CHAPTER SEVEN
Four weeks later
March 8—6:35 A.M.
Denver, Colorado
Three weeks after a full hip replacement, Alex was running on a treadmill between Max and Erin. They had made a pact to work out every morning at six-thirty. So far, despite injuries, they had been successful.
And they had fun. Erin was treated to an inside view of the delightful insanity of the twins. In their funny, friendly company, she began growing into herself again. Right now, she was making faces at Alex while Alex told her about peeing from a helicopter. Max laughed so hard that he had to turn his treadmill off.
“Hey, you have a text,” Max said, pointing to Alex’s fanny pack.
“You’re the only one who texts me, Text Boy.”
Max snatched her fanny pack from the floor and pulled out her phone.
“Ten bucks it’s an ad,” Alex said.
Max opened her phone to look at the message. His brow furrowed.
“Well?” Alex asked. She turned off her treadmill to see what was going on.
“It says, ‘You have six hours before they die.’”
“It does not say that.”
Alex grabbed the phone from him. Staring at the phone, Alex’s heart sank inside her chest. As if responding to her stare, her phone rang. Walking away from her siblings, she answered the phone to her Sergeant.
“Fey,” she said. “Hey, I just . . .”
“You have to wait,” her Sergeant said. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I just received a text message that says . . .”
“‘You have six hours before they die.’ That’s 1230 hours our time.”
“Right,” Alex said.
“At approximately 1230 hours, Afghanistan, three soldiers disappeared.”
“That’s . . .”
“Four hours ago. We’ve been notified about a potential map issue, because the soldiers walked into a GPS dead zone. Then . . .”
“What is today’s date?”
“It’s March 8.”
“I’ll call you back.”
Alex jogged to the bathroom. She just made the handicap toilet before throwing up. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she focused on the tile wall in an effort to stay present. Four blue tiles. Six green tiles. She threw up again. The walls are made of white tiles with blue and green tiles in a diagonal line.
“Alex?” Erin asked.
“I’m here,” she said.
Erin rattled the door to the handicap stall where Alex was standing. Alex flipped open the lock. Erin looked at Alex’s white face and the toilet. Reaching past Alex, she flushed the toilet.
“I didn’t know you still did this,” Erin said. “I thought that, being a Green Beret . . .”
“Some habits die hard,” Alex said. “I usually don’t eat when I’m working. It’s why I get so thin.”
“What happened?” Erin asked.
Matthew and Troy are in Afghanistan. Ah, fuck.
Alex raised her finger to Erin. She dialed her Sergeant.
“Who is lost? Who is it?”
“You have to go through voice security.”
“Fuck security. Sergeant, who is it?”
“Sergeant First Class Fred Rhine, Sergeant First Class Stuart Quinn, Sergeant First Class Kenneth Boransky.”
“Thank God.”
Alex snapped her phone closed. Pressing her phone against her forehead, she squeezed her eyes against the panic and despair.
“Alex, what happened?” Erin asked.
“Some soldiers are missing in Afghanistan,” she said.
“So what?”
“I have six hours to find them,” Alex said.
“Or what?”
“Or they die.”
“Matt’s in Afghanistan,” Erin said.
Alex nodded. “Matthew and Troy. That’s what I just checked. It’s not them. I won’t know if they are safe until I get home.”
Erin hugged Alex.
“If anyone can fix this, you can. I believe in you, Alex.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Come on.”
Max was waiting for them outside the bathroom. He took one look at Alex, and they ran through the gym to his Jeep Cherokee. On the short ride, the tension in the car was palpable.
“I’m sorry, but I need to do this alone.” Alex jumped out of the car. She ran to the side door and down the stairs to the basement.
“Alexandra Hargreaves Drayson,” she said into the voice imprint.
A scanning pad opened in the wall, and she scanned her left hand. A key pad opened, and she entered a series of numbers.
“Code,” a mechanical voice said.
