Too Secret Service: Part Two Page 8

  “Would that be wise?” Jennifer asked. “After all, he could be in the middle of getting shot at..”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll email him something. After that, all we’ll need is a place to hide.”

  “That I can arrange,” Daniel answered. “How do you feel about a stay in New York City?”

  “I’ve been worse places,” Jennifer answered. “Why? Who do you know there?”

  With a small smile, he answered, “Let’s say that I made friends the last time I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Daniel, the last time you were in that neighborhood, you wound up with a barricade site that resembled Beirut and a few thousand dollars’ worth of home repair.”

  “I like to think of it as home remodeling.”

  “To cover up scorch marks!” Lane said, voice raised in concern.

  “Excuse me,” Blaine interjected. “But do we really care what happened last time? When was this?”

  “Four years ago,” Clark answered.

  “Fine, four years ago is four years ago. But at the moment, I’d rather be safely surrounded by men with guns, as Jen suggested earlier. Can you get them in New York?”

  “I believe so. They owe me one or two…favors,” he said with amusement.

  “Great. Can we go and get them? After that, I’ll send Williams that email on DeValera… Wait a second; can this contact of yours be traced back to you? Even by association?”

  Clark shrugged. “I believe so. I could regulate it through a third party that’s less likely to be associated with me, if you want to be truly paranoid about it.”

  “After the past seventeen hours, I trust as many people as Cary Grant in an Alfred Hitchcock film. And how exactly are we supposed to get to New York?”

  * * * *

  The Hispanic woman gripped her seat belt with white knuckles as the black VW Rabbit sped down the highway. She felt sorry for the poor traffic cop who gave chase…should any poor cop actually see them fly by.

  “I still say you’re insane,” she told her…husband, for lack of a better word. Their circumstances were bizarre, to say the least, if not outright demented.

  “That’s why you love me, isn’t it?” he replied as he pressed down on the accelerator a touch harder. His relaxed posture at the wheel gave no indication he was pushing the car past ninety miles per hour. His ice blue eyes glowed with amusement as he navigated the road. His light blonde hair blew in the wind flowing through the window, which was only open a crack.

  “It sure as heck wasn’t for your acting abilities.”

  “Awww. And I thought you liked my numerous talents.”

  “Yes, but at moments like these, I tend to forget them.”

  “No one said you had to come,” he replied. “You could’ve stayed at home.”

  “Frankly, I’d rather get shot at than work another thirty-six hour shift.”

  “That’s the optimistic approach I love about you.” The blonde pushed his wire-framed glasses up his nose.

  “Tell me once again why we’re doing this,” she requested.

  “Danny Boy called. I answer. I’m still a bit iffy on who owes who from last time we met.”

  “I thought the first time we met was more than enough so he’d still owe us.”

  “Possibly, but you didn’t hear him, Angel. This wasn’t Daniel Clark shaken. This was friggin’ terrified. Now, we’ve seen Daniel on a barricade, and we’ve seen him as cool as ice looking down the barrel of an AK-47. Trust me, if I were half as sane as I claimed not to be, I should be shaking.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I know. I said, ‘If I were sane.’ If I was, that would take all the fun out of life.”

  She just shook her head as he sped along the next curve.

  * * * *

  Wayne slumped against the building as the helicopter landed. He looked at his watch. 11:05.

  All that in five minutes?

  He leaned his head back against the wall, feeling the urge to fall asleep right there. Why wasn’t he shaking from adrenaline?

  Wait five minutes, you will be, he answered himself. He rolled his eyes toward the roof. There was Strongbow, climbing her way down the rappelling wire.

  Mom and Dad would definitely not be sleeping in this house anytime soon.

  Wayne felt his father’s hand clamp down on his shoulder. “That was fun, wasn’t it, Wayne?” he yelled over the sound of dying helicopter blades.

