Chapter Three
“We’re tired of being in the fucking dark.” Chrome and Steele had already been in his office for more than an hour, pouring over details obtained from Tin and Nickel’s last op. Steele paced the room as if he were a caged tiger at a zoo.
Couldn’t see him, but Titanium still wanted to tranq him. “You have the same information I have in front of you, do you not? Same dates and notes in the file from their debriefing?”
Chrome snorted and Steele cursed again. “You’re kidding me, right? Do not for even one nanosecond think I believe—”
“Either of us believe,” Chrome added.
“Oorah, brother. That either of us believe we are getting all of the info from you.”
They were right. Of course. He didn’t like that they suspected he was holding out on them. Hell. He didn’t want to hold out on them any longer. But the last pieces of the puzzle weren’t in place yet.
Titanium reached beneath his shades and rubbed his eyes. Deciding what to tell them and what to keep silent about made him want to punch a wall. “I trust both of you but—”
“Bullshit,” Chrome coughed, and then it sounded as if he stood and joined the circus parade Steele led from one side of the large space to the other.
“It’s not. I can imagine what you guys think but—”
“What?” Chrome asked with a fair amount of panties in a twist. “What do you think we’re feeling at the moment?”
He imagined Chrome making quotation marks with his fingers as he spoke and wanted to give him a good shake. With a .22.
“Pissed off because you don’t know the right questions to ask, aching for a fight but you’re not certain who the enemy is, offended you were left out of the loop to begin with, insulted because you truly don’t think I trust either of you.” He waited and neither of them spoke. He exhaled and shook his head. “I’m not burying my head in the sand here. I’m not playing eeny meeny miny moe with details. There’s more to all of this than anyone knows and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it as expediently as possible.”
Several seconds later, one of them collapsed in a chair.
“Why do you think you have to go this alone? We’re all here. We’ve been here since you pulled us in more than a year ago. Why won’t you let us help you?”
It was Steele. And his genuine concern seeped in past his walls, making his heart ache and his eyes sting. He shook his head, determined not to break down in front of his brothers. “It’s not so simple.”
Chrome spoke up, clearing his throat first. “Sometimes. It is.”
“And sometimes every piece of new intel I find reminds me why I don’t want to put anyone else in danger. Why every time I send one of the teams out I’m so fucking freaked out it’s going to be the last mission.”
“We all know what we signed up for,” Steele declared.
“No. You don’t.”
“And you did, ass wipe? When you signed your name on the dotted line, enlisting into the Marines, you knew the bullshit the government was destined to pull on us?”
“Yes.”
One word sure as hell shut them up.
“You’re shitting me?” Chrome accused.
“I wish I was.”
Titanium shifted a few pages of braille in an open folder on his desk, trying to get the meeting back on track. “I have intel on a deal Red Wolf has in place and a high-ranking agent clearing the road for him. Mission prep needs to start and I think we need to send in Tin, Zinc and Adamantium so he can—”
“Fuck you.” Steele stood again and resumed the to and fro.
“We’re not sending anyone anywhere until we know what the hell’s really happening.” Sounded as if Chrome was speaking through clenched teeth. “We’re not leading Girl Scouts to sell cookies, much less our teams into enemy territory, one more time until you level with us on what the hell’s going on. And you can go fuck yourself if you open your pie hole and spout some kind of party line bullshit that you can’t, won’t, or don’t feel like sharing. Comprende, Warbucks?”
“You want to stick it to Red Wolf, do you not? Both of you?”
Two yesses came from the pacers.
“You know Red Wolf is responsible for tearing our teams apart and forcing contingency measures outside the scope of the good ole’ U.S. of A.”
Two more affirmatives.
“Then the whys of it shouldn’t make a difference.”
“You sound like you almost believe your own load of crap,” Chrome lobbed at him.
“Your panties are in a twist because—”
“If I wore panties, they’d be in a twist because you played us for years and I’m not only talking about since Elite was brought together. Or Operation Phoenix, even. You begrudgingly pulled us into the fold because you needed us. And I’m a commando kind of guy, fuck you very much.” Chrome’s temper got the best of him and Titanium could feel his frustration as if it were a breathing, snarling thing.
