Page 6

Nine and a half years ago; Minnesota…

“I’m compromised. How the fuck did they find me this time?” Cobble growled, using his burner phone from a location that wasn’t inside his now breached house. He’d tried calling Andy, as he was supposed to, but she hadn’t answered. Being spooked, he’d taken the chance and called Chuck. Cobble’s cousin had finally been designated as Andy’s back-up in an emergency. Which this definitely was.

“Hey, Auntie. It’s nice to hear from you.”

Oh, Chuck.

That cryptic greeting didn’t bode well. It meant his cousin wasn’t certain he was clear of the leak, even now. Cobble waited to see how Chuck wanted him to proceed after being abruptly displaced.

Yeah. Displaced again .

Cobble had come home from work on the bus, as usual, but before walking into his house, via the back door, he’d noticed that the small strings he always kept draped over the top of it were missing. Which meant that either someone was inside, or they had been.

He’d silently eased back into the tree line where a thicket of arborvitae and a fence made for good cover, and crouched down.

Another bummer? He had to pee like the devil, but he’d willed the urge away while he waited and watched.

It hadn’t taken long for Cobble to determine that a shadow was being cast on a wall opposite his kitchen window.

Son of a bitch !

Knowing that he had to move again, pissed him off. Because Chuck and Andy still hadn’t pinned down who, of their colleagues in the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA were the loose cannons. Even before Director Baskins—whom Cobble hadn’t yet met—had agreed that Andy could let Chuck know where Cobble was, Cobble’s location had continued to be infiltrated. The opposition was relentless.

While waiting for Chuck to speak, Cobble snuck down the fence-line, back toward the street, keeping to the camouflaged edges of the yard while pondering his next move.

He was getting damned tired of it all. Nearly five years, and it seemed that Andy and Chuck were no closer to finding out who, on foreign and/or domestic soil, were profiting from the smuggling scheme and orchestrating the hunt for him, even though the investigation continued.

Right. Fruitless investigation. The political unrest in South Sudan, even now, made the previously lax regulations of the prior government seem like Fort Knox. Information and players now changed almost daily, because this new regime? The fucking wild west.

Andy, currently working for the DOJ, had uncovered name after name of multiple people she suspected, and had done her best to make busts. But by the time she tracked down each and every identified perpetrator, they’d already be dead.

A leak at the DOJ as well as the FBI and the CIA? Absolutely.

Cobble still waited for Chuck to answer his question, but Chuck—even though on a one-time-use burner phone whose number he’d given Cobble—was clearly pretending Cobble was someone else. Dammit .

“Yes, Auntie. Sure. I have it in my car,” he chuckled. “My mother said you’d be calling for that recipe. You know this would be a lot easier if you’d just learn to use a computer.”

Cobble could tell Chuck was on the move. Most likely headed outside so his conversation couldn’t be coopted.

Sure enough, a minute later, Chuck tried to calm Cobble down. “I don’t know who’s behind this latest,” he huffed. “No fresh information has come to light on our end, so thank God you’re being vigilant.”

Huh. It was either be vigilant or be dead.

“New plan,” Chuck told him, unequivocally. “I want you to head out and lose yourself at that all-night mall two towns over. I’m going to have Missy come get you.”

“I haven’t been able to reach her,” Cobble said through gritted teeth. “That’s why I called you.”

“She’s undercover on an op, but I can contact her. Don’t worry. I’ll see that she changes hats immediately. Depending on flights, she should reach you in five or six hours. She’ll find you both a motel where you can lie low until she can come up with a new safe-house. This time, believe me, if I know Missy, she’ll be putting you in a place that isn’t in the FBI’s confidential stable of locations, since even that amount of intel has clearly been used against us.

“And we won’t send anyone toward your current location to do a forensics recon until Andy lets me know you’re both away from the area. Then I’ll alert Director Baskins, who’s going to be pissed that you’ve been found again. Once he’s finished chewing my ass, I’ll have him send out a team which will include three of the veteran agents we suspect, and three newly minted Feds, to see if they can find any evidence of who was there.”

