“Now,” I said. We all started jogging as best we could. I carried the front of Reagan’s litter while Van Dreeves carried the rear. Amanda jogged alongside holding an IV bag above her torso and Blair, with Brad by her side, held on to the opposite side. We kept her steady given the relative unevenness of the terrain. Hobart popped onto the road first as the aircraft stopped and dropped its back ramp.

  My charges entered the back of the airplane, and we hoisted Reagan up. Two men grabbed the litter and slid her onto a fixed litter that had been snapped into the side of the aircraft. They belted her in, careful to avoid the area where Amanda had performed her magic.

  Mahegan, Hobart, and Van Dreeves counted heads, checked the exterior of the aircraft, and gave the load master a thumbs-up, whereupon the helmeted figure raised the ramp, and the pilots revved the turbines and released the brakes, shooting low into the sky.

  The doctors gave Amanda a headlamp as they conferred with her. I stood close by but not too close to get in the way. Misha was across the way looking at Reagan, probably blaming herself. Brad and Blair were standing near Reagan’s head. Because of the noise, I couldn’t hear much of the conversation as one of the doctors began undressing the wound. He added some stitches and nodded at Blair.

  They needed another unit of blood and Blair gladly complied. Calles stood by.

  “That’s really all she can give,” Amanda said. “She’s down four units.”

  “I’m good. Whatever she needs,” Blair said.

  “I’m ready,” Calles said.

  They tapped into Calles’ arm and fed more blood to Reagan. The doctors did more work in the wound area, perhaps stitching something inside. They remained focused on Reagan with serious affect and concerned eyes.

  Amanda said to me, “I did the best I could, General.” She looked worried.

  “You did great, Amanda.”

  She nodded, not convinced. Reagan reached for my hand and gripped it tight. The doctors continued to work. The airplane made mild banks to the left and right. Through the window I could see we were low in the valley, staying below radar and avoiding drones.

  “We’ve got a facility near Craig, Colorado. Maybe another thirty minutes. I’ve called ahead and their medical team is ready. Best combat surgeons in the world,” West said.

  I nodded.

  The doctors said, “One more bag.”

  Amanda said, “Blair can’t risk it.”

  Calles held out her arm, clenching and unclenching her fist as she fed another pint of blood to my daughter.

  Amanda went to the front of the airplane and found a six-pack of Cokes in a cooler.

  “Drink up, you two,” she said. “Otherwise, you’ll pass out.” Then she stuck a fresh IV bag in both to keep their electrolyte levels up.

  The airplane touched down. The ramp dropped. A blacked-out ambulance parked ten meters behind the ramp. Two doctors came aboard. The two on the airplane and the two new ones unlatched Reagan’s litter and put her in the ambulance. Amanda, Blair, Brad, and I jumped in an SUV that followed the ambulance, which pulled into an aircraft hangar that looked like an underground bunker or ammunition storage facility.

  They unloaded Reagan and placed her on a surgical table. They sat Blair next to her just in case. A lab tech rolled a cooler full of blood units next to the table. The four doctors scrubbed and masked up.

  Then they went to work on my beautiful daughter.

  Night turned to morning. I didn’t sleep. I stood alongside Reagan, holding her hand. Brad was on the other side. Blair stayed right there.

  My team cycled through to check on her and me. Hobart, Van Dreeves, Mahegan, West, Owens, O’Malley, Matt Garrett, and of course, Amanda. Maximillian and his men, along with Owens and Black, had all received medical care from another medical team at this contracted black site that West in part managed. They all took turns sleeping, but everyone was restless.

  A flurry of action picked up. Reagan’s heart monitor raced and then settled. They had gone through another eight units of blood. It was obvious that Amanda, Blair, and Calles had saved Reagan’s life. Was it possible to keep her with us, though? These doctors were giving it their all. I tried to remain focused and positive. The doctors took turns inspecting the wound. They grafted some veins from her leg and then came back to the wound, working their magic. Throughout the night they went back and forth between the leg and the abdomen.

