Authors: Vicki Hinze
She passed a truck with a shotgun in a rack behind the driver’s head. A bumper sticker above his license plate read “Wife Wanted with Boat. Send Picture of Boat.” “At one time, you thought he had sent me to betray you.”
“I wasn’t totally recovered then, Sara. When I attacked you, and you came back, I knew Foster had brought you in to pull me out.” Jarrod’s voice went soft. “Now, I’m thinking he brought you into Red Haze to pull us both out.”
Sara wished she could be sure, but she wasn’t, and she refused to lie. “I know you think he’s under deep cover, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get out—that I’m his alibi. But I have reasonable doubts, Jarrod. Maybe Foster is trying to protect the interests of the country by keeping this technology out of the wrong hands. Maybe he did commit a self-sacrificing, honorable act by going under such deep cover that it could be misconstrued and get him convicted of treason. But maybe he isn’t protecting anything but his own backside and his star, and maybe he has committed treason. I’m not sure. And until I am, I won’t trust him. I can’t. All I have to do is look at David and Lou and the rest of them, and I know I’m right not to trust him. Not as long as I have doubts.”
Jarrod stared straight out of the windshield and said nothing.
Sara felt defeated. Defeated and angry. “Look me straight in the eye, Jarrod Brandt, and tell me you have no doubt whatsoever on this. Can you do that?”
Jarrod dipped his head to his chest. He stilled for a long moment and then looked at her, pain flooding his eyes. “No, Sara. I can’t. I wish to God I could, because being uncertain makes me feel disloyal to him.” Jarrod looked away. “But I can’t.”
Jarrod and Sara
strode into Grant’s office.
Sitting at his desk in a green leather chair, Grant glanced up. Surprise flitted through his eyes and his voice. “Brandt? Hell, I thought you were dead.”
Jarrod extended a hand across the desk. “The reports were a little exaggerated.”
“I should have known.” Grant clasped his hand and smiled. “You’ve been dead—what, three? No, four times now.”
“Who’s counting?” Jarrod released his hand and stepped back. “This is Dr. Sara West.”
They shook hands. “Nice to meet you,” Sara said.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Is this area secure?”
“No. Let’s move to the situation room.” Grant stood up, then led them down the hallway to a large room in the center of the building that smelled of old leather and lemon oil. “Please have a seat.”
A large conference table filled the room. Twelve chairs surrounded it. Sara chose the closest one and sat down. Jarrod sat beside her, Grant across from them.
“O’Shea called and told me someone would be coming.” Grant laced his hands across the table. “Any casualties getting out?”
“No.” Jarrod met Grant’s gaze easily. “Is Foster on the right or wrong side of this?”
Grant sobered, and uncertainty clouded his eyes. “We’ve had concerns.”
“Then why hasn’t he been pulled in?” Beneath the edge of the table, Sara rubbed a bit of her black slacks between her forefinger and thumb. The grating feel of the fabric helped her calm down.
Grant tapped the conference table. “He hasn’t been pulled in because turning traitor doesn’t fit his profile.” Grant’s voice went soft. “And because I haven’t reported my concerns.”
Grant didn’t want to be responsible for wrecking Foster’s career. Sara grasped that. Even if proven innocent, the slime of not being above reproach with all possibility of corruption being sheer lunacy would stick to Foster forever.
“This technology effectively manipulates the mind.” Grant rubbed at his thumbs. “It can direct thoughts.”
“When combined with other therapies,” Sara corrected Grant.
“Actually, no,” Grant corrected. “It can’t effect deep-seated change in a patient without the combination of therapies, but it can trigger and effect purely physical reactions.”
“I don’t understand.” Sara frowned at him. “I’ve experienced the effects of this technology. So has Jarrod, and—”
“Neither of you have experienced the full military applications of this technology, Dr. West.” Grant’s expression went from sober to grim. “I watched a field study three months ago. Dr. Owlsley was attempting to get more research funding. There were fifty men divided into two teams involved in a battle engagement. Red and blue teams. Red was the enemy. Blue team effectively stopped the red team without lifting a finger, much less a stun gun.”
“With the laser?” Jarrod asked.
“I read the report on this,” Sara said, her stomach knotting.
Grant nodded. “What you didn’t read, because it wasn’t disclosed, is that blue team stayed in its bunkers. The laser was directed at individual red team members. The stimulation was to produce severe stomach cramps, and it did. They fell where they stood and stayed down long enough for the blue team to capture them. Not a shot was fired.” Grant rocked back in his chair. “Red team was totally incapacitated, Jarrod. Totally. And the effects were sustained. That’s what wasn’t disclosed in the report. Do you realize the implications of this?”
“Unfortunately, I do,” Jarrod said, worry furrowing his brow.
Sara’s mind whirled. Finally, she reasoned through it. “It stimulated a thought that was purely physical. One that engaged no emotions. So it worked. But if the red team had expected it, and had built an emotional defense against it, then the experiment would have failed.”
Grant looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “There’s no evidence of that, Dr. West.”
Jarrod tapped her thigh with his under the table. Sara got the message, loud and clear, and shrugged. “Just a theory.”
“I appreciate it, but right now, we need facts.” Grant shoved his chair back. “We want to work outside normal AID channels, considering the doubt about Foster, but that leaves us with only one choice. General Scott, the Eglin base commander. Convincing him might take a little work.”
Jarrod frowned. “I know he’s ticked off at Foster. How political is it?”
“The general invited Foster to dinner, and Foster was a rude ass about it. The general felt slighted. You know how these things can get.”
“My goal is to protect the technology, and to do it, I need some clout,” Jarrod said. “I’ve worked for Foster a long time, Grant. I trust him. It’ll take hard evidence to prove to me the man’s corrupt.”
