“Mr. President, sir,” Parris acknowledged, her voice emerging hoarsely.
President Collins nodded back.
“We’re in the Situation Room, Captain Graves,” Strickland said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you located the Cobalt 60 at the top end of Vistaria, three days ago, Captain, did you see the actual bomb itself?”
Her heart was trying to climb out of her rib cage. “No, sir, we did not. The place was a rabbit warren. The radiation was off the charts, too. It was there, sir.”
“Or it had been there,” someone whispered from off-camera.
Parris’ chest felt as though it was being squeezed in a vise. “The radiation levels were too high for background noise,” she said sharply. “It was there.”
“Are you certain about that, Captain Graves?” President Collins asked her.
Parris could feel sweat breaking out on her temples. She clenched her hand into a fist beneath the level of the laptop so the camera wouldn’t pick it up. “Mr. President, sir, I cannot give you absolute assurance it was there,” she said carefully. “I stand by my original report. Even though we did not sight the cobalt core or the bomb, we knew it was there because of the radiation spikes. To have lingered any longer to find it, while under fire, would have put my men at an intolerable level of risk. Sir.”
President Collins nodded.
“May I know why you are asking, Mr. President?” Parris added. “It may help me give you better information.”
“That’s above your pay-grade, Captain,” Strickland said.
Collins held up his hand. “The Captain has shown she can think clearly in the field. It might be useful to have an asset on the ground who knows the real situation.”
Strickland hesitated.
“Explain it to her, Colonel,” Collins pressed.
“Yes, sir.” Strickland stepped back into the screen, not quite hiding the President from Parris’ view. He did not look happy. “Four hours ago, an unidentified craft entered US airspace south-west of New Orleans. It did not respond to hails. Fighter jets were scrambled and flew by. The craft is a General Atomics Predator C drone. It is one of ours, Captain, only it is not in our control.”
Parris moistened her lips. “I wasn’t aware there was a C. I’ve only heard of the B/ER.”
“The B is the latest operational drone,” Strickland confirmed. “The C is still in trial phase…or it was, until now. They have an eighty-five-foot wing span, over fifty hours flight time and a heavier payload.”
“And this is really one of ours?”
“It has been confirmed,” Strickland replied.
“The drone is leaking radiation, Captain,” the President said over Strickland’s shoulder, forcing Strickland to turn and include him in the conversation. “I’m told it is on a direct bearing for Washington DC. It will be here in five hours.”
Strickland nodded. “Therefore, I must ask you again. In your estimation, Captain, was the dirty bomb the Insurrectos built still in the caves when you blew them?”
Parris swallowed. She felt sick. “Sir…until you told me about the drone, I would have sworn on the Bible it was there. Now, I…” She worked her throat again. It was tight. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she finished.
Collins sighed and looked away.
Strickland nodded. “Then we must treat the drone as if it is carrying the bomb,” he said, speaking to everyone in the Situation Room. “It changes everything.”
“You can still shoot it down, though,” Collins said, as if he was stating the obvious.
Parris shook her head. So did the two people sitting at the table with the President who were wearing military dress uniforms.
Strickland said carefully, “Cobalt-60 gives off gamma radiation, sir. Lots of it. If we shoot the drone out of the sky, we would be doing exactly what the Insurrectos want—spreading the radiation across the country. At fifteen thousand feet, the fallout would spread for miles farther than it would if the bomb detonated at ground level. The results would be…well, they would be catastrophic, Mr. President.”
Collins scowled. “We may yet have to make that decision,” he said, his voice iron-hard. “If your military cannot wrest back control of your own vehicle, I will have to give the order, Colonel. The drone cannot be allowed near Washington airspace.”
Strickland looked as though he had eaten something rotten. “Yes, sir,” he said at last. He cocked a brow at Parris. “Dismissed, Captain.”
“Sir. Mr. President.” She shut the laptop, her hand trembling.
