Maverick

by Lisa Marie Rice

  He sat, waiting, drumming his fingers on his desk.

  Shit. This was not the right time to have Claire Day, or anyone else, nosing around. Everything had been proceeding so well, so smoothly. Long-held plans coming to fruition, right on schedule, as if he were plugged in to some divine clockwork mechanism designed just for him.

  And he was. Hadn’t he felt the wind of destiny powering him forward time and time again? He worked hard and created his own luck, but there was no doubt that he was moving in the direction fate had planned for him.

  He fingered the sheet of paper on his clean desk. Tomorrow’s schedule, including a meeting with a reporter for Vanity Fair on his work in Africa, and a photo shoot by Annie Leibowitz to go with it.

  The article was the beginning of the next stage, the stage that had begun in Laka. He’d spent ten years planning this and it might take another ten, but he was going to achieve his goal. Nobody was going to ruin this for him, least of all some cold-hearted bitch who should have died twice over.

  His monitor came to life, Wizard’s odd face popping up in a window. He wasn’t smiling. “Here you go. Man, I had to do an in-and-out, real fast, know what I mean? Anyway, here it is. The outgoing cell is registered to Maisie Cumberland, 429 Laurel Lane, Safety Harbor, Florida. The receiving cell phone was listed in the name of Richard Day and its location was in the DC area.” He gave coordinates. “I checked the land registry, and it’s a house registered to a Daniel Weston. Googled him. Ex-Marine. Detachment Commander of the US Embassy in Makongo. Was wounded in the Laka bombing, retired on disability. Runs a security company now. Hey, weren’t you stationed in Laka at the time of the bombing?”

  He froze, panic blossoming in his chest, cold shards of terror slicing him open. Oh fuck fuck fuck!

  Wizard was looking at him strangely, head tilted to one side.

  He had no time for Wizard now. He had to move fast, block this disaster before the whole thing unravelled. “I have to go. I sent the money, check your account.” He disconnected the webcam hastily and stood up, unable to sit still a second longer.

  A siren was sounding in his head, in time with his thudding heart. What a clusterfuck. A total disaster. He hadn’t really taken the Day woman seriously. He’d done his research, had Wizard hack into her hospital files, had even sent a man down to study her for a few days.

  Everything—the medical records, the discreet questioning of neighbors, a week-long phone tap—everything had pointed to Day as totally harmless. The very picture of a broken woman. Amnesiac. Needed extensive physiotherapy to walk, to maintain balance. Rarely left the house. Had no social life. Barely on the grid.

  He’d decided to let her live, though she’d been a loose end. And now look at how she repaid his generosity! The bitch was coming after him! She’d recruited the Marine Detachment Commander at Laka and she was coming after him!

  He remembered Gunnery Sergeant Weston, too. A highly decorated soldier. A fucking Marine. Marines don’t quit.

  Whatever else you could say about the bitch, Day had been on the ball. If she’d got her marbles back, if she and Weston were on his trail, he was up shit creek. Immediate damage control was essential.

  He needed Heston.

  He needed his army for this.

  It’s a goddamned army, Dan thought.

  He counted three on the perimeter, two more in forward positions. And they were good, too. They’d disarmed his outer perimeter. But two is one and one is none, his mantra. So he had two alarm systems, the second sounding when the first was deactivated.

  They wouldn’t know that. They wouldn’t be expecting him to be at Defcon I now.

  Dan watched as they fanned out, finding cover. He watched the lead guy pull something out of his knapsack. It looked like heavy binoculars as he brought it up to his eyes. A thermal imager to let them know where the warm bodies were.

  Good luck with that. Dan had had his house clad in a plastic that was opaque to infrared. The only thing a thermal imager would see was a blank wall. The windows had been coated with polycarbonate which made them bullet-resistant and resistant to laser listeners.

  The invaders were blind and deaf. No soldier liked to go into battle blind and deaf. They would stop, regroup. There would be a hierarchy, a leader. The leader would have a contingency plan and would have to communicate it to his men. It would take a little time.

