Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She laughed then, but it was shaky. “You make it sound like I just have to enroll in a class,” she said. “Confrontational Behavior 101. God, I wish it were that easy. All I ever wanted to do was fly. Why can’t I just fly?” She finally looked over at him, something akin to misery in her eyes. “I hate it when they win. And they always win.” She shook her head. “I don’t belong here. That’s why I went into the Reserves, into the civilian sector, but I didn’t belong there either.”

  Stan tried not to let her see how her quiet words had affected him. I hate it when they win. He blew out a burst of exasperated air. “Well, that’s bullshit I never expected to hear from you. You don’t belong? Who does? They always win? Fuck that. Learn how to beat ’em.”

  The harshness of his language had done what he’d hoped it would. It had surprised her. Brought her a little bit out of her misery. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Yeah? Tell me one thing that’s easy that’s worth having or doing.”

  She wouldn’t look at him as she stood up. “Look, you don’t understand. And I just . . . I don’t want to argue with you.”

  He got up, too, blocking her path to the door. “No,” he said. “No running away. You run away a lot, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer. She just stood there looking at him as if he’d stabbed her in the heart.

  He steeled himself. “You do. You run from confrontation. Not when you’re flying though. But the rest of the time. You were running away from Hogan when he caught up to you in the parking lot. But right now, you have to stick,” he told her. “You wouldn’t run if you were in a helo.”

  “I’m safe there,” she whispered.

  “You’re safe here, too,” he said, and her eyes filled with new tears.

  Please, God, don’t let her start to cry. If she started to cry, he’d have to put his arms around her, and that would probably kill him. Not him holding her—that wouldn’t hurt at all. What would kill him was having to let her go.

  Besides, if he pulled her into his arms, and she didn’t want him to touch her, he probably wouldn’t know it.

  She certainly wouldn’t tell him, that was for sure.

  What the hell was he going to do with her?

  And suddenly—just like that—he knew. He looked at his watch. Seventeen minutes to ten. There’d just been a surveillance shift change. Perfect.

  “You ever have allergies?” he asked her.

  She blinked at his apparent change of subject. “No.”

  “Neither have I,” he said. “But my sister had hay fever really bad, and she took allergy shots. What they did was inject a little bit of the pollens she was allergic to into her system. It worked to desensitize her. That’s what we’ve got to do for you.”

  She wasn’t following him.

  “You tired?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Yeah, right. “Are you lying?”

  She looked at him and laughed. It was a real life laugh, not one of those forced, fake ones that she sometimes made. “No. I’m not tired—I’m exhausted.”

  Stan grabbed his key and opened the door. “Well, tough nuggies, Lieutenant. You’re with SEAL Team Sixteen’s Troubleshooters now, and exhausted is no longer part of your working vocabulary. On your feet, grab your flack jacket, and follow me.”

  “Did you really just say tough nuggies?” she asked as she grabbed her jacket and followed him out the door.

  “You want me to what?” The SEAL nicknamed Izzy was looking at the senior chief as if he’d asked him to set explosives and blow up the local orphanage.

  Teri had to admit that everything about this was surreal.

  Both Gilligan—Petty Officer Dan Gillman—and Izzy—she had no idea of his real name—had just come in from the swampy fields around runway two, where they’d laid low and watched the activity on the hijacked plane for the past two hours. Their faces were streaked with camouflage greasepaint and their uniforms were soaked with a malodorous mix of seawater and briny mud.

  “Harass her,” Stan said, nudging Teri toward them, right there in the hotel stairwell, his hand at the small of her back. “Hit on her. Have at her. Try to intimidate her. She needs to practice being assertive.”

  Oh, God.

  “If you say so, Senior.” Dan Gillman couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old. He was good-looking beneath his greasepaint, with dark hair and melting chocolate brown eyes, a square jaw, and a physique that could have been featured in a six-page spread in Men’s Fitness magazine. He took a halfhearted step toward Teri. “Um . . .”

  “Come on, Dan,” Stan said. He’d stopped touching her, and she missed the heat of his hand against her back. “Pretend you’re in the Ladybug Lounge. Crowd her up against the wall. Invade her personal space. Get much too close and say, Hey, babe, come here often? Give it your obnoxious best.”

  Gilligan took one step and then another toward her, rather ineffectively attempting to herd her back toward the wall through his sheer size. But he stopped short. He didn’t touch her and his eyes were apologetic as he towered over her. “Hey, babe.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

  “Ah, Christ.” Stan pulled him away from her. “You’re about as threatening as little Cindy Lou Who.”

  “I have a sister,” Gilligan protested.

  “So do I,” Stan said, moving closer and closer, until Teri had to back up to keep him from bumping into her. “Watch me.”

  Her back hit the wall, and still he kept coming, his eyes hard and colorless in the dim stairwell light.

