CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Digging around in Maria’s desk, she pulled a yellow pencil from the drawer and began flipping through the stack of papers. Making notes on the edges of the documents, she made a face.
“Sir, I’d be happy to input the data into the intelligence server,” Larry said.
Alex was humming Seether’s “Gasoline” when Larry touched her arm. She looked up at him.
“Sir, the intelligence server?”
“Intelligence server? Yeah, people use the server.” Turning back to the pages, she added, “I don’t. Silence?”
Matthew and Troy stood at the end of the desk, watching Alex work. She seemed to shuffle the pages back and forth. Transfixed, they watched her rifle the pages, tap her pencil on the table, and hum. After a few minutes, she began marking the pages. She circled a word on one page, underlined a sentence on another page, and worked her way through the stack of paper.
They had each worked with a variety of intelligence officers. But they had never seen anyone do anything like what Alex was doing. After more than a decade of saying, “Yeah, I’m a good friend of the Fey,” they saw, for the first time, what made the Fey so special.
“Troy? Can you get my Sergeant on the phone? I need to speak with him. Thanks.”
She worked on the computer until Troy gave her the telephone.
“I’ve sent you some documents. Yes, that’s correct. Yes, can you transfer me to his line? Thanks,” Alex said. “Howard? Can you confirm . . . No paper. Right.”
Alex closed her phone.
“Mattie, I’m sorry, would you mind calling Raz back? Tell him that . . . uh . . . ” Alex flipped through the stack of papers. “All right, tell him that you bought the tickets for Valencia, and we are leaving in a half hour. But, he has to wear his . . . crap—what’s a men’s swimming suit?”
“Speedo?” Matthew asked. “Swim trunks?”
“No something larger . . .”
“What does he usually wear?” Troy asked.
“We skinny dip,” Alex replied. She looked up at their wide, surprised faces. She shook her head. “Spy stuff. What do you wear, Troy?”
“TYR board shorts,” Troy replied.
“Ok, I bought the tickets to Valencia, and we are leaving in a half hour,” Matthew started.
“But he has to wear his TYR board shorts. He should say . . .” Alex scratched her head. “ . . . ‘I can’t wait to make sand castles.’ Go.”
“Do you really skinny dip?” Cian asked.
“Not in Ireland,” Alex said, under her breath. She continued working with the documents.
“Alex, Raz said, ‘Your sand castles will not win the competition this year. My sand castles will win this year.’”
“That makes me so sad,” Alex replied.
Alex let out a breath and looked from face to face. How could this possibly work? For a moment, she yearned for the familiar comfort of Charlie and her team. She bit her tongue against the rising bile from her nervous stomach. There was no time for panic.
“Eleazar is making the first moves in what looks to me like a major offensive.”
“Against you?” Eoin asked.
“Against all of us. He has killed Zack.” Alex shook her head. “He thinks he killed Zack. He won’t know for at least three days. That’s the earliest the Air Force can get there. Sadly, there will be a lot of delays.”
“Then your friend’s body will have been eaten by wolves,” Cian said.
“Something like that,” Alex said.
“We’re in a movie!” Eoin said. Alex rolled her eyes but smiled.
“I’m sorry. We must act as if Zack is dead. Any fuck-up on our part, and we lose. Zack is dead.”
She closed her eyes.
“Next on his list is Joseph,” Alex said.
“WHAT?” Matthew and Troy asked in unison.
“Please, hear me out. After Joseph is Max and John,” Alex said.
“Motherfucker,” Cian said.
Alex held up her hand for silence.
“We have no time for emotion. There’s a hit planned on the President. Some brain trust at the Secret Service decided that Joseph is going to kill the President.”
“Max and John?”
“They will get in the way.”
“Alex, that’s a long way around to kill Joseph, Max, and John,” Troy said. He was unable to keep the doubt from his voice.
“Yes, it is,” Alex said. She was tempted to have a major temper tantrum. Blowing her frustration out in a breath, she said, “But the Secret Service will do the shooting. Plus, they will kill the President today. No one will give two shits about Joseph, John, or Max after the President is killed.
“Keep your initiative moving and make it seem like the government is behind it. That’s real psychological warfare,” Cian said. “I wish I had thought of something like that.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Alex said. “Anyway, Raz said that he can cover Joseph, Max, and John. We,” she pointed to Matthew and Troy, “need to save the President.”
“I want to save the President,” Larry piped up.
“I need you to do something else,” Alex said. “These guys can’t drive.”
“I can drive,” Cian said at the same time Larry said: “Who are these guys?”
Alex looked from one to the next.
“Sergeant Flagg, you are delivering the news that Captain Jakkman’s plane has crashed in Afghanistan. He is presumed to be dead.”
She flipped through the stack of pages and gave Larry the official notification of Zack’s demise.
“Where did you get this?” Matthew asked.
“My Sergeant was thinking ahead.”
