by J. L. Saint
Mari shifted from behind him to peek out. “Maisa? Fahran?”
Roger gritted his teeth. He didn’t like the setup at all and he wasn’t getting any sense of the whole forgiving, open-arms thing either. Mari went to move past him and he kept her back.
“Who is this man with you, Maryam?” The man asked in a mixture of Pashto and some other regional dialect that Roger had to guess at. Roger pretended not to understand, which took some doing when Mari answered back. “He is my husband.”
“A kafir? You have no shame,” the man said, jerking a Taser into view and firing.
Dear God. Roger’s gut sank into a pit of fear. He ducked and twisted, trying to escape the barbed projectiles as he shoved Mari away from him and brought his pistol up to fire. But his scream for her to run became an anguished cry as 50,000 plus volts and a pain-searing level of amps jerked his muscles into a rigid mass of useless flesh. He tried to stay upright by falling against the car beside him. Instead, his head plowed onto the edge of the roof and he rolled uncontrollably to the ground, twitching like an electrocuted puppet. His .45 Kimber and his cell phone useless.
“No! Fahran! Stop!” Mari fell to her knees beside Roger, determined to end the torture her brother was causing. She lunged forward and thrust her weight against the wires connecting Roger to the horrible weapon in her brother’s hand. Unexpected shock and pain slammed into her. My baby! Roger! She tried to yell as she fought the black tide rushing through her mind, but her body wasn’t responding to her mind. A cold dread crawled deep inside her. Her death sentence had caught up to her and Roger was going to go down with her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Atlanta, Georgia
1100 hours
“He just took a right! Damn red lights.”
Gripping the steering wheel, Angie gritted her teeth as she slammed on the brakes. After tailing the cabbie for forty minutes through heavy traffic down Northside Drive, her stress had reached nail-screeching status. Rico seemed to have passed that stage. He’d raked his fingers through his hair so many times it was a wonder he hadn’t mohawked himself. As it was, his thick curls bushed out on both sides of his head, giving him a Travolta, Saturday Night Fever look, which would have been funny if he wasn’t so on edge.
But he had a right to be. Every twenty feet they had to stop and even her patience had run thin. Hollywood’s depiction of surveillance was much easier than in real life. It was a miracle they hadn’t lost their suspect yet.
The light turned green and she hit the gas, squealing around the turn Rico had seen the cab take. Her stomach knotted and she wanted to bang her head on the steering wheel. No cab. Fifty yards ahead of them were three wide-assed dudes on decked-out Harleys who needed to spend less time polishing their chrome and more time in the gym if they wanted to look half as hot as their motorcycles. “I can’t believe it. We’ve lost him.”
She expected Rico to lose his cool. Instead he seemed calmer than ever. “Maybe not. Hurry to the stoplight first. There were motorcycles ahead of the cab on Northside Drive. If this is the same bunch, then the cab should be close. It’s only been forty-five seconds since we lost sight of the SOB. At the general speed he’s been traveling, he can’t be more than a hundred feet or so ahead of us. So, if we don’t see him to the right or left at the crossroad then he’s along this street. There’s a motor inn tucked between that bank and diner on the right and a strip mall on the left. All good places to check.”
“How you put all of that together so fast is beyond me.”
“Quick assessments are critical in my line of work.”
Angie hurried to the corner. The light changed and the motorcycle dudes roared ahead—doughboys riding gilded toothpicks. A quick left afforded her and Rico a clear view of the crossroad with no visible cabbie in front or behind. She made a left into the strip mall and ran a fast search of the parking lot before backtracking to the diner and motor inn.
Ten cars and no cabs were at DJ’s Country Diner so she hung a left into the Downtown Motor Inn parking lot and bypassed the four-by-eight cubicle with Manager printed on the door. Rust-streaked light blue paint and white paint were likely the only renovations the place had seen in forty years. No doubt shag carpet and bedbugs were the highlight of its décor. Another left brought into view a long strip of units on the left and way down at the last room, past three cars, sat a Checker cab.
