In The Valley Of Shadows

by Kat Smith

  Mara sighed. “It isn’t a choice, Alex. If we acknowledge the mission, the Russians will retaliate. We can’t risk an international incident.”

  “We don’t leave our people behind.” Alex flashed a glare into the camera.

  “Alex, you know how this works―the risks, the rules.” Her voice grew soft…sad. “And so did Captain Conner.”

  “Well, you can go fuck your rules, Colonel.”

  She recoiled and blinked when the screen went blank and welcomed the surge of anger that rose in her belly. Anger was the only thing that could keep her from withering and collapsing from the grief.

  Payton sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. She’d heard the entire conversation. “She’ll never forgive us.”

  Mara surged out of her chair and walked to the window. “Well, I’m not asking for forgiveness. The little snot’s forgotten how it is since she bailed to become a desk jockey for you. She served in the Army for eight years, rose to the rank of lieutenant. She knows how it is.”

  When she turned to see Payton watching her with a raised brow, it just pushed her anger closer to the surface. “You too, Director. You served in the Army for what, twelve years, right here on this base. We ranked up together.”

  “What, until I bailed to become a desk jockey?” Payton snipped back. She understood the anger welling up, but she’d be damned if she’d allow it to be focused on her.

  They stood staring at each other for a moment before Mara grabbed the glasses off the windowsill and took them to her desk to refill them. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to lash out at you.” She slid the refilled glass across the desk. “I’m just so pissed right now. Colonel Bowman in Vaziani is trying to protect his pilot, but I’ll have him in a box later this morning.”

  Payton watched Mara pour. “If he were yours, you’d protect him.”

  She sneered. “If he were mine, he wouldn’t’ve been in that helo. He didn’t have the experience to fly that mission. If we’d had an ace pilot, Devan would be alive, and the team would be celebrating a victory right now and packing up to come home.”

  Payton stood, picked up the glass, and walked to the window. “When do they leave Vaziani?”

  Mara sighed. “In a few hours. They arrive here tomorrow afternoon.”

  Payton knocked back her drink in one gulp and stood. “I’ll get my team working to intercept any chatter.” She plodded heavily to the door. “I’ll talk to Vincent. He’s Alex’s number two and almost as good. Maybe he can get us into the PD network in Makhachkala, if they even have one, and see what they have regarding the ambush, and more importantly, Devan.”

  “Thank you.”

  Payton smiled. “Well, maybe I can do something to improve our desk jockey rep.” She winked at Mara and pulled open the door and turned when Mara called out.

  “You’re one of the good ones, Director. Thank you.”

  “Go home and get some rest, Colonel. You look like shit.” The door shut, and Payton didn’t see the thin sad smile that crossed Mara’s face.

  The team sat in silent reverence and watched as Lena carefully packed Devan’s rucksack. They’d had to watch Devan do the same two years prior when Operations Sergeant Carey Moore had been killed during their mission in Charikar. However, this time was different, much different.

  The Charikar mission had been part of a larger sanctioned operation. Carey’s body had been returned home in the belly of a C-17 to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The aluminum, flag-draped transfer case that held his body was met by a carry team, who transferred his body to a waiting military hearse in a solemn ceremony known as a dignified transfer ceremony. He was then driven to the nearby Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center, where his body was officially identified, prepared, and dressed in full military dress uniform. His final mission was being flown to his hometown for a full military funeral.

  For Devan, there would be no flight home, no dignified transfer ceremony, no admission of the mission, no acknowledgment of her sacrifice. She would officially be listed as MIA in a journal, used too often to ever get dusty, and locked away in a filing cabinet in the Pentagon. For Devan, there would be no hero’s welcome home, no funeral with a bugler mournfully playing taps to honor her service and sacrifice.

  The rucksack that Lena reverently packed would be returned to her equipment cage at Fort Meade, locked away and the key given to the colonel. It would make it easy for the military since Devan never listed anyone as next of kin. But she did have family. She had the men and women in this room, the soldiers who had proudly fought beside her, soldiers whose lives she’d saved, and even a time or two had saved hers. The military would not acknowledge her life, her death―her sacrifice―but by God, they would. They would never forget.

