One moment the beam of light was there, and the next it was gone, leaving a ghost image behind in her eyes like she’d stared at the sun for too long.
“What the hell just happened?” Harley asked numbly from behind them, and Brielle turned to look out the cracked back window to see that everyone had miraculously managed to stay in the bed of the truck. They seemed pretty beat up, but they were all alive. “What was that bright light?”
Nobody had an answer to that, including Brielle. They all merely looked at each other—when they weren’t staring at the leveled remains of the village down in the valley. The place hadn’t been much, but now it was completely gone.
“Right now, I’m a little bit more concerned with whether we’re going to die from radiation poisoning,” Forrest murmured, Misty awake and cradled carefully in his arms as he leaned against the rear tailgate. “We were less than a mile away when that nuke went off.”
“I’m pretty sure all the radiation was contained underground,” Genevieve said, still looking back at the village. “The fireball never broke the surface, so I think we’re okay.”
“Think?” Jake asked, his voice flat.
All Genevieve could do was shrug, which wasn’t exactly the most comforting gesture in the world.
“Caleb, get us the hell out of here,” Jake growled. “We don’t have a clue what the hell just happened, but I’d feel a lot better trying to figure it out somewhere farther away.”
Caleb grunted, shoving the truck back into first gear, then wrapping his arm back around Brielle’s shoulders and pulling her close to his side again.
Chapter 8
Ukraine
“And what the hell would you have done differently?” Jake demanded, leaning forward in his chair to glare at the people on the other end of the video camera on the conference table. “Your team wouldn’t have gotten to Surinda any faster than we did, they wouldn’t have been able to stop the nuke from going off, and they damn sure wouldn’t have survived the shootout and the nuclear blast without casualties. At least my team accomplished that. And got out with intel on what they were doing under that village.”
The guy on one of the monitors—some jackass from the CIA—immediately shouted something back in reply, but before Caleb could figure out what it was, the rest of the people on the other screens joined in, everyone fighting to make themselves heard.
Caleb leaned back in his chair next to Brielle, glad they weren’t yelling at him. He definitely didn’t envy Jake being the team/pack leader. Tuning them out, Caleb turned his attention to the Odessa city map he’d pulled up on his cell phone. Hopefully, he could find a place to get something to eat after the briefing was over. He was frigging starving.
They’d flown straight back from Siberia to Ukraine, then come directly from the plane to this CIA safe house in Odessa. The briefing had already been in progress back in DC when Misty and Forrest set up the computer, with tempers flaring and people yelling. They hadn’t even gotten a chance to grab a cup of coffee before entering the fray.
Jake had told the CIA everything that had happened—leaving out the supernatural parts, of course—then Hudson had added a few details. At least the guy was nice enough to not out any of them. Not that it mattered. Things had gone downhill from there, regardless.
Caleb found a pub on the map that looked fairly close. A quick search on his cell phone told him that the place offered pizza and beer, which sounded about perfect to him. He leaned over and covertly showed the map and phone to Brielle, who quickly nodded her head. He almost laughed when her stomach growled. She was as hungry as he was.
He and Brielle hadn’t had a chance to talk since the stuff that had happened in the tunnels, but he noticed she had stuck close to his side the whole way back to Odessa. She’d even fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder on the plane. To say it had felt nice would be an understatement.
When she pulled back and focused her attention on Jake and everything else going on at the table, Caleb put away his phone and took the opportunity to glance around the big room. This was, without a doubt, the largest classified video teleconference he’d ever been part of. Besides McKay and the normal analysts from STAT and Hudson’s homies from the CIA, they were also graced with the presence of a gaggle of suits from the National Security Agency. He supposed it made sense that the NSA had gotten invited to this little goat rope, considering everyone assumed that at least some of the missing nukes would end up being used against the U.S. at some point. Still, he couldn’t imagine how having yet another spy organization involved was going to make this mission any easier to deal with.
But as crazy as it was to have all the alphabet soup organizations on the call, it was the nerd herd from the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California that really took the cake. Seriously, one of those guys was wearing an actual pocket protector. Apparently, they’d been called in to figure out what the whole beam of light thing was that they’d seen. Because it wasn’t like anyone else had a clue.
“Enough!” McKay finally said, his voice easily overriding those from the CIA and NSA, but only because he’d turned off their microphones. They were still yelling, but no one on this side could hear them any longer. It was kinda hilarious. Juvenile, yes, but hilarious nonetheless.
“I’m well aware that both of your agencies have voiced your concerns repeatedly about STAT having jurisdiction over this particular situation,” McKay said firmly, his expression hard as he stared straight at the camera. “I’m also well aware that the reason you’re complaining so much now is because your gripes have gotten you nowhere. So I’ll cut to the chase and make this simple. You were invited to this call to help. If you don’t wish to help, I’ll disconnect you from the call, and STAT will continue dealing with this situation on our own.”
Caleb almost chuckled as McKay’s words hit home, and the suits from both the CIA and NSA sat back in their respective chairs like they’d been slapped. The message was clear. Get on board or we’ll take our ball and play the game without you. Considering he was a suit, Caleb had to admit McKay wasn’t half-bad. Sometimes, he could even be sort of badass.
“Now, what do we have on that beam of light our team reported seeing?” McKay asked once the microphone connection had been reestablished with the CIA and NSA, moving the topic of conversation away from who could have done the Siberian mission better and onto something more important. “Any theories on what it was?”
“More than a theory,” the nerdy guy from Lawrence Livermore with the pocket protector announced, sitting up taller in his chair. “What your team saw in Siberia was a fully functional nuclear-pumped laser being fired.”
The briefing room took on that silence where you could hear that proverbial pin drop…at least until Caleb snorted.