Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  He leaned an elbow casually on the top of the machine. As tall as he was, that wasn’t difficult.

  Both Mitch and Brad glanced over. Nike just shrugged.

  She’d felt the eyes boring holes in her from the moment Anita arrived.

  Although Anita was friendly enough face to face, Nike was aware of a cold yet simmering anger in the other woman every time they spoke. Anita damned her with faint praise at every opportunity. It was a small problem since they didn’t interact much.

  “Do I smell coffee?” Jerry said, suddenly alert. Just as swiftly he was gone, the lure of the bean calling him.

  Amused, Nike watched him go, passing Ty coming in, wiping his neck with a towel.

  Ty paused at his desk at the sight of the cup of coffee that waited on the mug heater there. By the time he turned to look, Nike was on her way to the shower.

  Nike listened to the conversation among the some of the higher up members of the Gulf cartel and some of their people in the States. She heard the difference in intonation and emphasis as well as the slight variants of content between one and the other, variations that could and did change the context in a subtle, but significant way.

  The cartels maintained a strange and incestuous relationship. Sometimes they did business with each other, sometimes they competed and sometimes they went to war. The Colombian cartels were sometimes in competition with the Mexicans, yet they supplied much of the cocaine the Mexican cartels sold, while the Mexicans supplied the marijuana. All of them were linked to a greater or lesser degree to other drug organizations from Afghanistan to Chile, which was why there was so much concern about them. If they could smuggle tons of drugs and hundreds of people across the border, why not other things, other people? Like suitcase nukes and the terrorists to set them off.

  That, though, was hardly the primary worry, for all the concern over terrorists.

  Looked at a different way, the cartels themselves were already terrorists. Narco-terrorists. In fact, they were experts at it, having practiced for years. They terrorized much of Mexico, assassinated police officers, bribed officials, murdered and maimed without concern for the consequences. Decapitation was one of their favorite ways of showing their displeasure, but they had plenty of others.

  Nike remembered the two CIA agents she’d been sent to rescue in Mexico and what had been done to them. If they’d sent her in sooner… She sighed. No one had realized they’d been missing until far too much time had passed. It was one of the dangers of undercover work.

  She couldn’t help but think of Ty. If Buck hadn’t been so alert…raised the alarm so quickly…

  Already some of the same kind of violence was being seen on this side of the border and it was getting worse. Word on the street was that some of the gang-bangers had begun carrying grenades on them besides the inevitable automatic weapons. That didn’t bode well for either law enforcement personnel or innocent bystanders. They’d already settled into hundreds of cities across the country and had proven to be far worse problem than the Colombian cartels of the seventies and eighties had ever been. Everyone feared the Mexican cartels would bring their brand of violence across the border - the home invasions, torture and kidnappings.

  Few realized it had already begun.

  The cartels were increasing their level of communication. The chart Nike had set up clearly showed a growing upward trend. They were escalating.

  When they did speak they also conversed in a kind of code, obviously aware their conversations were overheard or recorded. Why hadn’t Anita and her people picked up on this? Nike wondered. Why hadn’t it been mentioned in the weekly meetings?

  She was aware of a commotion going on behind her. Looking up and around, she saw Delta packing up to move out.

  Curious, she got up, stretched and went into communications for another cup of coffee.

  Delia was on the board again. She gave Nike a grin and a wink as she talked, arranging with the National Guard for helicopter support.

  “What’s going on?” Nike asked.

  Tipping her chin at the small television monitor and the display on her computer - currently showing the National Weather Service’s automated radar - Delia said, “It’s summer. Severe thunderstorms are predicted for parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Ty’s sending Delta out just in case.”

  Nike glanced over to where Ty sat at his desk. The late afternoon sunlight that streamed through the windows glinted silver off his white hair. A familiar ripple of warmth went through her.

  He was still there when she and Alpha returned from Parkour training and headed for the showers off the gym.

  The sun was setting.

  Scrubbing her hair dry, leaning a shoulder against the wall, she looked down from the upper level to find Ty still at his desk.

  He hadn’t joined the others at lunch.

  Byron’s office was dark. He’d already headed home for the day as had Anita and her group.

  A voice murmured in the background… Toby, replacing Delia in communications. Even Delia was gone for the day.

  Behind her a quiet voice said, “He’ll stay until Delta calls in, until he’s sure everyone is safe and accounted for.”

  She turned her head to find Buck standing there, pulling a clean t-shirt over his head, tugging it down over his broad, muscled chest.

  “Hey Buck,” she said, softly.

  “He did the same thing when you and Alpha were in Atlanta. Waited until word came whether you, Mitch and the boys were needed or not.”

  Nike hadn’t known that. She went still, remembering how late it had been when the decision had finally been made. They’d been keyed up, waiting for word before they were told to stand down. It had been a bit of a relief.

  Neither Evan nor Victor Torrance would have noticed when she returned.

