Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(54)
“I’ll start at the library downtown,” she said. “Use a public computer. Do a little more digging. Maybe buy a new laptop, maybe not. I don’t want to take your charity.”
“I told you, it’s a loan,” he said. “No strings. I’ll stop for dinner fixings on my way back. My default is Mexican, so if you want something different, call or text.”
She blinked at him. “What, you’re cooking?”
“Purely in self-defense,” he said. “I’ve seen the inside of your fridge.”
She held her chin aloft in an aristocratic pose, peering down her nose at him. The fat lip and stitches tended to work against her there, but it was still an impressive look. “I,” she said, “am a modern woman. Your patriarchal expectations of female servitude are both antiquated and sexist.” She dismissed him with an imperial flick of her hand. “I choose not to cook.”
He grinned and picked up her laptop. “That’s a truly elegant rationalization.”
He dodged another pillow on his way out the door.
He still hadn’t asked about her dad. It seemed to be a sensitive topic for her. He’d figure it out on his drive.
But before he climbed into the minivan, he walked through the unruly little back yard, feeling the relief as the static settled lower on his spine, even as the drizzle trickled down his face. Unpruned junipers and broad-leafed evergreen rhododendrons formed a high wet tangle. Pushing past the thicket, he found a pair of spreading cedars beside the neighbor’s white clapboard garage, making a small sheltered space out of the worst of the wind and rain.
The static wouldn’t let him sleep inside, not anytime soon.
But he could make the backyard work.
He just didn’t want to have to find a place in the dark.
24
CHIP
Chip Dawes would still be in the Clandestine Service if he hadn’t decided to take down an Iraqi colonel who was skimming from the billions that the U.S. had brought in for reconstruction.
Even the Pentagon accountants expected some shrinkage. The Middle East functioned on authority and graft, and you needed some baksheesh if you wanted to get anything done. Uncle Sugar had brought planeloads of cash into the country for exactly this reason, and SSOs like Chip had access to stacks of hundred-dollar bills for greasing the locals.
It was easy to get used to, handling that kind of money.
But this colonel was a particularly nasty fuck with extra-sticky fingers, and Chip had credible intel that the colonel was using part of his skim to fund the insurgents. He confronted the colonel personally, but the man just laughed. He tried to get permission from his superiors to make an example, but word came down that the colonel was somehow protected.
Chip wasn’t having any of that.
The man had laughed at him.
And he’d stolen a lot of fucking money.
So Chip put together an informal working group. He ran the show, leadership being part of his natural skill set. Six run-and-gun guys from six different units, guys he’d used before, guys he knew and trusted to do the job. And one asset he’d used for years, a particularly successful Farm-trained operator who was used to working alone.
It wasn’t an officially sanctioned group, of course. This wasn’t Chip’s first rodeo, he knew how to slip and slide with the best of them. These were the go-go years, not a lot of oversight if you got shit done. Which Chip did, and planned to do again.
The colonel traveled in an armored Range Rover with three personal bodyguards and a pair of escort “technicals,” Toyota Hilux 4-door pickups with the usual heavy machine gun mounted in the bed. Each truck had four men inside and two in the back to operate the gun. Sixteen men in all.
Chip’s working group caught the colonel’s convoy on a narrow street outside the home of the colonel’s mistress. Two men with recycled RPG-7s on opposing rooftops to take out the technicals and crack the armored vehicle. Four men driving four local cars to block the road in and out, then attack on the ground with SAWs and M16s. Chip on one of the rooftops, using the radio to direct the battle. And his asset, unknown to the other men, waiting in reserve.
His superiors would have wanted him to have more men. Even the idea of using just six men to attack and kill a heavily armed escort would have made Washington shit a brown river, but Chip was a pro. The job went exactly as planned.
When the smoke cleared, Chip walked into the street with an M4 and reached through the shattered armored glass to open the door of the colonel’s Range Rover from the inside. It was disappointing that the colonel was dead—Chip would have liked the man to know who’d killed him—but the stainless-steel briefcase was there, as his source had said it would be, along with a cheap duffel stuffed with banded packets of hundred-dollar bills.
He thanked his men and handed each a stack of hundreds, saying that this small skirmish represented a great American victory against Iraqi corruption. The colonel was helping the insurgents, helping to kill their friends, and they had stopped him. The secrets in the briefcase would reveal more Iraqi traitors, and he was grateful.
Then Chip’s Farm-trained asset stepped out of a doorway with an M16 and opened fire with ruthless efficiency. Chip dropped to the ground, and a few of the men had time to return fire, but it was over in less than a minute. Six men down. Two men left.