by Rachel Grant
The marines looked like they should be studying for finals and asking girls to the prom rather than out in one-hundred-and-five-degree heat in full gear, providing protection in Djibouti. But it was clear after an hour these were men, not boys, and she was grateful for their protection.
At the end of the day, they’d walked and cleared a small section of the alternate APE. Morgan conferred with Ibrahim over the planned grid for the following day’s work. With each day, they shifted farther east, necessitating new meet points and the moving of equipment. This wasn’t like the Linus excavation, where they’d stayed in one place for over two weeks.
The survey would take longer with the smaller crew, but Charles Lemaire had indicated that finding men eager to work would be difficult now that Desta had threatened the project along with everyone who worked on it.
As far as the warlord went, she didn’t know if the Navy had learned anything from the cell phone Pax had taken from her apartment, or if either man she’d injured had provided any actionable intel. She was out of the loop, which was fine by her, considering being in the loop would mean giving up her project to men who’d stated flat out during the meeting the previous night they wanted her to lie and say there were no significant sites in the second APE after just a cursory search. And when that balloon didn’t float, they’d discussed bringing in their own experts who, they believed, would sign off on the project.
Morgan had met her share of Army and Navy archaeologists over the years, and she had a hard time believing any of the professionals she knew would ever sign off on a project in a place as culturally rich and prehistorically significant as Djibouti. People went into archaeology because they had a passion for the subject and wanted to protect the resource. Not to become rubber stamps.
But that didn’t mean she’d relinquish control just to prove that point.
She’d looked forward to talking about the meeting with Pax, but he was AWOL today and no one had said a word about why.
She felt bad for the marines, out in the heat in full gear. She and the crew took frequent breaks, setting up a shade canopy when necessary, but the marines were only allowed to take their breaks one at a time. Someone was always vigilant. She and her crew worked in the same conditions, but at least their work was interesting. Every moment held the potential for discovery. This was true in Djibouti more than in any place she’d worked.
She’d never in her life expected to hold artifacts in her hands that had been created by precursors to modern humans one to three million years ago. It was mind-blowing. And then finding Linus, well, she didn’t even have the words to describe what that discovery had been like.
Back at Camp Citron at the end of the day, she received a summons to the captain’s office. Dread settled in her gut. Had he found a way around her blackmail over the damage to the skull? It was possible he’d come clean with Charles Lemaire in an attempt to convince the minister to pull her from the project. It would be ironic if he got her fired, considering O’Leary had been the one who’d put pressure on her to stay. She had no regrets about her decision, and might even have made the same choice without the pressure from O’Leary, but she resented his methods nonetheless.
Coated with dirt and sweat after hours in the field, she took a shower, spending all of her allotted three minutes of running water before meeting with the captain.
Clean and presentable, she braced herself to face O’Leary. He was on the phone when she was admitted to his office. He waved her forward and bade her to sit with a gesture. She complied and folded her hands in her lap, being careful not to fidget or show white knuckles.
After a lengthy interval, he hung up the phone and met her gaze. Silence settled between them, and she wondered if he was counting to some predetermined number prior to speaking, if that was a technique taught in intimidation school.
She’d graduated summa cum laude from the general’s school for facing down authority and could outwait him without breaking a sweat.
Finally, he said, “We got off on the wrong foot, Morgan.”
“Dr. Adler,” she corrected. If she had to call him Captain O’Leary, he would damn well call her by her title as well, even if it was pretentious.
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Dr. Adler. You’ve highlighted my point. I’ve made a few mistakes.”
“A few. Mistakes. Why don’t I list the highlights for you?” She raised a finger to tick off the numbers. “One: you seriously damaged a fossil that isn’t just rare, it’s singular. The only one of its kind.” She held up a second finger. “Two: you made a power grab for my project with a complete disregard for the data that’s at stake. And three: you used my father to put pressure on me, essentially ending my relationship with him. That’s the view from where I’m sitting, so forgive me if I’m not ready to simply say ‘mistakes were made’ and move on.”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at her. His expression was closed. What did she expect? An apology? Foolish, since he was probably cut from the same cloth as the general, and Morgan knew she’d be downhill-skiing in hell before her father ever uttered the words “I’m sorry” to his lone offspring.
All at once, the man let out a heavy sigh and slumped in his seat. “I screwed up. Every step of the way.”
His words were so completely not what she expected, it took her a moment to take them in, to see that he’d dropped the command posture. She straightened her spine and waited for him to elaborate.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Adler.”
From his sincere tone, she was tempted to tell him to call her Morgan. But this could be another ploy. She simply cocked her head in question.
“I want to give you my perspective. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope you’ll understand.” He stood from behind his desk and turned to the window. “This room is the center of the US fight against terrorism in Africa and the Arab Peninsula. It’s my job to run the base and work with the different commands that have operations here. As you said, I’m essentially the mayor of Camp Citron.” He cast a smile at her over his shoulder. “I’m not the highest-ranking officer on base, but my focus is, and must always be, on the base itself. Other officers must look out for their commands, while I look out for our physical presence on the Horn of Africa.
