“I was thrown some tasks at the end of summer.” Dan pushed his tray to the side. Fixed Cade with an earnest look. “Apparently Whipper has no use for me now. The old bull’s been put out to pasture … again.”
Cade paused between bites. “There’s nothing for you to do in the city?”
“Last thing I want is to be back in a big city.”
“It’s still manageable,” Cade said. “Has an Old West feel to it.”
“Better than Wild West,” Dan said. “To keep busy, I’m going to start volunteering at the base range. Put my NRA certification to good use.”
Cade said, “I did some shooting over there.” He downed the coffee in his mug and started sopping up syrup with the last of his pancakes. Looking up, he went on, “Somehow our paths didn’t cross. Maybe I’ll see you there in the future.”
“Doubtful,” Dan said. “I think I may just load up the Subaru and go find me a cabin up in the Rockies. Something small near a glacially fed lake. Stock my cupboards up real nice and ride summer out. Come winter I’ll kill as many of those dead things as I can.” He rose and snatched up his tray. “Wash, rinse … repeat until I can’t no more.”
Cade watched the man turn to walk away. He said, “Until we meet again, Dan.”
Looking over his shoulder, Dan said, “Stay frosty out there, young fella.”
Chapter 50
Dan’s parting words stayed with Cade as he drove the short distance to the Mission Support building. His destination, the 21st Space Wing Tactical Operations Center, was tucked away somewhere inside the sprawling multi-story glass-and-steel building.
Save for the trio of desert-tan Humvees ringing President Clay’s hulking MV-22 Osprey—Marine One—the parking lot east of Building 350 held nothing but American-made SUVs and lifted 4x4 pickups.
Team vehicles, Cade thought as he parked next to a jacked-up Ford Expedition at least a foot taller than the stock Tahoe. The sword-wielding half-man, half-Pegasus decal on the rear window of the matte-black SUV told him it belonged to one of the Night Stalkers.
“Looks like we have ourselves a joint briefing,” he said aloud to himself. “You were right, Dan. Something big is going down.”
Before locking the borrowed rig, Cade stowed his M4 in the backseat area and left the spare mags in the center console.
The guard at Building 350’s north entrance checked Cade’s credentials against a list. Amazed he was not relieved of his sidearm and dagger, and that there was no magnetometer in play, he asked the airman for directions to the TOC.
Two levels underground, the air in the corridor leading to a set of double doors labeled 21 SW Tactical Operations Center was several degrees colder than that outside.
Gooseflesh pricking on his arms, Cade rapped on the door and waited.
He stood there for a long ten-count before a mountain of a man wearing off-the-shelf 5.11 pants and a Condor polo emerged through the door. The man’s attire notwithstanding, the wraparound sunglasses and flesh-colored earbud all but identified him as Secret Service—one of the President’s detail, to be specific.
Cade’s credentials were checked again, only this time he was relieved of his Glock and Gerber and given a wand-check by the man who failed to identify himself or even utter more words than necessary to get Cade to comply with his demands.
Feeling a bit naked without at least a pistol, Cade brushed past the unsmiling “Mountain” and stopped just inside the door. Nearby stood three more of President Clay’s detail. They were all wearing navy windbreakers, the bulges of personal defense weapons presenting if you knew where to look.
The air inside the tall-ceilinged, windowless room was a bit warmer than that in the hall. It smelled of stale sweat mixed with the faint, chemical odor of hot electrical components.
Peering past the detail, Cade saw a wall of monitors and at least a dozen 21st Space Wing personnel at their respective workstations. Each station had its own computer monitor, keyboard, and pointing device. Phones, some with their red lights blinking, sat between every other station.
President Clay was sitting in a leather chair to his left and mostly obscured by her detail.
Standing at the front of the room, arms crossed and surveying the assembled aviators and shooters, was an Air Force major general Cade had never seen before. Though the two-star was above average height, the top of his head fell a full foot short of the bottom bezel of the nearest flat-panel wall-mounted monitor.
