Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2

by J. L. Saint

  He released her and stepped back. “Hungry?”

  “Yes.” She drew in a much-needed breath of air. She thought about grabbing her abaya and putting it on now. Considering the way he made her feel, it would be safer.

  “What do you want to eat for dinner?” He started walking out of the bedroom, but his gaze fell on the rumpled bed and she cringed. It looked as if a tornado had struck it, she’d tossed and turned so much.

  She rushed over to straighten the bedcovers. “Whatever you want will be fine.”

  She didn’t dare look at him. What he must think. He’d loaned her his bed and she couldn’t even leave it neat. Leaning forward with her knees against the mattress, she fixed the blanket and threw the pillows back up to the headboard. She stood back quickly and hit a hard, hot body—an unmistakably aroused, hard, hot, male body. His arm wrapped around her when she teetered with surprise and a visceral shock wave of want hit her hard.

  He groaned, deep and guttural.

  She gasped and turned to face him, feeling his hand slide along her back and settle on her hip.

  He looked fierce, his nostrils flaring as he breathed heavily. His blue eyes penetrated so deep into her that it almost hurt to look into them, a pleasure/pain she couldn’t seem to embrace nor turn away from.

  “No ‘whatever you want will be fine’ responses,” he rasped. “Don’t fuss with the bed. Don’t hide behind politeness. Don’t worry if something is going to please me or displease me. I want the real, honest you. I want your opinion. I want to know what your wants and thoughts are. What your feelings are. I want to know the woman you are. And right this minute, I want to know what you are hungry for.”

  The word you rushed into her mind—forbidden, dangerous. I’m hungry for you. She nearly cried out from the confusion and pain inside her. He was so close, so dynamically real. She could practically feel everything about him in the touch of his hand on her hip, his heat, his supple strength, his gripping passion.

  “Pizza,” she shouted before anything else she was thinking could escape. “Pizza with cheese and onions and lots of vegetables.” She had to force the words out. Almost shout them and her adamancy surprised her. “What do you want?”

  He paused and just stared at her for a moment. His fingers flexed on her hip.

  “Meat. I’m a meat lover. I will settle for pepperoni, sausage, ham and…chicken. For now.” He stepped back like a soldier at attention then turned and literally marched stiffly from the room.

  Mari frowned. Why was that settling?

  Chapter Ten

  River of Blood Camp

  Union County, Georgia

  2000 hours

  Ahmed hadn’t felt Allah’s approval in many years. Life had not been good. He’d had many failures and few successes since the Americans invaded his homeland. He’d lost respect, honor and wealth, but that would all change now. Allah would now surely turn blessings Ahmed’s way now.

  His son-in-law had done well. In just one day, Salaam’s plan had brought terror into the heart of every American home, but unlike the jihadist of 9/11, Salaam’s soldiers had only just begun. Fewer died at one time, but the terror would be greater.

  Ahmed had those who’d remained in the compound gathered together. Everyone watched the multiple news broadcasts reporting on the horrific events of the day. A school bus on its side, mangled and broken in the nation’s capitol. Students had been injured. Three were now dead. Two entire interstates in Texas had been shut down most of the day. The truck drivers shot had caused deadly pileups. Times Square was a ghost town after the sniper attack. Killing a judge in his Chicago high-rise office had been brilliant. Businesses and restaurants were shutting down. People were afraid to even drink a cup of coffee. All of Rodeo Drive had closed and, best of all, the President’s fund-raiser scheduled at the Beverly Hills Wiltshire Hotel for next week had been canceled. No one felt safe anywhere.

  Not everyone shot had died, but Salaam would be pleased.

