Читать книгу Rogue Commander - Leo J. Maloney - Страница 14

Chapter Seven

Morgan arrived at his house, a two-story ranch in the Boston suburb of Andover, Massachusetts.

Alex had her own apartment now that she was drawing a paycheck. It felt strange not having her around anymore, but it was also great that he and Jenny had the house to themselves. No matter how often his work took him away from home, he always craved being back in Jenny’s arms. With Alex off doing her thing, he wouldn’t have to wait.

Morgan opened the front door and walked right into the middle of a ladies’ book club. Eleven pairs of eyes turned to face him.

“Dan!” said Jenny, standing. “I didn’t know you were coming!” She hugged him tight. Her warmth was cruel, mocking his desire. He felt the urge to order everyone to leave.

“We were just discussing When the Horses Wild Ran. Keri was just about to talk about the symbolism in—”

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he interrupted. Then, with the best smile he could muster, he said, “Please make yourselves at home.”

He wasn’t lying—at least about half of it. He took a quick shower, pulled on a pair of jeans, buttoned up a shirt, and went back downstairs. The club, thankfully, was on a break. He wasn’t sure how much Horse symbolism he could take. Jenny was having an involved conversation with two other guests, one of whom he knew to be their next-door neighbor, Cynthia. So he went to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator instead.

He heard the clicking of heels, and a woman he didn’t know came in after him. Her skin was tanning-bed orange—looking like a warning poster for melanoma. Her lips were plumped with Botox, and he wondered whether she didn’t also walk around with a perpetual pout on top of that. Her hair was calculatedly messy—blond highlights clashing against reddish-brown straw.

She flitted her fake eyelashes as she shot him an “Oh, hello there.” She had a glass of sangria in her hand. “Would you like a drink? Oh, look at me, offering you a drink in your own home!”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, you must be Dan.” She pronounced his name with two syllables more than it could carry. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Steffani. That’s two f’s and an i. Enchantée.” She held out her hand. He knew she meant for him to kiss, but he shook it instead.

“So where did you run off to?”

“Traveling,” he said, “For work.”

“Oh yes? What business are you in?” He held back the urge to laugh at how transparent her feigned interest was.

“Cars. Classic. Vintage. Especially American muscle cars from the fifties and sixties.”

She reached out her hand and put it on his shoulder. “I like American muscle...cars.” She emitted a high-pitched laugh, like she had said something hilarious.

“I can send you a catalog,” he said. “Excuse me. I need to go find Jenny.”

Leaving Steffani-with-two-f’s-and-an-i behind, he cut into Jenny’s conversation. “Pardon me, ladies. Could I borrow my wife for one second?”

Jenny looked from him to the ladies. “Excuse me, girls.”

As soon as he got her two steps away, he said, “I need your help with something. Upstairs.”

“Of course,” she said casually, following him up the stairs and into the bedroom. As soon as she had shut the door, he pounced and kissed her, pushing her against the wall. She ran her hands through his hair and his back, feeling his flexing muscles.

“I didn’t know you were having the Real Housewives over,” he whispered between kisses.

“Oh, hush, you,” she said and did it for him with her lips.

“So how was your mission?” she said huskily. “Get a lot of bad guys?”

“I don’t want to talk about them. I’m more interested in this one bad girl.” He ran his hands under her shirt.

“Dan,” she complained through an irrepressible grin. “My guests. They’ll—”

He kissed her neck, and she moaned softly, grabbing his shirt to pull it up over his head.

* * * *

That night found Morgan in Brookline, in a neighborhood that was pure old money, filled with colonial houses with broad yards. It was some of the most expensive suburban square footage in the country.

The afternoon with Jenny—especially her awkward return to the party, adjusting her clothes and pretending they hadn’t been doing what they were just doing—was now a glowing, but regretfully fading, memory.

He drove his Shelby Cobra down Heath Street, where Collins lived. Some two hundred feet from Collins’s gate was a car parked on the street. He made out two men sitting inside as he passed.

He knew a stakeout when he saw one. Morgan drove on.

“We have company,” he said. “Collins’s house is being watched.”

“To be expected,” Bloch said in his ear. “Find your own way in.”

“Gonna have to be the backyard. Shepard, a little help?”

