you talk to tonight. Agreed?”
Will recoiled. “I can’t agree to that.”
Jonathan made a show of pressing the transmit button. “Rescue Flight, Scorpion.”
He’d unplugged his earphone jack, so Will could plainly hear the pilot reply, “Go ahead, Scorpion.”
Jonathan looked to Will. “It begins here or it ends here. It’s your call, and you don’t get a second chance. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
You could almost see the thoughts racing through the reporter’s head. “Just the names?”
“Scorpion, do you have traffic for Rescue Flight?”
Jonathan keyed the mike. “Stand by.” To Will: “All parties remain anonymous. We’ll be a whole nest of Deep Throats. No names, no personal descriptions, nothing to make us identifiable to the outside world. And I warn you not to make a promise that you’re not willing to keep.”
Will stood there and sort of vibrated as he thought through his options. “Who’s she?” he asked, nodding at Gail.
“I got people waiting, Will. You either want this story or you don’t.”
Clearly against his better judgment, Will let go with a giant sigh. “Fine,” he blurted. “I agree.”
Jonathan scanned for signs of insincerity, then keyed his mike again. “Rescue Flight, disregard. Have a good night.” He flashed a smile to Will. “Where were we?”
“You were about to tell me what the hell is going on.”
“First tell me what you already know.”
Gail wandered up to stand next to Jonathan. She nodded in response to his glance to tell him that she was on the road to okay.
Will pulled a penlight out of his pocket and clicked it on, casting a beam into the night. It settled on a corpse. “Jesus,” he whispered. He brought his gaze around to Jonathan. “I got a call at home a few hours ago telling me to meet a driver at the front door if I wanted to snag the story that would make me famous. I had two minutes to make my decision. They said it had something to do with Tibor, so I threw on some clothes, and a guy who didn’t say much took me to a farmhouse in Middleburg, where that big chopper was waiting for me. For a while, I thought I’d walked into my own kidnapping.
“We were airborne for a half hour or so, and then we set down in another field, and just waited for instructions. I still don’t really know much about what’s going on, but they kept telling me that if I hung in there, I was going to get a hell of a story, and that no one else was going to have any piece of it.” He paused, as if pondering whether there was anymore to tell. “Is that enough?”
Jonathan nodded. “I think that sounds about right.” He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the coming monologue. “See, we had us a bit of a war out here tonight…”
Once he got started, it didn’t really take all that long to tell the story-at least the essence of it; the details could come later, in future interviews.
Will Joyce listened, checking his recorder was Will Joyce. Gail came next, Boxers last.
“And I need my radio back, please.” He knew better than to ask for his weapons.
Irene nodded, and his radio reappeared. He reconnected himself to the earpiece.
“Leave us alone,” Irene said to the nearby agents. “Suit back up to Level A and inventory that shed.”
The agent hesitated again. “Ma’am, I don’t think-” Then he saw the glare. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s walk,” Irene said, heading down the hill toward Jonathan’s original ambush site.
“You come, too,” Jonathan said to Will. That Gail would follow was a given. To Irene, he said, “So, how does it feel being back in the thick of things again?”
She switched on a flashlight to illuminate a path. “It’s been a while. I like it, but it makes the field agents nervous as hell.”
“Nobody wants the director to get in trouble on their watch,” Jonathan said.
After thirty yards or so, Irene brought them to a stop and lowered her voice. “Okay, let’s hear it. I know you have a plan, and that it’s carefully choreographed, so let’s just get to it.”
Jonathan had always appreciated Irene’s bluntness. He turned to Will. “Remember your promise,” he reminded. Then to Irene, he said, “Step one. You make sure that the Hughes family is left alone, and that the pursuit to find them guilty of murdering anyone ends now.”
Irene shook her head. “I don’t think you-”
“I’m not done,” Jonathan said. “Step two. You prepare whoever you need to prepare for the fact that my friend Will here is going to write a blockbuster story about Carlyle Industries and their secret contract to produce bioweapons in violation of God only knows how many treaties. Once that secret is out, there’ll be no need to kill people to keep it.”
Irene glared at the reporter, who seemed newly energized as he hovered a microtape recorder in the air between them. “Anything else?” she snarled.
“Oh, come on, Irene, you know you find this to be as much a relief as a pain in the ass. The truth will set you free.”
“Anything else,” she repeated, this time more as a statement than a question.
“Two more,” Jonathan said. “First, you make known to the world what the Green Brigade was up to, and how it was transformed by Ivan Patrick from a well-meaning environmental group into the self-serving paramilitary wolf pack that it is today. If you dig a little, I guarantee that you’ll find a history of illegal weapons sales, and I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that that very kind of sale was what ultimately created this mess.”
“Which leaves one more,” Irene prompted.
“Yes, it does. I want you to treat my friend Will here as the designated historian for all that transpires from this. Let’s see about getting him a Pulitzer.”
Hands on both hips, she shook her head in disbelief. “All this havoc, all these dead bodies, and no accountability. That’s what I’m hearing.”
Jonathan chuckled, knowing he’d won. “Your glass is always half-empty, Irene.”
Irene appealed to Gail. “And what about you Sheriff Law and Order? What are you going to do?”
Ga driven earlier in the day. At this altitude, they could see several miles of road length, so it couldn’t possibly take long.
But as Jonathan watched over Boxer’s shoulder, the screen betrayed nothing.
“Wait a second,” Jonathan declared, landing a hand heavily on Boxers’ shoulder. “Go back.”
“To where?”
“To the cabin. To the trail at the top of the ridge. The Hugheses said they didn’t know where it went. Maybe Ivan does.”
“Or maybe he sees this as the perfect time to find out,” Gail added.
Boxers didn’t bother to reply. He kicked in a load of tail rotor and spun them around like a top to head in the other direction, damn near throwing them all to the deck. As the passengers yelled their protests, the pilot laughed. “God, I love my job,” he said.
They rose to 500 feet as the nose dipped and the rotors pulled them faster and faster back toward the cabin. As the house and the barn passed below them, Jonathan saw the scope of the destruction. The blood had cooled enough to become less visible, but the bodies had not. He fought the urge to count them. That seemed somehow wrong.
Soon the tableau of destruction was gone, and they were again cruising over the unending expanse of trees.
Jonathan and Boxers saw the truck at the same instant, and they pointed together. “There,” they said in unison. The truck was driving faster than was prudent, given the road conditions. Even from this altitude, with very little magnification of the image, they could see the SUV barely hanging on as roots and potholes bounced it around.
“Any ideas how to stop it?” Boxers asked. “Looks like he’s got a real road to connect to in about three miles. At his speed, that gives us about seven minutes to think of something.”
Jonathan and Gail looked at each other. Her shrug matched his absence of ideas.
He turned to survey the equipment they had available. The seat and deck of the Blackhawk were strewn with the flotsam of the raid on the cabin. He saw helmets and a few extra Kevlar vests. Like good soldiers in any outfit, of course, no one had left a weapon behind; but at least they had Captain Courageous’s Glock. It was something.
