Lean on Me (47 page)

Their mission was a national security threat
with potential international security risks combined with a bunch
of young, holiday-bored soldiers wrapped in the blanket of missing
and quite possibly dead soldiers. That’s not to mention all the
excitement about the Jakker and Fey working in North Dakota.

Everyone who was anyone was watching North
Dakota this early Christmas morning. The President, the Secretary
of State and all the military heads were waiting and watching from
the Situation Room. The heads of government for every US ally were
awake, watching, and waiting on the completion of this action. The
Joint Chiefs of Staff called to say that they were watching and
countless other military brass checked in.

Alex closed her eyes for a moment. She hoped
it wouldn’t turn into some kind of John Wayne ego-fest.

“
Counting?” Raz lifted her
ear phones to ask in her ear.

“
All the possible meanings
of this action,” Alex said.

“
How many teams do you
think we’ll find at Grand Forks?” Raz asked.

“
I’m thinking every on-duty
team capable of getting the GFAFB will be there,” Alex
said.

“
Only game in town,” Raz
said.

“
Something like that,” Alex
said. “I’m hoping they will be more than happy to do our clean
up
and
our
paperwork.”

“
What about…?” Raz nodded
his chin toward Pete.

“
It’s not his strength,”
Alex said.

“
Ben called,” Raz said. “He
and Helene are in the air to New York. They’ll wait for your
instruction.”

“
Speaking of the Ben,” Alex
held up her buzzing phone.

“
He’s probably calling you
to tell you this is a diversion,” Raz smiled.

Smiling at his attempted joke, she answered
her phone.

“
Hargreaves.” After almost
a decade working for him, she knew he only risked a telephone for
emergencies.

“
I just got off the line
with Interpol,” Ben said. “Three members of the Irish Republican
Army entered the country last night at a variety of ports on
Student Visas. Two others entered under Tourist Visas. Interpol
believes more have entered the US through the usual
channels.”

“
And?”

“
They share one identifying
characteristic – their last name is Kelly.”

“
They’re coming for John
and Cian,” Alex said.

“
Possibly,” Ben said. “I
haven’t been able to get a hold of Jimmy and no one answers at your
house.”

“
Crap,” Alex
said.

“
I’ll keep you apprised,”
Ben clicked off the phone.

“
Now you’re only holding up
one finger,” Raz said.

“
The IRA is coming for
John,” Alex said. “And there’s nothing I can do about
it.”

FFFFFF

Friday morning

December 25 – 4:07 a.m. MST

Denver, CO

“
Santa doesn’t have massive
feet,” Cian said in Irish Gaelic. “They’d get stuck in the chimney.
You can’t do it.”

They’d decided to decorate the sitting room
on Max’s side of the house because the boys rarely went there. For
the last week, everyone who lived in the house had worked on making
the small room a Christmas wonderland. Of course, most of the
people who lived there weren’t there this morning. Cian, John, Max,
and Wyatt were putting the final Santa touches on the room before
waking up the boys. Cian pushed John out of the way of Max’s hearth
to demonstrate how his feet would work better.

“
Jealous of my feet?” John
replied in Irish Gaelic.

“
Your feet, your…” Max said
in Irish Gaelic.

“
Stop!” Wyatt said. “Just
stop.”

The three men turned to look at him.

“
You’ve been speaking
gibberish for hours,” Wyatt said.

“
It does sound like
gibberish, doesn’t it,” Max laughed.

“
Listen, little American,”
Cian made his Irish accent thick. “We’re speaking Irish Gaelic. The
language of the gods.”

“
Gods?” John’s eyebrows
shot up. He and Max laughed.

“
Do you see any gods here?”
Wyatt asked. “Because I just see four regular guys.”

“
I really like this guy,”
Cian said in Irish Gaelic to Max.

“
Fuck you,” Wyatt
said.

Cian laughed.

“
I solemnly agree to speak
only American for the rest of the morning,” Cian raised his hand to
take a solemn oath. “Johnny?”

John raised his hand and Max followed
suit.

“
We solemnly swear to speak
only American,” Cian said. John and Max repeated. “That means none
of that Queen’s English, Johnny.”

“
Whatever you say mate,”
John said.

“
Watch it,” Cian said. John
laughed.

“
The issue was over whether
Santa’s feet were as large as mine,” John said.

“
Yes, I can see that’s a
God-like problem.” Smiling, Wyatt shook his head at their
ridiculousness.

“
God! Why are my
feet
so ridiculously
small?” Max implored the heavens.

They laughed.

“
I’ll settle this,” Wyatt
said. “Are you all right with that?”

Max and John nodded.

“
Go ahead, Cian,” Wyatt
said. “I don’t think Santa could get those feet into his sleigh. In
fact, they might
be
the sleigh runners.”

Laughing, Max and John went into the kitchen
to get the supplies. Cian put on his winter boots. They met back in
Max’s sitting room. Max set down the cookie sheet near the
fireplace. John poured the glitter and corn starch mixture into the
pan. Wyatt helped Cian step into the tray. Cian took a step forward
then stepped into the pan. He left a white glitter footprint on the
wood floor. He wandered around the room and sat down near the front
door to remove his boots. He’d taken off his first boot when there
was a knock at the door.

Cian opened the door and peered out.

“
What the hell are you
doing here?” Cian said in Irish Gaelic.

“
It’s been less than an
hour? What the hell?” Wyatt started. His eyes flicked at Cian then
John. John moved to Cian’s side. Max walked to Wyatt.

“
You should leave,” Max
said.

“
I’m not…” Wyatt
said.

“
NO!” Cian
yelled.

