Special Ops Exclusive (4 page)

“Tonight?” she said in alarm.

“Tomorrow morning, but only if the crowd is still unruly.”

Rebecca suppressed a sigh. Wonderful. Get Trampled in a Stampede, Part Two.

“Fine. Call me if you find out more about Barrett, okay?”

“Of course. Good night, Becks. Great reporting today.”

She hung up the phone and stared at the picture of Nick on her computer screen. Lord, the man was
delicious
.

A part of her almost wished she’d saved the big I-know-who-you-are reveal until
after
she’d slept with the man.

A shiver rolled through her as she wondered what he’d be like in bed. He looked and acted like such a gentleman, but she’d glimpsed the passion in his amber-colored eyes as they’d swept over her body. Would he be sweet and gentle beneath the sheets? Or did he leave his chivalry at the door when it came to sex?

Disappointment filled her belly as she realized she’d never get the chance to find out.

What’s more important, Becks—sex or a Pulitzer?

Right. She definitely needed to focus on the latter. No matter how attractive Nick Barrett was, his delectable body wasn’t the ultimate prize.

No, his secrets were what she was after.

* * *

The call came to one of his private cell phones. Not the one reserved for business or the one he used for personal calls. This phone was for
personal business.

The kind of business that every last man in D.C.’s political arena dabbled in—and would deny to their last breath.

“What is it?” He kept his voice low and his gaze fixed on the closed office door.

Although he was burning the midnight oil, there was always an overeager aide or two beyond that door, just waiting to do some ass kissing.

“We might have found them.”

He didn’t need to ask
who?
The hunt for those bothersome soldiers had been the proverbial thorn in his side this past year.

“Which one slipped up?” he demanded.

“If the intel checks out? Barrett.”

Frustration seized his insides. Damn it. Barrett was the
last
man he wanted to kill.

Hell, he had no desire to kill
anyone.

“Where is he?”

“Cortega. He met with a journalist who’s covering the election crisis down there. Rebecca Parker.”

Christ. A reporter? And Parker, in particular? That woman was far too smart for her own good. And damn ambitious.

Why would Barrett be talking to her?

He shifted uneasily in his chair. Had the soldiers found something to connect him to the Meridian virus?

“Parker’s producer has been making phone calls all night,” the man on the other end of the line continued. “He raised several flags when he started asking questions about Barrett.” A pause. “If Barrett is in Cortega, what would you like to do about it?”

He went silent, mulled it over, sighed in reluctance. “Send a team down there. Take care of the problem—but not until he gives up the location of the other two.”

“Sir, with all due respect...”

He clucked in irritation. “Spit it out, Carraway.”

“Our primary concern was that the soldiers would realize the deaths in Corazón were caused by a virus rather than the ULF rebels. At that point, the goal was to silence the unit before they questioned what happened in the village.” Another pause. “But now the whole country knows that a virus was being tested in San Marquez.”

Bitterness clamped around his throat. The whole country
did
know, a fact that continued to infuriate him. Project Aries had been shrouded in secrecy from the get-go. Nobody was ever supposed to know that an American-engineered biological weapon was being tested on foreign soil, and the truth would have stayed hidden if it weren’t for that greedy scientist at the lab that created the Meridian virus.

That slimeball Stephen Langley had sold the virus to a terrorist group, who in turn revealed to the world that the virus was U.S.-made and government-authorized. And now, thanks to Langley’s betrayal, the DoD had formed a damn task force to determine who was responsible for Project Aries.

Not that he was worried about it leading back to him—he had several fail-safes in place.

Several scapegoats, too.

“Now that the truth is out, the soldiers aren’t a threat,” Carraway went on. “It’s not like they can expose us.”

“Not a threat?” He chuckled harshly. “Special Ops soldiers are a different breed. They’re ruthless, smart, unforgiving. They won’t stop until they find the person responsible for ordering the elimination of their unit.”

“A unit that shouldn’t have been sent to Corazón in the first place,” was the embittered response. “A cleanup team was already on its way. The rebels would’ve been taken care of and the deaths of the villagers and the medical staff would’ve been blamed on Hector Cruz and his men. But no, thanks to a communication mix-up, a Special Forces team was sent to answer Dr. Harrison’s SOS.”

“There’s nothing we can do about that now,” he said with a heavy breath. “Mistakes were made. The unit was erroneously dispatched, and now we have three loose ends to take care of. So send a team to Cortega and deal with it.”

