“Her mother was from Venezuela, and her father was an executive with the Russian State Energy. His job was to explore new energy ventures for the Fatherland. Which lead him to Venezuela, and then to her mother; who convinced him that they should defect to the United States.”
Perez didn’t move an inch; neither confirming nor denying the story of her heritage.
“Budete li vy pomoch' nam?” Poluski, asked her, speaking in Russian.
Perez swallowed hard before answering. “Da.”
“What did he ask you?” Cotton asked.
“He asked if we would help him save his country.”
“Wow, well we kind of have our own flippin’ country to save, you know!” Cotton growled.
Poluski listened to the sarcasm. “I understand your reluctance. You have loyalty to your Motherland, as do I to our Fatherland. But, if things go the way I think they are going, then the father and the mother will have one hell of a fight. Do you understand?”
Fields shrugged, his mind hurt. “So, what do you want with us?”
“Ah, I thought it would finally come around to that questions. It’s simple Sergeant Fields; I need your help. Well, not really you,” he pivoted his eyes to Perez. “You see, the Airman has some special skills, access and ability that we think will help the cause.”
“What if I don’t want to help you,” Perez stated, her emotion cool.
Poluski looked back at Alexi, who flexed his massive crossed arm. “Do as we say, and Sergeant Fields will keep all of his body parts intact,” Poluski threatened behind a beautiful full smile.
The silence that then filled the small area was as thick; like the smoke that floated around the dangling light bulb.
“How do I know I can trust you?” Perez asked, knowing that her options were limited.
Poluski took a last drag off the cigarette, tossed it to the floor and ground it out with the heel of his nice leather shoes. “You don’t,” he said, making a motioned for Alexi to do something. The guard moved towards Cotton, and he tensed up, expecting a blow from the Russian strong man.
“Relax, soldier man, and turn around.”
Reluctantly, Cotton did as he was told, and Alexi produced a knife. Before Perez could even move, Alexi had cut the plastic binds from Cotton’s wrists.
“Vy ryadom,” he said to Perez, and she too turned around to have the binds cut off.
“So, what is it that I’m supposed to do? It’s not like I can waltz into the Pentagon and start digging around for information to give you.”
“Oh, Airman, we already have most of the information that we need.”
“So, what then? What do you want me to do?”
“We need you to locate someone for us?”
“Who?”
“One of our assets. We believe that she is operating in the scope of the region that is your responsibility.”
“You mean the southeast United States? There are millions of people in the region, and I…”
“We have credible data that shows that our asset is loosely associated with the missions you have been running. Remember, if the Chinese were able to listen in on your conversations with your very fortunate friend, Specialist Clark, then, so were we.”
It was the data leak; the one piece of communications protocol that she had missed. Her mistake had served as a siren call to their enemies. Fuck! She scolded herself.
“We need you to locate and activate the asset.”
“I will not put American lives in danger to do your dirty work,” she said, coolly.
“I won’t either,” Fields added.
Poluski snickered. “Don’t think you are not expendable, either of you,” he threatened, and then changed tactics. “I promise that you will not be putting American lives in danger. If anything, you will be saving millions.”
Perez nodded, taking everything in before asking her next question. “So, who am I activating?”
“One of the daughters of our Fatherland, Leah Burrows.”
CHAPTER 27
“Mr. Dukes, Miss Emma, they aren’t calling me back! I don’t know what happened to them,” Tasha radioed. She felt like one of her lifelines had suddenly been cut.
“We’ve got to get there, now!” Clark said, speaking the obvious for the four in the truck.
“Copy that,” Dukes said. He was already flinging them around the truck as he sped along the firebreak roads connecting the backwoods of rural Alabama. “Get on the horn and see if anyone out there can reach them. I’m not losing my daughter, again!”
“Heard,” Clark said, keying the microphone and starting a litany of calls to anyone that could hear his voice. “This is Clark, looking for anyone that has seen a black military grade Humvee within twenty miles of Wolf Creek. Over.”
In the silence while Clark waited for a response, Tasha keyed her microphone.
“Mr. Clark, this is Tasha, are you still coming here to help me?”
Clark looked at Dukes, who nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, that’s the last thing we all talked about. We’re close,” he paused and looked at Dukes.
“Ten minutes if this dirt road comes out where I think it does,” Dukes said, swerving around a large fallen tree branch.
“Give use ten to fifteen minutes. We’ll be there, and Emma can help with David, just hang in there. Okay? Over.”
“Okay, but I think I hear another helicopter. Over.”
That phrase sent cool chill up Clark’s spine. “Crap! How far? Shaw get ready,” Clark let three thoughts escape into voice mode before he could prioritize and function.
“Still ten minutes,” Dukes reported, pushing the vehicle to its limits.
“Ready to engage, Sir,” Shaw confirmed, his demeanor changing slightly. He had seen major combat in Afghanistan, and that experience was what was now dictating his actions.
Emma leaned forward, placing a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “What about Perez, is there some way to reach her at the Pentagon?”
“Not without having a military radio,” Clark answered. He glanced back at her; he was also gearing up for a fight in his own mental way.