3.
CRISTIÁN’S GET-AWAY PLACE WAS a fallen tree beneath a pine. The pine tree had shed most of the lower branches. It was on the ridge above the camp. A mash of sharp dead branches behind the fallen trunk worked as both a screen and a deterrent to anyone who tried to approach. It was possible to move around the mass only by edging close to the soft lip at the edge of the gully.
It was typical of Cristián to have a place to escape to, away from everyone. Even in this most temporary of camping locations, he’d found the equivalent of a room with a door he could shut in the face of the rest of the world.
Cristián didn’t sit on the log. Instead, he put his back to the wide trunk of the pine and looked at her.
Chloe considered sitting on the log. Her weariness was dragging at her limbs, making her want to lie down and sleep. The novelty of standing before Cristián, though, kept her on her feet.
They had spent hours talking to each other in the last ten days, yet in all that time, she’d only seen his face and sometimes his shoulders and occasionally a little more.
She had never beheld Cristián from head to toe in one glance until now. In person, he was different from his screen appearance. Oh, his face was exactly the same. The high cheekbones with the sharp plane of his cheeks beneath. The equally square jaw and strong chin. The thick locks of his hair that, if he was frustrated or caught up in his work, would get ruffled into disorder.
He had a prominent Adam’s apple and often, the tendons on his throat would flex as he considered and weighed. Yet it was his eyes Chloe always came back to. Now she could see them for herself without the filtering of a screen, she could see they really were gray. Not a washed out blue, but a faded black which could be either stormy or calm, revealing or not.
He was taller than she had anticipated, which was stupid of her, for every Vistarian man she had met so far was tall and either rangy or well-muscled, and always with shoulders in proportion to their height. Cristián was no different in that regard.
She cleared her throat, aware that she was staring steadily and not speaking.
Although neither was Cristián speaking. His gaze moved over her. “You’re taller than I thought.”
Chloe smiled. “So are you. Your skin…it isn’t as dark olive as it appears on the screen.”
“Yours isn’t, either.” He frowned. “There’s really no Caucasians in your family? You’re black coffee, not black.”
She looked down at her forearm. “Too dark to ever be mistaken as a native Vistarian,” she said.
“No one will shoot you by mistake, then,” Cristián replied.
She shivered.
Silence fell again.
Chloe wrapped her arms around her body, feeling the chill of dawn in her bones. It was colder at this elevation than she thought it should be, given the latitude. She grimaced. “This is…strange.”
His gaze met hers. He wore an expression she had seen before. He was waiting for her to explain herself. The familiarity of the expression let her speak frankly. “I never once felt awkward, talking to you. God, I know everything about you. Only now it feels different. Why? Just because there isn’t a screen between us?”
“Two screens,” he corrected automatically. “I don’t know why, only it is odd, seeing you right here, within touching distance.”
Her heart gave a little flutter. Her uneasiness killed the warmth instantly,
though. “Maybe time will sort it out. So let’s be almost strangers for now. Why did you leave Pascuallita? Did the Insurrectos come for you?”
Cristián shook his head, a furrow settling between his brows. “I got an anonymous tip off that the Insurrectos were rounding up civilians and taking them somewhere and they were coming for my town next.”
“Anonymous?” she asked.
“Not under the Cloak, so not anyone I knew or could trust,” Cristián said. “It was the damnedest thing—it came in on my old AOL account and the routing was masked in the header. Whoever it was, they know enough to hide their electronic trail.”
“You took the message at face value anyway?” Chloe asked, astonished.
“One of my regulars missed his schedule, twenty minutes later. He lives…lived in Pueblo Bien.”
Pueblo Bien was just south of Pascuallita, the next town on the train ride to the city.
“When I got the message, I didn’t wait,” Cristián added. “Better to be a live fool than a dead cynic.”
