Edge of Battle

talk with me about using CIDs in special ops…” He shrugged. “But Kelsey’s group will be right there in San Diego, and it’d mean big bucks. I might be promoted to lieutenant colonel someday, but it’s unlikely I’ll go any higher than that. Maybe I’ll take her up on her offer—get started with the rest of my life now, while I’m young and hopefully not so stupid.”

“Work for Kelsey DeLaine?” Ariadna turned back to her monitors. “Sounds like a plan, J,” she said stonily.

“Or…”

“Or what?”

“Sergeant Major Jefferson told me that he’s forming a training corps to give the National Guard some high- tech surveillance and infantry systems, leading up to integrating the Guard completely into the Homeland Security role and eventually merging them completely into the Department of Homeland Security.” She half-turned to him. “This group is being set up at Los Alamitos Joint Reserve Forces Training Center, which I learned just happens to be…”

“A couple hours’ drive from San Diego.”

“True.” He felt her shoulders slump, and he reached down and wrapped his arms around her. “But…it’s just about a half hour from Cal State–Northridge, if the traffic’s not too bad on the 405. Right?” He felt her entire body tense up, and he thought, You idiot, you just blew it—but moments later he felt her hands touch his, then she reached around and squeezed her arms tighter around him. “I’ll stay in for my twenty and maybe shake things up a little bit in the National Guard. Sounds like fun, huh?”

“But what about…about you and Kelsey?”

“Ari, it’s always been you, and only you,” Jason Richter said. “But we worked together, closely together, and dating you or becoming your lover would’ve complicated everything—our careers, our lives, our relationship. I didn’t want to risk losing you.”

“But now…?”

“Now…I realize that if I don’t tell you how I feel, I’ll definitely lose you,” Jason said. “Besides, I suddenly find myself without a job and with my career and reputation pretty much down the crapper. I’m a good catch, huh?”

She laughed and pulled him closer. “I’m still going to go down and register, Jason,” Ariadna said softly. “I think I owe it to…to all the ones who didn’t make it across…you know, to do the right thing.”

“Then I’ll go and stand in line with you and your folks,” Jason said. “It’ll give me a chance to get to know them, no?”

Ariadna rose to her feet, embraced him, and gave him a long, deep kiss. He could feel her softly weeping in his shoulder as she held him closely.

“So, Dr. Vega,” Jason asked, “does this mean that maybe I’m not the last man on earth anymore?” Another hot, passionate kiss gave him all the answers he needed.

UXO MANAGEMENT AREA, TWENTYNINE PALMS

MARINE CORPS DEPOT, CALIFORNIA

THAT SAME TIME

In a remote corner of the sprawling one-thousand-square-mile Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms Marine Depot in the Mojave Desert of southern California was a maze of hundreds of low concrete bunkers, surrounded by twenty-foot-high razor-wire chain-link fences, guard towers, lights, and K-9 patrol areas. Formerly a weapons storage area for nuclear weapons, the area had been converted for use as the Marine Corps’ primary unexploded ordnance disposal site in the western United States. Using a sophisticated computer- coded tracking system, every bullet, shell, bomb, or explosive charge ever used by the United States Marine Corps since 1997 could be accurately tracked from creation to detonation. And if it wasn’t used in training or on the battlefield, it ended up here: the UXO Management Area not only cataloged and tracked munitions and explosives, but also disposed of unused ordnance in an environmentally friendly manner.

The one-thousand-acre UXO Management Area was highly automated and needed only a very small staff to run it, mostly civilian contractors with a Marine first lieutenant or captain overseeing a company-sized cadre of administrative staff and guards. The civilians monitored the equipment and computers and provided support services such as facilities maintenance and prepared meals for the small Marine force.

But in one of the three hundred and seventy weapon storage bunkers scattered across the barren desert landscape was one bunker that had its own chain-link fence enclosure and its own guard post. Although all of the bunkers were air-conditioned to keep the explosives stored inside stable, a thermograph of this bunker would have showed it several degrees cooler than most of the rest. Inside, the bunker was divided in half by steel bars. On one side of the bars was a simple desk and storage cabinets for the guards posted outside…

…and on the other side of the bars was a stainless steel cot, bedstand, washbasin, and toilet. This was the secret prison cell for terrorist mastermind Colonel Yegor Zakharov, his holding cell set up for him while he awaited trial in federal court.

Zakharov’s schedule since his arrest and detention at Twentynine Palms was pretty much the same every day: six guard shift changes per day, where the Marine guards would check in on him, then handcuff him and search his cell; and three meals per day. Once a week he was taken outside to a portable shower to bathe. As a federal prisoner awaiting trial he was allowed to have law-books and documents, but they were closely cataloged and taken away from him at night. He was allowed no TV, no radio, no books.

The evening meal and shift change occurred at the same time, so the oncoming Marine guard and the contractors with the meal would arrive at the same time. While the contractors waited outside in a pickup truck, the oncoming Marine guard would inventory and log in his weapons, ammo, and equipment in the bunker, receive the prisoner status briefing from the offgoing guard, check in with the security headquarters via radio to assume responsibility for the post, take the keys and passcodes from the offgoing guard, and then the offgoing guard would formally relinquish his post and depart. The new guard would then handcuff the prisoner, conduct a search of the cell and the prisoner, take away all of his books and papers and lock them in a cabinet, and then go outside to get the meals for himself and the prisoner.

“Hold on, comma es-tay you-stead hot, Maria?” the Marine guard said in pidgeon Spanish as he walked over to the pickup truck. “Boners tarheels.”

“It’s ‘?Como esta usted hoy, Maria? and ‘buonas noches,’ Sergeant: ‘good evening,’ not ‘good afternoon,’ and your pronunciation is terrible as always,” Maria Arevalo said with an amused smile. “When will you ever learn Spanish?”

“I said it the way it was meant to be said, Maria,” the Marine sergeant said with a smile. “C’mon in out of the heat.”

“I must go.”

“O-kay, darlin’,” the Marine said. “I’ll see you later. Ay-dos!” Maria rolled her eyes in mock frustration at the Marine’s clumsy attempt at Spanish and headed back to her pickup truck.

The Marine reported by radio that the meals had arrived, the contractor was heading back to the admin area, and he was about to open the bunker door. He rang the outer buzzer, then looked through the viewfinder in the door to be sure the prisoner was up against the back wall as he was supposed to do whenever he heard the bell, punched in the code to unlock the door, and went inside with the meal. “Chow time,” he said. He put the cardboard meal container on the small metal table, then turned to close the bunker door…

…and he never saw the baseball bat hit him on the side of his head.

Zakharov scrambled to the steel bars of his cell and looked on in astonishment as he saw the Marine guard hit the ground and a woman rush inside to check him. “?Usted es un angel!” he said happily. “I hope you brought explosives, my dear, because to use his key code to unlock this cell you have to call the security office first, so unless you can do a deep man’s voice you will need a…”

“I wouldn’t worry about any of that, Colonel Zakharov,” a man’s voice said in English—and U.S. Border Patrol agent Paul Purdy entered the bunker. He looked at Maria. “Is he okay?”

“He is unconscious.” She checked his pupils. “No concussion—I think he will be okay. His head is bleeding but