  Tomorrow was a crucial step in their plan. That kill had to go well because their ultimate goal hinged on one man’s death. It was so important that Salaam had left the camp to oversee the task. There was—

  Ahmed jumped up, shocked at what, no, who he saw on the television screen being filmed in the middle of a rioting crowd. He searched quickly for the news affiliate. Fayetteville, North Carolina. It was completely impossible, but the woman was unmistakable. He looked at his son, wondering if Fahran saw her too. But Fahran had his nose in the Qur’an. Ahmed rushed over and jerked the book away, then pulled his son to the back of the room and whispered, “Fahran, look. What do you see?” Ahmed pointed at the shameless dark-haired woman on the television screen.

  Fahran frowned. “Maisa? But that is impossible.”

  Ahmed smacked Fahran’s arm. “Whisper. No one must know this.”

  Fahran turned dark red, but lowered his voice obediently. “It looks like Maisa, but she is here. I just spoke with her and mother twenty minutes ago.”

  “It’s not Maisa. It’s Maryam.”

  Fahran shook his head. “Impossible. She was left years ago to die in—”

  Ahmed gave his own chest a punishing blow. “Did she die though? Did I do my duty and see to our family’s honor? Or did I give in to the pleas of my accursed wife to let Allah take Maryam’s life without violence? I left her locked in a cell, but I did not see her die. That worthless servant Fila and her son Asa who stayed to protect the house must have freed Maryam after we left. Now Allah is punishing me. All that we have worked for is threatened because I did not kill Maryam. This is your last chance to prove to me you are worthy of being my son. You must find her and bring her to me, Fahran. Take Maisa. She will trust Maisa, but don’t tell Maisa of my intent. Tell her I want to forgive Maryam. Go quickly. You must return before Salaam does. Maryam must die or Allah will destroy us all. Do not fail me, Fahran. There is no room for failures in our future plans. You must prove yourself a soldier willing to do all for Islam, for Allah. A man my grandson can look up to.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The downtown police station looked as if it had been ridden hard and then left out in the cold to flounder. Make-do furniture on its last leg, burnt coffee and faded dime-store décor surrounded a divided force. From what Rico could tell half of the cops wandered around in an ineffectual what’s-the-point stupor while the others charged like Dirty Harrys after Hannibal Lecters. Rico ended up with a Dirty Harry aiming for an Oscar.

  He preceded GBI Special Agent Brett McKay into a room, feeling the man’s Eastwood gaze bore holes into his back. He wasn’t sure if he liked the SOB yet or not. He did begrudgingly respect the man for his relentless drive, even though Rico had borne the brunt of it.

  Something had gone seriously wrong in the hours since the shootings at Piedmont Park. He didn’t know what, but it was big. The GBI was on board and Rico had overheard McKay give his partner the heads-up that a hard-ass from Quantico was on the way.

  Shortly after Rico had arrived at the police department, McKay had interrupted Officer Carver’s Q&A session and had taken the reigns of the investigation. McKay started out by confiscating Rico’s ID, supposedly until they had verified his military status and witnesses had corroborated his story about the shootings. Things had gone downhill from there.

  McKay had pumped Rico full of coffee and had repeatedly hammered for every minute detail of what had happened since he stepped off the plane that morning. He was surprised at how many things he had noticed even though he’d been wrapped up in Angie’s…everything.

  But after four hours of interrogation with his shoulder throbbing like a son of a bitch, he was past the point of steel control and stood a breath away from telling McKay and everyone else exactly where they could go, how they could get there, and what they could do to themselves on their way down. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, but he was damn tired of being the caged animal in their going-nowhere investigative circus. Not to mention
that the woman he came hundreds of miles to see, the woman who’d turned his world upside down, was at the hospital dealing with crap and he wanted to be with her.

  The way they were treating him, he might as well have been caught carrying the sniper rifle—something they’d yet to find.

  Rico was sure he could find it if they’d let him go look. There weren’t that many places to hide a rifle from the sniper’s nest to where Rico had caught up and fought with him.

  Hours later, after verification from Fort Bragg and witness testimony attesting to his whereabouts and actions during the shooting, Rico still wasn’t a free man. McKay and his interrogating pals had taken particular interest in Rico’s recent injury. They’d grilled him forward and backward about what had happened. How it affected him. How he felt about that. Was he angry? Who did he feel was responsible for what happened?