“This sounds…promising? Getting more new agents involved again?” Cobble pondered.

“A necessary step. We’ve finally got a suspect in South Sudan whose talking, and everyone in our combined agencies knows it. Because of that, we’ve needed to enlist more people, old and new, in our attempt to dilute the bad guys in the various agencies with fresh blood. Be careful, Sawyer. You are in more danger now than you ever were before. Whoever is complicit in the States has redoubled their efforts to locate you. Missy is going to move ahead extremely cautiously this time.”

Missy . Andy.

As important as all of the orchestrations were that Chuck went on to outline, Cobble almost missed the rest of what his cousin told him after mentioning his old LT. Cobble realized he’d affected a shit-eating grin as he continued jogging down the street toward the bus stop. He’d paused only once in a dense thicket of bushes to relieve himself, but he was still on track to catch the next conveyance downtown.

Out of an abundance of caution, Cobble hadn’t seen Andy in nearly two years; not since the last time he’d been moved. He had seen Chuck, who, after being given the okay to have Cobble’s location, had visited every now and then to cheer him up.

Apparently, they really weren’t trusting anybody this time, therefore Chuck was putting it all on Andy.

“Andy’s still not on anyone’s radar, though, right?” Cobble asked, keeping an eye peeled as he ducked into the plexiglass bus shelter. Last he knew, she’d been removed from his case, on the books, for caution’s sake.

“She shouldn’t be. We’ve kept her name out of everything here where you’re concerned. As far as anybody knows, her only involvement with you was as your once-upon-a-time platoon leader, and as your hand-holder in the hospital until you were released.”

“Yeah, but her offices, past and present, have to know that she’s still interested in avenging her squad.”

“They do, and that’s why we wouldn’t be surprised if she still has someone sticking to her ass to monitor her travels, but she’s made loud noises about her reasons; how it burns her ass to have an open case on the books. She’s keeping her bitching about the deaths within her squad, not leaning at all on you as an individual. It’s our belief that if she is being watched, which we know she was while in South Sudan, the last two plus years of her grumbling after Baskins publicly took her off the case, have semi-crossed her off everyone’s bingo card.”

“She did move me two years ago,” Cobble reminded Chuck, as if he would have forgotten.

“Yeah. But like I told you, we made it look like I was the one traveling to you. And as for now? We’re going to make sure she’s more than cautious. We’ll have Baskins quickly conjure a job that gives her an excuse to fly, then we’ll procure a bunch of tickets for her under several aliases to throw anyone snooping around off her trail.”

Cobble huffed. Yeah. The last thing they needed was for someone to suspect that Andy had known where he was, all along, but he was happier than he’d been a few minutes ago, knowing he’d see her again, soon.

There was still just something about Andy…

He’d spent many hours fantasizing about her over the past few years, and when he’d tried to do some local, casual dating, none of the ladies he took out had held his attention for very long, and none had ended up in his bed.

Not that his libido was shot. He could shoot off in record time while picturing Andy in various states of undress…on her knees…

Cobble cleared his throat. “Back to my living situation being compromised, Chuck,” he pondered. “Can you think of anything that would have revealed my location this time?”

Chuck huffed. “It could be I was followed or tracked last month when I visited.”

Cobble shook his head, even though Chuck couldn’t see. “I doubt that. You took some wildly convoluted precautions.” Chuck had told him about switching from driving to flying, then back to driving again. He’d also changed clothes and disguises three times, then they’d met in a public zoo, with Cobble in a wig as well.

“But…” Cobble thought back, and groaned. “Wait. You know that letter I gave you to bring home for Mom and Dad? Could it possibly have fallen into the wrong fucking hands?”

They’d all known, for quite some time, that his parents were being monitored in the event that Cobble got in touch. They took the threat seriously, and never called; always making sure not to speak of him to anybody, not even over the phone.

Chuck huffed. “I’ll look into it, but I told your parents to burn that letter after they were through reading it.”

Cobble snorted. “Yeah, but you know Mom. She’s sentimental. She probably decided to keep it, thinking she was tucking it someplace safe where nobody would find it.”

