On Thin Ice Read Free

his pride with great difficulty, he mumbled, “My apologies.” God, that hurt. But he had no desire to end up humping a desk in Waaskooskie Peoria. He gave it a little more thought and then limped out a grudgingly tacked-on, “Sir.”
    â€œYou called him a cocksucker, Vinicor!”
    â€œYeah, well, sorry about that, too. But in my own defense, sir, he called me in asshole. Now you know as well as I do that assholes are anyone who’s not DEA, sir—and especially not a DEA street hump.” Vinicor grinned crookedly. “Let’s me out.”
    â€œOh, what the hell,” McMahon suddenly capitulated. “He was only FBI anyhow.”
    Mick swallowed a laugh. His butt was saved only because he’d had the good fortune to threaten an FBI agent instead of one of the DEA’s own. You had to love it.
    The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a standing rivalry. A 1982 attorney general’s order directing a coordinated effort between the two agencies had set the tone when it required the DEA administrator to report to the AG through the director of the FBI.
    It was an order that had never once been followed and one the attorney general was wisely considering rescinding. He much preferred that both agency heads continued to report directly to him anyway, having learned the hard way that day-to-day informal coordination worked much more successfully than any attempts at a formal arrangement. Even then it required the deputy attorney general to oversee operational matters and resolve disputes between the two agencies.
    The supervisor had been shuffling through some papers on his desk. Finding what he wanted, he looked up at Mick. “So. You ready for a new assignment?”
    Mick hesitated. The truth was he knew he was in serious danger of burning out. Deep cover required an agent to sleep, breathe, and eat his role twenty-four hours a day, for however many days were necessary to see an assignment through to its completion. A field agent, or hump as they were known in the lexicon, was out there all on his own with no one to back him up, and armed, more often than not, with nothing more substantial than a bullshit story and his acting ability.
    That part Mick could live with. Hell, his own mother had once said he was such a good liar that he was bound to end up either a con artist or a politician . . . and of the two, she had added, she sort of hoped he’d opt for con artist. No, what really affected his general attitude these days was that even when he did make a righteous bust, it seemed the suits and the politicians were invariably standing in line just waiting for an opportunity to undo all his hard work. Mick’s belief in actually making any kind of difference in the war on drugs had been wearing increasingly thin.
    Then McMahon said persuasively, “This is undercover, Vinicor, not deep cover. Hell, it’d be like a day at the beach for you.” He tossed a file on the desk.
    Mick resisted the temptation to see what it contained for about forty-five seconds before he broke down and scooped it up. A loose snapshot slid from the folder and he plucked it off the desktop.
    â€œIce skaters?” Mick looked incredulously from the picture to his supervisor. “You want me to bust a coupla kid ice skaters? ” Looking back down, he ran the side of his thumb over the woman in the picture. A definite looker—too bad she was only a baby.
    â€œThey’re Miller and Morrison,” McMahon said, coming around the desk to stand next to Mick. He looked down at the snapshot. “Sasha Miller and Lon Morrison. And they ain’t kids no more; this was taken quite a while ago.”
    â€œSo what’s the history?”
    â€œSeveral years back they were some big-deal, hotshot sensation on the amateur figure skating circuit. Won top prizes in about every competition goin’, I guess. Can’t remember the exact