by Cara Carnes
“Still have that feeling?” Mary asked as she wandered over and rubbed her baby bump.
The woman was adorable. She’d gotten into the habit of rubbing her belly and then glancing at her hubby, who was never too far away, unless there was work to be done. Today the only work to be had was this op.
“Yeah,” Zoey admitted. “It’s probably my overactive imagination.”
“You’ve got better instincts than most. Talk through it,” Gage said through the com as he and Jud entered the main building and made their way to the elevator bay across a wide, open lobby.
“Why all the high-level firewalls and security systems? Why choose a high-end office building in downtown Boston and rent out an entire floor? The overhead expense alone should cripple a group that’s, at best, third-rate.”
“Add in salaries and mission expenses and it gets even weirder,” Dylan commented. “Maybe we aren’t charging enough around here.”
Zoey couldn’t help but laugh into the com. Most of the missions they’d undertaken lately had been pro bono. The government contracts paid more than enough to keep The Arsenal funded. Add in a few private jobs, and the Masons had no trouble farming out their teams for free work to help those who needed it.
“I don’t understand why they’d waste that kind of money,” Zoey commented as she watched Gage and Jud walk into view of another security camera she now controlled in the lobby.
“When a warehouse three miles down has twice the space at a third the cost,” Vi finished.
“Exactly.” Zoey called up the rest of the tenants in the building. Attorneys. Financial advisors. Brokerage firms.
Her gut clenched as she read the names. She recognized those names.
“Abort,” she ordered as the two men entered the elevator. “Get out. This whole building is black ops.”
“Are you sure? HERA’s hooked to all the government databases. We would have known,” Mary said.
“There’re black ops hidden in databases no one should access, then there’re really black ops.” Zoey shook her head. “I frequently got my hand slapped for stumbling across black-in-black groups. There are so many operating after 9/11 it’s impossible to keep track of them all. I spent more time in Ian’s office getting yelled at for nosing around than I did working.”
“CIA? NSA?” Gage asked.
“No, this is too sophisticated in its normalcy.”
The elevator continued its crawl up to the sixth floor. Why weren’t they stopping? She glanced at Vi and Mary, who both stood beside her. Why weren’t they telling Gage and Jud to abort?
Dylan wasn’t speaking either.
Because it didn’t matter. They’d already realized Congressman Cherling had formed an alliance with her former boss at the NSA. Ian had been entrenched with a dirty CIA team.
Weathers Enterprises was in cahoots with one of them. She’d assumed Cherling had hired them, but what if…
“Weathers is part of the overseas mess we exposed,” Zoey said. “Ian crawled into bed with Cherling to get back at me when he realized I’d helped Sara get away. Cherling hired Weathers because Ian hooked them up.”
The pieces clicked in Zoey’s brain. Cherling had only become aware of her because Ian had looked into her. He hadn’t tracked Sara down and accidentally uncovered Zoey’s involvement—he’d stumbled across it because Ian had been looking into Zoey.
“We thought you were insulated because Bob cut the red tape and ended any investigation into you,” Vi said.
“But the real threat wasn’t ever the investigation. It was the assholes you exposed. Not all of them got caught because Ian wasn’t just covering up the dirty CIA operation,” Mary said.
The two women were doing the freaking finishing-one-another’s-thoughts thing again. Watching them work was a thing of beauty, one Zoey would never get sick of. But this time she didn’t want to hear what they were saying because it meant she’d overlooked an obvious possibility when it came to her former boss.
He wasn’t just covering up the dirty CIA operation.
“He was leading it,” Zoey whispered. “Now he’s dragged Congressman Cherling into it because the man wants help getting his daughter back.”
Son of a bitch.
They’d knocked the head off one snake and the tail off another, but the two assholes had formed a new monster and kept right on going.
“They aren’t a cut-rate mercenary group, are they?” Zoey asked softly into the com.