Sitting on a leather chair to the two-star’s right, cigar clenched between his teeth, USSOCOM commander Don “Smokey” Blake seemed uninterested in the chatter going on all around him.
As Cade ventured into the packed room, he caught sight of the Pale Riders, minus Axe, who he knew had winged back to the U.K. weeks ago.
Panning about the room, he saw Ari, Haynes, and Skipper sitting behind a rectangular table, their attention focused solely on the trio of three-ring binders opened up before them.
Moving on, he spied three shooters whom he recognized from his time running ops in Africa with the 5th Special Forces Group. Lounging on a chair behind the larger of the three Green Berets was Captain Javier “Low Rider” Lopez. Seeing that he’d been made by his friend and fellow Delta operator, Lopez leaned forward, extended the middle finger on his left hand and feigned itching his nose with it.
Smiling at the covert bird flip, Cade hooked a thumb at Cross and Griff.
Obviously playing dumb, Lopez furrowed his brow and shrugged.
Cade pointed and mouthed, “Why aren’t you over there with them?”
Lopez pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then used those same fingers to direct Cade’s attention to the pair of Pale Riders.
When Cade reacquired Cross and Griff, the blond-haired operator was holding some kind of document above his head and using it to wave Cade over.
Still wondering why the team was split up, Cade crossed the room and took a seat beside Griff.
Regarding the redheaded SEAL, he said, “What’s up?”
“You’re up,” Griff responded.
Cross flopped the manila envelope on the table in front of Cade.
The words Top Secret — Eyes Only and Operation Clean Slate were splashed across the envelope. It was sealed with a length of red tape.
The moment Cade read the words, it dawned on him that Lopez was leading a team that included the 5th Group shooters.
The brass looked as if they were about to begin what would likely be a lengthy PowerPoint presentation.
Cade’s eyes were drawn to the sealed document. He could wait no longer. Besides, nothing was holding him back. So he broke the seal and removed the contents.
In addition to the cover sheet confirming what Cade already knew—he would be leading the Pale Riders on Operation Clean Slate—there was a map of Portland, Oregon and photos of places he knew all too well.
As the Air Force two-star was joined by an Army major carrying a remote control, a man Cade hadn’t seen since going through Q-Course with him at Fort Bragg pulled up a chair next to him and sat down.
“Natanumo,” Cade said, clapping the big Fijian American on his muscular back. “Been a long time.”
“After Robin Sage I went on to 7th Group. We saw tons of action running ops out of Bagram. I was in Germany on Z-Day. Place was a shit sandwich. Didn’t make it back to Carson until late August.”
“Well, Nat, I’m glad you and I are going downrange together. Welcome to the Pale Riders.”
The major general was about to begin the briefing, so Cade quickly introduced Fui “Nat” Natanumo to Cross and Griff and then turned his eyes to the display above the Air Force two-star.
Chapter 51
After leaving the BERR building empty-handed, Raven had paid a visit to Lola’s. Now, sitting on a bus bench a block south of Colorado Springs only government-sanctioned tattoo shop, she was thumbing through the manual to the Nikon D90 in the camera bag on the bench next to her.
The tattoo shop was occupying a space o
n the corner of Tejon and Moreno formerly home to Missing Link Motorcycles. Facing west on Tejon, the recessed entry to the ground-level storefront was an inky black hole in the building’s two-story brick facade.
Above the door was a sign bearing the former store’s name and its motorcycle-riding Cro-Magnon mascot. Tattoos ran up and down the arms and legs of the caveman. Whether the shop’s new owners were responsible, Raven had no clue. Someone had also altered the sign so that it now read Missing Link Tattoo.
Sun warm on her face and forearms, Raven set the manual aside and removed the digital camera from the bag. Next, she swapped out the stock lens for a telephoto item nearly the length of her forearm.
Flicking the power switch on the top-mounted dial to On, Raven felt a slight tremor in the camera body as its screen flared to life. As Lola had promised, the camera’s battery held a full charge and its installed SD memory card was empty.
