Defender (9 page)

Ah hell. Game over.

He’d been ready, even hoping for death more than once. But now that the time had come to cowboy up and die like a man, he prayed he had it in him. “What? No TLC? Damn. So you’re finally ready to dump my dead body.”

A slight smile curved her painted lips. “You’re not lucky enough to die yet.”

A flicker of hope warmed his chilled insides. “Aren’t you full of cheer today?”

“You are either very stupid or very smart.” She leaned to reach inside her purse, exposing the valley between her breasts. “I suspect the latter, but my friends and I can overcome that.”

“Lady,” the chuckle rumbling over his cracked ribs surprised him as much as it seemed to shock her, “I’m seven poundings past hurt.”

Her brown eyes flicked toward the car battery in the corner. “I thought your military trained you well enough to know there are many more ways left for me to work with you.”

Yeah, he knew, all right. He’d just been hoping she didn’t. “I guess that means you’re not taking me out for pizza and a brewski.”

“Correct.” She pulled out a small box, flicked it open, and pulled out a syringe.

What the—

She slid the needle into his arm. Coolness flooded the vein, and he didn’t even know what to fight against.

Some kind of truth serum? Or a lethal cocktail? He battled the darkness for once, confused for the first time by her behavior.

Why had she been so gentle with the shot?

EIGHT

The nocturnal city skyline splayed out beyond Jimmy’s windscreen. He manned the stick as the primary pilot tonight with Vince riding shotgun, the control panel spread in front of them. Chuck waited somewhere down there, if only the tracking chip could give them a more precise locale than the five-mile radius “somewhere in downtown Istanbul.” But the developmental device wasn’t large enough to work as an actual GPS.

At least the reads on Chuck’s vitals reassured them he lived. Although his heart rate spiked so high sometimes they knew bad shit was going down on a regular basis. Chuck wasn’t vacationing on the Riviera.

The weight of what their brother-in-arms must be suffering thickened the air with his presence.

If only tonight could bring Chuck’s rescue, but they didn’t have enough data and couldn’t risk tipping their hand. So they flew this flight in preparation as an orientation sortie. Jimmy maintained a higher altitude to aid the cloak of darkness, which made the low-power chip tougher to pinpoint. However, if anyone could milk more info out of the transmitter, the colonel would succeed.

Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon worked in the cargo bay, undoubtedly hunched over the makeshift console monitoring the tracking controls. Once they completely fielded the gear—months into the future—it would be installed in aircraft flight decks.

For now, the prototype was strapped in back with its mishmash of orange wires distinguishing it from permanent parts of the plane. Jimmy had lost count of how many orange-wired aircraft he’d flown on a wing and a prayer that everything would work as advertised.

No night-vision goggles this time, given how close they were to the wash of city lights. Instead, they would rely on the FLIR, the forward looking infrared camera.

Vapor thumbed the interphone mic. “Remember the time Chuck saved Jimmy’s ass in the Officers’ Club bar at Nellis, when those fighter pilots swarmed around the pool table playing crud?”

The radio crackled with the heavily accented voice of the air traffic controller. “Blackbird two-two, reset altimeter two-niner-niner-eight.”

Jimmy keyed up the radio. “Copy, two-niner-niner-eight. Two-niner-niner-eight set pilot.”

Vapor reset his altimeter and keyed up his interphone, “Set copilot.”

Jimmy remembered that evening well. “When are they not in the club playing crud?”

Vapor chuckled low. “No dodging the story, my brother.”

“Spill it,” Smooth coaxed over the airwaves. “I haven’t heard this one.”

“Fine. I was minding my own business, drinking an Alabama slammer—”

“Hitting on a smoking-hot babe who flew F-15s,” Vapor interjected.

“Yeah, whatever. This arrogant fighter dude from her squadron was shooting off his mouth faster than those pool balls whipping across the table. I managed to press the mental mute button on most of his bullshit.”

“But the kicker?”

“Hey, Vapor? Do you want to tell the story?” Jimmy waited until his pal sagged back. “He said that sometimes, late at night, he had to get his wife to remind him he’s just a
normal
man.”

Smooth whistled low.

Vapor shook his head. “I swear on my favorite dog’s grave Jimmy levitated off the floor. Thank God Chuck tackled him fast enough for the rest of us to restrain him, or he would have beat the inflated ego right out of that jackass.”

Jimmy adjusted the heading to correct for a wind shift. “Chuck always had the coolest head.”

“Has,” Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon barked through the headset. “Not had. No past tense.”

