The Protector (27 page)

Hawk handed him a piece of paper, indicating a need for secrecy. Jazz read the small and neat handwriting. “Recently, we have found proof of the traitors selling our high-tech weaponry secrets to arms dealers. Mad Dog made a deal with GEM. Their top operatives have been working to infiltrate several very well-known arms dealers the last few years. Marlena Maxwell in D.C. was Phase Two. Our side wants the location of where the latest cache of weapons was dropped. It has to do with X-S-BOT. I’ve been ordered to do Phase Three and GEM will facilitate my new role. I’ll be in deep cover for probably up to six months, infiltrating Dilaver’s network.”

“Alone.” It wasn’t a question. Jazz already understood that it was a lone assignment. One clearly couldn’t access Dilaver’s network with a team of SEALs. His statement was meant to underline the danger of the job of working as a double agent. “What’s the assignment?”

“Find out his U.S. contacts and where he hides the ‘extra’ weapons sent by our traitors. Break down his army in zones. But most important of all, destroy the latest shipment. Then run like hell.” Hawk cracked a small smile. “With the knowledge in my head, they’ll be hunting me down. I have to pass it along to another contact just in case they capture me.”

Jesus. The KLA had, among various factions, a formida
ble army of gangsters. They and other Dilaver gang members would find Hawk and kill him, if they had to go house to house. His friend was foreseeing the possibility of being exterminated before he could escape, thus the shopping list, the letter, and the will.

They eyed each other for a full, sobering minute. Hawk and he had made an agreement a long time ago. If one didn’t make it, the other would take care of personal things. If by chance, one went missing, the other was to somehow do the impossible—find out whether he was dead or alive so family members could be told one day.

“You’d better come home in one piece, buddy, or I’d have to tell all those Steves and Stevens you got drunk and drowned during training,” Jazz said quietly. “They won’t believe me and I don’t feel like beating up a bunch of your relatives when they attack me for lying to them.”

Hawk grinned. “I’ll try my best to save your pretty face from my family.”

“And I need you back in case I need a best man,” Jazz added.

Hawk played with the pen, studying him thoughtfully. “Sure she’s the one?”

Jazz nodded. “It’ll take time to get her to come around to thinking about being with me.” He hesitated, then added, “Okay, so I don’t really know how I’m going to accomplish that.”

Not when they hadn’t actually talked about the future. So far, he had just found out about her past.

“Find out her real name,” Hawk advised.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know that opera called
Turandot
?”

Jazz walked over to the small table where he had set all the food containers. “I need food. My twin is talking Puccini with me,” he addressed no one in particular.

“I saw the opera with Steve and Marlena in D.C.”

Now he remembered. Cucumber, Dirk, and Mink had talked about that particular night not long after their big
shootout. Of course, their version had nothing to do with the opera. In fact, he recalled hearing that Cucumber had slept through the whole show.

“Okay, let’s talk
Turandot
,” Jazz said as he sniffed at an orange-colored concoction.

“It’s about a beautiful princess who won’t marry you unless you answer three riddles correctly. If you fail, she orders your execution.” Hawk used his pen to demonstrate a mock beheading. “Pretty cold lady.”

“So, are you trying to tell me I’m going to fail or that I’m going to win Vivi’s hand? This mango rice is delicious, by the way.”

Hawk stood up and went to join him at the table. He scooped up some of the rice with his hand. “I’m betting on you to get all those riddles right, buddy.”

“Oh, good. You’re on my side. I thought you were interested in the princess and were wishing me to be the unfortunate dead suitor.”

Hawk reached for more rice. “What, you want competition? Isn’t that a bit tough when I’m not around to win?”

Jazz pushed the container out of the way. “My food. I can’t win what’s mine.”

A smile tugged at his friend’s lips. “Touché,” he said. “Just remember one thing, and I’m telling you because I’m your best-est friend who wants to see you win your girl.”

“You’re getting soft and sentimental.”

“I’m going away for a while. Who’s going to give you all that girly advice while I’m gone? Are you letting your sisters do your work for you?”

Jazz shuddered. He could just see all his sisters around Vivi. They loved him fiercely and would probably scare Vivi to death with instructions and questions. “Fine. Tell me what to do, Dear Abby.”

“The princess has a riddle, man. Answer it.”