“They’re likely disguised like that for a reason,” Mary said. “Now we find out why.”
“And whose bed they’re in,” Jud said as the elevator came to a halt. “Likely this is one of the orphaned operations initially started by the Collective.”
The Collective had orchestrated the kidnapping of Jud’s brother-in-law to inspire him to take the six-million-dollar hit on Vi and Mary. Fortunately he’d refused and obliterated the assholes running the organization.
But not before The Arsenal had dispatched every team they’d had overseas to get Danny out. The location he’d been held in had been very near the dirty CIA operation. Zoey had always assumed that was a strange coincidence.
“That dirty CIA group Ian was with was Collective, wasn’t it? That’s why they were so close to where Danny was being held. All those hostages in the three camps you hit were forced labor for drug fields. Everything was Collective.”
“Probably so,” Vi said grimly.
Zoey wished she could get up, punch out, and return to her civilian world—life was simpler when you wore blinders.
But shit had a way of simmering to the surface frequently around The Arsenal, not because they were trouble magnets, but because they kicked every nest they stumbled across.
“We may have bitten the head off the snake when we took out Collective leaders, but Zoey dealt them a big blow we hadn’t even realized,” Mary said.
“How so?” Zoey asked.
“We killed the leaders and seized their accounts,” Vi said. “They may have suffered from the blows we dealt, but they still had operations in place that’d ensure them a well-funded future. Then you blew that to shit when you outed their cash cow.”
“They’re bound to have had other ventures, though. That couldn’t have been their sole source of funding,” Zoey argued.
“Probably not, but the drug economy over there when combined with the illegal arms trade was likely a huge chunk of it,” Dylan commented.
“With it gone, the side ventures became primary. Organizations like Weathers had to step up and become the cash cows,” Jud said. “They’d need a new base of operations for the severely crippled remnants of the Collective.”
“So Ian started looking into Zoey the second we pulled her,” Gage commented.
“He figured out that I helped Sara and contacted Cherling. The congressman was just a diversion, a secondary route to attack so we wouldn’t piece together the fact that Ian was coming after us because of the money.”
“That’s one hell of a complicated trap,” Vi said. “A very organized and thought-out one with two targets in mind. The Arsenal.”
“And Zoey,” Gage said into the com as he and Jud exited the elevator and headed to a set of double doors. “The question is, how much did Ian find out? Does he know about her underground network? That’s something he may not have uncovered yet.”
Oh God. Zoey hadn’t thought of that. The entire thing could be blown. Everyone she’d helped could be at risk.
The money.
She’d pulled all the funds from Cherling’s accounts. Now it seemed he was merely the puppet being led about by Ian. Which meant she needed to pull the strings and see what shook loose.
She hit F3 on the keyboard and typed in the passcode D0bbyRu^z again, but this time entered all the search parameters related to Ian Schmidt and anything remotely connected to the CIA crew she’d exposed. It’d been a few months since she’d accessed the information, but she never forgot a detail once she committed it to memory.
/> Vi had taken all the Collective accounts she could find, but they clearly had a lot more buried within layers of dark web protection. It was up to Zoey to deal the next blow to the assholes. They wouldn’t win.
“Let’s get some answers,” Jud said.
Indeed. Let’s get some answers. Zoey finished the last of the parameter entry and hit enter. If her former asshole boss at the NSA wanted a war, fine.
War it was.
9
Gage and Jud came around the corner off the elevator and spilled out into a long bank of cubicles. Who the fuck had operatives in cubicles? One tall, wiry man stood and reached for his gun. Jud thumped the man’s face against the fake wall.
“Next one who pisses me off gets a snapped neck,” Jud warned. His gaze latched onto an older man with a thick belly. “Davey! It’s been ages. I see you survived my last killing spree. Guess being fat and lazy in an office suits you. How’s it going?”
The man’s hands trembled as he raised them at his sides like a gun was being held against him. “J-judge.”
