A Taste of Liberty: Task Force 125 Book 2 (6 page)

“Now do you have anything to say?”

Yeah.  Fuck you.  You should have told me what was going on.

“Yes, sir.
  My behavior was ill informed, over-reactive and unprofessional.  It won't happen again.”

And fuck you.

“That's it?”

Oh, yeah.  I almost forgot.  Fuck you.

“Yes, sir.”

Vince leaned in over Sarah's left shoulder.  His aftershave was faint, musky and delicious, and she hated that the very scent of him made her weak.

“I get that you have trust issues, but I'm not one of your ex boyfriends playing games here.  I'm the one guy you
can
trust because I'd rather take a bullet than see you hurt.  I'm your guardian fucking angel. 
Lucky, me!”
  Vince pushed his chair in with so much force it crashed and slid under the table.  He didn't give it a second glance as he walked out of the room.

His sarcasm stung.  She knew the punch last night wasn't about her date being blown.  It was because he had another woman in his room. 
A brunette.
 

I'm a brunette. 
A jealous brunette.

The thing with
Niko
didn't piss her off nearly as much as that brunette did.

You gotta stop thinking about this man.  No matter how much you want him, it's never going to happen.

Sarah drove back to her apartment and started packing. 

Sarah drove to the Camp to meet the rest of the team for their transport to the airport.  Vince and Will were already there. 

Will smiled. 
“Morning, pork chop.”

Vince stayed silent.

Sarah wanted to just run into Vince's arms and tell him how much she hated that he was seeing other women, but there was no way. 

Not in this world.  Not in this lifetime. 

She smiled at Will.  “Morning, Will.  Good morning, Major
Hennessee
.”

Will squinted and shot Vince a questioning glance.  Sarah’s formal address to Vince wasn’t lost on him.

Sarah assumed Will was in on everything Vince did, but he obviously wasn't aware of their exchange after the briefing.

It doesn't matter.  I'm here to do a job.  Getting all hot and bothered about Vince just gets in the way anyway.

Jason, Brian and Chris pulled up and the rush of activity began,
transferring gear from their cars to the two big, black,
Suburbans
they’d drive to the airport.  After they loaded all the gear and luggage, Sarah hopped into one of the
Suburbans
with Brian, Jason and Chris. 

Chris squinted over at her from across the back seat and handed Sarah her earpiece.  Once they'd tested them to be sure they were both transmitting to and receiving from each other, he spoke in Russian.  “What's wrong, Sarah?”

Everything.

“Nothing.”

“You're quiet.  You're never quiet.  You're sitting in your seat like a dog that's been kicked.  You're riding with us instead of Will and Vince.  It doesn't take an intelligence analyst to see something is wrong here, so spill it, sister.”

He's got a point.

“I screwed up.  I went off on Vince for busting up that date I had.”

“You mean your date with the Russian arms dealer?”  Chris chuckled. 

Anger bubbled inside her and she growled at Chris.  “Nobody told me he was a Russian arms dealer.”

“He didn't tell you who Nikolai was?”

“Nope.”

“So you thought…?”

“Yep.
  I went off half-cocked and
kinda
told him off.”

Chris raised his eyebrows in curiosity.  “
Kinda
, like how?”

“There may have been a one-sided physical altercation.”

“Oh, my God.”
  Chris sniggered into his hand.  “You hit him?”

Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Well, I guess that explains his foul mood.”

“Do you think he'll kick me off the team?”

“Oh, hell no.
  The team is like a family
-
for better or for worse.  Besides, he's crazy about you.”

Sarah wrinkled her brow.  “Huh?”

“We're men but we're not stupid.  The man has it bad for you.”

“Can't be so bad.
  He had a pretty brunette in his apartment when I told him off.”

Chris laughed out loud and shook his head.  “You're just as bad as he is!  You need to talk to him when we get to Italy.”

Fat lot of good that will do.

