Headed for Trouble

CHAPTER THREE

“Whoa,” Dave said, leaning in closer to squint at his laptop’s screen as he sat at the dining table in the hotel suite they’d designated as the temporary Troubleshooters headquarters in Nachtgarten. “That’s … very weird.”

“What is?” Sam Starrett asked, because knowing Dave, he’d tell Sam anyway. He didn’t look up from surfing the TV channels, looking for something even vaguely entertaining and stopping on SpongeBob SquarePants—in German. That was kind of cool. Guten Tag, Patrick. Wie geht’s?

“I’m getting a signal,” Dave reported. “But …” He hunched over his computer, fingers flying across his keyboard.

Dave Malkoff was something of an oddball. He’d been working for Tommy Paoletti’s Troubleshooters Incorporated since nearly its inception, yet remained adamant about not wanting to be a team leader, which was fine but a little mystifying to Sam.

A former CIA operative, Dave sometimes took himself—and life—a smidge too seriously. He was one of those guys whose intellect was too big for his own good. He’d aced every test he’d ever taken—and a hell of a lot of good that had done him when it came down to real life.

He didn’t seem to have any family, and although he appeared to be friends with the incredibly beautiful Sophia Ghaffari, he wasn’t friends in the Hey, mind if I drop by so we can lick chocolate off each other sense of the word.

And it was pretty obvious to Sam that Dave wished it were otherwise.

Jimmy Nash, a nutjob in his own right, was convinced that Dave was like the guy in that movie—a forty-year-old virgin—but Sam seriously doubted that. Although he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that old Dave hadn’t done the deed yet this decade.

It was, after all, only 2006. No need to rush things.

“Whoa,” Dave said again. “Alyssa definitely just activated the box.”

Sam looked up from the TV at the mention of his wife’s name. He looked at his watch, too. It was a little too early for her team to have reached the location of the oil tank. No way. Maybe if they’d been moving at a dead run, but … That wasn’t the plan. They couldn’t have gotten there yet.

“But it’s completely in the wrong place,” Dave added.

Sam moved his feet from the top of the desk to the floor. “Why would she do that?” he asked, standing up and moving across the suite, to look over Dave’s shoulder at his computer screen. His wife—their team leader—knew exactly where that oil tank was. “Maybe the box got switched on accidentally.”

Dave scratched his head. “I doubt it, sir. There’s a code she’s got to punch in to unlock the system. It couldn’t have been just bumped and turned on without someone knowing.”

“Is there a system malfunction?” Sam asked. “On our end?” His voice sounded terse, almost sharp, to his own ears, but Dave didn’t so much as flinch.

And indeed, there was concern in Dave’s eyes, too, as he glanced at Sam. “No, sir,” he answered unequivocally but then backpedaled. “I mean, okay. Yeah. I suppose there could be, but …” He was shaking his head.

“No.”

The hair on the back of Sam’s neck was standing up. Through the years, both as a SEAL and as an operative for Troubleshooters Incorporated, he’d learned to trust his gut instincts—or at least take them extremely seriously. He picked up the hotel phone, dialed Jimmy’s room number.

“Nash,” the man answered after only one ring.

He’d been on edge all night, hyper-aware that his fiancée, Tess Bailey, was out there in the world, without him tagging along as backup. Sam had finally sent him to his own hotel room.

“I need you back in here,” Sam ordered. “Decker, too. And see if Mark Jenkins is still in Lindsey’s room.” He hung up without waiting for Jimmy to respond.

“They’re definitely a half a klick from the tank,” Dave reported as he checked and rechecked both his computer and the program he was running.

There was a rap on the door, and Sam opened it. It was Nash—with Deck right behind him.

“Situation, sir?” asked Decker, who’d once been a chief in the SEALs. It was hard for him not to address the former naval officers in Troubleshooters with formality.In the same way, it was equally difficult for Sam and Tom not to call Deck Chief, especially in times of high stress.

