She had to look up the number. The internet was slow in Dawson City, and she had to sort through so many old SEAL files saved on her phone to find any information about Laird. The last time they’d talked on the phone had been before the original Kushkin mission, more than ten years ago.
“I was hoping you’d call,” Laird said as soon as he picked up the phone.
“You sent a letter to my daughter,” Diana snapped.
“Oh…” Laird popped his lips together. “Well, I figured you were at home. It’s not my fault you’re never where you live.”
“It’s not my fault either,” Diana replied. “You know whose fault it is.”
“Readers?”
Diana said nothing but she caught Amber’s gaze, rolling her eyes.
“Well, at least you got it,” Laird stated. “There were some things I didn’t want to include in there. Also, my hand started to cramp so…”
“Why, Laird?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you working with them?”
“For the money.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. What could I say, Diana?”
“No. You could have said no.”
“You don’t get it,” Laird replied, an exasperated breath making its way through the phone. “You never really got it. Your experience in the SEALs was completely different than mine. I was just another one of the substandard trainees. You were good… great. Best of the best was how Ratanake put it. You became a fucking celebrity just because you have a pussy. Sorry, but it’s true. Ratanake loved you. Literally, loved you. Your military is not my military. You were able to find a job, get married and have kids. Don’t you think I would have wanted that too, Weick? But I was so fucked in the head after Russia that I couldn’t do anything but come home and think. It was the thinking that really did me in, too. I spent all that time being eaten alive by my own guilt only for it to turn out that Rank had Robert Hanssen’d and joined the newest, freshest bad guys. Kushkin was small fry compared to what the Readers want to do. I mean, we all saw it at the funeral.”
“Yet, you still agreed to work with them?”
“Again… for the money, Weick,” Laird said. “Judge me all you want. I don’t give a shit. It’s not like I signed an NDA. I’ll give you and your government pals all the information you want.”
“I’m not working with the government…” Diana said, pulling her gaze and herself away from Amber, turning toward the wall.
“Oh,” Laird said, actual surprise in his voice. “Who are you working for then?”
“Me, Laird.”
“I like that.” Laird laughed. “Me too.”
Diana said, “You’ve always worked for yourself.”
There was another pause, both of them processing the back and forth of all that had happened. A certain kinship still existed between the two of them, the only two remaining members of their SEAL team, the only two who had ever truly known Dominic Ratanake.
“Kushkin is dead,” Diana stated, surprising herself this time.
“Taras?”
“Yes. Zabójca got him too.”
“Well, good riddance,” Laird murmured, his drawl coming through. “Ain’t that good for you?”
She didn’t need to tell him everything. She didn’t need to tell him that Taras had sensed a change in the antagonists just as Diana had.
“You gotta tell me, Laird,” Diana said, skipping over the end of Taras’s story. “What are they trying to do with the VBA?”
“Empty it out,” Laird replied. “I mean this is an assumption but based on the responsibilities of the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, in addition to being a fucking mouthful, they deal with all of the funds. They authorize pensions.”
“They want to empty out the veteran pension fund? That’s gotta be millions, if not billions of dollars,” Diana said.
Behind her, she heard Amber stop his pacing, listening in on the conversation.
“Billions, yeah,” Laird replied. “But I don’t know what they’re planning to do with it. If I knew, I’d tell ya.... Write you another letter.”
“Don’t write me another letter.”
“I’m kidding, Weick.”
They both laughed but just a little and for a short amount of time, no room and no time for kinship. Besides, Diana couldn’t approve of what Laird was doing, and he was going to do it with her approval or not.
The two of them followed Hoagland’s vehicle across the border. After all this time and travel, there was something comforting about being on American soil even if it was Alaska. That was where the comfort ended. There was a lot of stress in seeing the uniformed officers shove Hoagland into the backseat and drive him away in an armored car. These were soldiers and federal agents that weren’t going to take lightly to Diana and Amber’s informal interference. Amber had been surprisingly quiet about the MI6 connection, swearing that he was operating under Voss and not for the agency that she headed. That’s what he told Diana. He told the soldiers something entirely different, that he and Diana were a team working together as independents. She’d forgotten how good of a liar he was.
There was no direct road from Dawson City so they had to double back and make a twelve-hour drive to the city of Tok, Alaska. The mountains here were huge, intimidating piles of stone and snow. The town was even smaller than that of Dawson City, really not much aside from a bank, a gas station and a business called “Tok’s Paws” that provided equipment for dog sleds and also rented out cabins.
“There’s only two rooms,” one of the soldiers muttered to her partner as they opened the door for Hoagland followed by Diana and Amber.
“We can rent our own,” Diana said.
“Nope,” the soldier said. “You’re staying with us, Officer Weick.”
“What was your name again?” she asked, turning to her, the smell of the cabin hitting them all—cedar and smoke and fish.
“Captain Axtell, ma’am.”
Amber and Diana both stopped, exchanging glances. With a
