Black Skies (5 page)

“You’re as stubborn as a mule, you know that?” said Harun. “Of course I’m coming with you. Let’s see what to make of this
hunch,
then, shall we?”

“Let’s,” said Conley. “And let’s move fast. I get the feeling that those guys aren’t going to last very long.”

M
organ drove home to his sleepy suburban neighborhood well past midnight. He was a wreck. He’d hardly gotten any sleep during his game with Alex, and then had spent a grueling, frustrating day going over intel that led nowhere and making phone calls that got him nothing.

He parked his Shelby Mustang on the driveway and got out of the car. A cool, soothing breeze riffled his hair, and the moon and stars were bright in the cloudless night sky. He looked up, feeling some of the frustration flow out of his body as he breathed deeply. He then turned toward the house.

Through the window, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a faint bluish light coming from the living room, like from a computer or TV screen. His thoughts turned to his wife, Jenny. She’d often stay up waiting for him when he was out late, no matter how many times he asked her not to worry, to go to bed. He felt a twinge of guilt. She had known about his work as a spy for years, and she had come to support him and believe in what he did.

Still, fiercely loyal and strong as she was, she had a sensitive soul. It was part of her strength, the way she could lend comfort to people in need—the way she could make Morgan himself feel whole and fully human while working in a business that could be dehumanizing. All the same, it was something that he knew caused her more than a little suffering.

Morgan walked into the garage and opened the kitchen door. His German shepherd, Nieka, gave him her usual enthusiastic greeting. He ruffled the fur on her neck and petted her head. He walked into the warm kitchen, which had been put together by Jenny, who was an interior decorator, to be elegant and at the same time cozy. It was always the first place he walked into when he got home. The copper pots hanging from the wallpapered walls and the old-fashioned white cabinets were a welcome sight.

Nieka followed him to the living room, where he found not Jenny but his daughter, Alex, sitting on the couch in pajama pants and T-shirt, hair up in an unfussy ponytail, her face lit up by her laptop computer.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “What are you still doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, setting her computer aside and crossing her skinny legs on the couch. “To be honest, I hit the hay pretty hard when we got back in the morning. But I saw the news about the Secretary online when I woke up, and now . . . I just keep thinking about what’s happening, you know? I keep looking for the latest news online.” She motioned her head toward the computer. “That, and what people are saying about it.”

Morgan sat down on an ottoman facing her. He understood. The pundits had been crawling over themselves, speculating about the events, its causes and outcomes. Not that he ever read any of it—you’d get better predictions flipping a coin than listening to any of them. “Are you scared?”

“No. I mean, not for myself. I know things might get ugly, that there might be more to come, but I can handle myself. And things are safe here at home. At least for now. Right?” This last word came with a sudden tone of insecurity. “But I—I mean . . .” she continued. “I know you’re out there, doing your part, and I feel so helpless here. I just feel like I maybe I could be doing something, anything, to help out. Like I should be.”

“Alex, it isn’t your time yet,” said Morgan. He drew the ottoman closer to her, so that she was within arm’s length. “I understand how you feel, you know, kiddo? That feeling like you’ve got to take action. It’s been that way for me all my life. Jesus, you really are my daughter, you know?” He grinned and put his arm on her shoulder. She smiled back. “But you can’t rush thing sort of thing. Your time will come, I promise. Right now, you need to focus on staying sharp and getting strong, because you will be needed. We need kids like you to be better adults than us in the future. But for now, it’s for others to take care of. People who are prepared. Trust me.”

“I do, Dad,” she said, looking away. “I always do.” He didn’t buy it.

“All right, kid. Go get some sleep. It’s late.” He embraced her and gave her a kiss.

“You too, Dad. Are you going out again tomorrow?”

“Before you wake up, probably,” he replied, standing up with a slight grunt. “We’re in crisis mode I might have to stay over a few nights after tonight, depending on how it goes.”

“Do you think you might have to go away? Like, overseas?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said.

“You’ll come say good-bye if you do, right?” Her voice was faltering. He knew what kind of good-bye she was afraid of.

“I’ll be back before you know it, kid. And I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, trying to conceal the fact that she was tearing up. “Good night, Dad.”

