Chapter 14

Flint grasped the lighter in his pocket, curling his fingers securely around it as he walked. Beneath it was the jangle of the earrings and the solid bulge of the cigarettes and watch. He felt as though he was carrying something so precious and priceless. He was afraid of being stopped and searched. His pace was quick down the hall. Scarlett and Leatherneck had tried to follow him, but he refused their help. They had done enough. Where he was going was dangerous and would probably cost him his career. Unemployment seemed more palatable than knowing for the rest of his life that he had doomed Suarez to the experimental whims of the nation's top spy agency. They knew their business well, and even Suarez would not be able to resist their efforts forever. They would make her talk, make her reveal things that were not ready to be revealed.

He took the stairs instead of the elevator. Already, he could hear the chop of rotor blades close to the hospital. Suarez was, no doubt, being loaded on to one. He took the steps two at a time until he was at the bottom. He tore through the door leading to the landing zone only to see the choppers taking off, lifting high into the air, one after another. They turned and made formation in the sky, pulling away from the Joe compound and picking up speed.

Flint began running for the airfield. He could at least chase them and see where they were going. He saw a Dragonfly in the distance, ready to go. A maintenance man was nearby, packing up tools. He would soon tether the helicopter to the ground when he was done, but Flint had other plans.

The hatch to the two-seat chopper was open. Flint vaulted into the cockpit and quickly closed the transparent shell over his head. The crewman appeared at the side of the craft, inquiring what was happening. The inquiry turned to demands as Flint kicked over the engines and the rotors began turning. He felt impatient as he waited for the oil pressure to rise to a sufficient level.

He saw the troopers coming toward him in the distance. His own people were giving an armed response to his actions. Theft of military aircraft was frowned upon, even though he felt justified in technically borrowing it for a good cause. The rotors were whipping faster and faster, but the helo was no where near ready to lift off the ground. The maintenance chief was pounding on the glass, repeatedly warning Flint to exit the vehicle. The troopers were gathering strength, joined by other responding units until they surrounded the chopper, weapons locked and loaded. They took aim at Flint, all of them serious in their intent.

A jeep rounded the corner of the hangar off to the right. He saw Duke's blonde head rise above the windshield. He stood up and held on to the frame as the jeep sped across the airfield, looking like a commander amid a battlefield. When the jeep came to a stop, he jumped down and walked up to the helo, bent over slightly as most when nearing rotors.

Flint saw the look in his eyes. Duke was not playing games. His patience had been thin from the start, and Flint was sure it had just vanished completely.

"Shut it down!" Duke yelled over the din of the chopper. He gave a sharp cutting gesture across his throat to make sure his intention was clear.

A quick inventory of the troopers told Flint the odds were stacked against him. All he had to do, he knew, was try to lift off and they would open fire. They were authorized and trained to do just that. They were the primary base protection, and it was their job to protect Joe assets, no matter who was threatening them.

Duke glared at him, arms at his sides and fists clenched. His jaw was set, brow furrowed against the wash from the rotors. Flint was fighting a losing battle. There was no doubt Duke would enforce an armed response if the chopper lifted off the ground in any way. That was policy.

Reluctantly, Flint shut down the engine. Its high-powered whine slowly reduced to a whispering whoosh as the blades lost propulsion. Flint sat in the cockpit until the blades had come to a halt. Duke waited, ordering the troopers to hold their positions. Flint reached into his pocket one more time, palming the lighter. His mind flashed to imaginary thoughts of what Elwood was going to do to Suarez. There had been fear in her eyes when she realized they were taking her. Weakness had reduced to a mere child at the mercy of those more able-bodied around her. She had asked Flint to help her, to release her from her impending hell. He had refused.

Flint reached for the lock on the hatch and opened it. Duke stepped forward until he was almost flush against the hull of the chopper. He looked up at Flint.

"Get out, Flint," he ordered. "Don't make these guys do their job," he said more quietly.

