“I can’t fault this Colonel Song and Prince Faisal for their intelligence work,” Irwin finally sighed. “They’ve connected the dots on this one. And tracked down one of our most notorious units.”
Black Fox. Ethan shoved his anger down. Now wasn’t the time for that. Now was the time to focus.
“There have been rumors of certain politicians and agencies in Washington wanting to push for a stronger American position in the world. People running their mouths at cocktail receptions and poker games, mostly. They’ve said they want America to take control. Be the superpower everyone criticizes us for.” Irwin shook his head. “Rumors have an awful tendency of being true, though.”
“What do you know about this Kurdish visit?” Ethan leaned forward, his head between the driver and passenger seats. Collard sat up front, his face less recognizable if anyone looked in closely. After Jack's announcement about their relationship, Ethan's face had been splashed all over the media, all around the world. There was too much risk of him being recognized now that he was a celebrity. And a dead celebrity at that. He had to stay hidden.
“I know it’s happening today. The president is supposed to greet them this afternoon after the delegation enjoys a morning at the Pentagon. At least, that’s what the daily brief said.” Even though Irwin was no longer director, he still had the right to receive a copy of the daily brief each morning.
Ethan’s hands clenched together, his knuckles cracking as he squeezed tight. Today. They were planning on killing Jack—and so many in Washington—today. If he’d been one day too late. If he hadn’t recovered fast enough. Nightmares tore through his mind until he exhaled and forced them to the background. He was here. They would stop this. He would save Jack.
“At this point, I don’t know who to trust,” Irwin said. “Black Fox gets their claws in deep when they run an op. They’ve gotten as far as the White House. Who else is in on their mission?”
“This is supposed to be their final mission before they inherit the world. This is their coup.” Ethan cracked his knuckles. “We can’t trust anyone. And with a nuke in play, if we tip off the wrong people, they could detonate before we ever have a chance to try to stop them. We’ve got to play this close. It’s our team against theirs.”
Irwin frowned but stayed silent.
Finally, they made their way through DC’s sluggish traffic. Irwin veered right at the Virginia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue traffic circle, barely avoiding a collision with a texting cabbie. They merged onto New Hampshire, driving past messy crowds of students ambling on the sidewalks and jaywalking across the redbrick streets. The tires bounced and rattled against the bumpy bricks, and their speed slowed to a crawl.
“I have a safe house at George Washington University,” Irwin said, turning right on H street and then left on 23rd. Students laughed and waved to one another, bypassing the car in a sea of hoodies, scarves, and knee-high boots. Autumn had arrived in Washington.
They pulled up against the curb in a low pile of fallen leaves blown to the gutters by the passing traffic, right outside one of the university’s residence halls. “Let’s head up.”
They got a few hairy-eyed looks as they headed inside, mostly from students briefly glancing up from their phones before looking away. One student shouted at them, calling the team a pack of “ROTC-Nazis” before laughing and skateboarding away.
Irwin slid a keycard over the door with a smile. “Every liberal college campus has a conspiracy about the CIA spying on them. They never expect to actually find us there, though.”
The safe house was a series of dorms on the top floor. Cooper and his men dropped their packs and secured the dorms, going room by room and noting the views from each. It wasn’t a scenic tour. Cooper’s men called out angles and directions, and scope ranges for their weapons.
The main dorm was a four-bedroom suite, four separate bedrooms branching off from the main living space, which had a kitchenette, breakfast nook, and a cramped living room. Irwin pushed open the closets in each of the bedrooms, grinning.
“Time for your disguises, gentlemen.”
Thirty minutes later, Cooper’s men were decked out in the finest hipster college fashion. Skinny jeans nearly burst their seams on some of the men’s meaty thighs. Others chose the rugged look, slouching khakis with flannel overshirts and beanies tugged on their heads. Scruff they had grown since Ethiopia helped hide their faces and lend credence to their disguises. Doc, rail thin, chose skinny black jeggings and a flannel button-down. He wore a sagging beanie and shaved his face, and when he put on his thick-rimmed black glasses, he looked every bit the university hipster. Cooper chose a mismatched ensemble of board shorts and a GWU hoodie.
Ethan and Collard watched, bemused, as Doc argued with one of his teammates about touching up his hipster look with a bit of eyeliner. The two went back and forth, arguing like a team of punching robots, until Cooper threw a pile of discarded leftover clothes at both of their faces.
