Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (21 page)

With the terrorist-driven hell breaking loose around the US, the murder of his uncle, and the crap flying around in his head from Lebanon, he needed this small touch from her. And God, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from imagining loving her. Surely his response to her would fade with time. All he had to do was man-up now and keep his shit in control and it would all work out. He’d be the best damn friend on earth to her and the little girl growing inside her would have the best “uncle” that ever lived. Or uncles, he should say. He knew his team well enough that they’d all be there for whatever Mari and her child needed.

The code among his men—and many others in the service as well—went farther than “no man left behind”. No widow or family was left to suffer alone. No child was left without a strong father figure in their life. Military men, their families and their supporters could never replace a fallen soldier, but they damn well stepped fearlessly into the gaping void to do what they could.

He cleared his throat. “Just remember in there that I’ve got your back.”

Mari glanced toward the Inn’s entrance. “I’m ready.”

“Then let’s go.” He exited the truck and moved to her side, giving a supporting hand to her elbow and locking the doors. The hard press of his Kimber 1911 .45 in the small of his back was reassurance he probably didn’t need, but since Dugar’s attacks, he didn’t leave home without the pistol—his personal insurance to guard against trouble. “If your brother and sister haven’t returned yet, we’ll wait for a bit. The Inn should have some sort of lobby.”

A black van pulled from a parking space at the end of the row and headed their way, moving fairly fast toward the parking lot’s exit. Roger tightened his hold on Mari’s elbow and urged her back a step, giving the driver plenty of room to pass before they crossed to the hotel. His cell rang and he fished it from his pocket, keeping an eye on the van before briefly glancing at the phone’s screen. It was Mac, one of the men he had watching for Dugar.

Suddenly the van screeched to a halt next to them and he thrust himself in front of Mari as he grabbed his pistol from behind. The instant he saw a woman in a black burka and man wearing a tribal turban through the tinted windshield, he kept the Kimber out of sight. The driver’s window came down, but it was the woman in the passenger seat who spoke. “Maryam?”

Mari shifted from behind him to peek out. “Maisa? Fahran?”

Roger gritted his teeth. He didn’t like the setup at all and he wasn’t getting any sense of the whole forgiving, open-arms thing either. Mari went to move past him and he kept her back.

“Who is this man with you, Maryam?” The man asked in a mixture of Pashto and some other regional dialect that Roger had to guess at. Roger pretended not to understand, which took some doing when Mari answered back. “He is my husband.”

“A
kafir
? You have no shame,” the man said, jerking a Taser into view and firing.

Dear God. Roger’s gut sank into a pit of fear. He ducked and twisted, trying to escape the barbed projectiles as he shoved Mari away from him and brought his pistol up to fire. But his scream for her to run became an anguished cry as 50,000 plus volts and a pain-searing level of amps jerked his muscles into a rigid mass of useless flesh. He tried to stay upright by falling against the car beside him. Instead, his head plowed onto the edge of the roof and he rolled uncontrollably to the ground, twitching like an electrocuted puppet. His .45 Kimber and his cell phone useless.

“No! Fahran! Stop!” Mari fell to her knees beside Roger, determined to end the torture her brother was causing. She lunged forward and thrust her weight against the wires connecting Roger to the horrible weapon in her brother’s hand. Unexpected shock and pain slammed into her.
My baby! Roger!
She tried to yell as she fought the black tide rushing through her mind, but her body wasn’t responding to her mind. A cold dread crawled deep inside her. Her death sentence had caught up to her and Roger was going to go down with her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Atlanta, Georgia

1100 hours

“He just took a right! Damn red lights.”

Gripping the steering wheel, Angie gritted her teeth as she slammed on the brakes. After tailing the cabbie for forty minutes through heavy traffic down Northside Drive, her stress had reached nail-screeching status. Rico seemed to have passed that stage. He’d raked his fingers through his hair so many times it was a wonder he hadn’t mohawked himself. As it was, his thick curls bushed out on both sides of his head, giving him a Travolta,
Saturday Night Fever
look, which would have been funny if he wasn’t so on edge.