Jazz chewed for several seconds. “You’re kidding right? You’re asking me to follow an opera’s storyline. That’s your girly advice?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it sucks.”

“Think it over tonight while you jerk off.”

“I’d rather think of Vivi, thank you.”

They bantered lightheartedly for a few minutes before Hawk went back to his desk. They had to go to debriefing soon. Jazz ate quietly, watching his friend write. It was sort of macabre to eat and observe Hawk taking measures against an uncertain future. Just in case.

Time was so precious in this world. He wanted Vivi in it. In a perfect future, he would wish for his best friend to be there for his wedding.

“It’d be a pleasure to get to kiss such a beautiful princess bride,” Hawk murmured without looking up, uncannily reading his mind as usual.

“I might even let you, my friend.”

A riddle, huh? He’d better brush up on his
Turandot
story.

In spite of her aversion to military talk and political
tactics, Vivi had to admit that Admiral Madison cut a very commanding and captivating figure on the big screen. He must be very impressive in person. He certainly had a way with words, cutting to the chase without any frills or pompous references. She could see his men looked at him as a role model; every time he spoke, it was as if Moses was handing down the Commandments.

She had always been cynical about the top brass—they were up there, looking down, and usually never knew what was truly happening. Admiral Madison struck her as someone who actually did care about his men and their lives. He was strong and authoritative, yet took the time to listen to Hawk and Jazz when they had something to say, and he certainly gave a lot of weight to T.’s advice. It wasn’t a show he put on, like some higher-ups did when there were female figures around. He was neither condescending nor smarmy, and Vivi found herself actually paying attention to everything he said.

GEM was in a covert war within a covert war, and she played a tiny part in it now, like it or not. Her current contract had to do with women and children, but now that she had agreed to help Armando Chang, she would have to insert her
self into Phase Three. She hadn’t planned to before, but Armando’s desperation had touched her. He was looking for a missing sister. Even if he hadn’t baited her with Sia-Sia, she might have taken up his cause.

She bit back a wry smile. Or maybe not. She was still mad at his underhanded tactic but a part of her was grudgingly acknowledging his skill at having gone undetected by her. She was very good at what she did; she usually knew when someone was following her around, but Armando Chang had successfully evaded her. She knew that had caught her chief’s attention.

Kosovo. KLA. Arms dealing and drugs. Macedonian cartels. Those contracts had never interested her before. Her focus had always been on more immediate things, like tracking female slavery and child abuse. Those were important causes to her.

Yet T. and Admiral Madison had given her a new view of how everything was connected in this horror. And how tangled the web of political intrigue was. The different wars in Kosovo had given too many factions reasons to abuse power.

“I know sometimes we don’t see the big picture,” the admiral addressed them quietly. “If you ask the average person on the street, they can’t tell you anything about the battles going on that our young men are fighting. They will say the general things—the war against terrorism, against despots, against injustices. You who fight in the trenches know these things are just faceless banners. They don’t mean a damn thing. Whether it’s the heat of the jungle or desert or anywhere on this earth, each of us battles small pockets that sometimes don’t even make sense.

“The newspapers give a lot of attention to the public battles. I also know you could care less what the papers report while you’re sweating your asses off knee-deep in mud and blood. There is no glory in what we do, men. And ladies, too, pardon me, T. and Miss Verreau. We are in a covert war that grows more urgent everyday because our enemies—the real ones—play shadow games. Our troops are fighting battles
with the enemies’ foot soldiers. That is all very well and important. It’s essential to destroy our enemies’ weapons—human and nonhuman.

“But let’s be clear among ourselves about the invisible front—we who stand in the crossfire. I have come to realize that we must also win the war behind the war. That’s the job of special ops units such as ours in this room. Both our worlds must work together for optimum success. One is our world of dirty fighting, going right at the source, those damn cartels and factions that run all the illegal activities that finance terrorism. The other is infiltration and covert subversion, which the COS commandos and GEM operatives do. Our battles are different—we SEALs favor quick injection of violence, in and out, with maximum destruction of potential enemy networks; they, on the other hand, specialize in going in deep and working among our enemies for long periods to gain insight and knowledge. But we are also alike in many ways. We lurk in the shadows to find the real enemy. We do a lot of the dirty work behind the scenes because it’s necessary. We are in the crossfire because we’re the invisible warriors. If anything goes wrong, the average Joe on the street will never know the real story.”

