Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero
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“Just how friendly did you get with her, Johnny boy?” WildCard voiced the question that was in Sam’s eyes, too. “I thought messing around with married women was a relatively new hobby for you.”
Nils could feel Wolchonok watching him, and felt a flash of shame. And then anger—at himself. It was stupid. Why did he go into bars, his sixth sense tuned in and adept at finding married women looking for a little clandestine recreational activity, if he was going to feel crappy when someone like the senior chief found out? He wasn’t guilty of any real wrongdoing. All he did was smile, and these women approached him. It wasn’t as if he trolled Navy bases, targeting the sweet young things whose husbands had just left for a six month WESTPAC cruise.
And as for Meg . . .
“It wasn’t anything like that,” he told WildCard, giving him his best earnest face. “She was in DC later that same year, you know, when I was there, too, for the inquiry? We were friends. That’s all it ever was.”
They weren’t buying it.
“You never told me that Meg was in DC that summer,” Sam said. “I remember you were there a long time. The inquiry kept getting postponed or something.”
“It was just a couple weeks. And we were friends,” Nils repeated. “It was no big deal. There was nothing to tell.”
“You hit on her, and she turned you down,” WildCard interpreted. “Either that or you slept with her, fell completely in love, and she broke your heart by kicking you out when her husband came home.”
“Look, I didn’t hit on her, I didn’t sleep with her,” Nils said.
“It’s the ones they don’t talk about that you have to watch out for,” Sam agreed with WildCard.
Nils shook his head. “Believe what you want, assholes. But we were just friends.”
But even Mike Muldoon was skeptical as he stared at the video screen. “John Nilsson was friends with a woman as good-looking as this one?”
Nils gave up and went to where Jazz was monitoring information coming in via fax. He glanced through the pages they’d already received—background on the suspect.
On Meg.
WildCard had plugged himself back into his laptop computer. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t up for conversation. Sam had once seen WildCard take a phone call from a rear admiral while writing code and maintaining seven different instant message conversations on America Online.
WildCard called it multitasking. Sam called it crazy. It was one thing to spread your attention thin when talking to your girlfriend, but a rear admiral . . . ?
Of course, WildCard was one of those guys with no social skills, and not a whole hell of a lot of common sense. Like, when he went out drinking, he went out drinking. He didn’t go to a bar to meet women, he went to get completely wild-assed and shit-faced.
Part of that might’ve had something to do with the fact that up until about four months ago, WildCard had been all but engaged to his high school girlfriend, Adele Zakashansky.
She’d broken up with him via email, and ever since then he’d been spending all of his free time almost grimly focused on developing a long-distance tracking device that utilized the cell phone satellite system. It was a project he and Adele—also a computer geek—had dreamed up, and he was determined to get rich off it without her.
Sam sat down next to him now. “What do you think really went on between Nils and Meg?”
WildCard didn’t look up. “If he wasn’t banging her, he wanted to. Still wants to. Badly. Personally, I think he had a taste of what she had to offer. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe he only spent a lot of time imagining it.”
Sam dug into his pockets as he nodded. You could always count on Karmody to express himself dead honestly. He found a bag of peanut M&M’s and tore it open, popping three into his mouth at once, holding it out to WildCard.
“Warm chocolate sucks,” WildCard said. “You know, there’s a reason people store 3 Musketeers Bars in the freezer. That way it doesn’t suck because it’s all melty and shit. Personally, I’d think a guy who’s an officer in the Navy might recognize the fact that carrying chocolate in his pockets is like the direct opposite of storing it in a freezer.”
“Yeah, but these are M&M’s. You know, they melt in your mouth . . . ?”
“They melt in your pocket, too. It’s disgusting. It’s like sucking on a warm turd.”
Sam tossed another small handful into his mouth to test that theory. “No, it’s not.”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“So is that a no?”
“It’s a shit, no! Get ’em outta my face. Sir.”
Sam shrugged. “More for me.” He chewed for a moment in silence. “How’s the project going?”
WildCard finally looked up. “It’s going well. You want to help me beta test?”
He’d been wrecked by Adele’s rejection, running on anger and the thought of financial revenge for the past four months. Sam could see it in his eyes. And he knew that even if WildCard made five million dollars from this thing, he still wasn’t going to have what he really wanted, poor bastard.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I can help. What do you need me to do?”
WildCard dug into his own pocket and pulled out a small envelope. He shook its contents into his hand.
“Take these,” he commanded as he dropped two tiny metal balls into Sam’s open palm. They were about half the size of ball bearings, but they weren’t smooth. Instead they were rough to the touch, almost sharp—like techo-burrs. “Attach ’em to someone’s clothing. Don’t tell me whose. I want to see, number one, if I can track ’em, and number two, how far they get before they’re dislodged.”
