drowsy come 0300.”
“Yes, sir,” the training NCO said with a cruel smile, heading for the vehicle of the appointed candidate platoon leader.
Ari made the rounds as the troops settled in, checking the quality of their fighting positions, the placement of the armored vehicles and the watch rotation plan and offering constructive criticism to the officer candidate leaders. They were, he reflected, shaping up much better than he’d thought they would when he started this assignment. If Kage’s reforms held, the Colonial Guard might not be as much of a joke in a few years.
Once the sun sank below the horizon and everyone was fed, Ari rolled out a sleeping bag next to his rover and laid down to grab a few hours’ sleep before the attack came. He felt as if he had just laid his head down when there was the familiar feeling of a kick at his boot: the traditional, safe way to wake up an armed man in the field. He opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust before he spoke.
“Captain Hassan Ali,” he said quietly, sitting up. Beneath his sleeping bag, his hand still touched the grip of his unholstered handgun. “When I sent the message, I expected you would contact me upon our return to base.”
Colonel Lee’s aid crouched down next to him, anonymous in the dark of night in his grey guard body armor, a black watch cap pulled over his head. “Fewer prying eyes and electronic ears out here,” he replied in hushed but conversational tones. “Have you made progress recruiting the candidates?”
“Yes, I have a couple very promising ones,” Ari nodded, leaning back against the side of the rover, getting his feet beneath him. “Candidate Matienzo for one. His father is highly placed in the Southbloc Corporate Development Council… he has little love for the policies of the current administration. We have spoken of this… I think we can count on him if I am allowed to bring him into this. And he seems to be developing into a very capable soldier.”
“That is good to hear. But you did not contact me for this, I assume.”
“No, I did not,” Ari sighed. “This is difficult to say, Hassan Ali. It is about Alida… Lieutenant Hudec. We have become quite close…”
“And I salute your excellent taste, as well as your excellent luck, my friend,” Ali smiled. “She is an impressive woman.”
“I have… noticed things, in our time together. She has made calls that she has ended abruptly when I entered the room. She has been pressuring me to ask you and Colonel Lee for more details on your plans. This has worried me. So, I took a DNA sample from her. I had some close friends in the Marines, and one of them recently went to work for Fleet Intelligence. I contacted him and did not give him her name… I simply sent him the DNA analysis and had him run it through their database.”
“This was a hell of a risk, Captain Al-Masri.” Ali’s voice was cold and full of menace and trepidation.
“Her name is not Alida Hudec,” Ari went on as if the man hadn’t spoken. “And she is not a Colonial Guard infantry officer.” He let out a deep breath. “She is actually Captain-Investigator Gisella Katona of the Guard Investigative Division.”
“That is not possible!” Ali came to his feet, his voice raising instinctively before he remembered himself and crouched back down. “We ran a very thorough background investigation of Lieutenant Hudec,” he hissed in angry denial.
“The GID backstopped her very well,” Ari nodded. “But my friend has access to files that are more deeply classified than the ones your sources used. I cannot offer you any proof of this… my friend was hesitant to reveal even this much. But now that you know what to look for, you should be able to search this out on your own.”
“If you are wrong about this, Captain Al-Masri,” Ali said darkly, “it may be the end of you.”
“Captain Ali,” Ari returned, “if I am right about this, it may be the end for us all.”
Hassan Ali nodded reluctantly, swallowing hard. The man was very obviously close to panic, but he regained control of himself visibly. “Do nothing. Say nothing. I will be back in contact with you as quickly as I can.”
With that, Ali rose and strode quickly away into the darkness, probably to a waiting vehicle, Ari guessed.
Ari considered trying to go back to sleep, but abandoned the idea. His guts were roiling and his thoughts were on fire. This was a desperate gamble and one that could easily cost Alida her life. He knew these were the risks of the job, and he’d taken them a dozen times himself… and yet somehow, this time, he was scared… scared at what might happen to her, scared that she wouldn’t forgive him, and scared that he would never forgive himself.
Glen Mulrooney sliced cleanly through the water, his form perfect, his stroke textbook. He’d been swimming since he could walk and had competed as a student in high school and college; it came as naturally to him as breathing. It had been difficult to find the time when he’d been an intern for Senator Daniel O’Keefe, and his time was even more monopolized as an advisor to President Daniel O’Keefe, but at least now he had the benefit of being a member of the Capitol Athletic Club. Only a few minutes’ walk from the President’s office, the club boasted an Olympic size indoor swimming pool among its other amenities and he found the exertion both refreshing and refreshingly simple.
He particularly enjoyed coming in late at night, after Natalia and Valerie were asleep, when the place was mostly empty, as it was now. Which was why it surprised him when he caught a fleeting glimpse of someone walking on the pool deck as he turned to take a breath. For a moment, he felt a freezing panic in his gut as he thought of what Shannon Stark had said, but as he paused at the end of the lane, he let out a breath in relief.
The man approaching him was short and pudgy, his face nondescript, his hair and clothes so far from stylish that he seemed to be making an effort at it. But his doughy face was familiar, and that was enough to make Glen relax.
“Ozzie,” he said, levering himself out of the water and grabbing his towel from the wall. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a member,” the man shrugged. “Which doesn’t speak well for this place’s standards, I’ll tell you.”
Glen had to laugh. Oscar Fuentes was many things, but athletic wasn’t one of them. Hell, the man cared so little about how he looked that he didn’t even cheat and get a decent bodysculpting.
“Don’t laugh, blondie,” Ozzie cocked an eyebrow. “This is a great place for getting the inside track… people tend to talk a bit more loosely when the endorphins are flowing. Plus, they don’t allow security cameras in the locker rooms… privacy laws and all. So there’s no one to see who they’ve been talking to, and no one pins it on them when the story goes out over the newsfeed.”
“So,” Glen prompted, drying himself off and storing his goggles and earplugs in their case, “are you here trying to get information out of me? Not sure I worked out long enough to be that loose-lipped…”
“You need a shower,” Ozzie replied, frowning grimly. “Let’s hit the locker room.”
Shrugging, Glen snagged his swim bag and followed the reporter out of the pool deck and through the deserted hallways into the men’s locker room.
“I have to warn you, Oz,” he said jokingly, “if this is a come-on, I’m flattered but I don’t swing that way…”
“Shut up for a minute, will you?” the little man snapped, surprising Glen. Ozzie glanced around them, then walked through the rows of lockers and benches, making sure they were alone before he came back to Mulrooney.
“You asked me to run a check on Vice President Dominguez,” Ozzie said, sitting down on one of the benches. “Well, I did. I used the Pattern Recognition System that RHN developed to dig up dirt on celebrities and corporate bigshots and I used it to try to find anything about Dominguez that would make him vulnerable.”
“So, is he connected to the reactionaries in the Southbloc?” Glen asked, pulling on a T shirt and sitting down across from the reporter.
“The only connections he has to the Southbloc are his Aunt Rosaria in Caracas and some skank clerk from Argentina that he’s been banging on the side for the last three years,” Ozzie grunted dismissively.
“Then what was so important that you had to visit me here?” Glen wondered, an annoyed frown passing over his face.
