“Bullshit,” Peter Conley said, and the rest of the Tac team turned to eye him.
Karen kept her head down and said nothing. She was merely a scribe tonight and hadn’t had anything to do with Morgan’s taking.
“Look, Diana,” Kirby said as he leaned back in his chair. “I realize this is an anomalous event.” He took off his glasses and angled one stem at the glass. “But Cobra’s actions are beyond unsupportable.”
“Like when are they ever?” Bishop murmured from behind. Spartan elbowed him to be quiet.
“After specific orders to stand down,” Kirby went on, “he broke into a top-secret federal facility, stole government property, which was also classified, then assaulted a military service member, and stole an air force vehicle. There’s a warrant out for him from the FBI. Would you have preferred that we let them take him first, Diana? Without preamble or a chance to debrief him ourselves?”
She turned away from Kirby and looked at Morgan again. “That is not the...”
“We’re gonna hafta give him up to the feds,” Bishop interrupted. “He’s a loose cannon anyway.”
“Bishop,” Conley said from his corner. “You’re muscle, not brains. Remember?”
Bishop turned to glare at Conley, who simply cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. It was Conley’s bring-it-on invitation, which no wise man ever accepted.
“Hey, all you geniuses in the Zoo.” It was Morgan’s voice booming from the recessed speakers. From his manacled perch all Morgan could see was an enormous mirror, and he couldn’t hear anything that was being said. But they could hear him, and he knew it. “While you’re all talking shit in there, Collins is probably hauling ass to Central America.”
Diana leaned over and touched the button at the base of the control table’s mike. “Just sit tight, Cobra.”
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Do I look like I’m going somewhere?”
Diana released the button, straightened, and folded her arms. She rolled her pearls in her fingers and squinted through the heavy glass at Morgan’s rippling arms and hunched posture. Even cuffed to a steel chair that was bolted to the floor, she wouldn’t be shocked if he burst free like some rampaging beast.
She had intentionally goaded Morgan into, well, being himself, consequences be damned. She’d also set Alex up in a similar way with a mirror task—after all, the kid was just like her father. Alex had gone after Sheldon Margolis, but she was now out of contact, and who knew where? Lily was safely en route back to Zeta HQ, hopefully soon to deliver a back-brief that would connect all the dots on this rogue missile thing. However, Diana had been forced to engage Mr. Smith himself to sort all that out, which could mean that she’d soon be out of a job.
And still, here she was, surrounded by her best analysts, operatives, and agents, one of whom was playing for some other team. She’d used Jenny to clear Morgan, and she had no doubts about Alex, so at least those pieces were off the board. Peter Conley? He was Morgan’s best friend and had been for years, although that might mean nothing if someone had turned him. If someone had turned Collins, all bets were off.
Her Tactical team? They were all special operators—men and women of action who thrived on missions, were very well compensated, and rarely had dreams of greater ambitions. Lincoln Shepard? She shivered at the thought. If Shepard was dirty, then everything that happened at Zeta was in the hands of bad actors, and as explosive as a Washington hooker’s black book. Karen O’Neal? She was in love with Shepard, but that could be a ploy. The quiet ones were often most dangerous.
Paul Kirby. He thrived on his position with Zeta and seemed to have no other life. But he was vain, ambitious, borderline insubordinate. Little he did had anything other than his own promotion in mind. And during Diana’s recent, necessary, absences, he’d relished taking command. Now, emboldened, he was becoming overtly subversive.
She sighed inwardly. She trusted all of them. She trusted none of them. But that was the curse of a spy mistress.
Kirby cleared his throat. “Diana?”
She snapped from her mental calculations and turned her head. He was looking down at his cell.
“I’ve just had a text from the special agent in charge, Boston field office. He says, ‘Either you’re coming here, or we’re coming over there. What’s it going to be?’”
“Jesus,” Diesel mumbled from behind. “Just what we need here, the feds.”
“Tell him we’re running an internal debrief,” Diana said. “One hour.”