“What about Parker?”

He thought it over, his stomach going rigid with anger. Damn it. Why had Barrett met with Parker?

And what the hell had he told the woman?

“Take care of her, too,” he finally replied.

A long beat. “It will be difficult to separate her from her crew, and any sort of interrogation would have to be handled delicately. She can’t know why she’s being questioned.”

“Then don’t question her. The woman is smart. She’ll see through any phony interrogation attempts, and she’ll keep investigating, especially if she’s asked to stop.”

“What are you saying, sir?”

“The protesters are still causing trouble in Mala, are they not?” he said slowly.

“As far as I know, yes.”

“And Parker is right in the middle of the action.” He released a weary sigh. “Take her out of the equation. Make it look like part of the riot. Her whole crew, if possible.” He paused. “The producer, too.”

“This is risky. Has the potential to blow up in our faces.”

“We don’t have any other choice.”

“I suppose.” Carraway sounded unconvinced.

He suddenly felt incredibly frazzled, like this entire situation was slipping out of his control. “Just get it done,” he snapped. “Barrett, Parker, their associates...get rid of them all.”

Chapter 5

M
uch to Nick’s displeasure, Salazar texted the next morning to reschedule their meeting. Again. With the streets of Mala still in uproar, the presidential guard was committed to keeping the country’s leader safe from the unruly people who refused to acknowledge Garza’s power.

Cortega’s military and law enforcement officers weren’t equipped to deal with a riot of this magnitude. Barricades were being knocked down by the angry mob, all attempts by the tactical team to control the crowd had gone nowhere, and more and more people continued to arrive; some hailed from Cortega, others came from all over the world to show their support for the struggling citizens.

Nick had had enough of it all. He’d spent the morning in one of the city’s most dangerous and derelict neighborhoods trying to track down El Nuevo Diablo. Nearly every man, woman and child living in those projects had refused to speak to him. Those who did demanded compensation for their time, but once he told them who he was looking for, they swiftly handed him back the cash and claimed ignorance. They were so terrified of El Nuevo Diablo that they wouldn’t even accept a cash bribe that could’ve put food on their tables for months.

Now Nick was once again riding the elevator up to his hotel room. He had nothing to do but wait for Eva to get him the name of a con man who supposedly sold fake IDs down by the docks, but Nick doubted Paul Waverly would’ve used anyone less than the best. It was still worth looking into, though.

The elevator doors opened with a loud chime and Nick headed down the carpeted hallway toward his room. He was ten steps from the door when his instincts began to buzz and the little hairs at his nape stood on end.

Something was off.

Without slowing or altering his pace, he continued his approach, his gaze immediately noting the barely visible scratches around the keyhole on the doorknob. Someone had picked the lock.

Nick kept walking. Right past his room. All the way to the stairwell door at the end of the hall.

His hand slid beneath his long-sleeved shirt and down to the waistband of his cargo pants where he’d tucked his 9-millimeter SIG SAUER. He’d just gotten a grip on the weapon when a door flew open from behind.

He spared a hasty glance over his shoulder and saw a tall, muscular man filling the doorway of Nick’s hotel room.

As their eyes locked, triumph lit the stranger’s eyes and his hand whipped up to reveal a .45 handgun with a suppressor affixed to its muzzle.

“We’ve got him!” the man shouted.

Son of a bitch.

Nick dived into the stairwell, adrenaline burning in his blood and fueling his actions. He raced down the stairs, his boots slapping the concrete floor with each hurried step. He’d just reached the third-floor landing when he heard the fifth-floor stairwell door burst open from above.

Footsteps thudded on the stairs, spurring him to move faster. His breathing didn’t change. His heartbeat remained steady. One foot in front of the other.

There was no time to be afraid. No time to panic.

No time to dwell on the metallic
pop
that echoed in the stairwell as a bullet lodged into the wall above Nick’s head.

He made it to the lobby, throwing the door open with such force that it slammed into the wall with a loud crash. Ignoring the startled looks of the clerks at the front desk, Nick tore out of the hotel. He didn’t turn around. Didn’t check to see if anyone was behind him.

“He’s on the move!”

The male voice had come from the passenger side of the unmarked black van parked at the curb. A second later, a man in camo pants and a black tee flew out of the van and gave chase.

Damn it.