The admiral paused, and even across the miles, his blue eyes were direct and steady. Vivi found herself holding her breath, waiting for him to continue. She had never seen the big picture the way he had described it. He made sense out of a lot of confusion. At one point, she caught T.’s eyes on her, studying her reaction to what was a pep talk for a group of soldiers. T. understood her discomfort with the talk of war and battles. To her, soldiers had always done the destruction, created the problems; her job dealt with the aftermath. But Admiral Madison’s speech gave a new spin.

“I’m here in D.C. because of this shadow war. State secrets and high technology are being sold by traitors within our borders to illegal cartels merging like Wall Street corporations. There are countries eager to buy this information. Intel. Arms dealing. Sex trade. Drugs. They all combine to
finance power. We just caught one of these traitors recently, but not before he had done untold damage to our nation. Not only did some of our SEAL brothers die because of this scum, but probably many other covert operatives have been sacrificed.

“The latest discovery—not told to the public, of course—is some dropped shipments of high tech weapons not meant for the KLA or any foreign troops. From our investigations here, we know Dilaver either knows where they are or has them. We need to find and destroy these shipments or risk bigger and more expensive wars. I’m sending in a lone infiltrator, just like GEM and COS Command has already done. This man will work with their man. He will go back to Kosovo with Dilaver—alone.

“There will be one more joint mission that will give our man the opportunity to insert himself as Dilaver’s helper. The specifics of the operation will be given to you by Tess Montgomery, a very capable strategist in her own right. You—and I mean everyone in this room—are an invisible warrior, a soldier who is in the crossfire taking all the risks while avoiding being caught. Know this. You are the big picture. Get the job done and come back home safely, men.”

The whole speech was spoken without any drama. Admiral Madison’s approach was simpler—he was sincere and direct and he didn’t mince his words. Vivi, seldom impressed by military trappings, felt the tingle down her spine, the kind that made one feel proud and good about oneself. This, she thought in private amazement, was NOPAIN at its best. The admiral must either be a natural or had a hell of an instructor. Again, she caught T.’s gaze and thought she saw the tiniest gleam from those amethyst eyes.

Yet, she couldn’t dispute the truth of what Admiral Madison outlined. The sex trade was just the tip of the iceberg. And the drugs. She gave a mental shake of disgust. This drug that made its victims helpless…she shuddered inwardly. The information her superiors had given was grim. From GEM’s view, sex trade plus drugs equals fi
nance for arms dealing. From Admiral Madison’s side, the arms dealers weren’t just dealing with illegal weapons floating around from obsolete Soviet countries, but they are also vying for power in an unstable region. The endgame was simple. The faction with the biggest weapon to sell to the highest bidder would win.

She felt somebody tap her shoulder and turned. Jazz’s blue eyes smiled down at her. There was an intimacy in his gaze, even though his expression remained solemn. She smiled, unsure of what to say. The admiral had also pressed home a point that she had never considered. Funny. And totally ironic. She was a soldier.

Jazz knew that it was going to be impossible to be alone with Vivi for the rest of the day. She was talking to her chief, Tess Montgomery, whom Mad Dog had introduced briefly. There was something different about the new GEM operative who had joined them. It wasn’t just because the woman looked more like a movie star than an operations chief. Tall, long-legged, with flowing reddish hair that floated loosely to her hips, she wasn’t dressed like any operations chief about to conduct official business. It was the effect she had on his team. In fact, he could have sworn when she winked at his team as she passed them, some of them shuffled their feet. That certainly wasn’t the usual attitude he knew his team had when it came to beautiful women. He caught the Stooges giving each other secret signals.

He frowned. Hawk was talking to Tess with an easy familiarity that suggested he’d met her before. He noticed that Vivi was also watching and frowning, as if she, too, was thinking the same thing.

This was the woman he had to spend time with to go over strategy about what his team needed to do to insert Hawk. Instinct told him that she was more than she appeared to be, that the glamour she projected was an illusion. She looked vaguely familiar, but he was sure they hadn’t met before. No
one could possibly forget those Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Vivi looked over and gestured to him to join them.

“Lieutenant Zeringue, this is my chief, T.,” she said. “She’s been involved in all the phases of the operation, and that’s why she’s here today to brief you.”

