Nobody was screaming anymore. The last guy had killed himself, along with his two wounded buddies. Morgan got up on his knees and sat back on his haunches.
What is this? Guadalcanal? Or, maybe more accurately, Inchon?
He spent fifteen minutes checking over the corpses—gathering up their guns and tossing them out in the high grass, just to make sure. He was surprised and pleased to find the old water pump still working, and he sucked down half a gallon before splashing it over his stinging face and his neck.
Following that, he walked over to the towering white silo. The door wasn’t locked, so he took a breath, opened it up, stepped inside, found a light switch, and flicked it on. He took out his cell and tapped some numbers.
“Collins,” a sleepy growl answered.
“Guess who?” Morgan said.
“Sounds like a hissing Cobra.”
“That’s right.” Morgan looked up at three enormous Tomahawk missiles, racked on mobile gantries and with their vicious noses pointing at the silo cap. “And I’m looking at three big red dildos.” He heard General Collins sitting up in bed.
“Out-freaking-standing,” Collins said.
“As I remember, sir, that’s your highest compliment.”
“That is correct, Mister Morgan. Fine job. Where are you?”
“Ass end of Kentucky. I’ll text you the coordinates so you can send in the cavalry and be a national hero again. But you’d better make it a spook team, ’cause I made a little mess here.”
Of all the things Morgan thought, or hoped, his ex-commander would say, he never imagined the man’s next three words.
“No can do.”
“No what do?” Morgan blurted.
Collins’s voice remained even, in control. “We need one more thing.”
“We do?” Morgan frowned at the phone.
“I do. Without the tracking logs, there’s nothing to prove I wasn’t involved in this.”
Morgan regained his equilibrium as fast as he’d lost it. “Okay. What do they look like and where do I find them? Some sort of maintenance hatch on the birds?”
“They’re not with the birds. The logs are all digital, on a chip.”
Morgan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “All right, let me have it. Where do they keep these chips?”
“Utah. A place called Coldcastle Mountain. Technically, it doesn’t exist.”
“You know what, Jim?” Morgan growled. “If I didn’t owe you some debt of honor, I’d tell you to go screw.”
“After this one, Dan, I’m the one who’ll owe you.”
“Small comfort. All right, so you text me those cords instead, and I’ll let you know when I’m close.”
“Roger,” Collins said, and he clicked off.
Morgan turned off the light, left the silo and closed the door. The air still smelled like gunfire residue and blood. He started trudging his way back to the Shelby.
“Blast it,” he muttered, well aware of the choice of words. “I’m so sick of driving.”
At least Neika was happy to see him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The engraved bronze plaque on the door to Paul Kirby’s office was etched with the bold capital letters D.O.
The initials stood for “Director of Operations,” but Alex couldn’t help but smirk as she knocked softly on the door. Some tactical team members always made fun of Kirby’s sign, claiming that he actually didn’t “DO” anything except kiss Mr. Smith’s ass and try to undermine Diana Bloch. Others wanted to add another o and another doo—separated by a dash.
“Come,” said the imperious voice from the other side of the door.
Alex pushed it open and walked in. Kirby was seated at his large L-shaped Staples office desk, which Alex figured he’d selected to prove he was “low-budget.” The desk had a phony veneer, sort of like Kirby’s face. He was leaning back in his chair, reading an open manila file that had a dark red stripe on its border. Alex stood there at attention until he looked up over his thick glasses.
“This isn’t the army, Morgan,” he said, “which you haven’t been through anyway. Sit.”
Kirby’s guest chairs were a pair of metal folding types, probably chosen because he never wanted people to feel too comfortable. She pulled one over and sat. She’d motorcycled all night from D.C. to Boston, grabbed a short stack at a Pancake House, and cruised right over to headquarters. She was physically wiped, but her mind was still sharp. She was definitely Dan Morgan’s daughter. Her leathers creaked on the chair.
Kirby dropped the file and stared at her, with that weasel-like expression—as if he was poking his nose from a burrow. “Where have you been, Morgan?”
Alex shrugged and gave him her college girl smirk. “It was my day off.”
“You were recalled.”
“Yeah, I came as soon as I got the word. But I was down in D.C.”
Kirby picked up a pencil and let the eraser drum on the desk in triplets. “And what were you doing in our nation’s capital?”
“I was in Arlington,” she said, which was partially true. She didn’t know if Kirby might have had her tracked, so she hung her hat on one of her dad’s spook wisdoms: If you have to lie, take the truth and just twist it. “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” she added.
“You don’t say.”
“Uh-huh. One of my uncles is buried there.” That was true too.
“Very touching,” Kirby snapped, then dropped the pencil, put his elbows on the desk, steepled his fingers, and propped them under his bony nose.
“You don’t really understand this organization, do you, Ms. Morgan?”
Alex resisted the temptation to snap back, “Maybe better than you,” and chose to say instead, “Well, I’m new, but I’m learning...”
“This is not like a job at Target. We don’t call in sick; we don’t show up late or crave the ends of our shifts. We don’t commiserate with our fellow employees about the stressful conditions or paltry benefits. And we never, ever have a genuine day off.”
