Endings and Beginnings (Death and Destruction Book 8) Page 2

  “Why would anyone install a lift system in a hearse, Jarrett?” Thayne wondered. It was only the first of a thousand questions he had at the moment but for some reason asking a crazy man why he’d purchased such an idiotic car seemed sillier than even he wanted. Jarrett frantically motioned Thayne to follow as he walked around the hearse, hitting the remote and dropping the car back to the ground as it was meant to be driven. In that position, it probably looked even worse because it was still… a fucking hearse.

  “Look,” Jarrett said, motioning him over to the driver’s side as he swung the door wide. The inside of the car was perfection. If the outside looked like it had been put through a giant rock tumbler, the inside was exactly the opposite. The cherry-red leather seats were as smooth as butter and the wide dash sported a steering wheel fashioned out of a wide polished chrome bicycle chain. Thayne bent and looked closer. It actually was a fucking bicycle chain. A massive chain that had been welded onto some sort of rigid steering wheel beneath. The fact that it was way undersized and as gaudy as the rest of the interior made strange sense.

  The dashboard of the car was polished chrome, inlaid with glossy wood, and looked remarkably like the Nova’s dash with a 1960s AM radio with bright red knobs to match the upholstery. Huge round black speaker covers were set into both doors beside the window hand cranks. A six-inch tall white plastic dashboard Madonna rocked back and forth wildly on its suction cup like a Catholic bobble head. Thayne snorted and then couldn’t hold back anymore.

  It began as a chuckle and then burst out of him until he was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down his face. Jarrett laughed along with him, his eyes sparkling. Thayne threw his arms around him and he would have kissed him if he could have stopped laughing. Instead he buried his face in Jarrett’s neck and laughed until he was breathless. When he could finally breathe again, he pulled back as Jarrett loosened his grip. He still held him around the waist and he leaned back staring into Thayne’s eyes.

  “I will never understand you but I have never loved you more, Jarrett Evans-Wolfe. You are insane and completely off your rocker but I adore everything about you.” He leaned forward and kissed Jarrett tenderly, feeling the warmth of his lips and breathing in the unmistakable scent of his man. “Please don’t ever stop loving me.”

  “Not a chance of that, darlin. Not a chance.”

  Chapter One

  “Please tell me Stanger is gonna give us an assignment. I got so many papercuts, I need a damn transfusion.” Jarrett’s knee bounced like crazy.

  Thayne stopped in front of his husband’s desk and looked down at him. Only the pathetic expression on his gorgeous face and the plaintive whimper in his voice kept Thayne from bursting out laughing. Jarrett hated paperwork more than anything and since coming back to work after their honeymoon three months before, it seemed they’d been doing a lot of it. No big cases had come their way and what work did, was wrapped up in only a few days. They’d been quite literally twiddling their thumbs for weeks.

  To top it all off, their workmates, Sarah Connor and Devon King, had been sent to DC to attend a training conference with Lincoln Snow and his partner Mac McCallahan from the FBI. Since Jarrett and Thayne had already been to the most recent firearms conference held in the same city a few months back, their boss, Special Agent in Charge Lloyd Stanger, had sent Sarah and Dev instead. Jarrett had complained how unfair it was but Thayne had taken the decision in stride. It was just the way these things went. If there were enough funding to go around, Thayne, Jarrett, Jose Galvez, and his new partner, Nicodemo Devecchio, would have been sent to Washington DC as well. It was simply Sarah and Dev’s turn this time around.

  Besides, when given a choice, Jarrett had chosen to attend the seminar on the latest firearms on the market… but of course he had. Gun enthusiast was too mild a description for the way Jarrett felt about heavy-duty firearms and sniper rifles. Thayne had watched him have nearly multiple orgasms when they’d visited a weapon superstore in Arizona the summer before. No one got between Jarrett and his rifles and lived to tell about it. No one. Thayne laid a hand on Jarrett’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Sarah and Dev are due back tonight. Stanger promised he’d have a new case this week. Something’s up with our office and the FBI.”

  Jarrett frowned. “What’d ya mean?”

