Finding North (42 page)

It didn’t even matter that
the driver was paid out of an account that had paid for terrorist
acts around the globe.

What mattered to the
interim commander of Buckley Air Force base was that she was not
Air Force.

She should be glad that
she wasn’t still in Buckley Jail. She was released to meet with the
Admiral, who was currently meeting with the interim
commander.

She bit her nails and
wondered how that meeting was going. She shook her head like her
dog Maggie did when she came out of the river. She couldn’t afford
to worry about that now.

She forced herself to
continue her life review. John had received a call from Colonel
Gordon’s wife while the Colonel was en route to Anschutz. Mrs.
Gordon wondered if John would mind helping her with all the medical
mumbo-jumbo.

John, in turn, was furious
with her for not calling him to let him know what had happened. Or,
at least, he seemed furious when she was finally able to speak with
him two hours later. There, in the Anschutz waiting room, he’d
repeated the same words he’d said when they were twenty years old.
“You are a member of a family, not some lone warrior.” “How could
you not consider that I’d be worried?” “How dare you be so
careless?”

She still had no answer to
these questions.

Yes, she knew she was a
part of a family. Yes, she’d known he’d been worried. No, she
hadn’t tried to be careless. She’d been arrested and kept from a
telephone. They would have continued their usual fight, but White
Boy came to tell John that Colonel Gordon was getting out of
surgery. He’d hung up on her.

Alex sighed and wondered
exactly how mad he was.

Was he “at the moment”
mad? Was he “worried” mad? Was he “one-day mad” or a week-long “you
suck” mad? Was he “you need to leave the Army” mad? Or maybe an “I
can’t do this anymore” mad?

She dropped her head to
the table in front of her and replayed all the times he’d been
these different kinds of mad. She couldn’t tell which mad he was.
If she had a phone, she would have called and asked him, but Dusty
had her cell phone, and she was locked out of her office. Anyway,
the phones in this building were shut off.

As soon as the interim
commander had been assigned, Alex was cut off from her team, her
family, her friends, and even the Intelligence Center. Raz and
Trece had been thrown out of her cell. The interim commander had
also shut down the other intelligence teams by saying the entire
building was closed due to “the incident.” He was going to rid
Buckley of intelligence teams, or at least that’s what he’d told
her.

And The Monk.

She’d managed to get Ethan
Samson Fitzgerald out of the Buckley Jail. Joseph had called the
Major General in charge of Australian Special Operations. According
to Joseph, he’d lit a fire under the interim commander’s
arse
. The Monk was
stripped of the clothing they’d given him. The Security Forces
officers had dropped the naked Australian off at the gate. Colin
and MJ had picked him up and took him to her house. At least that’s
what she thought had happened.

She had no idea what would
happen next.

According to the interim
base commander, the life she had enjoyed had ended the moment the
driver had shot Colonel Gordon. He’d rambled some idle threats that
she had been too stunned to listen to. She’d just stood at
attention until he’d vented his spleen.

Alex refused to think of
her friend Colonel Howard Gordon. She’d met him when she was in
Special Forces training. He’d been her friend her entire career and
her champion these last few years. When she was barely surviving,
he’d created a safe, warm valley for her to rest in. She said a
silent prayer to whatever God that was listening that he’d survive
his injuries.

She heard footsteps in the
hallway and got up to see who was coming. The Admiral and his
personal bodyguard, Waltry, walked down the darkened hallway. The
Admiral’s personal bodyguard indicated that she should join them in
the hall. Rather than stopping, they continued walking. She had to
jog to catch up. They went out the back. They got into a waiting
limousine. For the first time in the entire time of knowing the
Admiral, his personal bodyguard got into the back of the
limousine.

“
What . . .?” Alex started.

The Admiral shook his
head. The limousine drove off the base. Alex turned to look as the
metal bar fell.

She was being escorted off
base. It was likely she’d never be able to return.

She looked at the Admiral.
His face was impenetrable. The limousine turned left at Sixth
Avenue and took an immediate right at Airport Avenue. The limousine
pulled into a civilian car wash, and the Admiral’s bodyguard got
out of the vehicle.

“
You need to exit the
vehicle,” the bodyguard said. “Lieutenant Colonel?”

Alex was so surprised that
her eyes spontaneously welled with tears. Rather than make a scene,
she scooted out of the car. She was about to step out when the
Admiral grabbed her left arm. Their eyes caught.

Alex felt the depth of his
rage and indignation in her gut. She nodded. He slipped an
inexpensive cell phone and a hundred-dollar bill into her hand.
Alex got out of the car. The limousine pulled through the car wash.
Alex watched as the limousine pulled back onto Sixth Avenue and
headed toward the highway.

She stood, shivering in
the wind, and watched the Admiral’s limousine until it was out of
sight. Stunned and more than a little confused, she stared in the
direction the limousine had gone.

Maybe her team would show
up.

Maybe her
father.

She stood in the wind for
fifteen minutes.

No one arrived.

She was alone.

A taxicab pulled up in
front of her. Maybe this anonymous driver would take her
home.

She opened the back door
and got inside.

“
Where to?” the driver
asked.

When she leaned forward to
tell him, she realized that she knew him. He was the Somali taxi
driver who lived in the apartment building two blocks from them. He
smiled, and she relaxed.

“
Take me home, please,”
Alex said in Arabic.

Speaking in Arabic, they
argued over Somali politics and commiserated about
khat
, the drug that they
agreed was behind the destruction of Somalia. In the end, he
refused to take her fare. He dropped her at his apartment complex
and took off toward downtown.

