by Tal Bauer
Around the bar, wooden chairs squeaked across the floor, agents readying to stand, reaching for their hips.
Mother grinned, almost sadly, one corner of her mouth quirking up as she snuffed out her cigarette in a glass dish. “This isn’t that kind of story,” she said. “No raging gun battles. No shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. This one is just about hard choices and doing things for the ones we love.”
Silence. No one moved in the bar.
“So I’m going to turn myself in,” Mother said softly. “And I’m going to turn in all my girls, too. Get them off the streets.”
“Who is killing them? Who is hunting them?”
“Rival mob boss. Eastern European. He moved into Chicago and he’s been moving his way out from the city. Gabriela started counterfeiting and ran into turf he’d claimed as his own. He took offense and tracked down her friends. Now he’s coming after me. It’s all tangled up out here, you see.” She looked down, squinting. “He’s coming after girls who are mine.”
“You ran your girls as prostitutes?”
“Don’t judge.” Mother pulled out another cigarette, lighting it as she spoke. “Until you’ve been where they’ve been and have no other choices than what they had, don’t judge.”
“I’m the last one to judge on bad choices made with no options.”
She chuckled, smoke falling from her chapped lips. “I’ll give you everything about these guys. Who they are. Where they are. What they’re up to. Who they’re working with.”
Somewhere across the bar, a glass dropped, shattering on the ground. One of the undercover agents at the table cursed, and another kicked him.
Mother smiled. “One thing. You know my girls are running fake identities.” Ethan nodded.
“I’m going to tell you they’re all underage.”
His breath punched from his lungs as his jaw dropped. “You’re going to admit to running an underage prostitution ring? You realize you’ll be in jail for the rest of your life?”
She shrugged, taking another drag. “Sure I will.” Exhale. “But they’ll be taken into protective custody instead of jail. Treated, instead of incarcerated. Given new lives, instead of punished for their former ones. And they won’t be in danger of being killed anymore.”
Ethan sagged. “They’re not underage, are they?”
“You guys really going to go through the trouble of trying to prove they’re not? Or you just gonna take care of them? Especially when they cooperate so nicely with you all?”
He turned away from her and back toward the bar. Gripped the wooden edge until his fingers ached. “Hey,” he grunted to the agent working the bar. “Bring us those beers.”
The undercover agent glowered at him but stomped off when Ethan glared right back. He slid two bottles down the bar top and crossed his arms, no longer pretending not to watch.
Ethan unscrewed both tops and passed one to Mother. She smiled her thanks, raising her beer in a toast.
“You’re unconventional. I like that,” she said after she’d drunk. “I bet that’s why you and he fit so well together.”
“Who?”
“President Spiers. Your boyfriend.” She winked as Ethan choked on his next swallow. “He’s unconventional, too. That’s why I voted for him.”
He finally chuckled, sliding his beer bottle back and forth across the wood grain. “You’re willing to go down for this? They’re going to throw the book at you. It won’t be good.”
“No, it won’t be.” Another drag, and she tapped the ashes off into the dish. “I’ve done enough, though, to earn the time. I’ll plead guilty. And this is what you do when you love the hard way. Make those kinds of choices that no one else can make.” Smoke wafted from her lips as she spoke. “You understand.”
“I do.”
She held out her beer bottle for another clink of the longnecks. “What do you say we finish these beers and then you can have those men over in that booth arrest me?” She grinned around her cigarette. They both drank, leaning against the bar top side by side.
“You’re a good man, Reichenbach,” she finally said, draining the last of her beer. “It’s why he loves you.”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he set their bottles on the bar and fished out a twenty, leaving it for the bar owner when he returned. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. This is the way it’s gonna go. This is the way they’re all saved.” Sighing, she straightened and looked him dead in the eyes. “Thank you for what you did with Gabi.” She turned to the FBI agents rising from the corner booth. “Howdy, boys. Ready?”
He stepped back while they read her rights and placed the cuffs on her wrists. She didn’t resist, and when they walked her toward the door, she sent one last smile Ethan’s way. “Keep fighting the good fight. Follow your own path.”
He watched through the windows as she was loaded into the van and the last of her cigarette fell to ash and whispering smoke on the edge of the glass dish.
22
White House
The invasion kicked off at precisely eleven PM Washington DC time, six AM in Iraq.
US paratroopers jumped into Iraq from Turkey and Jordan and Russian troopers from Georgia and Azerbaijan in the predawn darkness. Thousands of troopers filled the sky and swarmed on the ground, meeting up before moving across the desert and making the first strike of the invasion. Overhead, air strikes and artillery paved the way for ground forces moving in.
In the Situation Room, adrenaline made the air heavy, stinking with tension and sweat. Jack watched everything on the monitors from the head of the table. His generals and their aides buzzed, answering phones and fielding messages and dispatches from the invasion, working up the chain. A constant hum and a frisson thrummed the air. Jack fiddled with the watch Ethan had given him, running his fingers over the face and around the band.
Just after midnight, General Bradford took a call on a cell phone passed by one of his attachés. He grunted into the phone and then sighed, long and low. His head fell forward. Jack’s gaze flicked to him and held.