Flint surveyed the armed crowd around him and knew it was over. He released the buckle of the harness around his shoulders and flipped the straps to the side. He stood up and carefully exited the cockpit.

Duke turned to one of the troopers. "Give me your cuffs."

The trooper complied and tossed a silver set of bracelets. Duke caught them and took hold of Flint's arm. The cuffs were not too tight, but they were certainly a deterrent to escape. Flint was taken into custody by Duke and placed in the back of the jeep. The rest of the responding guard contingent was dismissed with one or two remaining to ensure the Dragonfly was secure.

Flint said nothing as the jeep made its way to the command center. Duke kept his eyes forward, and Flint knew it was more a matter of his loss of patience than a lack of things to say. Duke was second-in-command of the Joe team. He had earned his right to be angry when someone stepped out of line. He had run his military career by the book, for the most part. Even in the moments when he had strayed from the rigid standards of the organization, it had not been so far as to court prosecution. He was well-respected among his teammates for that very reason.

The jeep pulled to a stop outside the command center. Duke jumped out and helped Flint. Two guards approached.

"Take him to Interrogation," Duke ordered. "Unhook him once he's secure."

The troopers took custody of Flint and led him inside the command center to the interrogation room where Scarlett had first questioned Suarez. One of the troopers removed the cuffs. Then Flint was in the room alone. A red band rounded his wrists where the metal of the cuffs had dug into his skin. He rubbed at the marks, feeling the distortion in his skin. He had no idea how long he had been sitting there, but he got the feeling that he was on ice until those in command could be sure that Flint's ire had died down enough.

The door to the room opened. Duke entered and sat down in the chair on the other side of the table. Flint had no doubt there was an audience on the other side of the two-way mirror on the wall.

"Been a busy week so far," Duke said, settling back in the metal chair.

"Not as busy as it's about to get for her," Flint said.

"Doesn't excuse your actions," Duke said plainly. "No one is going to look favorably on you trying to steal a helo."

"I wasn't stealing," Flint argued. "I was doing what I thought was right. And since when did you become such a holy, by-the-book soldier?"

"Holy?"

"Sure," Flint said, feeling anger well. "You know what they'll do, and you're helping them."

Duke's face became hard. "She infiltrated an international security force."

"She saved our lives!" Flint said, just short of shouting.

"You don't even know who she is," Duke countered. "You took her at her word, and you have no way of knowing if she was telling the truth. What if she's batting for the b-team? Did you ever consider that?"

"You and I both know she's not. And if you want to get down to brass tacks, you weren't on the op. You don't know what went on in there."

"And suppose you tell the rest of the story about that? See, I don't buy that you gave us everything in the debriefing. I know you, Flint. You were holding back."

Flint was not about to give Duke the satisfaction of a slip in information. "It doesn't matter what went on. Right now, we need to help her."

Duke shook his head. "Not going to happen. As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, she's an infiltrator and subject to being held for questioning."

Finally, Flint's anger broke. "You really think Elwood is going to ask her nicely?

"It's out of our hands, Flint."

"No thanks to you! I could have at least followed them to where they took her."

"And for what? To mount a rescue mission? You don't get it. She's considered a POW. You're treading water in the treason end of the pool," Duke said. "And don't think the Joint Chiefs aren't paying attention to this. They're watching it like a soap opera. Tongues are wagging at the prospect of what she knows."

"Then cut me loose and let me help her!"

"You're not going anywhere," Duke said shortly. "Elwood already has you penciled in for your own session. Don't give him any more ammunition than he already has on you."

"And what about Elwood?" Flint challenged. "He blows in here like a wind and you just let him waltz out of here with Suarez with no questions."

"Because I knew we wouldn't get any answers if we asked."

Flint was in the mood to place blame where it belonged. "Hawk knew he was coming. The JCS obviously gave him some warning."

"Flint," Duke said, shaking his head, "it doesn't matter."

"It does matter!" Flint said loudly. "We're the good guys! We're supposed to protect the innocent, uphold the law."

