Rogue Commander

by Leo J. Maloney

  The explosion rocked the ground and sent a burst of water thirty feet into the air.

  Morgan turned over onto his back and watched as water rained down and the waves resulting from the burst lapped at the shore.

  “Zero,” Bishop said drily.

  “Fellas,” Shepard said over the comm, “get moving. Someone’s going to come check this out. Pickup spot, sixty seconds.”

  Morgan and Lily ran side by side in the darkness, the others close behind.

  She was safe. But Lukacs was gone...again.

  Chapter Five

  Alex Morgan forced a yawn to clear her ears from the pressure buildup in the cabin of the Dassault Falcon 2000.

  Flying in a private jet was one of countless new experiences that had become commonplace after she’d joined Zeta—along with handling deadly weapons and being in frequent danger. Her father was as secretive as anyone about the organization itself, but some things were becoming clear. The first was maybe that her father was secretive because he knew little more than she did.

  The internal structure was easy enough. Diana Bloch, implacable and professional to a fault, was their chief executive director. Her right-hand man was Paul Kirby, director of operations. He always had an expression on his face like he smelled something unpleasant, and she sometimes endured long rants from her father about what a spineless weasel he was. For a professional special ops agent, Dad was surprisingly invested in his rants.

  Zeta also had their brain trust. Lincoln Shepard was their IT guy—the now somewhat standard kind of child genius who had gotten into hot water by hacking into classified intelligence databases like it was some sort of video game. Bloch got him out in exchange for his service.

  Karen O’Neal, their numbers analyst, was the same deal, except with her it was some kind of insider trading thing. Though Karen was probably Alex’s closest friend in Zeta after her father, she’d never been too forthcoming about those details. Alex didn’t blame her, press her, or really even want to know.

  Karen and Shepard were dating, kind of. They thought they were being sneaky, but it’d been going on for more than a year now, so it was fairly inevitable that everyone would catch on. But no one said anything. Alex figured everyone enjoyed the sneaking around part—Zeta being a nest of spies and all.

  The tactical team was the muscle, whenever it was needed. They were physically quick—in and out, whenever they needed to move in with overwhelming force. They were also an insular group, so Alex didn’t know them all that well, despite nominally being a part of them.

  Once they spread out into the Dassault, the team had gone into decompression mode. Bishop, their nominal leader—a tall black man with a shaved head and bulging muscles under his white T-shirt—had raided the minibar and was in one of the chairs toward the back. He was alongside Diesel, their resident sniper, laughing about something they’d probably be all too eager to tell her about if she asked.

  Alex had a special admiration for Spartan, the only woman in tactical. Short blond hair, muscled, and tattooed, she wasn’t the kind of woman her father might consider beautiful, but he still lived in the Stone Age. Spartan, who Alex thought was magnificent, was lying back in a seat next to Bishop, downing a beer.

  That left “the operatives,” like her. Well, not like her—she was as green as they came. But that was her role.

  She liked to think that the operatives were the versatile ones. They did what needed to get done. Sometimes it was spying, sometimes extraction, sometimes infiltration, sometimes who knows what. They needed to be flexible, independent, smart, quick on their feet, and constantly develop new skills. Alex realized that the operatives were like interns, only the business they served specialized in killing.

  She’d gotten good experience in training. They taught deception from both sides—giving and getting, in other words, how to lie so she would be believed and how to discern lying from truth when someone tried it on her. She also was given stunt driving courses, Krav Maga training from actual Mossad teachers, seminars in explosives, and constant target practice in both shooting ranges and obstacle courses with every kind of handgun, automatic weapon, and sniper rifle.

  But the prime lesson she learned was that training and practice were very different from actual field work.

  It was a good thing she was working with pros. Lily Randall was formerly MI-5, and, like Alex, a relatively recent addition. Lily was curled up in a corner seat with a book in one hand and a flute of champagne in the other. Peter Conley was her father’s old partner in the CIA. He was now in the cockpit, conferring with the pilots. Her father had said that Conley could fly anything, so his presence on any flight was reassuring.

  Speaking of her father, Dan Morgan was hunched over the table, working on his own hobby, building a model Duesenberg SJ Special. The pungent smell of the model glue tickled her nostrils. He had been a spy for the CIA before she was born—sort of a private contractor, the kind who gave the Agency maximum plausible deniability. He’d left after some disagreement he didn’t talk about and was recruited into Zeta a few years back.

  That was also around the time Alex found out who he really was—at the tender age of sixteen. Happy birthday to her. Those had been a rough couple of months, but once she had made the decision to shoot a man who had been sent to kill her, her mother, and her father, the transition had gone smoother—at least for her. Her father, already filled with guilt for lying to his family for years—they’d thought he was a classic car dealer—was still not sure he should have brought Alex to Take Your Daughter to Work Day. But once there, there was no turning back.

  Above Diana Bloch was Smith, the man with no title and no other name other than perhaps “Mister.” Both Dan and his daughter had initially thought he was merely a recruiter—like a baseball scout for assassins and spies—but it turned out he actually represented the mysterious Project Aegis, the shadowy power behind Zeta. Alex had read up on it. Aegis was the shield of the Greek Gods—Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and those guys. Zeta was the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet or the sixth star in a constellation.

