Mirrored Man: The Rob Tyler Chronicles Book 1 (18 page)

“No,” Rob answered, too quickly. “At least I
don't think so.”

“You don't
think
so?” Her concern was
growing.

“I'm sorry, Button.” He didn’t how to answer
her. “Like I said, I don't know. At first he was fine and then …
pppphhhhtttt.” He made a raspberry.

Carol was silent as they drove through an
intersection. She forced herself take Rob's words at face value.
She knew he wouldn't be deliberately evasive, so she turned her
questions to the more practical. “Well, did he give you an
assignment?”

Rob grimaced. “Well, yes and no.” He felt
bad. Every other time he had found himself in a similar
conversation with her, he had been able to, at the very least, give
her the news that he would be leaving. He'd be flying out on this
date and returning on or about that date. But this time, Benny
really hadn’t given Rob anything to go on.

Carol looked at him with a straight face.
“Rob, you're beginning to annoy me.”

“I'm sorry, Button.” He placed his hands on
his knees and stared through the windshield. “I'm really not doing
it on purpose.”

She couldn't help but smile. He always had a
way of relieving her stress even as he continued to be a pain in
the butt. “Well, which is it, Hun … yes or no?”

“Okay.” Rob was trying to remember the
conversation word for word. “This is what he said. He has
recommended me”—he jabbed his thumb at himself, although Carol was
too busy merging into traffic to notice—“to be the subject of a …
project.”

Comfortable with her position on the road,
she glanced over at him. “Was that it?”

Rob held his hands up in frustration. “Well,
yeah, that … and that I have until Friday to give him a yes or no
answer.”

Carol was looking from the road to Rob and
back again. “He said he wants you to be in some kind of project and
you have until Friday to tell him yea or nay?”

“Yup,” Rob said, slapping his knees.

Carol turned her full attention back to
driving. She was less concerned about the situation, but still
wasn't satisfied. “Well, where is this project? Is it
overseas?”

“He didn't say.”

“When does it start?”

“He didn't tell me.”

“How long is it supposed to last?”

“I don't know,” Rob replied with a nervous
laugh.

Carol’s brows furrowed. “Well, how the heck
are you supposed to make a decision based on that?”

Rob pursed his lips and shook his head. “See
what I mean?”

“Uh huh,” she replied.

“There is one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He said that I should talk about it
with you.”
I thought we weren’t gonna discuss it with
her.

“With me?” Carol was mystified. She had long
ago accepted the fact that there were certain things that a husband
in the military couldn't tell his wife. Even though, on a few
occasions, Rob had confided in her some things that would probably
cost him his career if the Navy ever found out.

“I know,” Rob said in frustration.

There was a long silence as they continued
down I-26 to Summerville and home. They were both deep in thought.
Neither was sure where to go next. They didn't speak until Carol
turned onto their street.

“I guess what you have to do is ask yourself
whether Benny would ask you to do anything that would place you in
danger—and a
project
doesn't sound like it will—or if he
would ask you to break your moral or ethical convictions.”

There was the term Rob wanted to avoid using
in front of Carol. Moral convictions. Benny had mentioned the same.
But what moral convictions had he been talking about?

She pulled into their driveway, switched off
the engine, and looked him in the eye. Then, as if she had been
reading his mind, she said, “If there's anything that you”—she took
a breath and continued—“that you can't tell me about this, then
maybe you should call and make an appointment with Associate Pastor
Wallace.”

“Pastor Wallace?” At first Rob didn't
recognize the name. “You mean Brother Phil?”

Carol nodded.

Brother Phil was the associate pastor of
Summerville Christian Assembly, where they were members. The idea
threw Rob for a loop. They had been attending the church since they
moved to Summerville nine years before. At first, they had only
joined because they found out that the church had a good
international missions program and that it had a sister church in
Russia. Later, they had come to enjoy the staff at SCA, especially
Brother Phil, who played along with Rob on the church softball
team. But that was about all the contact he’d had with the man,
apart from the occasional “hey” as they went to and from church on
Sundays.

