"All of the surviving hostages have been extracted and are on their way to Germany on a medical evacuation flight," Secretary Brandeis told the packed audience. "They will be given a brief medical check in Germany, then returned to the States. Our first priority is getting them back to their families, although some of them are in poor psychological condition. On that score, they have bonded rather strongly with the SEAL team that was dropped in to hold the position and the team will be accompanying them all the way back to the States. This is at the rather pointed request of some of the young ladies who refused to board the evac plane unless the SEALs went too.
"The person known as Ghost is on the same evac plane and is in critical condition. Military doctors at the transfer point in Iraq stabilized him enough for movement but it's touch and go. Doctors have told me that we might not know for days, or even weeks, if he will live.
"As to Syria," the secretary continued, keying an overhead monitor that showed an oblique view of the set of buildings people had come to know, "this is Aleppo Four. A B-2 has been orbiting Aleppo Four continuously since the SEAL team was inserted. All of our personnel have been evacuated. And this is our answer to Aleppo Four."
There was a brief pause and then the screen flashed white and clicked out to a broader view that showed a boiling mushroom cloud.
"That is the lowest power nuclear weapon in our arsenal," Brandeis said, coldly. "Before anyone asks the question about 'won't that make people accelerate their WMD plans,' I'll make it simple. As our President once said: Bring it on. Every insane group of leaders in the world is trying to craft nuclear weapons, poison gas and biological agents. They have been for decades. Despite what the people in the press think, Saddam was working on it very hard. For today, we are not going into Syria. The state of war still holds. We can now confirm that Basser Assad was present at Aleppo Four, apparently watching the rapings and torture from behind a two-way mirror. He was killed by Ghost. And he was not the only person killed by Ghost." Brandeis keyed the screen again and a body was shown. It was twisted in death and someone in chemical protective clothing was holding the head more or less in place.
He waited until the shouts, from gleeful to horrified, died down and smiled.
"So for anyone who says there was 'no proven link to Al Qaeda,'" Brandeis snarled, "Agent Ghost also killed Osama Bin Laden, who was also watching the proceedings. He killed him, and Basser Assad, with the very mustard gas which was being produced in the facility. Aleppo Four is now a smoking hole. And let all of the terrorists of the world, all the governments of the world who support them, all the governments that are feverishly working on nukes and gas and germs, let all of them know that this is the end result. So, the question that you have to ask is: Exactly how far do I want to go to piss the United States off? Because now you know, that if you go far enough, what you're going to receive is a smoking hole and an increase in background radiation. If you push us far enough, our answer is simple: nuke them until they glow and shoot them in the dark. No questions."
Mike's throat was terribly sore. Then he forgot his throat as various bits of his body started informing his conscious mind just how very glad they were to have someone to complain to, finally. He managed to drag his eyes open and got a glimpse of acoustic tile.
"I was hoping for Valhalla," he muttered. Or tried to, it was more of a mumble. "Ow."
"You're awake," a bright young female voice said. "Don't try to talk. Are you in any pain?"
"Uhhh!" he grunted.
"Let me get you some water for your throat," the voice said, "then I'll get the doctor and see if your medication needs to be adjusted."
A tube was inserted in his mouth and he got a brief flash of one of those unpleasant multicolored smocks nurses had taken to wearing. So much for Valkyries and feasting.
He closed his eyes as the nurse squeaked out in her rubber-soled shoes and wondered where he was. The U.S., probably: the nurse didn't have the "feel" of military nurses. Which meant he'd been out for a while.
"So you're finally awake," a female voice said.
The face that leaned into view wasn't bad, but it was terribly professional. Brown hair pulled back in a bun, more handsome than pretty. Nice eyes, but a trifle cold.
"How are you feeling?" the doctor asked. "There's going to be a high degree of soreness from the surgery, but is there any intense pain? Pain remediation at this point is important."
"If I don't move," he said slowly, wondering why he couldn't talk more clearly, "I'm okay."
"That's the idea," the doctor said. "Don't move. With the level of morphine in you right now, you'd have a hard time anyway."
"W'ere my?" Mike asked then worked his jaw. "Where am I?"
"You're in a . . . special hospital in Virginia," the doctor said. "And . . . we don't refer to our patients by name. You're Patient 1357. Sorry."
"S'okay," Mike replied. "CIA?"
"Somewhat, but primarily military, sort of," the doctor said, smiling in a way that cut off that avenue of conversation. "I'm Dr. Quinn." She looked at him for a moment and nodded. "Go ahead and get it out of your system, otherwise you'll be bothered until you do."
"Medicine woman?" Mike said, trying to grin.
