Smoke and Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

assassin.”
    Viktor turned his eyes on Jack. “They found a slew of newspaper clippings. Most of them were from news coverage of past AGS ops. All of them have pictures of Guardians mixed in with the crowd of spectators in the aftermath of a mission. None of them were marked, but we don’t believe in coincidences.”
    Almost everyone’s face changed to anger, but Jack’s features contorted with rage. He stood up from his chair, hands clenched into fists; he snarled, “You knew. You knew Maia was in danger.”
    “Sit down, Jack. We didn’t know for sure.” Viktor passed around a folder and jerked his chin. “Those are the clippings. The photos are grainy. But what we could discern from some of them are pictures of Manning, Edmunds and Maia. None of them were missions you were on, Derek.”  
    He went on to tell them about the circumstances behind the deaths of the two agents. “They’re after the CIA, too?” Nathan asked.  
    Viktor nodded. “Jack, can you tell us anything more about the people who abducted you? You said there were two unaccounted for.”
    “Yes. The other two wore masks and were rarely present. One of them has a slight accent, almost British whenever he spoke English, but they’ve communicated in Arabic as well,” Jack answered.
    A mumble of speculations went around the room.
    “What aren’t you telling us, Viktor?” Derek asked.
    “There was an op eight years ago involving the two agents, myself and Marissa,” Viktor said slowly. “A chemical weapon was about to be deployed in a very populated area near Damascus. We had Mustafa Shadid in custody. He knew the location of the chemical weapon, but he was dedicated to his cause. He was willing to die rather than tell us where the VX nerve gas was going to be released.”
    Viktor fell silent. He had made many hard decisions in his life, but this remained to be one of the toughest, because only he knew all the facts and Marissa had been kept in the dark.
    “So, what did you do, Viktor?” Jack asked, a hint of challenge in his voice.
    Viktor looked at Marissa. Her head was bowed because she had vilified him for what he had done that day, and he had never told her the truth. He couldn’t, not then.
    “We lined up his wife and son,” Viktor said. “Gave him a choice. We’d take out his family one by one if he continued to stonewall us with the location.”
    “And did it come to that?” Edmunds asked.
    “I shot his wife in the head,” Viktor stated flatly.
    “Jesus Christ, Viktor,” Manning whispered.  
    Derek cursed and rubbed his forehead. Jack continued to stare at him with no expression whatsoever.
    “I turned the gun on his son,” Viktor continued. “He gave up the target and we saved hundreds.”
    There was an unspoken question in everyone’s eyes.
    “I don’t know if I would’ve taken out his son as well,” he admitted. “But the point to all this is we may have found a link.”
    “But Maia was not on that mission,” Nathan said.
    “Whoever’s behind this doesn’t want to kill me, Stark,” Viktor said. “What would be the pain in that? Didn’t it ever occur to you how easy it was to take out the six gunmen? The RPG could’ve easily destroyed the limo. No. They wanted me to watch someone I care about, die. There were two shots. I’ve studied the tapes. It was meant to be a head shot, but Maia bent to take off the mask of one of their attackers. And when she straightened up, the other bullet struck her in the gut.”
    Jack sprang out of his chair and started pacing and cursing. “Fuck you, Viktor.”
    “Yes, fuck me,” Viktor shot back. “You don’t get to make the difficult decisions, McCord, so shut the fuck up.”
    “Yes!” Jack roared and stabbed his finger at Viktor. “FUCK YOU! That bullet could have hit Maia in the head. She’d be dead now. So, yes, FUCK YOU!”
    Jack turned and slammed out of the war room. Everyone was deathly quiet.
    Viktor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Get him back