Cyclops One

“We have much to discuss,” he told her.

Her mouth moved but she said nothing. Belatedly, Luksha realized she was trying to spit at him.

He raised his hand to slap her but started laughing at her instead.

* * *

Howe finally found the right frequency for the SF ground team as he swept across the northern side of the atoll, his speed held back so he could get a good view of what was going on. A cloud of smoke and dust separated the main groups of fighters, or at least seemed to; though he was low and slow, it was still difficult to pick out exactly what was going on. There was movement near some rocks at the base of the island; as he moved past he caught sight of a boat.

“I think you have a group escaping in a boat,” he told the ground team as he banked around.

If there was an acknowledgment, it got lost in the general scramble of things as Howe positioned for another pass. The overlong mission had heaped fatigue on the pilot’s head like steel weights; his eyes burned and even his most mechanical, practiced motion felt awkward.

“Two boats — three. Coming out of the island. There’s another there,” he told the commandos as he started toward the island.

He had his gun selected, and the cue lined up in the HUD.

“They have one of the people from the plane, a woman,” said the SF commander, taking over from the communications man.

A woman?

Megan.

The realization froze him, as if he’d been hit by a taser. His hands moved; he flew the plane past the island and into a bank.

I can kill her.

I will kill her.

* * *

Fisher scrambled to the edge of the rocks and grabbed the line. It wasn’t that far down but he didn’t want to risk jumping into the water, since he couldn’t tell how shallow it was.

He also couldn’t swim.

“Where the hell are you going?” yelled Tyler, running to catch up.

“They have my suspect,” the FBI agent told him. He pulled off his jacket and wrapped the cloth around the line to keep his hands from burning as he went down. “I want her back.”

“We’ll never catch up.”

“We will if we don’t overload the boat.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“I’ve heard that,” said Fisher, stepping off the rocks.

By the time Fisher got the boat started, Tyler and one of the SF men had made it down as well. Three others stood at the top of the rocks.

“This is all we’re taking!” yelled Fisher. “Throw down the megaphone.”

“What?” shouted one of the men.

“The loudspeaker!”

Fisher grabbed at the megaphone as it flew through the air. He deflected it into the water but managed to grab it before it sank, just as the boat started in pursuit of the Russians. He dumped the water out and tested it. The squawk seemed a little off-key but it was working.

“You really think they’re going to stop?” Tyler asked him.

“If we threaten them, they may throw her overboard.”

“How are we going to threaten them?”

Fisher thumbed toward the sky.

“We don’t have a radio with us to order in a strike,” said Tyler.

“You gonna tell them?”

Tyler nodded. “We’ll take this as far as we can,” he said. “But we’re not going to get ourselves killed.”

“Sounds like a plan. Want a cigarette?”

* * *

“The Russians are not important,” Gorman told Howe. “We have the laser. We have Navy assets en route and we’re landing a fresh team on the island. You can let them go.”

“Tyler and Fisher are in pursuit,” Howe told her, relaying the word the SF people had sent. “The Russians have at least one of the aircraft’s crew members.”

“He’s not important,” said Gorman. “We’re trying to reach Fisher and tell him to turn back. Leave them.”

Howe’s radar indicated that there was a helicopter approaching from the northwest. The F-15s had also spotted it; they kicked toward it to check it out.

He could shoot up the boats, no problem. At this point no one was going to question what happened. The whole scrum was too confusing, too fluid.

No one would criticize him for killing a traitor. On the contrary, Fisher and the others were trying to stop her. He was completely justified.

The boat sat in the center of the target box, held there by the computer. He could kill the bitch, have revenge or whatever it was — vent his rage.

She had betrayed his country and everything he believed in.

She had betrayed him.

He pushed his side stick, closing in.

He really did love her, in ways he hadn’t understood at the time. And now it was gone. It had shot past him, the way a meteor traveled once through the atmosphere and burned up.

His finger rested lightly on the gun trigger. But something held it back.

Love? Duty? Fear?

He couldn’t sort it out. He had loved her, and then hated her, and now, as his plane rushed toward the earth, he decided — unconsciously, without words, with thoughts that were fragmentary and fleeting — that it was what he had thought that mattered, and what he did now that was the important thing. Not Megan: She had made her choice; she was gone. Tearing up the boat, killing her — that wasn’t where his duty lie. Revenge, anger — they weren’t who he was or who he would be.

Howe banked the plane sharply in front of the escaping Russian boats. He was less than fifty feet from the surface of the water.

“I have a fuel emergency,” he told the SF unit on the island. “I need to land.”

* * *

Megan watched the F/A-22V as it flew across their path, so low it almost touched the waves. It was Howe — it had to be.

The others ducked as the plane flew by. She stood and stared at him, trembling with sadness.

She could easily throw herself out of the boat; they were concerned with their pursuers, busy trying to reach their helicopter, lining up their weapons on their enemies. She could go over the side, escape.

But there was no real escape for her; she’d known that when she’d agreed with Bonham’s original plan, as safe as he had made it sound. There were things worth dying for, and she remained convinced she’d chosen correctly.

The question she couldn’t answer was whether there were things worth giving up love for. She’d made the decision before she met Tom Howe, when she had the luxury of not facing the question. Her fate was set with her first decision, with the stories her uncle had told; her beginning became her end.

It tugged at her, though. If duty was more important than love, why did every part of her inside feel choked?

Eliot had said something in “East Coker,” his meditation on religion, about your beginning being your end, fate set as duty and meditation. It had been his answer for The Waste Land.

Not her answer, but a comfort nonetheless.