The Big Burn

“In this case recruiting a smoke jumper. Which, I might add, is how this all got started with my father in the first place.”

“I don’t question the missions, I just figure out how to do ’em. They’re the brains, we’re the brawn.”

“I think you’re both. You designed the mission they want done. That takes brains.”

He smiled again. “It takes experience and professional common sense.”

“Are you modest by nature or by design?”

“Both. I’m a realist. This is an eclectic business. We put together the kind of force structure we need for each job. Each element brings something we need. We live and die by team effort and by always making sure we have the right people for the job.”

“Like me?”

“Like you. But not normally. We usually bring in specialists from all branches. Or even go outside the military. Whatever it takes to get the job done. It’s like everywhere else. The Ivy League guys dream up something to do, we tell them if it’s possible and how to do it. Then we do it and they take all the credit.”

She exchanged a little conspiratorial grin with him. She understood perfectly. “A little like having a long discussion on a short topic with Bureau of Land Management people.”

He nodded. “You got it. You’re about to meet the Bureau of World Management.”

“I detect something of a bad attitude.”

“My attitude is very flexible,” Brock said. “It depends on my proximity to things that irritate me. And right now we’re real close to an irritant.”

Anna chuckled. As much as she’d have preferred not to like Brock, he was the type, open and self-deprecating, that she could easily connect with.

They got out of the Humvee.

“One more thing,” Brock said. “You’ll be walking through the communications room on the way back to his office. There aren’t any females in there. Or anywhere in the camp, for that matter. Just horny guys who can’t get into town. We’re in shutdown, mission isolation. Don’t even smile. It’ll act like a spark in dry hay.”

“I’ll do my best to ignore anything with more appendages than I have.”

“Excuse me, but there’s nothing I’ve seen around here with more appendages than you have. Slump and frown, that might help.”

She laughed. What had she gotten herself into?

He pushed open the door and went in ahead of her. She hesitated, staring at him. He turned and shrugged. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t.”

Chapter 5

The cool air took her breath away for a moment. The inside of the hut felt just like a refrigerator. She inhaled, as if trying to suffuse every cell with coolness.

There were half a dozen computer workstations, all manned by young men. On the walls, giant maps. Several large printers along the far wall were kicking out page after page of documents. The place hummed with military paperwork.

She and Brock headed to the back as chairs moved and men stepped out of their way.

Not unexpectedly, she actually heard a few very low moans as they walked by. She saw Brock shake his head.

Brock knocked on the only office door in the place. A gruff voice told him to enter. Brock asked Anna to wait.

She stood outside, leaning against the wall, thinking that she needed to call her mother at some point and explain where she was and to tell her that her father was alive. Her mom was going to be shocked. Anna didn’t know the protocol on this CIA base and didn’t want to do anything stupid. Her dad’s life was in danger and she didn’t want to be the one to end it—just by making a phone call. Her mother was probably out in the mountains with her satellite phone, so it wouldn’t be difficult to contact her. But should she? They usually talked three or four times a week, sharing adventure stories. This time, she’d have more to share than a fire adventure. This time she would raise the dead. She had a feeling her mother wouldn’t believe it, and at that precise moment, Anna could barely believe it herself. But if she didn’t call, her mom would worry. Anna didn’t want that.

About ten minutes later, while Anna had fallen into memories of her dad, Brock opened the door and motioned her inside.

The stern-looking man sitting behind the desk told her to have a seat. “I’m Curtis Verrill,” he said without looking up from a file he was leafing through. Like that was more important at this moment than making eye contact. She knew right off that she wasn’t going to like this guy.

Verrill wore tan khakis and a blue short-sleeved knit shirt with no insignia. After a few moments, he finally sat back, looked up and studied Anna for a second.

He said, “I apologize for all the secrecy and hassle. Believe me, this has been as difficult for us as it has been for you.”

“And why is that?”

He didn’t appear to like the question, or maybe the tone, so he ignored it. “We have a problem—”

“And I take it, I’m the solution.”

He didn’t respond to that either, but he did throw an accusatory look at Brock, as if to say he knew where her prejudgment had come from.

He picked up a brown folder and held it in his left hand. “Your father’s files. I’m sure you have some questions.”

She stared at the folder. After all these years CIA was suddenly going to tell her the truth about her father’s disappearance.

She reached across the desk for the folder, but he pulled it back. Apparently, he wasn’t really going to tell her anything. Now she really didn’t like the man.

Verrill related the reasons her father went under, the reasons for the cover story, his extreme value as an agent. “For an American to have any credibility in a Muslim culture, he has to be one of them. Marry into their world. Live, dress, eat and sleep like they do for a long period of time. Do business. Have a solid bona fide relationship with the people around him. Your father succeeded in all of that. He was well known and well accepted. Once he was in, he began to network.”

She listened to the story and wondered if it was any truer than what she’d believed about her father before. These people were professional deceivers. He wouldn’t have put his own daughter through all that sorrow and pain for a job, even if it was for national security. He would have found some way to contact her. To let her know he was still out there. Alive.

Brock had already told her most of what Verrill was saying about the mission. Everyone, she was sure, was well versed in this story, but no one seemed to have a good reason about her father wanting her to come in after him.

“Why me?”

“I can’t answer that,” Verrill admitted. “We have the highest qualified smoke jumpers in the world. We didn’t need to go to a…civilian.”

You left a word out, Anna thought, but what was it? Female, perhaps?

She felt a little like she’d taken a wrong step and had fallen into the rabbit hole, Alice in Jungleland. She was standing there in the middle of the Pacific with this CIA agent and this Special Ops guy telling her she was going to jump onto some tiny island—an island in the middle of the pirate and terrorist country—in less than twenty-four hours to rescue her father.

It seemed completely unbelievable to her.

There had been times when smoke jumping felt the same way. She went from putting out one small fire to the next, and the next, and after about five or six of them she no longer could think straight.

Perhaps this was one of those times.

“If this is all true, why wouldn’t he have contacted us? We thought he was dead.”

“He couldn’t contact you. Not you, his ex-wife, relatives or friends because that’s the nature of the business he’s in. He took on a different name, different identity. He had to be believed. Any suspicions might have put you and your mother in jeopardy.”