Rogue Forces

weapons.”

“What kind of weapons?”

“How the hell should I know, Thompson? You have the manifest—if it’s not on there, it’s contraband. Confiscate it.”

“Isn’t anyone around here going to support McLanahan at all? The guy’s just trying to do his job. He saved our bacon during the attack and probably saved the vice president’s, too.”

“McLanahan will be okay, Thompson, don’t worry about him,” Wilhelm said. “Besides, we have our orders, and they come from the very top. I’m not going to let guys like McLanahan ruin my career. Send the recordings to division as soon as possible.”

“Hiya, big guy.”

“Dad?” There was nothing like hearing your son’s voice saying “Dad,” Patrick thought; it always gave him a thrill. “Where are you?”

“Still in Iraq.”

“Oh.” Bradley James McLanahan, who had just turned thirteen, was still a kid of few words—like his old man, Patrick surmised. “When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think it’ll be soon. Listen, I know you’re getting ready for school, but I wanted to…”

“Can I try out for football this year?”

“Football?” That was a new one, Patrick thought. Bradley played soccer and tennis and could water-ski, but he never showed any interest in contact sports before. “Sure, if you want to, as long as your grades are good.”

“Then you got to tell Aunt Mary. She says I’ll get hurt and turn my brain to mush.”

“Not if you listen to the coach.”

“Will you tell her? Here.” Before Patrick could say anything, his youngest sister, Mary, was on the line. “Patrick?”

“Hi, Mare. How are—”

“You are not going to allow him to play football, are you?”

“Why not, if he wants to and his grades—”

“His grades are okay, but they could be better if only he would stop daydreaming, journaling, and doodling about spaceships and fighter jets,” his sister said. Mary was a pharmacist, with grades good enough for medical school if she had the time between raising Bradley and two of her own. “Have you ever seen a middle school football game?”

“No.”

“Those players get bigger and bigger every year, their hormones are raging, and they have more physical strength than the skills to control themselves. Bradley’s more of a bookworm than a jock. Besides, he just wants to do it because his friends are going to try out and some girls in his class are going to try out for cheerleading.”

“That always motivated me. Listen, I need to speak with—”

“Oh, I got an e-mail this morning saying that the automatic deposit from your company from last week was reversed. No explanation. I’m overdrawn, Patrick. It’ll cost me fifty dollars plus any other penalties from whoever I wrote checks to. Can you get that straightened out so I don’t get buried in bounced check fees?”

“It’s a new company, Mary, and the payroll might be screwed up.” His entire paycheck from Scion went to his sister to help with expenses; his entire Air Force retirement went into a trust for Bradley. His sister didn’t like that, because paychecks from Scion were irregular depending on if the company had a contract and had any money to pay upper management, but Patrick had insisted. That made Bradley more of an outsider than he wanted, but it was the best arrangement he could make right now. “Give it a week or so, okay? I’ll get all the charges reversed.”

“Are you coming home soon? Steve wants to go to a rodeo in Casper next month.”

And the trailer they brought on such trips didn’t have room for a third kid, Patrick thought. “Yes, I think I’ll be home by then, and you guys can take off. Let me speak with…”

“He’s running to catch the bus. He’s always drawing or doodling or writing in his notebook and I have to tell him a dozen times to get moving or he’ll miss the bus. Everything okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay, but there was a little incident lately, and I wanted to tell Bradley and you about it before —”

“Good. There’s so much stuff on the news about Iraq and Turkey lately, and we think of you every night when we watch the news.”

“I think of you guys all the time. But early this morning—”

“That’s nice. I gotta run, Patrick. I’m interviewing some pharmacy techs this morning. Steve and the kids send their love. Bye bye.” And the connection was broken.

That’s how most of their phone conversations went, he thought as he hung up his phone: a very brief conversation with his son, a complaint and request from his sister or brother-in-law—usually a request for family time that didn’t involve Bradley—followed by a harried good-bye. Well, what did he expect? He had a young teenage son who had been either dragged around the country or left with relatives most of his life; he didn’t get to see his dad too much, only read about him in newspapers or on TV, usually involving harsh criticism about some questionable involvement in some near-catastrophic global calamity. His relatives certainly cared about Bradley, but they had their own lives to live and they frequently saw Patrick’s escapades as a means of running away from mundane family life back home.

He made some calls to Scion’s headquarters back in Las Vegas about his paycheck; they assured him the “check was in the mail” even though it was always transferred electronically. Then he was patched through to Kevin Martindale, former president of the United States and silent owner of Scion Aviation International.

“Hello, Patrick. Heard you had a tough day.”

“Rough as sandpaper, sir,” Patrick said. One of the code words that employees of Scion Aviation International were taught to use was sandpaper—if used in any conversation or correspondence, it meant they were under duress or being bugged.

“Got it. Sorry about the contract being canceled. I’ll try to work things from here, but it doesn’t look good.”

“Do you know if I’m going to be arrested?”

“Sometime tomorrow or the next day. I haven’t seen the warrant, but I expect it’ll be served soon.”

“The Turks were jamming the hell out of us. We had to shut down the plane.”

“Don’t worry about it, just do what they tell you to do and keep silent. You should send your freighter aircraft elsewhere. It won’t be safe in Iraq.”

“We’ll need it to start packing up.”

“It’s risky. The Turks will want it. They may try to grab it when it flies through their airspace.”

“I know.”

“It’s your call. Anything else for me?”

“Some snafu with the paycheck. A deposit that was made days ago was yanked out.”

“No snafu,” Martindale said. “Our accounts have been frozen solid. I’m working that, too, but now we’ve got multiple departments and the White House in on this, so it’ll take longer. Try not to worry about it.”

“Yes, sir.” And the call abruptly terminated. Well, sleep was going to be impossible now, Patrick thought, so he powered up his laptop. Just as he started to surf the Internet and read the news from the outside world, he picked up a call. “McLanahan here.”

“Patrick? I just heard! Thank God you’re okay.”

It sounded like his sister Mary calling him back, but he wasn’t sure. “Mary?”

“This is Gia Cazzotto, you ninny—I mean, ninny sir,” the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Cazzotto, the commander of the Seventh Air Expeditionary Squadron, said, laughing. “Who’s Mary? Some young engineer in a lab coat and big glasses who transforms herself into Marilyn Monroe when she pulls a pin out of her hair?”

Patrick’s laugh was a lot more strained and high-pitched than he wanted. “No, no, no,” he said, confused that his mouth had suddenly turned so dry. “Mary is my sister. Lives in Sacramento. I just spoke with her. Thought it was her calling back.”

“Sure, sure, sure, I’ve heard that one before,” Gia said. “Listen, Patrick, I just heard about the attack on