Instigator

by Fiona Quinn

  “It’s got that level of micro precision?”

  Nutsbe grinned. “Let’s just say that my company reaches for the stars when it comes to keeping our people safe.”

  “You’re connected to the GIS?” She turned to Lula. “Do you work for the NSA not CIA?

  “I wouldn’t be able to tell you if I did, so no need to ask.” Lula squeezed her hand and then released the contact.

  “Huh, that feels strange knowing I’m personally being tracked by a satellite.”

  “Lucky girl. Okay we need to get started on your training.” Nutsbe said. “Let’s try this out. First, I need you to read a few pages of text, so my computers can learn your voice patterns, and then we’ll practice with the contacts, and we’ll see what we can see.”

  “Literally.”

  “Exactly.” Nutsbe smiled.

  ***

  After they broke their connection with Nutsbe, Lula leaned in. “Are you ready for this Christen?”

  Johnna’s eyes were sharp. “It’s a big deal. It’s important that we understand the dynamics of what goes down this week. We will all be recording, just as you are.”

  Christen rolled her lips in.

  “We’re good friends.” Lula finished. “We’re here for a vacation. Everything is just fine. Besides, we’ll have helpers if we need them.”

  “Why would we need them?”

  Johnna shrugged. “The truth? Many of the men who are going to visit with your father are misogynist pricks,” she said. “They’ll go into private rooms where women are excluded. The difficult part from our point of view will be the places where a man could see and hear where we cannot.”

  “Like the bathrooms,” Christen said.

  “You’ll see. They’ll segregate us. The men from the women. The men will go and have boy talk – the kind of thing that a woman shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about.”

  “I’ve found that if you keep your mouth shut and don’t assert yourself or your thoughts, that they forget you’re there.” Christen said. “And you get to hear things.”

  “What kinds of things have you heard?”

  “Enough to know I needed to separate myself wheat from chaff and head out to do my own thing. It was up to me to figure out who I was and what I was capable of doing. And what I didn’t have the slightest interest in doing, like manipulating the masses for fun and profit.”

  “Do you still think you’ll be allowed to just sit and listen now?” Lula asked. “You are a Night Stalker after all.”

  “Come on, Lu! My being in the military went in one dad-ear and out the other. The last thing he heard and latched on to was a class I was taking at MIT in origami engineering.”

  “That sounds kind of cool,” Johnna said.

  “Yeah, it was. I really enjoyed it. I made a few things that I gave my father that Christmas, and now he tells everyone that I’m an artist and fold origami.”

  “Seriously?” Johnna asked.

  “Seriously.”

  Johnna looked like she was calculating this information into some equation. “You fold origami for a living?”

  “Not for a living, he thinks I’m living on my trust fund money. Which I am not. I give my yearly stipends to Fisher House. He thinks I fold origami as part of my artistic life, and he’s even told people that my art is in museums.”

  “Is it?” Lula asked.

  “Sort of. Not museums. Museum. And not now. A few years ago, one of my class projects was on display at the MIT Museum.”

  “That made an impression on him though,” Johnna pressed.

  “Yeah, art is an acceptable way for me to spend my time, and my little exhibit gave that art some credibility. It was a narrative he liked and that’s the one that got glued into place. He didn’t come to any of my ceremonies with the military – he said it was a phase, and I would quickly grow out of it. And somehow, it all disappeared for him. I’ve seen no reason to challenge him on the fact. If origami makes him happy and leaves me in peace, whatever, right?”

  “This is good.” Johnna grinned. “Very good. Better than I could have hoped for. I thought that whenever you were around the conversations would stop cold, that we’d only be able to pick things up in passing.”

  “What were you hoping I’d overhear?”

  “We don’t have a goal in this operation,” Johnna said. “There is no beginning, middle, and end. All we’re doing is observing a brief moment of time and recording it for future intelligence use.”

  “And finding a way to get my dad to cooperate by becoming a cut out.”

  “Oh, we don’t need to do that by coercion. We just need to couch the information in such a way that he will want to pass it on. We need a strategy, though, and strategy comes from understanding and planning. This is merely information gathering for that planning.”

  “If that’s true, then why the hell am I here? I could be back with my unit, helping get Prominator, Smitty, and the Deltas back safe!”

  “Because, believe it or not, doing this will save military lives. Hundreds, if not thousands of military lives.”

  Christen shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Good.” Lula said. “It’s better that way.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lynx

  Thursday, Iniquus Barracks, Washington DC

  “You’re out of your mind. Say what?” Lynx adjusted the screen on her computer to better see the guys’ faces. She was on a secure video conference with Gator and Blaze, sitting at the marble kitchen bar in Striker’s apartment. It was a better place for her to wait – wait for Striker to get in from Africa, wait for an update on their teammate Randy. Being here in the men’s barracks on Iniquus’s campus made her feel closer to the action. At least she could reach out and help Blaze and Gator if need be.

