The grizzled veteran softened. ‘I know, son, and Clare has briefed me fully on you as well as your associates. I am aware of some of the assignments you guys have undertaken.’
He removed a card from his jacket and scribbled a number on its back and pushed it across to Broker. ‘My direct number. Call me anytime, you need anything or if you’re having any problems with Isakson.’
Broker nodded. He knew the General meant it. He was old school. He had never married, had no children, and had no life other than serving his country.
As he was leaving, he patted Broker on the back and smiled at him fully for the first time. ‘Call Isakson, son. That takes priority over anything else. Don’t let this meeting go in vain.’
Broker sat there for a long while thinking over the meeting. There were a million other ways a meeting could have been arranged with Isakson. The fact that the National Security Advisor had come in person indicated that whatever shit Isakson was dealing with had a stench so strong that it had reached the White House.
It also meant that the NSA was figuring on cultivating his own private intelligence source and wanted to assess Broker in person for that.
In the end it didn’t matter. Broker would meet Isakson and hear him out, but would take his time about it.
Isakson and he had history. Isakson’s slow-footed approach and bungling in the rescue of the hostages had cost Broker dearly.
Broker had lost his best friend, his brother operative Zebadiah Carter, in that rescue. They had secured the safe release of the hostages, and Holt had been killed, but Zeb hadn’t survived the rescue.
Never a day passed that Broker did not miss Zeb.
The barista behind the counter had been flirting with Broker all day. She was several years younger than him, but he appealed to her. There was something to him, and she had been planning to slip him her number when he came up to pay the check.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes as she was serving another customer, and her heart skipped a beat. Gone was the humor in his face, and in its place was a cold, dark look. She looked back to her customer, smiling brightly. On second thoughts, he reminded her of a wolf, best left alone.
Chapter 8
Broker caught an evening flight back to New York, and it was close to midnight by the time he reached his apartment on Columbus Avenue, near Central Park. His apartment also doubled as his office; in fact, he had a couple of other such establishments across the downtown area. One never knew when one apartment would be compromised, and in his line of business, redundancy always paid.
The door to his apartment was wood, with a plain finish; inside the door was armored steel that was thick enough to stop everything thrown at it short of a rocket launch. The steel could retract in the frame of the building if needed, turning the door to a more ordinary one. To the right of the door was a DNA and iris scanner under a concealed flap. Broker stepped in and turned off the invisible lasers and all the other nasties in store for an intruder. He headed to his office and booted up his machine after pouring himself a rich black coffee from the Jura on a corner table.
Broker spent the next couple of hours tweaking the spiders he had on the Internet, which were his ears to all the chatter that passed online. Other programs overlaid the chatter with real-time events, such as the visit of the Iranian Defense Minister to North Korea, Somalian pirates capturing a Pakistani merchant vessel, China buying mines in Australia.
Werner, his artificial intelligence engine, brought all these together and came up with various hypotheses. His analysts then took the hypotheses and correlated those with the humint and created the finished product — the most sought-after intel that had made Broker the best known intelligence trader.
The Pentagon and the National Security Agency had tried to buy Werner several times. Broker wasn’t selling.
After a nap, Broker called a couple of numbers late in the morning.
‘This had better be good,’ growled a voice from the first number he called. Bear — six foot five and as wide as a barnyard door, all of it hard muscle, and sporting a thick beard, which was why he was called that — was never a morning person when he was in between assignments. Bear and his partner, Chloe, specialized in close body protection. Amongst other things.
‘And a good morning to you too.’ Broker smiled.
‘Hell, man, you know me by now.’ Bear yawned hugely, looking out at the sun bathing Los Angeles. ‘How’s the chatter business?’
‘Still pays my bills. What are you guys up to now? Chloe around?’
‘She’s gone for her 10K run. You know how she is with her running and walking. I’ve told her many times that the Good Lord let man invent wheels for a reason.’
Broker chuckled. Bear was as fit as any top operative, but never saw the point in not taking it easy when he could. Chloe, a physical contrast to Bear with her petite, dark-haired frame, ran a 10K on days she took it easy.
Afghanistan was where they had met, the heat and the mountains providing a backdrop to their wordless romance.
Born an army brat, Chloe Sundstrom had moved from base to base all over the world, and had seen her father retire as an E-8 in the 101st Airborne. A single child, she was treated as an adult by her parents at a very early age, and Master Sergeant Sundstrom’s ‘No sweat, no cake’ motto in life, became hers too.
Joining the army was a natural choice for her, and determined to see active duty, she was also hell-bent on going farther than her dad. That determination drove her through college ROTC with a scholarship, through Airborne School at Fort Benning, and the 82nd Airborne got a newly minted Second Lieutenant.
Operation Allied Force in Kosovo was Chloe’s first major deployment, when the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was sent to the Albanian Kosovan border to support NATO’s bombing of the Serbian forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic.
The battalion later became the first ground force to go in the Balkans. Army women weren’t supposed to be deployed in combat roles… in reality they got in the thick of action just as male soldiers did; it just wasn’t public knowledge. Chloe was a battle-hardened veteran by the time the 82nd’s soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. Afghanistan was a country ravaged by decades of war, a land where tribes frequently fought each other, a land where hope struggled to survive.
It was also a land of great beauty, dotted with villages where time moved much slower. Chloe fell in love with the towering stillness of the Hindu Kush Mountains first, and the rest of the land won her over.
It was the country where she fell in love.
The Special Operations teams from the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) were stationed in the same base as hers, and it was hard to miss Sergeant Bozo (Bear) Parvizi.
The Special Forces teams tended to keep to themselves and carried an aura around them. Bear didn’t need auras. With his height and presence, Bear just was. He had noticed Chloe, her liquid ease in the heat of Afghanistan, her cool glances when their gazes met, a magnet in the mess hall.
They spent their entire time in that hot spot without uttering a word to each other, but had a heightened awareness when the other was in proximity. Chloe had tracked Bear down when they both left the army — it wasn’t difficult, since Bear was searching for her too — and the mute romance found its voice.