No Stranger to Danger (2 page)

A team of Special Forces had descended upon the compound.

He wasn’t there on a mission. He never had been.

Those Brazilian identities were real … and so was that free trip.

Because of Conyers, he had been the one to close his friend's eyes.

He would never forgive him for that.

It pissed him off more than anything that his former handler had stolen from him the one thing that had ever really mattered.

His honor.

The one thing he had given up everything else for.

He had spent too many years passed from one relative to another, from one boys’ home to another, to make any kind of life in normal society. He had run into his fair share of trouble in his younger years before Staff Sergeant Mark
Michuto
, an Army recruiter, found him and pulled him up on his feet. He'd dusted him off and given him the one chance he had ever had.

Logan owed everything to that man.

The one place he had stuck was in the military. That had been his first real home, his family. He’d joined Special Forces, and then Delta Force had recruited him after Iraq. He'd been traded off more times than he could count, but at least in the military he had been traded because he'd been wanted and needed in another branch.

Then, along came the CIA.

Conyers … Conyers was the kind of handler who trained for one reason—because his trainees' skill reflected well on him and gained Conyers what
he
wanted. Conyers had always needed him to pull the trigger. He had killed for that man. He had done many things he was not proud of. Many things he could not take back and he would live with those things until his dying breath.

All for the sake of his country.

All for the sake of the men he had unknowingly betrayed.

All for the sake of avenging what Conyers had stolen from him.

In the past week, he had bided his time watching his former handler turned wanted fugitive and terrorist. Conyers had become a shadow of his former self: thinner, unshaven. The man had to be frustrated with the shift in power since he lost control of his compound in Brazil. He was a man in too deep for his own good. He only
thought
he held some control here, some form of power. Only because the enemy allowed him to believe it, and Conyers—even as lethal and wise as he had once been—fell hook, line, and sinker for their bait.

A sense of power. That was all it had taken to fell a good man.

Conyers wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t be the last.

Logan watched as a man got out of a black sedan at the curb in front of the building, buttoning his jacket and circling the tail of the car to open the back passenger door. The driver scanned the area and touched an earpiece at his ear. Nadir stepped from the building, approaching the car. He wore a black man-dress and black-and-grey
shemagh
wrapped around his head, the ends
wisping
in the breeze over his shoulders. His beard was long, and, because of the black sunglasses he wore, most of his face was covered. Nadir slipped into the car and the driver hurried back to the front.

Logan kick-started the bike, and it roared, rattling between his legs. He sat back and pulled his helmet over his head, buckling it under his chin—not for protection, but so Nadir couldn't recognize him on the off chance Conyers had mentioned him.

As quickly as the black sedan started, Nadir's car was gone. Logan pulled out of the alley onto the main thoroughfare. There they were, one block ahead at the traffic light, which wasn’t good. He needed cover.

"Logan?"

Logan swallowed hard at the memory of that phone call from Jericho Eden months before.

"I need a favor,"
he'd said.

Logan kept his eyes ahead on the tail of the black car. They turned right, and three cars back, Logan turned right, too.

"Get to
Barbacena
. There's a former CIA operative there by the name of
Carvalho
… I'll drop a preset DAGR in
Valença
. There's a Vale Verde-Texaco
posto
de
gasolina
on
Rua
Do
Barroso
when you come into town. You'll find it in a trashcan at the second pump … Don’t trust sources here…"

That's all he had been able to tell Jericho back in Brazil
.
.

His brother in arms, and he hadn’t been able to do anything more.

Logan took a left behind Nadir's car. Other motorists fell off between them, lessening his cover, forcing Logan to pull over and park at the side of the street until the gap widened.

He waited. Nadir took another turn, and Logan pulled out, zipping ahead down the street to catch up.

Logan took the same turn at the corner, but a small yellowish hatchback cut him off, lessening the space between him and the black sedan.

"Fuck," he said between his teeth.

Logan came to a stop directly beside Nadir's car. His bike idled at the light. With his helmet closed, they couldn’t see him watching from the corner of his eye.

Logan didn’t sweat it.

Nadir had never seen him before.

Logan swallowed hard as the window rolled down and Nadir turned his head, just slightly, and narrowed his eyes on him. Logan glanced over at the dark-skinned man. Nadir cut his eyes even sharper, but didn’t say anything. He just looked at him hard, and just as quickly as he'd rolled the window down, he began to close it.

The light changed, and Logan shot off. He couldn’t take the risk. Nadir wasn’t far behind, and Logan watched him in the small mirror on his right as the gleaming black sedan caught a sharp stab of sunlight when it turned and pulled into a gated villa to the right. The gates opened and shut quickly.

What in the hell had that been about?

Logan clenched his jaw.

When a spook got chills down his back, there was usually a good reason. Logan chose to ignore those reasons and turned his bike around in the direction of his apartment.

