Chapter 26: Interview

Snake Eyes wasn't in his room.

He wasn't in the dojo, which was the next place Hawk had thought that the ninja master would most likely have gone. He wasn't in the gym, or the rec room, the kitchen, or the pool where they set up water training exercises.

Finally, frustrated, he asked Allie if she'd seen where he went to. And got the last answer he'd expected, but the first one he should have thought of. "He's in Shana's room. Hasn't left since he went there yesterday morning to unpack her things."

And there was where he found Snake Eyes. Curled up silently on Shana's bed, back to the door, apparently oblivious to the world, lost in his own pain. Seeing him like that, alone in the bed that he'd shared with Shana more nights that Hawk knew (or wanted to know), made Hawk realize just how lost Snake Eyes was without Shana.

He'd been one of the old-fashioned military types, didn't really see a need for women in the military, didn't really approve. But when General Flagg had said to Hawk, "I got this woman you have to meet," Hawk had been floored. Watching her in action had proved an eye-opener; she was easily better than most men he'd ever seen, and he even thought she'd be the equal of Snake Eyes, who was the best martial artist Hawk had ever seen. He'd heard about her bout with Snake Eyes in the gym after extended hand-to-hand combat sessions with the other guys, all of whom she'd beaten handily. Hawk still couldn't make up his mind whether Snake Eyes had deliberately let her win or if she really had beaten him; neither Shana nor Snake Eyes had ever told him—or, he suspected, would ever tell him.

It wasn't until months later that he realized they had begun a physical relationship. Furious, he'd called them both into his office and chewed them out. Shana had heard him out, then quietly and precisely dropped her bombshell; if he was so certain that their seeing each other was going to disrupt their working relationship, then how come it hadn't already? That led to the discovery that Shana and Snake Eyes had been seeing each other—had, indeed, been sneaking into Shana's quarters—on a regular basis for half a year! And he'd never known. It also turned up the fact that Shana and Duke had a prior relationship too.

Faced with that knowledge, he'd had no choice but to give in as gracefully as he could and try to save face. When, a short time later, he added Allie to the team as his Staff Sergeant and linguistics expert, and saw Dashiell Faireborn, of all people—Mr. By-The-Book himself—sneaking into Allie's quarters shortly thereafter, he threw up his hands and resigned himself to the fact that his base was going to turn into a badly-written soap opera with The Girls breaking up with men and getting together with others.

And it hadn't happened like that, despite his fatalistic viewpoint that Shana would eventually get tired of Snake Eyes and move on—she was, after all, the complete opposite of him; outgoing where he was withdrawn, cheerful when he was gloomy, sunshine to his shadow. Clayton had looked at them and thought, 'It'll never last.'

Ten years later, his only thought was when they were going to get married. Because there was no question that they would eventually, just as he was certain Allie and Dash were, at some point, going to get married. Despite their showy, passionate arguments that had first been the talk of base but were now accepted by everyone as routine, there was a quiet core of compatibility and love between his pragmatic, stiff, inflexible Warrant Officer and his passionate, gregarious, language-talented Staff Sergeant; and as for Shana and Snake Eyes—Hawk had long since given up wondering how it worked, or why it did when they were such opposites. Just be glad it does work, he'd told himself, and never had reason to regret it, not even after the accident that took Snake Eyes' voice and face but had never taken Shana's heart from him.

Now he looked at Snake Eyes, alone in the middle of Shana's room; her presence was all around them, all the more heartbreaking because she herself wasn't, and Clayton had been haunted all night wondering where she was, what was happening to her, how she was doing. And he knew, without having to ask, that Snake Eyes had spent a similarly sleepless night.

He sat down in Shana's desk chair and regarded Snake Eyes' stiff back for a moment. "I didn't get any sleep last night either," he said, knowing Snake Eyes could hear him and was paying attention even if it didn't look like it outwardly. "I keep wondering where she is right now, what's happening to her, and the thought of all the possibilities makes me want to shout and throw things or shoot something. But in the end, it's not going to help bring her back." He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. "I had a talk with Johnson yesterday. He clued me in on a few things I didn't even know—and I wasn't sure if you did, either; Shana's very good at keeping things secret, so I thought I'd share them with you."

Snake Eyes rolled over on the bed and pinned Hawk with an unwavering gaze; Hawk started steadily back. "Johnson said out of all the people here on base, Shana is probably the best-equipped to deal with drug-assisted interrogation. Her classified secondary MOS—and I'll warn you this must go no further than the two of us—is kinesic interrogation."

Snake Eyes' eyes widened. So he hadn't known; Shana was very, very good at keeping secrets. "It made a lot of sense, once he pointed it out to me. How she seems to read minds, how she seems to know what you're thinking before you say anything…but along with her natural talents in kinesics, she also received an FBI-sponsored course in narcointerrogation resistance training."

