The Rift

CHAPTER 4

Somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee. That was all Blake had as far as an indication of who had sent the text. The code that went with this particular number indicated a path for the message to be passed. A path that consisted of five cutouts.

Blake stared at the screen of his laptop. He’d never heard of using five cutouts. One was usually sufficient since the very definition of a cutout was someone who knew both sides, but the two sides didn’t know each other. Thus the cutout was expendable and once expended, both sides were safe. Five meant whoever had set up this commo line was being extra, extra, extra, extra careful. Some paranoid son of a bitch, which defined a lot of people Blake had worked with over the years.

In this case, Blake didn’t know either side other than the message received and the mode by which he was to forward the message.

Which meant there was more to this than simply keeping it secure. It had to be a heads-up for each cutout along the way.

Regardless, he had a duty to perform and he knew the immediate task wasn’t going to be pleasant.

He missed the pool, he missed the young mother, and he even missed his grandchildren as he headed out to his truck.

“Fancy digs,” Ivar said as they passed a plywood sign with NO TRESPASS: WE WILL SHOOT YOUR ASS spray-painted on it along with a skull and crossbones. “I assume someone would indeed shoot my ass if I wasn’t supposed to be here.”

Again not a question, so Orlando didn’t respond. They’d left the tar road a minute ago and were rattling down a dirt road toward what appeared to be a deserted filling station, which Ivar assumed was anything but deserted.

Orlando braked a football field short of the station. He looked bored as two men appeared out of holes, camouflaged with ghillie suits and weapons at the ready. A third man appeared from behind and scanned Orlando’s eyes. Then the man did the same to Ivar. He seemed disappointed that the scanner beeped, his finger twitchy on the trigger. He waved Orlando on and the three disappeared back into their holes.

“They seem anxious,” Ivar observed.

“Told you,” Orlando said. “Security issues.”

Orlando shoved the stick into gear and they rattled up to the service station just as an old soda machine slid aside and a group of people climbed out of stairs that had been hidden behind it, arguing. All seven had the look that Ivar was now used to: Spec Ops. Competent, quiet (though not at the moment), professional. Well, except for the short, Indian-looking guy with thick glasses, but even he exuded something.

Scratch the professional, too, though, as one of them, movie-star good-looking, drew an MK23 from under his shirt and fired, punching holes in an old gas can and sending it tumbling.

“At ease, Mac!” the only woman among the seven called out in a voice that clearly indicated she was in charge.

Mac holstered his weapon and they all turned as Orlando stopped the jeep with a screech of brakes.

They didn’t seem happy to see Ivar. He recognized several from the hectic events at the University of North Carolina last year, but his memory of that event wasn’t the greatest, since he’d been under the influence of forces he still couldn’t comprehend.

“Fresh meat,” Roland said.

“Just what we fucking need,” Mac said with a Texas drawl, and Ivar sensed he would have preferred to shoot him. “Another rookie to break in.”

“Kirk did okay,” Roland said, indicating another member of their group. Kirk was of average height, lean. His face was almost skull-like, all angles, and he sported deep blue eyes that fixed Ivar with their gaze.

“Hey, Eagle,” Orlando called out. “My man here doesn’t know who Harvey is, even after I had him shoot the bugger back yonder.”

Eagle, a tall black man without a hint of hair on his head, laughed. “The Harvey test is so old school, Colonel.” The left side of Eagle’s head was covered with a burn scar, a gift from an Iraqi IED years ago.

“It’s not old if you haven’t done it before,” Orlando said.

“Who’s Harvey?” Roland asked.

“Big rabbit,” Eagle said. “But only one person can see him.”

“Nada killed a rabbit in the Fun Outside Tucson,” Roland said.

“Yeah,” Mac said bitterly, “where Burns got wounded.”

“And most likely infected,” Doc threw in.

“We’re not sure of that,” Moms said.

“What are we sure of?” Nada muttered, and Ivar threw a look at Orlando as if to say, See?

“So who the fuck — excuse me, the frak — are you?” Mac asked.

“My name is Ivar.”

“No one gives a shit what your name is,” Mac said.

“Roger that,” Eagle said. “Because if you say yes to Ms. Jones, you get a new name. And that will be that.”

Nada peered at Ivar. “I remember you. You’re from the lab in North Carolina.” He sighed. “A fraking scientist.”

They all turned and looked at Doc as if he were already Harvey.

