Weather the Storm (Security Specialists International #3) (8 page)

“Vanko! What’s going on?” Ren’s grim voice came over the phone.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Good, that’s good.” Ren coughed several times. “Um, Vanko, I have some bad news.”

Vanko cursed. Murphy’s Law was in play big time. “What now?”

“We can’t get your backup there tonight. We’re socked in. A front blew in. We’re under blizzard conditions until at least Wednesday or Thursday.”

Knowing how unpredictable the weather was in Northern Idaho, Vanko wouldn’t hold his breath for Wednesday.

“
Dermo
. Shit.” Vanko swerved into the left lane to avoid a slow-moving mini-van. He muttered even more foul curses, calling into question the bimbo-driver-on-her-cell-phone’s lineage.

Elana muttered, “Potty mouth.”

There was that valor he’d come to expect in the short time he’d known Elana. He gave her a naughty grin and winked. Her lips twisted into a slight smile before thinning again. A pinched look about her eyes indicated she was in more pain than she wanted to admit.

Ren half-choked, half-laughed. “Uh, bad traffic?”

“Yeah. I have no patience with these idiots.” Vanko took the ramp onto I-66 which would take him into Virginia and temporary refuge. “Elana,
milaya
, do you have something in that big bag—maybe some ibuprofen to take off the edge?”

She nodded and pulled her left hand from his in order to rummage in her purse. She pulled out a bottle.

“Give me the bottle.” He took and opened it, then handed several tablets to her. Angling his head, he indicated the cup holder. “Use my water.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. She popped the tablets in her mouth and took several long draws from his water bottle. She put the bottle back and attempted to smile at him, but failed miserably.

“Poor
zaychik
. Rest.” He resisted the urge to touch her again. He didn’t want to spook her now that she had her emotions under control once more. “I’ll have you some place safe soon where I can take better care of you.”

“Vanko…” Ren’s voice boomed over the speakers, startling them out of the cocooned world of the Hummer. “…Tweeter booked you a room under your go-to alias, Jake Smithson, at the Springhill Suites in Centreville, Virginia, right off I-66. Keep in touch. I’ll also have Tweeter locate some safe doctors near the hotel, just in case you need medical backup.”

Elana spoke up, “I won’t need anyone other than Vanko. Some food. A nice bandage. Some primo pain killers. A good night’s sleep. That’s all I need.”

She closed her eyes as if all of a sudden the lids were too heavy to remain open. Her dark lashes were a sharp contrast and looked like feathers against her alabaster skin.

She had a subtle beauty, one that would age well. Yeah, she more than did it for him on every level.

“I only plan to stay at the hotel long enough to care for Elana’s wound. In light of your weather news, I’ll make arrangements for a long-term stay at a more secure location,” Vanko told Ren. “So…don’t take any risks on our account. I’ll call when I know where we’ll be. I’ll also be picking up some throw-away phones.”

“Roger that, buddy. Tweeter and Keely will work on a way to use your cell phone to get the suspect dossiers to you. They’re big, but we’ll find a way.”

“I have a laptop with better than average security, Ren,” Elana said. “It also has a lot of RAM and hard drive memory.”

“That’s good. It’ll be way faster than Vanko’s cell,” Ren said. “Vanko can use our NSA satellite hookup and connect your laptop.”

“See? Teamwork.” Vanko smiled at Elana who allowed a slight twist to her lips before sighing and closing her eyes once more.

Ren cleared his throat. “Call me when you get to the hotel. Normally you’d have a half hour drive, but with D.C. area traffic I’ll give you an hour. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll take the risk and call out the local Feds to come find you.”

“Make it one and a half hours. I-66 is stop-and-go.” Vanko moved into the passing lane to get by a line of semis going less than the speed limit.

Ren snorted with disgust. “One point five hours it is. Stay safe.”

“Roger that.” Vanko scanned Elana’s emotionless face, but saw her underlying tension in the stiffness of her posture. “I’ll take good care of Elana.”

“I know you will, buddy,” Ren said. “Elana, Vanko’s one of our best personal security agents, you’re in good hands.”

“I can see that already, Ren,” Elana said. “Thank you.”

“No, thank
you
, Elana,” Ren’s voice broke. “You’re our first chance at taking out a man who’s made it his life’s goal to kill me, my wife, my child, and everyone I hold dear. Anything I can do for you, just ask. I’m out.”

