Two Evils (33 page)

Traffic became a little more congested as she neared the restaurant
, slowing her down. Her annoyance grew when it seemed that the traffic control system was also against her—at every intersection she came to, the light turned red as she was reaching the stop bar on the road. Billie was cursing up a blue streak by the time she pulled Teddy’s Sierra into the parking lot at Sine’s.

Jumping down from the truck, she took a casual look around as she strolled to the front entrance. Nothing caught her eye as out of place, but she wasn’t taking that for a guarantee that Rebecca hadn’t been followed.

Inside, she spotted the younger woman easily—she was the only female in the place who was wearing a soldier’s uniform. There were a couple of Air Force guys several tables away from her, though they were paying more attention to the ball game on the large plasma screen than they were to the pretty Marine at the bar. Billie walked over and waved, smiling, when Rebecca looked up and noticed her. She quickly crossed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around Rebecca and saying in a normal tone, “So sorry I’m late—traffic was a pain.”

“You got here just in time,” Rebecca said. “I know you told me to wait for you, but I was about ready to run, my nerves are so shot.”

“You didn’t order yourself a drink?” Billie asked as they parted.

Rebecca nodded toward the bar, where in front of her seat there sat a drink—a cosmopolitan, from the looks of it—that was clearly untouched. “I got as far as ordering it.”

Billie slid onto the barstool next to Rebecca’s and said, “Then we’re going to sit here until you drink it. Trust me, it will help.”

A bartender came over and asked what she would like to have. Billie ordered a watermelon margarita, and took a long pull the moment it was set in front of her.

“I envy you your ability to remain calm in a crisis,” Rebecca said with a laugh, finally taking a sip of her own drink.

Billie scoffed. “Actually, today was the first day in a very long time I wasn’t so cool,” she replied. “I admit that I was a little worried about you. I know that we put a heavy responsibility on your shoulders, and you could easily have said no.”

Her companion shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. Not when it concerns my brother,” she replied.

After taking another mouthful and swallowing it, Billie asked her, “So what happened today? How did you almost get caught?”

Rebecca took a drink from her glass, then another, before explaining that getting into General Wainright’s office had actually been easy—she’d just walked right in. “I told his secretary that I had a file he’d requested, but that I was to hand it directly to him. That’s when she told me he was out to lunch, but knowing the general’s habits, if he’d said to put it directly in his hands he wouldn’t be pleased if I just left it with her. I could, however, leave it on his desk, which was pretty much the same thing.”

“How did the secretary not get curious about how long you were in there?”

“The very simplest thing: she had to go to the bathroom,” Rebecca replied. “Just as she was opening the door for me—she’s an older lady, civilian you may remember—she laughed and said, ‘Oh dear, I have to go tinkle’—she actually used that word. Then she told me to go ahead and leave the file on the desk and to shut the door behind me when I left. I pretended to rifle through the stack of folders I had in my arms looking for the right one as she walked away, then I went inside, shutting the door so no one would see me.”

She then went on to explain that, knowing she didn’t have a lot of time, she had looked for a clue as to Wainright’s computer password on the surface of his desk. Various folders and papers provided nothing useful, so she decided to look through the Rolodex. In the back of the Cs is where she found something odd, a card with a series of numbers on it, nothing more. She decided to try them, figuring it was the best lead she had, and tried at first to put the numbers in as she saw them. When that didn’t work, she put them in backward, also without success.

Then, Rebecca told her, it had occurred to her that the numbers corresponded to letters of the alphabet, and so she put in the letters—and it worked. All the icons on the desktop were shortcuts to military applications, so she brought up the start menu and looked under the “all files” tab…and hit pay dirt.

“The file was titled ‘Pleasures’, which I thought an odd name, and in it… Oh my God, Billie…” She paused and took a long drink, draining half of what was left in her glass. Her expression was horrified as she set the glass back on the bar, saying, “There were pictures… Pictures of women who were naked, as though they’d been strip-searched or were being assessed or something. Like an inventory—and there was a document file that actually
was
an inventory—that’s what he called it! There were names, dates, descriptions of women and references to the corresponding pictures—and I swear some of them were girls as young as twelve! Then there was another document of clients, too.”

She looked to Billie then, and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think General Wainright is involved in human trafficking.”

“I
mean, he has to be!” Rebecca went on. “Why else would he have that awful stuff on his computer?”

Billie put a hand on the girl’s arm. “Honey, calm down. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself,” she told her kindly. “And you’re right—the content of the file is very disturbing.” It certainly gave credence, she mused silently, to the theory that the offshore account in the Bahamas—the one on the ICE watch list—belonged to the general. It explained why the information was not on a home computer—certainly wouldn’t want the wife accidentally stumbling across that, now would he?

And it was definitely the incriminating evidence they’d been hoping to find.

“Rebecca, did you happen to copy the file
s?” she asked then.

Fishing in her pocket, Rebecca produced a flash drive and held it out to her.
Billie took it and stuffed it into the pocket of her jacket, her hand brushing John’s cell phone and reminding her that she had promised to call him.

