The sharp ping of a submarine sonar echoed in the darkness.

“Jesus!”

Izz could see her confused, sleepy face in the sudden glow from his phone. He was surprised at how gorgeous she was even when angry. Maybe even more gorgeous because she was angry.

He grinned an apology and reached over her. “Sorry.” He kissed her forehead, then winced as the phone pinged again.

“That’s really fucking loud,” she groaned and rolled away from him.

Izz snapped the mute button and held the phone out where he could read it: [E – Global – TS0 – NTBO]

“Seriously,” she growled, tugging at the covers. “Why does it have to be so loud?”

He held his teeth against each other for a moment, then said: “It’s on mute now, baby.” He read the code again. [E – Global – TS0 – NTBO]

Echo team: Only one team involved, which means it’s a ‘close hold’ mission.

Global reach: Extraction point is far away from where the agents being tapped are located.

“Who is it?” She turned back to him and rose on one elbow. “Why do you use that annoying sound?”

“It’s work,” he said, trying hard to smile. “I need it to get my attention.”

She breathed hard, but her mouth curled in a way that told him she respected that.

“I’m probably going to have to go.”

Her eyelids dropped, and not from sleepiness. Izz turned the phone so she could read the message. No harm in that, since it was in code.

“What the hell does all that mean?”

He scooted away from her, swung his feet around to the floor. “It means I’m going to have to go. Which means…” His feet found his jeans, slipped into them.

“Which means I’m going to have to go?” She sighed, dropped her shoulder hard back into the bed, yanked the covers again. “Izzy. It’s not like I’m going to ransack your place.”

He stood, pulled the pants up to his waist, reconfirmed the message. [TS0]

Time Scale Zero: Get your ass to a secure site immediately for prebriefing, because the mission starts now.

“No offense, beautiful, but I have a carton of milk in my fridge I’ve known longer than you.” He could hear her spin, but he was busy looking for a shirt in the near-dark.

“Fuck you.”

“Done and done.” He turned with a smile, trying hard to be charming. The shadows were too deep to gauge its effectiveness. “I can drop you off if you’re up for a bike ride. You live on the East Side?”

She sat up and the covers fell away, reminding Izz why she was there. He dragged the shirt down over his face and, when he saw her again, arms were crossed  over breasts. He couldn’t tell if she were being stubborn, shy, or just cold.

He shrugged, scooped up his socks, leaned against the dresser to put them on. Her arms sagged, and her head gave a little shake, dark reddish curls slipping over one shoulder. She looked confused.

“Oh. You mean a motorbike?” She was suddenly wide-eyed.

Don’t make her feel stupid, he told himself, It will just make this process harder.

“I’ve got an extra helmet, and an extra jacket if you need one. It’s pretty warm outside, though. Nice night for a little ride.”

She threw the covers off and started gathering her clothes from the floor, looking at him once as if trying to figure out whether to be angry. Tugging his boots on, Izz thought about the last item of the code.

NTBO: Not To Be Opened. Whatever they were going to extract was all wrapped up and hush-hush.

~

Izz slowed to a stop in front of the apartment complex and turned his head to talk. He purposefully hadn’t told her about the helmet com system, and had left it off.

“This the place?”

She peeled her fingernails out of his jacket. He could feel her breathing hard against his back. “Jesus! Did you have to go so fast?”

I’ll take that as a Yes. “Sorry, love. I really need to get to work.”

She set one shaky leg on the sidewalk. He held his arm out for her to lean on, but she spun around. Clearly, not used to riding. “Are you a doctor or something?” She pulled the helmet loose, shook her hair.

“Yes,” he grinned tightly, “but not a medical doctor. Archaeology. I work for a … private acquisition firm.”

She dropped her eyes at that, in a way he was quickly learning to read. She liked that he was a nerd. He accepted the helmet from her, re-snapped the strap, and slipped it over the seat back. He heard the zipper of the jacket he had lent her.

