29. Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Day 14 Denali, Alaska
“How many spooks did you speak to?” The question was interspersed with panting, which was ridiculous. A stroll through the base corridors on his way to the elevator should not get his lungs so worked up.
It figured that Russo would call with a Kuznetsov update now, while Aiden was headed to the air hangar. The lab had finally called it quits on the bloodletting and given him the greenlight to jump base. Wolf had even okayed his ride on the Bell and allowed him to visit Cosky’s precious Neighborhood .
He stopped at the elevator, welcoming the delay to catch his breath. Time to hit the gym again. His lack of PT was showing.
“I’m on the move, so if I go silent, hold the line until I hit a signal again.” Aiden didn’t quite believe Cosky’s reassurances that cell phone reception was exceptional. For Christ’s sake, they were buried beneath tons of concrete, dirt, and rock. He punched the UP button for the elevator. “So, none of the spooks or soups know where Kuznetsov is?”
“Depends on which soup I spoke with,” Russo said. “They’re all reporting different locations.”
The elevator bells chimed, and the doors slid open. He stepped in and pressed the button to the air hanger. With luck, the Bell would be prepped and waiting. If he was extra lucky, Cosky would have one of those handy-dandy Neighborhood badges waiting for him. Having to cool his heels while someone rustled one up was going to strain his patience—which was already as thin as day old ice.
“The CIA and NSA put him in Sevastopol.” Devlin’s voice was a staticky rumble on the line. “But INTCEN, DGSI, and CNRLT claim the bastard’s in Seltso, along the Desna River. Mossad claims he’s in Istaravshan, Tajikistan.”
“Istaravshan?” Aiden straightened from his slouch against the elevator wall. His instincts lit up with a low grade buzz the instant Dev mentioned the town. “That’s only one hundred and fifty klicks from Vahdat.”
“One-fifty-one, if we’re going to be precise. Plus—it came from our Israeli friends. Mossad has some damn fine intelligence gatherers.”
True. “What’s your gut say? Did Kuznetsov go to ground in Istaravshan?”
Dev’s grunt carried ambivalence. “My gut ain’t talking. Besides, what we think doesn’t matter. USSOCOM won’t move on it. They’ll need a solid sighting before they’ll do anything. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened in Karaveht. They won’t greenlight another op until they have Kuznetsov’s location double and triple checked, with clear, identifiable photos. Which won’t happen anytime soon, with all the soups focusing on different locales.” He paused before adding quietly, “Feels like a scattershot op to me. My guess is that Kuznetsov, or someone connected to him, is setting off false identification after false identification to keep everyone guessing.”
“Fuck.” A scowl heated Aiden’s face. He’d hoped for more. A lot more. They didn’t have time for patience and prayers.
“I hear you, brother.” Sympathy practically dripped down the line.
Aiden’s scowl grew. He didn’t want sympathy. He wanted—hell, needed—results.
“One more thing, about that name you gave me,” Dev added, his voice sharpening.
“You mean O’Neill?” Aiden asked, waiting with barely leashed patience as the elevator slowed and the bell chimed.
“That’s the name. Singular, like Madonna,” Russo said. “Looked into him like you asked. You sure that’s the right name?”
“That’s all I have,” Aiden said. Not even Wolf knew the dude’s full name. Or if he even had one.
“Nobody got a look at his birth certificate?”
“My brother did.” The elevator doors snapped open. Aiden stepped out and into the air hanger. “Said the only thing listed was a first name. O’Neill. No last name given.”
“Hmm…” Russo paused. “No parents listed?”
“The mother was. Mary Beacher. No father. Nobody knew who knocked his mother up.” Aiden wove his way between the various aircraft, and damned if his legs weren’t getting heavier with every step. “I take it you didn’t get anything off the name?”
He hadn’t expected Russo to uncover anything. The ask had been a long shot.
“On O’Neill? No.” Russo hesitated before continuing with a what-the-hell tone of voice. “But my friendly neighborhood NSA spook is a big sci-fi fan, so he tossed Jack O’Neill in for the hell of it.”
“Jack O’Neill?” Aiden shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“It wouldn’t, if you aren’t a Stargate fan. It was a sci-fi hit during the late 1990s to the late 2000s—partly because of Richard Dean Anderson, who portrayed Colonel Jack O’Neill, an Air Force Special Operations Veteran. Anyhow, my spook is a big Stargate fan and has far too much imagination, so he tossed Jack O’Neill into his search criteria—and damned if he didn’t get a hit. A big one. Adding Jack to the search triggered a hit on a classified file, codename Stargate. Restricted access. No information available.”
Aiden stopped short between a Cessna and a Black Hawk. “That makes no sense.”
“Codenames aren’t supposed to make sense.” Russo’s voice was dry. “That’s why they’re codenames. Wouldn’t want anyone to follow the breadcrumbs to an actual identification.”
