People were entering the room next door, jostling and cursing as more than one husky man tried to get through a narrow hotel doorway at the same time. Kelly grinned and thumbed toward the common wall. “The cavalry’s arrived,” he said. “You can breathe normally again.”
Elaine scowled, realizing that she was just as tense as the words implied – not that the arrival of the team from the follow-car would change anything to her benefit if the shit really hit the fan. She stretched in her chair, twining her fingers behind her neck and, elbows flared, arching her chest forward.
Nothing in the file indicated whether Kelly was a leg man or a breast man.
“You know,” he was saying, “you’re a hell of a driver.”
She relaxed her body and said, “For a girl.”
“Goddam,” said Kelly as he twisted to his feet and walked toward the bathroom with the can emptied now of water. “You know, I hadn’t noticed that.”
His delivery was so deadpan that the woman’s mouth opened in shocked amazement – replaced by a flush by the time he returned with more water and a broad smile at how effectively he had gotten through her professional facade.
“They’re not going to talk to me either, you know?” the stocky man said as he seated himself normally on the chair beside Elaine’s. “Some folks I worked with might remember me, sure. But I was US, just as sure as the boys who got blown away the other day. Free Kurdistan is a lot more important to – to somebody like Mohammed – than any personal chips I could call in.”
“Word of how you terminated from the service got around very quickly when you didn’t return from leave,” Elaine said. Her voice had never lost its even tenor, and her mind was fully back to business as well. “Around the personnel of Operation Birdlike. Even though there was an attempt to stop it or at least replace the” – she smiled – “truth with rumors less embarrassing to the USG.
“Since the indigs – the Kurds – were Muslims and strongly religious, the fact that you’d dynamited the government of Israel did you no harm with the men you’d been training. And they’re quite convinced that you aren’t – won’t ever be again – an agent of the United States.”
Elaine paused. Then she added, “Besides, I think you underestimate the level of personal loyalty that some of your troops felt toward you. It was a matter of some concern during the interval between the time you – terminated and Birdlike was wrapped up.”
“You wouldn’t believe,” said Kelly to his hands flat on the desk, “how many people’d follow you to hell if you’re willing to lead ’em there. We got thirty-seven MiGs in their revetments at Tekret the one night.”
He looked up and his voice trembled with remembered emotion. “The whole sky was orange from ten klicks away. Just like fuckin’ sunrise. .
Kelly stood abruptly and turned away. “Shit,” he snarled. “Don’t fuckin’ do this to me, okay?”
“The only reason,” Elaine said softly, “that we’d ask you to use the people you know is that it might take too long to reopen normal channels. We don’t know how long we have before the – apparent hostiles – execute whatever plan they have in progress.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Elaine,” he said as his hands clenched and the muscles of his shoulders hunched up like a weight lifter’s. He faced her again and went on deliberately, “You wouldn’t be where you are if you had a problem with asking your grandma to penetrate massage parlors. You sure as hell don’t have a problem with askin’ me to burn people who trust me.”
“I’ve got a problem with wasting my time,” she said calmly, leaning back to look up at the angry man. She uncrossed her legs. “I wouldn’t waste time asking you to do something you wouldn’t do with a gun to your head. This one’s necessary, you know it is – and you know that whatever your friends may think, nobody’s coming to Earth from another planet to set up an independent Kurdistan! Don’t you?”