“Command not recognized.”
“Turk?”
“I see it. It’s going to take me about twenty minutes to get there.”
The plane in front of him jerked forward. He was now next in line.
“I need you to get there as fast as you can,” Danny told.
“Yeah, roger that, Colonel.” That was the funny thing about ground officers — they always assumed jets could simply get to where they needed instantly. “ROEs?”
“Avoid contact with the enemy. You’re just scouting.”
“What if they come for me?”
“Let’s play it by ear. We’re authorized to use deadly force to get Rubeo back, if it comes to that.”
“Roger that. Understood.”
The space in front of him was empty. It was his turn to fly.
“Whiplash, I’m clear for takeoff — talk to you in a few.”
Aboard the Osprey, Danny studied the same map that Turk was viewing, using a portable touch computer that accessed MY-PID. It was hard to like anything that he saw. Rubeo was being taken toward a city ostensibly still held by the government.
There was a small army base to the west. A large number of soldiers there had deserted, and the latest intelligence estimated that no more than three thousand were still in uniform and willing to fight. But three thousand was still far more than the Whiplash team was prepared to deal with.
Danny didn’t have enough people to take down a well-guarded house in the city — and guarantee that Rubeo would be alive. If he went into the city, he would have to call for backup. He’d already alerted the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCCOM, which had placed a platoon of SEALs at his disposal. They were on a carrier in the Mediterranean; he could send one of the Ospreys back to pick them up if necessary.
Turk would get there in twenty minutes. That would put the truck just outside the city. The Osprey would be roughly an hour away.
He went up to the cockpit.
“Tell Whiplash Osprey Two to double back and rendezvous with the SEAL platoon,” Danny told the copilot. “I’ll talk to the SEALs.”
“We’re still heading south?” asked the pilot.
“As fast you can.”
7
Rubeo knew his people would be tracking them by now. The best thing to do was to stay alive until they were rescued.
But that was far too passive.
It was true, he wasn’t a soldier. But he wasn’t a wimp either.
Searching the back of the van for something to cut the ropes, he hit on the idea of using the hinge edge. It wasn’t quite sharp enough to cut the rope, but by wiggling the rope against it, he was able to stretch the strands. The pressure on his wrists hurt, cutting off his circulation to the point where his fingers felt numb, but when he stopped, the restraints were loosened. He worked them back and forth, finally getting one free.
He pulled the other out, then went over to Kharon, facedown on the floor.
“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching to the young man’s hands, which were tied behind his back.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to untie you.”
“Why?”
“So we can get the hell out of here.”
“I still hate you.”
“Should I just leave you?”
Kharon didn’t answer. The knot was difficult, but Rubeo kept at it. Finally it came undone. Rubeo slid back, unsure what the other man would do.
Kharon’s arms felt as if they were paralyzed. They’d been behind his back so long that the muscles were stiff and his nerves were tingling, making them feel almost limp. He flexed them, trying to get some circulation back, trying to get control of them.
The strange thing was, he believed Rubeo.
But he still hated him.
He had so much anger and emotion, it needed to focus on someone. He hated that his mother had died, that her death had destroyed his father, that he had been left on his own, abandoned.
Angry at his mother? How could he be mad at her?
The faceless saboteur? Even if that was true, how could he hate someone he didn’t know?
“Come on,” said Rubeo, standing up. He had to duck so he wouldn’t hit his head. “Undo your legs.”
“We can’t just jump out of the truck,” said Kharon.
“Why not?”
“They’ll kill us.”
“I doubt staying in the vehicle will decrease those chances,” said Rubeo. “We can roll out. It should be dark by now. They may not see us. My people will rescue us soon.”
“We need weapons.”
“If you find any, let me know.”
Rubeo went to the back door. The truck rattled, but it was impossible to judge even their speed from what he heard or felt.
Surely they were in the desert somewhere. Getting out made more sense — it would be easier in the open space than in a city. Rubeo knew that from Dreamland.
“They’ll kill us,” said Kharon as Rubeo felt around for the lock. It was in a small pocket at the door and impossible to see in the dim light.
“Are you coming or what?” asked Rubeo.
“I don’t know.”
Rubeo went back to him.
“I wear a device that lets the people who work for me track me. They won’t be far behind. Come on. We just have to get a little way in the dark.”
He reached down and began undoing Kharon’s feet. Kharon pushed him away and then started untying them himself.
“Who helped you do this?” Rubeo asked.
“A Russian spy.”
“Name?”
“Like you’ll know him?”
“I might.”
“Foma Mitreski,” said Kharon. “He was interested in the technology you flew in. And in the transmission from your aircraft. As soon as your aircraft arrived, they contacted me and asked me to help them. We cooperated. I—”
Kharon suddenly felt ashamed and stopped speaking. He’d been wrong — so wrong he could never make it right.
“The Sabres?” asked Rubeo. “How did you track—”
“No, the other one. The manned plane. The Tigershark. We recorded them. They wanted the transmission in different circumstances — they wanted to try and look at the data flow under circumstances they knew. If a radar came on—”
“You recorded them — or you interfered with them?” asked Rubeo.
“We didn’t interfere. The encryption and fail-safes are too good. You know yourself — if you can start to see patterns, known reactions—”
“Then how did you order the Sabre attack?”
Kharon felt his throat clutching.
“You were behind the attack, weren’t you? Why did the Russians want that?”
“I wanted it,” he mumbled. “To discredit you. To ruin you.”
Rubeo stayed silent for a moment. “You killed innocent people to ruin me?” he asked finally, his throat dry.
Tears flooded from Kharon’s eyes.
“Yes!” Kharon yelled. “Yes. Yes, damn it. Yes. It was easy to insert the virus in the hangars. As soon as the aircraft were located there, I knew it would be easy.”
“Come on,” Rubeo said. “Let’s get out of here. You’ll tell me what you did later.”
Hand on the latch, Rubeo pressed his ear against the door and strained to listen. But it was useless. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the low hum of the motor and the rattle of the truck.
He glanced back at Kharon. He should have felt anger at what Kharon had done, but instead he felt something closer to relief — he wasn’t the one responsible for the deaths.
He also felt an odd compassion. Kharon was a tormented and twisted soul, worthy of pity.
“Come on,” Rubeo told him. “Get up and let’s go.”