Kirby raised his palms to the sides. “Diana...really.”
“Tell him,” she snapped. “Or just give me his number.”
“All right, all right,” Kirby said with exasperation and tapped.
“Ms. Bloch,” Spartan said from the back row. Everyone turned and looked at her. Spartan rarely said anything in meetings or briefings. It was as if she considered all words weak, and only fists and feet had meaning. “Why don’t we just take a vote?”
Karen O’Neal looked up from her laptop. Peter Conley came away from the corner wall and leaned on the back of a chair.
“Spartan,” he said, “you’re taking your code name too seriously. This isn’t the Greek Senate.”
“It’s not such a bad idea.” Bishop shot a muscled arm out and jabbed an accusing finger toward Morgan’s cuffed-up form. “That dude’s been off the reservation for months. He does more damage than good. We don’t need him.”
“That dude,” Conley growled at Bishop, “has saved your sorry ass more than once. But his doggy took a piece of it, so now you’re all high and mighty.”
“I get it, Cougar,” Bishop snapped back at Conley. “He’s your battle buddy. But this is a team, and we have to work together. He’s a loose cannon, and everyone knows it.”
Diana slapped the control table hard. Shepard flinched as it rang in the room like a gunshot. “Stand down,” she barked. “All of you. The minute this organization becomes a hippy commune, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
They all fell silent and stared at her. And at that very moment, an idea blazed in her mind.
“All of you will remain right here,” she ordered. “I’m going to discuss this with Morgan.”
She picked up her cell phone and marched to the exit door on the left and went out. The door to the clinic yawned open and she appeared on the other side of the glass.
“Lady Diana in the lion’s den,” Bishop muttered.
“Shut up and listen,” Spartan said, and he did.
Inside the clinic, Morgan sat back in his chair and watched Diana approach. She had her head down and was thumb-tapping a message into her cell phone. But she finished that quickly and hiked herself up on the end of the doctor’s table. Facing him and glaring down, her back to the glass, she started in.
“Cobra,” she said. “You are riding very close to the edge.”
“The edge of what?” Morgan looked up. “Retirement? Good. Maybe it’s time.”
Diana edged her cell phone onto her stockinged thigh, positioning the screen so that only Morgan could see it. She tapped the glass with a fingernail.
“You can be a smart-ass with me all you want,” she said. “But the feds won’t be impressed by your charms.”
Morgan glanced down and quickly back up, but he’d seen Diana’s message: PLAY ALONG. WE’RE MOLE HUNTING.
“Go ahead, turn me over,” he sneered. “But before I tell the FBI anything, you’ll have to rescind every nondisclosure document you made me sign. In the meantime, Collins is on the lam, he’s got access and launch codes to some serious fireworks, and nobody knows what he’s got planned next. Yeah, go ahead. Let’s waste time.”
Diana got up, dropped the cell phone into her suit jacket, and folded her arms. Then she paced, slowly, between the table and mirrored fourth wall.
“We received a call from your wife,” she said.
“Yeah? What’d she want?” Morgan followed her pacing form with his eyes. “Did I leave the dishwasher on?”
“She claims to have urgent information.”
“Right,” Morgan scoffed. “Like she’d even know how to make contact.”
Diana stopped pacing and looked fully at him. “You told her how. Does ‘the civil war president’ ring a bell?”
Morgan blinked. He was stunned by the revelation, but he had no other choice than to trust Diana. Play along. We’re mole hunting.
“Bullshit,” he snarled. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“I believe she does,” said Diana. “She claims to know something about this organization, something she feels I must know. She hinted about a bad apple. My guess is she’s referring to you.”
“Jenny knows as much about Zeta as I do about knitting.”
“She knows where your secret storage facility is.”
Morgan blinked again. This shit was getting serious. Play along. Did he have a choice? The mole-hunting part of it meant...Diana was trying to flush someone out.