“Sir,” Shaw leaned forward from the rear seat. “I’ve got a sat phone, do you think that would help?”
****
Perez ducked into the women’s restroom before scanning her badge for the final time before reentering the Pit of the Joint Chiefs. The blue tiled room was thankfully empty; she dropped her bags on a bench and made her way to the sink.
The Russians had allowed her to ‘clean up’ as best as possible before she was dropped off by a white van outside of the pedestrian gates. They had sent someone to her apartment and retrieved her purse, ID, backpack and a fresh uniform. The Russians were going to extreme measures in order for her to be reestablished back into the Pentagon system.
She turned the hot water on and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were baggy from a lack of sleep and she had a gash above her left eye from the crash; at least that’s what she thought. Before being allowed to leave the shipping crate, a Russian medic had butterflied the cut above her eye and ‘encouraged’ her to eat a high protein ration bar before they released her.
She put both of her hands on the sink counter in an attempt to calm her nerves, and focus on what she needed to do. This is not treason, she thought to herself. You can do this! Fields’ life is in your hands! This could save millions!
For the last fifteen minutes, she had been trying to concoct a story on why she had returned to the Pentagon early. She was also trying to figure out how she was going to pull off activating a Russian agent without tripping an internal alarm, or getting caught by one of her superiors. So far, she had come up with nothing. The bathroom door opened, and another lady entered. Perez looked in the mirror at the other woman.
“Ma’am,” she said with a nod to the other woman, a Navy officer. She washed her hands, grabbed her bag and left the bathroom ready to reenter the Pit.
Perez approached the secure door with trepid
ation. She swiped her ID badge through the reader and entered into the Pit. The Pit was the neurological center for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pit was also the only place she ever truly wanted to work since joining the Air Force. The Pit had been her singular goal; that is until the world had been turned on its head, and she found herself debating if her actions were those of treason, or not. Perez checked her watch after entering the room and saw someone else sitting at her workstation.
Seaman Dials had assumed her rotation of work and was closing out the log associated with getting Clark and his team out of radiated Atlanta; a project that they internally called Radio Phoenix. The irony was lost on all that didn’t know their Southern history. During the trailing days of the Civil War, Northern General Sherman marched through Atlanta on his way to the port city of Savannah. While in Atlanta, his men torched the city, burning most of the southern hub to the ground. After the war, Atlanta emerged again as a hub of commerce and was said to be like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Perez wondered if the city would ever rise again, considering that most of it had been turned to glass and the rest was strictly radioactive.
“Airman Perez,” Dials said, looking up from the computer terminal he shared with her. “I thought you had another few hours of leave.”
Perez smiled, she needed to sell the reason why she was here; that is if Cotton was going to stay alive. “I got a few hours in my own bed. It helped more than you know. Besides, I didn’t want to leave you with the Radio Phoenix clean up.” She felt her eyes twinkle and her cheeks hurt from smiling. She never smiled this much, and she let her cheeks drop.
Dials looked back at the screen and nodded his head. “Yeah, this was like a golden cluster. Plus, what I heard about the communications hacks, shit, it’s a wonder that the Martians didn't know about our battle plans! I don’t know how you did this for all of those days straight!”
“Dials, that’s really helpful,” she said, pulling off sincere, and ignoring the shitty comments. “I guess I was just doing my job,” she said robotically, adding a smile.
“Bullshit! You had kids involved in active combat, active service personnel, retired service members, a secret presidential bunker, a bad ass fucking presidential Humvee and a full-on firefight with the Chinese! I know I couldn’t go home and get some shuteye! Holy crap! That dude and the band of misfits he put together are the first real heroes to rise out of this hellhole! I’m surprised the Admiral hasn’t tapped him to lead a frontal assault against the Chinese!”
Perez absorbed the warped since of bravado from her fellow analyst. “Yeah, well, you kind of nailed it.” She played into his jealous bluster. “It was almost like, too much with all of the firefights and the C-130 Gun Ship; so, you understand why I need to close it out myself. Right?”
Dials just smiled and nodded at her. “Holy shit, yes! Are you kidding me? There are only like two or three guys in the Pit that have experienced the shit.”
Perez felt the bile rise up in the back of her throat. She couldn’t believe the warped since of idiocy this guy was spouting. But, she needed to get back to work, and make sure that Dials quietly moved on.
“But, you know,” Dials continued, even though she placed her bag right in the middle of the desk. “We have Red Bear about to kick off, but maybe you don't know since you were out. Anyway, there’s some shit going down in Russia, and the brass thinks it might spill over here, so, are you okay with me turning this back over to you? I really want to be on that task force.”
Perez absorbed the late breaking intel about Russia, and just rolled with it. “Yeah, yeah! Go, let me take care of all of this BS, and I’ll see how I can help after I’m done. I mean, this is exciting and a little weird, but it’s nothing compared to a Russian involvement in our situation! Not that that’s ever been in the news before, right?”
“Right,” he said nodding. “That’s a deal I can’t refuse,” he added, logging out of her terminal. “I’m heading over to the west Pit, that’s where they are pulling together the team.”
