by Sarah Black
Gabriel dropped the phone. “That son of a bitch wanted to know if I called you ‘General’ when we were screwing around. I think he was upset about Jennifer. You have stolen the respect and affection of his daughter, John!”
“I don’t give a shit. He’s always pissed off about something.”
“Hey, you know what? I think the Black Stallions are stationed in Sigonella. HC-4.”
“Is that an army squadron?”
“No, navy, and those boys are almost wild enough to be Horse-Lords. Almost. When I had the squadron in northern Italy we did some joint exercises. The new squadron leader of the Black Stallions, I knew that boy when he was a baby pilot, still wet behind the rotors. Dragged his ass out of a hell-hole in….” He stared at John for a moment. “Never mind. Need to know only, General!”
John studied his face. “I’m starting to think there are a lot of stories about you I haven’t heard! Like taking little Iraqi girls up in your chopper. We need to get a couple of beat-up looking backpacks. I can carry my messenger bag with the new suit.”
“Mr. Shakir?”
“It’s too dangerous to ask him to come here. He’s put himself and his family in danger too many times for us. And now the dickheads have terrorized the hotel’s housekeepers and waiters, we need to keep him away from the Regency.”
“You want to keep our luggage here, so the hotel thinks we’re returning?”
“Yes. We only bring with us what we have to keep, like our computers and my new yellow shirt. Leave my razor, but shove my toothbrush into your ditty bag.” He paced the room, then stuck his head out and gestured for his communications officer. She was looking beat, dark smudges under her eyes. “Jen, are you ready to leave Tunisia? Do you have anything critical still in play you need to wrap up?”
She hesitated. “I have a database on a hard drive I would not want to get into the wrong hands. Just a list of contacts, friendlies, as you army guys like to say. It was for me, just until I got to know everyone and memorized names and contacts, but I didn’t wipe it. Amira kept the netbook for me, and she gave it to her mother when she left.”
“Her mother, as in Youssef Shakir’s wife?”
“Yes. If she were found with the list, she could be in trouble. And the women would be in danger. It’s like the old phone trees the wives used during deployments, you know? Everybody had two people to call. If something happened, someone would write a blog post. And then it would be reblogged across the network. We also set up a fail-safe so they could report on attacks and safe houses.” She closed her eyes for a moment, rubbed her hand across her forehead. “This is on me. If I had worked harder to memorize names and addresses, I wouldn’t have needed to write everything down. But the Arabic was hard at first. Maybe I need to take Arabic lessons when we get home.”
“Can you just ask her to destroy it?”
“It’s a file on the hard drive. I’m not sure she would know how to wipe it, and it’s too valuable a piece of electronics for her to destroy. I need to just wipe the memory, and then give it back to her so she can get online, check on Amira. That’s what she was going to use the netbook for, to get e-mails from Amira. She goes around the city to places with free Wi-Fi and checks if there’s been a message.”
“I wanted to get my Kindle to the doctor, and give Youssef some money and any of our computer gear we can’t easily carry with us. We also need to find a couple of backpacks. We’re going to ditch everything, clothes and gear and the computer equipment we can’t carry. Wipe anything that might be a security breach. But I don’t want you out on the streets. You’ve already been picked up by Bahktar once, and he seems to be spinning out of control. You need to stay very far away from anyplace where they can snatch you. I’ll find somebody else to go.”
“I’ve been moving around Tunis for months, General. I think I could probably get to their house with the stuff, just carry it in a basket or something like I was going to market. It’s mostly that people see what they expect to see, you know? So if I’m dressed like a Tunisian woman, that’s what they’ll see.”
“What if Sam went with you?”
She shook her head. “I think he would really stand out. We’re leaving from the Bardo?”
“I certainly hope so.” He studied her small frame. “Have you called your contacts? Let everyone know about the children’s festival tomorrow?”
“We don’t call anymore, General. I tweeted.”
“Did you?” He reached out, gave her ponytail a tug. “Maybe what we need to consider is a disguise.”
