Page 71 of Deadfall

“Son of a bitch, look who it is,” Hangman slapped him on the back. “Jamal, my man—it’s been awhile—”

“Sit down, Jackal.” Riggs stormed into the room and interrupted the reunion. He scowled at the man with the eyepatch. “You creep me out lurking in the corners.”

Jackal glared at Riggs with a sour look, but moved to a seat next to Mouse. Jamal sat down next to Hangman with a last friendly clasp of his shoulder.

Riggs stood at the head of the table and gestured behind him. “That’s Lev—” Lev turned from his bank of monitors and gave a little mock salute. “Known him for a few years after the Warwick contract—he’s going to be our tech ops for this little escapade. Rex will be here tomorrow—” There was a collective groan.

“You invited him?” Mouse protested. “He nearly blew us all up last time!”

“He’s the best explosive expert I know—unless you have someone else, Mouse, shut the fuck up,” Riggs growled. Mouse frowned, but held up his hands and sat back in surrender. “Now, we’re planning on hitting—”

Hangman cleared his throat loudly. At the interruption, Riggs glared at Hangman who jerked his head toward me with a curious look.

“You gonna tell us who this pretty little thing is, boss?”

Riggs’ lips pressed into a line. “That’s Syn—”

“Well, yeah I can see that—” Hangman joked.

Riggs slammed his hand down on the table. “That’s her name, asshole. She’s one of Sacha’s.”

That seemed to shut everyone up. I didn’t understand what that meant, but even Hangman stiffened in his seat and didn’t make another joke.

“Like I was saying,” Riggs continued. “Our objective is to dismantle the foundations of a large black market conglomerate run by three brothers: Albatron, Octavius and Basilion. We will specifically be targeting Octavius because we believe he is the most accessible at the moment. The eventual goal is to destroy his supporting organizations until he’s forced out into the open and we can take him down.”

Hangman whistled low. “Go big or go home, huh?”

Jamal chuckled. “Nothing new there.”

Riggs glared at them both. “We’ll be starting small—”

Riggs went on to explain how we would start with surveillance to get the lay of the land and move on from there. No one asked why we were doing this, but Riggs had told me he didn’t expect that question. The men were being compensated generously to be here and that’s all they cared about. A job was a job and as long as there was danger and money, they were happy.

After the brief, everyone dispersed to get settled into the house. I stayed where I was and waited until Riggs was done chatting with Mouse, who was the last to leave.

“What did you mean earlier?” I asked.

Riggs glanced up briefly. “About what?”

“The Sacha comment. You’ve said it twice now.”

Riggs dropped the tablet next to Lev.

“You should tell her,” Lev said quietly. “Or, one of the others will.”

Riggs looked like he’d rather do anything else, but he didn’t protest.

“Sacha was a Russian spy,” Riggs said. “He defected and the CIA recruited him to train special ops teams.” He sighed. “It’s a long story, but his past came back and he had to go into protective custody. Except that wasn’t safe either—”

“His daughter…” I muttered.

Riggs pursed his lips.

“Yeah. He went deeper underground after that,” Riggs paused until Lev cleared his throat, subtly encouraging him to continue. “Anyway, he trained all of us.”

Well, that wasn’t what I’d been expecting. My eyebrows shot up.

“We were one of his last teams before he had to go into hiding.”