"Neither was the Fat Man or the other jerks I shot that night."
That was true. She"d never choked under pressure yet. "I don"t want you to get hurt . . ."
"Well, duh. And?"
I sighed. "I need help, but I don"t have to like it, and I sure as h.e.l.l don"t like putting you in danger."
"You"re cool putting Reaper in danger. I"m tougher than Reaper."
"Sure, but I"m not . . ." I hesitated. "I"m not in love with Reaper."
"Wow." Jill looked at me for a long time, but luckily she didn"t get all weird on me. "That"s remarkably sentimental by your standards. And good about Reaper, because ewww . . . that would be awkward for everybody." Jill grinned.
"Here"s the thing. The Crossroads is a city of bad guys. You"re not a bad guy, Jill."
"Nope. I"m not. You know I"ve got no interest in the things you"ve done in the past, and if this was just some heist then I"d tell you to go to h.e.l.l, you"re on your own. Because I"m not a bad guy, but this time, neither are you. You rescued Val from evil men. You"re going to The Crossroads on a rescue mission. For once, relatively speaking, you"re not the bad guy here."
"I . . . Well . . ." Holy s.h.i.t. She was right.
"Listen, I know you"re scared." She held up a hand before I could protest. "Yeah, yeah, you"re not afraid of anything, whatever. Spare me. I have to do this. Bob didn"t hesitate to help when I was the one in danger. He"s off on a mission to bring down the bunch of corrupt a.s.sholes that ruined my life. So what kind of hypocrite would I be if I stayed here safe in my island mansion while you go off on a dangerous rescue mission and get killed because I wasn"t there to help?"
We"d already had this fight, and I"d already had to admit she was right. I needed help, but I certainly didn"t have to like it. "Fine." I tossed her another mag of 9mm. She caught it. "Get to work then."
VALENTINE.
The deep rhythm of the rolling waves helped clear my head.
It had been an emotionally overwhelming few days. Dr. Bundt had sat me down in the beach house to look me over. It was strange to see this man again. The last time we"d met, I"d just woken up in another unfamiliar place, on board an Exodus ship, after having a traumatic brain injury where he"d had to drill a hole in my skull to drain a subdural hematoma.
Sitting there, getting quizzed, while he"d shined lights into my eyes, had just been too much. I"d been poked and prodded and questioned enough. I found myself having an anxiety attack, almost a panic attack. I stood up so fast I startled the old man, and took off out the door. I had gone back to my shady palm tree, sat down on the sand, and stared out over the water, trying to regain my composure.
Hours pa.s.sed with n.o.body showing up, leaving me alone with my thoughts. The sky was on fire as the sun slowly sank below the horizon. The clouds burst with shades of red and purple, and the sky itself was almost golden. A few days before, my only goal in life, as I dimly recalled it, had been to live long enough to see the sky again. Now I was in paradise, watching the most beautiful sunset I"d ever seen. For the last couple of days I hadn"t known hunger, fear, nor cold. I"d had plenty of rest, good food, all the sunshine I wanted.
It was too much. It was just too much. Completely overwhelmed, I sat under that palm tree and stared helplessly into the sunset until the sky darkened. The stars began to shine overhead when the sun finally sank below the sea. There are few things more routine and constant than the rising and setting of the sun, but at that moment, you would have thought I"d never seen it before.
Ling came to me as the horizon darkened. I was so lost in thought I didn"t notice her approach. "h.e.l.lo," she said, pulling me back to reality. "Dr. Bundt told me what happened. He said it was best to give you some time to adjust. I hope I"m not disturbing you."
"It"s fine," I said simply.
Ling seemed unconvinced. She sat next to me in the sand. "I know what it"s like, you know." I looked a question at her. She brushed a few errant strands of hair out of her face before explaining, "When Exodus rescued me, I was still very young. Yet in those years I"d lost my family, fought in a war, been injured, and barely avoided being killed in the destruction of Shanghai. Yet after surviving all of that, I was made a slave. They kept me chained to a bed in a shack, letting me outside only to relieve myself. I wanted to die. I gave up hope completely.
"When Exodus saved me, it took a long time for me to accept it. I didn"t speak for almost a month. I was afraid to. I was afraid it wasn"t real, as if . . . well, it seems silly now, but I had this idea in my head that if I spoke, it would break the spell, end the dream, and I"d wake up under my tattered blanket, still chained to that wretched bed."