Nick ran faster, dodging people left and right. He made a conscious effort to keep his gun tucked beneath his shirt, but the man chasing him didn’t deem it important to conceal his weapon. Several passersby gasped when they glimpsed the gun in the goon’s hand. A woman screamed, and then several shrieks pierced the air as more people on the sidewalk became aware of the gun-wielding man running by.

Goddammit! Nick didn’t dare turn around, but he knew his pursuer wasn’t too far behind. Fortunately, the Liberty happened to be two blocks from the city’s renowned antiques market—which was precisely why Nick had chosen that particular hotel. The market was an enormous maze of endless booths and tables and curtained kiosks, the perfect place to disappear.

Relief poured into him when the marketplace came into view. Less than a minute later, he was lost in a crowd of antiquers. A glance behind showed his frustrated pursuer elbowing his way through the throng of people.

Everything about the man said
mercenary.
The clothes, the shaved head, the military precision of his movements.

Nick reached a large area where hundreds of carpets hung from various clotheslines. He ducked behind a dusty Persian rug and began weaving his way through the canopy of carpet, which provided perfect cover.

He didn’t turn around, didn’t slow down, just moved through the market with quick methodical strides, not stopping until he was certain he’d lost his tail.

He ended up at a corner bar twenty blocks from the antiques market. His mercenary friend was nowhere to be seen, and the back of Nick’s neck wasn’t tingling anymore, a sure sign that he was no longer being hunted.

The bar was deserted save for the stocky bartender and a lone patron at the far end of the counter. Both men eyed Nick in suspicion as he approached the counter.

“What can I do for you?” the bartender asked in Spanish.

Nick responded in the same tongue. “A pint. Whatever you’ve got on tap.”

As the burly, olive-skinned man moved away to pour the beer, Nick slid onto a tall stool, positioning himself so that he wasn’t close to the front window but still had a line of sight to the door. The small television hanging over the bar was turned to a local news channel, the male reporter on the screen covering the downtown riot that was going strong. The looting had started in the wee hours of the morning, and there was now talk of Cortega seeking aid from the Brazilian army to control the mobs.

“Crazy people,” the bartender muttered, his disapproving gaze fixed on the TV. He set a tall beer glass nearly overflowing with foam in front of Nick.

Nick paid for the beer and thanked the man, then fished out his cell phone and called Tate.

“They found me,” he murmured, keeping his gaze trained on the door. He kept a close watch on the people beyond the plate-glass window, but the merc with the shaved head was nowhere in sight.

“Who?” Tate asked sharply.

“Mercs. They broke into my hotel room, then chased me for ten frickin’ blocks.”

“You sure they were soldiers for hire and not U.S. military?”

“They were too bold to be military. The one on the street was waving a gun around in front of pedestrians. He wasn’t trying to be covert. If Uncle Sam had sent these guys, they would’ve used some stealth.”

“Did you lose the tail?”

“Yeah. I’ll head to another hotel, hole up there until Salazar gets in touch.”

A familiar voice suddenly caught Nick’s attention, drawing his gaze back to the television screen.

Rebecca Parker.

She was doing a live report from outside the parliament building, shouting over the roar of the crowd.

A spark of concern lit Nick’s gut, but at least the woman had the sense to stick close to the news van this time. As she spoke, the camera panned to the furious mob, then focused on a car that was engulfed in flames thirty feet away. The sheen of sweat on Rebecca’s forehead told him that she must be hot as hell standing near that conflagration, but she sounded cool as a cucumber as she addressed her viewers.

“As you can see, the violence has escalated overnight. Two members of the armed guard were nearly beaten to death by five youths who have since been taken into custody, and several vehicles have been set on fire in the past hour. We’re seeing Molotov cocktails being thrown at the parliament building and—”

“—still looking into it, but Harrison was the only member of the team who spoke to Waverly.”

Nick jerked his gaze away from the screen as he registered Tate’s last remark. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said that the scientists at the lab that created the virus, D&M Initiative, are being questioned, but they all maintain that they don’t know who contracted them to work on Project Aries. Apparently Richard Harrison was the point man for the project—all he told his staff was that they were working on a top-secret government project.”

“He didn’t give them any names?”

“Nope, but his phone records indicate that he was in touch with Paul Waverly.”

Wariness flooded Nick’s chest. “Do we think someone in the Department of Defense authorized the virus project?”

“Maybe.” Tate paused. “Secretary Barrett has always been gung ho about defense. I can easily see the man green-lighting a biological weapons project like this.”

