Hot Target (2 page)

With all due respect, fuck you, Professor Harris. This was hard enough to write without having to find new ways to explain over and over again that if the guards had been allowed to make noise, an entire platoon would’ve come down on their heads, and a whole lot more people would’ve died.

As it was, the body count must’ve seemed outrageously high to the hostages. Cos hadn’t had time to do more than push the fallen guards aside. At least the sisters hadn’t had to step over them.

Yeah, great. What a guy.

0518. Extraction via Seahawk helo from roof.

0542. Out of hostile airspace.

And he was done. Christ. Writing this had taken longer than the actual op.

He saved and printed the report.

And then realized that if he left this office, he’d have to walk right past Vlachic and Collins, who were just getting into the details of The Story.

“So the chief walks through what used to be some kind of village square,” Collins was saying, “and it’s a bloodbath. Half the population of this town had been executed. Men, women . . . there were even dead babies, you know? Dozens of kids.”

“Jesus,” Vlachic breathed as Cosmo closed the laptop and put the report into Mikey’s in-basket. “I hadn’t heard that. It sounds like—”

“Bullshit exaggeration?” Collins asked. “Yes, it does, but detailed info about the casualties was in the written report, so . . . And Sam Starrett—you ever meet Lieutenant Starrett, Chick? Tall officer? From Texas? He’s gone from the Teams now, but—”

“Yeah, I know who you’re talking about,” Vlachic said. “I saw him a few times during BUD/S, out in the grinder, laughing at us.”

“Starrett was there at the village,” Collins said. “I heard he was, like, down on his hands and knees in the dust, retching. The carnage was that bad. And Chief Richter—although he wasn’t a chief then, you know—he’s just walking around, taking it all in. He doesn’t look upset, doesn’t look anything. You know Cosmo—he plays his cards close to the vest. He also never says much of anything unless he’s giving a direct order, but he’s standing there in that square, and he says kind of quietly—like, he’s not talking to anyone. He was just standing there by himself. But he says, ‘Whoever did this is going to fucking die.’ ”

Actually, what he’d said was “Whoever did this deserves to die.” Somewhere along the way, as The Story had been told again and again, someone had added the infinitive-splitting profanity and done that little verb switcheroo. Cosmo couldn’t blame them. It made for higher drama.

He himself was partially to blame, because he’d never bothered to correct it.

The op in question had happened years ago, early in his career. SEAL Team Sixteen had been sent to a terrorist hotbed of a country known as “the Pit.” In the mountains up north, two warring factions had been duking it out, and someone in a remote little village had pissed off one of the warlords, who had wreaked that terrible havoc.

The SEALs’ orders had been to escort negotiators into the mountains, to help get talks started to end the bloodshed, and to keep other villagers in the area safe.

Several of the officers were given an order—to locate the warlord’s encampment. A squad had left to do just that.

Cosmo, though, had helped handle the cleanup. Even though it was winter, something had to be done about the dozens of bodies lying in the village square.

He’d done some crap jobs in his life, but that one had been the worst. It made yesterday’s garbage chute seem like a picnic in the park with Nicole Kidman.

And
Renée Zellweger.

“The theory is that he discovered the location of the warlord’s camp,” Collins told Vlachic now.

By
he
he meant Cosmo, who now surrendered. He sat down in Mikey’s office chair, put his head back and his feet up, and closed his eyes. This was going to take a while.

“No one remembers seeing him at the briefing,” Collins continued, “but he could have been listening outside of the tent. During the night, it’s said that he went into the mountains and paid that warlord a little visit. And instead of negotiating a meeting, the next morning those diplomats ended up helping load up a hundred more body bags. That warlord and most of his men were dead.”

“And everyone’s certain it was Chief Richter?” Vlachic questioned.

“No,” Collins said. “But apparently he was unaccounted for that night—just short of UA. And—if he was doing something else, why doesn’t he talk about it and end the speculation, huh?”