“How did you nearly get caught?” Billie asked again.

“I was on my way out of the general’s office after copying the files I found. I was closing the door like his secretary asked when that MP appeared. I remembered seeing him with the general earlier today as I was coming in to work. They seemed to be in a pretty intense conversation, so when he showed up out of the blue, I freaked,” Rebecca told her. “I think I was pretty calm when I gave him the same story I’d given the secretary, but I guess something gave me away, because like I said, it seemed he was right there every time I left my office to retrieve something from the archives or deliver a file.”

D
owning the rest of her drink, Billie set the glass on the bar and slipped off her stool. “We should get moving. Any moment now, John will be calling—”

On cue, the phone in her pocket started to ring. Billie shook her head and Rebecca actually grinned as she pulled it out. Teddy’s phone number showed on the screen.

“Your ears must be burning, Agent Courtney. We were just talking about you,” she said into the phone as Rebecca got off her stool as well.

“How’s our girl?”
John asked.

She glanced at Rebecca as they walked out the door. “A little shaken up, but she’s a Marine. She’s dealing. We’d have headed back sooner but I thought it a good idea that she have a drink to settle her nerves. We’re leaving Sine’s now.”

“Did you talk about the job?”

“Yeah, and it looks like ICE was right on the money—literally. Becks found evidence that implicates Wainright in human trafficking,” Billie explained as she opened the passenger door of the truck for Rebecca and then rounded the front end to climb behind the wheel. “That account in the Bahamas has to be where he’s dumping his profits.”

“Shit,” John swore. “No wonder he didn’t want the deaths at Bolling to get out—an investigation into his projects might have uncovered his involvement with the trafficking.”

“Hold on a second,” she said then, and set the phone down so she could put on her seatbelt. Rebecca already had hers fastened and was ready to go. Billie picked up the phone again and pressed the speaker button. “Hey, I’ve got you on speaker—may as well let the whole cat out of the bag since Becky’s done this much for us. Plus it’ll be safer for driving.”

John chuckled, but said, “Don’t worry about talking. Just get your sweet ass back here.”

“We’re already on our way, Drill Sergeant,” Billie quipped sarcastically, hanging up to the sound of John’s laughter.

Slipping the phone into her jacket pocket once more, she slipped the key into the truck’s ignition, and moments later was out of Sine’s parking lot headed back for D.C.

Rebecca was silent for a few minutes, then surprised her by
suddenly asking, “Captain, you wouldn’t happen to speak Russian, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I had to know it
and several other languages for my work with the CIA. Why do you ask?” Billie wondered.

“Because there were some audio recordings in the Pleasures file I found on the general’s computer,”
Rebecca answered, “all of them recorded within the last few days. I only had time to listen to one, and not even all of it, but it sounded like the voices were speaking Russian. I’m certain one of them was General Wainright because one of the speakers referred to the other as ‘General’—though accented in Russian, of course. It was about the only word I recognized.”

It was no real surprise to Billie that someone involved in the trafficking of women and young girls would have a Russian associate—she knew that many of the girls caught up in trafficking were lured from European nations like Russia with the promise of jobs and riches—even husbands—in America.
So surely it was a coincidence that she’d had to dispatch an entire team of assassins, sent after her by one of the most notorious mafia bosses in St. Petersburg, while at the same time taking on a job assigned to her by a man with apparent ties to the Russian black market.

You don’t believe in coincidences, Wilhelmina
, her inner voice reminded her, sending an ice-cold chill down her spine.

“Captain?” Rebecca tried to get her attention, concern evident in her tone. “Billie? Are you okay?”

Billie blinked. Thank goodness her mind-trip had been an incredibly short one, as she was just starting to swerve left-of-center. Correcting easily as though nothing were amiss, she asked mildly, “Was the other voice male or female? Did either of them say anything that indicated the name of the person the general was speaking to?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Rebecca’s brow draw together in concentration. “Both of them were male. And come to think of it,” she said slowly, “there was one time the general said a word that kinda sounded like a name. I’m trying to remember what it was… Vazedy? Vassery?”

The ice around her spine expanded and encased her heart. “Vasily?” she suggested.

“That’s it—it was Vasily.”

Un-fucking-believable
, she thought.

The man who had given her up to the Sardetskys and the man who had requested her help finding her former teammates were one and the same.

Billie was stunned into silence for a long moment, then she slowly reached into her pocket for John’s cell phone and handed it over to Rebecca. “Pull up the last incoming call and dial it back. And put it on speaker—I need to talk to John. Now.”

Rebecca nodded mutely and did as asked. The phone rang twice before
it was picked up, though it was Teddy who answered. “Yo, sis,” he said. “Your boyfriend is at the nurses’ station on the phone, talking to his buddy at CIA headquarters, I think. Left my cell with me in case you called while he was busy—want me to get him for you?”

“Please, Teddy. It’s important,” she said.

“Sure, no problem,” her brother replied. She heard him tell the sleeping Kevin that he would “Be right back, bro” and walk out of the room.

