Palisade nodded crisply.
To Regan's surprise, he followed her to the couch, reaching for the now cold coffee he'd provided and dumping it in the lined trash bin as she donned her camouflaged jacket.
Just as well. She no longer needed caffeine. She had something far stronger coursing through her veins, snapping every cell in her body to life for the first time in over a week. Adrenaline.
She was collecting her beret when Palisade cleared his throat. Spoke. Softly, hoarsely. "He's fine."
She froze. There was no doubt who he was.
John.
A hundred desperate questions burned through the adrenaline, each clamoring to commandeer her voice box first.
She slapped every one of them back, offering two quiet but heartfelt words in their stead. "Thank you."
Palisade nodded.
Even if the general had wanted to share the details of John's current, classified mission, he couldn't. Frankly, it was astounding that he'd offered as much as he had. And she refused to insult the both of them—and John—by pressing for more.
A phone rang. The general's.
He retrieved the phone from his pocket and glanced at the number on the screen. The area code was 202. Washington, DC. "Sorry, Chief. I need to take this—"
"Understood."
"—and you need to take these. Stuff 'em in your duffel. They might come in handy." His phone rang a second time as she stared at the slender, palm-sized box he'd tucked in her hand, bemused.
Dramamine?
Granted, she had a long flight ahead, perhaps two or three. But she didn't get airsick, and since they'd flown together before, Palisade knew that.
Just where the devil was Durrani being held anyway?
Unfortunately, it was too late to ask. The general had already pressed his phone to his ear and turned away.
She'd been dismissed.
3
She should've swallowed one of those pills.
Regan stared across the CH-53E's cavernous belly, zeroing in on the rectangular window opposite her flip-down seat. She searched in vain for a glimpse of land amid the distant, hazy horizon as each pulse of the helicopter's yawning seventy-nine-foot main rotor reverberated through her body. For the moment, her stomach was holding its own against the thunderous rhythm, despite the coffee and oversized chocolate muffin she'd consumed prior to liftoff.
But for how long would it last?
Though the muffin had served as her first meal since she'd left the States, consuming anything at all might have been a mistake—along with her decision to not interrupt General Palisade's phone call long enough to ascertain her present location.
The Arabian Sea.
Given the view through every one of the Super Stallion's windows, it contained a hell of a lot more water than she'd imagined. And for some sadistic reason, the pilot had been all but skimming the surface of said water for over an hour.
Shouldn't they have arrived by now?
Regan peeled back the grosgrain cover of her combat watch and noted the time. 0734. Seventeen hours in the air and a nine-hour time-zone change had added an entire day to her life. Gil would be thrilled. If only because during the initial leg of her flight, the C-141's droning engines had piggybacked onto the knowledge that she now had a case she needed to be rested for. The combination had finally seduced her into nodding off somewhere over the Atlantic. By the time she'd woken, they'd landed in Ramstein, Germany.
To her surprise, she'd logged another marathon, near-dreamless nap during the next leg to Al Dhafra Airbase in the United Arab Emirates.
There'd been no sleep on this final bird, however, dreamless or otherwise. Worse, the tang of the sea air laden with the stench of jet fuel had finally gotten to her. The meager contents of her belly had begun to slosh.
Regan turned toward the Super Stallion's cockpit and caught the crew chief's knowing grin. He tapped the dive watch strapped to his wrist and flashed a trio of fingers.
Three more minutes.
Hallelujah.
God willing, the churning in her belly would ease upon landing—though not likely. According to the classified orders she'd been handed after touching down in Al Dhafra, as well as the fascinating footnote from the crew chief still beaming at her, she was headed not for dry land, but the constant pitching and rolling of roughly twenty thousand tons of Navy steel.
The USS Griffith.
She'd worked with the Fleet before, had even been aboard a warship for almost a week to pursue a joint Army/Navy lead in an investigation a few years back, but this would be her first case aboard a ship currently at sea.
Curiosity clamored in from several fronts, the most pressing of which concerned Nabil Durrani and his hidden agenda. Because he did possess one. Even if she hadn't spent the better part of a night ferreting out the details of the twisted doctor's life, she'd know there was more to their pending confrontation than a congenial chat with his final, intended victim.
If she still even held that dubious honor.
After her conversation with General Palisade concerning Durrani's cohort, Tamir Hachemi, Regan was beginning to doubt her exalted status.
Why else involve the anomalous, murdered mystery woman?
Religious significance her ass. Durrani hadn't entered the terror game because of Allah. Allah was simply his excuse.
The proof was in the man himself.
Every action Dr. Durrani had taken over the past few months had been meticulously scripted, right down to the bloodstained shawl he'd used to cover Jameelah Khan's—and only Jameelah Khan's—face and torso. It was that act that had caused Regan to initially suspect that Captain McCord had simply murdered the other six women in the cave to throw investigators off track, only to display remorse—albeit unconsciously—at the last moment. Instead, it turned out Durrani had planted the shawl in an admittedly ingenious attempt to effect the ultimate misdirection.
A man that clever didn't toss in an extra victim to equate for the inclusion of twins, no matter when he'd learned