  Thayne unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged out of it, hanging it over the back of his desk chair before plopping down. His desk shared a cubicle with Jarrett’s. He leaned forward and spoke quietly.

  “Stanger said the FBI transferred Halloran and Vause so guess who’s taking over their LA Division?”

  Jarrett frowned harder. “Please tell me it’s someone good. Are they bringin’ Lydia Miller back?” He sounded hopeful. They really liked the former head of the FBI’s LA division.

  Thayne smiled. “That would be a demotion for her. No. She belongs in Washington DC. She’s too good.”

  “Who then? We don’t know a lot of FBI SACs but since you’re smilin’ like a jackass, it must be someone good.”

  “You remember SAC Diaz from Phoenix?” Thayne asked.

  Jarrett’s eyes grew wide and he leaned forward. “That fucking scary female?”

  Thayne laughed. “SAC Claudia Diaz is a badass, Jarrett.”

  “She made my balls shrink,” Jarrett grumbled.

  Thayne barked a laugh. “Oh, fuck off, you pussy. She’s awesome. Snow and Mac are gonna be so happy.”

  Jarrett nodded. “Yeah, I guess she’s gotta be a hell of a lot better than that asshole, Halloran.”

  “Halloran was transferred to Omaha,” Thayne said with a chuckle. Jarrett laughed.

  “Oh shit. That’s fuckin’ poetic. He’ll probably do well with all them soy beans, corn fields, and tornadoes.”

  “Right? And I guess they sent Vause to El Paso. Stanger said the FBI director was really pissed at them both for the way they refused to cooperate with the ATF and exposed us all to the bomber when they refused to share all the information they got,” Thayne said quietly. “Anyway, Diaz is great.”

  “She made me nervous,” Jarrett admitted.

  “Well, you don’t work for her. And besides, she only made you nervous because she could see right through the charm and bullshit, baby.” Thayne reached out and caressed Jarrett’s knee.

  Jarrett frowned. “Whatever. So, Sarah and Dev are comin’ back tonight and we’re supposed to get a new assignment tomorrow?”

  “That’s what Stanger said. All I know is that we are supposed to meet at the federal building tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. sharp.”

  Jarrett stood up. “Okay. Sounds good. I’m starvin’. Let’s go get some dinner.”

  Thayne stood as well, grabbing his suit jacket. Dinner with his husband sounded great and it was after 5:00 p.m., technically quitting time.

  “What do you want for dinner? There’s a new Pho place on Main Street.”

  Jarrett shivered and glared at him. “Pho? You mean like Vietnamese soup? No thanks. I need red meat tonight and lots of it, darlin’.”

  Thayne smiled. “Protein, huh.” He walked beside Jarrett toward the elevator.

  Jarrett smirked. “You know it. For what I got in mind for dessert, I need sustained energy.”

  Thayne stopped in front of the elevator and pressed the button before looking over at his husband. He laughed at the purely sexual glance Jarrett was giving him.

  “God, you’re so easy.”

  Jarrett sobered. “You bait’n’ me?”

  Thayne laughed as the doors to the elevator slid open. “If you weren’t so predictable, you couldn’t be so easily manipulated and baited but I have to say, you caught on to my end game just like I wanted you to.” They stepped into the elevator and the doors shut. Jarrett immediately backed him up against the side. Thayne looked up, staring over Jarrett’s shoulder. “There’s cameras in here.”

  Jarrett leaned in. “And everyone knows we’re married. Fuck ‘em.” He ground his hips against Thayne’s, lowering
his lips and kissing him soundly. He pulled back just as the elevator stopped at the parking garage level. Jarrett grabbed his hand and pulled him out. “Come on, darlin’. It’s time for me to give my man some meat.”

  He cackled, and Thayne couldn’t help but laugh.

  ****

  The next morning, Jarrett and Thayne walked into the conference room at the LA division of the FBI located in the federal building in Westwood holding cups of Starbucks. Jarrett was thrilled to see their coworkers Sarah, Dev, Jose, and Nico already at the table. Their friends Lincoln Snow and McBride M. McCallahan were seated at the table as well as a serious SAC Claudia Diaz. Beside her was her counterpart with the ATF, SAC Lloyd Stanger.