“Kim already said he wanted to make me a disguise for tomorrow. Maybe we can give it a test run. If it’s not too girly,” she said.
“Please be careful. I want to see the disguise before you leave, and you will have no more than two hours to complete this mission. I will have to come after you if I don’t see your smiling face in a reasonable time.”
“Yes, General. We posted the photographs Kim took of the Director with Eli and Daniel, and the Elephant Clock page. They’re really sweet pictures. But they’re not getting as many looks as you getting punched in the stomach.”
“It’s okay. Par for the course. The plan is going to work, I promise.”
Abdullah was on the couch, making notes in one of the cardboard covered notebooks he used to write his music. “Abdullah?”
He looked up. “Sir?”
“Are you pretty beat?”
“No,” he said, smiling his wide smile. “I’m okay. Kim kicked me out, though. Said I was distracting him. He’s got Eli working and the desk clerk and a couple of waiters, and the room was getting crowded.”
“I wondered if I could ask you a favor. The staff downstairs, they were pretty upset after that ridiculous business this morning. How would you feel about playing a little something for them? You know, cello music to bind our tattered wounds?”
The light was back in his face now. “Something really calm and formal. Well, Bach, obviously! Yeah, okay, let me get it together. I have a little jazzy thing I’m working on. I could play it for you guys, and you tell me what you think.”
“I’ll speak to Mr. Aziz and see what time he thinks would be best.”
“I’ll play during dinner!”
“Good idea. Where’s Kim?”
“He took Eli and Daniel to one of the other rooms to work on the project, 406 and 408, and Mr. Aziz is letting his people help. He’s got like an assembly line going. Sir, do you think this is a good idea? I mean, can we get it together that quickly?”
John shrugged. “Abdullah, let’s just press on and do our best. I have no idea if it’ll work.”
Back in the bedroom, John was pacing. Gabriel was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Gabriel, can you go talk to Mr. Aziz and see if we can play the cello for his crew? Kim has press-ganged him into helping.”
“Yep. How are we going to get Abdullah’s cello to the airplane without anyone knowing what we’re doing?”
John paced some more. “Well, obviously he needs to be playing it tomorrow. No other reason to carry a cello with you. We’ll just set him up with a chair and a music stand and let him play until it’s time to run.”
“You want to talk to the kids one by one or address the wardroom tonight?”
“One by one,” John said. “You take care of it for me, okay? Just make sure everybody, and by that I mean Kim, knows that when it’s time to go, we need to go. Does he even have a watch? Jesus. How are we going to find him a watch? We need to discuss proper outfitting for active ops.”
“Go take a shower, boss, or lay down or something. Let me work on this.”
“We didn’t bring Super Freak, did we?”
Gabriel was grinning at him. “I’ve got something new, and I downloaded all the new songs to the iPod. Kim gave me this portable speaker that looks like SpongeBob so we can have a little private dance time.”
“SpongeBob?”
“SpongeBob Squarepants.”
“What the hell does that
even mean?”
Gabriel studied him, hands on his hips. “Let me go talk to the crew. Get your swimsuit on. When I get back, I think you and I need to test out that beautiful pool. John, this hotel is like where you go for your honeymoon or something. I am not leaving before we get a chance to swim.”
“Yeah, okay. Wait, wait! I need to speak to Sam. Go over the backup plan in case Jen gets snatched tomorrow. Send him in here.”
Gabriel sighed. “Yes, General.”
Sam stuck his head in the door. “Sir?”
“Come on in. Okay, let’s go over the plan if something happens to Jennifer, like she gets arrested or separated from the rest of the group, and you’re on your own.” Sam’s face blanched. “It’s not a crisis as long as you have a plan, Sam. Okay, so what’s your job?”
Sam pointed to himself. “My job?”
“Yes! What is your job with regards to Jennifer Painter?”
“My job is to protect her with my life.”
“Correct. Now, what do we do if she is taken? What will you do if I’m not here?”
Sam thought a moment. “I go to the embassy. I can also get Wylie and Jackson to help.”