“Which is exactly why I haven’t reported him.”
Jarrod nodded, a shared understanding lighting his eyes. “We need Scott’s clout to keep Foster out of Leavenworth—provided he shouldn’t be there—and to put Fontaine and Owlsley in it. Are we going to get his support?”
“Scott is sharp and hard, but fair. He’ll do the right thing,” Grant said. “The key is, what is Scott going to consider the right thing?”
Sara didn’t like the shaky sound of this. “Captain Grant, do you think Foster brought Jarrod or me into Operation Red Haze to assure his promotion?”
“No, I don’t,” Grant said. “In fact, I’m sure he didn’t. When he came here to recruit you, I was his liaison. Word was out then he would be selected for general. It was already a done deal.”
Sara mulled that over. Foster looked guilty of treason, but if the promotion was his passion and obsession, and he was already getting it, then why commit treason? It wasn’t logical. It had to be as Jarrod thought. Foster was undercover. So deep he was afraid he would be sacrificed. And he wanted Jarrod and Sara to pull him out. Or if pulling him out wasn’t possible, to protect the technology.
That, Sara thought, or he had suckered them.
Damn it, it still could be either way.
Grant stood up. “I’ll make the appointment with General Scott.”
“He’s going to want to talk with Rebecca Foster,” Sara said. “Actually, he’s going to demand it.”
Grant nodded and left to make the calls.
General Scott was
an imposing-looking man. Graying, tall and lean, with broad shoulders that looked capable of carrying a lot of weight. He was about fifty-five, serious-expressioned, with inquisitive green eyes that Sara instinctively knew missed nothing, and he sported two stars on each of his shoulders.
She sat at a conference table with him, Grant, and Jarrod, and largely listened to them brief him. The general clearly was familiar with Operation Red Haze, but he had been on the fringes, not a main team member. He absorbed the information like a sponge—and without expression. Was that good or bad?
Unsure, Sara let her gaze drift to the walls, to photographs of aircraft and presidents, then to the polished-brass holders, anchoring Old Glory and the Air Force flag.
A light tap sounded at the door. A moment later, a woman in uniform opened it and looked inside. “General, Mrs. Foster has arrived, sir.”
“Please show her in, Captain.” Scott glanced around the table.
“Yes, sir.”
Rebecca Foster came into the briefing room carrying a triangular box clutched to her chest. Red hair, blue eyes, and soft features, but her spine was ramrod-straight. She didn’t look afraid, she looked defiant. Maybe even outraged. She knew why she was here.
“Please, Mrs. Foster, have a seat.” Scott motioned to a chair near Sara.
Her black skirt swishing against her calves, she stepped up to the table. In front of General Scott, she set down the triangular box: a gleaming oak-trimmed glass case that held a United States flag.
“I understand there’s some question about Jack’s motivation on a mission.” She moved to the empty chair beside Sara, but Rebecca didn’t sit down. “I wasn’t told what mission, but then, I never am, and that’s as it should be.”
She looked at each of them, then back to the general. “That flag was draped over my father-in-law’s coffin. They buried him at Arlington with full military honors when Jack was six. At the funeral, Jack watched the planes fly the missing-man formation and heard the twenty-one-gun salute, and by the time the last note of taps faded, he had decided he wanted to be a general.” A smile touched her lips. “At the end of the service, his mother let Jack accept the flag for the family.”
Rebecca swallowed hard; her voice became stronger. “From that moment on, nothing could deter him. Not his mother’s fear that he’d be killed in the line of duty like his father, nor his grandparents—whom he loved deeply and feared more—begging him to pursue a safer career. His mother even stooped to soliciting Marcus Wetherwood, Jack’s best friend, to help change Jack’s mind. But even Marcus couldn’t sway Jack. One day he
would
be a general.”
Behind their chairs, Rebecca moved slowly around the table. “For twenty-three weeks, he saved his allowance. When he had enough money, he commissioned a local artist to build that case for the flag.” She let her fingertips drift over the beveled-glass triangle, over the gleaming oak. “He’s kept it with him ever since. Through school. Through the obligatory stint at the Air Force Academy. And through twenty-eight years of assignments to military bases in fourteen countries around the world.”
She pulled her hand away, stepped back from the table. “It’s always held a prominent place in our home. On the mantel, in homes that had one. Across from his desk in his study on a special stand I call ‘the shrine,’ in those that didn’t.” She tilted her head, and her voice softened, as if she were thinking back rather than speaking to them. “Seeing that flag always kept Jack focused. Disciplined and determined to give his best. He’s worked hard and long to do that.”
Rebecca glanced up at the general. “I don’t need to tell you what missions he’s accomplished, not that I could. But I have lived with the effects of those missions on him. Some have been
. . .
challenging. He’s served his country well. That much I do know. And I know the man.” She stopped near the general and stared down at him. “A boy six years old doesn’t save every penny of his allowance for twenty-three weeks, or commission an artist to build a case for a flag, unless that flag and all it symbolizes means an awful lot to him.”
General Scott listened patiently, without interrupting, which elevated Sara’s esteem for the man. She studied his body language; not condescending, he was genuinely listening.
“I can’t tell you exactly what my husband does to serve this country. I can tell you he serves it in any way it asks. He embraces all the ideals and values that flag symbolizes—as must the rest of you, or you wouldn’t be here.” Rebecca looked from the flag back to the general. “When you’re judging him, remember all of this—and remember one more thing.”
General Scott nodded. “What’s that, Mrs. Foster?”
Her eyes brimmed with unwavering confidence. “If forced to choose between death and betraying the convictions of that flag, Jack Foster would die,”