  “He’s always been like this. It’s just the way he’s wired,” Buck said with a frown and a sigh. “It got worse after an operation in South America. We had to leave someone behind. They died. It tore us both up for a while, but it tore Ty up really bad…”

  Ty had never been much of a drinker, but for a time it seemed he always had something near at hand. Enough to have Buck concerned.

  Slowly, Buck let out a breath, “For a while there…”

  He let the thought trail off.

  “So he checks and double checks to make sure that every eventuality has been covered and considered, then he waits and worries.”

  Buck studied his old friend, the man who’d been his partner for years and was still his friend. The man he’d trusted, implicitly, with his back. Knowing Ty would battle heaven and earth to help him… It was a bitter thought. He hadn’t been able to do the same for Ty.

  “Then there was Qatar…” Buck’s voice went tight.

  He hadn’t meant to say as much, but this was Niki. She’d been there.

  For a moment Nike went very still, her mouth and heart tightening as she studied Buck.

  The thought was clear in his voice.

  She looked at him, frowned a little. “You blame yourself…?”

  “I should have raised the alarm sooner. If we’d gotten to him quicker...”

  “Buck…” she said.

  He waved his hand. “I know. It doesn’t change anything, it also doesn’t change the way I feel.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Buck. If you hadn’t raised the alarm when you did, it would have been the tape that alerted us. We’d have lost hours of time.”

  Buck eyed her.

  Nike looked just as evenly back. “Truth, Buck.”

  Something in his eyes cleared. He nodded.

  “See you, Niki,” he said.

  Watching him go, she heard him call to Ty to say goodbye and then watched him let himself out.

  Ty rubbed his eyes as he read through the reports, assessments and analyses from the NSA, CIA, their own analysis people and those of the team members. Music played, some light jazz, enough to lighten the atmosphere, but not loud enough to drown out Toby’s soft,
calm voice. That way Ty could keep tabs on what happened out there.

  It was a good thing he’d sent Delta out. The weather service had been right and tornadoes had touched down.

  Only one had hit a populated area, but one - a level three - had been enough. It had plowed through a heavily populated section of the small town and erased a trailer park. Delta was in, helping to coordinate the disaster response in conjunction with the local authorities, using their search and rescue skills to help find victims. They were going through the wreckage now. It was the most heartbreaking part of the task, but they had a much better chance of success with help on the ground.

  That was part of what NIO had been created for.

  With a smile, he recalled helping Delta train, being one of the ‘victims’ for the search dogs to find. Giving them a live survivor now and then kept the dogs from getting depressed. Wrestling with them had done the same for him.

  He’d watched Alpha return from training, Niki nearly dwarfed in their midst, her eyes behind the glasses looking at Mitch as they walked through the door, her lips curving a little. More and more Ty saw signs of the ice in her thawing, or, like Pygmalion’s Galatea - in Greek myth the statue that had come to life - turning from cool marble to warm flesh.

  Everyone now used Mitch’s nickname for her, even him. He thought of her less as Nike and more as Niki. Somehow it seemed warmer, softer, made her more approachable.

  That she was dressed in a tight, thin camouflage-colored t-shirt that clung to every curve and the tight leather jeans she wore when she trained Parkour didn’t help. The jeans were protection for her knees and legs from the inevitable scrapes and burns from the concrete. Her t-shirt had been damp with sweat and clung to her body.

  With an effort, he brought his mind away from the thought of what she would look like as she did.

  It was relatively quiet, now. Delta was on the move then. Toby listened to their ongoing chatter, the communications between them, ready to catch the slightest sign of trouble.

  Rolling his head on his shoulders to loosen his neck, Ty sighed. It would be a long night.

  He smelled coffee.

  A cup appeared at his elbow, and a sandwich on a plate beside it.

  Glancing up, slightly startled, he found Niki standing there. Her soft scent drifted to him, reminding him of a sun-swept island. It stirred him.

  Those enigmatic eyes behind the glasses met his for a moment.

  “You’ll need this. You need to eat, too,” she said, her tone gently chiding, before she walked away.

  He always forgot. Everyone knew it.

  For a second he could only look at the food and smell the rich aroma of the coffee. Black, just the way he liked it. He’d already learned to tell when Niki made the coffee, the taste was different.

  “Niki,” he called, quietly.

  She stopped, looked back at him questioningly.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Once more, she went still and watchful, and then she nodded.

  “Go home. Get some sleep,” he said.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Take your own advice?”

  He smiled. “Soon. Good night, Niki.”

  To his surprise, she smiled in return, just a little curve of the lips.

  “Good night, Ty.”

  It was a step forward.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Mexican government, with technical assistance from the U. S., had begun a new offensive, moving hard against the cartels. It sent the army into parts of some cities to try to wrest control back or oust the crooked and corrupt police force after one police captain had finally resigned in the face of cartel threats to kill an officer each day until he did. Five dead policemen later he’d given in and given up. Nike sympathized. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time the Cartels had carried out such threats.

  Ordinarily, all of incursions might have changed little. Some parts of the Mexican government were so corrupt the likelihood this offensive would make any more of a difference than any other was minimal. This time, though, the government had been supported by the U.S. government - not in manpower, but in weapons and tactical support.

