Lethal Expedition (Short Story) Read Free Page B

when she spoke in a certain tone every brain in the room snapped to attention.
    “Not two, Blair. One and a quarter, tell them. The eggs roll at eleven, and we will not be late for the children of dead soldiers, clear?”
    “Clear, Madame President,” Lee said. Tall, powerfully built, he had been CNN’s White House reporter before joining the president’s team.
    “I’m looking forward to this,” Laning said. “It will be a very special day. Thanks to, of all people, Speaker Deroche.”
    “For a conservative, the man has a good head and a good heart,” said Vice President Rand Marshall. His own head was shaved and laced with red scars, and his voice would always sound like gravel being shoveled—both compliments of Desert Storm shrapnel.
    “Right on both counts,” Laning said. “And good ideas as well.”
    “Even I have to agree,” said the rabidly partisan Lee. “It’s simple, but brilliant. ‘Get people of different faiths and political stripes together and’ … how did he put it?”
    “ ‘Gather the divided under God’s roof and let Him join them together,’ ” Laning said. “You know what surprised me most about Deroche’s invitation?” Lee asked.
    “That it came from a Republican,” Marshall said.
    “That I could find no ulterior motive. I did try, believe me.”
    “I’m sure you did. Always on the lookout for those, Blair?” Laning said.
    “With all due respect, ma’am, is there any other kind?”
    She smiled. Behind closed doors, Laning was not loath to shed the mask of command. “Once in a great while, apparently. And do you know what else? Amica and Leanna love singing hymns at the cathedral.” She was referring to her daughters, fourteen and sixteen. “Me, too, for that matter.”
    Marshall coughed and examined his Mont Blanc. He and Lee exchanged glances. Laning watched them over the rim of her cup. She was a damn good president, but cursed with one of the worst singing voices ever to haunt the White House. She let the moment linger, then laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll restrain myself at the proper time. I’ve become very good at lip-synching.”
    “Thank you, Madame President!”

Day Five: Tuesday

5

    A pale, heavy-set man with curly black hair came into Hallie’s hospital room. Pressed khakis, white shirt, blue blazer, a red-and-gold striped tie. “Hello, Dr. Leland. I’m Agent Luciano, with the FBI. The doctors told you I would be coming?”
    She nodded. Two days before, she had emerged from Talisto Cave exhausted, dehydrated, possibly concussed. A Mexican search-and-rescue team medevacked her to Oaxaca’s capital, and the next day a government jet flew her back to Washington, where doctors admitted her to Bethesda Naval Hospital for observation.
    Luciano was opening his briefcase, fumbling for tape recorder and legal pad, but his eyes kept darting to Hallie. Tall, slim, and square-shouldered, she had fine hair cut very short, so blond it looked almost white in certain lights. An angular face in which dark-turquoise eyes were not perfectly aligned, the left just slightly higher than the right. The left eyebrow was arched higher, too, which made her default expression quizzical. Her philtrum—the space between her upper lip and nose—was slightly shorter than average, so that when her face was completely relaxed, her lips remained parted by a tiny, crescent-shaped space.
    Hallie put Luciano in the middle of his thirties and his career. He had a cop’s hard, unyielding eyes, but his tone was kind enough as he apologized for interviewing Hallie here.
    “People I work for got a call from State,” Luciano said.
    “Is that unusual?” she asked.
    “Not when two federal employees die under suspicious circumstances doing government business in a foreign country.”
    Hallie didn’t like the sound of that, and she had never been awed by authority, even the vaunted FBI. “What do you mean, ‘suspicious’? One had an accident; the other took his own