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Authors: Catherine Mann

Tags: #Suspense, #Man-Woman Relationships, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction, #Romance, #War & Military

Defender (7 page)

BOOK: Defender
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That made him think of the four dudes in front of him and how much crap they tried out, not knowing if their asses would be blown up.

He’d worked for three hours reviewing video feed from his hidden camera, searching for some clue to give him a better handle on the bar and the Surac woman. Shit out of luck so far. Once his eyes started to blur, he’d decided to check in on the air crew because . . . Well, he needed to do something after a frustrating two days of no progress and no answers.

The crew of four gathered around a table set up next to the airplane. The flat surface was lined with laptops and a spaghetti jumble of wires running from the computers into random open panels on the airplane. They seemed to be calibrating or testing something. Probably the advanced sensor suite they hoped to use to find Chuck Tanaka.

“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” Tearing the plane apart sure didn’t look like a good sign, and damn it all, he needed their technology.

Vince Deluca poked his bald head out from behind a cluster of wires and cables, a doughnut in hand. “Nice duds, Nunez. Are you pimpin’ on the side?”

“I’ll be taking a personal day when the bill for this wardrobe hits the boss’s desk.” He stepped deeper into the hangar and tried to make sense of how these test aviators thrust their hands into the tangle of wires and cables. “This mess you’ve got here looks worse than when my mom’s Christmas lights come out of storage. Is something wrong?”

Jimmy Gage stepped from around the line of laptops. Word had it, he pounded his body relentlessly in the weight room and on the basketball court since his four-month captivity. Captain Invincible could do it all. That kind of arrogance could make or break the op. “We’re just tweaking the sensors and conducting continuity checks. Looks like everything is up and running. No ill effects from our rough ride in.”

“Felt smooth to me,” Nunez said and meant it. “I never would have guessed this wasn’t your primary plane. How many test drives do you get in something like this before they clear you to take it out for a spin solo?”

Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon glanced up, looking over the rims of his Buddy Holly glasses. “You don’t want to know.”

“So you test dudes really can fly anything.”

The commander nodded. “That’s the point of the training. We’re writing the tech manual on new aircraft and equipment no one’s flown yet. Makes sense we need to be able to step inside anything and figure out how to make it do that flying thing.”

Gage jerked a thumb toward Vince Deluca. “Vapor here is famous back at test pilot school. An instructor came in and dropped a dash one—that’s the flight manual—for an A-7 attack plane they flew back in the dark ages. Then he told him to be ready bright and early for a live weapons release, flown in formation with two other planes. Next morning, Vapor clocks in, bags under his eyes. But he fired up that engine, rolled the baby out to the runway, and flew his mission flawlessly. When he landed, the ground guys noticed something off in the way he was sitting.”

Vapor shrugged massive shoulders. “Yeah, yeah, who the hell thinks to read about how to slide the seat backward and forward? I had to eat my knees for the whole flight.”

Nunez leaned a hip against the table. “You could have asked for help.”

The line of crewdogs eyed him as if he’d blasphemed.

Smooth backed away, hands up. “That would have been as bad as stopping for directions. Can’t be cutting off the
cajones
that way, or someone may get a leg up on you with the ladies.”

“Point made.” Nunez kept his perch by the table while the crew went back to their stations.

He’d understood in theory that these men were scientists and engineers as well as aviators, but seeing was a whole other matter. Sure, he played with high-tech gadgets in the field, but so much of his job involved the human factor of going undercover. How much of his field work could be outsourced to their technology?

They shrugged off the risk with jokes and posturing. But how many of them would die to make that technology available?

Gage reaffixed a metal panel onto the plane with exaggerated concentration. “So, Nunez, what’s the scoop on the fight that broke out?”

“That’s the million dollar question. Tough to decipher exactly how it began. No one’s claiming responsibility, so we don’t know yet if there’s a connection with the explosion on the boat. We’ve got guys tracing bomb parts and working the underwater recovery mission to gather more evidence.”

Smooth clicked through computer keys without even looking their way. “Probably just horny guys out of control.”

