Locked and Loaded (21 page)

“Is it?” she said, staring at him as the painful memories flooded back. “Then consider Hector and your business and all of your dreams collateral damage.”

“You bitch,” Roberto replied through his teeth. “I swear, Camille, you will die before I do this night and then we can both meet in hell.”

“Camille isn’t even my name,” she added in a deadly whisper, leaning toward him and straining against the guards’ hold. “You didn’t know jack shit, and you most assuredly
never
knew me. Ever … and, baby, we already met in hell—each time I tolerated your disgusting touch.”

“Let her go,” Guzman instructed with a casual wave of his hand, smiling.

The moment the guards released her, she rushed Roberto and punched him in his face hard. “I know I’m going to die tonight, but just let me kick this motherfucker’s ass before I do.” She stepped back from Roberto and stared at Guzman. “What do you care? He betrayed you, whatever shipment we took down only weakens him, not you—he was coming for you anyway.”

“Hell hath no fury…” Guzman said, shaking his head. He looked at his men. “What do you think? She is very philosophical, and I like how she thinks. If I thought I could actually convert her to our way of thinking, she would be very useful to our operations on the inside of where she is.”

“I’d say let the bastard go and see what she can do,” one guard said with an evil grin.

Guzman walked up to Roberto and spat in his face. “You’ve broken my heart. Your brother is dead and a betrayer. Your money is gone, and your product is burning on the loading docks. Your home in Miami is destroyed, along with all your toys and men who were loyal to you. And now, your woman is DEA and about to fight you in hand-to-hand combat while this house burns to the ground with you both in it … and tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Fitting.” Guzman sighed. “Tell me, Roberto. Was it worth it?”

A gunman left the room and ran outside. Immediately Sage smelled the gasoline as he walked around the perimeter of the house. In the distance, chopper blades and sirens disturbed the crickets’ songs. When he returned, the others let Roberto go.

For a moment he just stood and looked at her and then suddenly rushed her. She sidestepped him and landed a hard roundhouse kick to his back, much to the delight of the men gathered by the front door. He fell against the small tree and then pushed off from it. That had only enraged him and made him come at her again, this time quickly enough to almost grab hold of her throat again. But anticipating his moves, she reached up and through the small space between them, broke his hold, and made sure her elbow connected hard with his jaw.

Cheering rang out as though a prizefight or a death cage match was underway. But when Roberto fell against one of the guards, he came away with a gun. One shot blew Guzman back. The old man’s lit cigar flew over his head and down the steps, igniting the fuel that ripped around the building in a ring of fire. Guards panicked, more concerned about their own safety than seeking retribution for a dead man. Roberto immediately turned the gun on her. And just as quickly a sniper’s bullet put him down hard, then in rapidfire succession took out the guards who were trying to flee.

But billowing smoke and heat from fast-moving flames that ate up soft wood and dry brush now closed in around her. Windows and doors were impassable as the inferno raged.

In the chaos, a booming, familiar voice called her name from above, as she looked up the tree that was growing up through the floor and out of the storm-damaged roof. The sound of helicopter blades bore down on her, and she quickly pulled her body up the rough foliage and through the small hole in the tarp. She reached up as instructed and a strong hand grabbed hers, then another hand grabbed her flailing arm, as the craft pulled up and out of the line of smoke.

Her body collided with metal and sinew as the chopper moved away from the scene. Jeeps swarmed the street and the burning house below. Sage closed her eyes and held on tightly to the only one who’d ever come back for her.

CHAPTER 16

He held her tightly and rocked her as the chopper headed toward NAS, unable to keep up the ruse, not caring that the truth was being witnessed by the small band of brothers who’d flown in and out of hell with him more times than he could count. Lieutenant Hayes simply pounded Lieutenant Butcher’s fist with a nod and voiced the single victorious phrase of their brotherhood—
Hoooah
.

If the troubles of the world could just go away now, he would have been a very happy man. But nothing was that simple. There was still a very expensive shipment of some unknown amounts of weaponry, which would be used against American citizens, heading into Canada, based on Sage’s DEA intel and what Central Intelligence could piece together from that. Although they’d rounded up his band of merry men, Aalam Bashir, the man Assad reported to, was still at large. Yet it was a solid hunch that he’d be the one to make the weapons ID to initiate the transfer.