  The time Dan needed to get Claire out of here, get her to safety.

  “Keep low,” he whispered. “Get in the kitchen.” She moved quickly toward the kitchen, crouching.

  Good girl, smart girl. She didn’t protest or ask questions. She simply took her cue from him and did what he asked.

  Dan ghosted his way to the bedroom, grabbed Claire’s pants off the floor, her boots, two other tee shirts, two black watch caps, and two warm down jackets of his. With his booty, he moved back to the kitchen, watching the monitors along the way.

  The men were still in position, having taken what cover they could. But they’d take steps soon. He had to hurry.

  The kitchen was dark, but Dan knew exactly where to go. He’d actually practiced this in the dark, blindfolded. He had the safe hidden under the sink open in five seconds and was pulling out what they would need and handing it back to Claire.

  Two guns, a Springfield .45 and a Desert Eagle, three clips each, a grenade, a flashbang, a thousand dollars in cash, his K-Bar, a set of keys to a vehicle he kept in a garage across town, and two untraceable, pay-as-you-go cell phones.

  Alternative identity for himself, including a passport, but nothing for Claire.

  Lastly, a duffel bag to keep the kit in.

  He held out the clothes. Claire nodded, slipping into her pants and boots and putting on his black down jacket. She swam in it, but at least she’d be warm.

  Dan looked critically at her hair. It was beautiful, like golden sunshine, but a dead giveaway in the dark. He held a watch cap out and she covered that glorious hair with it, tucking in stray golden curls.

  Blondie. His Blondie. Looking at him gravely, ready to follow his every lead. He’d lost her once—he wasn’t going to lose her again.

  They went through the side door of the kitchen that opened onto the garage. He led her to his Yukon, glad that he’d sprung the extra ten thousand to have it armoured.

  It was, as always, parked with the rear to the rear wall, ready to shoot out of the garage.

  He put his lips close to her ear, nose touching her neck, and closed his eyes at the smell of her, the feel of her. He placed a grenade in one hand and a flashbang in her right.

  “Get in and crouch down in the footwell. I’ll open the doors to the garage and the gates at the same time. Keep your window open. When we’re past the garage gates, lob the grenade and the flashbang out the window. Just throw them as far as you can. You know how to pull the pin on a grenade?”

  She nodded solemnly, silvery blue eyes serious and focused. “Good girl. The flash grenade has a pin, too.” He showed her. “Pull them both at the same time and throw them out together.”

  The flashbang would blind the intruders for crucial minutes, the sound would deafen them for longer. And with any luck, the grenade would take at least two or three of them down.

  He had a monitor in the garage. Oh, shit. The bright, body-shaped flames were on the move again. They were surrounding the house. The leader would send at least one, maybe two men to the garage. They all had night-vision goggles.

  Dan examined their outlines carefully. They were carrying carbines, probably MP-5s.

  His SUV was armoured, but an MP-5 at close range could do some damage and certainly shoot out his tires. They had to move fast now.

  He’d installed two speeds into the garage doors and gates. He used the slow gear for everyday use, but the fast gear had been installed just in case he needed to make a superfast getaway. At the time, it had added $5,000 to the price of the system, and he remembered thinking that maybe he should pass. Now he was grateful he’d sprung for the ext
ra gear. It was going to save their lives.

  Two is one. One is none.

  The monitor showed the men about twenty meters from the house.

  Their leader was waiting for everyone to be in place. The leader wasn’t a big guy, probably around five ten—it was hard to tell with the wavering outline of the thermal image. He was definitely in control, though. He’d move forward a few meters, wait for the others to catch up then hold up his fist in the universal stop signal.

  The leader stood, arm raised, ready for the final rush.

  Dan had run out of time.

  He lifted Claire up into the footwell, ran around the side and ignited the engine. He kept all his vehicles fully serviced and with full gas tanks at all times. It was almost freezing outside, but the engine came to life with a powerful purr.