“Quite possibly,” Nunez answered, unconvinced. “We’re as sure as we can be for now. Any particular reason you want to know, Gage?”

“Just curious.” He gave the panel a final fist-thump. “Once you’ve got Chuck’s locale better pinpointed, we’ll close in with surveillance.”

Nunez bypassed the nearly empty coffeepot and box of doughnuts to stride down the line of equipment. “You can really see through walls with this thing?”

“Absolutely,” the commander answered without hesitation. “We worked the kinks out of this particular piece of equipment during the surge over in Iraq. With miniature munitions we developed, you could take out a lone sniper in a room and not even knock the knickknacks off the mantel.”

Gage leaned forward with intense eyes. “This one time, some Iraqi policemen were kidnapped and hustled off into a particularly bad neighborhood in Sadr City. We trolled over the area until we found a whole bunch of bodies crammed into one room in this walled compound. There were eleven missing policemen and eleven warm bodies in there. We called in the cavalry on the ground, told them where the other bodies in the house were, and turned them loose. They got those guys out of there before anyone had a chance to roll out the torture table.”

The commander stroked a computer screen with reverence. “The inventor of this system saved at least eleven families a lot of pain. I would say this thing has already proved it was worth the money.”

Nunez looked to the undercurrents of their fireside storytelling. “And that was the first time you used it? In combat while the enemy shot at you?”

“Sure,” Gage answered, adrenaline all but crackling in his eyes.

“You work the kinks out in operation.” Nunez twisted the camera button on his jacket, praying like crazy the thing wouldn’t explode into flames. “I so didn’t need to hear that.”

The commander nudged his black-rimmed glasses in place. “Agent Nunez, sometimes there’s a push to deliver, and we have to go with our gut.”

“What if it had gone the other way?”

Gage grinned. “Our guts are pretty fucking good.”

Nunez hoped for Chuck Tanaka’s sake that Jimmy Gage could back up that cockiness.

SIX

Eyes closed, Chloe eased down the cinderblock hall wall to sit on the floor and savor the sensation of undiluted Boston Philharmonic pouring through her iPod earbuds. Oh yeah. Just what she needed to pass the time as she waited for Livia to finish her rehearsal in the base basketball court allocated for their use.

Hanging around seemed to be the status quo lately. They were still waiting for the go-ahead to resume their tour. At least they had practices to pass the time, even private rehearsal rooms. The event director had worked her tail off this morning for shows they weren’t even certain they would present.

For a hijacked moment in the deserted back corridor, Chloe indulged in a Mozart fix. She hadn’t expected to miss her job this much, since she would be singing. It had always been about the music for her, the one thing sporadic bouts of poor health couldn’t leach away.

Don’t go there. Just let the waterfall of notes obliterate all else.
Her hands gravitated by instinct to “conduct.” Peace melted her muscles.

Then it tingled away. Someone was here, in the remote passageway. The tile floor underneath her went ice cold.

The sense of being eyeballed crescendoed in time with the music. She jolted to her feet, her eyes snapping open, muscles tensed.

Jimmy lounged against the wall by a Turkish tapestry. Even wearing air force sweatpants and a T-shirt, he carried that unmistakable confidence. So much for chalking his charisma up to the uniform.

She thumbed her iPod off and pulled out the earbuds. Muffled music from the gymnasium vibrated through the wall as Livia nailed high C.

“Jamming?” He crossed one Nike-shod foot over the other.

“Not exactly ‘Rock Me Amadeus,’ but yeah, I have Mozart plugged in today.”

“You’re a classical buff?” He sounded surprised.

“An orchestra conductor in Atlanta.”

His brows shot high. “No shit?”

His total shock was a little insulting. Did he really consider her a ditz? Then she recalled his irritation when she’d assumed Jimmy “Mars, god of war” Gage wouldn’t be the type to study up on Roman mythology. Apparently they’d both made some erroneous assumptions about each other.

“No shit. Classical music is my life, whether it be through conducting or playing the piano or even singing.”

