Comeback
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Interesting, then, the circumstances under which she’d recently seen Kim and Diana.
And because she was thinking of that meeting, Christine startled her by smiling—as sentimental an expression as Selena had seen her display—and saying, “It’s nice to see that you do manage to work well as a team when necessary.”
Selena hid her startled reaction at Christine’s apparent synchronicity with her thoughts. After all, that recent Oracle meeting had been beyond clandestine. In fact, she still didn’t know who played the role of Delphi, the Oracle contact. Delphi had been the one to warn her about impending terrorist action in Berzhaan right before the hostage crisis; Delphi had been feeding her such tidbits for years, mining information from various security agencies in a highly secretive effort to overcome the interagency turf wars. And though Selena knew she was far from the only one at the receiving end of Oracle’s information, she’d been startled to discover that her fellow agents were also former schoolmates. Kim Valenti had been at that meeting, as had Diana and few more recent graduates. An unofficial Athena force.
And then there was Allison Gracelyn, the meeting’s facilitator—daughter of Marion Gracelyn and currently an NSA programmer. While still at Athena, she’d developed what turned into AA.gov, the Athena Academy Web site, but she’d kept a low profile since then. Selena couldn’t help but wonder just what she’d been up to behind the scenes…and just what she was up to now.
Selena’s reaction, checked as it was, must have given something away, for Christine’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Whatever you wandered off to think about… I was referring to you and Cole.”
Oh. Right. Work well as a team. That they did.
When they had the chance.
“We’re trying,” Selena said. “Maybe we’ll get another chance to work in the field together.” She realized that their rambling pace had taken them toward the stables, forty stalls worth of well-trained horseflesh. Arthur Tsosie had been the stable master here when she’d been enrolled, a quiet man with a lilting tenor voice and full of as much people sense as horse sense. It was nearly impossible to recall riding here and not think of the Navajo Codetalker, and how he so quietly and ably shepherded such prodigies as Athena encouraged. “I should take a ride,” she said, a total non sequitur that Christine accepted almost as if she realized that the most important parts of their exchange had indeed just happened in Selena’s mind.
“Feel free,” she said. “Just after dawn is still best. Tomorrow the girls will be back from their visit to the base, so you’ll want to beat them to the best of the trail horses.”
Luke Air Force Base. Along with trips to the Indian nation reservations, the weeklong survival course in Yuma, a week of study at the Flagstaff observatory, Christine made sure the girls got out to the base, to hospitals, to police stations…to see how people and organizations worked together.
And how they didn’t.
After all, there’d be no need for Oracle if the CIA, FBI, NSA, or recently created Homeland Security actually shared their intel as effectively as they all claimed to. But Selena knew better than to let her thoughts wander there again, not with Christine’s sharp eye on her. She changed the topic to inquire after the latest crop of Athena freshman, and led Christine to the barn to point out a few horses Selena might enjoy. And Christine let her do it, which Selena took as the gift it was.
Dawn brushed the mountains a pale taupe as Selena rode out—borrowed boots, borrowed helmet, but her own schooling tights with leather knee patches and bright lime racing stripes up the outside leg. The horses might have changed since her time at Athena, the stable master might have changed, but the trails were the same, and she knew right where she was going—a zigzaggy route through the clumpy brittlebush, skirting the various cacti and looking out at terrain unobscured by any significant presence of tree or shrub. The odd paloverde, a few scrubby creosote bushes. Low desert mountains: skeletons of the earth. She took her dun gelding through a series of switchbacks to the summit as the light turned from diffuse to etchingly sharp, and after forty-five minutes of rugged riding, she came to the three-thousand-foot summit.
There she dismounted, loosening the saddle girth a notch and sitting cross-legged with the reins loosely in hand, a process that let her know how much her body would pay for this particular emotional exorcism. Didn’t matter how fit she was…nothing used riding muscles but riding muscles. The gelding bobbed its head a few times to see if she really meant it—they were really just going to stand here—and then snorted loudly into the morning air, mouthing the bit a few times before finally settling into a hip-shot stance of equine patience.
