Page 58 of Cross Down
“How’s Willow doing?”
I say, “Scaring me every day with how tough and smart she is.” I look around the house. “Kyra? And the kids, Joe and Vicky?”
He picks up a mug of coffee. “Sent them away to the proverbial undisclosed location. Figured things might get dicey here in the next few days.”
Deacon says, “Nice to get caught up on family affairs and all that shit, but let’s get to the topic at hand, shall we?”
Gary says, “Who wants to start?”
“I will,” I say. “Recently, Alex Cross and I were assigned to an interagency task force looking into the recent bombings and terrorist attacks. Before the second meeting, Alex and I were ambushed outside of DC Metro Police headquarters by professionals. He was seriously wounded and is in the ICU at George Washington University Hospital. Since then, there have been two more attempts to shoot me.”
Gary says, “Nice to be popular.”
“Safer to be a wallflower,” I say, and I spend the next five minutes telling him and Deacon about the task force, my meet-up with Mel, and my interactions with the Army CID. I wrap it up with our Zoom session, the deaths of Ruiz and Mel, and the creepy farewell from Harry Maynard.
That gets Bastinelli’s attention. “Were you friends with this guy Maynard?”
“No—we did some training modules together, that’s all. Seemed like a good guy at the time. When I figured out who he was, I passed his name and background along to an FBI friend of mine who’s on the task force. Maynard is the first real lead we’ve gotten.”
Deacon is quiet. I say, “Elizabeth? Could you run down Maynard’s name as well?”
“Doubtful,” she says. “You know the Agency isn’t supposed to operate in the U.S.”
It isn’tsupposedto. Major loophole indeed,I think. I say, “Elizabeth, give us a recap of our mission back in Afghanistan and what happened afterward.”
She says, “You two and the others provided overwatch for me as we passed over the border from Tajikistan to Afghanistan. I had three parts to my mission. One, drop off classified ground observation platforms on various trailheads and roads. Overhead satellites and drones do a ninety percent effective job, but we needed to get that number to one hundred percent. Two, meet up with new members of the National Resistance Front, give them financial support for their fight against the new Taliban government.”
Bastinelli shakes his head. “In other words, drop off canvas sacks full of Benjamins.”
“If it works, it works,” she says.
“Sure,” he says. “Paying other folks to bleed and die on our behalf—”
I interrupt them. “What was the third part?”
She puts her hands around the coffee mug. “To meet up with a prominent tribal leader in that region of Afghanistan and exchange some…information.”
“Did that meet happen?”
“No, he didn’t show up,” she says. “Even though he’d shown up for five previous meetings, and on time, which is a remarkable achievement in that part of the world.”
“Other than that, anything out of the ordinary?”
She shakes her head.
“Just before we left,” I say, “I remember you having a heated conversation with an army general in our briefing tent in Tajikistan. You remember that?”
“No,” she says.
“You remember the general’s name?” I ask.
“John, if I don’t remember the meeting, why would I remember his name?”
“Just asking,” I say, thinking,Just verifying, because I remember you talking to that general, and from the looks on your faces, the two of you weren’t discussing next year’s Super Bowl.To Bastinelli I say, “Your turn. Anything come to mind?”
He says, “First night we were in-country, I had watch. Cold as hell. And there was a row of flashes in the west…then I heard the rumbling. Did a time count. It was about five miles out.”
I know what he’s talking about. Sound travels at roughly a thousand feet per second.
