Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  Shane said, “I don’t think there’s any way I can sleep right now, not after this. If you’re pretty sure we have some time, why don’t we clean and re-bandage that leg wound of yours? If those guys show up like you think they might—”

  “—they will,” she said dejectedly.

  “Okay, well, if they do, you already said we’re going to have to move fast. Right now you look like you’re eighty years old.”

  “Thanks for the sweet-talk.”

  Shane laughed, relieved the black mood permeating the room had been lifted, even if only slightly. “Okay, let me rephrase that. You look fantastic, but you’re moving like you’re eighty years old.”

  “Hmph,” she said. “I’ll take what I can get, I suppose. But there’s one problem—we don’t have any bandages.”

  “You underestimate me,” he answered. “I found a twenty-four-hour drugstore as well as a home-improvement place while I was out. Stuff stays open late around here. In Bangor everything would have been locked up tight by now. Anyway, I picked up some Ace Bandages and some first aid cream, in addition to the duct tape you wanted. Now, get out of those pants and let me check out—uh, I mean, fix—those legs of yours.”

  Tracie smiled and limped to the bathroom while Shane reached into the paper bag, removing the first-aid supplies. A moment later the bathroom door creaked open and she returned, carrying her jeans. A motel towel that at one time had been white and was now the color of dirty dishwater was wrapped around her slim waist.

  She eased onto the bed, primly covering herself, looking more like a shy young girl than the kick-ass CIA spook Shane now knew her to be. He wanted to crack a joke but decided she seemed uncomfortable enough without him making things worse, so he bit his tongue and began unwrapping the bandage covering her wound. Blood had seeped into the gauzy material before clotting, more or less, and the bandage felt stiff, stuck to the wound.

  He stepped into the bathroom and returned a moment later with a washcloth soaked in warm soapy water. He dampened the soiled bandage, working carefully to remove it. Then he cleaned around the puncture wound in much the same way he had done last night, dabbing and probing, doing his best to ignore the lacy pink panties he could see under the insufficient cover of the towel. Tracie squeezed her eyes shut, teeth gritted against the pain, muscles tensed.

  There was no sign of infection, and when he had cleaned the injury to his satisfaction, Shane patted the area dry with a second hand towel. Then he began wrapping the fresh Ace Bandage around her thigh, trying to make it tight enough to provide support and prevent the wound from bleeding again, but loose enough for some semblance of comfort.

  He concentrated on his work, and when he finished, he looked up to find Tracie’s eyes open, unblinking, staring into his. She eased up off the cheap headboard bolted to the wall and leaned forward, moving slowly, deliberately, and then they were kissing, and Shane thought about those pink panties and reached down and pulled off her towel, throwing it to the floor while she fumbled with his belt buckle and the snap on his jeans, and then they were together.

  32

  June 1, 1987

  3:30 a.m.

  New Haven, Connecticut

  Tracie sat perched on a rickety chair, watching the mostly-empty parking lot through a slit in the drapes while Shane dozed. He had fallen asleep despite his protestations he wouldn’t be able to, and now he lay sprawled across the bed, covers tangled around his waist, snoring lightly.

  Tracie wondered if she should feel guilty for sleeping with him in the middle of this insanity. After all, they had been thrown together by chance, and when this was all over—assuming they survived; assuming the president survived—Shane would go back to his air traffic control job in Maine and she would return to Langley for another assignment. She had no idea where that assignment might take her, but felt pretty certain it would not be Bangor, Maine.

  So, yes, she thought, she probably should feel guilty. But she didn’t. Her life for the last seven years had consisted of training, work, and more work, most of it clandestine and dangerous, and over the course of those seven years, she could count her sexual relationships on the fingers of one hand. And she wouldn’t need most of her fingers.

