Adán glanced at the upright chairs sitting in a row beneath the shutters.
“I will leave you here,” Rey said. “Lieutenant Garcia will take care of you.”
Adán thanked him and sat down to wait.
It took twenty-three minutes for Calli to emerge from her meeting. Adán found the waiting time instructive. Through the big open doorway over Garcia’s shoulder, he caught glimpses of activity in the rest of the house. The hallway was a busy junction point, giving access to the front hall and the stairs and all the rooms at the back of the house on this side.
Adán remembered the house being a graceful, airy residence. It still had touches of grace—no one could remove the beautiful scrollwork banisters on the stairs, or the complex woodwork framing the arches. The banisters showed scratches, though, and the varnish chipped from constant handling.
The floors were worn the same way. There were no antique rugs to protect them anymore. The walls were stained at the edges and corners, where many hands had rested or brushed past.
Adán wondered how many people lived in the house or worked in it, for the hallway was never empty. No one lingered there, for it was a transition point. So many people crossed it that the view was never still.
After a while, Adán noticed the same people using the hallway. He registered their faces from among the many others whom he saw only once. A tall, black woman with beautiful eyes and a self-possessed air was one. She clutched a laptop against her hip. There were more walking wounded Loyalist soldiers, who fetched and carried.
Captain Rey crossed the hallway, too.
He almost didn’t recognize Calli when she appeared at the top of the steps and beckoned to him. With a start, Adán got to his feet and moved over to the steps, letting his gaze move over her. The last time he had seen her, Calli had been a glowing bride, her love for Nick easier to read than newsprint.
The woman standing and waiting for him now looked at least ten years older. Wisdom and patience colored her features. Long-term exhaustion dragged at her eyes.
Her straw blonde hair was pulled back behind her head, although wisps of it feathered her face. She wore jeans and a simple tee shirt that looked too big for her. Adán suspected it was one of Nick’s.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Adán,” she told him, when he put his foot on the bottom step. “Come back to my office. Let’s talk.” She turned without waiting for his response and moved down the back corridor that burrowed beneath the stairs.
There were many more people in the corridor, moving in and out of the rooms there. The rooms were no longer private lounge rooms. There had been a small library in one of them, once, the shelves stacked with first editions, most of them signed by the authors. At the far end, the rooms became more utilitarian—a laundry, the kitchen and the big butler’s pantry off the kitchen. Those rooms were likely still used as they once had been.
Calli turned into the room that had been the library and Adán followed. The shelves were still there, although they no longer held books. There were stacks of paper, instead. Files and notebooks.
The middle of the room held a big desk also covered in stacks of paper, and a sleek computer monitor and keyboard.
A woman with short, dark hair and large brown eyes sat in one of the six chairs sitting in an uneven arc in front of the desk. She was nibbling a cracker. Two more were in her other hand.
Calli rested her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Better?”
“Sorry, yes,” the woman said, after swallowing.
Adán reached for the woman’s name. “Minnie, isn’t it?” he asked her.
Minnie nodded and lifted her empty hand up toward him. “We weren’t introduced at Calli’s wedding. Besides, things have changed since then. I’m Señora Minerva Peña, now.”
“I heard about Duardo,” Adán told her, shaking her hand. “My congratulations.”
Minnie’s smile was small but warm. “Thanks.” She gripped both arms of her chair. “Well, I should get out of here…”
“There’s no rush,” Calli told her, settling behind her desk. “We’re all family. Adán, would you mind shutting the door?”
He turned and closed it. “What happened to all the books?”
“I sold them,” Minnie said, settling back in the chair.
Adán winced.
“I know,” Minnie said, her tone one of agreement. “Only, just one of those signed hard covers raised five hundred American dollars on E-Bay.”
“Five hundred US dollars buys enough groceries for us to last more than a week, even with everyone we must feed, here,” Calli finished. She waved toward the chairs.
Adán picked the one in the middle and sat. “I didn’t realize how tight it had become for you.”