Chapter Two

1330 hours, Sunday

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Logan
Cahil
eased open the door to his apartment, M-9 in hand, ready to fire if anyone was inside. He swept the room, clearing left to right. Clear. He went to check the bathroom, nudging the door open with one boot to the bottom. Clear.

He breathed a little easier as he lowered his sidearm and crossed back over the open, one room, Spartan
n
apartment and shut the door. He gave the unwelcoming sight he called home a strange look. It was strange what you could adapt to when you had been without for so long. He didn’t even have a bed. To him, having a bed would be strange.

The center of the room was not large at all, just enough space for a couch and TV.
If
one had a couch and TV. The small alcove to the right was big enough for a bed, and to the immediate right was a small bathroom. Logan flipped on the light and turned from the direction of the bathroom, toward the kitchen. Of the entire apartment, the kitchen was the only place that showed any signs of habitation
.

Logan walked over to the fridge that had been in the apartment, along with a stove and microwave, when he’d signed the rental agreement he had no intention of honoring. He pulled the handle and reached in for a yogurt, then closed the door, turning to the counter where he sat the yogurt cup and
safetied
his 9mm Beretta before he sat it on the bar above the counter next to his laptop.

Logan rolled his shoulders back and stretched his neck from side to side, relieving tension. He had expected more from his visit to Conyers's apartment, but having the mystery chip did make up for the much needed, and elusive, intel on Conyers's US contact. If he could find out that information, he could get the hell out of the Middle East.

Logan peeled back the foil cover on the yogurt and grabbed a plastic spoon from a ripped bag left on the counter, neatly aligned with a roll of paper towels and an empty beer bottle. He crossed from the kitchen to the alcove where his pallet lay rumpled from the previous night. Logan came to a stop in front of the map pinned to the wall. An angle of light cut across the darkened space from the fixture in the center of the apartment.

Logan bent to pull his burner from a tan pocket at the side of his knee, below the tactical leg-holster around his thigh, and pressed the buttons with his thumb to flip through photos he had taken of the map where Conyers had made markings on the grid.

When he found the photo he needed, he dropped the burner back into his pocket. Using his fingers, he traced the coordinates to the same point Conyers had marked on a map in his office. 45° 01' 58" N latitude. 38° 58' 37" E
longitude
. Logan took a red pen clipped to the side of the map and marked the location.
Ekaterinodar
, Russia. That was where Conyers would meet
Sierkoff
next week.

He replaced the pen at the side of the map, and his fingers brushed the only other thing he kept there. Logan paused on a sigh, caught the thin photo between his fingers behind the map, and pulled it out.

He stared down on the worn photo for a long moment. There was a heavy flicker of emotion as he trailed his finger over the badly bent and creased photo. He frowned down on it for a long moment, rethinking everything. Why he had done what he had, why he was doing what he was now. Was it all worth it? He had lost so much already. The photo reminded him how long he had been at this.

He shouldn’t have it with him, but he had never been able to give the picture up. The one last speck from his past, the one smidgen of a reminder of who he had once tried—and failed—to be.

The photo hurt him as much as it strengthened him.

Yeah, you're a fucked up bastard
, he said to himself, closing his eyes, then tucked the photo safely back in place with the not-so-discreet paperclip at the edge of the laminated side.

Logan looked back to the map, surveying the grid coordinates.
What in the hell were they up to?
he wondered as he studied the location of the meet. Logan ate his yogurt as he looked blankly at the map and thought of the intel in his mind. He dropped his plastic spoon into the empty cup and went back to the kitchen to toss his trash in the can. The container hit the bottom with a gentle rustle, and Logan pulled the new intel from his leg pocket and dropped the folded stack on the counter. Maybe he would find something better in this. There was also the intel from Conyers's computer—and the microchip. The chip would take awhile to decrypt, and he would need a few things first before he could extract the information from it.

Whatever it was, he would stake his bet on Conyers wanting it back pretty soon.

Logan lifted his laptop from the bar, set his computer on the counter in front of him, and pushed the screen back. First things first, he took the memory card from his other pocket and plugged it in. Immediately, files began to download, and he unzipped the pocket on his vest and took out the small, black, otherwise harmless appearing microchip that was potentially the most dangerous thing in his apartment.

Logan sat the little chip on the counter and unclipped the belt to his tactical vest, unzipped it, and shrugged it from his shoulders. He tossed it on the counter beside the plastic spoons and took the chip. He went to the small pantry and reached up to pull down a box of cereal, dumping the
Veridisk
card reader on the counter beside him.

Logan snapped the microchip into the slot, and immediately numbers and letters filled the small screen connected to the reader. The data transferred within half a minute to the injectable chip inside the device and beeped when it finished the download.

Logan picked up a syringe on the counter attached with a twenty-five-gauge needle and plucked off the cap with his teeth. He turned at the waist to spit the plastic piece into the trash behind him and then placed the rice-sized chip into the vial, twisting to close it.

