by Fiona Quinn
“Look at that,” Lynx said. “She’s scanning the overhang roof along the door.” Can we get a split screen of CCTV?”
“I haven’t been able to hack into that system. But I see what you’re seeing. She’s trying to get her face on someone’s camera.”
They watched as she queued up in the taxi line. As she climbed into a cab, Nutsbe placed a green square over the car, and the computer program followed its satellite image through the city. Traffic was heavy with lunch time gridlock. Jack was impatient. He didn’t want the last image of her to be her car sitting in traffic. He wanted to see where she was going to go. The cab pulled up to a building in a better part of the city. Nutsbe tapped away as Suz got out and went in the front door.
“Che Legarto Student Hostel,” he said. “What do you want to do next?”
“Let’s hang out and watch until we lose visual. Mark who goes in and comes out. See if she goes anywhere else. Do we have anything new about boots on the ground there?”
Nutsbe tipped his wrist to check his watch. “We should have heard back by now. I’ll make a call.”
Jack glared at the satellite image. Nothing happened. They stared at the street in front of the hostel.
A medic knocked at the door, he came in and checked Jack’s vitals, made notes, and hung another IV bag.
Jack caught his arm. “Antibiotics only. You can give me a Tylenol or something for the pain. I’ve been fighting against your brew since you jammed that needle in my arm. I need to be functioning.”
The medic unhooked the IV. “Yes, sir, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Oh, and hey, can you get those antibiotics in pill form? I need to be ambulatory. I can’t hang out here with a drip.”
“I’ll tell the doctor, and let him figure that out, sir.”
When the door shut, Lynx came over for a quiet powwow. “Ambulatory, why?”
“I’m heading down to Brazil.”
“What? No way in—” Lynx’s sentence was cut short when Jack squeezed her arm.
Nutsbe had hung up the phone. “Israel has a Mossad unit near Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. They’re sending an operative over the border. I gave them the address of the hostel. And I gave them your phone as their contact point, Jack. Lynx you’re the back up.”
“Israeli Special Ops? There must be some terror cell activity going on down there,” Lynx said.
Nutsbe typed and then read from his screen: “Ciudad del Este has long been known as a hotspot for terror activity. The TBA—tri-border area—of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has been a base for Islamic terrorists. From the TBA, terrorists have plotted and carried out attacks in the Americas. The groups that work out of the TBA include Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Al Jihad among others.”
“What attacks are we talking about here?” Jack asked.
Nutsbe ran his finger down the screen. “1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. The bombing of a Jewish community center a few months later.”
“1992. This information seems like it might be past its sell-by date.” Jack said. The idea that Suz might be caught up in a Middle Eastern terrorists’ cell sent his mind to places he couldn’t afford for it to go right now. He needed his focus front and center.
“Hmm 1995 Osama Bin Ladin was in Ciudad del Este. I’m not seeing fresh intel in that direction. They do have a huge Muslim population living in gated communities down there. Lots of Arabic speakers–I can work on getting into some intelligence reports that aren’t in the public domain. Just the presence of a Mossad unit tells me things are jumping down there, though.”
“One of their operatives is headed toward Suz?” Lynx asked.
“Affirmative,” Nutsbe said as his attention was drawn to the screen. A taxi drove up to the hostel and was parking.
The satellite imagery showed the front door swing open, and Suz walked out sans backpack. In her hand she carried the phone, but that was it.
Nutsbe put a green square on the taxi, and they followed it about twenty minutes through town. “Did you know your fiancée was CIA?”
“She’s not CIA.”
“I thought I saw your hand in her escape and protection of those children. I was laughing my way all the way through the Hound News report. And I was thinkin’ that was gonna be kinda shitty for her because there are gullible people who would believe those clowns. I watch them for entertainment value. Who knew Hound would get it right? I searched her in the data base. Is she black ops? What’s her real name?”
“She’s not CIA,” Lynx said.