Nick bit back an indignant denial, but inside, he was seething. His father would
never
allow a deadly virus to be tested on innocent people. Kirk Barrett was the most honorable man Nick had ever known. A man who cared not only about the American people, but also about
all
people, a man who considered it his duty to help those who needed it, no matter what.

Not only that, but Nick’s father possessed an ironclad sense of right and wrong. It used to drive him nuts when he was growing up—every mistake he’d made required punishment, even if he’d learned his lesson from it. Kirk Barrett didn’t tolerate wrongdoing, whether it was breaking curfew or forgetting to take the trash out or telling a little white lie.

Nick knew without a shred of doubt that his father was incapable of being involved in something as despicable as Project Aries, but he couldn’t say anything to Tate. Not without confessing that he’d been lying about who he was in the five years they’d served together. Although his commander had known who Nick was, the other men in the unit had been kept in the dark, and he wasn’t ready to confess to the deception. Not now, anyway.

“You’ve gotta light a fire under Salazar’s ass, man,” Tate went on. “The more time you spend waiting, the less chance we have of finding Waverly.”

“Trust me, I know.”

On the TV, Rebecca was urgently informing the audience that a Molotov cocktail had just been hurled at a member of the tactical squad.

“We’ve got a man on fire!” she said sharply. “Folks, these images are graphic. Please, if you’ve got young children, I urge you to move them away from the screen.”

The camera shifted to provide a gruesome tableau of a uniformed man engulfed in flames as he rolled on the pavement. Two policemen were desperately attempting to stomp out the flames that were devouring the man, who was screaming in agony.

Nick blanched. Christ, this was
insanity.

“Anyway,” Tate was saying.

A deafening boom and a horrified scream blared out of the screen.

Two seconds later, glass shattered as the bartender dropped the empty beer pitcher he’d been drying with a dishrag.

“Oh, blessed mother,” the man said in Spanish.

Nick sucked in a breath and watched the scene in horror. “Oh, Jesus.” He shot to his feet, nearly dropping the phone. “Tate, I’ll call you back.”

Flames. Orange flames. Filling the screen.

Nick’s heart hammered out a frenetic rhythm. The camera was no longer aimed on Rebecca. It had clattered to the ground, tilted at an awkward angle that made it hard to decipher what was happening.

A familiar female voice cried out in terror. “Jesse!
Jesse!
”

Rebecca.

With trembling palms, Nick glanced at the bartender and said, “Turn it up!”

The man did as he was ordered, and Rebecca’s voice got louder. She was panicked. Freaking out. Nick couldn’t see her, but he could hear her. He suspected everyone in the world was hanging on Rebecca Parker’s every word.

“The van’s been hit! It’s on fire! Jesse’s down! Oh God,
Jesse!
”

A blur of movement flashed past the lens, followed by a second explosion that yet again altered the camera angle.

Sneakers. Nick made out a pair of women’s sneakers, a soot-covered hand whizzing past the camera.

“Jesse, open your eyes! Look at me!”

And then the screen went black.

“Go to a different channel,” Nick snapped. “Now!”

Again, no hesitation on the bartender’s part. The second news channel they tuned in to was already covering this latest catastrophe, and they caught the male anchor midsentence.

“—several incendiary devices thrown at the American Broadcast News van.”

The anchor was sitting behind a news desk in the studio, and a picture of Rebecca appeared on the screen next to his head.

Nick’s pulse sped up at the sight of her familiar green eyes and tousled red hair.

“We’ve just received confirmation that the driver was killed in the explosion. Parker’s cameraman has been badly injured—we’re getting reports that he’s being rushed to the hospital with third-degree burns. There is no word on Parker yet. We simply do not know if she—” The man halted, touched his earpiece. “Wait, we’ve got an update. Rebecca Parker, award-winning correspondent for ABN, was not injured in the explosions. She just departed the scene in the ambulance with her cameraman, who has been identified as Jesse Williams.”

Relief crashed over him like a tidal wave. Rebecca wasn’t hurt. Thank God.

But her driver was dead. Her cameraman with third-degree burns.

Because a few protesters had thrown Molotov cocktails at the ABN crew.

Why?

Nick’s gut went rigid as the question floated into his head. Why would the protesters try to harm the very people who were shedding light on their cause?

On the TV, the news anchor was attempting to make sense of it, as well. “Officials on the scene suspect that the explosive devices were intended for the tactical team that had just pulled up near the ABN van. The three Molotov cocktails, however, missed their mark.”

Three
Molotov cocktails?