CHAPTER FOUR
She blinked but kept her focus.
“It’s time,” Raz said. Her cell phone rang. He answered the phone to her Sergeant. “Don’t put him through yet.”
Turning to Alex, he said again, “Alex, it’s time.”
Startled, her body jerked. She blinked at him.
“Tell my Sergeant that I’m not available.”
Raz looked surprised, opened his mouth to say something, and then nodded.
“Sergeant, please tell the caller that the Fey is no longer available. Yes, then lock it down. Yes, that’s correct. The Fey is no longer available. Thank you.”
Alex let out a breath.
“What’s for lunch?” she asked.
The men, who had been tiptoeing around her silence, began laughing and talking at once. She laughed. John bent to kiss her.
“Who’s working today?” she asked, looking from face to face. “No one? Let’s celebrate. No more phone calls.”
“Champagne or whiskey?” John asked.
“Whiskey,” Alex replied, as if it was obvious.
She passed a bottle of Red Breast Irish Whiskey to Max and followed Raz into the kitchen. While Raz opened the containers of Chinese food, Alex explained her plan. Alex pulled plates from the cabinet, and Raz drilled her with questions. She answered his questions with a smile. He nodded in agreement. They had a strategy. Raz carried the food out to the dining-room.
Alex made three phone calls, clearing her schedule for the day, and then joined the laughing, talking men in the dining-room. As the snow fell, they ate, gossiped, and celebrated the end of conversation with Eleazar.
FFF
Nine hours later
February 8—9:30 P.M.
Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, Southeastern Colorado
Sliding backwards in the dirt and snow with her legs in front of her, Alex fired her paintball pistols, one in each hand, at the targets. With her crutch hooked onto her forearm, she rolled under a bush for protection. She raised an eyebrow. Only two targets left.
She was in a simulation designed to train soldiers in warfare. Right at this moment, she was in the middle of a terrorist cell in the mock-Afghanistan area of Piñon Canyon in Southeast Colorado. Her assignment was to take out the terrorist cell in the shortest amount of time with the least gunfire. The army estimated that a Green Beret should complete this task in two hours and seventeen minutes. A healthy Green Beret, that is. Alex checked her watch. If she finished in the next thirty-three minutes, she would beat the simulation time.
She had eliminated seventeen targets, leaving only the main target and his bodyguard. He was hidden somewhere behind her. She rolled to her stomach and pulled her night-vision binoculars from her backpack. Scanning the snow-brushed tops of sage and prairie grass, she saw no one. It was too cold even for wildlife.
She heard movement and turned to watch two men moving through the brush. They were looking for her but didn’t know where she was. Her mind ran through the map of this area of the range.
Of course, Raz had given her a rundown of the simulation, including its weak points. What did they expect? She was an intelligence officer, after all. But intelligence only gives you an edge. She had already looked at the places Raz believed they would stash the main target. She smiled. Every once in a while, even Raz was wrong.
Using her forearm crutch, she moved across the landscape. Gunfire echoed through the canyon, and she dove into a small ravine. She rolled forward, coming to a stop next to a small pocket cave and the chief target’s bodyguard. One swift kick knocked the weapon out of the bodyguard’s hands. She tossed a paint balloon at the soldier and he mock-died. The target was in the cave behind this guard—or so they wanted her to think.
That meant that the primary target was right here.
Turning, she used her boot heel to dig into the dirt across from the pocket cave. She pulled her Bowie knife from the sheath strapped to her leg. Kicking, she sliced into the earth and reached the airspace of the man-made cave below. She widened the space with both feet and dropped into the cave. With her paintball pistols in front of her, she startled the soldier playing the target.
“You’re supposed to come in the entrance,” said the sandy-haired soldier playing the target.
“Done,” Alex said, with twenty-four minutes to go.
“Done,” the soldier target said. “You can lower your weapons, Major.”
“There’s another soldier here,” she said. “I can smell him.”
She grabbed the soldier target around the shoulders. Her paintball pistol pressed against his ribs.
“Show yourself or he dies. You are wearing body armor, aren’t you?” she screamed.
“Yes, Major,” the young soldier said.
Two soldiers carrying paintball machine guns stepped forward. As part of the simulation, they began screaming butchered Arabic slogans. Pushing the target to the ground, she shot the two soldiers with her paint handguns. She rolled forward and shot another soldier hiding in the wings.
“Come on,” Alex said.
Grabbing the target, she worked her way out of the cave. They reached the entrance to find what Alex expected: a group of soldiers pretending to be a tribe. With her paintball pistol at the head of the target, they made their way to the center of the tribal gathering.
Alex blinked her eyes.
Jesse?
Jesse Abreu stood on the edge of the gathering. He was pointing to something to her right. When she looked again, he was gone. Turning her head to where he had pointed, she saw two men cresting a small hill, carrying machine guns.
Live machine guns.
Ah, crap.
“M-16.” As he had for more than a decade, Jesse called the weapon.
“Live rounds,” Alex screamed.
She tackled her target and, with her arms around him, rolled sideways. Machine gun rounds pummeled the dirt around them. Shards of dust and rock flew into the air. The soldier tribe ran toward a ravine to get away from the live rounds. Alex yanked the target back into the cave.