“Sergeant Flagg, you’ll drive us to Fort Logan and drop the three of us near the event. Use your identification to get into the event, and go to the front with your paper. The President will announce Zack’s death at the Ceremony. Cian and Eoin will sneak out of the vehicle and be on hand to help—only help. We don’t want you to get deported. When it’s over, blend in with the crowd, and look for my brother, Colin.”
Cian and Eoin nodded.
“We need a faster ride,” Matthew said.
“No Zack. No chopper. And my Sergeant is confirming some details for me. I don’t have time to . . .”
“Let me make some calls. You authorize . . .”
“Of course,” she said. “If we can get a Black Hawk, we can parachute in before these guys get there.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir.” Matthew began making calls.
“Let’s see if we can find the weapons locker here,” Alex said. “My Dad showed me the locker when I returned to Denver, but I was pretty out of it.”
Alex’s eyes lit up when she remembered that Colin had just been here. Six weeks pregnant, Julie told him to get rid of his guns. Colin immediately removed the weapons and placed them in his father’s gun locker.
Such a good boy.
Chuckling, she dialed his number.
“I’m so fucking bored,” Colin said. “Why is it that you always miss these crappy political ceremonies?”
“I’m not the Golden Child?” Alex asked. “Plus, I’m either dead or never born.”
“Very funny. What do you want?”
“Where’s Dad’s gun locker?”
“Why?”
“Col . . .”
“If you believe for one minute that you are doing something fun, and I’m not involved . . .” Colin spoke in a terse whisper into his cell phone.
“You’re a civilian.”
“Fine. I won’t tell you.” He hung up his cell phone.
Alex tried to call him back, but he refused to answer. She let out a stream of curses. She looked up when Troy’s cell phone rang.
“Your little brother says that you are a big fat pig.”
“That’s very mature of him,” Alex said. “Gun locker?”
She looked over while Troy spoke with Colin. Troy’s laughing conversation
with Colin would insult a lot of Majors. Alex simply could not afford the time or the energy for anything more than a dark look. She gave Troy a fierce look, and he nodded to her.
“It’s in the floor of your father’s office behind the desk. The code is your nickname.”
“Fey?”
“Pumpkin,” Troy said.
“Great.”
Alex stomped into the office and found the space where her father left his weapons. Kneeling down behind his desk, alone for the first time since all of this began, she closed her eyes and felt a wave of exhaustion and hopelessness. She rested her head against her knees and sank into complete defeat.
She never felt this way in the field. Never. Everything that happened was another opportunity, another chance to do something fun. Charlie would look at her and say, “What’s next, missy?” But Charlie was dead. There was no one to believe in her now.
With a sigh, she pulled up the flooring and pressed the code into the key pad. Turning the handle, she pulled open the vault to find a piece of paper.
Pumpkin,
Some things you just know.
love you,
Daddy
That’s what he had said when they finally sat down to talk about her parentage. Standing in the nursery, waiting for “Rebecca’s bastards,” he had planned his return into the field, away from the mess of his life. But the moment the nurse placed Alex in his arms, every thought of escape evaporated.
He had expected a boy.
Yet the nurse set a tiny baby girl in his arms. Before he could ask about the obvious error, the nurse whispered, “The whole nursery is in tizzy, sir. You have a boy and a girl, General. Identical twins.”
At that moment, Alex opened her eyes. Looking in her eyes, he just knew that she was his girl. By the time the nurse returned with Max, his plan had changed, his whole life rearranged around being their parent. He felt as if he had been put on the planet solely to be Alex and Max’s father.
Some things you just know.
“What’s that?” Troy asked, as he peered over her shoulder.
“A note from my Dad,” she said.
“What does it mean?” Troy asked.
“It means that he thought we might be here today. It also means that I need to stop feeling sorry for myself.”
Troy nodded. Looking in the vault, he sucked in a breath, “May I? Your Dad let me take the Henry target shooting a few times. It’s quite a weapon.”
“Here’s the ammo,” Alex said. She gave him the Henry rifle and a box of shells. “You also need a handgun. Mattie? Do you still use a Smith and Wesson?”
“Forty-five,” Matthew said, coming behind the desk.
Alex smirked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing. Get what you need. Don’t forget silencers.”
“Raz called to tell you that the Air Force has delayed the flyover,” Matthew said. “They’re waiting to hear from you.”
“Thanks. I’ll take care of it.” Alex stood with another handgun, two loaded clips, and a different holster.
Moving past her, Matthew bent to pick out a handgun and ammunition while Alex dialed her Sergeant. With her back turned to the men, she closed her eyes and held her breath. Twenty-five military intelligence officers were reviewing the documents, trying to affirm her scenario.
What if she was wrong?
Her stomach turned over. She almost laughed out loud when her Sergeant verified that she was correct. They were released for duty. She asked him to confirm to the Air Force that Zack’s death would be properly announced.
With the phone pressed into her ear, she stepped into a Black Hawk helicopter. Troy pulled the door closed.
Ready or not, her little band of soldiers were on their way.
F
The Fey Page 29