Kodiak Sky

by Stephen Frey

  The short standoff had given the men who’d accompanied Skylar to Harpers Ferry just enough time to reach the cabin. As she’d made clear on that hillside overlooking Route 340 in West Virginia, the men in the black shirts and camouflage pants were serious people. None of Baxter’s men had survived, and their bodies were now at the bottom of Seneca Lake, secured to heavy rocks.

  Jack pointed at Espinosa. “You know all about Red Cell Seven.”

  Espinosa nodded. “Yes, I—”

  “Jack is lying.” Baxter spoke up confidently. “The two Orders I gave you are the originals.”

  “Mr. Baxter is the liar,” Jack retorted. “He’s also an accessory to murder. He had Chief Justice Bolger killed a few mornings ago on Constitution Avenue. We have a record of a wire transfer from an account Mr. Baxter controls, which was sent to the brother of the man who drove the truck that killed Chief Justice Bolger.”

  Espinosa glanced over at Baxter, then held up the two pieces of paper Baxter had given him to the light, one after the other. “This one is a forgery,” he said firmly as he brought the second piece of paper down from the light. “There is no 3-D marking on this piece of paper, Stewart.”

  Baxter clenched his jaw. “Remember what I have,” he sputtered, pointing at the cell phone lying on the table. “Now, Henry,” he said after a few moments, “I suggest you give me all three copies of the Order you are now holding.”

  Espinosa stared at Baxter for a long time. Finally he shook his head. “I’m not giving you anything, Stewart,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about that video anymore. You do what you want with it.”

  “Very well,” Baxter said, grabbing it off the table, “I will.”

  “You do,” Skylar snapped as she stepped forward, “and I’ll kill you, Mr. Baxter. And you know I mean it.”

  BY SEVEN p.m. President Dorn was so sick he had to be transported by ambulance from the White House to the ICU at Walter Reed. Despite his rising fever, he was hoping to see Shannon to give her encouragement.

  But Shannon was already gone. The Ebola virus had taken her life an hour before.

  JACK STARED through the thick glass at Karen, who lay unconscious on the hospital bed, quarantined. She had been injected with the Ebola virus shortly before being rescued, but was not expected to live.

  He bowed his head until it came to rest on the glass. If she died, it would all be on his shoulders—which made everything even worse, if that were possible.

  His cell phone rang, and he pulled it slowly from his pocket. Troy was calling. At least one of them was doing better.

  “HELLO, JACK,” Troy whispered.

  Jack took Troy’s hand as he reached the bedside. “Hello, brother.” Troy and Karen were being treated in the same hospital in Washington. Jack had simply needed to take the elevator up two floors to get to Troy’s room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” Troy smiled weakly. “I’m going in for more surgery tonight, but they say I’m going to make it.”

  “You’re indestructible. You always were.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Troy said softly, “not anymore, anyway.” He glanced up. “How’s Dad?”

  “Still in intensive care,” Jack answered. “You were right. Maddux knifed him in the neck. He’s lost a lot of blood. It’s still touch and go. The doctors are saying fifty-fifty, but I think they always exaggerate to the good.”

  “What about Baxter?” Troy motioned deliberately at the TV on the wall. “He’s in jail, right?”

  “Yes, as an accessory to Chief Justice Bolger’s murder.”

  “What about President Dorn?”

  “They took him to Walter Reed thirty minutes ago. It looks like he’s contracted the Ebola virus as well, though you won’t hear about it on television. The administration is keeping that very quiet, for national defense reasons, of course.”

  “Of course.” Troy took a deep, troubled breath. “What about Karen?”

  Jack’s lower lip trembled involuntarily as waves of emotion welled up inside him. “It doesn’t look good, Troy.” He forced back the tears. “What’s wrong?” he asked. Troy suddenly seemed upset. “You okay? You need a nurse?”

  Troy shook his head. “I have to tell you something.”

  “My God, what is it?” Tears were suddenly falling down Troy’s cheeks. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother cry. “What’s happening?”

  “I had to tell you this face-to-face, man-to-man, and maybe most important, brother to brother. You are my brother, Jack. More than that, my God, you’re the person I’m closest to in the world.”

  Jack stared at Troy so hard everything else in the room faded to nothing. “What the hell?” he whispered, as the pounding of blood in his head became so hard his vision blurred with his heartbeat. “What’s going on?”

  Troy held up the vial. “Someone gave me this,” he explained with a shaking voice. “It’s an antidote to the Ebola virus. It is enough to save only one person. Daniel Gadanz sent it to me to put me in hell.”

  “Give it to me, Troy!” Jack shouted. “Give it to me right now so I can save Karen!”

  “I can’t, Jack,” Troy gasped. “I have to save the president. I took an oath.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  Troy coughed hard several times. “I’m absolutely serious. I’m sorry, Jack. I had to tell you this face-to-face. I owed you that.”

  Jack lunged for the vial. “Give me that vial.”

  “Nurse,” Troy yelled as loudly as he could. “Nurse, help me!”