There’d been a few instances where his parents were sure people had been in the house.

“That’s possible,” Chuck pondered. “Did you mention anything in it that would have given away your location?”

“I…” Cobble thought hard. “I mentioned the weather, and how unusual it was; that as I was writing, we were getting three inches of snow in May.”

“Fuck,” Chuck cursed. “These guys who are after you are pros. That’s all I’d need to know to find someone. A quick look at the Doppler from the day you wrote the letter, and I’d be within a few square miles of your location. Then with a few questions around the neighborhood, at local markets and such…”

“I’m sorry,” Cobble hissed. He’d hate it if he had to stop sending even the shortest missive to his parents. He missed the hell out of them. But if that’s what it took… “This disappearing thing is getting harder all the time,” he lamented. “Don’t worry, though. There’ll be no more slip-ups from me.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Sawyer,” Chuck comforted. “How many times have I trusted the wrong people and put your life in danger?”

“Stop,” Cobble ordered. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead already. I just… I want you to find the head of this mother-fucking snake and all the other slimy assholes involved. I miss my life. I miss my family.” Cobble stopped, before he got too maudlin. He should consider himself lucky that he had people to help; i.e. Chuck and Andy.

“On that front, Missy has a bit of good news for you, but I’m not saying anything over the phone. We’ll solve this, Sawyer. I promise,” Chuck told him. “In the meantime, watch your back and wait for Missy. I’ll be careful not to leave any electronic footprint when I contact her, and she already knows your current burner number. Once she’s local, she’ll call and arrange to pick you up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Cobble told him. “Listen. I’ve gotta go. My bus is pulling in.”

“Okay, man. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

The bus ride to the mall was uneventful, and once inside the large, sprawling structure, Cobble relaxed a bit. The place was busy. That was good. He could lose himself in a sea of humanity while he waited. But what would he do to keep himself occupied? He hated shopping.

Cobble glanced at his watch and scowled. It was going to be a long five hours.

****

Eventually, after doing lap after lap around the mall, it grew late and the crowds dwindled. Cobble found a bench by a fountain that was partially obscured by greenery.

Perfect. He sat down because, damn, he was tired.

He’d worked a ten-hour day at the construction site, never even getting a chance to change out of his dusty jeans and muddy boots. He also lamented that today of all days he’d left his tool belt at the job. A fucking shame. He’d amassed a nice bunch of tools, and now—wherever Andy brought him to start over—he’d have to buy all new ones. That sucked. It also burned his balls that he hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to a couple guys with whom he’d become friends. He’d add them to his every-growing list of people he needed to contact eventually to apologize. At least he’d had the presence of mind to give the money he’d accumulated in paychecks, to Chuck, last time he’d seen him. Sometimes Cobble had a years’ worth of wages in cash, stuck in suitcases in his closet, and it would have pissed him off to leave all that behind. As it was, whoever was lying in wait for him tossing the place would only find two months of wages. If they didn’t find it, maybe the team of agents Chuck was sending in would recover it and hand it over to Chuck.

Cobble must have dozed off on his hidden bench, because the buzzing of the phone in his pocket startled him awake.

“H’lo?” he mumbled.

“Cobble?”

Andy’s voice over the phone cleared his head, immediately.

“Yeah. It’s me. Where are you?” he asked.

“Parked outside the west entrance of the mall. I’m in a white sedan.”

Cobble was already on his feet. “Headed your way.”

He hung up, and his gaze swept right and left as he egressed from his hidey-hole. Nobody was watching him. As a matter of fact, the only people around this time of night were a couple groups of teenagers, out for a night of mischief, no doubt.

Still, Cobble kept to the edges of the vast aisles, walking quickly, but not so quickly that he called attention to himself.

His excitement grew with every step he took.

In a few short minutes he’d be seeing Andy again.

He wondered what had changed in her life in the two years since he’d last seen her? He knew she was still with the DOJ where she had just started before his previous move, but was she married? Did she have a significant other? Those questions in particular flitted through Cobble’s mind, because when he’d last said goodbye to Andy, he’d given in to his feelings and on impulse, had wrapped her in something a little more than a friendly hug. He’d felt the embrace right down to his core.