The moment they touched down, they all boarded waiting Jeeps and headed to the main admin building. Colonel Mitchell met them, along with Hank Wilson, his core staff, Agent Alvarez, and several key members of Central Intelligence.

Time was of the essence. Everyone who had touched the intersecting cases in any way was now needed to add any intel they could to the joint task force. As they debarked the vehicles and entered the building, all eyes went to Special Agent Sage Wagner and Captain Anthony Davis.

Hank Wilson began clapping long and slow and hard, his meaty palms striking a cadence that contained both respect and clearly personal joy that she was brought home alive. Colonel Mitchell faced Captain Davis, and in a rare display, saluted him indoors.

“Captain, I know this isn’t protocol, but I am damned glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Anthony responded, respectfully. “Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my men.”

“Lieutenants,” the colonel said crisply with pride, turning to Anthony’s men. “Job well done, but we still have one piece of the puzzle to fit together.”

“Sir, if I might interrupt, I also wouldn’t be here and our mission would not have been as successful as it has been so far without the sacrifice and dead-accurate intel provided by Special Agents Sage Wagner and Michael Alvarez. Their DEA team worked seamlessly with ours.”

Colonel Mitchell nodded. “We thank you, as does America,” he said, looking at both Sage and Mike Alvarez. Then he allowed his gaze to settle on Hank Wilson. “Fine team. I wish all branches of our government worked together the way we did here. Then we could solve a lot of problems. But that’s an issue for another day. Right now we still have a piece of the puzzle missing, and I don’t want it floating around out there somewhere.”

“Thank you,” Hank said. “But you’re right, Colonel. We’re not out of the woods yet.” He looked at both of his agents and Sage nodded.

“Guzman said he’d come down from DC just to watch my and Roberto’s execution. They are getting really bold and have to have something big planned if a guy like Guzman, at his level, wanted to see me and Roberto burn,” Sage said, dragging her fingers through her hair as she stared at the map. “That part just doesn’t fit. Pics sent to Colombia should have sufficed.”

“Guzman, himself, came to oversee an execution?” Hank looked around the room bewildered.

“He was definitely in the body count Captain Davis and his men left back at that house in the Ninth Ward when they extracted me, sir,” Sage said, and then glanced at Anthony.

“Do you know how high a target of value he was for drug enforcement?” Hank said, bewildered. He looked at the colonel. “He’s got assets valued at over a hundred billion and is virtually untouchable—or was.”

“This guy Guzman was formerly an unknown to DELTA, but recently came on our radar—not due to his drug affiliations, but because Central Intelligence got photos of him having lunch yesterday with our old Russian nemesis-turned-policy-lobbyist, Dimitri Andropov,” Colonel Mitchell said, pushing a folder across the desk at Hank Wilson.

“We’ve suspected Dimitri of arms dealing for years, but could never prove it,” the colonel said in a frustrated tone. “He comes from the old days of the cold war—was one of their generals and also in the intelligence community for that side. Pure KGB. You don’t legislate that out of a man. But unless we have hard evidence, we can’t keep him out of our backyard. That’s the law these days.”

“So what is an old arms dealer doing sitting down to lunch at a fine Washington, DC, eatery with a top Colombian drug baron on his way to witness an execution?” Hank ran a palm over his scalp. “Doesn’t make sense, but there is a connection we’re missing.”

“Follow the money,” Sage said. “It always comes back to that.” She chewed her bottom lip, and paced slowly.

Try as he might to stop himself, he had to watch her move. Anthony’s gaze followed Sage’s fluid motions and the sexy way she chewed her lip. Every nuance about her was a gift. He was just glad she was alive.

“Assad walked out of the warehouse with five million dollars, a mil from each of the five distributors,” Agent Alvarez confirmed as he glanced around. “But here’s the deal. Roberto put up five million as a down payment to buy the product from Assad. Half up front to get Assad to put the product on the freighter. Then each distributor brought their cut to the meeting—that’s another five, for a total of ten million dollars. The full deal would have been one hundred and fifty million, once we flipped the product. Since Roberto put up half of the investment, he got seventy-five million right off the top. Each of us distributors were supposed to get fifteen million for our one-million-dollar investment—plus there’d be a service fee to Roberto … like a mil off the top. But basically it was a crazy-profitable venture.”