“Copy that,” Perez said, sitting down in her chair and feeling the warmth still residing in the seat. “Thanks for helping to get this cleaned up,” she added, tossing in a little brown nose for the equivalent ranking serviceman.
“You bet, thanks, see you over there soon.”
Perez nodded, as the Navy Seaman strode over to do the work he actually wanted to do. But, no sooner had she readjusted the desk chair to her height than Dials reappeared, standing over her shoulder.
“I forgot to mention that your swanky Humvee is on the move again. They apparently forgot to turn off the tracking signal.”
Perez looked at one of the widget windows and saw that a small dot was moving along an animated map. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, so she pursed her lips and looked back at Dials. “Yeah, I see that. I’ll see if I can get that disabled since we no longer need it. Thanks for the heads up.”
“You bet,” he said, and turned back around.
Perez looked at the dot, but actually ‘closing out’ the Radio Phoenix mission was not what she was interested in doing. She knew that her new mission was to activate a Russian agent; something that she was not sure she would be able to get past the Pentagon’s systems. That’s when her phone rang.
She raised an eyebrow at the phone’s interruption, but answered anyway. “Perez.”
“Good, I’m just checking that you’re where you said you would be,” Victor Poluski said on the other end of the phone; his Russian accent barely evident.
“I am, now I need to work. Don’t call this number again,” she said, hanging up the phone.
No sooner did she hang up the phone than did it ring again. She snatched the phone off of the cradle, angry at Poluski and how he was using her. “I told you not to call here again,” she growled.
“Perez? Perez, this is Clark. Listen, the Chinese have stolen the Presidential Humvee, and they have the children on board. I need your help!”
CHAPTER 28
Tasha heard the vehicle before she saw it. The sound of mud tires on asphalt gave away Duke’s position, and she pointed her rifle in the general direction; she wasn't going to be taken by surprise ever again. The sound of the helicopter was still evident in the distance.
“Be careful how we approach,” Emma advised her driver.
“What do you mean?” Dukes scanned the area.
“I mean she’s been through a shit load of stress. Just respect that…”
“I get that,” Dukes nodded, while also easing off the gas.
“Okay, from what I heard on the radio,” Emma continued. “This girl is at the tattered edge. That’s a warning for all of us.” She looked at everyone trying to get a nod, or something. “I know y’all are military guys, and you have some sort of training to deal with this level of stress, but the rest of us civilian types are kind of winging it. Okay?”
It took a second for the three men to appreciate and absorb the instructions.
“Okay, good call. We’ll approach nice and slow,” Clark offered, and Dukes’ let off of the gas even more.
“Actually, ma’am,” Shaw said from the seat next to her. “I think we’re all winging it.”
Tasha saw the SUV about a hundred yards before the turn into the church. She was standing at the corner of the church, using the edge of the building to mask her presence. With little to no training with the rifle, she held the weapon up, pointed at the road; her hands shook with the weight. Inside, her fear gripped her stronger than at any other moment, and exhaustion tried to pull her entire body down. The only thing keeping her upright was the church wall and the chance that these people could save her from the unknown.
Dukes slowly turned the SUV into the drive, his tires crunching the gravel on the old asphalt drive. He had spotted the young black girl peering around the building prior to pulling into the drive. All three men had weapons on their laps and ready to go at a second’s notice. Dukes let the vehicle roll to a stop.
“L
ook guys, remember, she’s scared and alone. She wants our help,” Emma reiterated, trying to quell the buzz to action.
“We just don't want to rush into a situation where we don't have all of the facts,” Clark conjectured, but not before Emma opened her door. “Hey!”
Tasha shifted the barrel of the rifle towards the lady getting out of the SUV; her hands shook so violently that the rifle rattled against the wood of the church.
“Tasha? Tasha, it’s Emma. We were talking on the radio, I’m here to help you,” she said, her hands up, with her palms open. Emma’s tone was motherly, helpful and that of understanding. “I’m here with Dukes, we want to help.”
Tasha took less than a second to process the offer of help. “Oh, thank God!” she said, dropping the sight of the rifle. She felt a tiny rush of adrenaline, something that was there, on reserve, waiting to provide one more attempt to save David. “Hurry!”
Emma watched the girl walk a beeline to the front door the church, beckoning her to follow. Without question, Emma changed course to meet her at the red church door.
“We’re going to help you,” Emma said, once she got within arm’s length, and touched the girl’s shoulder.
Tasha felt the warm touch, and it served to focus her. With a hand on the doorknob, she turned to face the woman. “I’m counting on it.” She opening the large wooden door to the church and led Emma to the dying man.
“Okay, we’re here,” Dukes said. “Emma’s in nurse mode, now, I need to find my daughter.”
“Roger that,” Clark responded. “Why don’t you and Shaw sweep the area, while I try to get the Pentagon on the sat phone. Shaw exited the vehicle and slung his rifle to the ready. He waited on Dukes before moving out.
“I just need to find her,” Dukes said, his voice exasperated with parental fear. “Losing her like this, I just don’t know what I’ll do if…”
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