Sarah's thoughts were interrupted when Jason turned around and grinned at her from the front passenger seat.  “I know you're speaking Russian but all I understand are the bad words.  If you aren't going to talk dirty then we'd appreciate it if you girls did your dishing in English from now on so we can eavesdrop properly.”

~~~

No one spoke until the private plane transporting the team to Italy was in the air. 

Vince broke the silence.  “Okay, you're probably wondering why we're staging so early for this operation in Italy.  We're going to set up our base of operations on an estate near Victor's place in
Sori
.  We'll be staying as houseguests of a member of the
Gruppo
di
Intervento
Speciale
or G.I.S.  We've
been assured it is secure and instructed that it will serve as our base of operations while we're in country.”

Brian spoke up.  “Hey, man, I know the G.I.S. is pretty bad ass, but I've never heard anything about them being paid well enough to have country estates.”

Chris chimed in.  “We've had a full check done on this guy.  He's from old money and had an exemplary career in the G.I.S.  There's no chance he's on the take.”

Brian sat back in his seat.  “Cool.  What else do we know about the guy?”

Chris looked at Vince.  “I just got the rip on him last night.”

Vince nodded to Chris to continue.

“They call him the Dark Angel.”  Chris ran his fingers through his shiny blonde curls.  “This guy has done anti-terror ops all over the globe.  He's been doing this for almost thirty years now.  He's very highly decorated.  Whenever the G.I.S. has a tough job, they send him.  They say he's the best.”

Jason took a swig of the coffee he'd brought with him.  “Boss, you've been doing this a while.  Have you worked with this superstar?  Do we know him personally?”

Vince shook his head.  “Not me.  Will?”

Will shrugged.  “I’ve heard stories about a Dark Angel.  I thought they were just urban legend.  Based on the stories, I’m pretty sure we’d know if we had met him.”

Chris' mouth curled into a wry smile.  “Now that you mention it, Sarah knows him.”

Oh, come on!  How many surprises do I need in a single week?

Sarah sat up straight in her seat.  “Huh?”

Chris nodded to Sarah. 
“Seems he was in Las Vegas a little while back.”

Vince glared at Sarah.  “Jesus Christ, Stevens.”  He rubbed his forehead.  “Will and I take off for a few weeks and you're out dating both sides in the war?  Who the hell else have you got in your little black book?”

Of course.
  Now he thinks I'm playing both sides. 
Frigging great.

Sarah rolled her eyes and adjusted in her seat so she didn't have to look at Vince.  “Look, Chris, I don't know where you got your information but it's wrong.”  She stood and started walking to the bathroom.  She glared at Vince as she walked by his seat.  “I've been on one date since Hassan and you know exactly how that went.”  Sarah walked into the bathroom and slammed the door before sitting down and wiping what would soon be a tear from her eye. 

Chris' voice came through her earpiece.  “Now wait a minute, Vince.  This was before she was assigned to us, when she was still a civilian at the Camp.  She met Angelo socially at Pure while she was on a twenty-four-hour pass.”

Angelo?  Oh, boy.

Sarah heard Will's voice next and he didn’t sound happy.  “What the hell is going on with you, man?  Why are you suddenly so hard on the girl?  She hasn't done anything wrong, and she's pulled your ass out of the fire more than once.  No disrespect, brother, but you need to pull that stick out of your ass and cut her some slack.”

Silence.
 
Bastard.
 

Sarah waited a few minutes, freshened up her makeup and then walked silently back to her seat next to Chris without making eye contact with Vince.

How did everything go to shit so quickly?

Chris gave her a sorry smile and mouthed the words, “You okay?”

Sarah nodded.

I punched a Marine in front of a woman.  We may never get past that one.  After all, a man's got his pride.

Will
cleared
his throat. 
“Chris, why don't you give us that brief on Bolshoi now so we can all get some sleep while we cross the pond?”

Sitting straight, Chris was all business as he rifled through the papers and folders in his briefcase.  “So, from the
intel
we have, Bolshoi runs a maze of companies and employs upwards of four-hundred people.  He's got anywhere from fifty to sixty operational aircraft at any given time and they're always moving.  This guy has the largest private fleet of Soviet era cargo planes in the world.”

“How do we know he's not just moving tulips from the Netherlands?”

Chris sighed and rolled his eyes. 
“Good question, Brian, what with the tulip trade being so lucrative and all.”
 

Brian opened his hands as if to say, “
it
could happen.”

Jason turned toward Will. 
“Soviet era?
  Is he connected?”

Will stretched his legs.  “Our contacts in the Russian
Mafiya
are sketchy at best, so we're just going to have to cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“We've got lots of conjecture from the analysts and allegations by the U.N. but nothing solid to go on here.”  Chris looked up from his papers and spoke directly to Vince.  “We're really bumping around in the dark on this guy.  I'm surprised they put us on him at this point.”

Vince leaned back in his seat.  “It was good
intel
from the case on Hassan.  We can run with this.  It shouldn't be a problem to nail him in a week or so.  These guys never take vacations.  We get Sarah in there, bug the phone lines, plant a few microphones and cameras, then cut the deal and we're out of there.”

“I don't know, Vince.”  Chris protested.  “There are mumblings this guy has ties to the director of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs.  That guy was old school KGB.  I advise we use extreme caution in this case.”

“Thank you for your input on this, Chris, and I appreciate you doing your homework on Bolshoi but we've been given an assignment here.  We can't exactly turn it down.”

“Alright.”
  Will walked to the bar and poured himself some coffee.  “So we have an assignment and our guy has cautioned us about possible dangers.  Everybody we work with is dangerous so let's just be smart and go into this with our eyes open and get the job done.”

“What else have you got on Victor, Chris?”

“Nothing you didn't already know, boss.  He's got heavy connections to Ernst Wagner.”

Sarah looked up at Chris.  “Who is that?”

Vince came as close to talking to Sarah as he had all day.  “He was the agency's go-to guy for guns during the Cold War.  The KGB used him a lot, too.  If you ask me, he was the guy who won the Cold War.  Son of a bitch made billions on it.  He's retired in Monaco now, but no doubt has a Rolodex any gun runner would happily kill for.”

~~~

After refueling in Boston for the transatlantic flight, the team settled in, and Sarah was ready to talk again.  She nudged Chris.

He stopped tapping away on his laptop keyboard and smiled at her.  “What's up?”

“Tell me about the G.I.S.”

“The Italian
Carabinieri
do both civilian and military policing.  Their training is very military and way tougher than any civilian cops get in the U.S.  Their elite counter-terrorism unit is called the
Gruppo
di
Intervento
Speciale
or G.I.S.  If a military base is under threat, or there is a terrorist attack, or they need a bunch of bad asses to deploy as peacekeepers, they send the G.I.S.”  Chris leaned back in his seat.  “These guys took on the Red Brigade and Sicilian Mafia and lived to tell about it.”  Chris seemed very impressed.  “There are only a hundred guys in the G.I.S.  They're selected only from the
Carabinieri
and they must have an outstanding military record and jump through some serious hoops just to try out for a spot.  Their training and selection process is really tough.  It's like two weeks of the SEALs Hell Week.”