Fallen: A Daniel Briggs Action Thriller (Corps Justice - Daniel Briggs Book 2)

by C. G. Cooper

  I really never thought about him again until he tracked me down almost a year before rolling into Old Orchard Beach, Maine. He said he was with the FBI now. He was building a team, and I was his number one draft pick.

  I let him down easy, giving him some line about never working for the government again. He gave me his number and said to keep in touch. I never did, but I still had his number.

  Pastor Walker watched as I placed the call on the motel room phone. I smiled when I heard Rex Hazard’s familiar voice, a voice from my past, a voice springing a well of distant memories.

  “Special Agent Hazard,” he answered.

  “Rex, it’s Daniel.”

  “Snake Eyes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, holy fucking shit, Marine. Where the fuck are you?”

  I forgot to mention that Hazard had one of the filthiest mouths I’d ever heard, and that included every gunnery sergeant I’d served with.

  “I’m in Boston. Are you still in New York City?”

  “Yeah, just outside. What’s going on, man?”

  I hesitated. His exuberance surprised me, made me remember that some people thought I was a hero, some kind of savior. I wasn’t, but they still thought it.

  “I need your help.”

  His voice went serious, like I remembered. “Name it.”

  “How much do you know about the Russian mob?”

  “More than some, but less than others.”

  I grunted.

  “Let’s start with information.”

  “What do you need?” he asked, back in battle mode.

  “I need you to find out about a woman named Varushkin, Natasha Varushkin.”

  I could hear keyboard clicking on his end.

  “Okay, can you give me an hour?”

  “The quicker the better, Rex.”

  “Roger. Hold tight. Hazard, out.”

  The line went dead.

  “FBI?” Walker asked nervously.

  I nodded.

  “An old friend from the Corps. Good man.”

  Walker looked down at his hands again and went back to his praying.

  I didn’t pray, but I did hope that Hazard could dig up something that might help. My life wasn’t much, and yet, some part of me still wanted to keep it. If I could get in and out alive, I’d do that. If worst came to worst, I’d give it away just to burn the whole Varushkin family to the ground and see Anna safe.

  I smiled at the thought. Yeah. That’s exactly what needed to happen. The world didn’t have enough matches for what I planned to do to Natasha Varushkin.

  Chapter 23

  Special Agent Rex Hazard’s cursor flew across the computer screen, clicking and scrolling as his eyes followed. The phone call was a surprise. He hadn’t seen Sergeant Briggs in years, the last time was the hazy farewell at the O-Club at Lejeune. Despite the time apart, not a day went by that he didn’t think of the sniper, wondering where he was, hoping he would find his way back to civilization.

  Under the authority he’d been given to recruit team members, Hazard had placed a simple tracking system on the trail of Daniel Briggs. Whenever he made a withdrawal, Hazard knew. If Briggs was ever to leave the country, Hazard would know. Up to this point, good ol’ Snake Eyes had followed a meandering path, a vagabond’s journey through the south and now up the east coast. Former Marine Captain Rex Hazard noted the passage and imagined what the famed sniper was up to.

  He’d known Briggs as an honest and reserved sniper who avoided praise and could always be counted upon. Simply put, Daniel Briggs was one of the best snipers the Marine Corps had ever trained. It was one of the reasons Capt. Hazard had put him up for the Medal of Honor. Well, that and what he’d done in Afghanistan. Briggs was never the same after that, and the Marine Corps had even contacted Hazard to see if they knew of the Marine’s whereabouts. He always knew, but he never told. If Snake Eyes needed his space, Hazard would let him have it. There were too many boys who came home to a confusing world filled with citizens who didn’t quite get what troops did, even though many tried.

  Now it was Hazard’s turn to give back, not only for Briggs saving his life, but for the debt he’d paid for his country, for the sacrifice, for the pain.

  Hazard perused the files on Natasha Varushkin. There was her entry visa and a corresponding Russian passport photo. Even as a teen she was striking, a real knockout. As the years passed on the screen, Natasha aged with the grace of a perfectly crafted wine. But her personal actions soon contradicted the beauty of the pixels.

  She was first arrested in college for underage consumption. Not that big a deal. The next arrest was for possession of marijuana, then another. The three disorderly conducts came next, and then the assault on a male companion. Even in her mug shot Varushkin looked poised and beautiful.

  Then it all stopped. Almost five years ago exactly, the arrests ceased and so did normal activities like bank card use, driver’s license scans and international travel.

  “That’s strange,” Hazard said to himself. He double checked, and sure enough, Natasha Varushkin had ceased to exist on the official United States radar. That didn’t mean records weren’t available, but he sure as hell couldn’t access them.

  Rather than run straight to his boss and ask for assistance with a higher level query (the investigation wasn’t exactly official, after all), Special Agent Hazard went with another option: next of kin.

  Two brothers, Igor and Frederick. Both dead. The only living relative was her father, Georgy Varushkin. When Hazard tried to access the elder Varushkin’s file, nothing showed.

  “Fuck.”