“If you two say so.” He grinned as he went back to scanning his computer.
“Come on Suz, get there already. We’re going to lose you,” Jack muttered under his breath.
The cab pulled up to a sidewalk. A large white building loomed in the distance, past walkways and green expanses. It looked like a government building. Suz climbed out of the cab and smiled at the driver. With that same smile plastered across her face, she walked down the sidewalk. Once again, her gaze scanned slowly along the roof, then she reached for the door. The screen flickered and went black.
“So, you’re still contending this woman’s not a CIA operative?” Nutsbe asked, shaking his head as he stood.
“Not CIA,” Jack and Lynx said in unison.
“Sure.” He snorted. “And I’m a fairy godmother. I’m gonna grab some shut eye. Don’t call me, even if the whole world in imploding. I’ll leave the computer up.” He moved out of the door as the medic came in with a bottle of pills and handed them off to Jack.
Lynx frowned as Nutsbe shuffled out the door, then turned her gaze on Jack. “Okay. What do you want to do next?”
15
Suz
2:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 16th
Itaipu Visitors’ Reception Center, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil
Had she been on vacation and not on a mission, Suz would have loved being here at the Itaipu Visitors’ Reception Center. She repeated the thought to herself. Then she played it through again a third time. I’m on a mission. That word surprised her. She wondered how people could walk by her and not know that she was effervescent. Not in a happy ebullient way, but in a fizzy, disoriented, overwhelmed kind of way. Her thoughts pushed to the side by the bubbles of hysteria that churned through her psyche.
The text that had come during her taxi ride had said: You are a tourist. Enjoy your day.
As if. . .
When you get out of the taxi, smile. When you thank the driver smile. Smile as you walk into the complex.
What is all that smiling about? she wondered. Opening the door and moving with the flow of visitors into the open space.
It’s almost 3:00, I should eat, she told herself and her stomach mutinied. She leaned shaking and sweat-covered against a pillar. She hoped that she was alone – that no one was watching her. She hoped she wasn’t somehow messing anything up now that her plastic smile had fallen off her face. She didn’t feel alone. Real or made up, she still felt like someone was watching her every move.
Her eye caught on the cafeteria sign; she shook her head. Suz decided to go to the orientation film, instead. A dark room was what she wanted.
Suz was the last one to leave the little theater. She would have stayed and watched the documentary again had the little clean-up man not shoo-ed her toward the door with his broom. Now, she found herself standing in line for tickets. She glanced over the offerings and tried to decide which would be the less painful to undertake.
Under normal circumstances she would have wanted to do everything. Today, she didn’t want to do anything except find those boys. If she and Jack were here to explore this would be fascinating. But right now her legs were rubbery and her vision blurred. Nerves for sure, but some of it also had to be that she hadn’t eaten anything that stayed with her since the MRE lunch on Monday. This was Wednesday. She had to eat. Maybe some juice. Something. She couldn’t help anyone if she fainted.
She snagged a bottle of papaya smoothie before joining th
e bus tour of the dam. She could sit, and the bus was air-conditioned which was good since the air was heavy with moisture and heat. She moved with the group outside under the multi-color striped awning. Thirty-five degrees Celsius the clock read. That was somewhere in the nineties, she thought. She sidestepped to the very back of the bus where she unscrewed the top of her bottle and began to sip slowly at the unctuous juice. She’d be beside the bathroom if things didn’t go well.
The tour would last only two hours. It was two hours when she knew, hoped, she’d be alone. They could track her on the phone GPS unless she slid it into someone else’s bag surreptitiously, and she disappeared. Called for help. Made a collect call to Iniquus. “I’m here in southern Brazil, come and find the children.” But she didn’t know if the children were here or not. They could be anywhere. She might just be the bait to pull attention in the wrong direction. Instead of helping, she could very well be the person who thwarted their rescue.
