The Phoenix Agency_The Sum Is Greater

by M. L. Buchman

  Hannah was nodding as if that statement made any sense.

  “Wait. What?” Jesse held out both the beef and pork for Hannah to choose as he slid in beside her.

  Hannah took the pork ribs and the Coke without comment.

  “Psi like in psychic, the science fiction stuff, or sai like in the Japanese fighting knives?” He should have gotten two different soda flavors, then he’d at least know which of those two she preferred.

  “Psi like in science fiction,” Faith said without blinking an eye.

  Jesse glanced at Halloran, who was clearly enjoying his complete confusion.

  Hannah started eating as if all of this made sense. Of course nothing really had since the moment he’d first met her sarcastic boots.

  “And what in God’s green world is Phoenix Agency? Phoenix are still mythological critters, aren’t they? That hasn’t changed while I was deployed, has it?”

  “Yep! Last we checked anyway.” Halloran selected a rib and started in on his meal.

  “You haven’t heard of Phoenix?” Hannah was now giving him the same amused look Halloran had been. “What rock do you live under, Outlaw?”

  “I live on a horse or in a helicopter, thank you very much,” though it was hard to take offense at Hannah’s smile.

  A big hand thumped down on his shoulder as if it was trying to drive him through the aging springs of the booth’s seat cushion.

  “Helos? Can always use another hand at the controls.” A new voice.

  Jesse looked up at the man who had just hammered him down. Then he looked up farther. He wasn’t quite as big as Halloran, who was huge, but he was damned big: well over six feet, wide enough of shoulder to have trouble with narrow doors, and a bright smile in his Italian-dark face that might have been saying hello or might have been preparing to tear him limb from limb for the fun of it.

  “What airframes?”

  “Mostly Little Bird. Black Hawk-qualified and enough time in a Chinook to not kill myself in one.” The monstrous twin-rotor Chinook still spooked him each time he took one aloft because they were so damned big.

  The guy stared down at him for a long moment as if he was processing numerous factors. “Gregorio sent us a Night Stalker. Hot shit! Shove in.” And the big guy shoved him over against Hannah on the long booth bench and sat beside him. “Tell me about your last mission.” His East Coast accent landed harshly on Jesse’s ear. He never quite grew used to how English was spoken north of Kentucky. At least he wasn’t a Yankee—they were almost incomprehensible. Maryland or maybe Delaware.

  Jesse ended up shoulder, hip, and thigh pressed against Hannah and he remembered why they were here. For her.

  A tall knock-out blonde, with brilliant green eyes compared with Hannah’s first hint of spring, sat down across from the big Italian guy, which placed her next to Halloran.

  “My husband has no manners. I’m Kat Culhane. He’s Mike D’Antoni.”

  Jesse introduced himself and Hannah. “She’s the one you need to be talking to, ma’am.” He nodded in Hannah’s direction. “Though I’m still not sure who or what y’all are.”

  “We’re—” D’Antoni jolted and glared across at his wife. Jesse had the distinct impression that she’d kicked him.

  The message was clear. Shut up, Mike, and let the women speak. Jesse was fine with that.

  “They,” Faith started.

  “We,” Mark Halloran corrected his wife, apparently enjoying living dangerously.

  “They,” being an author, Faith clearly chose her words carefully, “are former warriors who no longer fit in the military world. Phoenix Agency is one of the nation’s top contractors who specialize in what others aren’t allowed to do, or sometimes can’t do. We,” Faith pointed at Kat, “are two of the four members of the Phoenix Psi Department. Mark and I are telepathic.”

  “You mean you can talk to each other silently?” Jesse had fallen off the edge somewhere. Maybe this was how Hannah had been feeling in the field as she kept making new sounds. Like his ears were buzzing and he was in mid-flight after being thrown by a horse—with a harsh landing coming up real fast.

  After a brief pause, Halloran smiled and said, “Yes.” As clearly as if his wife had just told him to, though they hadn’t so much as turned to each other.

