He didn’t care about the Japanese minister’s indiscretions, even if it included half a billion yen, but he pulled the file back up to appear busy for the next four minutes. Let Anders sweat. He was everything Richards wasn’t. Athletic, handsome, and not half as bright as he thought he was.
“Anders!”
The man twitched.
“Sir?” Sweat darkened circles under his arms.
“The Japanese minister of finance has been caught by our people misappropriating approximately one million dollars worth of Japanese currency. A paltry sum, an indiscretion he has already amended. He has offered our President a single favor in return for this being kept between friends. Recommendations?”
Anders wiped his brow and looked toward the closed door. Be careful about doors, Mr. Anders, some of them have very long first steps.
“A million dollars doesn’t make for a very big favor.”
“A man’s pride makes for a much larger favor, especially in Japan.”
Again Anders stood and sweat. Nearly a minute Richards waited in silence.
“Drop the import tariff on American wine and cheese.”
Unexpected. Interesting.
“And that would do more than help a few rich Americans become richer?”
“It would improve our market share over the French wines and cheeses.” Anders became more focused as he warmed to his subject. His fear was replaced by anticipation.
“This hits the Japanese where they live, the much sought luxury items only available in the West. This could be leveraged into more American versus European products in a variety of products.”
That was good. Maybe he’d keep the man around a—
“In sight,” the speaker squawked with the heavy beat of helicopter blades in the background. “ Small craft. Piper. Four passenger. IR scan reveals two occupants. They’ve spotted us on a crossing course. They’re accelerating and turning away from our present course.”
“That’s them. Take them down, with prejudice. It’s a terrorist cell. Make it look like a normal equipment failure, then return to objective one and clean it up.”
“Roger. Out.”
Richards laced his fingers together and stared at Anders.
“Wine and cheese?”
CHAPTER 60
“Clarice!”
Clarice jerked out of her nap.
“Clarice! I need help!”
She struggled to her feet and sprinted across the lawn as well as she could in the long skirt. Her bare foot landed hard on a rock.
“Ow! Shit!” She hobbled forward and banged in through the back door. The yellow and purple aster wreath she’d made slid out of her hair. She managed to catch it and tossed it onto her desk.
“I could get to like the country. What’s up, Ms. P?”
“They’re attacking Shelley!”
“You’re white as a sheet.” She’d never seen the director so scared. Not even on the tape when Phillip had been dying.
“What? How?” No one knew where the silos were. Even she didn’t. Though she’d tried. She was one of the few civilians that even knew they existed.
Amanda pointed to her screen. Turned it for Clarice to see.
Six faces.
The six they’d found last night. Now they had names. Names, ranks, and serial numbers. Special Operations Forces and SAS. These were the ultimate bad boys. And other boys just like them had tried to take out EMS headquarters.
Her initial excitement at having outsmarted them once was waning rapidly. These guys weren’t giving up. And now they were attacking Shelley?
Then her boss scrolled the message down a half screen exposing a last line of text.
“Raid in progress.” Not even an exclamation.
“I didn’t see that. Almost forty minutes ago. I need to know what’s going on.” Tears were streaming down Ms. P’s face.
There were limits to what Clarice could do. She could find videos on the Internet like nobody’s business. She could send messages, edit images, anticipate the needs of a thousand scientists spread half around the world. All that she could do.
She couldn’t reach out to a woman she’d never met. One with an unknown location. Clarice had made connections to government and business officials all over the place, but none that could tell her what was happening now. Right now. To Shelley.
Unless.
She took Amanda’s hand in her own. They were cold, shaking.
There was one.
“Can I borrow your phone?”
And only one.
CHAPTER 61
“I don’t think New Hampshire is such a good idea.”
“Why not?” Jeff had finally managed to get the heavy headset on comfortably. It cut the engine noise to a tolerable level. Shelley’s voice was loud and clear. But the microphone kept bumping his chin as he spoke, no matter how he bent and twisted it, it made a loud thump in his ear each time he spoke the letter ‘t.’
The plane turned to the right. The compass swung away from the northeast where it had held steady the last five minutes once she’d agreed that New Hampshire was just as stupid as anywhere else.
She’d pointed out that she was born there.
He knew that, but wasn’t about to admit that he knew she was Mandy’s daughter. Not yet, though he didn’t know why he hesitated. Maybe it was prudent to wait until she wasn’t at the controls of this flying deathtrap.
And she didn’t like her mother. That must be tearing Mandy apart. Was that why Mandy’d said that she and Ashlyn missed him? They might not have grown apart if he’d been around? As if he had that sort of power over people.
The plane twisted back to the left.
“Why not New Hampshire?”
She was spending more time staring out the left-hand window than the one in front. There was nothing to run into up here, but it still made him nervous.
“I don’t think we’ll make it that far.”
She pushed the wheel forward and they nosed down toward the ground.
“I thought we had enough gas.”
