To that Dalton had no reply.

Hammond rubbed her eyes. “Oh well. I guess I ought to get working on the program to see what the hell is going on.”

Dalton left her and went to the bunkroom. Jackson was lying on her back, hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling. Hammond ’s words bothered him. He had assumed from the very beginning that Bright Gate-and the Russian’s SD-8 when he’d learned of it-had been the result of brilliant scientific work. But to have the current lead scientist here say she was baffled was disturbing. He knew he’d have to call this in to Eichen at the first opportunity. His mind went back to what had been said before Hammond talked about that, and he sat down across from Jackson.

“Sergeant Major?” Jackson was sitting up.

“It’s Jimmy,” he said without thinking. He saw the surprise on her face. “That’s the way we operated in SF. Between a team leader and a team sergeant. Who respected each other. But only when they were alone, not in front of others. If that’s all right with you, ma’am,” he added.

Jackson stuck her hand out. “Ljala.”

Dalton ’s eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

Jackson laughed. “Ljala. When I was a kid, my friends called me Jerry.”

“Ljala,” Dalton repeated. “I’ve never heard the name before.”

“It’s Roma. From my mother’s side. My surname is from my father’s.”

“Italian?”

“No.” Jackson got up and sat down on the bunk across from him. “Outsiders call us Gypsies. Roma is what we call ourselves. You’re a gadje, an outsider.”

Dalton untied his boots, pulling the laces, easing the tightness. “You’re a Gypsy?”

“Roma,” she corrected him. “The term Gypsy comes from early beliefs that my people came from Egypt. We didn’t. And most Roma don’t like the term Gypsy, as it’s usually used in a derogative manner.”

“Roma,” Dalton amended. “Where did your people come from?”

“That’s a long story that we don’t share with gadje,” Jackson said. She smiled. “I don’t really consider myself a true Roma, though. I’m sorry if I was short with you. I haven’t talked about it in a long time. My mother was a true Roma. That’s why I got picked to be part of Grill Flame.”

Dalton had worked briefly with the classified CIA program in the eighties and early nineties that used psychics to remote view. “Because your mother was a Roma?”

Jackson smiled, leaning back on the bunk. “You know, crystal balls inside the dark tent, telling someone their fortune. Laying out tarot cards and reading them. It’s in the blood. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Dalton said.

“There’s a little bit of truth in myths and legends,” Jackson said. “My mother was a true reader, as was her mother before her and the maternal line through the ages. They could see what others couldn’t. A person’s lifeline in their palm. The future in the cards. The sense of the spirits of the dead. And it was real, what they saw.”

“You believe that?”

“Don’t you now?”

Dalton nodded. “Can you read, sense the spirits?”

Jackson ’s smile was gone. “I rebelled against it. My mother embarrassed me. My father was so solid, so straight and narrow, I didn’t see why he had gotten involved with my mother. He was gadje also, the son of a preacher, a manager in a lumber mill. My mother-I didn’t understand why she gave up the road for him and turned away from her people. Maybe because he was so solid and steady. She, on the other hand, was beautiful and wild. Maybe opposites do attract, who knows? My mother drove me crazy. My friends thought she was nuts. The clothes she wore and the way she acted. Setting up a room in our house and reading fortunes.

“So I went as far from it as I could. To the Academy. The Army. And then they dragged me into Grill Flame when I took a test everyone in my Intelligence unit was required to take and I scored high on what they were looking for. I’ve thought a lot about it, since being here at Bright Gate. I ran from my heritage to be drawn directly into it.”

“And your mother?” Dalton asked. “How does she feel about it?”

“She passed away my yearling year at the Academy.”

Dalton hesitated, then asked, “Do you feel her?”

Jackson slowly nodded. “Sometimes. Sometimes here in the real world. And sometimes when I’m out on the psychic plane, I feel her spirit. It’s not like we can carry on a conversation; more like I can pick up her emotions, her feelings.”

Dalton ’s voice was low. “I feel Marie just like that at times. I know she’s out there.”

Jackson leaned forward and reached out with her hand, grasping Dalton ’s in hers. “She is. She’s out there and she’ll always be with you. The world is a much bigger place than that which we pick up with our five senses. You and I-we have the inner eye.”

“I’ve been learning that,” Dalton said. “So what didn’t you want Hammond to hear?”

Instead of replying, Jackson asked a question. “What do you think happened to the first PW team?”

“They got cut off.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” he lied.

“I think it’s because they saw something they weren’t supposed to see,” Jackson said.

“What did they see?”

“If we knew that, we’d have a chance of knowing who did it to them.”

“Raisor said he knew.”

“And look where he’s at now,” Jackson pointed out.

“I’d say the fact someone was monitoring Sybyl and they got cut off right after asking for information about the Air Force Space and Missile Systems is significant,” Dalton said.

“I agree.”

“I’ve got a feeling you know more than you’re telling me.” Dalton sat down on the footlocker at the end of her bunk. He felt bad knowing that the opposite was true. He knew exactly why the first team had been cut off, but he knew that telling Jackson about Nexus would endanger her. Of course, he also realized not telling her could be just as dangerous. But if she came to some conclusions on her own, certainly that couldn’t hurt. Besides, Dalton wasn’t one hundred percent sure he believed what Eichen had told him.

“It’s foolish,” Jackson said.

“Why don’t you let me determine that?”

Jackson shook her head. “Old tales. That’s all I was thinking about. They have nothing to do with this.” She lay back down on her bunk. “I’m tired. I need some sleep.”

Dalton stood and walked out of the bunkroom to the male latrine. He felt like a low-rate spy as he went into one of the stalls and sat down. He opened up the phone. There was a short buzz. A second. And then Eichen’s voice:

“Go ahead, Sergeant Major.”

He updated Eichen on the current inactive status of Bright Gate, Eileen Raisor’s request for information about the Air Force unit, Hammond finding the virus in Sybyl, and Hammond ’s concern about the development of the Bright Gate technology, which echoed what Eichen had told him the previous night.

“All right. I’ll check out the Space and Missiles Systems Center. Keep an eye out there for anything else.”

“What about whoever is replacing Raisor? Is he or she one of yours?”

“Negative. I have no idea who is coming to take over Bright Gate, but I’m relying on you to keep things under control there.”

“What about Lieutenant Jackson, sir? Can I bring her in on this?”

“No. The fewer who know, the better. And Jackson was with Bright Gate. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on her too.”

But you aren’t me, Dalton thought. “Yes, sir.”

McFairn leafed through the documents she had had her people intercept from the Pentagon. As deputy director of the nation’s primary communications security agency, McFairn could access any communications, no matter how highly classified. After all, it was her people who designed the secure systems all government agencies used.

A Task Force Six team was en route to Colombia to interdict a drug shipment and kidnap a cartel member to try to find out what happened to the Coast Guard cutter. Exactly as she had arranged. She hit the autodial for Boreas and faced the windows, noting the large flag on the pole outside the building flapping in a stiff breeze.