Siege Line

by Myke Cole

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I can’t die,” Schweitzer said. “Because I can bend cold iron with the one hand left to me. Because I can put a bullet through a dime at three hundred yards. Because I can hear a pin drop through a wall. Because I can smell if someone is lying. Because I am the only person out of all of us who has spent significant time in the Gemini Cell facility.”

  “You were a prisoner in the Gemini Cell facility,” Hodges said. “All you saw was the inside of a holding tank.”

  “I said I could smell lies. I didn’t say I was any good at telling them.”

  “Surely, you got some sense of the lay of the land,” Ghaznavi said. “Didn’t you move through the facility at all?”

  Schweitzer nodded. “A bit, and I remember some of it.”

  “But not enough to build a plan, damn it,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of magic-powered supersoldier?”

  “When they were handing out superpowers,” Schweitzer replied, “I took ‘run faster than a car.’ I didn’t have enough points left to get ‘mental maps.’ Anyway, I’ve been inside, which is more than I can say for either of you.”

  “I’ve been inside,” Hodges said.

  “You go, then,” Schweitzer said. “I’m sure the team will be well served by an aging mortal who hasn’t run an ass-in op in over twenty years.”

  Hodges looked at his feet again. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “He is,” Ghaznavi said. “Okay, Jim. You’re on the team.”

  “How fast can we get moving?” Hodges asked.

  “Moving with a sense of urgency isn’t the same as rushing. We’ve got some work to do. And the first item of business,” she said, turning to Schweitzer, “is you.”

  CHAPTER IV

  TECHNOLOGY IS A BEAUTIFUL THING

  Darkness blanketed the CIA campus. The low headquarters building was lit just enough to keep Schweitzer from seeing the stars without engaging his magically powered vision, and he didn’t bother. Walking beside Hodges and Ghaznavi, he felt almost human. Sensory limitations were a part of that, and even if it was just for a few minutes, he wanted to preserve the illusion.

  They went in through a back entrance, crossing a rubber mat emblazoned with the CIA’s crest, eagle’s head and compass rose. Bronze plaques adorned the wall, marching toward a row of stainless steel turnstiles that abutted a desk manned by a bored-looking guard. He didn’t bother to glance up as Ghaznavi badged through the turnstile, finally stirring as she opened a small gate, allowing Hodges and Schweitzer to enter. She held up her badge and he stiffened, waving her through. They turned right, meandering down a hallway with carpeted walls that undulated back on itself, waving back and forth as if it had been designed to deliberately confuse them. Schweitzer could hear the sound waves bending with each step, felt himself instinctively dialing out his hearing, pushing harder and harder to hear the guard desk, the low hum of computers in the hallway beyond.

  The corridor emptied out into a junction. A metal door concealed a trash chute beside an elevator open and waiting for them. Ghaznavi didn’t speak until the doors were shut and it was humming upward. “I don’t understand why you want to come.”

  For a moment, Schweitzer thought she had addressed the question to Hodges, but when he glanced up, the SAD Director was looking at him.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “On the raid on the Cell,” she said. “You fought like a mad dog to get out of there.”

  Schweitzer shrugged. Ghaznavi’s gaze was piercing; she had the interrogator’s gift of making it seem as if she saw into your heart, that it was useless to lie to her. Fortunately for Schweitzer, he had the SEAL training to counter it. As far as Ghaznavi was concerned, Patrick was dead, and he wasn’t going to disabuse her of the notion. “They pissed me off.”

  “Bullshit,” she said almost before Schweitzer had finished. “I didn’t get where I am in this organization by being gullible.”

  “You also probably didn’t get there by being pushy,” Schweitzer said. “For now, all you need to know is that I want in on this mission.”

  “You’re dead,” she said. “Why should you give a damn about what living people do?”

  Schweitzer was stunned by the question and, worse, his inability to come up with a response. As the elevator doors chimed open, he turned to her, putting heat in his voice. “Revenge isn’t about the living. It’s about the dead. They killed my wife and son. I’m not going to buy a house or save for retirement now.” He gestured to the gray ruin of his body. “Making things right is all I have left.”