Then it was time for Ethan and Collard’s disguises.
A quick 9-1-1 call had the campus police responding to the dorm to investigate a break-in and a robbery. Cooper’s men took up position, out of sight.
Collard answered the door when the officers arrived, welcoming them in. They looked around the sterile dorm, frowning.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Collard said, just before Cooper’s men fired tranquilizer darts into the two officers’ necks with weapons gifted from Irwin. They stripped the men down and tied them up, then left them in the bathroom.
Collards pants were too short, and Ethan’s shirt was too tight, but they made it work.
They held the final mission brief around the dorm room’s kitchen island. Cooper and his hipster team still stood like the Marine Special Forces they were, mountainous men with imposing figures. They tried to slouch, tried to relax, but only Doc was able to pull off the laid-back groove and nonchalant, fuck-off attitude of a college student.
“Cooper, you and your team will join the White House tour at noon.” Ethan moved the saltshaker across the kitchen island, signifying Cooper’s team, to the napkin folded in the shape of the White House. “Collard and I will be in the patrol car listening to the radio. When the call goes out for an emergency at the White House, all DC units are supposed to respond. We’ll be right around the block, and in uniform, we’ll be welcomed inside.”
“The Secret Service Armory is inside Horsepower,” Collard said, taking over. He sketched a quick layout of the West Wing and the White House basement on a napkin in black marker. “I’ll get you down there where we can suit up.” It was the weakest part of their plan, but they didn’t know how else to get weapons inside the White House. The Secret Service was actually very good at their job, and they weren’t trying to attack the agents on duty. Not even the secret tunnels would help Ethan this time.
“Black Fox,” Ethan said, sketching out a diagram of the Oval Office and the president's private study, “will be in Kurdish Peshmerga uniforms. They’ll be escorted around the White House by General Madigan, who will most likely have Jeff Gottschalk with him.”
Irwin pulled up a photo of Jeff Gottschalk on his phone and slid it onto the counter.
“We don’t know who else will be with them. Maybe the director of the NSA. Maybe the deputy director of the CIA. If they’ve got all hands on deck, then we’re in for a big fight. The visiting Peshmerga force is said to be ten strong.”
One of Cooper’s men whistled.
“Someone will have a bag with them. Or a box. Or a suitcase. That will be the nuke. We need to secure it immediately. Before anything else.”
“They’re not planning on offing themselves when they set off the nuke. What’s their escape plan? How do they plan on detonating?” Cooper scowled, looking like he hated everything about their slipshod plan.
“We don’t know everything,” Ethan admitted. “Which is why we need to stop this now. Before they have the chance to drop the nuke somewhere. We know its destination is the White House.” He hesitated. “For everyone on this team, that’s the main mission. Securing the nuke.”
Cooper raised his eyebrows, his look calling Ethan a dumb, lying bastard. “And your mission?”
“I will secure the president.”
No one challenged him.
* * * * *
There was one last thing Ethan wanted to do before setting up in an alley in the stolen patrol car with Collard.
He fought Director Irwin and Collard over it.
“It’s too big a risk!” Collard shouted, after Cooper’s team had filed out of the dorm room and were on their way to the White House. “Why risk the trace?”
Irwin frowned at Ethan, his arms crossed. “We know the NSA director is involved in this. Any electronic communications to the White House should be considered breached already.”
“I know.” Ethan’s nostrils flared as he exhaled, hot and angry. “But I need to send him a message. Something that only he would understand. I want him to be on guard today. Prepare him, at least somehow, for what’s about to happen.”
“I don’t like it,” Collard growled. “Way too big a risk.”
“We’ll do it from the university library. There are thousands of students here. Even if they did do a trace, they wouldn’t be able to find us in time.”
Director Irwin and Collard shared a tired, dry look.
* * * * *
Jack flipped through the file on his desk on the Peshmerga troops he was supposed to meet after lunch. A cold cup of coffee sat at his elbow, and his laptop was propped open on the desktop.
His laptop screen blinked.
Jack frowned. He turned away from the files.
A window opened in his email program. A new message draft. The cursor blinked in the message space.
Jack stopped breathing.
First Name, I’m with you all the way
appeared, letter by letter, inside the message.
The computer screen went dark.
