Chapter Three
After their morning run, Liam and Hound went out to his house to look over the surveillance from Ben’s house. They hadn’t alerted him yet that there had been a car parked in front of it for several hours then left. The car had heavily tinted windows making it impossible to see through. Hound had tracked the license plate to a rental company, but the name it was under was a dummy name. Liam had no doubt it was Alejandro or his goons, but they didn’t have proof. Hound had tapped into traffic cams around the LA area and found a man that looked like Alejandro, but they couldn’t get a facial recognition match.
“Dammit,” Liam cursed and paced Hound’s office space in his basement. Hound had wall to wall computer screens surveying all over California, but they couldn’t get one clean picture of the man they thought was Alejandro. No one had ever seen him face to face, so they were going off pictures from surveillance in the past. Hound had hoped there would be a picture of him on the flash drive Midas had brought back from Alejandro’s base but there was so much data still to go through. “We need to call Ben and tell him to bring Hannah back. She is the only one who can ID this son of a bitch.” Liam ran his hand through his hair he felt for the hundredth time in the past hour. He didn’t like knowing his enemy was close but didn’t know where. It was unnerving.
“Calm down, Sunshine,” Hound told him without looking up from his computer screen. That was Hound for you. Always calm under pressure. Liam usually was too but when it came to Cora’s safety, not so much. “The interrogation is tomorrow. The ex-commander will give us the intel that we need, and your worrying will be for nothing.”
Liam glared at the back of Hound’s head. The man couldn’t see the gesture, but it made him feel better. He hated this waiting game. Unfortunately, intel was what they needed now not muscle. And their ex-commander was the one who had it. He couldn’t send Cora away because one he knew she wouldn’t go, and two, he didn’t know what he was sending her away from. There had only been one car watching the house, but since he couldn’t see inside the house he didn’t know which house.
“Ah ha,” Hound cried out starting Liam.
“Did you find something?” Liam raced back over to Hound’s side and looked at the computer screen though he didn’t know at what.
“Finally, got a match. There is a lot of activity down at the LA docks. This picture here,” Hound said pulling up a smaller screen and enlarging it. “This man here seems to be making friends with some not so great people. I’m willing to bet it’s Alejandro with someone shaking hands. I’m going to send this off to Blade and see if he can ID any of these people.
Liam didn’t know how much he trusted this Blade character. They claimed they were FBI, but anyone could make shit up anymore and post it on the internet. But whoever this Blade person was they hadn’t let him and his team down yet. “It doesn’t look like good news either way. Alejandro is involved in drugs, weapons, and women. Being on the coast now puts him at an advantage. Let’s take this to the new commander and see if we can go after him?” Their prior mission had been to stop Alejandro’s business. This would just be the second phase of the same mission.
~
“Absolutely not,” their new Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jones, snapped at them. Their new commander was in his late forties, and his black hair was peppered with gray at the temples.
“Sir,” Liam started to say but was silenced by the commander standing up behind his desk and staring him down.
“Your previous mission was to gather intel and rescue hostages. We now have the intel that will aid in our shutting him down for good. There will be no revenge mission and turn our home soil into a battlefield. I’ll pass along your new information. It’s out of our jurisdiction now.”
What?
What did jurisdiction have to do with anything? The man was only a few hours away. He could get the team together to easily eliminate the threat once and for all.
“Sir, this isn’t about revenge. It’s about completing the mission.”
“It’s not, and there is nothing you can say that would convince me otherwise. Your previous commander set your team up and aided in the almost second kidnapping of Hannah O’Connell. How could this be anything but revenge? I cannot allow it. If a strike team is needed, and I’m not saying they are, I’ll call another team that isn’t as invested in it.” Liam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Their new commander was willing to give their mission away to someone else? He always completed his missions. This one wouldn’t be any different. Alejandro would be shut down for good. With setting up a new base of operation he had control to the East and West. Mexico wasn’t far away so now he could make deals to the South. No, Alejandro had to be shut down. And if his commander wasn’t going to help them then they would do it themselves. It wasn’t like they didn’t have their own resources.
“Have I made myself clear, Sunshine?” Their commander glared at him from across the desk. Liam locked eyes with him. A silent battle of wiles between them. He could be court-martialed for what he was doing. Insubordination. He was only a Staff Sergeant compared to a Lieutenant Colonel. Midas should be the one speaking for the team. Not only was he the highest ranking but he was their leader. He should be the one talking to their commander, but while he was away with Hannah in Portland being reunited with her family, Liam was in charge. He had worked with Midas long enough to know he would support whatever decisions he made.
“Crystal, Sir.”
“Then dismissed.” The commander said with a wave of his hand and went back to his paperwork on his desk. Liam saluted their commander and about-faced and walked out. A plan was already forming in his mind. They already knew where Alejandro was. They just had to get in and get out before anyone noticed they were there.
Back at Hound’s house the rest of the team was waiting for him. “How did it go?” Hound asked, but by his stoic tone, he already knew the answer.
“How do you think?” Liam asked instead.
A rare smile started to crack on Hound’s face. “That good?”
Liam threw himself into a computer chair and swiveled to face him. “It was a decisive no.”
“Commander’s aren’t exactly known for being kind and generous.”
“He said that it is a revenge mission and if someone is going to go after him then it will be a different team.”
“Like hell they are,” Tiny barked from across the room. Tiny, was their youngest, and contrary to his name the tallest team member. He rivaled Hound in height, over six and a half feet tall but the bastard could fit into the tiniest of spaces. Liam would never have believed it given the man’s size but Liam had witnessed it more than once, Tiny crawled into a hole that would cause a toddler to be claustrophobic.