“Just watch,” Selena told it. She waited, the southern part of the Phoenix valley spread out before her as the sun rose. The earth warmed and soon enough she saw the first of them—dust devils borne of a cold night followed by the desert sun on flat, hard earth. They spiraled sandy dirt into the air, creating miniature funnels that curved into the sky and danced capriciously across the ground, lifting tumbleweeds high into the sky. Selena grinned, watching them, remembering her younger self doing just this thing. Back then, she’d appreciated the power of the things—compact, giving way before no man, rising and subsiding on a whim. Now she saw their freedom and imagined that feeling in herself. Free from the impact of her past, from her unfulfilled future…free from herself.
Oddly, she thought about Oracle. She thought about her self-doubts, and how it surprised her that she’d been invited to the recent meeting. A meeting called not because of any particular current crisis, but because Delphi, the code name of the person behind Oracle, thought it was time to be proactive instead of reactive. They’d discussed the potential ramifications of the fall of Lab 33, the organization that had been behind Rainy Miller Carrington’s death among so many other things. Be ready, the carefully prepared notes had told them all. At any time, you might be needed to follow up on the information still being gathered in the wake of Lab 33’s downfall.
For starters, there were the Spider files. One of Oracle’s agents had been at work deciphering them, discovering a collection of incriminating records against highly placed people. Prime blackmail material. We need to know more about the person behind these files, the agenda stated. Be alert for any references to the code name “A”—now possibly known as Arachne—or events related to anyone on the attached eyes-only list.
She could do that. No problem.
High alert: there are indications of imminent terrorist action on U.S. soil. Current priority is to pin down the details.
She could do that, too.
Except that she, like Cole, was now a known face, a highly recorded face. And she was damaged goods, already relegated to teaching duty while the CIA waited to see if she got her act together.
Not that she wasn’t good at teaching; in a way, it’s what she’d been doing all along, albeit with the foreign dignitaries with whom she’d been trying to establish counterterrorism partnership programs and not in a classroom. Pulling together the material was second nature, starting with the U.S. counterterrorism policy. First, make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals. Second, bring terrorists to justice for their crimes. Third, isolate and apply pressure on states that sponsor terrorism…
And she knew firsthand how those policies translated to real-life action, so who better to explain it?
But it wasn’t what she wanted to do, was driven to do. She didn’t want to teach others how to deal with terrorism…she wanted to deal with it herself.
Damaged goods.
She hadn’t been damaged goods when she’d been here at Athena. She’d been young, with the confidence of the young. She’d been…
Strong. Capable. Gulping down the learning she’d been offered, the self-defense and sharpshooting and athletic training along with the languages and politics and peeks into the inner workings of law-enforcement agencies. Looking forward, not back. Not tied down by family, by relationships…by experience.
Selena closed her eyes, felt something in her chest swell and open, reconnecting to that younger version of herself. The unscuffed version, still bright and shiny new and full of all the fervent intention Athena could nurture to the fore. It was still there. Just remember to look for it.
When she opened her eyes, it was to another budding dust devil in the sere valley below. She smiled at the sight, and told her gelding, “See that? I told Jonas White that I was the Road Runner. But I think now I’m the Tasmanian Devil.” She watched a dust devil grow, sweeping up dirt and debris. Then she nodded, getting to her feet and dusting off her behind, but not ever taking her eyes from the churning column of air. “Yeah. I like that. Somehow I don’t think Taz carries a lot of baggage.”
As if to prove the point, the dust devil spit out a tumbleweed. Selena laughed out loud at it and gave her surprised horse a pat. “I think I’m on to something,” she told the gelding, and reached for the girth billets of the close contact-saddle. Not that she thought she’d find herself suddenly, miraculously unaffected by those days in Berzhaan or by what she’d done there.
But it was a start.
Chapter 4
Oops.
One really Big oops.
Cole yanked the defector—his defector, now, after weeks of hunting—out of the line of fire, and they both stumbled into a tiny doorway alcove. A tiny Berzhaani doorway alcove with a securely locked door. How the hell had he ever agreed to come back to Suwan?
As if there’d ever been any question. Cole, would you like to come back to black-ops fieldwork for this one job, after which we’ll say wham, bam, thank-you ma’am and drop you like the hot potato you are?
