“And who’d that be?”
“Sheldon Margolis. General Sheldon Margolis. Ever heard of him?”
The captain laughed. “ ‘Give-em-hell Shel’? Sure. He’s probably chewed out everyone here at some point or another. Friend of your father? Wow. Good to know he actually has a friend.” Ross took another look at Alex’s wide-eyed expression and coed outfit and pointed off to the farthest corner of the convention hall. “Last I saw him, he was over at Northrup Grumman, probably buying some killer drones.”
“Great!” Alex said brightly. “Thanks!”
“Hey, want some coffee before you go over there? Long walk.”
“Can I swing back afterward?”
“You bet.” The captain grinned as Alex waved and took off. The last thing she wanted was a date with some army guy. She was probably a much better shot.
She quick-marched all the way over to Northrup, praying that the general hadn’t already moved on. On the way over, she shrugged off her clingy cardigan and slung it over one arm. Then she spotted the display, a sprawling presentation of aircraft models spread out over a carpet of fake grass. In the middle, a small cluster of officers from various branches were listening to a larger man holding court. He had steel-gray hair, a Roman nose, and a turned-down mouth. His ink-blue dress uniform gleamed with “fruit salad” and jump wings, and his black nameplate said “Margolis.”
Alex waited until the group of officers moved on to another display, leaving Margolis alone with a navy lieutenant dressed in light khakis and short sleeves. She took a breath and, hugging her notebook to her chest, made her approach.
“Excuse me. General Margolis?”
He turned from the navy lieutenant and looked down at her. “Yes, miss?”
“Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Alex Steenbeck, Ohio State.” She slipped the notebook away from her chest, exposing her dangling press pass.
“Good for you, Miss Steenbeck,” Margolis said without any warmth or further invitation, but he shook her hand.
“You’re press,” the navy lieutenant observed with all the pleasure of spotting a cockroach in his soup.
“Yes, sir,” said Alex.
Margolis cocked his head to the left. “Lieutenant Honesdale is our PAO down here.”
Alex nodded at him as well. “Yes, well, I spoke to the Pentagon public affairs officer, Gail, and she told me where to find you.”
“Oh she did, did she?” Margolis frowned. “I’ll have to have a word with her.”
Before Alex could rush to the woman’s defense, the lieutenant cut in. “What’s the issue?” he asked, as if every reporter was a problem, which, in his world, was usually the case.
“Well, as I explained to Gail, I’m a reporter for the college newspaper, The Mandible. We’re doing a story on the Eighteen X-Ray program.” Alex turned back to Margolis. “As I understand, General, you were integral in the start-up of that at Fort Bragg.”
Margolis’s reaction told Alex that her opening gambit was a winner. He clearly felt proud of it, and wanted to let the collegiate world know.
“I was indeed,” he told her, his stern expression softening an almost infinitesimal bit.
“The Mandible,” the lieutenant mused. “Funny name for a publication.”
“Go get some coffee, Honesdale,” Margolis said. “I think I can handle this one.”
“Roger, sir.” The lieutenant moved off, but Alex caught a glimpse of him taking out his cell. She hadn’t had the time to set up any backup for her cover, so she might not have much of a safety window. She opened her notebook and clicked a pen.
“Sir, so just a few questions, if you don’t mind?”
He smiled at her old-fashioned reporting tools, apparently pleased he wouldn’t have to speak into the butt end of a smartphone. “Shoot.” He backed up onto a high metal bar stool in front of a glass display case and sat, but he was still looking down at her.
“Okay, so, this is for our college seniors. Is the program still in effect? I mean are Special Forces still looking for young men with no prior military service?”
“I don’t run that program anymore, Ms. Steenbeck. But my understanding is yes. However, the quality of grads is on the downside for the last few years. It’s hard to lure them out of their ‘safe spaces’.”
Alex looked up at him. No smile or irony in his eyes. He wasn’t joking. “Is it all right if I quote you on that?”
