Finding North (56 page)

“
Sher and his wife,” Alex
said, making sure not to mention Khudija’s name. “They work with
the Doctors Roy.”

“
They say he is fairy
born,” the leader said.

“
He is,” Alex
said.

“
The woman helped my wife
when she was with child and in trouble,” the leader said. “We had a
healthy baby boy, but we can have no more children for a
while.”

Alex held her breath. The
men around her shifted and the tension rose.

“
Why is that?” the leader
asked.

“
Girls often don’t
survived childbirth or end up with injuries which make them unable
to have children,” Alex said.

“
She barely lived,” the
man said.

The leader walked away
from Alex.

“
Nineteen,” the man said.
The men around him mumbled around Alex. “And when she’s
nineteen?”

“
She can have as many
children as you desire,” Alex said.

“
That’s what the doctor
said,” the man nodded. “But, how will we have sons to work the
fields?”

The men nodded in
agreement. Every eye focused on Alex. She felt more than saw her
team shift, ready to defend her, and themselves, from
attack.

“
You will work on each
other’s fields, harvest each other’s crops,” Alex said. “And when
your children are grown, they will work the land after school. This
is how it’s always been among the Pashtun. It’s how it shall be in
the valley.”

The leader gave her a long
look. She knew that this was the moment he would either decide to
let them go or kill them.

“
Congratulations on the
birth of your son,” Alex said. “And the health of your
wife.”

The leader
nodded.

“
Sher says that you are
fair,” the leader said.

“
If you let us go, I will
be so grateful that I will overlook anything that’s happened here,”
Alex said.

The man nodded. He made a
gesture with his hand. The small group of men gathered their
belongings and moved on. Alex signaled to Matthew. She took her
scarf from him and wrote a quick note with the yellow pencil in her
pocket.

“
Go,” she said. She held
out the package to Troy. He grabbed the package and a headlamp
before heading out into the dark.

MJ jumped out of the
tunnel and began to assess injuries. Leena was able to walk with
help, and Colin’s arm was broken. Even though James said he was all
right, his head wound was serious. They were just talking about how
to get to Kabul when a Chinook flew overhead. Troy arrived from his
mission.

“
You didn’t really expect
me to walk, did you?” Zack asked as the Chinook landed.

A team of medics hopped
out to help. They were on their way back to Bagram Air Base. While
James, Leena, and Colin went to the hospital, Sergeant Dusty found
them a place to bunk. They split up into partners, with Joseph
partnering with Sergeant Dusty. Alex was lying on the bed when Raz
came in from reviewing the video feed of the Boy Scout’s last
moments.

“
Any word on what happened
to the Sergeant that let us in?” Alex asked.

“
He’s . . .” Raz started.

“
Dead,” they said
together.

“
Rifle shot when he was
exiting the helicopter we took to the black site,” Raz
said.

“
Of course he is.” Alex
said. “Seems like they’ve outsmarted us on every op.”

“
Hey, at least you didn’t
have to hear him say, ‘The joke’s on you,’” Raz said.

“
But he said
it?”

“
Just before the site
blew,” Raz said. “In Russian, no less.”

“
Eniac, Boy Scout,
Zutterberg, . . .”

“
Joiner,” Raz said.
“Ruiz.”

“
Hector,” Alex nodded.
“Eleazar. Everyone we thought might be behind this is dead.
Everyone we thought might know who is behind this is
dead.”

“
It’s a miracle we’re not
dead,” Raz said.

“
How long does that luck
hold out?” Alex asked.

“
We have fairy luck,” Raz
said.

“
I just wish I
knew . . .”

“
Knew what?”

“
Who’s doing this?” Alex
asked. “Who did the Boy Scout work for? Who would he so easily
trade his life for? Who killed the MI-6 agent, whatever his name
was? Someone was there, right there,
and . . .”

Alex shrugged.

“
They vanished,” Raz
said.

Alex nodded.

“
How’s your head?” Raz
asked.

“
It’s okay,” Alex said. “I
took one of those pills.”

“
The knockout
ones?”

“
The vertigo ones,” Alex
said. “I don’t want to be too out of it. Never know when this place
will blow up.”

“
Good thinking,” Raz
said.

He unzipped his black
jumpsuit and took it off.

“
Nice bruises,” Raz said
about the bruises on her face from being punched.

“
I’ve been icing them,”
Alex said.

She held up the ice packs
MJ had made for her. He went to his suitcase and threw a tube of
arnica gel at her. She smiled, and he went into their
bathroom.

She closed her eyes and
tried to count the hours until John was off work. She started to
drift off.

“
Alex!” Raz shook her
shoulder. He was naked and wet from the shower.

“
Yes?” Her eyebrows
furrowed with concern, and her head pulsed with pain. She
grimaced.

“
Go through the names
again,” Raz said.

“
What names?”

“
Of the people we thought
were behind this,” Raz said.

“
Are you okay?”

“
I’ll tell you where
they’re from,” Raz said.

“
Can’t you just tell me?”
Alex asked.

“
I’m not sure,” Raz said.
“Just say them.”

“
Eniac.”

“
Born in Pennsylvania,”
Raz said. “Father worked at the Moore School of Electrical
Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.”

“
Where the first computer,
Eniac, was created,” Alex said.

“
Exactly,” Raz said. “His
father went to Texas Tech in Lubbock. Kind of a math genius.
Recruited by Mauchly. His mother, too. Eniac spent every summer as
a kid on his grandparents’ ranch just outside of
Lubbock.”

“
What?” Alex sat
up.