John threw himself against the door. There
was resistance but the door closed. Cian and John fell to the floor
and covered their heads. Max dragged Wyatt down. Cian raised his
fingers to his lips. He pressed his head against the door.

“
There are a bunch of men
standing outside the house,” Samantha said when she entered the
room. Cian shushed her.

“
I guess you knew that,”
she whispered.

Max grabbed her arm and pulled her down. A
fist pounded on the door.

“
I know you’re in there,” a
man’s voice said in Irish Gaelic.

“
Who is it?” Samantha
whispered.

“
IRA has come for us,” Cian
said.

“
There’s not a chance in
hell they’re going to take you,” Wyatt said.

Surprised, John, Cian, Max and Samantha
looked at Wyatt.

A fist pounded on the door.

FFFFFF

Friday morning

December 25 – 4:27 a.m. MST

Grand Forks Air Force Base, ND

Standing on the tarmac in the middle of
North Dakota, Alex looked out across the men and women milling
around her and her team. Jesse appeared at her side.

“
It’s like a SF training
reunion,” Jesse said. “Look there’s JS. Didn’t you tell me he’s a
big deal now? Look at him order that Delta team around!”

Alex nodded.

“
Holy crap!” Matthew
yelled. He ran forward to greet another one of their friends from
SF training. They were the largest group graduate and had graduated
with the highest scores. When asked later, most of the men said
they’d worked harder because they didn’t want to see a woman
succeed where they couldn’t. No one mentioned the fact that Alex
had coached them through every single day. “Troy, check it out!
It’s Garcia.”

“
I heard you guys were
working with the enemy,” Captain Enrique Garcia said. He held out
his arms and Alex hugged him.

“
Wow, you’re hugging
Garcia?” Jess asked. “Need a shower?”

Alex blinked in agreement.

“
I was really sorry to hear
about Jesse,” Garcia said.

“
Sorry he didn’t shoot me
himself,” Jesse said.

“
Losing Jesse is very
hard,” Alex said.

“
He was really the best of
us,” Garcia said.

Jesse made a ball of energy to throw at him.
Enrique had filed a number of grievances against Alex while they
were in training. He did not like training with a woman. He did not
like the fact that the woman had a friend. And more than anything,
he didn’t like that she was better than he was. Alex gave a slight
shake of her head to encourage Jesse not to throw the energy ball
at their once arch nemesis. Jesse laughed.

“
I didn’t realize you were
stationed out here,” Matthew said.

“
Training,” Garcia said.
“Did you hear about JS?”

“
The man’s General
material,” Troy said.

Alex looked across the men to Lieutenant
Colonel Jason Smith. Besides Jesse, he was one of her only
defenders in training. His father had been a Freedom Rider and JS
did not tolerate prejudice in any form. He’d gone on to make sure
their abusive Captain was court-martialed. He cleaned up every
division he was in until it was apparent to Army brass that he
should lead. He waved to Alex and she smiled.

“
Why is everyone here?”
Jesse asked.

“
I guess we’re all a little
war amped and holiday stir crazy,” Garcia said as if he’d heard
Jesse’s question.

“
I guess,” Alex
said.

“
What are we waiting for?”
Garcia asked.

Alex’s eyes slid over to look at him. His
voiced edged into his “dominating the weak” territory. Troy walked
to stand next to Alex.

“
We’re waiting for intel
from the 91
^st
Maintenance Group,” Joseph shifted slightly in
front of Alex to deal with Garcia.

“
Surely you have satellite
imaging,” Garcia said. Alex raised her eyebrows at him and counted
to five. She’d just hit five when he continued, “You intelligence
people are too finicky. We need to go in there, get our men, and
get on with this day. And don’t start on loss of lives. No one
captures US soldiers and gets away with it.”

“
Would you excuse me for a
moment?” Alex asked.

She was ten feet away when Garcia launched
into his usual rant about intelligence officers. She was a foot
from where Vince and Raz were working when she heard Garcia yelp.
Jesse must have hit him with an energy ball.

“
That looked like it hurt,”
Raz said. Alex smiled. “What’s the plan?”

“
We have intel?”

“
No entrance in or out,”
Raz said. “The site has been demolished per protocol.”

“
Did they find…” Alex
swallowed hard.

“
No body parts,” Vince
said. “They went through the site foot by foot. The weather’s bad,
so they could have missed something but I doubt it.”

The Fey team began to gather around them to
hear the details from the maintenance team.

“
As you know, I’ve been
watching the heat readings all day,” Raz said. “Dusty dug up some
old readings for this area.”

“
Old?”

“
June,” Raz
said.

“
And?”

“
There’s a definite change
in the reading,” Raz said. “I’ve been tracking the maintenance
group’s movements to compare. I’m pretty sure the hostages are
there.”

“
Pretty sure?” Joseph asked
from over her shoulder.

“
Eighty
percent.”

“
What’s the uncertainty?”
Joseph asked.

“
The readings are odd,” Raz
said. “As you know, I have a bit of skill with these types of
readings, even underground. But these readings are
unusual.”

“
How so?” Alex
asked.

“
The heat readings here are
clumped together, not individual bodies,” Raz said.

“
Why are we able to see
anything through the lead shielding?” Matthew asked.

Raz nodded to Alex.

“
I think the soldiers
rigged up something to get the data to us,” Alex said. “It’s
something Larry would think of.”

“
We believe the reading
we’re getting is coming through the destroyed silo,” Raz
said.

“
Which means they’re within
the launch facility,” Joseph said.

Alex nodded.

“
How do we get to them?”
Matthew asked.

“
How did they get in?” Alex
asked. “We confirmed the elevator’s destruction with the
maintenance group. They’re not one hundred percent sure because
these silos are different from the one’s they usually work
with.”