The Reluctant Warrior (Warriors Series Book 2) (6 page)

Broker nodded. He knew the General meant it. He was old school. He had never married, had no children, and had no life other than serving his country.

As he was leaving, he patted Broker on the back and smiled at him fully for the first time. ‘Call Isakson, son. That takes priority over anything else. Don’t let this meeting go in vain.’

Broker sat there for a long while thinking over the meeting. There were a million other ways a meeting could have been arranged with Isakson. The fact that the National Security Advisor had come in person indicated that whatever shit Isakson was dealing with had a stench so strong that it had reached the White House.

It also meant that the NSA was figuring on cultivating his own private intelligence source and wanted to assess Broker in person for that.

In the end it didn’t matter. Broker would meet Isakson and hear him out, but would take his time about it.

Isakson and he had history. Isakson’s slow-footed approach and bungling in the rescue of the hostages had cost Broker dearly.

Broker had lost his best friend, his brother operative Zebadiah Carter, in that rescue. They had secured the safe release of the hostages, and Holt had been killed, but Zeb hadn’t survived the rescue.

Never a day passed that Broker did not miss Zeb.

The barista behind the counter had been flirting with Broker all day. She was several years younger than him, but he appealed to her. There was something to him, and she had been planning to slip him her number when he came up to pay the check.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes as she was serving another customer, and her heart skipped a beat. Gone was the humor in his face, and in its place was a cold, dark look. She looked back to her customer, smiling brightly. On second thoughts, he reminded her of a wolf, best left alone.

Chapter 8

Broker caught an evening flight back to New York, and it was close to midnight by the time he reached his apartment on Columbus Avenue, near Central Park. His apartment also doubled as his office; in fact, he had a couple of other such establishments across the downtown area. One never knew when one apartment would be compromised, and in his line of business, redundancy always paid.

The door to his apartment was wood, with a plain finish; inside the door was armored steel that was thick enough to stop everything thrown at it short of a rocket launch. The steel could retract in the frame of the building if needed, turning the door to a more ordinary one. To the right of the door was a DNA and iris scanner under a concealed flap. Broker stepped in and turned off the invisible lasers and all the other nasties in store for an intruder. He headed to his office and booted up his machine after pouring himself a rich black coffee from the Jura on a corner table.

Broker spent the next couple of hours tweaking the spiders he had on the Internet, which were his ears to all the chatter that passed online. Other programs overlaid the chatter with real-time events, such as the visit of the Iranian Defense Minister to North Korea, Somalian pirates capturing a Pakistani merchant vessel, China buying mines in Australia.

Werner, his artificial intelligence engine, brought all these together and came up with various hypotheses. His analysts then took the hypotheses and correlated those with the humint and created the finished product – the most sought-after intel that had made Broker the best known intelligence trader.

The Pentagon and the National Security Agency had tried to buy Werner several times. Broker wasn’t selling.

After a nap, Broker called a couple of numbers late in the morning.

‘This had better be good,’ growled a voice from the first number he called. Bear – six foot five and as wide as a barnyard door, all of it hard muscle, and sporting a thick beard, which was why he was called that – was never a morning person when he was in between assignments. Bear and his partner, Chloe, specialized in close body protection. Amongst other things.

‘And a good morning to you too.’ Broker smiled.

‘Hell, man, you know me by now.’ Bear yawned hugely, looking out at the sun bathing Los Angeles. ‘How’s the chatter business?’

‘Still pays my bills. What are you guys up to now? Chloe around?’

‘She’s gone for her 10K run. You know how she is with her running and walking. I’ve told her many times that the Good Lord let man invent wheels for a reason.’

Broker chuckled. Bear was as fit as any top operative, but never saw the point in not taking it easy when he could. Chloe, a physical contrast to Bear with her petite, dark-haired frame, ran a 10K on days she took it easy.

Afghanistan was where they had met, the heat and the mountains providing a backdrop to their wordless romance.

