by Cindy Gerard
The clerk dragged himself away from his laptop, swiveled on his creaking chair, and rolled over to the board. He snagged the key to room 205, rolled back, and slid it across the counter without ever meeting her eyes.
“Up the stairs, third door down the hall,” he mumbled in thick Spanish, then asked for cash up front as she signed the register.
She carefully counted out several 10 nuevos soles bills—she was a tourist on a budget, after all—then inspected her change. “Gracious, señor.”
He’d already dismissed her from his thoughts, his full interest back on his game. She picked up her duffel, smiled serenely to the two elderly gentlemen bent over a card game in the corner of the timeworn lobby, and headed down the hall.
The soles of her sandals where whisper quiet as she walked over the tile floor and climbed the single flight of stairs. Once on the second floor, she slipped off the glasses, stowed them in her shirt pocket, then paused briefly by room 203. The murmur of voices assured her they were indeed inside, and she moved on to her room.
Once inside, she checked her watch. The night was young. It was barely nine p.m. There was much to look forward to.
She set the duffel on the bed, withdrew the briefcase containing her specially fitted Heckler & Koch MP5KA4 and two boxes of ammo. In her line of work it was the perfect weapon, designed for close quarters battle because it didn’t even have a butt stock, just a flat end cap with a sling loop on the outside. Perfect also, because this particular MP5K could be operational, if necessary, with a squeeze of the briefcase handle. Control freak that she was, she’d hand-loaded the 9mm, subsonic-blended, metal-armor-piercing, antipersonnel bullets herself. A quick and devastating kill had to be a certainty. Hands-on loading insured that component.
She set the briefcase on the bed and opened it up. Almost had an orgasm just looking at the gorgeous weapon. With care, she removed and inspected each piece before she assembled it, double-checked the magazine, and screwed the sound suppressor onto the end of the barrel. No, it wouldn’t muffle the bulk of the sound but before anyone in this dive decided to investigate, she’d be long gone, the job done.
If an elimination ended up being the job.
Her heart rate picked up just thinking about it. She stroked a finger over the barrel, then laid the gun on the bed and drew a deep, steadying breath. She needed to settle herself down, check the adrenaline spike. Shaking her hands to encourage circulation to her fingertips, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the cold-water faucet.
She bent over the sink, splashed tepid water on her face, then straightened slowly and studied her reflection in the small mirror. Several more deep breaths restored her rock-steady composure. Finally satisfied with what she saw, she touched her fingers to her lips, kissed the tips, and pressed them to the mirror with a grin.
Then she returned to the bedroom, dug her surveillance gear out of her bag, and set up shop.
3
Eva Salinas recrossed her legs and stared at her captive. He looked like hell—drugged, cuffed, and maybe… just maybe… almost as scared shitless as he needed to be.
But not quite.
Desperate times, desperate measures—and she was damn close to desperate.
Somebody was after her, trying to run her to ground, somebody with a connection to Operation Slam Dunk, and she didn’t have a clue who it was—or, for that matter, who had passed her the info that had put her in the crosshairs.
But there it had been one day, the OSD file, landing smack in her lap from out of nowhere. No name, no chain of command, no nothing, just her and the death warrant that had gone into effect the minute she’d started asking questions—and she had plenty of questions. Had OSD been a bait and switch funded by black money? A major screwup that power and corruption had covered up? Or had it come down exactly the way the file said it had and Mike Brown was responsible?
So far, she had damn few answers. She was certain of only two things: One: Whatever had happened that night, security had been breached and a whole lot of people had died—one of whom she still missed with an ache that kept her up at night. Two: Whoever had passed her that file wanted her to ferret out the truth as badly as someone else wanted her stopped.
The sorry piece of work cuffed to the bed had been part of it all. The OSD file had named him as the operator who had screwed the pooch and gotten his teammates killed. She needed him to talk and Mr. “Go to hell” was going to do exactly that before this night ended.
“The legendary Mike Brown,” she said, watching him carefully, looking for a reaction, any reaction. “Or should I call you Primetime? That’s what your team called you, right?”
He worked hard to convince her with a bland look that the use of his nickname and reference to his team hadn’t sliced him to the quick. She didn’t buy it. The man had once had a conscience. He’d been one of America’s best of the best, and he had to be feeling a little raw right now despite the lingering hold of the Ketamine.
She’d dosed him with just enough of the drug to possibly give him a hallucination or two—it wasn’t called Special-K for nothing—and make him malleable, to get him where she wanted him. Defenseless. Vulnerable. At her mercy. Nice of him to drown himself in booze to help the process along.
“Primetime and the One-Eyed Jacks.” She tossed out the name of his old unit like a gauntlet—or a piece of bait.
He bit, dropping any pretense of indifference. His eyes hardened as he watched her stand and walk closer to the foot of the bed.
And yes, she got it. Got why he had a rep for women falling all over him. She’d had no trouble picking him out in the bar. Despite the fact that he looked a little frayed around the edges with his too-long hair and several days’ growth of beard, he was the perfect male package: tall, dark, and broad-shouldered—dangerous. Add a face with ridiculously intriguing angles and planes, a touch of some ancestral Spanish blood, and thick brown hair, and he definitely lived up to his lady-killer billing.