Suz closed her eyes and let that thought blanket over her. Wow. It all came back to chess. Jack was a master at the game. She despised it. He thought it was fun to try to outguess and outmaneuver; she didn’t like to play games. Any games. She liked the win-win mentality where everyone got to be happy. When she asserted that point along with a “why can’t we all just get along?” Jack would smile at her. Suz interpreted that smile as “endeared by her naiveté”. She hated that he looked at her like that. It made her feel childish, like an ostrich with her head buried in the sand. Jack would sometimes ask her how she could live in a sunny little bubble when she knew what he did for a living. It wasn’t a challenge, or put down, he seemed genuinely confused. It was probably the same confusion she felt at why he did what he did for a living.
Yes, she knew what he did for a living. She knew that he shot people dead without a second thought. Not a single qualm. She knew he jumped onto ships in the middle of the ocean to kill pirates, with his bare hands if need be, and free hostages. He bombed buildings where terrorists sat at their tables, drinking tea and planning on exploding school buses. He tracked genocidal maniacs into the jungle, where they enslaved women and got little boys hyped up on drugs and had them fight. Jack was the mechanism by which she was afforded the luxury of innocence.
His work, the work of men and women like him, allowed her to sleep safely. What was that quote he used? Yes, George Orwell. . .“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It was a luxury she hadn’t understood until now. And that seemed silly because, so far, nothing bad had happened. She took a plane ride; she had sat down to take a bus ride. And she was barely up to the task. What was going to happen if she was called on to be Jack-like? She stared at her lap. She couldn’t imagine coming out the victor. This was a game she didn’t have the smallest inkling how to play.
16
Jack
2:40 p.m., Wed., Feb. 16th
Panther Force War Room,
Iniquus Headquarters, Washington DC
Jack and Lynx were alone in the Panther War Room.
Lynx looked him over, and she obviously didn’t like what she saw. Jack ran a hand over his week-old scraggle of a beard, brushed his palm up over his hair. It had been a while since he’d gotten a cut. It was long enough now to comb his fingers through. He was sweating and probably stank. Inside and out, he was in rough shape.
Lynx moved to the computer. “I wish we had Deep here. There isn’t a computer system in this world he can’t crack. I’d like to see what happened in that building. Any idea when our team’s coming in?”
“I was going to ask you the same.”
“Okay, here we go. I have an address. She’s at Itapul Tourismo. According to their website they have a tour of the dam, an astronomy hub, a biological sanctuary, a panoramic tour of the waterfalls, and a catamaran on the lake. Looks like she’s on tour.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
“That makes two of us,” Lynx said, turning to the board to list the new addresses and findings. “I guess we wait until the Israelis have a chance to take a look see.”
Jack took over Lynx’s spot behind the computer to find the next flight from DC to Brazil.
Lynx waited for him to finish. Without even looking her way, he said, “You’re going to start in on me, and I wish to hell you wouldn’t.” He entered his card information into the computer, then printed his ticket. “I have to grab my go bag. My flight leaves at 16:20 hours.” He lifted his gaze to make sure Lynx was on board with the plan. “I need a ride. Whatever that damned medic juiced me with is still in my system.”
Lynx looked like her cogs were whirring. From past experience, Jack knew to let her work herself through the process.
He unlocked his knee brace and bent his leg as far as it would go. Sweat beaded on his forehead and the muscles in his face tensed, even with the pain meds swimming through his system.
“What the heck are you doing?” Lynx squatted in front of him and put her hands on his leg to hold it still.
“I can’t go after Suz with my leg stuck at 180. Help me get it bent.”
Lynx pulled her hands away from his shin. “No way.”
Jack’s gaze hardened. “With or without you, Lynx. I think you can make this easier. But if you’re uncomfortable helping me, it’s not a problem. I’m bending my leg and going after Suz.”
“You can’t walk, Jack. You should be in the hospital.”
“It’s Suz.”
“Yup. It is. And you don’t know what’s going on with her. But you do know better than to go into an unknown situation without a team. I’d go, but I’d be next to no help. I’m not trained for that kind of thing.”