Their suspect. Angie’s heart raced over what to do next. Did she park in front of a room? Did she back up to the manager’s office? Or did she drive by the cab and exit onto the street up ahead. The parking area was like an urban alley, only wider—a walkway and parking slots lined up in front of the motel rooms on the left. On the right stood a three-foot concrete wall topped by a chain-linked fence that separated the Motor Inn from the bank’s drive-through tellers and ATM, all of which were empty at the moment.
“Shit. Back up, Angel!” Rico pulled out the gun Jack had thankfully given him last night.
She hit the brakes, glancing ahead as she slid the gearshift into reverse. Two things had happened in a split second. Men with big guns exited one of the motel rooms and the cabbie backed into the roadway, blocking most of the exit.
She pressed on the gas, looking into her rearview mirror and slammed into a black sedan that had come up behind her out of nowhere. Metal crunched and glass shattered.
“Christ. I’m sorry, Angel.”
Before she could absorb the accident, Rico reached over and thrust the car into drive then knocked her foot from the gas pedal and floored it.
“Drive straight, no matter what,” he ordered and rolled her window halfway down. He fired at the men on the left as they flew past, headed dead for the cab. The soft popping of the suppressor was ridiculously tame to the deadly power of the bullets.
She’d spent her whole life fighting to save people now she had no doubt she was now a killer of people. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Rico’s foot pressed relentlessly on the gas and she tried to keep her eyes open as they barreled toward death. An acrid scent burned her nose. Bullet holes spider-webbed the windshield before it shattered into thousands of tiny cubes. Seconds before they broadsided the cab, Rico shoved his torso between her and the steering wheel.
They slammed hard. Angie’s seatbelt cut into her chest and neck. Pain stabbed her spine as her knees collided with the dash. Rico was unbelievably wrenched from her and flung through the broken windshield.
She screamed. The air bag erupted in her face, ramming her back against the seat and a blinding agony exploded inside her head.
Glass cut into Rico as he rolled over the hood of Angie’s sedan, his Beretta clutched in his left hand, his right arm a useless mass of pain. His back hit the underside of the Checker cab they’d knocked to its side in the collision. Fire burned across his shoulders as the hot undercarriage seared through his shirt and into his flesh. He arched away from it and slid alongside Angie’s bumper, using the smashed hood to steady his pistol, ready for a target to show.
Sweat beaded his trembling body and steam boiled from the radiator, sickeningly acrid. His heart and soul screamed for him to go to Angie, but he didn’t dare move closer. Anyone coming to shoot would go for him first. He moved closer to the mangled, right fender of Angie’s car, wondering if he had a chance of killing the Uzi-carrying man and getting Angie out of there while the SOBs regrouped.
It was his fault. His ego had led her to injury. He prayed he’d taken the brunt of the steering wheel’s impact and that he would hear her moving, calling out to him or something. But as the seconds ticked, dread ate him alive. He heard the air bag deflate, but still nothing from Angie.
He had no doubt a gunman would show and was surprised that bullets weren’t already plowing into him. An Uzi in tow meant business. Rico knew he’d made the right choice to force their way past the men and prayed like hell he could hold off the gunmen until the cops arrived. He’d lost the cell phone upon impact and hoped the emergency signal he’d
sent to DT had gone through.
Hearing a noise off to his right, he leveled the Beretta. The barrel of a rifle slid into place over Angie’s trunk and Rico didn’t hesitate, he went low and shot into the shadows beneath her sedan. His bullet hit home. The following cry of pain was unusually high pitched and the subsequent, desperate cries in an Arabic-based dialect even stranger.
WTF? Did they think he was so stupid he’d blow his cover just to help a man who’d pulled a gun on him and Angie?
Leveraging back, Rico waited for the next guy, wondering where in the hell the sirens were.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Jack “DT” Hunter cocked one eye open as the sensation he was now “under surveillance” penetrated his light doze. Two pairs of bright blue eyes from practically identical faces stared back at him from where he lay on the couch. Their rosier-than-usual cheeks told him they still had a fever and would need to see a doctor before the day was over.
