In the Grey (20 page)

Nodding to herself, she
got up to get ready for the formal state dinner.

FFFFFF

Monday morning

November 8 – 7:37 a.m. MST
(10:37 p.m. China Standard Time)

Buckley Air Force Base,
Aurora, Colorado

“
Yes, that’s correct,” Ben
said into his cell phone as he walked down the hallway. “Yes. Give
me thirty minutes.”

He stopped short at the
entrance to the main Fey Team room.

“
Yes, that’s correct,” he
said and hung up the phone.

Hearing his voice, the
remaining Fey Team members looked up from their work.

“
Sir?” Joseph
asked.

“
I determined what you’re
supposed to miss,” Ben smiled. “Well, actually Alex figured it out,
but she left me this cryptic message
and . . .”

He looked at their stunned
faces and realized that he’d never spoken to most of them. Colin
stood up from the table in the middle of the room. He glanced at
Joseph and Joseph nodded.

“
We’re getting ready to go
to retrieve Steve Pershing,” Colin said. “Is there something I
might assist you with?”

“
They are going to kidnap
the secretary of state from an awards ceremony in Pakistan,” Ben
said.

“
Sir?” Sergeant Dusty
said. His tone indicated that he thought Ben had lost his
mind.

“
Listen,” Ben said. “They
tried to derail Captain Peaches, right?”

“
I speak Korean,” Margaret
said.

“
So does Chief Tubman,”
Ben said.

“
You do?” Margaret and
Joseph said at the same time. Royce shrugged.

“
Sure,” Royce said. “My
best friend growing up was Korean.”

“
You learned a dialect of
Pashto last year,” Ben said. “When you
were . . .”

“
Oh my God,” Joseph said.
“The secretary of state is attending an awards ceremony tomorrow
night in Peshawar. She’ll be reviewing that region all day. Do you
have confirmation, sir?”

“
Enough,” Ben
said.

“
I speak passable Pashto.
That dialect, the one you’re talking about, I speak that too,”
White Boy said. “I don’t know as many words as Trece but I’ve
talked to more people than he has.”

“
Anyone know that?” Joseph
asked.

“
Steve,” White Boy
shrugged.

Matthew laughed out
loud.

“
That’s right; Steve’s
missing,” Ben said. “So, what do Trece and Alex have in
common?”

He looked out across the
Fey Team. For the first time in the last couple of days, they were
smiling.

“
A lot,” Matthew
said.

“
One thing is that they
know people in that region of the world,” Ben said. “They have a
lot of friends there.”

“
Trece hasn’t been
anywhere without me in . . . ten years, maybe more,”
White Boy said. “I know everyone he knows, sometimes more, because
he’s usually . . . you know, doing
something.”

White Boy shrugged as if
“doing something” meant everything from having sex to killing
someone.

“
I know everyone in that
village,” Joseph said.

“
You’re supposed to be
drugged or crazed by the mind control,” Matthew said.

“
What about me?” Leena
asked.

“
Isn’t the secretary of
state’s assistant one of your best friends?” Sergeant Dusty
asked.

“
We shared an apartment
for a while when I first moved to Washington,” Leena
nodded.

“
Time to give her a call,”
Ben said.

“
Sir?” Royce
asked.

When Ben’s eyes turned to
him, he panicked. Matthew walked over to him. Royce cleared his
throat.

“
I queried my contact at
the secretary of state’s office,” Royce cleared his throat again.
“When you came in, sir.”

“
And?” Ben
asked.

“
Her usual security detail
is sitting this trip out,” Royce said. “They all got sick at the
same time. Norovirus. Highly contagious. A couple of them were
hospitalized. She’s traveling with a new set of agents. A few of
them no one’s met before. Her team was uncomfortable with it, but
she wouldn’t hear of missing a trip.”

“
This is going down,” Ben
nodded.

“
You said something about
Alex,” Troy said.

“
Alex left a message on an
old answering machine,” Ben said. “We used it before cell phones
and the like. I didn’t realize it was still active. My brother
received the message and checked out what she said. He has come to
the same conclusion. I just had to fill in the blanks.”

“
Sir, we need to help the
Fey rescue Mr. Pershing,” Matthew said.

“
And rescue the secretary
of state,” Ben nodded. “Where’s the Jakker?”

“
Here, sir,” Zack raised
his hand from a corner of the room. “We’re working out flight
plans.”

“
Can you fly in both
regions?” Ben asked.

“
I can only be in one
place at a time, sir,” Zack said. “That’s a law of
physics.”

“
Which one needs your
skill?” Ben asked.

“
Pakistan,” Zack said.
“But the Jakker always flies the Fey.”

“
Exactly,” Ben
said.

“
If the Jakker always
flies the Fey, then I’d be in China,” Zack chuckled.

“
And the Fey Team would
never get to the secretary of state in time,” Ben said.

“
Guess you’re getting a
turn at the wheel,” Zack clapped Cliff’s back. Cliff
smiled.

“
You’ll hear from Alex
when dinner’s over,” Ben said. “She’s going to want confirmation
that she was correct. Joseph? Matthew? Let’s get with the General.
When Alex calls, we’ll have everything ready for her
approval.”

“
Yes, sir,” the team
called.

Ben smiled.

“
Sir?” Vince
asked.

“
You are better than I’d
ever hoped for,” Ben said. “Now get to work. We’ll need to be ready
to board when she calls.”

“
You heard the man,”
Joseph said. “Get ready.”

The team hopped into
action.

“
Joseph, Matthew,” Ben
said. Their intelligent faces turned to look at him.
“Please.”

Smiling to himself, he
walked out the door.