  With a reluctance bred from years of independent action, Special Agent Hazard picked up the phone and dialed his boss. The secretary picked up.

  “Hey, Sara, is the old man in?”

  “He just got back, hold one.”

  Hazard waited until his boss came on.

  “Rex?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh crap. If you’re calling me sir, there must be something you want.”

  Ten years Hazard’s senior, his boss was a good guy. He was another Marine who’d made it as far up the FBI totem pole as he was going to get. He knew it, but didn’t let it get in the way of the job or training his men.

  “I need access to a file. Wait, make that two,” Hazard added, remembering the ghost file on the dad.

  “Send me what you’ve got and I’ll run a search.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The next time we play golf you owe me five strokes.”

  “You got it.”

  Hazard hung up the phone and smiled. His boss would need more than five strokes to beat him. Even though the senior agent played ten times as much as him, he just couldn’t overcome the years of ingrained repetition that Hazard stored in his body from playing on his college golf team. It came in handy when he wanted to show some snobby Ivy Leaguer that a lowly Marine from Columbus, Ohio could beat him whenever he wanted.

  As he waited, Hazard replayed the conversation with Briggs. The guy had the same intensity he remembered, not much fluff in his tone. Focused, thought Hazard. That’s what Briggs was. Like a panther stalking its prey, Snake Eyes never let go.

  That worried the thirty-something FBI agent. What the hell was the sniper doing snooping on the Russian mob? The Varushkin file hadn’t said anything about organized crime, but the FBI didn’t know everything. Even in a post-9-11 world, there were still plenty of secrets hidden in plain sight.

  As he organized his thoughts for the return call to Briggs, his phone rang.

  “Hazard.”

  “Why did you say you wanted these files?” his boss asked.

  Oh shit.

  “I didn’t, sorry.”

  “So tell me.”

  He’d been vague for a reason, but he didn’t want to lie.

  “I got a tip on some possible Russian mob activity up in Boston. May have ties to Manhattan.”

  Silence on the other end. Th
en his boss said, “Dead end on Natasha Varushkin. Looks like she cleaned up her act and somehow stayed under the radar.”

  “And the dad?”

  Another pause and more silence.

  “Where’d you get the tip from, Rex?” his boss asked.

  “One of my Marines.”

  “You mean from your time in.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what is he doing digging up stuff on the mob?”

  “Honestly, boss, I don’t know.”

  An even longer pause. Fuck, he’s gonna kill me.

  “One more question, Rex, and you better be on the level, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hazard answered hopefully.

  “Why are you helping this guy?”

  “The truth?”

  “The truth.”

  Hazard exhaled and then said, “He saved my life. The guy’s right up there with fucking Dan Daly and Chesty Puller.”

  “Can you tell me who he is?”

  “Over a beer, yeah.”

  Hazard heard a grunt, his boss’s way of giving in.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. The file on the father is a dead end too.”

  “But I thought you—”

  “Will you shut your pup mouth, Marine?”

  “Sorry,” Hazard said.

  “Jesus. If I’d known you were going to be such a pain in the ass I never would have recommended you for that promotion.” But there was mutual affection there. He’d handpicked Hazard for the job and they both knew it. Not many people could be trusted to do what Hazard’s experimental unit did. “Look, when I said it was a dead end, I meant it’s a dead end for us. I can’t get access, get it?”

  Hazard understood. Georgy Varushkin was a target for a very important government agency, and maybe more than one.

  “So is that it? Should I drop it?” Hazard asked.

  His boss chuckled.

  “If you had another boss, probably. Look, what did your sergeant instructors tell you to do when you didn’t know something?”

  There weren’t many proscribed responses to the stern instructor staff at Officer Candidate School at Quantico. While similar to enlisted boot camp, there were certain differences in the way officer candidates address the screaming enlisted men who commanded them around the clock. Instead of drill instructor you said sergeant instructor. “Yes, sergeant instructor,” and, “No, sergeant instructor,” were the most common responses to questions. In the early days of summer training, another oft repeated response was, “This candidate does not know, but will find out, sergeant instructor.”

  That’s what his boss was getting to.

  He went on, “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of friends in our fellow alphabet organizations, Rex. Why don’t you see if you can contact them while you saddle up with some of your boys. Sounds like your Marine could use the help.”

  Hazard grinned. He’d be sad to see the old man go.

  “Thanks, boss.”

  He ended the call and speed dialed another. His assistant team leader picked up before the second ring.

  “What’s up?”

  “You, me, and your choice of four men are heading up to Boston. Casual civilian attire. Heavy weapons on standby.”

  “You got it. When do we leave?”

  Hazard looked at his watch.

  “Thirty minutes. See if you can wrangle a helo.”

  “No problem. The flyboys haven’t had much to do this week.”

  Hazard’s next call was to Briggs. He kept it short, informing the Marine that they’d be there in the next couple of hours.

  “Thanks,” was Briggs’s simple reply.

  For the second time that day, Hazard thought about what could make Snake Eyes (of all the fucking people in the world) ask for help. Something must really be fucked in Boston to ring the silent alarm bell.

