A Taste of Liberty: Task Force 125 Book 2 (5 page)

“Thank you but there is no need.  I'll just take a taxi.”

“I insist.”  He stood.  “The city at night can be a dangerous place.  I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you on your way home.”

“No, really.
  I'll be fine.”  Something about the way he looked at her made Sarah feel uneasy so she told a little lie.  “I have to stop to get some cat food anyway.”  She hated cats.

Niko
walked her out of the crowded club and saw her to a taxi. 

She kissed him lightly on the cheek.  “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“I'll be in town for a few more days.  May I call you tomorrow?”

He’ll never call.  Something is really wrong here and I plan to get to the bottom of it right now.

Sarah kept her cool and smiled.  “I'll look forward to it.”

Those bastards cock blocked me and that call was his way of getting out of a bad date.

~~~

Sarah walked into her apartment and closed the door.  She pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed Vince.

No answer.

Those sons of bitches are going to answer for this.

The more Sarah thought about it, the angrier she became. 

Where the hell do they get off scaring my dates away like a couple of big brothers puffing up their chests?

She called Will.

He picked up on the first ring.  “Sarah, you okay?”

“I'm pissed.  Where's Vince?”

“We left the club about fifteen minutes ago.  He was going straight back to his place.”

“Great.  I'll find him.”

“Sa…”

Sarah hung up before he could say anything.  She left her apartment, stomped down the hallway and punched the elevator button.

Son of a bitch.

When the elevator didn't show up immediately, she ripped open the stairwell door and ran down the two flights of stairs to Vince's floor.

She banged on his apartment door like a cop ready to bust a drug dealer.

Vince opened the door within seconds wearing a casual smile. 
“Hey, sweetheart.”
 

A flash of pink silk caught Sarah's eye.  She looked past Vince to see a beautiful brunette in pajamas lounging on his sofa.

Rage boiled beneath her skin.  Every muscle in her body tensed with anger.  She glared at him but he seemed oblivious as he smiled at her.

Mutherfucker
!

She didn’t try to stop herself as she threw her whole body into a hard punch to his stomach. 

Vince wasn't expecting the hit.  He braced his hands on the doorframe, bent slightly into
himself
and stepped back before recovering.  His face was red and he looked genuinely surprised when he looked up.

His voice boomed.  “What the hell was that for?”

“Don't sweetheart me, you bastard!  You get to bring women home whenever you like, but I finally find a nice guy to go out to dinner with and you and your flunky, Will, have to fuck it up?”

He shook his head and grabbed her arm.  “Now hold on a minute!”

Sarah cut him off.  “No,
you
hold on!”  She shook her arm free of his grip.  “Let's get something clear here.  We may work together but my off-duty time is
mine.”  Sarah turned without waiting for a response and stormed down the hall.  Behind her, she heard Vince's door slam shut.

Son of a bitch!

~~~

Vince slammed the door and stalked across the room to the bar. 
“
Damnit
!”
  He poured a drink and then pounded the bottle of Jameson so hard it shattered on the bar. 
“Bitch!”

“Wow! 
Vinny's
in love.”

He shot a glare at the pretty brunette and raised his hand for her to stop.  “Don't start, Gina.”  He
flopped
onto the couch, set his drink down and lit a cigarette.

Gina walked over to the bar and started picking up the broken glass.  “That was a good bottle of Irish whiskey.  Dad would have your ass for alcohol abuse like that.”

Vince slugged his whiskey and shot another glare at Gina.

She smiled.  “You were right.  She is pretty.”  Gina giggled like she'd just been tickled.  “I like her spunk.  She's a keeper, bro.  I don't know what happened tonight but you should go talk to her.”

Vince growled at Gina.  “I don't feel much like talking right now.”

She gingerly tossed a handful of broken glass into the garbage can.  “Okay.  I get it.  Nobody likes getting sucker punched and told off. 
Kinda
like growing up with Rig and Marco, huh?”

Vince smiled at the reference to his brothers.  They all used to give each other some hard beatings as kids.  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Will.

“Hey, boss.  Sarah's
lookin
' for you.” 

“She found me.  What did you tell her about Nikolai?”

“She didn’t give me a chance to tell her anything.  Why?”

Vince rolled his eyes.  “That explains it.”

“Did you fill her in on Nikolai?”

“Nope.
  She didn't give me a chance either.”

“Oh, well.  She's safe?”

“Yeah, safe as a junkyard dog.”
  Vince hung up and set his phone on the table in front of him.

Shit.

Sarah woke up still pissed from the night before.  After their talk yesterday morning, she really thought she and Vince were on the same page.  Sure, they couldn't be together, but she didn't think Vince would do anything as juvenile as cock block her before bringing some bimbo back to his place. 

What kind of guy does that?

To bring Will in on it was just beyond comprehension.  Even if Vince was that big of a prick, she never expected that sort of behavior from Will.

A cloud of dust followed behind her as she drove along the dry, dusty roads toward the Camp.  When she reached the secret CIA training base, she pulled up under a canopy of camouflage fabric and parked her Jeep before going into the briefing hut.

The rest of the team filed into the room shortly after she took a chair at the briefing table.  Once they were all seated, Colonel Young, their team’s handler, came in and began the briefing.

“You folks did a great job of taking out Hassan and his network.  We seized so much money Al Qaeda is definitely feeling the pinch.  Unfortunately, there are always people happy to raise more.  Now we have to hit them where it really hurts, their supply lines.”

