“Gina stays with me.” When the general gave him a look that Cal knew was a prelude to some kind of lecture along the lines of This is not the time, keep it in your pants, he added, “She’s a witness. She heard the man who I think might be Whitman talking, and she can identify his voice. If anyone knew, if Whitman knew, he’d pull out all the stops to eliminate her.”
His father frowned and jerked his head in the direction of the motorcade surrounding his limo. “You don’t trust those boys to protect her?”
“I don’t trust anybody to protect her. Not until she listens to Whitman’s voice and identifies it, or not.”
“You think this Whitman will come if you tell him to? Won’t he suspect you’re setting him up?”
Cal shook his head. “I’m going to let him think I’m wounded—which I am, by the way; I took a bullet in the side a couple of days ago, no big deal—and that’s why I came running here to Eielson and my dear old dad. He wants that flash drive, and he’ll come get it. And he doesn’t know Gina heard his voice.”
His father frowned thoughtfully, then nodded. “All right, then. Get in the car and let’s go.”
They were both striding back toward the car when Cal said, “Oh, and a crew ought to be dispatched to Attu. There’s at least ten dead and a hell of a mess out there.”
His father snorted. “Sounds like the story of your life. I’ll pass the word on.”
Then the airman was opening the door for them and Cal slid in beside Gina.
Twenty minutes later, the flash drive was in the hands of IT specialists at D632. And under the supervision of a cadre of fully briefed D632 agents, Cal was dispatching a message to Whitman. Using code and the secure phone connection that he’d told Gina about on Attu, he relayed the information that he was wounded, at Eielson, and had a flash drive given to him by Rudy: the “proof” Whitman had been seeking. Only Whitman was going to have to come and get it, because Cal wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
After that, he and Gina sat down with his father at the cafeteria in the building and had a quick meal. He was starved, and he and his father weren’t exactly chatty at the best of times, so once Cal made a courtesy inquiry about the well-being of his stepmother—his father had been married to his second wife, a very nice former flight attendant named Sharon, for ten years—and learned that she was fine and, at that moment, visiting her mother in Chicago, most of the conversation took place between Gina and his father. By the end of the meal, the old man was calling her Gina (nobody ever called the general anything but “sir” or “General”) and making her smile as he caustically recounted some of Cal’s teenage exploits.
“He always could find trouble,” the general concluded, and gave Cal a censorious look. “Here we are a decade and a half later, and as you can see, he hasn’t changed a bit.”
“He saved my life,” Gina said over her last sip of coffee. “I think he’s pretty great.”
Cal smiled at her, met his father’s gaze—the old man’s look said as plainly as if he’d shouted it, This one’s too good for you—and stood up. The agents at the adjacent table, who were tasked with providing security for Gina until she was able to confirm, or not, that Whitman’s was the voice she’d heard, stood up, too.
Having thus ended the meal before his father’s reminiscences could turn acrimonious, as they tended to do, Cal borrowed a couple hundred dollars from him—all he and Gina had were the clothes they were wearing, and he thought he might need some cash—and exchanged surprisingly civil good nights with the old man. Then Cal and Gina were driven to the base hotel, The Gold Rush Inn. As spare and utilitarian as was just about everything Air Force, the inn was a foursquare and solid three-story beige brick building with a small lobby and adequate but far from luxurious rooms. Agents escorted them to their room, waited while a bag of clothing and other necessities from the base shopping center were brought up to them, then stationed themselves in a room across the hall where they would remain to provide security through the night.
When they were alone, Cal looked at Gina, who was glancing around the spartan accommodations with a slight frown as she took off her coat and hung it in the closet just inside the door.
He was familiar with Air Force lodging, but he tried to see it through her eyes. A queen-size bed with the bag from the shopping center on it. A small table beside it with a lamp. A chest across from the bed that held a TV. A couple of narrow windows set high up in the wall. A couple of cheap, framed prints. Brown carpet, brown curtains, brown bedspread, beige walls. Basic, white-tiled bathroom, attached.
She’d had a hell of a trying day, and he could tell how tired she was by the strain around her eyes and mouth and the slight droop to her slender shoulders.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm.” She moved over to the bed, rummaged through the shopping bag, and extracted a few items from it. “I think I like your father.”
Cal managed to repress a snort. “He seemed to like you, too.”