Page 27 of Memphis Heat

“Sorry, human,” he snarled. “But your usefulness has ended.”

He’d been played. Jarod tried to hide his shock. He’d never seen that one coming. “What the fuck are you talking about?” He still had Sergei to kill, and the other wolf didn’t look as if he gave two shits that Alexi was speaking. He had death in his eyes.

“ You . You killed my son. Now it’s time for you to die. I needed to get the MPD to show their hand. I needed to know what they thought they had on us so I could plan my next play. You know. Sell the real payload.”

“You’d give up that much enriched uranium for a chance we knew something you hadn’t fed us?”

Alexi merely shrugged. “A small price to pay considering the payout. It’s not like we don’t have more.”

“Now it’s time for you to die, mongrel!” Sergei lunged at Jarod then, claws slashing for his throat.

Barely ducking the blow, Jarod lashed out, teeth buried to the bone in Sergei’s shoulder.

With a roar, Sergei stumbled back, a chunk of flesh missing.

Jarod spat out blood and tissue, making a show of the hit.

“Enough, Sergei!” Alexi dragged Belle away from the fight.

She fought, changing herself, though not fully into battle form.

Still, her nails turned into claws, which she dug into Alexi’s wrist, trying to pull away from him.

He only sunk his claws in deeper along the side of her neck.

Blood trickled down her collarbone to disappear into her T-shirt.

“Mongrel will be around another day. I have his female.” He grinned evilly.

“Come get her. We might save a small part for you.”

Jarod bellowed in rage, the thought of Belle being at the mercy of these bastards making his stomach roll.

Under ordinary circumstances she could more than take care of herself, but these wolves were much stronger than she was on the best of days.

Could she hold out long enough for him to rescue her? His best shot was to get to her now .

One mighty leap, and Jarod was standing in front of Alexi, ready to fight for Belle. Then there was a solid crack , and his head exploded in pain. The last thing he saw before blackness took him was Belle’s terrified face.

* * *

“Sit. Down.” Snorrasan shot him a look.

“Belle is out there and all I can do is wait. I’m not any fucking good at waiting!” Jarod snapped.

“Your pacing back and forth like a cat in heat isn’t helping anything at all. Let Remmy do his job.”

“Did the transfer go through? Did you get their account number?”

“The transfer did not go through -- Amanda stopped it in time -- and I do have the account number, thanks to our surveillance video, even though that ToughBook’s not so tough anymore.

However, the account number’s not helping me much.

So far I’m going in circles,” Remmy announced with a growl of frustration.

“The number Alexi gave Amanda leads to a valid account, but it’s in the Caymans.

Almost untraceable. Miller’s got his IT guys on it.

They’ve got better clearance access than I do.

I’m going at this from another direction.

The city’s been paying the renovations contractor, Brilev Construction, LTD, through a local account, here in Memphis.

We could get a warrant for the bank records, but if I can get through this firewall… ”

“Let me help you,” Terra volunteered.

“Thanks, but I work alone.” Remmy’s response was terse, and none too friendly.

So , Jarod thought. I’m not the only one with trust issues .

Remmy’s guarded response had Jarod thinking the kid was sharper than he looked -- and he looked sharp as a scalpel.

One thing was for sure. Remmy wasn’t the mole.

He’d been turned after that botched raid that had killed Smith and Reginald and left Black and White on the furry side.

Remmy’d been attracting attention in the Computer Crimes unit until they’d raided a hacker’s station two weeks ago.

Kind of convenient for the MFOP, but not too convenient, according to Snorrasan and Miller.

“OK. I’m in. Bank records show the account for Brilev Construction, LTD registered to a holding company…

” Remmy frowned and clicked again. “Owned by another holding company… whose principles appear to be Ortsa Brilev, Alexi Umarov, and another holding company.” He looked up from the screen.

“We’ve been working under the assumption that Alexi is the boss.

Looks to me like he and Brilev are each in charge of different divisions of the same front company, with a third, silent partner or maybe even a boss. ”

“But Alexi’s an Alpha,” Amanda blurted. “Even I could tell that.”

Callahan shook his head. “Alphas have to work their way up through the ranks just like everyone else. Every pack Alpha has his generals -- humans call them Betas, but a Beta’s just an Alpha who hasn’t risen to top dog yet.

It’s like the military. You have to be promoted, one rank at a time.

If our alpha, Colonel Roberts, retired, Lt.

Commander Snorrasan would take his place.

And so on. The only way I could move up would be to challenge those above me within the pack’s infrastructure.

These Old World wolves, they’ve got pack structure that goes far, far beyond ours.

Alexi’s got someone he reports to somewhere, either here or back in Chechnya. Or both.”

“I wonder what he did to get promoted to overseas operations,” Butch mused.

“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Regan offered. “Maybe it was that bastard get of his, Dolf. If Dolf hadn’t been attacking cops in back alleys, we’d never have gotten wind of their operations until it was all far too late. Jarod kind of accidentally broke the case for us.”