She hefted the camera to her eye and trained the lens on the tattoo shop. Even with the lens magnification dialed all the way in, she could only see the front door and a small slice of the sidewalk out front.
Policing up her stuff, Raven walked the beach cruiser a half block south and set up shop on an outdoor table on the sidewalk in front of a coffee shop shuttered long ago.
When Raven again framed Missing Link Tattoo in the viewfinder, she was able to see the shop’s front door as well as the majority of the sidewalks and streets coming in from all four directions.
As she settled in to wait for the late risers to open up the shop, she heard a car horn sound far away to the south. Then, drifting in from the north, well beyond the wall, she detected the soft purr of a helicopter.
In the trees directly overhead, birds called back and forth, their sweet song foreign to her after a long fall and winter spent mostly inside.
Now and again she caught snippets of news being delivered by the Town Crier, positioned on a corner near the Pioneers Museum, a full three blocks away.
***
Ten minutes into her wait, Raven was struck by the fact that every once in awhile, when the wind kicked up from the south, she caught the sweet scent of colorful wildflowers growing in a planter nearby. It was the first time in a long time she could remember not being able to detect the stink of death so prevalent since that last Saturday in July when her world changed forever.
***
The first person to arrive in front of Missing Link did so at a quarter to two, riding a woman’s ten-speed, and caught Raven completely by surprise.
By the time Raven had powered on the Nikon, trained it on the sunlight-dappled doorway, and snapped a dozen photos, she knew three things for sure: The pixie-like person working a key in the padlock on the door was female, she was short and thin, and she was of Asian ancestry.
Once the woman—or girl, Raven couldn’t be sure—had walked her bike inside the store and closed the door, Raven confirmed her first impressions with a quick review of the shot footage.
Two more people on bikes showed up at a quarter past two. “Fashionably late” was what Sasha called it. “It’s what important people do to set themselves apart from the common man” was how she had framed it.
All of which led Raven to believe the pair were the tattooers.
The photos she had shot of the pair arriving and dismounting their mountain bikes were way better than those of the person first to arrive. The crisp images showed that both riders were of Asian descent and likely in their twenties or early thirties. Unlike the person who’d opened the shop, these two sported a plethora of visible tattoos. One man had what looked to be a king cobra coiled around his neck, with the serpent’s hood dominating one cheek and its long, forked tongue encircling one eye. Snake was well-muscled and wore his dark hair high-and-tight, like her dad.
Both men sported tight leather pants that looked like they came off the motorcycle shop’s racks.
The second man’s taste in tattoos centered mainly around things found at sea: multi-masted sailing ships, ornate anchors, and bare-chested mermaids. His dark hair was slicked back and glistened in the sun. A cruel mouth was framed by a neatly trimmed goatee. Both ear lobes sagged under the weight of multiple gold hoop-earrings.
After pausing in the doorway and looking down the street in the direction he’d come from, the wannabe pirate followed Snake into the shop.
Over the next forty-five minutes the shop attracted a handful of people. Most were already tatted up. All but two were Caucasians, the exceptions being Daymon and Tran—arriving together right on time.
At three sharp, her head swimming with questions, Raven packed up her camera, mounted the Schwinn, and pedaled off southbound.
In the hour since the briefing concluded, Cade had gotten a lot done. During the drive over from the Mission Support building, with call signs and tanker rendezvous times and situation reports of what to expect on the ground in his old hometown all competing for attention in his head, he had composed the body of the letter in the sealed envelope on the table before him.
Over the years he’d penned his share of death letters. Until now every one of the envelopes he stuffed those letters into were addressed to Brook.
The Sharpie seeming to weigh a ton in his hand, he wrote his daughter’s name across the front of the envelope.
The Bunker was quiet, the air still and cool; nevertheless, as the pen’s felt tip squeaked against paper, he felt his neck go hot.
All of the members of the various teams sharing this space—Pale Riders included—had already donned their body armor, gunned up, inventoried their rucks, and rallied to the flight line.
Alone with his thoughts, Cade rose and made his way to the Pale Riders’ cage. He put the letter on a shelf in his partition and closed the door.
