Black Wolf

They were being used mostly to store parts and featured rusted padlocks and peeling paint. Hera followed McEwen out around the side of Hangar Two to a narrow back path, approaching Hangar Five from the rear.

“There’s a security camera on the hangar across the way,” McEwen explained. “This one is wide open, but it would be better if we weren’t seen, I think.”

“How do we get in?”

“You can’t pick a lock?”

“I can pick locks.”

Rusted barrels of refuse crowded along the back of the building. Hera had to squeeze over a pair of them and then push them away to get to the back door.

It was so old the lock had rusted in place. She couldn’t get her pick to move the tumblers.

“We’ll go to Plan B,” said McEwen.

McEwen disappeared around the corner. Before Hera could follow, she heard glass breaking.

“What was that?” asked Hera.

“Plan B,” said McEwen, standing in front of the broken window. “Why don’t you go first? It’s a little hard to climb in my dress.”

Hera’s small LED flashlight was just powerful enough to light up the entire interior, but then there wasn’t much to illuminate. A collection of rusted steel garbage cans and drums stood next to the wall near the front. Discarded cardboard boxes were stacked in a semineat pile near the back. Two roofs’ worth of shingles sat on pallets at the exact center of the building.

And that was it.

“Pretty empty,” said Hera, shining the light around.

McEwen leaned in the window. “Give me a hand,” she said.

Hera was surprised at how firm the petite woman’s muscles were. She was light, not much more than a hundred pounds, if that.

“All right then,” said McEwen, straightening her clothes. “Let’s see what we have.”

She walked over to the cardboard boxes, bending and turning a few of them over.

“Toilet paper, handouts for passengers,” she announced, straightening. “Interesting.”

Hera rolled her eyes.

“Let’s see what they’re throwing out,” said McEwen, walking over to the garbage.

Two-by-fours and assorted sticks in the first can. Roofing material in the second.

AK–47s and grenades in the third.

“Bingo,” said McEwen.

* * *

The hangar had been rented by a company named Vleta Servici Ltd. MY-PID quickly determined that Vleta was associated with a company named Duga TEF, which had a small number of dealings in Russia. It found two bank accounts associated with Duga, then began tracking transfers that had been made into and out of the accounts. Within a half hour it had profiled a spidery network in Ukraine and Russia.

By then Hera and McEwen had removed the rifles and grenades from the premises, and planted several video bugs around the interior of the hangar. They’d also cleaned up the glass, removing the shards and the shattered pane. Someone looking at it would realize it had been broken, of course, but it was only one pane and might be overlooked, especially by someone coming in from the front.

“You think they were planning a hijacking?” asked Hera as she prepared to back the car precariously down the alley.

“I think it’s more in the way of a backup plan,” said McEwen. “A cache of weapons in case something goes bad. A group coming into the airport could grab them; someone wanting to leave could take them, and maybe use the boxes as cover to get them aboard an airplane. It’s a contingency.”

“Why just a contingency?”

“Think about it. You do mostly covert action, right? If you were planning something, you’d have your best gear with you.”

“Sure.”

“You might pre-position it, but you’d take critical care of it. No one could just barge in and grab it, or come upon it accidentally. The Wolves are as professional as you are. These weapons were ridiculously easy to get to — they could get in just by breaking a window, like we did.”

“True,” said Hera. “But—”

“They may have been a backup,” said McEwen carefully. “Not their main cache but something they could grab quickly in an emergency.”

She paused, thinking

“Or they may be a blind,” she added. “A misdirection. Either way, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”

56

Over the Atlantic Ocean, approaching Europe

The C–20B was an Air Force spec Boeing 737. While not nearly as luxurious as the standard corporate configuration of the plane, it was a VIP jet, with a number of features that anyone who ever had to fly in the belly of a C–5A or C–130 would have killed for.

Case in point: Breanna’s seat. It moved back, so it was essentially an inclined bed, about as comfortable as you could get in an airplane cabin without actually having a bed.

Breanna, however, found it uncomfortable. And even when she finally decided she’d be best off taking a nap before landing, had an almost impossible time dozing off. Finally she fell off into a fitful sleep, images flitting through her mind, ideas and arguments.

* * *

“Why didn’t you save me?”

The voice came from across the river. She jumped from the bed — she was still in the tent.

“Why didn’t you save me?” asked Mark Stoner.

She reached over to get Zen, but he was gone.

“Breanna — I saved you.”

“Mark? Are you out there?”

“Where are you?” he said.

She knew it was a dream — it could only be a dream — and yet it felt so real that it wasn’t a dream. It was something between a dream and reality, its own category.

“Where are you?” she asked. She pushed out of the tent, still in the sweats she had gone to sleep in. The air was cold. She felt goose bumps forming on her legs and neck. Her hands were so cold they were hard to move. She clasped them under her arms to keep warm.

“Why didn’t you help me?” he asked. “I saved you.”

“We saved each other,” she said. “Do you remember — we jumped.”

Had they jumped? Or was that with Zen? Now she couldn’t remember — Zen had saved her once, in India, had protected her and gotten them rescued. It was Zen, Zen who had saved her.

But she’d parachuted another time. Stoner was there — who had saved who?

God, she couldn’t remember.

They’d been together in the water.

It was a dream but it felt too real, as if they were there together now.

“Mark? Mark, are you OK?” she asked.

“I have to kill them now,” he said.

She screamed.

* * *

“Ma’am, you OK?”