Killing Time

34

“Well.” Brewster looked from one shocked face to another. “I guess we can safely say you hadn’t figured it out.”

He’d been close to these men once. They’d believed in him. Trusted him. Whatever regrets he harbored, however, held little sway when stacked up against the money he’d made over the years.

“I could have had you taken out eight years ago, you know. The three of you are only alive now because I arranged it.”

“Gosh.” Cooper was the first to break the silence. “Does that call for a thank you very much or a fuck you very much?”

Brewster grinned. “I always liked you, Jamie. Hell. All of you were damned entertaining.”

Brown glared at him. “So glad we could be of service.”

“And that,” he said, lifting a chiding finger, “was the crux of your problem. Your dedication to service.”

“You sonofabitch,” Taggart swore under his breath.

Again Brewster smiled.

“You sold us out.” The calm edge in Taggart’s voice did little to hide his outrage and hatred. “You murdered our brothers. And for what? Money? Power? The fucking fun of it? Sir,” he added mockingly.

Brewster shook his head and let out a sigh. “I misjudged you. That was my mistake. I hadn’t expected a bunch of flash-and-dazzle party boys to pull together and turn into a cohesive and, frankly, exemplary unit. Figured it would be all about the hotdogging, right? That’s what you all did best. Thought I could keep you contained. But I didn’t take into account the Boy Scout factor. You really did believe in the greater good. Well, all except Salinas.”

Oh, that got a reaction. Pretty little Eva went ghostly pale. And Brown’s eyes flared with hatred.

“Shut up,” Brown warned. “Just shut the fuck up. She doesn’t need to hear this.”

“Interesting. You never liked Salinas, Michael, yet you don’t want to sully his name in front of his widow?”

“Leave her the hell alone.” Brown couldn’t keep his emotions in check.

“No.” Eva took a step forward. “I want to know. Tell me.”

His gaze swung to the lush and lovely widow Salinas. Under other circumstances he might have looked for a reason to save her, but this was a done deal and he was finished with leaving any loose ends.

“Your husband wasn’t the man you thought he was, dear.” A hard truth, but few men were the heroes their women thought them to be. God knows he’d never been, but he’d sure convinced a helluva lot of women that he was Superman, and they’d all seemed happy to believe him. “Ramon was easy to corrupt, a greedy bastard who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, or his hand out of my till.”

Her face paled, and he could see her struggling to find some way to push her long-dead husband closer to the purer end. A lonely guy too far from home and his beautiful wife, just needing a little solace in another woman’s arms, a hardworking man who realized his boss was on the wrong side, and tried to right some wrongs.

Wasn’t going to happen. Not with Ramon Salinas.

From the tight, sad expression on her face, he figured she knew. Smart girl.

“So if he was working for you, why did you kill him?” she asked.

“Because every time I turned around, he was standing there with his hand out. When he started bitching about either getting a bigger cut or else running his mouth to the wrong people, he left me no choice. I buried the bastard. Frankly, my dear, you’re better off without him. Well, relatively speaking.” They’d all be dead by morning, and not one of them was naïve enough to doubt it.

Not even the lovely Eva.

He let his gaze run over her from top to bottom and back up again, not missing a curve. The lady was built. He had a soft spot for smart, gorgeous women, and this one was starting to look like a lost opportunity. He should have done the right thing eight years ago and been there to console the grieving widow.

Oh, well. Jane was a safer bet—and she had the same mean streak he did, which made them a good team.

“You weren’t supposed to make it out of Lima,” he said, holding her gaze. “Jane was contracted for the hit.” He gestured to the kick-ass blonde at his side, and saw dawning recognition in Eva’s and Mike’s faces. “She still wants to finish the job, professional pride and all that. She wants her pound of flesh.” And he was inclined to let her have it. His boys deserved the best, and Jane was the best.

He slid his gaze over the three of them, all that was left of the One-Eyed Jacks. That’s what they’d been—his boys, and he couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of regret. They’d been the best team he’d ever had, and they’d been their own worst enemies.

“You were too good,” he told them. “You couldn’t keep your heads down and ignore what needed to be ignored. It was a simple deal: drugs and guns. Lawson and I delivered the guns, and the Afghani warlords delivered the opium. But you guys”—he shook his head, and a small grin curved his mouth—“you guys just kept screwing their pooch. I don’t want you to think I gave you up. There wasn’t a choice to be made. It was purely a question of logistics. You had to go.”

“OSD was a setup from the get-go,” Mike concluded.

“And your own Salinas lead you into the trap.”

“Why not just kill all of us that night?” Cooper looked genuinely puzzled. “You knew we were out there hiding.”

“Ah, that was the genius of the plan. We could have killed you, yes, but then how did we explain what happened? Nothing like a whodunit to bring on a major investigation.”

“So you deflected the attention to us. Put the blame on us for killing those civilians.”

Brown always had been intelligent.

Brewster nodded. “Which got Karzai good and riled. He put pressure on the White House. Told the President that if he wanted to maintain any kind of presence in the region, he needed to pull all Spec Ops teams out or he’d blow this incident up in the international press to the point where it looked like Abu Ghraib all over again.”

“How’d you get it buried from the media?” Taggart wanted to know.

“Same way every potential political bombshell gets buried. Money. Karzai made out like a bandit. Plus he got his warlords off his back when the Spec Ops teams were booted—which was exactly what Lawson and I wanted. It got you out of our hair so we could continue to run our opium pipeline without interference.”

None of them had anything to say to that.

“If you had just left it alone”—he turned back to Eva—“everything would have stayed status quo. You’d all still be alive tomorrow.”

“Then why did you leak the OSD file to me?”

He frowned, puzzled, then let out a soft chuckle. “Someone leaked the OSD file? To you? God, that’s what set this whole thing off? Well, that explains a lot. Leak the file? No, that wasn’t me. Though now that I know someone’s playing fast and loose with information I had made certain was buried… well, when I find out who did it, they’ll be as dead as you’re about to be. And that’s the irony, isn’t it? Apparently they thought they were doing you a favor. Instead, they signed your death warrant along with their own.”

“So why are we still alive? Why not get it over with?”

Taggart. Always impatient, to his own detriment.

Brewster looked at the men who had once been under his command and actually felt regret. “Don’t worry. We will. But right now we have pressing business that can’t wait.”

Lawson’s walkie-talkie squawked, then a disem-bodied voice crackled over the radio. “ETA on the chopper, five minutes.”

“Stand by,” Lawson said into the radio, then looked at Brewster and nodded. “We need to cut this little reunion short. Our guests are about to arrive.”

“Your pressing business?” Cooper was insolent as ever.

“ ’Fraid so. Duty calls,” Brewster told them, then regarded them with a regretful look. “I know you don’t believe this, but I am sincerely sorry about the way this turned out.”

Cooper, Taggart, and Brown all looked at him, looked at each other, then as one, lifted their bound hands and flipped him twin birds.

Arrogant bastards. “And that attitude, gentlemen, is exactly why you’re going to die.”