"Black ops are above the law. You know that. Suarez was a part of one, and now she's subject to the consequences. So are you."

Flint clenched his hands in frustration and anger. He controlled the volume of his voice. "We sold her out, Duke. Try to convince yourself all you want that we didn't, but you know we did."

"Right now, my only concern is keeping your butt out of a sling."

"Speaking of that, how long do I get to stay in this hotel?"

"Provided you don't pull any more stunts, you're free to roam the base. Try anything cute, and I'll lock you up behind bars and let you rot there until someone comes calling for you."

Flint gave a humorless smile. "That's mighty big of you."

"Get out of here," Duke said with disdain. "Go see Allison, work out in the gym, clean jeep parts – I don't care. But stay on base and out of trouble until all this blows over."

"Is that an order from the 2IC?"

"No," Duke said firmly. "That's strong advice from a friend." He stood from the table. "Don't leave the base."

Flint watched as Duke opened the door and disappeared into the hallway. His heart still raced with stress and anger. Technically, he outranked Duke, but Duke had been given the position of second-in-command of the base. Flint was third, subjecting him to offhand ridicule by other officers that he was being led around by an NCO. What he did not tell Duke very often was that he respected the man's judgment. Duke, by far, deserved more than stripes on his arm. He deserved rank insignia on his collars for his dedication to the Joe cause. He was a true leader, one that Hawk recognized early on and rewarded. Leadership transcended rank in their world. Duke had been there since the beginning. He had earned his place.

All that made it easier to accept Duke's orders to stay out of trouble. It still cut like a knife that Flint had been told to stay put, but there were some things that were utterly out of anyone's control. Lately, it seemed that those things almost always related to Cobra and its habit of havoc it wreaked on the world. Innocent people were hurt. Some were killed. Others were victims of circumstance when they tried to intervene. Suarez was just one such person. Flint considered what she had done as he walked toward the base hospital again. She had given him every reason to distrust her and every reason to know for sure that she was there to help, not sabotage or hinder. It did not matter that Duke did not believe it, or that she had been less than forthcoming in the early stages of the saga. She had done her part, and she was slated to pay for her good deeds.

The fourth floor was quiet once more. The chaos of Elwood's surprise entrance had bled away into idle chatter and water cooler speculation. Flint felt the stares on him as he walked the floor toward Allison's room. The hospital staff was looking for answers. That job was best left to the man in charge of them, Doc. Doc would be able to tell them what they needed to know and have the words stick. If Flint tried, there would just be more questions, with the staff assuming he knew more than he did. In some respects, he supposed it was true. He had the firsthand account of events. However, there were some things that were never going to be public knowledge. That much he knew for sure.

He looked at Allison in the bed with new eyes. No longer did she look so invincible as she had been. She looked small and frail, damaged by a redirected bullet. Guilt seared through him as he recalled that he should have been the one to get hit. He thought about the scars that would now mar her body. They had all been hurt in one way or another in battles with Cobra, but this had been the most serious thus far. She would resent it, he knew. A weakness in her indestructible aura had been exposed. The vulnerabilities of her body had been pushed to the limit, to the point that her heart had stopped and she had died.

Now, she was alive. Lifeline had been in the right place at the right time to bring her back to them. Flint was able to reach out and touch her warm hand instead of saying any goodbyes to a casket draped in the flag of the United States of America. As he did so, her eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times before finally settling on him.

"Flint?" she asked, weak and raspy.

"Hey," he said, sitting down in the chair. "How you doing?"

"I hurt," Allison said, licking her dry lips.

He reached picked up her hand and held it between his. "I know."

Always to the point, she asked, "How'd the mission go?"

He was surprised she had remembered.

"Successful," he said, trying to keep the answers simple so as not to overload her in her weakened condition.

Allison knew him too well. "But?" she asked, knowing there was more.

He hesitated. "But, there's a problem."