 

Morgan crept upstairs and opened the door to his room. The lamp on Jenny’s side of the bed was lit. She was asleep, propped up on her pillow with an historical novel resting on her chest, reading glasses balanced on the tip of her delicate nose and her short brown hair fallen over her closed eyes. The careless way in which her bathrobe exposed her legs and just a sliver of her red panties made him bite his lower lip. God, that woman. She stirred as he walked toward the bed, and her eyes fluttered open.

“Dan.” Her voice could somehow combine tenderness, pain, and reproach, all at once.

“Hi, honey. How’re you doing?” He leaned down and kissed her soft lips.

She kissed him back and sleepily pushed herself up and sat back against the headboard, rubbing her eyes. “All right. A bit tired, I guess. How are you?”

“Pooped,” said Morgan. “Hell of a day. It’s shaping up to be one of those weeks.”

“One of
those?
” she asked pointedly, and he knew exactly what she meant. She was asking if he was going to go off on a mission, put himself in danger.

“I can’t say,” said Morgan. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

She winced. They’d had this argument too many times before. She did understand the importance of what he did, why he persisted even at great risk of injury and death. But while she accepted it, she sure didn’t like it. “Alex has a pretty bad case of poison ivy,” she said. “Plus a few ugly scratches. Dan, I swear, I don’t know what you two get up to out there.”

“Just a bit of fun,” he said, going into the bathroom to wash his face. “Nobody ever died from a little poison ivy.”

“Dan . . .” she admonished. “And that motorcycle you bought for her . . .” Alex had pleaded with him for a motorcycle for the better part of a year. A month ago, Morgan relented and took her into town to the dealerships. She spent the better part of the day test-driving every model, but finally settled on the Ducati Streetfighter. Morgan had never seen her so happy in his life as when she was tearing out of the lot on her new bike, leaving him to trail behind in his car. Jenny, on the other hand, had not been pleased. “I’m afraid she’s taking after you in the worst way, Dan. All this risk-taking. Thrill-seeking, even. It makes me sick with worry.”

“The girl is
fine,
” he said, toweling off as he walked back into the room. “She’s tough. She can take care of herself.”

“She’s saying she doesn’t want to go to college now.” Jenny said it as if Alex were running off to join the Hell’s Angels.

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Dan . . .”

“What?” he asked. “She doesn’t need to go to college if she doesn’t want to. Plenty of people don’t, and they do just fine.”

“They end up unemployed or at dead-end jobs.”

“Or they end up owning their own companies and becoming millionaires,” said Morgan. “Let her find her thing. A girl like that? Not having a college degree isn’t going to hold her back from anything she wants to do. And if she ends up wanting to become a doctor or something, she can always go back.”

Jenny looked miffed. “I don’t want you encouraging this sort of thing. It won’t end well, I know it.”

“Let her learn that her actions have consequences, then,” said Morgan. “That’s a more important lesson than anything she’ll learn in college.”

“She’s not you, Dan. I think sometimes you forget how young she is. And how sensitive, deep down. I’m glad you two are bonding and having fun together, I really am. But couldn’t you go fishing or something, for once?”

“She’s old enough to make her own decisions, Jen.”

“Is she? She’s eighteen. I’m not saying she’s not mature. But you don’t have to encourage this kind of thing.”

“Why not, if that’s what makes her happy?” asked Morgan. “I always did, and look where it got me.”

She cast him a sharp sidelong glance. “That’s exactly it, Dan. It’s hard enough having
one
of you in my life. All I need right now is another member of this family to worry myself sick over. But let’s not talk about it, okay? I just want to be near you.”

Morgan fell asleep with his wife in his arms. For that moment, at least, everything was right in the world. In the morning, he would rejoin the fray.

A
lex Morgan had set her alarm for 3:30 in the morning. Her eyes opened when it rang, and she deactivated before it had rung twice. Getting out of bed, she pulled on the sweatpants and T-shirt she had laid out the night before. She didn’t know when her father would leave, so she lay in her bed, listening for signs of stirring in the house. She took the opportunity to browse the news on her phone. Every outlet was blowing up with stories about the abduction of the Secretary of State. Alex hadn’t known much about the man before, but there was no lack of information now.

