Ruled

by Angel Payne

  “Dragon.”

  “Still here.” Truly feeling like his call-sign now—ready to spout fire but trapped in a rolling steel cage on Sahara Avenue—like Wrightman was ready to notice or care. But hell, wasn’t like he’d never had experience with this shit before. Any Spec Ops soldier who’d waited on “orders from DC” knew this restlessness. But damn it, he’d left his iPod back home, so no show tunes playlist to help allay the agitation. He was even with a “bunker mate” who’d appreciate the songs. Fate had a sick sense of humor sometimes.

  “Pocket.”

  And maybe he should have just wished for more silence.

  “Rocket?” he snapped. If the man wanted to play cryptic word association, he could sure as hell do—

  Something buzzed inside his suit jacket. The speaker in his ear was filled with the buzz saw of Sol Wrightman’s repetition. “Pocket.”

  He had asked for clarification.

  Sure enough, the window on his cell displayed an incoming call—from a number composed of all zeroes. Instinct revving at full throttle, Franz clicked his comm line off. Only then did he swipe the screen on the cell, heeding his inner voice once more to keep his outer one as succinct as possible.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your comm line’s completely off?” Sure enough, Sol wasn’t jingling to shoot the shit about the World Series.

  “Yeah,” Franz confirmed.

  “Is Tigress still with you?”

  “Right here.” He looked over. Tracy’s gaze hadn’t left him. If anything, she gaped more intensely. Nervously.

  Fuck it.

  He reached out. Wrapping her hand in his once more. So small. And trembling.

  He meshed his fingers with hers. Squeezed hard. It’s going to be all right.

  He had no business forcing that message to his gaze but didn’t care. He’d given more impossible promises in his life, in the last year alone. To a rebel-ravaged village in Thailand, he’d ensured new internet connectivity. To three desperate kids in Aleppo, the safe return of their missing puppy. To a group of half-starved North Korean scientists, the chance to live their lives in freedom.

  Two out of three wasn’t bad.

  If only unlucky number three hadn’t nearly dragged his country into war with North Korea.

  He gave his head a harsh shake, freeing it from the past. Weirdly, Sol’s paranoid grunt was a good helper for the cause too. “All right,” the man said. “That’s good; very good.”

  “Good for what?”

  And why did his gut already knot, preparing for the answer? Regrettably, he could fill in that part. Wrightman’s energy had surpassed normal crisis mode settings. The man was skittish, frantic, freaked the fuck out—and he was a trained professional in the world of “freaked out,”

  “Good for what, man?” Okay, he’d admit it. His own case of paranoia instigated the re-do on the snarl. Good thing. Wrightman wasn’t into dawdling about the comeback anymore.

  “You need to get her out of here, Franzen.” Nope. Definitely not dawdling anymore. “Out of the city,” he stressed, biting out each syllable. “Her and anyone else who was supposed to be in that villa with her. Nobody can know they all survived the blast—is that understood? Not yet. Not now.”

  “The…fuck?” He twisted Tracy’s fingers tighter into his own. “Wrightman, what are you—”

  “Do you understand, Franzen?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I copy. I understand. But—”

  “Good. Make it happen. Coordinate with Mackenna and Cary if you must, but only if necessary.”

  “Getting the vice president, her head counsel, her press secretary, and two horny teenagers out of Las Vegas?” Harsh grunt. “Yeah, I’ll need Sam and Shep.” And a team of at least eight or nine more guys, but he could sense Sol’s hissy about just the two from across the miles.

  “Fine.” Yep. Hissy pegged it. “But if you involve them, you take them too. Nobody who knows your destination can be left behind.”

  He felt like dragging a hand down his own face. Shit, he felt like taking off a whole layer of skin while he was at it. “Sure, and let me make the whole Statue of Liberty disappear while I’m at it. David Copperfield’s in town; I’m sure he has a few seconds to teach me.”