Matt and Mitch had fallen asleep on the ride to his Fort Bragg apartment from the Fayetteville airport. The flight from Atlanta to Fayetteville had made a connection in Charlotte, which had them arriving three very-busy-entertaining-boys hours after their departure. Triple the actual direct-flight time, but much better than a seven-hour car ride with six-year-olds and snipers terrorizing the public.
He was still reeling from the events. Over fifty dead today—the worst of which was the annihilation of eleven migrant workers right here in Fayetteville. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the shooter here wasn’t attached to the other snipers. The crime scene had been private not public, the timing had been before the other simultaneous attacks, and everyone had been murdered as opposed to random kills in a group of people—an act that made the Fayetteville sniper scarier than the others, and chilling that he could have been on the prowl in the Fayetteville area while they’d been on the road to Fort Bragg.
A horrific thought, but not as frightening as the fact that Lauren had planned to take the boys to Piedmont Park yesterday. The only reason they hadn’t gone is because the twins had woken up slightly feverish and complaining of sore throats so they’d stayed behind.
He’d yet to tell Lauren about the Fayetteville sniper. She lay snuggled against his chest, exactly in the same position she’d “rested a minute” after unbuttoning his shirt and promising to devour him an hour ago.
A plan he’d been lazily contemplating putting into action until ten minutes ago when Matt and Mitch woke up, whispering and tiptoeing about like a herd of elephants as they’d plotted a “pretermed” racecourse for their Earnhardt Junior cars. He’d known then that it wouldn’t be long before they came looking for a judge. His heart squeezed hard.
They’d been gone less than twenty-four hours and he’d already been missing the hell out of them when the first sniper attack happened. So when he’d heard about the close call, he’d asked Lauren to not only come back to North Carolina, but to come to his apartment on post to stay. She’d readily agreed.
Now he was contemplating not letting them out of his sight for a good long while. Every time he did, bad things happened—Menendez’s assassins after them, the boys kidnapped, Lauren attacked by Conrad Gardner. The list was bad.
But with both Gardner and Menendez in jail and in solitary confinement until their trials, he’d thought Lauren and the kids would be safe going back to Atlanta for a few days to arrange the sale of her house.
She’d made the decision to start a new life in Fayetteville and had moved into an apartment fifteen minutes from Fort Bragg just two weeks ago. He’d stayed with them most of the time, just as he had at the Wilmington Beach house she’d rented through Labor Day.
They had yet to make their commitment to each other official yet. Currently, their plan was to let his daughter, Livy, and Matt and Mitch get used to the idea of being around each other first. He and Livy had just reconnected since his divorce from Jill four years ago and he didn’t want Livy to feel she was losing him to Lauren and the boys before she’d had some quality daddy time. Besides, he’d wanted to do this right, proper engagement and all.
He’d been carrying a ring in his pocket for a week, waiting for the right time to ask Lauren, but something always intruded. Now was as good a time as any.
“Is it morning yet?”
“Can we race now, Mr. Jack?”
“We’re ready.”
Jack looked for the tiny moles to tell which one was Matt and which one was Mitch. Matt, mole on the left. Mitch, mole on the right. When he considered all that had happened since he’d shot Bill Collins in Lebanon it was a total miracle that they were a part of his life.
“Yes, it’s morning, Matt. Yes, you can race, Mitch. And it’s good you’re ready, but first I have a surprise for your mom.” Emotion clogged his throat as he smiled at the boys’ hope-filled expressions. He tightened his arm around Lauren. Thank God they were all here to intrude and to hell with the proper moment.
The boys cheered and gave up their pretense of being quiet and zoomed about the room with their cars.
Shifting slightly, he managed to rouse Lauren as he reached into his pocket, only to have his cell phone vibrate. Teeth gritting, duty had him pulling his cell phone out instead of Lauren’s ring.
