Alien Tango

supplied. “I’m not sure these things are related.”
    “I am,” Reader and I said in unison.
    Martini and Christopher both glared. I laughed. “We’re human, we think alike.”
    Reader grinned. “We’re both brilliant, too. That helps. But, seriously, the goal was to find out what happened to the Valiant . And we still don’t know.”
    “Let’s find out now, before we do anything else.”
    “I’d like to find out who’s trying to kill us,” Martini said dryly.
    “I really think we’ll have a better chance of that if we take care of whatever happened on the Valiant .”
    “I’m already having Paul run a cross-check on all personnel against Club 51, Howard Taft, and Leventhal Reid,” Reader said. “He’ll call if they find anything. Our favorite Fed’s alerted your mother to what’s going on.”
    “Good, I hope she’s got some helpful suggestions.” I turned back to Alfred. “Is Kennedy’s security on vacation or lowered alert status or something?”
    He looked shocked. I was causing that a lot. Wondered why and if this was one of the many reasons Martini had tried to keep me away from his parents. “Not that I know of. We brought in all our Security team, even those off duty, once the Valiant returned. Security’s been here twenty-four-seven since then.”
    “Huh.”
    “What’re you thinking?” Martini asked me.
    “There’re a lot of security cameras around, but the head of Canaveral Ops was killed while he was talking to us, and no matter what, you’d have thought a security detail would meet us when we docked.”
    Alfred looked even more shocked. “You mean there was no checkpoint?”
    Martini’s eyes narrowed. “No, nothing and no one. We got into the room at about the same time you did.”
    “I didn’t notice,” Alfred admitted.
    “Because of the explosion, I’m sure,” Gower said.
    “How close was Alfred to the blast?” I asked.
    “Close.” Martini’s voice was clipped. “I saw a spark, that’s why I . . . ”
    “Ran,” I finished for him. “Yeah. I’m not really impressed with Turco’s team.” The questions I wasn’t voicing yet were whether Security had been infiltrated, and, if so, had said infiltration been from outside or inside forces. Karl Smith’s warning and murder indicated inside, but we didn’t have enough yet to be sure.
    Alfred shook his head. “Fred has an impeccable record.” “Not anymore.”
    Alfred shrugged. “I suppose not.”
    “How long has he been here?”
    “Several years. The last five he’s been in charge of Security.”
    “How many issues have you had like this under his tenure?”
    “None. As I said, his record has been excellent.”
    Interesting. And it begged a new question. “What would it take to undo Canaveral Security to the point where we could disembark without checkpoints, and you all could be blown up and almost killed? Especially since Security’s at full and Canaveral Ops, at the least, knew we were coming.”
    Alfred considered this for a bit but finally shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. Ops didn’t alert us to anything, but I can’t say if they alerted Security or not. We don’t interact with Security all that much, really. They’re not here to police the employees but to protect them.”
    “Supposedly, anyway.” I decided to refrain from making more comments about Turco’s so-called skills, especially since I wasn’t sure yet if he had none or had some really good ones he’d hidden for all the time he’d been here.
    Martini jerked. “He’s waking up.” Sure enough, the object of my disdain started to come around.
    “So, do you want to question him?” Alfred asked.
    “Yes, but I think we should get more up to date on the astronaut situation.”
    Alfred looked at Martini, who nodded. He headed out, and we all followed, leaving all our suitcases and paraphernalia behind, other than the medical cases Claudia and Lorraine were carrying. Jerry and Joe untied Turco and dragged him along between them. I was pleased and proud to see that they weren’t nice about it at all.
    Reader walked next to me. “What do you think’s going on?”
    “Security breach. But who, why, and how is the question. I have no clue at this point. I’ve never been here before.”
    “I haven’t been here for this kind of situation. Maybe they had all the Security team focused on the Valiant .” Reader didn’t sound as though he thought this was a legitimate possibility.
    “Maybe. Maybe my mom