Bradford passed the phone back to his aide. He turned to Jack. “Mr. President, we have our first confirmed K-I-A.”
Jack’s blood froze. Everything within him stopped, his whole body turning to ice in an instant as the world slammed to a screeching halt.
He knew this would happen. Knew they would lose soldiers, lose good people in this fight. He’d known from the second he had committed to this course that this exact moment would happen. He could push the dread off for days, wrap himself up in the arguments that they were doing this all for the right reasons. They had the moral high ground. They had the whole world backing them up, a multinational coalition that spanned the globe and the blessings of the UN. This was the right and just thing to do, for so many.
But he couldn’t quite silence the young man inside of him who had lost his wife in the war all those years ago. Or the older man who had buried Ethan in Arlington, supposedly due to the Caliphate’s attack in Ethiopia.
Another family was going to feel like that now. Another family was going to have their heart ripped out, and have to accept a folded flag.
Dread had consumed him since Ethan had left and the reality of what they were about to do sank down upon him again. Without Ethan’s bulwark, that heavy weight was hovering, threatening to crash down upon him.
“Who?” Jack breathed.
“Private Kevin Rodriguez. 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg. Infantry. Nineteen years old. His family lives in Los Angeles.”
Jack closed his eyes. He’d be writing letters soon, letters to the families of fallen soldiers. The first one would go to California.
“It’s being released to the media in a few hours.”
“Thank you, General. Lawrence―” He turned to his chief of staff. “Have Pete put a statement together for the media.” The soldier’s name would be held back until the family was notified, but they still needed to say something. He needed to say something, for his
own sanity and for his soul.
Swallowing, he pushed himself to his feet. Pressed his hands to the tabletop. “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He escaped the Situation Room, silent after the general’s announcement. The heavy door slammed shut behind him and he walked away, heading down the hall to the West Wing’s ground-floor lobby. Mostly used by journalists and the press pool, the lobby was empty after midnight, still in the dead hours. He was alone, save for his Secret Service shadows hanging back out of sight.
He sank into one of the stuffed blue chairs beneath a picture of President Kennedy and pinched the bridge of his nose. Across from him, a bronze sculpture of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima rested atop a hand-carved wooden dresser from Lincoln’s presidency. History, so much history, and men who had come before him.
Who had made excruciating decisions and had to live with them. How? How had they gotten through?
His hands fumbled in his pockets, searching for his cell phone. The phone shook as he pulled it out, and he realized it wasn’t the phone. It was him. He was trembling. He dialed, punching in Ethan’s number as he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees.
“Jack?” Ethan picked up on the first ring. “Everything all right?”
“Hey, love.” Jack’s throat seized. He licked his lips, blinking fast as his eyes blurred.
“Hey. How’s it going? I’ve got the news on. Not much is being reported right now, aside from that it’s started.”
He nodded, as if Ethan could see him. Finally cleared his throat. “So far, the invasion is going well. According to plan.” He sniffed, one hand rubbing down his face, covering his mouth. “We just had our first K-I-A,” he whispered.
Silence. “Jack. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I know how this hits you.”
Nodding, again. He couldn’t speak, not just yet. And he was losing the battle against his blurring eyes, against the tears that threatened to fall. One cascaded down his cheek. He wiped it away. “I’ve got to write a letter to his family. I remember getting mine. I hated it so much. So trite. So… cold.” He took a slow breath. “There’s going to be more.”
“What can I do? How can I help?”
“Just― Just need to hear your voice.” He cleared his throat. Wiped at his eyes and sniffed again. “Tell me about your day. Thank you for the text telling me you’re alive and everything went well.”
“She turned herself in. Wanted to give herself up in exchange for us protecting her girls.”
“She was a madam, right?”
“Of a sort. But that’s the FBI’s case. Tomorrow, I’m back on counterfeiting. That’s not our mystery to solve.”
“But you did great work. Helped put things together. Connected people, and hopefully more people will be saved out there.”
Ethan was quiet. “Like what you’re doing over there? Connecting the world and putting a stop to those evils? Saving lives?”
Dammit. Jack closed his eyes as his lips quivered.
“Hard choices require hard love. The kind of love that sometimes hurts it runs so deep. You have that kind of love for the world, Jack. And for everybody.” Ethan’s voice had dropped, rougher and deeper. “You are a good man.”
His feet bounced, and another tear slipped down his cheek, but he left it. “Thank you,” he whispered. “If I’m half as good a man as you believe I am, I’ll take that.”
“You’re more, love.”
“I’m a better man with you. With your love.”
“Likewise.”
Down the hall, in the direction of the Situation Room, a shadow moved. Jack squinted, watching it veer toward him. The shape of a man appeared, one of his aides poking his head into the lobby. “Mr. President, phone call for you in the Situation Room. President Puchkov.”
“Gotta go, love. Duty calls.” He stood and nodded to his aide, wiping at his eyes and rubbing his nose as he straightened his tie. Tried to put himself back together and become the president once again.
“Call me anytime. I’m here for you. Always.”
