Finding North (50 page)

“
I’ll get the bread,” Alex
said.

“
I’ll help carry,” Raz
said.

John stepped close to
Samantha to show her the list. Wyatt and Max moved closer to the
cart. Halfway down the aisle, Alex turned to look. John and
Samantha looked like they were taking their twins for a day out.
Raz put his arm around Alex, and they moved quickly down the aisle.
The shopping aisle ended at a wall of the store. Leena was kneeling
down to get bread from the bottom shelf in the corner of the store.
Colin was standing next to her with a cart. They didn’t acknowledge
Raz and Alex.

Alex and Raz walked past
Colin and Leena to a door. Raz pushed open the door, and Alex
walked through. Raz followed. They were standing on the edge of an
open storage area. Alex took out her handgun, and Raz had his hand
on his. He pointed to his left, and they went between two aisles of
stacked pallets of kitchen appliances wrapped in
cellophane.

Zack was standing in the
middle of the aisle. He nodded to Alex and gestured behind him.
Alex and Raz continued down the aisle. They found Matthew and Troy
standing in the middle of the aisle. They were both holding machine
guns.

“
He’ll meet you back
there,” Matthew said. He pointed with the weapon toward the aisle
behind him.

Alex nodded. Looking where
Matthew indicated, she saw that a brand-new leather couch had been
pulled from a stack of couches and set up along the end of the
aisle.

“
You’re to get there
first,” Matthew said.

Alex nodded that she
remembered. She gave Matthew and Troy a vague smile before she and
Raz went to sit on the couch. Raz put his arm on the back of the
couch. Alex gave an involuntary shiver, and Raz scooted next to
her.

“
Cold,” she said. “I can’t
seem to warm up after . . .”

“
After seeing an
energy-absorbing skeleton?” Raz asked under his breath. “Gosh I
don’t know why.”

She smiled at
him.

“
I’ve missed you,” she
said. “We should hang out.”

“
I’ve been there,” he
said. “More than the others. I took you to the
hospital.”

She smiled to acknowledge
the gift of his friendship, and his eyes scanned her
face.

“
You think my
father . . .”

“
Who knows?” Alex
shrugged. “I’ll find him. I promise you that.”

Raz nodded.

“
Do you think I’ll meet
him?” Raz asked.

Alex smiled.

“
What?” Raz
asked.

“
You’re not worried about
whether or not your mother was a dragon rider,” Alex said. “You
just worry about the dragon.”

“
Oh,
Momma . . .” Raz sighed. “She had everyone tamed.
It’s not too surprising that she could tame a creature such as
that.”

He looked at her and
nodded.

“
I’m a little surprised
that you’re not a dragon rider,” Raz said.

Alex smiled.

“
What?” Raz
asked.

“
Max and me, we’re
fairies,” Alex shrugged. “In Ireland, fairies are a different kind
of being, a separate, possibly older, species of human. Any
archeological remains are commonly thought to be fairy mounds. Move
a fairy mound and you risk utter ruin. Many people believe that
fairies were a different species, something unique.”

“
What happened to them?”
Raz asked.

“
Inter-bred with humans,”
Alex said. “Killed outright. Those folks from Rome didn’t like
anything they couldn’t control. They set a lot of Irish ‘snakes’ on
fire.”

Alex shrugged.

“
Here he comes,” Raz
said.

Alex and Raz stood from
the couch. They watched the Admiral in Charge of Special Operations
and his bodyguards walk toward them. When he arrived, his security
team went to join the Fey Team. His personal bodyguard, Waltry,
stood by one end of the couch, and Raz stood by the other end. Alex
gestured to the couch, and the Admiral sat down.

“
How’s the fishing, sir?”
Alex asked.

“
Good,” the Admiral said.
“The trout are eager but wily.”

“
That sounds like a good
thing,” Alex said.

“
My wife appreciates the
chance to spend time with the grandkids,” the Admiral said. “Thank
you for the use of your family cabin.”

“
Thank the General,
sir.”

The Admiral looked over
Alex’s face and arms.

“
Your wounds have healed
well,” the Admiral said. “How’s the brain?”

“
Better,” Alex said. “I
still go on the fritz when I’m too stressed out, but I’m working on
my Zen practice.”

The Admiral laughed at the
idea.

“
We’re fortunate to be
alive,” Alex said.

“
Yes,” the Admiral said.
“Please start with Marcos Ruiz. Did we have any idea he was
affiliated with . . .?”

“
No,” Alex said.
“Honestly, in the last few years, I haven’t had much time to think
of him. When we realized we were going to see him, I contacted
Gitmo and reviewed his therapy and medical notes.”

“
Nothing?”

“
There’s a mention that he
‘thinks he’s a jihadist,’” Alex shrugged. “The doctor thought he
was full of it. I would have, too.”

“
What have you found?” the
Admiral asked.

“
We went to talk to his
family,” Alex said. “Turns out, he was in and out of mental
institutions since he was in elementary school. He spent a couple
summers in Pakistan with his church youth group. His family thought
he was there building schools. Pakistan’s special forces, the SSG,
have been able to track his movements there.”

“
And?”

“
He was building schools
at a jihadist training camp,” Alex said. “He appears to have come
back to the US only to prepare to himself for an assignment. He
told Erin he knew who she was and that his mission’s target was
always me, the Fey.”

“
How is Erin?” the Admiral
asked.

“
Better than you’d think,”
Alex said. “Neev used mind-control techniques to set up barriers in
her mind. She didn’t take in what he said.”

“
How did he pull it off?”
the Admiral asked. “That’s what I don’t get. According to every
report, he’d been a model prisoner. Yes, he grew his hair out. Yes,
he started openly practicing Islam, but everyone there is Muslim.
It seemed normal for him to want to fit in with the
rest.”

