Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  “Best way to get killed,” Ian said. “Number one, top of the list: Go undercover wearing a wire. Jesus, just shoot me now.”

  “Technology has advanced considerably,” Deb argued, “with the miniaturization of microphones—”

  “I’m not worried about Vanderzee seeing the fricking mic,” Ian shot back. “I’m worried about electronic detection devices. Bug sweepers. He’ll use one, and I’m dead.”

  “And I’m worried about being unable to monitor you.”

  “You’ll have to trust me,” Ian said.

  “I’m worried about not being able to protect you.”

  “I can protect myself, as long as I’m not wearing a freaking wire.” Ian then threw her own words back at her. “Technology has advanced considerably. The microphones we’ll use are extremely sensitive. They’re directional mics, that means you point them at the subject—me—and pick up my conversation. It works.”

  Deb was unconvinced. “So the team in the van—from out in the parking lot—they just randomly aim their mics at a noisy bar and magically pick you up?”

  Ian’s plan, as of right now, was to “bump into” the Dutchman at Henrietta’s, a local strip club he was known to frequent. And Deb was right. It would be noisy in there, with music playing and the drooling patrons hooting and howling. Assuming, that is, that a real-life strip club was similar to those Phoebe had seen on TV.

  Sheldon spoke up, telling Deb, “It won’t be magic. We’ll use FLIR thermal imaging technology—special cameras that detect human body heat.”

  “I know what FLIR is,” Deb said, annoyed. “But if the club’s busy, there’ll be a lot of bodies in there, generating heat.”

  “I’ll carry a hand warmer,” Ian explained. “A little chemical device, they sell ’em at camping stores. Yashi’s already picked some up for us. When I’m inside, I’ll crack open the package, that’ll activate it. Stick it in my pocket. The infrared sensors on the cameras’ll pick up that pop in temperature. From that, Shelly’ll know exactly where to aim the long-distance mics.”

  At which point, they’d be able to listen to and record his conversations.

  It all seemed very sci-fi to Phoebe, but Ian assured Deb that they’d do a test run—be certain that the equipment worked exactly the way it was supposed to work.

  If it didn’t, Deb warned, then Ian would have to give in and wear a wire.

  Phoebe had smiled when Deb had said that. If the FBI agent really thought she’d win that fight, she was woefully underin-formed. Give in was not in Ian’s vocabulary.

  As she added milk to a bowl of cornflakes, Phoebe heard Martell come downstairs. She could see him through the pass-through that connected the kitchen to the dining part of the main room, leaning to look over Ian’s shoulder.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Photos of the K-stani consulate staff,” Ian replied.

  “Including the janitorial crew?” Martell sounded incredulous. “Seriously?”

  Ian gave him his full attention. “Seriously. I’ve spent some significant time in Kazbekistan. If I’m going to run into someone who recognizes me from a previous mission, I want to know about it in advance.”

  Aaron had come downstairs, too, and as he headed for the kitchen he chimed in. “Hot tip: The janitors at the consulate aren’t really janitors.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Sheldon said. Phoebe looked up to see that he’d come in from the garage. “We’re ready to do that dry run with the surveillance vans.” He took off his work gloves, and mopped his brow with the sleeve of his grimy T-shirt. The garage was not air-conditioned, but neither Francine nor Shel had complained once about the heat.

  “Time to test our technology?” Ian asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Aaron smiled at Shelly on his way to the coffeepot. “You don’t need to call him sir,” he teased as he poured himself a mug.

  “Did I really?” Shel asked. “Wow. Old habits die hard.” He looked back at Ian. “Sorry, sir. Crap!” Laughing, he added, “Whenever you’re ready. Ian.”

  “Thanks,” Ian said, still distracted by the photos on his computer. “It’s going to be just … a sec …” He interrupted himself to add, “Longer than a second. Look, why don’t you get something to eat. And a shower, while you’re at it. Let me know when you’re ready after that.”

  “So what’s your official plan?” Martell asked Ian, as Shel and Aaron explored the depths of the fridge.