Because what he’d done one night, all those years ago, was no one’s freaking business. Cosmo almost got up and said it aloud as he walked out into the hall. But he stayed seated. Vlachic was a good kid. It would embarrass him to be caught gossiping this way.

Collins, however, was one of those cocky young officers that the chiefs prayed would either move quickly into the civilian sector or grow up—preferably
before
he got someone killed.

“And,” Collins continued, “get this: a SEAL name of Hoskins—he’s no longer with the Teams, but he hangs out sometimes at the Ladybug Lounge, so you can ask him yourself—he says he spotted the chief around dawn, heading toward the river to get cleaned up because his uniform was covered with blood. And Bill Silverman—you’ve met him, right? He heard one of the village elders thanking Cos, like ‘I can never repay you for what you have done.’ ”

“Shit,” Vlachic said, the word filled with meaning.

“Yeah,” Collins responded. “But seeing as how it brought peace to the region, at least until a new warlord moved in . . .”

Their voices faded as they finally moved off down the corridor.

“Do you think he did it?” Cosmo heard Vlachic ask. “Killed all those men?”

He couldn’t hear Collins’s reply.

He waited until he heard the door closing down at the end of the hall. He reached for his sunglasses as he got to his feet. “Free at last.” It was little more than an exhale, barely audible and certainly not meant to be overheard.

“Are you?” a voice asked. It was female and faintly Hispanic, and he recognized right away that it belonged to Sister Mary Grace, the youngest of his three nuns.

Despite that, it took everything he had to keep himself from jumping. How was it possible that he hadn’t heard her approach?

The sky outside the window was overcast, but he put his sunglasses on before he turned to face her.

Fortunately, she didn’t expect him to answer her question. “Lieutenant Muldoon thought I might find you here.”

Cosmo waited, and sure enough, she kept going.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” she told him. “So . . .” Her hands fluttered. She had long, graceful fingers, with short but well-kept nails. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am,” he said with a nod that was meant to give her permission to exit. “I’m glad you and your friends are safe.”

But she didn’t leave. “Do you have a minute?” she asked. “Do you mind if we sit down?”

That’s when he secured his spot in hell. He picked up that report he’d put in Muldoon’s basket and lied to a nun. “I’m afraid I need to get this to the lieutenant right away.”

She nodded solemnly, as if she believed him. “May I walk with you, then?”

Cosmo hesitated, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. She led the way out the door.

There was nothing to do but follow.

She was pretty in a very nun kind of way, with short dark hair and glasses that didn’t hide the luminousness of her eyes. Whatever she wanted, it wasn’t going to be good. Best-case scenario was that she was intending to preach at him for using deadly force during the rescue.

Thank you for saving my life, but couldn’t you have done it without hurting those poor terrorists . . . ?

He knew how to answer that. If she were someone he knew well and considered a friend, he might say,
You mean risk your safety and that of my teammates by doing anything other than permanently removing the “poor” terrorists who were responsible for three different bus bombings and 268 civilian deaths over the course of one week, who attacked the hotel where the delegates from your peacekeeping mission were billeted, who executed eleven members of your delegation, and who kidnapped you and your two friends with the intention of videotaping your impending torture and death as a warning to others who might defy them?

But no. Instead, if she asked that question, he would merely respond with,
No, ma’am, I could not,
politely excuse himself, and walk away.

If this woman’s recent experiences hadn’t made an adjustment to her never-use-violence way of thinking, nothing he said was going to change her mind.

And she sure as hell wasn’t going to change his.

But she didn’t speak until they went down the stairs and out into the crisp, cold sunshine.

“I was wondering,” she said then, “and forgive me if this is too personal, but . . . Are you married?”

What the fah . . . ? Cosmo couldn’t help himself. He looked at her over the top of his sunglasses.

It wasn’t often that someone managed to surprise him so completely. And Sister Mary Grace—who’d also sneaked up on him—was two for two.

“No,” he said.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

He broke eye contact. “No.” Jesus, was she . . . ? Cosmo prayed—for the first time in years—that she hadn’t sought him out to hit on him. That would be too ungodly weird.