  Finally, one of the doctors turned to me and said, “Major artery was cut. We’ve had to reconstruct it. So far, so good. Not out of the woods but at the edge of the forest. Need to keep her from going back in.”

  Another hour. I never left Reagan’s side. Held her hand. Kissed her forehead. Wept silently. How could I have done this to my children?

  “General, our repairs are holding. We’ve done a major reconstruction. Right now, it’s super fragile, but the last two hours have been encouraging. She’s not bleeding and the bypass should keep her alive until it fully heals. She can’t be moved for a few days, if not longer. Our team can watch her.”

  “I’m not leaving her,” I said.

  “Your call,” he said.

  “Thank you, Doctor. All of you. Thank you,” I said.

  I turned to Amanda, who was openly weeping and sobbing holding Blair, who was doing the same. Amanda’s blond hair was entangled with Blair’s brunette, both of their faces hidden in each other’s shoulders.

  “Oh my God I thought we lost her. Oh my God,” Amanda said.

  I hugged them both. Brad joined us.

  The rest of my team came into the operating room to see what the commotion was. They all joined in. Grown men crying and hugging after the most important mission of our lives.

  Saving each other.

  30

  I SPENT THE REST of the day by Reagan’s side as she slept, listening to the wonderful music of her heart monitor as it played each joyous note with rhythmic regularity. I wiped her forehead every time I noticed a bead of sweat. I used a cloth with soap to clean the blood from her face. Slowly, color returned to her cheeks, though she was still pale.

  The doctors routinely came into the unit to check on her. Their visits decreased as the day wore on. I took that as a good sign, and it was. Eventually, Brad, Blair, and Amanda came into the operating room on one of their many visits.

  “General,” Amanda said. “They want you in the ops room. The three of us will sit with Reagan.”

  She smiled sweetly at me, but I shook my head.

  “Nothing more important than right here,” I said.

  “We know that, but there’s something that is a close second they want to brief you on.”

  “Dad, come on. We’ve got her. She’s in good hands,” Brad said. He had three folded pieces of paper sticking from his jeans pocket. Songs he was writing, I imagined.

  Blair stepped toward me and said, “General, the guys really want you in there. It’s important.”

  “I’m not leaving Reagan,” I said.

  “We all get that, but they need a general in there to make some general-like decisions. Reagan’s improving. The doctors briefed us several times. Every time they came in here to check, they came out and gave us the update. Each time, better. Your team needs you. I’ve watched you and how these people respond to you. It’s really … unbelievable. You’re here for Reagan and Brad. You’ll be fifty feet away on the other side of the wall,” Blair said.

  I looked at the bloodstained towel in my hand and then at Reagan’s face.

  “Go, Dad. You get credit,” Reagan said. She smiled weakly. Her mother’s green eyes were half lidded. “We’ve got this.”

  I dropped my head, tears streaming down my face. My emotions were out of control. I was absolutely in no position to make decisions about whatever my team wanted to discuss with me.

  Blair, Brad, and Amanda stood next to me and placed their hands on my slumping shoulders.

  Amanda said, “You’re here for Reagan. For all of us. You always have been. We’re your family. We love you, Garrett. You’re our north star, and we need your leadership. Please pull yourself together and go listen to the team. This is a black ops site monitoring some heavy-duty stuff.”

  Amanda knelt next to me and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “We’ll be right by her side,” she said.

  I realized I was still holding Reagan’s hand when she squeezed it with more strength than I had felt from her since she was wounded.

  “Go, Dad. I love you,” she said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  I squeezed her hand and said, “I love you, too.”

  My knees popped when I stood from the plastic chair. Amanda slid behind me and seamlessly took Reagan’s hand from mine with no break in contact. Blair ushered me to the door as Brad pulled a chair next to the operating table, which had become Reagan’s bed.

  I walked into the Joint Operations Center, or JOC, of the contracted black site in northern Colorado. Standing before a series of monitors with maps and drone feeds were Mahegan, Hobart, Van Dreeves, West, JD, and Maximillian. Misha was seated in a wheelchair with some sofa cushions on either side of her. A tray table tilted to her front with a large keyboard. Her fingers worked furiously across the letters, numbers, and symbols. She was coding. What she was coding, I had no idea, but ones and zeroes clicked across the screen to her front in rapid-fire procession.

