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Hush

Page 30

by Tal Bauer


  He was at a crossroads, stuck trying to figure out where to go. His professionalism demanded one choice, and his heart and soul demanded another. And he was tired, so very, very tired of the choice. It was his life made large, the single choice that had the most meaning in his whole life, the only choice that truly mattered, now pressing in on him on all sides. And now, the choice of his lifetime came with a million extra pounds of pressure, clenching around his heart until he couldn’t breathe. In or out? Stay or go? Pride… or shame?

  Later, Mike took very good care of him, and his brain fizzled out as he finally relaxed, boneless and content in Mike’s hold.

  The crashing waves woke them, and Mike made love to him in time to the ocean’s swell and rumble. For the first time, there was nothing between them, and he saw in Mike’s eyes something new. Something tender and soft. Mike kissed him slowly as he thrust into Tom, pushing his hair back, cupping his face. When Mike came, inside him, he stared into Tom’s eyes as he exhaled shakily, breathing hard with his lips pressed to Tom’s.

  Tom was near catatonic after, the roars of sensation undoing him completely. He was a shell tossed on the waves, a branch mired in a hurricane, and after, he just wanted to be a bottle washed ashore on an empty beach, filled with Mike and his affection. Mike prodded him out of the cottage, and they made their way to the water to wade and relax. Etta Mae joined them for a little while, but decided chasing birds was more fun before snoozing on the cottage’s porch.

  And then, Mike laid out the towels, and the afternoon progressed exactly like Tom’s daydreams had spelled out. Mike was a god in the summer sun, his sandy hair catching the light and spinning threads of gold. Sweat glistened off his skin, traveled in slow drips down his chest and abdomen. Beaded in droplets on the ends of his chest hair. His toes dug into the sand and he lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, laser-focused on Tom.

  Tom felt like an unwashed mutt from the rescue shelter compared to Mike, but Mike looked at him like he was something special, and damn it, he was going to try to rise to that. Be the man Mike thought he was looking at.

  Mike did, in fact, taste like joy and perfection, and like freedom, and all of Tom’s dreams come true.

  Mike grilled again while Tom fell asleep on the sand before dinner. Later, they watched the stars come out as they lay with their heads together.

  “I think I want to retire to the beach someday,” Mike whispered. “Would you want to?”

  “Live on a beach? See this every day? I could be persuaded.” Tom felt Mike’s smile. Mike had his face pressed right into Tom’s cheek, into his neck, and his arms were wrapped around Tom, their legs tangled together. Mike was a human koala bear, and Tom was happy to be his tree.

  “I could be happy anywhere, I think, with you.” Mike’s voice was soft.

  Tom reached for Mike’s arm, lying across his chest. “What do you see in the future? What do you want? Five, ten years? Further along?”

  “I want to stay with the marshals. But… I’ll have to transfer courts. I really shouldn’t be dating you and be your JSI. Other than that… I’m a simple kind of guy. I want to do my job. Find my Prince Charming. Live a good life.” He swallowed, and again, Tom felt it through their closeness. “I want to fall in love with you. Take Etta Mae for walks together. Grill for you. Spoil you on the weekends. Travel when we can. See the world. Make love to you every night, or until my dick falls off from overuse trying to satisfy you.”

  Tom laughed, curling into Mike. They were eye to eye now, nose to nose. Hope sprang from Mike’s gaze, a flood of it, enough to wrap around Tom and cocoon him, push away the outside world, push it all the way to space, to the stars above. Just him and Mike, and Mike’s simple dreams of their future. A future that Tom had imagined so many times, dreamt about until he could taste it in the tears he’d shed.

  “What about you?” Mike’s words were a breath, edged in hope.

  “Everything you just said. All of it.” His lips brushed Mike’s as he spoke, they were so close. “And, I want to be out. Proud. One day.”