“Hey, if you’ve got a problem inside, it’s not me,” he said.
“Why did you break into Coldcastle Mountain?”
“I was trying to save Collins’s ass. Turned out he was setting me up to burn mine. And with all your heads up your asses, looks like it worked pretty well.”
Abruptly, a speaker inside the clinic crackled with the sound of Kirby’s voice. “Diana, I couldn’t stop them. They’re here.”
Still facing Morgan, she raised a hand in compliance, but she looked down at him, winked hard, and said, “You will cooperate fully with the FBI.”
Morgan watched her face and remembered something she’d once said to him on the cusp of an iffy mission: “You will never cooperate with any governmental agency, unless Smith himself is standing in the room and telling you to do so.”
“I’ll cooperate with my lawyer,” he said. “The feds’ll get dick from me.”
“As you wish,” Diana said, and she turned toward the mirror and snapped her fingers. “Take him.”
The door to the clinic swung open and the Tac team shouldered their way inside. Diesel and Spartan led the way, their expressions anything but enthusiastic, while Bishop brought up the rear. Diana stepped aside as Spartan walked behind Morgan, gripped the back of his neck, and leaned him forward in his chair. Diesel, taking no chances, was carrying another pair of handcuffs. He wasn’t going to release Morgan’s wrists from the chair before making certain he was still trussed up.
“Sorry about this, brother,” Diesel murmured as he cinched a new pair above the first.
“No problem,” Morgan said. “Screw you all very much. And I mean that deeply, no lube.”
“It’s not personal, Cobra,” Spartan said as she unlocked him from the chair.
“Yeah, I heard that in a mob movie once.”
Bishop looped his ham-hock forearm under Morgan’s armpit and hauled him up. His face was twisted but he wasn’t saying much.
“How’s your arm?” Morgan turned toward him and smirked. “My dog liked the taste, and she’s been asking for more.”
Bishop pulled a stun gun from his belt and showed it to Morgan. “You want some more?”
“Sure, gimme a quirt,” Morgan snarled. “But make sure you’re still holding me so we both get the rush.”
They frog-marched him over to the door. Morgan considered his fighting options. He could do an awful lot of damage with his feet alone, and maybe even get ahold of Spartan’s handcuff key. But then what? and whose side was Conley on? Would he help, or was there a line even Cougar wouldn’t cross? Then they passed the open door to the Zoo, where Conley was standing there, watching and brooding.
“Et tu, Cougar?” Morgan accused as he passed.
“I’m a cog in the wheel, brother,” Conley said. “Just like you.”
Morgan ignored his partner as the Tac team dragged him out into Zeta’s main hallway. He vaguely noticed the faces of others: Shepard and Karen looking pouty and ashamed while Kirby stood there with folded arms and a disgusting victorious smirk.
But all he really saw was the coterie of strangers bunched at the end of the hall—four FBI agents in suits and three more in SWAT gear backing them up. Diana cruised up beside him. He lifted his chin in defiance.
“That’s a lot of cop muscle for one tired old spook.”
“Don’t make this hard,” she muttered. “You won’t be there long.”
But Morgan wasn’t sure about anything now, not even that melodrama back in the cage. Those doors at the end of the hallway led out to the underground garage, where the FBI dudes probably had an armored Bearcat vehicle waiting. For all he knew, they’d be taking a long ride down to D.C., and by the time he got out he’d be wizened and gray.
Then the doors at the end of the lobby burst open, and a very tall man wearing an army full-dress uniform came stomping his way through the feds. He had stars on his epaulets and lots of ribbon bars, and he was trailing two younger officers who looked like guys on temporary duty from Delta.
But the most stunning thing about the vision was that Alex was right there along with the general, and she was dressed like that first day she’d interviewed for school. Diesel and Spartan stopped dead in their tracks, and Morgan squinted at the general’s black nameplate.
Margolis.