“Zack, get me out of here.” Alex whispered into the microphone in her sleeve. “We have live M-16 fire. Two shooters.”
The soldier playing the target screamed in pain. Pushing away from him to assess his injuries, she found his leg askew, broken when she tackled him. Alex covered his mouth with her hand and dug through her pack for a morphine auto-injector. She shot the soldier with the pain medication.
“You have to be quiet. Shh.”
His blue eyes wild with pain and fear, the soldier nodded.
Belly crawling to the entrance of the cave, she listened for movement. She saw and heard nothing but prepared for the worst. Pulling her handgun from its sacrum holster, she checked for live rounds. Ten 9mm bullets. She opened the zippered compartment of her backpack to find another loaded clip. Saying a silent prayer of gratitude, she slipped the clip into the back pocket of her pants.
Hearing a sound behind her, she rolled over to point her handgun at the noise. The “dead” soldiers came forward to see what was going on. With her hand on her lips for silence, she ordered them to carry the soldier with the broken leg deeper into the cave.
The sound of the nearing helicopter echoed through the dry terrain. Zack.
Rolling onto her belly, she scanned the area with her night-vision binoculars.
Where had they gone?
Ah. Fuck. No.
The shooters ran toward the unarmed soldiers.
She unhooked her crutch and jumped from the cave. Dragging her leg, she ran toward the unarmed soldiers. With a solid leap into the air, she fired in quick succession at the shooters. A soldier screamed when a bullet sliced through his abdomen. He fell to the ground.
Upon landing, Alex rolled sideways. The other shooter fired in her direction. Shards of dirt exploded around her. Stopping her roll with her leg, she fired. The other shooter fell backwards, with two bullets through his forehead.
Breathing hard, she collapsed back into the dirt.
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“What was that?” a soldier near her asked.
“Death,” Alex said. “Get the shooter. He still has a weapon.”
A group of soldiers surrounded the shooter and took his weapon from him. She heard the sound of punching and kicking.
“Do not kill him. That’s an order,” Alex yelled.
Just then a Black Hawk Helicopter landed in the clearing. Trece and the White Boy jumped from the chopper screaming Alex’s name.
“I’m here,” she said. She pushed to sit up and wave. The soldiers around her stood to wave.
“Get the fuck down. On your faces.” Trece fired above their heads. The soldiers dropped on their bellies.
“Alex,” Matthew said. He reached the top of the hill, followed by Troy.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I just can’t get up.”
Laughing, Troy pulled her to standing and held her tight. He released her and Matthew hugged her.
“Where’s your crutch?” Matthew asked.
“In the cave,” she replied.
“Gentleman, the Fey would like her crutch,” Matthew said to the soldiers.
The soldiers jumped into action to look for her crutch.
“Would you like a lift?” Matthew asked.
Alex shook her head. There was no way she was going to let these soldiers see that she couldn’t get around.
“I need to speak to command,” Alex said.
“Zack’s on the radio. They’re coming out. They requested that you stay here with the . . .”
“Bodies,” she said. She nodded. “We need medics.”
“On their way,” Matthew said.
“We have coffee in the chopper,” Troy said. “Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You beat another sim.”
“And almost got killed. I need to speak with Colonel Gordon. We’re due in Denver in a couple hours.”
“Yes, we’re very busy today,” Troy laughed.
A soldier gave Alex her crutch, and she made her way across the clearing. Matthew jumped into the helicopter and pulled Alex in behind him. Once in the chopper, she collapsed in pain.
“Where’s your morphine?” Matthew asked.
“I gave it to a soldier in the cave,” she said. “I broke his leg.”
“Is there another on the chopper?”
“I don’t think so.” Alex shook her head. “I just need a minute. Then, we’ll go back out like rock stars.”
“Hey Fey,” Trece yelled into the chopper. “These guys want to know if you’re really the Fey or just the pretend Fey. I told them, but you know how boys can be.”
Alex laughed.
“Come on, honey—it’ll take the edge off. These kids haven’t been shot at before. They’re freaked.”
“It’s time for the Fey to return,” Matthew said.
Alex pulled off her long-sleeved shirt to reveal a white tank, cream-colored dragon body armor, and the famous tattoos. Matthew dropped a blanket over her shoulders. Coming from the cockpit, Zack helped Alex to sit in the doorway of the chopper and then poured cups of piping hot coffee and cream.
“That’s them, isn’t it?” a soldier asked Troy when he jumped from the helicopter.
“Who?” Troy asked.
“The Fey and the Jakker,” another soldier said. He nodded toward the helicopter.
“I think it is,” Troy said.
Trece and the White Boy laughed their way to the cave.
“How does it feel to be the Fey again?” Zack asked in a low tone.
“Weird. Someone tried to kill me tonight. If it hadn’t been for Jesse, I . . .”
“Jesse’s dead, Alex. You know that,” Zack said.
Alex nodded. Everyone seemed to think that she had forgotten the single-worst reality in her life. Alex flipped the blanket so that the fairy tattoo was visible.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” she said.
“The Jakker flies the Fey,” he said. “Looks like we’re in business again.”
Alex had no idea what that meant.
F