“Perfect. No problem, kiddo. You’ve got backup for a snatch and grab, and then you get her to her father’s people in Algeria. This is absolutely not going to happen, but you only ever need a backup plan when you don’t have one.” John studied his shattered face. Sam was more than a little overwhelmed, but John had no doubt he would rise to the occasion if need be. “You’ll be fine. I have every confidence in you.”
He gave John a doubtful look, then closed the door quietly behind him. Gabriel still had his hands on his hips. “You are out of control. I’m about to wrestle you to the ground and stick a tranquilizer dart in your butt.”
John stopped in mid-thought, his mind wheeling like a flock of starlings. What had he just said? Tranquilizer dart in the butt? Gabriel’s eyes were smiling, dark and wild and full of light, like the night sky over New Mexico. Gabriel walked across the room, put his hand flat on John’s belly. “Breathe, General. There we go. We’ve got plenty of time. Everything’s going to work out.” He slid his hand lower. “Just breathe.”
JOHN estimated they had about seven minutes of breathing, breathing and sweet kissing, Gabriel’s big chest rocking him, the heart he loved most in the world beating under his cheek, before Kim burst through the door, dragging Jen by the hand. He untangled himself from Gabriel’s arms. It was enough, seven minutes, enough for him to calm down considerably and think about the pool, going for a little swim with the Horse-Lord. There was a time when seven minutes would have been enough for more, but he was fifty-two, after all.
Kim was grinning at them, but then he’d made it a vocation to pop into John’s bedroom at the most awkward and intimate moments. Jen’s face flushed bright red. “Don’t worry,” Kim told her. “They do this all the time.”
He turned to John and Gabriel. “Okay, are you ready? I’m not as skilled as Billy, of course, but how about this? We turn Jen into a boy, and one of us into her mother, so we have a mother and son walking to the market with the gear in a basket! That way she’s not out by herself.”
“If you can do it, do it.” Kim turned, pulled her back out the door. “Wait a minute. How are you going to turn her into a boy?”
“I’m going to cut her hair off. I don’t think we need much more than that, short hair and some boy’s clothes.”
John looked at Jen. “Are you okay with this?”
She shrugged. “Sure. I don’t care about hair.”
“That much is very plain,” Kim said. “Darling, you are going to be the cutest boy on the playground. Leave it all to me.”
“Hold it.” Gabriel held up his hand. “Kim, don’t ask anyone on the staff to bring you native women’s garments. No one but the people in the wardroom should know what you and Jen are up to. If you need women’s clothes, figure out how to steal some, maybe from the laundry downstairs. If you’ve got hotel staff helping with the Bardo project, keep them in the rooms you have set aside.”
John looked at Gabriel, then turned to look at Kim. “You and Jen? When you said one of us was going with her, did you mean yourself?”
“Okay, Uncle John? Don’t go all neutron bomb on me. I’m five feet seven, and the shortest man on the fourth floor of the Carthage Regency, except for Mr. Aziz. Obviously I’m the person who has to go with Jen.”
“Forgive me, nephew, but have you forgotten about your pretty Korean face?” John closed his eyes, and Gabriel slid an arm around his shoulders, pulled him back against his chest.
“That’s what hijabs are for!”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Jen spoke up. “Don’t worry, General. I’ll bring him back in one piece.”
Kim sighed, rolling his eyes in a gesture that John thought was familiar until he realized he did it himself. “Come on, Jen. Let’s get your hair cut before we’re both sent back to nursery school.”
John stared at the wall, making a rapid outline in his head. Okay, did they need to go at all? He could scrub the mission. The critical piece was Jen’s database of her pro-democracy bloggers, sitting on a little netbook, waiting to put brave women in prison. If Jen thought that Amira’s mother would not be able to wipe the memory herself, John had to trust her judgment. It wasn’t a risk they could take, not when Youssef Shakir had put so much of his family in harm’s way to help them. So, yes, they needed to go.