“It’s the unvarnished truth, so why not?”
Alex glanced sideways, spotting Honesdale over by a refreshment stand. He was mixing his coffee with one hand and talking on his cell with the other. She scribbled head-down in her notebook.
“So, Sir. The program’s fallen off, you’d say.”
“It was hot and heavy in the few years after 9/11. Then some of those college kids started coming back in body bags, which happens to be the nature of warfare. But a lot of universities started bad-mouthing the idea. They’re mostly run now by leftist professors babysitting millennial brats.”
“Yes, I see,” said Alex as she continued writing, and then she took her shot. “I was talking to General Collins about some of this...”
“Say again?”
She looked up. Margolis’s thick gray eyebrows were turned down at the middle.
“General James Collins,” she said innocently. “I heard you know him.”
“I know him,” said Margolis, and he rose from the stool and stood up. “I know him very well. And he had nothing to do with Eighteen X-Ray, or anything else you should be interested in for a college newspaper.” He stared at her with a pair of lizard green eyes for a long moment. “What are you here for, Ms. Steenbeck?”
“Well, what I said, Sir. General Collins’s name came up in connection with yours, so I just figured I’d reach out to him too.”
Margolis’s expression turned dark as a thundercloud, and he reached out and gripped Alex’s arm. “What are you here for, young lady?”
She looked as his fingers and back at his scowling lips. “Just for a quote. It’s still a free press, isn’t it, sir?”
Lieutenant Honesdale appeared to her right, holding his coffee cup and snarling down at her. “You don’t work for The Mandible, miss—which would be impossible anyway, since the last issue was published a year ago.”
“Honesdale,” Margolis snapped. “Go get security.”
Shit. Alex’s mind raced through her options, which were few. She saw Honesdale nodding, and she felt Margolis’s grip tightening, so she reached out and slapped the bottom of Honesdale’s cup. It sent a shower of steaming black coffee all over his crotch.
“Goddamn it!” he yelled and jumped back.
Alex jerked her arm from Margolis and took off. She sprinted down the closest display aisle as heads snapped around, and she heard a shout from behind. Then she took a hard right.
Thankfully, she hadn’t forgotten to note where all the emergency exits were, and she pounded her way through a craft services area and a slew of round tables with men wolfing hot dogs. Using them as cover, she charged toward the restrooms but took a hard left away from them—exploding through a barred exit door as an alarm went off.
She didn’t stop running for three blocks, even in the low heels, until she spotted a Tampa cab, jumped in, and panted to the driver, “Get me out of here! Some homeless dude’s been chasing me, and I’m scared!”
“Where to?” The driver hit the gas and took off.
“Busch Gardens. Hotel Nine.” She scoured the area out every window in the taxi, and waited for a full block before she slumped down in the back seat and cursed herself.
Dumbass. What the hell had she expected to get out of Margolis? Some babbling confession from a hard-ass combat leader? “Oh, yes, I’m trying to blackball that hero James Collins and ruin his life!” Now she couldn’t even go to the airport. She’d have
to grab her stuff, take a bus somewhere else, and then fly back from there. She was nothing but a total freaking amateur.
She looked around at the back of the taxi, both sides of the leather seat. Her cardigan. She’d lost it somewhere. Her phony student ID was in one of the pockets, with a really nice picture of her face on it. She smacked herself on the forehead.
The cab filled with flashing red lights, the driver muttered, “Sorry, lady,” and pulled to the curb. Alex heard doors slam, and a pair of cops appeared on both sides, hands on their pistols. Then a big black Suburban zoomed past the taxi and screeched to a halt right in front. The passenger door opened and General Margolis got out. Alex rolled her eyes.
“Dad’s gonna hate this,” she moaned.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I hate having to call you like this, Scott.”
Scott Renard stood in the gleaming kitchen of his labyrinthine house. Early-morning sunlight glinted off the brushed-steel appliances, and the coffee mug he’d been raising to his lips was now frozen in mid-gesture. His cell phone was docked, and everything was wired for Bluetooth, so the disembodied voice of Lincoln Shepard echoed in the room like a call from Olympus.
