“How long have you known?” I asked.
“In Anna’s case, as long as you have.”
He was right. She’d been forthcoming about having met Horatio when they both worked for SIS.
“As far as Officer Loxley, not as long. However, what I wasn’t aware of was the op the two were running.”
I invited the two men to join us and offered them both a brandy when I poured a second for myself. Henry stood and refilled the others’ glasses.
“What did you have to report?” I asked once we were all seated.
“The body’s been dealt with. Hornet and Amaryllis are on perimeter-monitoring duty until zero six hundred.”
“What else?” I asked.
“We searched the boat as soon as we had the area secured. There were two duffels in the footwell. Both were full of the same compound Gunner identified at the Lausanne site. Eastern European manufacture, military grade, with the detonators already inserted and ready to fire,” Dagger continued.
“In other words, Vasiliev had enough material with him to take down every structure on this property,” said Doc.
Dagger looked across the room at me from where he sat. “He came in on the water, and he would have left the same way. Anna intercepting him at the shore is the only reason those charges aren’t on the buildings right now. He was close enough to the boathouse to place the first in the same time it took Beacon to get down there.”
“If he’d put the first one on the boathouse, the blast would have taken out the server stack and every camera, sensor, and alarm running off it. The rest of the property would’ve gone dark in a single hit, and he’d have had the run of every other structure with nothing watching him,” I added.
“That’s right,” said Doc. “And while I don’t necessarily agree with the methodology, the bottom line is, Anna and Julian saved this camp tonight and the lives of everyone here.”
“Full team briefing tomorrow,” said Katarina.
“Start time?” Dagger asked.
“When are Reaper and Gunner scheduled to return?”
“Early afternoon. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred.”
“Let’s hold for their arrival, pending additional updates that would require us to convene earlier.”
“Roger that. I’ll send out a notification.”
“Thanks, Dagger,” said Katarina.
After the two left with Julian, and Anna, Lyra, and Henry went up to bed, she slipped her hand in mine.
“Can we take a walk?”
“Of course,” I said. “Where to?”
“Down to the shore.”
21
BEACON
We walked side by side on the path that led from the main camp, past the boathouse, to the shore. The sky was clear, and there was enough moonlight to see where we were going. It was cold, but I didn’t care. I welcomed feeling it. Feeling everything. I hadn’t realized how much of my life I’d spent numb.
I’d almost died here a couple of hours ago. Other than being in a building with bombs detonating around me and a beam pinning me to the floor after the roof collapsed, tonight was the closest I’d come to facing death.
Bishop saved me both times, and that’s what I wanted to remember. That I was still living.
The other reason I wanted to walk down to where it had happened tonight was to stare it in the face and let it go. Kind of like climbing right back on a horse after being thrown.
