Brass Monkey: A James Acton Thriller Book #2 (11 page)

“Major political favors,” interrupted Leroux.

“—
major
political favors, to do it, and re-task a battlecruiser at the same time, sending it into the same geographical area as this flight.” He closed his eyes. “Damn, it’s really thin,” he muttered.

“We’ve gone on thinner,” said Leroux, some of the eagerness out of his voice, replaced with a more hopeful tone.

Morrison suddenly opened his eyes and leaned forward in his chair, startling Leroux. “Yes, yes we have.” He reached for the phone. “When’s this flight supposed to be over the Red Sea?”

“Tomorrow night, local time.”

Shit!
He picked up the phone and hit the intercom to his assistant.

“Get me Delta.”

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Burt Dawson buffed the last bit of wax off the rear quarter panel of his 1964½ Mustang convertible, in original poppy red, then stood back to admire his handiwork.
Damn, she’s beautiful.
He loved this car. It was his dad’s dream car, and when he had died a few years ago, it was handed down to him. With no children of his own, and none likely with his lifestyle, he sometimes wondered who he’d leave it to.

“Can I sit in it, Mr. Dog?”

Dawson looked at the young boy, his godson, who now stood beside him, admiring the shine, an ice cream running down his hand, all the way to his elbow. Dawson grimaced. “Umm, maybe later, Bryson. After you’ve cleaned up.” The boy appeared a little disappointed, but then took a lick of the ice cream off his hand and walked away. Dawson leaned against the door and watched him meander over to his father, Red.

It was an amazing fall afternoon. Sunday, sunny, on the base with the families, all the guys shining their true loves. New cars, classic cars, motorcycles. No matter what year or price, no matter mint or beater, everyone was there, taking part. It was the camaraderie of the unit that made everything they went through worthwhile. This perfect example of Americana, nuclear families, husbands, wives, sons, daughters. All friends, all partners, all comrades. There wasn’t a man here he wouldn’t die for, and there wasn’t a man here who wouldn’t die for him.

“Hey, BD” Dawson looked over at his friend, Red, as he approached. “Ready to fire up the grill?”

“You bet!” Dawson smacked his hands together and pushed himself off the car, heading for the large oil drum BBQ behind the unit.

“Grill Master Sergeant Dawson’s up!” yelled Red to the crowd. A cheer rang out from the gathered families. Dawson smiled and got to work lighting the charcoal grill. It would take a while to heat up.
Not if I had an M21A flamethrower.
He chuckled to himself and watched as the families slowly made their way to the grass behind the unit. The kids threw beach balls and Frisbees around, while the men and women split into their usual two groups. Dawson looked at the long picnic table with the eleven men of his unit sitting at it, and flashed back to last year when his team had sat at that very table.
So many good men dead.
He shook his head.
Honor the dead. Don’t pity them.

His phone vibrated on his hip.

Shit.

Pretty much everyone he knew or cared about in the world was here with him. It had to be business. He flipped it open.

“Mr. Jones, you’re needed at the flower shop for a delivery.”

“I’ll be right there.”

As usual, the ever watchful Red was already approaching to take over the grill. “You gotta go?”

Dawson nodded. “Don’t wait for me, I’ll be gone as long as I can.”

Red nodded with a slight smile, and gave the coals a poke as Dawson walked to his car. He sat behind the wheel and fired up the engine. The rumble it made drew the attention of his men and their families. He turned the car around and glanced in the rearview mirror, his men watching him leave, their expressions letting him know they knew something was about to happen.

He arrived at HQ a few minutes later and headed to his commander’s office, Colonel Thomas Clancy. Clancy’s secretary smiled. “Go right in, Sergeant, he’s expecting you.”

“Thanks, Maggie.”

“Is that BD?” yelled a voice from the office.

“Yes, sir!” said Dawson as he strode through the doorway.

“Take a seat, Sergeant,” said Clancy, waving to the straight back chair in front of his desk. He in turn sank into the plush leather chair behind his desk and took a puff from a cigar that appeared started only moments before.