“Alyssa activated the box in the wrong location,” Dave repeated the little that they knew, as Mark Jenkins, too, came into the hotel room, “and we don’t know why.”

Enough was enough. “Game over,” Sam said. “I’m calling this bullshit. Deck, get on the horn with the officer in charge over at Nachtgarten. Dave, break radio silence and raise Alyssa. I want to talk to her.”

If this meant that they needed to reschedule this drill, take a do-over on a different night, so be it.

Jenkins looked as if he’d rolled right out of bed, but he was waking up fast. He was still a SEAL with Sam’s old team—Sixteen. In fact, he’d served with both Sam and Tommy Paoletti, often as a radioman.

“I’m not getting through,” Dave reported, and Sam met Jenk’s gaze.

Sam nodded at the SEAL’s silent question. “Let Jenkins try,” he ordered.

One good thing about Dave—there was absolutely no ego involved in anything he did. He relinquished control of their radio without a single word of argument, moving back to his computer.

“Captain O’Reilly over at Nachtgarten insists that all possible entries into the drainage system are under armed guard,” Decker reported.

“Tell O’Reilly he’s a f*cking idiot,” Sam shot back, “and that our team is already beneath his f*cking base.”

Deck, being a former chief, spoke fluent officer. “With all due respect, sir,” Sam heard him paraphrase the message into the phone, “we’ll need to verify—”

“Can’t reach our red cell, sir,” Jenk announced, pulling Sam’s attention away. “Signal’s being jammed, somewhere on their end.”

What the f*ck?

“Dave, call Tommy Paoletti with a code red,” Sam ordered as he broke open the suitcases that were stacked in the corner. Even when they went overseas on a training op or security drill, Troubleshooters Incorporated traveled with enough weapons and equipment to handle an unexpected emergency. “Jenk, I want to know who’s jamming the radio signal and exactly where it’s coming from. Deck and Nash, gear up. You’re with me.”

“I’m coming, too,” Jenkins said, grabbing both a weapon and ammunition.

As did Dave.

“I need you on your computer,” Sam told him.

“You’ll have me on my computer,” Dave told him, readying his equipment for travel, even as he got through to Paoletti on his cell phone. “Commander. Code red. Evacuate the barracks. Sam’s pulling the plug on the exercise. We’re unable to make contact with our red cell, and we’re preparing to go in after them …”

If this turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, Sam was going to hear about it until the end of time. But he was okay with that. Please God, let this be a simple communications or computer malfunction.

He didn’t often call upon a higher power for help. But he sent up another quick prayer as he led the other men out of the hotel room and down the stairs. Please God, help Alyssa keep her team safe. And God? Thank you for making Linda Cassidy see the light last weekend, and break up with her dickhead of a second husband, giving her son the impetus to fly here to Germany with them, and to be with Alyssa right now.

No doubt about it. If Alyssa were in trouble and Sam couldn’t be guarding her six, he’d want Jules Cassidy by her side.

Jules would die for her.

Of course, the flipside was that Alyssa would also die for Jules.

Sam kicked up his speed, breaking into a run as he went out the door into the hotel’s parking garage.

CHAPTER FOUR

Three men with M60 machine guns had set an ambush along the route leading out of the tunnel.

Jules and the Angels didn’t walk into it, thanks to Lindsey’s extraordinary tracking skills. She’d picked up the fresh trail—three men, carrying heavy gear—atop the tracks they themselves had made coming in. That the three men had M60s wasn’t deduced from the fact that they wore American running shoes. Nor was it divined from the lengths of their strides.

No, Lindsey had crept toward them, wearing her cloak of invisibility, and she’d gotten a visual of those three weapons—machine guns that were capable of turning human beings into some serious hamburger.

She’d also used her cell phone to snap a few photos of the men who were holding those M60s, zeroing in, in particular, on a swastika-and-flame-motif tattoo that they all proudly wore. From this, Jules was able to identify them as members of the New Reich, a particularly loathsome, hatred-spewing group of Neo-Nazis, based out of Dresden.