  Chapter Eight

  Payton and Mara stood solemnly on the tarmac as the helo kicked up dust as it landed. Anyone could see the desolation on the returning soldiers’ faces. They shouldered their rucksacks and trudged across the blacktop. Alex stopped on the tarmac, glowered at Mara and Payton, then turned away and disappeared into the dark hollow hangar.

  Payton turned her head slightly, spoke quietly. “She just needs time.”

  Mara’s shoulders tightened. “Yeah. Time and my head on a platter.”

  Lena Taylor hefted two rucksacks, one on each shoulder, and strode warily toward Mara and Payton.

  Mara stepped forward to meet her. “Sergeant Taylor.”

  Lena saluted the colonel and snapped a nod toward Payton. “Ma’am.”

  “At ease, soldier.” Mara reached for the rucksack hanging heavily on her right shoulder.

  Lena took a step back. She wasn’t ready to relinquish her hold on what remained of her captain and friend. “I can take this to Captain Conner’s cage, ma’am.”

  Mara smiled sadly and pulled the rucksack off her shoulder. It was heavy, but with little effort, she slung it over her own shoulder. “She was mine as well, Sergeant.”

  Lena swallowed hard as tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t trust her voice, so she simply nodded. She studied Mara’s eyes and noticed the weariness, the pain that mirrored hers. She snapped to attention and saluted a final time. After Mara returned the salute, Lena turned and walked silently into the hangar.

  They’d returned to Mara’s office, and Mara was digging the bottle of Scotch from the bottom drawer of her desk when sounds of a commotion filtered in from the outer office. Mara’s assistant and all-round efficient guardian of her office rushed in on the heels of Alex. “Colonel, I’m so sorry.”

  Mara raised a hand. “It’s fine, Sergeant.”

  Maggie gave Alex a scowling look before she stepped out and closed the door.

  Payton stood and turned to her intelligence analyst. “Alex, this is highly inappropriate.”

  Alex was livid, she couldn’t care less about protocol. She charged to Mara’s desk. “You just left her there.”

  Mara looked up at her former lieutenant, at her own daughter. “There was no choice. I couldn’t risk losing the rest of the team.”

  Alex threw her hands in the air. “Oh, I see. You can risk losing the entire team to rescue a blown CIA agent, but not to rescue one of us? One of your own? What if it had been me that fell out of that helo, Mom? I supposed you’d’ve just left me to rot there like you did Devan.”

  Payton grasped Alex’s arm. “Alex, that’s enough.”

  She jerked her arm away. “No. It will never be enough. You just abandoned her. Left her there to die. You might as well have put a bullet in her head yourself.”

  To Payton’s shock, Mara sat quietly and took the beratement. However, she’d had enough. As a former captain under the colonel’s command, she understood too well the price the colonel was paying. She’d stood beside her during the mission, saw the devastated look on her face.

  She whirled on Alex with scarcely constrained anger, regarded Alex with a cold dangerous look. “Stand down, Lieutenant. Now.”

  The order appeared to penetrate Alex’s
indignant rage. She stormed across the room and slammed the door so fervently on the way out, a framed photo of Mara and the president fell from the wall and shattered.

  Mara couldn’t look at Payton. It was rare that she felt so vulnerable, so naked and raw. She pulled the Scotch and two glasses from the bottom drawer of her desk and poured them both a drink. She slid one across the desk to Payton, then picked up her glass and drank it down in a single gulp and poured another. “This is becoming a habit.” She regarded the nearly empty bottle. “Brought this in a couple of weeks ago.”

  “The next one’s on me since I’ve poured half of that one down my gullet.” Payton stood and walked to the window. “She’s devastated, as are we all. She lost her best friend a few days ago, now Devan. Give her some time. She’ll come around.”

  Mara moved to stand beside Payton. “Do you agree with her? Do you think I would leave Alex stranded?”

  Payton looked out the window. “Of course not. This wasn’t your call. As much as you would like to think you were calling the shots on this mission, you weren’t.”