Silence crackled over the airwaves. Vapor’s jaw worked as if he was trying to come up with something lighthearted to say. Then his yap closed. Even the squadron’s funny man couldn’t inject a mood booster.

A warning warble came over the interphone.

Jimmy looked fast at the threat page of his display. “The optics detector seems to think someone is checking us over. Eyeballs out, crew.”

“Roger, Hotwire,” echoed in his ears in triplicate.

Probably a low threat, but someone
had
taken an interest in them. Hopefully just a stargazer with a set of bin-oculars, but still . . .

He made an executive decision. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We don’t need some terrorist using an erector set to launch any MANPADS.” Every pilot respected—and feared—the lethal power of a low-tech Man Portable Air Defense System. Enough so he knew the time had come to cut short their mission, a bite in the butt, since it meant less time to gather info on Chuck.

Vapor nodded. “Roger that. Let’s cloak up and move out.”

Jimmy paged through a display and entered the initial command for another of their test projects, a no-shit cloaking device. “Outside lights are off. Missile defense systems are active. Sure wish we knew if this one actually works. Wouldn’t it be sweet to test something at a nice quiet Stateside base before hanging our ass on its success?”

“Remember, gentlemen,” the colonel’s ever-steady voice of reason rumbled over his ears, “keep it calm. Tech order warnings are written in blood, since something drastic happened to bring that flaw to the fore. Cautions are written in stupidity. Let’s not be dead
or
stupid at the end of the day.”

Deeper they flew into the Turkish countryside, leaving Chuck behind in the skyline full of ornate spires enduring God only knew what.

Actually, Jimmy had a helluva decent inkling. His four months as a “guest” of the Afghani rebels had given him a fair taste. At first, he’d taken the punches as a sort of penance for Socrates’ death. Later, he hadn’t been able to form thoughts clearly enough to do more than survive the day in hopes of making it to the next one so maybe, just maybe he could live long enough to tell Sarah how her husband had died.

Apparently the bastards who’d taken him hadn’t read the Geneva convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. At least he hadn’t been raped like the guy in the cell next to him, although listening and being unable to help had presented a unique hell all its own.

When tasking came down from headquarters for his squadron to work this mission to rescue Chuck, Jimmy had known he would be on the crew. Chuck would need someone to talk to afterward. Sure, there would be military shrinks aplenty. Jimmy had done his requisite time on the couch, and yes, it had helped. He wouldn’t have been functional otherwise. But the brotherhood was strong, and sharing experiences with someone who’d been there was an integral part of processing, especially given that so much of what they did was classified.

Like the whole “cloak of invisibility” deal right now.

And damn, in the past he would have considered that a Harry Potter kind of thing, but now the phrase sounded more like something from one of Chloe’s
Star Trek
shows. And damn it again, that woman was invading his thoughts even from miles away.

“Fuck,” the commander hissed over the airwaves.

Not a good sign. Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon never lost his calm. Jimmy homed his focus back in on the job where it belonged: on this flight. “Sir? Problem with the equipment?”

“The tracking chip is working fine. Perfectly, in fact.”

His fist clenched around the stick. If Chuck’s life support signal had faded . . . Shit. Now he couldn’t even feel the stick in his hand anymore. “And?”

“Chuck’s alive.”

Jimmy exhaled long and hard. Then waited.

“The accelerometers from the chip show it’s moving.
He
’s being moved.”

Not stellar news for the good guys. All that work to pinpoint his locale would be for crap. They would be back to a “general vicinity” guess again once the signal steadied.

The past and present meshed. Chuck had saved him from a major ass beating that evening a year ago, and Jimmy hadn’t been one bit thankful. He’d wanted to pound heads, needed to let off steam on the second anniversary of his capture by the Afghanis.

He’d lost more than his friend back in those desert mountains. The bastards had fried him numb. He wondered sometimes if maybe they’d scrambled his brain, like with some kind of electroshock therapy gone way bad. Sure, he’d survived with all his body parts in working order, but they’d cooked away more than his sperm count.

They’d numbed him from the inside out.

The past was nipping his heels tonight with razor-sharp teeth that could slice through any numbness. He didn’t even want to think about what twisted versions of Chuck’s current hell and his past one that dreams might hold. All they could do was wait to get a fresh lock-in on a new locale, then work the intel angle.

More damned waiting.

Shut-eye was definitely out of the question. He couldn’t do anything more about Chuck at that moment, a reality he had to accept. Meanwhile, he needed to channel all that pent-up energy somewhere, or he would explode.

