Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (10 page)

Rico sat forward in his seat, his heart plummeting and racing at the same time. An elite gone off the deep end? Shit. He didn’t want to hear this, but he couldn’t turn away either. He looked closer at the man, trying to see the warrior beneath the fragile surface.

“Okay, Sergeant. Start with this morning.”

“You have to understand. I thought I was having a flashback.”

“I got that. Just go back to this morning and walk me through what brought you to Piedmont Park today.”

“Like I said earlier, in my counseling session yesterday the therapist, Dr. Ted Brennan—you can call him and he will verify this as well—said being able to visualize someplace special, someplace from my childhood that I could go to in my mind would help me fight off the flashbacks. My family came to Piedmont Park often when I was a kid. I woke up this morning and decided to revisit the park, to refresh it in my mind. I left Columbus about noon and had just started walking through the park when I heard sniper fire and screams. I thought it was all in my mind and I had to get out of there fast. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Have you ever hurt anyone?”

“Yes. My wife. She tried to help me one night and I hit her. I didn’t know where I was. Who she was.”

“Where is she now?”

“I made her go to her parents in DC until I can fix this. She’s pregnant. You can call her dad to check on that. But do me a favor. Don’t let her know. She’ll only come here and she can’t.”

“Do you own any weapons, Sergeant?”

“Yes, but they’re all locked away beyond my reach, just in case. Even though I’ve never gone for one during a flashback, it’s better to be as safe as I can.”

“Do you own a rifle?”

“Used to but I sold it a few years back. I collect antique pistols.”

“How long have you been in therapy?”

“Two months. I thought I was getting better until today. Christ, if what I heard on the radio is true, then I ran when I should have been looking for a killer. How can I live with that? The rifle shots were loud. I had to have been close to the sniper.”

“Why don’t you tell me about your flashbacks? Where are you? What do you see?”

“They’re bad. It’s cold. It’s snowing and dark. We’d been on the run all day from the enemy in the rough terrain of the Hindu Kush Mountains. We’d thought we’d found a safe spot. Radioed for an extraction and the team was on its way. The copter crested the mountain and headed right for us when an antiaircraft missile flared out of nowhere. The copter exploded in midair, raining debris down on us.

“Suddenly we were surrounded by combatants and under heavy fire. It was hell. By dawn I was the lone survivor. My teammates were dead and no one survived the crash. I was wounded and tried to play dead, but the bastards started doing horrible things to the bodies of my team. I couldn’t let them. Out of ammo, I went after them with my knife. I took out two of them before they captured me. What happened after…let’s just say until I was rescued three weeks later, I wished I had died with the others. Still do.” His hands were shaking, his expression bleak and tortured.

“Let’s go back to what happened at the park today. Do you remember seeing anyone?”

Sergeant Johnson shook his head. “No.”

“Fighting with anyone?”

“No.” The sergeant groaned. “Why? Did I hurt someone? When the flashback takes over, everything disappears into a blur.”

A sharp rap on the door to the room Rico was in grabbed his attention. Two men entered and his knotted stomach sank to his feet. Son of a bitch. He didn’t think the day could get any worse, but it had. The throb in Rico’s shoulder spread to his temples with a vengeance. He had is answer as to why the National Clandestine Service was after him.

The tall, lean man with predatory, hawk-like eyes was a stranger to him, but the bald bowling ball rolling in behind him wasn’t. The Staff Operations Officer from the NCS who’d given Commander Weston, DT and Beck hell in Peru was here. What the hell? Everyone who worked with the man called him Director, a position Rico prayed the ruthless man would never hold in the NCS. The thought of him in charge of the CIA’s cloak-and-dagger arm, out there gathering human intel at whatever cost suited him at the time didn’t exactly instill confidence in Rico.

The man’s callous treatment of Lauren Collins when he’d interrogated her about her deceased husband’s terrorist activities last month hadn’t earned him any brownie points with the team. But it wasn’t until DT overheard the man planning to indefinitely keep Lauren’s six-year-old twin sons from her, once the boys had been rescued from the drug lord Menendez, that the man earned the title “Dickhead”.