With that, he began a brief synopsis of events, cognizant of the fact that it was probably classified to the point that she would be excluded from those in the know. When he finished, he waited for her to be angry that she had been made the victim of circumstance.

"So now," he said, in conclusion, "I'm waiting to be grilled by Elwood and his minions."

To his surprise, she was perplexed more than upset at the developments.

"If the conference room was sealed, and you guys were the only ones who knew," she said, "how did Elwood find out what was going on?"

"It's been on my mind, too," he admitted, impressed by her presence of mind considering how she looked and felt.

"Have Mainframe sweep it," she said decisively.

Flint smiled. "I don't think I'm in a position to give orders at the moment."

Allison closed her eyes to a twinge of pain. "If you don't, you'll have bigger problems."

Flint looked up at the monitors above the bed. Her heart rate began to spike, and her eyes closed. He heard a tiny suppressed grunt sound in her chest.

"Let me get Doc," he said, trying to mask his anxiety.

She held his hand fast. "No." Her breathing was heavier. "It'll pass."

And it did. Slowly, she recovered her composure. Her vitals dropped back to a more normal rate, and she began to relax.

"Just a twinge," she said. Then she looked at him. "You have to sweep that room," she said emphatically. "Find out who's been in there lately."

"I will," he promised. "In the meantime, you try to get some rest. The team needs you."

She gave half a smile. "At least someone does."

"Well," he said, smiling, himself, "some of us more than others."

He leaned in and kissed her tenderly, not caring who might see. He had nearly lost her and had decided he would not waste another moment or another opportunity to let her know how he felt. Flint reluctantly left her when she closed her eyes and began falling back asleep.

He made his way back to the command center, enduring stares and curious looks from the guard staff there. A couple of them eyed him suspiciously, almost daring him to try something in their presence. He gave them no satisfaction, making a straight line for Mainframe's office. Once there, he knocked on the door.

"Door's open," Mainframe called, his voice muffled from behind the heavy oak.

Flint entered and immediately sat down in the chair across the desk from the Joe technical wizard. He looked around the room, expecting chaos of paperwork and computer parts. Flint was surprised to see that Mainframe was fastidiously neat in his work. Everything had a place. Works in progress were tidy and orderly.

Mainframe sat back in his chair. "Wow," he said. "They cut you loose?"

"For the most part," Flint said. "I need a favor. Two, actually," he said, correcting himself.

"Flint, my hands are tied right now if you want the impossible."

"I want the conference room swept for bugs."

Mainframe shrugged. "We sweep once a week. It was already done on Monday."

"And?"

"And nothing. Clean as a whistle."

"Sweep it again," Flint said.

Mainframe shook his head. "No problem," he said. "I'll do it myself in a few minutes if you want. What's the second favor?"

"I want you to find out who Elwood is."

Mainframe laughed out loud. "The guy's a spook, Flint. They don't exactly publish his bio for public consumption."

Flint felt no humor. "We're not the public. I want to know all available information about him. Call in some markers if you have to."

"You don't understand," Mainframe said, pleading. "He doesn't exist."

"And how would you know that?"

Mainframe hesitated with a guilty appearance. "Because I looked."

"All on your own?"

The tech sighed. "When he blew into that conference room, I couldn't help myself. It's not like I haven't run checks on people before."

Flint knew better. "This was no ordinary check," he said, knowingly.

"No," Mainframe admitted. "I knew when I started that the network returns would be negative. They're not going to publish an agent's file online."

"Who did you ask?"

"A friend of mine at the Pentagon. She's got her fingers in several programs and has more access than most. I'm waiting on a call back from her."

Flint smiled at Mainframe's efforts. "Hawk know?"

"You kidding? He'd have my head on a platter if he knew I went outside of channels without his permission."

"Welcome to the bad boys club," Flint quipped.

"Look, you have to keep this under your beret, Flint. I'm not kidding."

Flint held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, like Sergeant Schultz, I know nossing," he said, mimicking the rotund television camp guard.