“So that’s why you were doing the . . .” He waved his hands in a not-half-bad imitation of her conducting a three-four beat.

She stared down at her motionless fingers with their nails trimmed short for playing the piano. “It’s instinctive when I listen.” Enough of the chitchat. Her years of intense health concerns had left her with a deep-seated need not to waste precious time on picayune crap like pissing contests. “What brings you here?”

“My job.”

“Duh. I meant
here
, to see
me
.”

“Self-defense class for our local mayhem-prone Mozart groupie.”

She’d heard his invitation as she’d walked away after the concert fight, but she hadn’t thought he meant it. “You were serious about that?”

“Serious as the next riot you’ll probably land in the middle of.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and reached for her earbuds. “Thanks all the same, but I think I’ll just invest in a can of mace.”

In a flash so fast she barely registered the blur of his sweat suit in motion, Jimmy looped his arms around her torso and neck, hauling her back flat against his front. What the hell?

Her iPod dropped from her restrained hand. She wriggled to get free. Unsuccessfully. His arms locked her tighter against the hard-muscled length of him. The roots of her hair began to tingle.

She stilled, half-afraid to move and stir those tingles into a body-wide wave.

His head lowered, his mouth beside her ear. “How effective do you think that mace is going to be right now?”

Warm breath steamed over the sensitive skin along her earlobe, farther to her cheek, until she shivered. Her lashes fluttered closed in utter frustration, humiliation even. How disturbing to be so acutely attracted to someone she wasn’t even sure she liked.

“Let go, please,” she whispered, hating the slight bobble in her voice.

“I was simply trying to prove my point.” His arms slid away. He wasn’t cheesy about it, no copping a feel, but the simple brush of movement still jangled her already off-kilter nerves.

“People who insist on being right all the time are really annoying.”

“That will give you the perfect motivation to be a good student so you can kick my ass. Unless there’s some reason you’re afraid of the challenge?”

Did this guy take mind game classes in between saving the world? Regardless, his blasted psychology was effective. She was a fighter. “Where do we start?”

He swept a hand ahead of him, his ever-stoic face betraying no emotion. “This way, maestro.”


Maestra
, for females.” She deserved to indulge in just a little condescension, damn it.

“Right, definitely
maestra
then. Get ready to rock out, Sun Tzu style.” He charged down the hall with confident strides she had to double-time to match.

* ADANA, TURKEY

Nunez baked in the afternoon sun even without a suit jacket and tie. Nothing new. A large portion of his job included sitting around and waiting as inconspicuously as possible.

At least the food rocked at the tiny café across from the nightclub. Sitting at an outdoor table, he tore off another bite of his Lamb Adana—a cross between a gyro and his mother’s meatloaf—while skimming through a local newspaper. All of which provided the perfect vantage point to catch sight of Ms. Surac when she reported for work.

Over the past couple of days, he’d been rotating through the local bars on his list but still hadn’t connected with the Oasis’s cagey waitress again or found out anything more about the older Surac woman. He turned a page on the paper and paused mid-flip. Oh yeah. Good things came to those who waited. Anya approached the club, winding around pedestrians picking their way through vendor stalls. She strode down the cobblestone street, blond hair catching on the air with each gliding step.

Her steps faltered. She frowned, looking around and hitching her purse more securely on her shoulder. Her face tipped to the wind as if she could scent danger.

Then she looked straight at him.

Instincts such as hers were golden. Or deadly. He stared right back, allowing himself a small smile. Her exotic dark eyes widened. He didn’t even bother deluding himself. The static between them crackled with raw lust.

He reached for his money clip and tossed double the cost of the meal on the table. He wove through traffic at a slow jog, his eyes on the target.

The door fascist descended the steps and blocked his path, leaving Anya free to bustle past and up the marble steps. She cast a quick glance at him over her shoulder.

Nunez didn’t even bother smiling this time, just stared back. He could have sworn he detected vulnerability in her eyes, but he’d grown too jaded. All he could see was her marked resemblance to the older woman in the photo of his suspect. That she would be here, at a bar under suspicion, couldn’t be coincidence.