“We do. Well, we don’t, but it’s easy to get more on the way. That’s not the problem.”
Then he saw it over her shoulder. A black shape on the horizon. The big brother of the one that she’d parked in the top level of the silo.
In moments it pulled up alongside them. The helicopter was many times bigger than they were. The giant rotor spun in a blur on top. A man stared over at them from inside the front canopy. He wore a reflective shield that covered most of his face. In the open side door, almost big enough to fly this plane into, sat another helmeted figure. An incredibly nasty gun, a M134 minigun if he remembered yesterday’s weapons training correctly, rested on a swivel mount and pointed up at the sky, though its operator was clearly staring right at them through his own mirrored mask.
The pilot pointed down toward the ground with an abrupt gesture.
Shelley did something that made the plane slide sideways toward the helicopter. Just as the helicopter pulled up and away, she twisted the plane and rammed the wingtip into the helicopter’s rear rotor.
The scream of metal pierced through his headset as if it wasn’t there. The plane shook and shuddered. In horror he could see the end of the wing being chopped off like a celery stalk in a giant Cuisinart.
Then the helicopter was gone, up and behind them.
“Did you get it?”
They looked out at the wing together. It was bent upward at the end. Bits and pieces of metal twisted this way and that.
“I don’t think so.” She did a right and left thing with the wheel. The plane shuddered when she did the left part, but they didn’t fall out of the sky. That was something. Now if only his heart would start beating again, he’d be fine.
“Are they going to shoot us down?”
Shelley shook her head. “Not over US soil. Might hit someone else. Even out here. Besides, if they were, we’d already be dead.”
“Great. Then what?”
The plane slammed sideways with a awful thump.
He wished he hadn’t asked. Out the side window he saw the chopper lining up to hit their tail again with its skids.
Shelley stomped on one of the pedals. Nothing happened.
She stomped the other way. Nothing.
“I take it that’s not a good sign?”
She shook her head in the negative and raised up in her seat to look out the windshield. Looking down.
Not up at their attacker, but down at the ground.
He decided against speaking because it would come out as a thin squeak. Shelley was looking for somewhere to crash.
Another shattering thump drove the plane’s tail downward as the helicopter smashed against the back of their plane. The wheel was jerked out of Shelley’s hands. She grabbed it back, but the plane didn’t respond much. They were pointed very steeply downward now.
Field and forest lay below.
“The field,” Jeff called out, though they’d certainly be surprising a lot of cows.
Shelley turned for the trees. It was an uncomfortable, sliding turn that made his stomach shift in different directions than his body.
“Are you nuts?”
She smiled. Not the pleasant laughing smile over his MRE dinner last night. This was a radiant smile. Not hidden behind her ever so serious facade. It was wild and full of life. He knew this smile.
“I’m a crazy little girl. Watch me fly.”
And he had, a thousand times. She’d flown on dream wings with a blanket across her shoulders. A mighty leap off the porch and a two-and-half-foot flight to cushy grass of the back yard. A huge leap for a four-year old.
“You’re a crazy little girl.” He’d said it a thousand times and that much she’d remembered.
He smiled back at the little girl, grown now, with metal wings, and her mother’s smile.
“I’m watching. You fly, crazy girl. You fly.”
Inside, he begged for his life to flash before his eyes so he didn’t have to see the trees looming tall outside the windshield. But his life, per usual, didn’t cooperate.
CHAPTER 62
“Hi, Aunt Linds.” She knew the voice. Never on this particular phone, but Lindsey Grant knew it.
“Clarice?”
“Yup! It’s me.”
“What are you doing on this number?” Why would Clarice be calling on this phone. She’d been assured that there was only one person who knew this number. One person. Oh, the person her niece worked for.
“Is Ama—” No names. No names. “Is . . . your employer okay?”
“Yeah. Mostly. She’s kinda freaking at the moment.”
So was she. She’d nearly jumped out of her skirt when the phone had vibrated in her pocket less than a dozen feet from the Oval Office. She detoured into her husband’s executive bathroom almost scaring to death the Secret Service agent guarding the door. She hadn’t even been in the West Wing except for official functions in at least a year.
She pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it for a moment. It wasn’t set to encrypt.
“You have to secure our call.” She couldn’t do it. It had to come from the both ends. They both had to have handshake codes. Amanda had one set. She had the other.
Lindsey listened intently. Ran some water in the sink to mask her voice. Turned it off and moved to the inner bathroom closing the door, another wall of sound insulation, and sat on the toilet. Hopefully her husband hadn’t bugged his own bathroom. Nobody had been that stupid since Tricky Dick. She must be safe here.
“Ms. Peterson?” Clarice’s voice calling to her boss sounded as frightened as Lindsey had ever heard the girl. Had she ever heard her truly afraid? Even as a toddler she’d thrown herself at the world with open arms, and the world had let her in and looked after her.
