Oracle's Diplomacy

by A. Claire Everward

  Did it matter? she mused before she lost her train of thought, drowning in him as the kiss deepened and he wrapped his arms around her. His hand slid down her back, his fingers tightening as need flashed, as he realized it was more than a kiss he’d been waiting for the entire day. Finally, he thought as he felt her body respond to his.

  His phone signaled an incoming message. He was grumbling in protest when hers indicated one, too. They pulled away from each other with some difficulty.

  “Mine’s a new lead on someone I’ve been looking for. This morning’s case, a guy who escaped SIRT’s net a year ago and has resurfaced now,” he said absently, glancing at the phone. He shook his head. “A bad guy who loves being a bad guy. Unfortunately, it means I have to go in again now. Yours?”

  “Oracle.” It was enough, she knew. He knew all about Oracle now.

  “You’re supposed to be off today. You need the rest.”

  “They wouldn’t call me in unless there was no choice, you know that.” A frown crossed her face. The code in the message said it all. She looked at him. “And never mind me, I slept, had the entire day to rest. Did you sleep at all?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Goes both ways.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Donna says hi, by the way.”

  He laughed. “Fair enough. Once this one’s over I’ll catch up on some sleep.” Although, he thought, even then sleep just might have to wait. He now had something else on his mind.

  Unfortunately, for both of them work could not wait.

  “Any idea what it is?” He indicated her phone.

  She ran missions in her mind. “None of the pending missions have matured yet, so it’s most likely an emergency. The code is immediate.” She turned to go upstairs, change, get her IDSD ID. But then she turned back.

  “Did you see the car?” she asked. Donna had alerted her to the unfamiliar car in her driveway. Going out, she had discovered that, sometime when she had slept, IDSD had placed a car out of its executive car pool in her driveway. It was thoughtful of them to do that, make sure she had a comfortable—and yes, secure, she knew—replacement to her own car, giving her the independence she wanted instead of just assigning to her an interim ride with a driver, which she would feel limited with. But she still hated the car.

  Donovan nodded. “It’s temporary. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head, miserable. “There’s no way Frank is going to let me choose my own car again.”

  She turned back to go upstairs, and Donovan smiled. He’d already thought about that.

  Chapter Three

  Council Head Stevenssen raised her head. Her eyes were tired and felt so very gritty, but she was still here, in her office, in the same building where the meeting took place that had seen cheer turn into grave concern. She could not bring herself to leave and felt compelled to wait for news. It was surreal, all of it.

  George Sendor, her good friend and a valued colleague, had disappeared.

  News from Cres was scant, and not in the least helpful. But of course the search would take time, as would the investigation into what happened. She had to be patient, and it would not do to let show her horror at the events taking place, the potential outcome, the devastating consequences. The people around her looked up to her leadership, and she had to give a show of robustness and provide them with the stability they needed. It would be a necessity if events unfolded the way she was praying they wouldn’t. Nor would it do to disturb the work of the investigators. Or of the search teams, for that matter. They were the best, and she should let them do their job, as she would do hers.

  So far nothing had been found. The search teams were canvassing the area around Cres at a growing radius, land and sea alike, but whoever had perpetrated the abduction had obviously planned and executed it in a way that no evidence leading to them had been left behind. The jet had landed on the hard surface of Cres’s artificial platform, and no vehicles had driven up to it, or so it had so far been ascertained. Sendor, the investigators on site now believed, must have been taken away through the sea, just a short distance away from where the jet had been stranded.

  After an initial examination, the bodies had been taken away, Stevenssen had been told, and arrangements had already been made to move the jet. Night had fallen, hampering further efficient forensic work at the remote, barren site. That, and the fact that the incident had to remain hidden for now, had prompted the decision to move the crime scene—the jet itself—as quickly as possible. Where questions were raised about its presence there in the first place, a mechanical malfunction in a privately owned transport was cited, an explanation that also helped justify the presence of the search and rescue forces around it. All signs on the jet itself indicating who it was really registered to were covered, to prevent questions that no one could, as yet, answer. As for the search, it would continue under the guise of previously scheduled military search and rescue exercises. Other than that, there was nothing more to do on site. They had nothing.

  It has only been hours, Stevenssen said to herself. Patience.

  Easier said than done.

  At IDSD US’s secure complex on the Virginia bank of the Potomac river south of Washington, DC, the opaque reinforced glass doors to the war room spanning the greater part of the top floor of the missions building silently slid open before Lara, the priority-clearance security system having already identified and tagged her as she entered the building, and followed her every move. She stood at the entrance and looked around her. As always when she came here something within her awoke, taking its place at the forefront of her mind. A focus, an alertness that she loved to feel. This was her turf. Here everything that she was came together seamlessly, here she could be herself and was valued for precisely that. And even now, even after who she was had almost cost her her life, this was still where she felt most at home, where she belonged.