From the way Andy had startled before returning the squeeze, he’d say that she’d felt it, too. There’d been a kind of electricity that had flowed between them; enough so that Cobble regretted that she’d had to leave before they’d been able to speak about it.

He wondered if the sparks would still be there this time?

Pushing out of the mall doors, he spotted her car, immediately. There was very little traffic this time of night, so it was also easy to see that no one suspicious was anywhere nearby. Of course, he needn’t worry too much. Andy was more than capable of taking care of things. She’d probably already called in the tags on the few cars that did remain in the lot.

Cobble strode over and opened the passenger door, wasting no time, but folding himself into the tiny sub-compact.

He drank Andy in; silky dark hair pulled back in a bun, huge coke-bottle glasses. He wanted nothing more than to lean over and capture her pretty lips in a soul-searing kiss, but instead, he laughed to cover up his still-buzzing attraction. “Forget how big I am, did you?” he asked in way of greeting as he knocked a hand on the headliner of the tiny ride, but seeing her again, he couldn’t keep the huge grin off his face.

“No, doll, I didn’t,” she snorted. “But you have to understand. If I rented anything larger than this, I’d have to shove pillows under my ass to locate the road in front of me.”

Cobble chuckled, every nerve in his body pinging. “It’s good to see you again, Andy.”

It was her turn to laugh. “You, too. But nobody calls me Andy anymore,” she told him. “I’m either Agent Andriopolos, or Missy.”

She dropped the car in gear, and with an astute perusal of the entire area, she pulled out.

Cobble raised a brow, comfortable that she was taking over on any exterior vigilance they needed. “Do you mind if I still call you Andy?” he asked. “That’s how I always think about you.”

“You think about me?” she questioned cheekily, but he could see a blush working its way up her cheek.

“On occasion,” he allowed, teasing her back. Still, he had to ask… “Don’t you ever think about me?”

Surreptitiously, he checked out her left hand. No ring . Good .

Andy smirked, but demurred. “You know I do. I spend all my hours when I’m not on another case, digging into the shitstorm still swirling around you.”

Cobble sat back. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear, but he’d be satisfied for now that she was still using some of her time to keep him in mind, even if it was for business.

At the moment, however, he had something more exciting to think about; holing up in a motel together. That’s what Chuck had told him, at least.

“So, all that aside, where are you depositing me this time?” he asked while his body tingled with possibilities.

A frown line—that Cobble could see every time they drove under a street light—formed between Andy’s brows.

Cobble held his breath.

“I’m actually not sure. And neither is Chuck. He’s having to dig deep to find a place off everyone’s grid, especially since he can’t trust anybody in his office. Although he feels that Agent Englewood is a good guy, I haven’t ruled anyone out,” she allowed.

“So…?”

“So, here’s the other stuff that will happen. As soon as we’re out of the area,” Andy continued, “Chuck will send Englewood, three brand new agents, and two other veteran agents he really doesn’t trust to your breached safehouse to look for evidence of your intruder. With luck, Englewood or the newbies might see one of the suspected agents tampering with potential evidence.”

“What are those two agent’s names?” Cobble wanted to know, in case he had any contact with them in the future.

“Agents Georgio and Fleischerman” she returned with no hesitation before continuing with her concerns. “As for my office, there are at least two there who my DAAG and I agree are still behaving sketchily. And now we fear they may have cemented a network of sorts with their man or men in the FBI, in order for their smuggling operation to continue, unhindered.”

“Still, definitively a smuggling operation, then?” Cobble asked.

“Uh, huh. We’re one hundred percent sure that’s what’s driving this shit-show. And get this.” She gave him a sly grin. “We’ve just this week found our major native player in South Sudan.”

“Chuck sort-of told me that, but said you’d fill me in. Anybody I’m familiar with?” Cobble asked excitedly.

This was good. A whole lot better than the big fat zero they’d had last time they’d talked.