“Take your next right,” the IT wiz instructed. “Park three hundred and fifty feet along—there’s a dark spot there with no security camera coverage. You’re going to have to run through the yard of another house, then jump the fence to Collins’s place.”

Morgan parked where Shepard suggested and approached the house. This wasn’t exactly a high-crime area. The area was surrounded by a low brick wall. Morgan braced against a sycamore tree and hoisted himself, straddled the top of the wall, then pushed off, and landed on the other side.

He ran along the yard and took cover behind the tool shed. “How am I doing?”

“So far, so good,” Shepard said. “But you’re not there yet.”

Morgan looked around the corner of the shed, estimating how far he had to go. The backyard had more open space and was in full view of the back windows of the house.

That’s when he heard it—the muted pounding of paws on the ground, approaching him fast from the direction of the house.

Dog. A Doberman pinscher, to be precise. Sleek black coat, ninety pounds of lean muscle, and a bite made to pulverize bone. His bones, to be precise.

Morgan took off running, moving as fast as he could. He was halfway there when he heard the thump of dog’s paws behind him, getting closer and closer.

Morgan held his breath. He was going to have to time this to the millisecond. He listened for the steps, and then the final one—when the dog launched into the air—before taking a running leap.

Morgan dodged faster than the dog was expecting, and the Doberman caught only air. He stumbled as he fell, causing him to tumble and hit a tree trunk with a whimper.

That gave Morgan the opening to cover the rest of the distance to the fence. As he pulled himself up, he felt a tug at his foot—the dog’s jaw was clamped on his heel. It was growling, pulling. Morgan kicked down, wrenching his foot free, and pulled himself over the fence.

He took a moment’s rest and then, panting, crossed Collins’s backyard to the door.

Collins was divorced, never had any kids. He’d inherited the house, an old redbrick colonial, from his family. Too large for one man to live in alone, Morgan thought. He examined the windows, but they were solid wood, and all were locked. So he went to the back door and picked the deadbolt. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“I’m in,” he murmured.

He made his way through the house, stepping lightly, trying not to make a sound. It was a real old-fashioned, old-money New Englander—with old wallpaper dotted with paintings of ships and harbors in ornate frames. He moved up creaky stairs, making a vague guess about where Collins’s bedroom was. He hoped he wouldn’t startle the old guy too much, then fully realized where he was, who he was sneaking up on, and acknowledged what would happen if Collins had tried the same thing at Morgan’s house.

Sure enough, when he pushed open the one upstairs door that was closed, Morgan found himself facing down the barrel of a .357 Colt Python snub-nose revolver, held by General James Collins, in a ratty white T-shirt and boxer shorts.

“Crap on a cracker,” the old warhorse rumbled. “Is that Dan Morgan or the tooth fairy?”

“Hello, Jim.”

He didn’t lower the gun. “Are you here to try killing me?”

“Jesus, Jim, of course not. I’m here to talk. “

“Last thing I heard you weren’t in the talking business.”

Morgan shrugged. “I’m not in the breaking-into-houses-in-the-middle-of-the-night business either. You’re being watched.”

“Yeah,” Collins replied. “I noticed.” He let the gun droop and took a step back. “I’ve also been noticing you since you met my neighbor’s dog.”

Morgan grimaced. “Any idea who it is? The watchers, not the dog.”

“Who knows?” Collins shrugged, heading back to sit on the edge of his big wooden bed. “NSA, DoD, FBI? Go ahead. Put together any three letters, and there’s a possibility that’s them.” He emitted a hollow laugh.

Morgan took a look around. The place was messy, with clothes, books, and papers piled on the nightstands, the dresser, and the floor. “You becoming a hoarder in your old age?”

“That’s General Hoarder to you, plebe,” Collins retorted wearily. “What do you want, Dan? Pretty certain it’s not whether I wear boxers or briefs to bed.”

“No,” Morgan said. “Is there any chance we might be able to sit down somewhere?”

“What, the mattress isn’t good enough for you?” Collins didn’t expect an answer. Instead, he seemed to have a little conversation inside his own mind and grunted, “All right. Come on.”

Collins grabbed a frayed tartan robe and led Morgan down to the living room without turning on a single light. They sat on dusty couches opposite each other, a fireplace with a marble mantelpiece and brass pokers between them. Collins still held his .357 in his hand.

