Chapter Six
A li watched Max’s expression change from a reflection of old hurts to horror, to a closed book. He wasn’t going to tell her anything.
Stubborn fool.
She was stubborn too, but she’d let it go...for now. That brief expression of horror...worried her. Something had happened and it had been terrible.
Let him think she’d retreated, when all she was doing was holding her advance until the right moment. She’d just found a man who accepted all of her without hesitation. She wanted the chance to explore what was between them.
“Fine.” She sighed. “I’d like to talk about that report Eugene just gave you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”
“I had no idea you kept track of outbreaks in such a wide area.”
“Wide area? We track them worldwide.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re so damned dangerous. If people knew how easy it is to create and spread a biological weapon in a populated area, they’d be afraid to leave their homes.”
“Even the military?”
“Yes. Nothing about the weapons we fight is tangible. It’s an invisible war. Most people don’t even know they’re fighting it until they’re already the walking dead.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then asked, “May I sit?”
He gestured at the chair in front of his desk.
“I’m surprised the fallout from the anthrax attack at Forward Operating Base Bostick didn’t make things more difficult for you,” she said
“The details of that incident have been kept as quiet as possible.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Akbar came very close to killing a large number of our men, your father included. That’s news we don’t want every extremist, civilian, or average soldier out there to know.”
“News is exactly what I mean. I listened to Eugene’s situation report this morning. Couldn’t you send out more information that could help and not hurt your team?”
“We’re not a bunch of journalists. We’re lab techs, doctors, and medical scientists who deal with disease and death on a daily basis. Eugene gives me that report twice per day, minimum, because I need to know what’s going on a lot farther away than just a country or two. What happens in Africa affects Asia and the Middle East and vice versa. From an infectious disease standpoint, the world is a very small place.”
She stared at the top of his desk for a long moment. “Do you think Akbar is involved with any of those pharmacy break-ins or outbreaks?”
“I don’t know. The pharmacy break-ins...bother me. Akbar is a smart man and those thefts are an effective way to get the supplies he needs.” He swiveled his chair and got up to face a map encompassing the Middle East, most of Asia, and the northern half of Africa.
“Akbar is from Afghanistan.” He pointed at a red tack stuck in the map. “After his family was killed, he disappeared for a couple of months. We all thought nothing of it. I would have done the same thing if my family had been wiped out. When he came back, he’d lost ten or twenty pounds and was subdued. His enthusiasm for diplomacy was gone. Again, no surprise there. He gave the impression he wanted to keep himself busy with work. He told me he wanted the deaths of his wife and children to count for something. For peace.”
“He told you?” Stone asked, studying his face. “You know him?”
“I know him. At least I thought I did. He did a lot of good things for his country at one time.” Max shook his head. “What I didn’t know, what none of us knew, was that he’d decided to enact revenge on the United States military through terror. By releasing the one thing he’d always said was the most cowardly of weapons. Biological weapons.”
“Losing his family must have broken him,” she said quietly.
Max sighed. “I don’t know if he made the decision himself or if he reached it through the encouragement of other extremists. It doesn’t really matter now.”
“I think it does matter,” Ali said, leaning forward. “Knowing if he was influenced by a particular group might help us narrow down his possible targets.”
“There’s been no pattern to his targets. The first one made sense, sort of. He targeted a remote forward operating base in Afghanistan. You must know some of this—you mentioned Bostick. He tested his weaponized anthrax on a small village while poisoning the ear of the base commander. He convinced the base commander to disregard the advice and opinions of one of my doctors, who was embedded with a Special Forces team on a training mission. General Stone had to go there and take over in order to figure out what was going on. The general was the real target. Akbar's plan would have worked if he had eliminated my doctor and her Special Forces escort, but they took out Akbar’s delivery system.”
“I read the report. Do you think he’s fixated on the general?”
Max shrugged. “The second target had nothing to do with General Stone. He poisoned the water supply of a refugee camp with some kind of souped-up rabies virus. He wasn’t finished tinkering with it and decided to try to force Dr. Sophia Perry to find a way to make the virus easily transmissible from person to person.” Max shook his head. “Your father would have never gone there.”
They were both silent for several seconds, then Ali asked, “What do you think he’ll do next?”
“He seems fixated on creating the perfect biological weapon. I don’t expect that to change.”
“So, his goal is to create a bacteria or virus that can kill a lot of people?”