After ushering the escaped emotion back into the imaginary lockbox in his head, Cade hefted his ruck, slung the suppressed M4 over one shoulder, and set off to rejoin his team.
Chapter 52
Hurry up and wait.
Cade had heard the pejorative early on in his career. Maybe even as early as basic training.
The four words described succinctly what to expect as a cog among many in the Big Green Machine.
Today was no different. Someone down the line was having a problem getting one of the refueling birds off the ground.
Emerging from the hangar housing the Bunker, Cade immediately got an eyeful of the dozen or so helicopters that would take four different Special Forces teams into the fray. Stretching away to the east from the open hangar doors, the assembled machines represented the newest technology available before Omega brought the entire world to a grinding halt.
Shooters and aviators huddling in the shadow of a Stealth Chinook were busy reading briefing handouts and inspecting their weapons one last time.
Aviation techs and crew chiefs up and down the line were using the downtime to recheck avionics and square their birds away for the long flights ahead of them.
As Cade reached the Ghost Hawk—fourth from the head of the line—Nat was just finishing a set of pushups.
Ari, Haynes, Cross, and Griff were embroiled in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em. Where they got the table and set of folding chairs, Cade hadn’t a clue.
Wearing a flight helmet, with a spray bottle full of blue liquid in one hand, towel in the other, Skipper was polishing Jedi One’s cockpit glass.
Approaching Nat, who was now standing, Cade said, “Don’t you Fijians ever get tired of working out?”
“Naw, Wyatt,” Nat replied, flexing one arm for effect. “One can never take a day off.” He paused and a thoughtful look fell on his face. “Except leg days,” he went on. “It’s OK to skip those once in awhile.”
Cade was about to make a crack about tattoos and Pacific Islanders’ penchant for covering their bodies with them, when, out of the blue, Skipper said, “It’s on, Riders. Time to kick the tires and light the fires.”
Jumping up from the card table, Ari said, “Code name, Irene. I repeat … code na
me, Irene.”
Shooting the aviator a skeptical look, Cade said, “That wasn’t in the brief. Gotta be another one of your Black Hawk down references, right?”
“Bingo!” Skipper said, spinning a finger in the air. “We are go for green.”
Passing by Cade, Ari said, “Nothing gets by you, Wyatt. Time to mount up.”
Cross and Griff folded the table and chairs and carted them over to the hangar.
Ari and Haynes boarded the Ghost Hawk and immediately busied themselves with getting her turbines fired.
Just as the rotors started spinning, the team members were strapping in.
Five minutes after the call to “go” came through, all four flights were lifting into the air.
Crows loitering atop the hangars squawked their displeasure and, in an explosion of black feather, took flight en masse.
To keep anyone watching from getting an idea of the mission’s true objectives, the helicopters all thundered off in the same southeasterly heading.
As silence fell over the lonely corner of Peterson, four miles away the gaggle of noisy aircraft was slowly splintering, each individual flight adopting the heading that would see it to the assigned objective.
Antlers Hotel
When Raven returned from her mission, she stowed the Schwinn behind some bushes and entered the Antlers through the front doors. As she paused to let her eyes adjust to the dim environs, Calvin Stephens, a sixty-something, former 20th Group paratrooper and retired Alabama cop, was manning the security desk in place of Eve.
“How’s huntin’ today, little lady?” The man’s soft Southern drawl was easy on the ears. It didn’t tend to echo around the lobby like Eve’s shrill voice.
Since late February, when Raven had met this particular volunteer, her fondness for him had grown. Though she was technically still a kid, he treated her as an equal, never probing or prying for information she didn’t feel like sharing readily. While she’d never asked if he knew of her dad, she suspected, having been in the Special Forces himself, Calvin had already put two and two together. She also liked that once the soft-spoken man initiated conversation, it was always left to her to dictate where it went. Small talk in passing or five-minute chat—Calvin always went with the flow. Never once had he been condescending or tried to talk over her. In a way, she wished more adults—and quite a few of the younger people she knew—would learn something from the man.
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