  On the monitors, the men rose, all together as a unit, carbines to shoulders. Claire peeped over the window sill, saw what was on the monitor and drew in a shocked breath. She understood the manoeuvres. Understood the men were ready to attack.

  As he thought, two were stationed outside the garage doors.

  With a remote, Dan turned all the lights in the garage on to maximum power.

  The glare from the light inside the garage through the open door would blind them with their night-vision on.

  He looked down at Claire. “When I give the signal, pull the pins. There’s a delay time of between 1.5 to 2 seconds on both but you calculate one second. Throw them both as far from us as possible.”

  She nodded, right hand white-knuckled around the grenade, the left around the flashbang.

  Neither needed telling that if she made a mistake, fumbled, dropped it, the grenade would detonate inside the SUV cabin, turning them into pulp instantly. And then the flashbang would illuminate their messy remains with a million lumen, so the invaders would have a real good look at their blood and guts spilled all over the vehicle once they recovered from the stun effect.

  And if it was the flashbang that went off inside the vehicle—well, he didn’t know what the effect of a flashbang, designed to stun and blind soldiers within a radius of a hundred meters, going off inside an enclosed space would be, but he suspected it wouldn’t be pretty.

  Claire looked up at him and met his eyes. Hers were so beautiful, and rock steady. So were her hands. She’d been shaken to the core at hearing of the destruction of her home, but now she seemed calm and solid.

  She was afraid. She would be stupid not to be afraid, and the one thing everyone in the Foreign Service agreed on was that Claire Day was as smart as she was beautiful. Smarter.

  But she was in charge of her fear. Or at least Dan hoped so.

  He was putting his life in her hands.

  “Okay?” he whispered to Claire, putting the key in the ignition, while checking the monitors. The men were gathering, combat ready. It was about ready to go down.

  Dan didn’t dare take the time to repeat the plan, go over it, step by step, as he’d liked to do. As a soldier, he’d always been a meticulous planner, making sure his men understood the op perfectly. But there was no time. They were down to the second now. They had no margin at all if they wanted to survive.

  “Ready,” she whispered back, and buzzed down the passenger side window.

  On the monitors, the leader suddenly stood straight, pointing to the house. The signal to charge. The red and green ghost men on the monitors suddenly stood too, all together as a team, carbines to the shoulder. On the attack.

  “Go!” Dan pressed the remotes for the garage doors and the gates. They sprang open in an instant and he gunned the powerful engine, pedal to the floor, racing through the doors. The outside gates were already completely open. He sped down the driveway, shouts sounding through Claire’s open window, wincing as bullets glanced off the chassis.

  Please don’t let them shoot the tires, he prayed. He’d caught them by surprise, but they were already reacting.

  The invaders were dressed in black tactical suits, with ski masks. One near the garage let loose a burst that pinged off the passenger door and with a roar of outrage, Dan swerved and clipped him.

  One down, he thought savagely, feeling the jolt through the vehicle as the body bounced off the fender.

  “Claire,” he shouted, but she had already pulled the pins, coolly waited a second, then peeped over the sill to aim at the center of his lawn. She threw them both out the window.

  “Get down,” Dan roared, pushing her head down with his hand, and then all hell broke loose.

  Dan pressed the accelerator to the floor racing out of the gate, wrenching the wheel hard to the right the instant he could. As the back of his vehicle cleared the gate, then fishtailed to make the curve, they heard a loud explosion, followed by a high-pitched scream. A second later, the front of the SUV was pelted with clumps of grass-covered sod, torn-off tree branches, and, horribly, a human hand.

  Right then, the night lit up like daylight at the same time the shock wave of noise hit them. The flashbang had exploded.

  Even if the invaders had their vehicles within close range, they weren’t going anywhere right now. They’d have their wounded to tend to, and they would be blind and deaf from the flashbang for at least several minutes.

  But even though he was mathematically certain that the men who had tried to invade his home were wounded or temporarily incapacitated, he took strong evasive measures, speeding at 90mph through red lights, twice making a viciously tight U-turn on an empty street, tires squealing and smoking.

