Blue Knight

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Why?”

  His answer took a long time to come and he had to look back down at her hand before he could say it. “I’ve been doing this sort of work for fifteen years and this is the first time I’ve ever been scared.”

  She picked her words carefully. “You’ll be fine, Daniel. I’ve seen you do stuff. Not much, but enough to know you’re good. Very good. If anyone can come out of this alive, it’s you.”

  He looked up then, startled. “God, not me, Olivia. You. I’m scared for you.”

  Her mouth opened. But there were no words there. There were dozens of thoughts. Hundreds of them. None of them voiceable. All of them ranging from dumb shock to astonished hysteria.

  He kissed her knuckles again. “You shattered the coffee cup that day and covered for me and it was a selfless act. You keep saying you have to give to get, but you knew damn well you were never going to get anything back from me. You just did it because it was the right thing to do.” He stopped and kissed her temple. “Well, maybe you finally taught me something after all because what I’m doing tonight I’m doing for no better reason than it’s the right thing to do. Two weeks ago I wouldn’t have bothered because the risks are too high and these aren’t my orders, but I suddenly can’t stand to see my country go down the gurgler like this. Serrano’s insane and I just plain don’t want him in charge. I’m in a position where I can actually do something about it and I’m terrified I’m not going to live to see the sunrise, but it’s the right thing to do, so I’m doing it.”

  He closed his eyes. “But that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as leaving you behind, alone and having to deal with whatever craziness Serrano and Ibarra choose to hand out in the meantime.”

  “You’ll be back,” she said firmly. “And in force.”

  “If it comes down to a standing battle, then I won’t be able to reach you, not immediately. You have to take care of yourself.”

  “I said I would.” She cupped his cheek. “Do you trust me, Daniel?”

  He blew out a breath. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He laughed and kissed her knuckles again. “With my life. I already have, haven’t I?”

  “And do you consider me capable, within my own range of abilities and talents?”

  He smiled. “Astonishingly so. You have amazed me more than once.”

  “Then there is nothing more you can say or do to protect me. You have done all you can. I will do the rest.”

  Daniel shook his head a little. “Just trust me, huh?” he murmured. He sounded strained.

  Suddenly, she understood. All the important people in his life had gone away and not come back. His mother, his father, the family and friends who had disappeared. Then he had made the pattern repeat itself by ensuring anyone who did get close to him had wanted to leave by treating them so badly they hated him enough to go.

  Now he was the one leaving and he was expecting that when he got back she wouldn’t be there. It was the pattern.

  Tears burned her eyes. She knew now what she had to do. It would make her terribly vulnerable but for Daniel’s sake, she was willing to take the risk. She brushed her thumb over his cheekbone.

  “Daniel, I love you. I love you so much that it’s completely changed my life.”

  The shock on his face was momentary.

  Olivia pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him from interrupting her. “You don’t have to be afraid I won’t be here when you make it back,” she told him. “No matter how long it takes you. If you say you’ll be coming back, then I’ll defy Serrano and his whole fucking army just to see you again. Don’t you see? You can’t scare me away from you. Serrano tried and failed—I came back. He didn’t scare me from you.” She held his face. “You’re not going to let anyone down tonight. How could I let you down?”

  Daniel’s kiss seared her mouth, his hands holding her hard against him. He seemed to be trying to climb inside her skin and Olivia floated despite the anchor of his heavy body over hers.

  When at last he let her go he stared into her eyes. “Now I really am afraid,” he whispered. “I’m afraid I won’t deserve your love.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she told him. “I will love you no matter what you do.”

  He grimaced. “If that is true, then why do people who love you always leave?”

  “Because you had a shitty childhood and because you learned to be an even worse adult.”

  He looked startled again. Then he smiled. “Right, I forgot. The bastard syndrome.” He took a breath. Hesitated. Then, “It’s time, Olivia.”

  Her heart jumped, but she said with false calm, “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. I’m just going to get dressed and go.” He eased off the bed and began to dress.

  Olivia threw on her satin robe and belted it. She pulled the gun out from under the pillow, then stood at the end of the bed. Her heart was racing. When Daniel was fully dressed she held it out to him. “You’d better take this. If they catch me with it, it’ll go worse for me and you’re going to need it tonight.”

  Daniel nodded and took the gun with no argument. He pulled out the clip with quick sharp movements, checked it, checked the barrel and reassembled the gun with economical, practiced motions. He tucked the gun into his trousers and left his shirt hanging out. He unclipped the window but didn’t push it open. He glanced at his watch.

  “Go, Daniel,” Olivia told him softly. “You don’t want to miss the rendezvous.”

  He had one hand on the window frame, as if he meant to push up the window. His back was to her.

  Instead, he dropped his head, as if his courage had deserted him.

  Olivia dipped under his arm and pushed between Daniel and the window. She kissed him. “You must go.”

