The Protector

by Marliss Melton

  The comment proved she knew exactly who he was. Before the clusterfuck that had left most of his squad dead, he’d had the coloration of a young man. Grief and guilt had turned his hair silver, practically overnight.

  “But your eyes are the same,” she chattered on, shaking a pill into her palm. “I never forget a face. It’s a gift, I guess.”

  He glanced at her, surprised she found his face memorable at all. He had no exceptional features, no disfiguring scars. Pretending to scan the road signs even though the GPS would tell him the way, he focused on the mission.

  “Do you have any water?” she asked.

  “No.” He glanced curiously at the pill.

  She swallowed it anyway, making a face that told him it was lodged in her throat.

  The GPS prompted him to turn right in fifty yards. As he swung onto a boulevard jammed with service stations and auto parts stores, the sound of sirens grew louder. Flashing blue lights bore directly down on them.

  Ah, shit! But the black and white cruiser screamed past without even slowing. Probably heading to the scene of the explosion, he figured. Something sure as hell had happened.

  “That was close,” Eryn commented, clutching her purse with white-knuckled fingers.

  He slowed, searching for the narrow entrance to the garage where his Durango was parked.

  There. He braked abruptly, grabbing Eryn’s shoulder to keep her head from plowing into the dashboard. As he swerved into the alleyway between two buildings to a lot in the rear, she glanced up. “Why are we here?” she asked.

  The yard behind the mechanic’s shop was crammed with dilapidated European cars. “Changing vehicles,” he said.

  Cougar could tell her the whole story once he finally checked in. What the hell was keeping him, anyway? As Ike saw it, he had done his part. Cougar could do the rest. He never wanted to see Eryn McClellan again. She made him think about the past. She brought urgency and agitation to the present. He would rather just exist in limbo, wanting nothing for himself.

  **

  Farshad of Helmand province chuckled. The eruption of brick and mortar, human limbs and glass, had sent the agent who’d burst out of the opposite building flying backward through the air and crashing into a parked car. He had filmed it all on his digital camera to share with his students later.

  Inhaling the stimulating stench of black powder, Farshad filmed the injured agent as he slowly recovered. Like a startled owl, he blinked, then crawled toward the dismembered body of the UPS employee, whose death he had unwittingly instigated. Farshad hadn’t intended to kill him but with the agent interfering, he’d been forced to detonate the bomb. Ah, well. Americans called such casualties “collateral damage.”

  Through the lens of his digital camera, he savored the heat of the blast, the roar and crackle of destruction. Peace filled his heart. It was finally over. After three long years, his son, Osman, had been avenged. Oh, marvelous day, for Allah had prevailed over the Great Satan!

  Of course, Farshad would have preferred cutting off his target’s head. But there was justice in blowing her up, he comforted himself. After all, Osman had died similarly, having been crushed under rubble in the airstrike ordered by his victim’s father.

  Of course, if Itzak had not been corrupted by the West, Farshad’s revenge would have happened the way he’d envisioned it. Itzak’s cowardice had resulted in the target being moved to this complex in Silver Spring, Maryland. Farshad had found her by following the agent who came to her house to collect her dog. Stupid Americans. They had underestimated his ability to blend in, to watch and to wait, assessing the enemy while searching for vulnerabilities. But the safe house had made it next to impossible to execute her as he had planned.

  That was when the patience he preached to his students back in Helmand paid off. He had come up with another plan, and it had born fruit.

  Hearing a car approach, Farshad lowered his camera in time to see two agents leap out of their green sedan. These were the two who left every morning to observe the safe house from a mobile unit parked nearby. Farshad had followed them to it, one day, using his cousin’s taxi. As they rushed pell-mell into the smoking hole left by the blast, his pulse quickened. Any moment now, they would emerge bearing his victim’s maimed body, lamenting her death.

  Hidden within the shadows on the north side of the complex, he readied his camera.

  But they did not appear again for many minutes. And when they did, they were covered in soot and empty-handed.

  A cold sweat breached Farshad’s pores. His hands grew slippery.

  “Where is she?” the blond agent raged at one still outside.

  The agent with the glasses looked stricken. He got up and joined the other two.

  Inept Americans. Did they not know how to search the rubble?

  All three went back into the building. Farshad loosed the collar about his neck. His heart thumped; sweat coursed down his face. They ought to have found her by now.

  An ambulance barreled into the complex, followed by fire trucks and police cars. It was dangerous to remain, but Farshad stayed in his hiding place, rooted by disbelief.

  When minutes turned to hours and there was still no body, he was forced to consider the impossible: His victim had escaped. But how?

  Allah’s will?

  Never. He knew what Allah wanted. If the Commander’s daughter had survived the blast, then there was only one reason: His enemy had taken action, as usual, to conspire against him.