  She turned her back to the window so she could see Mara’s face. “The director of the CIA would turn and walk away without a second thought if his son or daughter were in that same situation. It’s only one of the reasons I left the agency. I can’t stomach that kind of mentality, that officers, soldiers, innocent citizens are disposable as long as the mission is for some greater good. In my opinion, the only reason the CIA set this mission up to rescue Altman was because he’s weak, and they knew he’d spill his guts if he were captured. If he were a stronger man, he’d been left on his own. Of that I have no doubt.”

  Mara swiped a tear away. “You were right. It was a mistake to put them together again.”

  “You can’t second-guess yourself.”

  Mara watched Alex storm across the exercise yard on the way to the parking lot. “Alex is no longer a soldier. She doesn’t remember the constraints we have to work under when running these off-book missions.”

  “She is, will always be a soldier. She’s been on several missions since joining the ICC, and this one won’t be her last.”

  “My heart would shatter if anything ever happened to her.” Mara stole a glance at Payton. “You’ll keep her safe, won’t you?”

  Payton smiled and turned to Mara. “She’s mine, too, remember.”

  Teona eyed the blood smeared on the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling. Splotches of what she could only guess was human tissue stuck in a clump to the wall. As a nurse, she’d seen bodies ravaged with disease and injury. It never failed to surprise her what humans could do to one another.

  Her gazed stopped at the ragged hole in the wall where her phone once hung. Her nerves were ravaged. The police spent hours going through the adjacent apartment. Luckily, apart from the hole in the wall, all the destruction had been in Christopher’s apartment.

  They had drilled her about the shooting, the dead men littering the house and the yard, but she’d played it cool and claimed she’d been awakened by the noise, and when she’d heard the gunfire, she had hidden in the tub, where they found her until it was over.

  Christopher had taught her well in the skill of deception. Had he been associated with the men who had attacked or the ones who had been attacked? She wondered if he was okay but didn’t have time to dwell on Christopher or his secret deeds. She had to get the mess cleaned up before she reported for a twelve-hour shift at work, or she knew the smell would be intolerable.

  Payton watched intently as Alex’s second-in-command, Vincent Harrell, a thirty-year-old intelligence analyst, studied the information from the initial data dump.

  She leaned over his broad shoulder, could smell the light scent of soap on his neck. “Anything of value?”

  He didn’t dare move. He was terrified if he turned his head, he’d smack his face into the side of Payton’s cheek. “Some odd emails, nothing specific. Everything seems to be working. I’m just trying to figure out this program. I had no idea she was working on something like this.”

  “That’s why it’s called a classified project.” She stood and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I trust you’ll figure it out soon. Any chatter on those other channels we aren’t supposed to be poking around in?”

  He spoke in a whisper. “There’s nothing on the police bands, and we never had a line into the rebel group. I’ve got an auto transcription program listening in on the chatter and programmed in the keywords you gave me. I’ll keep checking it throughout the day.”

  She turned and called back over her shoulder, “Call me when you find something.”

  Teona was exhausted. She’d spent a long day at work tending to a little boy who’d had his leg ripped off in a farming accident. She’d cleaned most of the blood and guts out of the house the previous day, but there was still the coppery odor of blood mixed with the smell of bleach.

  Even after two moppings, the linoleum floor in the foyer still retained a pink cast. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a bottle of industrial cleaner used at the hospital to clean up bio-spills. She could be fired for stealing the bottle, but it was a risk she was willing to take to get the house back in order. She didn’t want to think of the germs those assailants had brought into her house.

  Teona wiped blood from the doorknob to the adjacent apartment. She opened it to clean the other side and noticed bloody drag marks on the floor. She froze and listened through the pounding beat in her chest. She’d mopped the floor the previous day; this was new and looked fresh. She cautiously stepped inside, stopped, and heard a low painful moan come from within the bedroom.

  She stepped gingerly toward the bedroom door and winced when the floor creaked. Another moan. She hesitantly walked to the bedroom door and saw a soldier on the bed.

  “Help me. Phone.”

  Teona recognized the soldier. It was the nice one, the one who’d led her back to the apartment and ordered one of her men to tend to the wound on her leg. “You broke phone.”