“What’s up, sir?” asked Dawson as he took a seat and crossed his leg, his Bermuda shorts riding up, revealing a deep, six inch scar from last year’s excitement.

Clancy pushed a folder toward him. “Urgent op. Need your team in the Red Sea tomorrow.”

Dawson took the file and flipped it open. His eyebrows shot up as he read the briefing notes.

“Possible rogue nuke?”

“Yup. Delivered right into the hands of white supremacists, or so the spooks think.”

“Who’s Control?”

“We are.”

Dawson nodded, pleased that for this mission he’d be able to trust who his orders came from.

“Our mission?”

“Just get your assets in the area,” said Clancy, puffing on his cigar. “The intel is developing rapidly, so be prepared for anything.”

“Will the Rooskies have a team in there?”

“No intel on that, but don’t be surprised. With that ex-KGB puppet master they’ve got over there running things, he might be in on it for all we know, so be careful.”

“Always am, sir.”

“Uh huh.” Clancy didn’t sound convinced, but Dawson knew if Clancy had any doubts in his abilities, he would have been drummed from the unit long ago. “Well, at least this time you’ll be in the Middle East. What possible harm could you do there?”

Dawson smiled. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Clancy chuckled and waved him out of his office. “Go, get, there’s a plane waiting to take your team as soon as you’re ready.”

Dawson stood and headed to the door. “See you when I get back, sir.”

“Good hunting, Sergeant.”

Dawson nodded to Maggie as he headed out, she giving him a knowing smile, a smile that conveyed her prayers for his and his men’s safe return.

Dawson returned to the unit, his foot barely on the accelerator, wanting to give his men as much precious time as he could with their families, for he knew, the moment he pulled up, the day’s festivities would end, and some of his men may never see their loved ones again.

Nubian Desert, Egypt, University College London Dig Site

Laura Palmer leaned over a table, poring over satellite images of her new dig site. She had arrived the night before, after ten hours of relative comfort of first class on an airliner, then as many hours in the cab of an expedition vehicle that had seen better days, days that had never included an air conditioner. At least here, in the comfort of her tent, she had a portable air conditioner hooked to a solar generator that took the edge off. Anything more was a waste.

She heard the Velcro flap to the tent’s outer entrance rip open. Through the semi-transparent plastic of the inner entrance she saw someone fumbling with the seal, trying to close the outer flap before entering into the cool interior.

“Blimey!”

She smiled, already figuring it was Terrence Mitchell, a brilliant, yet painfully awkward grad student of hers from University College London. The outer flap mastered, he pushed aside the inner entrance flap and stumbled inside. He took a deep breath and smiled.

“Lovely,” he sighed. He turned to Laura. “I know it’s only a couple of degrees cooler in here, but my word, it feels like a heavenly icebox compared to that god-awful heat outside.”

She motioned to the fridge standing in a corner. “Help yourself to something cold.” She sat down as he headed over and poked his head inside the solar powered fridge that had arrived with her on the transport. He snagged a Diet Pepsi and closed the door, momentarily enjoying the cool air that rolled out and onto his sweat soaked legs. He ran the ice cold can over his face and neck before snapping back the tab, the hiss of carbon dioxide as it rushed from the top made Laura feel as if she had witnessed a real life television commercial.

She reached for her water bottle sitting on the table in front of her and took a sip. Mitchell took a long drag from the can, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. The satisfied “aaah” after he had drained half the can caused her to return the water bottle to where she found it, unsatisfied. She wanted a Diet Pepsi.

Mitchell turned to face Laura. “Thanks, mum, I needed that.” He stepped to the table and glanced at the images splayed over its surface. “Are these the latest images?”

Laura nodded. “Yes, the university sent them by courier to Cairo. They were waiting for me at the airport when I arrived.”

“Good timing.”

“Indeed.” She pointed at a grid pattern she had traced out. “I’ve laid out the grid for us to do our work on. See here”—she leaned in and traced her finger along several darker impressions along the image—“these darker areas appear to be too well laid out to be natural.”

“Ancient walls, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. I’m more inclined to believe streets, but there’s one way to find out.”