F

Tuesday morning

November 9 – 6:56 a.m.
China Standard Time
(November 8 – 3:56 p.m. MST)

Yuzhou Prison, Changqing,
China

Alex nodded to Ji and
followed Raz into a small, cement-lined room. The cold, sterile
room had no furniture. A slight maroon stain surrounded the drain
in the middle of floor. Just under the heavy disinfectant odor lay
the smell of death, a lot of death. She gave an involuntary shiver
and Raz shifted closer to her. She pressed her shoulder into him
and looked up. He smiled.

Last night, they had gone
through the ritual of gourmet dinner and dancing until Anna Chen,
Max’s date from the US Consulate, said she needed to get home. They
raced in her limousine to the US Consulate in Chengdu where they
worked until almost dawn, getting ready for the two
actions.

One Fey Team would head to
Pakistan, while the other half was coming to China. Alex agreed
with the assessment to shake things up, and gratefully, no one
argued. They’d spent the last two years preparing for the
eventuality that they would have to work more as individuals and
less as a team. This would be their first test.

The trick would be a
surprise. Joseph and Matthew had done their best to shake up the
teams. Alex took it one step further. She hoped she was right.
Their best chance was to snag the secretary of state before she was
in the captors’ custody. It was a big risk. If they failed, the
consequences would be too dire to imagine. Alex closed her eyes and
said a silent prayer that they would be able to pull this off. She
glanced at Raz and saw the same concern on his weary face. He gave
her a soft smile and their eyes held.

They heard the door rattle
and turned to look. Two armed Chinese guards brought Cee Cee Joiner
into the room. She’d expected him to look broken, defeated, or
maybe a little thinner. Instead, he looked exactly how he’d always
looked – an angry towering figure of a man who was used to an easy
life.

“
You sure took your own
sweet time,” he said.

Even handcuffed and
shackled, he continued to act as if she was a lazy servant who was
late picking him up. Surprised, his Chinese guards looked at him
and then at Alex. She shrugged. They hooked his chain through a
loop in the floor.

“
Thank you,” Alex said in
Mandarin. “We can take it from here.”

One of the guards left the
room.

“
We will be watching,” the
remaining guard said in Mandarin. “If you need assistance, you can
ring us here.”

He pressed a red button
near the door. An alarm echoed through the prison. He used a key to
turn off the alarm.

“
You have one hour,” the
guard said. “We’ll flicker the lights when you have ten
minutes.”

“
Xiè
Xie
,” Alex thanked him again.

He gave her a slight nod
and left the room.

“
Well, let’s get it over
with,” Cee Cee said in his thick Texas drawl. “You can take these
offa me. I’m ready to go home.”

“
I’m sorry, Cee Cee,” Alex
said. “You’ve reached the end of the line. No amount of diplomacy
is going to save you this time.”

“
What about him?” Cee Cee
sneered at Raz.

“
You killed a young woman,
Mr. Joiner,” Raz said. “And you’ve entered the country
illegally.”

“
You mean, because I don’t
have access to dough anymore, I’m stuck,” Cee Cee raised his hand
and pointed at Alex. As if it could stab her, he lowered his hand
in a kind of chopping motion. “This is your fault.”

“
Oh?” Alex pretended to be
surprised. “How so?”

“
You seized my funds,” Cee
Cee said. “Talked Cecil into cutting me off.”

“
Hmm,” Alex said. She
nodded to Raz, and he took a small plastic folder from the inside
pocket of his jacket. He gave her the folder. “I promised your
ex-wives that I would bring this to you.”

“
My who?” Cee Cee looked
genuinely confused. “I don’t have any ex-wives, honey.”

“
You’re still married to
Buffy,” Raz said.

“
That’s a fact,” Cee Cee
said.

“
And the others?” Alex
felt her heart squeeze with rage. “Trixie? Sue Ann? Becki?
Courtney?”

Cee Cee
shrugged.

“
What about your
children?” Alex asked.

“
Come on, honey, even
you’ve got to have figured the dollars and sense of that
situation,” Cee Cee said.

“
And the ones you killed?”
Alex asked. “David? Daniel? Marvin?”

“
Who?” Cee Cee shrugged.
“Is that who I killed in China? ‘Cuz I’d sure hate to have to die
over something as stupid as the death of some dumb kid.”

Alex took a step toward
him, and Raz put a hand on her arm. He didn’t hold her back. He
just put a hand on her arm to remind her of who she was. She turned
to look at him. He gave her a soft smile. She knew he wouldn’t
judge her if she beat Cee Cee Joiner to death. In fact, he might
join her. She nodded and turned to face Cee Cee.

“
This is a picture of
David and a picture of Daniel,” Alex said. “I’m showing them to you
so that you’ll recognize them when they escort you to hell. This is
Marvin and a picture of his mom, Jenni-June.”

“
What did I do to
Jenni-June?” Cee Cee asked. Alex paused for a moment. It was the
first time he’d indicated remembering any wife but
Buffy.

“
After Marvin’s funeral,
she got drunk and ran her car into a pillar of a freeway overpass,”
Alex said.

“
How does that have
anything to do with me?” Cee Cee asked.

“
Grief-induced suicide,”
Raz said.

“
That’s all we wanted to
say,” Alex said. “We’ll let them execute you now.”

She moved to stand in
front of the door.

“
Wait,” Cee Cee said.
“Don’t you want to know who killed your team?”

“
That’s all right,” Alex
said. “You’ve already indicated that you don’t know
anything.”

The lock to the door
clicked open and Alex put her hand on the door knob.

“
I lied,” Cee Cee
said.

Alex stopped
moving.

“
Give me one reason I
shouldn’t just let them shoot you now?” Alex asked.

When Cee Cee didn’t say
anything, Alex turned around to look at him.

“
I can’t think of one,”
Cee Cee said. “Listen, I know what I am. I do. It’s just
that . . .”