Hide and Seek (8 page)

“No, Mr. President. That was a very different situation. Our troops are loyal to the government and its leaders.”

“Good.” Meklis gazed at Dilara. “I want you and your people to prepare a release to be distributed on our Web sites. I also want to prepare an address to the public.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. President,” the general said, “may I suggest contacting the U.S. Air Force at Manas and the U.S. Embassy to be on alert. If my fears are warranted and this gets even more out of control, they could be in some danger.”

“The air base is north of the city,” Meklis said.

“Yes, sir, but it’s not that far. People drive there everyday to use the international airport.”

Meklis nodded. “I’ll make contact. With phones down, I’ll send couriers. I also want increased security for key government officials and their families.” He thought of his wife. He thought of Jildiz.

IT TOOK ONLY A
few minutes for J. J. and the others to kit up. He glanced around the ready room. No one spoke, each man was focused on his gear. It was the way with warriors before battle. Talk was cheap and it was big when not on the front line, but minutes before a mission boastful chatter gave way to private thoughts; thoughts of home, of family, of comrades wounded or killed in previous action.

J. J. was scared. He felt fear every time he was called to do what only a handful of men would or could do. At first his fear bothered him but over time he learned to embrace it. Fear never made him turn his back on the action; never hesitate to walk into the line of fire. It did, however, make him sharper and smarter. If he wasn’t terrified he would begin to worry. His former team leader once told him he preferred to lead frightened men because he knew they were sane. “Men without fear are not brave, they’re nuts.”

If that was true, then J. J. was the sanest man on the planet.

While the apprehension was not new, there was a new flavor to it. Images flashed in his mind. In his early spec ops days he thought of his Army chaplain brother and his parents, maybe the girl he was dating at the time. After he married, he thought mostly of Tess. Now a movie of children not yet born playing on the white sands of some beach flickered on the screen of his mind.

And it brought the deepest ache he ever felt and fanned the flames of anxiety until they were white hot.

“You okay, Boss?”

J. J. looked up at Jose. “Me? Yeah. Sure. Why?”

“You been staring at your shoelaces like you expect them to tie and untie themselves.”

“I’m a fan of shoelaces.”

Jose crossed his arms. “Who isn’t?”

J. J. straightened and turned to his team. “Okay, ladies, fall out.” Jose turned to join the team as they left the room. “Not you, Doc. Hang a sec, will ya?”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

A few moments later only J. J. and Jose remained. J. J. cleared his throat and broke eye contact. “Doc, you got, what, three dozen kids?”

“Not quite that many . . . yet. Just four. Or is it five? I’m not good with numbers.

“How do you do it?”

Jose narrowed his eyes. “You’re asking me how to have kids? I would think you and Tess had that figured out by now. You said she was expecting twins . . . Oh. I get it.”

“Good. I was starting to worry about you.”

“You’re looking for advice from me, Boss?”

“Yeah.” He looked into Jose’s eyes and saw understanding.

“Having kids changes a man, soldiers especially. You want the pat answer or the truth?”

“I want it straight.”

“Okay, I have no idea how I do it. I just do. When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me to eat what was on my plate. I’m a little thick-headed but I finally realized he wasn’t talking about Mom’s cooking. He was teaching me to deal with what’s in front of me. It’s the only thing I can change. That’s what I do. I deal with what’s on my plate at the moment.”

“So you don’t worry about your kids growing up fatherless?”

“Don’t be stupid, Boss. I worry about it all the time.”

“You’re confusing me.”

Jose nodded. “Welcome to my world.”

FOR J. J. BARTLEY
the most difficult hours of a mission were those immediately before a mission began. That was true from the beginning. No matter how well prepared he felt, he never felt ready. He used to use the prep time to double- and triple-check his gear, or review mission objects. He would be told what his role would be and he’d do it without question. That was then, a time that seemed decades ago but was only a few months in the past. Now the job of mission prep fell on his shoulders, so he studied the street maps of Bishkek, trying to commit to memory the area around the abduction attempt. He saw streets very much like those at home; a business and retail section, and several narrow alleys behind buildings.

