by Gabby Grant
It was then Mark was surprised to find Albert’s two sturdy arms around him, pulling him tight like a lost, fragile child.
“We’re going to get those bastards,” Albert said in a coarse whisper, as Mark felt the tightness within his own throat welling to explosive proportions.
Mark set his jaw and pulled himself together, before soundly patting Albert’s back. “Yes, sir,” he said, fighting the frog in his throat and working his way out of the hug. “Damn straight, we are.”
***
Major Carolyn Walker stood next to Captain Charlie Peterson at the DIPAC mainframe database, and sadly shook her head. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“No way Mr. Neal could have known this,” Peterson said. “None of this was active six months ago when he had Maria investigated.”
“So, unless he’d been vigilantly rechecking his sitter’s background, this is going to come as a very big surprise.”
“Exactly.”
Carolyn tried to shrug the tension from her shoulders but failed miserably. There was a blackmail trail as hot as a red potato leading straight to Maria and Pepe Gonzales’ door. The new post-haste investigation ordered by Walker had turned up a black limousine, suspected payoffs, and a whole block of nosy neighbors who were willing to speculate. And, Pepe Gonzalez’s latest medical records indicated the fifty-eight-year-old man was in need of expensive heart surgery.
In the middle of this whole god-forsaken world-wide business, somebody had been paying Maria Gonzales off for information about her boss. Somebody who had targeted Mark Neal and kidnaped Ana Kane. Somebody who was going to fucking pay if Major Carolyn Walker had anything to do with it.
Carolyn Walker strode into the basement lounge where Maria was watching her soap opera and grabbed the middle-aged woman by the elbow. “Let’s go!” she ordered curtly.
“Go?” Maria stood in trepidation and tried to back away. “But-”
“But nothing, Mrs. Gonzales,” Carolyn said, clamping down on the soft flesh of the woman’s arm. “You, lady, are a fork-tongued traitor, and I and the US Army intend to find out why.”
Maria’s jaw dropped open, then her eyes watered as she started to protest.
“Save your sorry excuses for the interrogation board.”
“Inter...? But I...”
Carolyn straightened her spine and dragged the subordinate woman toward the door.
“Wait! You can’t just take me! Not like this! I need...” She fumbled in her pocket as tears strained to break free from her clouded gaze. “Don’t I get a call? Un abogado? A lawyer?”
Carolyn spewed a laugh.
“No, Mees Walker, you can’t do this!” Maria called, still struggling in her grasp. “Dees much of the law I know!”
Carolyn cast a disdainful eye toward the glaring television. “You watch too much TV.”
“No!” Maria shouted, slapping Carolyn’s wrist.
Carolyn whirled suddenly, gripped both of the woman’s arms and twisted them behind her back. “Very poor etiquette, Ms. Gonzales. For an organization, not to mention an employer, who’s shown you so much hospitality, I demand more respect.”
“And, what,” Maria asked, her plump torso starting to tremble, “are you planning to do to me?”
“Talk, Maria. Pure and simple. You can make it easy on yourself or you can make it hard.”
“A lawyer?” Maria pleaded, helplessly imprisoned in Carolyn’s arms.
“We make our own laws at the DOS,” Carolyn said, shoving the woman forward and into the hall, “and you, sister, have just broken our golden rule.”
CHAPTER 13
Mark stood at the edge of the bubbling river watching the white and gray waters skirt over scattered rocks. To the east, the sun rose over towering oaks that peppered a clear blue sky with lingering gold medallions. Ana was alright, he had to believe it. Had to find a way to prove it, both to himself and to Albert, who had worked far too hard toward a reconciliation to lose his daughter now. And Mark was not about to lose his wife or the mother of his child. Despite their differences, in spite of the troubles that had gone on between them these past few months, there was no one Mark had ever loved more than Ana Kane. No, love was too ineffective a word. What Mark felt for Ana went beyond love. It was consumption, a passion that had seized him from that very first moment and refused to let go. There was something about her, a fierceness, a melancholy longing, that only Mark understood. And together, each of them was better, stronger, than they’d ever been apart.
