“You can’t find it through your usual channels?”

“Freddy, I’m calling you at home early in the morning using a burner phone. Does that tell you I’m doing anything usual?”

She yawns. “Good point. What’s the tail number?”

I read off the letters and numbers to her, and she reads them back to me.

“All right,” Freddy says. “Question one. What’s number two?”

“I need to know what installations we might have in a small town in Texas called Three Rivers.”

“How small?”

“Last I checked, less than two thousand people.”

Freddy whistles. “Pretty hard to hide a base or depot there.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for,” I say. “I’m looking for a safe house, a bunker, a dry-cleaning business that might be a front for something.”

“A black site?”

“Yes.”

“You know those are illegal, even in countries that used to welcome them. Like Poland or Estonia.”

“Sure, that’s what we’re officially told, but this is still very unofficial,” I say. “I need a deep and thorough search. Property ownership that doesn’t make sense. Utility bills paid by a law firm in Maryland. Parking tickets for vehicles belonging to the Agriculture Department’s regional office in Boise. Anything that gives a hint of a place that might be used to hide a high-value target.”

Freddy says slowly, “That’s a pretty big shopping list, Amy.”

“Yeah, well, I remember a pretty big whining session a few years back from someone who was going to give it up and go find a Motel 6 to take a hot shower.”

“Jesus, Amy, how many times do you want me to pay you back for that?”

I bite my lip. Damn it, why are my eyes welling up?

“Last time, I promise,” and my voice shudders, and Freddy, a major and executive officer for the Second Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, picks up on it instantly.

“Amy,” she says sharply.

“Yes.”

“What’s going on?”

I keep quiet.

Freddy says, “Amy…is this professional? Or personal?”

I talk through the tears. “As personal as it gets.”

CHAPTER 20

IN THE plain but comfortable office at Fort Belvoir with a sign on the door that says LT. COL. DENTON COMMANDING/297TH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE BATTALION, he sits at the wide and clean desk, slowly rubbing his hands against the polished surface, knowing that if a subordinate were to walk in, right at this moment, he or she would give him an odd look, but he doesn’t care.

A clean desk to call your own is one of the perks of getting this high up the ladder, this high up the pecking order, that slippery pyramid of command and responsibility.

Oh, yes, responsibility indeed.

Lots of burdens of command, both professional and personal, and while the professional burdens are widely known, evaluated, discussed, and probed, the personal are never examined. It is like a big crack in a home’s foundation that is never talked about, for fear it will bring something rotten into the open. Like the dreams, the memories of sharp explosions, the taste of someone else’s blood on your lips, and the trembling that sometimes happens so fast and so hard you retreat to the nearest latrine so no one can see you.