Anaz-Voohri (31 page)

“So you refused?" Zack looked intrigued.

“Of course, I refused." Tia wondered where he heard such lies.

“Then, who was that gentleman who came with you?" Did she detect an edge to his voice?
A hint of jealousy perhaps?

Surprised, Tia had to chuckle as she shook her head. “I came with my father.”

“Ah." He seemed relieved. “Is there any other man in your life right now?”

Still under the shock of this unlikely reunion, Tia finally relaxed and enjoyed Zack’s proximity. How she’d missed his touch, and the musky scent of his aftershave. “There is no one in my life, only my job.”

“Really?"
Zack’s smile brightened his face. “I followed you from afar, read about you on the net. Congratulations on your many successful raids.”

“My unit kicked some Anaz-voohri butt if that’s what you mean." Tia couldn’t believe he’d kept up with her. Could Zack have forgiven her? Did he still have feelings for her after all these years? She basked in his presence, his voice, his strong hand on her waist. “Whoever told you I was married?”

Zack’s expression darkened and his jaw tightened but he didn’t answer.

“What about you?" Tia asked to change the touchy subject. “I see a lot must have happened."

Zack hesitated, as if choosing his words. “
Luck,
and the miracle of new science.”

Tia had no doubt that he’d skipped the despair, the struggle, the hopelessness, the suffering. “The results are astonishing. What are you doing these days?”

 
At that moment, the dance ended, and another couple approached them. Tia recognized with horror the eye-patch of the legendary hybrid hunter. At his arm was a blond beauty, the President’s daughter.

General Carrick smiled at Tia and slapped Zack’s shoulder. “My friend, allow me to introduce the ravishing Tierney Grant.”

Fighting to remain cool despite the panic growing inside her, Tia offered her hand to the First Daughter.
“Delighted.
I’m Tia Vargas." Although she’d never met Tierney, Tia felt some kind of kinship with the beautiful girl. She smiled as they shook hands, and felt a tingle run up her arm. Immediately, she knew Tierney to be special, somehow. There was an aura about her.

Zack’s clear gaze fixed on Tia. “Allow me to introduce you to my boss of many years, General Jason Carrick." His tone suddenly grew cold.

When Carrick deposited a kiss on Tia’s fingers, she experienced a shiver of disgust. Zack looked angry and remained eerily silent.

Tia turned to Zack. “You work for ORION?" She felt as if she was falling off a tall building.

“Not only he works for me,” Carrick added with obvious pride, “but we are best friends. He even saved my life. And he has a knack for detecting hybrids. He is personally responsible for finding hundreds of them.”

“I see..." Ice took hold of Tia’s chest.

Carrick’s cold blue eye squinted as he studied her. “Tia Vargas, you said? The name rings a bell. Have we met before?" He looked puzzled.

“I would definitely remember if we did." Life had played a terrible joke on Tia. Just when she thought her life might finally make sense again, she discovered that Zack was the very person she should avoid at all cost, one of the fiercest hybrid hunters. Jason Carrick’s right hand!

Carrick stared at Tia with amusement in his eye, as if he remembered something funny. It made Tia even more uncomfortable. She couldn’t stand looking at him.

A lanky man in his late thirties, handsome and very serious, walked purposefully toward Carrick and Zack. All in the group seemed to recognize him but Tia didn’t.

“Hi,” the man said awkwardly. “My name is Archer,” he said for Tia’s benefit. His dark green eyes hardened when he saw the proprietary way in which Carrick held Tierney Grant. He glanced at Zack, then Tia.

“She’s cool,” Zack said with a friendly grin. “She’s OES and she has clearance.”

Archer straightened his back. “I just received a call from the lab. We may have a hybrid mole in the GSS. We have to warn the President, now and take security measures.”

Carrick’s face hardened.
“Fucking hybrids!
If it has come to this, we’ll have to test everyone in the government." Carrick bowed to the women and took his leave.

Zack smiled sadly as he squeezed Tia’s hand. “I have to go. Contact me through official channels at ORION. I’d love to continue this chat real soon.”

Disheartened by the news of Zack’s job and the prospect of more
hybrid
testing, Tia only nodded, unable to speak. She had to leave this place immediately and stay away from Washington. How long could she avoid being discovered?

As soon as Zack walked away, Tia went in search of her father. She found him in an adjacent study, smoking a cigar while conversing with government officials. “Sorry, Father. I’m not feeling well. I’m leaving.”

“Really?"
Her father looked surprised but didn’t remark on it. It wasn’t like Tia to wimp out for such a reason. “Take the car back to the embassy and ask the chauffeur to return for me.”

Tia smiled “No need. I’ll just catch a cab." She turned and walked away, denying her father any chance to protest.

Outside the mansion, she asked the valet for a taxi. The young man signaled the first waiting vehicle in the nearby line. When it pulled to the curb, he opened the door for Tia. She slid into the back seat.

After the door closed, she told the driver, “To the airport, as quickly as you can.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

New York
–
Spring
2020

Zack checked his navy blue dress-uniform in the wall mirror of his New York apartment then glanced at his watch for the fourth time. What was taking so long?
Probably traffic.
Archer’s limo had to pick up Dylan and Carrick along the way. But he shouldn’t worry. Archer’s private jet would wait for them. They’d get to Washington in plenty of time to attend the state funeral.

As his epad jingled, Zack dropped on the black leather couch.
An incoming message.
Tia? Full of hope, he read,
Sorry I had to leave so suddenly on a classified mission. Wish I could attend the funeral. I miss you. Take care
.

Not quite the romantic note Zack anticipated. The return address was blocked. No way to even respond. But what did he expect? Tia had disappeared from the fund raiser without as much as a goodbye, and he couldn’t find a message box to her name.

