“He won’t make it,” Eagle said. “There’s no crying in Special Ops, fella.”
“The longer these guys take,” Mac said, “the longer we’re going to be standing here in the rain. How about we gung ho up?”
Roland nodded. “Let’s finish this thing and whatever else Ms. Jones wants us to do here so we can get back to the team room and just have Moms and Nada give us shit. This is ridiculous. I set the course record on this thing ten years ago.”
“So you know what they’re doing wrong, right?” Mac asked with a grin.
“They’re not listening,” Kirk said. “I never went through the Q Course here, but I went to Ranger school. People think the N in Ranger stands for ‘knowledge,’ but we learned to listen to orders. And we had the Darby Queen to negotiate, which wasn’t no cake walk.”
Some of the candidates were now piling their rucksacks, trying to build a platform, to get them closer to the knotted rope.
“How did you get over the wall, Roland?” Eagle asked. “It wasn’t here when I went through.”
“I threw a little fellow up there,” Roland said. “He got the knot and then held on for his life. I jumped, grabbed his legs, used him as part of the rope.” Roland flushed. “Dislocated both his shoulders. But the instructors were impressed.”
“I don’t think that was or is the correct solution,” Kirk said.
“Worked for me,” Roland said.
“You aren’t in the bell curve,” Eagle said.
“No one here is supposed to be in the bell curve,” Kirk said.
“The rope is a MacGuffin,” Eagle said.
“A what?” Roland asked.
A cluster of candidates had their top man come within a foot of the rope, before the pyramid collapsed into a muddy pile.
“It’s a term Hitchcock used for something that seems important and everyone is focused on it, when it really isn’t important,” Eagle explained.
Kirk was the first to get it, as he usually was. “It’s misdirection. What if the rope wasn’t there?”
“No way anyone could get over that wall,” Roland said. “Even working together with what they got.”
“Yeah,” Kirk said, “but what was the instruction?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Get to the other side.”
Mac laughed. “Well, shoot. Even in Texas we’d figure that out. Eventually.” He shouldered his rucksack. “Ready, guys? Watching these newbies is making me wish I was in a different army.”
The Nightstalkers shrugged on their weighted backpacks, then simply walked around the wall. Roland was last and he paused, looking at the candidates. “Coming?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Twackhammer screamed.
“We’re going to the other side of the wall,” Roland said. And then he was gone.
The muddy candidates stood confused, staring at the wall, and then at Twackhammer, and then at the Nightstalkers. It was only when the major started to laugh that they got it. They grabbed their packs and followed the Nightstalkers around the wall.
And they were better soldiers for it.
Gretchen was sipping cheap white wine and getting a wonderful foot massage, which kind of made up for the trimming of her ingrown big toenail. She put the glass down and closed her eyes. Her mind wandered to that boring morass of wondering what she was going to make for dinner, which was inevitably a few hours from now. She did find it odd, perhaps even ironic, that her wife never cooked. Never learned, never wanted to try, and it was not a subject to be discussed. Nope, cooking was Gretchen’s, except she’d never really learned either.
You’d think in a marriage of two women that one of them would have learned to cook. What were the odds?
Gretchen, however, could make a mean smoothie and that’s about it. She tried to remember what was in the freezer because she might have a couple of chicken fillets to nuke and then half scorch. She opened her eyes and reached into her purse, pulling out her phone. She Googled a recipe for chicken. She’d spent thirty-six years working in IT for the government, although her partner thought she’d worked for the IRS. As if. Gretchen had worked deep in the bowels of the Pentagon for Mrs. Sanchez, but much like the women who worked at Bletchley Circle in England during World War II, once she retired, that was it. One never, ever, discussed that world with outsiders.
There were many reasons for that beyond the secrecy oath they swore. But even that issue outsiders had a problem with; some didn’t think oaths were worth that much, but for those in the covert world, their oaths meant everything to them. Also, outsiders didn’t understand. They couldn’t. One had to live the life, experience it, to understand.
And last but not least, speaking out of house could bring a very unfriendly visit from the Cellar.
As she scrolled through recipes, Gretchen smiled as she remembered watching the movie RED with her wife. Her wife had thought it stupid, but Gretchen had just howled and wondered who’d whispered the little truths to the screenwriters. Retired. Extremely. Dangerous.
The covert was over for Gretchen, even though the closest she’d come to the front lines were the bundles of millions of dollars of cash she and Mrs. Sanchez had prepped to be shipped overseas to be used to bribe, acquire, and who knew what else.
The woman rubbing her feet was the best and Gretchen tried to remember her name for the next time.
Then her other phone gave its distinctive Warren Zevon ringtone for the first time and Gretchen was reminded for the first time since she retired that her covert life was almost over. It was like the mafia: Just when you thought you were out, they pulled you back in, even though the Loop was technically, well, out of the loop.
Gretchen scrambled through her bag and found the second phone at the bottom. She punched the receive button and saw the five letter groupings message on the screen. She nodded, then forwarded it, as she’d been instructed, to the number she’d memorized. Gretchen then sighed and forwarded the message to a second number, not part of the standing operating procedure of the Loop but part of the reality of her continued existence as part of the living. One could only go off the reservation as far as those in power allowed.
She dropped the second phone back in her bag.
The woman doing her feet laughed. “You’re naughty!”
Gretchen was confused for a moment.
“Only one reason to have two phones,” the woman said with a smile. “You have boyfriend and no want husband to know.”
Gretchen smiled back and wished she were indeed naughty.
Maybe she could find someone who could cook.
CHAPTER 6
The term LoJack was invented to be the opposite of hijack, which was a little too cute for Neeley.
It was also too easy. Neeley distrusted easy. It wasn’t exactly one of Gant’s rules that he’d pounded into her during their years together, hiding from the covert world. It was implicit. Gant had taught her a lot, some of it skills that civilians paid a lot of money to learn such as skiing, parachuting, mountain climbing, and so on. However, he’d taught her the hard way. In adverse weather. Carrying heavy loads of gear. At night. And they’d done some of it under the most difficult circumstances of alclass="underline" when trying to track down and kill someone or, worse, when someone was trying to do the same to them.
But the Support personnel interviewing the driver of the Prius stolen at the Gateway Arch had learned that the car was equipped with a LoJack system. At three in the morning and in a rush, Burns hadn’t had the opportunity to be picky. The VIN and unit number had been sent out to police across the country and it had turned up, driving across Illinois and on into Kentucky. Police were warned to note location of the transmitter but to not approach under any circumstances.