  A step into the vast space was all she managed to take before the harried-looking Major Korrel strode toward her, trying hard to look as if he wasn’t running. She skimmed in her mind over what she knew about him. Mike Korrel, forty-four, head of the team that dealt with peacekeeping missions in the Middle East. Not someone she had had the occasion to work with directly, since usually if anything went wrong she worked the military oversight and intervention side. But he was a familiar face.

  “Ma’am.” His voice was urgent. “Our peacekeeping force on the former Syria-Jordan border was attacked. Our people managed to strike back, it looks like they’re managing to fend the attackers off and we’ve dispatched backup, but five of our peacekeepers were taken and we can’t track them.”

  As Lara walked to Mission Command, listening to Korrel’s account of the events, Aiden Jenor, her trusted aide, approached her from his station outside her office. Without a word, he took her briefcase and handed her the headset that would allow her to communicate with anyone she required access to, in IDSD or outside it, in or outside the field.

  “I need a run-through,” she told him, and he nodded once and hurried away. A run-through, a concentrated run of all data available done while she was already working a mission, was something she had to do only when she was called on to intervene in a mission in progress that she had no prior involvement in, an urgent intervention that did not allow any preparation beforehand. Not only did it demand more of her, since it involved the intake of a substantial amount of data within an impossibly short amount of time, it also left significant gaps in the information she had for her use and required her to take a considerable leap to fill them. She didn’t like that, didn’t like the added risk to the lives of those who depended on her to bring them home. But sometimes, like now, there was simply no other choice.

  The armed security agent standing before Mission Command moved aside and its heavy door slid open before her, and she didn’t slow down as she walked up to the multipurpose holoscreen that covered the entire length of its main wall. Stepping on the operations platform stretching the leng
th of the screen, she issued a series of commands into the slender microphone of her headset, and the left half of the screen blanked for a split second before it erupted with a flood of information—data and images—the run-through information flow Aiden had already activated in her office. She never took heed of anyone else in Mission Command, never took her eyes off the screen. There was simply no time.

  Around her, Mission Command fell silent as those present realized what was going on. That she was there. That Oracle was there, already working. They all fell back, retreating to the rows of seats that lined the back wall, all except for the two system operators in their designated stations on each side of the screen and the officers who had been overseeing the situation in the field, including Korrel. Normally they too would move back, but this was different. She might need them to provide information, having had no time to prepare.

  Not far from her, she noticed Vice Admiral Frank Scholes, the second-in-command of IDSD in the United States and the head of IDSD Missions as well as the global missions commander, and the only person authorized to oversee Oracle’s work. He was the one who had called her in despite the hectic events of the past days and her place in them, which meant, she knew all too well, that there had been, simply, no other choice.

  “They came through a tunnel,” Korrel was saying behind her, an edge of panic to his voice. “We had no idea it was there, that they had dug it, it runs so deep underground, and this isn’t the type of thing . . . tunnels have never been used in this area before, much farther southwest, yes, and some northwest from there, but never in this area, nowhere near it. And the peacekeeping mission has been in place for twelve years now, and successfully so. Why would anyone do this?”

  Lara didn’t care why. Not now. She wasn’t here to understand the why and how, these could be left for the post-mission debriefing and analysis that would lead to the required reaction, redeployment, and re-securing, through both military and diplomatic channels.

  She was here to bring the captive peacekeepers back before they were taken too deep into unfriendly territory. A hostage situation could escalate into years in which their captors would use them as leverage against those who cared about their fate. And if her assumption as to who did this was correct, that was exactly what would happen. Those who didn’t care about human life facing those who valued it over all—that never ended well. But even more of a consideration was the suffering the captives were facing, if they were even still alive. They, and all those who loved them and would want them safely back home.

  Were they alive, all of them? She knew that the abduction of five peacekeepers at once was a rare occurrence for that region, and close to impossible in the type of incident Korrel had described, a fast escape through a tunnel by what would necessarily be a small group holding the captives. That if their abductors found them too much to handle they might kill them, some or all. Bodies were easier to handle, did not resist, and could still be used as leverage, all the more so if the abductors managed to hide the fact that the hostages were no longer alive.

  No. They were alive. They had to be alive. All of them. And they had to be found now. And the abductors, they would be stopped before they managed to hurt the innocents they had taken. That was the only outcome she would allow in her mind.

  She tuned out Korrel, who was still speaking behind her. What he was saying was no longer relevant. Tunnel. That was all she needed to know. She faced the screen, didn’t see Scholes put a hand on Korrel’s arm to silence him, didn’t heed the tense anticipation behind her.

  Her mind filled with the data and images on the screen before her, absorbing it all at a staggering speed. The shortage of time was a major hindrance, but the immediacy of the situation, the lives of the people she was here for, served, as always, to focus her, and she gave it all she had. Information flowed on the screen, and she added to it what she already knew from past experience, combining it all—the region, the peacekeeping mission, the day’s events, past and ongoing conflicts, resident and transient groups, angers dominating, interests ruling, methods used. Anything, everything.

  Tunnel.

