Ms. Jones inclined her head in agreement. “True. Burns was on the other side. We have no clue what’s over there. We have no clue if he’s even Burns anymore. But policing the ranks of the covert world is the Cellar’s province.”
Moms wasn’t ready to give up. “Does the Cellar know how to close a Rift? Because it’s highly possible Burns is here to open one. He took the computer from the Gateway Rift.”
“You raise valid points,” Ms. Jones agreed. “Points I made to my superior. That is why you will be heading to Fort Meade to consult with the Cellar personally.”
“At your request or their request?” Moms asked.
Ms. Jones nodded at the import of the question. “Hannah wants to meet you. And I want you to be my personal liaison to the Cellar, as it appears we’re going to be working together more often in the future.”
Moms didn’t move. “And the team?”
“Is in stand-down,” Ms. Jones said. She held up a hand as Moms prepared to protest once more. “Again, I made all the points you are prepared to make, but again, I was listened to but not agreed with. The Snake was badly damaged and is in depot maintenance. The team was damaged. It is time for various members to rest, refit, retrain.” She shifted her gaze. “Nada, I believe you have personal business to attend to in Los Angeles. A birth?”
Nada blinked, not surprised that Ms. Jones knew about his family, but that she thought he would ever consider it a priority, especially with someone like Burns loose. But the way she’d shot down Moms told him there was no argument he could use. He was going to Los Angeles.
“I do,” he said.
“Good. Take the time to visit your family. After you give Ivar the Protocols to study, of course.”
“Yes, Ms. Jones,” Nada said, resigned to having to visit his family and taking time off. A condemned man would have looked happier. The last time he’d been in California with family, he’d had to bail out on his niece Zoey under less-than-optimal circumstances, and he wasn’t expecting to be welcomed with open arms.
“Doc.” Ms. Jones had already moved on. “You will be in charge of Mr. Ivar after Moms and Nada give him the Protocols. Show him the Can. Take him into the Archives. He is to know everything you know about Rifts and Fireflies.”
Mac snorted, as if to indicate he didn’t think that was much.
“Yes, Ms. Jones,” Doc said, bowing to the inevitable and ignoring Mac. He cleared his throat, something on his mind.
“Yes?” Ms. Jones asked.
“What role on the team does Ivar take?” Doc asked. “I’m the team scientist.”
“He is your assistant,” Ms. Jones said.
“No one else has an assistant,” Doc pointed out.
“No one else needs one,” Ms. Jones snapped. She held up a frail hand as if to stop the impact of the words. “I do not say that to disparage you. I say that because it’s the other way: We need more help understanding the problems we deal with, particularly Rifts and Fireflies. Ivar is the only person who has opened one and is still with us. That brings a unique perspective to the table. We need one because Burns walked through a Rift and is with us now. The Nightstalkers and all the iterations of our predecessors have been dealing with this problem since its inception in 1947. We’ve been on the defensive. It is time to change that. To be preemptive. I want the two of you to work on that.”
Doc took a step forward. “Does that mean you want us to consider opening a controlled Rift?”
Nada shook his head. “No one has ever opened a controlled Rift.”
“Not yet,” Doc said.
“I did,” Ivar said.
Mac snorted and Doc began shaking his head. Ivar held up his hand. “When you can open it and close it, you control it. I admit I have little clue how I did either, and I wasn’t in charge of my own faculties, but still.”
“Exactly,” Ms. Jones said. “And that is why you are here and that is why you and Doc will work together. Any more questions, Mr. Doc?”
“No.” Doc took a step back.
“Mac, Kirk, Eagle, and Roland.” Ms. Jones said the names ominously. “You need to relearn some basic lessons about following rules, after your stunt in Arkansas, which we never had time to address. You need some training. A flight is awaiting you at the auxiliary field. Colonel Orlando will escort you to Fort Bragg.”
“Oh shiit,” Mac muttered. “Not Bragg.”
“You all have your instructions. Please follow through. Of course, as always, you are on immediate recall.”
The Nightstalkers exited Ms. Jones’s office, a defeated group if ever there was one.
That was still living.
When the door shut behind them, Pitr reached down and unhooked the two lines. Then he gently scooped Ms. Jones up and carried her to her room. He laid her in the bed, reattaching the lines and then the monitoring gear.
They’d known each other since Chernobyl and it was obvious she’d gotten the worse of that event. She’d saved his life, warning him against flying over the reactor to dump a load of concrete. At the same time, she’d risked her own life, going into a control room to rescue another engineer — one of the engineers who’d helped make the disaster.
That was a basic contradiction in nature that Pitr still couldn’t reconcile in his old friend. Of course, others couldn’t understand why a Russian was running one of the United States’ most highly classified units.
It is as it is.
Ms. Jones sighed and collected her energy. Meeting the entire team face-to-face, a first, had drained her. But she’d been worn out prior to the meeting from her discussion/argument with Hannah, the person she reported to in the covert world. She’d thrown every argument that Moms had tried to start, and more, at Hannah and had been denied at every turn. It was more than just the issue of Burns, the failure of the Gateway mission, and the loss of the Snake. Tension between the Ranch and the Cellar had been building for over a year. Having to run the Nuke Op last December together had been both beneficial and disturbing.
Hannah’s insistence that Moms come to Maryland and meet with her brought its own set of questions, with most of the answers being bad ones.
“Please put me through to Hannah,” Ms. Jones ordered Pitr.
“What do you think?” Hannah Masterson asked Dr. Golden.
In another time and another place and another universe, they might have been two housewives chatting about their children. Or, given their business attire, two professionals discussing a client.
But they were three hundred feet below the main building of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. In an office where lives were evaluated, judged, and decided upon with regularity.
There was no chitchat. Hannah had once done chitchat. When she was Mrs. Masterson, appendage to her husband and doing all she could to help him climb the corporate ladder in the aerospace industry in St. Louis.
The fact he’d failed to mention his involvement in illicit covert activities in his past was something that had cost him his life and brought Hannah, by a very hard road, to her current position as head of the Cellar. It had also come close to killing her. And Neeley.
Hannah was half Ms. Jones’s age, in her late forties, with thick blond hair. She was fit, something she did for the job not for vanity, and her skin was pale, which was to be expected of someone whose quarters and office were deep underground. Her most striking feature was her chocolate-colored eyes.
She never thought of them as striking and only noticed the deepening lines around them when she looked in the mirror, which wasn’t often.
Dr. Golden was of roughly the same age, also blond, also fit. She wore glasses, which both she and Hannah knew was an affectation, something to give her more cache when she met with others. Even now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, women still had to fight to be taken seriously, especially in worlds dominated by men. Hannah let her position and, when needed, operatives like Neeley implement her seriousness.