And then fury, hot, and dangerous, and unacceptable.
Hawkins leaned over, took a look at the photograph stapled inside the folder, and sat back in his chair. After a couple of quiet seconds, he brought his hand up and rested it on his chest, open, relaxed, as if he was feeling the beat of his heart.
He well could be. It was a lot to take in.
Dylan was looking at the photograph, frozen in his chair, and Hawkins was looking at the floor, his hand over his heart-and Grant could have heard a fucking pin drop in the room.
The next move wasn’t his, and he had to wonder why in the hell he’d brought a cup of coffee with him. Hope, he guessed, that somehow this wouldn’t be so goddamn awful that he wouldn’t even be able to drink a goddamn cup of coffee.
Fat chance, and he couldn’t remember a time when he’d hated the politicos in Washington, D.C., more than this moment. He was pretty sure the two men in front of him were feeling the same way, and he could A1 guarantee they were both contemplating assassination-but not of the guy they’d been tasked with killing. No, they’d both be wanting the one who had dreamed up this goatfuck in the first place.
They could do it. Grant’s job was to make sure they didn’t.
Their gazes met again on the other side of the desk, and this time, Grant didn’t have a clue what was passing between them.
When Dylan’s gaze returned to the folder, and he started reading, Grant guessed the coast was nominally clear for a discussion of the situation, or at least a recap of the information he’d already read three times.
“The guy’s name is Conroy Farrel, which, as you will both remember, was one of J. T. Chronopolous’s code names, a situation which was carefully created by one of our government’s darker agencies. It’s a case of identity theft, if you can call it that when it reaches this level and has been sanctioned by the government. He was put into Paraguay by the CIA, though they aren’t the ones who created him. Although, as you may well suspect, I have reason to doubt that denial.”
Neither of his guys was talking, which was the exact situation Grant wanted to avoid. He wanted them to talk, a lot, to figure out how to explain to the rest of the team-to Kid, who’d lost his brother; to Creed, who had almost died losing J.T.-how and why Conroy Farrel had been set in J.T.’s place by their own government, with J.T.’s connections, and J.T.’s clearances, and worst of all, with what looked very much like J.T.’s face. The similarities were eerie, not complete, but eerie. For most dealings, Conroy Farrel could undoubtedly pass as SDF’s first dark angel without batting an eyelash.
Dylan finished reading the first page of the file and handed it over to Hawkins, silently-and so it went, page after page.
“Farrel has gone rogue,” Grant continued. “And the CIA is having a helluva time trying to take him out. The prevailing opinion is that SDF, who knows more about the real J.T. than anyone on the planet, is the team to go get this guy.”
Dylan shook his head. “Not the team,” he said.
“No,” Hawkins agreed, accepting the next page.
Well, that was the last thing Grant had expected, that they would out-and-out refuse to take the mission.
“Hawkins and I will go in and get him for you,” Dylan said, finally lifting his gaze from the folder and meeting Grant’s eyes with his own. “Just the two of us.”
Grant looked to Hawkins, who nodded. “Nobody else needs to be involved.”
Grant knew what they were doing, trying to protect the rest of the team, and he couldn’t fault them for it, but neither could he allow it.
“The CIA has already lost four other agents. I can’t authorize sending another two guys in, when it was the team that was tagged for this. Success is mandatory.”
Dylan’s gaze grew very cold.
“They’ll get their success,” he said.
“But we go in alone,” Hawkins added.
“If funding is an issue-”
“We’ll use the CHF,” Hawkins finished Dylan’s sentence for him.
Oh, hell, the CHF.
“You mean the Contraband Holding Facility?” Grant asked. “That coffee can full of diamonds in Quinn’s kitchen?”
A mission a few years ago involving a load of contraband dinosaur bones had netted the team a cache of diamonds nobody had bothered to officially report, and the windfall had gone into their emergency fund, the CHF.
anything.”
Another glance passed between the two men.
“Nobody needs to know we went in alone,” Dylan said. “Let Hawkins and me do the recon on this thing. That’s all, just the recon. We’ll report back to you with what we find, and the three of us can decide what to do from there.”
“You know that’s the best way,” Hawkins said, seconding the plan. “We can’t use CIA intel to catch a rogue CIA agent. We need boots on the ground. Two people, not a team, not at this stage.”
Grant considered the compromise and knew he’d just been handed a solution to his biggest problem with the tasking. He wasn’t likely to lose his whole team, if the whole team wasn’t involved. He didn’t have to figure out how to control Creed and Kid, if Creed and Kid didn’t know about Conroy Farrel.
On the other hand, he couldn’t think of a better way to get the guy killed than to put his fate in the jungle boy’s and Kid’s hands-and yes, he knew that might have been exactly why this thing had landed on his desk. Plenty of folks in Washington didn’t think he kept a tight enough rein on his SDF operators. Some of those folks might be counting on them to run wild, do the deed, and then take the fall for good.
“I’ll expect a report in eight weeks,” he said, coming to his decision. He didn’t have to worry too damn much about controlling Dylan Hart and Christian Hawkins. He’d never seen either one of them not in control of themselves.
“We need twelve, minimum, for an initial evaluation,” Dylan said. “Especially if we’re going in cold. We’ll need time to set up a network.”
“Prade?” Grant asked, and Hawkins nodded.
“Is connected from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.”
“Then you’ve got twelve weeks,” Grant said. “And I’ve got the whole team waiting out there for something.”
“Did you get us Ramos?” Dylan asked.
In answer, Grant slid the second folder across the desk. “He’s all yours.” And he was another one who was nothing but trouble, another independent thinker. SDF was full of them, and Grant wouldn’t have had it any other way, but by any standards, according to some information he’d gotten, Johnny Ramos was coming off of one helluva night.
Something was up, something big. Johnny felt it as strongly as anyone else in the room when General Grant, Dylan, and Hawkins came out of Dylan’s office.
Sitting on top of the snack table, Skeeter stopped with a Sugarbomb doughnut halfway to her mouth. Standing next to her, Creed shoved the last bite of his in his mouth, and Kid set his back on the tray, uneaten.
Smith and Quinn were sitting at a table with a chessboard between them, and though they stopped playing the game, they both kept eating, and Zach was sitting at Cherie Hacker’s desk, smoking with the window open and drinking coffee, and specifically not eating a Sugarbomb doughnut.
Johnny chewed and swallowed and rose to his feet.
Something was up.
He couldn’t read Dylan very well, but the guy looked a little gray. Hawkins he could usually read a little better, but Superman wasn’t giving anything away, other than the seriousness of his expression.
General Grant, Johnny couldn’t read at all. No matter what catastrophe hit, the guy was always the same. He always moved at the same pace, talked at the same pace, and both of those could be a little on the slow side. He was a measured guy, and when the general’s gaze landed on him, Johnny felt measured, too-measured up.