Falcon: The Quiet Professionals Book 3 (26 page)

Cassie could pretty much hear the “again” at the end of his sentence, though he didn’t say it.

“She provided the cover story she was told to give,” Phelps said. “We had special interests—”

“So, this is CIA activity? Inserting this operative into a delicate Special Forces operation?” Watters now sounded ticked.

She stood, hating the way they talked around her, as if she didn’t exist.

“It’s activity in the vested interest of our military and protecting Americans.” Phelps wagged a finger at Watters. “Don’t get an attitude with me, Captain. Your men aren’t the only ones trying to stop this very real threat against our military cyber security and computers. They broke through and decimated some first- and second-tier data. Thank God they didn’t get to more sensitive information before we shut it down.” He grumbled and scratched the back of his head. “Look, the thing of it is—Jin
did
get to some sensitive information through Miss Tang that put lives at risk.”

“Kiew wouldn’t harm anyone.” Hearing her own words, Cassie gulped. She was out of line but couldn’t take this anymore.

Phelps rounded on her, his disdain evident in his weathered face. “When was the last time you saw her—before your first encounter here, that is?”

“We send cards every year—Christmas, birthdays.” But even Cassie knew that didn’t mean anything. “Our last phone conversation was seven years ago.” The way Kiew treated her yesterday even left her wondering if they were still friends.

“Leave the analysis to the analysts,” Penner said. “Tang’s activities over the last few years have proven that she is lethal, cunning, and in the right-hand pocket of Meng-Li Jin. The attack on the base allowed a breach of some very sensitive data that we were able to trace directly back to Kiew Tang’s people.”

“Her people?” This couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be right. She’d sat in the restaurant with her. Had a good conversation. Kiew had sought her out the next morning, but now Cassie wondered if it was of her own accord.

“What information?” Captain Watters asked.

Tension rippled through the cell and ran like a river of mud over her shoulders. Cassie waited, dreading the general’s words.

“Names and locations of key assets in the region.”

Captain Watters seemed to grow like an impending storm. “
Which
assets? My girlfriend is an asset! Her cousin, too.”

“And your Miss Zarrick is on this base right now, isn’t she?” Major Penner asked.

Watters went very still. “And you know that how?”

“Because we’ve had an agent following her since the breach.”

“You have that many agents here to follow every asset?” Sal demanded.

Penner snorted. “Hardly. We put the agents on the
top
assets.”

“And the others?” Captain Watters’s shoulders were bunched and his fists clenched.

“Look, we do what we can with what little we have,” Phelps said. “And right now, our priority is to stop Kiew Tang.”

“Stop her? How?” Words shrill, Cassie tried to rein in her panic. Words like that had been used to reference more permanent means of interrupting an enemy combatant than what she wanted aimed at her friend.

“We want her extracted.” Penner pointed to the ground. “Brought back to U.S. soil and questioned.”

“You mean
interrogated
.”

“Cass,” Sal spoke softly, touching her arm.

She shoved his hand away, undeterred from plucking the truth from Phelps and his aide. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t what I signed up for.”

“No, what you signed up for you haven’t done. In legal terms, you went rogue.”

“I was tricked!”

Penner shrugged. “You still went rogue. You will work with us, Walker, or you’re gone.”

“You’re threatening me? Because I won’t threaten her?”

“Hey.” Sal stepped in front of her and caught her arms. “Easy, easy.”

“No!” She wriggled, but he held her fast. She bounced her gaze to his. “You realize what he means, right? What they’ll do to her if they capture her?”

“Cassie.” He leaned closer. “Stop.”

“I
mean
that we will do our jobs.” Penner focused on Sal and the captain. “We want your team to go in and bring her back—”

“Sorry, we are U.S. Army. We’re not under your command,” Captain Watters said. “We take orders from—”

“Me.” General Ramsey stepped into the room. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing with all the shouting.” He nodded to Phelps. “Sir.”

“General Ramsey.”

Ramsey motioned toward the captain. “You might not take orders from him, but General Phelps is the Associate Deputy Director for Military Support. He works in cooperation with the Unified Combatant Command.” Though his tone held placating tones, Ramsey’s expression seemed to ripple with something Cassie couldn’t identify—anger? Frustration? He turned to Watters again. “Do what he needs you to do.” And he was gone.

The captain and Sal shared stiff glances.

“I’m not trying to pull rank, son, but Ramsey’s right—and this threat is big enough that we can’t squabble over territorial lines.”

“Permission to remind you of that when I get strung up, sir?”

Phelps quirked a smile. “Won’t happen. Now back to this mission. You’ll use Walker to get close to Tang and lure her out.”

“I tried that,” Cassie said. “It didn’t work. They threw me out of the building.”

“Then get back in.” Penner’s brow knotted.

If they let that happen, Kiew would probably not be seen again. Whether they held her in some maximum-security prison indefinitely or killed her—no one would know the difference.

“General, I appreciate your vote of confidence in me and my team,” Captain Watters said, “but I’m concerned things are not being considered here.”

The man stood almost as tall as the six-two captain but had more bulk from apparent years behind a desk. “Like?”

“Like the delicate relationship with the owner of those towers.”

“Sajjan Takkar is no one to spit at,” Sal said.

“Burnett was always very careful in his dealings with Takkar. It’s my understanding that he’s neither an ally nor an enemy.” Captain Watters angled his head, his eyes glinting with meaning. “But we go in there and he finds out? We
make
him an enemy.”

