in Yuma, a week of study at the Flagstaff observatory, Christine made sure the girls got out to the base, to hospitals, to police stations…to see how people and organizations worked together.
And how they didn’t.
After all, there’d be no need for Oracle if the CIA, FBI, NSA, or recently created Homeland Security actually shared their intel as effectively as they all claimed to. But Selena knew better than to let her thoughts wander there again, not with Christine’s sharp eye on her. She changed the topic to inquire after the latest crop of Athena freshman, and led Christine to the barn to point out a few horses Selena might enjoy. And Christine let her do it, which Selena took as the gift it was.
Dawn brushed the mountains a pale taupe as Selena rode out—borrowed boots, borrowed helmet, but her own schooling tights with leather knee patches and bright lime racing stripes up the outside leg. The horses might have changed since her time at Athena, the stable master might have changed, but the trails were the same, and she knew right where she was going—a zigzaggy route through the clumpy brittlebush, skirting the various cacti and looking out at terrain unobscured by any significant presence of tree or shrub. The odd paloverde, a few scrubby creosote bushes. Low desert mountains: skeletons of the earth. She took her dun gelding through a series of switchbacks to the summit as the light turned from diffuse to etchingly sharp, and after forty-five minutes of rugged riding, she came to the three-thousand-foot summit.
There she dismounted, loosening the saddle girth a notch and sitting cross-legged with the reins loosely in hand, a process that let her know how much her body would pay for this particular emotional exorcism. Didn’t matter how fit she was…nothing used riding muscles but riding muscles. The gelding bobbed its head a few times to see if she really meant it—they were really just going to stand here—and then snorted loudly into the morning air, mouthing the bit a few times before finally settling into a hip-shot stance of equine patience.
“Just watch,” Selena told it. She waited, the southern part of the Phoenix valley spread out before her as the sun rose. The earth warmed and soon enough she saw the first of them—dust devils borne of a cold night followed by the desert sun on flat, hard earth. They spiraled sandy dirt into the air, creating miniature funnels that curved into the sky and danced capriciously across the ground, lifting tumbleweeds high into the sky. Selena grinned, watching them, remembering her younger self doing just this thing. Back then, she’d appreciated the power of the things—compact, giving way before no man, rising and subsiding on a whim. Now she saw their freedom and imagined that feeling in herself. Free from the impact of her past, from her unfulfilled future…free from herself.
Oddly, she thought about Oracle. She thought about her self-doubts, and how it surprised her that she’d been invited to the recent meeting. A meeting called not because of any particular current crisis, but because Delphi, the code name of the person behind Oracle, thought it was time to be proactive instead of reactive. They’d discussed the potential ramifications of the fall of Lab 33, the organization that had been behind Rainy Miller Carrington’s death among so many other things. Be ready, the carefully prepared notes had told them all. At any time, you might be needed to follow up on the information still being gathered in the wake of Lab 33’s downfall.
For starters, there were the Spider files. One of Oracle’s agents had been at work deciphering them, discovering a collection of incriminating records against highly placed people. Prime blackmail material. We need to know more about the person behind these files, the agenda stated. Be alert for any references to the code name “A”—now possibly known as Arachne—or events related to anyone on the attached eyes-only list.
She could do that. No problem.
High alert: there are indications of imminent terrorist action on U.S. soil. Current priority is to pin down the details.
She could do that, too.
Except that she, like Cole, was now a known face, a highly recorded face. And she was damaged goods, already relegated to teaching duty while the CIA waited to see if she got her act together.
Not that she wasn’t good at teaching; in a way, it’s what she’d been doing all along, albeit with the foreign dignitaries with whom she’d been trying to establish counterterrorism partnership programs and not in a classroom. Pulling together the material was second nature, starting with the U.S. counterterrorism policy. First, make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals. Second, bring terrorists to justice for their crimes. Third, isolate and apply pressure on states that sponsor terrorism…
And she knew firsthand how those policies translated to real-life action, so who better to explain it?
But it wasn’t what she wanted to do, was driven to do. She didn’t want to teach others how to deal with terrorism…she wanted to deal with it herself.
Damaged goods.
She hadn’t been damaged goods when she’d been here at Athena. She’d been young, with the confidence of the young. She’d been…
Strong. Capable. Gulping down the learning she’d been offered, the self-defense and sharpshooting and athletic training along with the languages and politics and peeks into the inner workings of law-enforcement agencies. Looking forward, not back. Not tied down by family, by relationships…by experience.
Selena closed her eyes, felt something in her chest swell and open, reconnecting to that younger version of herself. The unscuffed version, still bright and shiny new and full of all the fervent intention Athena could nurture to the fore. It was still there. Just remember to look for it.
When she opened her eyes, it was to another budding dust devil in the sere valley below. She smiled at the sight, and told her gelding, “See that? I told Jonas White that I was the Road Runner. But I think now I’m the Tasmanian Devil.” She watched a dust devil grow, sweeping up dirt and debris. Then she nodded, getting to her feet and dusting off her behind, but not ever taking her eyes from the churning column of air. “Yeah. I like that. Somehow I don’t think Taz carries a lot of baggage.”
As if to prove the point, the dust devil spit out a tumbleweed. Selena laughed out loud at it and gave her surprised horse a pat. “I think I’m on to something,” she told the gelding, and reached for the girth billets of the close contact-saddle. Not that she thought she’d find herself suddenly, miraculously unaffected by those days in Berzhaan or by what she’d done there.
But it was a start.
Chapter 4
Oops.
One really Big oops.
Cole yanked the defector—his defector, now, after weeks of hunting—out of the line of fire, and they both stumbled into a tiny doorway alcove. A tiny Berzhaani doorway alcove with a securely locked door. How the hell had he ever agreed to come back to Suwan?
As if there’d ever been any question. Cole, would you like to come back to black-ops fieldwork for this one job, after which we’ll say wham, bam, thank-you ma’am and drop you like the hot potato you are?
Of course he’d said yes.
A shot pinged against the pale stone of this old home, showering them with chips and dust. The defector’s hand tightened on Cole’s arm. “You have a plan. You must have a plan.”
“For this?” Cole laughed, short and entirely mirthless. “Sorry, Dr. Aymal. This isn’t your lucky defection.”
For
