Safe house, Gray’s Farm Main Road, Hawksbill Bay.
Stone pushed his shades onto the top of his head and flopped onto the couch. “This is a real hassle. Who is that prick?”
Jana had had enough and disappeared into a back bedroom.
Cade said, “Lawrence Wallace is a company man. I’ve had dealings with him in the past.”
“Yeah?” Stone said. “Without a rendition team, how are we supposed to make Jana’s assignment, Carlos Gaviria, disappear? I mean, the three of us? It can’t be done.”
“I thought you were a hotshot Army Delta Force operator, no less.”
“I’m serious. You stopped and thought about what it takes to pull off something like this? With a rendition team, it wouldn’t be so bad. Jana could lure the guy into a private room where he thinks he’s going to get a little ooh-la-la with her. They’d pop in and jam a needle in his neck so fast, by the time he felt the sting, the drug would have him halfway to unconsciousness. Then the team would whisk him into a van and he’d be gone. Next stop, Guantanamo Bay. But this . . .” Stone shook his head.
Cade shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s got to be something we can do ourselves.”
“How long have you been sitting in that cubicle?”
“Hey, Stone, screw you,” Cade said. “I’ve been in the field before.”
“Good, because we’re going to need it. But you’re not thinking this through. Gaviria won’t be alone. He’s the Oficina de Envigado’s number one on the island. He’ll have protection. And by protection, I don’t mean he’ll be carrying a condom.”
Jana stood in her bedroom doorway and said, “Two ex-boyfriends talking about condoms. Can this get any worse?”
Stone stood. “Jana, you don’t look so good.”
“Thanks a lot,” she replied. “Cade, I had to rush out of my bungalow. You have any Advil?”
“Sure. My stuff’s in the other bedroom. Outside pocket of my bag.”
She disappeared into Cade’s room.
Stone walked closer and lowered his voice. “It’s getting worse.”
“I know it is.”
“No, man. I mean, I’ve been with her for close to a year and I’ve never seen it this bad.”
“She didn’t show signs of PTSD before?”
“Sure she did. It’s just that she had better control of it. But this, it’s like she’s going to blow at any second. You can see it in her eyes.”
“You some kind of psychological expert?” Cade’s assertion was condescending.
“Happens to a lot of guys. I’ve seen it. We’d come back from a long deployment. It’s a tough thing to cope with. The human being is not meant to handle a war zone. What happened to her, anyway?”
Cade crossed his arms and squinted. “You were with her a year and she never told you? Doesn’t sound like you had much of a relationship.”
“Kiss my ass. She left you, as I recall. And that had nothing to do with me. You know, I’m tired of your crap. When I met her, she was eager to learn. So I taught her. She would never quit, and that’s when I knew. She was driven by something she’d been through. Now what was it?”
“If she didn’t tell you, I’m sure as hell not going to.”
“I’m not the enemy, Cade. We’re on the same team, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Cade said. He looked at the laptop. “And why hasn’t NSA called in again?”
Stone looked at his watch. “Maybe they’re busy.”
“Uncle Bill is the best there is. He doesn’t get busy.” Cade sat at the laptop and clicked a few keys. He squinted at the monitor. “What the hell?”
Stone leaned in. “What’s wrong?”
“The satellite,” Cade said as he pointed to a tiny icon of a spinning globe in the upper-right corner of the screen. The globe was dark.
“What about it?”
“When the connection is hot, the globe is bright green. It’s like it’s not there. Shit, we’ve lost connection.”
“Well,” Stone said, “if it’s anything like Wi-Fi—”
“It’s nothing like Wi-Fi. A stable connection like that doesn’t just drop. It’s in geosynchronous orbit. The satellite stays in the same position at all times. And it’s not like we’re mobile, or there’s interference from a storm system. Let me run diagnostics.”
“You bite my head off like that again, and you and me are going to have a problem. Geosynchronous orbit. I’ll show you geosynchronous orbit.”
“Hey, Delta Force boy, you just stick to your side of the mission, I’ll stick to mine.” Cade then muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“I said, you wouldn’t know your Wi-Fi from your Bluetooth from your BGAN from your VSAT.”
“What a pencil neck. Think you know your shit, do you? Let me ask you a question. In an M84 flashbang, is the pyrotechnic charge a subsonic deflagration or a supersonic detonation? No? What’s the muzzle velocity and max range of the .338 Lapua Magnum when fired from an M24A3 Sniper Weapon System?” Stone waited but Cade just looked at him. “Yeah, you know jack shit.”
Cade squared off in front of Stone, his jealousy and anger having gotten the best of him. Then from the back bedroom, Jana yelled, “What is this?” The men turned to find her standing in the doorway.
Stone said, “Nothing, babe. Just a gentleman’s disagreement.”
Her eyes were locked on Cade. “I said, what is this?” In one hand she held a box of candy. In the other, a stack of standard-sized envelopes bound together with rubber bands. The bundle was about four inches thick.
Cade’s mouth dropped open.
Jana marched up to him and shoved him into the chair.
“Speak.”
“Uh, those?” he said. “I was going to tell you about those.”
“When?” she barked. “This isn’t just a box of candy. This is marzipan. You know I love these. You know I used to get them when I was a kid. What did you think? That because you brought me marzipan, it was going to bring up all those memories, and we were going to be a couple again?”
He sat stunned.
“And these?” She held out the stack of letters. “These are letters from my father! When were you going to tell me about these?” She tore into the stack. “And look at them. From the postmark, he’s been writing me letters for the last nine months. And I’m just now finding out about these?”
Cade stuttered but then his voice turned. “You were gone. You disappeared, remember? You left. Stopped paying rent on your apartment, no notice of where you were going or when you might come back. What did you think would happen to your mail?”
“I didn’t give a shit what might happen to my mail or the lease on the apartment or any of it.”
“Then stop screaming at me about a stack of letters from your father. You never told me you were in touch with him in the first place.”
Stone said, “Wait, why wouldn’t she be in touch with her father?”
A salty silence permeated the space.
Cade finally replied, “Because he’s been in the federal pen her whole life.”