  His hand curled around her waist. “I will.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “I know.” He sighed and kissed her. “Peaches,” he whispered and pushed her gently to one side. “Don’t ever change your shampoo, either.” He carefully looked out the window, watching the guards. Even as he studied them she saw his job take over, the habits of his profession wash all personal concerns from his mind. The hard, clinical man she had first known stood before her. After about fifteen seconds, he opened the window and stepped up onto the low sill. Then, like a cloud shadow on an overcast day, he moved across it and was gone.

  Olivia closed the window, not nearly as quickly as Daniel had moved. Then she wiped her cheeks dry, dropped the robe to the floor and started to dress as swiftly as possible.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was barely beyond the curfew as Olivia walked the corridor of the hotel. Since the broadcast, the hotel had been in an uproar and she was banking on that to get away with what she planned. She had learned from Daniel that being outright obvious about something was more effective at hiding it than trying to be sneaky.

  So she walked like she had every right to be there.

  She saw only two sentries on her way to the public rooms and neither of them challenged her.

  She made it to the hotel foyer and looked around, her heart thudding hard. She pushed her hands into her jeans pockets, trying to make it look like she was casual and laid back. The low lights they set for the evening were already on. The night staff might already be in place, but there was no one behind the desk, which was exactly what she had planned on. It had been that way when she had sprinted here the other night.

  Olivia walked over to the counter and rested her forearms flat against it, like she was about to call for assistance. She looked around for observers.

  No one.

  She gripped the far side of the counter with her fingers and slid over the top. She crouched down behind the desk and listened, her heart screaming in her temples.

  No one yelled. No running boots. No protests.

  So far, so good. She stood up cautiously and moved into the office in the back behind the desk, through the glass door with the venetian blind. There was minimal lighti
ng back here, but enough to let her see this was a large administration office immediately behind the glass door, with three desks. All had telephones on them. She ignored them and kept moving, looking for a larger office, a bigger desk, a bigger chair. She wanted that telephone, because the chances that phone would be part of the hotel circuit would be less likely.

  Olivia found a big circular office at the end of a grand passage, complete with a leather-tucked and brass-studded chair, a rosewood-and-leather inlaid desk and two phones. By the light of the fire alarm switch in the wall, she studied the phones. One had three or four out-lines, an intercom, numbers for staff, the kitchen, a secretary, more. The other just had a number pad and speed dial numbers. That phone, then, was the private line.

  She picked it up and got a dial tone. Her heart really began to slam around in her chest. Her pulse was doing weird things, too.

  Counting out the numbers by touch, she dialed the phone number by memory and listened to it ring. Once, twice. “Come on, Jane, pick up,” she murmured.

  “Colonel Davenport’s office,” Jane said crisply.

  “If you’re there, that means Dad’s still at work, too,” Olivia said. “I have to talk to him, Jane.”

  “Oh my god!” Jane breathed. Then she pulled herself together. “Wait just a moment. Only a few seconds, I promise.” She didn’t say more than that, but she didn’t have to. The promise not to leave her waiting told Olivia that Jane knew exactly where Olivia was.

  The line went blank and muffled and Olivia could feel the buildup of a touch of panic. Now that she’d started this particular ball rolling, she wanted it to keep rolling. She didn’t like being put back into limbo.

  “Olivia?” It was her father.

  “I don’t have a lot of time, Dad.”

  “What do you need?” She could almost feel him switching gears.

  “A handful of black ops teams and a pair of Black Hawks, all suited up, fuelled up and on the spot at Bahía Coralina, Vistaria, at oh-four-thirty hours this morning.”

  There was the minutest pause. Then his voice came back, hollow and distant. “I have you on speaker phone, Olivia.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the situation room. You don’t need to know who else is here, because if I do this, it won’t be official.”

  Her head was thumping. If.

  “You have to do this. The loyalist Vistarians are coming in to take out the insurrectos holding us hostage at that time and they don’t have the tactical equipment or the numbers to do the job.” She made herself shut up. She had to let her father and the others in the room think it through. If she kept talking, they’d just get their backs up. She had to lead them to it a step at a time.

  “That’s true, sir,” someone murmured in the background. “The loyalists have been out of money for a while. They haven’t been able to raise taxes while they’re sitting on that beach in Acapulco.”

  “It’ll be a blood bath,” she said. “But the Vistarians are the only ones with the guts to step up to the plate. You saw what happened here this afternoon. What the insurrectos did. The Vistarians aren’t going to let another person die. Will you?”

  There was a click and the hollowness of the line disappeared. Her father’s voice came through firm and quiet. “You haven’t spoken to me for six years, Olivia. I almost died when I saw you on that video today. Now this. You suddenly reach out and ask for the impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible, Dad. You’re the President’s Chief of Staff. You can give an executive order and the military will jump.”

  She could almost hear him thinking.

  “No, this isn’t going to win me back, Daddy,” she said softly. “Don’t think it will. What you did was unforgiveable. But things have changed and I might be able to see my way to talking to you once more anyway, just because it’s the right thing to do. That’s all I’m asking you to do, now. Just do the right thing. Save lives, Dad, because it’s the right thing, not because it’s the political thing.”

  She could hear him breathing. Thinking.

