Chapter 36
“Who’s going to say it? Not my job anymore.”
Dilya rolled her eyes at Lt. Colonel Henderson.
“Hey, I’m retired, squirt. That has to come with a few perks. One is not giving that damned speech.”
Beale looked at Colonel Gibson, who shrugged his discomfort with doing whatever the task was.
Or perhaps he embraced being the role model for Unit operators never speaking.
Thankfully Derek didn’t hold to that model, at least not completely.
Though it would have saved himself and Abby a lot of trouble if he’d spoken up this morning; their respective crews weren’t exactly buddying up just yet.
“Fine,” Dilya huffed out. She turned to face Abby and Derek’s four-person team.
“There may or may not be a load of heavy shit about to go down. If it does, you’re not allowed to talk about it—ever.
If it isn’t one of these people—” she indicated the circle of people leaning forward to hear “—this never happened.” She turned to Colonel Beale.
“You sure about this, Emily? This has to be the biggest group ever in on one of these things. Your biggest was what, five plus me? Claudia’s was four, I think. ”
Colonel Gibson scowled at her.
“Hey, not deaf or blind. I may not know what happened, but I sure know who was in it.”
Beale shook her head. “You forgot about Mark’s bird on that one when you stowed away. And you’re missing three people on Claudia’s. And no, I’m not saying who. Get on with it.”
Dilya pouted for all of about three seconds. She was clearly a girl who liked to know things. Girl? She was probably all of three years younger than Abby herself. Which, she now understood, was part of her disguise. I’m just a kid, so it’s like totally safe to ignore me. Probably not.
“Okay. If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asks, you tell him you wanted to go to England in November to work on your tan because Scotland has such fine and sunny beaches. You can’t even tell Peter or Zack.
Not if they ask nice. Not if they corner you in the Oval Office and make it a Presidential order. No how. No way.”
“Oh.” Abby, finally having a frame of reference, recognized the dog, which led her to the girl.
“Oh?” Derek asked.
Abby pointed. “This is the First Dog, Zackie.” The dog popped her head up and wagged her tail at being named.
Derek’s eyes shot wide even as he reached down to scratch behind her ear. “Which makes you the First Dog Sitter and First Kids’ Nanny.”
“Was the first dog,” Dilya replied. “Anne gave her to me when I quit because she’s the awesomest other than Emily or either of my moms.”
“Either of your moms?”
“The first was a war refugee murdered in the Hindu Kush,” Dilya waved a hand at her own face.
Her darker complexion and bright eyes now made sense.
She made the gesture as if that was a completely normal background for a girl, a young woman, to have.
“The second rescued me. She’s the Army’s top sniper. ”
This time it was Derek who flinched in surprise. “Kee Stevenson? I’ve shot against her.”
“Did your D-boy ego survive when she kicked your ass?” Dilya leaned close, eager for the answer.
“She didn’t kick my ass.”
Misty rolled her eyes at him.
“…but she did beat on it some.” He shot a grin at Abby for using some all wrong.
“She did beat-some on it,” she whispered the correction.
“Whupped his behind ba-ad. Did a number on mine too. Damn but your mom is seriously chill.” Which was more words than Abby had heard Misty string together in the last two days.
Dilya looked as if she was going to burst with pride. None of which explained why she was here. Or why it fell to her to do the talking with the Three Colonels in attendance.
“So anyway, these kind of missions are so secret, they don’t even get code-word classified.
No need as there will never be a file about them.
Uh, what comes next?” She blinked her eyes at Emily twice before she nodded to herself and continued, “Oh, yeah. This is your chance to bug out. No bad marks on your report card if you have the common sense to run away. So, who’s out?
” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “Has anyone ever bailed on one of these things?”
Beale shook her head, “No one has been that smart on any I’ve been involved with.” Then she turned colonel-serious. “Just because she’s young and funny—”
“I’m funny? Cool!”
Beale ignored her. “—don’t doubt Dilya’s words. A black-in-black operation will push you to the limits. I’ve never lost anyone in ten of these, but others have been far less fortunate.”
“Ten?” The other two colonels twisted around to look at her in shock. “Nobody survives ten. Two, maybe three.” Her husband’s darker complexion turned almost as pale as Beale’s fair skin.
She just raised her eyebrow as if to say, You aren’t the only one with a past.
“Damn it.” Henderson shoved his mirrored shades atop his head and stared at his wife before turning to Colonel Gibson. “Can you believe that I was naive enough to think she was merely the best pilot I’ve ever flown with?”
Gibson was very slow to respond. When he did, rather than answering Henderson’s question, he held out a hand and shook Beale’s once before again disappearing into his Delta-silent bubble.
Abby wondered what it would take to have someone talk about her like that. That’s when she noticed that Derek wasn’t staring at Beale or Henderson. She remained very careful to not turn and acknowledge that he was looking at her.