It brought up a list of people who worked in his team. None of them familiar to him.
Sam asked, “Which one’s Tom Bower?”
“The one on the left.”
There was a guy a good head taller than the rest and probably another fifty pounds heavier, built out of solid muscle, too. “The big guy?”
“That’s him. Hasn’t changed a bit. Aged better than you…”
Sam ignored the tease. “Can you see any contact details?”
“There’s his cell phone.”
Sam looked at the number, committed it to his memory, and asked, “Mind if I borrow your phone?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sam dialed the number.
“Hello?” The voice was hesitant… like someone receiving an unrecognized call, and not yet sure they wanted to commit to talking to the person on the other side.
Sam said, “Tom Bower?”
There was relief in the man’s voice. “Good God, Sam! You’re alive!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam hung up the phone.
They had talked for less than two minutes. But the conversation was easy and came naturally. It was clear the two of them had an affinity for each other that came with a friendship that had developed over many years.
Catarina asked, “Any luck?”
“Yeah. He says I was on a secret mission two nights ago. He was supposed to pick me up at the beach here in Vernazza, but I never made it back.”
“Did he say what the mission was for?”
“No. He said he didn’t want to get into any of the details over the phone, because he couldn’t be certain the line was secure.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Catarina asked. “Maybe you are a spy? I mean, why else all the cloak and dagger stuff? The array of fake passports? Tom Bower’s been your best friend since you were a kid and he couldn’t recognize your voice well enough to be confident that he was speaking to you, and able to fill you in with what you were doing when you had your memory stolen from you?”
Sam twisted his hands outward, in a gesture of peace. “I don’t know. He seemed legit.”
“Okay. So what did he suggest you do?”
“He said there’s an airfield in La Spezia. It’s rarely used, but he has a team on board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III set to land there within the hour. He gave me the address. If I can meet him there, he’ll debrief me once we’re in the air.”
“Globemaster III.” She said the name of the aircraft wistfully. “That sounds like a big airplane.”
Sam nodded, surprised by his instinctive knowledge on aircraft. “Yeah, it’s the largest aircraft in the US Air Force’s transport fleet.”
“Do they know it’s a grass runway? Can it even land on grass?”
Sam grinned. “You bet it can. The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is practically a tank with wings. It can fly, land, and takeoff again anywhere it pleases.”
“That’s good.” Her voice softened. “So, you’re leaving my life again.”
“Yeah. But not for long. I’ll get everything ironed out, and then I’ll give you a call and we can catch up properly… if you’re okay with that?”
She wrote down her cell number. “I’ve waited this long just to talk to you. I’d love to meet up again once your memory’s back…” Her eyes drifted downward. “That is, if you still want to, after your memory comes back.”
He squeezed her hand affectionately. “Hey, you’ve saved me from a lot of trouble. Without you, I might have been killed by the Russian mafia, or whoever the hell it is that wants me dead… so I think it’s safe to say I owe you my life. Trust me, I’ll make time to see you as soon as this is all sorted out and I have my memory back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She suppressed a frown. “So, you’re still in the marines?”
Sam grinned. “It looks like it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The secretary of defense paced the operations room.
It was taking longer than she had expected and hoped for Sam Reilly to show up. It seemed impossible to believe that after all the man had been through, he could have drowned simply jumping into the ocean.
She had played out the series of unfortunate events that had led them to Sam’s catastrophic position. There had been more than a dozen possible outcomes, but in none of them, or in her wildest dreams, did jumping into the calm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea and drowning appear.
Her personal cell phone rang.
Few people had direct access to her.
She took a couple steps to the empty end of the room and accepted the call. “Yes?”
It was Tom Bower. “What the hell went wrong?”
She paused. Took a deep breath. It wasn’t like Tom to lose his control. If she let him go too much further, he might just take everything past the point of no return. “Excuse me?”
“You said you would protect him!”
“I did, and I will… to the best of my abilities.”
“No. That’s not what you said before. You said you’d get him out of it!”
“I did… or at least I’ve tried my best. Good God, Tom, you know he’s my best operative, and one of my closest allies. The last thing I wanted to see was Sam get killed. That’s why I took the risk in the first place and tried to get him out of it. Do you think I would have tried, if I had any other options left to me?”
That gave Tom some pause. He knew the truth. “Then who the hell screwed it up?”
“It doesn’t matter whose mistake it was. The fact is, we’re at the location where we’re at, and now we need to work out what to do about it — if anything can be done.”
“No,” Tom’s voice was emphatic. “I need to know, who screwed up!”
The secretary of defense exhaled. “You’re not going to like the truth.”
“Don’t give me that. I deserve to know. We’re talking about my closest friend. So I’m going to ask you again, who screwed up?”
She nodded to herself, certain that Tom wouldn’t be dismissed easily. “Sam Reilly did.”
“How?”
“When we erased his memory, we had no idea his instincts would kick in… he was supposed to be taken into protective custody by the Italian police and charged with murder until we were able to get this whole mess sorted out.”
“So what went wrong?”
“We didn’t take into account that Sam’s instincts, developed over a lifetime of overcoming life and death challenges, were sharp. They couldn’t be subdued like his memories, which were so easily wiped clean.”
Tom said, “He ran…”
“Yes.”
“And the others?”
“They tried to catch him… but, Sam’s instincts kicked in again…”
Tom’s voice showed a wry sense of pleasure. “How many were killed?”
“Two… that we know of. Possibly three.”
“It was a mistake to think you could control the situation.”
“Listen here, Tom Bower, I did control the scene. I tipped the Italian police chief to be there. We mobilized a SEAL team… and besides, you yourself were there to retrieve him if things went wrong.”
Tom said, “So then, if you had everything under control, why did I just get a phone call from Sam saying that he’d nearly been killed?”
“You did?” she said, excitedly. “He’s alive?”
“Yes. No thanks to you!”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. An ex-girlfriend’s place, still within Vernazza.”
“All right, we’ll send a retrieval team in to bring him out now!”
“I told him we could have the Globemaster III with a team on board on a disused airstrip on La Spezia.”