“You going somewhere?” Nada asked.

“Not that I am aware of,” Doc said. “But we all know our lives here are full of uncertainty and—”

“Give it a break, Doc,” Mac said.

“So why do we need another scientist?” Nada asked, knowing there was no answer forthcoming from this group. Ms. Jones had her own ways, and trying to figure them out was a waste of brain energy.

Orlando got back in the jeep. “You gentlemen, and lady, have a fine rest of the day. Until next time.”

“Stay safe,” Nada said, and Orlando paused for a moment, as if that admonition was more a premonition.

“You too.” In a cloud of dust, Orlando drove away.

Ivar shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under the gaze of the other seven. Finally Nada jerked his thumb at the rusting soda machine. “Punch grape soda.”

Ivar went over to the machine. He had four choices: Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, orange, and grape. The faded writing said .25 CENTS. He paused, thinking this through even as Mac called out, “Don’t hit the orange or we’ll all become part of the desert.”

Ivar didn’t have twenty-five cents. He also had a feeling it didn’t matter. He hit the button for grape. Driven by pneumatic arms, the soda machine slid to the side and a stairway beckoned.

“Got eight seconds,” Nada said, startling Ivar, since he hadn’t heard him come up right behind him. Along with the rest of the team. Ivar scuttled down the stairs, the others following. Before he reached the last stair, the steel door at the bottom slid open.

“Welcome to the Den,” Moms said as they came out of the hallway into a large circular room with dull gray walls and old battered furniture. It all looked like stuff the government should have auctioned off decades ago. Apparently the Nightstalkers weren’t working on the $10,000-per-toilet-seat federal budget. Ivar saw an assortment of tables; flip charts; whiteboards, some with incomprehensible writing on them; and a row of lockers. There was also a six-foot-high log impaled with throwing weapons: knives, axes, even a spear.

“You don’t get to throw,” Mac said to him, grabbing the handle of a hatchet and jerking it free of the log.

“Not yet,” Roland added, pulling the spear loose. “Not until after your first op.”

The woman stood in front of Ivar, having a two-inch height advantage. “I’m Moms. Team leader. We met once, but it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.” She pointed as she introduced him. “Nada, team sergeant. That’s Eagle, pilot and walking font of useful and useless information. Kirk, our communications man and contrarian. Roland, the one with the spear, naturally is weapons. Mac, the hatchet man, our engineer or as he prefers, demo man.” As she pointed him out, Mac threw the hatchet and it whirled, hitting the log with a solid thud, blade sinking in.

“What’s a contrarian?” Mac asked.

“I don’t think I am one,” Kirk protested.

“See?” Eagle said.

Moms pointed at the last person. “And Doc is Doc. He’s our scientist and doctor. I don’t know what you’re going to be, but you’re meeting Ms. Jones now and she’ll let you know. Then we’ll pick your name.”

“If you say yes,” Nada added. “Listen to what she has to say very carefully.”

“You might want to consider saying no,” Mac yelled from across the Den as he retrieved the hatchet. “Given recent events, that is.” He didn’t flinch as Roland threw the spear and it passed eighteen inches from him, burying its point into the log, the shaft quivering for a moment.

“There’s no shame in saying no,” Nada said. “You leave here and go on with your life.”

“He don’t look like he got much of a life,” Mac added, pulling the spear free along with his hatchet.

They all seemed to ignore Mac, except when he was shooting gas cans, so Ivar tried to ignore him also.

“We need more shooters,” Roland said. “Not scientists.”

“We need more brains,” Mac said. “Not sure this guy qualifies, though.”

“We need a bigger boat,” Eagle said, but no one got it, as usual. It was a sign of his frustration that he explained, “Jaws? Big shark? Need a bigger boat?”

“I got it,” Kirk said, “but I’m not a fan of the allusion.”

“The illusion,” Mac threw in.

“Yeah,” Roland added. “A shark I can handle. I don’t need a bigger boat. I need a bigger gun.”

“And since you crashed the Snake,” Mac added, “we ain’t got no ride.”

A muscle twitched on the side of Eagle’s face. “I lost all power. I had no choice.”

“We know,” Moms said, shooting Mac a shut-the-frak-up look. “We all did the best we could.”

Nada tapped on the door, then swung it open. “Sit in front of the desk. Don’t get out of the chair until dismissed. Then you come back out here. Violate these instructions and I’ll kill you.”