It was also clear from the symbols in Farsi that the NR had made on the tunnel walls in green fluorescent paint—go figure—that they wanted it to look as if the attack had been made by a local group of Iranian refugees.

Intolerant people could really suck.

But for every Neo-Nazi a*shole that was out there, messing up the world with his backward thinking and his stupid plan to kill thousands of American servicemen and -women in order to fuel hatred of innocent people who had nowhere else to go … For every one of them, there was an Alyssa or a Lindsey or a Tess or a Sophia. Ready to fight—and die—for justice and tolerance, ready to right wrongs and bring the real truth to light.

Alyssa came back toward the shadows where Jules was waiting, not far from where they’d activated the electronic device.

“They’re coming,” she told him.

Which meant that she’d been right.

Apparently, about an hour before Jules, Alyssa, and her red cell had accessed the tunnels via that riverfront warehouse, ten members of the New Reich had entered the same drainage system via an as-yet-unknown means. The NR had traveled along a different route in the tunnel system from Alyssa and her team. But the two paths had crossed as they drew closer to the area where the oil tank was buried.

At that point, five of the NR members headed toward the tank, going past it to hide, waiting for the Troubleshooters to arrive and essentially attach a homing beacon to the damn thing.

Three men had hidden near where the two paths met, waiting until the red cell had gone past. They had gone back to set up that M60 ambush on the very route Alyssa’s team would be using to exit the tunnels.

Two others had set up a similar ambush along the tunnel they themselves had used to get in.

Alyssa had hoped that they could escape the way the NR had entered, since their own path was now blocked, and had given the order to fall back along that route. They’d all followed Lindsey, but they hadn’t gone far before she’d signaled them to stop, and reported this second ambush site.

In short, they were trapped.

Jules knew that trapped wasn’t one of Alyssa’s happy-fun-time words. He also knew that she was worried about Sam. They’d been down here in these tunnels too long without radio or cell phone contact with the support team on the surface. Sam was, at times, a Neanderthal, but he could be patient, and he definitely trusted Alyssa to keep herself and her team safe. Still, Jules knew the man, and it wouldn’t be too much longer before Sam called off the drill and came down here, in search of them.

At which point he would run right into that first ambush. It was true, the M60s were pointing in the wrong direction, but they were easy enough to turn around. And Sam and every member of his rescue team could well be killed.

Knowing that there was a time limitation and no real way to communicate with Sam and the support team, Alyssa had decided to give the New Reich what they wanted.

Sort of.

She’d sent Sophia, Tess, and Lindsey to try to find a third and alternative exit and to see if they could find a jam-free place to use their radio or cell phones. And then she’d placed the signal box in a shallow room off the main tunnel, a full half-klick from both the tank and the barracks. At which point, she’d programmed in the code and turned the beacon on.

Come to Mommy and Daddy, you darling little Neo-Nazis.…

The plan was to let the NR “find” the buried “oil tank”—or at least the signal box that supposedly sat atop it. In theory, they would set their bomb, turn on its timer, and they would leave.

This was, after all, not a group that was big into suicide attacks. Jules was pretty certain that there would be a timer. And it would be set with sufficient time to allow them to make a getaway.

They’d scamper out of the tunnels, taking their machine-gun-wielding buddies with them.

At which point Alyssa and Jules would creep out from their hidey-hole in the corner of the room, take a gander at the bomb, see if there was a quick, easy, and certain way to defuse it, and then either do so or run like hell.

If it blew, it could take out part of the drainage system, causing a cave-in. But without the oil from the tank to fuel it, it wouldn’t do much more than that.

Jules hoped.

“Here they come,” Alyssa breathed again. And indeed, there they came.

CHAPTER FIVE

The base commander finally began the evacuation of the barracks.

About f*cking time.

But no one with the authority to give an official go-ahead seemed able to grasp the meaning of Sam’s report that there were three unknown, unidentified men, armed with three M60 machine guns, positioned about point-five klicks inside the riverside entrance that Alyssa and her team had used to access the tunnels.