She waved as he drove off
and walked the rest of the way home.

She let herself into her
side of the rooming house. The house was dark and quiet. Everyone
was off living their lives or resting from the last adventure.
Unsure of the level of threat against them, John had sent Quince
and the twins to Colorado Springs. Alex was standing in the middle
of the kitchen when Max came in from his side.

He hugged her. Taking her
hand, they went downstairs to the basement room they’d set up when
Wyatt moved in. This was their room. Without saying a word, they
went into the room, locked the door, and sat down on the couch. He
tugged on her until she rested against him.

Only then did she allow
herself to cry.

F

Chapter
Twenty-nine

Saturday
evening

May 21 — 5:33 p.m.
MDT

Denver,
Colorado

For the last hour, people
had trickled home to the rooming house. Troy’s boys ran across the
floors above. Ooljee and Paddie played video games in the shared
living area while Cian and Neev started dinner. The water turned on
and off a few times as people took showers or baths.

Alex and Max sat together
in their twin room.

At some point, they would
start living again. They would talk about what Max had found in New
York and the trip to China. Eventually, they would get around to
what had happened in Alex’s office and to all the implications of
her removal from base.

But right now, they were
enjoying the silent community of each other. Alex closed her eyes
and sighed.

“
Yeah, it’s probably a
good time to get moving,” Max said.

“
When are you going to
have a crisis?” Alex asked.

“
Have something planned?”
Max asked.

Alex smiled.

“
I had a crisis last
year,” Max said. “A big freakin’ life crisis, remember?”

Alex shrugged.

“
I seem to be the one who
does all the crying,” Alex said.

“
You’re the girl,” Max
smirked. “Boys don’t cry.”

He repeated what he used
to say when they were children.

“
Girls are crybabies,”
they said together and laughed.

“
I can make you cry,” Alex
repeated her usual line.

Max laughed. He patted his
lap. Alex put her head on his lap.

“
I think the world has
been after you these last few years,” Max said. “You’ve had a lot
to cry about.”

“
I guess,” she said. “Did
John call you?”

“
After he yelled at you on
the phone,” Max said. Imitating John’s London accent, he said, “I
was a complete arse. God’s sake, I didn’t even ask her if she was
injured.”

“
God’s sake,” Alex said.
“What did you tell him?”

“
You cracked your scapula
and had a flesh wound,” Max said. “Two stitches?”

“
Three,” Alex said. “I bet
that made him feel bad.”

“
He asked,” Max laughed.
“Did he . . .?”

“
Full rant,” Alex said.
“Then he hung up on me.”

“
Ah,” Max said. “Well,
he’s sorry.”

“
Hmm,” Alex
scowled.

Max laughed. He bounced
Alex’s head until she laughed.

“
You ready to hear what
happened today?” Max asked.

“
Did something happen
today?” Alex asked.

Max laughed. She smiled at
him.

“
Do I have to give up
pouting?” Alex asked.

“
No,” Max said. “But you
just might feel better.”

“
Go ahead,” Alex
said.

“
First off, you should
know that Dusty was lucky to make it off base,” Max
said.

“
What do you mean?” Alex
asked.

“
If he’d been even ten
minutes later, the new commander would have stopped him,” Max said.
“As it was, the Security Force officers went to his house and asked
for your belongings. He gave them something — clothing, stuff like
that. Stuff he had.”

“
That was smart,” Alex
said.

“
I don’t think we’d have
gotten as much done if they hadn’t come to harass him,” Max
said.

“
We?”

“
I took command of your
team,” Max said.

“
You did?”

“
I pretended to be you,”
Max said. “Fooled them completely.”

Alex laughed.

“
No,” Max said. “When
Dusty called Joseph, we did some quick shuffling so that the team
wasn’t under the interim commander’s jurisdiction. It’s tucked into
my team for now.”

“
Why?” Alex sat
up.

“
I’d tell you, but we have
to go in order; otherwise, you’ll get mad,” Max said.

“
Fine,” Alex lay back down
so her head was on his lap.

“
They went to Dusty about
fifteen minutes after he left the base,” Max said.

“
He lives right there,”
Alex said.

“
Exactly,” Max said. “He
called Joseph when they left. Like I said, we wouldn’t have had any
idea the shit was coming down the pipeline if they hadn’t come to
his house.”

“
Huh,” Alex said. “Do you
think . . .?”

“
Yes,” Max said. “I think
they were sent by your friend, the captain in charge of the Buckley
Jail, to let the team know this was going down. But get
this.”

“
What?”

“
They started trying to
get into your computer system around the same time,” Max
said.

“
They did?”

“
They tried from your
office and the team room,” Max said.

“
What happened?” Alex
asked.

“
The node shut down,” Max
said. “X had it set up to release a virus back to the hacker.
That’s what shut off the power to the building.”

“
Did they try to hack the
other teams?” Alex asked.

“
They did,” Max said. “But
they were connected to the Intelligence Center and the national
center. The CIA should be touching
down . . .”

Max looked at his
watch.

“
Oh, they’ve been there
for an hour already,” Max said.

“
Doing what?” Alex
asked.

“
Kicking ass and taking
names,” Max said. “Turns out the CIA doesn’t like it when you kick
their teams out of their offices for no reason. Especially when
they pay good money for secure, guaranteed leases on an otherwise
declining base. They like it even less when you try to hack into
their computers.”