  The pressure was clearly being felt in Mexico City to do even more.

  Communication between the cartels and their Colombian counterparts increased in response.

  Then Nike heard a name, a familiar name, in a communication between Javier Morales - one of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel - and his counterpart in Colombia. A chill went through her. She replayed the segment. Almost reflexively, she coughed, remembering… She pushed the memory back ruthlessly, shut a mental door on it.

  For a moment she was breathless as she considered the implications of what she’d heard, what it might mean.

  Then she turned to her computer with a purpose. She ran a search for all other references to that name, called up her chart of communications on another screen, turned it once more into a graph. There were smaller spikes, the recent ones larger. Much larger.

  Now she looked at those spikes harder, correlated them.

  She went still, looking at what she’d uncovered. Flipping to her search results, she compared dates and times against police and news reports.

  Her breath caught. A part of her went still and cold.

  Letting out a breath, she reached for the phone and made some calls.

  If she was right…

  When she was done she sat back, chewing on her lip.

  A glance at the reflection in the glass wall in front of her told her that Ty wasn’t at his desk, so he was probably up talking to Byron. She wasn’t certain she wanted to bring this to him yet, anyway.

  “Buck,” she called. “Do you have a minute to take a look at something for me?”

  Her stomach was in knots.

  A little surprised at the request, Buck turned to look at her. “Sure, Niki.”

  She was so self-possessed and quiet sometimes Buck forgot she was there, sitting between Mitch and Erik.

  “I’m shooting some data to you now,” she said, following it over to his workspace on foot. “I need to get another set of eyes on this. Do you mind?”

  He shook his head, sitting back in his chair to give her room to reach his keyboard to call up the data. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t want to say anything to prejudice you one way or the other. I want to see if you see this the way I do.”

  Puzzled, he said, “All right.”

  A slight crease between her brows was the only indication of emotion, her eyes were as unreadable as ever behind the ever-present sunglasses.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, looking up at her.

  “Some of it, yes. That’s why I brought it to you. I heard you might have connections in Texas.”

  “You might say that.” Buck smiled a little. “Two brothers in law enforcement and friends in both high and low places.”

  Her pretty mouth twitched. He wasn’t immune to the attraction of a good-looking woman, and she was all of that, but with Niki there just wasn’t that click or pop. There was, however, a growing respect and an odd fondness. He liked her, for all of her reserve.

  A glance. “Have you checked with Anita?”

  “Not yet,” Nike said, noncommittally. “I’m still trying to keep it separate and confirm first.”

  Buck looked at her. “Not to mention she doesn’t like you, and is likely to discount anything you say.”

  “And that,” Nike conceded wryly.

  Everyone knew the reason, but nobody talked about it.

  He smiled sympathetically, and then studied the information on his computer screen. His amusement disappeared. That wasn’t funny. If Nike’s information was right they had a serious problem, one no one had anticipated.

  He picked up his cell phone. “Stay there, let me make a few calls.”

  She settled, half-sitting on his desk, listening as he talked, as his eyes narrowed. What she did hear from his end of the conversation wasn’t reassuring.

  Afte
r the last call he hung up the phone and sat thoughtfully.

  Nike watched him.

  “Hey Ty,” Buck said, seeing him come down the stairs behind her. “Come look at this.”

  Turning at Buck’s call, Ty found Niki with Buck, her lovely eyes behind the glasses still, steady, her lovely face impassive once again, cautious, wary…and worried. That was unusual. As the weeks had passed she’d relaxed in slow, small increments until he’d learned to read her better. That last expression was of particular concern. Niki didn’t worry much.

  Leaning a little on the back of Buck’s chair to look over his shoulder Ty caught a whiff of her scent, that soft ephemeral aroma of a sun-washed island by the sea that was unique to her. It was soothing, but did little to dispel his own growing unease as he studied the data she’d gathered, looked at the spike in communications, the chain of evidence she and Buck had built.

  Still scanning the data Ty pressed speed dial on his cell phone, set it to speaker.

  It was one of those moments, those key moments when you could almost feel that something crucial was about to happen.

  “Byron,” he said, “we need to schedule a meeting, do you have time this afternoon?”

  His tense voice carried his concern.

  On the other end there was a brief silence, Ty heard a creak when Byron’s chair shifted as he sat up, picking up on Ty’s tension.

  “Let’s not wait,” Byron said, “Come on up.”

  “We’re on our way,” Ty said. “Buck, shoot that up to Byron. Niki, Buck, let’s go.”

  Aware of the sudden tension as the three of them strode for the stairs, Ty was aware of heads turning. Everyone else in the building went quiet as the three of them went up the stairs.

  Ty didn’t even pause to knock; he went straight through into Byron’s office.

  On his feet and leaning over his desk, Byron was already scanning through the data.

  “A professional assassin. You don’t hire a professional assassin for a low-level target,” he said.

  “No, you don’t,” Ty answered.

  “Daniel Garcia. I’ve never heard of him,” Byron said, and looked up at the three of them, but at one of them in particular.