"This may sound cold, and I admit I'm new to this, but it's her choice, isn't it? You're not making the decision for her."
"Going out there would be the dumbest thing I've ever done. They've caught her, detained her, threatened totake her back to prison, and yet they leave her with her phone. I mean, come on."
Albie scanned the horizon. "Then your decision is easy."
"I wish."
"It is. Either you don't go, or you consider all your resources."
"What does that mean?"
"There's one it seems you've forgotten. Maybe two."
"I'll bite."
"Assign David Hassid to find out exactly where they have her and have him send through an order from a bogus commander to keep her there until further notice. You call her back and tell her you're not coming. Make her and whoever is listening in believe it. You just show up, surprise attack, just when both she and the GC think you have abandoned her."
Rayford pursed his lips. "Maybe you ought to be in charge of the Trib Force. But surprising them doesn't guarantee success. I'll still likely be killed or detained myself."
"But you've forgotten another resource."
"I'm still listening."
"Sir? Director? Are you all right?" "He's out."
"His eyes are open, Doctor." "He fell on his head, Medicine Woman." "I've asked you not to call me th-" "Sorry. I don't know how you handled fallen braves on the reservation, but this one couldn't even break his fall. He couldn't shut his eyes if he wanted to."
"Help me get him onto – "
"There you go again, sweetie. I'm not an orderly."
"And there you go again, Doctor! We can let him lie here and bleed to death, or I can remind you that our patients way outnumber the help."
David's tongue was swollen, and he could not maneuver it to form the word. All he wanted was water, but he knew his head required attention too.
"Spray!" the dark nurse called out, and someone tossed her a bottle. She sprayed three bursts of lukewarm water directly into David's face, and he couldn't even blink. Compared to the heat of the asphalt, which he estimated at 120 degrees, the water felt icy. A few drops reached his mouth and he panted, trying to drink them in.
The doctor and nurse gently rolled him to his back, and in his mind he was squinting against the harsh sun. Yet he knew his eyes were wide open and burning. He wanted to plead for another spray, but he felt paralyzed. The nurse mercifully laid his cap over his face, and when feeling returned, he tried not to move so as to keep the cap in place.
If he could find his voice he would plead for Annie, but he was helpless. She was probably somewhere looking for him.
When David was lifted to a canvas cot, the hat slipped off his face, but he was able to blink and was soon under the shade of a crowded tent. He had been assigned the last sliver of shadow. "Critical?" someone asked.
"No," the doctor said. "But sew that head up soon."
The first syringe that plunged into his scalp made his whole body jerk and shudder, but still he could not call out. In seconds the top of his head was numb. "You can do this?" the doctor said.
The nurse said, "It's not exactly cosmetic, is it?"
"Give him threads like a football-I don't care. He can always wear a hat."
In truth, David didn't care what his head looked like, and it was a good thing, because the nurse quickly shaved an inch on each side of the laceration, splashed more liquid on him, and began opening a huge needle.
"How bah?" David managed, his tongue lolling.
"You'll live," she said. "Strictly superficial. Tough skull. But you really yanked the flesh away from the bone. Five inches at least, laterally at the top."
"Watah?"
"Sorry."
"Little?"
She quickly removed the top of the spray bottle, which had an inch of water left in it. "Open up."
Most of it ran down David's neck, but it loosened his tongue. "Looking for Chief Christopher," he said.
"Don't know him," she said. "Now hold still."
"Her. Annie Christopher."
"Director, I've got about five minutes for you, and if you're lucky, I'll find an IV to re-hydrate you. But while I'm sewing, you're going to have to shut up and hold still if you don't want to look worse."
"Do you see what I see?" Albie squinted into the distance.
Rayford followed his gaze and was surprised by a gush of emotion. A black tower of smoke billowed several hundred feet in the air. "You think?" he said.
Albie nodded. "Gotta be."
"Get as close as you can," Rayford said. "That was my home for a long time."
"Will do. Now, you going to use every resource available? Or did I waste my money on this uniform and all the credentials?"
THREE
Buck awoke at noon, Chicago time, and felt twice his age. As had been true every day since the Rapture, he knew exactly where he was. In the past it was not uncommon to wake up in a foreign city and have to remind himself where he was, who he was, and what he was doing there. No more. Even when exhausted and injured and barely able to function, somehow the self-preservation flywheel kept spinning in his otherwise unengaged mind.
He had slept soundly, but at the first flutter of his eyelids and that initial glance at his watch, he knew. It all made sense in a ludicrous way. Buck stared at the wall next to an elevator in a bombed-out skyscraper in Chicago, heard muffled voices from around the corner, smelled coffee and a baby. Kenny had his own aroma, a fresh, powdery sweetness that Buck conjured when they were far apart.
But Kenny was here, barricaded from the outer hallways exposed to the windows that let in the midday sun. Buck rolled to his back and propped himself up on his elbows. Kenny had apparently given up trying to climb the makeshift barrier and sat contentedly playing with one of his loose shoelaces.
"Hey, Kenny Bruce," Buck whispered. "Come see Daddy."
Kenny's head jerked up, and then he went to all fours before righting himself and toddling to the bed. "Da-da."
Buck reached for him, and the chubby bundle climbed atop him and stretched out on his stomach and chest. Buck let his head fall back again and wrapped his arms around Kenny. The boy seldom had the patience to simply rest in his father's arms, but now he seemed almost ready to nap himself. With the baby's tiny heart beating against his own, Buck wished he could lie there forever.
"Da-da bye-bye?" Kenny said, and Buck could not stop the tears.
Rayford had made a decision, several in fact. After watching the old safe house burn to the ground, he instructed Albie to turn back to Kankakee, where they would fly the GC fighter to Colorado.
"Now you're talking, Captain," Albie said.
"Now I'm talking," Rayford groused. "Now I'm probably getting us all killed."
"You're doing the right thing."
Unable to reach David in New Babylon, Rayford left a message asking him to get back to them with Hattie's exact whereabouts. He also asked David to inform GC personnel holding her that, should their current operation fail, they should keep Hattie there until assigned personnel could come for her.
David often overrode other GC systems to send such directives in a way that they could not be traced back to him. He was the one who assigned security codes to keep such transmissions from "enemies of the Global Community," so he was also able to use the channels without detection. "As soon as you can," Rayford recorded on David's private machine, "get back to Albie and me to confirm you've paved the way for us."
Before long Rayford would have to transmit his picture, with his new look and name, to David Hassid so the young Israeli could "enlist" him in the GC Peacekeeping Forces too. Meanwhile, he and Albie would put down at what was once Peterson Air Force Base, appropriate a GC jeep David would reserve, follow his directions to this bunker, if that's what it was, and pick up the prisoner.