“We’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“And my magical mystery tour continues.”
“Right.”
The smile on the man’s face had faded, replaced by something else, something in his eyes. Concern? Sadness?
Raine had led men into situations that could only be described as hell. Into actual hell-no exaggeration-and he had brought a lot of them out again. In that time he had learned to check their eyes. To catch the fear sitting there. The concern. The telltale anxious signs that someone might crack. That someone might just freeze up.
And a few words-of support, of connection-could make the difference.
Humans are funny. They have a lot of needs. But maybe the one need they have above all is communication.
Does someone understand me?
Is someone listening?
The plane leveled off some. Slowed.
Raine stretched, arching his back to shake off the effects of hours sleeping crumpled up in a chair-albeit a fairly luxurious one. At least the beers and shots had lost most of their edge.
Good. Especially if he was going to get his orders.
He looked back out the window and noticed the planes on the tarmac getting bigger. The small jet circled hangars, some of them spilling out F-16 fighters into the early morning Still, it looked pretty quiet here, even if it was an hour or so before dawn.
He guessed the time.
About 4:30 A.M.
He looked at his watch: 5:07.
Not bad. Still, the sky should be turning light, no?
Then he remembered the time difference. Mountain time here.
He pressed a button of his watch and moved it back two hours: 3:07… 3:08 A.M.
He relaxed-he never could explain it, but it was strangely relieving to have the right time on his wrist.
The screech of the jet’s tires hitting the runway.
A tilt as the nose touched down.
The scream of the engines in reverse, brakes.
That crazy feeling of having your body pasted against the seat.
The jet slowed. As it taxied to wherever it was going to discharge Raine, he thought of something that hours ago hadn’t seemed too odd:
He brought nothing.
No uniform. No change of underwear, no running shoes. No toothbrush, no personal effects. Nothing but what he wore to the bar, and a wallet filled with too little cash. The idea hit him full force.
It’s crazy. To fly out here with nothing. Sure, orders are orders…
But he didn’t have a clue what it meant.
The plane slowed some more. Raine unbuckled his belt while it still taxied. When the jet stopped, he listened to the small sounds of the engines slowing, quieting. Bright lights came on in the cabin.
Jackson stood up before him.
“Welcome to Buckley, Lieutenant.”
He went over to the small jet’s door and pulled a wide metal latch to the left, unlocking it. And like some magical portal, the door popped open, sending stairs down to whatever waited outside.
THREE
Raine walked out into the cold mountain air, where an Air Force jeep stood by, engine running.
“I assume that this jeep is for us, Jackson?”
“Yes.”
Raine walked over and got in the back while his escort went around to the front passenger seat. The jeep pulled away fast, before Raine even had time to get settled.
“We late or something?”
No response. Of course not. Raine looked out at the quiet airfield, the hangars with bright lights inside showing massive bombers and jets as if on display. A few ground crew walked around, but other than their arrival, there didn’t seem to be much happening at the base.
He looked over his shoulder at the small jet. Already it had started taxiing, turning in the other direction.
Time for its next pickup?
As the jeep raced toward a distant corner of the base, Raine felt his apprehension-if that’s what it was-grow.
He had been thinking what this might be about. Being picked up in the middle of the night. Flown here. The private jet. Not getting anything from his apartment.
It would be as if he had simply vanished.
Not that there was anybody to notice. With his family gone, and his last attempt at a relationship crashed months ago on the reality of his steady deployments, who’d really be looking for him?
The landlord maybe. For rent. But even that was automatically sucked out of his checking account.
So what was this?
He didn’t know; but he knew one thing. Whatever this was about, he would be finding out shortly.
Raine looked down at his hands: clenched tight, resting on his knees.
Relax, he commanded them. Ease up. Whatever the U.S. government had planned for him was-quite literally-out of his hands.
The jeep streamed on, and they’d soon left the main part of the base with its hangars full of expensive hardware. A massive building loomed in the distance, four, five stories tall. It looked like something NASA might need, but prefab and put up fast.
Raine leaned forward as the jeep went straight to that structure in the early Colorado morning.
The building was surrounded by a fence topped with concertina wire, and at the gate post, four soldiers stood with their M16s at the ready.
And inside the fence-in case no one got the point-an Abrams battle tank, another soldier manning the. 50 caliber from the open turret.
Probably more security inside the building itself. Raine’s intrigue was growing. Something pretty important was happening there.
The jeep screeched to a halt, and he didn’t need to be told this was their next stop. He opened the jeep door.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said to the driver.
Following Jackson, he went to the gate. Jackson flashed something from his back pocket, one of the soldiers gave a signal, and the gate opened.
Raine came up beside him. “Y’know, stopping for a warm coat might have been a good idea.”
Jackson was dressed only in his suit.
“Tell me about it.”
A joke? Interesting.
Jackson led the way to a side door. Raine could see this building had giant hangar-sized doors as well. Something big was going on in there.
Or was going to come out of there.
Another solider at that door, but he already had it open, and the two men walked in. Raine noticed that Jackson walked with the quick, direct stride of someone who knew where he was going.
He’d been here before.
He made a sharp right at entering and went down a long corridor with corrugated metal walls on either side. It seemed to Raine that there was no way to go deeper into the building.
But then the corridor turned left, and right again, like a maze. Jackson moved quickly, leading him down a warren of hallways before they came to an open service elevator. It was a wire mesh frame, designed to get big things up and down. Jackson slid it open, the elevator’s gate rattling.
Raine looked up, the roof of the building high above them, then at the elevator keypad.
After a zero, all negative numbers.
“We’re going down?” Jackson nodded as the elevator gate closed. He slid his card in front of a reader-too fast for Raine to see-and a light turned green. The elevator started down.
And it kept going down for what seemed a long time.
When it stopped, someone was there to greet them.
“Lieutenant Nicholas Raine. How are you, Lieutenant?”
Raine looked through the mesh and saw his old captain.
“Captain Hill?” Raine saluted.
Hill opened the gate. At first he was surprised to see his captain, but then Raine noticed the scene behind Hill, and it seemed the surprises might only have begun. It resembled Hollywood’s fantasy version of a war room. Banks of computer screens, some showing images, other data. People walking around quickly with a grim sense of purpose. And toward the back, a raised stairway up to a door.