Helen grinned. Number Five was Flyboy. Good to know these guys had a sense of camaraderie. From De Clerq’s report, she was getting a fair idea of what the rest of the “team” was doing. She had done her task and they were doing theirs. She frowned. Except for Number Nine. He didn’t retrieve somebody—who? One of two. The Cummings. Her frown deepened. Her fault, maybe. She’d caused him to lose time.
“Actually, Number Five has taken off to collect some satellite pictures of your chase. Your GPS dart hit its mark. Good work. You, too, Hell. We might get some more useful info about the people that attacked you, Hell, over.”
“Good,” she said. “I’d like to know that myself. Especially if it’s one of our agencies causing the trouble. What’s next on the agenda?”
“We all get home and you get to show off to the big brass what you’ve retrieved for them.”
“Okay, but will I ever know what the hell this operation’s about, besides getting a stupid decoder key?” she asked. “The mission is over so giving me details won’t interfere with my RV sessions.”
“We’ll discuss that during debriefing.”
“Heath, will you be there?” she asked.
His gaze roved over her prone body. “I have another task to do,” he said, before turning his attention back to the front.
Too many details destroyed objectivity in remote viewing because then the viewer would be creating the reality rather than collecting information. Once a session was over, the rest of the details would be provided, mostly to satisfy human curiosity. Sometimes, during her CIA sessions, they would just give her the percentage of success, without much else to tell her whether she “saw” the right target, or not.
She hoped CCC wouldn’t do that. She lay there, staring at Heath’s back. He was never there in the meetings. Was he her monitor?
Fifteen
The briefing had been short, to the point, and fortunately, no one questioned her abilities. All they had to do was take a look at her, of course.
“How are you really feeling?”
Helen turned. Dr. Kirkland had refrained from asking more than the standard questions during the meeting with the top agency executives. She had limped in on her own two feet and had shown them the electronic card. She wasn’t required to give a detailed account of how she got to it; that was irrelevant because the point was to prove that TIRVVR worked. And with the targeted object in her hand, none of the big brass argued. Thus the meeting was short and focused mainly on her success.
After it was over, everyone was dismissed for rest and in her case, medical care. De Clerq was going to review the stolen satellite feed they had directed to the Center before debriefing. She’d learned that the trojan their insider had planted in Deutsche International’s security system had a timer and would self-destruct once the mission was completed. That way, nobody could put a trace on them.
All in all, a pretty successful operation. She didn’t feel particularly elated, but that wasn’t what Dr. Kirkland wanted to know about anyway.
“I still don’t feel tired,” she told him, “although logic tells me that I should be dead on my feet from exhaustion. I’m not walking very well either.”
“Yes, I’ve been told to look at that knee. You probably twisted it in the fight. Let’s get you to the medical room and we’ll have a complete checkup without interruptions.”
To be honest, she didn’t want to be stripped and prodded, but of course this was the best time for that because it would give the doctor information he needed for his study. It was strange. She wanted to…prowl.
She had to smile at the thought. At the moment, the prowling would look a lot more like limping. She looked down at her injured knee, trying to feel the pain. It would probably worsen her injury, too.
“All right.” She allowed herself to be placed in a wheelchair again. She turned to De Clerq as Derek wheeled her off. “When will we all get together for a post-mission meeting?”
“Usually when most of the operatives are back,” De Clerq answered. “If there is a long time in between operatives’ return, we get together for a mini-update. We’ll make sure you’re kept in the loop. Rest up before debriefing, Hell.”
She nodded, not bothering to tell him that she couldn’t rest. When they were out in the hallway, she asked casually, “So who’s back from operations and who’s not, Dr. K.?”
“As far as I know, Heath’s back. He was the one in the van with you. Alex, Sullivan and Shahrukh are all accounted for. Flyboy, T., and Jed are still out.”
Helen hid a smile. She knew there were seven of the commandos left after the big incident that took two of them out. Add in Armando, and she had all their names now. Now all she had to do was find the time to study their files.
She wished she had shown more interest in doing so after she’d been told she’d “won” the coveted new job and would be finishing her training at Command Center, but she hadn’t thought about it. She had been out of the field for two years, so on her days off, it had been great to finally find some time to relax a little bit and catch up with her GEM sisters. The GEM structure had also changed after the merger with the highly-secretive Covert Subversive Command Center and she was more interested in that than in the individual players. After all, she had trained and competed with military types before, so these COS commandos couldn’t be much different.
Wrong. She should have paid attention to her instinct. She had gotten to know Flyboy and even though he appeared “normal,” she had felt a subtle shift of difference in him now and then. And Armando Chang was definitely a study all by himself. Speaking of which—
“Where was Armando?” she asked, in the same casual tone. “I don’t think I saw him at all.”
“He didn’t go on this operation,” Dr. Kirkland told her. They entered the elevator that would take her to the medical sector. “I imagine he’s in his quarters.”
She remembered the mention of Flyboy going off for satellite pictures of vehicles. That left Jed McNeil, Number Nine. She frowned. God-in-jeans, she’d called him. Irritating god-in-jeans, she amended. He had to “retrieve,” Heath had told her during the ride. She recalled Heath talking to De Clerq about telling Jed that he couldn’t be there for backup or something. So was Jed still out there searching for a lost target? Was it her fault?