I said nothing, but I was consumed with a feeling of guilt. Well, not guilt exactly, but rather shame. I looked over at Ling and wondered. This woman was about the same age as me, maybe a couple years older. She had easily seen as much, if not more, horror in her life than I had. From what little I knew of her captivity, it had been far worse than mine. I feared many things during my short time in North Gap, but I"d never once been concerned that I was going to be gang-raped. Feeling pathetic, and not sure what to say, I wrapped my arms around my legs and stared at the sand.
Ling startled me by placing her hand on my shoulder. "I"m not telling you this to make you feel bad, Michael. I"m not trying to . . . how would you say, one-up you with my own story. It"s important that you understand you"re not alone. I know what you"ve been through. Many of us do. People like you make up the heart and soul of Exodus."
Her face was illuminated by the same milky moonlight that shimmered off of the calm Caribbean Sea. "Are you trying to recruit me?" I asked flatly.
She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. "No. Though I think you"d make a fine addition to our order. I tried to recruit you for some time after seeing what you were capable of in Mexico. But after all you"ve been through, after all that"s happened, and knowing you as well as I do now . . . no. You"re not ready, Michael. Exodus isn"t a job. It"s a lifelong commitment. It"s an oath. You don"t just join, you become part of it, and it becomes part of you. Much devotion is required. You . . . your heart belongs elsewhere, I think. Your loyalties lie elsewhere. You just do not know where that is now that you have been betrayed by your country. Am I incorrect?"
I had to think about that for a moment. Normally I didn"t like it when people a.n.a.lyzed me, especially after months at the mercy of a mad scientist drilling into my subconscious with drugs and machines, but coming from Ling, it didn"t feel invasive. I wasn"t being prodded or interrogated. Her simple honesty put me at ease.
"No. Maybe. But it wasn"t my country that betrayed me. The government did. There"s a big difference. Our system was never perfect, but I think it"s falling apart now. I mean, that"s no surprise, things had been getting worse for a long time. I lived out of the country for almost five years straight when I worked for Vanguard. Every time I came home things seemed a little bit worse somehow. Even the government isn"t just some big faceless ent.i.ty. It"s people. People did this to me. They chose to do this to me. They made their decisions, and I made mine. They"re probably used to there not being any consequences for those decisions, but I made sure at least one of them paid a price."
Ling smiled. "Now you sound like an Exodus operative. Powerful men deserve their day of reckoning as much as anyone else. They too are answerable for their actions, even if they don"t think they are. It makes no difference if they"re warlords, criminals, or excuse their actions with the supposed legitimacy of government. They"re just men, as you say, and men must be held to account."
"You"re going somewhere with this, aren"t you?"
"I am." She hesitated for a moment, looking out over the shimmering ocean. "It took a lot of doing to arrange for your retrieval. Many in our organization did not want to risk it. We"re already considered a terrorist group by the United Nations. We almost never operate inside the United States in any capacity. The last thing the Exodus wishes is to risk the attention of the US government. I had to pull many strings. It was made clear to me that under no circ.u.mstances was I, or anyone on my team, to be captured alive."
"So why did you do it?" I"d been wanting to ask her that since I woke up. "What on earth compelled you to risk so much on my account?"
"Because Robert Lorenzo said you might know something about this Project Blue, and that that knowledge could be used as a weapon against this shadow government organization, Majestic." She hushed me before I could once again protest that I knew nothing about Project Blue. "They are an example of everything we stand against. Agent Lorenzo was wrong about Project Blue, but he was not completely wrong. You still have knowledge that can hurt them. You know things, have seen things, even done things on their behalf. That kind of information is power."
"Bob already used everything I knew. It caused a huge scandal that was almost completely forgotten, what, six months later? It just got pa.s.sed over and the media went onto the next story. G.o.d forbid they risk making some politician they like look bad."
"It is as you say." Ling nodded. "The corruption runs deep. But you did hurt them, whether you realize it or not. You have the power to hurt them again, should you choose to. As does Agent Lorenzo, if we can find him."
If only I had the answers everyone thought I did. Majestic was terrified of Project Blue. They were so compartmentalized, so secretive, that even they didn"t even seem to know exactly what it was Gordon had unleashed. Colonel Hunter"s notes had mentioned Dead Two and Dead Three being involved in a Project Red in China. The Second Chinese Civil War had broken out when I was in grade school, and continued off and on again for the better part of a decade before the final cease fire. Nukes had been used and millions died.
