“Korea?” Jake said. “You want me to babysit a congressional delegation?”
“Not officially, Jake. Someone from that delegation is part of our leak.”
“Well, I guarantee that Lori Freeman is not the leak,” he assured her.
“I know that. We think it’s from the other side of the aisle.”
“How do you expect me to look into these people with Lori there? She’ll see me and know something is up.”
Smiling, she said, “Let me worry about your cover. You need to get on a plane immediately and get there before them.”
“Military transport?”
“Good guess. Be at Andrews at zero three hundred. There will be a pouch and bag waiting for you.”
“Hopefully a gun.”
“Two. Identical Glock 19 gen-fours in 9mm.”
“Nice guns,” he said. “I own a few Glocks.”
“I know. But both of these are registered to a guy from Texas who has been dead for five years.”
“Standard fifteen round magazines?” Jake asked.
“Yes. But I’ve given you four extra magazines. Besides, I don’t expect you to use them.”
It was never expected, Jake thought. But shit always seemed to happen.
“But I just checked in here,” Jake said.
She went to the door and turned back. “You can still get a couple of hours.”
Toni left him alone to consider his current situation. Yeah, he could get some sleep. But now all he could think about was this case. What in the hell had he gotten himself into this time?
As Toni walked to the elevator, her emotions fluctuated from longing to disgust. She had just lied to the only man she would probably ever love. Yet, somehow he seemed to know she was lying. Jake could always read her, and that continually pissed her off. Just once it would have been nice to be able to deceive him like her training and experience allowed with other men. Perhaps her love for him was the problem. She couldn’t allow herself to be totally deceptive with Jake. Others were merely targets.
She got into the elevator and pushed the button for the garage. The doors closed and she gently felt the flash card in her right front pocket. Somehow Jake had gotten the information they needed without much trouble. Well, he did have to kill that man in Montana and release the kidnapped professor. That was something. But in the short time he had been with the professor he had convinced the man to turn over his research — something the government had tried to do though coercion and persuasion ever since they had found out about his ground-breaking discoveries.
Getting off at the garage level, Toni smiled as she walked casually to her car. A part of her wished she could go to Korea with Jake. To be together with Jake one more time…no, that wouldn’t work. Or could it? They had been good together.
Before she reached her car, she stopped for a second, as if she had forgotten something and was considering going back inside. In reality, something felt wrong. She wasn’t sure what, though. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and tickled her, as if a cold breeze struck her briskly from behind.
Instinctively, she switched the car keys from her right hand to her left as she clicked open the driver’s door. Then with her right hand, she drew her 9mm auto handgun from inside her leather jacket and turned swiftly toward a slight shuffling sound behind her.
A man with a gun lowered himself behind the back of a car, giving her no shot. She crouched down low, her gun aimed toward the hostile.
Suddenly, a sharp pain struck her in her right butt cheek, followed by a jolt that knocked her from her feet. She found herself flopping around on the cold, hard concrete ground and thinking about the last time she had been struck by a Tazer, with fifty thousand volts passing through her body. She was helpless. A completely unfamiliar feeling for her.
Her head against the concrete, the clicking sound of the Tazer still zapping her muscles into a bundle of flaccidity, she was aware of the sound of high heels coming toward her. As her eyes focused on this new sound, she smiled when she saw the most beautiful shoes she had seen in years. Rising up from those heels were extremely fit ankles. And those were her last thoughts before the second wave of volts coursed through her body.
20
Jake considered it a sin to leave his luxury hotel room in the middle of the night to catch a flight on a military aircraft at zero dark thirty. He wished he had a buck for every time he had strapped himself into a web seat on a C-130, or inside a Blackhawk. But he had gotten to Joint Base Andrews and found out he would be riding on what looked like the private jet of a spoiled Hollywood actor, a Gulfstream G550 or the military version C-37B, he was relieved somewhat. He knew they could make the entire flight from DC to South Korea on one tank of fuel. And if he had to fly, this was one helluva way to do so.
After some thirteen hours in the air, with nearly everyone aboard sleeping most of the way, they finally touched down at Osan Air Base, South Korea, some 45 miles south of Seoul. As he got off the plane and onto the tarmac, he couldn’t help thinking about the last time he was at Osan, where he had been strapped into a pod in the bomb bay of a B-2, and then was later dropped off into the Russian Far East. Not too many happy thoughts with that mission, other than his brief relationship with Chang Su.
At the operations building, a slight Korean man wearing an oversized black business suit, his close-cropped hair speckled with a touch of gray, smiled broadly when he saw Jake enter with his pack over his shoulder. Jake had heard a man would meet him here, but he had just gotten a name without a description.
“Mister Adams,” the Korean man said, extending his hand. “I’m Kim Chin-Hwa.”
Jake shook the man’s hand, his grip much stronger than expected, considering the man’s stature. “Chin Hwa?”
“You can call me Kim,” he said.
Sizing up the guy, Jake said, “How long have you been with the Agency in Seoul?”
The Korean’s lips tightened, as if he wanted to say something immediately, but he was holding back to form his words clearly. “Did I say I was with the Agency?”
Shaking his head and letting out a breath of air through his nostrils, Jake walked out the front door toward the parking lot and felt the shorter man trying to keep up with his pace.
“Mister Adams,” he said.
Jake continued walking until he reached the passenger side of a black Hyundai sedan. Then he turned to the Korean with a smile.
“How do you know this is my car?” Kim asked.
Scanning his eyes across the small parking lot, there were only half a dozen private passenger cars. The rest were military trucks and cars. “The cars along the back side are from Air Force personnel,” Jake said. “This is the only private-looking vehicle in the lot. The Agency always tries to blend in to the host country. Is this not your car?”
Kim smiled and clicked the doors open.
Jake threw his backpack into the back seat and got into the front.
Settling in behind the wheel, Kim said, “They told me you could be difficult.”
“They?”
“The station chief in Seoul.”
“Your boss.”
“Yes, sir.” Kim turned over the car and headed toward the front gate.
After a long silence, just as they passed through the main gate toward the expressway, Jake finally said, “Will you be babysitting me while I’m here?”
“Do you need a babysitter?”
“I usually work alone,” Jake said, but that wasn’t entirely true. “So I don’t really need someone watching my every move.”