Born an army brat, Chloe Sundstrom had moved from base to base all over the world, and had seen her father retire as an E-8 in the 101st Airborne. A single child, she was treated as an adult by her parents at a very early age, and Master Sergeant Sundstrom’s ‘No sweat, no cake’ motto in life, became hers too.

Joining the army was a natural choice for her, and determined to see active duty, she was also hell-bent on going farther than her dad. That determination drove her through college ROTC with a scholarship, through Airborne School at Fort Benning, and the 82
^nd
Airborne got a newly minted Second Lieutenant.

Operation Allied Force in Kosovo was Chloe’s first major deployment, when the 2
^nd
Battalion, 505
^th
Parachute Infantry Regiment was sent to the Albanian Kosovan border to support NATO’s bombing of the Serbian forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic.

The battalion later became the first ground force to go in the Balkans. Army women weren’t supposed to be deployed in combat roles… in reality they got in the thick of action just as male soldiers did; it just wasn’t public knowledge. Chloe was a battle-hardened veteran by the time the 82
^nd
’s soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. Afghanistan was a country ravaged by decades of war, a land where tribes frequently fought each other, a land where hope struggled to survive.

It was also a land of great beauty, dotted with villages where time moved much slower. Chloe fell in love with the towering stillness of the Hindu Kush Mountains first, and the rest of the land won her over.

It was the country where she fell in love.

The Special Operations teams from the 5
^th
Special Forces Group (Airborne) were stationed in the same base as hers, and it was hard to miss Sergeant Bozo (Bear) Parvizi.

The Special Forces teams tended to keep to themselves and carried an aura around them. Bear didn’t need auras. With his height and presence, Bear just was. He had noticed Chloe, her liquid ease in the heat of Afghanistan, her cool glances when their gazes met, a magnet in the mess hall.

They spent their entire time in that hot spot without uttering a word to each other, but had a heightened awareness when the other was in proximity. Chloe had tracked Bear down when they both left the army – it wasn’t difficult, since Bear was searching for her too – and the mute romance found its voice.

Bear was the middle child in a family of five and had to compete harder for attention from his parents than his other siblings. In a family that was loud and raucous, Bear was different. He was an introvert and had no interest in joining the family business in Saint Paul. The family ran a wildly successful take-away business, the only one in the city that combined Persian and Italian cuisine. Bear’s dad was of Persian origin; his mother of Italian descent.

While his brothers manned the counter, took orders, helped in the kitchen, or drove through the town, delivering, Bear dreamt of wider spaces, of places where he was accepted for who he was.

A bright student, he crushed high school, and just as his parents harbored ambitions of him being a doctor or a lawyer, he broke the news to them that he’d joined University of Minnesota’s ROTC course.

They spent months bitterly arguing with him, trying to get him to consider other career choices, but Bear was adamant.

Bear’s relationship with his family never recovered, and at his annual commissioning ceremony, he was the only graduate who had no family attending. Bear swallowed his disappointment, squared his shoulders, and 2
^nd
Lieutenant Bozo Parvizi made the army his family.

‘And no, we aren’t doing anything. A few jobs have come up but weren’t interesting enough. You got something for us?’ Bear asked with a hopeful note in his voice.

‘Someone has reached out to me. Might be nothing, might be something. Stay loose.’ Broker gave him some more details and then hung up.

The second number that Broker called rang for a long time before being picked up.

‘What?’ barked a voice.

Broker looked at his phone for a moment. Phone manners. He blamed the Internet for their death.

‘That cost me a five-pounder, so get on with it,’ growled the voice without waiting for Broker’s acknowledgement.

‘Where are you guys?’ Broker finally got a word in.

‘Broker? Hell, why didn’t you say so. Your number didn’t show.’ The voice lightened.

Broker rolled his eyes. Before he could answer, he heard another voice in the background shouting.

‘Rog, what the fuck are you doing there? You can talk to your girlfriend all day later. Come over here and help me,’ said the voice irritatedly.

‘It’s Broker,’ Roger shouted back.