Secretary of State Lee Erwin Wolfe had been a hero of the Gulf War, collecting medals and, more important, the respect of his men and of his superiors. He’d been conducting his duties as Secretary of State with his characteristic boldness and self-assuredness. His tenure had so far been effective in garnering cooperation from many countries to hunt terrorists and other enemies of the United States. He was friendly when possible, tough when necessary. He was one of those rare figures who was admired on both sides of the aisle.

Alex remained under the covers reading the news until her father got up at five. She heard the sounds of the shower first, then of him going downstairs. After a few minutes she heard the rumble of his car’s engine pulling out of the driveway and moving down the street.

She didn’t hurry—she didn’t need to. She knew her father was going to take I-93 down to Boston, so she might as well catch up with him there. Plus, she didn’t want him to spot her tailing him through the narrow suburban streets that led to the highway. She waited for two minutes to elapse—she had been training herself to count time in her head, and was within twenty seconds when she checked her phone—and then walked downstairs, treading lightly so as to avoid waking up her mother.

She made her way to the garage and got on her Ducati Streetfighter. It was a graphite sports cycle, sleek and aerodynamic, and it felt bulky and powerful between her legs, like a thoroughbred horse she had once ridden on a trip she’d taken with a friend. Her father had given her a pink helmet to wear, which Alex suspected he did precisely so that he could spot her if she ever tried to do what she was planning at that very moment, but Alex had secretly bought a second helmet, all black, for the exact opposite purpose.

She took the black helmet out of its hiding spot in a box of her old stuffed animals. She then unhooked the chain from the garage door motor and pulled it open, revealing the gray light of dawn outside and letting in a gust of chill air that broke against her leather jacket. She guided the bike out, closed the garage door, and walked it about one hundred yards from the house. Satisfied that doing so would avoid waking her mother, she hopped on and turned the ignition.

The bike rumbled underneath her. She set out, slowly at first until she was far enough from the house, and then she unleashed.

Alex Morgan’s experiences had taught her to use the phrase
life-changing
carefully, but getting the motorcycle nearly justified it. She loved her newfound mobility, the speed and flexibility of the vehicle. Sometimes she’d take the motorcycle out on the highway at night to see how fast she could go. She was working up to asking her father for stunt-riding lessons (asking her mother would have been a waste of breath), but in the meantime she had to be content with looking up videos and instructions on the Internet and trying them out in empty lots and deserted country roads.

Alex cut corners and pushed the throttle as far as she could while making the curves until she reached the highway. There, she matched her speed to the fast lane, keeping an eye out for her father. She spotted his Mustang by its stripes and slowed down to keep a safe distance from him. Lately, he’d been teaching her how to tail a car without getting seen, and she applied the principles he had taught her

He had, of course, warned her against doing this very thing, but curiosity had gotten the best of her. She wondered about where he worked, what exactly he did. She fantasized about going on missions both with him and alone. Also—and she had taken after him in this way—she wasn’t the sort to take that kind of warning to heart.

When her father, in the Shelby, signaled and took the off-ramp to downtown Boston, she followed suit, making careful mental notes of each of the turns he took. Eventually, she turned a corner and saw his car disappear into a building’s garage. She found a parking spot on the street and dismounted in time to see the garage door begin to descend.

Leaving her helmet with the motorcycle, she ran to the door and crouched, squeezing under it into the garage. There was an additional gate for cars that didn’t keep pedestrians out. She sneaked farther in, running along the wall and down a ramp. She followed the faint growl of her father’s muscle car reverberating through the garage, then the
tut tut tut
of idling, and then the noise cut off. He had parked.

Alex continued downward. Halfway down the ramp to the third floor underground, the wall ended in an opening to her right. She stood flat against a corner and peered out into a seemingly forgotten parking sconce that fit maybe twenty-five cars. She saw her father shutting the door to the Shelby. He walked to a nondescript door in the corner and disappeared into it.

Alex ran back up to street level. She found a button to open the garage door and walked out into the brisk early morning air. Very satisfied, she got back on her motorcycle and rode away, the roar of the motor echoing between the sheer faces of tall buildings. She had found the place. For the time being, that would be enough.