“I pulled you into the fold to save your lives. You have no idea the fate waiting for you if I hadn’t acted when I did. And I get nothing but the equivalent of verbal hate-mail from you most of the time.”
“How do you expect us to know the details, when you won’t tell us diddly?” Steele wanted to know.
Chrome added, “And why do you think your hard on for Red Wolf is any stronger than any of ours? You seem to take shit even more personal than we do. What the hell’s that about?”
Steele didn’t stay quiet or let Titanium address Chrome’s question. “And you, at least, knew about the eventuality of OP happening. Of needing another team to pull a snatch and grab. We didn’t have your luxury, so I’d say our hate for the guy responsible is much greater than your—”
“When I was eleven Red Wolf and two other men broke into our house when my dad was off on a mission. They murdered my mother right in front of me. So many stab wounds the coroner couldn’t count them all. And other shit I still have nightmares over.”
“Jesus, Tit. Why didn’t you—”
“Tell you, Chrome? Seriously? If you were in my shoes, would your mother’s murder really be something you’d want to rehash?”
“It would sure help us to understand all of this better. To help you.”
“The only reason I survived is because my mother knew something was wrong and hustled me into a soundproof safe room. I had to watch her murder on a camera system piped into the room I was locked into. And the bonus round that day? Broad daylight. Great picture. And the system had audio. And the same day, two states over, my older brother and his pregnant wife were murdered. Run off the road by some big ass SUV the cops never found, or more than likely never looked for because they were paid to forget about it. Poppy was just a baby when it all happened. Strapped in her car seat in the back. Still have no clue how she survived it, but she did. She’s the last member of my blooded family and just as invested in all of this. We lost everything.”
“God.” Steele cursed.
“He sure as hell didn’t answer my prayers that day. My fingers were bloody from clawing at the door when my dad finally got home to find me. My voice gone from screaming at the men to stop.” Titanium’s voice cracked, so he took a moment to clear his throat, as if two seconds would eradicate the emotion clogging more than his windpipe. “And I had to see my dad find my mom. Had to answer questions for hours upon hours. Days upon days. Because I could identify those men. I could testify against Red Wolf.
“So I don’t just know about Red Wolf. I know him. He stole my family, my childhood, my future. He stole it all.”
“What do you mean he stole your future?”
“I was a target from then on out. A pawn to be used against my dad to get what he wanted.”
“At least you still had your dad,” Chrome mumbled as if he were wiping a hand down his face.
“I lost him that day, too.”
“What do you mean?” Steele sat again.
“He was changed after we lost mom. How could he not be? He lost everything. Everything but me. He was so wrecked, it was all he could focus on. Finding Red Wolf. Bringing him to justice. He was all he cared about. So, I realized if I wanted to have any kind of relationship with him, I had to join in the fight. We had common ground. A united cause.”
“You were eleven.” One of the men in front of him whispered it as if he were trying it on for size.
Titanium shrugged. “Age meant no difference to him, so I had to let it go.”
“To your dad or Red Wolf?” Chrome asked it.
Titanium opened his mouth to answer and honestly didn’t have one. “If Red Wolf would have found me, I would have been dead like the rest of them.”
“What the fuck?” Chrome growled. “Why kill your family? What did he want from your dad so hardcore he’d risk everything? And in broad fucking daylight? Jesus.”
“The universal commodity,” Titanium hinted.
“Information.” Didn’t take Steele two seconds to answer.
Titanium nodded. “My father was in a special unit in the Marines. Highly covert. The first of its kind. He was hand-selected to be one of the first members. Three teams total. Either of you want to take a guess what it was called?”
“Elite.” Chrome started it.
“Recon.” Steele finished it.
“Correct.”
“Your dad was in the first group? Of Elite Recon? What are the odds?” Steele posed all three questions but Titanium could tell they were rhetorical.
“So, I effectively grew up in Recon. When I enlisted, I knew exactly what I was getting into, what I was signing up for. The enemy I was groomed to find. To eliminate. Once and for all. I wasn’t hunting him to secure the U.S. border and keep him out of the trafficking market of every illegal substance he could get his hands on. I was raised to make sure if my dad failed finding him before he retired I was already there to take his place.”
“And the reason why you had a contingency plan with a team in place to pull you and your team out if ever something went to shit.” Chrome was no half-wit.