  Mike’s smile rivaled the stars. He rolled on top of Tom, burying his elbows in the sand, and rested his forehead on Tom’s. They didn’t say anything, just kissed sweetly until the fireworks started off of barges to the south, and brilliant lights lit the sky, rainbows of shimmering colors that fell like glitter. He could see joy in the shine of Mike’s eyes, in the reflection of the fireworks. The cascading colors seemed to form a rainbow, a sign in the sky behind Mike’s head, beckoning Tom forward. Yes, this was the way. He was on the right path. Stay with Mike. Hold this course. Be brave.

  You can be happy.

  Ringing woke them before dawn.

  Mike’s marshal phone, his official one, clattered on the nightstand. Mike grabbed for it, rolling onto his back as he answered. “What?”

  Villegas’s voice came over the line, loud enough in the quiet morning to hear clearly. “Morning, asshole. Where are you? More importantly, where’s Brewer?”

  “None of your damn business where I am. Brewer is safe.” Mike reached for Tom, resting his hand on Tom’s thigh.

  “Well, wherever you are, get in contact with Brewer. We can’t find him. He’s not answering at his house and he’s not checked into the Hyatt. We need verbal confirmation he’s good and then you need eyes on him within two hours.”

  Mike sat up. Those were the procedures for an active threat. “What’s going on?”

  “Russia launched a shitshow of military force overnight. They say they’re just exercises, but the president moved everyone up to DEFCON three. We got tipped off by the FBI that some Russian gangbangers are on the move, too. Could be nothing. Could be a coordinated attempt to make a hit. We need to secure Brewer.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I’ll get in contact with him.” Mike swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll get him and take him to a secure location.”

  “Maybe you can actually put him in the Hyatt. You know. Under our secure protection? At the taxpayer’s expense?”

  Mike hung up on him.

  Tom draped himself over Mike’s shoulder, leaning on his back. “Everything okay?”

  “No.” Mike buried his face in his hands. “Something’s going on. We’ve got to get back to DC.”

  Chapter 26

  July 5th

  Dark, leaden clouds, brimming with heavy rain and sparking with furious lightning swirled over the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, and out into the Gulf of Finland. Winds tore left and right, shaking over the U.S. recon plane running a racetrack pattern from Finland to Estonia and back again, skirting the edge of Russian airspace.

  They were monitoring Russian communications, or doing the best they could in the weather. For days, they’d been alternating flights with four other recon planes, vacuuming the skies and sucking up all Russian communications they could. Geeks and analysts decrypted the data and translated the lingo, forwarding everything to the big brains back stateside. Their job was to fly and collect, fly and collect. No matter what.

  It was dull, even in the weather. Until—

  Lights flickered, and the plane bounced, jerking left and right, unseating crew and anything that wasn’t strapped down. Monitor banks situated in long lines, signal scanners and interceptors, fuzzed and fritzed, making their multi-million-dollar scanning equipment meaningless.

  Sergeant Playa picked herself up, and, doubled-over against the turbulence, staggered to her console. There was a dizzying array of dials in front of her, switches and buttons and toggles that controlled an army of fine-tuned instrumentation, all designed to grab Russian ELINT, electronic intelligence, as best it could.

  Voices rose throughout the cabin, panicked and frantic.

  “Sir! My station is dead!”

  “LT, I’ve got nothing!”

  “We’ve lost power!”

  “Shit, the whole plane has lost power!”

  The plane bucked again, jerked as if it had been rear-ended, and then started to drop. Playa saw
Lieutenant Hall’s eyes go saucer-wide, a full ring of white all around his irises. Alarms wailed, screaming from every console.

  “It was an electromagnetic burst, sir! Someone directed a microwave burst at us! Fried everything!”

  They were starting to dive, powerless.

  Freefall lasted four seconds, but to Playa, it felt like a lifetime.

  “This is Captain Paulson. All crew, buckle in tight and stow gear. We are breaking off course and taking evasive action.” The intercom crackled, flickering to life in fits and starts as the backup batteries powered on and the engines restarted.

  “Find the bastards that did this,” Hall growled. “Find them now! This could be the start of a war!”

  Playa’s hands flew over her console. “Source! Bearing…. Jesus! They’re close!”

