True Allegiance

Brett rotated his body, stretching his neck out of the hold. Then he grabbed the left wrist with his left hand, holding it steady, then snapped his left elbow into the man’s face. He could feel facial bones smash against his arm. The burly man collapsed, breathing bloody bubbles through his mouth and nose. Brett pushed himself to his feet, stepped on the man’s wrist. Then he took off the man’s ski mask.

“Mahmoud,” Brett said. “Fancy meeting you here. Now”—he placed the knife against Mahmoud’s throat—“let’s chat, just you and me.”

A few minutes later, after subduing Mahmoud, Brett dialed Ellen. “Honey,” he said, “don’t come to New York… I can’t say for certain yet. Just don’t come to New York. Something bad is going down.”

Ellen

New York City

BRETT HAD BEEN MISSING FOR more than twenty-four hours.

Nobody knew where he was. Meanwhile, she waited in her hotel for an audience with the president of the United States, who was said to be busy planning a major public address to announce his major new initiative. And so she stewed.

The call from Brett had sent her into a panic. If she headed to New York, she knew, she’d be headed into danger—Brett wouldn’t have called otherwise. But if she refused, she endangered any possible détente between Governor Davis and Prescott. Prescott didn’t take being blown off lightly, and he certainly wouldn’t take it lightly in the middle of the largest border crisis in decades. In the end, she decided that the summons of the president trumped the wishes of her husband. After all, she thought, a bit maliciously, if Brett can go halfway around the world for the bastard, I can go to New York.

But what she found in New York wasn’t the chaos she’d expected. Instead, the military had done a brilliant job of cleaning up the city. Businesses had opened up again. Traffic clogged the main arteries. The dredging of the Hudson had just about come to its conclusion, although the Coast Guard still patrolled the waters in heavy numbers. Military men and women seemed to throng throughout the city, occupying every coffee house, every restaurant. This, she thought, must have been what World War II felt like.

The effect was oddly calming. With armed men and women everywhere, she didn’t feel nervous—she felt reassured. No terrorist would be shooting up a restaurant anywhere near here. And she had to admit she felt safer in midtown Manhattan than she felt in El Paso, Texas.

Still, Brett was missing.

She’d tried his cell phone over and over. She hadn’t gotten an answer—it went straight to voice mail. That meant it was either dead, or he’d broken it. Either way, it put him out of reach. She didn’t feel too worried, not yet—she’d been through far longer without hearing from him, with him in far more violent places than New York City. But his absence did disquiet her. And his words rang in her ears: “Don’t come to New York.”

Ellen was no detective. That had never been her specialty, never been her job. That’s why she called Bill Collier. Collier told her that they’d lost contact with Brett almost as soon as he hit New York; he’d been using his personal cell phone, and while the NSA had access to the metadata, the White House had cracked down hard on Brett. Any attempt to end-around the system would be met with severe repercussions.

Ellen, on the other hand, was Brett’s wife. And, Ellen thought, after the Dianna Kelly incident, any jealousy she evidenced would be seen as reasonable. Brett was a hot item again. Hot copy. She didn’t have much to go on in the way of gumshoe abilities, but that’s what journalists were for.

She picked up the phone and called Jack Blatch.

The thickly built, mussed-hair little man from the New York Daily News with the Coke-bottle glasses grinned at Ellen across the table. “Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?” he asked, his face shiny with sweat. “The roast beef here is delicious.”

“I’m sure it is,” Ellen said.

“What brings you to New York again?”

“I’m here to see my husband.”

“I didn’t even know he was here.”

“Neither did I.”

Blatch whistled softly, a smile creeping across his face. “And now you, the good little wife, want me to bust him for you.”

“Something like that.”

Blatch leaned forward, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “So, what changed? He comes home, big hero, royal welcome, the whole thing. And now you want to bust him all over the front pages?”

“I don’t know.” She coughed. “I haven’t seen him for months. You’d figure he might be a little more intent right now on getting home to see me. But here he is, in New York, and nobody knows where he’s staying. I can tell you Prescott has no idea where he is.”

“That so?” Blatch muttered, scribbling in a notebook. “So why come to me? Why not do it quietly?”