Agents Under Fire (5 page)

This op definitely meant something personal to Brent. He wanted Tekla dead too badly. And he didn’t care who died with the target. Sometimes he sounded as if he
wanted
the whole family to be eliminated.

Why?

No way would those kinds of orders come from the U.S. government that was supposedly their client for the op. Not when the target was a U.S. citizen.

Gabe kept steady, wanting the op to be over without getting killed, without having to kill anyone unnecessarily. He scrambled for something to say.

But Tekla spoke first, his eyebrows lifting. “Was Brent the other medic?”

Here we go. Brent
had
been a medic. “Yes.” Gabe gambled.

Tekla looked him over again. “Where do you come in? You weren’t there. How did you hook up with him?”

“
Left the Army for the FBI two years ago. Brent recruited me from there. I have nothing to do with what went down at Lahedeh.”

“
You have no idea what went down at Lahedeh.” Tekla sneered.

“
I might,” he bluffed.

“
If you did, you’d be dead already. Everyone else is, except me. And I mean to stay alive.”

“
Nobody has to get hurt. Let me take you in. The government will give you a fair trial.”

Tekla gave a short, sour laugh. “I’ll never reach any courtroom.”

“
We’re here on a government contract. You killed people. You’re AWOL from the Army. If you have a good reason for all that, they’ll hear you out.” He did believe that.

“
Can I come out? I can’t breathe in here.” A plaintive voice asked from under the blanket Gabe had been keeping in his peripheral vision.

“
Come out and go into another room with Jasmine,” Tekla ordered.

The younger sister peeked from her hiding place, then emerged little by little, hair all mussed and cheeks pink with fever, eyes glassy. Jasmine went to her immediately, feeling her forehead and frowning.

“
She’s in no shape to walk around,” she told her brother. “Gabe isn’t going to hurt us.”

He appreciated the vote of confidence. He scanned the room. “Where is the aunt?”

All he got were funny looks. “The aunt from Arkansas,” he clarified.

“
Spending the winter with her sister in Florida,” Tekla said.

Thank God. The last thing they needed in the middle of this volatile situation was another civilian.

“
When are the men coming?” Tekla asked Jasmine.

She shot a questioning look to Gabe.

He glanced at his watch. “In about forty minutes.” As a gesture of goodwill, he tucked his weapon away. “She needs help.” He nodded toward the younger sister.

Jasmine rolled her eyes at him. “Why did you think I came to you?”

“
Didn’t have a chance to ask, with you trying to scratch my eyes out and all that.”

Tekla shot a dark look at Jasmine.

“
I can’t do this alone, okay?” She pulled a bottle of water from the rubble and handed it to her sister before looking back at her brother, her eyes begging. “You need as much help as Mandy does. We can’t just hang tough. It’s gone beyond that. I can’t fix this.”

The quiet desperation in her voice touched Gabe’s heart.

She’d been surviving with no resources, no support, in a foreign country, trying to save her brother and her sister. And the thing was, she’d done it. She’d taken care of them. She’d evaded an entire commando team, risked her life, putting everything on the line when she’d come to him.

“
I’ll help.” Hell, that had been a forgone conclusion probably from the moment he’d caught her on the roof and first faced her spirit and courage, first realized that something might be off with the op.

“
You turn yourself in to me,” he told Tekla, “and I’ll make sure your sisters will be safe.”

“
Absolutely not.” Jasmine shot to her feet with a look of betrayal on her face. “I brought you here to help my brother escape.”

“
Your brother made some bad choices. He’s going to have to face the music for that, but the rest of you don’t have to get hurt.”

“
You don’t understand anything!” she yelled suddenly, wrapping her arms around her slim body. She began to pace, throwing desperate looks at her brother.

“
Then tell me what happened.” Gabe turned to Tekla. “If there’s a rational explanation for what you’ve done, let’s hear it.”

“
The less you know, the safer you are.”

“
Like your sisters?” he snapped. “Do you know what a miracle it is that they’re still alive? How long are you prepared to gamble with their lives?”

Gabe caught himself and toned it down a notch. “If you don’t trust Brent and his crew, I have connections I can call on. I can turn you straight over to the U.S. authorities. The FBI, even.”

“
This thing goes too high. Brent has a backer. Someone in the government.”

Gabe considered the possibility and the implications. Brent was one of two dozen team leaders at a fairly small private security company that specialized in overseas missions. The contract to retrieve Jake Tekla had come from the government that couldn’t send military forces after the man into a sovereign country like Italy. Maybe they could have justified something like that in the Middle East, but certainly not in Europe.

The U.S. government didn’t want to get local law enforcement involved, at least that was the way Brent had explained it to Gabe when he’d been hired on. A rogue American soldier, a killer on the loose wouldn’t have inspired much confidence in the U.S.

And the Italians were already wary of military presence in their country, especially since the cable car accident a few years back when a U.S. jet flew too low, cutting the cables, sending twenty people plunging to their deaths.

So sending a private outfit after Tekla and keeping the op under wraps had made sense when Brent had first explained it. But, apparently, Brent and Tekla had a shared past in Lahedeh, and it sure looked like Brent had a private agenda where catching Tekla was concerned. What were the chances that his team just
happened
to get the government contract?

