Finding North (41 page)

“
I saw the
light . . .” he said. “I thought I’d drop by and see
how the trip went.”

“
You’re here early, sir,”
Alex said.

She stepped aside so that
he could come into the office.

“
I’m coming home from
Washington. Had to attend one of those stupid hearings,” Colonel
Gordon said. “Yes, Senator, we are wiping our asses with money.
Yes, Senator, we like to use the one-hundred-dollar bills to light
our . . .”

He leaned his head forward
and took an exaggerated sniff.

“
Cigars?” He nodded. “Beer
and whiskey.”

“
The Monk,” Alex asked.
“For the record, I called the Major General, and he told me I could
kill him.”

“
Kind of messy,” Colonel
Gordon said.

Alex smiled.

“
Have you met Hank
Zutterberg?” Alex asked.

Colonel Gordon raised his
eyebrows at her, and she nodded that she and Hank were on good
terms.

“
Only by reputation. Don’t
get up.” Colonel Gordon walked to the couch to shake Hank’s hand.
“Nice to meet you. I can tell by my LC’s pinched face that you’re
not having an easy go of it this morning.”

“
We went to training
together,” Alex said.

“
Ah,” Colonel Gordon said.
“It was the worst of times and the . . .”

“
Worst of times,” Alex
said along with him. Colonel Gordon laughed. “Would you like a
drink?”

“
Nah,” Colonel Gordon
said. “I need to get home. I had to stay for some moronic Senator’s
dinner. I kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I spent three years in
covert intelligence training to sit here listening to this baboon.’
But, dinners with morons come with the bird.”

Colonel Gordon smiled, and
Alex laughed.

“
How did it go?” Colonel
Gordon asked.

“
We were able to get Ji
and Fong to Yokohama,” Alex said.

“
That’s very good news,”
Colonel Gordon said.

“
Ji was in bad shape when
we got there,” Alex said. “He’s been in and out of surgery, so we
still don’t know why this happened.”

“
He was on the list,” Hank
said.

“
Really?” Alex
asked.

“
What list?” Colonel
Gordon asked.

Hank opened his mouth to
explain, but there was another knock at the door.

“
Hold that thought,”
Colonel Gordon said. “That’s my ride. I need my wife and the solace
of my own bed. You can brief me later. Monday?”

“
Of course,” Alex
said.

He gave Alex and Hank a
nod and went to the door. He lifted his left hand to wave goodbye
and opened the door with his right.

“
Sorry, sir,” a man
said.

There were two silenced
handgun shots, and time slowed.

Chapter
Twenty-eight

As Colonel Gordon fell to
his right, the shooter fired across the office and hit Hank. Alex
dove under the conference table and pulled her weapon. Hank rolled
off the couch and onto the floor.

“
I know you’re in here,”
the man said.

Alex heard him move into
the room. Jesse wadded up a ball of energy and threw it at him. The
man yelped, but kept coming.

“
It’s your god-damned
office!” the man said.

From her position under
the table, she saw that Hank had been shot in the torso but was
alive. She put her fingers to her lips, and he nodded. He gestured
to his cane, which she pulled under the table.

Alex tucked her knees
under her to ground her. The man fired in her direction, but Jesse
shocked him at the same time. He missed. When the man got close,
she fired her handgun with her right hand. The weapon bucked on
recoil. Her injured arm rebelled. There was a sharp burst of pain
from her right shoulder blade. She screamed with pain. Her shot
went wild.

“
Gotcha,” the man stood
over her and fired.

Alex dove to the side and
the bullet grazed her left side before hitting a chair. He fired
again, but Jesse grabbed the handgun, and the bullet went wild. The
shooter dropped to his knees.

“
There you are!” the man
said.

The Monk erupted from
bathroom with an automatic weapon in each hand.

Naked and dripping water,
he fired at the shooter from both hands. The shooter jumped behind
Alex’s armchair for cover. The naked Monk ducked into the bathroom
again. They began a firefight in her office.

Unwilling to risk the
handgun again, Alex reached up to the table top with her left hand
and found her plastic spoon. She broke the spoon off the end. Jesse
gave her a nod.

Weaving back and forth
from behind the armchair, the shooter was focused on The Monk. She
waited until the shooter weaved in her direction. With her left
hand, she threw the plastic projectile as hard as she could. The
spoon handle tumbled end over end and, with Jesse’s help, speared
the shooter’s left eye.

The shooter screamed, and
The Monk flew across the room. He shot twice, and Alex crawled to
Hank. He was losing blood fast. She grabbed a quilt from the back
of the couch. She used her body weight to press the fabric into his
wound. She lifted his body and saw a baseball-sized wound through
his ribs.

“
I’m okay,” Hank
said.

The Monk ran to Colonel
Gordon.

Alex grabbed a handful of
quilt and pressed it into the hole in Hank’s body. In her
trauma-heightened state of awareness, she could feel the pounding
feet of people running to their aid.

“
He’s alive,” The Monk
said of Colonel Gordon. “Oh Mary, please save the Colonel and my
brother, Hank.”

“
Help is coming!” Alex
yelled to The Monk.

Hank grabbed her hand, and
she looked down at him.

“
I have a family,” Hank
said. “A wife, kids, good life, happy, really happy, tell
them . . . tell
them . . .”

Alex took his hand with
both of hers. She looked deep into his eyes and saw death waiting
there.

“
I will tell them that you
were incredibly brave,” Alex said. “I will tell them how handsome
you were when we were in training. Women used to work our KP just
to be around you.”

“
Not you?” He coughed, and
blood splashed onto his lips.

