by Ronie Kendig
Cardinal sat in the outdoor restaurant, the remains of his dinner in front of him. The weight of the band on his left ring finger anchored his mind to it. Elbow on the table, he stared down, rubbing his knuckles along his lip.
“I trust you.”
Three deadly words.
At least, they had been for his mom.
“Do you trust me, Eliana?”
“of course I do, but…”
“There is no but. Only yes or no.” The colonel held her face in his large, powerful hands. “You said you loved me.”
“I do! I swear it!”
“Then trust me!”
Swiping a hand over his stubbly mouth and chin, Cardinal sat back. Pushed his gaze to the walkway, where seamen, airmen, and soldiers made their way to and from dinner.
“You’ve always been a great lover.”
Crack!
Nikol jerked.
A thousand tiny splinters snaked through the large pane of glass from the bullet.
“and,” the colonel hissed, “a horrible liar.”
Crack! The fractured glass rushed down like a mighty waterfall.
“No more.” With a great thrust, he shoved her backward.
Then the angel flew.
“Hey!” A clatter erupted.
Cardinal blinked. Someone stood in front of his table. Only as his mind emerged from the past and his brain aligned with his surroundings did he manage to respond. “No need to yell. I’m right here.”
“When I have to call your name three times—”
He squinted up at the woman. “Maybe I was waiting for you to talk nicely.”
Timbrel dropped into the chair, and next to her, Candyman joined them. “Listen, I might have been wrong about Rankin—”
“Might have been?” He couldn’t believe how easy it was to annoy her. And keeping her unbalanced would make her do more stupid things. It’d keep the balance of power in his hands.
“But I’m not wrong about you.” She leveled a gaze at him. “If you pull a stunt like that again, I’m going to Burnett and having him yank your sorry butt stateside.”
Cardinal lifted his bottled water and sipped. “According to him, I’m married to Aspen and under orders to make it look authentic.”
Anger exploded across her face.
“Wait,” he said, an authoritative tone in his word. “First—you came in before we kissed. It didn’t happen, thanks to you.” It ticked him off how she seemed to gloat under that revelation. Ah, let her have this one. It worked better for him. “But if it had, it would’ve been real. I like her. She’s a good woman. I’m not going to play her.” His heart careened at the admission. “This isn’t my first op. I know how to work the angles without messing with the heart.” At least, he hoped he did. “Besides, it won’t happen again.”
“Why not?” Timbrel scowled. “You jumping ship on her that fast?”
“No.” Man, she gave him no credit. “Thanks to your accusations, she doesn’t trust me. And I don’t want her to. Not here, not while her mind is wrapped around finding her brother. Her emotions are high, her adrenaline higher. What she’s feeling can’t be trusted.”
Candyman grinned through his thick, mangy beard. “You’re not sure she likes you for you or for the hero role you’re in.”
“Exactly.”
“Markoski! Candyman!”
The shout from down the path drew their attention, Candyman coming out of his chair even before the sound of his name finished.
At the command building, Watterboy waved them down. “Move! Aspen’s MIA!”
Twenty-Two
What do you mean, she’s MIA?”
“Checked the base, the kennel, her temporary bunk, mess—everything.” Captain Dean Watters stood, hands on hips, as he relayed the information. “She didn’t sign out of the base, but she’s not here.”
Lance Burnett flung the Dr Pepper can in the trash can across his office. It hit the wall and clattered into the metal bin. “How in Sam Hill does a person go missing on a military base?” He stabbed his fingers through his hair and clenched his fist. “Look, you know what? I don’t care how she got lost.” Glaring into the webcam, he made his foul mood known. “Just get her unlost. I don’t need any more gray hair than I already have.”
“Yessir,” Watters said, his grim expression betraying his displeasure.
Whether that was for Lance’s anger or Courtland’s MIA status, Lance couldn’t decipher. “You take that irritation, Captain, and you aim it at finding this young woman. She might be former Air Force, but she’s not seen combat. Out there in a city that is ninety-something percent Muslim is not a recipe for Granny’s homemade pudding. Got it?”