“Your choice how this ends,” Jud commented.
The man pointed down the hall.
“Guess you brought your brain to work today after all.” Jud walked slowly through the cubicles, choosing the long, windy route rather than the direct.
Gage matched the calm, methodical pace the man used. Each step was measured, precise, and meant to terrify whomever was nearest. Not everyone knew who the man was, but enough did for the effect to ripple through the area.
These weren’t the highly-trained operatives. They were grunts meant for show. The real active agents would be in the field or the real base of operations. The door slammed against the wall behind them as Dallas entered the room.
The man had opted to enter behind Gage and Jud in case there was trouble.
Dallas said nothing as he walked the same route they had taken. Instead of continuing, however, he dragged a chair from an empty cubby and sat in the middle of the room. He pulled out a KA-BAR and a hunk of wood and glanced up at Jud and Gage. “I’ll wait here and catch up with our friends.”
“I swear you three are taking twenty years off me,” Zoey said into the com.
Drones flitted about the room until they encircled the entire area. Dallas smirked as he looked up. “Seems I’m not the only one hanging out.”
Gage and Jud made their way down the narrow hall. Two drones whizzed by their heads, which left four with Dallas. Cameras were mounted along the upper wall every few feet. Whoever awaited them would know they were there.
Not that they’d attempted to be covert.
They weren’t just sending a message—they were broadcasting it.
“What’s your status, Cord?” Zoey asked.
“In position,” the man said.
He’d entered the server room down the hall via a crawl space he’d accessed by disabling the service elevator in the western area of the building. It’d meant climbing the shaft and popping the secured crawl space open. The youngest Mason wasn’t as out of shape as he’d claimed, not that Gage had ever believed it.
No one who worked at The Arsenal was anything but the best.
Ian Schmidt, Josiah Weathers, and Congressman Edward Cherling sat on leather chairs in an area along the southern wall. Glasses of a brown liquid sat before them, but none reached for them.
Puffs of smoke rose from Ian as he huffed on a cigar a little meatier than his fat fingers. Gage didn’t know how someone so out of shape could have been put in charge of CIA operations, but he supposed someone that mired in red tape and bureaucracy didn’t have to actually do anything.
“Sanderson. Jensen.” Ian’s familiarity with their names crawled through Gage like a warning. He and Jud both froze in unison, well outside striking range—not that the three men on the sofas were capable of striking anything except defenseless women.
“It’s funny how everyone out there almost pissed themselves because The Judge entered the room. Damn. That was a sight to behold,” Ian declared as he glanced over at Cherling. “Edward, this is the man I was telling you about. Judson Jensen took out more than half of the Collective leadership when the idiots went after the Quillery Edge. They never listened to me. I warned them it was a terrible idea.”
Gage filed the information away. Ian was higher up in the rung of leadership than they’d first realized.
“You were smart. You survived,” Jud said. “Took control when they fell.”
“Ah, give the man a cigar. He’s smarter than most,” Ian commented. “Breathe, Edward, your face is turning red.”
“Where is my daughter? I demand you bring that rainbow-haired, fat-ass bitch to me immediately. She knows where my daughter is.”
Gage didn’t feel the strike of knuckles against bone until the distinctive crunch filled the air. Pleasure hummed within his veins as adrenaline surged. Blood gushed from Cherling’s broken nose as he cried out.
“Careful, boys. He’s mighty protective of our rainbow beauty,” Jud commented as he crossed his arms and smirked.
Josiah laughed. “That’s the Gage I remember. Never bother with words when brutality says it all. I see you were right about him. He would’ve been a wonderful addition to the team.”
Ian glanced at Jud. “I recruited Sanderson here to come work for Weathers. He has a unique set of skills I find lacking in soldiers these days. You’re beauty in motion, Sanderson. I’m man enough to admit that what you did that day moved me.”
