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in opposite directions by forces outside of my control. It was almost a physical pain.
    I stroked her hair. “You know why I have to go.”
    “To keep the bad men away?”
    I leaned over and gave her a kiss. “That’s right, to keep the bad men away.”

8
    M emories of that night, and the commitment I had made to Heather, were interrupted by Blaine Alexander moving to the front of the table. He addressed the group. “Well, I’m lucky to be working with my favorite team on this one.”
    The comment caused the team to laugh. Whenever he became involved, the endgame had begun, so whatever team he was working with became his favorite team. Blaine and I had worked together on multiple operations in the Taskforce. He was a pretty switched-on guy, politically savvy and tactically sound. He had to be to keep the job. Before he could continue, I raised my hand. “Sir, I need to talk to Colonel Hale. Can you start without me? It won’t take a minute.”
    He nodded, knowing what it was about. “Yeah, go ahead.”
    I left the room at a jog, seeing Kurt talking to his deputy commander, George Wolffe, outside of the Ops Center. George had come over from the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. I don’t know him near as well, but from what I’ve seen, he’s calm and levelheaded. Unlike a lot of the folks at the CIA, Kurt said he was a meat-eater, so that was good enough for me. I didn’t mind talking in front of him.
    “Colonel Hale. Hey. Hold up. I need to talk to you.”
    “What’s up?”
    “I need to go with the team. I need to fly tonight.”
    Kurt looked at me like I was nuts. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who begged me to break protocol and let you go home for your daughter’s birthday. I broke every rule in the book to make that happen. People jumped through hoops to get you clean for the trip. Now you want to go to Tbilisi?”
    “Sir, things have changed. The trip was planned because of our deployment schedule. The team’s now deploying early. I need to go.”
    “You need to go home to your family. Come on, Pike, nothing’s going to happen between now and when you get there. They’ll just be building a pattern of life. This thing won’t kick off for at least a week.”
    “You don’t know that. We could be in a world of shit in twenty-four hours. I need to go. It’s my team.”
    “Pike, think about this. You’re the one who told me you haven’t been to a single birthday of your daughter’s since the first one. Go home. Azzam will wait. Even if this pops, there’ll be other targets. Take the leave.”
    “No. This is it. I told you before. This is my last rotation. There won’t be any other targets for me. My team’s leaving. I need to go. We’re at Omega, for Christ’s sake. Don’t do this to me.”
    Kurt said nothing for a beat, staring at me, mulling over the request. “Okay. You can go. But if you’re flying tonight, you don’t have time to get to a non-attrib phone for a call. Heather’s going to get the usual notice from the Alias Shop after you’re gone.”
    Heather had gotten this kind of impersonal phone call from operations plenty of times, updating her on my status. This time would be particularly difficult, but I knew she would understand.
    “Good enough. She’ll get over it. She knows this is my last tour. After this, it’ll be Pike 24/7.”
    When I reentered the conference room, Knuckles gave me a look. I nodded, bringing a smile to his face. After that, we both focused on the man talking, spending the next four hours getting an in-depth briefing on the target, his templated actions, the Tbilisi environment, and the cover we would use to get the mission done.
    Later, as we were packing our kit for the flight in the fourth-floor locker room, Knuckles broached the subject. “Heather’s going to murder you for this. You promised her. It’s the only reason she let you do this tour.”
    “She’ll understand. The guy’s trying to get a fucking dirty bomb.