“I don’t have to like you, sir. I respect the office. That should be enough,” he said calmly. The man only laughed at him, nodding.
“Alright, I’ll accept that. Listen Dan, I heard you boys are at Bragg helping with a situation that involves someone we are keenly interested in.”
“We are at Bragg, sir.” Dan said nothing else but he knew the POTUS knew exactly why they were there. He only chuckled at Dan’s vagueness.
“Let’s cut through all the bullshit. We all want Vasily dead and you boys are the best people to handle that task. You can get in and out, you know his moves and you know why this has to end.”
“And you get to claim complete ignorance to the situation, no one pointing fingers at you,” said Dan calmly. “The Russians will blame it on a rogue group of soldiers and you get what you want.”
“You understand that there has to be some plausible deniability, Dan.”
“It seems there’s a lot of that happening in and around Washington, sir. Doesn’t matter the party. Doesn’t matter which side of the aisle. It seems you’re all denying responsibility for the chaos happening in our country.”
“I’m going to guess you didn’t vote for me, Dan.” Dan said nothing to him as the other men raised their brows. “No matter. I’m asking you as the President of the United States to do this for us.”
“I think you forget that we don’t work for the government any longer. We ended our contracts with you years ago because the office couldn’t seem to understand that we were tired of sticking our necks out for people who didn’t give a shit about us, or the American public.”
“Now see here! I care about the people of this nation. It’s why I chose to serve.”
“Forgive me, sir, but you chose to serve for yourself. Not for America. But don’t feel bad. I could say the same thing about every politician who is currently serving, so you’re not alone. Here’s what I can assure you, Mr. President. If Vasily Gorbeva is in this country and if he is planning to do harm to Americans, we will interfere in his plans.”
“You know, Dan, I would think if a man like Vasily was after one of my own I’d be more inclined to go after the man and kill him.”
Dan froze staring at the others. Wes took the tablet, staring into the screen.
“You son-of-a-bitch. You told Vasily who killed his son,” said Wes. The president chewed the inside of his cheek just staring at the angry man. “You asshole. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
“I’ve protected the country,” he said casually. “Finding any records on you boys is difficult but the fact that Vasily had a photo of the killer was helpful. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t communicating with Vasily but he shared the photo witha double-agent we have working this case and he shared it with me. I was surprised I recognized your face.”
“You planned all of this,” said Wes.
“I never planned what happened at Duke involving the professor. That happened because of Vasily. He’s an arrogant man, much like the rest of you. The difference is you have the skill to support your arrogance. He does not. Happy hunting.”
The screen went black and the men stared at one another. Wes was the one most at risk in all of this but because his genetics were so strong, every Jordan was technically at risk.
Plus, they now realized that they’d made enemies, or at least, frenemies, of the current administration. Joey looked at his teammates, Red, Bo, and Bullett.
“Welcome to the family.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Are we certain they didn’t track the call?” he asked Peter.
“The men handling our technology assure me there is no possibility of tracking, sir.” Vasily nodded at him. “We can’t find the girl anywhere. There’s no sign that she took a commercial flight anywhere, no trains or buses. It’s as if she vanished.”
“She didn’t vanish but she won’t be found,” said Vasily. “We’ll find other students, other brilliant young minds that we can mold. My brother was helpful but he should have sent me young people willing to do this work for us. I didn’t need those who didn’t see the wisdom in what we’re doing.”
“Shall I prepare your bags?” asked the man.
“You can do that later,” said Vasily. “We’ll leave tomorrow evening. I have a few things I want to get done here before we go home.”
“Home,” smirked Peter. “It seems such a long time since we were home.”
“Yes, it does my friend,” nodded the older man.
Peter had been his son’s best friend, following him anywhere. On the day he was killed, he’d been told to go to a different house by one of the men in charge. If he’d been there, he would have saved his son, he just knew it. With Peter’s father gone, he saw him as a step-son and the most trusted man in his organization. He would do anything for him.
In fact, he’d done just about everything for him. Killed two wives that had served their usefulness. Killed men in his organization that no longer served a purpose or could be trusted. Found him women willing to do anything for one night for a tidy sum of money.
