Radclyffe - Honor Reclaimed

"Thanks. What is it?"

Blair told her, and Cam nodded.It was going to cause complications. "Sure. If that's what you need, I'll take care of it."

*

"How's Mac doing?" Valerie asked as Felicia closed her cell phone.

The two women sat across from one another at a glass-and-chrome table in a makeshift office they had hastily assembled in the dining room of the spacious two-bedroom guesthouse. Through the patio doors the shoreline was visible one hundred yards away. A twisting path led from the wooden rear deck through low dunes to the sandy beach. Under other circumstances, it would be idyllic.

"They're feeding him, so that makes him happy." Felicia smiled softly. "He's been out of bed, but that's about it. It's going to take him a while to regain his strength, but he's young and in great shape."

"Your team took a battering."

Felicia pushed back from the table, stood, and walked to the far side of the room. She opened the patio doors and a brisk night breeze blew in. It was just after ten p.m. "Do you mind?"

"No." Valerie remained seated, unable to read much from her expression but suspecting she knew several of the questions on Felicia's mind. "I know it's not easy working with someone new, especially in light of all that's happened." She didn't think it was necessary to bring up the betrayal of one of the team's own. "But I want to help bring these people down."

Felicia looked over her shoulder, appraising the cool, composed, and almost painfully beautiful woman who, not more than a month before, had been the subject of one of her own investigations. "The only thing I know about you is that you say you're CIA."

"You have doubts?"

"It's hard to believe even the CIA would put an agent in that position," Felicia said, turning back to the night.

"The Agency makes its own rules." Valerie smiled thinly, realizing that Cameron's team knew the nature of her previous cover.

Felicia snorted. "Oh, we all know that. I just can't believe none of us tipped to it."

"Covert operations are our business. It wouldn't have been easy."

"But you broke your cover for this operation."

Valerie smiled fleetingly. "I follow orders too."

"And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here?"

So that anything you find out, my superiors will know about immediately. Because someone thinks that you and your colleagues can do more than an interagency team made up of people who will be too busy trying to take credit to find out anything of value could. Valerie held Felicia's gaze. "I'm here to lend assistance. My understanding is that Camer—Agent Roberts's team is to be given unrestricted access to intelligence from every department. I'm here as a liaison from the Agency to see that happens."

"Just a glorified go-between, huh?"

"That's me."

Felicia shook her head, knowing they were playing a game that they were both too good at to lose. Valerie would not tell her what her true orders were, no matter how hard she probed. And they had work to do. "The commander trusts you."

It was a statement, not requiring an answer.

"So I do too." Felicia walked back to the table and sat down. "Let's go over what we have."

From the doorway, Cam said, "Let me grab a cup of coffee, and you can brief us both."

Valerie rose and said to Felicia. "I'll make it this time. You can get the next pot."

"Sure," Felicia said, watching Valerie follow the commander into the kitchen. She wondered what remained between them, and, despite the fact that Valerie's motives remained suspect, she felt sorry for her. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, and rested her face in her hands. It had been good to hear Mac's voice. Better than good. He had almost died, and the reality of what losing him would mean had struck her hard. It was time to rethink whether the barriers she had erected around her heart kept her safe or merely kept her alone.

*

"Okay," Cam said, pushing her empty coffee cup aside. She looked from Felicia to Valerie and then focused on Felicia. "What you're telling me is that we have the bodies of four men, each of which has been autopsied at Quantico."

"Yes, ma'am." Felicia passed the four folders across the table to Cam, who set them in a neat pile to her left.

"And the FBI's finest couldn't find a single thing to identify any of them."

"Nothing from the usual forensic evidence, no," Felicia said in a neutral tone. She was frustrated, they all were, and she needed a clear head to solve the problem. "We've run their fingerprints, obviously, and turned up nothing. We've got DNA—ditto. No matches. Dental impressions were made by the pathologist, but without a geographic area to focus on, it's impossible to even find adequate records to compare these to."

"So, if we ever find out where these guys came from, we might be able to run down the x-rays from area orthodontists, dentists, oral surgeons, and the like, right?"

Felicia nodded. "It will be corroborating evidence after the fact, but it's not going to take us anywhere now."

"What about retinal scans?"

Valerie shook her head. "The only retinal scans we might be able to access are from internal sources—the Pentagon, DOD, NSA, and similar agencies."

"FBI, CIA," Felicia added.

"Right," Valerie agreed. "Getting them is going to be tough, and retinal imaging from cadavers is very uncertain. The vitreous begins to coagulate soon after death, and because of the situation in Manhattan the day of the assaults, these bodies weren't retrieved for nearly eighteen hours."

"So no usable images?" Cam persisted.

"Not that we know of," Felicia clarified.

"Find out."

Valerie and Felicia made notes simultaneously.

"Anything else from the bodies? Old wounds, surgical scars— something we could track in hospital records."

"Nothing except they all had similar tattoos on their right upper arm," Felicia stated. She passed a computer image across the table. It showed a pale patch of skin with a tattoo of two crossed assault rifles above a small American flag.

Cam studied and frowned. "An Armed Forces division?"

"Apparently Savard checked that right away," Valerie said, referring to a sheaf of papers in front of her. "It's not an insignia from any division in the Army or the Marines."

"Well," Cam said, "I guess the American flag rules out any other nationality." She placed a fingertip on the lower corner of the paper and slid it back and forth in front of her staring at the blurry shapes. "Some kind of patriot group?"

"It's possible," Valerie said. "Savard also started a search through the FBI and CIA files on known paramilitary groups here and abroad. Unfortunately, there's no central database tabulating this kind of thing, and thus far we have nothing. It's going to take a lot of digging to assemble the available intelligence."

"These guys had some kind of military training, and if they don't show up in the Armed Forces databases, then it had to be well-organized, unofficial training." Cam regarded Valerie. "Your people must have some record of mercenary groups that employ a high percentage of Americans. There have been any number of actions in South and Central America as well as Africa where these guys might have been involved."

"It's on the list to check."

"Okay. Top of the list—mercenary and paramilitary groups." Cam pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ignore the headache that was beginning to throb between her eyes. "And we need to look for a connection between these same groups and Al Qaeda." She swept her gaze from Felicia to Valerie, recalling the conversation she'd had with the president's security advisor that morning. "Because it looks more and more like Osama's claim to being behind the attack on the World Trade Center is true."