Rex Dalton Thrillers: Books 1-3 (The Rex Dalton Series Boxset Book 1)

by JC Ryan

  She stepped out of the dressing room, ready to perform the acting job of her life.

  “What’s your safe word?” she asked.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  New Delhi, India, June 30, 5:00 p.m.

  IT HAD BEEN three days since Rex and Digger arrived in New Delhi, and Rex was anxious to be gone out of the city that made him feel like he was a sardine in a can. But only today had the forger deigned to meet him to obtain the details he’d need to produce his identity papers.

  Rex thought long and hard about setting up a Facebook and other social media accounts as part of his new legend. But he had to think about the ramifications of that very carefully. Not only was it going to be a challenge to create believable content that went back for a decade or so; there was also the matter of getting backdated photos. The last time a picture was taken of him was when he was in the Marines. In Delta Force he had to remain anonymous, not to even mention the secrecy required by CRC.

  For now, it was best to be one of those, what some would call, unfortunate souls wandering through life deprived of a Facebook or any social media account. At least he had a Gmail account.

  In the meantime, Rex mined Usama’s hard drives for intelligence about the people involved in his drug trade and other enterprises and for access to the wealth he knew was hidden somewhere on there.

  The little black book of passwords was both helpful and frustrating. Usama had used a code of his own devising to disguise which passwords went with which websites. Rex had to test them in sequence, building a spreadsheet on his own laptop to keep them sorted. And to avoid discovery by the websites’ security measures, he had to spoof his IP address with each attempted entry, keeping track of that, as well, in his soon-to-be massive spreadsheet. Working his way through all the information was going to take a long time, but that’s one of the things his new life gave him — time.

  He’d determined what he should be feeding Digger and had acquired it, but Digger had grown accustomed to the people food he preferred and balked at eating what Rex had to admit looked rather unappealing.

  To keep from starving the poor dog, he relented more often than he should have and shared what he had ordered for himself but mixed it in with Digger’s dry food, so he had to eat some of his own food to get to the tastier bits. Rex had read that dogs wouldn’t truly starve themselves, any more than picky children would. In essence, dogs were scavengers, they would eat anything they could get hold of. However, not all human food was good for them, and it was up to their humans to make sure they didn’t get the unhealthy stuff such as chocolates, candy, grapes and raisins, dairy products, and much more.

  But it was difficult, almost impossible, to resist the pitiful entreaties Digger was capable of making just with his accusatory expressions.

  He hadn’t come to the conclusion that he actually liked Digger unreservedly. At least, he hadn’t admitted it to himself, yet. But he suspected that an observer would assume the dog was very important to him. After all, he’d allowed Digger to sleep with him on the bed, or rather, maybe it was Digger who allowed him to sleep there. He was constantly checking with the dog to be certain his needs were met, and of course there was the issue of the food. He also conversed constantly with the dog, a result of having very little commerce with people during this waiting period.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Washington, DC, July 1, 2014 8 a.m.

  BRANDT HAD WOKEN early and treated himself to a room service breakfast before showering and dressing for the day. He paced as he waited for Marissa’s report.

  Had Carson shown his face at the club last night?

  Brandt devoutly hoped so. He was tired of the city, tired of hotel food, and tired of restraining himself from going and choking the life out of that lowlife, Carson.

  He couldn’t wait to get back home to Arizona, where he knew everyone he saw on a daily basis, and knew they were of unassailable character. He hated DC. Rubbing shoulders with slimy politicians, even slimier lobbyists, and apathetic pen-pushing bureaucrats every day was irritating and made him want to take several showers a day.

  He knew it was too early to hear from Marissa. She’d have waited for Carson until at least two a.m. when the upstairs club closed. If her target showed, she’d have been busy for the next hour or two. But Brandt had absolutely nothing else to do. His email correspondence was caught up. It was only five a.m. at his Arizona headquarters, so people would be just now tumbling out of bed for their daily exercise.

  So, he paced.

  He figured he’d probably walked a couple of miles’ worth of wear in the hotel suite carpet when the phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. I’m downstairs. You decent?” Marissa spoke breathlessly, like she’d been running.

  “Yes! Of course! Come on up.”

  When he opened the door, Brandt took note of Marissa’s heightened color. She was still breathing fast, but her smile told him it was good news. She walked straight into his arms, squeezed his upper body in a vice-grip hug, and kissed his cheek.

  “I’ve got it. My lord, that was nauseating and a whole lot of fun!”

  Catching her jubilant mood, Brandt smiled broadly, as well. “Sit down and tell me all about it,” he urged.

  “Coffee first. Got any?”

  Brandt had ordered coffee with his breakfast, but the carafe was empty. “I’ll have some sent up. Come on, spill it.”

  He jabbed the room service button on the hotel phone and barked, “Coffee, and please make it quick!”

  Instead of telling him, Marissa pulled a flash drive from her purse and handed it to Brandt without a word. Now it was she pacing as he logged in to his laptop and placed the flash drive in the port. Brandt didn’t know whether her anxiety was about the coffee or about what he was going to see in the files she’d brought him. If he hadn’t been so anxious to see them himself, he might have teased her by delaying.

