Page 53 of Gryphon

The Swedes had already traced the serial numbers to Pápa Air Base in Hungary. NATO’s database also showed both Stinger missiles and a targeting system were still logged as being in weapons storage at the military base there.

The two-star NATO general they’d brought with them said that a combined SAS and Delta Force QRF—quick reaction force—had taken control of the storage site and all of its staff while they themselves had been flying from Uppsala to Storuman.

They are flying in a quartermaster team from Brussels to conduct a manual inventory against records.

Which would take forever. Pápa was a primary US-stocked supply point for all of NATO—they stored everything from rifle rounds to massive C-17 cargo jets capable of spanning the globe for whoever in NATO needed them.

Jeremy, Miranda, and Meg had been taken away on snowmobiles to inspect what remained of the cockpit of the downed Gripen. It would take a diver to inspect the rest of the plane, though there was little doubt about the sequence of events with so many witnesses.

A pair of Gripens raced by close overhead before circling down to land at the main runway beyond the trees. They’d come to reinforce the other two jets stationed here. Löjtnant Hugo Bodin, who had shot the blue van from his own Gripen, was presently in debrief with the Swedish general who had accompanied them. Neither general had wanted Mike and Holly in the room, so they’d come out to see the wreckage. Thirty seconds had been enough. As it wasn’t a crash scenario, Mike decided against arguing.

“Who else stands to gain?” Mike headed up the road to get clear of the roaring chain saw as they began clearing the shot-down tree that had landed atop the blue van, caving in the passenger compartment and pinning it in place. Nothing except the two Stingers’ crates and a standard winter emergency kit had been in the rear.

“By attacking Sweden,” Holly added from close beside him.

Every time Mike tried to think of someone shooting someone else on purpose, he automatically thought of the final gun battles that had ended his career as a Denver advertising mogul. Okay, not a mogul—he’d never climbed that high—but at least he’d been a player.

The Giovanni brothers had taken out their own sister for playing hardball in using Mike’s ad agency to discredit their firms. But they hadn’t counted on Mike feeding information to the FBI. The FBI heavyweights, the National Security Branch, had swooped in and cleared out the Giovannis—along with the military, congressional, and diplomatic corps contacts who’d greased the wheels in a massive military secret sales scam.

“If I hit you, you hit some other guy, then who in heck knows what loops back to bite us all in the ass,” he summed it up for Holly. All he’d wanted back then was some fun with a hot lady and a good, lucrative con.

Back then?

Wasn’t that what he wanted now?

Yes, he assured himself, that’s absolutely what I want.

A passing truck swirled the falling snow, forcing them to close their eyes in its wake. Storm coming. The dark blue of the evening sky was disappearing much faster than the daylight. Heavy clouds sent thin, sharp flakes whirling down on a rising wind to sting his exposed face, clear portents of more to come.

“Who do you think, Holly?”

“Like I’d have a clue if you don’t.”

Well, he didn’t. “We need someone smarter than us.”

“Ooo, there’s a toughie, mate. Should I start a list, or would Australia’s latest census rolls be enough?”

Mike wanted to laugh. He really did. A laugh would help right now. Nope, not gonna happen.

“Heidi or Harry?” Holly suggested a little more realistically. “Or,” she swallowed hard, “Clarissa?”

“Not my first choice.” None of them were a fan of the CIA Director. Clarissa Reese was smart, effective, and as ruthless as one of Holly’s saltie crocodiles with the scruples to match. “Who knows what her agenda is? I half think she’d welcome a war with the Russians as long as she could find a way to be running it.”

Holly gazed off into the distance…a distance no longer showing beyond the snowstorm approaching over the wide flat land that had looked to stretch all the way to the North Pole.

“We’d better think of something soon. If we get snowed in here, we may not get out until the Spring thaw.”

“I met someone.” Holly said it so softly he’d have missed it, except the latest car whipping the snow at them was an electric Tesla.

Perfect. Of course she had. That explained…absolutely nothing. Unless it was Tad Jobson? But she’d said it wasn’t, unless that had changed over the last hour.

She yanked out her phone, dialed, and waited. “Hello, Valentina. This is Holly Harper. We met last spring at Dulles International.”

And Mike felt about two inches tall, short enough to get lost in the snow building up on the road’s shoulder. When they’d been bringing Miranda back from the UK, after Andi left the team, Holly hadn’t boarded the connecting flight to Seattle with the two of them. Instead, she’d slipped in twenty minutes later, the last second before they closed the cabin door.

Had an interesting meeting, was all the queen of Holly’s Team of One had said. A week later, the law firm run by Andi Wu’s family had ceased to exist as they were all arrested.

So who the hell was Valentina?

---