“Yessir.”
“The last thing I need is for some beautiful former JAG assistant to go missing, end up in the hands of terrorists, and have that all over the news. Because the Good Lord knows that it will soon come out that her brother went missing, too. And how will that look?”
Via live video feed, Lance again surveyed those gathered. “And where in Sam Hill is my man?”
“He said he had a few ideas.”
The pot of hot water that sat beneath Lance’s backside—the one Payne and the others would use to scald him right down to private—began to boil. “Ideas? About what? I want him on this feed right now. VanAllen!”
“Sir.” Candyman straightened.
“Drag his sorry carcass back in there. Now. I want words with that no-good—”
Light ballooned against a wall in the small conference room at Lemonnier. A dark shadow slid across it, then the explosion of light winked out.
“As you wish,” VanAllen said with a smirk and motioned to someone.
Cardinal stepped into view and handed something to Candyman. “Send that to the general.” He peered into the monitor. “General, I need you to get Hastings and Smith on this as we talk. Have them work the images. They’ll know what to look for.”
It took one call and the others were on their way. Lance would love to reach through the feed and strangle that cocky operative if he could. But he was too doggone valuable. “Well? What’d you find?”
He stretched to the credenza beside his desk and used it to pull himself to the small fridge then tugged out another maroon and white can. When he rolled back to the monitor, he found Cardinal, hands planted on the table, towering over the webcam. Lips tight, nostrils flared, he looked ticked.
Lance set the can aside, bracing himself. “That bad, eh?”
“Candyman’s sending the key feed clips to you.” Cardinal looked around the room. “The rest can crowd up and see on this monitor. Aspen retrieved Talon from the kennel at 2215 last night.”
“That’s normal,” Timbrel added. “Handlers prefer to keep their dogs with them, and she has an air-conditioned CLU.”
“Yes, but the kennel has a controlled environment as well,” Cardinal countered.
“Getting her dog at ten fifteen at night is normal?” Lance wasn’t buying it.
“I find it curious considering Talon was injured and dehydrated when she left him in the vet’s care. I know she’s protective and vigilant of the dog, but I also know she wanted him to get better. The only thing that would’ve made her compromise his recovery time and process would be something related to her brother.”
Tolerance was being stretched in the way Lance viewed Cardinal. Though he hated the man’s rogue methods, more times than not, Cardinal got his man. Or woman in this case.
“So?”
“Ran security tapes.” Cardinal flicked a hand toward the monitor. “Traced Aspen into the kennel and out. She went to her CLU and came out with a pack.” Cardinal mumbled something to VanAllen about the next image. “MP at the checkpoint said no woman and dog left through the gate. Inside the wire there are rows of cement barricades. There’s no way she could’ve scaled that, not with the dog, and especially not with his paw injured.”
“If you’d like to give me a tour of the base, you’re wasting your ti
me. I’ve been there. Get on with this.”
Cardinal stared at him. Then pointed to Candyman. “So, I ran a few hunches. Tried a few tricks.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Why wouldn’t the man just tell them what he found? Get on with it, so they could begin the search. If he knew where she was, wouldn’t he…? “You have no idea where she is, do you?”
“I searched the egress logs. Cross-referenced that with destinations and capacity.”
“Capacity.” Watters nodded. “She hitched a ride.”
“In doing these and searching the security logs, I came across this.” Again, Cardinal pointed to Candyman.
The image hogged over the screen. The motor pool. Jeeps. MRAPS. A medical team could be seen piling into a Land Rover.
“That looks routine.” Lance lifted his Dr Pepper.
“Except that it’s happening at four thirty in the morning. And the medical staff returned with us from their weekly rounds to the villages.”
He squinted at the image. Not the best quality, but that was to be expected with the security cameras.
“Look at the airman, second left. When the person turns and says something—”
A dog trotted out from behind a container and hopped into the back of the SUV.
Lance sighed. “And why didn’t the guards at the gate notice him leaving?”