Colonel Weidman stepped into the ready room with photos in his hand. “This just came in. President Oskonbaeva won’t allow us to overfly the area, but I was able to get these.” He waved the photos. “Pull it in, men.”

The team gathered around a table in the room. “We might not be able to send an aircraft over the city but we can use a space-borne asset. A bird was redirected over the area and took shots for us.”

J. J. looked at the satellite images. “So these are fresh?”

“Ten minutes tops, Master Sergeant.” Weidman pointed at one of the photos. “This is the area we are concerned about. As you can see, fires have been started at key intersections, most likely to bring traffic to a halt in the city.” He jabbed a finger at ten fires, some from a pile of something J. J. assumed were tires and a couple were from burning cars.

J. J. pointed at the image of a white van, a dark sedan, and two men lying in the street. The detail of the image was amazing and showed a resolution twice what was available just a few years ago. Had the angle been different, J. J. could have read the license plate on the sedan. Several people gathered around the bodies, but they looked untouched, as did the automatic weapon laying near the body of the man Lennon hit with her car. He couldn’t find the handgun the other man was carrying. It was likely someone stole it, or the resolution, good as it was, couldn’t distinguish it from the dark asphalt. It was sharp enough, however, to show the man’s bent and broken body. Lennon did some real damage to the attacker. Good for her.

“We have a problem.” The colonel put another picture on top. “This is Captain Lennon’s car. She left it in the middle of the street, doors open.”

“Why would she abandon her vehicle?” Aliki asked.

“Because it wouldn’t go any more,” Nagano said. “Machine Gun Guy was firing when she pulled it away. A stray bullet killed the reporter. My guess is he got a few rounds into the car. Tires maybe. Engine perhaps.”

“Good news is two doors are open and there are no bodies in the street.” J. J. searched the photo for signs of a female corpse or two.

“When it hit the fan, I had our intel guys monitor the police, fire, Kyrgyzstan military frequency. As you can imagine, the airwaves are burning up with transmissions. Some patrons in a restaurant complained about a gunman running through the place. That restaurant is right here.” He pointed at the street in front of a building a few strides from the car in the middle of the street.

“Did they respond?” Jose asked.

“No. The cops have their hands full with the riots. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the two are related.”

J. J. looked at the base commander. “Do you know better, sir?”

“No, I don’t. I’m a tad paranoid, an attribute that has served me well.” He straightened but still looked like a man who had several bags of cement on his shoulders. “So here’s what we have: an Army-trained officer on the run from at least one gunman. He may have called for backup. With her is the president’s daughter. There are riots in the city that are getting worse and, I am told by my advisers, will get worse when the sun goes down. We are forbidden by U.S. law and by the locals to intervene in any way. So what are we about to do? Intervene, at least until we get our soldier back.”

“We will find her, sir,” J. J. said.

“Are you being confident or cocky?”

J. J. shrugged. “Both.”

Weidman nodded. “Okay, a couple more things: one, the cell system in the country is down as are the landlines. The intel guys think that may be more ominous than it sounds. Your communication will be like that in the field. All radio.” He looked at Pete. “You’re the communications guy, you got the gear to do that?”

“Yes, sir, and more. We have CONNIE.”

Weidman blinked and waited for an explanation. Pete pulled an electronic tablet from his gear. “Look’s like an iPad or one of those other tablet gizmos.”

“That’s what it looks like, sir, but it’s a good deal more than that.” Pete looked like a proud father. “Is the colonel familiar with the way the Navy communicates with submarines?”

“Faster and funnier, Pete,” J. J. said. “Don’t waste the colonel’s time. You new guys need to hear this.”

“Modern submarines seldom surface except to retrieve communications. Even then they just send up an antenna. Their base sends a transmission in condensed digital packets, in bursts. It takes only seconds and the sub can then be on its way undetected. This is a field version of the technology. It’s new but we had great success with it not long ago. We can receive written orders, maps, images, and even video. It comes to us by satellite feed.”

“I imagine it’s faster than carrier pigeon.”

“But not nearly as tasty.” Aliki tried to look serious. He looked at the others. “What?”

“Hence, ‘Joker.’” Nagano shook his head. “I’ve been putting up with this for a lot of years.”