  Then along came what at first glance appeared to be a simple job, a piece of cake once she had escaped East Germany. All she needed to do was babysit an envelope, deliver it to Washington, and then move on to her next assignment. Somewhere along the line, though, things had become immeasurably more complicated, and in the middle of everything, here was this solid, earnest, well-meaning guy who was gorgeous to look at, self-deprecatingly modest, and who had, oh by the way, crawled into a burning airplane to save her life.

  The attraction she felt to Shane Rowley was immediate and consuming, and she simply hadn’t been able to stop herself from coming on to him when he finished bandaging her leg. She hadn’t planned what happened between them, not exactly, but her injury was not exactly something she couldn’t have dealt with on her own, either. She had handled much more severe wounds by herself, out of necessity, and could easily have waved Shane off when he insisted on cleaning and bandaging her leg.

  So maybe what happened hadn’t quite been spontaneous. Maybe somewhere deep in her subconscious, Tracie had intended to seduce him all along, but either way he didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, thinking about the frenzied lovemaking of their initial encounter, and then a slower, more sensual second round just a few minutes later.

  She glanced across the room at Shane’s sleeping form, and when she looked back out at the parking lot, the smile froze on her face before turning into a frown of concentration. A late-model Chevrolet Impala was creeping past the motel office, lights off. From this distance and in the poor lighting, she couldn’t make out the color, but the vehicle looked black or dark blue, or maybe green. It wasn’t the car the Russians had used earlier—she had scanned all of the cars in the Bangor Tower lot by force of habit even as she had been rescuing Shane, and this Impala had not been among them—but that didn’t mean anything. They would undoubtedly have changed cars by now, just as Tracie and Shane had.

  She glanced at her watch. It was 3:45 a.m.

  The Impala eased into a parking space several slots away from their Granada. Its driver killed the engine. For several long minutes nothing happened. The car’s occupants were being cautious, eyeing the surrounding environment, alert for any movement or anything out of the ordinary.

  Tracie knew they couldn’t see her in the darkened room. She waited, tense, her weapon held in her right hand, her body ready to move.

  Finally, both front doors on the Impala opened at the same time and two men stepped out. The car’s interior lighting had been disabled. The doors they left ajar. The men were dressed entirely in dark clothing, identical watch caps covering their heads, grease paint tamping down any sheen from their white faces.

  Tracie’s heart dropped, and the sadness she had felt earlier returned with a vengeance. Winston Andrews, her mentor and father figure, had betrayed her.

  She forced herself to push her feelings aside. She needed to focus. She could come back and mourn her lost relationship with the traitor Winston Andrews later. If she survived.

  The two men outside moved slowly, scanning the parking lot while moving steadily toward the dummy motel room with the Granada parked nose-in toward the door. Tracie backed silently away from the window and bent over the bed. She gently shook the slumbering Shane. “It’s going down,” she whispered. “Stay here and keep quiet. If things go bad, get to the car and get the hell out of here. Find a police station and turn yourself in.”

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and nodded once. Tracie crossed the tiny room in a few steps and slipped into the bathroom. Built into the rear wall was a small window just large enough for Tracie to wriggle through. She had cut the screen away earlier and the window stood open for quick access, the cool early-June night air filling the room with the tang of ocean salt. Tracie stepped onto the closed toilet
cover, braced an arm on either side of the window frame, and boosted herself through.

  She dropped to the ground noiselessly, the long wooden motel building shielding her from sight of the parking lot. Three steps and she had arrived at the back end of the structure. Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since she had moved away from the picture window. She peeked around the corner. Sixty feet away, shrouded in shadow, the two Russians had arrived at the front of the dummy motel room. One of the men was bent over the doorknob working on the lock, while the other man stood facing outward, keeping watch.

  The lock was cheap and Tracie knew if the Russian had any experience at lock-picking—and there was no doubt he did—the two men would be into the room in a matter of seconds. She had to hurry.