  Ghaznavi stared at him for another moment before dropping her gaze, giving a satisfied grunt. She stepped out of the elevator, and Hodges and Schweitzer followed her down another corridor to a plain door with an enormous dial-faced lock over the handle. A green magnet reading OPEN was stuck to the surface beside a long oak tag card crowded with signatures. She slapped her badge against a black card reader beside the handle, and the door opened with a click.

  The room inside was formal to a fault. The walls were covered with dark wooden panels, contrasting sharply with a sterile, unmanned secretarial desk. Furled flags stood in the corner below a dark flat-screen monitor. Two doors led off the suite, and Ghaznavi took the rightmost, entering into a larger room dominated by an L-shaped cherry wood desk covered with mementos of a storied career in government: mugs, miniature flags, plaques and commemorative plates, a model airplane, white with a blue stripe, tail markings conspicuously absent. The walls were nearly covered with certificates and degrees, photos of a young-looking Ghaznavi smiling with hard-eyed insurgents and teams of American operators. A huge triple-paneled print of Harriet Tubman dominated the room. She was leading the way down a rough-hewn tunnel, a group of terrified runaway slaves trailing behind her. Her eyes were resolutely forward, a candle held aloft to cut through the darkness. Below it was a wooden plaque, engraved letters stained gold. YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, it read, AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.

  Ghaznavi made herself comfortable in a swivel chair, putting her feet on the desk and her hands behind her head. She slipped her heel out of one shoe, letting it dangle from a toe and jerking it in the direction of a small, round table surrounded by four chairs in the opposite corner.

  Hodges pulled up a chair, and Schweitzer joined him. He had no need to sit, but it was a gesture in the direction of humanity, and he made it a rule never to pass those up.

  “You ready to start planning?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “No,” Hodges admitted, reaching into a bowl of nuts in the table’s center. “Where do we even start?”

  “We start with a team,” she said. “We keep it small, we keep it to the best, and we need a lynchpin, a quarterback.”

  “I thought that was you,” Schweitzer said.

  “I’m the boss.” Ghaznavi pushed a button on a phone on her desk, spoke over the ringtones sounding through the speaker. “I have people for that.”

  A voice answered; Schweitzer recognized it as the same one Hodges had spoken to on the plane. “Watch.”

  “Andy, it’s Jala. I need Reeves.”

  A moment’s intake of breath, long enough for Schweitzer to know that Ghaznavi didn’t make a habit out of calling the SAD watch floor. “Yes, ma’am. He’s home; did you want me to . . .”

  “Yup. Tell him he has twenty minutes to get his ass to my office.”

  “Ma’am, Mr. Reeves lives thirty minutes away.”

  “Tell him to speed.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Out.”

  The line went dead and Ghaznavi stared at Schweitzer, only the slow rise and fall of her shoulders indicating she was alive.

  “Rude to stare,” Schweitzer said.

  “I’ll have to check the manual,” Ghaznavi answered, “but I’m pretty sure when you meet a sentient walking corpse brought in by a United Stat
es Senator and escaped from a program so secret that even I didn’t know about it, you get a pass.”

  She glanced over at Hodges and cocked an eyebrow. “Khodaye, Don. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “I’m fine,” Hodges assured her, but Schweitzer could hear the rapid beating of his heart, could smell the proteins building up in his blood. The Senator’s cheeks were pale, a light sheen of sweat showing beneath his immaculate hair. Too much stress. Too little sleep.

  “There’s bourbon in the cabinet behind you,” she said. “How about you pour us both a drink?”

  Hodges looked grateful, stood, and turned to the cabinet.

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Schweitzer asked.

  Hodges froze. “You’re . . . dead liver.”

  Ghaznavi uncrossed her arms, set her feet on the floor, and leaned forward. “Do you even eat and drink, Jim?”

  “Of course,” Schweitzer said, though the truth was that he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t tried since his death.

  “I can smell the chemical composition of your blood,” Schweitzer said. “I can hear your heart beating. You think I can’t taste liquor?”