  “Nice of you to join us, gentlemen,” SAC Diaz deadpanned.

  Jarrett swallowed around the lump in his throat and he glanced at the watch Thayne had given him for a wedding present. “We’re only three minutes late, but sorry, SAC,” he said.

  She inclined her head at the bold Venti he held in his right hand. “Just enough time to get a coffee.”

  “Everyone needs caffeine, ma’am.”

  Stanger audibly growled. “Sit your ass down, Evans. I’m lending your team out to the FBI, so you’ll want to hear this briefing.”

  “Yes, sir!” Jarrett slapped his lips together and took a seat beside Mac who was smirking at him.

  SAC Diaz leaned over and picked up a remote control, hitting a button so the room darkened. She nodded to a screen Jarrett hadn’t noticed at the end of the room. It showed a satellite photograph of a large building that seemed to be tucked against a rock face. Surrounding it were vehicles of every description. The façade of the rock face had been scraped away. The surrounding landscape and jungle beyond looked rich and vibrantly lush but the soil was a vivid dark red and overgrown with thick vegetation. The area around the building had been cleared.

  “Where is that, SAC Diaz?” Thayne asked.

  “This is a well-known palladium mine in Pretoria, South Africa. The name of it is simply Number 3 Palladium Mine SA. I trust you all know what palladium is?”

  “Palladium is a chemical element similar in composition to platinum. Its atomic number is 46—given the symbol Pd—and was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston,” Devecchio said in answer to the mostly rhetorical question. “It is a silvery metal which today is used in the production of cell phones, computers, auto parts, electronics, dentistry, medicine, hydrogen purification, chemical applications, groundwater treatment, and jewelry. It’s also a key component of fuel cells which react to hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, heat, and water. Nearly half of all palladium is used in the production of catalytic converters. Its value is over twenty times that of silver and is a commodity mined primarily in the Transvaal Basin of South Africa, though much smaller deposits have been found domestically in Montana, Russia, and Canada.”

  “Jeez, take a breath, Devecchio,” Jarrett said, chuckling. The kid did like to go on but that just made him all kinds of adorable. It was fun having someone with an eidetic memory on the team.

  Devecchio flushed bright red as he stared at the others. He dropped his gaze to the table as he hid his fists underneath it. Jarrett felt a pang of guilt for embarrassing the poor guy. Mac reached over and patted Nico on the back and the kid looked up and smiled shyly at him. Jarrett was interrupted in his regard of the exchange when Stanger cleared his throat.

  “Pay attention, Evans. This briefing is directed at you and McCallahan since you both have been in the service only recently,” Stanger growled. “We’d like you to lend insight.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jarrett sat back in his chair as he looked over at Mac. Mac was looking back at him and Jarrett saw the almost imperceptible shrug of the man’s huge shoulders. McBride McCallahan was one of the largest men he’d ever seen at six feet seven inches and upward of 280 pounds of solid muscle. He was a well-trained spec ops Green Beret which set him apart from everyone else at the table. Mac had probably seen as much action, if not more than Jarrett had. After all, Green Berets and their ilk were the tips of the US military’s spear and Jarrett was aware that Mac could be as deadly as he could be, if not more so.

  “As I was saying, this particular mine is located in Pretoria, South Africa, and it is a significant source of palladium,” SAC Diaz continued. “From what our friends at Langley have been able to determine, a rogue force has taken control of this mine, the largest in the country. Our CIA operatives have determined that their intent is to smuggle the mineral to a faction inside the Chinese government. They intend on choking off the source of palladium and disrupting the cheap computer and cell phone industry’s imports to the US, thereby enriching Chinese companies they control and crippling other countries’ production.”

  “In other words, they want to corner the worldwide palladium market beginning with this mine?” Thayne asked.

  “That’s right, Wolfe. That’s just what they’re trying to do,” SAC Stanger said.

  “And this has been going on how long?” Snow asked.

  “Nearly ten months now. The intel hasn’t been easy to obtain,” SAC Diaz said. “Once word got out that the mine’s South African ownership had undergone a massive change nearly overnight, and that Americans were suddenly in charge of operations, we had to send in operatives. From that time until now, they’ve been collecting intelligence.”