“Take a wild guess what I’m here about,” Morgan said.

“Those goddamn Tomahawks. They’re gonna be the death of me. Are you wearing a wire?”

“Ear comm.”

“Turn it off,” said Collins. Without hesitation, Morgan popped the tiny transceiver from his ear and clicked it off, setting it on the coffee table between them. He could just imagine Bloch’s face. He was certain it would give a lemon a run for its pucker.

“All right,” Collins said. “What do you know?”

“I know the missiles are gone, on your watch, using your access codes.”

“So they say.”

“You’re telling me that’s not the way it went down?”

“It’s a sham,” Collins said. “A frame. I don’t know how. I don’t know who has my access codes or how they got ’em. But they sure have got me by the short hairs.”

Morgan had gotten a few lines on his face and gray hairs in the intervening years. But Collins had gotten old. He looked withered.

“Do you think this has to do with the investigation or Iraq?”

“Not or,” Collins contended. “And. It has everything to do with it, although maybe not in the way you imagine. They’re both part of a campaign against me. But I have information, a way to clear my name.”

“Why don’t you bring it to the investigation committee?”

“Because it’ll take investigating, and I can’t trust them to do it. As you probably know, there’s a lot of ugly politics in the armed forces. You heard of General Sheldon Margolis?”

“The name is familiar, but I don’t know anything about him.”

“You’ll know soon enough. He has big ideas. Major player, lots of friends in high places. He’s angling to make a presidential run. But I have dirt on him, which means he needs to get me out of the way. And the bastard might do it, too, if I don’t get some goddamn help.” His flint-hard eyes locked onto Morgan’s. “You gonna be some goddamn help, Morgan?”

“I don’t know what I could do for you.”

“Please,” Collins scoffed. “Yeah, I know we haven’t seen each other in years, and I have no call to demand anything of you. But while they’re putting the screws on me, the people who are really behind this are out there. And whatever they mean to do with those missiles, it’s bad.”

“How do I know you’re not the one who means to do something bad with those missiles?” Morgan asked pointedly.

Collins looked at the operative as if he had lost his mind. He leaned back on the sofa and spread his arms. “Because I’m right goddamn here in front of you, man, with some big-time badass special-ops wonk doing a dance with my next-door neighbor’s Doberman before breaking and entering into my goddamn house, that’s how!”

Morgan couldn’t argue the point. And to be truthful, he didn’t want to. “Can’t you go to the Department of Defense? You must know people.”

“Yeah, and Margolis knows those people too,” Collins said. “He’s isolated me from my allies.” Collins frowned. “They might be in on it; they might not be in on it with him. But they wouldn’t have to be. His word would be enough. Even if the truth got out, by the time things are sorted, it’ll be too late...for me and whoever those missiles are launched at.”

Morgan formed his hand into a fist. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to be some help. Tell me what I can do.”

“You can’t trust the government. You can’t trust your people. You can’t trust anyone. Except...”

“Except who?”

“There is one person. Navy Commander Alicia Schmitt. An old friend, the only one I trust. A good, patriotic American who’d never put herself ahead of her country. I’d put my life in her hands any day. She knows what’s going on. She’ll be able to tell you what to do.”

“Morgan.” It was Shepard, through the comm. That surprised him. Until then Morgan was unaware that the comm link could be restarted from HQ. Shepard’s voice was tinny and distant, like his conscience, but the message was important. “The police are coming. Time to go.”

“What is it?” Collins asked, his older ears unable to pick up the reedy words.

“It’s my people. They say the cops are coming.”

“I was expecting this. Morgan, find Alicia. She’ll know what to do. If she doesn’t believe you, ask her about Virginia. Tell her I told you to say that.”

“I will,” Morgan promised, standing. “Trust me. I’ll make this right. I’ll find the missiles and clear your name. And we’ll put Margolis in prison where he belongs.”

Collins stood opposite him. “Well,” he said, “put him someplace he belongs—that’s for sure.”

Police lights flashed against the curtains, lighting the dark rooms of the house. Morgan was going to have to go out the back, through the neighbor’s house, and get past the dog.

“Jim,” he said, “you wouldn’t happen to have a steak I could borrow, would you?”