Ivar nodded. After shooting at Harvey, nothing much was surprising him and he had no doubt Nada meant it. Everyone in the Den looked like they had a lot of experience killing, except for Doc.

Ivar walked in and sat in a hard plastic seat facing a large desk. There were several papers scattered on the surface. On the far side was a large, wing-backed chair, set in the shadows cast by large lights pointing directly at Ivar. He squinted, trying to see who was in the chair.

As far as he could tell, no one.

He heard a door squeak and then a man appeared, carrying someone in his arms. He was a tall, well-built man with silver hair. He ignored Ivar as he deposited an old woman in the chair, where she disappeared into the dark shadow. He went back to the door, then returned, rolling two IV drips. He reached into the darkness with the lines from the drips and did something.

Then he straightened. He turned to Ivar, shooting him a withering look, as if blaming him for this trouble.

“Do you want me to stay, Ms. Jones?” he asked. He had a slight accent, which Ivar guessed was Russian or Eastern European. When Ms. Jones replied, there was no doubt hers was Russian.

“You may, Pitr.”

He nodded and folded his arms across his chest, glaring at Ivar, who had no idea what he’d done to earn the man’s enmity.

“And,” Ms. Jones said, “I’d like the rest of the team in here.”

Pitr was obviously startled. “It is the tradition that—”

“Please,” Ms. Jones cut him off.

Pitr spoke in a louder voice, through the door, to the team room. “Moms. Nada. Please bring the team in.”

The door swung open and the Nightstalkers trooped in, spreading out along the rear wall, Moms and Nada in the center. They all looked like they’d rather be facing a firing squad.

Ms. Jones said, “Pitr, please turn off the spotlights.”

Pitr’s mouth flopped open, ready to protest, but he’d known Ms. Jones too long. He reached behind him and hit a switch. The lights behind the chair went off, leaving only dim recessed lighting around the edge of the room. It took a few moments for everyone’s eyes to adjust.

Ms. Jones looked somewhere between eighty and a hundred, give a decade or take a day. A withered old woman, skin lashed with red sores and old scars. She wore a thick gray smock, almost a sackcloth. Shunts went into her chest and one arm, the IVs feeding in whatever was keeping her alive. She had no hair, her skull crisscrossed with scars from surgeries.

“Yes, I am real,” Ms. Jones told them. “Although, Mister Doc has been right. There are occasions I was projected into here as a hologram, during some of my more difficult times.”

If this was a “good” time, no one wanted to see what she looked like during a “difficult” time.

“Since you all hear everything anyway, you might as well be present. I’m not sure how much longer I will be occupying this chair, and I think it’s time to stop some of the”—she paused, searching for the correct words, finally settling on—“pretense and mystery. We have”—she gestured with the claw of a hand at Ivar—“to give our latest member the option of joining our merry band and, if he decides yes, a name. Then there are some things I have to tell you, some of which will not please you.”

She shifted her gaze to Ivar, ignoring the others for the moment. Ms. Jones spoke so low, Ivar had to lean forward to hear her. “You do know, of course, that someone has to guard the walls around our civilization in the middle of the night? The walls between all those innocents out there who go to bed every evening, troubled by thoughts of such things as mortgages or the garbage that needs to be taken out tomorrow, or the car that is going to need new tires? The normal things most people worry about. There are even those who have grave, serious worries, such as divorce or illness or a loss of faith. But the things we in the Nightstalkers worry about, they are far graver than any of those worries.

“You know some of this because you were part of the event in North Carolina,” Ms. Jones continued. “You were there when these Nightstalkers behind you closed the Rift you helped make in the lab there.”

There was no accusation in the tone, but Ivar stiffened anyway and shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair.

“Tell me,” Ms. Jones said, “what do you think Rifts are?”

“Ms. Jones, I’ve been in training—” Ivar began, but Ms. Jones cut him off.

“Do not try to obfuscate the truth,” Ms. Jones said. “I have neither the time nor inclination for it. Any spare moment you had from training, you were on the Internet, researching Rifts. And you are the only person we know of who actually opened a Rift and is still with us. Everyone else either is dead or disappeared, where we know not. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a reality and the reason why I’ve had you pulled out of training early.”

“Why now?” Ivar asked, and Nada half stepped forward to smack him on the back of his head for his impertinence to dare interrupt Ms. Jones. Ivar pressed on. “Colonel Orlando said there were security issues. Is that why?”