  I will find her, Farshad swore, dropping his camera into his suit pocket. He slipped from his hiding place as agents dispersed to search the area. I will find her and I will have my vengeance, yet.

  Chapter Three

  Eryn let Ike Calhoun whisk her from the Mercedes and into the back seat of a burgundy Dodge Durango. Shutting Winston into the cargo area, he jumped behind the wheel and sped them away from Silver Spring with efficiency that had her groping for her seatbelt. Within minutes, they were leaving the city’s limits, headed toward the rolling hills of the Maryland countryside.

  Seated behind tinted glass, Eryn took comfort from the fact that she couldn’t be seen by anyone else on the road. Only Ike and maybe her father knew where she was right now. The knowledge helped to soothe her frayed nerves. With relief, she felt her medication taking effect. Her trembling had subsided. Her muscles relaxed and her breathing deepened.

  I’m not going to die today. The realization slowed her heart to an acceptable tempo.

  Studying her savior from the back seat, she wondered if she should thank him now or later. He sat rigidly at the wheel, his jaw still jumping. Every now and then, his vigilant gaze trekked toward the rearview mirror to skewer her, making her pulse leap.

  Ike Calhoun. Up to about a year ago, her father used to speak of the Navy SEAL by that name regularly and with affection. He’d even emailed her digital photos of a smiling, bearded warrior with commentaries like “The son I never had” or “You’d like this one, Eryn.”

  She had liked the looks of him. But the clean-shaven, grimfaced man at the wheel scarcely resembled the Ike Calhoun her father knew. If not for the green-as-grass eyes or the familiar angles of his nose and cheekbones, she’d have thought him a different man.

  A memory worked its way loose. Something had happened to disappoint her father. There’d been a wartime tragedy, a toll of casualties. Her father had been vague on the details since they revolved around Special Ops, but one thing had come across very clearly: He had opposed Ike’s decision to quit the military.

  As Eryn watched, Ike tugged off his gloves and set them aside, revealing hands that had been exposed to the elements. Long, powerful-looking fingers lightly and expertly gripped the steering wheel.

  Why had her father sent him, of all people? And where was he taking her? The questions vied for articulation, but her tongue felt suddenly immobile. Her thoughts were growing foggier by the moment. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken that pill.

  She assured herself that wherever
they were headed, it was bound to be safer than the FBI’s so-called safe house. She was in good hands now. Her father, who’d probably been fed-up with the FBI’s insistence on no communication, had intervened again on her behalf.

  Tipping her head against the headrest, Eryn let her weighty eyelids close. Her body relaxed into the cloth seat as she heaved a great sigh of relief. Winston’s hot breath fanned her cheek. I could be dead read right now, but I’m not. She could feel her heart beating slowly and steadily in her chest, proof that she was still alive.

  **

  “Who the hell are we looking at?” SSA Caine demanded, as he, Jackson, and Ringo hovered over a screenshot of the man who’d taken their client.

  Unable to find their client’s body in the rubble, they had hastened to the Mobile Command Center to review their surveillance tapes. It was then that they realized camera three by the back door had been sabotaged, having failed to capture Eryn’s panicked departure, which camera four had picked up—only they hadn’t seen that, having been riveted to cameras two and three showing the UPS man on their front stoop.

  No one had been more dismayed than Jackson to see the suspicious neighbor drawing Eryn into his condominium.

  Of course, she was no longer there. No one was. A quick search of the building and several well-placed phone calls revealed that Sergeant Hal Houston was drilling with the National Guard that weekend, which made the identity of the man occupying his condo a complete unknown.

  All the agents could make out under the bill of the man’s cap was a straight nose, tightly-held lips, and a firm jaw. He was thirtyish, Caucasian, physically fit, and he’d left no fingerprints.

  Hence the gloves, Jackson thought, berating himself even more severely than his supervisor had.

  “He doesn’t look like a terrorist,” Ringo mused. One of the lenses of the agent’s glasses was cracked. He had a nasty contusion on his right shoulder. But he’d refused to let the ambulance take him to the hospital.

  “Because he’s not,” Jackson murmured, and both his colleagues frowned at him.

  “Are you guessing again, Maddox?” Caine needled.

  “With all due respect, sir, I can tell you who he is,” Jackson insisted. “I’ve seen his kind before.”

  Caine folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, Rookie,” he said with measured patience. “Tell us. Who is he?”

  “A professional soldier, sir, sent by McClellan to get his daughter back.” He was sure of it.

  Caine’s upper lip curled, but he didn’t look as incredulous as Jackson thought he’d be. “What about the explosion? Was that McClellan’s doing, too?”

  “No, sir. That was the work of the terrorist.”

  “And this guy just happened to be waiting out back when the bomb went off.”

