Alien vs. Alien

not knowing anything about Operation Confusion or Operation Assassination?”
    “I’ll try.” While he was quiet I basked in the glow of still being his main emotional focus. Hey, it had been a long month apart. “I’ve got . . . something. I can’t be really positive, but I’d say that the anger at Cantu, Marling, and Cartwright is focused around confusion and strˀusion anong feelings of being out of control and shoved aside.”
    “Sounds like he was telling the truth.”
    “Maybe. I wouldn’t trust him.”
    “He needs us more than we need him right now. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. At least sometimes.” Usually the enemies of our enemies ganged up and worked against us together, but hope liked to spring eternal.
    “Okay, be careful. Keep Christopher with you. I’ll cover what he was doing.”
    “That you can’t tell me about, I know. You be careful, too.”
    “Love you baby. Don’t get into anything with Jamie along.”
    “Love you, too, and I’ll do my best, as always.”
    “That’s what worries me.”

    Yi

CHAPTER 35

    R E JOINED THE OTHERS. “Okay, I’m willing to believe the senator for the time being.”
    “I’m telling you the truth, of course you should believe me.”
    I snorted. “You’re a politician. Of course most of what you say is a lie, half-truth, or a statement filled with deniable plausibility.”
    Armstrong stared at me. “You’re a lot smarter than anyone thinks, aren’t you?”
    “You’re not really good with compliments, are you?”
    “Whatever,” Christopher said. “Where are we? Besides our usual nowhere, I mean.”
    “Are we expecting anyone else?” Len asked as he looked out the window that faced our Embassy.
    “Not that I know of.” Looked around. No one else indicated they’d invited anyone else to our impromptu party. I joined Len at the window. Most of the others joined us.
    There wasn’t a lot of legal street parking around here, so the several nondescript cars double-parking on both sides of our street were sort of obvious.
    “They’re purposefully dirty,” Len said.
    “No argument.” These cars had either spent the last month off-roading—which seeing as none were SUVs seemed unlikely—had just driven through the biggest and wettest dust storm ever, or had gone through the dirt car wash. “It’s amazing they can see out of the windows.”
    The dirt mobiles’ passengers got out. Most were men, but there were some women, too. All were dressed the same way—jeans, sneakers, and long-sleeved, camouflage jackets with a lot of pockets. The jackets hung oddly on all of them, indicating there were things underneath the jackets. Potentially bulky things.
    A tallish girl about my age with long dark brown hair appeared to be in charge. Sh΀e was pointing, and people were moving, so that seemed to prove the “in charge” theory. “Anyone know the new girl? She looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t know why.”
    Everyone peered out the window. Negatory replies given by all. Well, almost all. “She looks familiar to me, too,” Christopher said slowly. “But I also don’t know why.”
    “They look like suicide bombers,” Kyle said. “How they’re dressed, I mean.”
    As the words left his mouth, the brunette looked up and around, and I got a better view of her face, or rather the expression of burning hatred she was shooting around. Maybe it was the mention of suicide bombers while I stared at her fanatical rage, but I knew who was on our street.
    “Oh. Crap. I think I know why Christopher and I recognize her. I’m pretty darned sure that’s the stewardess from Operation Drug Addict, Casey Jones from Club Fifty-One, the one who was in charge of trying to blow our plane up.” All the new arrivals started to fan out—not toward or around our Embassy, but around Romania’s. The cars appeared to still be running, too. “Um, I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.”
    “What do you think their plan is?” Christopher asked.
    I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t asking me how Casey was here instead of locked up somewhere, in part because I figured he’d assumed what I had—our enemies had gotten her out of Guantanamo somehow, because that was exactly how our luck went. However, the answer seemed sort of obvious.
    “I think they’re here to blow things up.”
    “They’re encircling this building,” White said calmly.
    “Why blow up this Embassy?” Christopher asked. “When ours is right across the