Full Throttle(98)

Dan nodded, and she glanced over to find him letting loose with another massive yawn. “So that leaves?” he asked around a noisy exhale.

“Yonus Amani,” she said, “the young man who tried to help Abby and Steady escape the JI’s clutches. He’s been debriefed. And my boss didn’t come right out and say it, but I get the feeling he’s been paid a pretty impressive sum to keep his mouth shut about anything and everything he saw out there in the jungle.”

“Good for him.” Dan nodded and one corner of his mouth quirked. “He deserves every red cent.”

Penni nodded. “Which brings us to Umar Sungkar.” Just saying the man’s name made her lip curl. “Initial reports say he’s a nasty piece of work. A fanatical militant through and through. My supervisor didn’t know the exact location, but Umar is being transferred to what I can only assume is one of our black sites to undergo more vigorous…uh…questioning about where he got his Intel.” And by questioning, she meant interrogative techniques that skated very close to the lines international laws had established more than sixty years ago. And that was the brutal side of Uncle Sam that Dan had spoken of.

“You mean one of the black sites that traitor Winterfield didn’t disclose to the press?” Dan asked, his expression having gone from tired and lazy to hard and vicious in an instant.

For a couple of months now, the whole country had been reeling from the documents leaked by one former CIA agent named Luke Winterfield. It was all over the news, day and night, the exact locations of the safe houses, interrogation sites, and catch-all bolt-holes the U.S. kept throughout the world. And anyone who had ever held a position of affluence in either party, or who had worked in a classified post within the government, felt betrayed by the man’s perfidy. Although there were some, mostly in the civilian sector, who lauded Winterfield for exposing the locations of those super-secret international facilities. Those people declared—quite loudly, usually—that it was only right they should know everything their government was up to.

And she would go ahead and label that No Stinkin’ Way. The world didn’t run on rainbows and glitter and unicorn farts. And in every corner of the globe, there were bad men ready and willing to do bad things. And the only way to catch them before they did those things was to have people who operated in the dark—people like Dan—and to maintain places, secret places, special places where those people who operated in the dark could take those bad men should the need arise.

“I mean exactly one of those.” She nodded, pretty sure her expression mirrored Dan’s. “Winterfield couldn’t have known the locations of all them, right?”

Something…strange flashed across his handsome face.

“What?” she asked, cocking her head. “Do you know something I don’t?”

He was quick to shrug. Maybe too quick. “I just think if a guy is gonna sell out his country in one area, there’s not a lot stopping him from doing it in all areas.”

“Hmm.” She nodded, getting the distinct feeling he wasn’t telling her the whole story. Her mind flashed back to Steady’s hotel room and the cryptic “he” the two guys had briefly discussed when trying to determine who the mole might be and where he might have come from. “You don’t think it’s possible Winterfield was the one to give Umar his information, do you? I mean, how would he have come across that Intel? The Secret Service doesn’t usually have dick to do with the CIA. Separation of powers and interests and whatnot.”

“I guess we’ll hafta wait and see what they get from the guy,” Dan mused. Then, “So what’ll you do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, once you get back to DC?”

Uh, non sequitor anyone? Anyone? Bueller? But she didn’t call him on it. “Well, after eighteen or so hours of sleep, I’ll do exactly what my father taught me to do.” She clenched her hands into fists to keep from reaching up to rub her nose. She’d noticed anytime she did that, Dan cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “I’ll get right back to work.” What she left off the end of that sentence was and try with all my might to forget about you.

He nodded, his lips twisting.

What’s that look for? She didn’t think she wanted to know. Especially when he opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again before hesitating.

All right already. Here it comes.

And right on cue. “I know you said you didn’t wanna talk about—”

“Still don’t.” She raised a hand, cutting him off.