“Not since your money arrived,” Calli said. Her smile was just as warm as Minnie’s. “It was a most welcome relief,” she admitted.
“Good,” Adán said. “I’m glad it will be useful.”
Calli spread her hands on the desktop, studying him. “Why are you here, Adán?”
The hair on the back of his neck tried to stand up. The authority in her voice! She was a commander, assessing and making decisions that could change people’s lives. Only the most experienced and long-term successful producers in Hollywood carried that degree of gravitas.
Adán realized he had given a Vistarian shrug, his shoulders rising and falling without thinking about it. Since tying up at the jetty outside, he had been falling back into old habits. Childhood habits. Captain Rey’s accent had brought with it a sense of home.
This old house had prodded even more of his older memories.
“Why else would I be here?” he asked, keeping his tone reasonable. “To help.”
“You want to join the fighting?” Minnie asked, her tone lifting in astonishment. “Put on a uniform and pick up a rifle? Go pick off Insurrectos from across the strait?”
“I will, if Calli thinks it is how I can help,” Adán replied, although he wasn’t sure what she meant about picking off Insurrectos.
Minnie blew out her breath. She glanced at her cousin. “It would be the same as painting him with a target.”
Calli nodded.
Adán looked from one to the other of the two women, reassessing them. They spoke like men. Not just men, but older, seasoned men who had seen and experienced much and were judging him based on that wisdom.
“Sending you to the Big Rock would distract the Insurrectos and our men, too,” Calli said.
Adán nodded. “Nick told me as much, months ago. I’m here to serve, Calli. I don’t care what that means. If I must fetch and carry as the wounded men out there, then I will do it. If it helps, I will do it gladly.”
Calli looked doubtful. “There must be a better use for someone like you. I don’t know what that would be, yet. If you want to serve, then I won’t waste your potential.”
Adán relaxed. “Then I can stay?”
“He might be of better use back in America,” Minnie said. “He knows the President. He could help Olivia.”
Calli’s gaze didn’t shift from Adán. “That’s not the type of help you’re interested in providing, though, is it?”
Adán shook his head. “I’ve played that card already. Nick got five minutes with him. Now, President Collins isn’t returning my calls.”
“Don’t take it personally. He isn’t returning my calls, either,” Calli said, straightening up.
A tap sounded on the other side of the closed door, then it pushed open. The black woman Adán had spotted earlier stepped into the room and held out a scrap of paper to Calli. “Today’s password for the satellite feeds. They’re up now.”
Calli took the paper. “Thank you. Chloe, meet another member of the family. This is Adán—”
“Caballero,” Chloe gasped, her gaze settling on Adán’s face.
Adán shook his head. “Maybe I should change my name while I’m here.”
Chloe shook her head. “Wouldn’t do you any good,” she
replied. “Unless you change your face, too.”
Adán grimaced.
Minnie leaned forward. “Only, no one can see his face on the other side of a computer screen. Chloe, do you need any help with the analysis?”
“All sorts of help,” Chloe said. She considered Adán. “Are you any good with computers?”
“Only if there is a three-year-old standing by to help me,” Adán admitted.
Chloe sighed.
Minnie shook her head. “That’s just the medium. Adán, you’ve been staring at photographs your entire life. Movie stills and more, right?”
“It’s part of the job,” he replied. Watching daily rushes and assessing his performance, so he could make adjustments the following day. Coldly measuring the effectiveness of a new batch of publicity head shots and disassociating his emotions while analyzing his own face. Checking makeup shots, continuity shots… “I stare at images all the time.”
Calli raised her brow at Chloe.
Chloe crossed her arms. “Ever seen satellite imagery?”
He sighed. “I could lie and say I’ve seen more than my share, only…”
“He’s an observer of human nature,” Minnie said. “Chloe, you said only yesterday how hard it is to figure out what looks kosher and what doesn’t. Adán can tell.”