“Some people actually wash their clothes,” Sam felt compelled to point out.
“Yeah, well, the world’s full of danger, isn’t it?”
“Where’s Meg’s husband?” Nils asked the team’s executive officer, Lt. Jazz Jacquette, as he began sifting through the piles of faxed information. “Is he out of the country again? Any details on whether he’s been notified?”
Jazz shook his head. “There’s no husband.”
“Yeah, there is, XO. His name is Daniel Moore and he—”
“He’s dead.”
Nils felt himself go very, very still. “Excuse me?”
“It says it right here.” Jazz pulled a page free and handed it to him. “Daniel Moore was killed in a car accident in Paris over eighteen months ago. Margaret Moore’s a widow.”
Nils looked at the report, saw the words, but they still didn’t make sense.
Meg’s husband had been killed. Eighteen months ago. Eighteen fucking months ago. And she’d never contacted him. She’d never bothered to let him know.
Nils had to sit down, suddenly feeling every one of the past forty-four hours he’d been awake.
Didn’t she think he would care?
Didn’t she think he’d want to know?
Christ, he’d spent the past five minutes working to convince Sam and WildCard that he and Meg had just been friends. He’d been spinning hard, lying his ass off. Yes, they’d been friends, but they’d been way more than friends, too. What he shared with Meg Moore had transcended mere friendship.
Or so Nils had believed.
But Meg hadn’t called him when Daniel died.
Maybe he and Meg weren’t friends. And maybe what he’d said to Sam and WildCard had been wrong—for an entirely different reason. Maybe Meg was the one who didn’t consider him her friend. Maybe he was just some officer in the Navy she’d wasted some time with briefly back in the summer of 1998.
Maybe she didn’t think of him at all—at least not until she found herself in the Kazbekistani men’s room, holding three men at gunpoint.
Nils still couldn’t believe it. Meg Moore holding three men at gunpoint.
He went to work, reading every word of every fax. They had three hours before the transport touched down in DC, four before they arrived at the K-stani embassy.
He willed the plane to move faster, dying to get there and f
ind out why the hell Meg was doing this. Dying to find out why, after all this time, she’d asked for him by name.
Still dying to see her again.
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Four
IT HAD BEEN Meg’s first encounter with U.S. Navy SEAL Team Sixteen’s Troubleshooters.
She and Daniel were both officers in the U.S. Foreign Service, working and living inside the protective walls of the American embassy in Kazabek, Kazbekistan.
It had been the day after Christmas 1997. The day after Meg had found out about Daniel’s second affair.
At least she thought it was his second, although, knowing Daniel, he could well have had many others between number one and number two. To rephrase, it was the second affair that she had found out about.
She’d been numb with anger and hurt, and when a team of three Navy SEALs burst through the hallowed gates of the American embassy in possession of the man the K-stani government claimed was their public enemy number one, she’d welcomed the intrusion.
She’d been the only staff member who had.
There’d been such an uproar, she’d gone into the lobby to see if she could help and had found the three SEALs—one of them injured—and their “guest,” a man known only as Abdelaziz. They were tending to their wounded man right there, on the cold marble floor.
All four men were dressed in the ragged garb that most lower-class K-stani civilians wore. It was part Western—jeans and faded T-shirts that read “Just Do It” or “Hard Rock Cafe”—and part traditional—greatcoats and woolen hats that kept out the winter’s chill.
Their faces were smudged with dirt and blood, and the man who’d been injured was shivering from the cold.
“What on earth are you doing still in the hall?” Meg asked. It wasn’t hard to tell which one of them was in charge—it was the tall one with the light brown eyes. Had to be. She read “leader” in his face, in the set of his shoulders, in his every move. She looked around at the small crowd that had gathered. “These men need medical assistance and you’re standing here . . . ?”
She spotted Laney by the stairway, her mouth hanging open, file clutched to her ample chest. “Get a doctor,” Meg ordered her assistant, then turned back to the brown-eyed man.
“It would be appreciated if we could be moved—perhaps upstairs, to an inner room with no windows like these?” He spoke with a lilting Kazbekistani accent as he gestured toward the tall windows that faced the street. “I realize it’s understood that this embassy is a sanctuary, but I’m a target right now. It wouldn’t take much more than a high-powered rifle and a little lack of either respect or understanding to take me out.”
The brown-eyed man wasn’t in charge. He was Abdelaziz—the man behind this uproar.
“Where’s the ambassador?” she asked the wide-eyed junior staffers. “Where’s the administrative officer?”
