Apocalypse Crucible (34 page)

“Then we’ll talk later.”

Goose chose a more diplomatic course. “Later.” That was his answer, but his intention was to stay too busy until she gave up on talking to him again.

“That’s lip service, First Sergeant.” Danielle glared at him, but her instant anger was distracted, too.

“Ma’am,” Goose said, “I’ve got wounded men out there and a defensive line that’s been hurt badly. I need to get to them.”

“Goose.” Danielle’s voice was softer, punctuated by a sudden distant roar of an assault rifle on full auto. “That man, whatever name he gave you, he’s dangerous. I’ve seen him before. In Romania while I was covering a terrorist group the government ordered killed.” She paused. “I was working with an informant. The informant told me about the man I saw talking with Remington in the hallway. The next day, my informant was dead. Someone had hung him inside the shower at his hotel long enough to nearly asphyxiate him, then slit his jugular and let him bleed out. He didn’t die easily.”

The declaration, devoid of emotion, shocked Goose. The woman had seen more than he would have thought. “What does that have to do with the man you saw talking to Remington?” Goose carefully left out the fact that he’d had a conversation with Cody.

Danielle’s eyes turned cold and hard. “I believe he killed my informant. I think it was, in some way, my fault. My director wanted some edgy copy. I gave them the story about the potential CIA link to the terrorist group, to the fact that our government possibly had a hand in the political unrest in Bucharest.” She paused to swallow. Her left eye twitched. “I didn’t warn my source. When I couldn’t get hold of him, I went to the hotel where I’d put him up. I was the one who found his body.”

“I’m sorry,” Goose said.

“I checked him into that hotel, you see,” Danielle said. “So it was my fault. My company credit card was easily traced. I was reporting on rogue American CIA efforts, right? I should have known they could easily trace the cards I was using.”

“You think the CIA killed him.”

“Yeah.” Danielle nodded. “The terrorists would have made a bigger deal of it. They’d have killed my source and thrown his body into a public area with a note pinned to his chest with a knife.”

“But the CIA—”

“They wanted things kept quiet. The execution was clean. The Romanian police—” Danielle shrugged—“the government does a lot of business with the United States. Movies. Tourism. And they didn’t want terrorists there anyway. The murder was kept quiet. Even the network I worked for treated the story strictly hands-off. My source was a footnote. Nothing.” Her voice tightened. “And I got him killed.”

Goose looked away from the woman and focused on the hotel. “You think that man in there—”

“He was there.” Danielle’s voice was firm. “He was
there,
Goose. I know that. I saw him. Once. But I saw him.”

Switching his gaze back to her, Goose said, “If you only saw him once—”

Her eyes held his. “I’m sure, Goose. It was him. Before the events were over in Romania, he and his team left a trail of bodies behind them. I never found the witnesses or the kind of proof that I needed to go on the air with the story, but I know it was them.” She drew in a ragged breath. “If this guy is here now, he’s not here to help the military. No matter what he says. He’s following someone else’s orders.”

“Whose?” Goose asked.

“Fitzhugh’s, maybe. There are a lot of rumors around that the American president’s hands are dirty in international politics. Or someone else.” Danielle bit her lower lip. “Maybe not. Maybe it was just independent action. Some of these CIA guys? They’re powers unto themselves. The American government doesn’t want to know every dirty little trick those agents play to get the job done.”

Goose remembered some of the horror stories he’d heard from the old guard about Vietnam. The CIA had been responsible for a considerable amount of carnage in that war.

“And if a president does want to know,” Danielle continued, “you can bet that he doesn’t want anyone else to. Not everyone in the agency is like this guy. Only a few of the black ops field guys. But I’m telling you now that this is one of those guys you don’t want to trust. No matter what he offers you.”

Goose kicked that around in his head. Cody had obviously gone to Remington to retrieve his captured agent. Remington had refused.

Both of them, he was sure, were after Icarus. But his mind seized on another important fact that he didn’t think Danielle Vinchenzo had yet acknowledged.

“This guy knows you,” Goose said.

Danielle started to disagree.

Goose cut her off. “If he killed your source in Romania, he knows you. If he thinks you’re a risk to him, things could go badly for you. And if he was following your credit card, like you say he was, it might even be you he wanted back in Romania. I’d watch your back.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Okay.”

“Don’t let him see you as a threat,” Goose advised. “You’re a reporter. Here. Doing a story on the Syrian push into Turkey.”

Danielle didn’t say anything.

“Stay away from him, Miss Vinchenzo,” Goose said. “Stay away from him until we figure out what to do.”

Raising an eyebrow, Danielle asked, “
We?
”

Goose sighed. He was getting drawn into a lot more than he wanted. There were too many sides being drawn inside the city, and the Syrian army stood just outside the walls waiting for an opportunity to kill them all. Keeping straight the alliances he had made was going to be hard.

“We,
ma’am,” Goose told her. “On this issue, I’m with you to a limited extent. And the first time you cross me up, I’m gone and you’re on your own.”

She returned his gaze full measure, then gave a nod. “Fair enough, First Sergeant. But that threat’s a two-way street. I trusted you enough to warn you. I don’t like being wrong.” Without another word, she placed a hand on the Hummer’s side and heaved herself from the vehicle.