Briefly, Rob considered telling Carol that
there was nothing in the world he couldn't talk to her about. But
he quickly dismissed that idea, because they both would have known
it was a lie. No, he realized Carol was being a good military wife.
She knew instinctively that there was something he wasn't telling
her, and she trusted Phil Wallace to give Rob some godly insight to
help him make this decision.

He got out and opened the back door where C.
C. was asleep. He picked her up, taking care not to drop Opus, as
Carol retrieved Christian from the other side. He looked over the
car at her in the darkened driveway. “Would you mind giving the
church a call for me in the morning, Button?”

She smiled at him. “It'll cost ya,” she
joked.

SENATOR MARGARET
Kingsley, the
three-term Democrat from the state of Wyoming and Chairperson of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, sat across the white
linen-clad table from Captain Benny Walsh in the dining room of the
Sou'Wester restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland
Avenue in Washington, D.C. She was born in Georgetown, British
Guiana in 1952, but her parents had immigrated to the Unites States
when she was still an infant. Eventually, they settled in Casper,
Wyoming, where her parents took whatever work they could get from
the Catholic Ministries there. Her father, a taxidermist, soon
opened up his own shop to service the locals and out-of-towners who
hunted Wyoming's fare.

The senator graduated from Natrona County
High School in 1969, where she had earned a track and field
scholarship to the University of Wyoming at Laramie. There she
earned her bachelor's degree in political science. Upon returning
to Casper, she found work in the mayor's office as county clerk and
eventually worked her way up to county commissioner before her bid
for the senate eleven years ago. A serious, uncomplicated woman and
extremely to-the-point, she demanded much from her subordinates.
And they were well rewarded for their efforts.

She was wearing a gray business suit and a
pink blouse, which accented her medium brown skin nicely. But her
complexion was also beginning to show some signs of the stress she
found herself under. She wore her black hair short and her ears and
hands were distinctly devoid of jewelry. She would have sworn that
she had turned her cell phone off for the lunch engagement, but she
said when it rang, “The show must go on.”

“I don't care about any of that, Tom. That
wasn't in the deal,” she said, her frustration growing. Noticing
that her staffer, Keri Wadsworth, was scribbling notes furiously in
an attempt to keep up with the one-sided conversation, the senator
put her hand on the girl's steno pad to stop her.

Keri wasn't what most people would consider
attractive. Rather plain with her mousy brown hair pulled back
tightly in a bun, she was slightly on the short and heavy side.
Benny guessed that she was in her mid-twenties. Her dark, almost
black eyes stood out even behind the horn-rimmed glasses she wore.
She had on a black pants suit with a plain white blouse, completing
her drab appearance. It reminded Benny of a nun's habit. But the
thing Benny found most annoying about the young woman was her habit
of looking down when she spoke.

When Kingsley received the call, Benny
stopped eating the sautéed red snapper he had ordered. The food was
delicious, but he considered it rude to eat while she was talking
on the phone.

“Well, he already agreed to the price. What
he's asking for is highway robbery.” She rolled her eyes.

The server appeared and asked, “More wine,
ma'am?”

The senator was still engrossed in her
conversation, so Keri took the initiative. “Yes, please,” she said
with a nod toward Kingsley’s glass. Taking the bottle of
Chateau
Fuisse'
Pouilly Fuisse' Les Brules
from its
tricycle-shaped bottle holder, the waitress filled the glass and
then turned to the captain. “Sir?”

“No, thank you.” One glass was Benny's limit
when he was conducting business.

From what the captain could ascertain, the
senator was having difficult dealings with a landowner over a
particular parcel that the Air Force wanted in order to build a new
maintenance facility.