An image of Chloe popped to mind, full force if not fully welcome. He glanced at his watch. If debrief stayed on schedule, he should just be able to make it in time to join her damned shopping trip. Maybe he could funnel some of his frustrated need to rescue Chuck into watching Chloe’s ass.

If nothing else, he’d learned Chloe Nelson had a way of firing him up from zero to eighty in sixty seconds flat. Right now, aggravating or not, he needed the distraction she could offer.

Nunez clinked glasses with Kutros and banged back his seventh shot of raki.

He hoped the pills those test guys swore by worked for the long haul, because he was pushing them to the limits tonight. The local brew packed a potent punch.

He pretended to be drunk like the semiroyal beside him and raked in the info. The other two bars had proved fruitless thus far. Nunez’s CIA paramilitary operatives in the area had even used some of that air force-tested technology for seeing through walls. Nothing suspicious had come up at the other clubs. They would sweep the Oasis tonight to check out the back office and search for underground holdings.

Intelligence already indicated Kutros had a finger in everything from drugs to smuggling arms into the Middle East. It wasn’t a far leap to believe he would pound secrets from service members.

“You are a good sort, Carvalho. Good sort. Hold your liquor good, too.” Kutros jabbed his cigar stub in the air, the tip glowing in the dimly lit club.

The older man wavered toward the bottle, the glass clinking against the rim as he poured another round. Kutros reached once, twice, again before finally getting hold of his drink. He knocked back the raki with a wince. Closed his eyes.

And fell flat on his face on the table.

Nunez pried the glass from the unconscious man’s grip and thunked it on the table with extra force in hopes of waking the drunk, but no luck. Kutros was out cold. No more info coming out of him tonight. And if ever Nunez had needed to push a case forward . . .

His instincts told him the Surac woman held answers, and he’d come here tonight to find them—not because of he wanted another look at
her
. He’d dealt with attraction on the job before. What made her draw so tenacious? Could that be part of a well-honed act to lure in unsuspecting servicemen for the Marta woman, who might or might not be a relative?

His gaze zeroed in on Anya, not that he’d let her out of his sight for the whole night, even though she’d managed to somehow avoid ever being his server. Her avoidance spoke louder than any sly look.

She slid out of sight, ducking behind the bar then rising. She carried her purse and a lightweight sweater over her arm.

He bolted from his table, slapping down a stack of bills. He hit the exit in time to catch sight of her rounding a corner. Luck was with him. Even the door dude was busy hassling some poor sap who’d shown up in an off-the-rack suit.

Nunez made tracks around the corner onto a narrow side street. There. He spotted her. She walked quickly under a line of iron balconies, her silky dress and hair glinting from the streetlamps, making her an easy target for anyone.

Doors and windows stayed open in deference to the heat. Sounds of an argument drifted from one house, a crying baby in another, many televisions. The street might be teeming with life indoors, but he doubted anybody would help her. This was a hear nothing, see nothing neighborhood.

Nunez fell in step alongside her. “Remember me?”

“No.” She charged ahead without so much as a glance his way.

“I think you do.” Was he not worth her time because he didn’t wear a uniform?

“I think you are an arrogant man, and I know I am a woman with a gun in her purse pointed at you.”

Impressive. “You have a good grasp of English so understand, I do not plan to give you any reason to use that gun. In fact, I want to see you safely home.”

She stayed silent, her heels still clicking away on the cobblestone path. But she didn’t ditch him.

Or shoot him.

“Where did you learn to speak English so well?”

“I must to work.”

He angled closer. “Although your accent is a little thick.”

“Then ask for someone else to serve you when you come to the club.”

Thick, but sexy. “I can’t seem to place it. Where did you say you’re from?”

“I did not say.”

Stopping under a small archway, she reached into her simple—but top-quality—leather bag. He tensed, ready to take her down at the least sign she intended to plug a hole in his heart. With a flicker of a smile, she pulled free . . . her keys.

“Good night.” She twisted a key in the lock and disappeared inside the narrow building sandwiched between an unending string of others like it. Time-worn paint on stucco. Battered brick.

Places that held shadows and secrets.

Anya bolted all four of the locks behind her before breathing in the relative safety of her home. She clicked on the lights as she strode deeper into her apartment, not that it took her long to reach the kitchen, but the space was all hers.

The press of so many bodies while she worked threatened her oxygen supply. Being a Surac seemed to come with a hefty dose of claustrophobia.