  As he put an arm up on either side of her, pinning her in, his muscles strained the sleeves of his snugly fitting T-shirt. She found herself hypnotized, thinking about his underwear.

  The senior chief wore plain white, no-frills briefs.

  That fit about as snugly as this T-shirt he was wearing.

  It was an image that Teri was going to carry with her to her grave—Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok, all hard muscles and tanned skin and blue eyes and form-fitting white briefs.

  Oh, God.

  She felt him touch her, his chest brushing her breasts as he got yet even closer. It was exactly the kind of intimidating crowding that she hated, and yet he was being careful, she knew, to keep the lower half of his body away from her.

  He leaned forward and she felt his breath hot against her as he spoke, his voice a rough whisper in her ear. “You know you want me.” They were the same words Joel Hogan had said to her in the parking lot.

  He pulled back slightly to look down at her, and Teri stared up at him, unable to speak or move. Unable to breathe.

  For a half second, he froze, too.

  But then he pushed himself away from the wall, away from her. “That’s what I mean, Gillman. As stupidly obnoxious as you can imagine. Come on, do what I just did, and Teri . . .” He looked at her. “Don’t just stand there. What are you going to do when he says that to you? What are you going to say? Have something prepared. Pretend you’re in your helo—that you’ve got that kind of control of this situation, that kind of confidence.”

  Gilligan got close, still dubious. God, he smelled bad, kind of like rotting fish, and Teri started to laugh. This was just too absurd.

  “Okay, good,” Stan said. “Getting laughed at by the woman you’re pursuing is an instant soft-on.” He caught himself. “Pardon the expression.” He cleared his throat. “Now, look him in the eye and tell him to get lost.”

  “Get lost,” Teri said to Dan Gillman. It was easy to sound heartfelt. She wanted both him and Izzy to disappear. She wanted to be alone in this stairwell with Stan. You know you want me. He hadn’t been serious when he’d said that. He was only trying to be . . . what had he called it? Stupidly obnoxious. But his words were so true. She wanted him.

  “My turn,” Izzy announced.

  Teri turned to him, forced herself to meet his gaze. “Get lost,” she said, and Stan grinned, his smile lighting him from within.

  You know you
want me.

  Yeah, she did.

  Badly.

  “Got a minute?” Sam Starrett asked.

  “Sure. What’s up?” Max Bhagat looked up from the conference table that had been pulled off to the side of the negotiators’room.

  He was pretending to be cool and calm in his three-thousand-dollar suit, but rumor had it the laid-back control was just an act. Rumor had it that Bhagat’s true nature would be revealed within a day or two. He’d wear a hole in this cheap wall-to-wall carpet from his pacing. He’d stop eating, stop sleeping, that jacket would come off, and his sleeves would get rolled up.

  Rumor had it that Bhagat rarely lost his temper, but when he did—look out! It wasn’t a rumor but a fact that the man was the best negotiator in all of the FBI. He’d do whatever it took to buy the SEALs the time they needed to be as prepared as possible for the takedown of the plane.

  Starrett could appreciate that. He had the utmost respect for the men and women who worked hard to support his team.

  But so far the tangos—terrorists—on the hijacked plane hadn’t responded to any of Bhagat’s radio messages. Every fifteen minutes the man had broadcast a message to the plane. Down the hall, his team of assistants were placing bets as to when he’d get fed up enough to go out on the concrete runway with a bullhorn.

  The silence was unnerving. It was a technique the negotiators themselves frequently used. Now we’ll just sit here and you can listen to yourself breathe and think about all the ways you’re probably going to die. . . .

  “Your FBI observers,” Starrett said, trying not to sound as hostile as he’d felt just a few hours ago, out on the airstrip, and a half hour ago in the hotel restaurant when he’d gone to get dinner and found that Alyssa Locke was there, too. Everywhere he fucking went, she was watching him. “They’re distracting the hell out of my men. Me,” he amended. “Me and my men.”

  Bhagat just sat there, looking at him coolly, letting him sputter and make noise. Kind of like what the tangos were doing.

  He could imagine what Bhagat was thinking. Was it Alyssa Locke that Starrett had a problem with, or was it her gay partner, Jules Cassidy?

  But Starrett couldn’t explain. As pissed off as he was at her, he’d promised Alyssa he’d never breathe a word to anyone about the night they’d spent together. It was a secret he was going to carry with him to his grave. His very cold and lonely grave.

  “Do you mind if I ask them to observe from a slightly closer proximity?” he asked, and had the satisfaction of knowing he’d surprised Bhagat with his request. “I want to start working with warm bodies on the mock-up—people playing the parts of both passengers and hijackers. You have any objection to Locke and Cassidy getting involved?”

  “None at all,” Bhagat said. “Watch out, though, Alyssa Locke is an extremely accurate shot.”