“Amanda Peterson!” Clarice’s shout hurt Lindsey’s ears. “Snap out of it now. I need today’s code. I don’t know today’s code.”
At long last a series of beeps sounded in her ear and Clarice’s voice said, “Grsknl.”
Lindsey punched in her own code. “Can you hear me now?”
“Just fine, Aunt Linds. Look, we’ve got some trouble. Some guys are trying to kill Shelley… You know, I’ll bet they’re after that Jeff guy. Anyway, Shelley’s in the way and I can’t do squat. Ms. P. is like gone catatonic. I’m being a little stressed by all this myself.”
“Okay. Hold on. Let me think.” Someone was trying to kill Jeff the Chef and Amanda Peterson’s daughter. So they were together. Did they know about their shared past? Did each know who the other was?
“Where is she? Where are they?”
“Don’t know. At the silo I guess. I got no idea really.”
When Amanda had asked if she could hire her niece, Lindsey had been thrilled at the idea. They’d been working together for five years now and it had been very beneficial to all three of them.
For the first time, they were asking her for help, rather than offering it. For immediate help and she had no idea what to do.
“Okay, Clarice. We need to be calm about this.”
“Yeah, right. Calm. I’m good at calm. Me and the freakin’ US military. Why are they hunting Shelley?”
“The military is hunting Shelley?” Sometimes following Clarice’s speech was a little interesting.
“And maybe the British, too. Special Operations Forces guys. SAS guys, too. They’re tearing up the countryside. Killed all those chefs, you know.”
That made no sense, but Clarice had never been one to mix up her facts. And Amanda had kept near perfect control while her brother was killed right in front of her. She must be truly terrified.
“Special Operations Forces are attacking Shelley’s silo?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s way out in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. Ms. P. never filled me in on that little secret.”
“Okay, Clarice. I know what to do. You take care of your employer and I’ll do my best.”
“Right. And Aunt Linds?”
“Yes, Clarice?”
“Do it fast.”
CHAPTER 63
Lindsey scooted back to her own office before placing the call. She didn’t want to be there if her husband had a sudden need to pee.
“Brigadier General Edward Johns please.”
“May I tell him who’s calling?” The voice was young and male.
“Tell him, it’s, um . . .” Think quickly Lindsey. She was not about to identify herself as First Lady to some unknown peon. “Tell him it’s Little Nell.”
There was a brief pause.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you are not on his call list.”
“Trust me on this. If you don’t want to be working as a dummy on the bayonet practice range by the end of this week, you will tell him I’m calling.”
The young secretary had the audacity to laugh.
“That’s not bad, ma’am. I’m usually threatened with the Arctic Circle posts.”
Lindsey dug her hand through her hair. There had to be some way past this gate keeper.
“This isn’t a secure line. Don’t you think I’d give you my name if I could.”
“Not good enough, ma’am. Nice try.” He sounded decidedly cheerful.
“Are you a fan of old movies?”
“Some.” An edge of caution.
“Ever see Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
“Once.”
“Do you remember who is in love with Crazy Eddie?”
“Um. I think so. That’s the biker dude?”
“Right. And Columbia, the little blonde
, loved him. Columbia was originally played by Little Nell Campbell. Now go tell General Crazy Eddie that Little Nell is calling. I’ll hold.”
“You don’t want to be calling him that, ma’am. Uh!” He was clearly thinking about who might dare to be doing so. “Wait a moment, please.”
She paced twice across her office and back before a loud brash voice rang in her ear.
“Little Nell!”
“Crazy Eddie!”
He roared with laughter. “Haven’t heard that one in a long time.”
“Do you remember the date?”
“Sure do. It was Thurs—”
“Good. Are you at an encryption capable phone?”
“Are you okay?” All the bravado was gone. Suddenly the Brigadier General was on the line.
“Just key the date.”
He did and she did.
“Crazy Eddie?”
“I’m here, Little Nell.”
“You still heading up SOAR?”
“Yes.” Uh-oh. He’d shifted down to that monosyllabic monotone she knew from the few times she’d managed to be exceptionally irritating.
“Would you know if there was an operation going on somewhere in the Midwest?”
“Yes. Not that I’d talk about it, not even to you. Wait. Did you say Midwest or Mideast?”
“Midwest.”
“Which Midwest?”
“The one in the US.”
“Operation, you said? Not training.”
“Operation. A very dear and trusted friend of mine’s daughter is apparently under attack at this moment in the United States’ Midwest. I have reason to believe your people are involved.”
“Shit! Hold.” The line went dead.
She paced six times around her office and counted to fifty twice before he came back.
“They’re already deeply involved. Fancy talk for it’s happening now. I sent the shut-down order. But I don’t know if it will be there in time.”
“I owe you one.”
“No problem, Little Nell. You dress up as Columbia again, I’m sure I still have my Crazy Eddie suit. We’ll go to a midnight showing. Then I’ll call it even.”
Swap Out! Page 20