“Fine.” Pamela slumped down against the hard cushion of the pax seat. Just like the military — you offer your help and they shit on you. After all she’d tried to do for them… after Tombstone… after…
That was then, she argued, infuriated. Bad enough that she had to deal with the military without having to confront her own transgressions once again.
He knows who I used to be. Back before… before I understood.
They didn’t
Not always, she admitted reluctantly. At least, although she’d always thought of herself as a patriotic American, perhaps a jaded, cynical — call it realistic — one, but an American nonetheless.
But on the ground, watching the reality of combat, challenged by Xerxes to reexamine her own choices and beliefs, she’d come to a new understanding of what it meant to be an American.
In that second, she understood what she’d never fully grasped before. No matter that she could recite the intricacies of foreign conflicts and the history that predated them, pronounce the names of every foreign leader and his coterie, identify the most obscure geographic regions on a map — she’d been ignorant. Even after years as a war correspondent, even after all the awards, the hoopla, the public recognition, she’d never really crawled inside the military mind. Known what it was to go out on a mission with the probability that you’d never return. Known what it was to plan those missions, knowing you were condemning the crews and ground forces almost as surely as if you’d put a gun to their heads yourself. But you sent them out anyway and learned to live with the results. Because not so long before, your superiors had faced the same hard choices, made the same agonizing decision. And in a way, executing the mission was sometimes easier than ordering others to.
“Yes, Admiral,” the pilot said, and Pamela realized she hadn’t been paying attention. “We’ll try it right now. Out. Miss Drake, were you listening?”
“Not closely — could you fill me in?” Pamela heard a new trace of humility in her voice, one she wasn’t entirely sure that she liked.
“Sure thing. Admiral wants me to try to put you in contact with the Macedonians. Tell them he’s going to come up on a frequency — hold on, I’ll write it down for you — and wants to talk. Tell them that the U.S. is withdrawing its forces from support of any Greek aggression, and that we’re standing by to enforce the no-fly zone. Against both sides. We’re going to want some time to clear this whole thing with Washington. Basically, it’s stop the problem, stop the clock. Just like in a trainer. You got that?”
“I got it. Tell me when we go to live feed. That is, when the circuit’s on. Whatever you call it.”
She heard a quiet chuckle over the ICS. “Roger. Standby—
Pamela took a deep breath, and started perhaps the most important broadcast of her life with the words she’d used on so many other occasions. “Good afternoon. This is Pamela Drake, ACN correspondent, speaking to you live from…”
Batman listened to Pamela’s words echoing on the speaker. His eyes sought out Lab Rat, who was leaning against the far bulkhead with his eyes shut. Anyone who didn’t know him might have thought that he wasn’t paying attention, but Batman knew what he was doing. Lab Rat was filtering out all the distractions, focusing the entire power of his intellect on the words coming over the speaker. It was this capability for concentration, this ability to bring single-minded intensity to bear on a particular problem that made him so valuable as an intelligence officer.
And would have been deadly in an aircraft, Batman thought. As powerful as Lab Rat was as an intelligence officer, he thought that the other man might have lacked the ability to maintain his scan, to avoid being fixated on any one aspect of the problem while maintaining the overall picture and executing the mission. In the air, too much concentration was almost as deadly as too little.
But as an intelligence officer, Lab Rat was in his natural element. Deception, obfuscation, the fog of war — he sliced through them as easily as Batman could peel out of a formation and do a barrel roll. And now, he was worrying at the problem of shifting alliances, listening to Pamela’s words to detect any false notes — for if truth be known, Batman was not entirely sure he was doing the right thing, taking her up on her offer to contact the Macedonians.
But what choices did he have? With the SAR helo leaking hydraulic fluid and the shifting alliances being sorted out in the air, Batman was out of options.
Finally, Pamela finished her broadcast. There was a moment of silence, then, clearly prompted by the military men in the helicopter, she added, “Over.”
More silence. Lab Rat was motionless, his chest barely moving as he took shallow breaths. Outside the compartment, someone laughed, the noise oddly alien as it seeped into the secured compartment. Inside TFCC, no one moved.
Xerxes stared up at the speaker, a puzzled expression on his face. He turned to the radio operator. “Where is the signal coming from?”
The radio operator leaned across the room and tapped on the blip on the radar screen. “I am not certain, sir, but it appears to be correlated with this airborne contact. The American helicopter.”
“SAR, they say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm.” Xerxes felt the tension begin to drain out of his face. Was it possible she was telling the truth? And just how far did he dare to trust her? “What are the American fighters doing now?”
“They’re flying CAP stations, sir. In between us and the Greeks. Nice, tight orbits, unless one of the Greeks tries to break through. They’ve used their guns a couple of times, mostly as a warning it looks like. No missiles in the air yet.”
Xerxes picked up the microphone. “Miss Drake. This is not an encrypted circuit, so I’m not going to pass any sensitive information over it. Do you remember where I took you the first time?”
“Yes.”
“Could you find it again? From the air, I mean — things often look different when you’re airborne instead of on the ground.”
“I’m pretty sure I can.”
“Good. Land your aircraft there. I can’t have you flying directly into the camp, not just yet. They’ll track you by your transponder. Have you told them where it is?”
“No, I haven’t. Not yet.”
“Don’t. Go to — that place — and I’ll have aircraft technicians and someone from my staff meet you.”
Silence for a moment, then, “If I can, I won’t tell them. Unless it endangers the safety of this crew or any American forces.”
Xerxes heard new steel in her voice, and in a flash, he knew what it meant.
Lab Rat opened his eyes. The pale blue irises shone in the dim light. He looked across the room and into Batman’s eyes. The intelligence officer nodded once, then appeared to break the spell that had held him motionless for the last fifteen minutes.
“You think it’s legit?” Batman asked, already knowing what Lab Rat would say but having to ask the question anyway.
“Yes, Admiral, I do. I suggest we get that helo vectored in ASAP. They’re going to need some time for that