Ms. Jones shook her head. “Things have occurred, but we are not under threat here. There is a situation, but it does not appear urgent.”

Moms and Nada exchanged a what-the-frak? glance.

Ms. Jones paused and they could hear her struggle for oxygen for a moment. Then she spoke again: “What do you think a Rift is?”

“A gate,” Ivar said.

“To where?”

“Three possibilities,” Ivar said without hesitation. “Either distinct or combined. First, it could be a shift in space. So, that would mean to another place or even planet. If whatever is on the other side is even on a planet. It could be some other”—Ivar paused, then gestured a circle with his hands—“space. Second, a shift in time. The Rift could be punching through to the future. And, if time travel is invented in the future, that means they’re here now. Perhaps the past, but not likely. Third, the Rift could be to a parallel universe. When you start considering it might be a combination of two or all three, it becomes a bit overwhelming.”

Doc made some sort of noise but not enough to earn a rebuke from Ms. Jones, who was still focused on Ivar.

“What do they want?” Ms. Jones asked.

“They?”

Ms. Jones sighed and Ivar quickly spoke. “I don’t know. There were times in the lab when other Ivars materialized. I couldn’t quite figure out if I was real or one of them.” He rubbed his forehead. “I definitely sensed intelligence behind it all.”

“Did you sense a threat?” Ms. Jones asked, which caused Pitr to glance down at her in surprise and the Nightstalkers to fidget.

Ivar grimaced, obviously reluctant to answer. “There was so much going on — the Russians, the Nightstalkers coming, the other Ivars.”

Ms. Jones made a noise; what it meant, Ivar had little clue, but he was picking up the hints.

“Not particularly,” Ivar said. “Not in the lab. But there were no Fireflies there, like the team faced in Senator’s Club.” He gestured at the people behind him. “On the other side, whatever was there and trying to come through, I didn’t have a good feeling about.”

“‘Good feeling,’” Mac muttered with a snort.

“At ease,” Nada said in a low voice.

“Do you know what a criticality accident is?” Ms. Jones asked Ivar.

He nodded. “Of course. An uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.”

Unnoticed by everyone, except Ms. Jones and Pitr, a frown crossed Doc’s face at this shift in questioning.

“How many have occurred?” Ms. Jones asked.

“Twenty-two outside of reactors,” Ivar said.

“And sixty, known, including reactors and assembly facilities,” Ms. Jones said. She lifted a hand toward her scar-covered head. “I experienced one directly at Chernobyl. It was the largest of the sixty. Known. Explain to the team what a criticality accident is exactly.”

“Well, uh, it’s the unintentional bringing together of a mass of fissionable material outside of a shielded environment. The critical mass releases radiation and neutron flux. The radiation can be very dangerous to any humans nearby.”

“The woman who opened the Gateway Rift,” Ms. Jones said, “had received what would have been a fatal dose of radiation — fatal, that is, if she’d lived long enough to have died from it.”

“Lucky her,” Mac muttered.

“That’s new,” Doc said. “Usually they’re sucked through the Rift.”

Ms. Jones ignored him, focusing on Ivar. “What if the critical mass is done intentionally?”

“Then it isn’t an accident,” Ivar said. “Did this woman have fissionable material?”

“No.”

Doc tried to keep his hand in. “Then it had to come from the other side.”

“Duh,” Mac said. “Even Roland could have figured that out.”

“Yes,” Ms. Jones said, ignoring the team interplay as she usually did. “I fear we are approaching our own form of criticality.”

“How so?” Moms asked.

Ms. Jones shook her head. “I don’t know. But for many years the Rifts and the Fireflies were relatively the same. But the last few have been different, evolving. That concerns me. Almost as if there were a plan being played out.”

“And Burns?” Moms asked. “How does he play into this?”

“That is a good question,” Ms. Jones said. “I fear we might not ever know the answer.”

“I’ll get the answer out of him,” Nada vowed.

Ms. Jones waved that comment off and focused back on Ivar. “Will you destroy Fireflies, and whatever they’re in, if ordered?”

Ivar didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Will you be a Nightstalker?”

“Yes.”

Ms. Jones gestured and Pitr picked up a thick folder from among the papers on her desk. He disappeared behind Ms. Jones’s high-backed chair. A shredder went to work.