  Understatement of the century. Along with being drop dead gorgeous and amazing in bed, Alyssa was an expert marksman, a world class sharpshooter.

  “We’re working on getting you an actual World Airlines 747 to use for practice,” Bhagat said.

  “We should’ve had it here this afternoon,” Starrett countered.

  “Hello?” The voice came from the radio, and Bhagat jumped out of his seat.

  “Radio contact!” one of the aides shouted as Bhagat reached for the microphone.

  “Get the senator,” he ordered.

  Another of the aides who’d been dozing in front of the surveillance equipment vanished down the hall.

  “This is World Airlines flight 232,” the voice from the radio announced. Whoever it was, she was young, female, and American. No doubt about it, that voice was pure New York.

  “Flight 232, my name is Max,” Bhagat said, sounding cool and unruffled. “Who am I talking to?”

  As Sam stood there, the room came to life fast. All the empty chairs filled up and the bright overhead lights were switched on.

  “I’m Karen,” the voice said. “Karen Crawford?”

  “Hi, Karen. Are you all right?”

  “Max, you’re not, like, the airport janitor or something, are you? Because that was a really stupid question.”

  The entire room stopped breathing. All of the members of Bhagat’s team of agents turned to look at him. Sam guessed he’d been called a lot of things in his life, but stupid obviously wasn’t one of them.

  He didn’t seem particularly perturbed, but then again, he never did.

  “I’m trapped on a plane with five angry men,” the girl’s voice continued, “who are armed with seven different automatic weapons. Seven. Believe me, I know. I’ve counted them.”

  Max Bhagat smiled. “Make a note, please—we’ve got eyewitness verification that there are five hijackers on the plane, all fully armed,” he said to his team. He was already pacing. “Good job, Karen. Tell us as much as you possibly can, but do it without putting yourself into additional danger.” He thumbed the key to the radio microphone, opening the frequency.

  “I’m an FBI negotiator, Karen,” he said into the mike with his accentless, smooth, FM radio voice. “I apologize for the stupid question. I was hoping you could assure me that you and everyone else on board—including our hostile friends and the pilots and crew—are all in good health.”

  “Two of the passengers have been injured,” her voice came back, loud and clear. “But I’m okay. They want me to talk to my, well, my father.”

  Senator Crawford must’ve been sleeping on a couch in one of the other rooms. He came in as if on cue, with his hair a mess, Yale sweatshirt on in place of his suit jacket, blinking in the bright overhead light.

  “They know who she is,” Bhagat told the senator, getting right to the point, no niceties. “They’re using her to speak for them. Remember, no promises at this point, sir.” He thumbed the mike. “Karen, we’ve got him right here. He’s anxious to talk to you, too.”

  As Starrett watched, Senator Crawford nearly grabbed the microphone from Bhagat’s hands. “Karen, honey, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Daddy. You know, I almost didn’t make this flight. In fact, my friend . . . my friend Gina, she didn’t make it on board. Someone picked her pocket and stole her passport and they wouldn’t let her on the plane. I know her parents must be really worried about her, but they don’t have to be, because she’s not on the flight. She’s still back in Athens and—”

  The look on the senator’s face was almost comical. “Who the hell—?”

  Bhagat almost knocked the man over in his haste to get the mike away from him. For a guy in a suit, he could move pretty fast.

  “Hey! I don’t goddamn know who that is,” Crawford continued hotly, “but she’s not Karen. She’s not my daughter. And I would appreciate a little more consideration—”

  “Peggy, notify the American consulate in Athens,” Bhagat barked orders right over him. It seemed as if the rumors of Bhagat’s legendary temper were all true. “Karen Crawford’s probably there right now, trying to get a replacement passport. Get her to safety, quickly and quietly—no media. Not one reporter finds out about this. If she shows up on CNN, I will go there myself after this is over and personally escort everyone in the Athens office to hell, is that understood?”

  It clearly was. “Yes, sir.” Peggy hauled ass out of the room.

  Max Bhagat turned his glare back onto Crawford. “Another outburst like that, and senator or president or God—I don’t give a gleaming goddamn who or what you are—you will be out of this room.”

  That, too, was understood.

  Still, Crawford bristled. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Do you really care?” Bhagat shot back at him. “This young woman—and I believe she just told us her name was Gina. George, get me the passenger manifest from World Airlines, fast—she just managed to inform us that your daughter’s not on that plane. Glory alleluia, it’s your lucky day. Your daughter is safe. But whoever the hell Gina is, she’s someone else’s daughter, and she’s taking a real risk here. If the hijackers
find out she’s not Karen, they’ll kill her. I don’t doubt that. Now, when you get back on this radio, sir, you remember that. And you keep her the hell alive.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Nine

  “Back off,” Teri said, but this time Izzy kept coming. The SEAL was built like a professional linebacker, and with the streaks of black camouflage still on his face, he looked faintly savage.