“Thanks.” He sniffed for the last time, exhaling slowly. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
23
Des Moines
When he got in Wednesday morning, Ethan found a Post-It stuck to his computer monitor. See me immediately. Sighing, Ethan grabbed the note and headed to Shepherd’s office.
“You called?” He held the note up, stuck to one finger.
“Shut the door.”
Shepherd was all business, sitting at his desk and waiting for Ethan to take a seat before he spoke. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what you’ve been up to these past few days. I knew Monday morning when the head of the FBI office called me, screaming about how I needed to bench you and strip you of your badge and gun.”
Ethan stayed quiet.
“I wanted to see how this would play out. What you guys would do. You had a real shot at ending this thing.” Shepherd tapped his desktop. “And you did. Well done.”
Stunned, Ethan blinked at his supervisor. “Sir?”
“You refused to take the easy way out, Reichenbach. You kept doing your job. Kept showing up. Kept being an agent.” Shepherd shrugged. “I was wrong about you.”
Ethan’s jaw dropped.
Shepherd cleared his throat. “That FBI head called me back. Said he’s got an opening on his JTTF team and wants to offer it to this office.” He squinted. “You want to restart your career? You probably can’t run an investigation in your own name, but you can do everything else. Run intel and counterintel. Work with the others. Chase terrorists. Go after the big fish again.” One hand waved over his desk and out his windows to the bullpen of agents. “Not be stuck here working financial crimes.”
Stunned, Ethan watched Shepherd carefully, waiting to see if this was all some big joke. If Shepherd was that cruel. Shepherd just blinked at him.
A spot on the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force. That wasn’t just a career restart, it was a career surge. He’d be right in the thick of everything again. Agents on the JTTF shot up the ranks, and they were vanguards for the nation and the world. The front line of law enforcement against terrorists―any terrorists―who wanted to strike.
Long hours. Long days. Perhaps missed weekends. The job would cut into his time with Jack, of that he had no doubt. Would take away from his relationship with Jack.
Was that what he wanted? Where did he want to put his effort? His devotion? Was rebuilding his career really―truly―what he wanted? At the cost of losing time―irreplaceable time―with Jack?
Financial crimes wasn’t sexy, but it was stable. He had his daily hours. His routine. And every Friday, he was on the way to Jack. That, more than anything else, mattered to him.
He licked his lips and cleared his throat before he spoke. “I think,” he said slowly, “there’s a better agent suited to that position.”
Shepherd’s eyebrows rose. “You wanna give this to Becker?”
“He’s a good kid. This is where he wants to grow. And it’s a great opportunity. Becker should get the job, sir.”
“I don’t have another babysitter for you in the office. You’ll be working alone after this.”
Ethan smiled. The rest of his colleagues were older than he was, agents on the way to retirement. No one who needed mentorship, or guidance, or a hand to show them the ropes. He heard what Shepherd said, between his caustic words. “That’s all right. I’m good on my own.”
“All right.” Shepherd tapped his desk again. “I’ll let him know. Oh, and―” He stood, sighing like he was tired and no amount of sleep would help with that. “I’m giving you the rest of the week off. You’re out of vacation, but take this as comp time. You did good on this case. You deserve a few days. I don’t want to see you until Monday.”
Shepherd couldn’t be serious. There had to be a catch. “Sir, do you expect me to remain on recall for the―”
“Get the hell out o
f here, Reichenbach! I expect you to be on the way to the airport soon!”
“Yes, sir.” He hesitated at the door. “Thank you, Shepherd.”
Shepherd waved him away.
Ethan made record time logging out of his workstation and heading out, zooming back to his apartment. He threw some clothes into his duffel, grabbed his cell phone charger, and barreled out the door.
On the way to the airport, his phone rang. It was Becker.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, where are you? I’ve been looking for you.”
“Heading out of town. Shepherd gave me some comp days. I’m on the way to the airport.”
“Shit.” Becker grunted. “Well, I guess I’ll tell you over the phone, then. He just promoted me.” Becker sounded amazed, like he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “He reassigned me to the JTTF. Can you believe that?”
“Congratulations, man. You deserve it. I’m happy for you.”
“Fucking amazing.”
He could hear the smile in Becker’s voice.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to come out for drinks with Ellie and me, but…” Becker trailed off.
“Sorry. On the way to DC.”
“Sure. Yeah. I, uh. I start on Monday. So… I won’t see you at the office anymore.”
Ethan sighed. He’d most likely never see Becker again. Not when Becker made new friends and dove into his job and started dating Ellie for real. “Maybe some other time, Blake.”
“Yeah. I’ll… I’ll see you around, Reichenbach. Stay out of trouble.”
He laughed. “You know me.”
Becker snorted, and the line cut out.
He paid for his ticket to DC at the counter and made his way through security before any media showed up. He waited at the coffee shop, tapping his foot as he sipped his latte and nodded to his federal shadow, who arrived thirty minutes later, wide-eyed and surprised. A fresh cup of coffee was waiting for his shadow at the counter.
Finally, just before boarding began, he pulled out his phone and texted Jack. [Can you talk?]
