Rules of Revenge

by AJ Quinn

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books Available from Bold Strokes Books

  Synopsis

  Until you’ve been pushed past your limits, you don’t know what you’re capable of.

  When a terrorist group brings down three passenger jets, CIA Threat Analyst Jessie Coltrane is plunged into a netherworld where it’s difficult to tell friend from foe. Nothing is what it seems. Case in point? Darien Troy, the beautiful but deadly operative brought in to help neutralize the threat. Jessie is drawn to Darien. She’s just not sure she can trust her.

  Darien’s never backed down from a challenge, but this one’s suddenly very personal. As the body count increases and old secrets come to light, she’ll have to decide how far she’s willing to go. Because this time, more than survival is on the line.

  Rules of Revenge

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Rules of Revenge

  © 2014 By AJ Quinn. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-278-6

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: December 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Ruth Sternglantz

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)

  Acknowledgments

  For as long as I can remember, my dream has been to write. So I will always be profoundly grateful to Radclyffe and Bold Strokes Books for taking a chance on me and making my dream a reality. I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to Ruth, Cindy, Sandy, Connie, Sheri, Lori, Toni, and all the others who work so tirelessly to make everything possible. And I especially want to thank you, the readers, who allow me to enter your lives through my stories. Thank you for your e-mails, your encouragement, and your support. It’s an honor and a pleasure to share this time with you.

  Dedication

  To my first and only chosen daughter.

  Thank you for coming into my life.

  Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

  —Confucius

  Chapter One

  Imam Sahib District

  Kunduz Province, Afghanistan

  In the shadows cast by the first light of day, death waited patiently. Still. Silent. Focused.

  That she found herself in the remote tribal lands of northern Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border was of little importance. What mattered were the conditions, and they were as close to perfect as they could get for the job at hand. No wind, the temperature was mild, there was unlimited visibility, and the region’s rocky hills and thick brush afforded plenty of natural cover.

  A perfect kill zone.

  Lying on her belly, legs spread out and feet arched down, partly embedded in the ground, she stared through the scope on her rifle. By her calculations, it was 630 meters from her current position to the road. But even after she compensated for bullet drop, wind drift, and ambient temperature, she knew her target would be well within the range of both her skill and the weapon she held with the gentle touch of a lover.

  For just an instant, she paused. Reassessed. But one final glance confirmed what she already knew. The benefits of the location she’d selected outweighed any risk. It afforded the best vantage point—an unobstructed view of the road—and the suppressor would reduce the sound of the muzzle blast.

  She knew a ballistic crack would still be heard, but it wasn’t a concern. In the unlikely event anyone other than her target happened to be in the vicinity, they would find it almost impossible to determine where the shot had come from. And with the bullet traveling at three times the speed of sound, her target wouldn’t hear anything before it was too late.

  Satisfied, she settled in to wait. Remaining alert for anything unexpected, her thoughts turned back to her target. A man named Ivan Fyodor Sakharov.

  According to the intel she’d obtained—information she routinely augmented regardless of who sanctioned the job—the former Russian military officer was a major player in the business of trading military-grade weapons for heroin. And he had found the perfect place to ply his trade.

  Afghanistan. A country known to produce roughly 3600 tons of opium annually, almost 90 percent of the global total.

  The opium was harvested from farms across the country and taken to factories in the remote Pamir Mountains, where it was turned into heroin. Large quantities were then transported—by truck, motorcycle, even on foot—into Tajikistan, where a kilo of good quality heroin could net a wide array of weapons, including assault and sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, handguns, and cases of ammunition. Even American-made Stinger missiles could be had for the right price.

  The weapons inevitably found their way into the hands of the numerous terrorist groups which proliferated around the globe, while the heroin made its way into Russia, across Europe, into the UK, and into North America.

  It was a dirty business. But it was Sakharov’s rapid rise through the ranks in the Russian mob—the Bratva—that had raised flags in international circles. And someone in the chain of command at one of the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies—MI6, CIA, DGSE, NSA—wanted him neutralized.

  She shrugged mentally at the clinical euphemism and allowed herself, if only for a moment, to wonder at the pointlessness of the contract she’d accepted. Because she knew one inescapable truth. For every weapons or drug dealer who disappeared in the lawless borderlands, there were a dozen others ready to take his place. Monsters were like that. Each seemed to come with a ready-built succession plan. And life simply went on without skipping a beat.