  “Kat is a remote viewer,” Faith continued. “Give her a reference point and she can often zero in on an image and get us a view of where the team needs to go. We also have a precog, and Kelly breeds psychic dogs.”

  Jesse looked at Hannah, but wasn’t ready for her whispered question.

  “So, maybe I’m not a freak?”

  “Not!” This time Kat and Faith spoke in unison and then laughed at their common answer. A sentiment that Jesse echoed as well.

  He backed his statement up with a hard squeeze of her thigh under the table. It was intimate, thoughtful, and appreciated. The fact that she wasn’t broken, at least not in that way, was a huge relief.

  Hannah still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a freak in this world no matter what they said. She was a woman in the Army, which awarded her Freak Level One. A warrior in Delta Force, which took her up to about Level Twenty. A female warrior in Delta Force, Level Nine Kajillion. She’d rung the nine-kajillion bell—which had always been her personal highest measure—all before she’d started projecting mass audio hallucinations, or whatever they were.

  “Even if I don’t believe you, I’m glad I’m not alone in this.”

  “A couple years back,” D’Antoni spoke up from the end of the table, “I’d sure have labeled you that way. Then Faith moved mountain and sky to track me down, which isn’t easy to do, to go rescue Halloran’s sorry ass. Shocked the hell out of me that they could talk to each other from Texas to Peru. I’d never heard of such shit. Didn’t believe her until she proved me wrong.”

  “Then I showed him a few tricks,” Kat nearly purred with delight like her namesake.

  Hannah needed time to think, so she sidetracked the conversation, “Why do you need a Night Stalker?”

  Faith and Kat weren’t fooled for a second, but Halloran and D’Antoni walked straight into the trap and began questioning Jesse.

  Jesse did an admirable job of avoiding their inquiries, because Night Stalkers wasn’t something you talked about with civilians. But Halloran was a former Delta operator and apparently knew a couple of Jesse’s fellow pilots. They were wearing him down fast.

  She focused on her pork ribs. It surprised her that she could actually taste anything in her present state. The flavors were Texas strong, deeply smoky, with a tang as fresh as an ocean wind after too long in the deep jungle. She wished she’d been awake for the extraction from the jungle—that transition was always her favorite moment to mark the end of a mission.

  In a way, she’d had that on her arrival at Jesse’s ranch.

  Jesse’s ranch.

  She felt a pang that a big swallow of Coke did nothing to wash away. To be there, to see it, to meet his father…and then to have it ripped away by the meeting with Faith and Phoenix. Why should it feel like that? As if she’d had to leave a small piece of herself behind on the prairie. She hadn’t even been there long enough to poke around the ranch house a little and see what Jesse’s life was like.

  There was no way that he had become so important to her so fast. His home felt like…home. Something she’d barely known as a little girl.

  Then she remembered their two kisses in the jungle and the one in the car.

  There was absolutely no way that she was going soft on a guy merely because he kissed like he meant it. Like it was about her. Somehow—in ways that she didn’t understand—Jesse saw a Hannah Tucker she’d never met herself.

  Down the table, Kat stood up, picked up her Coke glass, then held it out of sight by her thigh. With her free hand, she tugged at Halloran’s sleeve.

  “What?”

  “Could you fetch a gal a Coke?”

  Halloran looked up at her strangely, then over at the sod
a fountain ten steps away. With a shrug, he slid out of the booth and headed over, muttering about what was up with the women these days.

  Kat slid in next to Faith and set down the full Coke glass that she’d kept out of Halloran’s view. Then she switched plates and napkins. When he returned with a fresh Coke, he didn’t even look puzzled. He simply sat down, took a sip of what was now his own Coke, and rejoined the conversation that D’Antoni and Jesse were having about past military missions.

  “Aren’t men just the sweetest thing?” Kat said to Hannah as she patted Halloran on the shoulder. He didn’t appear to notice.

  Now, Faith and Kat were sitting side-by-side facing her.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” Kat asked while picking up her next beef rib and waving it at her like an accusing finger.