DT, Roger and Beck had thwarted the dickhead’s plans by going rogue. The team had infiltrated the drug lord’s compound in Peru and rescued the twins along with Angie and Rico, uniting Lauren with the boys on live camera before the SOO could get his hands on the twins. The SOO had arrested the team, but Roger’s cousin, the President of the United States, had put a fast stop to that crap. The team was on the dickhead’s shit list and from the look in his eyes, Rico was on it too.

The man had a lot of power and a long arm. Rico stood to meet him head on.

McKay rose and extended his hand. “You must be Special Agent Aaron Gibson.”

Gibson nodded. “And this is SOO Dick Djorkaeff from NCS.”

“Director to my colleagues and friends,” the man said, frowning hard enough to crease his fleshy face from ear to ear.

Rico bit the inside of his cheeks, cutting off a grin. No wonder the man insisted on being called Director. The team would get a kick over the fact that dickhead’s name was Dick Djorkaeff. Dick de Jerk worked well too.

McKay spoke up, motioning to Rico. “This is Rico Santana, our star witness to the Atlanta sniper attack.”

Rico winced at the description even as he puzzled over McKay’s word choice. Why say the Atlanta sniper attack?

SA Gibson shook the left hand Rico offered. Dick de Jerk just nodded. No handshake and he didn’t mention their past acquaintance, either. Rico narrowed his gaze. What game did the SOO want to play? From the look Gibson bounced between Rico and the SOO, the animosity had to be palpable.

“You right-handed?” Gibson asked. “Your last shoulder surgery was two weeks ago. Can you do much with it yet?”

“Yes, I am, and no. Not hardly anything yet. That includes shooting.”

“Or fighting. Yet you still tackled a man who you had every reason to believe was dangerous?”

“Couldn’t just let him escape.”

“It’s quite an interesting situation you and Sergeant Johnson have here, don’t you think, Corporal Santana?” SA Gibson moved to take a seat and motioned for Rico to do the same.

“What do you mean?” Rico kept his reply calm and his voice even as he sat. Inside he wanted to gnash teeth and kick ass. How many times was he going to go under their microscope?

Gibson lifted a brow. “What are the odds of you both accidentally being in the park today? That you both have recently suffered serious, traumatic injuries and that you’re both innocent bystanders?”

“You can see our dilemma, right?” McKay paced across the room.

Rico exhaled. No telling how long Gibson and de Jerk had been observing both him and Sergeant Johnson during the interrogations. “When you put it that way, SA Gibson, it does sound almost unbelievable,” Rico conceded. “But given we’ve been at war for ten years, the odds are more than you’re insinuating they are.”

“Did you actually see Sergeant Johnson with a rifle?” Gibson shot back.

“No. I only saw Johnson wearing fatigues and running from the park. He went crazy when I tackled him. That all said ‘guilty’ to me.”

“So, it’s possible his story is true?” McKay paced back and sat down next to Rico.

“Yes.” Rico nearly strangled on the word. If Johnson wasn’t the sniper that meant Rico had done almost irreparable damage to the investigation. He’d sent the police after an innocent man while the real sniper had escaped.

“And it’s also possible you two are in this thing together, isn’t it? Creating a confusing, but believable story while the sniper slipped away?”

Gibson’s forceful question almost had Rico admitting that it was a theoretic possibility, but he wasn’t about to play into their hand. “No. Until I tackled him in the park, I’d never seen the man before.”

“You wouldn’t have to have seen him,” McKay said. “The Internet makes all things possible these days.”

Rico shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, men.” He gave the SOO a hard look. Why wasn’t the SOB throwing his weight around as usual?

“Maybe so,” said McKay.

“We’ll see,” Gibson amended. “You know anybody who’d be in Manhattan today? Times Square to be exact.”

“Not that I know of. You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“How about Beverly Hills? Got a contact there?”

“What the—”

“Texas? DC? Miami? Chicago? Seattle?”

The barrage hit Rico like machine-gun fire. His shoulder and head throbbed to the point he’d broken into a cold sweat. “I’m not saying a damn thing more until you tell me what’s going on.”

