Chapter 1 #4
“I’ll be present for your debrief when you and the others return,” Jamie said, looking off-screen at something that had caught his attention for a brief second.
“You had plans,” Kyle protested.
“They can wait.”
Kyle bit back his initial retort before it escaped his mouth.
He would never say he regretted the way they got together, and he didn’t regret the secrecy their relationship existed in now, but some days, Kyle wished they could speak their minds without fear of reprisal.
Promising to give Jamie a blowjob if he’d just go and deal with his family probably wouldn’t go over well with any of the brass.
On the other hand, he knew it would go over extremely well with Jamie.
“Where’s Viper? Did you take over for her? You know she’s more than capable of leading in your absence,” Kyle said.
“Of course she is. And Viper was the one who called me back to the war room once the bomb was reported in. She knew I needed to be updated.”
Kyle knuckled his eyes. “Right. Did any of the photos from my scope camera get received?”
“Some. We have analysts working on them. I’m hoping we’ll have something when you guys get back.”
“Yeah. Okay. See you in two hours.”
Jamie nodded, all business, but Kyle knew how to read the relief in his blue eyes. “Copy that. Base out.”
Kyle killed the uplink and slumped back in the co-pilot’s seat. Annabelle was on the comms with flight control, the electromagnetic engines a faint hum in the background. She muted the public conversation in favor of their encrypted comms.
“We’re cleared for takeoff,” Annabelle announced.
The Hermes combat jet was capable of vertical takeoff and landing.
Once the ground crew cleared the launch pad, Annabelle pushed the engines to full throttle, and the jet launched itself into the sky with a roar.
The jagged megacity skyline surrounding the base disappeared in favor of hazy blue sky that got shades darker the higher they flew.
The clouds thinned out as Annabelle plotted out a vector that would have them flying in the high stratosphere and skirting the edge of the mesosphere.
The windshield was polarized against the bright sunlight, and Kyle blinked to adjust his vision to the brightness, staring at the curved horizon.
The flight didn’t take long, not with the way Annabelle was flying them home at a rate of Mach 2. By the time they landed, Kyle had his thoughts in order for the long debriefing he knew would happen.
The combat jet juddered as it touched down at the MDF’s airfield, the assigned ground crew approaching with their maintenance tools as Annabelle lowered the ramp.
Kyle was already out of his seat and leaving the flight deck before the ramp even touched the ground.
Madison and Alexei shucked off their harnesses and hurried after him, none of them surprised in the least to find the rest of the team waiting for them on the tarmac.
Aside from Jamie and Katie, Trevor Sanchez and Donovan Williams were standing shoulder to shoulder nearby as they let their captain and second-in-command assess Kyle and the others first. Trevor was the team’s medic and probably should’ve had first dibs, but the four who’d gone into the field were all walking under their own power.
“All right?” Jamie asked as his gaze trailed over them.
“Alive, if pissed,” Madison replied.
“If none of you need Medical, the director wants to hear what happened in person ASAP.”
“What happened is the mission was a complete fuckup, and either the target was a metahuman, or we were found out somehow,” Kyle said flatly.
Jamie’s mouth pressed into a tight line. “Let’s get inside.”
MDF headquarters consisted of three main buildings connected by various ground corridors and aerial pedestrian bridges.
Hangars lined one side of the airfield, and smaller buildings were attached to the main building of the MDF headquarters.
The ready rooms where teams geared up for missions were located in those smaller buildings.
Jamie and the other three waited long enough for Kyle, Alexei, Madison, and Annabelle to strip off their tactical armor.
They didn’t bother with changing out of their combat uniforms since that would necessitate a shower, and they didn’t have time for that right now.
Everyone except Jamie was in uniform, and Kyle found himself stealthily eyeing the bespoke suit Jamie wore. He had fond memories of that suit.
They left the ready room and took the nearest elevator to the command levels high up in the main building.
Those levels were restricted, but very little was restricted to metahumans on base.