Of course he’d said yes.
A shot pinged against the pale stone of this old home, showering them with chips and dust. The defector’s hand tightened on Cole’s arm. “You have a plan. You must have a plan.”
“For this?” Cole laughed, short and entirely mirthless. “Sorry, Dr. Aymal. This isn’t your lucky defection.”
For the man had made it out of Afghanistan without incident, escorted and flanked by CIA exfiltration experts, and then they’d handed him over to the Berzhaan team— who should have seen him onto a plane headed for the States. But a little bobble here, a little bobble there…they’d lost him. Cole didn’t yet have the full story on that, but if the guy’s luck held true, he could well see how it had happened.
Because who’d have thought Cole would be under fire from his former fellow CIA contract employees? Dark ops men of superhero proportions who hadn’t re-upped, but who instead had come to the Middle East to work for a security consultant. Until now, Cole had thought they still worked for that man.
He’d been wrong.
Boy, had he been wrong. Walked right into this one, didn’t you? Whoever they worked for now, they weren’t on Cole’s side any longer. And they were bold. Bold enough to open fire in the narrow streets of this dignified old neighborhood on the edge of Suwan.
“C’mon, Jox!” The voice of a man who’d once worked beside Cole shouted out from behind cover across the street. Worked beside Cole closely enough to know the nickname based on his CIA station name. Definitely not working alongside Cole any longer. “Get real! Give it up. We’ll even let you walk away.”
But not Aymal. That was a given.
And Aymal was too important to risk. He carried a mental map of weapons-exchange locations—and key pieces of intel regarding an impending terrorist strike. None of which he had divulged so far, nor seemed inclined to divulge until his feet hit safe ground. U.S. ground.
Was his fake nose slipping with his sweat? Cole gave it a firm nudge, as though he were pushing up glasses; there was no give. Just the expected itch. Without turning around, he said to his defector, “Tell me that if I manage to get you through this alive, you’ll put half the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan out of business.”
“Most certainly,” Aymal assured him. Eagerly, too. The guy spoke some English; he had to know the offer Cole had just received. “I’m certain your government considers me a valuable asset.”
“Oddly, I consider me a valuable asset, too,” Cole muttered, scanning the roofline across from them. Two-story stone buildings lined the street, butted up side to side. A woman’s balcony jutted out of the second story, elaborate scrollwork framing the screening that allowed ventilation but kept the women out of sight. Seemed like there should be some way to use that…but no. Too far to the side.
Then he caught a glimpse of movement on the roof. Hmm. Give it up? I don’t think so. To his once-friend-nowenemy, he finally shouted, “I don’t see that happening.”
“Trust is such a fleeting thing,” the man shouted back. “Too bad you don’t seem to have much choice.” He unleashed another shot at them to prove his point and it skipped over the corner of the stone and across Cole’s side, right through the leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He flinched, cursed, and didn’t give it so much as a cursory inspection. If it burned that damned bad, it was a surface wound. Behind him, Aymal, too, flinched—away from the solid impact of the bullet in the wooden door.
Cole really hoped there was no one home.
To their pursuer, he said cheerfully, “There’s always choice.”
But he wasn’t looking at the car that hid the two men, and he wasn’t about to return fire in this populated neighborhood. Instead, he looked up.
Yup, there was someone on the roof. Three little figures, clutching a stick bat and a big red ball and a—okay, he didn’t know what that last thing was. Didn’t matter. It would do the trick. He waved at them, a wiggle of his fingers. Selena would smack that hand just for bringing the kids into this—what if they were our own?—but they were safe enough. To his newly sworn enemy, he called, “They do have cops in this neck of the woods, you know.”
“I happen to know they’re busy right now,” the man said, all too confident.
Dammit. They must have arranged a diversion. Cole looked at the kids again, made up his mind. “Get ready to move,” he murmured to Aymal.
“Where?” Aymal’s voice held a desperate note. A not unreasonably desperate note.
Cole nodded at the car currently serving as shelter for the two men who’d chased them this far. “There.”
