Daniel's Christmas

Chapter 4

Chapter Four“You said we were going to the Game Room. This is—” Alice nearly choked on her words as she watched Daniel press a palm against a glass plate reader. She’d been tired enough to not think much as they descended from the main level down a long flight of stairs.

She didn’t need the two Marine Guards at perfect attention to indicate what lay behind these heavy doors. She’d seen enough movies to know they stood at the entry to the Situation Room. A place that in many ways served as the political center of the planet. Decisions made here affected global politics, started and ended wars.

“Game Room. Definitely.” Mr. Smooth-Chief-of-Staff Daniel Darlington was back in place. “Most administrations call it the Woodshed, but President Matthews is Washington D.C. born and bred. Didn’t seem appropriate.”

Alice still couldn’t believe that she’d flustered the White House Chief of Staff. She. Alice. It was pretty flattering. Well, maybe it was lack of sleep that warped her perceptions, though she felt alarmingly awake at the moment, even if her body didn’t.

“There are refreshments,” the President spoke in such a friendly, normal fashion that it was proving difficult to remain gobsmacked by being in the President’s presence. “An amazing video system attended by the finest Marine Corps technicians. Global politics is more like chess than say, Chutes and Ladders, but there are pieces always in motion and we try to keep track of them in here. So, the Game Room fits.”

The Marines pulled back the double doors and Alice felt herself sucked inward as if by a vacuum.

Without preamble, President Matthews called out to what appeared to be an empty room, “I need to speak with Majors Beale and Henderson. They’re probably still at that little SOAR base in Pakistan.”

A disembodied voice spoke in soft, clearly articulated tones, “A few minutes, Mr. President.”

“Pakistan?” she whispered to Daniel. With relations the way they were in Pakistan, it was hard to imagine that there was a U.S. airbase still there. Though with SOAR. Maybe. The Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment often showed up in the damnedest places on her reports. The Night Stalkers, as they called themselves, were even called on by the CIA’s S.A.D. because no one could deliver a crew by helicopter the way SOAR could. Or get them back out as consistently. Though CIA pilots would never agree, Alice had seen the reports and it was true.

“Pakistan,” the President confirmed. “A special deal. Bati airbase is a small desert location that gives our folks close access to the Hindu Kush passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their primary mission there is to curtail the massive arms flow that Pakistan is sponsoring. However, in exchange for the airbase and certain other considerations, the Pakistan government also receives, shall we say, stabilization assistance along their contested border with India.”

That was just about the craziest arrangement she’d ever heard. But it also explained the oddities of the mission to take down Osama bin Laden. SOAR helicopters had penetrated deep into Pakistan as if coming out of nowhere, no reports ever emerged of where the flight had begun. One leak said northern Afghanistan, but that made even less sense. But perhaps from the secret, Pakistan-sanctioned airbase at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains. That would explain the infiltration issues she’d been unable to puzzle out.

After they’d raided bin Laden’s compound, they fled the country while being chased across the border by Pakistani jets. They must have been very slow jets to allow the helicopters fly from so far in-country, get clear of Pakistan airspace, and fly out over international waters. Or they had a secret pact with the government. Therefore, the Pakistani jets had chased the American helicopters for form’s sake, but not been allowed to interfere because of special on-going military agreements. That made the whole bin-Laden operational logistics make sense, finally.

Alice appreciated that. There was a back-burner portion of her thought processes that worried and chipped away at unexplained problems. That one had been there for a year or more, and now she could tell by the sudden mental silence that enough of the pieces were in place and she could let it go.

It also illustrated different aspects of the notorious southwest Asian schizophrenia. It was the reason her job never grew dull. It was like they thought with both sides of their brain, separately. Iran, a paranoid, extreme Islamic nation that cast aside all things Western, was now one of the few space powers on the planet. Afghanistan, desperate to shed the mantel of the Taliban, reviled the U.S. presence to suppress the brutally violent fanatics. The dichotomy of thought and action remained endlessly fascinating.

Daniel offered her some coffee and a doughnut. But her nervous system was so scrambled with exhaustion that she settled for hot chocolate and a croissant to avoid the bizarre effects caffeine would perpetrate.

As they sat at the table, the giant screen at the end of the room lit up. A beautiful blond glared balefully out at them.

“What the hell do you want at this hour, Sneaker Boy?”

Sneaker Boy? Alice looked around to see who she was addressing. The President was smiling at the screen.

“Morning, Squirt. What are you so surly about?” There was a tease in his voice.

Daniel leaned over to whisper in her ear, “Childhood friends.”

Alice turned to glance at him which brought them nearly nose-to-nose. Just the slightest bit of lean and they’d be kissing. She looked away quickly and took a large bite of her croissant to cover just how stupid her brain could be when she was tired. Her cat would be laughing at her for being such a goofball. If she had a cat.

The woman on the screen covered her face with both her hands as if impossibly weary. “Peter, you i***t!”

Alice choked, coughed, and spewed a small cloud of flaky croissant crust all over the polished Sit Room conference table.

“What time is it?” clearly meant as a rhetorical question. Rhetorical with an acid bite.

“One a.m. our time,” the President responded pleasantly. “Makes it midday for you.”

The woman uncovered one eye and just scowled at the President.

“Oh, right.” He didn’t sound very chagrined.

Alice finally got it, too. The Night Stalkers were called that for a reason. They lived in a flipped clock world, flying missions at night, sleeping during the day. The President had just rousted them after two or maybe three hours of sleep. And by the look of it, last night had included an exhausting mission.

She idly wondered if a report of it might be crossing her desk at the CIA even now. No, she’d left the southwest Asia desk six months ago. For half a year she’d been specializing in the craziest, most isolationist country on the planet.

And when she’d pulled her latest report on North Korea together, the Director had sent her scampering to the White House to report.

The Night Stalkers. The President had asked for Majors Beale and Henderson. That meant this was Major Emily Beale. Alice inspected the sleepy woman more closely. She’d shown up in enough of Alice’s reports over the years for her to know about the legend the woman had become. She out flew everyone, with the possible exception of her even more famous husband. Well, famous to the very small world of those who knew about black ops helicopter pilots.

All Alice saw was a sleepy looking woman in a sand-colored t-shirt.

“At least I didn’t wake Mark.”

A square chin in need of a shave appeared over Beale’s shoulder, “I wish, Mr. President.”

A hand reached out and filled the screen for a moment as it realigned the camera a bit higher. The two most successful pilots in SOAR history now looked out at them. Their most captivating features were Henderson’s gray eyes and Beale’s brilliant blues, almost as bright as Daniel’s. Even rumpled, tired, and grumpy, they made a beautiful couple.

Alice had always wondered how she’d look as part of a couple. Her sporadic relationships typically burned out long before her imagination had time to really take hold. And any efforts to make a portrait-type image, even in her head, had never gelled. Even in her naïve teenage years she hadn’t been able to imagine herself a couple with her massive crush, Leonardo di Caprio. And by the time Firefly’s Nathan Fillion came along, she’d lost the dreamy-eyed teenager completely.

She glanced again at the profile of the man seated beside her in his three-piece suit in the depths of a Washington D.C. night. Daniel was concentrating on the screen at the moment, revealing only his profile.

Him she could picture easily.