“Okay, I know.” Alex lifted her palms in partial surrender. “I just thought, you know, the regulations manual talks about stand-down intervals and rest...”
Kirby smacked the desk with his palm, and Alex purposely flinched. If Kirby wanted to put on a show of dressing her down, who was she to deny him?
“This is a tactical intelligence and special operations organization!” he barked. “We follow orders here, daytime, nighttime, anytime. And we are never off comms, even if we’re banging our boyfriends!”
Alex jerked her head back. Did he mean her boyfriend, which she didn’t actually have, or his?
“Are we clear, Ms. Morgan?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh-huh?” His wispy eyebrows flared up.
“I mean, yes sir, we’re clear.”
He wagged a bony finger at her. “You have a strain of genetic malfeasance, Ms. Morgan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your errant father. He didn’t want you involved here, and frankly, neither did I. This isn’t some mafia crime family where all the progeny must make their bones. However, Ms. Bloch overrode our objections, apparently seeing some raw potential.” Kirby laced his fingers together and loomed closer. “All I see is a renegade cobra’s slithering snakelet.”
With that, Alex’s cheeks flushed rosy pink, and she fumed. You’re about to cross the line, a-hole. Her brown eyes slitted.
“Let’s leave my dad out of this, sir.”
Kirby’s thin mouth twisted up. “Yes. You’re a big girl. In a few years, you’ll be able to order a drink. But for now, you’re going to stay right here at HQ and busy yourself with some admin work until I task you otherwise.” He flicked a hand, picked up the file again, and opened it. “Dismissed.”
Alex got up, her fingers clenching her sweaty palms. She mo
ved toward the door and turned back. “I don’t really have any admin work.”
Kirby rolled his eyes. “Then go clean your sniper rifle.”
“It’s spotless.”
“Then go clean someone else’s!” he snarled. “Out!”
Alex was still steaming inside as she walked past a row of open cubicles reserved for the wizards and worker bees. Paul Kirby was no different than any other corporate slob, throwing his weight around and making himself feel bigger by stomping on his underlings.
You’re right, Kirby, she thought bitterly. This isn’t like Target. It’s worse. We don’t actually make or sell anything. And there’s tons of bureaucratic bullshit.
She saw Lincoln Shepard glancing at her over the top of one of his monitors. He looked paler than usual.
“Hey there, hotshot,” he muttered.
“Hi, Linc.” She flicked a weak wave. She liked Shepard, more than most of the people at Zeta.
“You’re not looking too chipper today,” he observed.
“I’m as happy as a kitten in a dog kennel,” Alex grumbled. “You look a little burned out yourself.”
“Brain fried,” Shepard said. He would have liked to commiserate with Alex about the horror of Lily’s capture, but different mission threads were strictly compartmentalized.
“Hey, do you know where Cobra is?” Alex asked.
Shepard glanced around and dropped his voice. “Nobody knows.”
“Figures,” Alex huffed. “Just like home.”
She walked down a hallway and pushed through the door to the Team Room. It was mostly the purview of Tactical—a large space with a long table in the middle for preparing gear braced by wooden benches. Then there were rows of wide, tall, steel-gray personal lockers on either side. The lockers were intended mostly for Tac operators’ gear, clothing, and weapons, but a few were reserved for the “lesser” operatives such as herself.
Nobody was around, so she sat down on a bench and brooded. She sure as hell wasn’t going to clean her rifle, again, or anyone else’s for that matter. “You shoot it, you preen it.” That was the rule. Another rule was “Never stop thinking.”
So she did. Where the hell was her dad? He’d left Kadir Fastia’s with that spring in his step of ridiculous boundless energy, off to tear up the world like some pit bull. That stuff had annoyed her all the time as a kid, but now she knew she’d inherited that strain. Sitting around made her nuts.
He was running down this thing for his old pal, General Collins, determined to clear his name. But after he’d left, Fastia had shared with her that the cause of Collin’s career crash was a much bigger fish, namely, one Lieutenant General Sheldon Margolis. So, who was going after him? Nobody? It sure seemed that way, though she couldn’t exactly ask. Then go clean your sniper rifle. Bullshit!
She was hunched on the bench, picking bug residue off her leathers, when she looked at her locker across the room. Then she slapped her knees, got up, left the Team room, and cruised back down the hallway. Shepard was gone, probably off to lunch, and most of the other cubes were empty as well. She spotted Karen in the back, sitting alone. She adopted a phony brightness.
“Hi, Karen!”
“Well hi there, Alex.” Karen smiled. “You seem chipper today.”
Alex grinned and rolled her eyes. “Actually, I’m fried. But it’s cool ’cause Mr. Kirby told me to just do some admin stuff today.”
“Admin stuff?” Karen cocked her head. “Like what?”
“Oh, just some file clearing and maintenance. Works for me, though. I just need a machine.”
Karen gestured at an empty cubicle off to her right. “You can use that one there. I’m going to grab a bite outside. Want something?”
“Thanks, but I’ll do that later. Don’t want him to think I’m disobeying his orders.”
“God forbid.” Karen winked, picked up her backpack, and left.
