Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

her aback. He could see it in her eyes that her mind was processing, reassessing assumptions about the encounter, and trying to figure out what it meant. She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t seem to know what to say until she settled on, “Who are you?”

“Dan Morgan.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“Jim asked for my help.”

“Funny way to make an introduction,” she said, but he could see she was stalling.

Morgan frowned. “You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“He was taken into police custody last night.”

“No shit.” She seemed, somehow, not surprised.

“Did you know he was in trouble?”

Instead of answering, she said, “Why you? Why me?”

“He sent me. He told me that Margolis is setting him up, and planning to have you take the fall with him. If we don’t stop him.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

“Okay,” he said. “If you won’t help, I’ll do it anyway.” He pinioned her with a stare. “But that’s not the way Jim wanted it.”

“Excuse me if I don’t believe you. Who really sent you?”

Morgan finally got it. He finally understood why Schmitt was being so furtive. “You weren’t really worried about burglars in the park, were you?” he asked. “Who’s after you?”

“You don’t get to ask,” she maintained, the gun rising to his heart level.

“Hey,” he complained, “I approached you unarmed.”

“Maybe you wanted information,” she said.

“I definitely want information. General Collins told me you had enough of it to clear him.”

Her eyes began to waver. He saw she was waging some sort of internal battle. The stress on her, maybe since just hearing of Collins’s arrest, must have been enormous and was building.

“I don’t know you from Adam,” she finally said. “My trust is not so easily earned, not even by mentioning the general.”

“He told me to ask you about Virginia.”

Her countenance changed. Surprise. Anger. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Morgan said. He had succeeded in bringing her up short, which was a good thing when someone was threatening you with a gun. It was a step up from her wanting to kill him.

“What else did he say?”

“Exact words: ‘If she doesn’t believe you, ask her about Virginia. Tell her I told you to say that.’ That’s it. He said you’d know what it meant. He suggested you’d trust me if I said it.”

She holstered her gun.

“He was wrong. Today, that buys your life. Don’t try a second time. And if you follow me now, I will shoot you down.”

He watched as she jogged away, disappearing around a bend in the path.

Chapter Fourteen

“He’s gone dark.”

Lincoln Shepard was working two of his laptops, side by side, his gray eyes flicking from comm apps to trackers as his fingers flew like a mad pianist’s. The War Room tabletop was greasy with half-eaten pizzas and sloshed-over Styrofoam cups, and the fake blue sky above streamed shafts of sunlight onto the gleaming wood through wisps of phony clouds.

“What do you mean ‘dark’?” Paul Kirby was incredulous, his flabby lips turned down more than usual.

“I mean like in nighttime, black, silent, impenetrable,” Shepard said as his fingertips stabbed at the keys. “You know, like you can’t see shit.”

Diana Bloch paced behind her command chair. She was wearing a gray pantsuit, pink blouse, and a string of modest pearls. She rarely paced over anything or anyone, but they’d been trying to raise Morgan since the start of business, which at Zeta headquarters meant 0700, sharp. She slapped a manicured hand on the leather.

“I told him to stand down. You all heard it.”

“Yes, we heard it, Diana.” Kirby dropped his heavy glasses on the table, where they bounced once and clattered. “And we recorded the debriefing.” He rubbed his wispy eyebrows. “Mr. Smith may not be pleased,” he concluded.

Bloch stopped pacing, looking at her subordinate as if he had invoked Bigfoot or the Yeti. “Excuse me?”

Kirby glanced at her sideways. “He already knows. I had to tell him. You know I did.” When Bloch said nothing, simply stared at him as if trying to see where his brain stem met his spine, Kirby continued, seemingly trying not to babble. “Standard operating procedure, Diana. You made those regulations yourself. If an agent fails to respond for more than two hours, he’s either dead or something else.”

“Something else such as what?” Her voice sounded like a scalpel cutting flesh.

“Gone rogue.” Kirby leaned back and puffed up his chest.

“Nonsense.” She flicked her wrist and a bracelet jangled.

“Really? We’ve been trying to raise him since breakfast.”

Bloch looked at him, rolled her chair aside, pressed her hips to the table edge, and leaned on her palms. “Yes, AZ43-I, I made the regulations concerning agents missing for more than a hundred twenty minutes. But I know of no standard operating procedure where the chain of command is superseded to report concerns to the head of recruitment...”

Kirby knew he was in trouble. Bloch only used official internal designations when she was one step from decapitation. “You know he’s more than...”

“The...head...of...recruitment,” Bloch repeated in a tone so far beyond stern that even Kirby snapped his jaw shut.

Bloch’s eyes blazed, but then she turned sharply away and started barking orders. Within minutes, the faces remaining from Lukacs’s extraction team were looking down from the wide, curving screen that encircled half the table. It was Conley, Bishop, Spartan, and Diesel—each in a different location—reporting in as ordered. Both Dan and Alex Morgan were notable by their absence.

“Good afternoon, people.” Bloch sat down in her chair. “Cobra has been AWOL for half a day.”

“We’re working on that,” Kirby interjected. “I’m thinking that perhaps he’s...”

Bloch cut him off like a hangnail. “The situation requires actualities, not suppositions,” she snapped before twisting her head toward Shepard. “Well?”

Shepard’s cheeks flushed crimson. “Um, I’ve tried everything I could. Apparently he’s done something with his earpiece and stripped the battery out of his cell.”

“What about his car?” Kirby prodded Shepard.

“That’s why he drives that old muscle car,” Shepard said. “Anything with a computer chip I can crack, but that thing’s about as trackable as a bicycle.”

Bloch