“Out at the front entrance,” Chris Chenko volunteered, “telling the Kazbekistani Army officers just how big a mistake it would be for them to roll through the gates with their tanks and storm the embassy.”
Oh, dear God. “How about the PAO or IO?” she asked, hoping for somebody, anybody, even though she already knew the answer.
“Everyone’s out front, Mrs. Moore,” she was told.
Abdelaziz was watching her, and she gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Okay, let’s get you upstairs. We can use my office temporarily.” She looked back at the wounded man. “Do you need help carrying him?”
One of the SEALs—a young man with a nasty scrape on his cheek that had bled down into the collar of his shirt—shook his head. “No, ma’am, we’ve got him.” He had a drawl reminiscent of James Garner’s Maverick, and eyes the color of a Texas sky.
Meg swiftly led the way up the stairs, Abdelaziz on her heels.
“Thank you,” he said, and meant it.
She glanced back at him. “I can’t believe they just left you in the lobby.”
“There’s a somewhat . . . tense situation out there. And the government’s not the only one who’s after me.”
“The way I’ve heard it is the government thinks you’re a terrorist, and the terrorists think you’re working for the government.” Meg opened the door to her office and stepped back to let him in. “Which is it, Mr. Abdelaziz?”
“The truth is never as clear as we’d like it to be,” he said cryptically, flashing her a smile.
He had beautiful teeth, an incredible smile. In combination with his too-warm eyes, the effect was impressive. Abdelaziz was an outrageously handsome man.
An outrageously handsome young man. Probably about the same age as her little sister, Bonnie—about twenty-three or four.
Much younger than Meg.
Although, ever since discovering Daniel’s infidelity, purely by accident, from a fax she wasn’t supposed to see—it wasn’t as if Daniel had wrapped up the truth and left it as a gift for her under their straggly little Christmas tree—Meg had felt about a million years old.
Her great-uncle Andrew who was pushing ninety-seven looked younger than she felt today.
The doctor arrived, and Meg locked her file cabinets and stepped back, out of her office, to give the men their privacy.
To her surprise, Abdelaziz followed, closing the door behind him.
“The SEALs trust you to wander about on your own?” she asked.
“I’m not wandering—I just stepped outside to thank you again.”
“Please stay with them,” Meg said, “until we know for sure how this situation is going to be handled. And please don’t take this personally, but I’m going to put a guard outside the door. Some people seem convinced you’re a terrorist. There are children in this compound, and—”
“You don’t have to explain or apologize.”
“I’ll call the kitchen for food and get you something hot to eat,” she told him briskly. “I’ll send for some towels and clean clothes, too—you could all use a shower. There’s a bathroom in the basement, next to the workout room. When you’re ready, I’ll have a guard escort you downstairs.”
He moved back, away from her. “I’m sorry. We must smell terrible. The past few days have been filled with . . . challenges—some more malodorous than others.”
“I can’t imagine where you’ve been or what you must’ve been doing.” She paused. “Or who you really are.”
He was even more attractive when he laughed. She wished her sister Bonnie were here to meet this man, and then, in flash, she realized she wished nothing of the sort. She wished she were Bonnie. Fresh out of college and just starting out. Free to allow herself to be charmed, even for just a moment, even by a dangerous man.
“It’s best if you don’t try to imagine anything.” He gestured to the closed office door. “I should go back and . . .”
“Good idea,” she said. “I’ll get that food.” But first the guards. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
“You’ve already been more than kind, Mrs. Moore.” If he’d been clean, he would’ve bowed and kissed her hand—Meg had no doubt of that. As it was, he just gazed at her with those disconcertingly luminous light brown eyes. “The safe haven of your office is sincerely appreciated. As is your kind offer of food and a shower. I am most grateful.”
Such Kazbekistani dignity and formality coming from this ragged and bloody young man made Meg smile. “It’s my pleasure.”
“The pleasure is mine, fy siwgwr aur.” He’d slipped into another language but it wasn’t Russian or even one of the lesser known K-stani dialects, either.
Fy siwgwr aur was . . . Welsh? Yes, it was a term of endearment that translated clumsily into “my golden sugar.” For a moment, Meg was convinced she was losing it—that the stress of the past few days was getting to her. But he continued on, still speaking in Welsh, of all odd things. “Yours is the most beautiful smile I’ve seen in all my life. It makes me forget I haven’t slept in four days.”
Unless maybe he was the kind of man who had a good nose for sniffing out lonely, pathetic women. Maybe her current unhappiness was etched on her face. Or perhaps he was one of two or three million Kazbekistanis who knew about Daniel’s affair with Leilee. Why not? It wouldn’t surprise Meg one bit to find out she’d been the last person in all of K-stan to know what a total, lying bastard she’d married.