the screen.
They sat in silence for a while, comfortable, and Kyle let his eyes close. In two minutes he was asleep again, with his head back against the sofa. Pat looked over at Jeff, who gestured that she should keep quiet. “Let him be,” he said. Jeff had just checked one of his e-mail accounts and found an encoded message from Washington. Trouble was on the way, and Kyle was going to need all the sleep he could get.
CAPTAIN RICK NEWMAN WAS in a garage on a military base in North Carolina, up to his armpits in grease as he worked on his latest automotive restoration project, a 1955 Chevy Bel Air two-door hardtop with fender skirts. The outside skin of the old car was in decent shape, not much rust; the original baby blue and cream paint scheme was still visible, the chrome running trim undented. The interior needed major renovation, but it would just take some time and money to make it cherry again. The engine, though, a rare 350 V8, was for shit, and the deeper he dug into its guts, the shittier things got. It would cost a fortune to replace the whole thing, which was against the rules for a serious hobbyist and car trader like Newman. He had bought the car for nine thousand dollars at an Alabama estate sale and planned to restore it personally and sell it on the upside of $50K. It would take years. “Hey, Cap’n! You got a phone call over here,” shouted a motor pool Marine.
Rick wiped the grease from his hands and picked up the receiver. “Captain Newman,” he said.
“Hey, Rick. This is Sybelle Summers calling from Trident in Washington.” The voice was some hybrid of a normal tone, authoritative sandpaper, and a purr.
“Hi, Sybelle. Long time,” he said, suddenly alert. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got a job for you, my friend. Get back to your office right away and call me back on a secure line. Top Secret.”
“On my way,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.” He hung up, closed the Chevy’s hood, and hurried away to clean up and get to his desk. The Bel Air would have to wait. Newman was part of a Marine Special Operations Company that comprised four platoons. The rotation had one platoon in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, one in training at this secret base in North Carolina, and the fourth on ready alert, sitting on a short leash, ready to go anywhere in four hours.
When he spoke to Sybelle Summers on the secure link, her orders were quite simple and explicit. He was to choose five more designated operators for a black mission, get over to Camp Doha, in Kuwait, and link up there with Master Gunnery Sergeant O. O. Dawkins, who would give them a full briefing. Eight men would be going in, and Newman’s group would provide the guns in case something went wrong.
She gave him only a brief overview to help pick the specialists he would take and said he could plus up with scouts, snipers, or anyone else he needed. Trident would chop them from their current assignments and arrange the temporary duty. To Newman, it sounded like he was going to need shooters to provide firepower for a special op. He had plenty of good ones from which to choose. He would rather work with people from his own team, highly disciplined and well trained, who already knew each other. His group would click together like a well-oiled military machine. Hughes, Tipp, and Rawls for certain. Two more and himself. The addition was easy. His group was six. Double-Oh made seven. Who was the eighth?
Newman began making calls of his own.
Darren Rawls faked a move to the right, pulled back, and went up and up and up. Rawls, with a thirty-one-inch vertical leap, seemed to levitate in slow motion as he flicked his wrist and delivered a jump shot from the top of the key. His sneakers hit the concrete court as the ball finished its arc to the basket with nothing but net. “Game over, Rabbit. Pay me the money,” he told Joe Tipp, a lanky white boy who was better at football than hoops. Both were sweating hard in the North Carolina sun that baked the hidden, off-limits military installation. They were the lead instructors in an escape and evasion training mission and had started the young members of the platoon through the assigned exercise at dawn. The first and fastest would be approaching the finish well after dark. At sundown, when the trainees were exhausted but feeling confident about having made the distance, Rawls and Tipp would hunt them down, one by one, and capture them. Then the fun would begin in the interrogation hut. Until then, they might as well play ball or take a nap. Their beepers sang out at the same moment.
Travis Hughes was out pillaging and terrorizing the countryside on his Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R. The speed limit was 65 mph, but Hughes had not pimped out his bright red rice-burner to go 65. The Marine staff sergeant, a sniper team leader, wore a blue bandanna around his head, dark sunglasses, creased black leathers with an Outlaws patch, and biker boots. Long red hair flew behind him as he stormed back toward the base. The blonde at the bar had been with Marines before, and when the beeper stuttered on his belt, she knew he was gone. She walked with him outside and gave him a long wet kiss when he powered up his machine. She nibbled his ear and said, “Stay out of trouble this time, Travis.” Hughes revved up the bike. “Don’t think I can do that, darlin’,” he said and launched the motorcycle out onto the road, laughing into the sharp wind that whipped around him. He bent low over the handlebars and cranked it up to a comfortable 110, hauling butt back to the base.
LONDON
Television reporter Kimberly Drake was only two years out of journalism school and still a little fish, even within her Arkansas station. She wanted to be considered a serious journalist, not just a talking head, and sometimes felt that her good looks were no advantage whatsoever. Every station had a beautiful anchor or weathergirl, and she could no longer even imagine an unattractive woman hosting a television newscast. To break out of Little Rock, Kim needed some big stories, and once she had earned her spurs and boosted her reputation, she could jump to a bigger station or at least a cable network.
Then, out of nowhere, the station management decided to send its own correspondent to the royal wedding, just like its big competitors, as part of the continuing battle for advertising dollars. Kimberly would have happily either screwed or killed her news director to get the assignment but did not have to do either. Since the rest of the reporting staff was male and the female anchor was too pregnant to travel, nobody else even wanted the assignment! To the guys, it was just a wedding. Fluff, not like a Super Bowl or a war.
The station gave Kim the job but put very little money behind the trip. Tom Lester, a veteran cameraman, accompanied her, along with a young engineer who would work as a soundman for the stand-ups. The shoestring budget meant they operated out of a small purple and white production van that the station had hired at bargain basement rates.
Kimberly did not care. As she left the Royal Wedding Command Center Press Office in London with her new laminated credentials on a chain around her neck and walked toward the media production area in Kensington Park, she felt like a real reporter for the first time in her life.
It was not until late that night that reality sank in. Because of her low status, Kim’s truck had been assigned a space far away from the parade route, on the very back row. From the camera position atop the van, she could overlook the vast media lot that had been cordoned off, and she was jealous that another purple and white van from the same company, rented by an Italian cable operator, had been given a slightly better spot about fifty yards away.
She had never seen so many media types. British journalists were as aggressive as pit bulls, and reporters and television people from dozens of other countries were arriving, also wearing press credentials for the big event. There were hundreds of them around, many of whom she recognized, although they did not know her. The network people were right at the front! Media money was everywhere. Private residents had fled the city and rented out their apartments and homes at exorbitant rates. Restaurant prices doubled around the heart of the press operations because the reporters were on expense accounts.
Kim Drake stood atop her van and sipped a cup of coffee and stared out over the media throng. She had to admit she was a little fish over here, too. A guppy swimming with sharks.
5