“It’s about Lily, isn’t it?” Renard’s stomach muscles tightened, and he saw the creamy surface of his latte trembling. “Just tell me.”
“She’s missing.”
Renard put the cup down on the granite counter and then sat heavily on a stool—his blond head hanging as he sucked in a long breath. It was the call he’d begun to fear, and the reason he’d tried so hard to get her to give up this deadly game.
But then the tech genius part of his brain took over, as if his id had flicked a switch.
“Missing where, how and when? Just give it to me, Linc. All of it.”
Shepard realized why Renard had gone from being a college kid to a billionaire in less than a year. When he spoke, Linc felt compelled to reply. “She was on a mission in Beijing,” said Shepard. “It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance thing, but her cover got blown, and they arrested her.”
“Jesus, Linc.” Renard shut his eyes and rubbed his thumb over the deep crease between his eyebrows. He was half-dressed for work, wearing skinny black jeans, running shoes, and an “SR7” T-shirt. The initials were his, along with his lucky number. “Couldn’t care less about the details of the mission. Couldn’t care more about the details of the arrest. Let’s have them.”
Once more, Shepard was impressed by the man’s concentration and thinking process. Automatically trying to regain his mental balance, he blurted out, “Aren’t you going to ask if we’re in negotiation with the Chinese?”
“You wouldn’t call me to report a special girlfriend news bulletin,” Renard snapped but not unkindly. “If you’re calling me, it’s for some IT beyond the call of your duty and ability, right? and by the way, this line’s secure.”
Renard gave Shepard time to blink and gape on the other end of the automatically secured line. He was used to that by now. It was just a hint of his company’s superior capabilities.
“R-right,” Shepard admitted, gulping. “This is extra-governmental, Scott. And it’s worse than that. They’ve destroyed her ear comm but not her cell. My guess is she won’t give them access, so I’ve been able to track that till now. She’s moving fast. I think on a flight to Pyongyang.”
Renard rose from the stool and gripped the counter, his fingers pale. “Are you kidding me? North Korea?”
“That’s our assumption. We’re fairly sure her cover was blown by a North Korean.”
Renard banged a fist on the counter. “North...Korea. Hold on, hold on, let me get my brain around this. North...Korea. . . Wait a minute. You said she was on a plane? Now?”
Shepard was taken aback. “What? What do you mean?”
“Is she still on the plane, or is she in the bowels of some North Korean prison?”
“On the plane. She’s still in transit...”
Renard was moving as fast as his namesake—it was French for fox—in both mind and body. As he raced toward his study, his fingers were already twitching in remarkable patterns. “I need the aircraft details, as many as you can give me...”
Renard heard Shepard giggle—a weird sound of excitement and self-acknowledgment. “I knew it was right to call you! Already transferring all I know about it. Hack that aircraft, Scott.” Shepard’s voice had turned from apoplectic to a plea. “Stop it from reaching North Korea. We can’t handle it, but maybe you can. Once she’s there, she’s gone.”
“Forget you people,” Renard snarled. “And I mean that in the broadest possible terms.”
“Got you, Scott. Really sorry.”
Renard sped into his study, which looked like a combination of the Dr. Strangelove war room, an Apple Store, and FAO Schwarz. “No apologies wanted, Linc—just send me a live link to your nav system, and make sure her cell’s blinking at me like a lighthouse. Think you can handle that?”
“Yes!”
“Good. I’ll do what I can do and maybe call you back later.”
“Thanks, Scott.”
“Don’t thank me. We can’t save Lily from here, but maybe we can help her save herself.”
Renard snapped his fingers, the programmed audio signal for his smart-home to accept a new task.
“How can I help you?” a woman asked.
“Call the office.”
“Calling office.”
A young woman answered. “SR Holdings, how can I help you?”