Surprised, and maybe feeling a little threatened, Goose watched her go. She never turned back, never looked over her shoulder. He sat back in his seat and called for his driver.

United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 2255 Hours

“Jenny! Hey, Jenny!”

Holding the saucepan with both hands as she poured chicken noodle soup into the olive-drab thermos standing on the kitchen counter, Jenny looked over her shoulder but managed to keep an eye on the pouring at the same time. The soup smelled great, and she hoped Megan was in good enough spirits to appreciate it.

“What?” she asked.

Casey Schmidt held the cordless phone up. “Phone. For you.”

Teenagers clustered around the kitchen table still playing Monopoly. The game had progressed quickly. Motels sprang up everywhere around the board.

“Gimme a sec.” Jenny finished pouring and put the saucepan in the sink on top of the mountain of dirty dishes that never seemed to go away despite her best efforts. She and the dishwasher were barely able to keep up with the demand for clean plates, bowls, and silverware. She tried to clean pots and pans as she went.

Megan and the other counselors were talking about getting school going again to provide a larger area for the teens and also to provide a stable environment. At least the cafeterias at the facility there were equipped to handle the feeding workload.

The microwave timer dinged for attention. One of the guys got up from the table and pushed by Jenny. When he opened the door, the smell of buttered popcorn filled the room in a fresh warm wave.

Jenny sealed the thermos and wiped her hands on a towel. She made her way toward Casey and the phone.

“Who is it?” Jenny asked. Her first thought was that it was Megan calling to let her know not to come to the hospital because Leslie Hollister had died. Jenny didn’t know what she was going to say if that was the case.

“A guy,” Casey answered. She was thirteen and gangly with a serious overbite. Having her blonde hair pulled up in pigtails made her look even younger.

“Did you get a name?”

Casey shook her head. “He didn’t give it. Just said he wanted to talk to you.” She eyed Jenny speculatively. “Do you have a boyfriend?” “No,” Jenny said crisply.

During the last few days she’d been inundated with personal questions. That came from her acceptance as an authority figure, Megan had said. Kids wanted to know adults so they could better understand them and the perimeters they were allowed, and then how far they could push those perimeters.

Jenny figured it was a lot like a prisoner finding out how far he could push the jailer. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” She took the phone before Casey could ask why not, which she was certain would be the next question out of the younger girl’s mouth. Holding the handset to her ear, Jenny said, “Hello.”

“Jenny? Is that you, girlie?”

As always when she talked with this man on the other end of the phone connection, Jenny’s stomach twisted with relief and dread. She felt relieved because she knew he was still there. Not vanished. Not dead. But she felt dread because of all the bad memories of him. As soon as she felt that, guilt came charging up from the rear to the head of the line.

She worked to keep her voice calm and level. “It’s me.”

He waited a second, and she could imagine him taking a puff from his cigarette. “Do you know who this is?” He’d been drinking. She knew at once because when he drank, he liked to play games that he thought were cute.

“Of course I know who this is, Dad.” Jenny hated his games.

Sometimes he did it to prove how much smarter he was than she, and sometimes he did it to be cruel.

“Thought maybe you might have forgot. It’s been days since I seen you.”

“I called every day, Dad. Three and four times a day after the phones here started working again.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. Weird how CallNotes work. I mean, you can leave a message even when a guy’s phone isn’t working.

’Course, he don’t get it till the phone’s up and working again.”

Jenny turned and made her way to the utility room. The noise from the Monopoly game and the crowd of movie watchers made having a conversation almost impossible. Not wanting anyone to see her talk to her father because he always had such an emotional effect on her, and especially when she was tired, she opened the utilityroom door and stepped out onto the small stone patio Megan had told her Goose and his friend Bill had laid one summer.

Plants lined the patio area. A plastic tarp covered the gas grill. Dishes that people had abandoned littered the patio table and chairs. Farther back, a tire swing hung from a thick branch, a sandbox held a collection of Tonka toys, and a small fort flew a black pirate flag that had faded in the sun. Jenny had seen a picture of Chris and Goose inside the fort. Both of them were dressed as pirates, carrying plastic swords and wearing eye patches.

“Are you all right?” Jenny asked.

“Do you care?”

Guilt slammed into Jenny like a fist. Even though she knew leaving Fort Benning was next to impossible and would have caused stress between her and Megan—in addition to leaving Megan overwhelmed by the number of teens she presently had staying at her house—Jenny had felt glad to have a reason not to leave.

“Of course I care.”

“Seems to me if you cared, you’d have come home sometime over these last few days.” Her father’s accusation was flat and hard.

“I couldn’t come home. Have you watched the news?”

“You know I try to stay away from that. Buncha depressing people with sad lives is what it is.”

Like yours is any better,
Jenny couldn’t help thinking before she could stop herself. Then she immediately felt bad. He was her father and she was supposed to love him.
I do love him,
she told herself fiercely. And that was the truth. However, the truth was that she also didn’t like her father much most days. Loving someone and liking him were totally different.

She said, “I know you don’t make a habit of watching the news, but with everything that has gone on, I thought maybe you might have watched.”

“I didn’t.” He paused, and this time she could hear him take a drag on the cigarette.

“A lot of things have gone on. Things that you should have known about.”