Tiny had been leaning against the wall casually when Liam had first walked in, and now the giant was pacing. No one wanted a pissed off giant stomping around the basement with thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment surrounding them. A bull in a China shop came to mind.
Liam stood up and blocked Tiny from pacing further. “Relax, Tiny. It’s not going to happen.”
“It’s not?” Tiny looked skeptical. Liam didn’t blame him. When your commander said jump, you didn’t ask how high; you just did it. So, for the commander to tell them to stand down and Liam was telling them otherwise was unusual.
“No, this is our mission. Hound already knows where he’s at. We can go in tonight, get him and bring him back here.”
Tiny still didn’t look convinced. “What about Midas?”
Liam tried to hide his wince but failed. “Midas has his own objective right now.”
“He’s our team leader. He has just as much right to finish this mission as we do.”
Tiny was right. Liam had seen a golden opportunity to end this thing once and for all and hadn’t cared about anything else. Liam didn’t want to call him, but it looked like the conversation couldn’t be avoided. “I’ll call him right now.”
He was pulling out his cell phone from his pocket when Hound’s voice stopped him. “You might want to hold off on that call for a minute. We have a problem.”
Liam put his phone in his pocket and walked over to Hound who was staring at his computer screen. “What sort of problem?”
“Commander Brady was killed.”
Liam reared back as if punched. “What? When?”
“An hour ago. Alejandro and his men just walked into the hospital and strangled the commander.”
“How could he know where Brady was being kept?”
“I don’t know. Alejandro could have more than just Brady on his payroll.” Liam cursed. All his plans were going to shit. This would no longer be a simple in and out mission. Alejandro was here in town. But where? Commander Brady had been killed an hour ago. Alejandro could be anywhere.
“What about the security team? There were dozens of MP’s watching him.” Liam was still in disbelief that Alejandro and his men got through the MP’s and out without anyone raising an alarm.
“All dead.”
“Fuck,” Liam growled and rubbed the back of his neck. Could nothing go right anymore?
“It’s time to warn Midas.” Tiny told him. It wasn’t anything Liam wasn’t figuring out for himself. But damn he didn’t want to have to call Midas. Hannah hadn’t seen her family since before her capture. Midas had agreed to take her home in return for her help with ending Alejandro’s terror. They hadn’t been gone long but it looked their trip was about to be cut off short.
Liam didn’t want to, but he knew he needed to. Hound pulled out his phone this time and made the call.
“What’s up, Brother?” Midas asked without preamble. He would know Hound wouldn’t be calling just to shoot the shit.
“Commander Brady is dead. Killed in the hospital,” Hound said just as briskly.
“What? How?” Ben asked in shock. “He was surrounded by guards.”
“All the guards were killed, and the Commander was strangled to death. It’s a warning Midas.”
“From who?”
“Alejandro. Security footage shows a man we believe to be him, and a large army, in the hospital.”
Ben answered slowly. “He knew the commander was going to talk and so he silenced him a day before he was supposed to be interrogated. Convenient.”
“He might have more spies in the area. Higher than the ex-commander.”
“Yeah, but who?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
“I want to keep Hannah up here but I have a feeling she’s going to want to be there to see the end of things.”
“Good luck, one more thing, Alejandro looks like he’s setting up shop down here in California.”
“I’ll head back tomorrow, and we’ll take the son of a bitch out for good.”
Hound hung up and turned and faced the team. “Midas is heading back tomorrow. He’s going to try and leave Hannah up there, so she stays out of this. The last thing Alejandro needs is leverage. I thought we would need her to ID Alejandro, but with the footage at the hospital we won’t have to. We have enough that we could ID him ourselves.”
“We know he’s here,” Liam said taking back over. Until Midas got home, he was still in charge. “Hound use every available security camera in town and on base to try and find out exactly where he is at. He couldn’t have gone far.” Hound’s computer started beeping, and a small warning message came across the screen.
“What is it?” Liam was almost afraid to find out. Nothing else seemed to be going right in the past hour.
“I learned from Commander Brady to always follow the money. With Alejandro setting up a new residence he would have to move some of his funds here. With the data we collected off the flash drive, I could get his bank account information. So, I put a tracker on the accounts to alert me if funds had been moved.”
“And?” Liam hated waiting in suspense and listening to all this hacking and tracking jargon.
“The money is here, but when I tried to access the account, I was blocked. I tracked down the ISP that was blocking me. I’ve been hitting a lot of firewalls, but I think I finally…gottcha.” Hound peered closer at his screen when he pulled up the address the block was coming from. “Oh shit.”
“Oh, shit, what?” Liam yelled and slammed his fists down on the desk. He was tired of the suspense.
Hound turned to face him, and the grave look on his face didn’t bode well. “The person blocking me from getting into Alejandro’s accounts is Cora.”
Cora?
His Cora.
“You’re wrong. Check it again.” Liam wouldn’t believe that of Cora. She would never aid an international terrorist. Not his sweet Cora.
“Data doesn’t lie, Sunshine. Cora set up security to protect Alejandro’s accounts.” This was worse than he thought. Cora was working with his enemy. Maybe she didn’t know. He hoped not. There was only one way to find out.
“Hound, get eyes and ears on Alejandro. I’m going to go visit Cora again.” He hoped he was wrong about the situation and Cora wasn’t helping an international dealer and trafficker.