“Sir, we had coms get into the computer Aspen had here. She had a Skype call last night with one”—Candyman read from his computer— “Brittain Larabie.”
“On it,” one of ODA452 said as keys started clicking.
“She’s her best friend,” Timbrel said.
“She’s also the reporter who interviewed me,” Cardinal added. “Get her on the horn.”
“Yep,” the ODA452 team member said, diverting his efforts to a phone. A few seconds later, he handed the device to Cardinal.
“Miss Larabie, Dane Markoski here…yeah…good, listen, we’ve got a situation here. Aspen is missing…calm down. We’ll find her, but I can’t do that without your help. Last night you Skyped with her. Did she mention anything that raised concern for you?”
Riveted to the monitor trying to gauge the conversation happening, Lance watched Cardinal. What was Larabie saying? Why had Cardinal gone silent? “Markoski?” Lance popped the top on the soda can, his mouth nearly watering at the tsssssssssk that erupted from the depressurization of the can.
“But she said nothing about leaving or…?” Cardinal nodded. “Okay, good. That helps. What time did your call end?” More nodding. “Thank you. It’s very helpful…yes, of course. As soon as we can.”
“Well?”
“Anyone here go to Aspen’s CLU last night around eight?” When everyone responded to the negative, Cardinal sighed. “According to Larabie, while they were Skyping last night, someone knocked on Aspen’s door.”
“Who was it?”
“Larabie doesn’t know because they ended it so Aspen could answer the door. I’m going to dig around and see if I can figure out who went to her and why. That might give us some indication of what provoked her to grab her dog and run.”
“Got it,” Lieutenant Hastings said. “I scrambled through the various video feeds. I found one that’s really shady, but give our analysts a few hours—”
“Aspen’s already out there. We don’t have hours.”
“Give us some time and we can have this guy’s history. But he’s about five eleven, brown hair, wearing ACUs. He has something in hand—looks like an envelope. We lose him when he steps under the CLU’s walkway.”
“Time stamp?”
“Twenty-oh-eight.”
Finally. A break. “That’s our guy. Find him.” Cardinal fisted his hand. Something was going on here. A woman with a dog didn’t just walk off a base. Or ride off in a Land Rover. There were too many security protocols. So, how’d she bypass them? Why did the man in the motor pool help her?
No sense. It made no sense at all.
“Hey.” Timbrel dropped her booted foot to the floor and sat forward. “Whoever that was, he had to have something pretty important in that envelope. Aspen doesn’t have adventure in her blood like some, so her leaving means something.”
“Agreed. But what?”
Timbrel shrugged. “I’m not going to do your job for you.”
“Markoski, that SUV you said she might’ve climbed into?” Lieutenant Hastings spoke up from the Pentagon. “I cross-checked gate logs. It went out with supplies for Peltier General at 0630.”
“Who signed out?”
“Uhh…no name—oh wait, here we go. Lieutenant Will Rankin.” The idiot. He had no idea what he’d just done.
“Let’s go.” Timbrel punched to her feet.
“Hold up,” Cardinal said. “We know where the truck was headed, but—”
“Talon got a hit there, so it makes sense she’d go there again. Maybe she thinks she can track down Austin. Since that SUV left at six thirty, that means she’s been on her own for over six hours. We don’t have time to—”
“That’s right.” Cardinal tempered his frustration with Timbrel’s charge-first, think-later method. “We don’t have time to rush out there with unknowns that cost us time. And if we all went out there as U.S. military, everyone would clam up.”
“Then we break up into teams.” Timbrel stuffed her hands on her hips. “I’ll go with you.”
“No way.”
“Why not?” Timbrel had gone into confrontational mode.
“I need to go into town as a husband worried about his wife’s disappearance. That will get me local sympathy and awareness—people will start talking. If I can suggest a reward, then that will spread like wildfire. They’ll bring me word. It’ll go faster. I’ll book a room at the Sheraton. Brie,” he said, talking to the Pentagon again. “Once I’m there, relay the phone so it will come to my sat phone.”