“I think he wants to create a pathogen that will wipe out as many people as possible. His own life is worthless to him. All he cares about is killing in great numbers.”
“If he’s supported by other terrorists, do they know they’re just as much of a target as we are?”
“Probably not. Akbar is an educated and charming man. He’s good at putting things in their best light. He knows how to tell people what they want to hear.”
“Perhaps that’s the message we should send,” she said diffidently. “Plant a few seeds of doubt.”
“I don’t think that will work. These are people with their minds made up, and they’ve decided we’re the bad guys.”
“We could still try, couldn’t we?”
Max lifted one side of his mouth. “They’re arrogant. Whether it’s because they believe in what they’re doing totally or because they’re drunk on their own power, it doesn’t matter. It won’t be easy to convince them of anything.”
Nothing easy was ever worth having. “Even if there’s only a small chance of convincing them, I think it would be valuable to try.”
“How could this message be circulated among the right people? We don’t want to spark massive panic or worse, anarchy. That could kill more people than whatever pathogen he’s planning to unleash.”
She smiled, putting as much violence into it as she could. “We use our covert community to spread the word at the grassroots level.”
Max shook his head. “As soon as you do that, you lose control of the information. Terrorists will spin it any way they want to, blaming the United States and its allies for the problem. We’re back to panic and anarchy.”
Couldn’t he at least try to see her point of view?
“I still want to try it.” It had the potential to change public perception, and that played a huge part in influencing who’d show up to the battle.
“Even if we had time to try to leak the kind of information we want, we don’t have the contacts to leak the information to.”
He might not have the right kind of people to pass the information to, but she knew people who did. “But if we did?”
“We’re back to the bad guy thing again. They’re not going to accept anything we say, even if it’s intercepted and supposedly secret.”
“But—”
“Ali,” he interrupted. “The decision isn’t up for debate. The work we do here is classified. The rest of the military machine knows as much as they need to and no more.” He smiled at her to soften his words, but that just made her mad. “The number of people whose opinion I care about is very small.” He sat back in his chair and waved at the world at large. “The rest can fuck off.”
Oh, they could, could they? “May I speak plainly, sir?”
He frowned, but nodded.
“I think you’re making a mistake.”
He stared at her, his expression unchanging. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but the subject is closed.”
It was like last night had never happened.
“How am I supposed to help you if you won’t even entertain my suggestions?” she demanded. The time for tact was done. “Your security is my number-one concern.”
“What’s that got to do with starting rumors?”
“It’s one way to make you safe.” She leaned forward. “People have no idea what a dangerous man you are. They think you’re this...this uncoordinated moron who couldn’t find his asshole with a map and a flashlight.”
“Seeing as how it’s behind me,” he drawled with a half smile, “they’d be right.”
She smacked her face with one hand as disappointment burned a hole in her gut. He wasn’t taking this seriously at all. An insidious thought occurred to her.
“Is this because the general is my father?”
He snorted. “Your father could be the president of the United States and it wouldn’t change my opinion, or my decision.”
“Thank God for small favors,” she muttered under her breath. Just the thought of him treating her differently because of her family connections made her want to spit fire. “Tying my hands behind my back with a gag order so I can’t fight effectively for you is stupid. Your safety is determined by a lot of factors, and you’re only making my job harder.”
“I thought your job was keeping me safe?”
“I’m also supposed to advise you on ways to do that.”
He just shook his head.
She watched his face for any sign that he was willing to compromise, but his expression was closed.
“Permission to leave, sir?” she asked, getting to her feet.
“Granted, Sergeant,” he said as if tired.
She marched out and shut the door, rather proud of the fact that she didn’t slam it.
* * *
M ax waited three seconds , then got up and went to the door himself. “Eugene, find out if General Stone is in his office.”
There was only one man he could consult with on the subject of Sergeant Stone and how to get through the woman’s thick, stubborn skull.
“Yes, sir,” Eugene called out from his desk.
A few seconds later, Max’s phone rang.
He picked it up and barked, “Maximillian.”
There was silence for a moment, then General Stone said, “Who died?”
“No one yet,” Max said, wincing. “I apologize for my tone, sir. I’ve just had a frustrating conversation with my self-defense trainer and wanted to ask your advice.” He hoped to God doing it wasn’t a mistake.
Silence again. “I see.”
When the general didn’t say anything else, Max continued. “She proposed a course of action I couldn’t condone. Unfortunately, even after I explained my decision, she refused to back down. Given her precipitous departure of my office, I can only assume that she’s very pissed off. Any advice for me on how I might affect a change in her attitude?”
