conversation.
“Hey Bree, this is Danny. We’re here. What’s the ETA on Tigershark?… Uh-huh.”
Nuri felt a twinge of jealousy at how close the colonel and Breanna Stockard were. There was a level of trust there that he’d never had with any of his supervisors, and certainly not with Jonathon Reid. It wasn’t that he thought Reid or any of the men he’d worked for were less than dedicated, or would leave him purposely in the lurch. It was more a question of how far beyond their duty they would go. He’d already seen Stockard risk her career and her life for Danny.
For
“Nuri thinks there’s a lot more going on here than we’re being told, Bree,” said Danny. “Uh-huh.”
Nuri watched Danny listen to something she said, but in the darkness he couldn’t see his face well enough to interpret his reaction.
“She wants to talk to you,” said Danny, handing him the sat phone.
“Ms. Stockard, hello.”
“Nuri, what do you think is going on?” asked Breanna.
“I can’t say exactly.”
He explained that the Agency didn’t seem to be following its usual protocols when targeting a high-value terrorist like Li Han. On the other hand, he had to admit that because he had no direct information about either Raven or the particular mission, he simply didn’t know how suspicious to be.
The more questions Breanna asked, the less confident Nuri felt. And yet, things still seemed a little off, a little unusual in ways that made him believe the CIA wasn’t telling them everything.
Well, duh, he thought, handing the phone back to Danny. When did the Agency
“She’s going to talk to Reid,” Danny told Nuri after he signed off. “I don’t think Reid would lie to her.”
“Probably not,” said Nuri.
“You think Reid would lie?”
Nuri shrugged.
There were all sorts of reasons Danny didn’t particularly like the fact that Whiplash was a joint project between the military and the CIA, but they all came down to Nuri’s two words:
You never knew exactly what the CIA was up to. The Air Force and the rest of the military might have its problems and its politics, but these paled compared to Central Intelligence.
“Tigershark will be here in another three hours,” said Danny. Once the aircraft was overhead, they would have real-time surveillance as well as a connection with their computer system, MY-PID. The rest of the team was scheduled to arrive roughly two hours later. Assuming that Melissa Ilse had located the wreckage by then, they would fly in, retrieve it, and come home.
Danny noticed Nuri staring into the distance.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Just how lovely it is to be back in this stink hole,” said the CIA officer.
Chapter 11
Melissa Ilse cut the motorcycle’s engine, coasting in the dark as the indicator beeper became a steady hum. She was a mile from the UAV.
Hand-built by Ducati to CIA specifications, the lightweight motorcycle had a pair of oversized mufflers that kept engine noise to a low rumble. But sound traveled far in the desert foothills, and she couldn’t afford to take a chance of alerting anyone that she was near. She needed to locate the UAV and recover its brain, or her career was shot.
Harker had told her that in so many words.
Melissa glided off the dirt trail she’d been riding for the past half hour or so, letting the bike’s momentum carry her to a trio of rocks a few yards up the hillside. She put on her brakes as she reached them. Hopping off the bike, she set it down gently against the largest of the rocks. She pulled the MP-5 submachine gun from its holster on the side of the bike and trotted down to the trail, turning back to make sure the bike couldn’t be seen.
Her night vision goggles were heavy against her face. She pulled them off and rubbed her cheekbones and eyes. She was surprised there was enough light to see fairly well, and it was such a relief not to have the apparatus pressing against her face that she decided she would do without it for a while. She stuffed it into her rucksack, then examined her GPS.
The handheld device wasn’t coordinated with the UAV’s homing signals, but it wasn’t hard to get her bearings. The aircraft had gone down on the other side of the ridge. She could either climb directly over it or circle around parallel to the trail she’d been riding.
Direct was always better.
Melissa paused every few steps to look around and make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d been through this general area several times in the past two months, before Raven was brought in. She might even have been on this very hillside, though she didn’t remember it.
The chapped land and rugged hills reminded her of southwest Nevada, where her dad used to take her camping and hiking when she was a girl. He and her mother had divorced when she was only three; he had custody only a few weeks each year, and they always spent at least one week of that camping. She cherished those trips now, and looked forward to the next, not due for several months.
Melissa scolded herself. It was dangerous letting her mind drift. Crouching at the top of the ridge, she put one hand on the rocky crust, then folded herself against the hillside, peering over the top.
Shadow covered everything before her. She slid down a few feet, pulled off her pack and removed her night vision goggles.
A small settlement sat in the valley on the left, not quite two miles away. There was no sign anyone was awake.
So where was the plane?
From the signal, it should be to her right, maybe a thousand yards away.
Melissa surveyed the area again. The submachine gun felt heavy in her hands. She’d never fired it at an enemy. She’d never used a gun against a real person at all.
She took a slow breath, controlling her nerves, and started down the hill in the direction of the signal.
She came to the wreckage sooner than she thought. The aircraft’s left wing jutted from the rocks. It had sheered at the wing root, pulled off by the force of the midair collision.
Melissa took over, scanning the area. This was bad luck — she’d gone after the wrong part of the plane. The flight computer was in the forward section of the fuselage — the other signal nearly five miles to the northeast.
She cursed silently, then took the camera from her pocket. They’d want to know what the wrecked wing looked like.
Chapter 12
Senator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard looked up at the receptionist as he rolled into the rehabilitation ward in Building 5123 at the Walter Reed Hospital complex. They were old friends by now, so well-acquainted that Zen knew she took her coffee black with two sugars.
