The Book of Truths (32 page)

“Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time!”

Colonel Horace Egan, USAF Retired, was rounding third and ready to cross the plate with Mrs. Floyd as she cried out a line from
Casablanca
.

She was leaning against a console in the underground bunker, Egan pressed up against her. Her dress was in disarray and Egan planned on fixing that by taking it off her. She’d come back twice more since their first encounter, both times without her husband, and he’d advanced a base each time. Tonight he planned to bring it home.

She’d put up a good display, but Egan had always known that when he focused on an objective, he could achieve it. He leaned into her, kissing her once more, glad he still had all his teeth even if he were a bit short on the Samson hair.

“We’ll always have—” he began as he parted lips with her, but his line was cut short as a board on the right side of the room lit up like a Christmas tree. Fourteen flashing orange lights.

“Oh crap,” Egan said.

And then a red phone gave a shrill ring. Reluctantly, Egan separated his body from Mrs. Floyd, who pouted and pondered, not for the first time and not for the last time, why she was drawn back to this dark place and this randy old goat.

Men and their missiles.

“Yes?” Egan snapped as he picked up the phone.

“Colonel Egan, my name is Ms. Jones. We have a problem we were hoping you could help us with.”

“All the self-destructs?” Egan asked, glancing up at the board.

“Yes. Is there a way to shut them down? They’re all predigital.”

“Need the arming code to disarm them,” Egan said.

“We’re trying to get it—” Ms. Jones began, but Egan suddenly laughed. His memory wasn’t so bad after all.

“Lady, the last time this joint was active, everyone knew the code. Hold on.” Egan walked over to the one working console in the control room. Eight circular pins were set in it, like a large bike lock. The numbers were set randomly.

Egan quickly dialed each one to zero.

He hit the red button above them and all the orange lights blinked out.

Peace once more reigned in the SAC control room.

Egan walked over to the phone. “Taken care of. Now, if you don’t mind,” he glanced over at Mrs. Floyd, “I’ve got an important matter to attend to.”

“Mister Nada.”

Nada and the rest of the team paused in unloading the Snake at the Barn once they heard the omnipotent voice coming out of the cargo bay speaker. “Yes, Ms. Jones?”

“During the ‘Clusterfuck in Nebraska,’ you mentioned being on a SADM team. You were quite cynical about it all.”

Mac couldn’t help himself, bursting out laughing.

“Mister Eagle mentioned being expendable,” Ms. Jones continued. “I want to assure you that you and your teammates are not considered expendable. I have done some research on the matter. The time delay you didn’t think was built into the weapon? Do you still believe that?”

“Of course not,” Nada said. “We got away.”

“How do you know I didn’t have the weapon modified with a delay?” Ms. Jones asked.

That stumped Nada for the moment.

“Aaaahh.” Ms. Jones drew the sigh out so long, that once more, they thought she might just have given her last breath. “Cynicism has its place, Mister Nada. I am reminded constantly of my own.”

Nada wondered who the hell told Ms. Jones she was cynical?

“We enmeshed ourselves deeply into a dark history on this operation. But we prevailed. In your previous time in the army, Mister Nada, you wore the Green Beret, did you not?”

“I did.”

“And you know the history of it, correct?” She did not wait for an answer. “President Kennedy, in October 1961, instructed the Special Forces commander to have his men wear the then outlawed headgear. He later called it a ‘symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.’ Do you think he meant those words?”

Nada shifted uneasily. “I imagine he meant them.”

“In the summer of 1963, President Kennedy signed a presidential order that SADMs must be built with that time delay designed in the W54 system at the munitions plant. He was looking after those men who wore the Green Beret. He was looking after you.”

“And then they killed him,” Mac said bitterly.

“Ah,” Ms. Jones said. “Let us not get into
that
.”

Two weeks after the world had been saved from nuclear war, Neeley had been hanging in the climbing harness all night. One of the first things Gant had told her when they began training together was that patience was one of the most difficult traits for a covert operative to master, but one of the most essential. Neeley had honed that trait over the years. Twenty-four hours of surveillance on a target was considered an absolute minimum, yet most people couldn’t sit still for five minutes.

Neeley had been in Peru for four days, crossing the border illegally from Brazil after a two-week journey west across the Amazon. The long journey, to keep anyone from backtracking her, was another form of patience.

After crossing the border, she’d spent one day making it to this remote part of the Andes. One day observing the climbers’ base camp, which they broadcast on Facebook, which she found quite odd but very useful. And then one day climbing to get ahead of the team trying to ascend to the summit of Palcaraju Oeste, a peak northeast of Lima. At just under twenty thousand feet, it wasn’t a world-record altitude, but it was a technically difficult climb. Not something for the faint and almost unheard of for someone to try solo.

Neeley didn’t plan to go all the way to the top.

And she wasn’t doing it solo.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun sending bright streaks of daylight over the peaks to the east.

“You know that saying?” Roland asked.

He was dangling four feet to the right, his bulk encased in Gore-Tex, his position triple anchored because he put a bit of strain on the rope.

Neeley waited for him to complete the question, having gotten used to his habit of thinking his way into the completion during their journey from the States, across Brazil, into Peru, and up the mountain. She’d insisted she could do the job alone.

