“As well you should be.”
“Can safety precautions be built into it? The paper says that they would be ineffectual.”
“Potentially ineffectual,” said Rubeo. “I can’t make a judgment without knowing much more about the specifics of what we’re talking about.”
Fair enough, thought Reid.
“There would be physical limitations, depending on the hardware. And different contingencies. I’m sorry to be vague — the portability issue is not trivial, but it can be overcome. Conceivably.”
“If it were up to you, would you allow such a weapon to be used?” asked Reid.
Now Rubeo’s lips curled up in the faintest suggestion of a smile — a rare occurrence.
“I don’t make those sorts of decisions,” he answered. “In my experience, it is a very rare weapon that, once created, is not used.”
Chapter 12
Danny jumped up an instant after the explosives blew out the panel. It was a neat penetration, a literal door for the Whiplash team to run through. The first trooper inside tossed a flash-bang grenade in the direction of the lone occupant. The man fell from the chair where he’d been sleeping; two Whiplashers reached him before the room stopped reverberating. One put his boot against the man’s back and his gun against his head, just in case he had any notion of moving. The other trussed his arms and legs with thick zip ties.
“Where the hell is the plane?” yelled Thomas “Red” Roberts, who’d been tasked to secure the UAV. “All I see is the pickup truck.”
Danny nudged Red out of the way. He was right. The only thing inside the building was the truck.
Danny flipped the shield on his helmet up. A single lightbulb near the front threw dim rays around the large room. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he pulled the signal receiving unit from his pocket and turned it on. The device was relatively simple — it beeped as it tracked the transmitter, the signals getting closer and closer together.
It was a solid tone.
He went over and peered over the back of the truck. There was a small jumble of what looked like debris near the cab. He picked it up — it was a hunk of plastic with some circuitry attached. Undoubtedly the tracking transmitter.
Damn.
“Movement in Building Two,” said MY-PID.
“Two, three people moving to the front,” added Turk, who was watching the feed.
“Osprey up,” said Danny. “Red, Marcus — search this damn place.”
“Already on it, Cap,” said Marcus. He was another of the new recruits, a former Ranger, also trained as a helicopter pilot. Danny hoped to use that specialty in the future.
There was a burst of gunfire from the front of the building.
“Boston?”
“They ducked back inside,” said Boston. “Didn’t look like they had weapons.”
The Osprey’s heavy rotors pounded the ground as it approached. Red went to the passenger side door of the pickup truck.
“Wait!” yelled Danny. “Check—”
His warning was too late — the truck exploded as Red pulled open the door.
Chapter 13
The past was gone, erased and buried from his memory, shocked out of him, drugged away. The past was gone and the future was blank; only the present remained, only the present was real.
Mark Stoner shifted in his bed, staring at the ceiling.
What was the present, though? Working out? Getting better?
Better from what?
It was all a jumble, a knot of torn thoughts.
Zen. Who was Zen?
A friend. Someone he knew.
But why was he in a wheelchair? And what was a friend, exactly?
Someone he saw a lot.
What was he supposed to say to him? What was he supposed to do?
Stoner leaned to the side. Dr. Esrang had given him a radio. He turned it on and began flipping through the stations.
“… Two out, and here comes Granderson. He flied out his last at bat. The former Yankee is batting just.230 this year…”
The words were strangely familiar. Stoner tried to puzzle out what they meant.
Baseball.
He knew that. The game.
He knew everything about it, didn’t he? He could picture what was happening in his head. He saw the batter swing and miss.
A memory floated up from deep within his consciousness. He was at a game with his grandfather.
His grandfather!
There was a past.
Baseball.
Stoner folded his arms across his chest and listened as the game progressed.
Chapter 14
The explosion blew Red back into Danny. Both men fell against the floor. The explosive charge was relatively small, and their body armor absorbed most of the blow. Still, there was enough of a shock to knock both of them out for a second. Danny came to with Flash leaning over him.
“Cap, you OK?”
“Yeah,” managed Danny. He got to his feet with Flash’s help. Red was shaken, but uninjured except for some cuts and bruises — the biggest one to his pride.
“Nothing in here,” said Flash. “You want to evac?”
“Right. Let’s get out of here. Take the prisoner with us. Both of them — get the guy Sugar knocked out.”
“On it.”
They left through the hole at the side. Boston and Sugar joined them as they crossed over the railroad tracks, running into a small clearing where the Osprey could land and pick them up. Danny could smell the exhaust in the wash from the Osprey’s rotors as the aircraft swooped toward them, its engine nacelles angled upward in helicopter mode.
His head was pounding. He paused as the aircraft settled down, counting his men to make sure they were all there. Flash had cut their prisoner’s leg restraints away, but he held his man by the arms as they moved double-time toward the rear of the Osprey. The prisoner was small and skinny, a young teenager.
Sugar had the other POW on her back. This one was tall — close to six feet — but just as skinny as the other.
Both were probably useless, Danny realized. Whoever had booby-trapped the truck probably figured they were disposable.
“We’re all here, Cap,” said Boston, taking up the rear.
“All right, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What happened?” asked Boston as they ran up the MV-22’s ramp.
“They booby-trapped the door of the truck and we missed it,” said Danny. “We were lucky. And sloppy.”
Chapter 15
Li Han crouched at the edge of the culvert, watching as the Osprey rose. Its wings began to tip forward; it seemed to stutter to the right, and for a moment he thought it would crash. But the stutter was an optical illusion — the aircraft pivoted, turning away smoothly as it accelerated into the distance.
He had a clear shot for a Stinger missile.
But even if he’d had an antiaircraft weapon ready, it would have been foolish to attack. The aircraft was undoubtedly equipped with a detector and countermeasures, and even if he did succeed in taking it down, he’d be telling them he was still nearby. Better to remain a mystery.
Afraid he might be given away by the locals, Li Han had slipped out of the warehouse with Amara and most of the others, taking over a house about a quarter of a mile away and working on the UAV there. But even that had seemed too close, too small a precaution — as soon as he’d heard the explosion, Li Han had taken Amara with him and run from the building, using a door in the basement.