Jarod nodded, slowing his racing mind enough to follow her line of logic.

“These Chechens, they’re all born wolves, families going back to the Old World.

Every one of them can recite his genealogy going back hundreds and hundreds of years.

They sit around at night arguing about family disputes older than all of us put together.

Alexi only had one son, Dolf, and he was a real screw-up.

Nasty taste for human blood. Alexi made him sound like a pain in the ass, but I should have seen beyond that.

Dolf was Alexi’s weak point. He’s been stringing us along, feeding me just enough wrong information to make us vulnerable, out of some sense of revenge for his son’s death.

That’s why he’s taken Belle. He wants to face me.

Wants me to track him down. Wants to call me out, one on one, and make me pay. ”

“Well, all of the account holders lead to dead ends except for this last holding company, D. A. Umarov, LTD,” Remmy reported.

“And its principles are Ortsa Brilev, Alexis Umarov, and Dorf Umarov, Sr. The physical address for the holding company is an office building in the industrial park near the airport.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?” the room chorused.

“I found it. This ain’t good.” Remmy flicked his finger toward the plasma monitor on the wall as it lit up.

“What the…”

“Fuck!”

“What am I looking at?” Snorrasan demanded. “Old school here. Clueless.”

“I used Whois to locate the owner of the construction firm’s website and backtraced that to another site registered to the same address, and then I hacked that site and found this. And this is a private online auction,” Regan explained.

“And that” -- Butch pointed to the item being bid on --”Looks to be one hundred grams of weapons grade HEU -- Highly Enriched Uranium -- in ten-gram lots.”

Snorrasan looked puzzled. “Ten grams? That’s like a handful of paperclips.”

“Emphasis on the Highly Enriched part of the description,” Agent Miller explained. “Ten grams is enough to wipe the east side of Memphis off the map.”

“And it’ll fit in a lead-lined thermos,” Callahan added. “Had one in my hand for a few moments this afternoon before the whole place went to hell. Lead-lined canister weighed less than ten pounds.”

Snorrasan looked at the screen again. “ Oh, shit , indeed. I think I felt better not knowing.”

“You need an invitation just to find the site, and it’s a live auction,” Remmy explained. “I just hacked the site. It ends tomorrow night at midnight. Ten winning bidders will be instructed where to bring their cash for pick-up.”

There was silence while everyone digested Remmy’s discovery. Terrorists of every nationality and agenda imaginable were getting ready to descend on Memphis. It was a nuclear Armageddon in the making.

Jarod wanted to howl in frustration. Did he concentrate on the global threat or the threat to his mate?

It was likely she wouldn’t live long after this was all said and done.

Yes, Alexi blamed Jarod for the death of his son, and Alexi really wanted to kill Jarod personally, but if Jarod didn’t get there before all this went down, the pack would disperse and there wouldn’t be many left for Alexi to impress with his defeat of Jarod. He’d kill Belle. Slowly. Intimately.

“OK,” Snorrasan said, standing, his palms flat on the desk.

“Callahan. Black. You’ll go in and scout the area.

Intel only. We need to get an idea of their outside defenses.

What kind of firepower we’re up against. I want to know their guard movements, number of men, and just how trigger-happy these guys are.

“Carson. O’Malley. I want a full profile on any and everyone coming and going from that place.

You’ll backup Callahan and Black. Ramirez, you keep doing what you’re doing.

White will see that you have any resource you need available to you.

” When Remmy opened his mouth, probably to protest, Snorrasan gave a short shake of his head.

Jarod raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but every time he thought Snorrasan was an archaic dumb fuck, he did something to prove otherwise.

Having Remmy keep an eye on someone he was already wary of was a good idea. The pup had proven himself more than once by all accounts. If he didn’t entirely trust someone, there was probably a good reason.

“If what Remmy found was correct, we’ve got less than twenty-four hours to set up a takedown for this. We want to make sure this is finished before Memphis is overrun with international terrorists.” He looked around the room. “Any questions?”

About a million , Jarod thought.

When no one said anything, Snorrasan rose to his full height.

“I don’t have to tell you how much is riding on this.

Prepare yourselves tonight. I want everyone in position in twelve hours.

” He looked at Terra. “Officer White, I require your… company… tonight.” He gave her a wicked wink, leaving no doubt as to his intentions.

Cold-hearted bastard . He didn’t trust Terra any more than Jarod did. Jarod actually admired the man for his line of thinking. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer…

Terra merely nodded, smothering an eager smile of her own.

If she suspected they didn’t entirely trust her, she was good at hiding it.

It was probably nothing, anyway. Terra White had nearly been killed the same night as Amanda Black.

They’d been partners. Why should all this suspicion fall on Terra and not Amanda?

Just a feeling. One that Jarod knew would keep him up tonight.