  “Yeah,” Gator’s full-on grin lit up his face. “We got hired to have this fake fight, see? The goal was to save our mark from the fake kidnappers who were really the good guys.” Gator pantomimed the story, smacking his fist into his hand, making the air crack with the sound of impacts. “And this guy’s just whaling on me. I thought he’d got pissed because I ducked under the chair he done flung and caught his buddy, knocking him out cold. Turns out the guy with the chair was trying to take me down for the count. He must have thought I was Davidson’s security detail.”

  “Because he was an actual bad guy?” Lynx gasped. “That’s crazy!”

  “Actual bad guy. An actual kidnapping we thwarted,” Blaze said.

  There was a knock on the door and both men swung their attention around.

  “Hang on two secs. Gator ordered room service.” Blaze moved out of the picture.

  “Of course, he did,” Lynx said. “How’s the food there?”

  “It don’t fill me up for long.” Gator rubbed his hands over his washer board abs.

  “It never does. You guys have been non-stop since you left the US. Are you holding up?”

  “We’re good to go,” Gator said, turning his attention toward Blaze.

  “Lucky for us we’re in an English-speaking hotel right now, and they have some food with some staying power.”

  Gator the gladiator was all muscle and power and not an ounce of fat on his body. But that body needed constant fueling. Once when he was staying at her house, he’d bought a whole turkey for dinner with all the fixings. Lynx got a leg, and he got the rest of the twenty-pound bird. It didn’t even put him into a turkey coma, like she’d warned would happen. Nope, Gator was an eating machine. It was good to know some things didn’t change.

  Blaze moved back into the line of view with a laden trolley. He settled back in his chair and Gator shifted the computer out of the way.

  “You don’t mind, do you Lynx? We’re nigh on starved.”

  “No, please. Eat.”

  Blaze lifted the domed lid on his steak and egg breakfast, leaned over with his eyes closed, and breathed in the aroma. “This is so much better than the last seventy-some-odd hours on mostly M
REs. You have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

  “Go on and eat, no need for it to get cold.” Lynx pulled her foot up onto the stool and wrapped her arms around her leg, resting her chin on the top of her knee. “There you were. You thought you were dancing with our client to dupe a mark, instead you thwarted Davison’s kidnapping. What happened to the bad guys?”

  “We still thought they were the good guys, so we helped them escape.”

  Lynx’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “No, you did not.”

  Gator raised his right hand in the air. “Swear to god. We got them all over the ledge and down to their car then went to tend to Davidson and let his security through the door.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “I love it.”

  “Davidson was shaking our hands, asking what we did for a living, asking what we were doing in Tanzania, exactly like the plan said.” Blaze was sawing a hunk off his steak. "We were completely in the dark.”

  “Then we get the phone call,” Gator said. “This guy on the phone was, Whooo-e! some kinda pissed off.” Gator shook his head. “Not at us but at Davidson. He was supposed to go for cocktails where our client had planned the fake attack, but instead he’d stayed at the hotel and cancelled all his plans for the day. The family was back in the hotel with their security teams. They were supposed to take off for their next destination, and Blaze and me were supposed to be on that plane, the guy was ranting. He says we needed to hang tight while they came up with Plan B.”

  Lynx’s face hurt she was grinning so hard. “And that’s when you told them what went down?”

  Blaze and Gator folded over laughing so hard that tears slid down their faces.

  Gator dropped his fork back on the plate and rubbed a napkin over his face.

  “We had had no idea,” Blaze said. “I mean, get this, Lynx. This guy Gator was fighting was so out of control, Gator decides to put him to sleep for a little bit and as he’s crunching down on the guy’s neck, he’s whispering in the guy’s ear, counseling him against wearing blue slacks because of the tsetse flies.”

  Lynx turned her head and sprayed out the water she’d just chugged. Choking, sputtering, she pounded her fist against her chest, trying to recover. “You’re killing me.” She coughed. “The bad guys must have been so confused. They must have thought you guys were insane. Or thought you were some kind of badass.”

  “Badass? Not the way I was punching they didn’t. I barely tapped the guys.” Gator said. “Besides, I’m not sure they could understand English. I heard them yelling to each other in a foreign language. I thought it were Russian. Blaze, though, says he’d didn’t recognize any of the words.”

  “But they were returning full blows? Were you hurt?”

  “Eh, Blaze got him some bruised ribs. I’ve got this one on my cheek.” He turned and pointed at the purple smudge under his left eye.

  “And that didn’t cue you in these were real bad guys?”

  “Testosterone,” Blaze said. “It can warp the mind.”

  “Sorry,” Lynx said and tried again for a sip of water. “I can’t relate. But I’ll take your word for it. So where does that leave you with this mission?”

  “Our client knows we were successful in our part. We saved Davidson and proved our metal, Davidson took our business cards, and we waited for stage two, which was the daughter and her friends calling to say they were joining us. Davidson hired us, then moved the groups flight up a day so we’d beat them to the city. We’re in our new destination, waiting on their plane to touch down.”

  “And now that we’re here,” Blaze said “We wanted to talk to you about the text message you sent us. ‘This is the house that Jack built.’”

  “Yeah, funny how many nursery rhymes there are that have to do with Jack. Not our Jack, just the name in general,” Lynx gathered her hair into a pony tail to get it out of her face so she could think. She used the elastic she kept on her wrist to twist the strands into a make-do bun.