But it would be just his luck when it came to women. He attracted the strange ones. Or the needy ones—needy in the sense of “I need to be tied up.” Or even worse—“I need to be treated like crap, so if you’re going to be nice to me, I’m leaving right now.”

He had some kind of homing beacon that drew in the desperately dysfunctional—the women who thought he was dangerous and got off on that. If there was such a thing as a nympho nun, it made sense that she would seek him out.

Please, God, if You’re out there, make this woman’s desire be for nothing more than to sing a verse or two of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”

“Any kind of significant other?” she persisted. “Someone that you can talk to?”

And just like that, he understood. She wasn’t hoping to jump his bones, thank you, dear sweet Jesus. She just wanted to make sure he had an outlet for his emotional and spiritual relief.

Sister Mary Grace didn’t falter as he stopped walking, as he gazed silently down at her. He knew damn well that the combination of his mirrored shades and his poker face could make strong men shake in their boots and back away.

But she took a step closer. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you ever need to talk,” she told him.

She had beautiful eyes. They were so warm, so peaceful. So nonjudgmental.

“I’m all right,” he said.

“I know.” The way she said it, with that smile—it wasn’t just a platitude. “But everyone needs someone to talk to. Don’t you think?”

“The team has a shrink,” he told her, mostly because she was standing there with those eyes, waiting for some kind of response. With anyone else, he would’ve excused himself and been long gone.

“That’s good,” she said with another warm smile.

It made him feel like a liar. “I don’t go very often, or . . .” He corrected himself. “At all, actually. Except, you know, when I’m ordered to. . . .”

“But you can go if you ever need to,” she said. “Right?”

“Yeah.”

There was silence then, but she didn’t try to fill it. She just stood there, smiling at him.

Collins and Vlachic were across the yard, talking to Izzy Zanella, who was trying to get a softball game going. All three of them were watching Cosmo and the nun out of the corner of their eyes.

“I’ll pray for you,” Sister Mary Grace finally told him, and, Christ, what could he possibly say in response to that?

“Thank you, Sister.”

Jenkins saved him—God bless him. He came running out of the administrative building. “Hey, Zanella, have you seen Cos?”

Izzy pointed, and Jenk jogged in his direction. “Excuse me, Chief,” he called. “We just got a call from the States. Your mother—she’s going to be all right—but she’s had an accident. I guess she fell and . . . Sounds like she broke both of her wrists.”

Oh, shit. “Excuse me,” Cosmo told the nun.

As he ran for the admin office, he heard Ensign Collins say to Vlachic and Zanella, “Chief Richter has a
mother
?”

C
HAPTER
O
NE

Cosmo’s mother was driving him crazy.

Well, okay, to be fair, it wasn’t his mom, but rather her choice of music that had pushed him out of her condo, into his truck, and back down the 5, here to San Diego.

He parked in the lot next to the squat, ugly building that held the offices of Troubleshooters Incorporated. The sun was warm on the back of his neck as he crossed to the door. As usual, it was locked—apparently Tommy Paoletti had had no luck yet finding a receptionist for his personal security company. But he
had
installed a system that would allow him to let people in without having to run all the way out to the door twenty times a day.

A surveillance camera hung overhead, and Cosmo looked up at it, making sure Tommy would be able to see his face as he hit the bell.

The lock clicked open as a buzzer sounded, and he went inside.

“Grab some coffee—I’ll be right out,” Tom shouted from one of the back offices. “How’s your mom?”

“Much better, thanks,” Cosmo called back.

And she was. Right after the accident, when Cosmo had first gone to see her, she’d been in a lot of pain. Her face had been almost gray, and she’d looked old and frail lying in that hospital bed.

But she’d been home a few days now and was feeling far more her old self.

Which was great.

But, dear sweet Jesus, if he had to listen to the soundtrack from
Jekyll & Hyde
one more time, he was going to scream.