"See, feel better?" the doctor said. "No relation. I'll send the nurse back in to take care of your needs. If the pain gets particularly bad, ring for the nurse and we'll make an adjustment. Let me be clear: Pain is not weakness leaving the body. You can play that game when you're operational, but when you're recovering, high-order pain reduces your ability to heal. We want to keep the pain down. Don't be a hero. If you're in a lot of pain, tell us. If you move and it hurts like hell and won't go away, tell us."
"Got it," Mike said. "I take it I'm going to live?"
"You're going to live," the doctor said, nodding. "There was some infection, but we got that under control days ago. You've been unconscious for nearly two weeks. Not in a coma, just unconscious. Not abnormal with injuries as severe as yours. But you're well on your way to recovery, now."
"Thanks," Mike said, working his head. His neck seemed, other than stiffness, to be the only thing that didn't hurt.
"You're welcome," Dr. Quinn said. "I spent nearly ten hours with my hands in various bits of you. I'm glad to see it was worth it."
The biggest problem was the tedium. In a civilian hospital, he'd probably have been discharged after a few days to a week, basically when the IV came out, which was three days after he woke up. Since this place was "sort of military," and he had nobody to help him at home, he had to stay. He watched TV and caught some of the replays of the return home of the girls. The government, thank God, had let them get together with their parents before the news media got a crack. President Cliff had waited until the day after the homecoming to go visit, and hadn't talked to the media on the way in or out, just turned up, spent some time and left. No grandstanding, no politicking. The scene of the girls getting off the plane in Dix was part of Fox's lead-in. Charlie Three had, apparently, been their escorts back and for some reason the chief had one of the girls stuck on his back like a limpet. That was a major shot in the lead-in.
Some general had taken over from Assad in Syria. He had promised that they were out of the WMD game and renounced terrorism, then started playing the Saddam game of denying that there ever was any WMD and they certainly weren't sponsoring terrorism. All the while complaining largely of fallout from the remarkably clean burst over their soil. All America's fault, of course. The girls were never there. There was no proof. Show us the proof they were there.
Video footage by news media from the site certainly wasn't proof. Oh, no. And all the networks but Fox were eating it up and constantly asking "where's the proof?" Flipping idiots.
Some of the girls were on from time to time and he shook his head at the tenor of the questions. Bambi . . . Britney was interviewed on ABC. He'd made sure he stayed awake that evening, and the interviewer, some chick, was aghast that she would have actually tried to fight. That she wasn't viewing herself as a victim. Bambi just about tore her a new asshole. "I'm not a victim. I fought to help all of us stay alive and I refuse to be called or characterized as a victim. I'm a fighter and a survivor. Ghost taught me that."
The government had gone from giving updates on his health to refusing to speculate whether he was alive or dead. Since he was listening to that from inside a secure—he'd seen the guards outside—military hospital, it gave him a bit of a shiver. But he figured it was for his own safety. Various Islamic groups had pronounced jihad, personally, on the horrible person that would actually kill their Great Leader. Not, by the way, that the Great Leader was dead. Show us the proof. Pictures of a body are not proof. But the man called Ghost was going to be one when they got their hands on him.
He tracked his progress by the stuff that came out and what he could do. IV, drainage tubes, the day they let him walk to the bathroom and he found out how hard it was. He tried to play mental games, remember historical events; he got one of the nurses to get him some books and they all turned out to be romances. He read them anyway and came away wondering just how traumatic it really was for the girls in the bunker. If this was what women read for fun . . . ?
One day he was puzzling over a scene in one of the "historicals" that didn't match any "history" he knew, when a colonel in undress greens walked in unannounced. One read of the nametag said it all.
"Good to finally meet you, Colonel Pierson," Mike said, holding out his hand.
"Glad to see you're going to make it," Pierson replied, grinning.
"Am I?" Mike asked with a raised eyebrow. "The government doesn't seem sure."
"That's why I'm here," Pierson admitted, pulling up a chair. "One of the reasons. You want to be alive or dead?"
"Can we stick with 'unsure'?" Mike asked.
"For the time being," Pierson said. "This administration will be more than happy to stay with 'unwilling to comment upon his mortality.' But . . . administrations change. Honestly, you-know-who is probably going to run in '08 and she's got a good chance of winning. We both know that."
"How hard would it be to classify it so the bitch can't get it?" Mike asked. "The teams won't talk."
"Hard but not impossible," Pierson admitted with a sigh. "Pretty hard to not say that you survived, but we can probably hide your identity."
"Works for me," Mike replied. "So what else do you have?"