  Phoenix looked at his father, restraining the urge to laugh. Getting shot at was always fun as long as you didn’t get hit; after which it became far less interesting. He wanted to kick back, relax, and critique the failed assault, noting everything he would’ve done in their place (a futile exercise since they would’ve failed against such superior forces in any event).

  “Yes, but it cost you your deposit on this place,” Williams replied.

  His father waved it away. “Eh, the government paid for it. Besides, it was ugly. I’ve known people who burn buildings for that offense. People like your partner, in fact.”

  “Dad, she’s not my…” He drifted off in mid-thought.

  The Ranger smiled. “Being shot at together doesn’t count?” he asked casually, now that the main rotors had wound down.

  Wayne snapped back to the conversation and quickly stood. He spread his arms to encompass the whole battle site. “What are they doing here?”

  “They were trying to kill us,” his father deadpanned. “I had presumed the meaning of that was particularly clear.”

  “No! Not that! Why are they here?” Wayne turned back to his father. “And if you say ‘to kill us’, I’ll deck you.”

  “Not at all. Why were they here? They were born, of course.”

  A sudden, irrational urge to do great damage to certain areas of his father’s body passed through Wayne’s head. “How did they know we were here, Catherine and I?”

  “Well—” Williams Senior stopped at the glance he received from his son. “Well,” he resumed, “they knew you would be at the J. Edgar building, and after your little stop in Ireland, they must’ve naturally guessed you might have stopped by since you were in the neighborhood.”

  Wayne shook his head. “What reason would they have to think that? No offense, but you are not exactly reason enough to stop by for a chat when someone wants to make Moscow into a night-light. There weren’t any bombs in London, and if we didn’t accidentally receive a package of blackmail photographs, we’d be in Rome by now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Unless you have recent contacts in the area, the only way in Hell you’d be able to get a gun would be through me.”

  “Catherine has contacts, I’m sure. She could’ve gotten something. No, someone had to have told them, or something had tipped them off. All they needed was someone to tell whoever they are that we’re on the island, and that would be enough. But how could they have known? Unless you have enemies you have a grudge against…”

  “I don’t hold grudges. I have no living enemies.”

  The sounds of the propeller blades had finally died, and he heard the sounds of feet jogging his way. Wayne turned, already reaching out his arm to shake the hands of whoever drove that gun ship.

  Catherine came to a complete stop, then shook hands with him, smiling. “Great job, Wayne.”

  He couldn’t help but smile in return. “Not bad yourself. Not a-tall a-tall,” he said in a so-so brogue.

  She nodded crisply, then surveyed the various and sundry dead bodies. “So, what do you think these guys wanted, aside from using us as target practice?”

  “I think that’s all they wanted. What they’re doing here is another matter entirely. We’re not even sure how they knew we were here.”

  “Cabinet Member Brooks,” Catherine replied.

  He cocked his head. The man in the blackmail photos. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Probably the reason I used. The ‘Our secret base was blown up, and you must be in on it’ approach. It’s the only thing that makes
sense. I’m betting they came in and found him exactly as I left him, and, coincidentally, realized that someone else was already there and had given him the second degree.”

  Williams nodded in agreement. “Which means Mister Brooks is soon to be relocated to an iron bed that slides in and out of a drawer, complete with toe tag and a complimentary autopsy.”

  She smiled. “Ah, the simple joys of an eternal vacation.”

  The door of the helicopter slid open at last. The pilot came out, almost squeezing past the door frame—he was six-three, easy. He wore a flight suit so dark a green it was nearly black. He casually strode over to the trio, his light blue eyes scanning the damage around him. A sidearm resided on his right thigh. His combat boots crunched as he trod over shattered glass and shell casings. His wavy brown hair was nearly black in the night.

  “Well, Captain,” he said, “I’ll hand this much to you. You sure know how to throw a party…as well as a few grenades, it seems.”

  “Lt. Coleridge, I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

  “I didn’t know you had this much of a night life.”

  “You should see me on weekends.”

