Backblast Candace Irving (classic novels to read .txt) 📖

to shore up goodwill toward US or our military. Iftikhar Bukhari has a serious problem with everything American—secular or Christian. Even Muslim. Bukhari has also got his eye on the presidency, so if you have to deal with him, watch him closely."

Good to know.

Surprising too, this newfound forthrightness of Riyad's. Then again, asshole or not, it appeared he was on their side, at least about this. No matter how the spook felt about her and John, the former SEAL in him had finally accepted that they were in this together. They didn't have to be friends, and probably never would be, but they did have to function as a cohesive unit if they planned on taking Webber down.

Hooah for the team concept.

The only problem was, while Senior Chief Webber was definitely a traitor to their nation and his former sailors on the teams, she wasn't convinced Webber was the traitor they were after. Yes, though Webber had officially been on the reservation a year ago September, he still could've been in that parking lot listening to her and John. And, yes, as a SEAL, Webber could've easily gotten ahold of her BI, especially if he'd done so while he'd been faking his loyalties.

If he'd really wanted to, John could've gotten her BI at any point this past year as well. He hadn't, because he had morals. Standards.

Something Webber had clearly lost, unless he'd been faking all along.

But what she suspected that Webber did have, was access to the traitor who was currently inside the embassy. How else would Webber have known to link up with Brandt at Al Dhafra to hand off the strychnine? The information that Brandt would be departing the ship and then returning with Durrani and Hachemi had to have come from those diplomats who'd been on the Griffith or from someone back at the embassy who was in the know. But who?

And there was Hachemi's murder, itself. Had the translator had a name after all?

Webber's?

As he had with John, had the translator and the dirty SEAL worked together in Afghanistan? Was that where and how Hachemi had been turned?

And why Hachemi had been marked for murder?

She was beginning to suspect so.

She glanced at Riyad. "What about DSS Agent Charles Maddoc? Do you know him?"

"The RSO? Only by name. But, yeah, he was in Pakistan when Webber came through on his security review. Maddoc was with the US consulate in Karachi then; arrived here sometime last year. Can't remember when."

"April seventh." Regan shrugged as the spook gave her an odd look. The date had been in the RSO's backgrounder. "I have a thing for numbers."

Scratch that; that wasn't surprise reverberating within the spook's fixed stare. It was shock, and not over her numerical recall skills.

It was John who voiced the cause. "That's the day the SDV mission went south, or damned close to it, isn't it?"

Riyad nodded. "My men died on the eleventh."

His men?

Oh, that explained so very much. The spook's constant, thrumming anger and obsession. Not to mention the bleak pain now swimming in the murky depths of his eyes.

It was the same pain she'd seen in John that night in Germany when he'd been mourning a fellow SF officer and friend who'd died from an IED earlier that day in Iraq, and again, as John had lost man after man to that psycho-toxin.

This time, she voiced the cause, so neither of them would have to: "You weren't just on that mission. You led it. You were in charge when those four SEALs died, and when Webber and that SDV went missing."

"Yes."

Ah, Christ. She did not want to feel for the spook. But she did. From the tension in John's jaw, the throbbing in that telltale pulse point of his, so did he.

Riyad managed to clear his throat first. "It's not a coincidence, is it?"

She shook her head. "Maybe, maybe not. Maddoc was already in Karachi. I'm assuming the transfer had been in the works for some time."

"Most likely."

But they were all thinking the rest. If Webber had followed John to that parking lot nearly sixteen months ago, the rogue SEAL could've recruited Maddoc even earlier, before the RSO had even been assigned to Karachi. If so, Maddoc could have requested his Karachi and Islamabad security assignments.

Given John's comment regarding Webber's repeated invitations to hit the bars and strip joints off Bragg, Webber had clearly attempted to recruit John. Why not Maddoc and others, as well? An ocean of booze, some male bonding, an abundance of tits and ass—it all went a long way to greasing the skids, if someone was ready and willing to slide off the rails. A conclusion Webber must've reached as he'd listened to their blowout in that parking lot.

"Why would Webber want to recruit me?"

It wasn't until she'd glanced up at John that she realized she'd fallen silent. But it hadn't mattered. John's Rae-dar was truly up to speed and working. This time he'd managed to read her mind.

She shrugged. "Your skills? Your contacts?" Until they had an inkling as to what Webber had planned in Pakistan and elsewhere, they couldn't be sure. "John—"

"Just a sec." He pulled his vibrating phone from his suit jacket. But as he turned away to answer it, Riyad's rang—and then hers.

Shit. A trio of simultaneous calls to a team like theirs was never a good thing.

As Riyad turned in the opposite direction from John to answer his, she headed for the desk to give them all space for their individual conversations.

Scott's name was rolling across her screen.

She accepted the call and skipped the preliminaries. "What's wrong?"

"You got a TV in that room?"

"Yeah."

"Switch it on."

She turned toward the sitting area, but John had beaten her to the punch. He stood back from the TV so she and Riyad could watch from their respective corners of the suite. A mob of Pakistani men filled the screen. Most were dressed in the country's traditional shalwar kameez, and nearly all were crowding and pushing in on the main gates