“You’re spying on Vistaria?” Adán asked.
“Chloe hacked the feeds of half-a-dozen satellites, both orbital and geo-stationary,” Calli said. “It gives the army invaluable information on Insurrecto deployments and strengths and weaknesses. We give the data to the generals on the Big Rock to use. The feeds also give us thousands of images of the city and the major towns.” She hesitated, then said, “People are going missing. We’ve been getting reports—most of them from the north of the main island. The satellite images might give us a clue why they’re missing.”
Adán frowned. “People go missing in wartimes.”
“More than usual,” Calli said. “Chloe has been running numbers and they support my gut feeling that the numbers have increased just in the last couple of weeks.” She glanced out the window, as if she might see Vistaria from here if she stared hard enough. “Something is going on over there and I can’t spare Daniel to dig it up. He has enough to do.”
Adán knew the name. Daniel was Olivia’s new husband, the man who had helped her escape the Whitesands Hotel. “I can look at them and see if there is anything,” he said. Relief touched him. The biggest hurdle, the one he had thought might be too much of a barrier to overcome, had been dismantled. They would let him stay. They would let him help. Calli was not dismissing him because his face was known everywhere.
Chloe crossed her arms again. “In between, you can help me with communications. Broadcast messages.”
“Not if you need me to type with more than two fingers,” he replied.
“Phone calls,” she replied. “We can phone anywhere these days.”
Minnie snorted and pressed her hand against her mouth.
Adán glanced at her, startled.
Minnie shook her head. “I’m just imagining Duardo’s mother taking a call from Adán Caballero and the look on her face when she recognizes the voice.”
Adán grinned. “Hey, at least one person will know I’m contributing.”
“Lots of people will know,” Calli assured him. “Although, you have to understand, Adán, being famous is a drawback in a war.”
“So I’ve learned,” he said, his tone sober. “That is why I’m not keeping my expectations high. If I must hide behind a computer screen to be useful, then I will.”
“Thank you,” Calli said.
Chloe jerked her head. “Come with me,” she told Adán.
Calli turned to Minnie, as Adán got to his feet. “Will the boat be ready for tonight?” she asked her cousin.
“Boat?” Adán asked. The jetty outside had no vessels except his and the fishing smack that was now a patrol boat, which had escorted him here.
Minnie looked up at him, then answered Calli; “They’re filling the last tank this afternoon.”
“Not this morning? It has to leave by sunset at the latest.”
Minnie frowned. “There was an accident. Menendez slipped on the deck. He broke his leg.”
“The other leg?” Chloe asked, turning back. “He was already on crutches!”
“That’s why he slipped. Oil and water…” Minnie shrugged. “That’s why I was late for the meeting,” she told Calli, with a note of apology in her voice. “I was settling him in the ER in Acapulco.”
Calli chewed at her bottom lip, looking like the young woman she was. “You’ll need another pilot, then.”
Adán sat down, his heart beating harder.
“I was going to take it across myself,” Minnie said. “I’ve done the crossing a couple of times. I know the charts and how to read a compass.”
“No, Minnie, I absolutely forbid it,” Calli said, her tone flat.
Minnie scowled. “Why? Because I’m pregnant? Why should that make any difference?”
“It makes all the difference in the world.” Calli swallowed. “We’ll find someone else.”
“I’ll take it over,” Adán said.
Everyone looked at him, startled.
He shrugged and laughed silently at the gesture. “I know boats,” he said. “And the sea. I know the Big Rock. I know how to read a compass, too.”
Calli’s gaze slid toward the window, which looked down upon the bay and the jetty where his boat waited. “The guns over there aren’t fake, Adán.” She was back to looking like a much older woman.
“Neither am I. All appearances to the contrary,” he added.
Her smile was grim. She nodded.