  Instead, he sat down and accessed the files. He skipped the text document and went straight to the video. It began with a view of Carson’s back, one arm extended toward the camera.

  “That’s when he was leading me from the meeting room to the private suite,” Marissa explained. She went on to tell him how the interior of the underground rooms was set up, since he hadn’t read the report first. By the time she finished, the camera showed them entering the private suite, and Carson turned around. The camera angle was bad – it showed only his torso.

  “I was standing too close to him to get a good shot,” Marissa narrated. On the computer, Carson’s voice said, “You can change in here.”

  “Wait,” said Brandt, pausing the video. “How did you get those shots? Wasn’t the camera hidden in your bustier?”

  “As I got up from the table, I opened the top button of my blouse. I figured it wouldn’t hurt the view any,” she said.

  Brandt glanced involuntarily at her chest.

  No, I suppose the view would have been fine.

  Hastily, he brought his eyes back to the screen and restarted the video. It went black for a second, and then came back on, showing a door opening. Brandt gasped. What had been hidden by the camera’s proximity to Carson’s body before was now in full view. Brandt’s blush raised the temperature in the room a full degree.

  Just then, a knock on the door interrupted what he was about to say. “Room service!” came the call. Before Brandt could get out of his chair, Marissa was across the room.

  “Thank you, lord!” she said, opening the door.

  Brandt had quickly closed the laptop, flustered by Marissa’s careless action. The young man with the coffee could have seen. Meanwhile, Marissa had invited the boy in to set the coffee service down on the table where Brandt sat. She tipped him and ushered him out, then breathed in deeply.

  “I just love the smell of freshly brewed coffee,” she said. “I need about a gallon of it now. Can I pour you a cup?”

  Brandt thought that he’d had put enough stress on his heart already, and he
expected more. More coffee was the last thing he needed.

  “No, thanks. You go ahead — it’s all yours.”

  He opened the laptop, which had gone to sleep when he closed the lid to hide what was on the screen from the server and woke it up again.

  Marissa walked around to stand beside him again as he continued viewing the video. This time, he steeled himself against the vision of a torture room, and avoided an overt reaction, though the sight did twist his gut.

  “You didn’t actually…” he started to say.

  She said, “Just watch the video.”

  Now Brandt had a fresh shock as the camera showed Carson entering its view from another room. Brandt’s jaw dropped at the costume, if you could call it that, Carson wore. It consisted of nothing but wide leather straps, held together by links of metal, leaving far more of Carson’s… anatomy… showing than Brandt had ever hoped to see.

  Damn, that must hurt!

  A few moments later, he was beyond such observations. What Marissa had done with a quirt and something that looked like a short version of a pirate’s whip, a cat o’ nine tails, definitely had to have hurt.

  Brandt looked at the meter that showed how much of the video he’d watched. There was much more, but he was sick to his stomach already and couldn’t bring himself to continue, not with Marissa in the room with him. If the camera showed Carson’s hands approaching… He didn’t trust what he’d do. He turned it off.

  “Is it enough, boss?”

  Brandt just nodded and turned his face away from her view to gain some control over his emotions. In the parlance of his Navy days, before he’d joined the CIA, what he’d just seen would gag a maggot. “I’m so sorry to have put you through that, Marissa. Do you need some R&R before your next assignment? Go to the Bahamas, put that out of your mind?”

  “Boss, look at me.”

  Reluctantly he turned.

  “That. Was. Fun. No, I don’t mean I’m into that, it was sickening, but look — you told me that scum was responsible for the deaths of eight good men, including one of our agents. And that was just in one operation. How many more could there be with a rat like him?

  “And if he’s involved in protecting the heroin trade, he’s indirectly responsible for the death of my sister. She OD’d.

  “No, I’m good, I signed up to work for CRC to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

  Brandt reacted with shock. Her sister had OD’d? Why hadn’t he known that? But Marissa was still talking.

  “I enjoyed punishing him for that. You don’t need to be worried about the rest of the video. Nothing happened that we didn’t both want to happen. Okay, so maybe I drew blood with that whip, and maybe he didn’t anticipate that, but the son of a bitch begged for it. Begged. And I was happy to oblige. There was nothing else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Brandt answered, relieved. He’d chosen well. Marissa seemed unaffected by that obscenity on the video. His admiration for her grew a few more notches. He couldn’t have done what she had. Couldn’t have stomached it. She was a trouper.

  “There’ll be a bonus in your next paycheck,” he growled, overcome with emotion he didn’t understand.

  “No need for that, boss. Truly. But what are you going to do with that video? I think I deserve to hear what happens to him.”

  “I’ll do better than that. How would you like to be with me when I confront him with this?”

  “You’re right. That’s even better.”

  Brandt told her he needed to finish watching it alone, and he needed to read her report and view the still pictures, as well. Only then could he formulate a plan to destroy Carson. Once he had everything reasoned out, he’d call her with a time and place to meet with them.

  It wouldn’t take long.

  ***

  BRANDT REFLECTED THAT it had taken longer than he anticipated. It turned out he had to watch the video several times before he could reduce its impact on him enough to act with cunning and reason.

