Lean on Me (60 page)

He smiled and took off down a barely visible
pathway. The young woman nodded for her to go. Alex ran behind the
older man. Max followed Alex with Efren’s sister taking the rear.
Only five miles as the crow flies, it was a steep, treacherous
climb in and out of ravines on the narrow footpath. They moved with
the fast, quiet precision of their guides.

When they reached the gates, the guides
dropped back. The older man made a distinct birdlike whistle. The
whistle was met by similar whistles of other tribesmen. The tribe
had surrounded the property. The older man raised his eyebrows
slightly. He and Efren’s sister moved off into the jungle. They
would wait until Alex and Max had finish fighting their way to the
hostages.

Using Bobby’s keys, Alex opened the gate and
they slipped inside.

F

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Saturday night

December 26 – 8:25 p.m. MST

Denver, CO

Exhausted, John had excused himself from the
general mayhem of the house and gone upstairs. There was no way to
know when Alex would return or what condition she would be in. He
told himself it was better to be rested and ready.

Mostly, he missed her. It was nice to get to
know a few of his siblings but they were strangers to him. Alex and
Max were his family. He was about to get in bed when Maggie yipped
at the door. He opened the door to her and she hopped on the
bed.

He set his netbook next to the bed in case
Alex Skyped, checked to see if the ringer was on the phone, and got
in bed next to the dog. He looked at the computer one more time
then rolled over to sleep. And fell into a dream.

He and Alex were waltzing. She wore the
black dress with the red band and those amazing shoes. He wore a
hand tailored tuxedo similar to the one he’d ordered from Frederec.
They were dancing on a wooden floor under thousands of white mini
lights. The night was humid and warm with the smell of coconut on
the air. Beautiful music drifted on the warm breeze. As if floating
on air, they spun around and around. Smiling, he shook his
head.

“
I know it’s you,” he
said.

“
I can never fool you,” the
Blue Fairy said. “You must love her very much.”

Horror gripped his heart. The Blue Fairy
only visited John when Alex was in desperate danger. John stopped
dancing.

“
Is she… Has she…” His
mouth refused to form the words he was terrified were
true.

“
She is very much alive and
uninjured,” the Blue Fairy said. “Come let’s dance.”

“
Tell me,” he said. “Just
tell me.”

She held out her arms. Commanded by some
unknown magic, he took her in his arms. The music returned and they
danced.

“
You can’t make me do this
forever,” he said.

She laughed and the air filled with the
sound of a thousand tiny bells.

“
What’s funny about that?”
He stopped moving to look at her.

“
You are not my slave,” she
said. “You dance because you know you must. You dance because
dancing is better than the terror that lives in your heart. You
dance because in this light I look like your beloved. And dancing
in her arms is one of the things that makes this life worth
living.”

He fell silent and they returned to
dancing.

“
Why are you
here?”

He stopped dancing and pulled away from
her.

“
The darkness is coming for
her,” the Blue Fairy said.

“
We’ve fought it
before.”

“
Not like this,” the Blue
Fairy said. “This is not something that grows from inside her. It’s
something put over her like a cloak or a cape. Every move
orchestrated by the best strategist in a master’s game of chess
with the world as the prize.”

“
She’ll see the dark and
fight it,” he said.

“
With your help,” the Blue
Fairy said. “You must help her find the light, her light, the one
that will never go out no matter how deep the dark
becomes.”

“
My love,” he
said.

“
Yes,” she said. “You have
started this fire together. Keep it going and she’ll be
fine.”

“
Thank you.”

“
Shall we dance a while?”
the Blue Fairy asked.

“
She’s not dead?” John
asked.

“
Hardly,” the Blue Fairy
laughed, causing the air around them to erupt in sound. “She has
pulled off the best trick of all. She replaced certain death with
life. Outfoxed them completely.”

“
This causes the dark… uh…
cloak to come,” he said.

“
Yes.”

“
Did she do the wrong
thing?”

“
No,” the Blue Fairy said.
“She did the next thing. This struggle has always been their
destination.”

“
Their?”

“
She and Max,” the Blue
Fairy smiled. “But you knew that. This struggle, and others like
it, is exactly what they were born to resolve. That’s why she
survived Paris.”

“
I thought that was you,”
John said. “I thought you made her survive.”

“
This struggle has always
been my destination, what I was born to do, as well,” the Blue
Fairy said. “Come, let’s dance.”

Unable to think of anything else to say, he
took her in his arms and danced.

FFFFFF

Saturday night

December 26 – 10:05 p.m. PST

Chiapas, Mexico

Alex stood up as the last hostage was
removed by the Mexican Army Medics. Looking over, she saw Leena and
Vince guarding two of the men who assaulted her. Feeling her eye,
Leena looked up and nodded. Alex had encouraged her to go from
being the captive to the captor. Leena smiled. It must be
working.

Max stood just off to her right. She took
his hand and walked away from the medics, the Mexican Special Force
First Brigade, and her team. They had learned to be ninjas as
children and fought their way through people as adults. As
identical twins, they knew how to move when the other stopped and
stop when the other moved. Tonight, they had acted with a precision
that allowed them to wound before kill, capture rather than wound.
In the end, they were forced to fight hard to free these hostages.
Killing human beings was always remarkably easier than trying to
save them from their own folly.

Raz had arranged for Alex and Max to change
and unload in a small private clearing near a stream. He waited for
them and then left them alone. They helped each other remove their
gear. Because this mission had such high profile attention,
everything they wore and carried would be shipped off to the US
Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory. The bodies of the men and
women they’d killed would go to them as well. The USAIL would
analyze everything and prepare a report that would be shared with
the Mexican government. Eventually, they would get their gear
back.