“You just haven’t had enough time to appreciate it,” his mother had told him. “A few more listens and—”

Oh, no. No, no, Mom. I’ve heard it quite enough, thanks.

Cosmo poured himself some coffee from the setup in the Troubleshooters waiting room.

He’d actually liked
Urinetown.
He could handle repeated listens of
The Full Monty,
too. And
West Side Story,
if done properly, could bring tears to his usually super-cynical dry eyes.

But most of his mother’s very favorite Broadway musicals were those which Uncle Riley had dubbed “screamers.” They were filled with hyper-emotional ballads with crescendos that swelled to triple forte, delivered by sopranos or tenors who, as Riley had insisted, deserved immediate arrest by the “too-too” police.

Uncle Riley had gotten away with it, but God help him if Cosmo ever said anything like that aloud.

Not just to his mother, who would give him her best injured look, then subject him to several hours of lectures on true music appreciation.

But God help him also if he talked about such things to the other men in SEAL Team Sixteen.

They would look at him as if he were, well . . .

Gay.

Which he wasn’t.

Not even close.

Not, of course, that there was anything wrong with it.

Shoot, with his mother, it would’ve been easier if he had been. He might’ve been born with some special genetic ability to actually enjoy
Jekyll & Hyde.
And
Phantom
and
Les Mis
and all the other screamers he’d gritted his teeth through, as he’d taken his mother to see them through the years.

Cos took his coffee and sank down into one of the new leather sofas in the Troubleshooters waiting room. Buttery soft and a light shade of honey brown, they replaced the former mismatched collection of overstuffed chairs—thrift shop rejects—that had cluttered the area in front of the receptionist’s desk.

Whoa, the walls had been repainted, too.

Magazine racks, potted plants, real lamps instead of overhead fluorescents . . .

Tom’s wife, Kelly, had been threatening to redecorate for months, insisting that the image Tom was trying for with his new company probably wasn’t “piss poor and tasteless to boot.”

But huge leather sofas—as nice as they were—weren’t exactly Kelly’s light and breezy New England beach house style.

Someone else had done this.

Someone besides Tom—who was a great leader but seriously fashion and design challenged.

“Are you here for the meeting?”

Cosmo looked up. The woman coming down the hall toward him was a stranger. She was wearing a pin-striped suit that had been tailored to accentuate her feminine shape. Petite, with blond hair cut short and delicate features in a launch-a-thousand-ships face, she had blue eyes that were coolly polite. Professional. Intelligent.

Ivy-league intelligent.

Her hands were ring-free. Both of them. Her fingernails were short, bitten down almost to the quick—a direct and intriguing contrast to the career-woman persona.

She took a few steps closer and tried again. “May I help you?”

“No, ma’am,” he finally answered her, then mentally kicked himself. Talk, asshole. She most certainly could help him. He would love for her to help him. And at least be polite. “Thanks. I’m waiting for Commander Paoletti.”

She finally smiled, and it transformed her from merely breathtakingly beautiful to full-power-defibrillator heart-stoppingly gorgeous. He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her to bear his children.

“You must be one of his SEALs,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” Stand up, fool. But, Christ, don’t spill the coffee . . . Too late. It splashed over the edge of the cup and onto his fingers. Gahhhhd, it was hot.

She pretended not to notice as he pretended that he hadn’t just been scalded. She even held out her hand to shake. “I’m Sophia Ghaffari.”

Sophia. It was a beautiful name, and by all rights violins should have started playing when she said it. She looked like a Sophia, she dressed like a Sophia, she even smelled like a Sophia.

He tried to wipe his fingers dry on his pants, but it was hopeless. “Cosmo Richter. Sorry, I’m . . .”

A freakin’ idiot.

He crossed to the coffee setup, where he found some napkins, thank the Lord.

But Sophia didn’t run out of the room screaming, “Save me from cretins!” as he wiped off his hand. “You must be here to help out with the Mercedes Chadwick job,” she said instead.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Tommy said something about an easy op in L.A.”