  “You want to involve David fucking Copperfield, you go right ahead. You’ll just have to kill him after you’re done with him.”

  “Fuck.” Maybe more than a layer of skin had to go. “Wrightman, this isn’t an episode of some damn TV show—”

  “A little affirmation you and your ‘wild boys’ have conveniently forgotten on a few occasions, yes?” The man’s voice climbed, clearly picking up on the blood of Franz’s shock in the water. “Did you think I didn’t research you before greenlighting Bommer’s decision to call you down here? So yeah, Captain, I know about your wild boys pack and how you enjoy a quiet but robust reputation for off books missions that would make television creators cream their jeans. Likely factored into the big brass’s decision about cutting you after the Kaesong gig too—but I don’t give a shit. You know how to cross lines, and tripping that kind of terrain requires more than just steel balls.”

  John sucked in a burning breath. “While my junk appreciates the appraisal—”

  “Your junk doesn’t get a say in this, Franzen, any more than the rest of you.” The man’s grunt was dark and impatient. “You have resources, fucker. Now use them.”

  His jaw jutted. His nostrils flared. “It’s not as easy as—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Goddamnit. She’s the vice president of the United States!”

  “I don’t care.” But the way he sliced the end of each word spoke the exact opposite. Sol cared, all right. He cared to the point he was scared. Not a let’s-get-this-right kind of scared. It was deeper. Bigger.

  Armaggedon-style bigger.

  What the fuck was going on?

  “Just make shit happen, Franzen,” the man rasped as if facing his own gallows. “Take them all dark. Do it now, and don’t tell anyone. Do you copy me on that? Nobody. Can. Know. Not even me. Christ, especially not me.”

  “Kanapapiki.”

  Son of a bitch.

  That part, he stowed under his breath with the phone against his chest. With the device back at his ear, he growled, “You going to feed me a scrap of what’s going on here?”

  “It’s our only chance.”

  “A bigger scrap than that?”

  “You’re our only chance.”

  The guy’s breaths were now harsh slices through the line. Franz envisioned him tearing through the convention center at a full sprint.

  Shit on a shingle.

  It was a good one, so he borrowed it. Not that he wanted to. He liked his melodrama performed on a stage, thank you very much, not plunked in his lap and open for insane interpretations.

  “Just get them out of here,” Wrightman dictated again. “While they all still think…”

  “What?” John sliced into the man’s deliberate pause. “They all still think what? And ‘they all’ who? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  The man let out a strange sound, grunt and groan mixed, before uttering, “Wish I knew the full answer to that, Franzen.” A rough inhalation. A harsher breath out. “On the other hand, maybe I don’t.”

  “Christ.” He rammed the top of the phone against his forehead. “You seriously pulling an X-Files on me? I’m not in the alien baby business.”

  Wrightman snorted. “Just promise me you’ll get her out of here. Luke too. I need to know I can trust you on this. There’s no one else right now to trust. I know you’ll stay this course. You do the right thing, Franzen—even when the fine print orders you to do otherwise.”

  Wasn’t that the candy treat moment of the day. Shiny compliment as it went down; fucked-up stomachache as it became reality. “Yeah,” he muttered. “The fine print.” Grinded the phone into his temple again. “So you’ve done your homework.”

  “And damn glad I did.” From his
end of the call, sirens swelled louder. “I have to go, man,” Sol stated. “And so do you. Quickly.”

  “Sol—”

  “You have to move, Franzen.” The sirens were shrill and close, nearly drowning his words now. “Take them,” he shouted. “Hide them. Get someplace nobody will think of. Once that’s happened, contact me—but use deep-cover protocol. Do you understand?”

  For a long second, he didn’t respond. Just sat unmoving, thankful for the shell of the car for once, feeling like the mortals from Ghost after something from the other side had barreled through them.

  “Franzen.”

  “What?” It stumbled from the ice cavern of his senses. Chunks of the frozen stuff broke off into his stunned senses, making his head jerk.

  “Do. You. Understand?”

