Lean on Me (12 page)

“
It’s an entire division
now.” He shrugged. “Gives them something to do.”

“
I guess,” Alex
said.

He lifted the carburetor off the engine and
walked to the bench.

“
Why are we talking about
the twerp?” Alex asked.

“
He’s been promoting
hostage retrieval using drones…”

“
I know, I know,” Alex
raised a hand to block the flow of nonsense. “Cheaper and easier,
less damage and drama than a entire team, blah, blah, blah. I’ve
heard it all.”

“
We live in
put-up-or-shut-up times,” he said.

Alex gasped. He nodded. He carried the
Electroinjector to the vehicle.

“
That’s why Larry and Heath
and….” Alex pressed her hand against her heart. “Who
else?”

“
None of my generation or
your father’s,” he said. “Wouldn’t do it. Said it was stupid. But
yes, he stacked the deck with people you’ve trained.”

“
Where are they?” Alex
asked.

“
No one seems to know,” he
said. “Once they went missing, our twerpish friend disappeared with
all the information. JFCOM called in their best people, and they
can’t figure out what he did.”

“
Why didn’t they just call
me?” Alex asked. “I’m on the payroll.”

“
Would you have called
you?” he laughed. “After you’d stopped laughing and taunting them,
you’d have told everyone what’d happened.”

Alex smiled, and he laughed.

“
Your father would have had
a field day,” he said. “And…”

“
Okay, okay, I get the
picture,” Alex said. “How many teams? How many men?”

“
In the US? We think eight
US military teams of twelve, with an emphasis on ‘we think.’ There
may be more. A few of our allies sent a teams – the UK, Spain,
India, Italy, Greece, none from the Far East. In fact, it’s kind of
weird how some allies sent teams and others didn’t.”

Focusing on his thought, he looked off in
the distance and took a drag on his cigarette.

“
Dom’s poker buddies,” Alex
said.

The man’s eyes shifted to look at her.
Dominic Doucet, her uncle, was the head of French Intelligence. His
eyes drilled into her.

“
Dom hasn’t said anything
to me,” Alex said. “I only know Dom’s in a poker game with the
heads of a lot of our allies’ intelligence groups. They play poker
online a couple of times a month.”

“
Who?”

“
Uh, Japan, the
Philippines, China, South Korea,” Alex said. “Ben and Dom’s dad
worked for intelligence in Asia when they were kids.”

“
Australia?”

“
Sure,” Alex said. “Turkey
and a few others. They use the game to keep tabs on each other.
There are others and they rotate. We’d have to ask to get the whole
list.”

“
That would explain it.
Dominic Doucet flat out refused to entertain the conversation. He
said it was stupid. He caused a big stink. But he was right, of
course. If he was in contact with these other countries, he would
have told them not to send people.”

For all the previous moment’s cheer, this
man’s voice became angry and dangerous.

“
It was to be a grand
display of the power of the United States Information Systems. They
were all to extract on the same day, same hour. Your boy Flagg and
that Marine Walker protested but were overruled by Eniac; that’s
what the twerp goes by now. Eniac.”

“
Eniac?” Alex asked.
“Huh.”

Looking up from the engine, he raised his
eyebrows expectantly. Seeing that Alex had retreated into thought,
he returned to the engine. After years of researching the
Electroinjector, he installed it with ease. He leaned back to
admire the beautiful symmetry of the engine, just as it was planned
and manufactured.

“
Would you like to see?” he
asked.

Alex jerked at the sound of his voice. He
laughed.

“
Eniac was one of the men
in the group of Fey-haters that formed last year,” Alex said. “I
knew every one of them and even had some sense of why they hated
me. I could never figure out who he was. I thought the twerp got
Lasik.”

“
He did.” He lit another
cigarette. “He wears those glasses as a kind of disguise. You know,
he’s such a spy.”

He and Alex laughed.

“
You wanna help find these
guys?”

“
I don’t think you’ll need
it,” he said. “But you better act soon. JFCOM’s pretty
desperate.”