“You no longer exist,” Ms. Jones said. “All tangible proof of your existence is gone. Teams in the field have also erased your existence in the outside world. You might be a memory for people you’ve met in your life, but that is all. And memories fade, faster than most people realize.”

Ivar swallowed hard, trying to search his own memory for those who might have a memory of him.

Apparently he wasn’t giving up much, he decided.

Ms. Jones finally shifted her gaze past him. “Names?”

“Fred,” Nada said right away, as Nada was wont to say. He felt every team needed a Fred and they hadn’t had one in a long time. This was met with a few eye rolls but was so expected it was pretty much ignored.

“Mini-Me,” Mac said. “We already got a Doc, so he can’t be called that, but he is a scientist. Kind of looks like a mad scientist to me.”

This nomination didn’t seem to light anyone’s fire.

“Roland?” Ms. Jones asked.

The big man didn’t like being singled out, especially by a woman. He had a thing about women in leadership roles — not a bad thing, but they made him kind of nervous. He’d rather be shot at.

“Buddy?” Roland suggested, at a loss for anything else and not having paid much attention to the candidate anyway.

“He ain’t a dog,” Mac drawled.

“A nice name,” Ms. Jones said, and Roland blushed, the barbed wire standing out in stark relief against the scar. “Eagle?”

“Chowder,” Eagle said.

“Clarify?” Ms. Jones said.

“The only Ivar I know of is a chain of seafood restaurants around Seattle,” Eagle said. “Ate at one while waiting for a ferry. Had chowder.” Eagle shrugged. “Best I could do. Under the circumstances.”

Ms. Jones moved on. “Mac?”

“Rat.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at Mac, including Ivar.

Mac clarified. “Not ’cause I think he’s a rat or nothing, just that when we rescued him in that lab, there were rats there, and he was kind of weird about them.” Mac shrugged also. “It’s all I know about the man.”

“Moms?” Ms. Jones asked the last member of the team.

“Ivar.”

Ms. Jones blinked.

“Heck, Moms,” Mac said, “we know that’s—” Then he trailed into silence.

Ms. Jones cracked a smile, which actually appeared like her face was crumbling. “Yes. I like it. He is an original. He is the only one to open a Rift and still be among us. Therefore he should still retain his name. Ivar it is.”

“Welcome to the team,” Mac said, taking a step forward and slapping him, a bit too hard, on the shoulder. “Usually we celebrate with beer, but this ain’t a beer day.”

The rest of the team shuffled by, uncomfortable under Ms. Jones’s gaze, and shook Ivar’s hand.

Then everyone regained their positions and waited for the bad news.

“I will not bore you with more ‘why we are here’ talk,” Ms. Jones said. “You all have heard it many times and Ivar will have time here at the Ranch for me to discuss it with him one on one.”

Moms and Nada exchanged a glance. They’d both expected to be gearing up and moving out to go after Burns ASAP after this. Perhaps they were leaving Ivar behind and—

“The issue of Burns has been appropriated by a higher authority,” Ms. Jones said.

“Frak,” Mac muttered.

“Fuck me to—” Nada couldn’t finish it.

“Excuse me, Ms. Jones.” Moms was the only one who would dare to stand up to the old woman. “Burns was one of us. We clean up our own messes. He killed the scientist at the Arch and he killed one of our Support in Utah along with an innocent girl. He’s ours.”

“He was ours,” Ms. Jones clarified. “But we lost him, didn’t we? We discarded him and then he turned on us. It is my fault,” she added, because she always took responsibility for everything that went wrong. “I chose him for the team. It was a mistake. One I hoped we could rectify in-house. I also made the mistake of letting him go. Believe me, Miss Moms. I want us to go after Burns very badly.”

Nada stepped up next to Moms. “Whose responsibility is it now?”

“The Cellar,” Ms. Jones said, and they all glanced over at Roland, because he’d spent some time with a Cellar operative after their joint mission during the previous holidays, saving the world from nuclear Armageddon.

Roland put both his big paws up, as if to ward off the stares. “I ain’t heard nothing from Neeley since we dropped those two CIA dickheads.” When Roland said dropped, he meant it literally, cutting the two men’s climbing rope and letting them fall to their deaths on a mountaineering expedition in South America. Such was the price of betrayal in the world of covert operations.

“It does fall under the province of the Cellar’s mandate to deal with rogue agents,” Ms. Jones said.