“Then make sure he
doesn’t
find out.”

CHAPTER 21

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan
3 April—1750 Hours

T
his is some kind of messed up,” Sal said as he and Dean headed back to the briefing room where they’d left Raptor.

“Hooah.”

“It’s like there’s this tangle of trip wire around our feet and a barrel of explosives just waiting for us to blow ourselves back to the States.”

“Then let’s avoid stepping on it.”

Sal nodded then glanced over his shoulder. Cassie trailed them by a half-dozen feet. That she wasn’t talking, fighting, and arguing told him the meeting with Phelps knocked the wind out of her.

Knocked it out of him, too. She’d lied to him, to the team about her job. Where did her lies end? Just when he’d started wondering if they could work things out, he got broadsided by another lie. Not exactly the working material for a relationship.

Dean stopped outside the Command building and reached for the door handle. “Talk to her.”

“About what?”

“Make sure she knows we’re not done. She has a mess to clean up with us.”

“Dean—”

But he was already inside the building and the door was closing. Sal popped it with a grunt.

“What’s wrong?” Cassie asked, her voice devoid of feeling. No, not devoid—
smothered
.

Gritting his teeth, he turned around. Stared at the ground. “They’re not happy. I’m not happy.”

“Who
is
happy, Sal?” She held fast with those blue eyes. Puddles of grief and anger. “Everything I thought I was working for has been a lie.”

With a nod, he almost smiled. “I can relate—any more lies you want to come clean with before we go on?”

“It was my job, Sal. You don’t tell your mom what you’re doing out here on a daily basis, do you?”

“Hey. Stick to the facts, to this mission.” Man, he hated her under-the-radar attack on his mom. Low blow. “My mom isn’t relying on me to protect her or depending on me to be straight up in something that could mean life or death. I am—they are!”

Cassie looked away.

“My team is going to put their lives in your hands.” He moved closer again, his boots crunching on the pebbled path. “And so help me God, if you have any more lies up that sleeve of yours—”

“I don’t!”

“Good!” Silence snapped through the evening, chilled and desperate. He roughed a hand over his beard and groaned. “I don’t know what to do you with you, Andra. I want to tell my team they can trust you, but”—he shook his head again and shrugged—“I don’t know that they can. I don’t know that
I
can.”

She flinched and again looked away.

“I want to. Why? I have no idea.” He inched closer and hooked her arm, bringing her around. She wore a floral perfume that snaked up and coiled around his brain, squeezing off oxygen. “Can I trust you? Can I believe that there aren’t any more lies? That you aren’t hiding something else from me?”

Her blue eyes held misery. “You? Or your team?”

Sal felt his life caving in. His resolve sinking beneath the quicksand of their past. He was tired of this fight. Tired of learning about more lies. Two doozies in one week had pretty much done him in. Yet it terrified him to let go and dishonor Vida’s memory.

“Because while your team is important, I could care less about them. But you?” Her eyes went all glassy, digging through the sandy years of anger and hurt to the heartstrings he’d buried beneath. “You know I’d do anything for you.” She always had a way with words that knocked his feet out from under him.

“Then give me a reason to believe in you again.”

“What? What do you want me to say, Sal?”

“Say there are no more secrets, that what is there now is real and honest and true.”

“It is!” Cassie said. “How many times do I have to say it? And in how many ways? What I did—working with Gearney, I did out of honest belief that I was doing my duty. It wasn’t a conscious betrayal.”

“But you’re not military. You’re not DIA, like you presented. That was a lie.”

“Yes, you’re right. What will it take to prove myself?”

“We don’t have proving time, Andra. I have to go in there”—he jabbed a finger toward the door—“and sell the team on you.”

“And you can’t do that.” She said it with a breathy, disbelieving laugh.

“No.”

Her full lips tightened. “Good thing you don’t have to.”

Sal let go of her arm and straightened. “Come again?”

“It’s not up to them.” Blue eyes flashed. “Phelps wants me on the mission. I’m on the mission.” Cassie let out a long, deep breath. “While I want your belief in me more than I’m willing to admit—though I am starting to wonder why I still hang on to the hope that you’ll one day forgive me and take me back… I guess I’m just stupid that way—I don’t need their belief or yours for this mission.”

“Wrong!” Sal leaned in until he felt his breath hot against her cheek. “Those men have to believe when the guns are drawn and the bombs are going off that you’ll be there. I need to know that you aren’t going to stab me in the back again!”

Cassie planted both hands on his chest and shoved him back. “Step off, Russo! I have no secrets left. No more lies. If you can’t accept that, well, I guess that’s your problem. But right now, I just want to get my friend out of a deadly situation.”

“You still call her a friend?”

“Yes,” Cassie hissed. “Because I believe in her.”

Watching her walk into the briefing area was like watching the devil walk into his midst. Dean didn’t trust her. Didn’t want her in the room. Didn’t want her on this mission. But he wasn’t in control. Not this time. “We clear?” he asked as Sal stepped in behind her and closed the door.

“Crystal.” Sal moved to a seat at the table by Riordan, leaving Walker on her own. She stumbled to a chair that listed off to the side, away from the others.

“Brie managed to tag Nianzu, but the tracker’s not working, so we’re one down on that. Walker will provide intel and shadow us on this mission,” Dean explained to the others. “Lieutenant—please.” He motioned to the floor. “Tell us what you know about Kiew Tang, the lover and assistant of Meng-Li.”