Titanium continued, determined to get it all out. Well. Most of it. “Then things went tits up in Russia and the secondary intel I was told was shit too. Told me the contact my father had in the State Department, had been working with for years, was actually a mole really working for Red Wolf.”
“Son of a bitch,” Chrome mumbled.
Steele had been quiet for a couple minutes but then he finally spoke up. “Wait. OP was my mission. Red Wolf was my mark.”
“It was determined I was too close to the case, so it was given to you. Which was the right thing to do.”
“You said your intel. You didn’t leave it all up to me anymore than you became a chick and opened a damn pet store in Moscow.”
“No,” Titanium admitted, frustration eating at him. “I didn’t leave it all up to you. I had eyes and ears in every corner of the globe networked down to several filter contacts getting me info.”
“You already said your secondary info blew. Were you so fucking sure of yourself you didn’t think this information was important to share with us. With the two of us, even if you couldn’t share it with the rest of the teams?”
“Even without you being involved you still had to die. Imagine what your fate would have been if you had known? Ever wonder why that debrief lasted for days? Why all the questions? They were vetting all of you to see what I’d told you.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“All of Elite Recon was compromised then and I knew it. I found out months and months later, none of us were supposed to live in Russia. Not even one of us. My sources told me the only team in real danger was mine because Red Wolf got wind of who I was. Who I really was. He was coming after me to finish what he started.”
“And you walked into the mission, knowing all of this and still didn’t say shit.” Steele was pissed and he couldn’t blame him.
Titanium clenched his fists because he would have felt even angrier. “I was supposed to be within arm’s distance of the man I’d been hunting for almost twenty years. Do you really think I would willingly fuck it up?”
“It happened anyways,” Steele grumbled.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“So what really went down in OP?” Chrome’s voice was tight and Titanium hated having to explain the clusterfuck that was Phoenix.
“Steele’s intel from Alayna was good. With all of my eyes in the sky and all of the extra checking I could possibly do, I truly believed what she was telling you was 100% accurate. As did she, but you already know it from her. If I would have heard anything otherwise, I would have told you. I would have gotten the mission pulled if I thought there was any chance it could go down the way it did.”
The other two men remained silent.
“I never would have knowingly risked your lives, nor the lives of the men and women under our commands.”
“You’re fucking serious?” Steeled ground out the words between clenched teeth. “You had a team in place ready in the wings to swoop in and save your ass, so how can you sit there all high and mighty and tell me you didn’t risk the rest of us to fulfill your personal vendetta?”
“My other team was put in place when I was brought into Recon. They were on standby when anything of this caliber went down. But they had to be activated. It’s not as if they followed me around like puppies on every mission. They had to be called and given at least twenty-four hours’ notice of when and where they needed to be somewhere for a potential extraction.”
Steele didn’t buy any of it. “Sounds like you ratted yourself out to knowing at least a day beforehand our info was bunk.”
“I didn’t call them in. And I was too out of it after the explosion to even comprehend contacting them. Not to mention, I would have already been knocking at the Pearly Gates by then.”
“Then who did? Somebody else obviously knew about them.”
“My father, the only other person who knew how to activate them. And the only reason any of us are alive today.”
Silence. For only a moment or two but to Titanium, it felt like a lifetime because he knew there was more to it. Those shades of black coming to life to haunt him. To bury him.
“But?” Chrome prompted. “I know there’s a but.”
“Why?” Titanium stalled. “Maybe there’s no more. Maybe the end is all that’s left of the story.”
“Bull. Shit.” Chrome shifted in a chair. Probably looking at Steele, while flipping Titanium off. He sure as hell didn’t know. “You talked about your dad a lot when we were in Recon together. You were hella proud of your old man, as you should have been. This whole conversation has been different. I know what you’ve gone through.”
Titanium quirked an eyebrow.
“All right, asshole, I know some of what you’ve gone through. I’m trying here, okay? We’ve been pissed at you for—a while. We want to understand. We want to work together but seriously you have to start trusting us at some point or this can’t work.”
“Oorah,” Steele muttered.
The exhale Titanium released was like a seal on a burial tomb breaking. The lock hissing open on a secret long dead but not buried. Not deep enough. “My father was a great man. But he was so singularly focused on catching Red Wolf he lost some of his… Objectivity.”