  A string of ornamental shrubs, brownish-yellow and dying, lined the rear of the parking lot, forming a barrier between the motel property and the trash-strewn alley behind it. Tracie ducked down below the tops of the shrubs and raced behind them, using them for cover, limping only slightly. She disappeared into the darkness at the rear of the dummy room, then made her way back along the side until she reached the corner. She bent down, hands on her knees, and worked to quiet her breathing.

  A couple of seconds later, she heard a muffled grunt of satisfaction and eased her head around the corner just in time to see the lock-picker begin easing the door open. He worked slowly, clearly concerned a squeaky hinge might awaken the occupants.

  She waited patiently, just out of sight, as the two men stood in the doorway. The first man faced into the room, unmoving, door partly open, and she became concerned she had not done a good enough job of disguising the blankets on the bed to look like sleeping people. Then she realized the Russian was letting his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room before proceeding. It made sense. It was what she would have done.

  At last the first man disappeared inside, while the second man maintained his position at the door, facing outward with his back to the room. He held his silenced weapon against the side of his leg. The gun would be invisible should a car happen to drive into the lot, but Tracie could see it clearly, its black matte finish muted by the dirty light.

  Within seconds, the assassin inside the room would discover they had been duped. She had to make her move before that happened or she would lose the advantage of surprise. Still she waited. She would get an opportunity soon. The Russian hit team was being sloppy, careless because their intel had come directly from their high-ranking CIA connection. They were confident their targets would not suspect a thing, that the doomed man and woman would feel safe and secure inside their anonymous New Haven motel room.

  Instead of maintaining an active scan, the Russian at the door stared impassively into space, bored, occasionally glancing left and then right. The third time he looked toward the motel office, Tracie acted.

  She broke from the cover of the motel building, moving silently but quickly. Before the guard could react, Tracie grabbed his gun with one hand. She used her other to place her own gun against his head, nestling the barrel in the soft tissue between the skull and the jawbone. She pushed hard. “Don’t move,” she said softly.

  The man didn’t move.

  Tracie ripped the Russian’s weapon out of his hand. He would have a backup, probably in an ankle holster, but she didn’t have time to worry about that. “Move into the room as quietly as you can,” she whispered.

  The man pivoted slowly and eased into the room, Tracie right on his heels. The first Russian had arrived at the bed and stood next to it, his back to the doorway. The lookout cleared his throat and the first Russian froze for just a second and then whirled, sensing a problem.

  He wasn’t quick enough. Tracie trained the lookout’s gun on the assassin’s chest, her hand unwavering, her Beretta still pressed against the first man’s head.

  “Drop your weapon,” she said quietly. “Do it now or you die, and so does your friend. I won’t say it again.”

  For a long moment nothing happened, as if the Russian was calculating his odds of survival should he try to shoot his way out of the room. Tracie let him do it. He would inevitably come to the same conclusion she had—that he was out of options.

  A moment later, the gun dropped with a muffled thud to the thinly carpeted floor. “Now kick it over to me,” she said, and he did, undisguised malice in his hooded eyes. The gun skidded to a stop a couple of feet to her left. For now she ignored it. She didn’t have a free hand to hold the third gun, and it was far enough away from either of her captives that they would not be able to make a play for it without catching a bullet in the head.

  She flicked her gun toward a small chair at a writing desk next to the TV stand. “Go sit down,” she said, wondering how she was going to immobilize the assassin without giving the lookout an opportunity to jump her or go for her gun.

  “I’m right behind you,” a voice said, and she jumped, resisting the impulse to pull the triggers on both weapons. She realized it was Shane’s voice and wondered briefly how he had made it to the doorway without her noticing.

  The Russian assassin was a cool character—he was facing Tracie and must have seen Shane standing in the doorway behind her, but he had given nothing away with his cold, calculating eyes. He’d been waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of the unexpected visitor to make an escape attempt. Now it was too late.

  Tracie spoke to Shane, still talking quietly. “You were supposed to wait in the other room.” She didn’t know whether to be glad he was there or angry he had ignored her instructions.

