Scott pulled at the neck and sleeves of the long black t-shirt he wore to fit the shirt back into place. While he did so, he looked directly at Captain Howard. He twisted his neck back into place too and a loud crack seemed to settle everything into place.
“Well then,” Scott said boldly, firmly. “Brig? Infirmary? Or would you like to hear what I have to say about how we can get these sons of bitches and make them pay?”
Chapter 13
The director’s screen faded to black and his speakers began playing the warm orchestra music of Phantom of the Opera. He closed his eyes and air played along with master violinists as his soul was swept away and his mind cleansed.
Selective focus was the cornerstone of his decades of success.
Know only what you need to know for success.
Look no further.
Ask no questions you don’t want answered.
In another life he would he been a violinist, not a purveyor of the illicit.
What did it matter who was paying? What did it matter who was doing the killing or who was being killed?
Life was a dirty game. Everyone paid; everyone killed. Some got their hands bloody; others let others get their hands bloody.
The buzzing of his phone startled the director, not because anything actually frightened him anymore but because he’d been so lost in his thoughts.
He was eager for news, but waited for his phone to confirm the call was secure, encrypted and untraceable. Standard procedure was to redirect all incoming calls through multiple routers before being connected to the Secure Mobile Server on his ship.
He checked his earpiece. It took a moment but soon a green alert and shield icon on his phone confirmed a fully-encrypted and untraceable voice call. “Yes,” he answered, his voice full of purpose and inquiry.
“I’m in place,” the female caller replied.
The director sensed the tension in her voice, felt she knew that breaking protocol might be at the cost of her life. Operatives always worked through intermediaries; they didn’t work with the director. Ever.
Nonetheless, she was the agent in the field and the only one who could help remedy a crisis that was spiraling out of control.
“I have an update,” she said.
The director said nothing. His only response was to push the earpiece more tightly into his ear as he waited for her to continue.
When she spoke, her voice was void of emotion. “I’m taking care of it. The girl, done. The insider, done. Evers, next.”
The director went to his computer. He right-clicked the contingency file that had been prepared, selected Send To and then selected the caller’s number. “Sending,” he said finally.
Chapter 14
Safely aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, Alexis paused at the bulkhead door. She looked at her phone, saw the text containing the attachment from the director. “Received,” she said as she opened the file.
The called ended.
She read through the file as her thoughts raced. I have my final orders, she told herself, intending to comply fully with everything expected of her.
She looked at her watch. Less than 36 hours now to do what must be done to change the world and decide everything.
She knew she was in uncharted territory, that things had gone terribly awry. She was in trouble, but pushed dread from her thoughts.
Her basic survival instincts had kicked in and she was operating on a new adrenaline rush that coursed through every part of her. It was the kind of high she had after a good kill. The only thing she needed to do now was to make things right with the director and try to get out alive.
As expected, the HH-60H Rescue Hawk had taken her to the Kearsarge after discovering her in the water and the shipboard triage team had taken her directly for treatment. She was after all unconscious and only partly responsive at the time from the drugs she injected once she sighted SAR and waved them to her.
The drugs slowed her heart rate and lowered her body temperature dramatically — enough to make it look like she was suffering the effects of hypothermia after being in the waters of the Mediterranean all day.
Being moved from incoming triage to the infirmary was an unexpected windfall. She easily killed the girl and the insider in the infirmary. She should have been able to get to Evers in the infirmary, but he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He never seemed to be where he was supposed to be.
After a quick backward glance, Alexis opened the bulkhead door and walked hurriedly down the hall in search of another fortuitous windfall. A windfall whose neck she was going to snap like a twig.
She was accustomed to following carefully constructed plans, but this situation had completely fallen apart and the director himself had taken over.
She was unnerved by this, but resolved herself to her task. She had endured no shortage of challenges in her life and had learned to rely on her intellect and training to overcome whatever obstacles were in her way. Her goal now was to do what she must and survive the inevitable backlash no matter what it took.
Chapter 15
The Navy SEAL standing next to Captain Howard snickered, but the captain brushed him aside. “Evers? I’ve heard about you,” the captain said. “Brass balls indeed.”
Scott grimaced. Captain Howard had more than heard of Scott. The two had met before, but it seemed only Scott remembered the encounter.
Captain Howard returned the look. “Evers, is there a SEAL detail under my command that you haven’t harassed or harangued?”
Scott was too torn up inside to grin, but he almost could have. “Probably not, sir. Nothing personal. My job to protect Shepherd’s crew and mission. Yours, your mission. The job.”
The last two words set Scott’s thoughts spinning again. The j-o-b had always been his excuse with Edie. “Damn you, Edie, for dying on me,” he told himself.
“Evers, what am I going to do with you?” The captain asked. “You deserve the brig. You’ve earned—”
Midshipman Tinsdale cut in, “If I may, sir. Evers was my responsibility. Orders were to the mess and then back to the infirmary for further observation, sir.”
Tindale’s voice cracked on the final sir and the captain winced. For a moment, the captain seemed unsure what to do. The master chief intervened. He reached out to Scott, shook Scott’s hand.
As the chief ushered Scott forward, he said quietly, “Cooper was my man. You did a good thing out there. Saved him. If Midshipman Tinsdale can recognize that, hell, I can too.” Then louder, the master chief said, “Where did you serve, Evers? Too good, too smug not to have.”
“A few too many duties. A few too many wars,” Scott said as the midshipman took the opportunity to step away and into the hallway. “Then field operations for the Agency, a few more unnamed wars, and now, well…”
“Which agency?” the chief asked.
“The NSA—” Scott caught himself as he was about to say “sir,” but he knew better. No master chief was a sir. A master chief was what he was and so he finished by saying, “—master chief.”
As the master chief turned to face the unhappy SEAL standing beside Captain Howard, Scott noted the chief’s name tag for the first time. It read: ROBERTS.
Scott did a double take. Was this the Master Chief Roberts he’d heard so much about? If so, the man was a living legend or as much of one as there could be in the close-knit special operations circles Scott traveled in.