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“Can’t happen. You guys are on your own. We’ll give you a complete data dump on what we have, front any costs, and you’ll report back to us, but there will be no contact with any other Caesarea personnel. Sorry. We don’t know where the leak happened or how they planned this attack. We’re not sure who has been penetrated. If we use Caesarea personnel there now, it might automatically be a compromise, just because they’ve identified them as such.”

Shoshana smiled at that and said, “I’d expect nothing less. So we’re on our own?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get our own support, or is that something that’s too big of a shit storm, too?”

“What do you mean? What support?”

“Well, we have to go to America in two days for a wedding. Is that okay?”

Jeremy looked at Aaron, then back at her, saying, “The wedding can wait. Your country is calling.”

Aaron knew where Shoshana was going. He said, “You’ve given us a mission with no support. We’re going to the wedding.”

Perplexed, Jeremy said, “What’s a damn wedding got to do with this?”

Shoshana leaned into him, getting face-to-face. She tried to be calm, but the anger leaking out was a visceral thing. She said, “I’ll find the killer of Gideon. Not for you or Israel, but for me. And the wedding is how I will do it. I need passports for four individuals.”

Chapter 4

I stared at Jennifer in her white dress, slowly walking up the path to my position next to the minister. She reached it, smiled at me, and then took my hand. The minister smiled as well, happy to be here on a warm June day for the wedding. I glanced at the gate to the Ashley Hall grounds and saw it shaking, like someone was trying to barge in. The gate broke, and three terrorists entered, screaming and firing weapons.

Jennifer ripped off the lace of her dress, exposing three hand grenades held in place by their pins.

Wait, what? Who would attach a grenade to themselves by the damn pin?

She pulled two, threw them at the gate, and then...

And then...

A voice entered my head. “Pike!”

I felt a slap to my belly and was brought out of my Walter Mitty daydream.

Jennifer glared at me and said, “What in the world are you doing?”

Sheepishly, I said, “Nothing. Sorry. Where were we?”

She glared at me and said, “We’rerehearsing our wedding!”

I saw Amena with the rings, going from foot to foot, embarrassed for me, and my best man Knuckles looking at me like I’d had a stroke.

I said, “Uh huh... Got it. Let’s keep going.”

Jennifer looked like she wanted to gut me, but turned with allsweetness and light to the minister. Amena snuck up behind me, pulled my pant leg, and said, “You’re really terrible at this.”

I said, “You wouldn’t be any better.”

She laughed and said, “Oh yeah I would.”

Jennifer glared at her as well, and she scampered away, going back to her position for the rehearsal.

Twenty minutes later it was over, and I was in the alcove of the McBee House on the campus of Ashley Hall, getting an earful from Jennifer for not taking this seriously. She really,really,wanted a legitimate wedding to match our justice of the peace certificate, and I suppose I wasn’t helping, but it was getting a little ridiculous.

I said, “Jenn, come on. We’re not even allowed to have a crowd here because of the damn pandemic. We’ve got like ten people. How much rehearsal does this take? I’ve seen less rehearsals on an assault in the Al Anbar Province against a terrorist force hell-bent on killing me.”

Even with the vaccine rollout, things had been slow to return to normal. Now, with all the new, exotic mutations running amok, the projection from the powers-that-be was next fall, which aggravated me to no end.