Even in his current state, Brown was Hollywood gorgeous—primetime TV gorgeous. The quintessential all-American male. Born and raised in Colorado ranching country, star high school and college athlete, Naval Academy standout… blah, blah, blah. But his wild-card rep—supported by the diamond stud in his left ear—pegged him as a renegade and a troublemaker. So did the flirty smile, laser blue eyes, and an alpha male swagger that was too natural to be staged.
But according to the OSD file, beneath that spectacular exterior beat the heart of a screwup and a coward.
Well, she needed his help, and he was going to give it to her, one way or the other. She had no intention of dying for the justice she would see done—and by God, she would see it done. And she would get out of this alive.
She pulled her thoughts back together. She was on a mission and determined to make him squirm. “Let’s back up a few years. To Annapolis and the Naval Academy. You graduated with honors. Impressive.”
“We do aim to please.”
“Started out your military career as an E-2 pilot,” she continued, impervious to his smart-ass smirk. “Except flying the carrier-based turboprops and conducting electronic surveillance over the Gulf ended up being a little too boring for you, didn’t it? A little too routine.”
Though his face gave nothing away, he appeared to have stopped breathing. He didn’t like it that she knew so much about him. Too bad. Psych ops 101: Make ’em sweat to make ’em talk.
“So you decided to change to the C-12 King Air and then, even though it made no sense to your CO, you asked to switch to helos and ended up transporting covert-ops teams—Task Force Mercy originally—in and out of hot zones because you wanted to get closer to the action.”
He jerked hard on the plastic cuffs, then swore when all he got for his effort was pain. No doubt about it. He’d begun to unravel nicely. And she’d just gotten started.
She so had his number. Then as now, Brown was a loose cannon. Only now he was also a struggling, recovering alcoholic and though her research
said he’d quit smoking years ago, when she’d spotted him in the cantina, an unlit cigarette was tucked above his right ear—a crutch for a weak man.
From the moment she’d committed herself to seeing this thing through, she’d made it her business to know everything about him. He was a lean, mean six foot three, one hundred ninety-five pounds, and he was her one and only living, breathing connection to Operation Slam Dunk. The file had detailed his wounds from the disastrous Afghanistan op. He’d taken some shrapnel in his leg, dislocated his left shoulder, and sustained some nasty third-degree burns on his right thigh. A small price, considering so many others had paid with their lives that night.
He made her sick. He’d once been one of the Navy’s best and brightest, but for the past eight years, since Afghanistan, he’d been hiding out in South America running a semi-legit, mostly bogus air-cargo business.
Now he was no longer anyone’s best and brightest. And like it or not, right now he was hers; he knew it, and he wasn’t having a lot of luck hiding his anger over that fact.
“All that action brought you to the invincible unit, right?” she pressed on, letting him know he had no place to hide, not from her. “An elite team, hand-picked by Spec Ops command.”
He strained against his cuffs, then swore again when the plastic strip didn’t budge from the metal head rail. “Who the hell are you?”
She ignored his question. “The One-Eyed Jacks, a multibranch military task force formed in 2002 and disbanded in 2005,” she stated from memory. She’d read his jacket so many times she knew every line of it by heart. The One-Eyed Jacks had been loosely patterned after Task Force Mercy, a highly classified covert unit that had operated all over the Middle East and Africa right before the Bush administration took the reins.
“Got your nickname because of the uniqueness of your experimental unit, your tight camaraderie, and your reckless reputation. Oh, yeah, and you all loved to spend your down time playing cards. Poker. Spades. Blackjack. You name it. You played it.”
“Let me guess,” he interrupted. “With your winning personality, Old Maid is your game, right?”
A wiseass to the end.
But when she held up the jack of hearts she’d lifted from his pocket, all that bravado folded. The worn playing card was tattered around the edges and faded with age. A 9mm round punctured it dead center.
“You all made a pact. You all carried a one-eyed jack—either a jack of hearts or a jack of spades. The cards were a sign of unity, and your lucky charms.” She paused a beat, then flipped the card toward him. It landed on the chest that heaved rapidly beneath his black T-shirt, making it clear he wasn’t nearly as calm as he wanted her to think he was.
“Only your luck ran out eight years ago, didn’t it, Brown?” She moved to the side of the bed and leaned in close. “Ran out big-time during Operation Slam Dunk, when you screwed up and got most of your unit and dozens of innocent civilians killed.” His eyes went hard as stone.
“I need to know why. I need to know who paid you to sell out your team.”
• • •
Fire burned in Mike’s gut like a bonfire. From the cheap booze. From the drug. From the anger at himself for getting caught like a fucking stooge.
But most of all from the mention of Operation Slam Dunk. The memory of that night still ate at him like a cancer.
Sell out his team? He’d rather die a thousand times over than ever sell out the One-Eyed Jacks. But he’d burn in hell before he’d defend himself to her.
