AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hundreds of rockets. Thousands of grenades. Millions of bullets. How many had been aimed at his sorry ass in the last eleven years—and not had the courtesy to take him out in the process? Goddamn them.
There were no more blasts now.
And he was lost in the silence.
Except when the explosions came again.
In his dreams.
Rescuing him.
Haunting him.
Taunting him.
With the life he no longer lived. The purpose he no longer had.
A noise, high and sharp, vibrated through his head. An ice bucket of salvation in radio hail form. He swung his wrist to mouth level, efficiently answering Sol Wrightman’s buzz. “Dragon here. Go ahead.”
“Franzen, what’s your twenty?” Wrightman sounded irked by Franz’s use of the call-sign. Not that he could be blamed—but John sure as hell wasn’t going to waste time with an apology. If Sol couldn’t deal with a slip like that, he was in the wrong damn line of work.
“Little over a mile from home,” he responded. Yeah, more code. Wrightman would deal, and thank him for it. No security specialist in their right mind, especially one brought on by the Secret Service themselves for extra expertise in a city like Vegas, would openly name the hotel at which the vice president was staying. For someone planning an attack, the information was findable in a dozen other places, but he’d be damned if they found that success from listening to her security detail.
He confirmed the estimation with a glance out the window. The driver, an easygoing dude named Shep who’d seen a lot of action in the Marines, had followed his instructions to the inch. While Sol and the decoy motorcade took Paradise then Harmon, crossing to The Bellagio’s back entrance off Sinatra Drive, John had insisted on taking this smaller group, with just one lead vehicle and four scattered incognito behind, straight up The Strip.
Unorthodox? Not really. It was the oldest trick in the book. Hiding the target in plain sight. And sure, it added several minutes to their trip since traffic on The Strip was a zoo on the best of days, but the delay was a good thing. Wrightman would arrive at the villa first, flushing out any real threat before Tracy was anywhere near.
To that end, it felt safe to add, “Confirm Tigress’s destination is checked and secure?”
Sol’s comeback quickly had him sitting up straighter.
“Negative.”
“Negative?”
Three syllables on his lips but a dozen queries in his mind. What the hell? Was there a problem? He didn’t pick that up from Wrightman’s voice, which held steady at annoyed not alarmed, but Sol was still as readable to him as tea leaves in milk soup. For all his manic energy, Wrightman clearly kept his deeper shit to himself. The man could have a gun to his head, or simply be constipated.
John scowled. Deeply. He was used to knowing his team inside and out, down to the nuances in their voices.
He checked their location. They were nearly at the light for Tropicana. A left could take them right out to McCarran, where her plane waited on the tarmac, but if security had been compromised, he’d advise a right, toward I-15 and Nellis. It’d take a minute, maybe less, for Sam to hook them up with proper clearance then transport back to DC.
First things first. “Clarify.” The Escalade’s interior echoed his growl back, a leather-and-wood slap in the face. You’re not in charge, and this isn’t war. Through gritted teeth, he added, “Please.”
Sol’s reply was prefaced by a weary sigh. “Itinerary change. We need you to head back.”
“Back where? To the convention center?”
He watched the reflection of his frown in the vice president’s narrowed gaze. “What?” She snapped. “Why?”
“You heard the boss. Clarification, please.” Repeating the politeness was the easy part. Enduring the increased tension in Tracy Rhodes’s gaze wasn’t, even as he got busy disconnecting the audio jack to his earpiece, instead jamming it into the car’s patch.
“Some idiot over here slugged too much juice into one power box,” came Sol’s voice through the car’s speakers. “They blew out the whole building, which crashed the drive on the sound system.”
“Peachy,” John muttered.
“Dammit,” Tracy layered atop that.
“They’re out getting a whole new laptop to reprogram now,” Sol continued. “Sound levels have to be recalibrated, and we only have an hour until they let the crowd start to line up. Once that happens—”