Alex whistled the first verse of “When you wish upon a star,” and the door to her secure office clicked open. Flicking on the lights, she opened a key pad on the armoire. She punched in another series of numbers and scanned her right thumb. The armoire clicked open. With a flip, she turned on her computers and signaled command.
“Fey,” Alex said. She waited.
“There you are,” her Sergeant said.
“I turned the phone off until I got to the office,” she said. “Sorry I hung up on you.”
“Sergeant Mac Clenaghan and Sergeant Olivas are in the air to the dead zone.”
“God damn it,” Alex said. “Who authorized that? They’re supposed to be working on a map and under my command.”
Her Sergeant shook his head.
“Find out.”
“Sir, we don’t . . .”
“This is Eleazar. He said he would come for my friends first. Who’s flying them?”
“Sergeant . . .
“Jakkman” they said together.
Alex let out a string of curses.
“Sir,” her Sergeant started.
“I don’t want to know.”
“Sergeant Ramirez and Blanco are with them.”
“Of course they are.” She blew out a breath. “Can you set up a direct link?”
“Yes, Major,” he said. “Let me work on that. You have a message from Agent Rasmussen.”
Alex nodded.
“Sir, we have five hours and forty-two minutes. Can you find them?”
“I know where they are,” she said. “Map 75-1090, quadrant fourteen, fifteen or part of thirteen.”
“That’s one of the maps we’re supposed to work on.”
“Those quadrants are GPS blackout zones. There’s an old Russian military compound smack dab in the middle of those quadrants. They’ve tried sending drones, but they crash on the site. That’s why Matthew and Troy were supposed to look into sending a team there.”
“Well, they’re on their way.”
“Don’t remind me. Can you collect the Dragon Lady imaging?”
“I have it already,” he said. “There isn’t much, but I’ll send it to your computer.”
“Thanks. Let me know when I’m connected to Matthew.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alex dropped her head in her hands.
“He thinks that killing them will destroy you,” Ben said, walking into her office.
She turned to look at him.
“He is correct in that assumption,” she said. “Do you live here now?”
Ben laughed. “I’m your father’s best friend. I took his key.”
“It’s pretty good service for Homeland Security,” she said.
“We arrived last night. I expected that he would do something to get your attention. I want to pay attention to what he wants you to ignore.”
“Like what?”
Ben shrugged.
“Raz?”
“Making breakfast for your sister and brother. John’s upstairs showering.”
“He said . . .”
“I know. We don’t believe he’s in the country. You were right. It will take him months to make his move here. I think we still have time. It’s a little different in Afghanistan.”
“How . . .”
“Who knows? He may have
had this plan lined up all along. Our intel, which you know is crap, says that he’s holed up in Jerusalem.”
“New baby,” Alex said.
“New bouncing terrorist baby boy,” Ben said, attempting a joke. “I’m going to smoke. You may as well come up.”
“I’m going to check the maps.”
“Who would have thought that you would be a cartographer?” Laughing, he walked up the stairs.
Alex set to work. As the clock counted down to 12:30 p.m. Mountain Time, Alex memorized the contours of the map reviewed the surveillance data and the reports. Closing her eyes, she remembered the area, where, almost twelve years ago, she and her team dropped Matthew for a two-year assignment with an Afghani warlord.
Charlie had agreed to drop Matthew because the village was only slightly out of their way. Or so he thought. They were ten hours into an uphill hike when they realized they were lost. Their ancient Russian map was wrong. They were too far away for a pickup and turning around would put them behind their extraction timetable.
When the team settled in for the night, Alex, Jesse, and Matthew hiked to a nearby ridge. Lying on her back between Jesse and Matthew, Alex watched the stars and her watch. When the sun rose that morning, she checked her measurements and went to work on the map. By the time the team was ready to travel, she had completed the changes. As a joke, Alex stamped the map with a tiny fairy rubber stamp that Erin had given her that Thanksgiving.
The Fey was born.