Lieutenant Butcher released a long whistle. “And you wonder why we can’t shut this bull down?”

“But what we confiscated at the docks was only about a million dollars’ worth of weapons inventory, if that,” the colonel said, glancing around the room.

“What if they are planning on multiple small shipments?” Sage suggested, and then stopped pacing to look at the group. “We know we interrupted five million dollars of potential shipments, because you picked up Assad and his men with that cash right after they left the warehouse. But what happened to the first five million?”

“MI and Central Intelligence report that only a million of it was wire-transferred from the casino to a Mr. Charles Wallace up in Toronto,” Colonel Mitchell said.

“There’s your payment for what we found on the docks,” Anthony replied, glancing at the colonel and then at Sage. “How much you want to bet that the other four million is waiting on the call from Aalam Bashir to Assad to let him know to release the funds.”

“But a huge shipment of four million dollars’ worth of arms has to come in through a port city. To truck in that much stuff, or to fly it in, or even to bring it in by rail … it’s possible, but seems like it would be hard to hide—unless it was coming in via multiple small shipments like Agent Wagner said.” Alvarez looked around as Anthony turned to the colonel.

“Unless it’s nuclear material, sir.” Anthony stepped into the center of the room. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir. A sighting of Dimitri Andropov with a billionaire drug lord, at this time, is extremely troubling, given what happened in Kazakhstan.”

The colonel glanced around the room. “What Captain Davis is about to disclose is highly classified. But we don’t have time for clearances and bureaucratic bullshit right now. We need to act before Assad’s contact calls him, the payment is perceived as late, or word leaks out that the dock and port have been raided, if it hasn’t already. Understood?”

Everyone nodded, and Anthony pressed on. “We lost about a pound of nuclear material during the secret transfer from the Aqtau nuclear plant over there to the UN facility eighteen hundred miles away. There’s still debate about whether or not that pound ever existed, if the scales were off, whatever, because we did recover and contain eight hundred pounds. But there’s still suspicion that an inside job occurred.”

“How does this factor in here, Captain?” Hank Wilson asked, clearly troubled. “It don’t get how this fits with Colombian drug dealers at all. This is way out of Guzman’s normal span of control or interest.”

Anthony nodded. “Hear me out, sir. This is pure speculation, but what if Assad’s terror cell was only spending half the money—since they’d only set up wire transfers for half? That five million in cash they physically carried away from the warehouses could go back to fund other aspects of their cell’s operations, and they just purchased a million dollars in conventional weapons. But then they also may have purchased something special that’s worth four million dollars … and that’s small, light, and easy to transport—something that is our worst fear.”

“If we can crack the code on who this Charles Wallace really is, the guy who the wire transfers were sent to, then maybe we can figure out if this guy has the capacity to deliver something like that to Bashir?” Sage added.

“We’ve been running that name through the MI databases to no avail,” the colonel admitted, and then smoothed a palm over his head.

“A lot of loose nukes got away from Mother Russia,” Sage replied, casting her gaze around the room. “What was Dimitri Andropov doing meeting with Guzman? It still comes back to that.” She looked at her boss. “Anybody keeping tabs on his whereabouts now?”

Colonel Mitchell looked at the Central Intelligence staff in the room, and one of their agents who sat before a laptop pulled up a screen.

“Andropov left DC on a morning flight to attend a technology conference in Boston, sir.”

“Check all the charter flights leaving from Boston to Toronto and any passenger manifests with a Charles Wallace on them.” Sage leaned against the wall and looked at Anthony. “How’s your Arabic, Captain?”

“Never better.”

“We can run Captain Davis’s voice through a voice synthesizer and make him sound like Assad, if he keeps his communication short and sweet,” the staffer from Central Intelligence said. “We can record key words and phrases and answer in bursts to satisfy the caller without Captain Davis even having to be in the room.”