“I’ve got this.”
“Yeah you do. You’ve got an infection. You’ve got a fever. You’ve got an open surgical site. You’ve got a brace. You’ve got a leg that won’t bend. You’ve got—”
“Got it,” Jack cut in.
“Take someone with you. Get Titus to lend you a couple guys.”
Jack paused. “I’d have to go through Command,” he said very quietly. “I have no clue what’s happening other than it’s not right. Let me check it out before I get Iniquus involved. If I’m getting dumped – I don’t want to start an Iniquus mission to find that out. I need to protect Suz, even if that means protecting her privacy and dignity. Let me get eyes on, get some sense for what’s happening.”
Lynx wore her heart on her sleeve, something he liked about her and something he disliked about her. Right now he wasn’t liking what he saw. It looked damned close to pity.
“Let’s wait for a sit-rep before you jump on a plane,” she said quietly.
“You know that when things go down, it’s always time sensitive. Boots on the ground are what makes the difference. I have to be there if she needs me. If she doesn’t? I can always put my butt back on a plane and fly home.”
“And if she’s in trouble?”
“I’ll let you know what I find out. If she’s at risk, I’m not going after her on my own. I’ll need help. I’m not stupid enough to put either Suz or myself at risk.”
Lynx didn’t look like she was buying it.
“I have some contacts down there,” he said cryptically.
“Contacts like locals? How come we didn’t reach out to them when Suz was deplaning?”
“Local contacts whom I can only approach in person. And we couldn’t approach Suz while she was deplaning because we don’t know what the hell is going on. This is not Suz. She’s being run by someone. You know that, right? And it isn’t a CIA handler.”
“Of course it’s not. Suz couldn’t possibly—argh shit.” Lynx grabbed at her head.
Jack reached out his hand to steady her. Lynx lost focus and her skin blanched then brightened to pink. His brows pulled together. “You okay, Lynx?”
“A knowing. It was a doozy, too.” She panted.
“Jack be nimble?”
“Just ‘
Jack be quick’ this time.”
“Exactly. It’s time to jump.” He reached out and grabbed his ankle in his powerful hands grimacing with pain, he eased his leg back until it bent.
Lynx held her hands out — her fingers splayed as if to halt what he was doing. – “Jeezus, Jack, that’s weeks of PT work. Stop! You’re going to destroy your knee.”
17
Suz
10:00 p.m. Wednesday, February 16th
Che Legarto Student Hostel, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil
Sleep.
Suz stared at the phone text. Sleep? By command? Was that possible? She turned her light off and lay on her back under the white cotton sheet, dressed in a fresh pair of underwear and t-shirt she had found rolled up tightly in her zombie bag. She had rinsed today’s clothes as best she could and hung them over the shower rod in the bathroom.
She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. She wondered if Jack ever really did. Jack went to the various SEAL schools and specialized trainings. They helped him do the technical stuff. But his job wasn’t all technical, some of it was more finesse. He had to convince locals to give him information, help him, and to shut up when necessary. Did the military teach him how to maneuver through all that? Probably not. But Jack had an aptitude for people. Suz had an aptitude for people too, little people. She liked kids best. Grownups were much harder – they carried baggage and agendas. Maybe that’s why she had had such a hard time fitting in since her move to the East Coast.
At home in California, she was with her friends that she had had since her grade school days. Five steadfast friends like fingers on a hand. Suz had read a psychological study somewhere that said you can’t have more than five good friends at a time. And she had felt re-affirmed about her tight circle when she had read that. Her friends didn’t want her to move. They had probably been right. Suz flipped over onto her stomach balling up one pillow to put under her hip and balling up the other under her head. If she stayed in California, she wouldn’t be here now in stinking Brazil. But her heart would still be broken, since Jack wouldn’t be there. He’d be swimming with the SEALs somewhere far from her.