  Marissa’s report was long and thorough, as well.

  After studying everything, he sketched out several scenarios to anticipate how Carson would react when confronted. Then he had to find a meeting place that would accommodate that reaction without drawing the notice of people who weren’t involved, but that also wouldn’t raise Carson’s suspicions.

  Short of killing the man, which Brandt seriously considered, there were only a few alternatives that would result in the desired outcome. He’d give Carson the choice.

  He decided on a golf course for the meeting. He didn’t have time for golf anymore, but with a ten handicap, he’d once played a passable game. Carson, though, was a fanatic. He’d jump at the chance to trounce Brandt in a game. He called Carson as soon as he’d thought it all through. Today was too soon. The late notice would mean Carson might not be available. They made plans for the next afternoon.

  He thought about how to involve Marissa in the scheme. He didn’t want another witness, so bringing her in as part of a foursome was out. Then he got an idea that tickled his sense of humor. He’d have her disguise herself as a caddy, and he’d have her stay in the golf cart while he and Carson walked. When he had enough privacy, at a hole where no one was nearby, he’d hand Carson the still pictures and have Marissa get out of the cart to be introduced. Once Carson saw her beautiful face, he’d know he was screwed. Brandt couldn’t wait to see his face.

  It was time to call Marissa and let her in on the plan.

  “Marissa, it’s me,” he began.

  “Oh, hi, boss. What’s up?”

  “We have a date to play golf with Carson tomorrow afternoon at two,” he said. He gave her the name of the golf course.

  “Interesting. I’d have thought you wanted to surprise him with the evidence,” she said.

  “Oh, I do, and here’s how it’s going to go down.” He explained the ruse. “Do you think you can pull that off?”

  “You bet I can,” she said, laughing. “I’ll wear a red wig and I’ll have freckles. Even you won’t recognize me unless you look closely. Give me a sign when you’re about to call me out of the cart, and I’ll have the freckles and wig off faster than you can say hole-in-one.”

  “Sounds good!”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Then Carson will have to make a choice,” Brandt replied. “You’ll hear the options soon enough.”

  After a few minutes of banter, Brandt ended the call and thought it all through again.

  Yes, it’ll work. I can’t wait to hear his choice.

  ***

  CARSON HUNG UP after Brandt’s call and unexpected invitation.

  Strange. I guess he’s ready to kiss and make up.

  Carson had played golf with Brandt once before and had humiliated him at every hole.

  Maybe he’s been practicing, or maybe he’s just a sucker for punishment.

  Carson didn’t relate the word to his own peculiar tastes. He was able to compartmentalize so well that he’d never even thought to stop and analyze why he indulged in his platinum club member activities.

  By the same token, he never thought about the Senator’s activities, unless he was forced to by some circumstance, like the Senator pressing him for a favor. Then he allowed himself to be disgusted, never thinking that others might find his tastes disgusting.

  However, disgusted or not by their shared secret, he did as he was asked.

  It was the trait and talent of many government officials. Their private lives might not reflect their public stance, but they lost no sleep over it. And with the specter of mutually assured destruction hanging over their heads, they occasionally met each other in those dim halls but never felt threatened.

  Quid pro quo was the name of the game.

  Sometimes one needed a favor and might casually mention the club to another. It was always couched in friendly terms.

  As a fellow member of the club, surely you wouldn’t mind doing this.


  Subtle.

  Never threatening, but it carried a threat anyway. And everybody toed the line. No one was offended. All very civilized. Next time the favor might go in the opposite direction.

  Carson looked forward to the golf game. He hadn’t liked Brandt’s attitude the last time they’d met, so this would give him a chance to put Brandt in his place. First by beating the pants off him in the game and then afterwards, telling Brandt in no uncertain terms to never dare to threaten him again like he did a few days before.

  Carson still had to answer to the Senator and whoever was pulling his strings for the disaster in Afghanistan, but he had no doubt he could finesse it somehow. The brotherhood between them because of their mutual platinum club membership would help with that.

  He’d had many years to practice covering the errors of his agency. With Brandt’s assurances that no one man could have done the damage and that he only had one man in Afghanistan, who’d been killed in the explosion he, Carson, had arranged, he could confidently say that it wasn’t his people.

  Plausible deniability.

  For a fleeting moment the thought crossed his mind that Brandt could be playing him. But no, Brandt was a straight shooter. He didn’t have the balls to play in the atmosphere of Washington.

  Soon, he wouldn’t dare ever invite me to even play golf with him again.

  ***

  THE NEXT MORNING brought a sunny dawn and an unexpected cold front that dropped the temperatures in Washington to a pleasant seventy-five degrees, unheard of in July. All over the city, proponents of global warming were hearing from their opposite numbers, global warming my ass!

  It was going to be a great day for golf.

  Brandt planned to leave the city right after giving Carson his ultimatum. Independence Day, only two days from then and on a Friday, which meant a three-day weekend, was exciting for people in Washington who enjoyed a spectacle and crowds. Brandt wasn’t one of them. Give him his desert, his open vistas of stark beauty, breathtaking sunsets, and an outdoor cookout with his men, any day.