  I saw Calles seated next to the door holding a rifle in her lap with one arm in a sling. She had a bandage on her neck and looked pale. She’d fought well.

  “Good job out there, Ranger,” I said.

  She looked up, nodded, and said, “Sorry about the baton, but I had to keep my cover. Drewson paid me but I didn’t know his plan.”

  “Roger that,” I said and kept walking until I was standing next to Mahegan.

  “Boss,” Mahegan said. “We’re glad Reagan’s good to go.”

  “Roger that,” Van Dreeves and Hobart said in unison. The rest chimed in also.

  “Thanks for everyone’s support,” I said. “Team effort.” Then to Mahegan, “She okay?” I tilted my chin toward Misha, who was beyond focused, tunneling into her algorithmic world.

  “She’s good,” Mahegan said. He didn’t elaborate.

  “Okay, what do we have?” I asked.

  “This is Black Site X-Ray,” Hobart said. He typically briefed our operations, so it wasn’t surprising to me that he took the lead. “Guys, no one is supposed to know this, but X-Ray has been monitoring Chinese activity around the nuclear bases. The mission here is to assess and report and then provide direct action if directed in the southwest up to Wyoming. Lots of chip plants. Lots of nukes. New Mexico. Arizona. Wyoming.”

  “Who’s doing the directing?” I asked. I remembered Drewson’s comment about the Chinese spying on the military installations in the Midwest and Southwest. His words about countering those efforts at the time seemed altruistic. Now, I knew they were lies and misdirection.

  “Supposedly the CIA, but these guys are kind of on autopilot,” Hobart said.

  I nodded. “They must be talking to someone. STOL airplanes. Doctors. A full up JOC. Drones and satellites. I would imagine there’s a healthy arms room somewhere nearby.”

  “All of that,” Hobart said. “Let’s just accept at face value that this is a highly compartmented operation with little oversight, if any. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last time. Title Thirty-two. Title Twenty-eight. All that stuff factors in somehow, but this isn’t the important part.”

  “Okay, accepted,” I said. “What’s the important part?”

  I felt my emotions recede some, replaced by exhaustion primarily but also more objective thinking. Command and leadership are mostly about asking the right questions and then making the best decisions.

  “The team here has signals intercept. They’re tracking comms between Blanc and Drewson and also a company called Zeus Micron, which is nearby.”

  I became very interested, the emotions circling back with some adrenaline to keep me awake.

  “Go ahead,” I said. My jaw set, my eyes focused on the monitor that showed a drone circling around the collapsed tunnel we had escaped. I saw the route we had taken beneath the overhanging cliff, keeping us off the thermal radars that were surely watching.

  “First, Drewson and Blanc think we’re dead,” Hobart said.

  I nodded.

  “And they’re sending teams to confirm. Their engineer assessment thinks it will take two to three days to dig out the debris.”

  “And figure out that we’re not dead,” I said.

  Hobart nodded. “Roger that.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Blanc is in New York City. Drewson is on his way to Washington, D.C. to meet with the president. That’s what we know,” Hobart said.

  “Where are they meeting?”

  But I already knew.

  “That’s what Misha is doing. She’s intercepting and deciphering their communications in real time. They’re using encrypted text messaging. She was able to get inside their messaging system, maintain the access, and develop her own pattern-recognition algorithm so that she stays in front of the rapidly changing quantum security codes without being detected. If you ever want to see a severely pissed-off teenager with the capability of advanced revenge coding, just snap a picture of that,” Hobart said.

  I looked at Misha. She was a million percent focused, her hands clicking and typing trying to keep up with that brilliant mind of hers.

  Misha snapped her head in my direction, directing a laser focus at me. Then she smiled showing off the pink rubber bands in her braces and nodded at her monitor.