Mark had hoped, had waited more than forty years, to find a woman who fit his life. And Ana not only fit it, she filled it- completely. But now that she was gone, Mark felt nothing but burning empty. Empty and angry, he realized. Angry enough to detonate every building and smash every sick bastard’s head this side of Richmond, if that’s what was necessary to bring Ana back. But this wasn’t just a Virginia problem and Mark knew it. This wasn’t just a US problem either. Yet, as US intelligence appeared the target, America was certainly the bull’s eye on the board. All Mark had to do was find out who was throwing the goddamned darts.
Mark heard the car phone alert in the sedan parked behind him. Albert popped open the passenger door and lifted the trilling receiver.
“I see... When... No, absolutely. You did the right thing in letting me know...”
“And?” Mark asked, heading back up the boat launch that led to the river.
“That was Mooney on the line.”
Mark’s stomach soured. It seemed nothing ever involving Tom Mooney meant positive news. Former Ambassador Tom Mooney had been appointed to Costa Negra at the time of Ana’s earlier kidnaping. He was now stationed back stateside as head of the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Mooney and Albert Kane went back a long way, Mark had learned. Longer than anyone had originally suspected.
Mark waited.
“Seems all hell’s busting loose all over the place.” Albert said, removing his glasses. “Joe McFadden’s gone AWOL on some top security mission in the Middle East. Seems he’s got a five hundred “K” bounty on his head.”
Mark whistled. Other than Albert’s friend, Mooney was also Joe McFadden’s uncle. They were each the only family the other had left.
When Mark first met McFadden in Costa Negra, the tension between them had been explosive enough to ignite the atom bomb. But afterward, once they’d been forced to work together toward the common worthy objective of freeing hostage Ana Kane, Mark and Joe had developed a grudging respect for one another. Later on, that qualified admiration had developed into something more akin to friendship. A friendship that appeared to go the way of the wind once Ana’d broken off her relationship with Joe and taken up instead, more indefinitely, with Mark.
Mark looked at Albert and noticed the older man seemed unsteady, a condition rare for a seasoned professional like Kane. In fact, Mark had only seen Albert with that expression on his face once before. And it had been in the north of Spain, just over three years ago.
“This have anything to do with the analyst scare?”
“I’m afraid damn not,” Albert said, repositioning his glasses. “For once, McFadden’s disappearance and Ana’s abduction have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.”
So why then did Mark have the kinetic sensation that somehow they did? “Better check back with HQ and see what they’ve got on that coat,” he said, heading back around the car to the driver’s door.
Mark was just pulling open his car door when a slight ping whizzed by his right ear.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, diving onto the driver’s seat. “Down, Albert! Get down!”
The rapid ratatat of submachine fire sliced from the nearby trees and shattered the sedan’s rear window.
“Holy shit,” Albert said, scrambling toward the floor, “set it in gear!”
Mark righted himself as much as possible while still dipping beneath the dash. He cranked the ignition, set the car in reverse and floored the pedal.
The car lurched backwards as another round of gunfire tore loose, this time splintering the windshield.
“Think they like us?” Albert asked, clutching onto the seat and the side of his door, as Mark wheeled the car around and spun onto the narrow dirt road.
Mark grimaced and punched the gas. “Think they’d like us better dead,” he said, as tires squealed in rapid revolution. “Hang on, Chief,” Mark said, as the accelerator zipped past sixty. “We’re going for a little ride.”
A new round of gunfire ripped through the back of the car, pock-marking the two front-seat head rests.
“Sure as hell hope so,” Albert breathed, as Mark leaned into the wheel and took off like a bat out of hell.
CHAPTER 14
Major Walker sat at the sparse rectangular table with three other people. DOS protocol officer Sergeant Steve Alexander, Maria Gonzales, and John James, the best JAG lawyer DOS had. They had Maria purposely surrounded. Though she was technically free to leave, they weren’t about to let her know it. The ring-around effect was a part of the intimidation.
