Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(72)
“So you’re saying this Project was…what?” Becky blinked. “Illegal?”
“According to everything I know about how our judicial system works,” Boss said.
“But these were terrible men,” she argued. “I mean murder? Slave trading? Child prostitution? These guys were bottom feeders. No,” she shook her head, her blond ponytail whipping across her shoulders, “they were worse than that; they were friggin’ slopsuckers.”
“No denying that,” Boss agreed, and another thread of anxiety that’d been tied around Rock’s heart loosened. Of all the Knights, that he’d been most worried about how Boss would react to the news that he’d been involved with The Project. Because even though Boss had been known to bend the rules with the best of them, the fact remained, the man rarely broke them.
And The Project? Well, to his utter regret, it appeared The Project had broken all the rules…
“Which brings us around to the question of who exactly you were working for in the CIA,” Ozzie said.
And now they were getting to the meat of one of Rock’s problems. Because the truth was… “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You don’t know?” Boss frowned, his brow furrowed in a series of deep lines. “So then who set up the interrogation rooms for you? Who helped you snatch these guys? I mean, they were all wealthy, right? Their security had to be ultra tight.”
“The location of an interrogation room, always in some abandoned building, was part of their file. It was ready for me when I needed it. And as far as kidnapping them?” He lifted a shoulder. “You always did say I was a slippery sonofagun. I just bided my time, slipped into their inner circle, and grabbed them when they least expected it.” And there were a few times he’d almost been caught.
“Jesus, Rock,” Boss breathed, shaking his head in disbelief. Oui, sometimes Rock had a hard time believing it himself. And saying it all out loud? Well, it sounded even more preposterous than it did in his head. “Okay,” Boss continued, “so then who the hell was this Rwanda Don person you told us about?”
And again, all he could answer with was, “I don’t know.”
Boss growled, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, man, so let’s start at the beginning. How did the CIA recruit you into this…this Project?”
And so it begins… The sad, complicated, twisted tale of his life.
Rock took a deep breath, laced his fingers together on the table, and started in on a story even he sometimes had a hard time believing. Because it was the stuff of B-rated spy films and really bad thriller novels. And, in his case, it also happened to be true…
“After I applied for BUD/S, I was contacted, via telephone, by a guy from the CIA callin’ himself Rwanda Don,” he began. “His voice was altered, using one of those gizmos that made him sound like he was a throat cancer survivor.”
For a second, his eyes snagged on Vanessa’s. And there it was again. That look of absolute conviction. Even after all he’d just told them, there was no censure, no judgment in her eyes. Non. There she sat, steadfast in her belief that what he’d done was right. And he had the thought again…
Mon dieu, she’s some kind of woman. And he wished…
Hell, he didn’t know what he wished anymore. And then an image of Lacy popped into his head. The way she’d looked in those last days, so skinny and sickly, and his heart hardened.
Non. Don’t second-guess yourself, mon ami. You know what loving someone can cost you. And you can’t put that kind of burden, that kind of pain, onto someone else. Because his job with the Black Knights—not to mention his affiliation with The Project—all but guaranteed the likelihood of him meeting an untimely death, and he refused to allow someone who loved him to suffer the kind of loss he’d suffered after Lacy died. The thought was simply unbearable…
He shook his head and continued, “Well, anyway, I was asked if I was interested in comin’ in for an interview.”
“Coming in where?” Boss asked.
“That’s the thing. I was interviewed right there in Coronado. It wasn’t Langley or the Pentagon or somewhere in DC. I went to an abandoned building where I was shown a bunch of CIA credentials before I was hustled into a room by a couple of dudes wearin’ face masks. Once there, I was questioned by Rwanda Don and a few other people who were sitting on the other side of a two-way mirror, with all their voices disguised. I’d heard The Company could be pretty loopy when it came to recruiting new agents for new projects, so I went along with it and answered all the questions as honestly as I could.”
“And what kind of questions were you asked?” Ozzie said, rising from his chair to stroll over to the conference table. He pulled out a seat to join the group but not before plunking a razor-thin laptop down in front of him.
“The standard fare,” Rock admitted, thinking back on that day and how nervous he’d been. It was the first clue he’d had of what a crazy, almost unbelievable world the spec-ops community really was. “I was asked about my reasons for wantin’ to join the SEALs. About my thoughts on certain government policies. How I felt about the possibility of having to take a life in the line of duty, yada, yada. And then it got weird.”
“Weird?” Becky asked, crunching down on the sucker in her mouth. “How so?”