“That’s the one.” Now that his hands were clean, she had crossed her arms. “She’s a movie producer—and I guess a screenwriter, too,” she told him. “She’s been getting death threats.”

His chance to touch Sophia, to shake her hand, had apparently passed. What a crying shame.

“Hey, Cos.” Tom Paoletti came out from the back, smiling his welcome. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“No problem, sir.”

“Before I forget, Kelly said to say she’s on for lunch tomorrow.”

“How is she?” Cosmo asked. Tommy’s wife, Kelly, was pregnant with their first child.

“Other than pissed that she can’t fly?” Tom asked. “She really wanted to go back to Massachusetts for a week on the beach before the baby was born, but her OB just grounded her. We had a four-hour discussion the other night on the definition of ‘highly recommend.’ ” He rolled his eyes. “The happy ending was that one of our clients owns a house right on the beach in Malibu, and he’s always telling me to use it. So we’re going tomorrow. Actually, you can do me a big favor and drive Kelly up there after lunch.” He looked at Sophia. “Soph, you better get moving, if you’re intending to catch that flight.”

“Yeah. It was nice meeting you,” Sophia told Cosmo, then turned back to Tom. “Tell Decker I’m sorry I missed him.”

“I’ll do that,” Tom told her. “He’s stuck in traffic. It’s bad—really, you better get going.”

As she hurried down the hall, he led Cosmo back toward his office. “We’ve had a change of plans,” he continued. “Originally Decker was going to meet us here, but the 15’s a parking lot. I’m going to meet him tonight, at the client’s. Any chance you can come along?”

“Sure.” Cosmo couldn’t help hesitating, turning to watch Sophia hustle out of her office and down the hall and out the door.

Tommy, of course, noticed. “Sophia’s handling our paranoia accounts. You know, people who are panicked by the changing terrorist-threat levels. They want to make sure they have the best security system possible. She sets up a team to try to get past their system, see just how good it really is against professionals. She does the face-to-face work, initial meetings, report presentations, that sort of thing. She’s very good at it.”

“Sounds like fun,” Cos said as casually as he could as he closed Tom’s office door behind them. “Right up my alley. The breaking-in part, I mean. She need any help?”

Tommy laughed as he gestured for Cosmo to take a seat. Someone had gotten him new furniture for his office, too. A real desk instead of that rickety table he’d been using. “Her current assignment is out of state. I thought you wanted to stay close to your mom in . . . Where is she? Laguna Beach?”

“Maybe I could commute.” There was actual artwork up on the walls. Watercolors. Scenes of a coastline that was definitely New England and quite probably Tom and Kelly’s hometown on Boston’s North Shore.

Tom lifted an eyebrow. “To Denver?”

If it had been Phoenix or Vegas, he would’ve tried it. But Denver . . .

Tom knew what he was thinking. “Nice try, Chief,” he said. “But she’s recently widowed—she’s not looking to get involved with anyone right now. And I really need you in L.A.—Hollywood, actually.”

“The movie producer who’s getting death threats,” Cosmo repeated what Sophia had told him. “Is Deck the team leader?” Decker was a former SEAL and a former Agency operative.

“Yep,” Tom told him.

Cos nodded. If he couldn’t work with Sophia, Decker would be his strong second choice. “Count me in.” He backpedaled. “If, you know, he wants me.”

Tom nodded. “I’ve already spoken to him. He wants you.”

Lawrence Decker was a spec ops legend. He’d left the SEAL Teams shortly after the terrorist bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military complex in Saudi Arabia. According to the grapevine, Chief Decker had been frustrated by the red tape that, at the time, kept the SEALs from actively hunting down the terrorist organization that had killed so many American servicemen. He’d left the Teams and joined the clandestine and nearly nameless organization known as the Agency, where he’d gotten his wish—going deep into countries known for harboring terrorists. Now he was one of many former SEALs and Delta Force, Marine, CIA, FBI, and Agency operatives who were working for Tommy Paoletti’s civilian consultant group.