  “Wait a minute. Americans are involved?” Mac asked.

  “Yes.” SAC Diaz turned back toward the wall as she changed the slide with the remote control. The outside of a modern building with the Stryker-Dunn logo popped up on the screen. “I hope you’re all familiar with this company.”

  Grumbling started around the room and Jarrett instantly knew why. Stryker-Dunn was the country’s single largest military security company. Jarrett knew they employed tens of thousands of former US military. They were the forces meant to support whatever conflicts served US interests around the globe where the US military itself couldn’t admit involvement. Some of them were nothing more than thugs with high-level training or as Jarrett knew very well, mercenaries.

  They were well-armed, well-trained, well-financed, and above all, they served the master who paid them the most. Their loyalty wasn’t guaranteed by anything more than the almighty dollar and those bastards commanded the top salaries around the world. Jarrett knew some of them made more money in a year being murderers-for-hire than a man serving honorably in the US military made in twenty years. Men like that were as dangerous as they came, and Jarrett knew way too many of the fuckers. After all, he’d been one for a couple of years.

  “I can tell by the expression on most of the faces in the room that you are familiar with Stryker-Dunn,” Stanger said. Everyone in the room nodded. “Good. Well, a couple of you are about to get more familiar with them because we have learned that they are providing security and cover for the new ownership of this mine.”

  “Wait. These Americans are working for the Chinese now?” Sarah asked.

  “Americans!” Nico coughed. “Traitors is more like it.”

  Stanger and Diaz smiled. “That’s right, Devecchio. Their loyalty is to the almighty dollar. In this case, Stryker-Dunn isn’t exactly working for the Chinese. We believe that someone at the mine has a partner to help them take over mining operations. We believe someone at the very top of Stryker-Dunn’s payroll is the partner and the person at the mine is part of their management team. We suspect the person or persons at Stryker-Dunn may even be on the board of directors because it would take a vote of the board to authorize involvement of the massive number of Stryker-Dunn security forces now in charge of running the mine.

  “We believe they’re responsible for killing several of the mine’s bosses, going so far as to display photos of their corpses to threaten the miners and surviving managers into cooperating with them. I don’t think I have to tell you that these mercenaries are ruthless and have no conscience. Our goal here is to gather evidence of Stryker-Dunn’s involvement in the schem
e along with their ties to the Chinese. Once we have it, the CIA and our covert forces will go in and wrest control back from Stryker-Dunn and the mine’s manager who hired them.”

  “So, does the FBI have a suspect on the board of Stryker-Dunn?” Thayne asked.

  “We’re certain the decision to work for the Chinese was made at the highest levels of the company which is why we think the suspect may be on their board, though we don’t think the board was made aware of the criminal conspiracy. There are too many men who call themselves patriots on the board to imagine they’d support a scheme that would harm an entire segment of US industry in favor of a Chinese company. We believe the board may have been duped into thinking they’re sending forces as security for a foreign company and getting paid well to do so. That’s what Stryker-Dunn does, after all.”

  “Provide security to whoever has the deepest pockets,” Dev concluded.

  Diaz looked at her and nodded. “That’s right, Special Agent King. Our job is to get proof of Stryker-Dunn’s involvement with the Chinese so Congress can stop their support and their funding of the company. Only Congress can shut down this operation by cutting off all US government contracts with them. The company has been helpful to the US in the past, but they’ve been going off the rails for a while now. A great number of the men they hire have no conscience. If they were simply former military types, that would be different but they’re not. In this case, we believe if we put enough pressure on Stryker-Dunn’s board and management from the outside, they will voluntarily leave the mine alone,” Stanger said.

  “Voluntarily leave them alone? Wait a minute,” Thayne said. “So, we’re not gonna arrest them? I mean what’s the goal here? The CIA is gathering information. Why can’t that be sent over to the congressional intelligence committee and put a stop to our involvement with the company? Why risk lives? I mean, I know our forces wouldn’t think twice about putting themselves in danger. I’m just wondering if it’s absolutely necessary to put the lives of men on the line if we already got the intelligence.” He sat back in his chair as Stanger and Diaz nodded.