'Good night,' Friday said. He felt the flush of embarrassment and a trace of doubt as he shook Nazir's hand.
The Black Cat Commando turned then and walked into the night, trailing a thick cloud of smoke behind him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
Alconbury, Great Britain Wednesday, 7:10 p. m.
Mike Rodgers was looking at files Bob Herbert had emailed from Op-Center when the giant C-130 touched down at the Royal Air Force station in Alconbury. Though the slow takeoff had seemed like a strain for the aircraft, the landing was barely noticeable. Maybe that was because the plane shook so much during the trans-Atlantic flight that Rodgers did not realize it had finally touched down. He was very much aware when the engines shut down, however. The plane stopped vibrating but he did not. After over six hours he felt as if there were a small electric current running through his body from sole to scalp. He knew from experience that it would take about thirty to forty minutes for that sensation to stop. Then, of course. Striker would be air bound again and it would start once more. Somewhere in that process was a microcosm of the ups and downs and sensations of life but he was too distracted to look for it right now.
The team left the aircraft but only to stand on the field.
They would only be on the ground for an hour or so, long enough for a waiting pair of hydraulic forklifts to off load several crates of spare parts.
The officers of the R. A.F referred to Alconbury as the Really American Field. Since the end of World War II it had effectively been a hub of operations for the United States Air Force in Europe. It was a large, modern field with state-of the-art communications, repair, and munitions facilities.
Since every base, every field, every barracks needed a nickname, the Americans here had nicknamed the field
'Al.'
Many of the American servicemen went around humming the Paul Simon song, 'You Can Call Me Al.' The Brits did not really get the eternal American fascination with sobriquets for everything from presidents to spacecraft to their weapons--Honest Abe, Friendship 7, Old Betsy. But Mike Rodgers understood. It made formidable tools and institutions seem a little less intimidating. And it implied a familiarity, a kinship with the thing or place, a sense that man, object, and organization were somehow equal.
It was very American.
The members of Striker walked down the cargo bay ramp and onto the tarmac. Two of the Strikers lit cigarettes and stood together near an eyewash stand. Other soldiers stretched, did jumping jacks, or just lay back on the field and looked up at the blue-black sky. Brett August used one of the field phones standing off by the warehouse. He was probably calling one of the girls he had in this port. Perhaps he would bail on the team and visit her on the way back. The colonel certainly had the personal time coming to him. They all did.
Mike Rodgers wandered off by himself. He headed toward the nose of the aircraft. The wind rushed across the wide open field, carrying with it the familiar air base smells of diesel fuel, oil lubricant, and rubber from the friction- heated tires of aircraft. As the sun went down and the tarmac cooled and shrunk, the smells seemed to be squeezed out of them.
Whatever airfield in the world Rodgers visited, those three smells were always present. They made him feel at home.
The cool air and very solid ground felt great.
Rodgers had his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the oilstained field.
He was thinking about the data Friday had sent to the NSA and the files Herbert had forwarded to him. He was also thinking about Ron Friday himself. And the many Ron Fridays he had worked with over the decades.
Rodgers always had a problem with missions that involved other governments and other agencies within his own government.
Information given to a field operative was not always informative.
Sometimes it was wrong, by either accident, inefficiency, or design.
The only way to find out for sure was to be on the mission. By then, bad information or wrong conclusions drawn from incomplete data could kill you.
The other problem Rodgers had with multigroup missions was authority and accountability. Operatives were like kids in more ways than one.
They enjoyed playing outside and they resented having to listen to someone else's 'parent.'
Ron Friday might be a good and responsible man. But first and foremost, Friday had to answer to the head of the NSA and probably to his sponsor in the Indian government. Satisfying their needs, achieving their targets, took priority over helping Rodgers, the mission leader. Ideally, their goals would be exactly the same and there would be no conflict.
But that rarely happened. And sometimes it was worse than that.
Sometimes operatives or officers were attached to a mission to make sure that it failed, to embarrass a group that might be fighting for the attention of the president or the favor of a world leader or even the same limited funding.
In a situation where a team was already surrounded by adversaries Mike Rodgers did not want to feel as if he could not count on his own personnel. Especially when the lives of the Strikers were at risk.
Of course, Rodgers had never met Ron Friday or the Black Cat officer they were linking up with. Captain Nazir. He would do what he always did: size them up when he met them. He could usually tell right away whether he could or could not trust people.
Right now, though, the thing that troubled Rodgers most had nothing to do with Friday. It had to do with the