There was a pause, and then the voice shouted back, ‘Does he have work for us?’

‘Bwana asks if you have work for us,’ Roger dutifully reported back to Broker.

Broker laughed. ‘I heard. Not yet but maybe soon. Where are you guys?’

Roger ignored him and called out, ‘Nope, he says maybe soon.’

‘Well, then, hang up and get over here.’ Bwana’s voice rose again.

‘Hell, you’re doing fine without me. Let me talk to Broker,’ Roger replied back.

‘Why am I not surprised? The black guy ends up on the shit detail always,’ grumbled Bwana, his voice fading away as he got back to whatever he was doing.

‘We’re down south, near the Mexican border, our side of it.’ Roger got back to Broker. ‘We were in Mexico a few weeks back, on a job for their government, and since that finished, we’ve been on a fishing holiday, drifting our way upwards. How’re you doing, and where are Bear and Chloe?’

‘I’m good, and they’re in L.A. They too are between assignments. Listen, do you have anything lined up?’

‘Nope. You know how we hate hard work! We might start looking out for some work once we reach the Midwest, but for now, we’re good.’

‘Fab. I might have something for you shortly. There is something bubbling away, and it might come to a boil soon.’

Roger turned serious. ‘Broker, you just have to say the word and we’ll drop whatever we’re doing and turn up. Shooting, if necessary.’

‘Yup, I know. Stay cool,’ Broker replied and hung up.

Broker leant back in his chair in satisfaction. He had his team.

Clare had set up the Agency to take on the deepest black assignments that no other intelligence or defense agency would undertake. Taking down terrorist cells, tracking down stolen nuclear warheads, infiltrating intelligence agencies of rogue nations, rescuing high-value hostages, and sanctioned assassinations… the assignments were varied and were
all
deniable.

To maintain deniability and anonymity, she wanted an elite team who was comfortable with living and working in the shadows. She had come across Zebadiah Carter because she knew his sister, Cassandra, who had been her roomie at Bryn Mawr. She’d been intrigued when Cass had casually mentioned her brother as being some kind of Special Ops superman, and when she’d read his file – which only a handful of people had access to – she’d been impressed.

Zeb Carter had quit the Special Forces and was a private military contractor. A mercenary for those who didn’t believe in political correctness.

Zeb was a merc with a difference. He took on only those assignments that fit his tight moral code, and one of those codes was nothing against the national interest. The other was no war on women and children.

She had sounded him out about working with her, and it was Zeb who’d suggested that they create a team of elite agents who were all mercenaries, but whose first allegiance was to the Agency. She had left Zeb to build the team, knowing that he would not only handpick the best from the best, but also those who shared his moral code.

Zeb came back to her with the profiles of Broker, Bear, Chloe, Bwana and Roger – all of them ex- Special Forces and in Broker’s case, ex-Ranger – and the Agency was in business. Zeb was their leader, and Broker his right-hand man. She had once laughingly referred to them as her Warriors.

The name stuck.

Broker picked up the tail easily the next day. They were a two-man tag team who alternated every couple of blocks as Broker strolled down Fifth Avenue toward Lower Manhattan. They were good, but they stayed on him a bit too long before alternating. Broker’s radar pinged in the second block, and he casually slipped on a pair of shades.

These weren’t ordinary shades.

Broker had taken a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator shades and had outfitted them with the tiniest pinhole cameras looking rearward. The cameras projected tiny images on the inner lenses, images that the eyes could read easily. The cameras projected in either video or still mode by flicking a tiny switch on the hinge of the shades.

Broker made the operatives easily once he reached East Thirty-Fifth Street. He ambled into a café and nursed his caffeine fix as he thought. They were well dressed, but not expensively dressed so not from a hotshot security company and neither were they from rent-a-cop. He went through the assignments on his plate currently, and whilst all of them carried a significant risk, he didn’t think any of those assignments had led to these tails. They could be onto him because someone was interested in knowing why he’d met the National Security Advisor, but Broker was reasonably sure who these tails were and why they were following him.