Sacrifice Love: Saints Protection & Investigations (35 page)

“What about me?” Ethan asked, his voice shaky.

“Leave. Just leave. Say nothing. Do nothing. Take her car and move it somewhere out of sight. I’ll contact you as soon as you are needed again,” Mohammad said.

Dani turned to look at Ethan’s pale face, his eyes full of regret. “I trusted you,” she said. “You’ve betrayed us all.”

Pain slashed across his face at her words. “I’m sorry, Dani. I…I never meant for anything like this to happen.”

“Bullshit, Ethan. You knew the minute you brought me here you were signing my death warrant.”

Wincing, he started to speak again but Abdul bit out, “Get out of here,
alkalb la qimatan laha
.” With a parting grimace toward Dani, Ethan walked out of the house, jogging to her jeep, her keys in his hand.”

“Sit,” ordered Abdul.

Eyeing him defiantly, she watched as he pulled out a long, curved knife. “Have you ever seen what a janbiya can do? Slicing off the skin of an infidel would be nothing to me.”

Licking her lips as her chest heaved while she sucked in air, she dutifully sat down in the hard-backed chair. Abdul slipped behind her, securing her tightly with tape.

Oh, Jesus help me. Somehow let Chad find out where to find me.
She watched in horror as Abdul began placing plastic bags of white powder in her lap and taping them to her as well. Glancing down, she noticed the pendant.
The tracer! I forgot the tracer. Chad will know where I am…if he realizes I’m gone in time to look for me.”

“Do you know what this is?” Abdul asked.

“TATP,” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

Chuckling, he said, “Yes. But it has another name…one that I am particularly fond of. It is called the Mother of Satan.”

“S
o the goddamn
ATF and FBI have an undercover sting operation going and have the balls to ask us to help investigate without putting us in the know?” Jude bit out.

“It sucks, but having been undercover before, you gotta keep a lid on it,” Cam explained, although his face had the same irritated expression as his fellow Saints.

“So what about the recruits we investigated?” Bart asked.

“According to Roscoe, everything we’ve done was legit. It was only the undercover agents that we did not know about. They could not obtain the detonation info that we got, so your efforts were necessary,” Mitch replied.

“And our investigations into the materials they’re using,” Blaise growled. “Fuckin’ hell, did we do it all?”

Jack looked around the table at his men, all angry, and in his opinion, rightfully so. Before he could speak, Mitch looked off screen. “Guys, hang on. Roscoe knows that I’m telling you and he’s come to the FBI regional office. Let me get him up here.”

A minute later and with some minor jostling of the conference cameras, Roscoe appeared alongside Mitch.

“Gentlemen, I understand that you’re pissed, but we have no time to go into the intricacies of undercover work. Right now, we’ve got a bigger problem on our hands. We’ve located the local cell’s house that has been busy with TATP. We’ve been watching them, wanting to find out what they’re doing. We’ve got someone on the inside. He’s sent a signal that something’s up. He can’t tell us and we’ve got no fuckin’ idea right now.”

“You’ve got a man there and don’t have cameras or audio on the inside?” Marc asked, throwing his hands up in irritation.

Roscoe grimaced, replying, “They move around and for fuck’s sake, they’re not stupid! They’ve got ways to detect recording devices. These terrorists have money…organization…and determination. It’s been a two-year process to place a man on the inside.”

“So all you can tell us right now is that your agent at that house says it’s been compromised? What does that mean?” Blaise asked.

“We don’t know. We’ve got visual that a man and woman went inside and the man was the only one to come out so far. I assume they’ll be on the move soon. But with the TATP inside, we can’t just send someone in.”

“This is one of the reasons I had to leave the agency,” Chad said under his breath to Monty, sitting next to him. “Too many cock-ups.”

“Tell me about it,” Monty agreed. “FBI was the same way. The fuckin’ right hand had no clue what the left hand was doing.”

“Fazan Darzi is your man inside, right?” Luke asked.

Roscoe looked shocked for a second, then covered it well. “What makes you say that?”

Mitch jumped in. “I told them!”

“If Jahfar isn’t working with the terrorists and the only person we know him to have had communication with is Fazan, then it stands to reason they work together,” Luke added.

Roscoe, tight-lipped, nodded. “Yes, Fazan is our man inside and as soon as he can, he’ll report in and let us know what’s going on.”

Roscoe stopped talking as he took a call, his face changing as he listened. Disconnecting, he looked straight into the camera and said, “Chad—a jeep registered to Danielle Turner was seen at the house we have under surveillance. She was positively identified as going in, but not coming out. The person leaving in her vehicle was Ethan Petit of MES.”

Chad stood quickly, his chair tipping back, slamming onto the floor. “They’ve got Dani?”

“I’m sorry, but it appears so—”

Mitch interrupted, saying, “Jack, my office is on it. We’re going to coordinate with ATF to get there.”

“Fuck that!” Chad roared. “ATF’s fucked this whole thing up and now those bastards have Dani in a house with fuckin’ explosives.”

Roscoe said, “You don’t know where to go and I’m not giving you that information.”

“Don’t need it, asshole,” Chad said. Turning to Luke, he barked, “Pull her up on your monitor. She’s got a chip in her necklace.”

The other Saints stood in solidarity. Jack looked at Mitch and said, “My guys will be there…you can count on that.”

“You cannot go charging in,” Roscoe pleaded. “I’ll have bomb squad members at the location. Everything’s going to have to be played by the book, or these bastards’ll get away.”