  Phoebe took her cereal bowl and coffee out to the table and sat down to eat, even as Deb came downstairs, her hair still wet from a shower.

  “Test the equipment this afternoon,” Ian said, already refocused on his computer screen. “Try to connect with Vanderzee tonight.”

  There was a clatter from the kitchen as a frying pan was dug out from a cabinet. “Anyone want in on an omelet?” Aaron called.

  “Ooh, me!” Phoebe said.

  “And me,” Deb called. She met Phoebe’s eyes and widened her own. They were in total agreement. Both Martell and Aaron had a magic touch in the kitchen, and over the past few days, whenever either of them offered food, the default answer was oh, yes. And when they cooked together …

  Phoebe turned to look hopefully at Martell at the same time that Deb did, but he was waving Aaron off, focusing on Ian.

  “Still nothing figured out for after that?” Martell had been an extra-unhappy camper ever since Ian had made the decision to not make a decision about the best way to rescue those kids. Ian wanted to connect with the Dutchman first. He’d told them that his best plans were organic—whatever that meant.

  Martell was clearly convinced that Ian was clueless, and wasting their time.

  “Yup,” Ian said now. “Still in wait-and-see mode.”

  “You know we all hate that,” Martell told him. “Right? Except maybe Yashi, who is too zen to hate anything. But I’m the only one here brave enough to say it aloud. That, and tick tock, bitch. I’m starting to wonder why you just don’t grab a ski mask and climb in a window at the consulate, get this over with. You’ve had the FBI’s files for days now.”

  Ian didn’t glance at Phoebe, or even anywhere near Phoebe, as he finally looked up at Martell. “Their security is too tight,” he said. “And last time I checked, I don’t have a license to kill innocent people, which is what I’d have to do if I went in like that. All of our intel shows that most of the guards don’t know those kids are there. Do we really have to rehash this?”

  “Can’t you use, I don’t know, trank darts on ’em or—”

  “Trank darts,” Ian repeated flatly. He raised his voice. “Will someone please explain the obvious flaws in that plan, so I can finish what I’m doing before we go out to test the equipment?”

  Deb pulled Martell away from Ian’s part of the table. “The biggest problem is that any guards in the consulate would be firing real bullets at Ian. Trank guns are an option when the target’s an unarmed mountain lion.”

  “Trank guns are also single-shot weapons,” Phoebe pointed out. “Reloading is a whole big thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Martell said. “I was just being a dick and—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  They all turned—Phoebe, Martell, Deb, Ian, and even Yashi, who’d just come back from a shopping run—to see Aaron aiming not just his loudly spoken words, but his full-on incredulity at Shel, who was gazing back at him, stricken, as he clutched a carton of eggs.

  Francine had just joined them in the kitchen, coming in from the garage, but she now looked as if she wished she were anywhere else on earth.

  “You knew?” Aaron shouted at his husband, only half-asking. He turned to Ian. “You let Shel know you were in prison, that whole fucking time, but not me?”

  “I didn’t know the whole time,” Shel said. “I found out in June.”

  “Well, shit,” Aaron said. “Since you’ve only been lying to me for eight months instead of nine—”

  “I didn’t lie,” Sheld
on insisted. “I just … didn’t … tell you—I couldn’t tell you. Aaron, God, I swear. I promised Francie.”

  Francine held up both hands and backed away. “Hey, don’t lay this on me. I was following Eee’s stupid-ass orders.”

  Aaron was beyond furious. “What’s up, Air, you okay? You seem a little down. Yeah, Shel, I don’t know, I guess I’m just worried about Ian. I wish he would call me. I just can’t shake the feeling that he might be dead. I mean, it’s been so long since I heard from him. I mean, other than those postcards. Anyone could’ve sent them. Well, no, Aaron, I happen to know for a fact that Ian’s not dead because Francie told me he’s in prison.” He got loud again. “Things you fucking didn’t say! It’s called lying by omission. How many times did we talk about Ian in the past eight months? Huh? How many?”

  “I promised her,” Sheldon whispered.