She stood over him, cold, hard, demanding, and with the upper hand. He couldn’t help but hate her for that—but not nearly as much as he hated himself. Something had gone terribly wrong that night and all he’d gotten was an impossible choice—life imprisonment, or a deal that had ended up costing him his soul.
He’d never gotten answers, not one, and he sure as hell didn’t have any to give her.
“… you screwed up and got most of your unit and dozens of innocent civilians killed.”
Even though the accusation sucked what little fight he had left out of him, he had no intention of rising to her bait.
“That’s it?” She finally straightened, leaning away from him. “No defense?”
Her goading tone pissed him off even more. “You’ve already tried and convicted me. What’s the point in defending myself? And speaking of points, what’s yours? Either shoot me, screw me, or set me the hell loose.”
That threw her. She’d expected answers, not demands. And not a crude indictment of her staged seduction. Judging from her sudden stillness and an unmistakable hint of disappointment in her eyes, she might even have wanted him to deny her charges.
Now that was interesting.
Or not. God, he was tired of this crap. He’d drunk himself stupid tonight so he could forget about Afghanistan, only to have this woman throw it in his face like a gallon of acid.
So much for plan A.
“It wasn’t me who decided you were guilty,” she said, back in attack mode. “It was a military court. Oh, wait.” She smiled humorlessly. “There was no actual guilty verdict, was there, or you’d be rotting in prison right now. Instead, you cut a deal. Bought yourself a less than honorable discharge in exchange for your freedom and the promise that the incident got buried.”
“Not deep enough, apparently.” His gaze narrowed on hers. “How do you know about Operation Slam Dunk anyway?” Even the press hadn’t gotten wind of what had happened that night. He had his own theory about the tap dancing that had gone on behind the scenes to accomplish that silence.
“Like I said. I know everything about you.”
And then she proved it, nut-shelling the case that the Navy had laid out against him with cold-blooded accuracy.
He tried not to listen as she hammered him with bullet points.
Dereliction of duty…
Disobeying direct orders…
Reckless endangerment…
The list went on and on, and all led to the conclusion that he had been responsible for the death of his men and those villagers.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, but couldn’t stall a cold sweat that compounded his queasiness as vivid memories of that night gnawed at him like rats.
The helo spinning out of control… the ground rocketing up to meet them as he fought to right the bird.
The crash…
The explosion…
The fire…
The stench of blood and burned flesh.
The deal that had cost him everything.
Not a day or night went by that he didn’t see those images. Didn’t hear the screams. Didn’t do his best to forget.
And this woman had brought it all back.
Who was she?
And how the fuck had she gotten that information?
He couldn’t get past that question. The after-action reports, the court-martial transcripts… everything about OSD was supposed to have been deleted from the DOD database. No one was supposed to have access to any of it.
Taggart and Cooper, the two other surviving members of the One-Eyed Jacks, had been brought up on charges with him. He knew they wouldn’t talk. He hadn’t had contact with either one of them in eight years and yeah, they hated his guts now, but there was no way in hell they were going to talk—they had the same stakes riding on silence as he did.
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it, Brown?” she asked into the thickening stillness.
“What do you want from me?” he ground out. And then it hit him.
“You lost someone over there.” The sudden insight blared through his headache and the nausea. That’s what this was about. Someone she cared about had died in Operation Slam Dunk. Somehow she’d gotten hold of the file and she held him responsible.
Join the club. Everyone held him responsible.
“No, I didn’t.”
He honed in on her eyes, knowing what he’d see in them even before he called her on it. “You’re lying.”
“And you’re avoiding. Sev
en men in your unit died that night. Dozens of civilians… many of them children. All because you decided to play Captain America.”
He clenched his jaw until he thought his molars would crack, hating her for throwing the lies in his face. Hating himself for taking it.
“You led those men to their deaths.” She got right in his face again. “You got those people caught in the crossfire. Because you were hotdogging. Because you were playing games with people’s lives.”
“The hell I was!” he roared so unexpectedly she flinched and stumbled backward. “The hell I did!” He strained violently and futilely against the cuffs, desperate to get at her.
He collapsed back on the bed, defeated. Wrung out.
Silence rang in the wake of his shouted denial. He despised himself for the sudden weakness that washed over him, obliterating his bid for apathy. But, Christ, now that he’d said it out loud, he didn’t seem to be able to stop saying it.
“The hell I did.” It came out on a whisper this time, his voice broken, his defenses destroyed.
Humiliated that he’d let her crack him, beyond his limit with her bitch goddess accusations, he turned away, his eyes stinging, his vision blurred—but not before he saw pity momentarily soften her features.
Fuck her. He didn’t need her pity.
But goddamn, he could use a drink.
4
Eva steeled herself, watching Brown’s façade crumble. It was a painful thing to witness. Stripped down, naked emotion—that’s what she’d just seen in his eyes. Anguish. Pain. It was all there. Because he was guilty? Because he wasn’t guilty? Because he’d sold out rather than fight to prove his innocence?
She pulled it back together and fought the unwanted compassion she had promised herself she would not feel toward this man. No matter how beaten he looked. Guilty or innocent, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was finding out who had dropped the OSD file into her life, why they’d done it, and who was after her because of it.