  “Sir!” Sergeant Mitchell, down the line of scanners and hovering over the rebooted radar controls, shouted, “There is a Russian ELINT jet closing on us, bearing one-five-one! Distance, less than one mile!”

  Playa grabbed her console right as their plane dipped into an S-roll and banked hard, a move more accustomed to a fighter jet than their lumbering recon plane. One of the scanners leaned down and puked between his knees.

  “How did they get on top of us?” Hall wound his way to Mitchell, bracing himself on the bucking deck and grabbing the handholds above him.

  “They could have masked their signature in the storm, and they’re not broadcasting an identification beacon.” As Mitchell spoke, four more dots appeared on screen, flanking the Russian spy plane. “Oh, shit!” Mitchell cursed. “Sir, four Sukhoi fighter jets now on station! Distance, half a mile! They’re on an intercept course!”

  “Have they painted us with radar?” Hall’s voice dropped, clinically cool. Half a mile from an attack run of Russian planes. The odds were not in their favor.

  “They just did.” Mitchell looked up, meeting Hall’s gaze briefly.

  Paulson’s voice broke over the intercom again. In the cockpit, he was receiving the same information from his flight crew. “Brace for impact! All crew, brace! Brace!”

  Hall threw himself into a jump seat as the bulky, blocky communications and electronic surveillance plane dove, spiraling and banking hard in a wild evasive pattern. Wind shears howled against the airframe, and G-forces pinned the crew into their seats. Mitchell started reciting the Rosary.

  This is it, Playa thought. The Russians are going to shoot us down. World War three is about to begin. We’ll be in all the history books… if there are any history books when this war is over.

  Heavy rattling, deep and thunderous, boomed on all sides, echoing just beyond the steel hull of their jet. Someone was shooting.

  Three NATO fighter jets, two from Sweden and one from the UK, zoomed past their plane, whooshes of light and sound outside their windows. Tracer rounds illuminated the dark sky, and the lightning flashed, just long enough to glimpse their harsh outlines against the storm. The trio of fighter jets roared into the wake of the American plane, barreling forward and firing warning shots over the Russians’ wings.

  “Russian flight, Russian flight, you are in violation of NATO airspace.” Playa’s earpiece picked up the heavily accented voice of one of the Swedish pilots. “You are in violation of NATO airspace. Return to Russian airspace immediately, or we will take your actions as provocation and respond accordingly.”

  Unfailingly polite, as always. Move, bitch, get out the way, would be how she’d say it. Or, get the fuck out of our face.

  They kept diving, but the half barrel rolls stopped, and—finally—the dive tapered off, too. Playa sat back as Captain Paulson leveled their recon plane out, and all around the cabin, shaky sighs mixed with nervous prayers.

  Playa kept listening over the comm unit, to the NATO fighters closing in on the Russians. “Russian flight, return to your airspace. This is your last warning.”

  “They’re not turning around.”

  “Do we have permission to engage?”

  “Fucking start a war? Are you bloody serious?”

  “They were warned!”

  “Fucking Reds. They’re asking for this—”

  A new voice broke into the channel. “NATO flight, you do not, repeat, do not have permission to engage. Trail fighters and rebroadcast our demands to the Russians to leave NATO airspace.”

  Silence, for a moment, until the lead fighter responded. “Understood, sir.”

  Muttering continued on the private channel, though. “There you go. Now the fucking Reds know they can do whatever the bloody fuck they want, and all we’ll do is be cross with them.”

  “Cut the chatter!”

  Playa listened until Captain Paulson flew out of range. The NATO fighters were circling and shadowing the Russian jets. Ten minutes later, Captain Paulson reported that the Russians had retreated back to their airspace, and they were on approach for landing back in the UK.

  She tuned into UK frequencies, listening as they came in closer.

  When the breaking news skewered the airwaves, she wished she was back in the air over Estonia.

  Chapter 27

  “Mr. President, we have a situation.”

  President McDonough glared at his National Security Advisor, Bill Simon. A migraine had latched itself to the base of his skull the day of the DC Sniper shooting, and it was only getting worse each day.

  “What is it now?”