  “I thought you might need help and I was right.”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Okay, the duct tape is in my right jacket pocket. Take it and secure our friend here,” she nodded in the direction of the assassin, “to the chair. Tape his wrists to the arms of the chair first, then his ankles to the legs. Use plenty of tape and wrap it as tightly as you can.”

  Shane eased past. She kicked the door closed and shuffled forward, prodding the lookout with her weapon. Her arms were beginning to tire from the strain of keeping both guns raised and trained on their targets. The pair moved forward, locked in a bizarre dance, and finally she stopped when they had moved to within a few feet of Shane and the other Russian. She watched closely as Shane slid the chair out from the desk and turned it around. The Russian reluctantly sat and he got to work.

  It took only a couple of minutes to immobilize the man. Finally, Tracie felt comfortable lowering the weapon in her right hand. She told Shane, “Tape his mouth shut.”

  He wrapped the duct tape around the man’s head, and when he had finished, Tracie said, “We’re going to split these two up and I’m going to get the information I need. This guy’s not going anywhere. Come with me and help me tape down this one,” she nodded toward the lookout, “then come back here and babysit our murderous friend. It won’t take me long.”

  She shoved her gun into the ribs of her captive and moved to the parking lot. Shane picked the third gun up off the floor and walked out behind her, closing and locking the door. Then they hustled across the lot to the second room. Within seconds, Shane had taped the man to the chair while Tracie held her weapon on him.

  “I need a little private time with this guy,” she said to Shane. “The safety is off on the weapon you’re holding. If Mr. KGB over there,” she nodded at room across the lot, “does anything other than sit quietly, shoot him, and don’t stop shooting until the clip’s empty.”

  Shane hesitated for just a moment and then nodded without a word. He pulled the door closed quietly as he left, and Tracie was alone with her captive. She stared at him without speaking. He returned her gaze, trying to look defiant but only managing uncertain.

  She smiled thinly. “What do you say we get to know each other?”

  33

  June 1, 1987

  3:55 a.m.

  New Haven, Connecticut

  The iron was ancient, two decades old if it was a day, a cheap model with just a few heat settings and a lon
g, fraying power cord. Tracie could see a hint of bare copper wire nestled behind the rubber plug and wondered how long it would be before the damned thing sparked and burned the entire wooden motel structure to the ground.

  It appeared today would not be that day, however. She plugged in the iron and held it by its cracked handle as she stood directly in front of her captive. She said nothing, drawing out the moment.

  The Russian wasn’t speaking, either. He was making an effort to control his fear but was failing. His shaking gave him away. His eyes darted around the room, doorway to Tracie to iron and then back to doorway, starting the cycle again.

  Tracie raised her hand to her lips and licked her index finger, then tapped it against the business end of the iron. It emitted a short, sharp hiss. In the silence of the motel room it sounded like a staccato laugh. The lookout tried to remain impassive but she saw his eyes widen in fear.

  She nodded. “Let’s begin, shall we? I’m sure you can guess what’s about to go down here. I’m not anxious to hurt anyone, but I need answers and I’m going to get them. One way or the other.”

  The Russian was quiet, his jaws clamped shut. Tracie could see the muscles working behind his cheeks as he ground his teeth together. The tension in the air was electric. “You know,” she said, “it seems only fair I should start with you. It’s thanks to your sloppy surveillance that you and your buddy across the way are in this situation. He’s probably pretty unhappy with you right now, don’t you think?”

  The lookout remained silent. He was stocky and muscular, like a football lineman, but his eyes gave away his terror. Tracie continued, “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. The only way I can be sure I’m getting the truth is to interrogate both of you, so if it makes you feel any better, your buddy will get his turn, too.”

  Again the man refused to respond. Tracie shrugged and then snapped her fingers. “Oh, I almost forgot. I wouldn’t want you to accidentally bite your tongue off, at least not before giving me the information I need. It’s so hard to understand someone when he’s trying to talk with no tongue, especially when he’s not speaking his native language. Know what I mean?”