"Yeah, well, guy wants to talk to you. C'mon—I don't want my phone tied up all afternoon."
I got my legs under me and walked over... and halfway there the only conceivable possibility clicked into place. After nearly a year... For a second I considered turning around, getting back into my car, and heading for parts unknown. I would have a perfect right to do so; neither Griff nor Banshee had the slightest legal hold over me any more.
I reached the bar and accepted the phone from the barman. Licking my lips, I took a deep breath and held the instrument to my ear. "Hello?"
"Adam? God—I was afraid we weren't going to find you."
My jaw clenched painfully, and I knew with absolute certainty that my year away from Banshee had abruptly come to an end. Griffith Mansfield was the archetypical iron-calm man, with a manner and matching voice that were as even and steady as set concrete even at the worst of times. In my two years with Banshee I'd never once heard that voice as shot through with tension as it was now, and it sent an ice-cold spike digging into my stomach. "What's the matter?" I forced myself to ask.
"Full-fledged hell has just broken loose, that's what's the matter," he growled, "and we're right square in the middle of it. Where are you?"
"What do you mean, where am I? You called me, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, let me check the readout." The line went blank for a moment, and the spike digging into my stomach took an extra turn as I realized Griff really didn't know where I was. Checking the readout meant he'd been on something like the FBI's Search-Spot system... and last I knew the FBI was not in the habit of lending their magic phone equipment out to hole-in-the-wall agencies like Banshee. Which meant he hadn't been exaggerating: all hell really had broken out. "Adam? Okay, I got you. Look, there's a small private airstrip about four miles south of you, at the west end of Lake Hattie. Go there and wait; they'll be sending a T-61 from Warren AFB for you."
I licked my lips again without noticeable effect as my intention of pointing out to him that I was no longer under his jurisdiction died a quiet death. First the FBI's phone search machine, now an Air Force general's commuter jet casually laid on to carry a civilian cross country. Whatever was happening, it was becoming less and less likely that anyone was going to let my personal preferences get in the way. "Griff... can you at least give me a hint of what's happening? Has something happened to the rest of the Jumpers?"
"No, no, everyone's fine. As to the rest of it, you'll get everything we know on the plane—if you don't find out sooner. I understand they're going to release it to the media in a few minutes."
"Griff—"
"Look, Adam, trust me; I wouldn't be asking you to come back if it wasn't vitally important. I'll see you soon." There was a click and he was gone.
"Damn," I said softly to the dead line. Laying the phone back on the counter, I looked up to find both the barman and the waitress staring at me with what seemed to be a combination of awe and suspicion... and in the waitress's eyes, at least, I could see the dawning realization that she was about to lose possibly her only customer of the afternoon.
That, at least, I could do something about. Digging out my wallet, I found a twenty and handed it to her. "Keep the change," I told her. At least now I could give without having to take quite so much thought for the morrow: whatever Banshee's other financial difficulties, Griff had always insisted on good salaries for his Jumpers... and it looked very much like I was about to become a Jumper again.
I reached the airstrip in ten minutes, and was sitting in my car listening to the radio when the news broke.
Somewhere over western Colorado, Air Force One had just crashed. With the President of the United States aboard.
—
The T-61's pilot didn't have much more for me than I'd already heard on the radio, mainly because there wasn't much more that anyone knew at this stage. Air Force One had been on its way to Washington from President Jeffers's Sierra retreat when the pilot suddenly announced he'd lost the right inboard engine.
Seconds later the radio went silent altogether, and the jets that were scrambled for an overflight reported wreckage strewn across a large swath of smoking cliffside forest. There had been no confirmation of casualties or survivors as yet, but from the sound of things there wasn't much call for optimism. Little to do now but clean up the wreckage, both physical and psychological... and to find out, for the record, what had gone wrong.
The latter would be Banshee's job.
—
We arrived about an hour and a half after leaving Wyoming. A police car was waiting at the end of the runway for me, a lukewarm box of take-out chicken in the back seat reminding me that I'd never gotten the early dinner I'd planned. Indirect evidence of two things: that Griff was getting his balance back, and that sometime this evening I was indeed going to have to Jump. Two of Banshee's Jumpers did best on empty stomachs, but I wasn't one of them. The thought of what was coming tightened the knot in my stomach; but the hunger down there far outclassed the nervousness, and by the time we pulled up at the familiar nondescript building fifteen minutes later I'd worked my way through all three pieces of chicken and was polishing off the last of the biscuit.
Griff was waiting for me at the front door. "Adam," he nodded, gripping my hand briefly as he pushed the door open. "Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it."
"No trouble," I told him, not entirely truthfully. We stepped out of the entryway airlock... and I found myself face to face with a dress-uniformed Marine.
"He's one of our people," Griff told the Marine before I could get my tongue unstuck. The guard nodded incuriously; but even as we passed him I could feel his eyes giving me an unobtrusive but thorough once-over. I'd seen that kind of apparent unconcern once or twice before, always from truly professional guards who used it as a way to throw people off-guard.
Professional guards at Banshee. "The place has changed," I murmured.
"The Marines are just on loan," he shook his head. "Courtesy of a Washington VIP named Shaeffer. He's in the lounge updating things for Hale and Kristin."
"What about Morgan? Or has he quit?"
"No, he's still with us. He's downstairs getting prepped."
I blinked. "You've got a Jump going already?"
"We will as soon as the model of Air Force One is ready. Shaeffer insisted on particularly fine detailing, and the modelers just finished it a few minutes ago."
"Actually, I was surprised more by the speed than the delay," I told him.
Griff snorted. "Yes, well, for a change, the budget overseers aren't going to be a problem. It's amazing," he added with a trace of bitterness, "the kind of money people are willing to throw around when someone important gets killed."
I nodded silently.
We reached the lounge and went in. The Washington VIP was there, all right, easily distinguishable by his expensive business suit and taut look. He was standing over the lounge table talking across a map to Hale Fortner and Kristin Cosgrove and—
I stopped just through the doorway, so abruptly that Griff stepped on my heel. "Rennie?" I hissed.
Griff squeezed past me into the room. "We needed everyone we could get, Adam—"
"How on Earth did you get him to come back?" I whispered. The painful scene that had taken place when Rennie Baylor was fired from Banshee flooded back from my memory.
"Look, this is no time to dredge up past disagreements," Griff hissed back. "Not for me, not for any of us—and if I can stand him for three days, so can you. Okay?"
I took a deep breath and got my feet moving again. True, it was Griff, not me, with whom Rennie had had most of his friction... but that didn't mean the rest of us hadn't suffered with him from the sidelines. Still, for three days—and under such circumstances—I would do my best to make do.