  Abruptly the hollowness came back. “We’re going to need some special teams on the spot at Bahía Coralina, Vistaria, by oh-four-thirty hours this morning to liaise with the Vistarian command,” her father said, speaking to the room at large. “Do you have any black ops troops in need of sudden, rugged recreation and a few Black Hawks lying around idle down near Acapulco?”

  Olivia heard a squeak of boots on the linoleum outside the office and looked up over the desk. A guard was strolling the corridor.

  “Someone’s coming,” she murmured into the phone.

  “Is there any other information we need, Olivia?” her father asked.

  The door opened and she froze, unable to answer. She was behind the desk, crouched down low, but if she spoke, the guard would hear. There was a chance he would notice the phone was missing the hand piece, anyway.

  “Is someone there?” the guard asked in Spanish. He sounded nervous.

  “Have you got money on you, Olivia?” her father asked. “Try bribing him if he sees you.”

  She grimaced. Her money had been taken from her, weeks ago.

  The guard came around the desk and saw her. He was very young, very slender. He cocked his rifle. “Put the phone down!” he screamed.

  “Oh my god!” her father cried in her ear.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right!” she said to the guard in Spanish, holding up her free hand.

  “Who are you talking to?” the guard demanded.

  “No one. I can’t get a dial tone. See?” She held the phone out to him to let him hear for himself.

  It was a natural reaction for the guard to lean forward to put his ear to the hand piece. At the same time, using her body as a shield, Olivia pressed the disconnect button on the base and held it down.

  As soon as the guard leaned forward, she walloped him across the side of the face with the hand piece. It sent him staggering a few steps and most importantly, stopped the gun from pointing at her. She took off running. When she reached the foyer she broke into a sprint, her boot heels clunking across the tiles in unmusical taps. She dived into the service corridors and kept changing directions as corners appeared, until even she was not sure where she was.

  Then she slowed and started picking her directions with more intelligence. She glanced at her watch. She just had to survive maybe twelve hours. That was all. For now, she would find somewhere to hole up and hide.

  * * * * *

  Téra slipped out onto the family verandah, pulling a shawl around her shoulders. She felt light and empty, like all the pith had been pulled out of her and nothing had replaced the hollow insides.

  But she didn’t hurt just now. She knew that was temporary.

  Calli and Minnie were both sitting in the dark, staring out at the rolling sea. Calli wore a pea jacket and Minnie was in one of Duardo’s old army coats. Minnie sat cross-legged on her chair. Calli had her chair tilted back and one foot propped on the balcony rail. She was drinking from a bottle of Vistarian mescal.

  Téra pulled up the old kitchen chair she preferred to sit on out here. “They told me where everyone went. God, Calli, Nick went too?”

  Minnie gave a tiny smile. “They needed everyone. Our numbers are so few.” Her smile trembled and died.

  Calli passed the bottle of mescal to Téra. “Here. It’s cold out here. It’s going to be a long night and even longer day.” She looked at her watch. “Three a.m. They should have reached the bay. Now they just have to wait for Daniel.”

  * * * * *

  Agonizing pain in her thigh woke her up. She was tumbling, rolling.

  Hard light in her eyes. Olivia threw up a hand to shield her eyes, even as she tried to reach for her thigh.

  “Get up, puta, or we will shoot you where you lie.”

  She rolled over and got onto her hands and knees because her thigh was such a blaze of agony she wasn’t entirely certain s
he could stand straight up.

  “Look at that, she likes it on her knees,” someone joked in Spanish.

  The light was still blinding her, but she didn’t need to see past it to know what had happened. She had fallen asleep inside the storage room and they had found her. Someone had kicked her in the thigh to wake her.

  At least her leg wasn’t broken. She got to her feet slowly, feeling the thigh cramp a little in protest. But it took her weight.

  “Fuck, look at her man!” one of them said, almost moaning. “Let’s do her.”

  “Look at those titties, man,” the other said.

  “I don’t want to annoy Ibarra tonight,” a third said. “He’s too incensed about finding that Nemesis son of a whore.”

  Olivia was already squinting against the light, so it gave her a way to hide her reaction to their conversation. “Nemesis” was probably Daniel, but it was the first time she’d heard he had an operational code name. The name seemed to worry the insurrectos.

  A hand pulled at the back of her jeans. “I want those long legs around me.” The hand was pulling her steadily backward. She dug her heels in, trying to fight it, but the man was stronger than her. She reached back and tugged on his hand, pulling it out of her jeans, but he grabbed her wrist instead.

  The others just stood there and watched.

  Olivia was turned around by the pulling on her wrist and now she got to see the soldier who was doing the pulling. He was shorter than her and must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Most of that clung around his middle. He had a moustache, thick eyebrows, big florid cheeks and the dark skin of the southern Vistarians.

  She shook her head and he began to smile. “Oh yes my long-legged whore. You’re going to take my cock and everything else I give you,” he said. He looked around at the others. “She looks like a delicate filly. Bet I can have her begging for it by the end.”

  There was a soft chuckle that passed around the room and she realized that even if the others didn’t participate, they weren’t going to stop this.