  Jason Coleridge nodded, merely glancing at Wayne. His gaze settled on Catherine, and a luminescent grin spread out over his face. He thrust out a hand like it was a spear. “Good evening, ma’am. Lt. Jason Coleridge, at your service.”

  She took his hand. It looked immensely tiny in his huge paw. “Mariah Scott,” she told him, not breaking eye contact. Wayne, on the other hand, made damn sure to glare at his father hard enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Instead, the Ranger just smiled and added, “She’s my future daughter-in-law.” He gripped Wayne’s shoulder. “She’s engaged to my son here.”

  Jason’s smile drooped only a nanometer, but Wayne could tell from the infinitesimally small tightening in certain facial muscles that he was now straining to keep his smile in place. For some reason, Wayne liked that thought.

  Jason broke off his handshake, concluding with a brief nod, and turned to Wayne, repeating the gesture, looking down on him. “Ah, so you’re Grendel Junior, huh?”

  Wayne took the hand absentmindedly. “Grendel?”

  “That’s what we call him ’round our office,” Coleridge replied with a nod toward the Captain. “We always figured he was a monster of some sort.”

  “Really?” Wayne answered, increasing the pressure.

  “Yeah… Nice grip.”

  “I read a lot of hard covers,” Wayne answered.

  * * * *

  Blaine looked at his watch for the ninth time in as many seconds. Each time was too quick for him to actually read the time on his digital watch. He’d been pacing for the better part of an hour now, his brow furrowed by thoughts that wouldn’t let him be. He looked rather like a Wall Street investor waiting for the final results of the day, straining to be let loose by the leash of the bell that marked the nine-to-five shift. To look at him, no one could honestly tell he’d been shot twelve hours earlier.

  Jennifer, for her part, wanted to get some popcorn and watch him pace. It was more entertaining than watching Star Trek (NetForce had already designed half of the programs they used on the show, and the other half were Science Fantasy, not fiction). She could almost see Blaine think over the information Clark had obtained.

  Clark, on the other hand, was about as perturbed as a writer who just received his latest advance. He had slipped on a set of reading glasses and started reading another Patricia Cornwell. It had something to do with terrorists. At points, all he did was shake his head and go over lines, sometimes even paragraphs, muttering something about “Bloody amateurs.”

  Blaine looked at his watch again. Jennifer sighed deeply. “It’s eleven o’clock, feel better now?” He ignored her and kept pacing.

  Maybe Clark’s wife had the right attitude when she came in, said, “Oh, again?” and had eaten the dinner Daniel had prepared.

  Blaine still wanted to know what she meant by again.

  But, then again, maybe he didn’t.

  After dinner, Jeri—Mrs. Clark—had departed for bed, as unnerved by the news as her husband was. From Clark, Blaine expected it. Clark was a professional at maintaining his cool. Jeri was an untrained civilian.

  They must have an interesting life if this is mundane, Agent Lansing mused.

  The doorbell rang. Daniel immediately snapped the book closed as even Blaine stopped in mid-step and pivoted on the ball of the forward foot. Clark was the only one to move to the door. He quickly glanced out the peephole, then quickly unsnapped the locks and wrenched the door open with enthusiasm.

  Just outside the door frame stood two figures, a man and a woman. He was five-ten and well built, with kind, ice-blue eyes, blonde hair, and a soft face—not to mention gold, wire-framed glasses. He wore a white windbreaker over his sweatshirt. The woman in front of him was Hispanic, two inches shorter, and bore a resemblance to a young Salma Hayak.

  “I didn’t expect the both of you to come,” Clark told them.

  “Just be grateful I brought along my better half, Dan-O,” the man answered.

  “And that coming down here is better than a shift at the ER,” Clark said with a look at the woman.

  “That too, Daniel,” she replied, stepping inside. The man followed, surprisingly graceful for his size.

  Clark closed the door behind them. The tall one immediately headed for Blaine Lansing and pumped his hand. “You must be that Fed Danny Boy mentioned.” He turned on Jennifer. “And you are his rescuer, correct?”

