Terry Watkins - The Big Burn

There were half a dozen computer workstations, all manned by young men. On the walls, giant maps. Several large printers along the far wall were kicking out page after page of documents. The place hummed with military paperwork.

She and Brock headed to the back as chairs moved and men stepped out of their way.

Not unexpectedly, she actually heard a few very low moans as they walked by. She saw Brock shake his head.

Brock knocked on the only office door in the place. A gruff voice told him to enter. Brock asked Anna to wait.

She stood outside, leaning against the wall, thinking that she needed to call her mother at some point and explain where she was and to tell her that her father was alive. Her mom was going to be shocked. Anna didn’t know the protocol on this CIA base and didn’t want to do anything stupid. Her dad’s life was in danger and she didn’t want to be the one to end it—just by making a phone call. Her mother was probably out in the mountains with her satellite phone, so it wouldn’t be difficult to contact her. But should she? They usually talked three or four times a week, sharing adventure stories. This time, she’d have more to share than a fire adventure. This time she would raise the dead. She had a feeling her mother wouldn’t believe it, and at that precise moment, Anna could barely believe it herself. But if she didn’t call, her mom would worry. Anna didn’t want that.

About ten minutes later, while Anna had fallen into memories of her dad, Brock opened the door and motioned her inside.

The stern-looking man sitting behind the desk told her to have a seat. “I’m Curtis Verrill,” he said without looking up from a file he was leafing through. Like that was more important at this moment than making eye contact. She knew right off that she wasn’t going to like this guy.

Verrill wore tan khakis and a blue short-sleeved knit shirt with no insignia. After a few moments, he finally sat back, looked up and studied Anna for a second.

He said, “I apologize for all the secrecy and hassle. Believe me, this has been as difficult for us as it has been for you.”

“And why is that?”

He didn’t appear to like the question, or maybe the tone, so he ignored it. “We have a problem—”

“And I take it, I’m the solution.”

He didn’t respond to that either, but he did throw an accusatory look at Brock, as if to say he knew where her prejudgment had come from.

He picked up a brown folder and held it in his left hand. “Your father’s files. I’m sure you have some questions.”

She stared at the folder. After all these years CIA was suddenly going to tell her the truth about her father’s disappearance.

She reached across the desk for the folder, but he pulled it back. Apparently, he wasn’t really going to tell her anything. Now she really didn’t like the man.

Verrill related the reasons her father went under, the reasons for the cover story, his extreme value as an agent. “For an American to have any credibility in a Muslim culture, he has to be one of them. Marry into their world. Live, dress, eat and sleep like they do for a long period of time. Do business. Have a solid bona fide relationship with the people around him. Your father succeeded in all of that. He was well known and well accepted. Once he was in, he began to network.”

She listened to the story and wondered if it was any truer than what she’d believed about her father before. These people were professional deceivers. He wouldn’t have put his own daughter through all that sorrow and pain for a job, even if it was for national security. He would have found some way to contact her. To let her know he was still out there. Alive.

Brock had already told her most of what Verrill was saying about the mission. Everyone, she was sure, was well versed in this story, but no one seemed to have a good reason about her father wanting her to come in after him.

“Why me?”

“I can’t answer that,” Verrill admitted. “We have the highest qualified smoke jumpers in the world. We didn’t need to go to a…civilian.”

You left a word out, Anna thought, but what was it? Female, perhaps?

She felt a little like she’d taken a wrong step and had fallen into the rabbit hole, Alice in Jungleland. She was standing there in the middle of the Pacific with this CIA agent and this Special Ops guy telling her she was going to jump onto some tiny island—an island in the middle of the pirate and terrorist country—in less than twenty-four hours to rescue her father.

It seemed completely unbelievable to her.

There had been times when smoke jumping felt the same way. She went from putting out one small fire to the next, and the next, and after about five or six of them she no longer could think straight.

Perhaps this was one of those times.

“If this is all true, why wouldn’t he have contacted us? We thought he was dead.”

“He couldn’t contact you. Not you, his ex-wife, relatives or friends because that’s the nature of the business he’s in. He took on a different name, different identity. He had to be believed. Any suspicions might have put you and your mother in jeopardy.”

Verrill handed her a photograph. “This was taken two months ago.”

The man in the photo was getting out of a car, wearing Muslim headgear and clothing, deeply tanned, older, but it was her dad. The nose, the shape of the face. Definitely him.

Then Verrill started lecturing her on how critical the mission was, how important it was to get her father out. That the free world was depending on her. He called it Operation Fierce Snake.

She stared at Verrill, but her mind was on her father and that day he’d left and never returned. She remembered him turning as he was getting into a friend’s car. She was getting ready to go to her first year at the University of Colorado. He’d winked, smiled and said, “Be good. Be quick.”

She had laughed. “We have to live up to our name.”

He’d smiled and given her a thumbs-up.

According to Brock, her dad was already remarried by then. He’d never said a thing.

Then Verrill regained her attention. “We’re still getting some weak, random signals from his locator. He’s up on the mountain. He has some contacts on the island and one of them will meet you when you go in. Brock will fill you in on the details.”

Her father had divorced her mother twelve years ago, but he never talked about it, or berated her mother. She’d been one of those very lucky girls to have the greatest of fathers. Anna knew, and apparently so did the CIA, that she’d go anywhere, risk anything, to get him back.

Verrill continued, “Malaysia is off-limits. If you go in, I don’t know anything about it. If you don’t come out, I know nothing about that either.”

Anna glanced at Brock. He was impassive.

Verrill said, “You will go into training immediately and train continuously until you leave. That’s all.”

He stood now and reached out to shake her hand. She shook it, but somehow she knew it was simply a formality. There was nothing friendly about the gesture. “Good luck,” he said, and pulled his hand back.

The way he said it, the dark flicker in his eyes, sent a chill through Anna. She knew he really didn’t believe she could get in there and get her father out.

She’d prove him wrong.

She followed Brock out of the office, through the Quonset hut and back into the heat.

“I would like to call my mother in Colorado.”

“No problem. But you can’t tell her anything about your father or what you’re up to. You should call her soon, because once we start the training you won’t have time to talk to her until after we get back. Plus, you should know that any calls going out of here will be monitored.”