Harris (Alpha One Security #1) (10 page)

I’d listened to the men formulate the plan and kept my thoughts to myself, knowing I needed to sit back and learn by listening.
 

We were in the desert somewhere in Nevada, waiting. Miles and miles and miles from anything. I was in the back of an ex-military Humvee, one of the huge wide mammoth ones. Tan, with gargantuan tires. Armored to withstand bullets. No creature comforts. No AC, no music, no diet Coke.
 

The plan was that Nick would bring the duffel bags full of cash in the back of an old Jeep Wrangler from his location a few miles on the opposite side of the drop-point from where we were. Exchange the cash for the girl, and then haul ass to us. Thresh and Duke would cover Nick’s approach to us, which they’d dubbed the “EZ” for extraction zone, Puck would be behind the wheel of the Humvee, and I would be in the back of the Humvee to be with Cleo. Once Puck had Cleo and I clear, Thresh, Duke, and Nick would cover our retreat, making sure Cain and his goons weren’t following us, or trying to double-cross us.
 

Nick was going in alone, unarmed, only a walkie-talkie to coordinate with the others. Just the bags of cash and the Jeep—which didn’t even have a top—and the clothes on his back. We knew from Lear’s surveillance that Cain had the drop location covered from every direction, and that we were outnumbered, and that his guys were all heavily armed. There would be at least a dozen cross-hairs on Nick at any one time. Sure, we had both Lear and Anselm with big old rifles covering Nick the entire time, but what could a couple of guys with rifles do against twelve or fifteen guys with machine guns? Sorry, assault rifles. Or submachine guns, or whatever. Anselm and Lear couldn’t keep them from shooting Nick. If someone got an itchy trigger finger, Nick would be dead, and no one could do anything.

What assurance did we have that Cain wouldn’t have his guys shoot Nick as soon they had the cash?
 

None, I was told.

That was the biggest risk.

It could turn into a firefight.
 

In fact, I think Thresh and Duke were planning on that eventuality. Planning? Hoping? With those two, it might equal the same thing.
 

As for me? I was wired, and bored out of my mind. And scared for Nick.
 

I had my Beretta 9mm in a black tactical holster on my right thigh, the belt going around my waist and the bottom of the holster itself fastening around my thigh. The holster also contained two extra clips of ammunition. I felt kind of like a legit member of the team, although I was under strict orders to not pull the pistol out unless my life was directly in danger and I had no other choice. No matter what happened, I was to leave the gun-slinging to the professionals.

Soon, that would be me!

No time to think about that now. Focus on the op, Layla.

Except, there was absolutely nothing happening. Not a goddamn thing. Puck was in the front of the Humvee, the engine rumbling with a deep diesel clatter, the door propped open, his feet crossed and propped in the V-gap where the door met the frame at the hinge. He had a laptop on his belly and was playing poker on it, a cigar between his teeth, lit and curling acrid smoke.
 

“Is it always like this?” I asked.

“What? Ops? Yeah. Boredom is part of the gig. Lots of sitting, lots of waiting.”

“Being wired and full of adrenaline and all that bullshit while bored at the same time is a weird feeling.”
 

Puck chuffed a laugh as he pulled a mouthful of smoke off his cigar. “Yeah, it’s a shitty feeling. You wanna go, go, go, but you gotta wait, wait, wait. It fuckin’ sucks.” He tapped at his laptop, playing a hand, and then returned his attention to me. “This feels a lot like my TOD in Iraq, actually. Sitting in a Humvee, bored out of my skull, waiting for shit to hit the fan. Kind of wigging me out a little, actually.”

“You don’t look like you’re wigging out,” I said.

“Yeah, well, fear happens on the inside. It’s what you do on the outside that determines the kind of person you are.” He didn’t look at me as he dropped that little nugget of wisdom.

“That was deep, Puck.”

“Nah.” He pulled on his cigar, blew out a stream. “It’s experience. My first firefight, I fuckin’ froze. Hid in a doorway ignoring my L-T’s orders to return fire. Bullets whippin’ past, buzzing and shit. They make this sound when they pass right by your ear, a kind of buzz—”

“Sometimes they make a…snapping sound,” I said, remembering Brazil, being in that old Defender, bullets going past my face. “Sometimes they snap, sometimes they buzz.”
 