The general marched straight up to Diana. “That’s enough of this nonsense, Ms. Bloch. This man is not the enemy.” Then he looked Morgan over, up, and down. “Come on, you poor, sorry son of a bitch. Let’s go get the real lowlife traitor.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Six thousand feet above the Golden Gate Bridge, Scott Renard’s private jet burst from a cloud.
It was a Bombardier Challenger 605, with an ice-blue skin, fire-red winglets, and the italicized letters SR on the sides. Inside the spacious nine-passenger cabin, the décor was all black leather and chrome, as if a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost had been turned inside out. And much like everything else Renard owned, you could talk to the aircraft and it would do your bidding or, if elucidation were required, talk back.
“Feet dry,” said the voice inside the large, lush cabin. It had the same female lilt as Scott’s house.
“Give me the cockpit,” Scott said. He was half-reclined in a puff leather chair, facing aft, where Lily was ensconced in the bathroom. Between him and there, Chilly and Hot Shot faced one another across a round chrome table, happily devouring freshly grilled steaks.
“Flight deck here,” reported Scott’s chief pilot.
“Morning, Bobby,” said Scott. “Plane says we’re over land.”
“Roger that—welcome home. Want us to set her down in Frisco?”
“Not yet. Just cruise around for a while. What’s your bingo?” Scott asked, a reference to fuel consumption.
“Got about a thousand nautical left, enough for a Sunday drive.”
“Okay, just stand by.”
“Yes, sir,” said the pilot, and the Challenger winged over into an easy elliptical glide.
The door to the aft bathroom opened, and as Lily emerged, Scott sat up and smiled his gap-tooth smile. He’d brought her some clothes that fit her style, but they looked much different on her than the rack. Her lithe legs were snuggled in tight black jeans, with a roll-neck crimson sweater on top, and black running shoes on her feet. Her red hair was freshly washed and combed, so her mane fell loose to her shoulders. Whatever she’d been through, she looked like she’d left it behind—along with that Hallstatt outfit, which was now bunched up in a bag like a souvenir.
“Wow,” Scott said as Lily walked up the aisle.
Chilly, whose back was to Scott, looked up from his steak, and Hot Shot twisted his head around.
“Can I second that?” Chilly asked.
“You may, as long as that’
s all.”
Chilly dipped his gelled red head. “Then wow, dude.”
“I’ll just say you clean up real nice, ma’am,” Hot Shot said. Some military habits die hard, such as addressing all men as sir and all women as ma’am.
“Thank you, lads.” Lily dipped her head as she passed them.
“Yes,” Scott said. “From Dorothy to Emma Peel in a flash.”
“Who’s that?” Chilly asked.
“Never mind. You’re too young.”
Lily flopped down into a chair across the aisle from Scott’s.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Like the dead,” she said, “though with a few fitful dreams. One of them was about a girl who’s infatuated with a nerd in wolf’s clothing. But then it turns out it’s the other way around. He’s a wolf, posing as a nerd.”
Scott grinned. “Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“Or a nightmare,” said Lily, but then her smile widened. “With a happy ending.”
A young woman emerged from the forward cabin, carrying a tray with two glasses of orange juice. Her outfit was “flight attendant casual”—just jeans and a blazer with an “SR” lapel pin. She had freckles, brown hair in a ponytail, and large, heavy glasses. Renard never hired to impress his clients—only based on resumes, nothing else. She set the juice down on their respective tables.
“Thank you, Susan.”
“You bet. Anything else?”
“Not for now.”
She went back to the galley. Lily sipped her juice and regarded Scott as if seeing him for the first time.
“We’re going to have to have a long talk, young man,” she said.
“Later. At the moment, we’re going to war.” He looked over at Chilly and Hot Shot, who were now plunging their steak-stained forks into steaming eggs and arguing the merits of the book version and TV adaptation of Game of Thrones.
“You there,” he snapped. They both dropped their forks and sat up like obedient dogs. “You’ve got three minutes to snarf that up.”
“Okay.” Chilly wagged his head. “Then what?”
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