  “Jennifer Lane.”

  “Blaine Lansing.”

  The man dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Names are not important. With any luck, you two will never see me again.”

  “Okaaay.”

  * * * *

  Sarah Durkin looked to be in her late twenties at the most, but no one on Earth could have imagined her age as being forty-five years old. Her lively obsidian eyes followed Patrick Cochran around the bedroom as he dressed to go into work on his day off. She shook her head from side-to-side, letting her silky, raven-black hair move with it. There were times she wondered what she saw in this man.

  At forty-seven, the Deputy Director of Intelligence had a receding hairline to add to his already broad forehead. The left side of his chest was covered with old bullet scars from the night he and Sarah had met: a long and tiresome affair. His manner and bearing were finely polished during his years at Yale Law. His lanky form was accentuated by his extreme height, both a result of Marfan’s syndrome. At his age, he was used to references about Ichabod Crane and Abe Lincoln.

  And also damned secretive at the damnedest moments, she thought.

  “What is it?” she asked, still prone on the bed.

  Cochran snapped around, his mind obviously somewhere else. “Oh? What?” He slipped his black glasses on over his eyes. “Sorry, I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was,” she said, pulling herself up the headboard. “Then I heard you trampling around here like an elephant.”

  He cast a critical eye around the room, taking in the computer magazines, computer parts, wire, and circuit boards he’d nearly broken his neck on. With a half-smile on his lips, “Trampling might not be quite so accurate as ‘tripping.’ I’m surprised the phone didn’t wake you up.”

  “I’ve had practice ignoring it.” She glanced at the clock. “When was it?”

  “A few hours ago. I tried thinking it over, but it’s not working. I’ve got to get to the office,” he said, stepping into a sock. “Something’s come up. Luckily, it never closes. An old Company man has resurfaced. A counter-terrorist agent.”

  “An assassin?” she asked, remembering CIA also stood for Completely Incompetent Assassins.

  Her lover turned to her with a look of stone and said in a hard, alien voice, “A nightmare.”

  * * * *

  “All right,” the man named Peter said as he slammed the door behind him, “the two of you keep your h
eads down when we get in sight of the guard post. If anyone comes looking for the two of you here, we don’t want to give the guard anything to remember. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Blaine answered. “But who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Peter, this is Angelita, my”—Peter looked at his companion—“wife?”

  “Church, si; State, no,” Peter’s wife responded with a precision which puzzled the listeners.

  “Right.” Peter turned the key. “I hope this man of yours is waiting for your email at midnight.”

  “He’s in London,” Blaine answered.

  “In which case,” Angelita said, “I hope he doesn’t mind an early wake-up call.”

  Chapter 31

  Saturday, November 11th

  6:00 AM, London Time

  Wayne was awake, his back propped up against an arm of the couch, his back comforted by a plush pillow. His first perception was the blackness behind his own eyelids. His first thought was how much more sleep he could get.

  Frankly, if the world isn’t going to blow up tomorrow, why bother? Oh, wait, the world is going to blow up…if not tomorrow, then a few weeks from now… Yeah, I guess I have to wake up.

  Then what was holding him back?

  He forced his eyes open, then glanced from the ceiling to his chest, or, more precisely, Catherine’s head resting on the center of his chest.

  Why exactly is she there again? Ah, yes: Wayne Williams, noble idiot, insists assassin take the couch while he rests on the floor. She insists on him sleeping on the couch because of his back. He says, with not enough sarcasm, “Why don’t I lay down on the couch, and you lay down like I’m just one of the cushions?”

  Of course, the little argument might not have come up had their bed in the guest room not been shredded, or had not the other couch taken the brunt of the gunfire in the living room, and, of course, the only intact bed in the entire house was in his parents’ room… Guess where his parents were sleeping.

  Wayne looked at Catherine resting. She looked so at peace, she could have been an angel.