  As far as Alex could tell, their Aegis was not, strictly speaking, a government agency. It was more like they had some bigwigs in government—military and intelligence top brass—plus, she guessed, major financial backers in the private sector. Who they were was kept very close to the chest, though. And she was not about to rattle any cages by prying into it.

  “Alex.” Her father had set down his model and was looking at her with that expression he always had when he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. He wasn’t the most communicative person—and a lot of things between them ended up going unsaid because of it. “Back there, with Lukacs. In the apartment.”

  To see her father like that had both scared her and pissed her off. It was one thing to see him hurt and kill people in the heat of combat. It was another to see him go so uselessly off the rails. Do that at the wrong time, and everyone’s life would be at risk. But she knew this was the sort of thing he was anxious about—her knowing who he really was, warts and all.

  “It’s fine, Dad. Your macho man took over. You felt protective of Lily’s virtue.”

  Relief and consternation seemed to mix on his face, but, as usual, he wound up hearing what he wanted to. “People like Lukacs—there’s no other language they understand. And I’ll stop at nothing to help the people I care about. That’s true for Lily and Peter, but it goes double for you and your mother.”

  Alex took his words at their face value. It was certainly a language her father understood. “I know how far you’re willing to go,” she assured him with affection. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “So you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, breaking into a warm, knowing smile. “I do, Dad.” Maybe more than he did.

  He sat back and took a deep breath. “You know, you did well out there. Quick on your feet, remembe
ring your training, working as a team...”

  They were interrupted by an alert from the laptop computer which was open at an empty table—an incoming video call from Zeta. Morgan accepted the call, and Diana Bloch’s face appeared—brown hair in a professional short trim, muted, sober makeup, and a face that rarely cracked a smile. Beside her was Lincoln Shepard, his messy black hair sticking in every direction, wearing a Japanese anime T-shirt.

  “I trust everyone is having a good flight,” Bloch said. “And I respect your need to rest. But we need to talk about what’s next.”

  Peter Conley walked back from the cockpit and asked them, “Any word on Lukacs’s whereabouts?”

  “I’ve cast a wide net,” Shepard said. “Not surprisingly, he’s careful. Despite our best efforts, I’m concerned that little worm may wriggle away again.”

  “So I want to see Lukacs’s belongings,” Bloch continued. “There might be something useful there.”

  Morgan reached into his carry-on, pulled out a bag, and set it on the table. He placed a wallet, a few coins, and a phone on the table.

  “The phone’s a burner,” Morgan explained.

  “I might be able to get something off of it anyway,” Shepard said. “Let’s see what’s in that wallet.”

  Morgan opened it and carefully spilled its contents on the table: an ID, presumably fake, some money, and credit cards.

  Something caught Alex’s eye. “Hold on.” She reached out and took something from the wallet—a golden rectangle about the size of a business card. She held it up, and it gleamed in the light of the airplane cabin.

  “That’s real gold leaf.” That was Lily, looking up from her book. “I know gold when I see it.”

  “Looks like there’s something on it. It’s really hard to see, hold on.” Alex ran her fingers over the surface and tilted it to catch the angle of the light just right. “Looks like some kind of symbol.”

  “Let me see,” Lily said, reaching out for it. She examined it, tilting it against the light as Alex had done. “Yes, there’s definitely something there. I need paper,” she said. “A notepad, anything.”

  Alex looked around and settled for the nearest thing—a barf bag in the pocket next to her seat. She handed it to Lily, who made a quick sketch and held up the paper. “Anyone recognize this?”

  “You’re not very good at drawing,” Alex said. “Hold on.”

  Using the card as a reference, she made a closer approximation of the design on the card—a broken circle, with a sort of pinched triangle in the middle. “Is this a bit closer?”

  “Yes, looks more like it,” Lily said. “But I don’t recognize it.”

  “Hold it up to the camera,” Shepard said. Alex held up the card and the design. “Nothing I know of, but I’ll see what I can find.”

  “The circle reminds me a bit of the Ouroboros,” Peter Conley said. “The snake that eats its own tail.”

  “Morgan.” It was Bloch. “I need to talk to you privately.”

  Bishop, in the back, snickered like Morgan was a schoolkid being called to the principal’s office.

  Morgan took the computer and brought it into one of the tiny cabins near the cockpit. “I’m sorry, but saving Lily was the right call,” he said. “We’ll get Lukacs soon enough—”

  “That’s not what this is about, Morgan. We can get into the details in the full debrief, and we’ll go into the specifics of that decision. But it was our decision, ultimately, and I take responsibility for it. But that’s not what this is about. I’m pulling you off Lukacs.”

  “What? Why? We were close, Bloch. Closest than anyone’s been in a long time.”

  “I know. But I have another mission for you—one that only you can perform.”

  “What—” Half the screen was occupied by a familiar face, one he did not expect.

