moved in to rescue and everyone had been executed by the time the operatives reached the family. “Things just keep going from bad to worse,” Jack said. “This Miles/Menendez character is sure to be on his guard after the raid, if he hasn’t already gone to ground. What about news on Rico?”

  “I have the team in Orlando already on it. Nothing yet”

  “Wait a minute? Neither of you answered my question. What really happened in Columbia?”

  “When we’re alone,” Jack said. “Right now, let’s focus on what’s being done to locate Miles/Menendez and where he is taking Matt and Mitch. What is NCS doing about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Weston said. “Folks here are keeping tight control and we’re out of the picture.” Weston glanced at his vibrating cell phone. “I’ve got to get back to Bragg.” Weston turned toward the door.

  “We’re done here,” Jack said. “We’ll come with you.” To hell with the CIA and official channels. He’d call in every favor in the book to find out where Lauren’s sons were and how to get them home safe. He caught Lauren’s arm, urging her toward the door. She gave him a pointed look that sharply reminded him of how he’d left things between them that morning. Jack bit back a curse, his heart and conscience smiting him. He should apologize for leaving things they way he had this morning, but just like then, there was no getting around the facts. He was what he was, a man who took lives. He’d taken Bill Collins’s life and nothing was going to change that. Her revulsion when she thought Collins killed for a living was the same as he’d gotten from his ex. Lauren’s horror and anger at Collins had given Jack an out and he’d taken it.