Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
It was late morning by the time we rolled up to the farmhouse after taking a redeye flight from Salt Lake to Baltimore, then driving the two hours back to the Eastern Shore.
Stella had slept most of the flight. Between the thumb drive Shades had given me and the thick stack of documents Irinia had handed over, I didn’t so much as close my eyes.
I was dog-ass tired and facing a debrief which meant sleep was going to have to wait.
As soon as I rolled to a stop, Stella opened her door and silently slid out.
Which was how she’d been for most of the trip.
This after she spent nearly six hours speaking with Irinia.
I was still unsure exactly what Lore did as a profession.
There was a lot of speculation and lore surrounding her—hence the handle she’d earned.
However, it was obvious a big part of what she did included intelligence gathering and she was damn good at it.
Which meant I spent six hours watching her work while only interjecting a few times to ask a follow up question.
It was clear, Lore needed no help interrogating a woman who looked to be someone’s sweet grandmother, or anyone besides.
She was a damn good interrogator.
I’d been impressed. As had Dutch, Badger, Bishop, Hollywood, and North.
Before we’d left the ranch Dutch had practically begged her to come work for him.
Hours later and I was still actively ignoring the way my neck got tight at Dutch’s offer and the way my gut churned when she didn’t immediately turn him down.
In other words, I was in a bad mood.
That mood further deteriorated when I followed Stella into the house and found Penny in the living room sitting on the couch. Laptop open on her thighs but her eyes landed on me with blatant interest.
This shit was getting ridiculous.
Before I could open my mouth to explain to the gawking woman how I felt about people staring at me every time I walked into a room, Zane appeared at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement.
“Down here.”
Stella ignored Penny’s stammered, “Welcome back.”
I barely lifted my chin as I made my way to the stairs making sure the door was closed before I descended. If Penny was upstairs in the living room, Zane thankfully didn’t want her in the debrief.
Stella tossed the thick stack of papers Irinia had given us on the table. Kira glanced up from her laptop, her gaze landed on the intel, and a slow smile stretched across her lips. But it was her eyes dancing with excitement that made her look like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Is that it?” she asked, shoving her computer to the side so she could lean across the table to reach the papers.
“Three decades worth of intel she thought was noteworthy,” Stella confirmed and tossed a yellow legal pad on top of the stack. “Those are my notes from our meeting this afternoon. Then she looked at Zane and declared. “There’s a list of names. That’s what POTUS needs, isn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question, yet Zane confirmed, “That list is Graham’s golden ticket.
Right now, we have the Chinese playing the long game to fuck us.
Russia’s on the board actively hitting us with China’s backing.
We’ve got collapsed bridges, power grid malfunctions, and data breaches.
The first two were experiments. The threat to our nuclear facilities nothing more than a dry run to test our readiness and protocols—if their backdoor works and the reactor melts down, that’ll be a bonus.
But they’re more interested in procedure, so when the time’s right, they can hit us all at once with Maddon’s blueprint. ”
Maddon Judd.
The gift that kept on giving in the form of a former CIA officer turned traitor.
Unfortunately, as traitors went, Maddon Judd was the most dangerous kind.
He understood the strategic framework of our military and intelligence agencies.
He also had a deep understanding of our weaknesses.
There’d been a time he’d had a hand in bridging the gaps in our nation’s security.
Which meant he knew the fragility of those measures and was able to exploit them, writing a detailed blueprint on exactly how to attack the US in a way that would cripple the country, and he sold that plan to the Chinese.
“Golden ticket?” Stella pressed.
“India is a wildcard,” Zane said, bringing a new country into an already crowded game of Who Wants to Attack the United States.
“Graham needs to break the RIC alliance. That list ensures the uneasy India-China agreement falls apart. Not to mention India’s not going to be pleased to learn Russia’s got doubles in R&AW. ”
“That’s to be expected,” I pointed out. “No government is innocent of planting doubles in an ally’s intelligence groups.
India will not be surprised Russia’s got people in the Research and Analysis Wing.