  As Hazard placed his last call to another Marine buddy who’d landed in the shady underworld of CIA operations, the former STA platoon commander steeled himself for the coming action. If Briggs was onto something, it would undoubtedly be something big. Hazard thought back to the last time he’d been with Briggs in the field, and the fact that he almost hadn’t come home. That’s how it was with the sniper. The Marine was a magnet for action, like the world was trying to throw everything it could at him and still he kept coming out on top. Hazard knew neither he nor any other man was quite so lucky, and he wondered why. He shrugged off the worry as his old friend came on the line.

  “Julian, you got a minute to talk?”

  Chapter 24

  Natasha accepted the lingering hug from the man she’d come to see, but it took every ounce of self control she had not to cringe. Her host finally held her at arm’s length and said, “You get more lovely every time I see you.”

  She smiled politely at the man she knew simply as Joe. Physically, the only things that made him halfway remarkable were his flat nose and protruding belly. The rest of him wasn’t fat, but his stomach distended like some starving child in Africa.

  “It is good to see you, Joe,” she said, accepting the added peck on either cheek.

  “It is not every day that I get to see such beauty,” Joe continued, waving her toward the chairs nestled in the corner of the tiny office.

  She chuckled and said, “If what I’ve heard is true, you have a steady stream of beauty flowing through your arms.”

  He shrugged, but was in no way embarrassed. It was true. The Russian immigrant was rarely seen without at least four stunningly beautiful women. Natasha knew this because some of those very women had come from her Ukrainian supply chain.

  “So, what is it that brings you to my humble office?” Joe asked, settling in his favored leather armchair.

  Natasha knew she was walking into mined territory; any wrong step could mean disaster. Despite how he might look, Joe ran one of the largest illicit Russian organizations in Boston, and was even making headway into the jewel of the east, New York City.

  “I think it may be time for us to join forces,” Natasha said, hating to say the words even as they came out of her mouth.

  Joe’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Please tell me my charms have finally rubbed off on you,” he replied.

  The man was always thinking with his penis.

  “Business, Joe, I was talking about business.”

  He put on his best wounded look, but Natasha knew it was a ruse. Joe had enough tail to chase. Nabbing her would only be a temporary bonus.

  “Business?” Joe asked, his tone now level, the playfulness gone. “Wasn’t it you who told me our business would strictly be what it had been?”

  It was true. Up until that point, Natasha had only supplied Joe’s organization with women. She procured the best and he paid top dollar. It was a good business relationship, lucrative for both sides. But after the conversation with her father, Natasha needed backing. If she was going to pull off her plan, she would need the help of one of the Varushkins’s original rivals. It was a necessary evil given the tight timeline.

  Natasha leaned forward, knowing she was giving Joe a perfect view of her perfect breasts. She smiled and said, “Things have changed.”

  Joe rubbed his hands together, and Natasha counted no less than three glances down the front of her blouse.

  “You know I have always desired a more…intimate business relationship with you, Natasha. So tell me, how do you envision the consummation of this new arrangement?”

  Natasha smiled and said, “I need you to kill my father.”

  +++

  The news from Rex was a mixed bag. It would be nice to have some backup, but that was only if things got really bad. He was clear on that point.

  “If shit hits the fan, like the OK Corral on the streets of Boston, we’ll jump in. But if you keep it contained, we stay out.”

  That was fine with me. There’d been big messes in the past, but I wasn’t planning on that this time. A quick in and out would be a good place to start. Picking up some intel to pass on
to Rex would be a bonus, but Anna was my top priority.

  I didn’t tell Rex about my plans for Anna’s mother. He didn’t need to know. That might put him in an awkward position, and someone with the FBI didn’t need that kind of heat. Better to tear the place up and let Rex “independently” uncover the plot. My name would never be mentioned.

  When Rex’s team made their first pass, he called to tell me that their scans picked up at least twenty warm bodies inside the Varushkin brownstone.

  “We’ll make another run in thirty minutes,” he’d said.

  Twenty people. One of them was Anna and some had to be servants or maids. Even if five were house staff that still left fourteen possible enemies with guns. Things could get ugly, and fast.

  Ideas rolled around in my head. Sure I could break in, but then what? By the time I reached Anna, the whole house would know someone was there. No, that wouldn’t work. They make it look easy in the movies. In the real world, there are alarms (which I could not disarm) and there are people. Real security personnel, like those employed by the Varushkins, wouldn’t be as stupid as those movie characters, where the actors probably get paid a hundred bucks for dying quickly.

  I needed something sure, something that would minimize the risk to Anna. More ideas came and went as I shuffled them into my mind’s trash bin. There had to be something, and that something came soon after. The phone rang. It was Rex.

  “Hey, I’ve got one more friend on board,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, another dumb grunt who owes me some favors.”

  “What’s his specialty?” I asked.

  Rex snorted. “Short of a fucking airstrike, he can probably get it done.”

  My mind whirred with the possibilities. The idea was to keep the thing contained, to give me a big enough window to retrieve Anna. Rex was telling me the genie was in town and he was about to grant me one wish.