“Roger that.”
“Markoski,” General Burnett spoke up, roughing a hand through his tightly cropped hair. “I have to get clearance on this change.”
“Then get it.” The general was trying to stall. Though he probably had a great reason, Cardinal didn’t have time for them to work out all their theories and probabilities. Aspen was out there, with her dog, but utterly alone. She didn’t know the language, probably didn’t know customs. Forget that she was beautiful. “But cut me loose to do this, my way.”
Burnett’s rugged face glowered. “Now, listen—”
“You and I both know if we all go out there, if all these uniforms show up, we’ll never find her.” He leaned in. “I work better on my own, and I can do it faster. Let me find her and bring her back. Things are screwed up, and we need to move swiftly. I can do that better alone.”
“What are you afraid of?” Timbrel challenged. “Afraid you ran her off with your sweet-talking and charm?”
Wrong button to push. Cardinal swung around. “If you want to play the blame game, fine. My interest is getting Aspen back—alive. What you aren’t thinking about is that someone seems to have lured her off the base, alone, in the middle of the night. And I don’t know where you come from, Hogan, but in most cities I grew up in, that was a death sentence. Now, do you want your friend and handler back alive, or do you want to bring her home in a casket?”
Timbrel swallowed, and in doing that, signaled her retreat.
“Burnett—”
“Sorry, son. I have to put my boot down. Payne’s being the royal pain I warned you about, and if he found out—and no, I’m not hinting you should do anything rogue. If he found out, they’d rip these stars off my shoulders.” He wagged a finger at Cardinal. “This is a direct order: Do not go out there alone. Things are hot. Something’s off, and we need to figure it out before we go guns blazing after her, not to mention we need to get some things in place before it’s too late.”
Cardinal frowned. “It’s already too late.”
“Are you forgetting who’s in charge here?”
Cardinal’s heart pounded
. It’d been a long time since he’d directly disobeyed an order. “I’ll get back to you on that.” He cut the live-feed transmission, stood, and saw the others coming to their feet, clearly ready to stop him. “I need twenty-four hours to find her. That’s it.”
No one moved. Good sign.
“Let’s send two teams,” Watterboy said. “I’ll return to the base in the city, across from the missionary’s home. Candyman and Timbrel can go to the hotel as well, posing as tourists—”
“No,” Cardinal said. “Watterboy, you and Timbrel get a room at the hotel as well. Candyman’s too noticeable with that beard and thick chest.”
Candyman frowned, holding his hands up as if inspecting himself. “Yeah, guess this body is on America’s Most Wanted list.”
“Good plan change.” Timbrel narrowed her eyes at Candyman. “His ego wouldn’t fit in the hotel room anyway.”
“Agreed.” Cardinal focused. Trained his mind to quiet. “Candyman, make sure your team is ready to jump if we get a lead or eyes on target.”
Candyman nodded. “Roger. But for the record, I’m not too happy with the captain here shacking up with my girl.”
If only there was time to joke. “Listen, I won’t kid you—Aspen out there is not good. It was foolish for her to go off on her own.”
“Assuming she’s on her own,” Watterboy added.
“We have to assume that she wanted her brother back, and her one weakness pushed her to make a stupid move.” Cardinal gave a nod. “If she’s not alone, then once we find her, it could be a fight to the death to get her back.”
The door banged open. Rocket burst in, his face flushed. “A team just got ambushed. Admiral Kuhn is locking down Lemonnier under McLellan’s orders. Nobody in, nobody out.”
Lance cursed. “Okay.” He sat up, took a swig of his sugary addiction, and then focused on Cardinal, who stood waiting, glaring. “McLellan is the personal assistant to Colonel Hendricks.”
Cardinal stilled. “Payne’s Hendricks?”
“Yeah.” Adrenaline spiraled through his system like a gusher. “So listen up—nobody tells anyone we know this.” Another swig. Another. There was a lot of work to do. Even more to hide. Because if Payne had sent Hendricks’ man to usher Aspen out of there…