  Hannah decided that the Delta practice of not speaking would serve her well at the moment.

  “We aren’t supposed to fall so fast, are we?” Kat didn’t even have the decency to whisper it.

  “Wouldn’t know,” Faith replied. “Can’t remember a time when I didn’t love Mark. We grew up next door to one another. He was the ever-so-gorgeous boy next door.”

  “That and the telepathy,” Kat agreed. “Whereas I hated Mike for the longest time.”

  “Only because you loved him so much from the first moment.”

  “Did not!”

  “Did, too,” Faith clearly knew every detail of Kat’s past.

  “Crap! Yes, I did.”

  “How long did it take you?” And they both turned their attention on Hannah.

  “To what?”

  “To fall for the cowboy, of course.”

  “Is that what I’ve done? No, I haven’t done that.” Unless of course she had. “Can we change the topic?”

  “Would you rather talk about how you’re going to be using sound projection in our Psi Department?”

  “Not really.”

  “You only have the two choices,” Kat made a smooth, happy sound. “Personally I’d rather hear about the cowboy first, but we’ll get both stories out of you, you know.”

  “Fire tongs and electroshock?” Hannah was made of tougher stuff than these two women.

  “Wine and chocolate,” Faith replied.

  “And as you’re just back from a mission, we would toss in bubble bath,” Kat agreed. “With the handsome cowboy, of course.”

  “You two play dirty!”

  Both women smiled at her.

  “Regrettably,” Kat took a long drink from her Coke. “We’re wheels-up on a mission in fifteen minutes. We’ll have to bribe you later.”

  “We could always take her with us,” Faith looked at her friend.

  “That could be fun,” Kat was clearly all for it.

  Apparently Hannah no longer had to speak to be in this conversation, which was just fine with her.

  “Sure way to welcome the newest member to our Psi Department.”

  “Whoa!” Definitely time to rejoin the conversation. “I work for US Special Operations.”

  “Phfft!” Kat waved a hand at her. “Don’t bother us with details. Mike. Time.”

  Mike checked his own watch, then said, “Time to finish it up,” as if Kat hadn’t spoken.

  “How he survived as the boss of Phoenix before I came along, I have no idea.”

  Everyone slid out of the booth.

  D’Antoni grabbed Kat as she stood and hauled her into a tight embrace. He laid a kiss on her that went on long enough to significantly increase the temperature of the room.

  It was enough time for Jesse to look at her with that question on his face, the same one as before that had her thinking about jumping him in the car.

  Again Hannah answered him with a tiny shake of her head, though this time she was more sorry to do so. Kat and Faith were absolutely right—she’d fallen for a cowboy.

  She still wasn’t sure how it happened, though she suspected Kat and Faith of conspiring. The way they had talked about their husbands was something special—as if dangling a treat for a kitten. Made their relationships sound like the best thing that had ever happened to them. They didn’t even need to say much—the air was electric between the couples. Hannah ended up in one of the trucks with the two women, which left Halloran and D’Antoni to follow in the other car…and Jesse with no choice except to follow her in the rental. Without her even noticing, Kat and Faith had just kidnapped her. She liked tricky women.

  A mile away, they pulled into a small airport. There were a dozen small planes tied down and a line of hangars. The last hangar in the row was different from the others. It looked fresh-built and she could spot the security on it easily. Security high-end enough that she knew two things. First, there would be a whole second layer of security that would be much harder to detect. Second, she wouldn’t like to be the one responsible for infiltrating this particular building undetected.

  Jesse followed the two big black pickups, feeling like a sad-sack city boy in his white Camry rental. The men of Phoenix drove serious muscle machines, as tough as any of Daddy’s farm pickups and absolutely immaculate.

  Hannah’s comment about the ranch was worrying at him. Daddy had never given any hint that he was anything but proud of Jesse’s service. And maybe it was true. But Jesse could feel the tightening noose of the lariat looped about his waist and tugging him back toward home. It had always been there, but after a decade in the service, it was tightening and he’d have to do some thinking about that.