  Hodges shrugged. “Rocks or neat?”

  “A single cube, please,” Schweitzer said, “and better make it a double.”

  Hodges poured and set the glasses down on the table. Ghaznavi joined them, lifted hers. “To secrets,” she said. “The darker, the better.”

  Schweitzer lifted his glass, the feel of the crystal in his hand evoking a cascade of memory. The condensation on the surface. The chill of the ice cubes clattering against the rim, the dull sloshing of the liquid. Sarah had once bought him a bottle of Virginia Gentleman back when they’d still been dating. They’d sat in the bed of his truck and watched the boardwalk on Virginia Beach, the crowds moving by, smiling and laughing, shining in the darkness as if lit from within. Sarah had swiped a couple of her mother’s good crystal glasses and her ice bucket. He remembered the smoky burn of the liquid as it traveled down his throat, the fire it lit in his belly.

  “Bottoms up,” he said, and tossed it back. His stretched features forced him to tilt his head back to keep the liquor from dribbling out of his mouth. It orbited the back of his throat before he forced his muscles to swallow, an old reflex rusty from lack of use. His dead taste buds reported the flavor in glorious detail he’d never known in life. But it was just that, a report, like his feeling of pain or fatigue, a thing distant, told by a third party.

  He managed to keep the disappointment off his face. He might be dead, but he was a person, drinking with other people. He nodded to Ghaznavi. “Delicious, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “My dad always used to give me shit about drinking. To this day, he looks down on me for it. Old fool doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  “Now what?” Hodges asked.

  “Now we drink”—Ghaznavi raised her glass—“and we wait.”

  They drank, and they waited, and the companionable silence was the most wonderful thing Schweitzer had known in a long, long time.

  At last, a buzzer sounded. Ghaznavi returned to her desk and pushed a button on her phone. “Come!” she shouted to the door before taking her seat in the swivel chair again.

  Schweitzer heard the dull thud of a footstep followed by a long, metal scrape, and a man limped into the room. His bright red hair was still sleep-tousled, longish, fading into his thick beard. He wore a dirty, faded ball cap with a subdued American flag, a flannel button-down shirt, and sweatpants that hung to his ankles. One foot wore a hiking boot, the kind of high-performance model operators always used instead of standard-issue. The other foot was missing. In its place was a long, J-shaped carbon-fiber blade. Schweitzer followed the outline of the prosthesis up the sweatpants and saw it terminated at the man’s knee.

  The man’s eyes were still sleep-fogged but narrowed, flicking around the room, noting danger areas in the corners, looking at the occupants’ hands rather than their faces. Schweitzer could tell he was an operator, possessed of the same casual deadliness Schweitzer had worked so hard to cultivate. This must be Reeves.

  “Came as quick as I could, ma’am.”

  Ghaznavi smiled at him. “You’re late.”

  “I know you said to speed, but I figured even if I tinned my way out of being pulled over, it would slow me down. Did forty-five the whole way.”

  “Sound judgment. This is why I hired you. I’m sure you know Senator Hodges.”

  “Heard of him, that’s for sure.” Reeves inclined his head. “Good to meet you, sir. I’m Ernest Reeves.”

  Hodges nodded, waving a hand over the lees of his scotch.

  Reeves’ eyes strayed to Schweitzer, who was still staring at his prosthetic leg. Did he still run ops like this? How had he driven here?

  Reeves noted Schweitzer’s gaze and folded his arms across his chest. “Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”

  The rush of embarrassment made Schweitzer feel more human, and he was grateful for that. He raised his head, his burning silver eyes gleaming from the shadows gathered beneath his cap. “I’ll have to check the manual, but I’m pretty sure when you’ve been killed and brought back from the dead, you get a pass.”

  Ghaznavi snorted laughter, waving at Schweitzer. “Reeves, this is Jim Schweitzer.”

  Reeves frowned. “The SEAL? Didn’t he get his ID burned?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “And they whacked him.”

  “Also right,” Hodges said.