Mitchell smiled. “Dig!”

Laura nodded, pleased to hear her prize grad student had forgotten the oppressive heat outside.

“Where are we on this?” he asked.

She pointed at a spot several grid blocks south. Mitchell frowned.

“What?”

“Well, there’s an NGO that arrived here yesterday and they set up camp right where we’re going to be digging.”

“An NGO? On my site? What are they doing here?”

Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I spotted them as they arrived and went over to explain that we had the entire area assigned to us for a dig, and they said they had permission to be there, and that it would only be for a few days.”

Laura shook her head. “That won’t do. They could be contaminating the site.” She grabbed her satchel containing their government authorization forms and headed from the tent. “Take me to them.”

Somewhere over Maryland, United States

James Acton stretched his aching muscles. His back, ass, legs, basically everything, were on fire from having crawled, crouched, knelt and laid on the rocky ground of the dig site every day for months.  Then this ridiculous flight home to placate the alumni committee at his university just capped it off. The passengers, not to mention the flight attendants, frowned upon a grown man stretching in the aisles, and his nineteen hours of travel to get
to
this flight, hadn’t helped his condition. Ten hours by truck from the dig in the mountains of Peru, bouncing over roads in name only, four hours of waiting at an airport which had more chickens running around the terminal than passengers, all to catch a prop from Lima to Mexico City. Three hours sucking in the filth generated by ten million souls living in close proximity with no environmental laws that couldn’t be broken with the right amount of currency, then finally, finally his flight on an American carrier and its promised luxury, promised luxury that had him crammed against the window (even though he had specifically requested the aisle), with an immense woman beside him pouring over the arm rests,  unapologetically sharing his space, who clearly belonged to the “I’m fat and beautiful, so deal with it” camp, her sleeveless shirt revealing six inches of extra skin dangling like gizzards under her arms every time she reached for something from the bottomless snack pit that was her purse, and an odor that left Acton looking back fondly on the air he had just escaped, had left him in a pretty foul mood by the time he boarded his final flight for Maryland.

Arriving at last, he departed the flight and arrived at the baggage claim area, exhausted, sore, and ready to swear off airplanes for the foreseeable future.

And he smiled.

Waiting for him was his best friend, Gregory Milton, waving from off to the side, a huge smile on his face. Milton reached to grab the wheels of his wheelchair but Acton waved him off and hurried over. He leaned over his friend and hugged him around the shoulders. Milton returned the hug, slapping his friend on the back and then pushing him away.

“Have you smelt yourself?”

Acton laughed. “That’s not me, that’s the livestock that was flying with me.” He looked his friend up and down, still unable to get used to seeing him in the chair, but after he thought he had lost him in last year’s “incident”, it was the most beautiful sight imaginable. “You look good.”

Milton patted his stomach, protruding a little farther than when Acton had seen him last. “Still getting used to this damned thing. I thought life behind a desk was making me fat, but life in a chair is definitely doing it.”

Acton winced. It was his fault his best friend of over twenty years, the man who had taken him under his wing as a freshman in college, who had encouraged him to become an archeologist, and who, as Dean, had given him his current job as head of archeology at Saint Paul’s University, was in this wheelchair.

Milton took his friend’s hand and squeezed. “Hey, I know that look. Stop dwelling on this, it wasn’t your fault. I chose to help. Knowing what I know now, I still would’ve done the same thing.” He smiled wryly. “Although I might wear a vest next time.”

Acton managed a weak smile. “Yeah, well, I guess it’s better than the alternative.”

“Yes, yes it is. Just remember that.”

Acton thought back on that day, receiving the text message his friend had sent him when he thought he was dying from two gunshot wounds. It was almost a week later that he found out his friend was alive, discovered almost immediately by another customer at the gas station who happened to be an ER surgeon. It had saved his life. Dozens had died in those few days, but his best friend had survived. Acton sighed. “So, how goes the therapy?”

“Oh, good days and bad days,” said Milton. “Today was a bad day. Tried all damned day to move my f’n toe, and it wouldn’t budge.”