They waited. His two best friends simply waited for him to continue. They didn’t push or give him shit about the silence.
Some things took years to come to the surface.
“My dad is also the reason we were all killed after Phoenix.”
“What the fuck, man?” Chrome nearly growled the words and Titanium couldn’t blame him.
“He knew we were close to Red Wolf in Russia. Closer than anyone had ever been. He gloated to the wrong person. His contact in the State Department, had been feeding him bits and pieces of info for years about Red Wolf. Dad never acted as if he cared two shits because everyone was a suspect. Everyone had a price and could be bought or threatened. One time he said too much. It was why the mission got pushed up, even though most of your team was gone, Steele. It was why both of our teams were pulled in for backup. The asshole in the State Department got the bad info to Alayna through her handler, who was also dirty.
“Too late, my dad got wind through another pipeline we’d been set up. It was too late to get word to me. And the orders had already gone out so it’s not like any of us could cough up, ‘No, we’re taking a day off.’ We all know how well it would have gone over.”
Titanium touched the brand through his shirt and continued.
“So, he activated the hidden team, which should have activated the trackers at the same time.”
“Trackers?” Chrome’s inflection reminded him of Scooby Doo. Ruh, ruh? He had the odd sensation to laugh, which made him scowl harder. Cracking up this late in the game wasn’t an option.
“My team had trackers placed under the skin on their right shoulder so the extraction team could pick up the right people. Only the men and women who knew the end game were supposed to be affected.”
“Why not all of us? Why didn’t you tell all of us what the hell was happening? What was at stake in Russia? Even before our mission? I mean seriously, Tit. We were all brothers.”
“Would you have chosen this life if given another option, Chrome? If you knew you had to die to live, would you have really signed on for it? I know Cammie makes it harder to answer but if she weren’t a factor, would you have wanted to die like the Ghosts did?”
Silence.
“Exactly. And we didn’t know who the leak was. We knew someone in the team was funneling info out, but we didn’t know who. We couldn’t take a chance of compromising the mission. So we kept it tight. Lot of fucking good it did me in the end.”
“Who was the leak? You have a look on your face like you want to vomit. Who was selling us out? If it was one of my people, I’ll handle it myself.”
“No need.” Titanium shook his head, beyond ready to be done with this conversation. “A building already silenced the leak.”
“A building?” Chrome questioned.
Titanium nodded. “Cobalt.”
“Jesus, Mary and you’re fucking out of your mind.”
“Wish I was. The Russians got to him. Threatened his family. Hardcore. Through Poppy, he sent me a letter right before he went to Vegas with Copper, Merc and Platinum. He couldn’t live with himself, even if it wasn’t totally his fault. He wanted to tell everybody and figure it all out. Him saving Copper when the building collapsed paid his debt to the team.” Titanium wiped a hand down his face. He was bone tired and phantom pain lit up in both limbs. “We also have intel pointing to Cobalt being the reason the building was leveled. They wanted to ensure his silence. The deaths of the rest? Collateral damage.”
“Does Copper know? Anyone else?” Steele was usually hard to read, but not now. Emotion bled through every word. Cobalt was one of his and as his team leader he would be taking it harder than the rest of them. Another reason he’d tried to shield his brother as long as he could.
“No. And I’d like to keep it that way. I know it’s not totally my call, but he never gave anyone enough info to harm any of us. He didn’t do it because he was a traitor or an asshole. He did it to protect people he loved.” Shades of black again and again.
“Agreed.” Chrome conceded a little while later. “Steele. His debt was paid. I know he was yours and you can take the lead on this, but he saved our girl.”
Took Steele longer to answer but he finally accepted Titanium’s suggestion. “Let him stay dead and buried. He already lost everything but his honor. Who knows if we wouldn’t have done the same thing in his shoes…” Didn’t take Steele two breaths to latch onto the next piece of the puzzle. “Why was everyone picked up?”
“When?” Titanium asked, but he knew exactly what he was talking about.
“You said all of your team had trackers. All of your team sans Gold was picked up and then half of Chrome’s. What the hell went wrong? You might be a prick but you’re a smart prick. Something major must have happened if those trackers failed.”
