Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(92)

She screwed up her face and gave a short nod, focused entirely on the steep slope in front of her. He released her and she tipped over the edge, letting gravity take control. The first couple of turns looked solid. She’d inherited her father’s athletic ability, but also his tendency toward cockiness. About a quarter of the way down, she was already carrying too much speed.

“Carve a little harder!” he shouted. “Squiggles, not lines!”

He thought she’d taken his advice when she arced right, but quickly realized his error. Someone had built a plywood jump in the middle of the slope and she was lining up on it.

“Stay away from that!” he shouted. “Go back left! Left!”

She ignored him, locking in on the ramp and crouching into something resembling a tuck. The hollow thud of her hitting it was loud enough for him to wince and for her mother to look up from her book. Anna stayed airborne for an excruciatingly long time, finally coming down into what at first appeared to be a decent landing.

Then things took a turn for the worse. The pink of her T-shirt was suddenly replaced by the black of the base of her board, then the blond of her hair. Pink, black, blond. Pink, black, blond…

He scooped up his own board and went after her, descending in long leaps as the sand collapsed beneath him. When he finally reached her, he thought she was crying, but the sobs turned out to be guffaws.

“Did you see that?” she said, spitting out sand as she spoke. “I was like fifty feet in the air!”

“At least,” he said, checking her for injuries but finding nothing more than a few abrasions. Finally, he pulled her upright. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. I can do it next time, though. I just sunk in the front. That’s all.”

“Why don’t we just spend the day getting your board under you and then next time we’ll set up a smaller jump. Sometimes it’s better to work up.”



“Did you see me?” Anna said as they leaned their boards against the Land Cruiser. “Mitch says I was at least fifty feet in the air.”

Claudia frowned. “What did I tell you before I agreed to this?”

“That I needed to be careful ’cause we don’t even know where the hospital is yet.”

“And was that careful?”

“It’s, like, really soft. It’s just sand, you know.”

“Which you now have everywhere.”

“We can fix that,” Rapp said, grabbing the girl, flipping her over, and shaking her up and down by her ankles. She giggled while an improbable amount of sand poured from her clothing. When the flood became a trickle, he flipped her back over and dropped her on her feet.

“Are you ready for your sandwiches?” Claudia asked.

“Definitely! Are you hungry, Mitch?”

“Starving,” he said, digging their lunches from the cooler. He sat with his back against the vehicle, while Anna knelt and used the top of the cooler as a table.

“Are we done for the day?” Claudia asked.

Anna shook her head. “We want to do a couple more runs. Then I can get better so we can build a jump next time.”

“A jump?”

“Mitch says we can make one a little smaller. Then I can work up to the big one.”

He tuned out the ensuing argument, finishing his food and washing it down with an icy Coke. How long could they safely stay there? Two weeks seemed reasonable. Then maybe they could move on to Walvis Bay for another couple before leaving the country for… Where?

Anna wolfed down the rest of her sandwich and then guzzled the bottle of water her mother had given her. After that, she was immediately back on her feet. “You ready, Mitch?”

“I’ve got to make a quick phone call. Why don’t you start up by yourself. I’ll catch up.”

“By herself?” Claudia said skeptically.

He pointed to the empty, wide-open dune. “It’s not like she can get lost.”

Anna inched toward her board.

“Okay, but go slow,” Claudia said. “It’s getting really hot.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty hard. You know, ’cause the sand’s soft and you, like, slide back every step. You know what would make it easier, Mitch?”

He glanced up from the phone in his hand. “What?”

They answered in unison. “Elephants.”

Rapp grimaced. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

The consensus seemed to be that they would not.

Claudia watched her trudge back toward the slope, waiting to speak until she was out of earshot. “I’m nervous.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“Not about her. About your call. At some point, Anna’s going to have to learn more than how to sandboard and why zebras have stripes. That’s going to mean figuring out homeschooling. And we’re going to have to find a way for her to be around kids her age. She can’t just socialize with us.”

“The first one’s doable, but you know as well as I do that the second one’s not. She’s a smart kid, but we can’t expect her to keep quiet about her past. And the stories she’d tell are going to attract attention.”

“I know,” Claudia said miserably. “It’s just the uncertainty. Is this going to be a few months? A few years? Our whole lives? If I just had some sense, I could make peace with it.”