“
I didn’t have time for
men,” Alex smiled. “But I will tell them I tried to woo you with my
cookies. You loved my peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies, but you
never said, ‘Thank you.’ Not even once. You’d stuff your gorgeous
face, scowl at me like you were tough, and stomp away.”

“
Huh,” Hank chuckled. His
face was blanched white.

“
Then I’ll make up the
most outrageous lies about your accomplishments,” Alex said. “They
will believe them because I’ll order Mac Clenaghan and Olivas to
make up even more outrageous lies.”

She gave him a warm
smile.

“
They will remember you as
a great man,” Alex said. “I will, too.”

He looked at her for a
moment.

“
They took KP to see me?”
Hank asked. “Really?”

“
It’s the truth,” Alex
nodded.

“
Hey, Jesse,” Hank
grinned. “How . . .?”

Hank lost consciousness.
The next thing Alex knew, she was surrounded by soldiers and agents
of every rank from various corners of the building. They dropped
down to give Hank first aid. Alex heard The Monk scream her name.
She jumped to her feet. The Monk had been tackled by a number of
soldiers.

“
He saved me!” Alex
yelled. “Get off of him! Get off!”

She ran to the door and
pulled at a few of the men. The paramedics arrived with Air Force
Security Forces. She was able to free The Monk in time for the
officers to take him into custody. For good measure, they arrested
her, too. They were marched down the hallway and shoved into the
back of a car. In the car, Alex gave The Monk her fatigue jacket.
He put it over his shoulders.

“
We need medics,” Alex
said.

“
We’ve already called,”
said the officer in the passenger seat.

The officer driving turned
on their siren and took off across the base.

“
Hank was alive when we
left,” Alex said in a low tone to Monk.

“
He knew,” The Monk
nodded. “He just knew. He told me last night that he wouldn’t
survive the day.”

The big man’s eyes welled
with tears.

“
He was my friend, my
brother,” The Monk said. “My
only
family . . .”

In the pre-dawn light,
Alex saw tears roll down The Monk’s face.

“
Hey,” Alex kicked the
back of the driver’s seat. “Can you check on our friends? Did they
survive?”

The driver gave her a dark
look in the rearview mirror, before asking about Hank and the
Colonel’s status over the radio.

“
En route to Anschutz,”
the radio replied. “Touch and go. The civilian arrested, but they
were able to get him going again. The Colonel is
responsive.”

They arrived at the
Buckley Air Force Jail. They were led into the building and into
the same cell Alex had spent quality time in a few years
ago.

“
Did you punch out the
shooter’s eye with a spoon?” The Monk asked after the officers
left.

“
I have skills,” Alex
said.

The Monk chuckled. They
sat down on the cot, and Alex put her arm around him.

“
Sir,” said the captain in
charge of the Buckley Air Force Base jail as he walked toward the
cell. Alex remembered him from her last visit to this jail. “We
were just informed that the civilian has died. I thought you’d want
to know.”

“
What?” The Monk asked.
“Hank’s dead?”

The Monk began to wail. He
rocked back and forth on the cot.

“
The colonel is in
surgery,” the captain said.

“
Thank you, Captain,” Alex
said.

“
I need your clothing and
weapons,” the captain said. “But, wait until I can bring you warm
clothes.”

“
Blankets,” Alex said.
“Coffee.”

“
Yes, sir. I took the
liberty of calling Dusty,” the captain said. “He should be here in
a minute. If you have things you don’t want pawed through, I won’t
stop you from giving it to him. We just need your clothing, shoes,
and weapons — that’s all. I also took the liberty of retrieving
your friend’s property, his cane, from the scene. I’ll give it to
Dusty.”

“
Do you know who shot
Colonel Gordon and Hank?” Alex asked.

“
The colonel’s driver,”
the captain said. “Funny thing is that he came highly recommended
from Lackland. He had the appropriate security clearance. He was
here only to cover the colonel’s usual driver’s R and R week. This
would have been the second time he drove the colonel.”

“
It’s not your fault,”
Alex said. “No background check would have uncovered his
motives.”

“
He did not survive to
tell us, either,” the captain said.

Alex nodded.

“
And, sir?” the captain
asked. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“
Thank you,” Alex
nodded.

Alex turned to The Monk
and grabbed on to him. In his intense grief, he fought with
her.

“
It’s Alex, Ethan,” Alex
said. “It’s just Alex.”

His entire body relaxed
against her, and he wept in her arms.

FFF
Saturday afternoon

May 21 — 2:54 p.m.
MDT

Buckley Air Force Base,
Aurora, Colorado

Alex shivered and hunkered
down into her thick Fey jacket. She had not been able to stop
shivering since the Buckley jail. It was as if a cold wind had
blown up her back and not let go. It didn’t help that the heat had
been turned off in the building. She wished she had her warm
scarf.

Of course, her right
scapula had cracked when she’d tried to shoot the driver. The
medics had shot pain medication into the site and given her a
sling. She had three stitches on her left side where she’d just
managed to miss a bullet. They encouraged her to get to the
hospital when she was released.

She was sitting in this
frigid building instead.

Everything was a big
mess.

She swallowed hard and
looked around the team workroom. She’d never been here by herself.
The acting Colonel suspended her team while “the incident” was
investigated by Air Force Security Forces.

It didn’t matter that the
driver wasn’t on their team.

It didn’t matter that she
was attacked.

It didn’t matter that Hank
was killed.

It didn’t matter that her
team had immediately jumped into gear and found that the driver
owed more than a hundred thousand dollars in gambling
debts.