“
You okay?” Alex
asked.

Max shrugged.

“
Me too,” Alex said. “Wanna
talk?”

“
I wonder sometimes when
the world won’t need people like us,” Max said.

“
People like us have been
around probably as long as humans have roamed the earth,” Alex
said.

“
That’s what I mean,” Max
said. “

“
Would you like to be in
the field more?” Alex asked.

“
I do this every day, Alex.
I might not kill people literally but I’m a fierce fighter in the
court room, diplomatic circles, and every other way.” He put his
hands on his hips like he had when he was a kid. “I’m a full-time
ninja.”

“
I love that about you,”
Alex said.

“
Some death is necessary
for the rest of us to live in peace. That’s just a horrible fact of
life.”

“
I hate that,” Alex
said.

“
I know,” Max
said.

“
Ever wonder if someone
will say that about us?” Alex asked.

“
What?”

“
That we were killed so
there could be peace,” Alex said.

Shaking his head, Max held out his arms. The
twins hugged each other.

“
We’re having one of those
twin moments Wyatt wants us to record,” Alex said.

“
I thought that was
before,” Max said.

“
When I shot the guy behind
you with my bow when he was about to slash your neck with a
stiletto?” Alex asked.

“
When I tossed a knife at
the guy who was going to jump you from the trees,” Max said. “I
felt that tingling sense of imminent danger and…”

“
Yes but
how
did you feel the
tingling sense? How? How? How?”

Max turned to Alex. Their brown eyes
held.

“
I didn’t keep track
either,” Alex laughed. He smiled and went back to undressing. “I
hope we’re not more researched now that he lives with
us.”

Max laughed. As they undressed, their
differences returned. Alex’s hair spiked straight up as she dried
off her sweat with a towel. Stripped to her underwear, Alex bent
over to unzip a duffle full of clean clothing.

“
You have a bruise,” Max
pointed to two small round bruises between her shoulder blades.
“Did you get shot?”

“
You have one here.” Alex
pointed to a small round bruise on his chest bone. She pressed on
the bruise. Squealing, he grabbed her hand and turned it over in a
wrist lock. She laughed. “Don’t forget the Saint Christopher. Oh,
can you get Troy’s mini-tool too?”

Max dug through their bag of dirty gear to
take the Saint Christopher medallion out of the pouch in his
utility belt. He gave her the mini-tool and held the Saint
Christopher medallion up to show her.

“
Wyatt’s mom gave this to
him before she died,” Max said. “She didn’t know he was gay. She
just knew he was different. She gave it to him to protect
him.”

“
He’s very sweet,” Alex
said.

Max smiled. Alex reached into their clean
clothing bag to pull out the handgun her father had purchased for
her when she was a child. She slipped it into her sacrum holster.
She bent over and took out Max’s identical handgun from the bag.
Smiling at her, he took the weapon and tucked it into his side
holster.

“
Colin’s an amazing medic,”
Max said.

“
Isn’t he?” Alex said. “Our
little brother’s back there saving lives. Very cool.”

“
We rescued twenty-three
men tonight,” Max said. “Not counting Heath’s body.”

“
Twenty,” Alex
said.

“
The families will be
really glad to have the others home,” Max said. “Even if they
didn’t make it.”

Alex nodded and he hugged her again. They
pressed their foreheads against each other.

“
Time to move,” Raz said.
“Press is on their way.”

“
Are we taking any home?”
Alex asked.

“
No,” Raz said. “The
Mexican Army and the tribe are taking credit for saving the
Americans in a joint cooperative operation with the US Army as
military strategic advisors.”

“
They are good.”

“
And we are so advisory,”
Max said.

“
Sue Ann?
Bobby?”

“
Sue Ann and Bobby are
staying to sort out what’s happening with their land. The State
Department sent a kid to watch them. They’ll probably be home by
Monday.”

“
And Pete?” Max
asked.

“
They swapped numbers,” Raz
said.

“
No spit?” Max
asked.

“
Most people move a little
more slowly than you two do,” Raz said.

“
She’s such a lovely
person,” Alex said.

“
We want her to be happy,”
Max said.

“
Leena?”

“
Mexican Military has taken
custody of her attackers,” Raz said. “They take a very dim view of
men who attack female soldiers.”

“
So do I,” Alex
said.

“
Let’s go home,” Raz
said.

Margaret and Pete ran forward to pick up
their gear bag. The bag was locked, taped closed, and signed before
they carried it to the waiting Pave Hawk. Raz took their empty
clothing bag from Alex. They walked to the helicopter together.

F

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Three weeks later

Friday midday

January 15 – 12:05 p.m. CST

Over Texas

“
Half-hour to landing,”
Zack said.

Raz shifted his arm from around her shoulder
and Alex leaned back into her seat. Zack, Cliff and a US Air Force
team were flying the Fey Team in a Chinook to San Antonio to pick
up Larry and Heath.

Of course, no one was around to release
their bodies in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. As soon
as attention turned to the six bodies lying in San Antonio, the
argument began over the official story on how and why these five
men and one woman died. As always, Alex insisted that the families
deserved the truth. She was lucky that the President took her
side.

The truth didn’t make facing Larry’s parents
any easier. They had been angry when he joined the service. They
were furious that he had died. They had no trouble telling Alex
exactly what they thought of her. They refused to let Helene into
their home. His mother called her the French whore who “stole her
son.” Too young to take sides, his brothers stood with hollow eyes
around the edges of the emotional minefield. Not one for words, his
father simply asked about his death benefits.