“You think Stargate is O’Neill? How can you be certain the file doesn’t spell out some highly classified op or something?”
“I’m not certain,” Russo said with the verbal equivalent of a shrug in his voice. “A coded file could be about anything—operations, operators, hell, even snitches. No way to tell what it contains without gaining access to it. And according to my spook, this file is impenetrable. I’m not saying it’s your guy. I just find it interesting, that’s all.”
“Any info on which of the soups classified the file?”
Russo paused. When he continued, his voice was more cautious than ever. “Looks like ODNI.”
“Fuck me,” Aiden breathed. “I hope your spook has some serious hacking skills, and that hit didn’t register, or if it did—” which it probably had , “it can’t be traced back to him.”
Nobody in their right mind wanted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence crawling up their ass.
“No shit,” Russo said, his voice hushed, like he was worried the ODNI had already traced the search back to him and was listening in on him from space or some shit.
“That file can’t have anything to do with O’Neill,” Aiden said, shaking his head. “No way.”
“Not saying it does.” Russo paused again. “You’re going to ask him about it, aren’t you?” The question came with a clear, “ you stupid fuck” attached to it.
“Maybe.” Russo knew him too well to believe an outright denial.
He groaned. “You are! Jesus. You know if he is ODNI, asking him about Stargate could put an extra bounty on your head.”
“What’s another couple of million?” Aiden started walking again. “Maybe I can push the bounty above five mil.” Which was what the combined bounty had been for his former ST7 leadership.
Dev snorted. “You took Rawlings up on one of his batshit crazy bets, didn’t you?”
Aiden could almost feel Russo’s eye roll through the line.
“That’s classified.” He rounded a Sky Hawk, and the Bell came into view. “You got anything else for me? I’m about to go skids up. I got somewhere I need to be.”
“That’s it. I’ll call if I hear anything more.” The line went dead.
Aiden closed on the Bell, and the tall, dark-haired asshole pacing beside it. Cosky stopped his pacing when he saw Aiden, waited for him to get close enough, and drove a plastic badge into his chest. Aiden came to a sudden hard stop, most of the air vacating his lungs beneath the plastic punch.
He grunted, grabbing the badge before it hit the ground. “Fuck, dude, what was that for?”
“Your slow ass is making me late for date night.” Cosky turned, hopping through the open cargo door and into the belly of the Bell. “And here I thought you were in an almighty hurry to get your love life squared away.”
“Date night?” Aiden jeered, following his brother-in-law into the chopper. “Does Kait know you’re seeing other women already?”
“Trust me, Kait is all the woman I need. No way I’d risk what I have with her by screwing around.”
“You’re telling me you made a date with your wife?” Aiden put so much effort into his eye rolls they stung. “Isn’t that like closing the coop after the chickens have escaped?” He turned, sliding the cargo door shut. He picked up the headsets sitting on the seat next to Cosky, and sat down, handing one headset to his brother-in-law, and adjusting the other over his head, so the mic was pointing in the right direction. “You’re supposed to date ‘em before you marry them, not after.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors, jackass.” Cosky adjusted his own headset before shooting him a get-real look. “And forgive me if I don’t take relationship advice from the dude who’s about to get served with the verbal equivalent of a Dear John letter.”
Aiden set his jaw. Not if he could help it. At least it sounded like Cosky and Kait would be gone, which gave him the time and privacy to talk to Demi and convince her to give him another go.
“Where are you taking Kait?” Translation: How long are you two going to be gone?
“Talkeetna. They’ve got a kickass seafood and steak place.” Cosky shot him a knowing look. “You’ll have two hours, or close enough, to make your case. But I wasn’t busting your ass earlier. You can’t stay with us. I’m not putting Demi in that position. If she’s uncomfortable, Kait will be caught between the two of you and miserable as hell. You’ll need to take Rawls up on his offer to stay with him and Faith.” He paused, studying Aiden’s face with an I’m-not-shitting-you look. “After you’re done talking with Demi, call him. He’ll pick you up.”
Aiden raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t he live next door to you? I can walk to his door.”
Cosky shook his head, a long-suffering expression on his face. “In the dark? With no NVDs? Through four feet of snow? Don’t be an ass. Call him. Kait would never forgive me if I let you kill yourself during your first trip up to visit us.”
Aiden made kissing sounds and batted his eyelashes. “I didn’t know you cared, bro.”
Before Cosky came back with a brutal and probably amusing retort, a low, deep whine surrounded them. The Bell’s floor vibrated beneath their feet. The chopper’s hold held no windows, but even without seeing the ground getting smaller, Aiden could tell they were rising.
From what Rawls had told him earlier, the flight to Shadow Mountain’s Neighborhood took twenty minutes, which meant the distance between the base and the township was somewhere around one hundred and thirteen klicks. Quite a distance to sink roots.