  “Call home.”

  Teona stepped into the room. “No phone.”

  Devan used all her remaining strength to reach her hand out. “Please help me.”

  Jacob sat alone in the interrogation room. He stared straight ahead and refused to show any hint of nervousness. He’d done his job, got the intel on the rebel militant group. Yep, he was good. Wasn’t his fault the Army had sent some weak woman to pull him out of Russia.

  From the other side of the observation window, Assistant Director of Foreign Intelligence Fredrick Vaughn stood watching Jacob. At five-foot-three, Vaughn’s balding head barely cleared Payton’s shoulders. But what he lacked in height, he compensated with attitude. “Ready? I’m going to rip his dick off and shove it down his throat.”

  Payton just closed her eyes and took a breath. “After you, A.D. Vaughn.”

  Vaughn stormed into the room and dropped a thick notebook on the table. “Mr. Altman, I’m Assistant Director of Foreign Intelligence Fredrick Vaughn, and this is ICC Operations Director Payton Cardina.” He pulled out a metal chair, sat, and closed his hands over the notebook. “Do you understand why you’re here?”

  Payton took a seat and studied Jacob Altman’s face. He leaned back in his chair nonchalantly, but his gaze darted between her and Vaughn. They’d been in the room less than a minute, and he’d already glanced toward the mirrored observation window twice. He was trying hard to contain it, but he was nervous.

  Altman sucked on a toothpick, arms crossed over his chest. “No, I do not.” He sat up and matched Vaughn’s posture. “I do know that I spent the last year in a shithole country trying to gather intel on a rebel group you have a hard-on for. In the last few days, I’ve been shot at, dragged halfway across the world, and now I’m locked in this fucking room being interrogated by a dwarf.”

  Payton bit the inside of her lip and swallowed a smile. She slid a bottle of water across the table and smiled at him. “Mr. Altman, please believe me when I say everyone at the CI
A, the NSA, and the ICC greatly appreciate the invaluable work you did in Moscow.” She lifted her hands, palms up. “We’re just very concerned about what happened in Makhachkala and attempting to determine what went wrong.”

  The frown on his face softened a bit, but he was unwavering with his answer. “I wasn’t followed.”

  Payton nodded. “Where’s your friend Christopher?”

  He threw his hands in the air. “How the fuck do I know? He’s not a friend.”

  Fredrick stood and leaned over the table. “He was your asset. It’s your fucking job to know who you’re working with.”

  “He was not an asset. He was someone I met at a coffeehouse.” He looked at Payton. “I’m not saying another word until he’s gone.” He leaned over the table and snarled at Vaughn. “Beat it.”

  “Fuck you, Altman. You do not give me orders.”

  Payton stood and dropped a hand on Vaughn’s shoulder. “Can we step outside for a moment?”

  Vaughn grabbed his notebook and stormed out. Payton tossed a smile Altman’s way as she turned toward the door. “I’ll be back in a moment, Mr. Altman.”

  When the door closed behind her, Payton turned to Vaughn. “You obviously don’t have a lot of experience interviewing people, so I’ll make this easy for you.” She pointed to the observation room. “You’re going to go in there and watch, take notes, or diddle with yourself for all I care, and I’m going back in there to get the answers we need.”

  Vaughn opened his mouth to speak, but Payton cut him off. “We lost a good soldier on this mission, a mission you’ll never acknowledge ever took place. We’re going to do this my way, or I’ll go over your head.” She stood close so he had to look up at her and flashed a smile. “Which won’t be difficult to do.”

  Mouth open in shock, he gawked at Payton. “You ICC people are all alike. You think you’re so superior.” He swept around and slammed into observation to watch.

  Payton took a moment to gather her thoughts, then re-entered the interview room. “Thank you for your patience.” She sat in the seat left vacant by Vaughn. “Mr. Altman, I’m not accusing you of anything. My interest here is simple. I need to discover how the rebels found you.” She twisted the cap of her bottle of water and took a drink. She played to his sense of superiority. “Maybe they were able to tail you, but I suspect not. You don’t appear to be someone who’s easily fooled.”