“Let me talk to Sharon,” he said to Rodgers.
She’s going to kill you,” Rodgers said. “Take a deep breath and a jog around the parking lot. We can handle this.”
“Thanks,” Hood said, “but I’ll let you know what I’m doing. I appreciate the update. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sure,” Rodgers said glumly.
Hood clicked off and folded up the phone. He swatted it gently in his open palm.
Sharon would kill him, and the kids would be crushed. Alexander had been looking forward to doing the virtual reality Teknophage attraction with him.
Jesus, why can’t anything ever be simple he asked himself as he walked toward the pool. “Because then there would be no dynamics between people,” he said under his breath, “and life would be boring.”
Though he had to admit that a little boredom would be good right now. It was what he’d come back to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding.
“Dad, you comin’ in?” his daughter, Harleigh, yelled as he approached.
“No, cheesehead,” said Alexander. “Can’t you see he’s got his phone?”
“I can’t see that far without my glasses, dorko,” she replied.
Sharon had stopped squirt-gunning their son and was swimming in place. From her expression, he could tell that she knew what was coming.
“Gather round,” Sharon said as her husband squatted by the side of the pool. “I think Dad’s got something to tell us.”
Hood said simply, “I have to go back. What happened today-we have to respond.”
“They need Dad to kick ass,” Alexander said.
“Hush,” Hood said. “Remember, loose lips-”
“Sink ships,” said the ten-year-old. “Ex-squeeze me,” he said as he went under.
His twelve-year-old sister went to hold him there, but Alexander darted away.
Sharon just glared at her husband. “This response,” she asked quietly. “It can’t possibly be made without you?”
“It can.”
“Then let it.
“I can’t,” Hood said. He looked down, then off to the side. Anywhere but in her eyes. -I’m sorry. I’ll call you later.”
Hood got up and called out to the kids, who interrupted their chase long enough to wave. “Get me a T-shirt at Teknophage,” he said.
“We will!” Alexander said.
He turned to walk away.
“Paul?” Sharon said.
He stopped and looked back.
“I know this is difficult,” she said, “and I’m not making it any easier. But we need you too. Especially Alexander. He’s going to be, ‘Oh, Dad would have loved this’ and ‘Dad would have loved that’ all day tomorrow. Sometime real soon, you’re going to have to start ‘responding’ to not being around enough.”
“You don’t think this kills me?” Hood asked.
“Not enough,” Sharon said as she pushed off the side. “Not as much as being away from your electric trains in D.C. Think about it, Paul.
He would, he promised himself.
In the meantime, he had a plane to catch.
SEVENTEEN
Monday, 3:33 A.M., Washington D.C.
Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires stood on the dark airstrip at Quantico. He was dressed in civilian clothes and a leather jacket, his laptop computer standing on the tarmac between his legs as he hustled the six other members of the Striker team into the two Bell JetRangers that would shuttle them to Andrews Air Force Base. There, they would transfer to Striker’s private C-141B StarLifter for the eleven-hour flight to Helsinki.
The night was crisp and invigorating, though, as always, it was the work itself that exhilarated him the most. When he was a kid growing up in Jamaica, he had never experienced anything more exciting than running onto the soccer field before a game, especially when the odds were against his team; that was how he felt each time Striker kicked into action. It was because of Squires’s passion for soccer that Hood allowed him to name the team after the position he had played.
Squires had been sleeping in his small home on the base when Rodgers called, giving him his orders for the trip to Finland. Rodgers apologized that they were only able to get congressional approval for a seven-person team, rather than the usual twelve. Congress had to mess with everything they were given, and this time it was the roster that was pared. The thinking was, if caught, they could always explain to the Russians that they hadn’t sent over a full force. In the world of international politics, distinctions like that apparently meant something. Fortunately, after the last mission, Squires had adapted Strikers’ playbook to work with almost any number of team members.
Squires didn’t kiss his wife goodbye: farewells were easier if she stayed asleep through them. Instead, he took the secure phone into the bathroom and talked to Rodgers while he dressed. The tentative plan was for them to pose as tourists once they arrived. Once the team was airborne, Rodgers would be in contact with Squires with additions or embellishments to the plan. As it stood, three operatives would go into St. Petersburg, four would wait in Helsinki as backup.
The Striker members who stayed behind would be disappointed, and they wouldn’t be alone. Striker didn’t go into action often, but Squires kept them ready and finely tuned with drills, sports, and simulations; the four who remained in Helsinki would be especially frustrated to get so close and not be part of the action. But like any good, experienced military man, Rodgers insisted on having people ready to help with a retreat if one was necessary.
After the team had boarded the JetRangers, Squires climbed into the second chopper. Even before it was airborne, he pulled the portable computer onto his lap, plugged in a diskette handed to him by the pilot, and began checking the equipment that was already on the StarLifter, from the weapons to clothing and uniforms of what were considered powder-keg foreign nations, countries where on-site intelligence might be necessary on short notice: China, Russia, and several Middle Eastern and Latin American nations. There was also enough underwater and cold-weather gear for the entire team, though the inventory did not yet contain the still and video cameras, guidebooks, dictionaries, and commercial airline tickets they’d need if they were to pose as tourists. But Mike Rodgers prided himself on his attention to detail, and Squires knew that the items would be waiting for him at Andrews.
He glanced around the cabin at the Strikers who had come with him. He looked from blond, beaming David George, who had gotten bumped from their last mission when Mike Rodgers took his place, to new recruit Sondra DeVonne, who had begun SEAL training and was recently seconded to Striker to replace the man they’d lost in North Korea.
As always, he felt a rush of pride as he looked at their faces … and the keen sense of responsibility that came from knowing not all of them might be coming back. Though he worked hard at what he did, he was somewhat more fatalistic than Rodgers, whose motto was, “My fate’s not in God’s hands as long as there’s a weapon in mine.”
Squires shifted his gaze to the computer and smiled as he pictured his wife and their young son, Billy, blissfully asleep. And he felt that sense of pride again as he thought of them secure in their beds because of more than two hundred years of men and women who had wrestled with the same thoughts as he did, experienced the same fears as they galloped or sailed, drove or flew off to protect the democracy in which they all passionately believed ….
EIGHTEEN
Monday, 8:20 A.M., Washington, D.C.
The small executive cafeteria was located on the ground floor of Op-Center, a secure room located behind the employees’ cafeteria. The walls were soundproof, the blinds were perpetually drawn, and a microwave transmitter just outside, on an unused landing strip, kept up a drone that would sound deafening to an eavesdropper.
When he came aboard, Paul Hood had insisted that both cafeterias offer full, fast-food-style menus, from dry eggs on a muffin to personal pizzas. This wasn’t just for the convenience of Op-Center employees, it was a matter of national security: during Desert Storm, the enemy had been tipped off that something was brewing by spies who kept track of the amount of take-out pizza and Chinese food that suddenly went into the Pentagon. If OpCenter was put on alert for any reason, Hood didn’t want a spy or journalist or anyone else finding out from a kid who delivered Big Macs on a motorbike.
The executive cafeteria was always busiest between eight and nine in the morning. The day shift took over from the night shift at six, and day staff spent the next two hours reviewing intelligence that had come in from around the world. By eight, when the data had been assimilated and filed or discarded, and barring a crisis, the Directors of each division came to have breakfast and compare notes. Today, Rodgers had posted E-mail about a full staff meeting at nine, so the room would empty a few minutes before the hour to give everyone time to make it to the Tank.