Roland had insisted on coming along.

Hannah and Ms. Jones had conferred and thought this would be a good “cross-training” opportunity for the Cellar and the Nightstalkers.

As if what they’d just done wasn’t enough.

“I think it was the Indians,” Roland continued. “You know, Native Americans. They say, ‘It’s a good day to die’?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Neeley said as she began the delicate operation of getting out of the sleeping bag without completely unhooking from the mountain.

It was a lot harder than it sounded.

“It’s bullshit,” Roland said. He hadn’t used a sleeping bag. He’d claimed his Gore-Tex pants and jacket would be enough and he appeared to be correct, seeming none the worse for the night at altitude. “I prefer my own saying: It’s a good day to help someone else die.”

With one arm, he pulled himself up, unclipped from all three of his anchors, unsafe at any altitude, then put in a new piece of protection that would allow them to go up the fifteen feet they needed for the perch they had decided upon. Then he began to lift Neeley, hand over hand.

“Hey!” she protested. “I can climb.”

“I know,” Roland said, “but I need the workout.”

Neeley settled in, shoulder to shoulder with Roland on a two-foot-wide ledge right next to a cornice of rock. One of the more difficult aspects of the route the two climbers below them would be taking this morning.

“Do you know why I told you about what happened in Pakistan?” Neeley asked Roland as she watched the two climbers struggling on their next pitch.

“You were bored?” Roland said.

Neeley smiled. “I usually operate alone. I don’t get bored.”

“To explain why we’re here,” Roland said.

“Yes.” And Neeley waited. “And we’re here.”

Roland’s forehead furrowed. If Mac had been there, he’d have
told Roland not to hurt his brain by straining it too much. But by saying that, Mac would have stopped Roland from straining it and going to new heights, literally and figuratively.

“We’re here,” Roland finally said, “because you were on that Sanction.”

“And?” Neeley prompted.

“The entire purpose of the Sanction in Pakistan was to find these two guys.”

“Exactly,” Neeley said. “You think anyone really gives a damn about some garbageman and his wife? Even if he gave up bin Laden? In fact, no one, not even the Cellar, wants those people around. In my job, I have to always suspect the reverse. Think strategically. You’re great with tactics, Rollie.”

Roland flushed red, impossible to see under the balaclava that protected him from the harsh wind and cold. The only other woman who had ever made him blush like that was Moms, but she was his team leader.

Neeley was different. He just hadn’t figured out how yet.

Neeley continued. “But this is strategy. It’s like…” Neeley searched for the right words. “It’s like the difference between Patton and MacArthur. Patton was great in combat. Battle of the Bulge he turned Third Army on a dime and slashed apart the Panzers. But that was a reaction. MacArthur, in the entire Pacific Campaign with his island hopping, lost fewer troops than were lost in the single Battle of the Bulge. MacArthur thought ahead of his enemy.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Roland asked.

And for once he had her stumped for a moment, and then she flushed. “Because I’ve only helped one other person and it’s been a long time. I helped Hannah when she needed me. Because Gant helped me. And helping others, it’s…” She fell silent.

“It’s a good thing,” Roland said. He nodded toward the two climbers. “Let’s take care of business.”

They fell silent as the two men continued up the mountain, reaching this difficult stretch. One took lead, putting in protection. He made half a pitch then halted. The other climbed up to him as he took belay. As expected, on their next pitch, they hit a protection point just eight feet underneath and on the other side of the rock wall from where Neeley and Roland waited. As soon as both were in place, protection put in and one beginning to climb, Roland swung wide on his rope around the shoulder of the mountain into the man on belay.

His move was so startling, the man in the lead teetered. Neeley swung around and gave him a gentle shove and he fell to the end of his rope.

Roland held on to his belay man, keeping both on the mountain. Roland looped their rope through a figure eight on the front of his harness, then cut their attachment to their own anchor point, in effect making himself their anchor.

As one man dangled over the abyss, the other stared wide-eyed at Roland. “Who the hell are you! What are you doing?”

Neeley climbed down and locked in on the mountain on the other side of him. “Hey!”

He turned his head toward her and she slapped his face with her gloved hand, drawing blood from the small needle in her hand.

The man blinked. “What did you do?”

“Cherry Tree, Mr. Nesbitt. You are Nesbitt, right?” She didn’t expect an answer yet as she knew it would take a minute or so for the serum to work. “And our friend on the end of the rope is your partner, Mr. Porter.”

“What the fuck?” Nesbitt sputtered. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m from the Cellar,” Neeley said. “And you’re going to tell me the truth.”

At the word
Cellar
, what little blood was left in Nesbitt’s face drained out. At the end of the rope, twenty feet below them, Porter was yelling something, twisting and turning in the wind, which blew his words away into the empty sky.

Neeley was watching his eyes. She saw his pupils dilate slightly and knew Cherry Tree had taken root.

“Did you compromise the mission?”

He blinked, shaking his head. “Mission?”

“The garbageman.”

“Oh. Fuck.” The next word was ripped from him. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“We claimed the interrogation. My group. We had to maintain integrity on our story. Get the credit.”

“Why?” Neeley asked in such a tone that Roland looked at her.

“Promotion.”

“Did your supervisor know?” Neeley asked.