“Well tell him that the additional eighty or
so jobs this annex is going to provide to
his
community
should make him very well-thought-of by the people there. And if
that doesn't work, tell him we can simply take the land. It's his
choice.” With that, she closed her phone and turned her attention
back to Benny. “Pardon the interruption, Captain. Where were we?”
she asked, splitting her attention between him and her crab
bisque.

Benny smiled. “Not at all, Senator. I was
explaining that the interview with Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson was
unproductive. When I mentioned the nature of the program, he
declined the invitation.”

“Well, who the fu…” She glanced at the young
staffer who had begun taking notes again. “Who's left? I mean, we
started out with almost two-and-a-half dozen candidates and now
were down to … how many?”

The captain painted on a serious face. “One,
Senator.”

“One?” Kingsley dropped her spoon on her
bread plate with a loud
clang
. “How can we be down to the
last man?” She was incensed. “I wanted at least three candidates to
be at the ready.”

The implications of that last statement
hardened the captain’s resolve.
So she wanted back-ups just in
case, huh?

Kingsley saw the subtle change in his
demeanor. She hadn't gotten to where she was today without being
able to read people. “To be ready when we bring the program into
full production,” she added.

Production?
What on earth were
they going to produce?

Kingsley dabbed at the corners of her mouth
with her napkin as she sat up straight, matching the captain’s
posture. She sized the man up before she asked, “Is your heart
really in this, sir?”

Benny returned her gaze. “I will continue to
perform my duties as ordered, Senator.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “Aren't you even
the slightest bit curious about what you've been selecting these
men for?”

“A sailor doesn't have the luxury of
curiosity, senator. He simply follows orders.”

She took another sip of wine and leaned
back. “What about this last man?”

“Commander Robert Tyler,” Benny stated
matter-of-factly. “He's a very good man. Out of the original list,
he would have been my first choice.”

Was that it?
Did the captain want
his man to be the one? Was Walsh looking for a feather to put in
his cap by having his “first choice” be the one who did the deed,
so to speak?
She smiled slyly. “Your first choice,” she
repeated. “Then why has it taken so long to complete this process?
It's been a year-and-a-half.” She placed more emphasis on the
latter statement, her annoyance growing.

Benny looked at the staffer whose attention
hadn't left her pad. She was patiently recording their words but
showed no real interest in the subject itself. “I was not the
individual who developed the selection process, Senator. I was
simply the man who implemented it. As I understand it, this
project”—he shifted his eyes back to Kingsley and smiled—“was of
the utmost importance, and only the best-of-the-best candidate
would be acceptable. I was giving my assignment its due
diligence.”

Kingsley softened a bit. She was still wound
up over the conversation on the phone and wasn't giving the captain
the respect he deserved. “Of course you are, Captain.” She leaned
forward and managed a smile. “May I call you Bernard?”

“Benny. And yes ma'am, you may.” His
expression didn’t change. He had to work for politicians. He didn't
have to like them.

“So, tell me about this Commander … Tyler,
was it?” She forced herself to relax.

“Commander Rob Tyler. Former SEAL. A sniper.
He holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering, and he's been an
instructor down in Charleston for about nine years now.”

Kingsley’s arched eyebrows betrayed the fact
that she was impressed with the man's brief but varied résumé.
“Sounds like a smart cookie. And a former SEAL, too?”

“SEAL Team Six, before their designation
changed to DEVGRU. As I said, Senator, he was always my first
choice. But I didn't want to create an air of favoritism in the
selection process,” he lied. If Benny had been on board with the
genetic experiment he would have presented Rob first, and been done
with it.

Kingsley bought it. “Don't be silly,
Captain. Everyone I've talked to has confirmed what I have always
suspected. That you are a professional.” She took a sip of her
Pouilly Fuisse'
. “No one would have suspected you of
anything inappropriate,” she lied. “But I do appreciate your
attention to detail and sense of fair play.”

“Thank you, Senator.”

“Now, about Tyler. How old a man is he?”

“Forty-six.”

Kingsley's eyes widened. “That's kind of
pushing the outside of the envelope, isn't it Ben?”