I might want to revisit this. He leaned, grabbed the sides of the jacket in both hands, and tugged. She stumbled forward, as if reluctantly. He grinned on one side and squeezed the black-and-gray leather together over her breasts.

“Next time, I can pick you up. So you keep the jacket, okay?” She grinned, so he zipped it up, but only halfway.

She tapped the side of her head, then pointed at him. “A carton of milk is worth more than a condo, but less than a jacket.”

He laughed. I deserved that. And, she’s really clever.

“By the time I get back, the milk will have gone bad.”

“Maybe I will too,” she said with a one-sided smile.

“One can hope,” he paused dramatically, “that you won’t.” She laughed at that. He revved the bike.

“No kiss?”

He leaned in, kissed her the way they’d kissed outside the dance club where they’d met. Her lips were intoxicatingly full. Izz wondered momentarily if there were some Celtic propensity for thick, pink lips.

He pulled away, reluctantly. She whimpered.

“It’s urgent.” He brushed a curl from her cheek and she smiled. That was Goodbye.

Izz eased away from the sidewalk, to spare her the first hard burst of exhaust, then gunned it toward the Trust’s airfield.

~

Her name was Shivaun Collins. She had shown him her ID at the club. He was careful about that. She looked young.

He drove the bike along the winding roads of the Virginia Tidewater, past woods and tobacco fields and crumbling houses. An old landscape. Full of archaeology. The Trust’s facility was a half hour down the road, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay on the site of a Civil War fort.

It had been dry, the road safe despite fallen autumn leaves. Those could be treacherous when wet. Izz gunned the bike and took the curves like a bird reeling in turning winds. He wanted to get to his mission, return to his real life, a life of purpose.

Her name was Shivaun Collins. The given name a variant of the classic Irish name Siobhan. Surname also Irish. Given her names, her red hair, her pale skin, she was likely very purely Irish. He’d love to dig into her DNA. He’d bet on 90 percent purely Irish.

Izz was not purely anything. He’d dug into his DNA, and his genealogy.

A gas station appeared in the bike’s headlight. He checked the fuel gauge. It was good. He raced past the station into the dark road beyond.

Shivaun had been intrigued that he had a doctorate in archaeology. She was smart, too smart to be slumming around a small town club. Was she a student at the local college? He hadn’t bothered to ask. He’d been a poor digger.

Her name was Shivaun Collins. She was beautiful. What else did he know? She was charming and clever. She was observant. She was different. And, she was almost certainly very purely Irish. He had no Irish in his background.

The road grew straight between regular rows of trees planted to replace old growth cut down for who-knew-what purpose. More mysterious history.

Izz knew from his studies that the Irish had not been well-thought-of among the English colonialists through whose lands Izz pushed his bike. The Irish had been a conquered, barbarian people, driven to the colonies by need. Stubbornly Catholic, ruggedly defiant, often legally constrained by indenture. Little more than slaves.

He saw the waters of the York River on his right. He was close. The Trust’s airfield and its crumbling Civil War fort would be a few turns ahead.

Izz was not purely anything. That, he’d learned that from digging, as an archaeologist, a genealogist. His Palestinian father had been Qurayshi, a descendant of the clan of Mohammad. But also descended from Armenian Christians who had settled in the Holy Land. His mother was a Chinese aid worker in the Palestinian territories, but also the daughter of a Muslim African father whose homeland was an earlier target of Chinese political interest. Which made Izz a quarter-blood of four legacies.

So many ancestors, so many family lines to account for. Was he an Arab, Armenian, Swahili, or Chinese? His maternal grandmother’s line traced back to Confucius, Kong Fuzi himself, twenty-five hundred years in the past. Izz was truly as global as the mission that called him.

He felt this weight of legacy as he turned the bike into the Trust’s airfield. Her name was Shivaun Collins. His own ancestry was a chaos of human legacy. And his mission? Unknown.