SOO de Jerk spoke up then. “Sniper attacks occurred simultaneously in each of those cities today. Fifteen dead and more injured.”

Rico blinked as he processed the info. Eight cities around the US under attack? As if all of America had been thrust into a war zone? This was serious shit. Rico exploded from his chair. “Why in the hell are you wasting your time on me then? Why aren’t you—?”

Full of venom, the SOO put his face in Rico’s. “Out of all the cities, Corporal Santana, you’re the only
supposed
witness and Sergeant Johnson’s the only s
upposed
suspect.”

Chapter Twelve

Rico sat back down, hard, and glanced at his watch. “Then we are seriously screwed. If the sergeant is telling the truth, you’ve wasted five hours chasing white rabbits while the real sniper escaped.”

“That would be thanks to your intervention, wouldn’t it?” asked de Jerk. “You have any buddies with a grudge against the government, Santana? Anyone who’d go to any length to get back at the US for supposed grievances?”

It was clear to Rico that de Jerk had DT, Roger and Beck in mind. Yeah, the team had infiltrated a drug lord’s Peruvian compound against orders, but every one of the men he’d fought years with would die a thousand tortured deaths before allowing an innocent to die. Whereas, according to DT and Roger, the same thing couldn’t be said for de Jerk. If Lauren’s sons had died while the CIA waited for more actionable intel on Menendez, de Jerk would have likely just shaken his head and shrugged his shoulders. “No, I don’t. Do you?” Rico attacked back.

The SOO lifted a brow then stepped back as Gibson moved in.

“What else did you see after you found the shell casings?” Gibson demanded.

Rico pressed his fingers to his temples trying to think. “I don’t know. I was so focused on Johnson that nothing comes to mind. Sure, there were people about, cars on the street. Everyone running to get out of the way as I chased Johnson. But no specifics come to mind.”

They questioned him another thirty minutes but Rico still couldn’t come up with anything. Why the hell not? He’d been trained to notice shit. He’d been trained to withstand days of interrogation under depraved conditions, so why was he barely keeping things together now?

“Why don’t we let Corporal Santana go on with his plans in Atlanta, sleep on the matter, and see if he comes up with more information in the morning?”

Considering the suggestion came from SOO de Jerk, Rico thought it was a twisted joke. At this point, he’d half concluded that he’d be spending the night behind bars in between interrogation sessions. The surprised look from both McKay and Gibson said they were thinking the same.

Rico glanced back into the interrogation room, probably because the “leave no man behind” creed was in his DNA and this was definitely enemy territory. If Sergeant Johnson was in the same innocent boat as Rico, he wondered what was going to happen with the soldier. The room was empty. SA Farrell had taken Johnson out of the room while Rico was being hammered. Rico almost asked about the man, but bit his tongue. He had to seriously consider Johnson could be lying and was part of what had to be the most widespread domestic terrorist plot in American history.

He turned his attention back to the men. Both SA Gibson and SOO de Jerk were looking at him, and had clearly read his interest in Sergeant Johnson. Well, shit. There went Rico’s bid for freedom.

Twenty minutes later, Rico followed McKay through the precinct, having left Gibson and de Jerk in the interrogation area. He had a feeling they were going to dig into Johnson next. Rico heard Angie even before he saw her.

“Officer Cox, this is your last chance. After today’s events, it will only take one phone call to the press to turn this place into a media nightmare. I suggest you let me speak to someone who has contact with Corporal Santana right now or I am going to make that call.”

“Ms. Freemont, I assure you that Corporal Santana will contact you the moment he is able—”

“She sounds like a force to be reckoned with,” McKay said.

“She can move the earth,” Rico muttered, distinctly remembering the ground shaking when he finally planted his mouth on her ripe lips. The fierceness in her voice as she dealt with the policeman sent a flood of warmth through him. Rico knew he could count on the team no matter what, but as for anyone else in his life, not so much. His father had split before he’d been born. His mother had been too strung out on drugs to care much before she OD’d in a back alley. And his grandmother—that had been a different story. He sucked in air and shoved that memory back deep into his gut.