Slamming his hand down on the table, Chad roared, “I don’t give a fuck about them right now. I’m going in to get Dani.”

“If you’re not careful, you’ll end up just like your former partner. Adam wouldn’t listen either.”

With those words, the silence in the room entombed them. Chad’s mind blanked for a moment as he tried to reconcile what Roscoe’s words meant. “You…Adam? What the fuck did you mean by that?”

Mitch was looking at Roscoe, his face mirroring the Saints’ disbelief. Roscoe growled, “We don’t have time for this!”

“What did you mean?” Chad asked, with deadly calm.

“Adam came across evidence after he jokingly set up a fake account on a dating site. He came to me. We used him to keep an undercover profile to find out what he could. He dug. Deep. Then he became afraid that Muhammad Hakim was on to him and he didn’t want anything to blow back on his wife. He backed off with us, but he still kept notes—that he did not turn in to me. They must have figured out he knew something and eliminated him when he walked into a trap.”

“He was a hero and you let his wife think he was working with terrorists? You goddamn fucker!”

Mitch, interrupting the escalating argument, said, “Get to the location and we’ll meet you there.”

Signing off, Jack nodded to the Saints. “Men, suit up. Luke, let’s get the van ready.”

Chad stood for a moment, his legs refusing to carry him anywhere. Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he turned. Marc stood behind him, his sympathetic expression hitting Chad in the gut.

“Let’s go, man. Let’s get your girls.”

Girls…Dani and the baby. Hell yeah, I’m going to get my girls,
Chad vowed, his face set in anger.

*

Dani sat perfectly
still as the duct tape wrapped around her ankles and knees. With her hands taped behind her, she was afraid to move with the TATP in her lap. Her chest heaved as her breaths came in pants, but she forced herself to slow her breathing in order to keep her movements to a minimum.

Abdul finished and smiled down at her. “Good, good. Stay very still, woman, while we finish what we need to do.” He stood, then looked back down and smiled. “It’s fitting, you know. You will die the same way your husband did. He tried to be a hero and look where it got him.”

She lifted her gaze, piercing him with her hate. “Adam? What about Adam?”

“He tried to find out what we were doing. Tried to play at being undercover. He wasn’t very good at it and paid the ultimate price.”

“Adam…was—”

He interrupted her as he walked out of the room and out of her sight.

Adam? Adam was a hero? Not a…

A trickle of sweat slid down the side of her face as she looked around, desperate for anything to use.
Nothing. Oh, my God…I’m going to die here.

One of the other men came back into the room, picking up a box near her. As he leaned over, he whispered so softly, she almost was not sure she heard him. “I’m trying to help.”

Her eyes darted over to him, watching the expression on his face. He mouthed,
ATF
. Eyes widening, her chest heaved again before she reminded herself to stay calm. Glancing down at the explosives in her lap, she bit the inside of her cheek to still the trembling.

Mohammad walked back into the room, his dark eyes sharply assessing. “Leave her,” he ordered to Fazan. “Go help the others and then take the van to the next location.”

“I can stay here, if you like,” Fazan offered. “I’ll make the sacrifice and stay here to make sure everything goes as planned.”

Mohammad eyed him for a long minute, then a slow smile spread across his face. “You seem taken with the woman.”

“No, I just thought—”

“Your job is not to think. Your job is to follow orders.”

Fazan nodded as he stood, flashing a look of regret Dani’s way. He walked out of the room slowly as her mind scrambled for a new hope.

*

By the time
the Saints arrived at the entrance to the subdivision, their way was blocked. The ATF and FBI had cordoned off the area. Roscoe met them as they charged toward him.

“Got the residents out of the house next door and my guys are still in the other house at the end of the cul-de-sac. That’s how we knew what was going on. She’s still inside, but it looks like they are on the move. We hope to detain them as they leave without letting them tip off one of their remote incendiary devices.”

“They go to another house, they’ll blow this one or set it up to blow,” Chad said. He looked over to one of his former ATF buddies that was suiting up. Walking to him, he asked, “What are your orders?”

“Get in close. Send in the robot, see what we can find out. If there’s a hostage inside, we’ve got to then work on eliminating the risk first.” The man looked at him in curiosity before asking, “What’s got you here?”

“There is a hostage inside…my woman…carrying my baby,” he managed to choke out.

“Damn, I’m sorry, man.” Looking around, he said, “I’ll keep you informed.”

“You won’t have to,” Chad added. “I’ll be inside before you can make it that far.”

The agent’s eyes were wide as he shook his head, but Chad had already turned and walked away. The Saints moved away from the crowd of ATF agents and were huddled by their van. Luke was on the inside with his bank of monitors and computers.

“What’s the plan?” Jack asked Chad, turning the mission over to him.

“I’m circling around and checking it out from behind. I’m going in when we’ve determined there are no outside triggers.” He noted the incredulous expressions, then explained. “If she goes, then I go too. Either we both get out or we both die…but I’m not living without her.”

He felt Marc’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing the emotion when words would not suffice. “We got your back, man. Tell us what you need.”

“If the task force is going to wait here to grab whoever comes out, then let me know what they say. I’m heading to the back of the property.” He already had his earpiece in and his Kevlar on. Securing his weapons in his holsters, he looked up, seeing Marc and Blaise doing the same. He did not need to ask. They were going too.

“Luke, when we move in close and determine if there are no outside trip wires, I’ll snake in the camera. You monitor it from here and let me know what you see.”