  “General James Collins,” Bloch said. “I understand you knew him back in your days at the CIA.”

  “I worked under him,” said Morgan. “I did several black ops under his command in Africa.”

  “What can you tell me about him?” she asked.

  “Currently under investigation by a Senate committee for misconduct in Iraq. It’s bullshit. He’s a good man. Real American. Best boss I ever had.”

  “Maybe not so good,” said Bloch. “A cache of Tomahawk missiles went missing from a silo last week. Disappeared into thin air. And eleven soldiers dead, killed by whoever took them. The Pentagon’s covering, calling it a training accident.” She held up both hands and made air quotes. “But DIA says it had to have been an inside job.”

  “And they’re trying to pin it on him?”

  “His codes were used to access the base and deactivate the security systems. He had access to blueprints and schematics of the base, as well as details of its contents. The evidence doesn’t look good.”

  “What does he say?” Morgan asked.

  “That he had nothing to do with it. That he doesn’t know how his codes came to be in the possession of whoever orchestrated the heist.”

  “And you want me to see if that’s true?”

  “That’s the gist of it, yes,” Bloch said.

  “What makes you think he’ll open up to me? We haven’t seen each other in years.”

  “You received a voice mail today.” A recorded voice played over the speakers.

  “Dan, it’s Jim Collins. Something’s happening. I need your help. There’s no one else I can trust.”

  “You’re listening to my voice mails now?”

  “Of course,” Bloch responded without a hint of humor. “But we’re monitoring Collins. We couldn’t be coy about this. It’s too urgent. We need to find those missiles, Morgan.”

  “I get the picture.”

  “We need you to get him to talk,” she said. “You know how this goes. Use your relationship with him.”

  “And then stab him in the back?”

  “If he’s a traitor, yes. If not, get him to help you find the missiles. The truth is what we want.”

  Morgan was again amazed by the cold-blooded practicality of the woman. He also realized that was maybe what he liked about her the most. “That hasn’t always been my experience,” he reminded her. “Sometimes, what you higher-ups want is a fall guy.”

  Bloch sat back, and her lips got very thin and straight indeed. “This is Zeta, Agent Morgan,” she said carefully. “I am Zeta. If you think that is true, or even possibly true of me, I’m sure the classic car dealerships of the world would welcome a salesman of your caliber back into the fold. Don’t put your personal relationships ahead of your objectivity or the nation’s security. You’re a better agent than that.”

  “When the chips are down, I hope that’s more than just talk, Bloch.”

  “If you have to hope, then you don’t know Zeta at all.” She restored the placid authority to her expression. “You in, or can you give me a solid lead on a Porsche 916?”

  Morgan almost grinned. “Yeah, I get it. You need me to save the day. Must be Tuesday.”

  Chapter Six

  Lily gave her name at the lobby of the San Francisco St. Regis. Bright sunlight streamed in from Third Street through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall and fell on the interior’s mild modern decor.

  “Everything looks good with your reservation. Your car is also ready.”

  “Car?”

  “Let me see here. Yes, that’s right. We have a car for you. Courtesy of a Mr. Renard.”

  That would be Scott Renard. Young multimillionaire, Silicon Valley prodigy—as so many were— and Lily’s boyfriend. She thrilled at being left this little surprise.

  The man at reception handed her the keycard snugly inserted into a heavy stock envelope. “You’re all set. Are you going up to your room now, ma’am?”

  “No. Can you have the car brought around?”

  Th
e valet drove it into the drop-off area at the hotel door. It was a silver Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe, all sleek curves and low to the ground. She was a sucker for European sports cars, and Scott knew it.

  She got in, settling and arranging the seat and mirrors—which always felt like a ritual in a new car—getting to know its layout and particularities. She ran her hands over the interior, feeling the plump smoothness of the leather. Then she twisted the key and pulled off into the street, delighting in the responsiveness of the accelerator and the easy, fluid way in which it drove.

  She couldn’t wait to get that baby on the highway. But for now, she just played on the hilly San Francisco streets, as much as she could get away with and not attract the attention of the police. Once the sheen started wearing off, she activated the hands-free communication panel and called Scott.

  “Hello, stud. Guess where I am?”

  “I think you’re looking for something more specific than Frisco.”

  “Very specific. My present company is sexy, curvy, European and very powerful.”

  “If you’re trying to make me jealous, it’s not going to work.” He chuckled. “Do you like it?”

  “I think you know the answer to that question. You do know how to please a girl.”

  “In more ways than one. Speaking of which, I’m at work. Come pick me up.”

  “Don’t you have big executive things to do? Hire people, fire people, look at fiscal reports?”

  “I got all that done. I have a very important board meeting in five minutes, during which we are going to see if anyone can beat my high score on the office video game, but I can skip out early...if you sweeten the deal.”

  Her smile widened at the suggestion. “Suppose I just leave you there playing games with the boys?”

  “Okay. You win. I miss you desperately. Come now, or I’ll wallow forever in sorrow.”

  She grinned. “Be there in twenty.”

  “That’s the best you can do with my little present?” he asked incredulously.

  “Be there in ten.”