Jamie led them past the war room, a heavily secured room that was the beating heart of the MDF’s field operations, and into a briefing room Kyle had considered Alpha Team’s by his second month with the MDF.
Metahumans made up a small percentage of active field agents in the MDF, but they were given the more critical missions due to their powers. Not all metahumans came from military ranks, which made Alpha Team unique in the damage they could do against an enemy, whether on domestic or foreign soil.
Jamie pressed his palm to the control panel, and the door slid open. Everyone filed inside, and Jamie nodded at the room’s only occupant. “Sir.”
He didn’t salute only because he was out of uniform, but Kyle and the others did. Metahuman Defense Force Director Amir Nazari nodded in acknowledgment of their greeting. “Welcome back. I hear things didn’t go as planned on this mission.”
“No, sir,” Kyle said as he sat down.
The team ranged itself around the table with a large screen embedded in the top, opaque and empty of data or command windows.
Kyle watched as Nazari took his usual seat at the head of the table.
The director had a long military background and still carried an active commission with the United States Army as a three-star general.
Going into his sixth year heading up the MDF, Nazari was a superior officer Kyle had come to respect in the nearly seven months since he’d joined Alpha Team last summer.
The craggy-faced director wasn’t one for fits of rage when missions didn’t go as planned, but he did want answers.
“What happened?” Nazari asked, meeting Kyle’s gaze.
“The target knew my position. I don’t know how, but he looked right at me through my scope before the bomb went off. I didn’t choose the shooting location until we got on-site. I don’t know how they could’ve known where we’d be far enough in advance to set up a bomb like that.”
“My hacks didn’t see anyone else in the system,” Katie added.
Jamie frowned. “I’d hate to think we have a leak somewhere.”
Considering they’d had an infiltration by the enemy last summer, Kyle didn’t think anyone would be happy if it turned out there was a leak.
Katie and the handful of other telepaths the MDF employed had initiated full scans of all employees in surprise checks several times since then on orders from Nazari.
They’d managed to weed out a few lower-level agents since Everly’s attack on the MDF headquarters, but luckily, nothing worse than that had turned up.
People might not like the mental scans, but those who worked for the MDF knew when they signed on that telepaths could use their power on their own side if the need was great enough.
Telepathy was the most legislated out of the slew of metahuman powers that had cropped up in the past one hundred years.
The public really didn’t like someone being able to read their innermost thoughts without some form of restriction.
Of course, that really only worked on an honor system, which was why metahumans who didn’t join the MDF were always monitored.
Kyle didn’t have a problem with Katie and her power.
The team’s second-in-command was a rock-solid sergeant he had great respect for.
Getting used to her telepathy had taken time, but both he and Alexei could now handle it without risking a headache.
Kyle watched as Nazari tapped his fingers against the screen embedded in the table, waking up the computer. “Ceres, retrieve the scope pictures,” Nazari said.
“Retrieving scope pictures,” the MDF’s smart building operating AI said in its usual serene female voice.
A multitude of holopics flickered into existence in the center of the table.
Kyle glanced down at the command window that opened up in his terminal and started swiping through the dozens of pictures his scope had managed to take and upload back to base before his weapon got caught in the bomb’s blast. Picking out several of the clearest, he swiped his fingers over them and sent them toward the center.
The other holopics minimized, letting those couple take up everyone’s attention.
“This one is of Estrada when he tagged my location,” Kyle said, glaring at the holopic of the man in question preparing to draw his thumb across his throat to simulate cutting it. “There is absolutely no question he made me.”
Kyle pointed at the next holopics, that of a woman, her head mostly turned away from his rifle scope, less than a quarter of her face showing.
He knew a facial recognition program wasn’t going to come up with much using that little to search off, even with an AI backing the search and multiple agency databases thrown into the mix.
“These are the buyers. Russians, by the look of them. Actual Russians, not Russian American.” Kyle tilted his head in Katie’s direction. “Don’t take that as an insult.”
“None taken,” she said dryly. “I like not being lumped in with the enemy.”