“But—”
“Look, you do your thing with your defector stuff, and I’ll do mine with the getting-us-out-of–this-alive stuff, okay? Be ready.” And he looked back to the roof, motioning to the kids. Move to your right. Universal gesture language, carefully performed by the hand not holding his semiautomatic pistol. Clearly puzzled but just as obviously curious, the kids shuffled over until he stopped them. Right over the bad guys, they were—bad guys who were running out of patience, and who fired off a couple of shots to express their displeasure. “Seriously,” Cole told Aymal, not taking his eyes from his new allies, “we’re gonna move. Any minute…” A new gesture for the kids, then, though drop your toys was a harder one to convey.
But then understanding dawned, and the kids looked to one another and to the toys in their hands. Also clear enough in any language. Are you sure? Do you really mean it?
Cole gestured more emphatically. I really, truly mean it. And grasped Aymal’s abaya with the same hand that held the gun, careful to keep his fingers outside the trigger guard.
“Jox, last chance!” Still behind the car. Still beneath the kids, who shrugged at one another, not frightened as they might be. They were up on the roof, out of sight of those below.
And gunfire was clearly not a new experience for them.
They released their toys. Bat, ball and unidentified dropping object, plummeting down just behind the men who had Cole and Aymal cornered.
Aymal yelped, “Na baba!”
A defector with a wealth of languages at his disposal. Cole didn’t speak Barzhaani as well as Selena, but knew the equivalent of you’ve got to be kidding! when he heard it. “Not kidding,” he said, cheerful enough as he watched the toys fall—timing his move, waiting for the inevitable curse or shout of surprise—
There. Now. He gave Aymal a jerk of a jumpstart and sprinted all out for the car, crouched low, ignoring the burn of his side and the hot trickle of blood there. First things first…he slid in behind the car, yanking Aymal close and holding his finger to his lips in what he hoped to be an unnecessary warning.
Their diversion quickly ran its course. The operative-gone-merc snarled, “Damn smart-ass kids.” And then he raised his voice, full of annoyed impatience. “Time’s up, Jox. We’re coming in!”
A pause. A second man said, “What the hell does he think he’s doing? If he could get into that house, he’d have done it already. He’s got to know he’s outgunned. And the rest of our people will be here before the cops even get close.”
“I don’t know, but I’m getting bored.”
“Jeez, Hammer, get down! What do you think—”
“Relax, Buzz. Don’t get girly. Looks like we got lucky.”
Yeah, pretty much in your dreams. Cole kept his hand up, cautioning Aymal to silence, and listened carefully. His leg ached mildly under the strain but held strong—good and healed. And then the brush of cloth against metal told him what he needed to know—the men were creeping around the front of the car, still slow and cautious, still waiting for Cole to spring to life. As Cole intended to do…just not how they expected. He gestured Aymal around the back of the car and by now Aymal had caught on, moving silently with a glimmer of hope. Cole peered around the back bumper to make sure the far side of the car was clear, then hauled Aymal around with purpose. A quick peek though the back windows of the diminutive Zaporozhets sedan revealed the Dolph Lundgren look-alike and his unwieldy sidekick to be engrossed in their approach of the alcove, a situation that wouldn’t last long. Like Cole, they wore hooded abayas over western pants, and wouldn’t stick out in a crowd. But even after several days in the long robe, Cole still found maneuvering in it to be unwieldy.
Such as when one had the need to spring full bore along the street, running as lightly as possible and waving back over his head at three small co-conspirators, not looking back but hearing just a hint of a giggle drifting down in the still air. As soon as he found a gap between buildings he ducked in, bouncing off the far building with one hand and checking behind to make sure he still had Aymal.
He did. And Aymal looked astonished. “We’re still alive,” he said, and patted himself as if to make sure he was still all there. He looked much more at home in his own abaya, which covered the same white kurta and pants Cole wore. Once out of sight they could pull off the abayas and continue with their new looks—the one thing about the day’s plan that hadn’t gone awry.
Yet.
“Alive so far,” Cole agreed. They jogged as fast as they could through the narrow space and popped out the next street over, where Cole spotted an old Russian Niva transport and headed straight for it.
“Na baba,” Aymal muttered.