Millions died. A pit formed in my stomach. My own Dead Six had been involved in an intervention in a foreign country. Had D2 and D3 been doing the same thing? Had Project Red started the Chinese civil war?
Ling didn"t seem to notice my racing thoughts. "I met Bob Lorenzo by chance," she explained. "He told me there were four men who knew about Project Blue. Three of them, are dead. One was a United States Senator, the other two were your former superiors, Curtis Hunter and Gordon Willis."
I clamped my eyes shut. "Jesus."
"I think you can see why Agent Lorenzo was so interested in you."
"So who was the fourth guy?"
"I do not know. Neither did Bob. He didn"t know the man"s ident.i.ty, but his investigation indicated that he had fled to The Crossroads." Ling said that last part like she expected it to mean something to me.
"Don"t know it."
"It"s a lawless region, the intersection of North China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, kept lawless by the inability of those nations to control the remote parts of their territories."
"Okay. This is where you met Bob? What were you doing there?"
The Exodus operative looked at me for a moment, but said nothing. She was hesitant again. "We are planning a very large operation there. The Crossroads is controlled by a powerful warlord known as Sala Jihan. The profits come from his mines, mines that hundreds, maybe thousands, of slave workers die in every year. It"s not a secret, simply another blight on the world that Western media ignores."
"You didn"t answer my question."
Ling"s expression hardened. "Exodus intends to eradicate Sala Jihan and remove his vile stain from the earth." Ling was a very well-spoken, calm, almost dispa.s.sionate woman. Half the time she seemed very cold. Seeing that fire in her, the true believer, still surprised me, even though I already knew it was there. But holy c.r.a.p, there was the crazy. Ling continued, "In Agent Lorenzo . . . Bob, we found a kindred spirit. Before he was captured he asked me to find you. He said you would be able to help."
"What the h.e.l.l do all these people expect me to know?"
"Michael . . . I have no right to ask this of you. You"ve been through enough, but in order to secure my organization"s blessing on the rescue attempt, I told them that you would be an a.s.set to us."
And there it is. "I thought you said I wasn"t cut out for Exodus?"
"That"s not what I said. It"s not like we"re above taking in outside help, as you"re well aware." She waved her hand, indicating Lorenzo"s island. "Lorenzo is going to The Crossroads to search for his brother. I promised him that we would do everything we could to help him in this endeavor if he helped us save you, and Exodus always fulfills its covenants. But for you, Michael, there is no obligation. You do not have to come with us, but I"m asking for your help."
I blinked hard. This was insane. "What is it do you think I"m going to be able to do?"
"I know what you can do. You"re a warrior," Ling said. "I also know what you"ve been through. I do not wish to place such a burden on you. Let me ask you this: if not with me, where will you go? Majestic will not stop hunting you. They may have the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States at their disposal. Anyone you a.s.sociate with, anyone who shelters you, will be in danger. Exodus is uniquely prepared to deal with people in your position. Let me help you one more time, Michael. I"m not forcing you to join. I"m not forcing you to fight our battles. I swear to you, you can walk away if you wish."
"I"m not sure what to do, Ling."
Standing up unexpectedly, she brushed the sand off of her pants. "All I ask is that you weigh your options carefully. Whatever you decide, a plane will be here tomorrow, and I will be leaving on it. Sleep well, Michael." Ling walked away without looking back.
LORENZO.
St. Carl Island February 18th We"d had one final meeting with Ling to discuss travel arrangements and contacts in The Crossroads. I was far more comfortable seeing to my own than tagging along with Exodus. She"d told me that their little turboprop Cessna would be leaving and a larger, longer-range jet had just landed to take them to Europe in the morning. Of course, it had also landed on my airfield without my permission. At this point I think Ling was doing that just to p.i.s.s me off.
Antoine pa.s.sed on several contacts and specific intros to use with Exodus operatives in the region. Shen updated Reaper on some of the radio frequencies and code phrases we could use to communicate, though I was positive he didn"t give us any of the important ones. Ling hit it off with Jill by complimenting her decorating of the living room. It was a real chick bonding moment. Everything was now set for our meet in The Crossroads.
That left only one thing in question.
"What the h.e.l.l do you mean, you"re not sure if Valentine is going with you?"
"Easy, Lorenzo," Jill put her hand on my arm.
"I always mean exactly what I say," Ling stated. "Michael is not my prisoner. He is free to do as he pleases. If he does not wish to accompany us on this mission, then that is his choice."
