Gary Ponzo - A Touch of Greed

“Two million,” Morris said.

“And?” Fisk held out his open hands and looked at Riggs.

The Defense Secretary shrugged. “That’s more money than we had available for this operation. It puts us in a position to bring it to a Senate Committee for approval.” Then Riggs gave Fisk a curious expression. He seemed to be looking for a tacit answer to an unasked question.

Fisk gazed around the table at the group of department heads staring at him. “You want me to ask the President if we can use black ops money to fund this thing?”

Everyone knew Fisk was the second most powerful man in the world. He’d grown up childhood friends with President Merrick and had gained Merrick’s confidence almost to a fault. Merrick had allowed Fisk to run foreign affairs on his own terms, even against Merrick’s own policies, but Fisk had never let him down.

Fisk sighed. “Okay, who’s our enemy here? And how are we going to proceed?”

“They’re a group of militants out of Syria,” Walt said. “Former members of Hamas who were displeased with the passive direction the organization was headed. They want to make a name for themselves and this seems to be the quickest route.”

Fisk tapped a fist over his mouth. “Who do we have down there right now?”

“Nick and Matt are running the operation,” Walt said.

Fisk blew out a breath. “Thank goodness.” He glanced around the table. “You need to understand something. President Salcido is in a tough battle for reelection down there. We’ve spent years on an agreement to work with the Mexican Army on their side of the border. We could have access to information we’ve never been able to see before. But if Salcido loses the election and Rodriguez takes over. . well, he’s practically owned by the cartels.”

Fisk examined his audience as if to determine how much further he needed to go. “So if we step one foot inside their border to attack anyone, even a known assassin-it will give Rodriguez all the ammunition he would need to show how Salcido is owned by the US. And we can’t afford for that to happen.”

Fisk made eye contact with each department head. “Understood?”

Everyone nodded.

Walt waited until Fisk was finished before he said, “I’m not sure we can wait for this shipment to cross the border, Sam.”

Fisk maintained an even stare. “Let me rephrase this,” he said. “We cannot be caught in Mexico doing anything antagonistic, period. If someone crosses that border, they may as well be on the moon. We can’t help them.”

That’s when Walt realized they were on their own. His team would have to operate without support from any other agency or department. Politics had been a dangerous component of his job, but now he was practically given orders to confiscate a nuclear weapon inside another country while offering the executive branch complete deniability.

“Don’t worry,” Walt said. “No one will get caught.”

Nick and Matt were in the parking lot, leaning against the wheel well of Matt’s SUV watching the sun lower in the western sky, while Homeland Security employees made their way to their own cars, beginning a procession of vehicles south toward Tucson’s suburbs. The only people who made eye contact were the ones who parked nearby and only for a moment, maybe to get a look at the jerks who had messed up their office.

“I don’t like it,” Nick said. “This is messier than I expected.”

“No shit.”

Nick looked at Matt who was eyeing the exiting employees like he was profiling their trustworthiness.

“You have any hunches?” Nick asked.

Matt shook his head. “They all look guilty to me.”

“We have to treat it that way. There’s no one here we can trust. Just the three of us.”

Nick pulled out his cell phone. “I’m getting the girls out of Payson and into a safe house.”

Matt nodded while examining the parking lot. “Yeah. We’re not exactly making any friends here, are we?”

Nick called the Phoenix field office and spoke with the Hostage Rescue Team. When he was done, he told Matt, “They’re sending a crew in a chopper to get them. Call Jennifer and let her know what’s going on.”

It was Matt’s turn to talk on his cell while Nick shaded his eyes and searched the sky. He heard Matt trying to convince Jennifer Steele she would need help.

“Baby,” Matt said, “there’s some real dirt going on down here. I don’t trust anyone.” Then there was a silence while Agent Steele made her case for staying put. “It’s only for a few days until we get to the bottom of this,” Matt pleaded.

Nick spotted something above them in the distance. It was the size of a large hawk and seemed to be gliding on the breeze, until it made an erratic turn, signaling to Nick it was manmade. As it came closer, Nick could hear the hum of the electric motor as the device whizzed overhead, just twenty feet from where they stood.

“Okay,” Matt said into the cell phone as he spied the mechanical device buzzing by. “I’ll tell him.”

The device was configured like a stealth bomber and circled around to make another pass. This time it dove sharply toward the two agents gaining speed as it zeroed in on them. At the last moment it pulled up, but not before it smacked Matt on his shoulder.

“Jeesh, Stevie,” Matt screamed. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry,” Stevie yelled from across the parking lot, holding the controls for the mechanical drone. “I’m trying to get it calibrated.”

Matt said his good-byes, then stashed his phone back into his pocket. “I hate this shit.”

“What?” Nick said.

“When we were back in Baltimore, the world seemed a lot smaller. Everything was nearby.”

“You mean help was nearby?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Nick looked up at the drone now back in the sky making bank turns like a bird, soaring higher and higher. “I know what you mean,” Nick said, rubbing the side of his face. “I’d go out of town and there were ten FBI agents within five minutes of home. Now I have to call Phoenix to have a helicopter fly into Payson.”

Matt folded his arms across his chest. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “When you proposed to Julie, how did you do it? Did you do the whole get-on-a-knee thing?”

Nick grinned. “Really? You think you’re ready for this?”

“I know I am.”

“Well,” Nick said, “if you really want to know, when I first proposed to Julie, we were having dinner at Flemings, and I actually did get down on my knee.”

“And?” Matt asked, his eyebrows raised. “How did it go?”

“She said no.”

Matt laughed. “Are you serious?”

Nick nodded. “You bet. We’d only been dating four months and she thought it was too soon.”

“Wow, what a bummer. That must’ve been an awkward dinner. Did you at least wait until desert before you asked?”

“I wish,” Nick said. “We hadn’t even gotten our drinks yet. I was so nervous I just wanted to get it out of the way. She came to me two weeks later, though, and said she was ready.” Nick patted his partner’s shoulder. “Listen, Jennifer’s completely head-over-heels for you. You’re a changed man from your younger days. She knows that. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Matt had a distant stare. Maybe he was imaging what came after the proposal, maybe he was thinking of something else. The both stood there watching the drone make its passes around the parking lot, until finally Matt said, “I’m going to get some coffee. You want something?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “What about food?”

“What about it?”

“Forget it,” Nick said, holding his stomach, thinking about the corruption they were going to have to confront. “Just get coffee. I can’t eat a thing.”