“The job, the needs of the base, can, at times, make me myopic. But lapses on my part can mean terrorist organizations have a chance for success in their strikes. They grow and gain power. Al-Shabaab has committed atrocities here in Africa as bad or worse than what ISIS has been doing in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Al-Shabaab attacks have been as devastating as what al-Qaeda has done in the Middle East, yet many Americans don’t even know al-Shabaab exists. I’m fighting a war invisible to most Americans—except for the part where they’re pissed about the drones.”
She stiffened at that. She had her own issues with drones. “Well, the drones are killing civilians. Families. Children. Machines delivering death without accountability.”
He nodded. “Yes. More mistakes. But we can’t share with the world the real reasons we target certain individuals. For example, we’ve suspected for over a year now that China is arming Etefu Desta, which brings the threat he poses to a whole new level. A well-armed Desta could seriously gut our fight on terror on the African continent. He needs to be taken out. Soon. And when we find him, we’ll do everything in our power to only kill members of his organization. But I shouldn’t have to justify the use of drones to kill Desta to you, considering you’ve been targeted by the warlord.”
“Yes. I’ll admit to being a hypocrite. I’m against drones on principle, but I’d cheer if you sent one after Desta, and I’m hoping the man who was shot in the wadi can provide his location.”
He turned away from the window and faced her. “Which brings me to the reason I asked you here. He was murdered this morning before he was able to tell us where Desta’s base is.”
Shock filtered through her. “Murdered? Isn’t he on a Navy ship in the Gulf?” She’d seen
him fly off in the helicopter. How could he be murdered on a Navy ship?
Captain O’Leary nodded. “Another patient at the medical facility—also a detainee—overwhelmed his guard and slit the militant’s throat with a scalpel.”
She gasped. “Is the guard okay? Was anyone else injured?”
“The guard has a concussion but is otherwise okay.”
“What happened to the detainee with the scalpel?”
“He was shot and killed as he tried to escape the medical facility.” The captain paused. “You should know, the killer was the man who was taken into custody after assaulting you and Sergeant Blanchard at your Linus site yesterday.”
She sucked in another sharp breath, feeling pummeled by each fact the captain revealed. “Did he plan it somehow? Attacking us at the site so he’d be captured and taken to the ship?”
The captain shrugged. “We’ll never know if it was a crime of opportunity or exceedingly well planned. The man had to know escape was unlikely. His willingness to sacrifice himself to keep Desta’s base of operations a secret is worrisome.
“Desta has never utilized suicide bombers before, and we’d believed it was because his followers want to overthrow the government of Eritrea—due to political ideology, not religious. Simple greed for power combined with a pedigree that has China betting on him to succeed.”
The captain turned back to the window. “But this…this is different. Intelligence indicates the man who killed the militant on the ship might be from al-Shabaab, which means either Etefu Desta is now aligned with the terrorist organization, or al-Shabaab is using the warlord as a cover for their own activities. Either way, they don’t want us to find him, and we’ve got an uphill battle taking down this threat.
“There’ve been other signs of Desta’s cooperation with al-Shabaab, and Monday’s coordinated assault on the base that included the bombing of your vehicle may well be indicative of things to come.” He faced her again. “When we met on Monday, I was viewing the situation with a much bigger picture in mind. My base had been under attack. My convoy pinned by a sniper. An explosion on the main road to the base. With our own airstrip, we can react more quickly and bring in supplies and new personnel more easily. As the mayor of Camp Citron, I need to look out for my citizens.”
She nodded. She did understand the importance of gaining an airstrip to aid the US fight in the war on terror in Africa.
“Marines were sent to retrieve Linus because the same person who called in the tip that resulted in Sergeants Blanchard and Callahan stopping you before you reached the base contacted us again and said Desta was going to smash and grab the fossils. The first tip proved true, as you know. I don’t regret taking action to prevent the second.”
Her stomach flooded with acid. “Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday?” When she’d met with him prior to the meeting, he’d offered no explanation. In disgust, she’d attended the meeting and gazed with horror at Linus’s shattered zygomatic arches and the broken bits of his glabella—bones that had protected an australopithecine brain that could make and use tools. A male who had hunted with those tools on his very last day. His bones had survived intact for three-point-five-million years, only to be broken within hours of the US military learning of their existence.
That was the attitude she’d brought to the meeting. A little explanation from Captain O’Leary would have gone a long way.
“I didn’t tell you because we have reason to believe the tips are coming from someone within Desta’s organization, making everything about the tips and the information highly classified.” He gave her a faint smile. “Not to mention that I don’t answer to you.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because today we received another tip. And this one involves you.”
Fear unfurled in her belly. “Me? Like the package delivery tip?”
“This one is more personal. It appears Desta is…interested in you.”
Fear became full-blown terror. “Interested?” Her voice was little more than a squeak.
“He has expressed the desire to make you his fifth wife.”
