“Can I go to the bathroom first? Need to drain my lizard.”
CHAPTER 11
“DO WHAT THEY tell you. No stupid jokes. It’ll be fine.”
Mia’s words sounded empty even to her as the militants took away Sebastian, but she needed to say something. She’d felt his leg shaking on the ground for the last two hours, and was worried. He’d always been an anxious type, even before Tripoli, and tended to strike authority figures for the worse.
Tripoli. What in the world had compelled him to ask her about that now? She’d told the truth. Partly. She’d known he was the kidnapped journalist. Saving an old friend from college had been a motivation. It’d served as her pitch to command for why she should be the assigned pilot. And a raid going after Abu Abdallah’s family? Success could be found on an operation like that. Glory, as well.
She’d volunteered for the wrong mission. It happened. Mia refused to dwell on the whys or hows. No one in the wars volunteered for anything for pure reasons, she knew, not entirely. Of course she’d wanted to help Sebastian. And of course she’d sought something else, too, something beyond charity for an old college friend, something for herself.
It was the same now, in the ballroom. Sebastian will be fine, she told herself. And if not, he’s not who you need to protect. Something inside her was twinging again, sharp and knotty.
Mia was still blindfolded. Someone to her left moaned and said they felt dizzy. A charging handle of a rifle was drawn. A voice spoke to the moaner and to the group at once. “No. Noise.”
Like most pilots, the military had sent Mia to SERE school. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. She’d learned how to live off the land in any environment, from the Siberian tundra to the Amazon. She’d built smokeless fire pits from scratch. She’d killed a bunny with a trap made from sticks, gutted it with a belt clip, and turned it into kebab. She’d been waterboarded. None of that would help in an Empire City ballroom seized by a militia of disaffected war veterans.
But the school had also included a sitting session on persuasion and influence. Most of the class slept through it, delirious at the chance to be off their feet for fifty minutes. But not Mia. She’d fought off the siren song and listened, because if there was anything worse than being a prisoner of war, it was being a woman prisoner of war. She’d wanted to know it all.
Two guards began speaking to each other. They talked low, wary of the ballroom’s acoustics, but not low enough. Mia bowed her head and homed in, like she was lost in benediction.
“This place is nice.”
“Rich people, man.”
“Yeah, I know. But still. See those chandeliers? Pure gold.”
“Think of how many of our people could be helped with just one of ’em. Keep focused.”
“Yeah.” A minute or so passed. “Ever seen anything like it before, though?”
The other voice considered. “The Temple out west,” it said. “And Assad’s sun palace in Syria. Before the wogs blew it up.”
“Damn, you was over there then!” The veteran laughed. “You’re even older than I thought.”
“We were winning when I left. Then you trigger-happy bastards came along. The Found Generation, shit. You all messed up everything.”
They went back and forth like that, arguing about who had screwed up the Mediterranean Wars worse, when, and where. They’d mentioned the sun palace. Mia racked her mind. The high palace had been in the hills surrounding Aleppo. The crescent palace lay in the center of Raqqa, near restaurant row. The state palace dominated what remained of Homs. The water palace floated alongside the island of Arwad. The sun palace, though…
“Idlib,” she said out loud, surprising herself. No turning back now, she thought. This is the right approach. For me. For them. For her.
Jesse hadn’t said so, but she knew he preferred a girl.
“What was that?” The militants had heard her.
“Idlib,” Mia repeated. “The sun palace. I walked through the rubble there during my tour. Must’ve been amazing before the truck bombs.”
Through the threadbare of her blindfold, Mia saw the two men approach her. What kind of group plans out something this complex, she wondered, but skimps on blindfold costs?
“You a vet?”
She nodded. “Army. Helo pilot out of Fort Sam Damon.”
“Chinooks?”
Mia sniffed. They thought she flew cargo. “Black Hawks. Mostly ripping through the Morning Islands, hunting down the last of the Greek radicals.”
That impressed them enough for her blindfold to be removed. The Morning Islands campaign had a reputation. She looked up to find two men of average stature and slung rifles, bafflement splayed across their clay faces. If they shaved their face stubble, they still could’ve been posting guard at any American outpost across the world.
“Chaplain didn’t say anything about other vets being here,” the one who’d been admiring the chandeliers said. He looked like he should’ve been delivering Mormon pamphlets house-to-house, Mia thought, not committing terror. “Only rich people and generals.”
“Jonah’s not here,” the other guard grunted. “So loony tune’s in charge tonight.” Mia’s ears rose at that. For one—the name Jonah. Could this Chaplain person be the man wanted for the war memorial bombings, army veteran Jonah Gray? Her fiancé, among many others, would be interested in that. For two—“loony tune” was almost definitely the Veteran Zero who’d made the unhinged speech over the microphone. Which meant this group, this Mayday Front, had internal discord. Which was something to exploit, Mia thought.
“How do we know you’re speaking truth?” the other guard asked her. He was older, and wore the sad, dumpy face of someone who joined the military only to find the same assholes who’d made up his small town were everywhere. A short, barbed mustache would’ve framed his face had it been even.
“Tap my right leg,” Mia said. “Think a citizen has one of these?”
The leg clinked.
The older militant crossed his arms and nodded. He’d figured her out, finally. “Officer,” he said.
Mia thought about lying, but quickly decided not to. Soldiers smelled out lies like hounds.
“Don’t hold it against me,” she said, offering just a hint of a smile. “You two worked for a living, I’m sure.”
The old joke landed. The militants asked about her deployments and units, she asked about theirs. They asked if she knew their old officers, and she did, a couple of them. She asked about the war tattoos covering their forearms, where they got them, what they meant. They told her. She asked if they’d had a hard time since getting out. They had. She asked if they’d loosen the cable ties around her wrists. They did. The younger one asked if she had a boyfriend. She said that she did, a husband, but left out the pregnant part. Babies scared boys. The older one asked why she’d come to the American Service event.
“Because I believe our government would benefit from having more people with military experience in it,” she said. “Who have skin in the game. We used to behave like a republic. I think we should get back to that.”
“What do you do now, ma’am?” he asked, dumpy face creasing out into corners. He was probing, still. Probably made a good barracks lawyer, Mia thought, explaining to his fellow joes how leadership was plotting against the regular soldier.