Aimpoint by Candace Irving (best mystery novels of all time .TXT) 📗

other words, they'd already know every possible weakness—and how to exploit it. Because they'd already done so.

"Shit."

Regan nodded. "Yup." The hell with waiting for tomorrow. The time to reassess her NCIS colleague's role was now. "I'll call Captain Brooks and clear it with him, but I want you on that detail twenty-four seven, starting tonight. Get as close as you can to Ertonç and stay there. At least until we're certain he's not the target."

And if her gut was right, and he was?

Hell, even if LaCroix hadn't vetted the security procedures they'd be using, Mira and that team had their work cut out for them. From the look in her friend's eyes, Mira knew it, too. Along with the rest. The sergeant's attitude might've taken a downturn lately, but his skills had not. If LaCroix wanted Ertonç dead, there was an excellent chance the general would be six feet under, and soon.

And the fallout?

Turkey's relationship with NATO—and especially the US—had been hanging by a thread for some time now. Discovering that an American soldier had coldly assassinated their newest war hero-turned-general just might snap it.

Permanently.

Mira Ellis was missing in action—again.

Regan scanned the ocean of US Army and multinational camouflage as she neared the array of double-doored entrances to the auditorium. So far, there was nary a sign of her NCIS colleague.

Wait. There. Beside the doors to her right.

Regan focused on her friend's sleek blond updo and navy-blue suit as she slipped between a pair of British officers. "Pardon me. Just passing through."

She spared a smile for the shorter lieutenant's stumbling apology and kept advancing, repeating her excuse thrice more as she breached camouflaged cluster after cluster. Finally, she was firmly entrenched within the line leading up to the entrance doors beside which Mira was dutifully stationed.

The thickly lashed dart of blue sent her way assured Regan that Mira had spotted her as well, despite her own neatly secured French braid and Army Camouflaged Uniform with the corresponding second lieutenant insignia she'd donned that morning. But there'd been something else in that dart of blue, too. Her colleague had something to relay.

Something big.

Regan produced Rachel Pace's freshly minted ID as she reached the doors.

Mira glanced at the ID and motioned her through, leaning in to murmur in her right ear as she passed. "Your date's a CPF—and E's US man Friday."

Garrison? A Close Personal Friend? Of the general?

Regan forced herself to focus on the set of ACU-clad shoulders less than a foot from her face, following the camouflaged fabric into the rapidly filling auditorium as she processed her shock. She'd assumed the captain would be here this morning, yes, but as a faceless uniform among many. After all, he'd received his own text last night. The one that had him forgoing whatever moves he'd been intending to attempt with her and heading back to his office. That text had to have concerned the general's early arrival and the speech she was about to hear, along with the Wolverine meet-and-greet to follow. But Garrison was intimately acquainted with the general?

How intimately?

More importantly, was that cozy relationship behind the rest of Mira's man Friday message? Namely, Garrison's apparent selection as the general's Hohenfels US Army liaison. Or was there another darker, possibly more nefarious, reason?

Christ. She was getting whiplash.

By the time she'd finished studying the captain's file last night, she'd come to the conclusion that those shadows she'd spotted in his eyes at the bar had been born of nothing more than constant stress and lingering exhaustion. There was nothing in the captain's recorded past to suggest that, like LaCroix, he too had suffered a debilitating sucker punch to his innate sense of duty, honor and country. Let alone a concrete connection between John Garrison and Scott Platt.

"Damn it, I said I'd deal with it."

By the time she'd finished plowing through the captain's stellar performance evaluations and award write-ups, she'd convinced herself the comment referred to anything from a normal, work-related dispute down to and including quieting the volume on the TV at night.

Was she wrong? Had she missed something? Something that wasn't hinted at in the file, or simply hadn't yet had time to appear?

Had Garrison lobbied for the collateral duty because of his own souring take on the US Army in general and the SF mission in particular?

He had been in that bar with LaCroix. The US/Syrian-Kurd reversal in support and subsequent pullout had rattled a lot of SF cages. Did those shadows she'd seen point not to stress, but a growing, fundamental burnout?

She could've sworn he'd been talking LaCroix down following that explosion-inducing text. What if he hadn't been? What if Garrison been urging patience?

Her gut still leaned no. But what if her gut was off?

Could she afford to take the chance?

The answer—an absolute no—had Regan altering her path. Instead of taking a seat near the front of the auditorium, she opted for a spot near the center of the rapidly coalescing mass of bodies. She slipped in behind a pair of broad, beefy shoulders and immediately spotted two of her three current targets: a crisply ACU-clad John Garrison and this morning's surprisingly not quite larger than life guest of honor—a stocky, silver-haired, thickly mustached and somewhat wan-looking General Aytaç Ertonç. The men were marking time mid-stage right, near a trio of senior male US Army officers. Even from forty feet away, it was clear Mira was correct. Garrison and the general weren't simply friendly; the men were practically bosom buddies.

When had that happened? Where?

Why?

The answers would explain a lot. Potentially even exculpate the captain once and for all—or condemn him.

As she studied the curiously covert body language between the men, Regan compared and contrasted the facts she'd spent half the night gleaning. Though an officer now, Garrison had six years' time in service on his contemporary captains—because he'd begun his career as an enlisted combat engineer. Like LaCroix, Garrison had been the go-to expert at rigging explosives at his first command, and an even better leader. So much so,