But he had a right to be. Every twenty feet they had to stop and even her patience had run thin. Hollywood’s depiction of surveillance was much easier than in real life. It was a miracle they hadn’t lost their suspect yet.

The light turned green and she hit the gas, squealing around the turn Rico had seen the cab take. Her stomach knotted and she wanted to bang her head on the steering wheel. No cab. Fifty yards ahead of them were three wide-assed dudes on decked-out Harleys who needed to spend less time polishing their chrome and more time in the gym if they wanted to look half as hot as their motorcycles. “I can’t believe it. We’ve lost him.”

She expected Rico to lose his cool. Instead he seemed calmer than ever. “Maybe not. Hurry to the stoplight first. There were motorcycles ahead of the cab on Northside Drive. If this is the same bunch, then the cab should be close. It’s only been forty-five seconds since we lost sight of the SOB. At the general speed he’s been traveling, he can’t be more than a hundred feet or so ahead of us. So, if we don’t see him to the right or left at the crossroad then he’s along this street. There’s a motor inn tucked between that bank and diner on the right and a strip mall on the left. All good places to check.”

“How you put all of that together so fast is beyond me.”

“Quick assessments are critical in my line of work.”

Angie hurried to the corner. The light changed and the motorcycle dudes roared ahead—doughboys riding gilded toothpicks. A quick left afforded her and Rico a clear view of the crossroad with no visible cabbie in front or behind. She made a left into the strip mall and ran a fast search of the parking lot before backtracking to the diner and motor inn.

Ten cars and no cabs were at DJ’s Country Diner so she hung a left into the Downtown Motor Inn parking lot and bypassed the four-by-eight cubicle with Manager printed on the door. Rust-streaked light blue paint and white paint were likely the only renovations the place had seen in forty years. No doubt shag carpet and bedbugs were the highlight of its décor. Another left brought into view a long strip of units on the left and way down at the last room, past three cars, sat a Checker cab.

Their suspect. Angie’s heart raced over what to do next. Did she park in front of a room? Did she back up to the manager’s office? Or did she drive by the cab and exit onto the street up ahead. The parking area was like an urban alley, only wider—a walkway and parking slots lined up in front of the motel rooms on the left. On the right stood a three-foot concrete wall topped by a chain-linked fence that separated the Motor Inn from the bank’s drive-through tellers and ATM, all of which were empty at the moment.

“Shit. Back up, Angel!” Rico pulled out the gun Jack had thankfully given him last night.

She hit the brakes, glancing ahead as she slid the gearshift into reverse. Two things had happened in a split second. Men with
big
guns exited one of the motel rooms and the cabbie backed into the roadway, blocking most of the exit.

She pressed on the gas, looking into her rearview mirror and slammed into a black sedan that had come up behind her out of nowhere. Metal crunched and glass shattered.

“Christ. I’m sorry, Angel.”

Before she could absorb the accident, Rico reached over and thrust the car into drive then knocked her foot from the gas pedal and floored it.

“Drive straight, no matter what,” he ordered and rolled her window halfway down. He fired at the men on the left as they flew past, headed dead for the cab. The soft popping of the suppressor was ridiculously tame to the deadly power of the bullets.

She’d spent her whole life fighting to save people now she had no doubt she was now a killer of people. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Rico’s foot pressed relentlessly on the gas and she tried to keep her eyes open as they barreled toward death. An acrid scent burned her nose. Bullet holes spider-webbed the windshield before it shattered into thousands of tiny cubes. Seconds before they broadsided the cab, Rico shoved his torso between her and the steering wheel.

They slammed hard. Angie’s seatbelt cut into her chest and neck. Pain stabbed her spine as her knees collided with the dash. Rico was unbelievably wrenched from her and flung through the broken windshield.

She screamed. The air bag erupted in her face, ramming her back against the seat and a blinding agony exploded inside her head.

