Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

“If this is some kind of drill…”

“We need you. Let’s go.”

It felt like a drill. After Quinlan had inducted her into what he called phase two of her training, it had taken several weeks for her hand and her ankle to heal. But the breaks, purposefully, had been clean and it hadn’t taken much time to get her back into perfect physical shape. After that, phase two had kicked into high gear. The intensity of some of the exercises was almost unreal. She’d suffered a battery of psychological tests, physical tests and endurance tests.

One time she’d been made to stand or squat, not sit, on a two-foot-square raft in the middle of a near frozen lake for over seven hours in nothing more than a leotard. Somewhere during hour eight they figured she’d learned whatever she was supposed to have learned. Or they learned whatever it was they needed to learn about her.

Not that she ever made that easy. Nobody got her quite like Q. He’d left for a few weeks after what she called the “incident,” but when he came back they had been just as close as they were before. If not closer. He might have been stunned by her acceptance of what he’d done to her, but he didn’t show it. And she never explained why it had been so easy to accept.

“Seriously, I am not in the mood for a drill. You kicked my ass today. That ten-mile run took it out of me and-”

“Now, Sabrina.” He reached into one of two dressers that made up half the furniture in her dorm room. Since he’d commented on the decor the last time, she’d added a James Bond poster over her bed. It wasn’t much, but she figured it was a start at personalizing the space. He hadn’t commented.

It wasn’t until she saw one of her bras clutched in his hand that she realized she’d been standing in front of him in nothing more than a half T-shirt and panties. “Jesus, Q! What the hell are you doing?” Reaching around him, she snatched the pink lace out of his hand.

In the second drawer he apparently found what he was looking for and pulled out a pair of sweats, pushing them into her hands. “Get dressed. We need you in the Comm.”

The Comm was the nickname for the communications center. It’s where the science and technology guys received, monitored and analyzed data being communicated from covert operators around the world. She was barely even allowed to know that the Comm existed let alone be needed there.

“Are you kidding me?”

He grunted, signaling his frustration with the delay.

“All right, all right. Turn around,” she told him, shielding her bare legs with the sweats and desperately trying to keep him directly in front of her so he didn’t catch a glimpse of her thong. At one point or another he’d had his hands all over her during combat training, but something about him seeing her bare ass cheeks made her feel ridiculous.

“We don’t have time for childishness,” he said dismissively. But he must have sensed her stubbornness and finally complied.

Tugging on the sweats, she thrust her feet into a pair of flip-flops that were only ever used to get her from her room to the shower down the hall, but they were the closest things to shoes he was going to give her time to find. He found her coat on the floor where she’d dropped it and tossed it to her.

“Let’s go.”

She followed him out of the convent to a car that was waiting by the door. The engine was still running. Technically, they were on the Langley compound, but the distance to the Comm center was great enough that it warranted driving.

“So what’s this about?” she asked as soon as Quinlan hit the gas.

“It will be easier to explain when we get there. But you should know that this was my idea. Don’t make a fool out of me.”

“Okay, no pressure there.” Her curiosity was raging, but she didn’t bother to ask him about it again. If he wanted her to wait, she would wait.

They drove up to a square squat building that was attached to the main complex by a walkway, but this building had its own entrance. It also descended to three levels underground, which Sabrina learned when Quinlan hit the down button on the elevator.

She could feel the tension in the silence and understood that, whatever this was, it was no drill. The elevator doors opened to a long linoleum-covered hallway that had only one door at the very end.

“Any minute now a metal wall is going to come crashing down behind me, right?”

He stared at her in bewilderment.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Too many Get Smart reruns.”

After that she closed her mouth and followed him down the long corridor. They reached the door at the end and he punched in a code. A beep sounded and they stepped inside to find a small group of men waiting for them.

One was dressed in full military dress-green for army-with enough hardware on his chest to make him somebody ultraimportant. He had a puffed chest and face that looked as if it was carved from stone. Next to him was an assistant director at the Farm that Sabrina recognized. The same man who had come to see her at the shooting range.

Two tech-geek guys, in clothes that had seen at least two sequential sunsets, sat at a panel that took up most of the room. It was basically a big long computer, with four different monitors of information that kept scrolling numbers at lightning speed, and two keyboards that were built into the unit. Their eyes were pinned to the monitors. They didn’t even turn around to look at her.

“Cool,” she said smiling.

The army man spoke first. “You’re kidding me.”

“Sir, this is-” Quinlan began, but was instantly cut off.

“A little girl. We’re running out of time and you brought me a little girl.”

“I am almost nineteen,” Sabrina protested, tired of her age always being a thing. But she quickly shut up when Quinlan wrapped a hand around her upper arm and squeezed with enough pressure to let her know now wasn’t the time to shoot her mouth off.

“Sir,” the AD said, “we’re running out of options. The NSA has gotten nowhere. Our various code-cracking programs are coming up empty. Ms. Masters is exceptional. We should give her a chance.”

If it was possible, the army dude’s face got even harder. Then the AD nodded to Quinlan.

“Sabrina, what we’re about to tell you is classified. I know I don’t have to elaborate.”

He didn’t. She got it. Big secret. Shut mouth.

“One of our assets in Iran made contact. He has information regarding a mobile chemical lab that he believes has the potential for producing smallpox in mass quantities. We need to find the location of the lab and photograph it before it can be moved or broken down as proof of this country’s illegal weapons activity. And then, of course, we need to destroy it.”

“Right. How did he pass the information?”

Quinlan reached for a paperback book that was sitting next to one of the keyboards and handed it to her. The cover indicated it was a crossword puzzle book. But when she flipped through the short pages she could see that all the puzzles consisted of letters and numbers.

“We believe the location of the lab is embedded in the puzzles.”

“The asset can’t tell you-”

“He’s missing. Soon after he was able to get the book out we lost contact. We have no idea how long the lab will stay put, which means time is running out.”

“How long has the NSA had the book?”

“Three days.”

Sabrina nodded. “Dad couldn’t figure it out, huh?” No doubt it was eating him up inside. Heck, if he found out that they’d gone to her as a last resort that might be the final straw that pushed him over the edge.

No, that wouldn’t be enough to do it. But if she solved it…yeah, that would hurt.