Weidman pulled the conversation back to target. “I have two vehicles for you. You’ll be leaving during daylight, but you can’t be seen running around in full gear. Your CBUs have no insignias, but your weapons are clearly American as are your accents, so if you’re compromised, we won’t be fooling anyone. We’ll deny ever knowing you but no one is going to believe us. Understood.”

J. J. answered for the team. “Yes, sir. Five by five.”

“I wish we could wait until nightfall, but too much is at stake.”

“Understood, sir. We’ll be ready in ten.”

“You have five.” Colonel Weidman walked from the room.

“Okay, gentlemen, I’m going to have to say this quick and I’m only going to say it once. I expected a couple of months of drills and practice before our team was mission ready. Well, that’s not going to happen.” J. J. looked at Aliki and Nagano. “Everything I’ve heard about you is good, but I need to hear it from you. This team had to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder problems once and it almost got us killed. You guys lost a lot of men a few weeks ago. Are you still able to function in the field?”

“Sure, Boss,” Nagano said. “The medics cleared us for duty and our psych evals are clear.”

“I know what the paper says, Mike. I need you to look me in the eye and tell me straight: You good to go?”

“Golden,” Aliki said. “Good to go.”

“Mike?”

Nagano stared into J. J.’s eyes. “You can count on me, Boss.”

J. J. searched their faces, eyes, demeanor for any tells indicating a problem.

“Anything I need to know about before we hit the streets?”

“No, Boss,” Aliki and Nagano said in stereo.

“Excellent.” J. J. looked at the others. “Gear ready?”

“Ready.” They spoke in unison.

“Okay, Aliki is the second on this mission, just like Shaq was before. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“We’ll be moving out in two civilian vehicles. Vans.” He looked at Pete. “Junior, you’ll be with me. Doc, you too—and you’ll be driving. Junior, you got maps on CONNIE?”

“Yes, Boss.”

J. J. knew a mission had begun when proper names gave way to nicks. “Joker, you lead the second team. That’s you, Hawkeye, and Weps. Don’t break Hawkeye. He’s young and fragile.”

“I’m not that young. Wait. Or fragile.”

They laughed and J. J. had no doubts Crispin was trying to lessen the tension. “Doc, introduce the new guys to the tradition.”

Jose moved closer to the table, removed his wallet, something he would soon, like the others, lock away, and removed a photo of his wife Lucy, seven-year-old Maria, eight-year-old Matteo, ten-year-old Jose Jr., and two-year-old Tito. He set it on the flat surface. Pete retrieved a photo of his wife and set it next to Jose’s family photo. Unmarried Crispin set a picture of his father on the table. J. J. looked at Aliki, who seemed stunned. He withdrew his wallet and withdrew a family photo that looked like it represented three generations. Mike was ready when his turn came. His photo showed a petite Japanese-featured woman. “My fiancée.” He spoke softly.

Finally, J. J. set his picture on the pile of photos. It was black-and-gray-and-white, indistinct.

“That’s your wife, Boss?” Aliki’s brow furrowed. “Man, you married badly.”

“It’s a sonogram of my unborn twins.”

“Oh.” Aliki grinned. “I can see the resemblance.”

J. J. didn’t respond. He placed a hand on the photos. Jose followed, as did Pete and Crispin. A moment later, Mike’s hand joined the others. Aliki put his big paw out. It shook. J. J. took a deep breath. “For them, and for those like them, we do this.”

The team repeated the words. “For them, and for those like them, we do this.”

A few moments of silence passed. J. J. prayed silently, then said, “Let’s rock, gentlemen.”

J. J. Bartley led his men from the room and wondered what awaited them.

OUTSIDE THE ADMIN BUILDING
awaited two ordinary-looking vehicles: one a Russian-made delivery-style van, the other a Chinese-made van. Both looked as if they rolled off the assembly line a mere two decades before. The Russian GAZ was painted—repainted, J. J. assumed—a charcoal gray and bore injuries of years of use. The red Chinese JAC Motors looked less damaged but no one would take it for anything other than a well-worn van looking for a place to park and die.

“Choose your vehicle, Joker.” J. J. stood, doing his best not to look stunned.

“Do I have to?” He shook his head. “I have a reputation to maintain.”