  “Yeah, well, you’re married to me! Jesus! Fuck, Shel!”

  Ian turned and aimed his words at the rest of them. “Let’s give the guys the house. We’ll go out and test that equipment.”

  But from the upstairs bedroom, Rory awoke from his nap and let out a thin wail.

  Francine ducked around her brother and crossed the room, clearly heading to the stairs, to deal with the crying baby.

  Ian stood, intercepting her. “Can you stay here, watch Rory?”

  Her answer was to grab one of the laptops and take it with her upstairs, so that she could work while locked in with the baby—while his parents talked out this issue.

  “Don’t bother.” Aaron’s voice was harsh. “It’s not going to change a fucking thing.”

  Phoebe grabbed her sweatshirt—a white zippered hoodie that spelled out the words Siesta Key in pink letters across its chest—and quickly followed Deb, Martell, and Yashi out the door.

  * * *

  Ian needed sleep.

  He’d intended to take a combat nap—quick but revitalizing—after he went through the files of the K-stani consulate staff one more time. He’d figured he could get in a solid half hour while Sheldon ate and showered.

  Instead, this had happened.

  He was in the front passenger seat of surveillance van one, with Joe Hirabayashi driving and Phoebe strapped into the passenger seat in the back. Deb was driving van two, with Martell beside her.

  It may have been a mistake to leave the safe house. Ian couldn’t stop thinking of Aaron, and how angry he’d been. Jesus, maybe he shouldn’t have asked Francine to stay behind. With Air knowing that Francie was watching Rory, he might do something stupid—like storm out of the house—and put his ass in danger. Although without Francie there to watch the kid, there was no way Aaron and Shel would have had a real chance to talk, at least not openly and loudly and …

  Something icy brushed his arm, and he jumped and turned to find that Phoebe had leaned forward from her seat in the back. Had she really just touched him? Was it possible that her fingers were that cold? He caught her hand, and yes, she was freezing. She was wearing her sweatshirt zipped up to the neck because the air conditioning in the van was blasting, and had been for a while.

  “Sorry,” he said, and let her go so that he could adjust the dial up from the coldest setting.

  But that wasn’t why she’d gotten his attention. “Yashi needs you to tell him where you want to go,” she said, her dark eyes somber in her pretty face, and he knew that this was not the first time the question had been asked. “We didn’t want to guess.”

  “Shit, right, sorry,” he said—it was becoming his new refrain—then turned to address the FBI agent, who’d left their safe house’s neighborhood and was driving them north on the main drag. “Let’s go to Henrietta’s. It’s over by the airport.”

  The FBI had been following the Dutchman, and the intel reports made note of the strip club that the suspect frequented in the evenings. He didn’t hang out there every night, but he showed up often enough to make it a good place for Ian to encounter him seemingly by chance.

  The full name of the club was Henrietta’s Wild West Emporium, and from what Ian had read from the file, the women who waited the tables there wore cowboy hats and boots, and little else.

  Yashi nodded and pulled into the left lane to do a youie, get them turned around. He must’ve been connected to Deb via Bluetooth, because he passed along the info even as he consulted a GPS. He quietly arranged for the two vans to take two different routes so they wouldn’t arrive at the club together, in a suspicious-looking convoy. Instead, Yashi would approach from the south, and Deb would approach from the west.

  “We might as well do an actual dry run,” Ian announced, and the federal agent passed that along, too. “Identify any dead zones or locations that might be too noisy for the directional mics. I’ll go in, order a drink, walk around, talk to myself, make sure you can hear me.”

  “I could go in with you,” Phoebe volunteered.

  He laughed. Right. He turned to look at her. In her jeans and that touristy sweatshirt, plastic thongs on her feet, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like an adorably bespectacled college girl on vacation. In a dive like Henrietta’s, she couldn’t stand out more, even if she held a flashing neon sign that read I don’t belong here, with an arrow pointing down at her.

  But she was serious, so he responded, “That’s not a good idea.” And wasn’t that an understatement.

  “So that you have someone to talk to,” she persisted. “So no one thinks you’re crazy …?”