“
Desperate enough to pay
Eniac to find the teams?”

“
Anything he asks. And I
mean
anything
.”

“
You mean including my
disposal,” Alex said.

He gave a curt nod. Alex grimaced.

“
But you have to ask
yourself...” He tossed another butt into the can and lit a fresh
cigarette. He added a smoke-filled, “Did Eniac lose the teams so he
could find them?”

“
You mean rather than
finding real hostages, he made up a bunch so that he could find
them himself?” Alex shook her head. “How?”

“
How would you do it?” he
asked. “Start there.”

“
That’s why they took Ben,”
Alex said.

“
It’s a way of calling you
without having to pick up the phone,” he said.

“
Pick your friends…” Alex
started.

“
And don’t let them pick
you,” he finished. “Shall I start her up?”

Alex nodded. He went around to the driver’s
seat and turned the engine over. It took a few tries before the
engine caught with a roar. He got out, closed the hood, and
returned to the driver’s seat. With a wave to Alex, he drove out of
the garage. Alex sat in the sunshine for another minute before
walking toward to the house.

Zack was in the vegetable garden chatting
with the man who had pretended to have a bum leg. He waved to Alex
and followed her into the house. Well-fed and well-amused, she
found Trece and Cliff waiting for her in the kitchen. Mammy had
prepared a sack of food for them to take on their journey home.
She’d even stashed some cigarettes for Mr. Benjamin if Alex should
happen to see him.

“
You tell your poppa, if he
runs out of things to do, Mammy has plenty of work for him,” Mammy
laughed.

“
I’ll tell him,” Alex
said.

“
I hear you talked some
sense into Becky,” Mammy shook her head. “Nice girl your mom, when
she’s not so stuffy.”

Alex smiled and took Raz’s gift for Mammy
from her backpack. She placed a notebook-sized package wrapped in
brown paper into Mammy’s hands. Mammy’s eyes reviewed Alex’s face
and then turned over the package. Mammy gave Alex one more glance
before using a kitchen knife to cut the tape holding the brown
paper together. The paper fell open to reveal a beautifully framed
photograph of Mammy’s mother and father. Dressed as if for a ball,
her mother was laughing and leaning into her father. Her father’s
arm was draped over her mother’s shoulder. His head was forward as
if he had just told a joke. After all these years, the love between
them was palpable. Mammy looked from the photo to Alex and then
back at the photo. Holding her breath to keep from weeping, Mammy
nodded to Alex.

“
I’ll see myself out,” Alex
kissed her cheek and followed the men to the car. She was halfway
down the walk when Mammy yelled:

“
See you soon!”

Wondering what that meant, Alex gave her a
big wave and stepped into the Bronco after Zack. They took off at a
fast clip.

“
What was that?” Zack
whispered to Alex.

“
Mammy’s parents worked in
intelligence during World War II,” Alex whispered. “They were lost
in Russia after the war – no trace – when Mammy was a baby. She
never had a photo of them. Raz unearthed a photo and made a copy
for her.”

Not knowing what to say, Zack could only
nod. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, they were back at the
dock. Before she left the Bronco, Alex set a manila envelope with
Jesse’s sketch of Dura-Europas on the bench seat. She jogged to the
speed boat. They took a quick trip to the Marine Air Base Station.
After more than one “You sure we don’t need to report those amazing
biscuits?” from their Navy SEAL guards, there was a round of
blushing, saluting, and a short drive back to the helicopter. In
their absence, the helicopter had been washed and fueled by a group
of the Jakker’s fans. With a wave to Zack’s fans, they hopped back
into the Pave Hawk. The helicopter was warm and ready to go. Zack
and Cliff made quick work of their safety checks and they were
airborne.

“
Where to, my Fey?” Zack
asked over the intercom.

“
Troy’s drop off at
Dahlia’s,” Alex said.

“
Enjoy your nap,” Zack
said. “I’ll wake you before we land.”

“
Thanks,” Alex said. “Are
you going to the reunion?”