  Reeves’ eyes narrowed, then widened, but only for a moment. They didn’t waste time on Schweitzer’s face, darting repeatedly to his hand, shoulders, and legs. Reeves was a professional. He knew he was in the presence of something he didn’t understand, but he stayed focused on the threat. Time enough for explanations later.

  He followed Schweitzer’s gaze to his leg. “I guess dying didn’t teach you manners.”

  “No . . . sorry,” Schweitzer said. “I just . . . I never met an operator who overcame something like that and stayed in the fight. Respect.”

  Reeves seemed mollified. “CIA’s not the Army. You get a little more latitude. I don’t let it slow me down, anyway. Are you really dead?”

  Schweitzer eased his hood back. “Yeah. Guess we’ve both overcome obstacles.”

  Reeves had his game face on now, showed no reaction other than a slight tightening in his hands. “Please tell me this gives you superpowers.”

  Schweitzer nodded. “Just like Superman, only without the pesky breathing.”

  Reeves turned to Ghaznavi. “I assume this is why I’m here, ma’am? There has to be a read-on for this.”

  Ghaznavi waved the thought away. “I’ll get with the security officer and have a code word assigned. For now, just keep your mouth shut. Well, except for your team.”

  “There’s a team?” Reeves asked.

  “I need you to assemble one. I was thinking a squad. Or two fire teams. Either way, you’re the lead, and he’s your second.”

  “He is?” Reeves jerked his chin at Schweitzer.

  “Well, it certainly isn’t me,” Hodges said.

  “No offense,” Reeves said to Schweitzer. “Never worked with a dead guy before.”

  “None taken,” Schweitzer said. “I’ve never been dead before.”

  “So, what is this, ma’am?” Reeves turned back to Ghaznavi. “Magic?”

  “That is exactly what it is,” Ghaznavi said.

  “Yup,” Hodges said as Reeves’ eyes moved to him.

  “Sorry you had to find out like this,” Schweitzer said. “Kind of sudden.”

  “So, you’re not a robot, or like some super-fancy special effect?” Reeves asked.

  “No,” Schweitzer said, “and please don’t cut me open to check. Your boss already tried that, and it doesn’t
heal.”

  “Ma’am, I have to ask,” Reeves said to Ghaznavi. “Is this some kind of practical joke? Am I being filmed?”

  “Come on.” Ghaznavi thumped her fist on her desk. “Does that sound like the kind of thing I would do?”

  “Respectfully, ma’am?” Reeves smiled. “Absolutely.”

  Ghaznavi glanced quickly to Hodges, who smiled, then back to Reeves. “It’s not a practical joke. That is Jim Schweitzer, and he has been raised from the dead as part of an op that harnesses magic, which, as you have already deduced, is totally real.”

  “’Kay.” Reeves chewed the inside of his cheek. “He reliable?”

  “More reliable than a lot of living people,” Schweitzer answered for her. “At least I know what side I’m on.”

  “What side is that?” asked Reeves.

  “Same one as when I was in the Navy,” Schweitzer answered.

  That seemed to satisfy Reeves, who nodded. “What’s the op?”

  “The unit that . . . created Schweitzer has gone rogue,” Ghaznavi said. “They tried to push a button on Senator Hodges. Schweitzer saved him. We’ve got to shut the operation down immediately.”

  Reeves continued working on the inside of his cheek, sucking in the corner of his moustache in the process. “I take it they won’t be cooperative.”

  “Nope.”

  “Where are they?” Reeves asked.

  “Colchester.”

  Reeves finally looked shocked. “Colchester, Virginia?”

  “About a half-hour drive from this very office, not counting for traffic.”

  “That’s . . .”

  “About fifteen hundred people,” Ghaznavi said. “Goes up to around ten thousand if you count the commuting communities surrounding it, which you should.”

  Hodges cocked an eyebrow and Ghaznavi shrugged. “In my line of work, you want to know your home turf.”

  “You mind if I sit down, ma’am?” Reeves asked, already pulling up a chair.

  “Want a drink?” Hodges asked, then filled a glass with ice before Reeves even answered.