Payback (8 page)

It
wasn’t until his sister had said he sounded happier that he had realized he
was. He had always dismissed the idea of a long term relationship, his job too
dangerous. He respected the men that did get married and start families, but he
had been to far too many funerals where the grieving widow was handed the
folded flag to ever want to risk doing that to someone.

And it
had left an empty hole inside him that he hadn’t realized was there.

Until
Maggie.

Shit,
you’ve got it bad!

He
knocked again.

“Enter!”

He
opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. “Good afternoon,
Colonel.”

“It’s
Sunday and I’m here. There’s nothing goddamned good about that if you ask my
wife.”

Dawson
chuckled, taking a seat, the Colonel not one for formalities when alone. If the
brass was in town, or some honcho from Washington, he’d go through the motions,
but here, in The Unit, with his men? Never.

Clancy
shoved an unlit cigar in his mouth, chomping on the head.

“I
thought you quit.”

Clancy
looked down at the stogie. “I have.”

“Uh
huh.”

“Hey, as
far as my wife is concerned, I’ve quit. And as far as I’m concerned, unless
there’s smoke coming out of the end of it, I’m not lying.”

Dawson
raised his hands in defeat. “Hey, I’ll never come between a man and his wife.
Or cigar.”

Clancy
grunted, pulling the cigar from his mouth, staring at it. “When the hell did
these things ever become bad for you?”

“Probably
around the time the war on cigarettes was pretty much won.”

Clancy
nodded, stamping the unlit cigar out in his clean ashtray. He shook his head as
he caught himself. “Now they want to tax candy bars and potato chips.” He
glanced back at the cigar. “Perhaps dying early from lung cancer isn’t such a
bad thing.”

“When
they start taxing fun, I’m moving to Cuba.”

“You
mean sex. And if they start taxing that, I’m joining you.”

“Bringing
the missus?”

“As long
as you’re bringing Maggie.”

Dawson
smiled then shrugged. “You never know.”

“Hmmm.
You better not lose me a perfectly good secretary.”

Secretary!

“She’s a
big girl.”

“Yes she
is, with a heart of gold. And the best damned assistant I’ve managed to find.
Don’t eff this up!”

Assistant?

“It’s
only been a few months, sir, I think we’re getting a little ahead of
ourselves.”

“Riight.
That’s what I said to my buddies when I started dating Cheryl. Thirty years
later and I still don’t know what the hell happened.”

“Shotgun
wedding?”

“Nope.
But if her pappy was still around, there’d be shotguns involved if I ever tried
to divorce her.”

“Let’s
hope they don’t bring in the tax then.”

Clancy
chuckled, grabbing the cigar and shoving it back in his mouth. He jabbed a
finger at a folder on his desk, pushing it toward Dawson. “Vice President’s
daughter is missing in Sierra Leone. She’s a doctor, volunteering for two
months with Doctors Without Borders at an Ebola treatment center. A male
doctor, French national, was found beheaded in her quarters. She’s missing
along with a female Ukrainian national, also a doctor. This is from the top.
They want you in Sierra Leone like yesterday. Find her, get her out of the
country, and they don’t care what you have to do to get it done.”

“Team?”

“Four
man, your choice.”

“I’ll
take Niner, Jimmy and Atlas.”

“Good
choices.”

“Cover?”

“You’re Diplomatic
Services. You’ll be permitted side arms and that’s about it. But if the need
should arise, you can get supplied from the USS Simpson. Details are in the
file.”

“When do
we leave?”

“In six
hours.”

“Any
leads?”

“Nothing
yet, but hopefully the CIA will have something for you by the time you get
there.”

“Do we
have a motive? Any ransom demands yet?”

Clancy
shook his head. “Not a peep, but it just happened earlier today. They might be
still securing them.”

“So no
idea who’s behind it.”

“Negative,
but there is an Islamist problem in the area.”

“Church
burnings if I’m not mistaken?”