Chapter Eight
The supply boat taking fresh water and food over to Las Piedras Grandes was of the same genre as the patrol boat. It had started life too many decades ago and had been tossed upon the open ocean every day since, hauling fish into Acapulco. Six weeks ago, the faded metal-hulled boat was donated by its owner to the Loyalist Army to use for their fledgling navy. For the last two weeks, it had been running supplies to the Big Rock nearly every night.
It had two freshwater tanks in the bow that could carry a hundred liters apiece and a pump screwed onto the prow. The cabin and the back end of the main deck carried cartons of food, strapped down with fishing nets to hold them in place.
It left a narrow alley between the cartons and the helm. The alley was the width of a man.
Adán prodded the engine and listened to it chug into life. He moved down two steps into the small cabin to peer at the boxes and crates sitting on the worn carpet, then came back to the deck. “I can’t get into the engine room,” he pointed out, jerking his thumb toward the steps.
Minnie checked something off her clipboard and nodded. “Every inch gets used to carry stuff. We can only run at night and it takes all night to get there and out of sight before dawn.”
He sniffed. “It smells as though the engine is burning oil,” he pointed out.
Minnie lowered the clipboard. “If it has, then it has been doing it since we started using it to haul stuff over to the Rock.”
Adán pursed his lips. “If it breaks down in the middle of the sea, then we must toss food to get at the engine.”
Minnie considered him. “Hundred bucks says it won’t.”
Adán blinked.
Rubén Rey came up alongside the boat. In the dark, his glasses flashed moonlight. “You’re ready to go,” he said, keeping his voice down. He was wearing civilian jeans and a light twill jacket. Adán spotted the Glock on his hip, pushed back so the open jacket didn’t show it. The Glock and Rey’s competence had let Adán relax a little more. Clearly, Rey had not been left behind because he was a liability at the front. He was a vital part of the security around the house.
Adán gripped the wheel and waited for Minnie to step up onto the dock. It was high tide, so the step was a tiny one and she resented anyone trying to help her. He had
seen her annoyance more than once this afternoon, when Rey and other Vistarians tried to give her a hand up or down into the boat. She was just three months pregnant, he had learned from Chloe, who seemed to hear everything said in the house, no matter where it was whispered.
Minnie’s independence made Adán think of Parris. He pushed the thought away. It was easier to rid himself of the memories tonight than it had been in a long time. He had new priorities now.
Minnie tucked her pen under the clipboard and handed the clipboard up to Rey. He took it with a nod and tucked it under his arm. “Good luck!” he called softly.
Minnie turned back to face the helm. “Let’s go.”
Adán looked from her to Rey and back. “You cannot come with me!”
“Yeah, I can,” Minnie said. “I’m free, white and adult.”
Rey smiled. He didn’t move away from the boat.
Adán’s thoughts stuttered for a moment. “I don’t want Calli pissed at me.”
“You’re covered,” Minnie told him. “This is one hundred percent on me.” She glanced up at Rey. “Right?”
He nodded.
Minnie glared at Adán defiantly. In the orange light from the arc lights spread along the dock, her scowl made her look like a little child.
Adán hesitated.
“I’m sick of cutting coupons and shopping, alright?” Minnie said. “I want to do something. Something real.” She put her hand on the dashboard beside the wheel. “This helps people. It helps the Loyalists. Directly and immediately.” Her scowl came back. “So don’t tell me ‘no’.”
Adán’s chest tightened. “As everyone tells me ‘no’?” he asked.
Minnie relaxed.
Adán looked up at Rey. “What about you?”
Rey smiled and shook his head. “My help is needed elsewhere.” He reached for the rope and unwound it from the boll, then tossed it onto the small mountain of cartons stacked on the back of the deck. “See you tomorrow.”
He turned and headed back toward the marina and the parking lot, where the last lorry to bring supplies to the boat waited.
Adán glanced at Minnie, who was staring over the dashboard, as the boat drifted away from the dock. The tide was turning. “You heard Calli this afternoon,” he told her. “The guns they’re using aren’t fake. Neither are the bullets.”
Casualties of War Page 8