Snake Eyes sat bolt upright in bed, staring. Hawk winced, but nodded. "I told Johnson the same thing; the thought of our military strapping Shana down to a bed and injecting her with drugs makes me uncomfortable, too. Damn barbaric is what I told Johnson. But she not only survived it, she passed it with flying colors. He told me she's well-equipped to handle narcointerrogation."

Silence for a moment. Snake Eyes was looking at Clayton with a half-distracted air; Clayton had just given him a lot of information about Shana that he hadn't known before, and he was trying to process it all.

"Think later, Snake Eyes. I came here to tell you that the FBI are going to be here in a little bit to run through the details of the mission with you, to debrief you on what happened on this mission. Johnson said they'll spearhead the search for her; it's only fair since she was one of their operatives." He saw Snake Eyes' shocked look for the second time, and grinned crookedly as he stood. "Yeah, that particular little secret took me by surprise too. I didn't know that she was technically FBI, on loan to me. I would have probably been a lot more careful which missions I sent her on!" He opened Shana's room door, held it open. "Come on. As much as you'd like to hide in here, and as much as I like having you hide in here—I haven't seen a recruit run past me white-faced with terror since you left—you are going to have to talk to the FBI since you were the last one to see Shana alive. Cam said she's been learning AMESLAN from Shana, and I've noticed she's also pretty good at reading body language, so she'll be sitting in there with you. Go on, now." As Snake Eyes started to reluctantly head down the hall toward the administrative levels and the conference rooms, Hawk called after him. "Snake Eyes?"

The black-clad ninja master paused, looked back at Hawk.

"I'm not going to say anything if you want to sleep in her room. I promise."

It was hard to tell under the black balaclava, but Hawk would have sworn Snake Eyes smiled just a moment before he headed down the hallway.

Cam looked up as the conference room door opened, and smiled wanly. "Come in. Have a seat. Jammer said they're on the way down; Duke's bringing them." As he came in and took a seat, she closed her eyes and took a few deep, calming breaths, then opened her eyes to see Snake Eyes' looking curiously at her and smiled. "Little mind-clearing calming trick. I had a feeling I was going to need it so I ran through some meditation exercises before I came."

Meditation?

She touched the pentagram hanging around her neck. He nodded in understanding as the door opened and Duke came in with not just one man wearing a black suit that screamed FBI, but also three other men wearing black paramilitary uniforms with DHS on it. A moment later as the door opened again and Hawk walked through it, he frowned at the Homeland Security uniforms. "Why are you here? I thought the FBI was going to handle Shana's case since she was FBI."

"We've had our eye on Ms. O'Hara for some time now," said one of the DHS suits. "With her combination of skills, talents, and training, and the freedom and latitude she has to move freely about the country under the guise of classified military operation—and her freedom to move around outside of it—she's been under scrutiny for some time."

"Why? Think she's going to go postal and blow us all up?" Cam's words were sarcastic.

The DHS suit, however, didn't seem to notice. "That's what we're afraid of. And this, her suddenly going missing, proves that she shouldn't have been allowed to go on international missions."

"Excuse me. I resent your implication that I cannot trust Master Sergeant O'Hara." Hawk stressed her rank. "She has never been less than completely dedicated to her country, her career, and her team here and I would unhesitatingly place my life in her hands. And so would anyone else on this base."

The DHS suit rolled his eyes in barely-contained annoyance. "Well then, let's hope your faith won't be misplaced. Let's get down to business. How do you know that Master Sergeant O'Hara hasn't defected, rather than been captured, as you said?"

Hawk's jaw dropped. "Defect? Defect? Where the hell would she defect to, in the middle of the damn jungle? For that matter, who the hell would she defect to?"

"Some of the arms confiscated from the rogues in the Congolese and Rwandan jungles match arms smuggled out of Ireland and sold to African militants. It's not too much of a stretch that O'Hara would use this fortuitous turn of events to defect to the side of the Irish rebels. With her skills and talents and training, she could be a valuable asset to them in training their new recruits. According to her file, she speaks both English and Gaelic fluently and is proud of her Irish Catholic heritage."

"And I am proud of my Native American heritage. It does not mean I am going to pick up a tomahawk and go on the warpath counting coup!" Cam spoke for the first time, and her eyes flashed angrily. "Although I am considering finding out what your head looks like under your hair—but since you're wearing a toupee, it wouldn't count by my tribe's standards."