The door dude crowded his space and defused the static. Did this guy ever sleep? Yet another sign the man was a cokehead or doing some other brand of speed, which made him unpredictable.

There was no pushing past him without creating a scene. She opened the door herself, small price to pay for a clean getaway.

“We’re closed.” Mr. Slick’s sunglasses shielded his condescending look today. The guy clearly clocked double duty as a doorman and bouncer.

The Terminator with a fedora and a Valentino suit.

“I’ll wait.” Nunez didn’t budge.

Neither did the doorman. “Be careful of pickpockets. They prey on those who loiter.”

A stare-down later, the doorman sniffed and turned away, back to his post, offering a quick flash of his braided ponytail and 9 mm tucked in the small of his back. He parked his uptight ass on a wrought-iron bench, snagging a newspaper from beside him.

Nunez studied the door closing behind Anya Surac, half registering the cacophony of car horns on the pedestrian-packed street. Wafting scents of roasting kabobs in a nearby stall presented a far greater distraction, since this mission left more time for drinking and little for eating. He eyed the vendors lining the street.

“Crash and burn, my friend,” a male voice rode the smell of cigar smoke. “Crash and burn. Your lady does not seem interested.”

Nunez pivoted fast and found the man standing in a nearby doorway. Now that guy’s accent was easy enough to place. The dude hailed from somewhere around Greece. Nunez catalogued the piece of info before moving closer for details—a man in his fifties, graying curls, thick brows, and an even thicker stogie.

The stranger nodded a dismissal to the glorified bouncer. Nunez’s mental antennae went on alert, hands sliding up to ride on his belt, within reach of his own concealed weapon. “The tougher they are, the greater the victory.”

“True. True.” The man stubbed out his cigar on the sole of his Barker Black ostrich-capped shoes. A downright sacrilege. “You throw around much money.”

Nunez fed the guy a noncommittal, “I believe in enjoying life.”

Wait for it. Wait . . . for . . . it.

The man thrust out his hand. “Spiros Kutros.”

Nunez’s antennae homed in. Kutros, a man who claimed distant kinship to a defunct Mediterranean royal family. And an investor in this very club.

Interesting. “Miguel Carvalho.”

“Carvalho? Ah, I have heard of you.”

Of course he had. The NSA and CIA built a variety of covers, sometimes years in advance, planting reports, photos, and gossip for times when an undercover agent had to launch a sting quickly, without the luxury of months to build trust. Stepping into Miguel Carvalho’s “life” had been simple.

Kutros flashed perfect teeth that only the very wealthy around here could afford. “That waitress, she is a hot one.”

“Do you have a prior claim?”

“None. I prefer my women to be like . . . How do the Americans say? . . . Like my whiskey, smooth and easy.”

Was it a coincidence that he mentioned America so early on? “Ah, but the bite sneaks up on a man faster that way. At least I know what I’m in for with ones like that.”

“To each his own, my friend.”

Miguel would want a woman like her. But what did Mike want? He never took the time to consider relationships. Any sort of real connection had been discouraged the second his family entered the witness protection program.

He’d enjoyed plenty of sex but not entanglements. And always with women who shared his lack of expectations. There were plenty of female agents in his shoes, needing physical release between undercover assignments.

“So,” Kutros spoke through puffs of smoke, “you are alone on your vacation?”

“Who says I am on vacation?”

“If you are not on vacation, your employer must be very frustrated.”

“Who said I need a job?”

Kutros threw his head back and laughed until his amusement turned into a raspy cough. “My kind of person.”

“I take that to mean you do not have a job calling you?”

“Investments to oversee.” Kutros pulled out a new cigar and pointed it toward the club. “Not a bad job checking the alcohol and service, eh?”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“That I am.” Kutros extended the cigar. “Welcome to Turkey.”

Mike took the Cuban smoke he knew sold for four hundred dollars. Connection made. “Thank you, my friend.”

BOOK: Defender
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