“And who’s going to drive it?” asked Danny.
“Gee, I don’t know.” Boston smiled. “We could draw straws, or just go by rank.”
“Officers excluded?” said Danny.
“Oh yeah. This is strictly an enlisted thing.”
“What about those of us who aren’t in the Army?” asked Sugar.
“Hey, I’m not in the Army,” said McGowan. “So I oughta get dibs.”
“I’ll ride it back,” said Danny, taking the handlebars. “I think Chief Rockland needs a little time to bond with his people.”
“Thanks,” said Boston.
The bike was a Ducati, remade for special operations work under contract to the Technology Office. It had an extra large gas tank, and a heavy duty suspension to accommodate the weight of a soldier with a full complement of gear. It lacked the glossy paint normally associated with Italian motorcycles, and included a few accessories not normally found in street bikes, like a miniature forward-looking infrared radar mounted in the headlight assembly. But it was still a Ducati, and Danny had a blast riding it back to the base, running ahead of the bus. The dirt road was just loose enough to add maneuvering interest as he zipped up the hills.
His fun lasted all of ten minutes, as the Voice announced that a pair of Jeep-sized vehicles were approaching on the road south. The computer calculated that the bus would arrive at the highway within thirty seconds of the Jeeps.
He had the Voice cut into the team radio channel.
“Boston, have Abul stop for a while,” he said. “Two Jeeps are heading our way. I don’t want them to see you.”
“No problem, Cap. How’s the bike?”
“It’s nice. I’m going to get a little closer to the road and have a look at these guys.”
“Roger that.”
Danny leaned on the gas, accelerating so he could get near the road well before the other vehicles. The oversized muffler and heat dissipater turned the trademark Ducati roar into a low moan — a sin, really.
He stopped about a half mile from the road and lay the bike down gently in the dirt. Adjusting the infrared image from the motorcycle, he zeroed in on a rise in the road about a mile to the north and waited.
“Estimate time for the vehicles to pass,” Danny asked the Voice.
“Three minutes, eighteen seconds.”
“Can you identify them?”
“Negative.”
“Are they Sudanese army?”
“The army does not operate Jeeps.”
“They’re real Jeeps?”
“Chrysler Motors, model year 2001.”
“Do these belong to Red Henri?”
“Vehicles are not among types known to be operated by East Sudanese Liberation Crew headed by rebel known as Red Henri.”
The Voice listed three probabilities: two rebel groups that operated to the west, and an aid organization, which was headquartered far to the north. Danny doubted it was the aid group — even do-gooders knew better than to drive out here at night.
The lead Jeep took the hill at about forty miles an hour, cresting into his view. It carried four men; the rear Jeep held two.
They began slowing, and Danny sensed that they were going to turn up the road toward the camp. Sure enough, the lead vehicle stopped abruptly just past the turnoff, then backed up and began climbing the hill. He had the Voice project the image from the Global Hawk into the control unit, watching as the Jeeps continued on the road toward their camp.
“Nuri, you on the line?” Danny asked over the Voice’s communications channel.
“Yeah, I’m looking at them on the laptop.”
“Who are they? Do you know?”
“No idea. I’d guess rebels, but that’s pretty obvious.”
“Maybe you oughta hide up in the rocks.”
“Maybe. Let’s see what happens.”
Back at the bus, the Whiplash team members were developing a shared case of cabin fever. They had spent the better part of the last three days traveling, first to report for the assignment and then to get into position to make the jump. None of them, Boston included, liked the idea that they were sitting and waiting in the desert, as if afraid of a couple of locals in old Jeeps.
Hera pushed her feet against the seat back, trying to keep her muscles from going into spasm.
“Hey Chief — when we are we moving?” she asked.
“Soon as Colonel Freah says we’re good to go.”
“When’s that going to be?”
“It’ll be when it is,” said Boston.
“That’s a line of Plato, isn’t it?” said McGowan.
“Who’s Plato?” asked Boston.
“Plato’s that guy in the Popeye cartoons who ate all the hamburgers,” said Flash.
“No, you’re thinking of Pluto.”
“I know who Plato is, asshole,” snapped Boston, but no one heard him — they were too busy trying to remember the cast of the ancient cartoons.
Because they’d had to scramble to pull the operation together, Flash, McGowan, Hera, and Sugar had joined Whiplash as provisional members. There was no question that they were qualified; all had proven themselves in covert operations in the past.
But impressive résumés didn’t make a good team great. Boston knew all too well that the opposite could be true. The success or failure of a group depended very much on the chemistry between them, whether they were trying for a pennant in baseball or sneaking behind enemy lines in battle. Even if he had personally vetted everyone in the group, he still wouldn’t have been sure how they would all work together in the field.
What he’d seen so far didn’t encourage him. They’d pitched in to help secure the gear well enough. But he could tell they were still checking each other out, deciding whether they wanted to trust each other.
“Brutus was the guy Popeye beat up,” said Boston, in a tone that suggested the conversation should end. “Wally was the hamburger guy.”
“You’re wrong,” said Flash. “It was Bluto.”
“It’s amazing how grown men can argue about cartoons,” said Hera.
“We aren’t arguing. We’re discussing,” said McGowan.
“This is about as intellectual a discussion as those jawbonis can have,” said Sugar.
“Who are you calling a jawboni?” said McGowan. “I’m Scots — I don’t do jawboni.”
“All right,” said Boston. Sensing the animosity level starting to rise behind the joking, he decided it was time to act less like a chief and more like a kindergarten teacher. “Who wants ice cream?”
Danny worked out a plan in his head to ambush the men in the Jeep if they went into the camp. But it wasn’t necessary. The Jeeps continued up the road without turning off, moving through the hills.
They brought the bus into camp twenty minutes later and began unpacking. The gear seemed to have gained about a thousand pounds in the five miles from the drop. The process dragged as they sorted, stored, and installed. Even Danny grew tired. He kept himself going the last hour or so thinking about Reid’s ice cream.
With everything finally squared away a half hour before sunrise, he divided up the watch, then headed to the house and its makeshift kitchen for a prebedtime snack.
Only to find the ice cream gone.
“You always said the troops were the first priority,” Boston said when Danny asked for an explanation.
“From now on, they’re the first priority on everything but ice cream.”
13
The jeeps that Danny had seen did not belong to one of the rebel factions. They were actually carrying Bani Aberhadji south to a small village about forty-five miles southeast of the base camp.