  “No. You’re staying in the van. You wouldn’t be out of the house if my brother wasn’t a spoiled child.”

  “Oh, I’m really glad he didn’t hear you say that,” she said.

  “Yeah, me, too.” Ian sighed, his own anger suddenly deflated. This was his fault. He’d had no idea that Sheldon had somehow gotten the truth out of Francine months ago. And maybe what was messing him up the most was that, even in hindsight, he had no idea how he would’ve or should’ve handled that if he’d known.

  But even as relationship-challenged as Ian was, he recognized that withholding the truth from an intimate life partner for nearly a year could seriously damage even the strongest of unions.

  Phoebe touched him again, on the shoulder this time, as if she knew exactly where his thoughts had gone. “They’re going to be okay. Aaron is smart enough to recognize that Shelly’s not perfect, either. Mistakes get made. Forgiveness is given. It’s part of life. You know. Growing and learning and getting stronger?”

  “The irony is that I was doing it for him. For them.” The words escaped before Ian could stop them.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “And I’m pretty sure Aaron knows that, too.”

  What was he doing? Talking to her like this was exactly what he didn’t want to do. This feeling of closeness, this spark of connection wasn’t anything that could help him. In fact, he knew from past experience that it could only hamper and hinder and slow him down.

  Or get him killed.

  But the hard truth was that he honestly liked this woman. And as for his physical attraction? It had moved from annoyance to full distraction.

  Ian made a mental note to talk to Deb about finding a different safe location for Phoebe to stay for the remainder of the mission. Surely the feds could foot the bill for a resort hotel room and a coupla 24/7 guards for the next few days. A week tops …

  “They’ll be okay,” Phoebe said, reaching out again to squeeze his shoulder.

  Ian wanted her to keep her hand there. It was all he could do not to reach up and cover it with his own, maybe warm up her fingers a little bit more. But he didn’t, so she let him go and sat back in her seat.

  Yeah.

  If the feds wouldn’t cover the expense, he’d pay for it himself.

  At this point, God help him, it was a necessity.

  * * *

  Expulsion from private school just a few months before graduation was significantly better than being shot and killed by his boyfriend’s brother.

  Aaron had to keep
reminding himself of that, especially when his own brother came striding down the hall to the Brentwood headmaster’s office. Ian had had to request emergency leave in order to deal with his now homeless little brother.

  Wearing BDU pants in a desert camouflage print, he was sporting a decidedly nonmilitary haircut and a full beard—and an expression of tight anger.

  Ian didn’t try to argue with the headmaster. He simply signed whatever papers he needed to sign, collected Aaron, and left. Of course, Eee thought the “sexual misconduct” that had gotten Aaron booted was due to his little brother’s orientation.

  Turns out that the conservative school didn’t discriminate. A sex tape was a sex tape, and if you were in one, even inadvertently, you got kicked out.

  Still, it wasn’t until after they’d loaded Aaron’s bags into Ian’s rental car that Aaron was able to tell his brother what had really happened—including the part where Francine had thrown herself on the gay grenade to save Sheldon from his crazy father’s wrath, and also the part where Berto had come damn close to killing Aaron in a jealous rage.

  He told Ian that he was worried about Shelly. He hadn’t seen or heard from him in days—of course, during that time Aaron had been confined to his room, without Internet access or phone privileges.

  “Berto’s as crazy as their father, and now he knows,” Aaron said, as he used Eee’s BlackBerry, fumbling in his haste to check his email to see if Shelly had sent him anything and …

  There it was. An email. He opened it. It was brief, just a few lines, with no Dear Aaron or Love, Shel.

  We can no longer be in contact. It’s not safe for you, or for me.

  I’ve been transferred to a new school. I can’t tell you where.

  Don’t call, or even email. I’m changing this address right after I send this to you. I won’t get your response.

  I wish to God I never met you.

  Aaron’s eyes stung. Shel didn’t mean that. He couldn’t mean that.

  Ian glanced over, and correctly read the agony that was on Aaron’s face. “He dump you?”