“Yes,” Moms agreed, “but whoever the Cellar sends, will they understand if a Firefly is involved?”

“There’s no indication a Firefly came through,” Ms. Jones said. “I told you: We have video from six different cameras of the gate. The only thing that came out was Burns.”

“What looked like Burns,” Nada corrected. “And who knows what’s in him. He took down the Snake pretty effectively. The Burns we knew couldn’t have done that.”

Ms. Jones inclined her head in agreement. “True. Burns was on the other side. We have no clue what’s over there. We have no clue if he’s even Burns anymore. But policing the ranks of the covert world is the Cellar’s province.”

Moms wasn’t ready to give up. “Does the Cellar know how to close a Rift? Because it’s highly possible Burns is here to open one. He took the computer from the Gateway Rift.”

“You raise valid points,” Ms. Jones agreed. “Points I made to my superior. That is why you will be heading to Fort Meade to consult with the Cellar personally.”

“At your request or their request?” Moms asked.

Ms. Jones nodded at the import of the question. “Hannah wants to meet you. And I want you to be my personal liaison to the Cellar, as it appears we’re going to be working together more often in the future.”

Moms didn’t move. “And the team?”

“Is in stand-down,” Ms. Jones said. She held up a hand as Moms prepared to protest once more. “Again, I made all the points you are prepared to make, but again, I was listened to but not agreed with. The Snake was badly damaged and is in depot maintenance. The team was damaged. It is time for various members to rest, refit, retrain.” She shifted her gaze. “Nada, I believe you have personal business to attend to in Los Angeles. A birth?”

Nada blinked, not surprised that Ms. Jones knew about his family, but that she thought he would ever consider it a priority, especially with someone like Burns loose. But the way she’d shot down Moms told him there was no argument he could use. He was going to Los Angeles.

“I do,” he said.

“Good. Take the time to visit your family. After you give Ivar the Protocols to study, of course.”

“Yes, Ms. Jones,” Nada said, resigned to having to visit his family and taking time off. A condemned man would have looked happier. The last time he’d been in California with family, he’d had to bail out on his niece Zoey under less-than-optimal circumstances, and he wasn’t expecting to be welcomed with open arms.

“Doc.” Ms. Jones had already moved on. “You will be in charge of Mr. Ivar after Moms and Nada give him the Protocols. Show him the Can. Take him into the Archives. He is to know everything you know about Rifts and Fireflies.”

Mac snorted, as if to indicate he didn’t think that was much.

“Yes, Ms. Jones,” Doc said, bowing to the inevitable and ignoring Mac. He cleared his throat, something on his mind.

“Yes?” Ms. Jones asked.

“What role on the team does Ivar take?” Doc asked. “I’m the team scientist.”

“He is your assistant,” Ms. Jones said.

“No one else has an assistant,” Doc pointed out.

“No one else needs one,” Ms. Jones snapped. She held up a frail hand as if to stop the impact of the words. “I do not say that to disparage you. I say that because it’s the other way: We need more help understanding the problems we deal with, particularly Rifts and Fireflies. Ivar is the only person who has opened one and is still with us. That brings a unique perspective to the table. We need one because Burns walked through a Rift and is with us now. The Nightstalkers and all the iterations of our predecessors have been dealing with this problem since its inception in 1947. We’ve been on the defensive. It is time to change that. To be preemptive. I want the two of you to work on that.”

Doc took a step forward. “Does that mean you want us to consider opening a controlled Rift?”

Nada shook his head. “No one has ever opened a controlled Rift.”

“Not yet,” Doc said.

“I did,” Ivar said.

Mac snorted and Doc began shaking his head. Ivar held up his hand. “When you can open it and close it, you control it. I admit I have little clue how I did either, and I wasn’t in charge of my own faculties, but still.”

“Exactly,” Ms. Jones said. “And that is why you are here and that is why you and Doc will work together. Any more questions, Mr. Doc?”

“No.” Doc took a step back.

“Mac, Kirk, Eagle, and Roland.” Ms. Jones said the names ominously. “You need to relearn some basic lessons about following rules, after your stunt in Arkansas, which we never had time to address. You need some training. A flight is awaiting you at the auxiliary field. Colonel Orlando will escort you to Fort Bragg.”

“Oh shiit,” Mac muttered. “Not Bragg.”

“You all have your instructions. Please follow through. Of course, as always, you are on immediate recall.”