  Abruptly, she turned but not to the current view of the focus area, which she had placed to her right on the screen. Instead, she turned to Scholes, who was still standing close by, waiting, watching her. He nodded slightly. So that’s why he called her in to do this. He was one of only two people who had recently seen something that would have led him to think Oracle just might be the one who could cut short the peacekeepers’ abduction, something she herself had no idea she could do until then, until just the day before. She knew exactly what he was asking her to do. He wanted her to seek an unknown at an unknown location. Which was, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

  She turned back to the screen, now showing, at her command, a stationary drone view of the incident area and the arriving back-up defense forces deploying, the remaining peacekeepers mixing with them. The minutes ticked by on the rows of clocks hanging on the back wall of Mission Command, but not in her mind. Thinking about the advance of time, the urgency, wasn’t a priority. It got in the way. Time, in this instance, had only served her for the split second it took her to realize this had to be done, to decisively end, now.

  Although she might have use for it again later.

  She took a last look at what she had, then uttered a quiet command and the entire screen blanked. Everything useful to her right now was in her mind. This wasn’t like other missions, there were no satellite feeds and drone footage of hostile forces moving around trapped allies. There had been nothing except the shocked peacekeepers and raging defense forces in the live images she had removed from the screen before her. There was no one to guide here, no one for them to stand up against, not until she could tell them where the missing peacekeepers were.

  She kept her eyes on the blank screen and locked on to the mission-relevant information in her mind. Gradually, everything around and within her faded away—sounds, sights, data and thoughts—until nothing remained but that which mattered here, now, what she needed to work with. She was completely, entirely focused.

  But it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t enough. No sufficient information, no likelihoods to be used or deduced, no certainties to grasp on to.

  Just five people trapped in their own private hell, which no one could bring them back from. Not in time. Perhaps not ever.

  I can, she thought. I have to. I have to bring them home.

  Turning into the depths of her mind, she took a leap.

  For anything from a split second to eternity she was in nothing. There was, quite simply, nothing. Not even familiarity with her own abilities—this was new, she had done this only once before, once just the other day, and then the constraints were, in a way, so much . . . less.

  Unafraid, she stayed where she was. Where others needed answers to hold on to, guidance to follow, certainty to live in, she didn’t. She accepted what was not there. Lived with it. Existed within it. Turned without hesitation into it when she needed, took confident steps deep into the unknown where others would be too fearful to venture.

  And did within it as she wanted. She restructured some probabilities, closed some gaps, left some for later, turned away from others. Deduced, decided. And when she was ready, went beyond. It happened, was happening now, somewhere, someplace real, she couldn’t see it but it was there, still happening in that someplace and sometime she would be able to return to in the future, look to, analyze, but by then it would be too late, she needed it now. She needed to be there, to be then, to see it, now.

  And then she did. Just enough.

  Just enough to know.

  Mission Command was dead silent. No one dared to move or speak. Even those who had seen Oracle at work before, and many of those present had, had never seen her this way. Standing like this for so long, silent, eyes closed now, head slightly bowed. Of course, she had nothing to work with. It was impossible. Not even Oracle could—

  Oracle raised her head,
opened eyes intense with focus that had Scholes take an involuntary step back when she turned them to him. Yes, he thought. That’s it. You have them, don’t you?

  He never had any doubt she would. In the five years since he had brought her here, as he built the war room and Mission Command around her, he had seen her take step after impossible step forward, advance, develop. Walls only stood in her path until she found a way to break through them. And she always did.

  Her eyes turned back to the screen, her commands already bringing up multiple localized views and alerting the field commander assigned to her, who would relay her orders to the forces on the ground that were ready to go on the hunt.

  Oracle was ready to bring the captives home.

  Chapter Four

  When she finally came out of Mission Command, a gray autumn morning greeted her through the window wall that stretched along the entire length of the war room to her left. She stood for a moment looking at the overcast sky, focusing. This was the difficult part of finishing a mission. Winding down that part of her that was Oracle, and focusing back on here, now. Normally this last incident might have been easier than other missions, some of which left her exhausted, fighting to return to herself. This one was short, one night, that’s all. But it was a time-sensitive mission with a high uncertainty level and she had worked under tremendous pressure, and that was a recently found skill—very recently—she had used in there. And then there was the toll recent events had taken on her, mind and body, and the fact that they themselves had come on the heels of long weeks of a hectic workload, a line of successive missions. But then, that was what Oracle’s days looked like more often than not.

  Letting out a breath, she turned right, passed the entrance to the main conference room, skirted the hub of activity comprising the enclosed workspaces that took up a large part of the war room’s midst, and approached the critical mission experts’ offices, the nearest of which was hers. Aiden followed her into her office, a cup of coffee—her favorite strong blend—in his hand. She sat behind her desk with a sigh and gratefully accepted the coffee. Around her the wall screens were blank, as was her multitouch desk. Normally, as soon as she entered the war room and its internal security recognized her, the mainframe would activate the secure closed system in her office, and all screens would be waiting for her with the IDSD Missions symbol rotating on them. But Aiden had been in here and had blanked all screens, thinking, and rightly so, that she would prefer her office calm and quiet after the long hours behind her.