“So, Ms. Gonzales,” John said, speaking slowly and deliberately, his clear eyes glinting above his aquiline nose. “Would you like to tell us what this is all about?”
Would you like...? Man, oh man, was John good. No opening threats just a clear opportunity for Maria to come clean. Carolyn studied the woman directly across from her and picked up the twitch in those dark brown eyes.
“Eees not like you think! Not like you say...” Maria began, shifting her eyes repeatedly between John’s steady gaze and the center of the table.
Carolyn cleared her throat and Maria looked up. “We know, Maria. Know about the limousine. You’re being blackmailed, aren’t you?”
John sat silently waiting for Maria to respond. As an attorney, he was prohibited by code from saying anything too leading. Carolyn, on the other hand, had liberal jurisdiction at the DOS. And, if she made a little slip or two in protocol, John could rest easy that Steve Alexander wouldn’t get it down on paper.
As if on cue, Steve shook and glared at his pen, then scratched its point hard against his pad of paper.
John arched his brow, as Maria looked nervously around the room at the faces surrounding her.
“Dry,” John announced, looking up.
“No worries, Sergeant,” Carolyn said, patting the small recorder on the table in front of her. “I’m getting it all on tape. No doubt Mr. Neal is going to want to hear every word.” She cast a piercing look in Maria’s direction and the middle-aged woman quivered.
“I say, ees not like you think... It’s...Mr. Neal, he--”
“What about Mr. Neal?” John James pressed.
Maria chomped down on her lower lip with her teeth and began fumbling with the hemline of her skirt, smoothing it out so it covered every inch of her knees.
“What I don’t get,” Sergeant Alexander cut in, “is how you could do it?! I’ve got a little girl myself, not much older than Isabel...”
Carolyn watched Maria crumble at the mention of Isabel’s name and decided in an instant Steve Alexander’s talents were being wasted in his current position.
“Here, here,” Carolyn said, standing and coming around the table, as Maria wept freely into her hands. “It’s going to be alright.”
“I didn’t know,” the sniveling woman pleaded. “Swear I didn’t know what else to do. Pepe, he’s all I have.”
Carolyn laid her free hand on Maria’s shoulder and cast her eyes on John who was sharing a look with Steve. “No Maria, you have Mr. Neal and his wife, too. Isabel-”
Another dissolving heap of tears.
“Isabel,” Carolyn said again, as Maria righted herself and grabbed another fistful of tissues from the box on the table, “is going to be alright. We are all here to help you, Maria. You, your Pepe, and the Neal’s. All you’ve got to do is tell us what you know.”
***
Carolyn Walker paced the narrow hallway, thinking. It would upset Isabel now to replace her caretaker. Particularly since both her parents were mysteriously missing and the baby had begun a nightly routine of calling for her “mama” with wellspring eyes.
Carolyn sighed and tugged at her collar. While the DOS laundry service had provided her with clean uniforms daily, she longed more than anything to get back home and into a pair of jeans. She hoped her younger sister, Rebecca, was truthfully looking after her cats. Becky, who was just nineteen and a student at the nearby university, was not always the most reliable pet-sitter.
It was a poor reflection of her life, she realized, that she had no one else to miss her besides two over-fed felines. But, ever since returning from Kuwait, twice-decorated Major Carolyn Walker hadn’t had much of a life at all outside the US Army. She’d been to Texas, through advanced officer training school in Arizona, and, thanks to her wartime service, been able to escape being assigned to Korea altogether.
The best time Carolyn had had in a long while had been in Panama, and that had been more a decade ago. There’d been a Marine there, someone she’d thought she could care about. Someone who, quite unfortunately, didn’t appear to return the feeling.
Carolyn squared her shoulders out of habit and walked into the cubicle-like kitchen, hunting for a soda. Mark’s division secretary, Alice, was with the baby and Maria was still downstairs with Sergeant Alexander while everybody tried to decide what to do with her.