Did it have to be Jen? Yes, Amira’s mother trusted her and would give her access to the little computer. Did she need someone with her? Here John hesitated, carefully parsing his feelings from his fears. She would be weighed down by the gear he wanted her to carry, but she knew the streets. If there were two of them, they wouldn’t be alone if they got jumped. They would have a better chance to fight off a lone troublemaker. They wouldn’t be alone. He didn’t like to think of Jen alone, or Kim or Eli or Daniel or any of them, alone and at the mercy of people who meant them harm.
Did it have to be Kim? His stomach tightened to the size of a walnut. Kim’s worldview, while beautiful and full of love, needed some refining, a little toughening up around the edges. Kim would try to talk his way out of trouble, which you could do, sometimes, maybe 40 percent of the time, when you spoke the local language. Which he did not. There was a time to talk and a time to run, and Kim did not have the experience yet to know which was which. Charm was a potent tool, but Kim had never been face-to-face with the evil that happened to men when they felt the thrill of power, the desire for blood, and they had a weapon in their hand. He turned to Gabriel.
“I should go with Jen. Not Kim.”
“No, John. Your face has been too visible. I’ll go. She shouldn’t go alone.”
“I speak Arabic.”
“So does Abdullah.” They both thought about this for a moment, his long, elegant fingers, the inward look in his eyes when he started playing his cello. “No,” they both said.
“I should go, John. She knows the streets. We’ll be there and back in an hour.”
“You don’t look like an Arab man, Gabriel, much less an Arab woman. You’re too tall. You walk like you’ve got titanium balls.” It was a fact that the Horse-Lord could not wear a disguise. No one could disguise his walk, his big strides, his big American balls. John could recognize Gabriel’s walk at a hundred paces or a hundred miles. Gabriel frowned at him, crossed his arms. “Are you going to wear a hijab?” John nodded at the look of horror on his face. “Okay, then. I should go.”
“That would put this mission in danger, General Mitchel,” Gabriel said, very carefully. “Are you thinking this through clearly?”
“And you would be willing to let Juan go out on the streets of Carthage with groups of Salafist thugs looking for American faces?”
“Juan is fifteen,” Gabriel said. “Kim is twenty-three. I know exactly what I was doing when I was twenty-three. I know what you were doing. Do you think he is capable of so much less tha
n you or I?”
“I am sure he is going to think us both into the ground in a few more years. But for now, he had zero experience. None.”
“And he is going to get this experience how?”
“The same way we did. Training.”
Gabriel stared at him, arms crossed. “Army training. Really.”
“Fucking hell.” John picked up the stupid SpongeBob speaker and threw it against the wall. It didn’t even crack, just bounced and lay on the carpet looking at him with that goofy yellow smile. It was all John could do not to stomp it to pieces with his boot.
“One hour,” Gabriel said, “then you and me and Wylie and Jackson go find them, and I will be happy to lay a trail of destruction through the streets of Carthage to get them back. Okay?” He opened his arms, held them out until John stepped closer, let Gabriel wrap him up close to his heart. “Deal? Now let’s take a swim and settle down.”
“Agreed,” John said. “Unless you want to try and tranquilize me again.” The pool was safe, they could take some of the boys to work off their excess adrenalin. “We have enough suits?”
“We have mine and yours,” Gabriel said. “Eli is working to restore balance to the Force, but I bet Daniel might like a swim.”
“Daniel’s got a plaster cast on his hand. Dr. Shakir didn’t have any fiberglass.”
“Thank God, or Kim would have taken all the fiberglass casting material in Tunis to make an elephant clock!”
“Sam might like a swim.”
They heard a sound like a wounded buffalo coming from the living room of the suite. Gabriel kept his hand on the door. “Five bucks says it’s Sam, watching Jen get her hair cut off.”
“I don’t think I’ll take that bet,” John said. They walked out to the kitchen. Jen was sitting on a stool with a towel wrapped around her neck. Kim was cutting her hair short, a couple of inches long, and it turned the straggly ponytail into bouncy curls the color of her ginger freckles. He’d cut the hair around her face first, and John thought she looked cute as a button, and about twelve years old.
