"Nothing else. I was wondering when the Johnson will arrive."
"Englehardt and his crew took off an hour ago," said Samson. "They should be there tonight, our time."
"Once they're here, I expect to start running two sorties a day. We'll stagger them—"
"I don't need the details. Carry on."
The screen blanked. Dog leaned back in his seat. He was sorry now that he'd agreed to take on the mission. He should just have gone on leave — he was more than entitled.
Rising, he took off his headset and pulled back the curtain to call the Whiplash communications specialist. As he did, the console buzzed, indicating an incoming communication.
It was Danny Freah.
"Colonel, we have something up," said Danny as soon as he punched the buttons to make the connection. "Report of a possible attack in a village southeast of us. We could use some Flighthawk coverage."
"We're on our way."
Breanna pulled up against the side of the pool, catching her breath. Her heart was pumping ferociously, the beats so fast she didn't count them. Fearing she was far over her targeted pulse rate, she took a deep, slow breath, savoring the oxygen in her lungs. Then she went to the side and pulled herself out.
"Hell of a workout," said one of the club trainers, a white woman in her mid-thirties with the unfortunate nickname of Dolly, though she didn't seem to mind it. "You were swimming up a storm."
Breanna nodded, still catching her breath.
"You OK, girl?" asked Dolly.
"I'm fine." Breanna forced a smile. She loved to swim, and the water workouts were easy on her knee, but her ribs ached from the vigorous strokes.
"You trying to prove something?" asked Dolly.
"Why?"
Dolly laughed. "I think you just broke the record for the 10K free-style." "Just that I'm in good shape." "No doubts there."
Breanna smiled, then grabbed her water bottle and the small towel she always took with her during a workout.
No doubt there.
All she had to do was convince the doc. Maybe she'd bring him along tomorrow.
She'd just reached the locker room when she heard her cell phone ringing. She opened the lock and took out the phone, opening it without looking at the number.
"This is Breanna."
"I got those tickets. Meet me over at the county airport at four."
"Tickets?"
"To the Lakers, remember?"
"Oh, Sleek. Um, OK. Sure. Where?"
Sleek Top leased part of a small Cessna that was kept at the Las Vegas airport; they'd take it to L.A., where the Lakers were facing Kings later that evening. He told her where to meet him.
"We'll grab something to eat at the game," he said. "I'll have you back home before midnight."
"Great," she said. "I'll see you then."
The Romanian platoon traveled in four 1980s vintage Land Rover III three-quarter-ton light trucks, and a pair of much older UAZ469B jeeplike vehicles. The former were badly dented and the latter were rusted, but their engines were in good order and the troops wasted no time moving out, driving down the highway in the direction of the reported guerrilla sighting. The gas pipeline was about fifteen miles to the northwest, and Danny wondered if the report wasn't the result of a mistake or perhaps hysteria until he saw the glow of a fire in the distance.
"It's the local police station," Lieutenant Roma told him, leaning back from the front seat of the UAZ. "They make these kind of attacks all the time."
The police station was located across from a church in a cluster of six or seven buildings just off the main road. The station was one of three wooden buildings nestled together, and the flames that had been started by an explosion had set the other two buildings on fire.
The Romanian lieutenant split up his force, using about half to secure the road on both sides of the hamlet. The rest came with him as he went to investigate the attack.
The men leaped out of the trucks as they arrived, shouting at the people in front of the burning buildings and telling them to get back. Everything was chaos. There were a dozen civilians, some crying, some screaming, others stoically using pails in a vain attempt to put out the flames.
A man in a soot-covered police uniform materialized from the right of the buildings, his face burned to a bright red by the heat. He had something in his arms — a doll, Danny thought at first. And then as he stared, he realized the doll was a human child who'd been pulled out of the building too late.
Tears streamed from the policeman's eyes, and Danny felt his stomach weaken.
Lieutenant Roma was talking with an older man near the steps to the church. The man spoke in almost a whisper, his head pitched down toward the ground, as if speaking to his shoes.
Roma listened for a while, then nodded. He moved away from the church, toward Danny.
"There were twelve," he told him. "They may have taken a policeman hostage. They blew up the building with no warning."
"Where'd they go?"
Roma shook his head. "They have the police car, the ambulance, and may have taken a truck as well. Someone heard tires screeching on the back road there." He pointed to the side street, which ran to the southeast. "It would make sense that they would go that way. They'll avoid the highway."
"Let's get after them."
The lieutenant frowned. Danny realized he wasn't hesitating out of cowardice — there was no local fire department, and he was debating whether anything could be done to stop the fire.
It was already far too late. Fed by the wood that had dried for more than a hundred years, the flames climbed into the night sky. The back of one of the buildings crumbled to the ground. The fire flared, but without wind to spread it across the street, it would soon run out of fuel, choked by its own ravenous hunger.
Thicker, heavier parts of the buildings — rugs, appliances— began to melt rather than burn. Acrid smoke spread across the road, stinging everyone's nose and eyes.
"Yes, let's go." Roma turned to the man and told him in Romanian that they would be back. Then he looked at Danny. "Are your people ready to help us?"
"They should be in the air any second."
Zen took over the Flighthawk as soon as it was launched, juicing the throttle and heading toward the GPS reading from Danny Freah's radio. The infrared camera in the Flighthawk's nose showed a docile, almost dreamlike landscape of empty fields broken only occasionally by small clusters of houses. It seemed impossible that there was a war here, but Danny's voice when he checked in sounded as grim as if he were in the middle of hell itself.
"We're traveling on local Road 154," said Danny. "They have a police car, an ambulance, and maybe a pickup truck. There may be a hostage."
"Roger that," said Zen. His rules of engagement required him to get permission not just from Dog, but the Romanian Second Army Corps commander before firing — unless the guerrillas were shooting directly at a Whiplash team member.
In that case he'd obliterate whatever he felt was a danger and ask questions later.
"Check the highways nearby, just in case," added Danny. "But we think this is the road they took."
"Yeah, we're on it."
Romanian road maps had been uploaded into the computer's memory. Zen gave a verbal command and the computer projected the map on the screen. After highlighting his position, it flashed an arrow on the highway Danny had mentioned, a long, winding road that ran from the larger highway to the south.
The road was about thirty miles away. Zen adjusted his course, turning so he would bring the road into view just south of Danny's location. Then he pushed the plane lower, his eyes locked on the view in the screen.