One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (22 page)

Staff Sergeant Cindy “Hawk” Bird had grown tired yesterday of waiting by the hotel phone for a call from her in-country CIA contact who she knew was only about a quarter mile away on the second floor of the U.S. embassy. After checking in early yesterday afternoon, Hawk couldn’t resist taking a quick walk around the area to clear the jet lag, or, truth be told, to clear her mind after a whirlwind Whistle-stop and having been rerouted at the last minute away from the Commander’s Board she had so anticipated.

It had been a beautiful day with carefree locals walking their dogs, clear plastic doggie bag and leash handle in one hand, cell in the other. She had walked only a block from the hotel parking lot, careful, though, not to be too obvious when she glanced back over her shoulder while passing the Norwegian embassy, to check if her tails were still on the job. She then continued west down Dag Hammarskjolds vag another six hundred feet along the noticeably clean sidewalk, and stopped. She had paused there, playing it cool and trying to blend in. She had peered through the gray-painted embassy fencing and razor-topped chain-link fence, willing her x-ray vision to pierce the tinted windows of the U.S. embassy.

She wasn’t able to see inside, but she just knew Myron Curtis was in there somewhere.

C’mon, Myron, you knew I was coming.

Hawk turned south, taking Laboratoriegatan Street toward the bay, passing by several walkers of various cultures and skin colors, and noticed the Turkish and South Korean embassies. She reached the edge of the bay and stopped, taking in a deep breath of fresh Swedish air. She was amazed by the sheer beauty of the sailboats, dozens and dozens moored at the nearby docks. She looked for swimmers and wondered how warm the water might be, before coming back to reality.

Hawk gained the sleepy Nobelparkan dirt trail that hugged the north bank, allowing her to complete a lazy circular route back to the Villa Kallhagen in just over thirty minutes. No calls, so she had waited, killing time in her room by flipping through the flat-screen channels, trying to find a station in English or one not showing a soccer game.

After a late breakfast at the Villa’s five-star dining area, Hawk waited in her suite for contact from her host, bored, antsy, and tired of the waiting game. She checked her watch, then the desk clock on the nightstand next to the pearl-covered phone. Both were close to 1
P.M.
, her watch just two minutes ahead of the clock’s red digital numbers.

Hawk ran her fingers through her hair, expending trapped energy just for the hell of it. She tapped both hands on the edge of the bed, hummed for a few seconds, and popped straight up. With no word from the CIA, she walked across the plush pink carpet, threw open the beige blinds, and absorbed the gorgeous Djurgårdsbrunnskanalen, the peaceful paradise-colored canal water surrounded by towering emerald pines interspersed with shady spruce trees. In the distance, maybe a half mile away, she marveled at the top half of the 110-year-old haunted-looking Nordic Museum.

Fuck it! Truth is cover, cover is truth.

The phone in the suite rang, startling Hawk and pulling her from the window. She closed fast, nibbling nervously on the end of her fake fingernails, and watched it ring a second time. Answering on the first ring was too desperate, almost as if she was expecting an awkward prom invitation from that cute boy in algebra class.

On the third ring, Hawk moved. “Hello?”

“Miss Tomlinson, my apologies for the disturbance, but you have a call from overseas. I’ll patch you through.”

It sounded like the same guy that checked her in, the tall one with wandering eyes, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Thank you,” Hawk said, wondering why the front desk would think a call from the Swedish embassy down the street would appear to be an international call. Possible, she allowed, and maybe smart for operational security issues.

Hawk heard the phone switch over, leaving her with a hollow silence.

“Can I help you?” Hawk said.

“You alone?”

“You’re the last person I expected to hear from,” Hawk said as she plopped onto the white bedcovers.

“Sounds like all is okay over there,” Kolt said.

“The old man have you checking up on me?” Hawk asked, figuring Colonel Webber might be having second thoughts about sending someone on such a unique singleton mission, one that could go sideways on so many levels in a heartbeat.

“Well no, actually,” Kolt said, “just wondering myself.”

“Bullshit,” Hawk said. “I’m sure you have a hundred better things to do.”

“Look, Miss Tomlinson, it’s important you get this one right,” Kolt said. “We’re running out of time.”

“Time for what?” Hawk asked. “I’m not tracking.”