He pulled the end of his shirt up to catch under his chin and took the syringe, puncturing his side with the needle and injecting the chip. He grunted at the sharp intrusion and blew out a breath as he pulled out the needle and dropped his shirt. He popped the microchip from the reader and gathered the
VeriDisk
reader and syringe. He tossed them back in the box and replaced it in the pantry.

Just in case.

Damn. He gritted his teeth and touched the tender spot at his side.

Logan blew out a breath as he went back to the computer to check the downloads. Almost there. He turned around the counter and started for the bathroom. He crossed the room and went in. With one last look at the potentially dangerous chip, he dropped it onto the floor and smashed it with his boot. Logan bent to pick up the shattered piece held together only by small gold wires and dropped it into the toilet.

Logan spit on it, and then pulled his dick out for a piss. When he was finished pissing on Conyers's microchip, he shook off and stuffed himself back into his pants, zipping as he went back to the counter and pulled the memory card from the computer. Logan set it aside and started opening files, trashing anything useless.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Sifting through intel was always a pain in the ass. He clicked through the documents, scanning and deleting. Some he pushed over to the side for later. Briefly, he gave a cursory glance to the porn pictures and deleted those, too.

He had seen better.

"Wait," Logan breathed, pausing at an email dated one week back. "Who are you?" he mumbled at the security photo of a young, dark-haired woman taken as she crossed a street.

The photo wasn't porn, though it seemed perhaps Conyers had been hiding the picture amongst the Playboy-style pictures. Logan clicked to enlarge the photo, dragging it over to his desktop, and then opened a new message to send a copy to his own email.

What could Conyers want with this particular woman?

Logan closed out his email and the file, started to open another.

The soft click stopped him.

Logan lifted his sidearm before he even had time to see the man at the door he was aiming at.

As a spy, there was one problem with tracking the person who had trained you: they knew your every move before you made it. Unfortunately, the understanding between trainer and trainee didn't always go both ways. And if they knew you were out for them, that could prove to be a problem.

He officially had a problem.

"Conyers," Logan said. A moment passed between them, quiet and long and hollow. His brow pinched as he watched the man leaning on his doorframe, the door slowly gliding toward the wall and bumping into it.

"Hello, Logan. Long time no see," Conyers said as he strode into the apartment with his air of confidence, as though a well-trained former CIA operative wasn’t leveling a weapon in his direction.

 
"You got a lot of nerve to walk into my apartment alone," Logan said, quick to call his former handler on his lack of precaution.

"Oh?" Conyers said, a swagger in his gait as he came to lean on the bar, not three feet from Logan. "Might I never leave now? You going to kill me? You have a lot of nerve following me around the world, trying to discover my secrets." He paused, studying Logan. "No, you're not going to kill me, not until you can discover what game I'm playing at."

"What are you after?" Logan demanded. He was never one to dick around over bullshit.

"Ha!" Conyers made a pouty face. "Like I would tell you. If I were going to do that, then I would have called you up months ago and let you know so you could go on about your business, but those damn burner phones. They do have one problem and that’s that you can never get a hold of anyone ‘cause your number is always changing."

Conyers's sarcasm was grating.

Logan's jaw ticked. "You knew. How did you know I was here?"

"You see, son, there is one thing I never taught you. Never trust anyone, especially not me." Conyers eyed the weapon pointed at his head and ran his tongue over his bottom lip. He chuckled quietly at the M-9.

"That’s funny," Logan said. "I thought you taught me that lesson quite well in Brazil." He had hardly so much as blinked since Conyers walked in. He didn’t trust the man for even an instant.

Conyers held up a finger. "But
knowing
a person is key. You can always trust in someone's instincts if you know them well enough … and I knew yours. I knew you wouldn’t give up the chase. As for Brazil, well, it really depends on how you look at that misfortunate incident."

There was not a living, breathing man Conyers trusted. The only thing Conyers trusted was that one day he would win this ridiculous attempt at screwing the United States and that was only because Conyers had a misplaced conviction in his own cunning. Logan knew
that
about him; he also knew that deep down Conyers was a coward.

As for himself, he had never trusted either. He had tried. But he had all too good a taste of how dark, deadly, and uncaring humans could be.

Conyers chuckled, swimming in his own twisted humor and looked down, studying the floor a moment. He lifted his arms wide and slowly stepped to the side of the counter. Logan's aim followed.

"
Why
are you here?" Logan asked. "You knew I was in your apartment earlier, so why didn’t you have someone kill me then?"

"You think I'm going to let my highest bidder know someone is hunting me? That there is even the slightest hint of a problem?" Conyers shook his head. "No."

"Sounded like you already had problems aplenty."

Conyers chuckled. "No, no. Except for you, I have no problems, my friend." He slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the bug Logan had placed earlier and tossed it onto the counter.