He didn’t have to explain further. It was a variation on a principal he had expounded in the Group, more than once. It was always, always, better to act as quickly as possible. Even if that action gave a skewed or wrong result, it provided information which would steer the next attempt…or demonstrate that a second attempt wasn’t worth it. Ready, fire, aim, he often advised the others.
Chloe had used the same principle herself. As soon as Cristián had gone off the air, two weeks ago, she cleared out her money stashes, packed her laptop and headed for Acapulco. She would learn eventually if her choice and every other choice she had made since were massively bad…or not.
“So you grabbed your bug-out bag and left,” she concluded. She glanced at the camp, a hundred feet below. “And you took Pascuallita with you.”
“What was left of Pascuallita—everyone I could connect with safely,” Cristián amended. “We stood on the cliff up behind the town and watched a dozen Insurrecto trucks roll through the main street.” He shook his head. “Whoever tipped me off, they’re on the inside. They knew.”
“They knew more than you. Did you hear about Calli, Cristián? Adán Caballero? The Ambassador of Mexico?”
He frowned. “My laptop is dead. So is my cellphone. No one has a live battery left in the camp. It’s been four days.”
Chloe told him about the rash of hostage taking and extortion Serrano had launched. “They were coming for you, Cristián,” she finished. “You and your family, so they could pressure Duardo. Sweeping up the entire town was just a pretext.”
“No one in the town would have pointed them to our house, anyway,” Cristián said thoughtfully. “They would point in the opposite direction, if they pointed at all. They had to round up the town to find us. Instead, I took the town away from them.” His expression hardened. A light came into his eyes. “I didn’t know they were looking for us in particular, although it hardly matters. I wasn’t going to wait to find out and I wasn’t going to leave anyone behind for them to trample on.”
The ringing note in his voice reminded Chloe of a conversation she’d had with Téra only a few days ago. “I wish your sister could see you now,” she said softly.
“Pia and Trini are both down there,” he said, sounding amused. He pointed to the camp below them. “They just have to look up.”
“I mean Téra. She told me you were the quiet brother. The mellow one.” She laughed. “If she had seen you just then, she would have known exactly what I meant when I said she was completely wrong about you.”
Cristián didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. His gaze was on the camp, below.
Chloe studied him again, troubled. Her heart ached. This was not the Cristián she thought she knew so well, either. This was not the man she had spoken to for…well, years, if she included the Group conversations.
Cristián was an introvert while his elder brother, Duardo, was not. Cristián had always known that difference and accepted it. Duardo had covered himself in glory—military honors and promotions, physical exploits and more. Cristián had chosen the opposite path in every respect. He had even refused to go to the local school. His education had been self-directed. Because of his gifts, he had focused upon intellectual pursuits and left the physical accomplishments to Duardo.
When the Internet came along in the 1990s, Cristián begged his mother to buy him a computer and modem. She gave him both for his ninth birthday. Cristián had been on-line ever since, a world-traveler in his mind.
The Internet broadened his horizons in ways no one in his family— most especially Duardo—could possibly understand.
Chloe did understand, because she was a part of the world Cristián found. It was why she understood him better than anyone else.
Only…a kernel of doubt gnawed at her. They knew each other intimately, in every little detail, yet they were strangers.
“Tell me what you are thinking,” she begged him, her heart squeezing.
Cristián nodded down at the camp. “I’m thinking that I have my sisters and my mother here. A whole village of people. I can’t just break off and dash across the sea on a whim as you did.”
“Is someone asking you to do that?” She certainly had not.
He shook his head. “I’m telling you what I’m thinking. For so long…for years, I have thought we were the same, you and me. Only…we’re not. Not really. You have freedom.” He looked down at the camp. “I don’t.”
Coldness prickled the length of her spine, making her shiver once more.
She had risked everything to get here. She had readied, fired and now she must assess her aim. Had she aimed wrong?
*
THE EMPTY BED ON THE other side of the room was an accusatory finger. Every time she glanced at it, Calli’s guilt rose a little higher.