So why did she contact him now, after three months of total silence? The logical answer would be that her job prevented her from contacting him sooner, but Zack didn’t buy it. His gut feeling told him something else was going on, but what?

The message also included strange lines that didn’t mean anything and Zack recognized the code Tia had given him during their happy years to exchange secret messages. His heart raced. Once decoded, however, the lines read,
Not all hybrids are working for the Anaz-voohri. Beware of Carrick’s self-serving elimination of unwanted elements. He probably arranged the accident that killed the First Lady.

Although preposterous and even shocking, the accusation did strike a chord in Zack’s mind. Since he realized Carrick had falsified Tia’s confidential file and most likely sent the notice of his death, Zack didn’t trust Carrick about anything. The opportunistic bastard would stop at nothing to achieve his dream of grandeur.

Rumor had it in ORION that the President’s wife had refused DNA testing, and that made her a prime suspect for being a hybrid. Her fatal car accident had conveniently eliminated her without creating a political uproar. The discovery of a hybrid in the white house would have discredited President Grant and compromised his re-election. And Carrick needed his friend Grant to remain in the white house.

Zack hated politics.

The part about not all hybrids working for the Anaz-voohri didn’t surprise him, either. He wondered how Tia came by that information, but his psychic search sometimes brought up hybrids that didn’t have any contact with the enemy. Some of them didn’t even suspect they were hybrids. When that happened, Zack usually neglected to mention them to Carrick, who would not hesitate to have them killed.

Unknown to anyone in ORION, Zack carefully screened his search. He only reported hybrids actively plotting against humanity. If discovered, his omissions could get him court-martialed for treason. After all, the world was at war. Zack often wondered whether Dylan did the same but never asked. Such subversive talk could get them both killed.

The epad beeped and Dylan’s voice came through. “Hurry up, we are downstairs.”

“Coming!"
Zack rushed into the freight elevator, set the alarm from his epad then went down.

Archer’s limo waited at the curb. Zack stepped in as the door opened and smiled at Dylan, all dressed up like Carrick and himself in a navy blue uniform. Archer, who wasn’t military anymore, wore a black Armani suit and looked particularly somber.

“It’s nice of you to offer your private jet,” Zack commented, but Archer didn’t lighten up.

Dylan smiled, as usual, as if he had no care in the world.

When Zack met Carrick’s single blue eye, he thanked the powers that be that the man couldn’t read his thoughts. Zack wondered whether Carrick knew Zack figured out his little scheme. But even though Zack burned to know exactly why Carrick had falsified Tia’s records, it wasn’t worth losing his life over it, or worse, Tia’s life. So he kept quiet. Let Carrick think he was the master puppeteer.

*****

Washington
, DC
, same day

After a short plane ride and several traffic bottlenecks around Washington, DC, Zack slipped on his sunglasses against the noon sun. Now sitting next to Archer, in ORION’s open black Hummer, he faced Dylan and Carrick. Staring at Carrick’s eye-patch, Zack felt trapped in a macabre farce. If the man had really ordered the execution of the First Lady, he had some nerve parading at her funeral. To think that the bastard had told Tia Zack had died... anger churned in his chest.

Not since the funeral of John F. Kennedy had the crowds gathered for such an event. The affair looked grandiose indeed, with flags at half-mast. Black silk banners, hanging from the light poles along Pennsylvania Avenue, framed the black and white portrait of Janine Grant. The lack of color didn’t do justice to her fiery head of hair. Stately orchestras
played
 
somber
music from the stands.

The Hummer rolled at a turtle pace, four rows behind the open hearse. The American flag draped the casket, buried under a mountain of white flowers. A procession of black convertibles, three abreast, followed in an ostentatious cortege half a mile long. The Secret Service Motorcycle Unit, on Harley Davidsons, all black shine and chrome, flanked the slow motorcade. Zack wondered whatever happened to his Kawasaki. He should ride again sometime.

Carrick chuckled. “I don’t envy the Chief of Security. With all these heads of state among the guests, this funeral must be a fucking nightmare. I asked President Grant to minimize the pageantry, but he wouldn’t hear of it. What do I care? After all, it’s his funeral." Carrick laughed at his own bad taste pun.

The A-list guests sat in grandstands on both sides of the detoured itinerary leading to Oak Hill cemetery. The overflow of carefully selected mourners stood quietly on the sidewalk, held back by security ropes.

Journalists took pictures and sometimes ventured under the ropes to get a better angle, only to be reprimanded by security personnel on foot. The black splendor evoked a punked Fourth of July, where black would have replaced the red, white and blue and sucked the joy out of the crowd.

The ride that normally took ten minutes in regular traffic, would last over two hours. As the cortege progressed slowly, Zack’s thoughts returned to Tia. Why didn’t she leave a return address?

*****

In the quaint historic setting of Oak Hill Cemetery, as the memorial service came to a close, Zack stood next to Carrick. At least, Zack didn’t have to look at him.

Carrick laced his arm around the sobbing First Daughter. “I’ll accompany Tierney and her father to the White House,” he told Zack with an appropriately sad face.

Archer, close enough to hear, shook his head in obvious frustration and motioned to Zack and Dylan. “I’ll give you guys a ride back to New York.”

An hour later, Zack, and his two friends sat comfortably around the coffee table, in the spacious cabin of the private jet that served as a salon. Sharing a bottle of Chivas Regal fifty year old scotch, they drank to the memory of Janine Grant. A cold fish no one really knew, to be sure, but a strikingly elegant woman and a classy First Lady.

The amber rays of the setting sun set the faces aglow through the plane’s unusually large windows, probably another feat of engineering from Haepheon Technologies. Above a sea of white clouds, away from any indiscreet ears, as the altitude enhanced the effects of the scotch, the tongues loosened as the inhibitions faded.