Maybe Brent did have someone somewhere, making sure the contract went his way.

Too many unknown elements. Too much to lose. The op wasn’t entirely right, but Tekla wasn’t innocent, either. Gabe didn’t want the man’s family to come to harm, but he drew the line at aiding and abetting a killer.

He looked the guy straight in the eye. “I need to know about those three men you killed.”

~~~***~~~

Chapter Seven

“
How about we step out into the hallway?” her brother asked Gabe.

Jasmine opened her mouth to protest, but Gabe said, “I think your sisters have a right to hear this. I think they should get a vote in what happens.”

She gave him a slight smile, her heart softening. She liked that he was treating her and her sister as equals. She liked the way he looked at her, a
lot
differently than he’d looked at her ten years ago. As if he actually
noticed
her now. Way too late, but definitely flattering.

Man, she’d been crazy about him. Well, that ship had sailed. She wasn’t going back to live on Obsession Lane. She’d embarrassed herself over him enough for a lifetime back in the day. Every email she’d sent to Jake had at least one question about whether he’d seen Gabe again, and if so, how he looked, had he mentioned her.

Thank God, this time around she was a lot more mature and a lot smarter. She was
not
going to develop any kind of crush on him again. Although, if he managed to save them, she might—
just might
—forgive him for tying her down and drugging her.

The two men stared at each other.

She knew how difficult it would be for Jake to trust someone after all they’ve been through. He had a lot of pride. And he’d always shouldered all the responsibility for the family. He
hated
to ask for help. He always wanted to fix everything alone.

But he also always did the right thing.

“
All right.” The tight set of his jaw betrayed that he was only doing this because he had no other choice. He lowered himself to a sitting position and set his gun down at last.

Gabe acknowledged the gesture with a nod. “Let’s start with what happened in Lahedeh. What were you and Brent doing there?”

“
We were still looking for Osama at that point. My team—Brian, Greg, Eric and I—went down into the water cistern. We found two locals down there with these huge terra cotta jars. They got Brian before we got them, and injured Eric. Greg called in the medics. They were there pretty fast. I knew one, but not the other.”

“
Brent,” Gabe put in, his face clouded.

Jake nodded. “Greg and Brian were pretty tight, from the same town and all that, enlisted together. So Greg was ticked that they killed his buddy. He started pumping more bullets into the dead locals. I told him to knock it off before someone got hit by a ricocheting bullet. So then he starts kicking over the jars. Or tried. They were too heavy. He knocked the lid off one… I’ve never seen that much gold.”

“
What gold?” she asked the same time as Gabe did.

“
Some warlord’s hoard. Worth millions.”

Her blood pressure spiked. “Our lives were destroyed because of money? That’s the big secret you couldn’t give up? I thought it had to do with national security. Are you kidding me?”

For the first time in her life, she really,
really,
wanted to hit something.

“
Eric was the team leader. He sealed the jars, told us this was all confidential. Word couldn’t get out or we’d have the warlord’s private army after us, plus all the locals and treasure hunters. He took charge. Later he told us that the treasure was transported to the National Museum in Kabul.”

“
Except it wasn’t,” Gabe put in.

Jake shook his head. “Last day I was in Afghanistan, I had a couple of hours to kill in Kabul and a cute private I wanted to impress. I thought I’d take her to the museum, show her the gold and tell her the part I played. See how far that gets me.”

She rolled her eyes. Her brother had a way with women, no doubt about it. He definitely had the Casanova gene, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. She hated to see him like this, sick and weak. That he couldn’t protect them about killed him, too. He was too used to being the tough guy, a warrior.

“
They never heard of the gold.” He adjusted his bad leg. “So I tried to call Greg when I got back home. He was dead. Friendly fire.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Called the medic I knew. Friendly fire again. Couldn’t track down the other guy. Figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

He took a slow breath and shot an apologetic look to Jasmine, his eyes filling with regret. “That was a mistake.”

* * *

Gabe watched as Jasmine wrapped her arms even tighter around herself and stared at a spot in front of her feet, all emotion sliding off her face.

He wanted to know what happened to her after her brother had first gone into hiding, but Mandy had slumped over while they’d been talking, and that worried him. She didn’t seem fully aware of her surroundings anymore. They had to take care of Mandy before they could move out of here.

He stepped forward. “We have to bring this girl’s fever down.”

Jasmine looked at her sister then launched into action, shaking off whatever dark weight had been sitting on her shoulders. “There’s a tub in one of the other rooms. We could bring cold water up from downstairs.”

“
Do you have any buckets?”

She hurried to the corner and pulled two five-gallon paint buckets she probably had picked up at a construction site.

He took those from her. She grabbed a chipped pot from the windowsill and led the way.

He could tell downstairs that the water service to the building had been shut off at one point but someone, probably Jake, had rigged it. He filled the buckets and she filled the pot, then they started up the stairs. The drug seemed to be wearing off. She no longer swayed with every step.

“
What happened back in the U.S. before you came here?” He wanted to help, but to do that, he needed to see the full picture.

She wouldn’t look at him.

He knew he should let it go, but something deep inside him demanded to know. He followed her into a smaller room and dumped the water into the tub, caught her by the arm as she turned to go back. “Jasmine?”