Glass cut into Rico as he rolled over the hood of Angie’s sedan, his Beretta clutched in his left hand, his right arm a useless mass of pain. His back hit the underside of the Checker cab they’d knocked to its side in the collision. Fire burned across his shoulders as the hot undercarriage seared through his shirt and into his flesh. He arched away from it and slid alongside Angie’s bumper, using the smashed hood to steady his pistol, ready for a target to show.

Sweat beaded his trembling body and steam boiled from the radiator, sickeningly acrid. His heart and soul screamed for him to go to Angie, but he didn’t dare move closer. Anyone coming to shoot would go for him first. He moved closer to the mangled, right fender of Angie’s car, wondering if he had a chance of killing the Uzi-carrying man and getting Angie out of there while the SOBs regrouped.

It was his fault. His ego had led her to injury. He prayed he’d taken the brunt of the steering wheel’s impact and that he would hear her moving, calling out to him or something. But as the seconds ticked, dread ate him alive. He heard the air bag deflate, but still nothing from Angie.

He had no doubt a gunman would show and was surprised that bullets weren’t already plowing into him. An Uzi in tow meant business. Rico knew he’d made the right choice to force their way past the men and prayed like hell he could hold off the gunmen until the cops arrived. He’d lost the cell phone upon impact and hoped the emergency signal he’d sent to DT had gone through.

Hearing a noise off to his right, he leveled the Beretta. The barrel of a rifle slid into place over Angie’s trunk and Rico didn’t hesitate, he went low and shot into the shadows beneath her sedan. His bullet hit home. The following cry of pain was unusually high pitched and the subsequent, desperate cries in an Arabic-based dialect even stranger.

WTF? Did they think he was so stupid he’d blow his cover just to help a man who’d pulled a gun on him and Angie?

Leveraging back, Rico waited for the next guy, wondering where in the hell the sirens were.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Jack “DT” Hunter cocked one eye open as the sensation he was now “under surveillance” penetrated his light doze. Two pairs of bright blue eyes from practically identical faces stared back at him from where he lay on the couch. Their rosier-than-usual cheeks told him they still had a fever and would need to see a doctor before the day was over.

Matt and Mitch had fallen asleep on the ride to his Fort Bragg apartment from the Fayetteville airport. The flight from Atlanta to Fayetteville had made a connection in Charlotte, which had them arriving three very-busy-entertaining-boys hours after their departure. Triple the actual direct-flight time, but much better than a seven-hour car ride with six-year-olds and snipers terrorizing the public.

He was still reeling from the events. Over fifty dead today—the worst of which was the annihilation of eleven migrant workers right here in Fayetteville. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the shooter here wasn’t attached to the other snipers. The crime scene had been private not public, the timing had been before the other simultaneous attacks, and everyone had been murdered as opposed to random kills in a group of people—an act that made the Fayetteville sniper scarier than the others, and chilling that he could have been on the prowl in the Fayetteville area while they’d been on the road to Fort Bragg.

A horrific thought, but not as frightening as the fact that Lauren had planned to take the boys to Piedmont Park yesterday. The only reason they hadn’t gone is because the twins had woken up slightly feverish and complaining of sore throats so they’d stayed behind.

He’d yet to tell Lauren about the Fayetteville sniper. She lay snuggled against his chest, exactly in the same position she’d “rested a minute” after unbuttoning his shirt and promising to devour him an hour ago.

A plan he’d been lazily contemplating putting into action until ten minutes ago when Matt and Mitch woke up, whispering and tiptoeing about like a herd of elephants as they’d plotted a “pretermed” racecourse for their Earnhardt Junior cars. He’d known then that it wouldn’t be long before they came looking for a judge. His heart squeezed hard.

They’d been gone less than twenty-four hours and he’d already been missing the hell out of them when the first sniper attack happened. So when he’d heard about the close call, he’d asked Lauren to not only come back to North Carolina, but to come to his apartment on post to stay. She’d readily agreed.