Learning to Stand (50 page)

Making an exasperated gesture, James grabbed
the muzzle of the machine gun and flipped the man over the couch.
White Boy turned in his seat to punch the man to the ground. The
man rose to sitting to fight with White Boy.

The other man rushed forward and was tripped
by Cian. As he was falling, Raz rose up slightly then punched him
in the face. Even with a left handed punch, the man was out. He
fell into John’s lap. John lifted his cards over the man’s
head.

“
No blood.” Raz showed John
his left hand.

“
You’ve had a bit more
practice than I have.” John nodded.

“
Talent,” Raz said. “I
prefer to think of it as talent.”

“
You would, wouldn’t you?”
John replied.

“
I could use some help
here,” White Boy said.

Cian tossed his Hurley to Vince. Vince
bashed White Boy’s challenger over the head.

“
Thanks.”

White Boy turned around to sit on the couch
again. He wiped the blood from his cards with his T-shirt.

“
Full house,” John
said.

Matthew looked over the couch to John’s
cards.

“
Four of a kind,” James
said. “Aces.”

“
Read them and weep,” White
Boy said. He unveiled a straight flush. “I always wanted to say
that.”

“
They were
my
cards,” John
said.

“
Yeah, but you won’t tell
Alex will you? I’ve never won at cards.”

John shook his head. Their heads turned to
look at the ceiling as scuffling continued upstairs.

“
You guys all right?”
Matthew yelled up the stairs.

“
Ha ha!” Helene laughed and
hooted. “Got him!”

“
Raz?” James
asked.

“
Flush,” Raz
said.

They passed the cards to James and he began
shuffling.

“
Hey, I was going to ask
you, James Bond,” White Boy said. “How does the ‘license to kill’
thing work? Is it like a hunting license with a bag limit? Or more
like a driver’s license? Do you actually get a laminated ‘license
to kill’ card like our IDs?”

James raised a single eyebrow to White Boy’s
flood of questions. The entire line of questioning was based in Ian
Fleming’s imaginary James Bond.

“
I assure you, I live in
accordance to Her Majesty’s laws,” James sniffed.

Cian and John raised their eyebrows at
James.

“
What’s a bag limit?” James
asked.

The men laughed.

“
Would you mind…?” John
pointed to the man in his lap.

“
Sorry,” White Boy said. “I
forgot.”

White Boy dragged the man from John’s lap to
the closet. Vince followed White Boy with the other unconscious
man.

“
How are you feeling?” Vince
asked Matthew.

“
All right,” Matthew said.
“I need to sit down.”

Cian and James moved over to give Matthew a
tight spot on the couch.

“
You will never ever believe
what happened!” Larry trotted down the steps followed by Helene.
“Helene knocked this guy out with her feet! They came through the
upstairs window. We pushed one guy back out the window. He landed
on the ground. BLAM! He hit his head.

“
Then the other guy? I was
fighting him. Man, he was really big and so strong. Helene grabbed
the door jam and whapped the guy with her feet. John, what happened
to your hand?”

“
I’m told I caught someone’s
tooth,” John said.

“
It’s bleeding,” Larry said.
“You should clean it or it will...”

The front and back door burst open. The man
at the front door cocked his machine gun and pulled the trigger.
Raz shot him dead with the handgun in his arm sling. Everyone
ducked to avoid the spray of machine gunfire as the man fell to the
ground.

The man at the back door turned and ran.

“
Get him,” Matthew
said.

“
Me?” Larry asked. “Why
me?”

Helene ran after the man at the back door.
Surprised, Larry stood for a moment.

“
Get your girl!” Cian, James
and John said.

Larry raced out the back. He tackled the man
in a snow drift on the lawn.

“
Who’s that?” Colin appeared
from the house.

“
Bad guy,” Larry said. The
man wrestled out of Larry’s grip.

Before the man could stand, Colin caught him
in the chest with a solid back kick. The man skid backwards to
Helene’s feet. Helene stomped on the man’s face breaking his nose.
The man screamed with pain. Larry jumped on the man to hold him
down. Colin put his foot over the man’s windpipe until the man
passed out.

“
Let me guess,” Colin
said.

They turned to see a Black Hawk helicopter
fly overhead.

“
While I was waiting for the
doctor to appear for a baby check up, bored out of my fucking mind
I might add, you guys were having fun,” Colin said. “God damn it! I
always miss the fun stuff.”

Alex ran through the back gate to the
carriage house. One at a time, the men followed Alex to the
carriage house. With her handgun out, Alex took a breath for
courage at the back door. She whispered a prayer that everyone was
alive. Creeping through the carriage house, she entered the sitting
area. Troy and Trece followed Alex until they stood in the sitting
area watching James, Cian, John, Raz, Matthew and White Boy
finished another hand of poker.

“
Hello, love,” John said.
“Fold.”

He stood from the couch to kiss Alex.

“
What did you do to your
hand?” she asked.

“
My hand? Huh,” he said. “I
hadn’t noticed.”

“
Cut yourself shaving did
you?” Trece asked.

“
Shaving?”

“
Yeah. You cut yourself
shaving your hairy palms.”

The men snickered.

“
My what?” John asked. “What
is he talking about?”

“
I’ll explain later,” Alex
said.

“
I won a hand!” Everyone
looked at White Boy. “Can you believe…?”

Joseph and Denver SWAT exploded through the
front door. Ten armed SWAT team officers streamed through the front
door of the carriage house. The men stared at the SWAT team.

“
Can you believe it?!” White
Boy continued. “I won a hand. You can ask these guys. I had a
straight flush!”

Alex rubbed her mouth to keep from
laughing.

F

CHAPTER FORTY-One

Two and a half hours later

Tuesday evening

April 1 – 8:45 P.M. MDT

Denver, CO

“
We’re almost there,” Joseph
stuck his head in the carriage house small dining room. “Fifteen
minutes.”