“Hi, Jackie, it’s Scott.”
“Hey there!” Things were very informal out at SR.
“Listen, I won’t be coming in today, at least not till much later. But I need some help. Send me our two craziest gamers.” He could “hear” her blink and gape, too.
“Chilly and Hot Shot?”
“Yup. And Jackie, don’t use Uber. I need them here fast, so use the car service and tell them we’ll pay double if they step on it. Got it?”
“You bet!”
Scott disconnected the call, and then Renard’s cell phone dinged. He picked it up, tapped in his code, and a link popped up in a text message from Lincoln Shephard. Tapping on that, Renard’s screen filled with an overhead satellite image of unfamiliar greenery, mountains, and a weaving, blinking yellow orb moving quickly from left to right as the background scenery swept underneath. And when that screen filled, the study became that image. Renard was standing in the middle of it.
“She’s right there,” he whispered. “If I could just reach out and grab her...”
For the next twenty minutes he studied every millimeter of the terrain like a caged leopard. I can do this, he promised himself, knowing that whatever he did could well make it worse. And if I can, maybe she’ll realize that this is no life and that her real life is right here, with me.
The front doorbell rang, and he opened the door remotely, his security equipment informing his visitors in the kindest voice that the master of the house was in his study. Within seconds, Chilly and Hot Shot were in the doorway. Chilly had a crop of bright red hair gelled straight up, and Hot Shot looked like a Tom Cruise stand-in circa Top Gun.
They both wore torn jeans, ratty high-tops, and sweatshirts. Before coming to SR, Chilly had made a living hacking for anyone who’d pay. Hot Shot had served in the air force as a UAV pilot, or a “drone jockey” and then turned his skills to advanced software development.
“Mornin’, bossman,” Chilly said with a wide grin.
“What’s up, sir?” Hot Shot still had the air force in his blood.
“Morning, boys,” Renard said. He managed a gap-toothed smile, but he pointed his first and middle fingers at their chests. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to do something terrible, dangerous, and illegal, and which may even cause World War Three. If you talk about it to anyone, I’ll fire you, sue you, and make sur
e that you never work in this town again. But that really won’t matter, because I’ll also have you killed. Clear?”
Chilly’s red eyebrows shot up. “You had me at illegal.”
“Shut up, Chilly.” Hot Shot elbowed him in the ribs and nodded at Renard. “Clear.”
“Okay,” said Renard. “Let’s go.”
Chilly looked around in confusion as Renard walked to the far wall. “Go where?”
“Never told you this, Hot Shot,” Scott said with his back to them. They couldn’t see what his hands were doing, but they were moving fast. “But I secretly wanted to be a fighter jock. That’s why I’m always asking you about UAVs.”
“Didn’t know that, sir,” Hot Shot said. “Why didn’t you do it?”
“Low pay and too many rules.”
“That’s for sure.” Hot Shot laughed. “And long stretches of boredom between trigger times.”
But then the bookcase Renard was standing in front of hissed and popped out from the wall. It then rolled to the left on quiet Teflon-coated casters, revealing a gray steel door with a digital keypad.
“Too cool, dude!” Chilly said with glee.
Renard pressed the keypad and let a laser read his palm print and retinas before he pulled the door open and waved a hand inside the sill. A light glowed on.
Inside was a room the size of half a shipping container, with black lacquer walls that curved to an apex of dim blue lights. The far end was occupied by racks of servers on heavy steel shelving, before which two forty-inch monitors were angled downward at a pair of thick leather seats, side by side. A pair of heavy-duty Motorola headsets snuggled the headrests, and each chair featured a right-handed joystick with multifinger controls. At the foot of each chair were sets of aircraft brake rudder pedals. Renard flicked a switch on the wall and the servers began to blink and wine.
“Jesus,” Hot Shot whispered. “This looks just like that friggin’ box I sat in for three years at Wright Patterson. How come you got the whole double rig?”
Rogue Commander Page 17