If Hawk hadn't been so furious, he would have burst out laughing; the DHS suit put a hand up to his head, and the slight movement of his 'scalp' as he touched it told Hawk that Cam was right; he was wearing a toupee. Duke's lips twitched, and Hawk was sure that was a smile under Snake Eyes black mask; his eyes betrayed amusement.

Time to put an end to this. "You're supposed to be here getting clues to help me find a missing person, a dear friend and a good soldier. But the way you act, it's like you're expecting to put out a warrant for a criminal."

"We may need to if we cannot ascertain whether she was indeed captured or if she went voluntarily on her own, defecting to an as-yet-unknown side."

"She. Did. Not. Go. Willingly." Hawk stood, and the flat, dangerous edge to his voice drew all of their attention.

Cam stood—and Hawk had known Cam had a temper, but he'd never seen it—until now. Her eyes were hard and her voice low and dangerous. "We were on a bridge in the middle of the jungle. It was pouring rain and there were pursuers. In order to save us and the children we were trying to rescue, Shana and Snake Eyes here cut the ropes that held the bridge together. The wood and ropes were wet, and they both fell. They were washed a considerable distance downstream, lost each other in the rapids, and when Snake Eyes finally managed to get out of the water, he was in time to see them drag Shana out of the water on the opposite side of the river, throw her in the back of a jeep, and drive off with her. We picked up her trail in Kinshasa, aided by intel that said they would have taken anyone the human traffickers captured to an abandoned hospital there, to be sorted and classified according to her expected market price and then shipped to the next closest port at which they thought they could get a good price. Since she was picked up in Africa, but she's too distinctive to be sold there, the next closest port of call at which they could get a decent price for her would be Amsterdam. You'll find her at the slave market in Amsterdam."

The DHS suit gave her his full attention. "Seems like you know a lot about human trafficking."

"I know stuff. Now stop asking stupid questions and go find Shana!"

One of the other guys in Homeland Security uniform stirred and spoke for the first time that interview. "You're Cameron Arlington. Daughter of Frederick Arlington, at Osan AFB."

"Yes."

"You're the illegal. You were in ICE holding here at Sealview for a while before we transferred you to New Mexico."

A hiss—and now Cam was truly angry; her eyes were hard dark stones and the sharpness in her voice could have cut metal. "I was only illegal because someone made false accusations. I'm a citizen, I've always been a citizen, my father was Native American and you need to get the hell off my back!"

"Watch your mouth, you know we can still revoke your citizenship and have you deported anyway if we want to. All we have to do is lose a piece of paper and declare you undocumented." The DHS people were no longer even bothering to be polite, and Hawk decided that was enough for him.

"You will do no such thing. Cam Arlington is my soldier, a trusted member of my team, and her citizenship is a matter of record. So, for that matter, are the DNA results that prove she is Frederick Arlington's daughter. If you happen to lose an item of her paperwork, I have a certified copy of each item in her folder, plus those DNA results, and so does the medicine woman of her Iroquois tribe in Western New York. Now, if all you can do is stand here and insult my team, then you don't need to be here to do that. Duke, if you would see our guests get off the base…" Duke nodded, and Hawk opened the door, gestured Cam and Snake Eyes through it, and then closed it behind them.

And leaned against the wall and blew out a breath. "Whew. Glad that's over." He looked at Cam, saw her face frozen. "What's wrong? Don't let those stupid comments get to you."

"No, I didn't…I mean…" she looked at him with a mix of hope and fear in her eyes. "Dad…really was my Dad?"

Oh my God. How did we neglect to tell her the results of the DNA test? "Yes. Do you remember Alex taking a cheek swab while you were at Sealview?"

"Y-yes."

"She didn't have any of your father's DNA to compare it with, and no living relatives, but Jennifer Aiennatha volunteered a blood sample and the Native American markers came up. While there's no definitive proof that Frederick Arlington was indeed your father, your DNA has a ninety-two percent match to Jennifer's. It's enough to prove a Native American heritage. So since Frederick Arlington was the only personnel at Osan with Native American heritage, it is very likely he was indeed your father."

"He…was…" there were tears on her cheeks; she scrubbed at them with one hand, but more kept coming. "I worried—if I wasn't perfect he'd abandon me like my mother had—but he was my father."

"Yes, he was." Hawk looked up, saw Charlie coming, frowning at the sight of Cam emotionally upset. He stepped forward quickly, intercepted Charlie. "In all the stuff going on, we never told Cam the results of the DNA test. I just mentioned casually that Frederick Arlington was indeed her biological father. I didn't realize she hadn't known, and I didn't mean for her to get so upset."

"She'll be fine. She's just in shock." Charlie stepped past Hawk, went to Cam. She looked up at him, then threw her arms around him. Hawk said something incoherent and fled; Snake Eyes just slipped quietly away.