“Just don’t let the navy push you around,” Kolt said. “They prefer their women heavily buzzed and in gangs.”

“Uhh … okay,” Hawk said, “that’s random.”

“I know you’re busy. Glad all is good,” Kolt said. “Remember, if you can, find a way to squeeze us in. It’s political but important.”

“Are you drinking again?” Hawk asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Better face-to-face. Just the rumor mill turning around here. Nothing specific,” Kolt said.

“Not buying it.”

“Listen, I need to run but if there is a valid reason, ask for help,” Kolt said. “Our survival may be at stake here.”

“Holy shit, Frank!” Hawk said, reverting back to Kolt’s cover name from their guy-girl urban recce team back in Cairo.

“Gotta go,” Kolt said. “You’ll be fine either way, and we’ll see you when your vacation is over.”

“Wait a sec—” Hawk said before hearing a dial tone.

What the hell was that all about?

Hawk set the phone in its holder and stared at the lampshade. She wasn’t sure what Kolt was getting at, but knew few things could prompt Kolt Raynor to risk a cold call while she was under cover. He wasn’t liquored up, that she was certain of. No, the call was deliberate, and she was disappointed in herself that she wasn’t able to read between the lines to solve the riddle Kolt had just leveled at her.

“I gotta get some air!” Hawk whispered to herself as she bounced up and turned for the bathroom.

Hawk threw a super-soft hotel bath towel over her shoulder, grabbed the elevator down to the lobby, passed the dining area scattered with limo drivers and tails in dark three-piece suits, eyes buried in their cell phones or rapidly swiping a touchscreen, and made for the gift shop.

Browsing quickly, she yanked a skimpy all-black two-piece from the rack and threw a twenty banknote and a five-kronor coin down, thankful she had thought ahead and dumped what she had left of North Korean won and Russian rubles just before catching her flight out of Berlin.

Kolt had told her back in Cairo to never enter a new destination looking too much like a tourist, or an arrogant American flashing greenbacks all over the city, and converting it all to Swedish krona had been a smart move. One of the simpler, but crucial lessons she was flooded with during her recent Whistle-stop planes, trains, and automobiles exercise. Dying her hair blond with the hair-coloring kit she picked up at the duty-free store in Beijing was another one.

Hawk took her change, stepped into the ladies’ room, and slipped into the new suit. She hesitated before putting her clothes back on, staring at her image in the full-length mirror and a little bent at the fit. Standing in her stocking feet, she realized she hadn’t been in a rocking set of heels in weeks.

Hawk pushed the inside portion of her right thigh an inch or two to see the gunshot scar, still no more faded than the day before. She looked at her right upper chest before tugging at both sides of the bikini top, trying to cover the scarring from the sucking chest wound.

Out the back glass double doors and heading toward the canal, Hawk caught herself moving too fast, in too big of a hurry, out of character, and eased back into a carefree glide. She’d had a lot on her mind before Kolt’s unsolicited call. Yes, heavy head stuff, but after Kolt’s out-of-left-field mind fuck, she felt like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

I haven’t even been to the Commander’s Board yet!

In third gear for less than a hundred feet, Hawk gained the flat gray stone walking path, passed under the Villa Källhagen Gästbrygga, the sign telling hotel guests they were welcome to enjoy that particular dock, and crossed the shaky arched footbridge, sliding her palms along the wooden rails. She stepped off the plank bridge, onto the ten-foot-wide floating aluminum dock, and noticed the ducks weren’t startled at all by her presence. Walking down the dock she noticed the five buoys, identifying the shallow zone for boaters, and the Nordic Museum’s pointed peaks of Renaissance architecture, and stopped a stride short of the far edge of the 130-foot-long dock, before spreading her egg white towel on the deck.

Balancing on her belly with her feet overhanging the edge, Hawk reached behind herself to untie her top, careful to keep her breasts on the deck. She knew she was being tailed since she arrived in country—everyone was tailed that stayed at the Villa—but she’d be damned if one of those rent-a-cop perverts with a zoom lens was going to get a freebie today.

They are so Captain Obvious!

After fifteen minutes, she gingerly rolled to the left, careful to keep an even tan. Hawk looked toward the footpath that she’d enjoyed the day before, noticing an African American in mauve shorts, a wolf gray man purse hanging off his right shoulder, a matching gray tee, and a pair of beat-up tan deck shoes. Not entirely out of place for the neighborhood, given Embassy Row and that Sweden has a huge minority population of Africans and Middle Easterners, but something about this man was odd.