“Patience.”
The general didn’t add anything else.
“That’s it? I was hoping for something constructive I could do or say.”
“My daughter has a stubborn streak wider than the Grand Canyon. The best way to convince her of anything is to give her time to think. Stand firm on your decision and she’ll come around eventually. Unless you’re wrong, then she’ll never give up.”
“I’ll settle in for a long wait, then. She was very angry with me when she left.”
“Angry is fine, insubordinate is another.” The general’s tone was questioning.
Why would he be asking, even adroitly, if his daughter had been insubordinate? “Angry, sir.”
The general grunted and asked, “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
The line went dead.
Max punched in Eugene’s number.
As soon as the young man answered, Max said, “Eugene, come to my office please.”
Eugene was at the door two seconds later. “Yes, sir?”
“Shut the door and come in.”
Eugene carefully approached the desk and came to attention.
“Take a seat,” Max said. “Anyone not lab personnel outside my door or in your area this morning?”
“There was—a couple of people from Supply with our daily order, but they left...uh...after you asked for General Stone.”
Supply? “Do the same people deliver our order every day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do they drop the supplies and go or stay to chat?”
“Both. They make small talk while they’re dropping things off and getting the paperwork signed.”
Normal behavior. Ali had him seeing conspiracies where there were none. “I’d like you to look into Sergeant Stone’s military file. Check for charges brought against her or warnings.”
“Yes, sir.” Eugene blinked a couple of times, but otherwise managed to hide his surprise.
As much as Max hated to ask this, he couldn’t ignore any sources of information. “What does the rumor mill say about Stone?”
“Well, sir,” Eugene said, then cleared his throat. “There’s a few things going around. The main one is that she’s tough but usually fair on those she’s training. I’ve seen her sparring and her reflexes are unbelievably fast.”
Max nodded at him to keep talking.
“There’s also a story going around that says she was late coming to the team because she was brought up on insubordination charges. Charges that are still under investigation.”
“Do you know who brought those charges forward?”
“No, sir, but I’ll try to find out.”
“Anything else?”
“There’s a general feeling she’s gone as far as she’s going to go in her current role. People are taking bets on if she’ll leave the military or transfer out.”
“Is staying with the team included in this transfer scenario?”
“No, sir. Most people think we’re just a regular medical lab and she’s here to try to get you, uh, straightened out.”
Max shook his head and smiled ruefully. “It sounds like she’s gotten herself into a shit storm. Don’t mention this conversation to anyone. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been doing that all along.” The private nodded and left Max’s office.
“That boy needs a raise,” Max muttered to himself. “Or a promotion.”
Putting his assistant and his bodyguard out of his mind, he went to work, sifting through the detailed reports of the current outbreaks Eugene had mentioned in his morning summary.
Akbar was there. Somewhere.
The rumble of his stomach had him checking his watch. Lunch. Well, he’d better get a move on and get to the food court.
Eugene had already gone. Max locked his office and left. He nodded at a few people he recognized from the clinic and other departments. When he got to the food court, he took a seat with Eugene and Jones. The two were in a clandestine relationship that his assistant refused to admit was happening. It was cute.
As he dug into his food, someone sat next to him.
“Hand-to-hand training this afternoon,” Stone said in a cold voice. “Fourteen hundred. Two hours.”
Wow, she was pissed. He kept eating. “Last time I checked, a colonel outranked a sergeant.”
“On the training ground, the sergeant outranks everyone,” she replied.
The conversation around them died down to nothing.
What the hell was she doing?
“Is this how you get your jollies, Sergeant? Beating people up?”
“No, sir. My job is to make sure you’re able to defend yourself and your unit to the best of your ability and to a standard set for every soldier in the United States military. A standard you can’t seem to meet.”
Was she asking to be charged with insubordination?
She appeared in complete control of her emotions. There was no shaking of her hands, her breathing appeared slow and even, and she wasn’t tense.
Was this her way of getting around his decision not to use rumor as a weapon? Start one herself? Did she think he wouldn’t figure it out?
“This venue is hardly appropriate for this discussion,” he said after a couple of moments.
“You can say whatever you want wherever you want, but it won’t change anything.” She got to her feet. “See you at fourteen hundred.”
Max managed to keep his eyes on his food and not on Stone as she walked out. He was going to spank her ass the next time he got her alone.