Jack jumped up and grabbed his laptop. He pushed back the screen, slammed his hands down on the keyboard. Nothing happened. “Ethan?” he asked, caught between terror and hope. Was he really talking to a laptop? “Ethan, was that you?” His eyes rose, his gaze circling the Oval Office. “Ethan?” he whispered.
His laptop rebooted, powering back on. The cheerful login screen splashed a picture of him and Ethan taking a selfie on the couch together in his study, laughing out loud at their own ridiculousness. After his announcement, hiding their relationship seemed stupid. He’d added a picture of Ethan to the table behind him, the first and only personal picture he had displayed.
Jack pounded his keyboard, typing in his password. The computer blinked and then brought up his desktop.
There were no emails. No message drafts. Nothing at all to prove what he’d seen.
Slumping backward, Jack collapsed in his desk chair. His chest tightened, a caught sob that lived in the dead spaces of his heart struggling to break free again. Was he losing it? Or was Ethan, somehow, contacting him? From beyond the grave?
He closed his eyes.
And then opened them. He stared at his laptop until his secretary knocked on the door ten minutes later and told him his lunch guest had arrived.
* * * * *
Cooper’s men tried to slouch their way through the White House tour. They watched the students on campus and on the Metro, trying to copy their attitudes. Mostly, they felt like idiots.
But they got into the tour, and they wandered from the Green Room to the Blue Room, trailing after the tour guide and listening to the history of the White House architecture.
Cooper kept eyes on his team and scoped out the White House in turn. When they entered the White House, they’d caught a glimpse of Peshmerga uniforms disappearing around the corner, and had heard the booming, scratchy voice of General Madigan welcoming them to the White House.
Minutes later, while looking down the walkway to the West Wing, Cooper spotted Jeff Gottschalk talking to the Deputy Director of the CIA, Gary Luss, outside the Cabinet Room next to the Rose Garden. He tapped his nose three times as he turned back to his team. They all nodded and then busied themselves with looking normal as they perused the White House tour guide pamphlet and moved on to the State Dining Room.
* * * * *
Jack welcomed Daniels into the Oval Office with a sad smile. “Levi,” he said. He bypassed the handshake and gripped Daniels’s shoulder instead, squeezing tight.
Daniels wasn’t in a suit. He was in jeans and a polo, tucked in, but it was the most casual Jack had ever seen him. The sling was still on, holding his left arm immobile across his chest.
His eyes, when they met the president, were dull and lifeless, void of any spark or light within. He looked away quickly. “Mr. President,” Daniels mumbled. “You asked me to come?”
“I wanted to see how you were doing.” Jack slowly walked to the couches, and Daniels trailed behind. Stewards bustled in, setting plates of sandwiches and fresh baked chips down on the coffee table, along with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. They disappeared, and Jack gestured for Daniels to sit. “I’m doing terrible,” Jack said, sighing as he collapsed to the couch.
Nodding, Daniels sat across from Jack. “I can’t sleep,” he grunted. “I keep asking myself…what else could I have done? If I wasn’t hit…” He trailed off and looked down, clasping his hands together. “I try not to remember, actually. I don’t want to think about it.” He swallowed. “If I remember it, then I…then I’m feeling it, and it’s too real.” He was on a roll, speaking fast as his eyes bulged wide. “And I can’t get away from the dust and the smoke and the fire and, God, Ethan’s last shout…” Daniels covered his mouth with one hand as tears streamed from his eyes.
Jack reached across the table, clasping Daniels’s free hand. “Levi,” he breathed. He didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry.”
Daniels looked down, and he took a few minutes to collect himself, wiping away his tears and his snot. “I saw your press conference,” he finally said. He smiled, just barely. “Ethan would have hated it.”
Jack chuffed. “Yeah. He’s not one for the spotlight.”
“But he would have been damn proud. Damn proud to hear you say what you said. Be called your lover.” Daniels finally laughed, and he clapped his hands once between his knees. “Man, when Ethan fell for you, I thought DC was gonna cry. He was
the
bachelor. He didn’t have time for love.” Daniels’s humor dried up as quickly as it came. “When he fell for you, I knew it was something real. Something serious. Scared the hell out of me, ’cause we got some pretty big rules against it, but…” Daniels met Jack’s gaze and smiled. “I wanted you two to have a happy ending.”