"In the meantime," Mainframe said, saving a file on his computer, "let's go sweep the room and see what we can find. I doubt there's anything there."

He reached down to the drawer of his desk and pulled it open. After a brief rummaging session, he brought out a small black box with a wand attached by a cord.

"Just in case," Mainframe added, "keep the conversation neutral if any at all. If you're right, we don't want to tip off whoever may be listening."

Flint followed him to the conference room. Once there, Mainframe began systematically sweeping the wand over the room, looking for red lights that would indicate a hit. He checked electrical outlets, phone jacks, network jacks and all the furniture with negative results.

The whiteboard was clean, as were the plasma screens. He looked at Flint in an "I told you so" manner that was annoying. Still, Flint encouraged the search to continue.

Mainframe finished the sweep of the room and returned to where Flint was standing. He shook his head to indicate everything was clean.

Flint's head dropped backward in frustration. He looked up at the ceiling, trying to come up with a new scenario. The lights were painful in his eyes. Florescent lighting always gave him a headache. He routinely worked in his office by the mellow light of a small banker's lamp for that reason.

His eyes focused on the elongated shades of the lights suspended over the conference table. He pointed upward when he realized Mainframe had not swept there.

The tech climbed on to the conference table and aimed the wand at the shades, sweeping over them in careful thoroughness. The first shade proved negative. The second lit up the detector in bright red lights.

Flint's excitement rose. There was a bug. He watched as Mainframe carefully felt along the horizontal light shade. His hand stopped when he felt something that should not have been there. With surgical precision, he picked up the device and brought it down for Flint to view, setting it in the center of the conference room table. Then he motioned for Flint to follow him into the hall. Once the door was closed, he spoke.

"You were right, Flint," Mainframe said, sounding out of breath in his exhilaration.

"What is that thing?"

"Definitely a transmitter. But," he said, "we have a bigger problem."

Flint remembered Jaye's prophetic words in the ICU. He could not suppress an ironic smile. "Don't we always?"

"You don't understand," Mainframe said. "That's pure Cobra tech in there."

Flint felt the shock of the information. "You sure?"

"I know the line we use. We, as in the Pentagon, three-letter agencies, etcetera – the good guys. That," he said pointing into the room, "is a pure, unadulterated snake toy."

"How'd it get there?"

Mainframe walked a few steps away from Flint and called out to the sergeant on duty. "Sergeant, anyone been in there lately who shouldn't have been?"

The guard stepped out from behind the desk. He was large, well-suited for his job. "There was some unscheduled maintenance a few days ago," he reported. "A crew had to replace some light tubes."

"Did you check their credentials?" Flint asked, joining up with them.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant answered. "All their paperwork was in order."

"I'll pull that when I get back to my office," Mainframe said to Flint. "Sergeant," he said, addressing the guard once more, "I want that room secured. No one goes in or out until further notice. Understood?"

"You got it," the sergeant said in acknowledgement.

Flint followed Mainframe's hurried steps down the hall back to the office. Once inside, he dialed Hawk's office line and requested an immediate meeting. While he waited for the general, he began running diagnostics on the communications array of the base, looking for the transmission signal for the device.

"The reception base has to be relatively close," Mainframe said, working the computer system. "Those devices are short-range."

"Which means whoever was listening had to be inside the perimeter to get a signal."

"Right. And," he added, "I just swept in there four days ago, including the lights. That bug is recent, probably since the attack at the mountain station."

There was a knock on the doorframe. Hawk stood tensely before them, stress on his face. "This better be good," he said, looking directly at Flint.

Flint did not waiver. "The conference room was rigged with a Cobra bug. They've been listening in on everything we've said in the last few days."

"Perfect," Hawk said, looking grim and angry all at the same time. He looked at Flint directly and crossed his arms across his chest. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

Mainframe and Flint looked at each other curiously.

"Sir?" Mainframe queried carefully.

Hawk took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The transport carrying Suarez is missing. They never made it to the new location."