I would bet my retirement they’ve got doubles in the Intelligence Bureau, the National Investigation Agency, and the Defense Investigation Agency. ”
“Affirmative. It’s one thing to know your allies are spying on you from the inside.
It’s something altogether different to have it confirmed, especially when the secretary of research has been sharing secrets.
It’s also been rumored Para Special Forces has been experimenting with a new jetpack.
They might not be so happy when they find out their ally the Chinese embedded tracking devices in the packs and the 7 Para commander is a traitor. ”
Holy fuck.
“Graham needs them turning on each other. He needs a distraction of his own while he gets his house in order.”
Well, India finding out that Russia had infiltrated their agencies and a special forces unit would certainly be a distraction. But it wouldn’t cause the fissure POTUS would need between Russia and China unless…
“There are high-ranking Chinese officials on that list as well,” I surmised.
Zane’s smile came slow. When it was fully formed, he looked like an evil villain in a bad comic book movie.
“Past and present,” Kira confirmed, already tapping away at her keyboard. “You didn’t look at the names?”
“The list was the last thing she gave us,” Stella explained. “We didn’t have time to go over it before we had to leave. And then Cash was driving…” She let that hang.
“Say no more.” Kira smiled. “No one can read while Cash is driving.”
Before I could comment on the old and tired jab about my driving that, just to fucking note, had on more than one occasion saved our asses, Kira’s fingers abruptly stopped and her head snapped up from her screen. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit, what?” Stella prompted.
“You know how the Pentagon has been storing documents offsite at Delcon?” Kira started and glanced back down at her screen.
“And how those documents were only supposed to be declassified or confidential? Yet somehow top-secret docs got moved in the data transfer? But we couldn’t trace how the TS files made it into the transfer?
” Again she didn’t wait for anyone to answer since we were all aware of the stupidity of storing any documents in a location that was not a sensitive compartmentalized information facility.
And Delcon was most definitely not a SCIF.
Kira’s eyes lifted and went straight to Zane.
“The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s assistant is on this list.”
That wasn’t a ‘holy shit.’ That was a monumental fucking hell.
“Well fuck,” Stella mumbled.
“But that’s not the plot twist,” Kira went on. “According to Iriana, the assistant is a double. Or maybe he’d be considered a plant. The Chinese think he’s theirs but really, he’s the CIA’s.”
I sat back in my chair, tipped my head back, and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m too fucking tired to play musical spies.
” I righted my head and looked at Kira. “I will supply you with all your caffeine and sugar needs for the next thirty days if you’ll make me a cheat sheet of who’s screwing who—no, scratch that, I don’t care who’s screwing who and who’s playing double-agent, triple-double-back-around-the-bend-up-the-ass-with-no-lube agency games.
Just work up a target package and give me a clear list of people to take out. ”
“Make it ninety days and you have a deal,” Kira returned.
“Done.” I pushed back from the table, made my way to Zane, dug into my pocket, and pulled out the flash drive.
Zane’s hand came up and I dropped the drive into his palm. “Mission complete. Now I’m going to take a nap.”
With a jerk of his chin, I was dismissed.
I took the stairs two at a time to the main floor, exhaled when I saw Penny was no longer in the living room, and hustled up the next flight of stairs.
Two minutes after I stripped off my clothes and faceplanted onto the mattress, I was dead to the world.
I felt a hand on my ankle and instantly came awake. Almost as instantly instinct kicked in. I rolled to my back and knifed up. My hand shot out but before I could connect with anything solid, it was slapped away.
What the fuck?
Without thinking I lunged at the same time my eyes adjusted to the darkness as a fist came flying at my face.
A last-second adjustment saved my face but the power behind the punch meant my body took the brunt of my attacker’s momentum as we collided.
I rolled but not before my head was forcibly yanked back by my hair and I felt a hand cup my balls.
I grunted in surprise.
“One more move, asshole, and I’ll make that vasectomy you’re so proud of an unnecessary precaution,” Stella growled.
No, I didn’t have Stella under me, I had Lore. And why did that turn me on so damn much?
“Baby girl, if you wanted to feel me up, all you had to do is ask.”
Her hand tightened to the point of pain.
“Now you’re just being a tease.”