Her breath left her in a rush. When she could finally speak, she said, “You can’t be serious.”
The captain shrugged. “There is no way of knowing how serious the notion is, but we can’t ignore it.”
She jumped to her feet and tried to ignore the spin of the room. This could be a lie. This had to be a lie. She really wanted it to be a lie. “You can’t use this to remove me from the project or keep me prisoner here—”
He held out a hand. “No, Dr. Adler. I will not attempt to interfere again with the management of your project. Also, it might appear suspicious if you didn’t show up in the field, and we don’t want to risk revealing we have an informant.”
“So business as usual?”
“Not completely. We’ll be issuing you a gun, as Sergeant Blanchard requested. I understand you know how to use it?”
She nodded.
“Good. There’s another precaution we can take. One Desta won’t know about.” He crossed the room, opened the door, and signaled to someone in the waiting area.
The woman who’d attended yesterday’s meeting entered the room carrying a heavy-duty black case. She set it on a side table and pressed her thumb to a small blank square. A rectangular panel on the top opened, revealing a numbered keypad. She pressed several buttons, and the case lid rose. “We haven’t officially met,” she said. “Savannah James.”
“CIA?” Morgan asked.
The woman offered a tight smile and said nothing.
“Dr. Adler,” Captain O’Leary said, “We’d like permission to inject a subdermal GPS transmitter into your arm.”
Sweat dotted her brow, as if she were back out in the Djiboutian heat, not in a nice, quiet air-conditioned office with an insane officer who’d just suggested implanting her with something that couldn’t exist. “Aren’t subdermal trackers science fiction?” she asked.
James answered for O’Leary. “The kind they had in The Hunger Games are fiction. No one has made a tracker that transmits continuously. The battery required would be the size of a deck of cards, and would need constant recharging. What we have is highly classified because it’s only useful as long as the enemy doesn’t know it exists.” She held out a two-millimeter wide, fifteen-millimeter long strip that looked like copper-coated vinyl. “It’s flexible, so it will move with you. After the insertion point heals, it’s painless. A chip this size can emit a signal for four hours. It requires an active cell phone within ten feet; it hops on the signal and transmits to the base station, which is here on Camp Citron.”
“So what good is it, then?” Morgan asked. “Four hours isn’t very long, and cell towers out here are few and far between.” The item looked harmless enough. Except that they wanted to implant it under her skin.
“It can remain dormant for up to two months. It only wakes when activated. Four hours is plenty of time if the abductee waits to trigger it until they’re certain they won’t be moved for enough hours for a rescue to be planned and executed.”
It still sounded like a narrow hope, but it was certainly better than no hope. Or rather, better than becoming the fifth wife to a sex-trafficking, drug-dealing warlord. “How do you activate the transmitter?”
“The easiest method is direct pressure on the chip for ten seconds. Massaging the spot will activate it in only five seconds. For that reason, we try to put it in a location that’s not likely to be pressed while sleeping, but also an area of the arm that can be reached when hands are tied together in front or behind.”
The woman had Morgan hold her wrists together and touch her left arm with her right hand. She drew a red line in the easiest places to apply pressure for ten seconds. Morgan repeated the process with her hands behind her back, and her arm was marked again, this time in blue.
“Okay, now nose,” James said.
“Excuse me?”
“Raise your hands above your he
ad as though they’re bound above you, and press your nose into your arm, applying as much pressure as you can, aiming for the red and blue intersections.”
“The name Savannah doesn’t fit you,” Morgan said. “It can’t be your real name.”
“It’s not,” the woman said.
“You wear it like an ugly Christmas sweater. Awkward. Possibly itchy.”
The woman laughed. “I do give most of the personnel on base hives, but I’m curious why you say that.”
“You’re no Southern belle, for starters, and I’ve only met one Savannah who wasn’t from the south—but her parents were. More important, the way you said it when you introduced yourself was flat. Either you aren’t connected to the name Savannah, or you don’t like it.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone here calls me by my last name anyway. Now press your nose into your arm.”
Morgan did as instructed, and the location for the chip was selected. Midway between her armpit and inner elbow, near the deltoid tuberosity of the humerus. Behind her back, she could reach the spot with her index finger, in front with her thumb, and her nose would work if the others failed.
Not-Savannah moved with smooth efficiency as she pulled a gadget that looked like an ear-piercing gun from the case, but it had a wider, flat needle. She inserted a cartridge with a sterile chip into the chamber and said, “This will pinch for a moment, but that’s all.” She set the gadget aside and reached for an alcohol swab.
Instinctively, Morgan covered the spot on her arm where the tracking device was to be injected. “So, what are the health risks? Will I be getting arm cancer in five years?”
Not-Savannah shrugged. “The long-term effects are unknown, but it’s not recommended the implant remain in place for more than two months. Removing is a quick surgery—like pulling out a big splinter. Are you allergic to any metals?”
Morgan pursed her lips. “No. But I’ve never been implanted with any before.”