  General, their plan is to meet at the facility in Normandy. They’re investing in something secretive there. The intel shows that they’re hiding Chinese involvement in a chip plant that is connected to Sainte-Mère-Église, where Evelyn and Blanc are from. The Phalanx Code, like I said, is your grandfather’s will, and in it is a document that makes two acres of French land become American territory owned by Coop. Just like the Normandy cemeteries are sovereign US soil. Blanc has built a headquarters there and used it to apply for and get approved a US chip-manufacturing permit. Drewson is his partner in the deal, but the property is yours.

  “How is the American president involved, Misha?”

  Unclear. She may believe Drewson’s lies, or she may know they’re lies and not care. Doesn’t matter. The chip plant is a huge Chinese spy operation enabled by Blanc and Drewson, preventing the US from gaining control of its security apparatus while enabling its own. It’s supposed to be a US–built chip plant so that there’s no Chinese spyware on chips that are on EVERYTHING we use and do now. The only major chip manufacturers in the world are Taiwan Semiconductor, Samsung, and Intel. We have a single point of failure. China is inside all three followed only by Israel, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Intel is supposed to be building a new plant in Ohio that is sealed off from foreign influence, but construction delays have slowed that project considerably. Drewson and Blanc are skirting the intent of the law by using Coop’s land. Your land. We need to stop that, find Blanc and Drewson, and then do whatever you do to those kinds of people.

  “That’s pretty much the mission, boss,” Mahegan said. “Misha thinks she can remotely disable the machinery in the chip plant and just gum it up so bad that they never get to where they need to be. The real issue is to find Blanc and Drewson, together. It would make our job much easier.”

  “Resources?”

  “Everything we need. What these guys are seeing here is China remotely intercepting nuclear communications, reverse engineering that, and designing a chip that provides them twenty-four/seven real time access to the most sensitive assets the United States has. Nukes. Jets. Aircraft carriers. They pass that to Drewson and Blanc, who make sure the spyware is in every chip they produce,” Van Dreeves said. He was the logistics guy and had a handle on the equipment and transportation I would need. I took a full minute before speaking.

  Misha typed:

  One batch of the new chips has already shipped to Zeus Micron in Boulder, Colorado. They refurbish nuclear warheads and are upgrading the guidance systems with the new chips that Blanc delivered.

  “How do we know this?” I asked.

  I’m in Blanc’s files. A shipping log shows they shipped a week ago. The CRM tool they use shows “delivered and installed.” When I get into Zeus’ records, they show “installed and prepping to move to Minot.” When I get into the Air Force records at Minot Air Force Base, they show delivery of tomorrow. Obvs really bad if those warheads get put in a silo. Who knows what Blanc has done to the targeting.

  “Is it really that easy to hack all these people?” I asked.

  She quit typing for a brief moment and turned her head toward me, dropping her chin on her chest and leveling her eyes through the tri-colored glasses. It was a classic “you’re kidding, right?” look. I questioned her no more.

  “Okay, Randy and Joe, you two figure this side out. Wherever those warheads are, we need to stop them. I’ve got Blanc and Drewson,” I said.

  Naturally, they didn’t like it one bit.

  31

  JAKE MAHEGAN, JEREMY WEST, and I took off at midnight in an unmarked MD-83 freighter operated by World Atlantic Airlines, which flew for all the three-letter agencies.

  We left the rest of the team at Colorado Site X-Ray to disrupt the Zeus supply chain to Minot Air Force Base, to protect one another, and above all else, to be with Reagan as she healed. Not until Mahegan and I had eradicated the threat from Blanc and Drewson would my people be safe.

  While there was strength in numbers, I was firm about not putting any more of my people at risk. The Zeus Micron mission seemed lower risk than the Blanc and Drewson mission, and therefore I assumed that task.

  Importantly, by the time we took off, Reagan was alert and talkative, but still supine. The doctors assured me that she was on the path to recovery. They had clamped her femoral artery on one end and her external iliac artery as it entered her abdomen and conducted a peripheral arterial bypass. The Sharpstone traitor’s knife entered her pelvic area and nicked the artery. Amanda had sewed it shut as best she could with what she had, assuredly saving her life. Blair’s and Calles’ blood transfusions kept my daughter alive, as well.