It was Beck.
“This had better be good,” Jack said. He couldn’t make out Beck’s reply above the roar of a car engine on Beck’s end and the noise the twins were making, but he heard several alarming words—shot at, almost killed and Dugar.
“Say what?”
Lauren sat up at the alarm in his voice and he rolled from the couch, whispering to the boys that he’d be right back. He moved to the kitchen and Beck’s story came through loud and clear. “Surf and Mac are with me. The commander set them up for watch at 0-dark-thirty outside the Butner ACP (Access Control Point). They pretty much saved my ass too. We’re heading north on 401 tailing Dugar to see where he’s hiding. He’s driving Neil’s ’57 Chevy. Have you been in touch with the commander? We can’t reach him.”
“Not since last night. Don’t lose the SOB. I’ll find the commander and call you back.” Jack wanted the yellow-bellied Dugar in his gun sights so bad he was half tempted to hop in his car and head north. Some evil just needed to be sent back to wherever the hell they’d come from ASAP. Anything else Jack might have said to Beck died the second Jack’s phone buzzed and Rico’s emergency signal for help flashed along with a latitude and longitude.
ANGEL.
“I’ll call you back, Beck.”
“Bad news?” Lauren asked as she slipped into the kitchen, holding a thermometer in her hand and worry in her gaze.
“Worse than that. All hell seems to be breaking loose,” Jack said as he dialed Dekker. The general was going to be pissed that he’d seen Rico last night, but brothers had each others’ backs and that was the bottom line. “What’s their temp?”
“Down from before. Ninety-nine point eight and their throats hurt less, so I’ll wait on the doctor.”
“Good.” While the line connected, he moved over and brushed his lips against hers. “I’m going to Roger’s office and don’t know where else or when I’ll be back, but I’ll stay in touch. Don’t leave the post. As of this morning, we’ve a sniper in Fayetteville too.”
Lauren followed him from the kitchen. “Is this more of Menendez’s hidden agenda that you-know-who helped plan?”
Jack shook his head. “No. And don’t borrow any more trouble than you’ve already had to bear.” “You-know-who” was code for Bill, the boys’ father, who’d played a deadly game of terrorism and lost. The collateral damage he’d left behind was partly responsible for some of the political meltdown between a number of countries and that fact weighed heavily on Lauren’s heart.
Dekker’s number went to voice mail. Jack bent down and whispered to Matt and Mitch. “Gotta go get some baddies. We’ll do four races when I get back, okay? Meanwhile, your soldier’s orders for the day a
re to help your mom rest.”
“Yes, sir.” They solemnly saluted then looked at each other with excitement bubbling as they held up four fingers and jumped around enough to bring Sasha and Sam, their white German shepherds, running from lookout at the front window. Shaking his head and smiling, Jack grabbed his keys and sent Lauren a hungry look that promised everything when he returned.
“Hold up. You forgot something.” Lauren crossed to him, lush mouth smiling, blue eyes promising everything a man could dream or hope for.
She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and he nearly groaned with want. Before he could tell her he had to leave right then, she zipped his fly up for him then pressed her fingers to his lips. “Don’t worry about us. Do what you have to do and we’ll be here when you get back.”
Her words were like a blessing of love that eased a ton of worry from his shoulders. He still had some knee-jerk apprehension that any woman could deal with his line of work and not turn bitter. He walked out the front door, feeling as if he had the freedom to focus on what needed to be done. He left Dekker a short message and called Senior Airman Holly Gear, who’d flown down to Atlanta early this morning. She answered first ring.
“DT?”
“Rico’s in trouble.”
“More than you know. General Dekker is ready to kill him. Instead of coming to the FBI as planned, Rico’s been running around as if he’s looking for clues on the sniper. Now the FBI isn’t so sure and believes he’s buying time to cover up evidence. The body of the agent tailing Rico this morning was found at Piedmont Park where Rico was last seen. The FBI is making some nasty suggestions.”