"Holy s.h.i.t, Ling. After all we went through to get him . . . And you want to just leave him . . . And on my island? Oh f.u.c.k that. Get him off my island."
"What would you have me do?"
"Have Shen choke his a.s.s out or Antoine can throw a bag over his head and carry him, I don"t care!" Considering how wanted Valentine was, he"d been here too d.a.m.ned long already. "I don"t give a s.h.i.t what you do, as long as he"s on your f.u.c.king airplane in the morning, because otherwise I"ll-"
"He"s no trouble," Jill interjected. "We"ve got s.p.a.ce."
"Oh, h.e.l.l no!" I shouted.
"I know you don"t like him, but we"re not going to be here anyway! He"s been through a lot of trauma, Lorenzo!"
"Trauma is when Majestic finds out he"s here and then kills us, Jill." Shen, Antoine, and Ling exchanged glances and then politely backed away from the table like they totally weren"t paying attention to the erupting argument. "Stop right there. You Exodus b.a.s.t.a.r.ds aren"t sneaking out of this one. Get Valentine out of here or I will."
"And what do you intend to do with him?" Jill demanded.
"He can learn to swim. Or h.e.l.l, I"ll be generous. I"ll give him an inflatable raft. Haiti"s that-a-way."
"Mike helped save my life, Lorenzo," Jill shouted. "Maybe you should go inflate that raft for yourself."
"Oh, snap," Reaper said. "Somebody"s sleeping on the couch tonight!" I glared at him. "Never mind."
Ling shifted. I looked to see what had gotten her attention. Valentine was standing in the door way, looking pale and tired.
"Oh good, our house guest has arrived. Feel like apologizing to me?"
Valentine didn"t say anything in response.
"Apologizing for what?" Ling asked.
"Sticking a gun in my face under my own roof."
"Sorry," he said, totally not meaning it. Valentine nodded at Jill. "Good to see you, Peaches." She smiled at the use of her alias from Quagmire, because of course this a.s.shole would be charming to my girlfriend. Then Valentine looked at Reaper. "Good to see you too, Skyler."
Reaper frowned at the use of his hated real name. "I"m with Lorenzo. This f.u.c.ker"s got to go."
"Yeah, about that, we were just discussing your leaving on a jet plane tomorrow."
"Or we were discussing about how you were welcome to stay here until you felt better," Jill added.
I turned back to her. "No. We weren"t."
"He"s been through a lot, Lorenzo. He"s a good man." Jill was starting to get her stabbing face. "If it wasn"t for him, I"d be dead."
"You still might get the chance if he gets spotted and they track his escape back to us! Do you feel like becoming a fugitive again? Because that"s what we"ll have to do if they connect us."
"Mike can stay here as long as he needs to. That"s what Hawk did for me!"
Of course, she"d bring somebody doing a good deed into it. I smashed my hand into the table. "d.a.m.n it! He"s-"
"Gone," Ling pointed out.
I looked back at the doorway. Sure enough, Valentine had left.
Apparently he"d made his decision.
LORENZO.
St. Carl Island February 19th I"d gone to the airport to see them off. Ling hadn"t seen Valentine, and she seemed a little sad about that. I was sad too, because now I was contemplating how to get rid of him, up to and including murder, without my girlfriend finding out of course.
However, it turned out that Valentine had decided to leave after all. He showed up as Exodus" Gulfstream jet was being loaded, with all of his earthly possessions shoved into one of my laundry bags.
"Hey," he said when he saw me hanging out by the hangar. "Jill gave me a lift. She"s back by the gate."
"She"s nice like that. So, what are you going to do?"
Valentine stopped and looked over the St. Carl airfield, at the brilliant green trees surrounding it, and then across the vast ocean. "I don"t know. All I want is to be left alone. I don"t want anybody else dying because of me."
"I know that feeling well." I didn"t hate Valentine exactly, but he had a way of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my orderly existence that was borderline supernatural. "Maybe I"ll see you in The Crossroads, but if not, good luck."
The plane was warming up behind us. "If I think of anything else, anything that can help you find your brother, I"ll call." What remained unspoken was how unlikely that really was.
There was still one thing that was bugging me, though. Mostly because it had come up during my argument with Jill, and I actually didn"t know the answer. "The news said that Gordon Willis offed himself. I bet Jill five bucks that was a crock and you murdered him."