  It was a subject that Rico hated to talk about, because the outcome of everything was completely up in the air. When it came to his injury, he was standing in quicksand with no escape and could only pray to God his grip on the branch he held didn’t slip. As a result, his conversation with McKay about his injury had not gone well and he’d finally told McKay where he could go. The bastard only shrugged and said he’d be pissed too if someone was rubbing his nose in a possible career-ending injury.

  They sent an agent over to Grady Memorial to question Angie, her mother and Franz. So Rico knew secondhand where Angie was and that Franz would apparently be all right. But he’d yet to speak with Angie. Now they wanted him to see if he recognized any of the men in a lineup.

  “Guy on the far right is your man,” Rico said. He knew it in a glance even though the man didn’t have fatigues on now and his demeanor was calm.

  “Interesting,” McKay said, sounding as if there was something Rico should know.

  “Why?” Rico studied the guy one more time to be sure. He was positive and he’d had it with this whole place. “That’s the guy. You’ve got your man now and I’d like to go to the hospital to see about Angie. She’s been through hell.”

  “No can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “NCS has you red flagged. So until the suits arrive, you’re here.”

  “National Clandestine Service? Why?” Rico wondered if the nightmare could get worse. McKay ignored Rico’s questions.

  “Ever met that guy in there before?” McKay asked.

  Rico looked back at the man he’d picked out of the lineup. “No.”

  “You’re both men of unusual talents.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you join me and I think you’ll understand.”

  Rico followed McKay. This time Rico was on the other side of the mirror, looking into the interrogation room. Special Agent Dave Farrell, whom Rico had met earlier, led the man Rico had identified in the lineup into the room. They sat at the table. The man appeared tense, and clasped his hands tightly together as if to stop them from shaking. He was pale and sweating hard like a man on a bad drug trip.

  “Relax,” Special Agent Farrell said to the man. “Why don’t we go through what happened today again? Start with who you are.”

  “Sergeant Blake Johnson, Special Troops Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Fort Benning, Georgia.”

  Rico sat forward in his seat, his heart plummeting and racing at the same time. An elite gone off the deep end? Shit. He didn’t want to hear this, but he couldn’t turn away either. He looked closer at the man, trying to see the warrior beneath the fragile surface.

  “Okay, Sergeant. Start with this morning.”

  “You have to understand. I thought I was having a flashback.”

  “I got that. Just go back to this morning and walk me through what brought you to Piedmont Park today.”

  “Like I said earlier, in my counseling session yesterday the therapist, Dr. Ted Brennan—you can call him and he will verify this as well—said being able to visualize someplace special, someplace from my childhood that I could go to in my mind would help me fight off the flashbacks. My family came to Piedmont Park often when I was a kid. I woke up this morning and decided to revisit the park, to refresh it in my mind. I left Columbus about noon and had just started walking through the park when I heard sniper fire and screams. I thought it was all in my mind and I had to get out of there fast. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Have you ever hurt anyone?”

  “Yes. My wife. She tried to help me one night and I hit her. I didn’t know where I was. Who she was.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I made her go to her parents in DC until I can fix this. She’s pregnant. You can call her dad to check on that. But do me a favor. Don’t let her know. She’ll only come here and she can’t.”

  “Do you own any weapons, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, but they’re all locked away beyond my reach, just in case. Even though I’ve never gone for one during a flashback, it’s better to be as safe as I can.”

  “Do you own a rifle?”

  “Used to but I sold it a few years back. I collect antique pistols.”

  “How long have you been in therapy?”

  “Two months. I thought I was getting better until today. Christ, if what I heard on the radio is true, then I ran when I should have been looking for a killer. How can I live with that? The rifle shots were loud. I had to have been close to the sniper.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your flashbacks? Where are you? What do you see?”