  “You sent the one ‘Jack be quick, Jack jump’ last time. Do you think it’s tied to that mission we were running? Because Jack didn’t build that house, Jack was there when the house–well, building—exploded.” Blaze said while Gator chewed a bite of toast.

  “The unique thing about that knowing was that when I sent the text to Jack, he was on a roof and jumped. The building exploded, and he was saved. I thought that was the perfect outcome.”

  “But it wasn’t?” Gator swiped his thumb over his lips as he focused on her.

  “It was. He lived. But then I got the same knowing again, when Jack was in the hospital after his surgery, getting his knee repaired.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean that – wait, I’m confused.” Blaze said. “Normally when you have a knowing once the issue is resolved, like Jack surviving the building being bombed, it’s over. Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t over. He had to jump again. This time jumping meant he had to go save Suz. And when he took off after her, flying down to Brazil, that first knowing was finally resolved and was replaced with another nursery rhyme. “Jack fell down and broke his crown.’”

  “How’d that one play out?” Gator asked.

  “Jack fell down and broke his crown – well some guy with a rock bashed it into his head a bunch of times until he passed out.”

  “Shit,” Blaze said.

  “Exactly.” Lynx’s lips pulled thin.

  “And now you have another Jack rhyme?” Gator said. “Maybe it has nothing to do with us.”

  “It most certainly does have to do with you. I got sucked into whatever vortex was swirling around Gator.”

  Blaze turned sharp eyes on Gator.

  Gator returned Blaze’s gaze with a nonchalant shrug. “We were in the room waiting for General Elliot to tell us about Randy, and I was riled up pretty good.”

  Blaze nodded. “I was too. It was claustrophobic, tension can do that. So Lynx, you were in Gator’s energetic field, and you had a knowing ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ Not about Jack but about something that he had set in motion. Am I understanding that right?”

  “Yup, And I got the distinct impression it had to do with you and Gator. I sent the text out, right away. Now you’re telling me that when you two got the texts, you had both just raised your hands for an assignment. You two and only you two.”

  “I guess that’s an affirmation of some kind.” Blaze said. “I think it would help to figure out what this is about in advance. We have two different assignments to consider. Jack’s work on that assignment for Iniquus and his search for Suz in Paraguay. This being the third connection.”

  “That was my takeaway impression Something started by Jack—well—no not started by Jack but maybe shifted by Jack? No…Maybe something Jack set in motion? Yeah – that last one feels better...When I had the first ‘Jack jump’ message, you were on a classified mission. Could you tell me a story that would help me hone in. I don’t have any clue what part of the world you were in when Jack jumped from the building, let alone what you were doing.”

  Both men fell silent and Lynx gave them a moment to figure out a strategy that would let them pass her information without breaking the rules about classified information. She got up from her stool and gathered her lap top. Lynx wandered into the living area with its floor to ceiling glass wall overlooking the Potomac and the city of DC beyond, and moved toward the couch.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” Gator said as Lynx settle onto the cool leather surface and lay back with her head resting on the arm. The computer balanced on her stomach.

  “We were out on our mission,” he said. “I was lying in the ditch, hands over my head, debris falling all around us. Striker comes up on his knees, and he’s shaking the chunks off, coughing into his elbow, he says he thought he saw something flying off the roof just before the building blew. We made it to the side of the building and sure enough Jack had jumped. Blaze was on that side and got over to him first. We
found Jack rolling on the ground. He crushed the car roof in. His phone was on the road. Your text still on the screen.”

  “Good thing it was a newer model car and was made for absorbing impact,” Blaze said. “It saved his life.”

  “Amen,” Lynx breathed out. It had been that close. Shit. Even though she knew Jack was fine, the number of close shaves their team had survived over the last year was crazy. She was hoping against hope they could figure out what was going on so she could give these two the edge as they took off on their new mission.

  “Alright, I got it.” Gator said. “I can tell you this. I was reading an article just the other day, that might interest you, Lynx. It said that ISIS looks likes it might be defeated in Syria and Iraq but the military is waiting for the next extremist groups to pop up.”

  “Terror?” Hmm. This knowing didn’t feel like a terror plot. “That doesn’t sit right with me. But keep going with the article.”

  “You know about what went down here in Tanzania with the scientist group getting kidnapped, and the hotel being exploded out in Ngorongoro, but have you heard that things like that are popping up in southern India and the Philippines?”

  Lynx let the two regions rumble through her system. Had they been in India? No. She came to a sitting position. “The Philippines? I haven’t heard about this. What’s happening there?”

  “If you were following international news, you might have heard about Mindanao in the Southern Philippines,” Gator let his vowels play on his tongue and added a little Cajun seasoning to his pronunciations. He spoke in a cadence that conjured starry nights and the lapping of water against the wharf. It had a warm sing-songy quality that made Lynx want to hunker down for a good tale. But this subject had nothing to do with Gator’s gentle tone. She razor focused on the details he was offering her. “Right, yes, they say that was an extremist attack.”

  “They don’t want you to know what was going on. A group seized the city with two-hundred thousand people in it.”