“
Thanks,” Alex
said.

Alex spent an hour with the Denver Police.
When Joseph took over, she retreated to the small bedroom on the
first floor of the carriage house to work with the Fey Special
Forces Team journals. The men were busy cleaning up, repairing the
doors, and installing state of the art security in the carriage
house. Alex could devote her undivided attention to the Fey
journals.

Family members dropped the remaining
journals by the house around dinner time. The journals had arrived
from Buckley by secure transport an hour ago. Attempting to create
order out of chaos, Alex sorted the journals into stacks. She
ordered them chronologically leaving the most recent journal on
top.

There were five tall stacks of their
communications officer Tommy’s journals. Tommy always had so much
to say. As if she was patting Tommy’s back, her hands lovingly
patted his journals. There were four or five journals in Dwight’s
stack. As a weapons officer, his journals consisted of lists of
weapons. Remembering Mrs. Harris’s assertion, Alex smiled. Dwight
would never have written even one detail about his liaisons.
Never.

Nathan’s son had dropped off one journal. He
said his father didn’t like to write things down. Also a
communications officer, Nathan was the opposite of Tommy. She
flipped through the pages and smiled. To Nathan, words were
powerful and should be used sparingly. Paul’s engineering precision
led to only a few concise journals. She held the tiny precise
script close to her eyes.

Jax’s journals were filled with the team’s
health data. She had three stacks of his journals. Dean, their
other medic, also had three stacks of journals. Doing a quick
count, Alex realized they had an equal number of journals. She
wondered if they kept the same information. Or…

Who knows? She rubbed her heart where her
loss lingered.

Joseph had about as many journals as Tommy.
His journals were clean and fastidious. Typical Joseph.

She didn’t have any of Mike’s journals.
After letting his kids pick one item, his wife threw all of his
belongings away. The kids were tossed out about six months later.
Mike’s oldest son, MJ, supported his brother and sister on his
salary as a Special Forces medic. She remembered Mike having
journals. But, like her funny, mercurial friend, they were lost
forever.

Scott and Jesse had about the same number of
journals. Four stacks. She wondered what Scott the engineer, kept
in his journals. Jesse’s were filled with drawings and comments
about the churches they visited. Jesse loved old churches. Every
trip, they visited at least one church. Alex fanned Jesse’s
journals in front of her. She felt a familiar warmth and safety
brought by her best-friend.

Charlie’s journal sat on top of the desk
next to her own last journal. Going from stack to stack, she pulled
the last journals from each of the stacks. She set the journals out
in a row on the table. She counted eleven journals. She set
Charlene’s fake journals above the eleven true journals.

Alex folded her arms across her chest. She
was looking at the last words of the Fey Special Forces Team.

“
Yes,” she said to the knock
at the door.

The door opened to show a small round faced
woman. If she wasn’t wearing in a full dress Marine uniform, Alex
would have thought she was twelve years old. The woman’s eyes went
wide with surprise and she popped to a salute.

“
Who are you?” Alex
asked.

“
Private First Class
Margaret Peaches reporting for duty, sir. I mean ma’am. I mean Fey.
I mean...”

“
At ease Private,” Alex
said. “Why are you here?”

“
I’m a translator, ma’am.
I’m a member of the Navajo nation. My grandfather was a code talker
in World War II, ma’am. The Peaches have always been Marines. We’re
always ready to be of service,” Private Peaches spoke in a rush of
anxious words. “I’m here to fulfill a request by Major Joseph
Walter. High priority clearance ma’am. I flew to Denver from the
sand.”

“
I’m sure you’re exhausted,”
Alex said.

“
I’m here to serve, sir. If
you show me where I can start, I’ll begin at once.”

“
Private Peaches, we are
about to have dinner and a little party,” Alex said. “If you’d like
to look over these books, you may start. But I will encourage you
to join us for dinner.”

“
Yes ma’am. I worked on your
books last fall,” Private Peaches said. “I’m here to work, ma’am.
I...”

“
Ok,” Alex said. “First, you
need to call me sir.”

“
Oh. Oh. Oh. I’m sorry. I
remember that from last fall, but... Oh crap!”

Alex smiled.

“
Why don’t you start with
these two books?” Alex asked. “We know they are fakes. We ran them
through every test. We haven’t found anything – electronic,
microbot, gadgets, even biological weapon. Just this nonsensical
prose. Most of the families threw the books away. Maybe your fresh
set of eyes can reveal their mysteries.”

“
Yes sir,” Private Peaches
said. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

“
I’ll come to get you when
I’m done,” Alex said.

“
For?”

“
Dinner.”

“
I’m here to work. My Sergeant told me I needed to work hard
and not let you down. And I don’t intend to
ever
let you down, sir.”

“
Then come to dinner,” Alex
said. “Do you need additional translators?”

“
No, sir,” Private Peaches
said. “I can do this. I want to do this.”

Alex smiled at the eager girl.

“
We’re ready,” Joseph
said.

“
Major Walter, this is
Private First Class Margaret Peaches,” Alex said.

Joseph nodded his welcome.

“
She’s going to take a look
at the fakes,” Alex said.

“
Great,” Joseph said. “We’ll
return in thirty minutes. Join us for dinner.”

“
Sir, I intend to work hard
for Lieutenant Colonel Hargreaves, sir.”

“
Then come to dinner,”
Joseph said. “We’ll be back.”

The Marine was sitting down at the table
when Alex and Joseph left the room. Walking down the hall, Joseph
took her hand. She turned to hug him.

“
So hard to move on,” he
whispered.

Pressing her face into his shoulder, she
began to cry.

“
I miss them so much,” she
said.

“
We don’t have
to...”