  But in spite of what she viewed as self-evident futility, she had made herself available. Her choice. It was always her choice when it came to which jobs she accepted, which ones she turned down. And her feelings about death were seldom wrong.

  By accepting the contract, her clients were assured whatever she did would be done quietly and efficiently. She was very good at what she did. She had never failed to deliver. And she ensured there was no blowback—no unintende
d consequences—from any covert operation she took on.

  As for her targets? They were terrorists. Extremists. People who trafficked in drugs and weapons and humans and put innocent lives at risk. They had made their own choices.

  *

  As seconds and minutes passed, she continued to stare at the dust-covered road. But in the heat and silence, with nothing to do but wait, her thoughts turned in a familiar direction and she was conscious once again of the questionable moral compass that guided her existence.

  Trust no one.

  Kill or be killed.

  They were the tenets that guided her life. Truths she never questioned. She knew a lot of people would suggest it wasn’t a comfortable way to live. And perhaps they’d be right. But it was the only existence she’d known for a very long time. More importantly, through constant vigilance and by remembering each and every lesson she’d been taught, she’d managed to stay alive.

  Flashes from the last fifteen years filtered through her mind. The lessons begun by her mother, then continued by others—the ones who had taken an interest in her over the years. The things she’d done. The mistakes she’d made along the way, as well as the successes.

  The violent fury that once drove her had long since flamed out. She’d learned to channel it and had even managed to make some sort of peace with the fates that had set her on this path. She focused on keeping things simple and normally didn’t let emotions dictate her actions.

  She was no longer the same person. But in any case, that would have been impossible because death changed everything. And Cairo and Damascus, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel Aviv, and all the places and years in between had left their mark.

  She was often uncertain what time zone she was in—or even what country. And she traveled under so many different passports, some days her own name sounded foreign to her ears. What she had was her work. Her reputation. A violent past, a volatile present, and financial security, whether she cared about that or not.

  At one time, she had thought it would be enough.

  Until recently, it had been enough.

  But it was not a lot to show for twenty-eight years of living. She had no personal life. No ties, no family, no lovers waiting anywhere in her shadowy life. There were fewer than a handful of people she trusted. Only one or two she might even call friends. And it probably explained why she found herself revisiting her choices so frequently of late, making her think perhaps she had stayed in the game too long.

  Her former handler labeled it spook burnout.

  He worried she was accepting too many jobs, taking too many chances. Maybe crossing too many lines that shouldn’t get crossed. When he had finally broached the subject before she’d left for Afghanistan, she knew he’d expected her to argue. But she couldn’t see the point.

  She’d already figured out that, over time, the job could either steal your soul and turn you into an emotionless killer or come close to breaking you. And sometime in the last year, when she hadn’t been looking, her ability to distance herself emotionally from her work had begun to shred.

  Retirement, she supposed, was always an option. She was an expert at being a ghost. She could disappear and settle anonymously on a small island somewhere. A place filled with life and color—lush greens, endless blues, and vibrant reds. A place as different as you could get from the places work frequently took her and still be on the same planet. A place where she could reinvent herself and begin to rebuild her life.

  It wasn’t as if it was the first time the idea had occurred to her.

  The thought of going native and living in a tropical paradise inspired a smile. But only for an instant, because the bigger question was whether the people who had helped create her and routinely utilized her skills would ever let her retire. People in her profession seldom did.

  There was also the added worry that even if she managed to walk away, her own need for adrenaline might have her crawling back to this life, like an addict in search of a fix. What if this is the only place where life makes sense? The only place you belong?

  It was that particular fear that was plaguing her now, reverberating in her head. With no answers in sight, she forced herself to shut out all extraneous thoughts and return her focus to her current assignment. Ivan Sakharov.

  She took several breaths, began going through a routine she had gone through many times before. She’d learned long ago how to compartmentalize, how to tune out everything but her target, and she began the process of clearing her mind.

  Just as slowly, she released all the tension from her body and began lowering her heart rate until it was forty-five beats per minute. Seeking the still point until only the whisper of air over sand and rocks existed. And then even that ceased to exist.

  With her body and mind quiet, she could wait like this for as long as she had to. No other reality existed. Everything now came down to timing. The eternal wait until the moment came, followed by the instant when instinct and reflexes and training told her to act.

