"If you don't want to tell me how you felt in that parking lot, why not tell me how you're doing with the dreams?"
"Better," Nick said, "but the headaches are starting again."
"You remember what you discovered the last time you were here?"
"Yeah. I can get killed like anybody else. But I already knew that. I'm not sure it has much to do with the dreams or PTSD."
"It was more than that. What was the word you used, to describe how you felt? Do you remember? It's important."
"Why?"
"Why do you think?"
"Damn it, you're doing that shrink thing."
"What shrink thing?"
"Throwing questions back at me. Answering a question with a question."
"Would it do any good if I told you what I thought?"
"That's why I'm here."
"No it isn't," Milton said. "You're here because you want to stop the nightmares and the rest of it. Me telling you what I think isn't going to help you solve anything. You have to figure it out yourself."
Every time he'd been here, Nick had wanted to get up and walk out. Now he wanted to do it again. He thought about the last time he'd been in this office. He'd been talking about Afghanistan, about the day he'd almost died. About the grenade. About the child he'd killed who was trying to kill him. The scars on his body began throbbing as he thought about it. What was the word he'd used?
Helpless.
Milton saw it register on Nick's face. "Stay with it," he said. "Stay with the feeling."
"Helpless," Nick said. "Helpless is the word."
Milton was silent.
…the grenade comes toward him, a dark, green shape tumbling through the air…everything goes white….
"How the hell do I deal with that?"
"How do you usually deal with it?"
Nick laughed. "More firepower."
Milton smiled. "Okay, but what else?"
Nick thought. "I get headaches," he said. "Nightmares."
Milton nodded. "Because…?"
"I don't know."
"When we have a nightmare over and over again, it's because our unconscious mind is trying to get our attention. It's a way to get a message through to the outer mind."
"What message?" Nick asked.
"What do you think?"
"There you go again," Nick said.
Milton waited.
"The only message I get is that I almost died."
"That's right. You almost died. How do you feel when you have the dream?"
"Damn it, you know how I feel." Nick was getting angry. "Helpless. Frightened. That good enough?"
"So why do you have the dream?"
Nick took a deep breath. He wanted to punch Milton. He wanted to leave the room. He felt like he was on the verge of something, some discovery. "All it does is remind me."
"Of what?"
"That I feel unprotected. That I could die."
"Yup. Does it work?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do the nightmares keep you safe? Protect you?"
"Of course not."
"Right. It's a failed strategy. Now you know what the issue really is."
Nick felt a surge of adrenaline. "Survival?"
Milton nodded, pleased. "At the most basic level. Life and death. Now that you know that, you don't have to get headaches and nightmares to remind you."
"It can't be that simple."
"Maybe it's a little more complicated than that but that's the foundation," Milton said. "Think about it some more and we'll do something a little different next time to defuse whatever is left."
When he walked out of the office, Nick felt that something had changed. What had Milton said? That since Nick knew what the issue really was, he didn't need the dreams to remind him. He remembered the feeling, like an electric jolt running through his body, when he realized the issue was survival. It was more than knowing it. He'd felt the rightness of it, felt the energy and truth of it ripple through his body, like touching a live wire.
It wasn't the first time he'd thought about getting killed. It wasn't the first time he'd thought about personal survival either. Hell, he had years of practice surviving in situations where others died. Where he could have died. Knowing that survival was the big issue couldn't make any difference.
It couldn't be that simple.
Could it?
CHAPTER 16
"I've pinned down the location of the signal that triggered the satellite," Stephanie said. "You're not going to like what I found."
Elizabeth had made fresh coffee. "It's nice out. Let's have coffee on the patio," she said. The coffee break had become a regular habit, something Elizabeth and Stephanie tried to do every morning about this time.
They sat down at a painted wicker table. The sun felt good on Stephanie's face.
"What did you discover?" Elizabeth asked.
Stephanie said. "The signal that triggered the satellite came from Alaska."
"Alaska? Where in Alaska?"
"The middle of nowhere. The Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge."
"Okay. You have my attention. What is a high frequency radio signal doing coming from a wildlife refuge? What's there that could do something like that?"
"SATWEP."
"The Satellite Weapons Program?"
"That's right. The Army runs it in conjunction with DARPA, the Defense Agency Research Projects Agency," Stephanie said. "The Pentagon does love their acronyms, don't they?"
"But that's the government." There was disbelief in Elizabeth's voice.
"I said you wouldn't like it," Stephanie said.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. The signal definitely came from there. The signature is unmistakable. There's nothing like it anywhere else on the planet."
"Steph, you just said someone used a defense agency installation to attack Russia. If Moscow finds out, it's going to make a lot of trouble. It's an act of war."
"Then this probably isn't something you want to share with Vysotsky," Stephanie said.
Elizabeth snorted and choked on her coffee.
"You shouldn't make me laugh when I'm drinking."
Stephanie said, "I'm glad you think it's funny."
"It's the way you said it." Elizabeth blotted her lips with a napkin. "I don't think you realize how funny you can be sometimes."
Stephanie started to say something then changed her mind. Instead she said, "The main SATWEP facility is located near Anchorage, but there's a classified program that uses the same technology in smaller installations and research facilities. They aren't always manned. The signal came from one of those. I've got the GPS coordinates."
"Where is it?"
"It's remote. The nearest town is just a wide spot at the end of the road called Circle, around fifty miles south of the Arctic circle. They run a big dog sled race out of there every year. Beyond that, it's all wilderness. The only way in is on foot or by air. "
Elizabeth sipped her coffee.
"What do you want to do?" Stephanie asked.
"I'll send the team in. There could be something on site to give us a lead."
Stephanie said, "There's bound to be some kind of security, even if it's an unmanned station."
"We'll treat it as if it were a hostile installation," Elizabeth said.
Stephanie waited.
"Normally I would go to the White House on something like this," Elizabeth said, "but I don't trust Edmonds. I don't want to tip our hand or let anyone know what we're doing. We'll use the Gulfstream to transport the team and supplies to Alaska."
"When do you want them to go?"
"Right away. I don't think we have a lot of time to stop this. Taking Rice down is a bad sign. We need more intelligence and we need it now. We need evidence. Once we have that, I'll decide the next step. Get the team together and we'll plan the mission."
"What about the Russians? Are you going to tell them what we've discovered? "
"Let's see what Nick finds in Alaska before we talk to them," Elizabeth said.