Surely there must have been something she could do to save Roldán from the fate she was facing right now? Only, every time Calli thought of what happened in the bordello in the basement, with the white-haired and freaky Ibarra, she could detect no moment when she might have chosen to do anything differently. Nothing could have changed the outcome.
Roldán made the choice which put her where she was.
Calli had been locked in this bland room for two days since, with nothing to do but stare at the walls, the empty bed, or look out the window and wonder what Nick and Duardo and Flores were doing now.
The lack of information was crippling. It made her heart beat harder, as she tried to guess what might be happening out there.
The turn of the heavy lock on the door, at least three hours before the standard arrival of the minimal meal which would be her supper, made Calli sit up. Her heart was already racing. Now her pulse leapt with it as she watched the door open.
This was different. This was a break in the routine. Something had happened. Something had changed to cause this break.
She braced herself.
An armed Insurrecto private stepped through the door, his machine gun swinging to point at her belly. He moved to one side.
Ibarra came in behind him. He strolled with his hands behind him, his head turning, as if he wandered the paths of a varied garden, examining the blooms. He nodded when he saw her, a smile shifting his mouth into an upward curve. No corresponding warmth entered his eyes, which remained flat and lifeless.
“Please come with me,” he told her.
Calli didn’t move. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, downstairs,” he said airily. He flicked his hand at dust on his shoulder.
Her gut tightened. “Downstairs? How far downstairs?” The bordello was in the basement, although there were two other floors between her and the basement.
Ibarra shrugged. “Why, all the way,” he said and nodded to the private.
The soldier jerked the sub-machine gun. “Get up.”
Calli rose to her feet, her mind whirling. “What has happened? What has changed?” she demanded.
“Move,” the private said.
“Ibarra!” Calli said sharply. “Tell me.”
The use of his name made Ibarra jerk. His gaze met hers. Now life showed in his eyes. Intelligence. “Your beloved Nicolás has disappeared.” His tone was mild. “Your use as leverage has gone.”
Calli swallowed. “You’re lying. You knew that three days ago. Something else has happened.”
Ibarra considered her. Then he nodded, as if his assessment was to his satisfaction. “The Loyalist Army approaches Freonegro Pass, with Peña at its head. He has the US Marines and the Second Mexican Infantry Brigade on either side.”
Freonegro Pass! That narrow valley between the eastern and southern mountains was the only way to reach the city from the south…and it was only two hours away from the city by car.
Abruptly, the life drained from Ibarra’s eyes and his vapid smile returned. He stepped aside, gesturing toward the door. “Shall we?”
Calli considered, her heart working way too hard. She couldn’t defeat a man with a sub-machine gun, not inside a house where dozens, if not hundreds, of armed Insurrectos roamed.
She moved ahead of Ibarra out into the thickly carpeted hallway which ran down the center of this floor. As they moved toward the big rotunda where the double-helix stairs were, another thought struck Calli, one which made her chest squeeze and her gut to clamp tight.
Ibarra had told her what was happening. He had given her information that Daniel and Duardo and Nick would call classified and sensitive.
It meant Ibarra didn’t expect Calli would ever be in a position to pass the information on.
4.
DUARDO LOOKED UP AT THE familiar high eastern peaks of the Freonegro Pass, only a few miles away now. For a heartbeat or two he allowed himself to indulge in wishful thinking. He ached to be climbing the Old Man peak right now. Men had died on that peak. Only two had ever reached the summit. Duardo would happily risk exposure and oxygen deprivation if it would remove him from the US military Hummer he was sitting in right now.
He also wished they were riding in a Vistarian military vehicle. Only there were no Vistarian ground vehicles. They had a grand total of three stolen Blackhawk helicopters. The choppers could not move three thousand men, alas. They sat on the ground, ten miles back, to preserve jet fuel for when they were really needed.
V-Day Page 3