THIRTY-FIVE
Abitter wind slashed the air and dark clouds loomed over the lawns of the Pike’s Peak National Cemetery. Snowcapped mountains rose in the distance, American flags snapped along the roadsides, but all Jessie saw was the sea of headstones in meticulous rows, one after another, hundreds of them. Standing between Hawk and Brandon, Jessie felt cold to the bone.
She watched as a cable at the end of a forklift raised her father’s casket out of the ground, then turned and set it on the back of a flatbed truck.
Men tossed straps over the coffin to secure it for the fifteen-mile drive back to the medical examiner’s office at Fort Carson. After the attack on Bran last night, Colonel Larkin had made the autopsy a priority. The ME would begin his examination that afternoon.
The wind stung her eyes, and Jessie wiped tears from her cheeks. She had known this would be hard, but she hadn’t expected to feel the devastating loss of her father just as fiercely as she had the first time.
Her lips trembled. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I wouldn’t disturb you if I weren’t sure this is what you would want me to do.” Her throat closed up. Her father had only been gone a few months. Part of her still couldn’t believe it. “I won’t let you down, Dad. I swear it.”
Bran squeezed her hand and drew her against his side, steadying her. She took a deep breath, some of her composure returning. As she watched the flatbed drive away, she prayed the autopsy would give them the evidence they needed to prove her father had been murdered.
Then the CID would be forced to look into her accusations that Weaver, the Aryan Brotherhood, and Chemical Material Activities director General Samuel Holloway were connected. Maybe they could find a link to the money from the auction, follow it straight to Holloway’s front door.
“Come on, baby. Let’s go.” Bran’s arm went around her shoulders as he urged her back to the Cherokee. Maddox slid in behind the wheel, Bran helped Jessie into the passenger seat, and climbed into the backseat behind her.
No one spoke as they drove back to the hotel. Until they had the evidence they needed, there was nothing to say.
Jessie refused to consider the possibility the autopsy would come up with nothing. Agent Tripp had ordered the Division of Forensic Toxicology to run a new tox screen for various poisons, including aconite, that could simulate a heart attack.
Before they had left the hotel, Jessie had looked it up on the internet, a poisonous tree plant that was sometimes called wolfsbane, monkshood, or devil’s helmet. According to Tripp, the ME would be testing for similar poisons, as well as examining the contents of her father’s stomach.
By the end of the day or tomorrow at the latest, they should have news.
“Would you please sit down?” Hawk grumbled at Bran from his place in an overstuffed chair. “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”
Bran blew out a frustrated breath. “I was hoping we’d get the report back by now.” He flopped down on the sofa next to Jessie. He wasn’t a patient man—except on a mission when a silent vigil could last for hours. Then patience could mean the difference between success or failure, even life or death.
“Nothing ever happens that fast in the military,” Jessie said. “You ought to know that by now.”
“Unfortunately,” Bran grumbled.
“I’m starving,” Maddox said. “Why don’t we order something to eat?”
“Now there’s a good idea,” Bran said.
“You two are always hungry,” Jessie teased, smiling.
Bran cast her a heated glance she correctly interpreted astrue, but in my case, not necessarily for food. He grinned when she flushed. At least she was still thinking about sex. F-ing Ray Cummings hadn’t screwed things up completely.
And Bran had enough self-confidence to figure he could make things right again with just a little more effort on his part. He smiled, the sultry look Jessie tossed his way making him even more certain.
Maddox grabbed the room service menu from the desk. He took a quick look, then handed it to Jessie. “Fried chicken for me. What’s everybody else want?”
She opened it and held it for both of them to read, but just then Bran’s phone rang. He reached over and snatched it off the mahogany coffee table, checked the screen and recognized the contact name.
Bran pressed the phone against his ear. “Sir.”
“Captain Garrett, this is Colonel Bryson.”
Old habits had him snapping to attention, squaring his shoulders and sitting up straighter on the sofa. “Colonel.”
“I have news. I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you as much as I can. After our conversation, I spoke to Lieutenant General David Tanaka, director of Special Operations/Counterterrorism Strategic Operational Planning. According to the general, your information was correct. In an effort to gain power in Yemen, a group of rebels backed by Iran began an assault using chemical weapons against Yemeni civilians. Fortunately, we arrived in time to stop a full-scale attack and destroy what remained of the weapons, keeping the number of casualties to a minimum.”
Relief filtered through him. But those few casualties would have suffered deadly symptoms, starting with nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, severe blisters, and burns on their skin and mucous membranes. The most critical side effect was a pulmonary edema caused by filling the lungs with fluid, which killed in less than thirty minutes.
“Why gas their own people?” Bran asked.