“They didn’t fail. They were deactivated so the extraction team had to pick everyone up who was gravely injured but still had a remote chance of survival.”
“Deactivated? Wait. How?” Chrome asked it and Titanium would have taken torture instead of having to answer his question.
Silence.
Titanium sneered “Someone had to turn them off. All of them.” He crossed his arms and leaned into his chair.
“And you know who did it. The person who turned the signals off.” Chrome stared at him. He couldn’t see him, but he knew it no matter. “You know who it was.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Who?” This time it was Steele.
Deep breath. “My dad. Had to be. He and I were the only ones who knew the codes to activate them. Or deactivate them. Sending the retrieve signal out to the other team automatically lit the tracker. Deactivating the signals could only be done manually.”
Chrome crossed over into completely dumbfounded. Join the club. “What the fuck? Why?”
“The contingency plan in place if, for some reason the trackers malfunctioned was to pick up everyone and then let us sort it out, but another search and rescue team was moving in hot. Friendlies. Supposedly. So our secondary team had to lock and load only the gravest injured parties, so they’d have a chance at survival. It was pure chance my team took the worst of it on the ship.”
“I don’t get it. Why would he risk your life above the rest? Makes no sense. Especially with everything you guys went through to insure your survival.”
“That’s the kicker. Apparently, the order went out before Russia blew up around us All of us had to die. Every single one of us. It was a no survivor order. Either in the explosions or afterward.”
“We must have been so close to finding Red Wolf,” Chrome thought out loud. “He must have been right there.”
“We thought so too.”
“We didn’t die,” Steele interrupted. “Not really.”
Titanium shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Dad had to sell his soul to the devil to keep you all alive. So he convinced them neither of you or your teams knew anything. Which you truly didn’t.”
Chrome snorted. “Plausible deniability.”
“Exactly. And it took an act of God to keep the details of the whereabouts of all of you buried. Red Wolf wanted revenge and he wanted it paid out of our asses. Apparently, we fucked up some massive shipment in Russia and he lost a shiton of money.”
“Oorah.” Chrome was subdued, which was strange for him. A titanic load of info had been dropped in their laps and Titanium couldn’t blame them for needing some time to wrap their heads around it.
“Thrown out like last week’s trash…but alive.” Steele’s voice was low. Thoughtful.
“Barely.”
“Why barely?”
“Dad died almost two years after.”
“After Operation Phoenix? Almost two years after that?”
“Yes.”
Both of the men remained silent for a second and then Chrome spoke. “Which has what to do with all of this? I’m sure it does, ‘cause I can’t imagine you enjoying rehashing all of this, but I’m not following.”
“We actually weren’t totally ready to pull you guys in yet. There were a ton of loose ends when we pulled you in, Steele. Dad had a bad heart. Which was what actually killed him. Broken heart, much more like it. As soon as he died there was no one in authority left to keep you guys hidden. Because I was dead. Left all you wide open to be plowed under by Red Wolf. Especially since the government didn’t know the Ghosts existed. Still don’t. We had to work day and night for almost two weeks to get you pulled out in time.”
Chrome seemed to be tapping his foot. “How did it happen, anyways?”
“What?”
“All of this? Elite. The compound. The missions. The financing. Seriously, I didn’t think you were made of this much money even though I know you came from a pretty wealthy family.”
“My family wasn’t this wealthy.”
“Uhh. Didn’t your inheritance start all this? Elite? With your money?”
“Yes. And no.”
Steele chuckled but it was anything but jovial. “When I think we know it all you reveal something else up your sleeve.”
“Some secrets aren’t mine to share. A few were things I knew nothing about. ‘Til I woke up from my coma.”
“Such. As.” Steele’s patience was wearing thin.
Titanium stood, Annie hopped to her feet. “Not this time, girl.” He patted her flank and moved the several steps to his right until he found the filing cabinet. He pulled the top drawer, felt the first few tabs on the folders and found the one he was looking for.
Yanking it free, he shoved the drawer closed and then pivoted to hold the folder out for whomever got their ass over to grab it.
One of them took it. “What is this?” Guess it was Chrome.