She waited a moment for Zack to disconnect
the helicopter’s speaker system from recorders and command.

“
Go,” he said.

“
Are you still going to
JFCOM tomorrow morning?” Alex asked.

“
Yeah. Why?” Zack
asked.

“
I’ll go with you,” Alex
said.

“
Sure,” Zack said. “Like I
said, I don’t know what they want. They wanted me to go in today,
but I was flying today. All day right?”

“
Tomorrow morning is
perfect,” Alex said.

“
Going online,” Zack said.
“I hate those fucking reunions Alex. You know that.”

“
Thought you might change
your mind,” she said.

“
Not a chance,” Zack said.
“Now get your nap and stop badgering me about this high school
crap.”

“
Yes sir,” Alex
said.

She closed her eyes and was out.

FFFFFF
Sunday morning

October 25 – 9:20 a.m. EDT

Fredericksburg Police Station,
Fredericksburg, PA

“
My brother was always a
kind of… evil genius,” Troy said. “Even when we were kids, he had
this capacity to strike hard at your most sensitive spot in such a
way that no one knew it had happened. Even when it happened, you’d
wonder if you’d hurt yourself.”

“
Can you give us an
example?” Army CID Agent Snypes said.

“
Well, like marrying
Dahlia,” Troy said. “I spent years wondering what I had done wrong
and hating myself for taking her back every time. My self-loathing
spurred a decade of self-destructive behavior. I thought she had
married him because of something that was wrong with me or
something I had done. But, it was Hector who made it happen. All
that time, all that self doubt, and it turns out that Hector was
pulling the strings. He really and truly despised me.”

“
Anyone with a television
can see that your father shares the sentiment,” Detective Young
said. “Any idea why you’re the object of their…”

“
Hatred?” Troy filled in
the question Detective Young left hanging in the air. “I got away.
When I was ten, I started going to adventure camp in the summers. I
made a lot of friends, who I spent afternoons and weekends with
during the school year. I mean I was under Hector’s thumb every
moment of every day until the day I left for camp. When I came
back, I just wasn’t around enough for him to exert his will. And
then I betrayed them completely by joining the Army.”

“
Why marry Dahlia?”
Detective Young asked.

“
Dahlia said that marrying
him was a perfect storm,” Troy said. “She wanted to hurt me. He
wanted to hurt me. Once married, he could hurt me through her every
day. He told her that he had a number of military contacts. If she
didn’t stay with him, he would have me killed. She left him once,
and a few days later I was shot; flesh wound in the shoulder –
nothing serious. But he told her he had me shot, and if she didn’t
return to him, he would have me killed.”

“
Did he have you shot?”
Army CID Agent Snypes asked.

“
I don’t know,” Troy said.
“My CO doesn’t think so, but Dahlia believed him.”

“
Why not hurt you more
directly?” Detective Young asked.

“
You mean rather than rip
the heart out of me and launch a decade of self-torture?” Troy
asked. “Why bother doing the work yourself when he could get me to
do it for him? That’s what I mean by evil genius. Even as a kid,
Hector thought in terms of maximum damage, minimal effort, and zero
culpability.”

“
Why wasn’t Hector Jasper
charged with, at the minimum, child abuse?” Detective Young
asked.

“
Dahlia and the boys were
terrified of him,” Troy said. “She felt lucky to get away. The boys
were in terrible condition – undernourished, ill, and…”

Unable to continue, Troy clamped his mouth
shut and shook his head.

“
If you were unable to
obtain them, Detective, we have the Social Security reports,”
Hawkins Mac Alister said.

“
We have them,” Army CID
Captain Snypes said. “Captain Olivas, you were telling us why Mrs.
Jasper blocked criminal proceedings against Hector
Jasper.”

“
I’m not sure who advised
her,” Troy said. “Probably her therapist. But Dahlia wanted to get
away, divorce Hector, terminate his parental rights, and then wait
until the she was officially divorced. She had that in motion
before we reconnected in April.”