The Nightstalkers exited Ms. Jones’s office, a defeated group if ever there was one.

That was still living.

When the door shut behind them, Pitr reached down and unhooked the two lines. Then he gently scooped Ms. Jones up and carried her to her room. He laid her in the bed, reattaching the lines and then the monitoring gear.

They’d known each other since Chernobyl and it was obvious she’d gotten the worse of that event. She’d saved his life, warning him against flying over the reactor to dump a load of concrete. At the same time, she’d risked her own life, going into a control room to rescue another engineer — one of the engineers who’d helped make the disaster.

That was a basic contradiction in nature that Pitr still couldn’t reconcile in his old friend. Of course, others couldn’t understand why a Russian was running one of the United States’ most highly classified units.

It is as it is.

Ms. Jones sighed and collected her energy. Meeting the entire team face-to-face, a first, had drained her. But she’d been worn out prior to the meeting from her discussion/argument with Hannah, the person she reported to in the covert world. She’d thrown every argument that Moms had tried to start, and more, at Hannah and had been denied at every turn. It was more than just the issue of Burns, the failure of the Gateway mission, and the loss of the Snake. Tension between the Ranch and the Cellar had been building for over a year. Having to run the Nuke Op last December together had been both beneficial and disturbing.

Hannah’s insistence that Moms come to Maryland and meet with her brought its own set of questions, with most of the answers being bad ones.

“Please put me through to Hannah,” Ms. Jones ordered Pitr.

“What do you think?” Hannah Masterson asked Dr. Golden.

In another time and another place and another universe, they might have been two housewives chatting about their children. Or, given their business attire, two professionals discussing a client.

But they were three hundred feet below the main building of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. In an office where lives were evaluated, judged, and decided upon with regularity.

There was no chitchat. Hannah had once done chitchat. When she was Mrs. Masterson, appendage to her husband and doing all she could to help him climb the corporate ladder in the aerospace industry in St. Louis.

The fact he’d failed to mention his involvement in illicit covert activities in his past was something that had cost him his life and brought Hannah, by a very hard road, to her current position as head of the Cellar. It had also come close to killing her. And Neeley.

Hannah was half Ms. Jones’s age, in her late forties, with thick blond hair. She was fit, something she did for the job not for vanity, and her skin was pale, which was to be expected of someone whose quarters and office were deep underground. Her most striking feature was her chocolate-colored eyes.

She never thought of them as striking and only noticed the deepening lines around them when she looked in the mirror, which wasn’t often.

Dr. Golden was of roughly the same age, also blond, also fit. She wore glasses, which both she and Hannah knew was an affectation, something to give her more cache when she met with others. Even now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, women still had to fight to be taken seriously, especially in worlds dominated by men. Hannah let her position and, when needed, operatives like Neeley implement her seriousness.

Often it was the last thing some people saw.

Hannah rarely ventured forth out of the Cellar, wielding her power in the darkness through her agents. Golden, on the other hand, as a psychiatrist, had to meet people to do her job. Many of those people were covert ops, toughened veterans, who conjured up initial impressions quickly and had little time or tolerance for those who tried to probe into their minds, especially a woman.

Even when that probing could determine whether they lived or died at Hannah’s command.

“Childhood trauma,” Golden said. She had no notes to refer to. Hannah didn’t believe in a paper or electronic trail. If one came into her office and couldn’t remember what they had to say, perhaps what they had to say wasn’t that important. The only papers Hannah kept were in the desk behind which she sat. There were no copies.

Hannah gave a wry smile. “Don’t we all have childhood trauma?”

Golden nodded. “Pretty much. But it’s the manner of the trauma and which parent figure it comes from that is the key. And then the environment in which one grows up.” This was Golden’s specialty: profiling backward, looking not at crime scenes but at lives, seeing the patterns to them, particularly in the formative years.

Golden did it first as a student, writing her PhD on it. She’d wanted to determine who had the predilection to be a killer long before they killed. Serial killers were born and also made in her opinion, and she wanted to study the combination that made the cauldron of evil. She then expanded her field and was drawn to further study in the military because they kept such good records of their members. Hannah’s predecessor, Nero, had done it instinctively, keeping files on numerous candidates, sensing the traumas and, most importantly, how the betrayals in their lives would cause them to blossom into adults of a certain nature.