“No guns, no war.”

“That's right, Jason.”  Young picked up a remote from the table and clicked on a large television screen.  “Vince and Will have been working their network since your last mission and cut a deal with a major arms player, Nikolai
Federov
.” 

Sarah caught her breath as she looked up at the familiar face on the screen.  He had longer hair and a beard, but it was him.  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her skin went cold.  She gasped.  She looked over at Vince, and he shot her a sideways glare.

Oh, shit.

Sarah's face grew hot with shame.  She'd punched out her boss for breaking up her date with a major arms dealer.

This is so not good.

Young continued and flashed another face on the screen.  “Victor Bolshoi is the best at what he does.  Nobody thinks about getting into the arms trade without first considering how it may affect him.  So far as we know, he is the Godfather of arms traders. 
The real power player.
  Nobody makes a move without his blessing.  Victor has the infrastructure to move anything, anywhere.  He also has a virtually unlimited supply of Soviet light and heavy weapons as well as delivery vehicles to include aircraft, watercraft and land vehicles.”

Sarah examined the photo closely.

Brian winced.  “One
stop
shopping, eh?”

“That's right.  If you want to go to war, you call Victor.  Even if you don't call Victor and get your supplies from another dealer, that dealer will have to call Victor because he's the only one who can move merchandise from point A to point B.  He is your next target.”

My new boyfriend.
  And to think I was only one degree of separation off.  Ain't that some shit?

Young placed the remote on the table and walked around the room to pass out mission folders to all of the team members.  “He has more than a handful of legitimate import-export businesses and is so good at hiding his
tracks,
nobody has been able to get anything to stick.  The Belgians tried it once but he slipped through their system in twenty-four hours.  The Italians have been trying to nail him for years but never get enough evidence to hold him.  They're going to work with us on this operation.  Your team needs to infiltrate and get enough information so we can finally nail him to the wall.  Since we have a special arrangement with the Italians and what we’re doing isn’t exactly legal over there, they, of course, will receive the credit if the job goes well.”

Chris opened the folder placed in front of him.  “But won't that destabilize the international arms trade and create a vacuum for even more small players to rise up?”

Young nodded.  “Yes, it will.”  He crossed his arms over his huge chest.  “That's why we're counting on you to find information on everyone he does
business with.  With that, we can coordinate with other agencies and pick everyone up in one fell swoop.  With all the key players out of the game, it is going to make things very difficult for the small time dealers to move anything.  That should buy us enough time and enough advantage to put the pressure on Al Qaeda.”  Young picked up his coffee and took a drink.  “No guns.  No ammo.  No war.”

Brian spoke up.  “This guy is in his thirties?”

Will smiled at Brian and nodded.

“He’s pulling in some serious money.”  Brian set the financial analysis back in his folder.  “Damn.  I'm in the wrong business.”

Young paced like he always did when he was briefing.  “Don’t let his age fool you.  He's young but he's smart.  He graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow.  He's got at least five passports and twice as many aliases.  He's language-smart.  He speaks Russian, Farsi, Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Xhosa and Zulu that we know of.  His only weaknesses are his cocaine habit and his need to have lots of women around, most of whom are paid well to be there.”

Will and Jason turned and smiled at Sarah.

She shot them a confident nod and turned her attention back to Young.

Chris looked up from the page he was reading in the folder.  “If we've got all this shit on him, why haven't we just snagged him and made him disappear?”

Young's face turned serious.  “Let's just say that, until recently, he's been useful and leave it at that.  They're all yours, Major
Hennessee
.”

Vince sat back in his chair and continued the briefing seated. 

Every time he made eye contact with Sarah, she looked down at the folder in front of her.  She was so ashamed of what she'd done she couldn't bear to look at him.  She was still pissed about the fact he'd brought a woman home with him, but then that made her no better than she'd assumed of him.  The shame doubled.

The briefing ended an hour later.

“Okay, that's it, people.”  Vince closed the folder in front of him.  “Go home and pack your bags.  We leave for Italy tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred.”

Sarah couldn't get out of there fast enough and jumped out of her seat.

Vince's large hand came down on her shoulder and pushed her back into her chair.  “Stevens.  You stay for a few minutes.”

Oh, man.  Here it comes. 
Shame, shame, shame.

Sarah looked up at Vince's brown eyes.  They were usually so soft and warm.  Today they were hard and cold.  “Look, Vince, I didn't know.  I…”

“Shut up.”

Sarah was so surprised by his harsh tone and the words he used she did exactly that.

He looked at the door as it closed.  He spoke once he heard it latch.  “The last person who sucker punched me woke up in a hospital bed.”

Sarah shook her head.  “I was out of line.”

Vince jumped in before she said any more.  “You're damned right you were out of line!  Do you think this is a game?”  He continued before she could answer.  “We're not a bunch of kids playing spies here.  This is the real deal, Stevens.  We've got better things to do than bust up your dates.”

“I…”

“Be quiet!  If you want to stay on this team, you're going to have to learn to trust us.  You need to trust me.  The way you see things isn't always the way they are.”

All she could see was the grain of the wood on the conference table and she desperately wanted to be the tiny, light, speck under her hand.  Shame over her behavior and humiliation over the dressing down she was receiving created a burning desire to get out of that room and as far away from Vince as she could.  She slipped into military mode to escape and leave as soon as possible. 
“Yes, sir.”