“Just about. There are a couple places down the road.”
They found the motel the waitress recommended in the center of a village two miles away. It wasn’t hard: A large 1950s era farm tractor stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, as much a landmark as mascot.
During the Soviet years the town factory had churned out tractors, as many as five hundred a week. The plant had closed soon after independence, and the old buildings now housed a variety of small businesses, including two that repaired and rebuilt the tractors originally produced there.
The town had a population of about five thousand, most living in the village center. Housing projects from the 1970s and early 1980s, their yellow bricks weathered to a dull brown, crowded around somewhat newer structures, brightly painted, which sat around the edges of the small business district. Main Street was the local highway; a pair of blinking lights slowed cars down as they approached, though crossing from one side to the other could be a dangerous undertaking.
The motel was wedged in beside a small grocery store and one of the factory buildings. Two stories tall, it was a narrow box of rooms with a balcony on the left. It presented its narrow side to the street, running back fifteen rooms deep toward a large fence that bordered a set of warehouses.
The clerk took little interest in them once Nuri proffered his credit card. They got three adjoining rooms on the second floor toward the rear. They checked them out, planted some video sensors around the rooms and the motel to keep guard, then drew lots to see who had the first watch.
Flash lost. He set up the laptop in his room, watching the farm via a satellite feed, while Nuri and Danny went off to bed.
Nuri felt as if he had only just drifted off when his satellite phone began ringing. He jerked upright in bed, dazed, before grabbing the phone.
“Yeah?” he said, fumbling for the Talk button. “Yeah?”
“This is Reid. Can you talk?”
“Uh, yeah.” He pushed upright in the bed and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past one. He’d had two hours of sleep.
“Are you awake?”
“I just — we’re trying to nap a little.”
“Where’s Danny?”
“He’s sleeping, too.”
“Get him, please. Contact me through MY-PID.”
Danny didn’t particularly like the idea of cooperating with the Moldovan government, but he had no say in it. Reid made it clear that the decision had been made by the President.
“It’s window dressing only,” said Reid. “One of our people in Chisinau is already working on the arrangements. If the Moldovans decide to send someone along on the raid, then you simply arrange for them to show up after the area is secure.”
“What if the Moldovans tip the Wolves off?” asked Nuri.
“That should not be a problem as long as the operation is addressed as a drug one,” said Reid. “And by simply limiting the details they have, there should be no chance of that kind of double cross. Besides, it’s doubtful the Moldovans have any real links to the Wolves. We’d have picked up information about it.”
“Maybe,” said Nuri skeptically.
“Dr. Rubeo has some information for you,” Reid continued, ignoring him. “There’s some equipment that will be arriving with your people in Ukraine tonight. I take it that he wants to explain how it works. You had best wait until a reasonable hour to contact him. He’s cantankerous enough as it is.”
Danny had already given Boston the heads-up that they would probably need a strike force. As soon as he got off the phone with Reid, he told him to get it in the air. A C–17 with the team and much of their equipment was due to land in Germany a little after eight. After refueling, it would fly on to Chernivtsi in southwestern Ukraine. There it would meet a second C–17 with their Rattlesnakes. A pair of armed Osprey MV–22s were scheduled to arrive at roughly the same time, completing the assault force.
In theory, they could launch an assault just before dawn. But the force would be tired from the long flight, and Danny still didn’t have much intelligence on the farm. He wanted to move as quickly as possible, but he also knew he would only get one chance at this.
He also thought it would be best to go in at night. More than likely, the men at the farm would be prepared to fight whenever they struck, but attacking at night would make it less likely a stray passerby would wander across the operation.
So he decided to hold off for twenty-four hours. It was a logical decision — they wouldn’t have to rush the planning, and he and the others would be able to rest. But it was also the sort of decision easily second-guessed, not least of all by Danny himself. He lay awake for another hour, trying to beat off the doubts, until finally, exhausted mentally as well as physically, he slipped into a fitful slumber.
35
Breanna paused at the door of the aircraft, preparing herself to go down the steps. Though she’d been back to Dreamland several times since leaving the active Air Force, the return was always emotional. She had spent some of the best days of her life here, and while not ordinarily given to nostalgia, it was impossible to keep the memories from flooding back as soon as she saw the low-slung silhouettes of the research bunkers and nearby hangars.
Some of her hardest had been spent here. Yet for some reason the difficulties, the trials and tribulations — the stays in the hospital, the long nights watching over Zen, her own dramas in the emergency room — all of that faded. Only the good times remained.
“Hey, boss!” bellowed a familiar voice from below. “You’re late!”
Breanna pushed herself out onto the steps.
“I knew you weren’t flying this old crate,” continued Al “Greasy Hands” Parsons, standing at the bottom of the rolling steps, “because you woulda had it here a half hour early.”
“Even I can’t fight head winds,” said Breanna, coming down the steps. “How are we doing, Chief?”
“Chief” was a reference to Greasy Hands’ title fifteen years earlier, when he was responsible for making sure every aircraft Dreamland had could get into the air.
There had been officers over him — plenty — but ask any maintainer on the base who they answered to — and who they didn’t want to cross — and “Greasy Hands” would be the immediate answer.
The same with the pilots.
“Brass is already here,” said Greasy Hands in a stage whisper as she came down the steps. “Got enough of them to stock a hardware store, if there were hardware stores anymore.”
“The chief of staff here?”
“First one to arrive,” said Greasy Hands. “They’re all over the Sabre like ants at a picnic. I’m thinking maybe we can tie a few of them to the wings. I just don’t know which ones.”
Greasy Hands winked. He still had a chief’s perspective on what he liked to call “upper management.”
Dreamland had changed a great deal since her father had the command. There were many more buildings. Taj Mahal — the command center back in her day — was now a research laboratory. It was flanked by two much larger buildings. What had been a tiny residential area used by perhaps a hundred or so military and research personnel, most of them single, was now a small city more than ten times as large. There was a day care center, an interdenominational chapel, and a small school.
And an outdoor swimming pool. She would have killed for that when she’d been stationed here.
Breanna turned toward the sound of advancing rotors. An Osprey was settling down a few yards from the rear of the C–20B that had just brought her here.
“Recognize this bird?” Greasy Hands said as they walked toward the aircraft.