At the same time, a loud noise sounded from behind her. She looked into the rearview mirror in time to see a Humvee charging toward the truck. Bill
ie slammed her foot on the gas but it was too late—the Humvee crashed into the tail end of the Sierra with amazing force, throwing her heavily toward the steering wheel. Rebecca screamed and dropped John’s cell phone to the floor.

Billie pressed her foot
to the gas again, pushing it all the way down as she careened around a sedan with children in the back seat, narrowly missing the bumper by inches. The Humvee followed, roaring toward them again as they rounded the bend of Washington Boulevard onto Arlington Memorial Bridge.

Fuck
, Billie thought angrily. Not only were there cars here but pedestrians as well—that pretty much guaranteed that someone was going to get killed.

She was thrown forward again as the Humvee slammed into them a second time; thankfully the seatbelts were keeping her and Rebecca from hitting the dash or going through the windshield, though Rebecca’s head smacked loudly into the passenger door window.

“Son of a bitch!” she cried, pressing her right hand to her head.

“Are you all right?” Billie demanded even as she jerked the wheel to the right to move around another car in her way
, then she pulled left again.

“It’s not bleeding but it hurts like hell,” her companion replied. “Guess this means I wasn’t being paranoid.”

Billie grimaced, jerking the wheel to the left as she said, “Looks like it.”

The next time she had to
swerve to the right, the Humvee—with its greater horsepower—followed yet again, but then switched back to the left lane and pulled up alongside them. The driver then broadsided the Sierra, and Billie struggled to maintain control of the truck. The maneuver was repeated again, pushing them from the center lane into the curbside lane. Pedestrians began following the examples of the cars around them and scrambled to get out of the way, lest the two battling vehicles jump onto the sidewalk.

Billie quickly realized that was their attacker’s intention—they were trying to force them over the side of the bridge and into the river. She considered briefly slamming on the brakes to go from pursued to pursuer, but there was no way she could ram the Humvee with enough force
to send it over the sidewalk. The Sierra’s engine just didn’t have enough power—it was built for pulling, not pushing. There were also the cars behind them to consider: though furtive glances in her rearview showed that the travelers behind them were slowing down, there were nonetheless a few cars near enough that if she came to a sudden stop, she’d cause an accident.

She was not willing to risk civilian lives if she could help it.

Before she was able to think of a solution to their predicament, however, the driver of the Humvee achieved his goal: Just a few hundred feet from the northeastern terminus—which would have put them on land at Ohio Dr. SW and in the District of Columbia—the larger, more powerful military vehicle slammed into the side of the Sierra one more time, sending it and the women inside up onto the curb, across the sidewalk, and through the concrete barrier…

…into the chilly water of t
he Potomac just a hundred and five feet below.



John had just hung up with Rex, relaying the cursory information Rebecca had found and assuring him they would bring what they had into headquarters as soon as the women had returned, when Teddy came out of Kevin’s room. The youngest member of the Ryan clan held out his cell phone, saying, “It’s for you, my agency brother.”

He grinned as he took the phone from Teddy’s hand, turning away as he put it to his ear. “Billie?”

The reply that greeted him was the loud crunch of metal on metal and a sharp, feminine scream. “Billie!” he shouted into the phone.

Teddy was beside him in an instant. “What is it?”
he asked.

John held up his hand, listening intently. He heard the sound of a crash again, followed by a loud crack and one of the girls—Rebecca, it sounded like—cry out “
Son of a bitch!
”

“
Are you all right?
” came Billie’s voice.

“
It’s not bleeding but it hurts like hell
,” said Rebecca. “
Guess this means I wasn’t being paranoid
.”

“
Looks like it
,” Billie agreed with her.

Another crash sounded, and a fourth; grunting and heavy breathing told him Billie was struggling to control Teddy’s truck. “Billie!” he shouted again. “Rebecca!”

His gut twisted when he heard yet another crash—this time followed by both women screaming. “
We’re going into the river!
” cried Rebecca, her voice now filled with terror, followed moments later by a very loud splash.

John bellowed his rage
when the line went dead and ran for the elevator with Teddy glued to his side.

“What the fuck is going on, Courtney?!” the younger man demanded as John punched his finger into the call button.

“I heard what sounded like crashes—someone was after them. I think they’ve been pushed over the bridge into the Potomac.”

Teddy let loose a cursing rant that would make a sailor blush. “We’re going after them,” he said firmly.

John didn’t bother arguing—he knew Teddy was a firefighter, and as such was the kind of guy you wanted around in a crisis. He just hoped like hell that he would be able to maintain a level head with his sister being involved.

For that matter, he hoped that
he
could keep a level head. Fear for Billie and Rebecca had clamped around his heart the moment he heard the first crash, and he prayed that the girls would be able to get out of the truck safely.

“The elevator’s taking too fucking long, come on,” he said then, and with Teddy at his side he ran for the closest stairwell.

On the way he called 911, demanding that rescue services be immediately dispatched to Arlington Memorial Bridge. It was a wild hunch to send them there, but he knew that the shortest route from Pentagon City back to D.C. would take them across that bridge—and Billie would have taken the quickest drive possible.