  Jackson had to admit the timing was remarkable, but McClellan had been badgering their field office about his daughter for days. He’d overheard Director Bloomberg telling Caine that McClellan was becoming a real pain in the ass. The Commander had wanted his daughter released to his personal representatives, while Bloomberg maintained that Eryn wanted to remain with the FBI. The bottom line was that McClellan now had what he wanted. At least Jackson hoped that was the case.

  “Hold onto that theory, Rookie,” Caine advised, causing Ringo to divide a puzzled glance between them. “Right now, we still have to eliminate the UPS man as the suspect. Either he martyred himself for Allah, or he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Ringo, I’m volunteering you to get in touch with UPS. Find out everything you can about the driver. We’ll want the original packing slip for the box and a copy of their surveillance tape.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ringo darted out of the sound room.

  As the biometric lock on the door to the MCC clicked shut, Caine applied himself to transferring their image of the soldier over to their facial recognition program. The software took measurements and compared them to tens of thousands of archived images. Caine sent Jackson an indecipherable glance as the computer went to work. It finally chimed, reporting 668 possible matches for the image.

  “Shit,” Caine muttered.

  Jackson hid a private smile. He wondered if Caine had any clue what kind of special operator McClellan would have picked for the job. Not only had the man arrived in the nick of time, but he’d sabotaged camera three without any of them realizing till it was too late.

  “Sir,” he said, recalling his incredulity when the bomb had detonated. “How did the terrorists find the safe house? You must have been followed when you went to collect our client’s dog.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Jackson. Nobody followed me. We leaked the address of the safe house to the Brotherhood.”

  For ten seconds, Jackson couldn’t speak. “But...why?” he finally managed.

  Caine shot him an impatient glance. “Oh, come on, Rookie. You know how the game goes: No bait, no fish. Don’t look so horrified,” he added. “You, of all people, should appreciate what’ll happen if we don’t make an example out of these bastards. This is the New Face of Terror that the CIA’s been warning us about: Strike at the U.S. military by targeting their families back in the States. We’re the FBI, Maddox. It’s our job to see the bigger picture.”

  “But, sir,” Jackson sputtered, “she could have been killed!”

  “She isn’t dead, is she?”

  Jackson sat back, stunned and disillusioned.

  “Look at it this way,” his supervisor added more quietly. “We needed evidence. Now we have a body, the remnants of a bomb, and soon a packing slip. We are going to find these bastards, Maddox. And we are going to make such an example out of them that this new trend in terror will be snuffed out forever. Now, are you with me? Or don’t you have the balls for it?”

  “I’m with you.” Jackson had squelched the devastation wrought by extremists in Iraq.

  Odd, but what had happened today at a location that was supposed to be a closely guarded secret had the same smell and feel as that hot, unpredictable warzone.

  **

  Ike pushed out of the SUV into the smell of country air and horse manure. He’d tried calling Cougar while driving; only the winding road that took them far from the D.C. Beltway made cellular reception intermittent. Plus, the throw-away phone he’d bought for the mission was a cheap piece of crap that only worked when he tilted his head thirty degrees to the south.

  Ike had made up his mind. Cougar, who’d been AWOL from the get-go, could damn well take over from here.

  Glancing back at the Durango, he assured himself that Stanley’s daughter still slept. That pill she’d gulped down earlier had knocked her out, saving him the stress of listening to her nervous prattle. If the fates were kind, he could hand her off to Cougar without having to dredge up another word.

  Nothing personal, but she was just the kind of woman who made feeling nothing, being nothing difficult. The less time he spent with her, the better.

  “Come on,” he muttered, willing Cougar to answer. He had gotten Ike into this mess, and now he was nowhere to be found.

  After ten persistent minutes, Ike finally made contact.

  “Where the hell are you?” he growled with relief. “I’ve got the package. Tell me where to rendezvous and I’ll hand it off.”

  “Change of plans, LT.”

  Ike scowled at the cryptic message. “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t leave Carrie right now.”

  Cougar’s older wife—and the source for his nickname—had health issues. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer when Cougar joined Ike’s team.

  “Can’t leave her,” Ike repeated. What did that mean?

  “I’ve got hospice people all over the place. I can’t keep the package here.”

  Hospice people. Oh, Christ, then Cougar’s wife was...dying. “Damn.” Ike felt like the ground had just shifted. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  At a loss for what more to say, he listened to Cougar’s labored breathing. The kid was holdi
ng it together, one breath at a time.

  “What do you want me to do?” he finally asked. They still had a mutual problem to deal with.

  “Pops said you can keep the package.”

  “No.” Ike’s refusal was immediate and visceral.

  “Once the excitement dies down, he’ll give you a call.”

  He felt a distinctive throbbing in his temples. “Negative. My place isn’t right for her. There has to be another way,” he insisted, abandoning their code-speak.