Everyone knew that story. Alex blinked at the surveillance data. What they didn’t know at the time was that the Russian map was intentionally wrong to cover a sprawling compound cut into the mountains of Afghanistan. The deserted compound, hidden from the world by the mountains, was not only a GPS dead zone but also a complete electromagnetic nightmare. Compasses went haywire. Radio transmissions failed. Instrumentation went out. The team crept through the compound on full alert and swore they would never go back. Clearly, Eleazar had better intelligence than the Special Forces grapevine.
“Sir?”
“I’m here,” Alex said.
“I have the link to Sergeant Mac Clenaghan and a radio link to the cockpit,” her Sergeant said. “The Jakker says . . . well, you should talk to him. I’ve tracked the order. It looks as if it was generated from our office. I’ve checked with everyone and . . .”
“No one sent the order.”
“Right,” he said. “Colonel Gordon is furious. He wants them back in Kabul. Be glad you aren’t on site today.”
Alex smiled.
“The lost soldiers’ CO requested a communication regarding the whereabouts and . . .” Her Sergeant wrinkled his nose. “He wants to talk to the Fey.”
“Fine.”
“Who would you like first?”
“I’d like to speak with Matthew.”
“Here you go.”
“Hey, Alex, whatcha doing?” Matthew asked. He was laughing at something Trece said behind him. “What’s the story with rounding up all your friends and then going incommunicado?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been trying to call you since we got orders. I think I left about forty messages—well, four—on your cell phone.”
Alex held her cell phone up to the webcam.
“What?”
“I never got them, Mattie,” Alex said. “I didn’t send these orders. It’s Eleazar.”
“What? Zack too? He had orders. We thought it was weird, but we couldn’t get ahold of you. What about the soldiers?”
“Eleazar snatched three soldiers. We don’t think they’re hostages. We actually think they’re lost in that Russian compound.”
“The one we found when you dropped me off?” Matthew asked.
Alex nodded.
“Don’t fuck with me, Alex.”
“I’m not. Ben’s upstairs. Eleazar told me that he would come for my friends first and that I would watch them die.”
“Trece said it was the eighth. I didn’t put it together. Fuck. What do you want us to do?”
“Colonel Gordon has requested that you return to Kabul.”
“And leave the soldiers there? No way.”
“Matthew, he will kill you.”
“Fuck him. God damn it.”
Matthew turned from the laptop computers. Alex heard him tell the others the news. She heard moaning. Matthew turned back to the computer.
“You have a mutiny. We’re not going back to Kabul.”
“Matthew! God damn it.”
“Before you go all, ‘You do this because I’m female,’ we’re doing this because that mother fucker killed our friends and got away with it. We’re not going to let him take three more soldiers.”
“I would like a vote. I’m not going to send anyone to their death without letting them choose.”
“Fine,” Matthew said. Turning the laptop, he said, “She wants to hear from each of you.”
“Hey, Alex,” Troy said. “This kind of crazy shit is my specialty.”
“I’ve been lost in Afghanistan,” Trece said.
“And I was with him,” the White Boy added. “We were saved by one of your maps.”
“It sucked. We want to get the soldiers. We also know that you’re smarter than some terrorist prick. Do your intelligence thing, and figure it out.”
“I wasn’t smart enough a year and five months ago.”
“You’re smarter now,” Trece said. “Get to work and save our asses. That’s what you intelligence pricks do. We’ll take care of the boys on the ground.”
Matthew’s smug face came back on the screen.
“Get to work, Alex,” Matthew said. “Do your job.”
“You need to tell Zack,” Alex said.
“I will. Is this a direct connection?”
Alex nodded.
“You’ll be in touch then.” Matthew clicked off.
Fuck.
Alex rubbed her forehead.
“Sir?”
“Sergeant, I need about fifteen minutes. Then I’d like to speak with the CO.”
“They aren’t returning to Kabul.”
“No,” Alex said.
The Sergeant nodded. “I’d do the same thing. Your friends are very brave.”
“Or stupid.”
The Fey Page 8