  The guys hadn’t pushed when he’d refused to speak about being a Night Stalker. But it was nice to be able to talk to guys who really understood the perks and the shortcomings of working for Joint Special Operation Command. D’Antoni had actually been SAS-trained, but Halloran and Hannah’s Delta Force was modeled after the British Special Air Squadron, so it was still a familiar world.

  Inside the hangar was the crispest Black Hawk he’d ever seen. It didn’t have a midair refueling probe or side-mounted weapon pods and machine guns, but it was still a mean, black, fighting machine in cherry condition.

  “Could you get her prepped for me?” D’Antoni handed Jesse the pre-flight list and walked away before he could answer.

  Jesse was standing there holding the checklist as the two men walked over to a massive gun safe and opened the combination lock. Inside was an collection of weapons that made Jesse’s eyes bug out a little. Not just FN-SCAR and M4A1 combat rifles, but Glock handguns (complete with harnesses) and Barrett .50 cal sniper rifles good out to two kilometers in the right hands...and a former Delta Force operator’s hands were definitely the right ones. That was only the beginning of a vast array of gear.

  Hannah sidled up beside him as the two women went over to the cabinet to select Glocks in shoulder harnesses and a pair of night-vision goggles. “Neither one is a warrior, but they don’t go in unprepared,” she explained to him in a whisper.

  “What are we doing here, Hannah?”

  “That’s my question.”

  They stood side-by-side and watched the four people of Phoenix gearing up.

  He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close. He buried his face in her hair just because he could never get enough of that.

  “We gotta find a bed, cowboy. Real soon now.”

  “As soon as they’re gone.”

  “Uh.”

  “What?”

  Hannah shook her head. “They’re expecting us to go with them.”

  “Say what?” Maybe Jesse needed his hearing checked. Or maybe her brain had been addled by all the Phoenix female bonding and barbeque.

  “Apparently it’s some sort of a test or invitation or something.”

  “We’re US government employees. We can’t do this.”

  “We’re both on leave.”

  “Hannah! I try to be respectful, but have you lost your marbles, ma’am?”

  She nodded. “I think so. These women know things—and not just about crazy psi stuff. There’s something really impressive about
them.”

  “Which means you’d fit right in.”

  She leaned in to his sideways hug in a way that he could only interpret as pleased, and made his thoughts about a bed all that much higher a priority.

  “What about the men?” Hannah asked him.

  “Well,” Jesse sighed. He suspected that bed wasn’t happening anytime soon. “I don’t believe in snap judgements, but if I had to make one…yep, I’d feel good if I had to go into battle with those two.”

  She turned fully into his arms. “Kiss me, then finish your pre-flight.”

  He spent a lot of time tending to her first command. Even if it meant he had to hurry on the second.

  6

  Jesse watched Hannah select a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle (with the mod he knew had not been released for civilian sale) and an FN-SCAR combat assault rifle.

  “At least they don’t have the Delta-designed HK416,” she whispered. “I like that some things are sacrosanct.”

  They both took a pair of Glock 19s, NVGs, extra batteries, extra ammo, a radio—and a spare—and extra batteries for those as well. He grabbed her before she could turn from the supply cabinet and handed her a couple of energy bars and a water bottle. From a pocket, he fished out a Tootsie Pop, unwrapped it, and stuffed it in her mouth.

  It earned him a second kiss, sloppier and shorter than the first, but raspberry-flavored and filled with sizzle. She was altering his view of sexy by the moment—this fully-armed warrior woman was stirring up places he didn’t even know he had to be stirred up. She did it much more and his heart was going to be joining in and then all hope for him was lost. Actually, he suspected that might already be the case, but there wasn’t time to think about it.

  In minutes they were airborne. D’Antoni gave him right seat and left him to it, acting the perfect copilot. Not Night Stalker trained, but the man was definitely skilled.

  The helo felt heavy. A Little Bird was like a tap dance—fast, light, skittering on the controls and across the sky. Muhammed Ali would have approved of a Little Bird; it flew like a butterfly and stung like a bee.