 Clancy
nodded. “Now that their civil war is over, it’s given them a chance to remember
that the country is over twenty percent Christian. That just doesn’t sit well
with some people.”

“Too
many people.”

“Too
true, but it’s not our job to judge, that’s God’s.”

“And
it’s our job to arrange the meeting?”

Clancy
laughed. “You know, I talked to Stormin’ Norman about that. He never said it.
Loved it, but never said it.”

“Too bad,
it fit him.”

“Fifty
years ago they would have blamed Patton.” Clancy suddenly became serious,
looking straight at Dawson. “Listen, we don’t know who took her or why. All I
do know is that Ebola is running rampant there. You need to be damned careful,
all of you. The last thing I need is one of you becoming infected. The
paperwork will kill me.”

“If the
paperwork doesn’t, Maggie will.”

Clancy
leaned back in his chair. “She’s the first one who’s managed to get her claws
into you without having her heart broken in sixty mikes. How are you feeling
going out on ops knowing that she’s back here, waiting for you?”

Dawson
shrugged. It was something he had been asking himself, and to be perfectly
frank, he felt it hadn’t impacted his ability to do his job at all. He still
took the necessary risks, still did whatever it took with the same regard for
his own life as he had been trained for. Just because he was sent by his
country on dangerous missions didn’t mean it expected him to die for it. It
spent millions of dollars training people like him to do just the opposite.
Dying for your country was a necessary risk, but never an expectation, not in
today’s battlefield. Casualties would happen, but everything would be done to
avoid them. Gone were the days of throwing infantry at fortified positions in
the hopes that eventually someone would break through.

Could a
war like that happen again?

With the
way Russia kept doing moronic things, he sometimes wondered. There were only
three countries he could think of where mass casualties might arise should
there be a conflict. Russia, China and North Korea. They were about the only
countries with standing armies that could be a genuine challenge, but none had
anything America would want, so any altercation would involve fighting them on
soil foreign to both sides.

Poland,
Taiwan, South Korea.

He
shifted in his seat, realizing Clancy was waiting for an answer. “I can’t say
it’s really affected me. I just focus on the job as always. During the downtime
I think about her, but it’s no different than it is for the rest of the guys
who have wives or girlfriends back home.”

“No, but
you’ve always been a loner.”

Dawson
nodded. “True. But I’ve always had family, my men, The Unit.” He paused, his
eyes narrowing. “Why, you worried about me?”

Clancy
chuckled. “Not at all, Sergeant Major, not at all. The day I start to worry
about you is the day you’re out of The Unit.”

Dawson
smiled. “Trust me, sir, you’ll have my resignation first.”

“Of that
I have no doubt.” He pointed at the door with his cigar. “Now go, and be
careful. Leave the viruses where you found them.”

Dawson
rose giving the Colonel a slight bow then left the room, glancing at Maggie’s
empty chair.

And
wondering what it was going to be like going into a true hot zone for the first
time with someone back home he cared about.

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Chris Leroux combed through thousands of hits to the search requests
he had input, his eyes occasionally glazing over forcing him to sit back and
blink a few times. It wasn’t that he was tired, it was just staring at the
screen all day.

And it
had been
all
day.

His
entire team was working overtime, half now, half for the night shift, trying to
find some bit of intel that might lead to the Vice President’s daughter but so
far there had been nothing. But he knew it was just a matter of time. MYSTIC
had been activated, the National Security Agency system capable of recording
every single phone conversation in an entire country. Currently, unbeknownst to
the Sierra Leonean government, their entire country was being eavesdropped on.
And as the computers sifted through the phone calls, converting them into text
where possible, flagging calls with certain keywords, satellites and listening
stations around the globe were pushing reams of data into Echelon, another
system much older than MYSTIC that recorded every single phone call, among
other methods of communication, made from outside the United States.

The data
was there, or it would be. Someone would mention something, and someone would
eventually catch it.

The key
was catching it in time.