“Out, Ren.” Vanko punched off. “He meant every word. You need anything, just ask. You’re part of the SSI family now.”

He sensed her gaze on him. “I haven’t done anything yet,” she said, confusion in her tone. “There’s no guarantee the man I saw is the same man you’re after.”

“He is. I had a chance on the flight to D.C. to read the statement you made to the D.C. cops. It’s our traitor.” He checked out the mirrors and the traffic on each side and ahead of them.

“Are there local cops on our butts? Is there a tail?” she whispered.

Elana was very observant and more alert than he’d thought. What in her past had molded Elana to be hyper-aware of her surroundings?

“Ren’s handling the local cops. No tail at the moment. No worries. Okay?”

“I’ll try—but you need to know I’m a world-class worrier.” Her lashes lowered again. A little whimper followed by a sigh, and just that quickly Elana had shut out the world for the time being.

But he was darn sure she wasn’t fully asleep. She still didn’t trust him enough…yet. Did she ever feel safe enough to fall completely asleep while a man was close?

He bet not. She would with him.

Saturday, December 3rd, 2:00 P.M. (EST), a bar in the Benning Heights area of D.C.

“Are you nuts? I told you to never call me on this line.”

The big-ass-wig in the Defense Intelligence Agency sounded pissed. Crocker could care less.

The sound of a car’s motor was in the background along with traffic noise. Son of a bitch was in his car. Good, it would make the call harder to isolate.

“Your men fucked up a simple job…on the National Mall no less. I’m driving in to attend an emergency meeting about this shit.” Crocker’s employer spat out the words like bullets. “The bitch can identify me—and if I go down, you go down. Kill her…or kiss life as you know it goodbye.”

God, Crocker hated this fucker’s guts.

“The guy who picked her up was driving a Hummer,” Crocker barked into the land line located in a seedy bar in an even seedier D.C. neighborhood, a guaranteed NSA-less zone. “It had plates from one of those rental agencies catering to the diplomatic crowd.” He related the company’s name and plate number. “I need the GPS code to track them.” He’d been lucky to catch the plates on the Hummer in the online videos.

He glanced toward the bar where his two men sat watching a basketball game as if they had no cares in the world. The moronic peckerheads had lost the fucking librarian. And they’d lost her publicly. Their grainy images and more than a few fucking videos were plastered all over the fucking Internet. The two had become expendable. Crocker had already called up his other team after seeing the You Tube videos.

The DIA asshole cursed under his breath. Crocker had heard and said worse.

“I’ll work on getting you the code and anything I can get on her rescuer,” his employer said, “but you take care of her…soon.”

The unspoken “or else” rang loudly in Crocker’s head.

“Understood,”
you stupid mother-fucker candy ass
, “I’ll handle it personally,” Crocker snarled.
Since my ass is on the line as much as yours.

“That’s what I thought I’d paid for…your personal service.” His employer paused, then added, “I’ll send the intel to the Internet mailbox.” The sound of the car motor ceased. “I have to go. Don’t call me on this line again. Use the mailbox.”

Hell no.
“I’ll contact you however I damn please.” Crocker always used throw-aways and the odd landline—and NSA could chase electrons all the damn day trying to find him. Using an e-mail box wasn’t quick enough turnaround when decisions needed to be made ASAP. And this situation was damned fast and fluid at the moment.

Crocker hung up on his employer’s creative use of the f-word. He returned to the two losers and sat down. His back to the bar, he stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles.

Taking a sip of his beer, he pinned the bozos with a glare. “Bad shit is happening at DIA. We need to find the bitch and her rescuer, eliminate them, and try and salvage this goat rope. If we don’t…” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid. Let them fill in the blanks however they wanted.

Crocker was already going over his emergency exit strategy in his head. He didn’t trust his employer, Captain Syd-fucking-MacLean, not to throw him under the bus even if he succeeded in killing the nosy librarian.

“Shit, man. The bitch made us from the beginning.” Mike Dillman had hired out as a mercenary/assassin since he’d left the Marines via a dishonorable discharge. Crocker had used him on several other missions, and the man was usually good at not being seen and securing his objective.