  Minutes or possibly hours later, her patience was rewarded, the silence disturbed by the sound of an approaching vehicle. As expected, Sakharov was driving an open Jeep, throwing a cloud of dust as he approached, his long blond hair shining like a beacon. His posture was relaxed and unconcerned. Unaware his fate was sealed and he had but a few moments left to live.

  A second passed, then another as she took a couple of deep, controlled breaths. She focused on the lone occupant in the vehicle.

  One last breath. And as she exhaled, she gently squeezed the trigger.

  *

  In the last light of day, Darien Troy slid her bag into the overhead compartment and sank into the comfortably oversized seat in first class.

  For the next few minutes, she scanned her e-mail while half listening to the muted sounds of her fellow passengers as they boarded the Boeing wide-body and settled in. One particular e-mail caught her attention. Marked urgent, it came from Ben. It was short and to the point, but then Ben seldom needed to say more.

  Need you in Paris. ASAP.

  Had it been anyone else…

  But this was Ben Takahashi. Her first case officer. Her handler, mentor, surrogate mother and father, and the older brother she sometimes wished she had, all rolled into one. He’d seen to her education, her training, and had saved her young and foolhardy life on more than a couple of occasions.

  And somehow, when she wasn’t looking, he’d become so much more. He’d slipped past her defenses, and somewhere along the way, they’d forged a friendship—the unlikely pairing of a well-connected son-of-a-diplomat-turned-spy and his too-young, barely-in-control protégé.

  She hadn’t cared about surviving when he took her in. And yet somehow, by the end of their first year together, Darien had found herself doing more than just surviving. She’d blossomed, thrived under his tutelage. Developed a healthy appreciation for life. And over time, her connection with Ben enabled her to cultivate a patina of sophistication she might otherwise have never achieved.

  If nothing else, she owed him.

  Without further thought or question, she began swiftly entering the keystrokes that would change her current flight plans from Afghanistan. Minutes later, it was done. Tomorrow would still find her in Dubai. But Frankfurt, then London, and ultimately Paris were now scheduled in the days that followed.

  There was still room to fine-tune her connections. And she’d need to stop long enough to pick up a few things before catching up with Ben. Like her motorcycle…and some weapons. But when it was all done, she’d make her way toward the Latin Quarter.

  There, in a sixteenth-century house she never seemed to find the time to finish renovating, Ben would explain what was so urgent he was willing to break the one rule he knew she insisted on. A commandment engraved in stone that said she never worked back-to-back jobs.

  Of course, she knew without asking what job she’d find Ben working on. She’d seen the newspaper headlines while waiting for her flight. Had seen the horrific photos, the after
math of the three passenger airliners simultaneously brought down on their final approach to Washington, Paris, and London.

  Five hundred ninety-three lives gone in the blink of an eye.

  MI6 probably pulled Ben in before the dust had settled. And even if they hadn’t, CIA would have asked for him. Because even before NTSB had boots on the ground, she knew they would find US-made surface-to-air Stinger missiles had been used to bring down the three jets.

  Light to carry and easy to operate, Stingers were a fire-and-forget weapon, employing a passive homing seeker that needed no direction from the operator after firing. The operator wouldn’t need to maintain a lock on the target and could disappear immediately after firing. That made them perfect for hit-and-run acts of terrorism. And utterly lethal against civilian airliners, which weren’t equipped with the countermeasures found on military aircraft.

  It was also commonly known that hundreds of Stingers were still missing from the arsenal supplied by the CIA to the mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan war, in spite of attempts to buy the weapons back.

  Darien wasn’t keen on being in bed with the CIA. But she knew what Grace Lawson wanted, Grace Lawson got.

  What didn’t make sense was why Ben and Grace would feel they needed her particular expertise, especially this early in what would undoubtedly prove to be a long investigation. That thought was troubling and left her feeling unsettled as too many images from the past suddenly bombarded her.

  Shutting down her smartphone, she closed her eyes. There were limits to the number of personal rules she would break—even for Ben—and the answers to her questions would have to wait until she got to Paris.

  After the flight crew had completed last-minute preparations, after the pilot had welcomed the passengers aboard, and after canned instructions and warnings had been issued, the jet began to roll along the runway before gaining momentum and surging into the late-evening sky. Shifting in her seat, she turned her head and stared out the window.