Hawk lowered her sunglasses to her eyes, concealing her rude but curious death stare on the guy, and keyed in on the unique hiccup in his gait, his weight supported by a wooden walking cane, and a miniature jet-black thick-haired dog on a short leash.

I’ll be damned, the son of a bitch still takes his fieldcraft seriously.

The man certainly looked the part. His hair had grown into more of an unkempt fro look since she last saw him in the streets of Cairo. In fact, he looked a whole lot better now than he did back then, with a bad arterial bleeder, ashen-faced, and well within the golden hour. She knew the cane was courtesy of one of Kolt Raynor’s impetuous command decisions, but given the choice, she figured the guy preferred the hiccup more than death.

Hawk watched him pass under the Gästbrygga sign, cross the arched footbridge, and continue down the floating dock headed straight at her.

Hawk retied her bikini top, rolled over as if she were on a jujitsu mat, and crossed her legs in front of her. She wasn’t too keen on giving the guy an eyeful. A few feet from Hawk, the man stopped, leaving his dog just enough leash to flaunt his cuteness and score some love. He eased down to his rear end, sitting with his lower legs dangling over the water.

“You know Swedish law now allows women to swim topless,” he said without looking Hawk’s way.

“Not getting out enough?”

“You’d think not, right?” he said. “This is the most overhyped country on the planet. Most think every girl here is a blond bombshell, but that’s urban legend. The talent level competes very poorly with other countries in Eastern Europe.”

“How did you find me?” Hawk asked, quick to limit the small talk.

“Surprisingly, Sweden is fat. Likely the fattest country in all of Scandinavia,” he said, “though it’s a close call with Denmark.”

“That was my biggest concern, the competition,” Hawk said. “Is that why you drag this little hairy chick magnet around with you?”

“Gustav. He’s a Swedish Lapphund,” he said, “the country’s national dog.”

Hawk smiled sarcastically and rubbed the prickly ears and wedge-shaped head, causing the excited wavy tail to rotate like a top.

“He doesn’t get in the way of your cane?” Hawk asked, immediately second-guessing bringing up bad blood.

“I guess that will pass for bona fides,” he said, now looking at Hawk for the first time.

“Miss Tomlinson, I’m not so sure I’m happy to see you again, given our shared experiences,” he said, “but I do need to be blunt with you.”

“You can call me Carrie,” Hawk said, again sarcastically. “I’m listening.”

“I didn’t ask for you, I didn’t even ask for Delta, I asked for the SEALs.”

“We do have a lot in common, Myron,” Hawk said. “I didn’t ask for you, and I wouldn’t ask for a SEAL even if the entire U.S. Marine Corps was tied up on an amphibious landing somewhere.”

“Do all Delta operators have a chip on their shoulder?” Myron Curtis asked.

Hawk thought about that for a moment as she petted the dog. Sure, some of the Unit guys were a little cock strung at times, but most were average dudes—married, two and a half kids, pickup and minivan in the driveway. Type A, confident, sure, but not genuinely arrogant assholes. But that wasn’t what was giving Hawk pause. No, Myron Curtis’s specific word choice was the problem.

Had I not been pulled early from Whistle-stop I’d be a Delta operator by now!

“I wouldn’t know, Myron,” Hawk said.

“I know you aren’t an operator, Carrie,” Curtis said. “I was talking about the guys like that Kolt Raynor and his partner, Slapshot.”

Whatever, you bastard!

“Look, Myron, can we just cool it and agree to work together to get this mission done?” Hawk realized the last thing she needed was Curtis crying to his bosses on the seventh floor at Langley over cable traffic.

Go along to get along, Cindy Bird. Kolt isn’t here to underwrite the conversation.

“I guess you aren’t one of those elitist Swede disco bimbos with striking blond hair after all.”

Damn, he is pushing my buttons today.

“Truce, Curtis!” Hawk said. “Fill me in now or call in someone else.”

“Holy shit!” Curtis pointed to the battle scars above Hawk’s right breast. “Those birthmarks or did you take a round in the chest?”

Hawk reached up and gently pulled the bikini top over slightly, trying to cover the scars without looking too obvious.