Crocker took a long gulp of beer. “Maybe she’s observant. Don’t underestimate her again.” He turned an eye on Ed Peavey, another former Marine, though his discharge had been honorable. “Same goes for you, Ed. Our employer’s getting us the tracker code for the Hummer and any intel on the driver he can.”

Peavey’s lips twisted into a smirk. “You should’ve asked. I could’ve saved y’all the aggravation of talking to the fat-ass son of a bitch.” Peavey tossed back his whiskey; his slitted, amber-eyed stare fixed on Crocker.

Crocker repressed the urge to draw his weapon. Peavey had always unnerved him. The lanky Marine was smart—scary smart. Crocker would die before letting the man know his uneasiness.

“I got the plates on that Hummer.” Peavey tapped his empty glass on the bar; the bartender brought a bottle of Rebel Yell over and poured two finger’s worth into the glass. Peavey took a slow sip of the potent brew and waited until the bartender had gone back to the other end of the bar.

“And what good does that do us, Ed?” Dillman asked.

“Tracked them.” Peavey tossed back his whiskey. “Know exactly where they are.” He indicated the monitor on his mini-iPad. “As for the driver, well, can’t tell y’all about him. With some time, I might be able to hack deeper into the rental agency’s files, but since he’s a dead man walking, who in the hell cares?”

“Good work, Ed.” Crocker peered at the small screen. “They’re heading into Virginia on I-66.”

“Yeah. They’re still movin’,” Peavey said in his slow Georgia drawl. “But I suspect they’ll have to stop sooner or later to care for the lady. I hit her. Right side. We’ll get them then.”

Crocker chugged the rest of his beer and then slapped the bar top with the flat of his hand. “Then what the fuck are we sitting here for? Let’s move out.”

* * * *

Saturday, December 3rd, 3:00 P.M. (EST), DIA Headquarters

Captain Syd MacLean, aide to the Director for the Counterintelligence and HUMINT Center of the DIA, or DX for short, was sweating big time when he finally closed his office door after an emergency briefing with the heads of the various DX sections on last night’s shootings at the Georgetown University library and today’s shootings on the Mall. The two incidents were being treated by the intelligence community as acts of terrorism because of the connection to the government contractor, SSI.

The good news was, no one knew he was the traitor among them…yet.

The bad news was—something big was going on and Syd was out of the loop. He didn’t like being out of the loop, especially when his ass could get fried as a traitor. His boss, Major General Joe Higgins, had been called to attend an emergency meeting with the DIA Director and all the DIA department heads, leaving Syd to run the emergency briefing for their particular department.

With a growing mixture of anger and dread, Syd turned and watched CNN’s ongoing rehash of this morning’s Mall shootings on his muted flat screen.

Goddammit, Crocker! You stupid, fucking-son-of-a-bitch asswipe.

After Syd had read the morning intelligence briefing reports on the Friday night library shootings, he’d then called Crocker, informed him who the witness was, where she could be found, and ordered the merc to eliminate her.

He’d sent the man on a straightforward black bag job, and by noon, Crocker’s two stooges had blown it up into a national fucking news incident.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Syd kicked his desk chair across the room, its wheels scraping the wood floor of his cushy office. He could almost feel his enemies’ breath on the back of his neck.

“Get your ass in gear, Syd,” he muttered as he pulled his chair back to his desk. The sooner he obtained the whereabouts of Elana Cruz a.k.a. Elana Fabrizzio, the sooner the woman who could link him to acts of treason against the United States would be silenced.

Using a burner phone he kept on hand for communicating with his NSA contact, he punched in the number. Terri Roberts was the dupe who’d assisted him with his past illegal endeavors, all under the cover of him doing his normal day-to-day intelligence job.

Syd was fairly sure Terri didn’t have a clue what he did with the intel. Hell, she’d never even questioned why he always made contact with her on a non-DIA phone line. She was that much of a naïf. She thought she was helping him keep the world safe from terrorism. If his cover were blown, she’d take a fall as collateral damage.

He could care less. She’d been a mere tool.

Terri had also been his “lover” ever since she’d begun working at NSA. It was one way of ensuring her loyalty to him. Unfortunately, she was clingy, irritating, and boring in bed—but on the other hand, had been damn useful to his bottom line. With Terri’s unwitting assistance, he’d become a very rich man. His assets were safely parked in offshore accounts and real estate.