Izza dashed to the table where she’d set up another tasty looking buffet. “Orange juice or water?”
“OJ’s good.”
A couple dripping bottles sailed end over end in Zack’s direction. “Thanks, Izza. We won’t be long.”
She grinned like the cat that ate the canary. “Take all the time you need.”
Walker settled sideways behind the wheel while Alex swiveled the co-pilot seat around to face Zack, who’d made himself comfortable on the bench. He’d already drained one OJ dry.
“Man, that’s good,” he said as he cast Walker a sideways glance. “I don’t know about you, but jumping out of airplanes always scares the crap out of me. Bet you’re just like Adam, though. You like skydiving?”
“I like flying, not falling. Adam can keep that shit,” Walker muttered. “I take it you guys have both been inside the Dragons? Did you know Goff?”
Alex growled. “Only Peters, the lying bastard.”
Zack shook his head. “Never met your CO, but yeah, a few years back, The TEAM tangled with the guy we thought was in charge. Guess Peters wasn’t, but we didn’t know about Admiral Pickering and Commander Goff then. D.C. Interpol Director Daniel Peters took that detail to his grave, but not before he and his goons got the jump on us in the office one day and…”
Zack seemed to be having trouble speaking, so Walker waited.
“Fucker almost killed us. Me and Mark. David and Harley and—”
“I was out of the office the day Peters brought an army to kill my TEAM,” Alex growled.
“He’d already bombed our underground parking garage,” Zack said. “Damn near killed Alex. That’s the only reason you weren’t there when he showed.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, but he didn’t anticipate my TEAM.”
Zack grunted. “What that smug bastard didn’t expect was that you’d lived. Almost lost my job over that op.”
“You did what you had to do.”
Zack turned to Walker. “I was working a joint op with ATF when I stumbled across a little girl being sold by the Dragons. I couldn’t just leave her. She was so cold, barely breathing. Ended up screwing the op to save her. Pissed Alex off, but only because it put him in the middle of a war with then ATF Director Kevin Carducci. But it also led me to join up with Mei Xing, a mother looking for her kidnapped daughter—”
“The Dragons took her daughter?”
“Yes and no. Mei thought they’d taken LiLi, but Mei was a crazy, mad woman back then. She was running on nothing but fumes, not thinking right. Her boyfriend, LiLi’s biological father, was the one who’d kidnapped her. Bastard took her out of the country. But when Mei got wind of a child smuggling ring working inside the District, she jumped to conclusions. Little did we know then, but it turned out her ex came from old money. He’d had her apartment wired, then paid a couple jerks to pass themselves off as phony detectives and cops to respond to her calls for help. When she thought law enforcement failed her, Mei took the law into her own hands and” —he ran a big hand over his bare head— “turned into a walking nightmare.”
Alex nodded. “Mei was fierce. She finagled her way into the Bureau, DC Metro’s main precinct, the local morgue, Child Services, even Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE. That about sums up what was running through her veins back then. Nothing but sheer grit and a helluva lot of ice water. Poor thing thought she was good enough to infiltrate my TEAM.”
“Let me guess,” Walker drawled. “You shot her down.”
“You know it,” Zack answered. “He’s got the instincts of a stone-cold killer, but the heart of a lion.”
Alex’s nostrils flared as if he’d smelled something that didn’t agree with him.
Walker let the comment slide, but Zack had summed up Alex perfectly.
“Anyway…” Zack lifted his face to the roof. “Boss tasked me to work with Mei. Mei thought I was a joke, a playboy. I thought she was a beast.”
“Which she probably was,” Walker added. “Quinn Dooley was the same kind of beast when he first approached me about going into Guatemala. Desperate moms and dads are like that.”
“Yes, I get that now. But I wasn’t a father then. I’d just come home from the sandbox and was working for Alex. After my time in the Corps, I just wanted to live my life, you know what I mean? I had a fast car and a bachelor pad. I