Puck looked at me, a piercing stare that contained a new element of respect. “Yeah. The snap is when they’re not as close. You hear ‘em buzzin’, you best fuckin’ duck.”

“That first firefight, what happened?”

He returned his attention to his online poker game. How he was getting signal out here was beyond me, since my cell phone said
no service
. “Like I said, I froze. By the time I got my balls back, the fight was over. L-T reamed me a new asshole, made me pull latrine duty for three days. All the guys ragged on me. Next time shit went FUBAR, I refused to let myself freeze. I was still pissin’ in my boots, but I didn’t freeze. After that, it got easier. Never is exactly easy, though, you just…deal.”

“When I was running from Vitaly’s men, I kept telling myself I had to hold it together. I promised myself I could freak out later.”
 

Puck puffed again, sending a thick mushroom cloud skyward. “I’ve heard bits and pieces of that story, but never the whole shit and shebang.”
 

“It’s a long story, but here’s the Spark’s Notes version: Vitaly Karahalios had me kidnapped as a ploy to get back at Roth and Kyrie. I was bait, and he told me as much. Had me brought down to Brazil—and that trip is it’s own fun story, let me tell you. I spent three days with Vitaly, never sure if he was going to kill me, rape me, or both. He ended up leaving on business, and his second in command tried to rape me. I stabbed him in the eye with a pen, stole his clothes and gun, then hijacked a car from a one of the valets that worked in the building. I bought a burner phone, called Kyrie, which got me Nick—Harris, I mean. I was supposed to find somewhere and wait for Harris to find me, but Vitaly’s guys found me first. I stole their truck and took off like a bat out of hell. Eventually I managed to cross paths with Harris. We took down some of Vitaly’s guys in an ambush, hooked up with Thresh, who got us a flight out of South America.”
 

Puck just stared at me. Then, after a few processing blinks, he burst out laughing. “Jesus, woman. You stabbed a man in the eyeball with a pen?”
 

I snickered. “That’s not the worst part.”
 

He raised his eyebrows. “What is, then?”

“When they’d first kidnapped me, they’d kept me locked up in this little room in the bottom of an old fishing boat. There was an old, dirty ink pen lying on the floor. So I cleaned it off and—hid it.”
 

He frowned at me. “Hid it? Where?”
 

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Best hiding spot a woman has, Puck. Up my hoo-ha.”
 

“You gotta be shittin’ me.”
 

“That’s not something I’d make up,” I said. “I called it ‘Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen.’”
 

This got me another disbelieving belly laugh. “And you shoved it so far into the dude’s eye that he died?”

I couldn’t quite suppress a shudder at the visceral memory. “Not…immediately. I had to sort of…” I mimed slamming the heel of my palm down, over and over, “drive it…in a little. And even then, it took him a while to—you know. Die.”
 

“Fuuuuck.” He wiped at his face, still laughing. “That has got to be the most hard core thing I’ve ever fuckin’ heard.” The awe in his voice sent thrills of pride through me.

“I was in survival mode. I would have done anything to stay alive. I don’t go down easy.”
 

Puck snickered. “I think our boy Harris might disagree.”

I glared at him. “Don’t be a cock-waffle, Puck.”

He held up his hands, palms out. “Sorry, sorry. I’m an ass. I ain’t ever really had a filter. It’s why I never made it very far in the FBI. They don’t appreciate a man calling his superior a ‘pencil-dick weasel-fucker’, apparently.”
 

I snickered. “I would imagine not.”
 

Puck grinned. “He was, though. Typical desk jockey, you know? Couldn’t find his balls with both hands if you gave him a map and a flashlight.” He checked his watch, the same type that all the guys wore, thick rubber chronographs that looked like they could survive a direct nuclear blast. “Shit should be happening soon.”
 

He snagged a handheld walkie-talkie from the seat beside him. “Anselm. Report?”
 

“He is making the trade off now. He has the little girl in the Jeep, and he’s giving them the bags of money.” There was pause, and then a crackling as Anselm keyed his mic again. “Be ready. I have a bad feeling, you know? In my stomach. Shit! I knew it, I knew it!”

“Anselm, talk to me, what’s happening?”
 