“Yup,” she smirked again. “You know his face. As a matter of fact, only you know his face in person as it attaches to a violent crime,” Andy agreed, growing solemn. “But we have a CIA rat to uncover first before we can nail him to the wall.”

Yes ! They’d finally put a name to the face that had haunted Cobble for years. He noticed that Andy wasn’t giving out a name, but that was her way; laying things out carefully. She’d eventually spill.

“You mean, things are getting closer to wrapping up?” Cobble tried to swallow his exhilaration.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Andy confirmed.

“ That , Chuck didn’t tell me.” No wonder the opposition was ramping up to take him out.

Did that bother Cobble? No. Because it was about fucking time they got a break.

Cobble, about a month after he’d almost died, had regained full memory of the group that had breached the UN office. He’d never forget the guy who’d been in charge that day; the one who had so callously ordered the killings, nor would he ever fail to remember the man’s agenda.

Before the asshole had had his minions open fire on the entire office, he’d confronted one of the UN workers, demanding some sort of important paperwork, talking about gold. When the worker hadn’t handed over what the insurgent had wanted quickly enough, that poor asshole had been the first to be shot in the head.

Winch, standing by with the squad, had signaled that they weren’t to retaliate yet, hoping still to spare lives, but he waited too long. After the remaining UN staff opened up every drawer and cabinet to the interlopers so they could find what they wanted, all hell had broken loose… With Cobble as the only survivor.

Cobble had long ago supplied a composite drawing of the guy to Chuck and Andy, but they’d never been able to match him. Until now.

“So are you going to give me a name?” Cobble finally asked. He couldn’t stand not knowing a second longer.

“Our prime suspect’s name is Abuk El-Umar,” Andy supplied.

Unfortunately, that meant nothing to Cobble.

“We were able to identify him because he’s currently highly visible in the new regime; being hand-in-glove with President Kiir’s sketchy as hell Vice President.”

She practically growled that info before continuing. “A little background on El-Umar; he was previously the shadow, right-hand man to George Athor. Athor was the assassinated head of the SPLA who fomented the 2011 uprising. During that association, El-Umar kept an invisible profile, but now he’s basically come out, feeling safe because he’s government sanctioned.”

“I’ve read about that new, highly-suspect VP,” Cobble speculated. “Macher’s his name, right?”

“That’s right,” Andy confirmed, turning onto the interstate.

Apparently, she was taking them far away from the town where Cobble had been hiding.

“Macher was sworn in as Vice President by Kiir in 2011 right after the takeover, but he also had been purported at the time to be the head of a rebel faction, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In Opposition. So, nobody trusted him for a few years. But lately, vigilance regarding Macher has lapsed, and the VP is feeling empowered. Hence, El-Umar making his public debut.”

“So El-Umar is working with Vice President Macher,” Cobble sneered. He shook his head. “Where does that leave us? Or me?” he added.

“Well, even though speculation is rife now about El-Umar’s role in the gold smuggling operation, he’s attempting to make it all look legal. At least as legal as anything gets in South Sudan. You , however, are still the only one who can put him at the UN offices and positively identify him as a killer. So, whoever in the DOJ, CIA, and FBI has their fingers deep in his pies are still dedicated to taking you out of the picture.”

Dandy. Just Dandy .

“What Chuck and I have been able to uncover,” she let him know, “is that El-Umar is not only ass-deep in orchestrating the gold smuggling for “patriotic purposes”, he’s now been linked to ferrying it out of the country.”

“To…?”

Andy sighed. “Well, we haven’t been able to trace any of those illegal shipments to the US, but we know they’re being sold into other countries. Russia in specific. El-Umar, however, has to be working with a top-level official—think CIA—who, for a cut, is helping him get the goods out of the region and to the buyer, buyers, or accomplices.”

“People who want anonymity from everything, including certain atrocities—like the slaughter in the UN office,” Cobble supplied bitterly. “I hate it when corrupt governments take over and there’s so little that honest people can do to combat it. Especially when higher-ups in our own country’s agencies join the party just because their palms get greased. Isn’t it always about money and greed,” he stated angrily.

“It is, indeed,” Andy agreed.

What a fucking mess.