  “They’re bad. It’s cold. It’s snowing and dark. We’d been on the run all day from the enemy in the rough terrain of the Hindu Kush Mountains. We’d thought we’d found a safe spot. Radioed for an extraction and the team was on its way. The copter crested the mountain and headed right for us when an antiaircraft missile flared out of nowhere. The copter exploded in midair, raining debris down on us.

  “Suddenly we were surrounded by combatants and under heavy fire. It was hell. By dawn I was the lone survivor. My teammates were dead and no one survived the crash. I was wounded and tried to play dead, but the bastards started doing horrible things to the bodies of my team. I couldn’t let them. Out of ammo, I went after them with my knife. I took out two of them before they captured me. What happened after…let’s just say until I was rescued three weeks later, I wished I had died with the others. Still do.” His hands were shaking, his expression bleak and tortured.

  “Let’s go back to what happened at the park today. Do you remember seeing anyone?”

  Sergeant Johnson shook his head. “No.”

  “Fighting with anyone?”

  “No.” The sergeant groaned. “Why? Did I hurt someone? When the flashback takes over, everything disappears into a blur.”

  A sharp rap on the door to the room Rico was in grabbed his attention. Two men entered and his knotted stomach sank to his feet. Son of a bitch. He didn’t think the day could get any worse, but it had. The throb in Rico’s shoulder spread to his temples with a vengeance. He had is answer as to why the National Clandestine Service was after him.

  The tall, lean man with predatory, hawk-like eyes was a stranger to him, but the bald bowling ball rolling in behind him wasn’t. The Staff Operations Officer from the NCS who’d given Commander Weston, DT and Beck hell in Peru was here. What the hell? Everyone who worked with the man called him Director, a position Rico prayed the ruthless man would never hold in the NCS. The thought of him in charge of the CIA’s cloak-and-dagger arm, out there gathering human intel at whatever cost suited him at the time didn’t exactly instill confidence in Rico.

  The man’s callous treatment of Lauren Collins when he’d interrogated her about her deceased husband’s terrorist activities last month hadn’t earned him any brownie points with the team. But it wasn’t until DT overheard the man planning to indefinitely keep Lauren’s six-year-old twin sons from her, once the boys had been rescued from the drug lord Menendez, that the man earned the title “Dickhead”.

  DT, Roger and Be
ck had thwarted the dickhead’s plans by going rogue. The team had infiltrated the drug lord’s compound in Peru and rescued the twins along with Angie and Rico, uniting Lauren with the boys on live camera before the SOO could get his hands on the twins. The SOO had arrested the team, but Roger’s cousin, the President of the United States, had put a fast stop to that crap. The team was on the dickhead’s shit list and from the look in his eyes, Rico was on it too.

  The man had a lot of power and a long arm. Rico stood to meet him head on.

  McKay rose and extended his hand. “You must be Special Agent Aaron Gibson.”

  Gibson nodded. “And this is SOO Dick Djorkaeff from NCS.”

  “Director to my colleagues and friends,” the man said, frowning hard enough to crease his fleshy face from ear to ear.

  Rico bit the inside of his cheeks, cutting off a grin. No wonder the man insisted on being called Director. The team would get a kick over the fact that dickhead’s name was Dick Djorkaeff. Dick de Jerk worked well too.

  McKay spoke up, motioning to Rico. “This is Rico Santana, our star witness to the Atlanta sniper attack.”

  Rico winced at the description even as he puzzled over McKay’s word choice. Why say the Atlanta sniper attack?

  SA Gibson shook the left hand Rico offered. Dick de Jerk just nodded. No handshake and he didn’t mention their past acquaintance, either. Rico narrowed his gaze. What game did the SOO want to play? From the look Gibson bounced between Rico and the SOO, the animosity had to be palpable.

  “You right-handed?” Gibson asked. “Your last shoulder surgery was two weeks ago. Can you do much with it yet?”

  “Yes, I am, and no. Not hardly anything yet. That includes shooting.”

  “Or fighting. Yet you still tackled a man who you had every reason to believe was dangerous?”