Now please, Breanna, Jonathon — we have some other items on our agenda, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Thank you for supporting me,” Breanna said as they walked back to his car.
“Supporting us both, I believe.”
“You stood up to your boss.”
“That’s my job, really. He doesn’t mind, too much…but…” Reid let the word hang there for a moment. “…if this thing does get too big, then we hand it off.”
“Absolutely.”
“No ego.”
“None. Well, maybe a little.”
Reid laughed. So did Breanna.
Their laughter was short-lived. Breanna’s secure satellite phone rang as she got into the car. It was Danny, who used the Voice’s communication module to call her.
“Yes?”
“We have a situation,” he told her. “And an opportunity.”
Danny explained where Tarid was and what they hoped to do.
“Are you sure you can get him out?” Breanna asked when he finished.
“I can’t be giving out guarantees like that. I think I can, or I wouldn’t have called. I may be able to do it without the Sudanese army taking any casualties, if luck runs with us. But that’s a big if. I can’t guarantee anything. There’s a village nearby — again, I’m not guaranteeing anything. Once things start happening, a lot of their soldiers may die.”
Breanna turned to Reid. “They found the subject. He’s being held in camp about fifty miles from the battle site. They want to follow him.”
“That’s what they should be doing,” said Reid.
“The Sudanese army is guarding him,” Breanna said. “Do you think we could get them to release him?”
“Given the state of relations between our countries, I’d say there’s no chance at all.”
Breanna covered the phone. “They have a plan to get him out, but Danny’s concerned that some of the Sudanese soldiers will be killed if things go wrong.”
“We have to be ruthless in this game.”
Breanna wondered if it was really that easy for him. There were, of course, many arguments in favor of getting Tarid out, even if it did mean casualties among the Sudanese regulars. An atomic bomb would threaten millions. But somehow she felt the calculus should take more time.
“If they think they can get him out and follow him to the other elements in this chain,” Reid added, “we should urge them to do so.”
Breanna put the phone back to her head.
“Do it.”
Breanna checked with Zen on the way back to her office, making sure that Teri was all right. Zen’s report was filled with his usual optimism and humor; according to him, Teri had charmed the staff and would no doubt have been running the place if he’d let her. Since it was too late to return to school by the time the X rays—“very negative,” said the doctor — were done and read, Zen had taken her back to his office, where Teri did a little homework and research on the Web before heading home with him.
“Research meaning sending text messages to her friends?” Breanna asked.
“We have a rule in the Senate,” replied Zen. “We only text enemies.”
“Har-har.”
“When are you coming home?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“No sweat. Teri and I have dinner covered. I’m thinking spaghetti and meatballs.”
“Again?”
“It’s the chef’s favorite dinner. And I don’t mind it, either.”
“All right.” Breanna glanced to the left, suddenly conscious of Reid. “I’ll probably be home around six. Maybe seven.”
“Which means nine, right?”
“Close to seven.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Breanna clicked off the call and returned her cell phone to her pocketbook.
“Tough job with a family,” said Reid.
“It can be,” she admitted.
“When I was younger — it is a very difficult balance. But you seem to get a lot of support from your husband.”
“He tries. He’s very busy.”
“You don’t have a nanny?” Reid asked.
“No.”
Breanna suddenly felt uncomfortable, not so much because of the content of the conversation, but because of whom she was having it with. While she and Reid had worked well together over the past few months, they’d never discussed personal matters — hers or his. She didn’t even know if he had any children.
“We’ve had various helpers,” Breanna said. “But we’ve always felt — we feel very strongly that, if we can, we’d prefer to raise Teri ourselves.”
“Don’t want her calling someone else ‘Mom.’ I completely agree,” said Reid. “Raising them yourself — there’s no substitute. As hard as it is, I’m sure she’ll be better off in the long run.”
“I hope so,” said Breanna.
Breanna returned to a whirlwind of tasks at the Pentagon. Most of them had nothing to do directly with Whiplash, but she interrupted her schedule when her secretary, Ms. Bennett, finally managed to get hold of the man she wanted to run the group’s support team: her father’s former right-hand man, Terence “Ax” Gibbs.
“I’m having a fantastic time down here,” Ax told her over the video phone. He looked it, too — he was on a porch on an island in the Florida Keys. “How are you all enjoying the snow?”
“It hasn’t snowed all winter up here,” said Breanna. “And now it’s almost spring.”
“Too bad.” Ax winked. The former Air Force chief master sergeant had retired when Dog was assigned out of Dreamland. Up until then, Ax wasn’t just the epitome of a chief master sergeant, he was a chief’s chief, a candidate for sainthood or the devil incarnate, depending on your perspective.
Most people would have said he was a little of both.
“I need your help, Ax,” said Breanna. “I have a new command. It’s a joint operation involving intelligence and the military. I need someone who can get things done, who can work with the military side lining up support for different missions, who’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty.”
“Sounds like it would be right up my alley,” said Ax. “If I were looking for a job.”
“Now before you say no—”
“You’re just like your father, you know that?”
“Ax—”
“Fortunately for you, my sources indicated that this call might be coming. And I was able to do a little research into the subject.”
“How—”
“Once a chief, always a chief.” Ax raised his glass of home-brewed ale as a toast. “There are some things I can’t tell, even when retired. Don’t worry, no state secrets have been betrayed. Who would be, well, not better than me, but nearly as good?”
“I—”
“Greasy Hands Parsons. And he has far too much time on his hands now that his grandson Robert has started