Alex slipped into a chair at a lone computer, took out her Zeta CAC card, and swiped it in the access strip. The monitor brightened up with its weird wavering Z, which resembled the logo from that movie, Zorro.
She opened the Internet, did some Googling on Lieutenant General Sheldon Margolis, then picked up a white telephone headset from the desk and pushed the mike close to her lips. By then she had accessed the Department of Defense telephone listings and dialed a certain number. A woman answered.
“Pentagon, Public Affairs.”
“Morning, ma’am,” Alex said brightly. “My name is Alex Steenbeck. I’m a journalist with The Mandible.”
“The Mandible?” The woman held her snicker. “You mean, as in jawbone?”
“Well, yes. It’s a college newspaper, Ohio State.”
“Oh, I see. And what can we do for you, Alex?”
“So, I’m doing this story about the Eighteen X-Ray program. You know, the one where Army Special Forces takes guys straight out of college?”
“Yes. And?”
“Well, I was hoping to get some quotes from General Margolis. He was head of US Army Special Operations when they started Eighteen X-Ray.”
“That’s true,” the woman said, apparently impressed. “Hold on a sec, please.”
Alex waited, shifting in her chair and trying not to glance up at all the “Big Brother” cameras poking down from every corner of Zeta. The woman came back on the line.
“Alex, I’m afraid General Margolis is out of town.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I’ve got a deadline, of course, and a grade goes with it.”
“Well, he’s apparently down at CENTCOM for the Special Operations Expo. He should be back in a few days.”
“Okay,” Alex said. “That’s in Tampa, right?”
“Yes it is. Seems you know your subject.”
Alex grinned into the mike. “I read a lot of Clancy.”
The woman laughed. “Good for you. Call us back on Monday, and I’ll see what I can do. I’m Gail.”
“Thanks, Gail.”
“You bet.”
Alex took off the headset, shut off the computer, and strolled back over to the Team Room. She went to her locker, worked the combination, pulled out her black gear duffle, and set it on the linoleum floor. Then she swept through her hanging rack of “costumes,” selected a bunch of stuff that seemed schoolgirl-reporter appropriate, and folded them into the duffle. She shut the locker, hefted the duffle, left the Team Room, and turned right.
She pushed through the exit door, took the elevator up and popped out into the underground garage. But she walked right past her Ninja and trotted up the ramp and out into the bright daylight. She hailed a Boston Cab and piled into the back.
“Logan Airport, please.”
The driver took off. Alex pulled out her wallet and chose her own Visa card, rather than the Amex one linked to the Zeta accounts. She tapped her cell phone and smiled as she found Travelocity.
“Dad’s gonna love this,” she mused.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SOFIC, the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, is held every year at the Tampa Convention Center. It is an enormous undertaking, composed of hundreds of private companies hawking their military wares in a space that seems about a square mile in size. The convention is an endless labyrinth of booths, from the smallest ones displaying items such as the latest field dressings, tactical flashlights, and combat knives to the stalls the size of small-town playgrounds offering everything from armored assault vehicles to Little Bird helicopters.
Over the course of three days, special operators from fifty nations roam the aisles in search of the latest implements of warfare. Some are in uniform, some not, and for the most part, they’re men. So, a comely young female striding through this “mall of death” always draws winks and smiles.
Alex had no idea exactly how she was going to track down General Margolis, but she was d
etermined to walk the convention until her feet were blistered and the lights were turned off. She’d caught a late flight to Tampa, discovered that every decent hotel room in town was booked, and slept in a fleabag out near Busch Gardens.
In the morning she’d dressed in her college reporter outfit—a tartan skirt, low black heels, a cream-colored chemise, and a black cotton-cashmere cardigan—bought a thick notebook at the nearest stationery store, and cabbed it down to the convention.
Admission was by invitation only, so she’d gone to the Press Office, presented her phony Ohio State ID and lied about The Mandible having applied months ago, as well as that she’d flown down on her own dime. When her eyes welled up and she looked on the verge of hysteria, they’d given her a patronizing smile and a press pass.
As it turned out, she’d arrived at the last day of the conference, which made her grimace. Margolis might have already finished up all his business and left. But fretting over that wouldn’t do any good, so she started an alphabetical grid pattern, beginning with Aimpoint gun sights. By the time she got to Columbia Helicopters her calves were already aching.
The place was packed with handsome, buff men, and if she’d been looking for a boyfriend that would’ve been great, but she only had eyes for a middle-aged, three-star general. It was like looking for one particular goldfish in the Boston Aquarium.
With her feet on fire, and having already been offered six invitations to lunch, she arrived at the Defense Logistics Agency booth. There was no equipment on display, just a bunch of American army officers discussing the trials and tribulations of quartermasters. She tugged on the sleeve of a tall blond captain, who turned, looked down at her, and smiled.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said. It was the first time she’d ever been called that. “You interested in parachute rigging hangars? They’re on sale for half a mil.”
Alex glanced at his nameplate and smiled back. “Sorry, Captain Ross, don’t think so. Actually, I’m looking for a friend of my dad’s.”
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