“I cannot, I cannot. Go to him. Drive east and be ready to provide assistance. It has gone, as you say, off the rails.” There was a loud
BOOOOM
that echoed weirdly, coming loudly from Anselm’s end of the line, cut off as his radio went silent, a sound which we also heard in the distance, the report of a rifle.
 

Immediately after the echoing boom of Anselm’s rifle we heard automatic fire crackling from multiple locations, and another long rifle report.
 

Puck had closed and tossed his laptop aside as soon as Anselm cursed, and by the time the first rifle report echoed, he had his door closed and the Humvee in gear.
 

“Hang the fuck on, Layla!” he shouted as he gunned it and slewed the truck around, the tires spitting sand and dirt and rocks.
 

I heard the radio crackle, heard Nick’s voice: “I’m heading toward you, coming in hot.” I heard gunfire in the background, a girl’s screams.
 

I was hanging on, leaning into the turn, trying to see out the window and failing. All there was to see was desert flying by. We hit a ditch and went flying, my head hitting the ceiling, and then the Humvee bottomed out with a nasty scraping crunch, and immediately we pitched down, sliding partially sideways down a steep, short hill. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my head was throbbing, but none of that mattered, buried as it was beneath the adrenaline and the fear.

Gunfire echoed from a thousand different directions, assault rifle fire, Anselm’s rifle—a deep, distant, basso concussion—overlapped by a different rifle report, this one louder, closer, and sharper.

“Puck!” the radio crackled. “Where the fuck are you! We need cover!” That sounded like Duke.

Puck, in a lightning fast movement, snatched the radio off the seat and tossed it back to me, putting his hand back on the wheel as fast as possible. “You talk,” he barked at me. “I drive.”
 

I keyed the radio. “This is Layla. We’re on the way to you.”

“Well you’d better haul ass,” Duke snarled. “We’re taking heavy fire and there ain’t shit for cover out here.”

“Is anyone hurt?”
 

“Not yet.”

“Any sign of Harris?”

“No. Should be seeing him any minute, though.” I heard gunfire batter across the radio, either Duke or Thresh.

“What’s happening?”
 

“The op went FUBAR, that’s what. It was a fuckin’ trap, like I fuckin’ said.”
 

“Leave the interrogation for later,” Puck told me. “Let him focus on what he’s doing. We’re almost at their position.”
 

The transfer had taken place in a canyon between two tall ridges. It was an old riverbed or something like that, Nick had said, and it made sense. The middle of the canyon had walls a good fifty feet high, and the land stretched away in either direction for dozens of miles as high ground, with lower elevations approachable from either end of the short canyon. This meant both parties could approach the meet from a neutral direction. It also meant the location was easily defensible for Cain’s men. The land rose sharply away from the end of the canyon, leveled off, and then bucked up again sharply. Puck and I had waited at the highest possible point, out of sight of the actual transfer location, but still fairly easy to get to with an off-road vehicle like the kitted-out Wrangler. Duke and Thresh had been positioned a good half-mile closer, where the ground had briefly leveled off, so they could rush forward and lay down covering fire for Nick as he drove away from the transfer. This meant they were exposed to a certain degree, but only to any gunmen on a high enough elevation to see them, not from the canyon itself.
 

We didn’t have far to go, a little over half a mile, but it seemed to me in that moment that it took forever to reach Thresh and Duke’s position—time was moving like taffy, stretching out, and then retracting to snap too fast, leaving me with still images of Puck’s hands on the wheel, utterly focused, and then a jumbling, jouncing, too-fast flash of the desert moving past the window, brown and blue and brown, rocks, dirt, reddish stone slicing into the sky.

Abruptly, Puck threw the Humvee sideways into an arcing skid, shoving me hard against the wall, and then he had the big vehicle in park and his door open, and he was standing in the doorway, an HK MP-5 to his shoulder, kicking in three-round bursts over the windshield. I heard his submachine gun rattling, at once too loud and not loud enough. And then I saw Duke throw himself around the hood, taking cover behind the Humvee, ejecting a magazine from his M-4 and replacing it. I heard Thresh’s voice, and then the rear door flew open, slammed against the apex of its hinges, and Thresh was there, all seven feet and three hundred plus pounds of him. Sweat poured down his face, and blood reddened the outside of his right bicep from a thin, shallow scratch. He had an M-4 too, and was using the momentary reprieve of hiding behind the door to reload, like Duke.