  In a hot blast, the ice melted away. Strength surged over him, as ingrained as the blood in his veins, a default mode eleven years in the making.

  Mission mode.

  So yeah, he did understand. Could do this shit in his sleep—not that a lot of that had been happening lately. But maybe even that was a good thing. Sleep wasn’t going to be a luxury on an assignment like this, perhaps the craziest he’d ever been handed. He was leaping into a bottomless black hole, dug by the man to whom he was speaking, who wasn’t even handing him a flashlight for the trip. Why not? And did Franz really need to know? He was just the guy who made the mission happen. The bigger picture didn’t have to be his concern. Couldn’t be.

  Hadn’t Kaesong taught him that?

  Kaesong. The mission that had changed everything.

  That, in no small way, had made it possible for him to be here right now.

  That, if he believed more in such things, might have him dialing up the gods for a little chat about their twisted version of humor. He enjoyed a good joke as much as the next dude, but this was not funny.

  A point backed up in grotesque detail the very next moment.

  “What the fuck?” His whisper layered atop Tracy’s stunned gasp. Considering the context, she was fully entitled to it—along with the death grip she wrapped around his hand.

  The metaphor fit.

  Too damn well.

  They were stopped at a light just after clearing the Strip. A sports bar sat to their right, a coffee shop to their left. Both were packed, but not a single person in either was laughing, drinking, or caffeine-ing. Not even the wait staff and baristas moved, riveted along with their customers on TV screens filled by somber journalists.

  At first, the sight was confusing. Even if the media had arrived at the Bellagio on the heels of the fire department (highly likely), then connected the blown-up villa to the vice president (also highly likely), and then formed a “theory” she’d actually been inside the villa (moderately likely), they had to lock the story down with confirmation from someone in Tracy’s camp—highly unlikely.

  Or was it?

  Because there, prominent on the monitors before those crowds, was the professional head shot of the woman by his side. Her birth date and death date—today’s date—were listed underneath.

  But that wasn’t the most shocking thing about the broadcast. That came with the next “update” across the screen.

  The announcement so shocking, John couldn’t summon a reaction for it in English.

  “Kefe.”

  His brutal growl didn’t make translation necessary—though Shep layered the word on the air anyway.

  “Fuck.”

  Tracy emitted a tight, stunned choke. “Th-That can’t be right.”

  “Maybe it isn’t.” Shep’s voice was vicious with hope. Normally, Franzen would shut that shit down. He’d done it enough times in the past—talking the brutal truth into a desperate soldier after watching their buddy get blown apart—that it was second nature by now. But this time, he yearned to believe too. This time, as he yanked down the small TV screen from the ceiling console and then jabbed the power button, he prayed the bar had opted for some trash TV network instead of verified news…

  The news every channel on the planet was now carrying.

  Shit.

  Not that it amazed him—though to really convince himself this was real, he ceased his station surfing on the Golf Channel. They were apparently a subsidiary of the larger cable news outfit so had spared their anchors the task of having to break this kind of a story. Those guys, still in their polos and checkered pants, were probably as frozen and stunned as the rest of the world, listening to the main news anchor speak with visible strain.

  “We’re still waiting confirmation from the office of Vice President Tracy Rhodes—but it appears the vice president has joined her leader and mentor, President Craig Nichols, on the casualty list of this bleak, black day in our world’s history.”

  The newsman couldn’t keep his shit together the whole way. He stumbled over the last few words, his emotion cracking through, now seeming to pour from the monitor. As the light turned green and Shep guided the car down the street, it came as no wonder that all the passing sights seemed different. In one day, the world had changed.

  “Nichols and his wife, First Lady Norene Nichols, were pronounced dead after a preprogrammed explosion tore apart half of the White House residence. The first couple were enjoying a rare lunch break together. Six members of their Secret Service detail were also killed by the blast. It is still unknown how the explosives escaped multiple security scans.”