Yeah, Troubleshooters Incorporated’s personnel list read like a Who’s Who of the elite from the Special Operations world.

“You’ve got how many weeks of leave left?” Tommy asked Cos.

“Three weeks, two days, seventeen hours.”

His former SEAL CO smiled. “Well, at least you’re not counting the minutes.”

Cosmo glanced at his watch. And fourteen minutes.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to use this time as a vacation?” Tom asked.

“I’m quite sure, sir.” Like many SEALs in Team Sixteen, Cosmo wasn’t good at taking vacations. After just a few days, he got bored. Restless. “I just want to be able to check in on my mother once or twice a day, even just by phone.”

“You’re an only child, aren’t you?” Tom asked.

“Yeah. I’m it,” Cos said. “That’s why I took the full thirty days.” He’d taken the extra time off even though his mom was adamant that Cosmo not be the one to provide her personal care. She’d put it in bottom-line terms by saying no way was she going to allow her grown son to accompany her into the bathroom. “She’s doing really well, but I still want to be close by, you know? She seems to like both her day and night nurses—which is good, because with both wrists in a cast, she can’t do much of anything without help.”

“That must be frustrating for her,” Tom said.

Understatement of the year. “She has her coping strategies,” Cos told him. “She loves listening to music, so she’s been doing a lot of that. The Card’s also putting together a special computer keyboard for her, so she’ll be able to go back online.”

God bless WildCard Karmody, SEAL Team Sixteen’s computer wizard.

“So tell me about this Hollywood producer.” Cosmo got down to business. “Her name’s . . . Mercedes? Like the car?”

“J. Mercedes Chadwick,” Tom told him, then smiled at the look of disgust Cosmo shot in his direction.

“What’d she do,” Cos asked, “to piss people off enough to make them want to kill her?”

“I don’t need personal protection—a team of bodyguards? That’s absolutely ridiculous!” Jane Chadwick told Patty, her new college intern.

Patty didn’t seem convinced, so Jane turned to Robin, hoping for just a teensy bit of brotherly support.

But he wasn’t paying attention. He was giving Patty one of his “hey there” smiles. The girl, naturally, was dazzled. Of course, she was impossibly young and didn’t yet have the mileage that would enable her to see past Robin’s gorgeous face to the inner low-life womanizing scum within.

“Yo,” Jane said, clapping her hands sharply at her brother. Half brother. At times like this it helped to remind herself that they shared only a fraction of their genetic makeup. “Robin. Focus. Patty, go call the studio back and tell them no. Thank you, but no. I’m perfectly safe. Be firm.”

Unlike that of many young movie-loving girls who made the pilgrimage to Hollywood, Patty’s freckle-faced cuteness wasn’t an act. She actually wore kneesocks and meant it. Jane didn’t know her very well yet, but unfortunately being firm didn’t seem to be high on her skill list.

But at least she was out of Jane’s office, closing the door behind her, releasing Robin from her captivating spell.

“If you touch her,” Jane told him, “I will kill you and I will make it hurt.”

“What?” Robin said. Mr. Innocent. He made that sound that was half laugh, half indignation. “Come on. I was just smiling at her.”

One thing was certain: Her too-handsome half brother was a brilliant actor. If they could get this movie made, and—most important—if they could get it distributed and seen, he was going to be a star.

“Besides,” he added, “you of all people shouldn’t be making idle death threats.”

That was supposed to be funny. Jane didn’t crack a smile.

“That wasn’t a threat,” she said. “It was a promise. Let me put this in terms you’ll understand, Sleazoid. If you sleep with her, she’ll think she’s your girlfriend. And when she finds out that she was merely your Friday night distraction, she’ll be badly hurt. Now. Maybe you don’t give a rat’s ass about Patty’s feelings, but I do. And I also know what you do care about, so listen close. If you break her heart, she will quit. And if she quits, you will take her place and become my personal assistant, and you won’t have a single minute to yourself from that moment until we are done making
American Hero.
Which means in Sleazoid-speak that it will be two months before you have sex again. Two. Months.”