The unknowns had had their backs to the Troubleshooters support team that went down there for a quick sneak-and-peek. They’d had no idea the Troubleshooters were there, and it wouldn’t take much for them to continue to not know they were there—right up until the moment their weapons fell from their lifeless fingers.

The key word being lifeless.

But Captain O’Reilly, the OIC for the mock attack, didn’t want the Troubleshooters to use deadly force. He’d actually suggested that they go down there and shout a warning, maybe start a dialogue.

Deck was on the phone with the captain right now, suggesting that the word of the day be covert. Shouting a warning meant that those three unidentified men with very big weapons would then know that the good guys were there. If shots were fired—and they would be—that would ruin Sam’s chances to infiltrate farther into the tunnels, see how many additional men with big weapons might be down there—maybe already having taken certain American hostages.…

“Sir.” Mark Jenkins had news for him. “We’ve located the origination point of the frequency jamming. It’s down a parallel tunnel. Dave’s pulled up a schematic—shortest route is past the three-man ambush.”

“Let me see,” Sam said.

Dave turned his computer to give him a better look at a screen that was a confusing jumble of lines and blotches.

“Point to it,” Sam ordered, and Dave complied, which really didn’t help him that much.

“Is it inside the confines of the base?” Sam asked.

Dave was a smart guy, a graduate of some fancy Ivy League school. He knew exactly why Sam was asking that, and, as he met Sam’s gaze, it was clear that he knew if any bad shit happened in the next few moments, he’d be blamed for providing faulty information. Still he didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir, it certainly looks to be.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. Finally. Something they could work with. He took Decker’s phone from him, handing him his own cell. “Get me Tom Paoletti,” he ordered Deck, even as he put the former chief’s phone to his ear.

“They may not even have real bullets,” Captain O’Reilly was saying, of the three men in the tunnel. “If you can prove that they do—”

Yeah, by having them unload a full banana clip in their direction? Thanks a bunch, Captain Kangaroo. Maybe you should actually spend some time in Iraq, grow a little battlefield perspective.

“—perhaps then we can consider additional measures,” O’Reilly continued.

“There are at least three fully armed unknowns in that tunnel,” Sam reiterated. “They’re screwing with our radio signal, and we’ve located the source of that jamming—it’s inside the gates of the base. I’m calling this what it is, Captain—a terrorist attack on a U.S. military installation. We’re going in. With force.”

“Mr. Starrett,” O’Reilly responded, heavy on that mister. “I don’t have the authority to allow you to do that.”

Sam was ready to tell O’Reilly to blow him when Jimmy Nash reappeared. Sam hadn’t noticed when the Troubleshooters operative had disappeared, but Nash certainly registered on his attention-meter now, considering that the crazy son-of-a-bitch’s clothing had been sprayed with what looked like blood. He was cleaning off a K-bar knife and the look in his eyes was one Sam had seen a time or two in his own bathroom mirror.

“The tunnel’s clear,” he reported as he put a handful of extremely non-rubber bullets onto the table in front of him.

Jesus Christ. Three against one, yet Nash had done the job silently, without getting so much as winded. Except, wait, he was a little winded, and some of the blood on his shirt was his own.

“Your arm’s bleeding,” Deck told Nash.

He barely glanced at it. “Just a ding.”

O’Reilly was still sputtering on his end of the phone, so Sam just spoke over him. “The bullets are real, the tunnel’s been cleared. We’re going in—”

It was then, before Sam could end the conversation with a cheery “f*ck you,” that a bomb went off, shaking the very foundation of the warehouse he was standing in.

O’Reilly even felt it on his end. “What the hell was that?”

Sam didn’t answer. He’d already hung up and was down in the tunnel, shouting orders. “Jenkins and Decker—find the radio jammer and make it stop. Dave and Nash—” Crazy and Crazier “—you’re with me!”