  “The Russians have launched military maneuvers around St. Petersburg, on the border of Estonia, and over the Gulf of Finland. They breached NATO airspace over Estonia and fired a microwave burst at an American surveillance plane. It hit them like an EMP and fried their equipment.”

  “Jesus Christ. Is everyone all right?”

  “Yes. The plane was forced to abandon its mission and return to the UK, though.”

  McDonough slammed his pen down on his papers and leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked, and he propped one foot up on the lower drawer of the Resolute desk. “Goddamn it.”

  “And… Mr. President, there’s this.” Bill Simon turned on his tablet and passed it over to the president. It was frozen on a live stream from CNN, the breaking news ribbon curling over the bottom of the frame. The anchor, a woman, was frozen mid-word, her eyes wide. She almost looked frightened.

  McDonough looked from the frozen tablet to Bill Simon. “I’m not going to like this.”

  “I’ve called everyone in. We’re assembling in the Situation Room as we speak.”

  McDonough pressed play on the tablet’s screen.

  “Just in, Russian government officials say that they have found conclusive evidence that the CIA was behind the attack on Russian President Vasiliev. CIA funds were reportedly transferred to Vadim Kryukov, who then used that money to pay Bulat Desheriyev, the DC Sniper.”

  “Oh fuck…” McDonough grimaced, grabbing the tablet with both hands.

  The screen cut to the Kremlin, and a bevy of Russian governmental officers surrounding President Dimitry Vasiliev. He looked good, strong, even though his arm was in a sling. He wore a white cast, signed by his fellow Russians and dotted with hand-drawn Russian flags. He was a walking advertisement for Russian patriotic pride and a rallying symbol for nationalistic fervor. McDonough cursed again.

  Vasiliev spoke. “Today, we present to the world the findings of our own independent investigation, unencumbered by American meddling. We have discovered that the CIA funded and supported the cowardly man who perpetrated these terrorist acts upon the Russian people.” He grasped a handful of papers, no doubt their proof. “I am submitting this evidence to the American courts, for their sham trial in Washington DC. And, I am also submitting this evidence to the International Criminal Court, the arbiter of gross international law violations. Assassinating the head of a rival power is illegal, President McDonough! I had not even digested the lunch we shared that day! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  McDonough’s eyes slid closed.

  “It gets worse, sir.” Bill
Simon hovered, growing paler by the second.

  “And, in support of a full International Criminal Court investigation, we have arrested three CIA officers who were operating illegally in Russia.” The officers around President Vasiliev held photos of three Americans, mug shots taken in a Russian prison. “CIA officers John Parker, Ellie Sands, and Hector Rodriguez are being held in a maximum security Russian prison for crimes against the state.”

  “Who are they?” McDonough ended the live stream and tossed the tablet on his desk. If he could, he’d throw the damn thing through the White House windows. Bulletproof, the windows wouldn’t break, and the tablet thumping to the carpet wasn’t as satisfying.

  “John Parker is the CIA Chief of Station in Moscow. Ellie Sands and Hector Rodriguez are two of his deputies.”

  “Fuck. So they really did grab our people.”

  Bill Simon nodded once.

  “Have we had any contact with them yet?”

  “None. And the Russians aren’t taking our calls at the moment. The State Department is working every angle they can.”

  “Let’s go.” McDonough rose, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of the chair. “I want everyone in the Situation Room. Now.”

  Chapter 28

  Mike turned on his emergency lights for the drive back to DC. He gripped the wheel, kneading the leather, and Tom watched his pulse throb in his temple and the side of his neck. Twice he took calls from Villegas. Short and clipped, Mike only said that he’d made contact with “Brewer” and that he was “on the way” to securing him.

  His personal phone rang as they hit the Maryland suburbs, the exburbs of DC. Mike heaved a long sigh before he answered.

  “I was wondering when you would call. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  Tom couldn’t hear the other person over the roar of the road. He watched Mike carefully. Saw his eyes tighten, his gaze narrow.

  “Yeah. Okay. We’re on our way. Be there in an hour and a half.”

 

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