  Tracy clapped a hand over her mouth. The move barely muffled her anguished moan. “Craig. Norene. Oh my God.”

  “We’ll bring you updates about the tragedy in Washington as they are received, but as most of you know, it is just the beginning of the shocking stories we’ve been forced to confirm over the last two hours, from all around the world.”

  John leaned over to turn up the volume. The position secured her head into the crook of his arm, but damn if that didn’t feel ideal right now. The inches responsible for taking her out of the politician box, into the space of being simply woman. The woman he was responsible for, despite what looked to be even weirder news than what they’d already heard.

  Something strange…is happening in Oz…

  “We now have validations from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, and Japan. As we suspected and reported at the top of the hour, every one of their leaders, including Prime Minister Azkan, Chancellor Pfeuller, President LeBon, Governor General Ontario, Governor General Long, and Prime Minister Shoju, as well as the King and Queen of England, have been officially pronounced dead, taken out in blasts similar to the attack that killed President Nichols—and, we presume, Vice President Rhodes.”

  “Holy. Fuck.”

  Shep’s oath mixed with Tracy’s sob. As she twisted, burying her head against John’s chest, her outburst intensified. He clutched the back of her head, keeping her close, absorbing her grief—in more than one screwed-up way, even thankful for it. She poured out the shock he couldn’t allow himself to feel—had been trained not to feel.

  When feelings got involved, he made stupid decisions. Caused missions to go sideways. Nearly got people hurt—or worse.

  Not this time.

  Because this time, he gambled with the lives of Tracy and Luke Rhodes.

  Existences he had to hide from the world, even if that meant tossing his feelings down the garbage disposal. He’d dig the remains out of the pipes later—if there was anything left to salvage. If there was anything left of him to salvage.

  And wasn’t that a fun way for fate to come knocking at his consciousness again?

  He could practically hear the little fucker giggling. Watching in glee as realization took over, shining on his psyche like a sudden blare of light…

  Was this why his remains hadn’t become Kaua΄i fertilizer yet?

  Was this the mission his sorry ass had been saved for?

  To save her?

  The irony of the recognition was subtle as a Skrillex riff. John freakin’ Franzen, sidelined from the job he loved because of p
oliticians and their machinations—only to be tasked to save one of them. One of the most prominent players on the field.

  No.

  Technically, she’d just become the biggest player on the field.

  Yeah. Skrillex was sounding pretty fucking perfect by the minute.

  The newscaster on the monitor clearly played the same soundtrack. He jolted up so violently, his chair was upended. Every viewer confronted his incensed gaze into the camera and watched his trembling hands fist atop the stainless-steel desk.

  “Okay, people. Listen to me. The world is a changed place, which means we have to change. We have to be better than we were when we woke up this morning. Braver than we were; stronger than we already are—not just for our country but for the whole world. Right now, we have a couple of black eyes, but we’re not down for the count. We’re not—”

  John shut off the feed.

  Silence again.

  But not peace.

  A stiff desert wind buffeted the left side of the car. The rumble of the road was a taunting lull.

  As they went where?

  The guy’s gaze, glancing expectantly to Franz via the rearview, conveyed a silent repeat of the query. Aloud, the guy muttered, “Fuck me five ways.”

  “Not now, honey.” The quip thinned the tension for half a second. Franz enjoyed it while he could, having to switch back to cold mission mode. “We have more important things to focus on.”

  “Like what?” Tracy beat Shep to the response. Not surprising, since it was backed with a stare of a thousand more questions—and shoulders weighted by the very huge world just dropped upon them. With his hand dropped to her nape, it was easy to detect the tension. Not so easy? Resisting the craving to rub his touch outward, to help ease that massive load on her.

  She was so small.

  She was so devastated.

  And he was about to make it worse. But waiting “until a better time” was not an option.

  He took a deep breath. Secured his hold on her a little tighter and then simply got the damn words out. “Like accomplishing what Sol Wrightman mandated me to do.”