“
Go through the list,” Raz
said.

“
Eleazar,” Alex
said.

“
That’s what triggered
it,” Raz said. “His specialty was psychological terror,
right?”

“
Sure,” Alex
said.

“
He grew up in Jerusalem,
right?” Raz asked.

“
Sure,” Alex said.
“Neighbor to Sumit Roy.”

“
Exactly,” Raz said.
“Sumit told me that, for a time, their neighborhood was popular
with Americans, especially from Texas.”

“
Why?”

“
Oil,” Raz said. “They
were researching Israel’s oil fields.”

“
Israel has always wanted
to be energy independent,” Alex said. “They have a natural gas
field that would make the Utes jealous.”

“
Exactly,” he said. “We
know Joiner paid him.”

“
You think Cecil Joiner or
someone from Pecos Oil spent time in Jerusalem when Eniac was
growing up?” Alex asked.

“
Exactly,” he said. “Who
else?”

“
Boy Scout?”

“
We know he’s Buffy
Joiner’s brother,” Raz said. “You checked his DNA against Tristan
and that coffee mug Tristan stole from Buffy’s house.”

“
Joiner is obvious,” Alex
said.

“
Texas born and bred,” Raz
said.

“
Ruiz,” Alex
said.

“
Haemon Jasper,” Raz
said.

“
We need to get Mattie and
Troy in here,” Alex said.

Chapter
Thirty-nine

He nodded. Alex grabbed
her phone.

“
You should get something
on,” Alex said.

Startled, he looked down.
His own nakedness surprised him. Embarrassed, he grabbed clothing
from his suitcase and went into the bathroom. Alex called Matthew
and asked him to bring Troy. There was a knock at the door.
Thinking it was Matthew, she yelled, “Come in.”

Colin stuck his head in
the room.

“
Hey, Col,” Alex
said.

“
I came to check up on
you,” Colin said. “MJ said you had vertigo after the explosion, and
I . . .”

Matthew and Troy came in
the door behind him.

“
Are we having a meeting?”
Colin came into the room.

“
No, I wanted to ask them
something,” Alex said.

Colin went to where Alex
had set out her medications.

“
What?” Troy
asked.

Colin counted her
medications to make sure she’d taken them. Seeing she’d missed a
few, he grabbed the pills and brought them to Alex. She scowled at
him.

Raz came out of the
bathroom.

“
Oh, good,” Raz said.
“You’re here. Do you have any idea where Marcos Ruiz is
from?”

“
It was in the file,” Troy
said. “West Virginia.”

“
I was asking Matthew,”
Raz said.

“
Yeah, like I could tell,”
Troy said. “Hey, Alex, I’ll take your pills.”

“
Very funny,” Alex
said.

“
The file does say ‘West
Virginia,’” Matthew said. “But . . . you’re right.
There’s something about that, isn’t there? Do you mind if I call
Erin?”

“
Go ahead,” Alex
said.

Matthew took out his cell
phone and walked out of the room. Colin nudged her to take the
pills. She took the pills from him.

“
Was I just his
bodyguard?” Troy asked.

“
What’s gotten into you?”
Raz asked.

“
Mechanics from Kandahar,”
Troy said. “They corner me every time I’m in Afghanistan — Can you
fix this? Can you make that? What about this?”

“
Fix what?” Colin
asked.

“
Drones,” Alex said at the
same time Raz said, “UAVs.”

“
Any little thing can make
them suck in the field,” Raz said.

“
The technology is
fantastic, and works wonderfully in air conditioned labs in the
US,” Troy nodded. “But stick ’em out here in the billion degree
heat and sand and sweat and intermittent electricity
and . . . I mean, the electronics melt
and . . .”

“
Tell them you’re busy,”
Alex said.

Troy sighed and gave her a
hard look.

“
You want me to tell them
you’re busy?” Alex asked.

“
No.” Troy shook his head.
“They need help, my help. Ever since everybody found out about the
nanodrones, they email me with questions all the time. I help when
I can — I mean I redesigned the electronics on
the . . . Never mind.”

Troy cleared his throat
and looked at the wall.

“
You mean, we’re the
interruption,” Raz said.

Troy blushed and Alex
laughed.

“
I’ll get to it then,”
Alex said. “I wondered if you know if your father ever worked in
Texas.”

“
He worked on White Sands
for a while,” Troy said. “Does that count?”

Alex looked at
Raz.

“
New Mexico?” Raz
asked.

“
It’s just north of El
Paso,” Alex said.

“
White Sands Missile
Range? Where the Trinity site is located?” Troy said. They gave him
a confused look. “Where the A-bomb was tested?”

Troy shook his
head.

“
You know nothing!” Troy
said in his best imitation of his father.

Alex laughed.

“
What about Zutterberg?”
Raz asked.

“
He grew up in Texas,”
Troy said. “Uh . . . Bovina, that’s
right.”

“
Bovina?” Alex
asked.

“
It’s just across the
border from Clovis, New Mexico,” Troy said. “They had a cattle
ranch. His mother worked on base, so they could make ends
meet.”

“
And you know this
because . . .?” Alex asked.

“
I slept next to him in SF
training,” Troy said.

Alex frowned.

“
In the asshole section,”
Troy said. “Far, far away from the
pristine . . .”

Jesse appeared out of
nowhere to throw a ball of energy at Troy.

“
Ow! Shit!” Troy hopped
around as if he’d been injured.

Alex laughed. Matthew came
back into the room. He looked at Troy’s wincing face and shook his
head.