“They’ve been in bed together longer than we realized,” Mary said. “Dylan pulled Gage almost two years ago. We need HERA going further back, at least two more years.”
“Three,” Gage growled into the com. It’d been three years since the blood bath. Beauty in motion. There’d been nothing but carnage. Disgust rose in his gut as he remained motionless.
“I always knew you had it in you. That drive, the primal instinct too many have lost,” Ian commented. “Seeing you lay waste to your entire team one by one with such precision was a thing of beauty.”
A startled gasp filled the line. Zoey had remained silent while Cherling insulted her, but Ian airing his demons had snapped her emotional grip.
“He and his team were tasked with training the locals. Lots of our men were ordered to do that. A lot of times the locals would get scared and run away when the fighting got too intense. Lots of teams died because of it,” Ian commented with a glimmer in his gaze. He huffed his cigar, then continued. “Gage’s team was in an area we all know well. Not too far from where Danny was rescued from. Do I have my geography right?”
“Fuck,” Zoey said. “Is that true? Vi? Mary?”
“Do not react,” Mary ordered into the com. “Let him keep talking. This intel is useful.”
Gage trusted the women on the other end of the com with his life, but he couldn’t see the usefulness behind dredging that hell.
Son of a bitch. “Get to the fucking point, Schmidt.” Gage fisted his hands.
“History is important, Sanderson. I must not get the details wrong. First off, he wasn’t a Ranger. Not at the end. He and six men of his choosing were pulled from the Rangers to form a very specialized black ops team assigned to train a large group of locals.”
“You’re a well-informed bastard,” Gage said.
“The locals Gage here and his team were supposed to train weren’t interested in fighting the enemy, though. They were the enemy.”
Jud tensed and shifted his stance beside Gage.
“Associates of ours decided to experiment. They suggested to the tribal leader to infiltrate us from the inside. It took, what? Two months to turn everyone on your team?”
“Why?” Gage growled. “They were good men.”
“All men have a price, Sanderson. We just never found yours. Did we?” Weathers asked.
“They’d been mired in war and death too long and wanted an out,” Ian commented. “We offered it to them. For a price.”
“Enough,” Gage growled into the com
.
“One village,” Ian finished. “Kill one village to prove your defection and come to our side. Lead the locals farming our crops. It was simple and had a tremendous payday for a group of battle-weary soldiers. No one would miss them. They’d assume the team was killed by insurgents. It was a brilliant plan.”
“But Sanderson never cracked, did he?” Josiah asked. “He’s too stubborn to break.”
“See, that’s where you lack vision, my friend,” Ian commented. “I invest in warriors like Gage here because he’s the long-haul gamble. You don’t break a soldier like him. You shape him. Slowly.”
Bastard. Jud reached over and snagged Gage’s shirt when he took a step forward.
“Stand down, Sanderson,” Mary ordered, her voice firm on the com. “This is the why you’ve been haunted by.”
Fuck.
He clenched his fists and willed the bastard to finish. No words escaped the firm clasp of his lips.
“We disabled coms so there wasn’t an option for secondary support. Gage here was judge, jury, and executioner when they entered that little village and he realized what the team meant to do. They thought he’d see their reasoning and go with their decision. But you didn’t, did you?”
Gage looked away, unable to stop his brain from recalling the moment he’d realized his team had turned against everything they’d stood for. “I had no choice.”
“Oh, but you did. You could have gone along with their decision. Or walked away.” Ian looked over at Josiah. “What was the final count? Was there one?”
“Unofficially, six Rangers in the cutaway team from the Ranger battalion. Gage’s team,” Josiah emphasized. “Thirty-two locals.”
“Ah, yes. Thirty-eight. And how many villagers did those thirty-eight kill?”
“None,” Gage answered.
“Your hard work that day was rewarded, though. The village leader sent a runner to a neighboring village who knew how to get in touch with a strange group outside of town. I believe that was Dylan Mason’s Delta team.”
Son of a bitch.