And
recognizing it for what it was.

There
was a rap on his door.

“Enter!”

He still
felt a thrill of imitating one of his heroes, Captain Jean Luc Picard. Yes, he
was a geek, and proud of it. Well, maybe not
proud
of it, since he had
led a pretty sheltered, lonely life because of it. But he loved his Star Trek,
Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar and pretty much anything else with ‘star’ in
it, and he wasn’t going to change.

The door
opened and he smiled as his girlfriend, Sherrie White, entered carrying a
bucket of the Colonel’s finest. “I brought you some dinner since I knew you’d
be working late,” she said as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
She gave him a peck then placed the bucket and a large KFC bag on his desk,
removing her jacket and hanging it on the coatrack in the corner.

He took
a moment to appreciate her fantastic curves while she was looking away.

She
caught him.

“See
something you like?”

He
looked away quickly, his eyes shifting to the large brown bag of food, the KFC
logo emblazoned on the side, grease stains already permeating through the paper,
the aroma causing his empty stomach to growl in appreciation.

If
women wanted men to pay more attention to them, perfume should smell like fried
chicken, not flowers.

“You’re
thinking about the fried chicken perfume again, aren’t you?”

He felt
his cheeks flush. “You know me too well.” He stood, opening the bag. “I should
patent it like Dylan says. We’d be rich.”

“Bah,
being rich is too complicated. I like our lives the way they are.”

He
looked inside. “Christ, how much did you get?”

“You
said half your team was here, so I got enough for everyone.”

“Maybe I
better get on that patent,” he said as he removed two large boxes of French
fries. “This must have cost a fortune.”

“It
wasn’t too bad. Besides, my raise just came in.”

“A
whopping one percent like mine?”

“Yup.
But I still get to shoot guns and blow things up, so my meagre salary to keep
our nation safe is still acceptable.”

“When I
agreed to let you move in I figured you’d be making James Bond type money. I
had no idea your salary would be half mine.”

She
shrugged. “If you’re marrying me for my money, you’re wasting your time.”

Marrying!?!

She
looked at him, a smile on her face. “Did I scare you with that word?”

He shook
his head a little too quickly. “No, I mean, um, no.”

She
laughed. “Don’t worry, honey, I’m not Beyoncé. You don’t have to put a ring on
it to get some of this.” She slapped her ass. “But it wouldn’t hurt,” she said
with a wink, opening his office door. “Chris bought KFC!” she called,
immediately eliciting excited, hungry outbursts. His office was quickly filled
with the four people who were working the classified search engines with him.

“Thanks,
boss!” said one of his senior analysts, Marc Therrien, as he took the paper
plate Sherrie handed him. Chicken, fries and potato salad were dished out and
everyone stood around, eating and making idle chitchat, Sherrie, far more
outgoing than Leroux, having everyone in stitches with a tale from her training
at Quantico. Like Leroux, most of his staff were more the introverted type, but
Sherrie simply had a way of putting people at ease.

One of
the many reasons he was desperately in love with her.

Perhaps
marriage isn’t such a bad idea?

The
thought terrified him. And excited him. He never would have imagined he’d even
have the option of getting married, he a loser in his own mind, his friends all
online besides Dylan Kane, a CIA Special Agent who had taken him under his wing
when they were kids at the same high school.

And
because of Kane’s job, he almost never saw him.

Sherrie
falling for him while on assignment was the best thing that had ever happened
to him, and he was terrified every day that she might change her mind. But it
had been almost two years now and they were still going strong.

Maybe
it’s the fact we’re both potential targets of The Assembly.

He
dismissed the thought. The Assembly, a secret organization he had accidentally
uncovered that claimed to have been around for centuries if not longer,
manipulating world events to their liking, was his top secret side project that
Director Morrison had assigned him to. Since the organization had shown no
qualms about killing, he was under 24 hour guard.

His only
truly private time was in the confines of his apartment, though it was swept
before he entered by his detail.