Alex looked at the
Admiral. His face was a wash of guilt.

“
You can’t possibly know
what you don’t know,” Alex smiled when she repeated Dahlia’s
words.

“
It’s my job to know,” he
grimaced.

“
We believe his lawyer
brought Marcos Ruiz the bomb,” Alex said. “Since he was killed, we
assume the lawyer wasn’t aware it was a bomb. The explosives were
coated with chocolate and appeared to have come from Marcos’
mother. They were small, about the size of your pinky, and attached
to each other via some kind of coated wire or thread. They took a
photo of them at the desk. You couldn’t see the wires because they
were tucked under the plastic. They looked like a box of
chocolates.”

“
Nice mother,” the Admiral
said.

“
Oh, they weren’t from his
mother,” Alex said. “We think they were built in China, possibly
near the Pakistan border. Very sophisticated. We haven’t found the
manufacturer, and the SSG has found no evidence of the explosive
being made or handled in Pakistan.”

“
How many of these
chocolate-covered exploding sausages did he swallow?” the Admiral
asked.

“
Twenty-five, maybe
thirty,” Alex said. “The entire set-up was enteric coated. They
were specifically intended for swallowing. The explosives would
move right through the stomach and settle in the small intestine.
They might not even show up on an x-ray.”

“
How did he detonate
them?” the Admiral asked.

“
Forensics is unclear,”
Alex said. “Possibly with a remote, but that’s a guess.”

“
But he detonated them
himself?”

“
Yes, sir,” Alex said. “We
believe the lawyer was just a convenient patsy. Ruiz lured Erin to
Gitmo in order to kill her. He knew I’d never let her go there
alone. He hoped to kill me, as well.”

“
My other confusion has to
do with the room they were in,” the Admiral said. “Why did you
create your own interrogation room rather than use the secure
facilities they have there?”

“
I thought he might pull
something,” Alex said. “I wanted to control the room’s security.
The walls were made out of N-rated cinderblock. There were blast
shields around the viewing room as well as the hall. We set up
surveillance cameras and tried to ensure the very best safety for
Erin and the team.”

“
Blast shields?” the
Admiral asked. “Did you expect this kind of trouble?”

“
No, sir,” Alex said. “My
superior officer tells me to expect the very worst. A bomb in that
room was my very worst outcome. If I’d expected anything, it was
something from the outside. An RPG, maybe.”

“
Your superior officer is
brilliant,” the Admiral said.

“
Yes, sir,” Alex said. “We
spread the rumor that it was an advanced interrogation chamber,
but, really, the room was set up to interview Ruiz. “The table and
chairs didn’t arrive until we were already there. That’s why they
weren’t bolted down.”

“
Hutchins and Tubman owe
their lives to that unbolted table,” the Admiral said.

“
Yes, sir,” Alex said. “As
I said, we were very lucky. Trece and White Boy are still on leave
but are healing remarkably well.”

“
I saw them in the parking
lot,” the Admiral said. “White Boy was with this tiny
woman . . .”

“
His wife, Yvonne,” Alex
said.

“
She looks like a mouse to
his elephant,” the Admiral said.

“
She’s tough as nails,”
Alex smiled.

“
She’d have to be,” the
Admiral nodded. “They know about
the . . .”

“
Women, drugs, travel,
party lifestyle?” Alex asked. “Yes. They signed waivers to that
effect when Trece and White Boy entered that service.”

“
How . . .?” the Admiral asked.

“
I doubt they like it, but
many women live with a lot worse,” Alex said. “They like that it
happens away from the family. And Trece and White Boy are both
remarkably loyal. They send their paychecks home. They don’t keep
girlfriends. They’re careful about diseases. And, honestly, their
lives revolve around their families. So, to their wives, it’s just
work their husbands do in service of their country.”

“
Takes all kinds,” the
Admiral said.

“
Exactly,” Alex said. “I
have not been able to get updates on Ji Fong.”

“
That’s because he’s been
tucked away in a private hospital,” the Admiral said.

“
How is he?” Alex
asked.

“
Healing,” the Admiral
said. “He’s out of bed and walking, sort of. He wants to speak with
you, but you can understand why that’s impossible right now. I
received this to give you.”

The Admiral gave Alex an
envelope the size of a greeting card.

“
Get-well card?” Alex
asked.

The Admiral smiled. Alex
gave the card to Raz, who tucked it in his pocket.

“
Zutterberg?” the Admiral
asked.

“
Murdered by someone from
the driving pool,” Alex said. “The Monk killed the driver, so we’ll
never really know for sure why he did it. We postulate that it was
for money to cover his gambling debt.”

“
Did you get information
from Zutterberg?” the Admiral asked.

“
He took a job to follow
me the eight months before everyone was killed,” Alex said. “He
reported on some kind of plot . . .”

“
A plot?”

“
To make me and Jesse look
like we were insane,” Alex said. “With his notes, I was able to
piece together that Jesse and I went to apiaries around the world
that year. This Colony Collapse Disorder thing was just starting to
happen in Denver.”

“
I remember you talking
about it,” the Admiral said.

“
Yes, sir,” Alex said. “I
was hoping to find out what was happening to the honeybees. On at
least three occasions, two documented by Zutterberg and one he
references, we went to an apiary and saw beekeepers slaughtered
while working their hives. We believe they were pretending to be
dead. Fake blood and everything.”

“
Sounds crazy now,” the
Admiral said. “Any idea why someone would do that?”

“
Theories,” Alex said.
“Nothing concrete.”

“
What’s your most likely
theory?”

Chapter
Thirty-five

Alex gave him a long,
assessing look. He nodded to encourage her to tell him.