Hannah had been one of those candidates. Nero had been looking for a person who could withstand the most base betrayal yet still be able to function, to perform their duty.

For Nero it had been an instinctive art; for Golden it was a science.

Hannah’s husband’s betrayal had been like the smash of a blacksmith’s mighty hammer on a misshapen lump of metal, splintering it, revealing a finely honed edge of steel hidden inside.

Sometimes, alone in the dark, and she was often alone in the dark, Hannah mulled over the issue of free will. Were we all a product of our genes and then our environment shaping those genes, as Dr. Golden postulated? Was it all just fate? Was her presence here, behind this very desk, a predetermined event, in which she was just playing her part? If she got up and walked away, quit her post as head of the Cellar, was that also preordained? A person could go crazy trying to understand the ramifications and possibilities.

However, this didn’t bother Hannah much. She only thought about them as a means of exercising her mind when she was bored.

Which wasn’t often. There was almost always something in the world of covert operations that demanded her attention.

Golden folded her hands in her lap as she waited on Hannah. The office was spartan, essentially little different from when Nero had occupied it, minus the medical equipment near the end of his tenure. And a bit more lighting, since, unlike her predecessor, she could see. Nero had lost his eyes at the hands of the Nazis after being captured on a covert operation during World War II.

After being betrayed. Making him the perfect candidate to head the Cellar.

“Bottom line?” Hannah said, because she always dealt in bottom lines.

“Moms appears to be a loner but she isn’t,” Golden said. “She took care of her brothers, all younger than her, while they were growing up, nurturing them, giving them what her mother wasn’t capable of. She works best on a team.”

“Neeley liked her,” Hannah said. “Thought she was effective,” she amended, surprising herself a bit at the term like. Like had nothing to do with what she had to do here at the Cellar.

“That was more a product of the observation than the observed,” Golden said.

Hannah graced her with a smile, revealing perfect teeth. “I enjoy how you phrase things. I imagine therapy with you would be most interesting.”

“Therapy for you would be counterproductive,” Golden said.

“True. I am who I am and who I am is what this job needs. So Neeley is”—Hannah searched for what she wanted to say—“needy?”

Golden swallowed and shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t have the full story, but she did know that Neeley and Hannah had come to the Cellar together after a trial under fire. When the toughest jobs came up, it was Neeley whom Hannah dispatched to deal with them. Perhaps for too long now? That was the question that had caused Hannah to summon Dr. Golden.

“You will admit,” Golden said, “that it is rather amazing Neeley is still alive after all the missions she’s been on. While her body is intact, I have concerns about her mind.”

“And,” Hannah concluded, “you don’t think Moms would be a good replacement.”

It was a statement, so Golden didn’t reply.

Hannah leaned back in her chair and gazed off, lost in thought. She was like that for almost a minute before returning her gaze to Golden. “Can you help Neeley?”

Golden was startled. This was not what she had expected. “I can try. When can I meet with her?”

“As soon as she finishes her current mission,” Hannah said. “Also consider the possibility that Moms might replace Ms. Jones, not Neeley. Our Russian friend is getting on in years.”

Dr. Golden wouldn’t be sitting in this office if she hadn’t already considered multiple possibilities, playing the game out several moves ahead. She knew she would never be a move ahead of Hannah, but she tried her best to keep up. “That is a much better fit. But her emotional connection with the team could cloud her judgment.”

Hannah shrugged. “Teams can be rebuilt. It is the head that is most important.” She nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. Please listen in later today when I meet Moms.”

Golden nodded. She got up and left the office, the heavy security door swinging shut behind her, sealing the room.

Alone, Hannah lifted her hand in front of her eyes. She stared at it, noting there was a slight tremor.

This all would be so much easier if she were a psychopath. Or even a sociopath.

She wasn’t that lucky.

The phone rang and Hannah’s secretary, Ms. Louise Smith, announced a call from Ms. Jones. Hannah picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Moms will be en route shortly. She’s in-briefing our latest addition.”

“Good.”

A long silence played out and Hannah waited. She knew Ms. Jones wasn’t happy. But Ms. Jones’s happiness wasn’t something she cared about.

Ms. Jones finally spoke. “I would like to reiterate my stand that the Nightstalkers should be allowed to pursue Burns. He’s an unknown entity. This might not be a simple Sanction.”

“No Sanction is ever simple,” Hannah said. “You’ve made your position known. Thank you.”

And then she hung up.