“Gold’s will and where he left his entire estate to a tax sheltered corporation called EGI. Elite Group, Inc. With the sole trustee being my dad, because if anyone survived Phoenix to carry on, it would be him. Gold’s directives of what he wanted done with the money, how funds were allocated. All of the legal documentation to set the group up—forever—is all there. With my father’s signatures on it from the beginning. He was working with Gold and I knew nothing about it.”
“You’re shitting me.” Sounded as if the two of them were flipping through pages.
“He’s the reason we are what we are. All of my inheritance stayed with my father when I—died. Gold set him up under the corporation, and then my father had everything transferred to one of my aliases in the event of his passing.”
“Why did Gold do this?” Chrome asked with sheer skepticism. “Why would he give everything up for this?”
“His sister.”
“Huh?”
“Last page. It’s a picture right? Of a pretty brunette.”
Pages flipped. “Yeah. A knockout.”
“And who’s she standing with?”
“Holy. Shit. Red Wolf.”
“Exactly. He snatched her a few weeks before Phoenix. Gold went nuclear.”
“Which is why he and Uranium butted heads so much there at the end. Two powder kegs ready to blow.” Chrome put it together. And fast.
“Exactly. We were trying everything to figure out what the fuck happened and how she got pulled into things. We’ve been working on it ever since.”
“She looks happy in this picture. Was she taken against her will or…”
Titanium had wondered the same thing. “We think she went willingly but we also think she was pulled in under false—everything. How much she knew then remains a mystery. Clusterfuck of epic proportions. So he couldn’t leave everything to her. She’s named in his will as a benefactor of sorts. Everything’s complicated, but the last few pieces are falling into place now.”
“What do you want? A medal?” It was Steele who shot his mouth off first.
Didn’t take Titanium half a heartbeat to rise to the threat. “No. Some fucking gratitude would be nice every once in a while. Or a little less bitching and moaning, especially from you of all people.”
“Me? What the hell?”
“You, of all people, should know how it feels on the other side of it.”
“On the other side of what asshole?”
“The other side of valid info like when we walked into Russia blind as bats and twice as shitty. When your source turns out to be wrong and the blood of your family is on your head. And hands.”
“Which doesn’t even sound like it was Alayna’s fault anymore.”
“Potatoes. Patatoes dickwad. I put my dad in the ground and immediately had to turn around and pull you in to save your life. All of you. And all I hear from you is whining about what you lost.” Yes, he was being an ass but Lordy he was sick of keeping his cool when Steele went out of his way to be an asshat.
Revenge drove Titanium, kept him putting one metal foot in front of the other. Ever since they brought him back to life, it’s the only thing he’d been able to focus on. The thirst for vengeance kept him breathing, forcing him to take one more metal footstep in front of the other.
Raine’s voice somewhere in the house dragged across his conscience and he tamped his need down for her. He lived for her too now. Wasn’t certain when it had changed but the realization didn’t make it any less true.
“Whining? I lost everything. And you think I’m whining?”
Pissed and shooting his mouth off to Steele probably wasn’t what he was supposed to do but damn it felt good. Egotistical and a bit of an ass. Surprise. Surprise. Can we say defense mechanism, boys and girls?
“You didn’t have shit before Phoenix. Nothing but the group. I kept you safe until we could pull you in again. And may I remind you, Alayna wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for me finding her, bringing her in and convincing her to stay so you could both exact some vengeance against her old handler? You’re no better than me on wanting revenge. And you owe me at least an Oorah for the mission you got to take him out. That, if nothing more. I saved all of you.”
“Fuck you.” One of them tossed the folder on his desk and stormed out. Probably Steele.
The other one lingered for a minute. Standing there. Staring. Probably at him. Probably Chrome. A few seconds later, he left as well.
Pissed off rolled around the room, bombarding Titanium with wave after wave of anger. They didn’t understand everything yet. He knew they didn’t. Couldn’t blame them for it. Yet he was so damn tired of their attitudes, something had to give.
Knowing he’d be pissed off if he were in their shoes didn’t help anything. No doubt he’d have taken a swing at them a time or two. Only they hadn’t. Cause of his legs. And his fucked up eyes.
Anger and hurt welled inside him, vying for dominance. Woe be it for the next person who had to deal with him.
And. In. Walked. Raine.