There was a dry note to Vivi’s voice, as if she was absolutely aware of how her chief affected men in general.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“T.,” she said easily, shaking his hand. “That way you won’t get confused when people call me by other names later.”

“T.” he agreed. Other names?

“I heard you’re pretty proficient with the piano, Lieutenant. I gather, from your handle, that you favor jazz and blues?” She had a beautiful speaking voice, the kind that advertisers go after. His musician ears appreciated the different inflections she placed on words.

“Yes, being from Louisiana…” He shrugged.

“You have to play me something one of these days, when we aren’t so busy. I have a particular blues song that is my favorite.”

“Sure. What is it?”

Her beautiful eyes had a gleam in them as she flashed a breathtaking smile at him. “Oh, it’s about the usual blues thing. Masquerade and masks, things to do with the heart.”

Vivi was frowning. “T….” Jazz caught a hint of a warning in her tone of voice. “I believe we don’t have much time to talk about music.”

“There’s a lot of choreography in music and war, darling. Don’t you agree, Hawk?”

He was right about his earlier impression. T. and Hawk were on a first-name basis. His frown deepened. When did they meet? Hawk had never mentioned her—just Marlena Maxwell and Vivi—whenever they had talked about GEM.

“Yes, although Jazz would tell you that they are opposites. One is creation and the other is destruction,” Hawk said.

“Interesting point. And Lieutenant Zeringue is skilled in both.” T. arched an eyebrow.

Jazz lifted a shoulder. He hadn’t thought about it that way. “I’m good at arranging things in sequence,” he said mildly.

“It’s all sight and sound, isn’t it? Things can be created for destruction and vice versa, hmm? And sometimes what you can’t see can turn out either way, right?”

Jazz frowned. He had no idea what the woman was talking about. He hoped she didn’t speak in those terms when she gave him the information about the Triads’ bunker or he was going to have a hell of a time figuring things out. “I suppose,” he hedged cautiously.

“T., stop messing with his mind,” Vivi interrupted at that moment, her voice low. “We don’t have time for this.”

Tess Montgomery gave him a cryptic smile. “Timing—very important in music and explosives,” she told him, then abruptly turned back to Hawk. “Introduce me to your men, Hawk. I’ve heard such good things about them.”

Hawk flashed Jazz a quick grin, amusement stamped on his face, before going off with the GEM operative. Jazz knew that expression well. It meant his friend knew things that he wasn’t going to share yet. He turned to Vivi.

“How’s your back? Did you do something about the scratches?” he asked.

She looked surprised, as if his concern was unexpected. Did she think he wouldn’t remember the scratches? “I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll probably feel it more tomorrow.”

“Tired?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you suggesting that I can’t keep up with you?”

He widened his eyes innocently. “I was going to suggest that I continue to keep up with you. But only if you aren’t too tired, of course.”

She kept her expression severe even though a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “I knew it,” she mocked. “I knew I shouldn’t have slept with you. Now all you’re going to think about is me naked in the woods, tearing your clothes
off, pushing you to the ground, climbing on top of your naked body and having my way with you.”

Jazz groaned at the instant reaction the description brought up. “You win,” he said, ruefully hoping no one would notice his condition.

Vivi snickered. “Men are so easy.”

“I wish we were alone again. Then I could show you how easy I can be.”

She hesitated. “I…wish that too.”

He hid his satisfaction. He understood how difficult it was for her to admit that. He had to be very careful with how he worded his next few sentences. “I don’t know how tight the schedule will be,
chouchou
, but I’d like to have dinner with you. I know it’s going to be very busy for both of us the next few days and without a way of contacting you, I’m at a disadvantage.” He took a step closer. “Call me?”

“And if I don’t?”

He cautioned himself again. “You’ll hurt my feelings. I’ll feel used and abused,” he deadpanned. “You’ll feel guilty about how you’ve hurt me for the rest of your life. And it’ll be your fault if I play ‘Oh Susannah’ mournfully on the Dan Nhat like some lovesick puppy, dying from unrequited love. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”

His attempt to keep it as lighthearted as possible worked. Amusement chased away the hesitation in her eyes. She shook her head. “I believe you. I heard your first attempt,” she said wryly. “I’ll call.”

“Soon,” he pressed. He wasn’t quite
that
patient.