FOUR

Empty Eyes, Shattered Souls

Giddy led the Murrays back to the main office suites and guided them into a large briefing room. Both were stunned at the technology ringing the immaculate space. It rivaled anything that they'd encountered in an actual government facility. Huge ultra-high definition monitors circled the room and in the center was a huge oblong oak table with keyboards and smaller screens built into its surface. The chairs were ergonomically designed for comfort during long watches and several clocks, both digital and analog set to all of the time zones covered part of another wall. He ushered them down toward the end of the table and asked them to be seated.

"Stockwell will be here shortly, I need to fetch Vasily and Samantha, as well as the families of the chopper crew."

While they waited two men entered the room, they recognized them from photographs as part of Alice's team. Both stood to shake hands.

"Hello, we're Alice's parents. I'm Gil and this is Page her mother."

Heckler sighed and stepped forward. He grasped Gil's out stretched and squeezed it. He felt horrible. Since word of the disaster had reached them, he'd been an emotional wreck; slamming from devastated at their loss to enraged at having to watch the blown op come apart and at his inability to do anything. He'd been uncomfortable not sending the entire team, but Murray had insisted that the contract was a two man op and that Rios and Salem could manage it. Besides, she'd argued, she wanted Rios to meet the South African Ambassador. It would be good business for a co-owner to have a face to face with a lucrative new client.

"Heckler, and this is Secour. I'm sorry, but it was out of our hands."

"No problem. You're here now and we all have each other. I don't know why Alice never made a better effort to get us all together years ago."

"I don't know. We were all pretty shocked when she told Fifty and Tyannikov to visit. It's maybe just that she wanted work and life separate."

Before they could all sit again, Giddy returned with Vasily and Samantha. Page stunned them all by immediately embracing the big Russian.

"Shh. Shh, if she is there they'll find her." He soothed holding her tightly, "But I must be clear, honest" he pushed her back a bit and locked eyes with her, "I do not think, after seeing devastation, that much hope lives. I share your sorrow. I am here for both of you. Now come, come and sit."

Stockwell finally arrived looking exhausted. His already thin features were gaunter and his eyes red from lack of sleep. He motion to Secour to turn on the screens and took a seat at the head of the table. Before speaking he took off his loosened tie and rolled up the rumpled sleeves of his light blue shirt. Finally he removed his T.W.O cap ran a liver spot speckled hand through his thinning hair and replaced the gray hat.

"Dauad, bring coffee. Anyone want anything different pipe up. Fine, Dauad make it happen son, don't forget the creams and such."

He cleared his throat and flipped open a thick folder. After shuffling round in it for a bit, he began taking out thick reams of stapled papers and sliding them to each person seated at the table.

"This is the contract Murray wrote, and I approved. You don't need to read it all just now, but I thought, due to the circumstances, you were all owed complete transparency. Do we all know one another?"

A choir of grumbled yeses went round and Dauad returned with an enticingly fragrant coffee service. He served the group while they thumbed through the contract, and once finished stepped aside awaiting his next order.

"Secour?"

"On line in thirty seconds with a live, secured U.N. drone feed, a satellite feed from one of ours, a German sat feed, a Google feed, and a Russian feed. We may get lucky and the feed from our teams and DBA's teams from there body cams will come up. They have to get a link and right now the freqs are being a bit choked out. I'm trying to bump one of the sats we got from SSC into position to to get our own feed for the bod cams, but we're ten mikes out on that minimum. Here we go."

The room lit up a bit as the screens flickered and came to life. The views on all of them were of devastation on a level never before witnessed in a modern city landscape. Shanghai was no longer recognizable. The collective gasp that shot round the room was nearly deafening. Stockwell allowed the group to watch the changing video for a bit before speaking in a hoarse grave voice.

"As you can see, we have never encountered this type of destruction in a major metropolis before. This is unprecedented in our lifetime. We will probably never know the full extent of loss of life and most of those lives will go unrecorded simply due to the immensity of the destruction. Aside from those killed in the fallen towers uncounted more were marched into stadiums and squares and summarily executed. First matter at hand: Rios will be on shortly." He said locking eyes with a worried Samantha, "He is in bad shape, but he's seen the medics." He switched Vasily, "Salem, Vasily, is still in surgery in Beijing. I still do not know exactly what transpired or what his injuries are. Cha Min has a man at that twenty waiting for word. He is a doctor so his report should be accurate."

Finally, he sighed and after looking at the ceiling to try and stop his tears he faced Gil and Page.

"Gil, Page I have to at this time offer you my sincerest sympathies. We have recovered video data from the chopper's feed and from Salem Helmet cam. Her chopper was struck mid-section by surface to air missile. The pilot, Rafi Falcón, tried to set it down but the flak was overwhelming. It spun into the office high rise nearest it and after the building exploded both it and the bird slammed into the bay. You can view this video if you wish, if it will help you to accept this horrible tragedy."

"Alice…you're certain that she was on board?"

"Yes, Gil, she can be heard trying to help Rafi. As the situation now stands the teams are only two klicks out from that location, and should have contact with us soon. I'm sorry, and you both, all of you here that knew and loved her have my condolences."

"Boss, Rios is up, we need to switch to his feed."

"Make it so."