  CHAPTER 40

  CHIEF JUSTICE Henry Espinosa relaxed in a wingback chair of his office at the Supreme Court, waiting patiently.

  Two hours ago his office had been swept for listening devices by members of the Secret Service, and they’d determined it to be pristine.

  One hour ago the office had been swept by an electronics expert Espinosa had known personally for years and trusted completely. As he’d watched, the man had found and disconnected three tiny listening devices.

  The knock on his office door was firm and authoritative.

  Espinosa rose from the chair and moved across the thick rug. “Hello, Stephen,” he said politely as he opened the heavy door. He was still wondering when those devices had been planted and why the official experts hadn’t found them—or if they were the ones who’d planted them. “Please come in.”

  Stephen Hudson had been David Dorn’s vice president. In less than an hour Hudson would be inaugurated and become the country’s forty-fifth president.

  Dorn and Hudson had never been close, Espinosa knew. The ticket had been arranged by party leaders purely for political purposes, purely to garner votes. Hudson was a fair-haired senator from California who didn’t even get along with Dorn, but he’d served his purpose. He’d guaranteed the state’s truckload of fifty-five electoral votes for Dorn—and sealed the election.

  Then, for all intents and purposes, Dorn had cut Hudson loose. Since the election, they’d met only four times, and Hudson had become little more than a figurehead. He’d tried to lead several high-profile employment initiatives, but he’d gotten no support from the White House, and the initiatives had withered on the vine before ever getting traction.

  For the last year Hudson had accepted his situation and eased all the way into the background. But his role was about to change dramatically, and Espinosa was about to initiate the change.

  “I won’t be calling you Stephen much longer,” Espinosa said with a smile when they were seated, facing each other. “Very soon it will be Mr. President.”

  Hudson’s eyes gleamed. “Sometimes life works in strange ways, Henry.” He leaned forward. “Now tell me why I’m in here meeting with you alone when I’m being inaugurated by you in forty minutes.”

  Espinosa leaned forward as well. Typically it would have been the outgoing
president and his chief of staff who would have called this meeting just prior to the inauguration. But that wasn’t possible this time.

  “I need to tell you about one of the most tightly held secrets of the office you are about to take over,” Espinosa explained in a hushed voice. “I need to tell you about Red Cell Seven.”

  CHAPTER 41

  JACK GRINNED from ear to ear as he rushed into the private room of the New York City hospital.

  Bill smiled back weakly from the bed. He’d finally awakened from his coma forty minutes ago.

  “I love you, Dad,” Jack mumbled as he leaned down to gently hug his father, while Cheryl looked on with a huge smile of her own.

  Bill had lost a tremendous amount of blood, but he was finally out of the woods. Despite his age, Bill Jensen remained a very tough man.

  “I love you, too, son,” Bill murmured, tears coming to his eyes as Jack pulled back from their embrace. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re a hero. Your mother’s been telling me everything.”

  “Skylar McCoy was the hero.”

  “Don’t do that. She was a hero, definitely. But this country owes you a huge debt of gratitude as well. I’m very proud of you, son.”

  “Thanks.” It was amazing to finally hear those words come from his father’s mouth. It seemed as if he’d been waiting a lifetime.

  “Karen?” Bill spoke up suddenly with a fearful expression. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

  Jack turned and pointed toward the door. Karen was standing there, leaning on her cane.

  She waved at Bill. “Hi,” she called as Jack moved to where she was standing and took her in his arms.

  He’d never tell her about the struggle with Troy in that hospital room. How he’d wrestled the vial away from his brother before the nurses could get into the room. How he’d sprinted from the hospital before Troy could have him stopped. How it had made things bad between Troy and him, so bad that they were speaking again but not a lot. Karen didn’t need to know about all that. She was alive, thanks to the antidote, and that was all that mattered to Jack.

  “I love you,” he whispered in her ear as he held her.

  “I love you, too, Jack. I always will.”

  CHAPTER 42

  JACK AND Skylar sat side by side on the narrow ledge overlooking the Shelikof Strait. It was the same ledge Skylar had been sitting on when she’d gotten the phone call from her superior officer ordering her to Washington.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jack said as he pulled the collar of the fur-lined parka up around his neck. Northern lights gleamed across the star-laden sky above as tall waves crashed on the boulders below. “Cold but beautiful.” He leaned forward and glanced down hesitantly, glad he was secured to the cliff by a thick rope that was lashed to a metal spike Skylar had driven into the rock face after they’d climbed down here. “Thanks for bringing me.”

  “I wanted you to see it,” she murmured, reaching into her coat pocket. “This is my favorite place in the world.”

  “I can understand why.” He took a deep breath of the crystal-clear air. “Thanks for making dinner, too. It was excellent.”

  After leaving town this morning, they’d canoed and hiked around and across Kodiak Island to the grove of trees where Skylar had carved her initials long ago. She’d caught several rainbow trout in the creek at the bottom of the ravine with her bare hands and cooked them over an open fire, along with fresh vegetables and potatoes. She’d even brought along a good bottle of wine in her backpack.