  All the while he analysed the tactical situation.

  There had been at least five men that he could count, which was massive overkill in his book. It was either a snatch and grab, or it was a hit. Either way, sending five men for a man and a woman meant that they had no margin for failure and that they had huge resources.

  At that point, if they had manpower to spare, they could easily have had a backup team waiting outside his house, in case they made it out. Dan raced down streets he knew like the back of his hand, at twice the legal speed limit, checking his rear-view mirrors constantly.

  It was only by the miracle of his top-of-the-line security that they were alive.

  As they sped through the streets, Dan could see Claire in his peripheral vision, still crouching in the footwell. She braced herself against his violent twists and turns between the seat and the door. She had to stay down. The combat driving took every ounce of attention he had. He couldn’t slow down, stop taking tight corners, for the time it would take her to get up in the seat and pull the seat belt over.

  So she stayed down while he shot down streets, braked suddenly, took turns without signalling, gunned through red stop lights, all the time tracking westward.

  After half an hour, when he was absolutely certain he wasn’t being tailed, he pulled into a driveway on a dark, residential street. The bushes lining the driveway were overgrown and brushed against the sides of the vehicle as he drove up.

  There was a garage out back. He parked his Yukon behind the house. Dan killed the engine and pressed back against his seat for a second, to relieve some of the stress. The house shielded them from the streetlights. It was dark, utterly silent after the engine’s full blast roar.

  He told Claire he’d be right back, and entered the garage with his key.

  If they’d come to his house, they knew who he was. They’d look up the vehicles he owned. The Cherokee he drove out of this garage was registered in a different name, a Marine buddy who’d died in Iraq.

  Dan opened the passenger door of the Yukon and met Claire’s eyes, the pale blue seeming almost white in the gloomy confines of the vehicle’s cab.

  She was safe. Against all the odds, against an army coming after them, she was safe. But he had to make sure.

  “Are you hurt anywhere? Are you okay?” His voice sounded harsh because his throat was so dry.

  She coughed and whispered. “Yeah.” The voice was low but not shaky. “I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

  “C
ome here.” Dan could barely get the words out from his tight throat. “Now.”

  “Oh, yes.” She moved with the grace of water, simply floating down from the vehicle and into his arms, the black watch cap falling off as she buried her face in his neck. Oh man, she was alive. Visions of a dead Claire had been right there in the back of his mind, in nightmarish detail. He knew what dead bodies that had died a violent death looked like.

  There was another possibility, too, a nightmarish one, right up there with Dead Claire on a scale of horrible. There was the possibility that whoever was after her wanted her alive, to torture her for something that might be in that beautiful head of hers. She was a former spook. She said she knew nothing, but who the hell knew what was what in the shadowy world of intelligence?

  It was a cruel and cold world, with plenty of men and countries willing to kill and maim for anything that might give them an edge.

  To lose her horribly just after he’d found her… Dan shuddered and hung on for dear life, heart pounding, palms sweating, tightening his arms around her slender body hidden beneath his huge down jacket.

  He was sweating all over, drops falling down his temples, and his hands were shaking, suddenly totally incapable of thinking of anything but a dead Claire.

  Seeing her, lifeless on the hotel carpet, her life’s blood flowing out to create a macabre red frame, or on his kitchen floor, a bullet through the head, shards of bone and brain on his walls or—a charming scene in the little Trifecta of Horrors running through his head—Claire’s body, charred and smoking, caught in the fire in her home.

  Dan hung on for dear life, sweating and shaking, completely undone. Later, when he could think straight, it would astonish him.

  He was known for his cool under fire. On an op, he’d held off fifteen insurgents single-handedly while the medics worked on the wounded at his back, a cold killing machine, keeping the terrorists back until the medevac helicopters came. He’d moved from rock to outcropping to dip in the ground, making every shot count. The insurgents thought they were facing a full team of snipers, and had finally slithered back into their holes when the whup whup of the Chinooks’ rotors filled the air.