Informed by a first-person witness, Rita decoded, in case the Colonel is an inaccurate correspondent. Smith looked as relaxed as he ever did, which corresponded to somewhere between overcaffeinated and hitting the crystal meth in normal-person terms. But he certainly didn’t look stressed out or upset, as he might if his superiors were investigating him for running a rogue operation.
“We’ve become something of a sensation over the weekend.” The Colonel smiled tightly at her. “The Secretary of State was briefed on Saturday, and on Sunday we made headlines in a very small way—on the President’s Daily Brief.” Rita swallowed, queasily nervous. That document was more usually preoccupied by Chinese nuclear battle group maneuvers in the Yellow Sea, or the geopolitical consequences of fluctuations in the price of natural gas in Europe, than by the fifteen-minute foray of an agent blundering around a railway switchyard in the dark. To Rita, who’d grown up carefully keeping her head down, making it onto the Daily Brief felt wrong. “Dr. Scranton is here to ensure that the White House is kept fully informed.”
Rita dry-swallowed. This was like something out of a bad Hollywood adventure game. “Okay, I guess. I’ll do my best—” She realized her mouth was in danger of running away from her, and forced it into silence.
“We’re still on for 0300 hours on Tuesday,” Smith added. “Patrick, do you want to take it away?”
“Um, yeah.” Rita took heart. Patrick was putting a good face on it, but she knew him well enough now to recognize the small signs: he was at least as unnerved as she was. “Our current mission plan repeats and extends the Mission One baseline from Thursday last, adding additional elements that extend the sortie duration to two hours. As before, there will be go/no-go checkpoints and emergency exits at each staging point. The objectives are to revalidate safe insertion protocol, check for signs of adversary awareness, collect uplink data from distributed surveillance nodes, then insert additional surveillance devices…”
One of the suits who’d blown in with Dr. Scranton raised a hand as soon as Patrick paused. “How exactly are you going to check signs of activity on the part of an adversary you have not yet characterized?”
Rita stifled a groan: It’s going to be one of those meetings, she realized. Not so much micromanaged as nanomanaged, every footfall to be structured for maximum carefully contrived defensive ass-covering on the part of the stakeholders. Her unique status as the only JAUNT BLUE operative meant that everybody was simultaneously shit-scared of losing her and eager to put their own grubby fingerprints all over the intelligence assessment that would be read by the woman in the Oval Office.
It was simultaneously fascinating and tedious, like sitting in on one of HaptoTech’s marketing meetings before the trade show. Only Clive would have fired the fingerprint hounds on the spot. I should have stayed over with Angie, Rita realized. Except that, as an opportunity to be a fly on the wall at an intel operation that had just leveled up to Boss, this was unbeatable. Historic, even. The other girls at Spy Camp would have been slack-jawed with envy—and so would their parents.
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO; IRONGATE, TIME LINE THREE, AUGUST 2020
It was nearly three in the morning and a light rain was falling when Rita climbed out of the trailer—actually a TV production unit’s mobile dressing room that someone had sprung for—and clumped over to the taped-out transfer location. Her back sagged under the weight of all the crap the committee had insisted she carry. This is just nuts, she thought. Tired and irritable, she wished she were brave enough to throw a quiet tantrum.
Sunday night’s meeting had bled over into the small hours of Monday morning, then reconvened over coffee and cronuts at two in the afternoon, then run on again until eight. This deprived her of the chance to do more than catch a quick shower and call Angie—just for the blind reassurance of hearing her voice, a tangible reminder that she hadn’t imagined her life taking an extraordinary swerve for the better.
She also managed to fit in an hour-long nap—one troubled by disturbing dreams of abandonment. Upon waking, the surreal sense of disconnection resumed: Why am I even here? she asked herself. Why can’t I just take the week off? The emotional flash flood, pouring across the rock-hard plain of a life baked by months of drought, made concentrating on what she was supposed to be doing almost impossible. She was besieged by the resurrected ghosts of unquiet memories: hiking together on the Appalachian Trail, lying awake at night in a crowded tent listening to the girl next to her slowly breathing, and wondering—
For Mission Two, there were three times as many bodies clogging up the parking lot and getting in the way, most of them apparently bag carriers for rubbernecking bosses who couldn’t force themselves to let well enough alone and allow the people who knew what they were doing to get on with the job. Which was basically her, with Patrick for instructions and the DHS armorers and sysadmins for tech support. The Colonel had come along to keep a nervous eye on the teeter-tottering hierarchs who had descended from above, as if to watch the launch of a new long-range missile or something. People in expensive suits kept bugging Rita to talk to them, made her repeat herself endlessly until her cheeks were tight from nervous smiling. Even that bitch Sonia Gomez was trying to make nice in her direction. And the floodlights—
Rita finally cracked. “Will somebody kill those floodlights, please?” Half a dozen mobile telescoping masts with lights on them lit up the parking lot so bright that Rita was beginning to feel the need for sunblock.
One of the rubberneckers called, “We need them for the cameras—”
“They’re going to ruin my night vision!”
Colonel Smith heard her plea and took mercy. “You heard her! Everybody get ready for lights out at T minus five minutes! She needs to adapt to darkness before showtime! Who’s in charge of lighting? You, yes you, I want the floods out, out at T minus five, all of them…”
The lights began to dim, fading finally to a pointillist sparkle of isolated LEDs that simulated moonlight. It was still too bright, Rita fretted, but her eyes were beginning to adapt. “Are you okay?” Patrick asked quietly from behind her. “Anything you need?”
Yes: get rid of the circus, she thought. “There are too many people here. Isn’t that a security issue?”
“Yeah. I’ll have a word with the Colonel. If we’re lucky he can convince Dr. Scranton to lock it down again after this run, but she’s under a lot of pressure from stakeholders who want to get an eyeful of the promised land.”
“Who do? I mean, what? Why?” Promised land?
Patrick looked bone-tired. “The Mormons and the Scientologists are duking it out again. They’ll take any excuse: you just have to roll with it. Can I get you anything else? Can of Pepsi?”
“I don’t want to need a restroom while I’m out there. Have a coffee waiting for me in debrief when I get back?”
“Good girl.” He patted her shoulder, misjudging the weight of her pack, and she staggered. “Oops. Try not to, uh, break a leg.”
“Check.”