  After dinner and despite the wine, they’d rappelled down here to watch the aurora borealis. So they wouldn’t be bothered by bears, she’d told him.

  Jack glanced up at the yellow and green lights shimmering among more stars than he’d ever seen in one sky. He hoped she was kidding about the bears. But he suspected she wasn’t.

  Skylar lighted the joint she’d pulled from her pocket, took a hit, and held it out for him. “Here.”

  He chuckled self-consciously. Commander McCoy was always full of surprises. “No thanks.”

  She rolled her eyes and took another hit. “It’s one of the ways I deal with who I am and what I’ve done,” she said, after exhaling a plume of pungent smoke straight at him with a laugh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I kill people for a living, Jack. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m a little mentally warped, because I seem to handle the job pretty well.” She shrugged. “Still, sometimes it gets to me.”

  “You protect this country.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “That’s what you know, Sky.”

  She glanced over at him. “Hey, you know, that’s the first time you’ve ever called me Sky. I like it.”

  He nodded but said nothing.

  “I’m glad Dorn’s dead,” Skylar confided. “I’m glad the Ebola virus killed him. I hated him for lying to me, for making me think my father was still alive so I’d go after you guys.”

  “How did my father convince you Dorn was lying?” Jack had wanted to ask her that for a while. “What did he say that night at the cabin?”

  “It wasn’t what he said. It was what he showed me.”

  “Which was?”

  “Your father showed me a video of my father’s ship on the bottom of the Bering Sea.” She hesitated. “His body was still in the wheelhouse. There was a close-up of his face so the brass would recognize him. He was suffering when he died. I guess drowning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Jack grimaced. “Why did they need to make sure he was—”

  “My father ran missions for the ONI. He picked up and dropped off our people from and to U.S. subs out in the Bering Sea. They had to make certain there wasn’t anything classified onboard, so they sent divers down.” She held the joint out for him. “You sure?”

  Jack shook his head. “No.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “You know, I thought I was dead that night at the cabin,” he admitted. “You saved my life.”

  “Well then, we’re even,” she said. “You covered me in Harpers Ferry. I covered you at that cabin. It worked out pretty well.”

  “Yeah, I guess it did.”

  Skylar let her head fall slowly back against the cliff. “What are you doing here, Jack?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you come to Kodiak Island?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  She shook her head. “You had another agenda.”

  He grinned. How could she know? “Okay, maybe you’re right. Look, I want to know if—”

  “If I’ll join Red Cell Seven,” she interrupted.

  So along with all her other talents, she was a mind reader, too. “Well, will you?”

  “Are you going to stay involved?”

  Espinosa had given Jack both original Orders after the incident at his house with Baxter, and within twelve hours Jack had hidden them well. Only two other people knew where they were.

  And despite his issues with the cell, Jack had taken time away from bond trading to help the unit reorganize and to dive deep below anyone’s radar again. It had helped that President Dorn had died and that Baxter was in jail awaiting prosecution for a long list of serious crimes.

  “If Maddux was ultimately going after you guys,” Skylar asked when Jack didn’t answer, “why didn’t he just kill your father at the cabin while they were there together?”

  “He was trying to suck up as much knowledge about the cell’s money situation as he could. And Maddux knew my father would have told people who to come after if something happened to him.”

  “Your father is a smart man.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Is that how Baxter knew to call Judge Espinosa? Is that how he knew to warn Espinosa about Opera
tion Anarchy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did Maddux really whisper something to Baxter about the plot? That’s what it said in his notebook.”

  Jack nodded. “He contacted Baxter so later he could connect him to Operation Anarchy, so it would look like Baxter knew about it. How else could Baxter have warned Espinosa to stay at home if he didn’t have knowledge?”

  “How did he know Baxter would call Espinosa?”

  “He and my father figured out that Dorn and Baxter had manipulated Espinosa to the top of the Supreme Court. My father found that wire transfer going from Baxter’s account to the brother of the guy that killed Chief Justice Bolger. Maddux knew that Baxter and Dorn had a great deal invested in Henry Espinosa.”

  “Which got Baxter indicted,” Skylar said, “along with the record of the wire transfer.”

  “They manipulated Espinosa to the chief justice position so they could wipe out RC7. And they killed that poor woman Espinosa was having an affair with so Espinosa would be their puppet, so Baxter could force him to sign that directive ending RC7’s existence when he presented the forgery of the Order.”

  “But it wouldn’t have mattered. The forgery didn’t have the 3-D piece.”

  “If we hadn’t shown up when we did, Sky, Espinosa would have signed that directive. I’m sure of it. He got courage because you were there. He saw that you meant what you said. He saw fear in Baxter’s eyes. I certainly did.”

  They were quiet for a long time as they watched the northern lights.

  “You okay?” Skylar finally asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I know you miss Troy. I know how close you two were.”

  Jack exhaled heavily, shook his head, and put his hands to his face. “Yeah, we were.” Troy had died from an infection brought on by the wound and the subsequent surgeries. The call that morning from the hospital had been an absolute shocker. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”