“Well who is?”
Danny decided it was better not to answer. Chase might prove useful, and it was best to avoid alienating him to the extent possible.
“I’ll be in Tripoli by noon,” added Chase. “If you care to coordinate with me, contact me.”
“I don’t want you doing anything that’s going to jeopardize our getting him back,” said Danny.
“That makes two of us,” said Chase sarcastically. He killed his connection.
“What’s up with that asshole?” asked Boston, who’d come into the office during the conversation.
“Don’t you knock, Chief?”
“I did and you didn’t hear.” Boston smirked. “Chief’s knock.”
Boston’s expression changed quickly as Danny explained what had happened.
“We’ve got Shorty and we got Flash,” said the Air Force chief master sergeant. “That’s it on personnel. Unless you want to start borrowing Eye-tralians. Two Ospreys for transport and firepower. That’s not a lot if they were able to grab Rubeo in broad daylight. What the hell was he thinking?”
Danny shook his head. Arrogance was a difficult thing to explain.
“How soon can you get the Ospreys airborne?” he asked.
“Gotta talk to the maintainers,” said Boston. “Probably pretty quick, though. Half hour? Twenty minutes? Whatever it takes to get fuel into them.”
“All right, let’s get moving. We’ll do this on the fly.”
“Say, Cap?”
Danny winced at the old nickname.
“Sorry — Colonel,” Boston corrected himself. “What about having the Tigershark fly cover? Come in pretty handy.”
“I don’t know.”
“The aircraft’s all checked out.”
“I wish I could say the same for the pilot.”
But it was a good idea. Danny picked up his phone and dialed Turk’s cell.
5
Rubeo regained consciousness on the floor of a panel truck, his arms and legs bound. It was dark, but he could tell he wasn’t alone. He pushed to the side, rolling over halfway until he hit something.
Another body.
Jons, maybe.
Whoever it was, he didn’t move or speak. His shallow breaths sounded like groans.
Rubeo pushed in the opposite direction, moving a foot and a half until he got to the wall. He maneuvered himself upright and sat, back to the wall of the truck.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he examined the other person in the truck with him. He looked too thin to be Jons.
Lawson? He’d been in the second vehicle.
Rubeo scooted over and leaned close.
It was Kharon, tied as he was.
Rubeo pushed back to the wall.
Kharon’s animosity had shocked him. But Rubeo understood exactly where it must be coming from — Kharon blamed him for his mother’s death.
“Neil. Neil?”
“What?” groaned Kharon. “What happened?”
“I believe you are in a far better position to explain than I am.”
Kharon, apparently realizing where he was, struggled to free himself. He jerked and rolled, but it was no use — the bonds were strong and well-tied. He flopped around like a prize brook trout confined to a canoe.
“You’re only going to hurt yourself,” Rubeo told him.
“I hate you,” said Kharon. “I hate you.”
“Why?”
“My mother.” Short on breath, Kharon began to choke, then wheezed and finally cried. He screamed, and banged his head on the floor of the van.
Rubeo closed his eyes. The manic display of grief continued for more than a minute, until finally Kharon collapsed, completely spent.
“I’ve blamed myself as well,” said Rubeo softly when the other man was still. “I told her not to work that night, but I should have made her go home. I shouldn’t have let her work. I am tremendously sorry for it.”
“I don’t believe you,” whispered Kharon. The words were barely audible.
“It wasn’t an accident,” said Rubeo. “I know they didn’t tell you the whole story. It’s still classified.”
Kharon didn’t react.
“The accident was actually sabotage,” Rubeo continued. “We had a Russian agent at the base. It was the tail end of the Cold War.”
“You’re lying.”
“No.” Rubeo closed his eyes, remembering Dreamland. Kharon’s mother’s death was just one of several incidents that had eventually led to the shake-up, the threats of closing, and finally the coming of Tecumseh Bastian.
So good did come of it. Though it was impossible to explain that to Kharon. Nothing would ever compensate the ten-year-old who had lost his mother.
“I don’t blame you for not believing me.” Rubeo leaned his head forward, trying to undo the terrible muscle knot forming at the back of his neck. “I think if you ask Breanna Stockard, she’ll tell you. She knew your mother.”
Kharon didn’t answer. Rubeo wondered if he had passed out again, until finally he realized the young man was crying uncontrollably.
6
Danny jumped from the Hummer and trotted toward the waiting Osprey. Boston was hanging out the door, waving him on.
The huge propellers, which rotated on their nacelles at the wingtips, whipped overhead, anxious to pull the craft into the air. Danny ran behind the wing to the door, shading his eyes against the dust kicked up by the rotors. Boston grabbed him by the forearm and helped him up. Not a half second later, the Osprey leapt forward, pushing into the stiff Sicilian wind.
“Body armor over there,” said Boston, pointing to the side bench as the hatchway closed behind them. “Gear and weapons.”
“Thanks,” said Danny, going over to suit up.
Across the tarmac from the Osprey, Turk sat at the controls of the Tigershark II, waiting as a long queue of NATO fighter-bombers moved up the taxi ramp to the runway. The com section bleeped; he cleared it, and the image of Danny Freah appeared in front of him.
“Turk?”
“I’m here, Colonel. Just waiting for clearance to take off.”
“Thank you for getting ready so quickly.”
“My pleasure,” said Turk. He meant it — he wanted nothing better than a chance to get back in the air and prove himself.
Again. Which he shouldn’t have to do.
“Dr. Rubeo wears a locating device that tracks his location continually,” said Danny. “The information has been tied into MY-PID, and we’re uploading into your connection now.”
Turk was sitting behind a transport and a tanker, waiting for clearance. As the aircraft in front of him moved forward, he nudged the Tigershark to follow.
The tower gave clearances and directions to a pair of other planes, the controller’s voice drowning out Danny’s.
“You got that?” asked Danny.
“Stand by. I’m queuing to take off,” Turk told him. He reached his arm up and touched the virtual switch to open the map panel. “MY-PID interface.” The computer blinked. “Find Rubeo,” he told his computer.
The map panel flickered. Turk used his fingers to zoom out a bit, getting some perspective — the indicator dot was some eighty miles south of Tripoli. According to the computer, the vehicle was moving at roughly fifty miles an hour on a paved highway toward the city of Mizdah.
“Plot intercept at maximum speed,” he told the computer.
“Nineteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds from takeoff,” said the flight computer. The distance was a little over four hundred miles.
“We can do better than that,” Turk told it.
“Command not recognized.”
“You’re a slowpoke.”