In reality, what Maria had been able to tell them wasn’t much help. She was being blackmailed alright. Blackmailed into passing along information about Mark Neal’s family. She’d been lied to, though. Told it was a personal investigation, an information gathering process only- that would bring no harm to the Neals or their baby.
She’d revealed some of Ana’s personal and computer habits, strange things that seemed unrelated and didn’t appear to do any harm. How Ms. Kane spent her free time, how she routinely entered her home...
Once Ana had disappeared, though, Maria’d panicked, fearing the information she’d been passing along had somehow played a part. She’d gone into hiding with Isabel because she was scared. And, because, as strange as it was to fathom, Carolyn did believe she loved the baby.
Maria’s point of contact had been a man only known to her as El Lobo. As he’d always sat in the front of the limousine and listened, she’d never actually seen his face. He’d never spoken either. Only listened, which Maria had found spooky and strange.
The driver, a dark-skinned middle-easterner, she thought, did all the talking, asked all the questions. He was the one who took her calls and handed over the envelopes in payment for information. As far as Maria knew, the Arab didn’t have a name, only the lethal black eyes of the devil. How he and El Lobo had found out about Pepe’s heart condition, she didn’t know. How they’d discerned the exact amounts of her escalating medical bills and scheduled their “payments” to meet them, she didn’t know either.
Carolyn sat at the small kitchen table and popped the top on her soda can. Telling Neal now would just give him one more thing to worry about, and he had enough headaches as it was. Besides, no matter what information Maria had given away, including her most recent revelation about Isabel’s location, the baby was safe. Carolyn had assured Mark the DIPAC was a fortress and she’d been right. Now that security had been alerted, they were ready and on the alert. No way in hell anybody could get in here now, no matter what they knew.
***
Mark spun onto Highway 29 and gunned it north toward Washington.
“Not going to make it all the way there in this heap,” Albert said.
“No, sir. This is where being Assistant Director at DOS is bound to have its perks.” He turned and smiled at his father-in-law, who seemed to be breathing a lot easier now that the danger had passed and they hadn’t appeared to pick up a tail.
Albert grabbed for the car phone with a smile. “Gotcha,” he said, punching in the numbers. He ordered that a replacement car be readied for them and supplied just past the
juncture of the next town.
“What’s been bothering you, son?” Albert asked as Mark wheeled their new car onto Interstate 66, heading north. “You’ve scarcely said a word since the river.”
Mark set his jaw, but kept his eye on the four-lane road where traffic blurred by on his right-hand side. Even though he was doing eighty in a sixty-five, Mark knew he wouldn’t get a ticket. “This McFadden thing. What was it exactly McFadden was doing in the Middle East?”
“Tom didn’t say. Only mentioned the Rub Al Khali Desert.”
“Home of Al Fahd’s terrorist training camp?”
“Among others,” Albert shrugged.
“Among others with such open hostility toward the United States?”
“Probably not.” Albert cracked his window. “I think Joe’s mission had something to do with BW.”
“Biological warfare?” Mark asked, cutting across three lanes of traffic and swerving onto an exit ramp.
Albert looked over his shoulder as car horns blared, but said nothing.
“What kind?” Mark asked.
Albert let out a long, slow breath as their car eased to a stop at the top of the exit ramp. “Or maybe, chemical weapons...I don’t know. Something that was being investigated. This was a Company project, Mark. And even as the DOS AD, you know I had limited-”
“...need to know,” Mark finished for him. “How about Mooney’s involvement?”
“He’s Joe’s uncle, for crying out loud.”
“Professional?”
Albert shook his head. “Not in McFadden’s troubles.”
Not in McFadden’s... Without warning, Mark peeled the car off of the road and careened onto the shoulder. Albert clutched his shoulder strap as pavement grated and tires squealed to a halt.
“What in the hell was that supposed to mean,” Mark asked, pursing his lips and turning to his father-in-law.