"Well," Pierson said solemnly, clearing his throat and picking up his briefcase. "There are a number of forms that I need you to sign. We're handling the money through the Witness Protection Program . . ."
"Money?" Mike asked.
"Well, first there's Osama," Pierson said, his face cracking into a grin. "There was a Presidential Finding that the President's words to the news media, 'dead or alive' meant that the reward could be paid . . ."
"Dead or alive," Mike said and whistled. "How much?"
"Twenty-five million," Pierson said and grinned again. "It's being handled through the Witness Protection Program and they're pretty damned secure, even from presidents. It's split in various accounts so no one bank person sees a deposit of twenty-five million. But there's another five million for 'aid in disrupting a major terrorist operation.' So your grand total is thirty. There was some quibbling about your medical expenses, which were sizeable, and I'm told that when the discussion reached presidential level it descended to four-letter words. So you don't even have to pay the hospital bill."
"Damn," Mike said, his eyes wide. "What the hell am I going to do with twenty-five, thirty million dollars?"
"Uhm . . ." Pierson hummed. "Think, rather, what you can't do. But spend it wisely—most lottery winners go broke. Another reason to spend it wisely is that you don't want to become too visible."
"Boat," Mike said. "A yacht. That way I can move around. I'll come up with a cover story, but it will look like I'm a drug dealer or former drug dealer spending his ill-gotten gains."
"That works," Pierson said. "Now, we don't expect that you'll have actual trouble from the terrorists or any future adventures. But there may be repercussions. There is a special program for certain categories of protectees, and you're a good example, which gives them pseudo-police authority. Effectively, you're made a special version of the Reserve Federal Marshall. What that means is you can carry anywhere in the U.S., and in a good bit of the rest of the world. And it acts as a Class III permit, so you can carry heavy if you wish. Illegal use is illegal use, but if you can carry it, you can carry it."
"Good," Mike said. "I'd been somewhat worried about the tangos finding out who I was before I found out they found out. But if I'm armed in an ambush, that's a different story."
"Don't go Rambo," Pierson said sternly.
"Don't intend to," Mike replied. "But it's a comfort."
"Also, in the same vein," Pierson continued. "You don't exactly have a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card. But some things may come up relating to your . . . special status. Part of this," he said, holding up the briefcase, "besides instructions on what you can do with your status and what you can't and how to handle it, is a number of the Office of Special Operations Liaison. Or, as we call it, Oh-so-SOL. It's where I work. The phone is manned twenty-four hours a day. If you have problems or questions, call it. You're also going to be on the military database as a 'special contractor.' That could mean anything from a contract weapons instructor to . . . well, you. However, if anyone brings up your record, all the salient information is Code Word classified, so they'll probably put two and two together and get something near four. At the very least, if it's a military or police situation, they'll recognize you're not just one of the narod. Don't use it if you don't have to."
"Understood," Mike said, sighing. "I don't just get to be myself the rest of my life, do I?"
"Nope," Pierson said. "When I retire, I'll be nobody. You'll always be, at least until the terrorists get worked down to a regional nuisance, the guy who killed Osama. Sprayed him with poison gas then cut his head off. Arguably, you should be surrounded by bodyguards the rest of your life. Knowing you, though . . ."
"Ain't gonna happen," Mike said. "I'm a good enough bodyguard, thanks. That it?"
"Except for the paperwork," Pierson said with a nod. "And running you over the instructions. Yes."
"When can I get discharged?" Mike asked. "I have a bunch of money to spend."
"As soon as this gets cleared up," the colonel replied. "And we'd really like a written after-action report . . ."
"Don't hold your breath," Mike replied, grunting. "What happens on the mission, stays on the mission. Let's get started on the rest of it, though. I have people to see. . . ."
It was a shitty day in Athens. A weak cold front was coming through and the light, misty, rain was soaking into Brenda McCarthy's sweatshirt as she walked up College Street. The conditions fit her mood, which was crappy. The girls had been given A averages for the semester that had been "disrupted" as the administration put it. But since the beginning of this new semester she'd had to contend with being "One of the Syria Girls." The whispers and looks in class were bad enough. But the experience tended to attract . . . the wrong kind of guys. Guys that she really didn't want calling her "Babe." Guys that, frankly, set off her creep meter.
So it was just adding insult to a screwed up day when some loser sitting at the Starbucks called out to her.
"Hey, Babe, it is Babe, isn't it?"
She spun around to deliver an angry reply and stopped as the man stood up and took off his sunglasses. She stood still as he approached to where he could speak quietly.
"I don't like it when most people call me that," she said, her face working, trying not to cry.
"Well, I don't know your real name," the man said. "But some people call me Ghost."