“Relax.” Cole checked the door handle on the way by. If it had been locked he would have kept right on walking but no, luck was on his side this time and he stopped, smoothly opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat to drop his gun by the stubby transmission hump gearshift and immediately twist down under the dash of the diminutive—really diminutive—SUV. “Try not to look conspicuous, okay?”
“I am conspicuous,” Aymal said, reaching for dignity. “So are you. And you bleed.”
“Yeah, I bleed. Not a big deal. Just don’t hover.”
Aymal decided to lean against the wall to check a convenient problem with his foot and by then Cole had the vehicle started and straightened to find Aymal staring. “What’re you waiting for?”
“We can’t just take it.”
“You’re not really up on this terrorist-defector stuff, are you? Of course we can just take it. You heard the man— the police are at a convenient diversion. And we’ll be careful with it. Very careful.” Cole didn’t wait for Aymal to close his door before shoving the gear stick into First and peeling away into the street, using just enough restraint to avoid telltale tire squealing.
Aymal twisted to look out the back window, and when he was finally satisfied there was no immediate pursuit, he straightened, assessed their route, and said, “We should be heading for the airport.”
“To the pickup?” Cole shook his head. They were already out of Suwan, heading south in a land that almost immediately looked uninhabited, arid rocky steppes without so much as a forlorn little hut to speak of civilization. “We missed it, buddy. They’re long gone. We’re going in deep until I can arrange something new.” Something he could trust. He shifted gears to turn, pushed the speed back up until he hit the low cruising speed of this road just south of Suwan, and fumbled in the satchel lying across his thigh. The newly perforated satchel. “Dammit,” he muttered, and took his second hand off the wheel, holding it steady with his knees as he flipped the satchel open.
“Dawana!” cried Aymal, grabbing the steering wheel.
Cole narrowed his eyes for a quick glare even as he pulled his cell phone out and reclaimed the wheel. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“Bebakhshid,” Aymal said, but he didn’t sound very sorry.
“You aren’t really comfortable with the whole notion of guns and action, are you?” Cole pulled the phone antenna out with his teeth, flipped the thing open, and had his thumb headed for the pertinent speed-dial number before he realized the phone had no signal. Big surprise, given the way this had all gone so far.
“I worked at a desk,” Aymal informed him. And then, at Cole’s surprised glance, he added, “Someone has to.”
True enough. And Cole’s briefing had focused more on the particulars of getting the man out than the particulars of who the man was. He jammed the antenna against his chest to collapse it and left the phone sitting between his knees.
“Where—”
“Two choices,” Cole told him. “We can drive around in circles hunting a solid cell signal, looking obvious and pathetic. Or we can hole up somewhere and ask around until we find someone who knows where to pick up a good signal, at which point I will venture forth and bravely make some phone calls.”
“Hole up…you know this area?”
“You’d be surprised,” Cole said, feeling cheerful again. The distinct lack of pursuit turned out to be quite a mood enhancer. “More choices—we go south and hit silkworm people territory, or loop around to the north and see what can be done in Oguzka. I happen to know they have no love of people who solve their problems by shooting other people.”
“How—”Aymal stopped himself with a shake of his head.
“Faith,” Cole said. “Have faith. Do you think they would have sent me if I couldn’t do the job?”
“Your first attempt to make contact with help put us in this stolen car, fleeing bullets and leaving a blood trail.”
Cole glanced down at the blotch of red seeping through his abaya. “Trail? That’s just a single footprint, and we’re bringing it along with us. Anyway, intel didn’t know those guys had done a flip-flop on us. They’re gonna know, though.” And he said no more, for of the village he was comfortably certain.
They had, after all, been extremely grateful when his wife had saved their collective butts eight months earlier.
Chapter 5
Selena settled into the saddle, ready to head back to Athena—and from there, back to work. Back to Virginia, to prepare for her upcoming evaluation—and after that, either back to the Farm or back to Langley. Either way, she’d deal with it.
She’d just lifted the reins when her cell phone rang, the Looney Tunes riff she’d installed upon returning home from Berzhaan. Her horse startled, head raised and ears swiveling, and she shifted seat and leg just enough to reassure him. The Velcro closure of the pommel bag yielded to her grip and she slipped the phone out just as it was ready to give up on her and switch over to voice mail.