“Why build your Neighborhood so far out? You could have cut your commute by half if you’d set up camp just outside of Denali.” Aiden adjusted the headset mic, which kept trying to migrate beneath his chin.
Cosky, who was slouched down in his seat, head against the wall, looking half asleep, didn’t bother opening his eyes. “We wanted distance between the two in case the base was ever targeted. Besides, twenty minutes is perfect decompression time. By the time we set down, base pressures are behind us, and family time is ahead. We try to separate the two.”
Aiden could see that. By the time the Bell circled and dropped, worries about Kuznetsov and nanobots had given way to worries about Demi and their future. Or lack thereof. Frowning, he organized the points he wanted to make into punchy sound bites.
What we’ve got together is great.
We can build on what we’ve already created.
I can give you a home and a family.
The sex is fantastic. We can build on that.
“Don’t think about it so hard.” Cosky sounded reluctant, like he didn’t want to get drawn into the drama but was finding it impossible to remain neutral. “Thinking too much when it comes to women never ends well. Use your instincts. Speak from your gut.”
Easy for him to say. The dude already had his woman roped and tied. Aiden rolled his shoulders and tried to relax.
You’ve got this. This isn’t rocket science. You’re not locked down, cut off from your brothers, with RPG strikes raining down all around you. This isn’t life and death, no matter how much it feels like it.
With a light rocking motion, the Bell settled on the ground. The engine’s roar decreased. So did the beat of the rotors. Aidan took his headset off, rose to his feet and dropped it on the empty seat. Cosky followed suit.
“Home sweet home.”
Without the buffering of the headset, the beat of the Bell’s rotors drowned most of Cosky’s voice out. But Aiden was certain that the words he caught carried relief. No doubt Cosky was thrilled that the opportunity to dispense relationship advice had ended.
Cosky dragged the cargo hold door back, motioned Aiden out and followed him to the ground, dragging the door shut behind him again. They ducked and shuffled their way out from under the rotors. Once they’d cleared the icy backwash of the rotors, the winter chill felt lazier, even warmer.
Aiden took the scene in with a slow, focused scan. Emerald trees, with Christmas lights vaguely visible through clouds of fresh snow. It figured that Kait would go batshit crazy with the whole Christmas theme, and that her besotted husband would let her. He took another longer look around. Christ, there were trees everywhere. Dozens of boughs surrounded the house for unfriendlies to hide beneath. What the hell was Cosky thinking?
He shifted his attention to the house. It was full of windows and bright light. The whole place was lit up like a bullseye. He scowled. Had Cos lost his ever-loving fucking mind? All that light would lead the unfriendlies right to their door and those windows would make the place impossible to secure.
“We need to have a serious conversation about these trees and windows,” he told Cosky, as the Bell took to the sky.
“If you can talk some sense into your sister about that, be my guest,” Cosky muttered back as he brushed past Aiden.
The front door, with its festive holiday wreath, opened, and Kait stepped onto the porch. He could barely make out the crown of Demi’s aqua-colored head behind his sister’s shoulder.
Kait rushed down the steps, heading directly toward him. Aiden got a quick glimpse of Demi in the doorway, huddled in a thick tweed sweater jacket of blocky greens and blues. And then his sister blocked his view. He enveloped her in a hard hug, then pushed her back to give her a narrow eyed, leisurely, face to toe examination. Things had been in such an upheaval the last few times he’d seen her, which had been in the clinic. He’d paid little attention to how she looked. Cosky better be taking care of her, otherwise they’d be having a serious conversation—probably spelled out with knuckles and bruises.
His sister looked great, though. Much more relaxed than the last time he’d seen her, when anxiety and stress had drained the glow from her face.
He let her go and stepped back. “Looking good, sis. Denali agrees with you.”
“Right?” Kait laughed, her voice exuberant. “Who would have guessed? I always thought I was a sun and sand kind of girl.” She linked her arm with his and they lazily followed Cosky toward the porch. “I can’t believe this is the first time you’ve been here. You know Wolf would have made an exception for you to visit, right?”
“No offense, but I wanted to spend what little downtime I had with my girl.” He glanced at the open door, but Demi had disappeared.
“Yeah…” Her voice went quiet for a moment. She shot a quick glance toward the empty doorway, and the exuberance faded from her face. “Did Cosky tell you we’re going out to dinner? He and I, I mean. You’ll have privacy to talk to her.”
From the sympathetic look that had replaced the joy, she didn’t expect the convo to go well. Aiden’s stomach tightened. Regardless of that gut shot expression his sister was wearing; he still had a chance to patch things up with Demi. He knew she had feelings for him. He had feelings for her, too—strong ones. Sure, there were problems they needed to work out. But every relationship had rocky moments.
Emotions held couples together during the rough patches, and they had those emotions in spades. They just needed to explore compromises, ones they could both live with.
He wasn’t giving up on her.
He wasn’t giving up on them.