Raven Strike

Chapter 1

It felt as if God himself were hunting him, circling beyond the clouds, watching every movement. An angry, vengeful god, a god obsessed with obliterating him. It felt as if God had singled him out above all to be the focus of his persecution, the modern-day Job. Except that this Job must die, and die harshly, in bloody fire and unimaginable pain. To survive, this Job must do nothing less than outwit God.

Such thoughts would have been blasphemous to a believer, but Li Han did not believe in the Christian god, let alone the vengeful, twisted Allah his paymasters had created from their own misinterpretations of scripture. To Li Han, all conceptions of god were superstition, tales told to children to get them to bed at night. Li Han had no religion except survival, and no ambition beyond that.

Once, he had dreams. Once, he’d even had desires beyond staying alive.

He was going to be rich. He desired this so badly that he would do anything for it. And he had. Like a fool.

Too late, he learned that wealth and comfort were illusions. The simplest facts had taken so long to understand.

The pilotless aircraft droned above. Li Han could hear it above as he rested at the side of the mine shaft. He had constructed a passive radar device to tell him where the aircraft was, but it wasn’t necessary now. All he needed were his ears.

Li Han waited as the engines grew louder. He saw it in his mind’s eye as it came overhead. It was the shape of a dagger, sleeker than the UAVs he’d seen farther south, different than the one in Pakistan that had fired at his car but missed.

It was a special UAV. He flattered himself that the Americans had built it just for him.

The noise grew to its loudest — God’s angry voice, calling him out.

He laughed.

The drone banked. The sound began to dim.

“You will go when I tell you,” he said to the man standing near him.

The man nodded. He knew he was a decoy, knew even that he was very likely to die. And yet he stood there willingly, prepared to run, prepared to take the drone away.

Fool!

The sound lessened as the UAV banked toward the farthest edge of its track above.

“Now,” whispered Li Han.

The man pulled the scarf over his head, pitched forward and left the cave.

Chapter 2

Melissa Ilse felt her breath catch as the figure emerged from the shadow of the hillside.

Mao Man, or an imposter?

Not for her to decide — Raven would make the call.

She watched the video feed change as the UAV’s sensors locked onto the figure. His back was turned to the aircraft. The plane changed course slightly, angling so it could get a look at the man’s face.

Melissa folded her arms to keep herself from interfering. This was the hardest part of the mission — to let Raven do its job on its own.

“Here we go,” said Major Krock. The Air Force officer headed the team piloting the Predator UAV, which was flying with and helping monitor Raven. “Here he comes.”

Melissa folded her arms. Even on good days she found Krock barely tolerable.

Four vehicles were parked along the hillside below. The figure kept his head down as he reached the dirt road where they were parked. Raven took data from its sensors, comparing what they gathered to its known profiles of the criminal the CIA had nicknamed Mao Man. The system began with the most basic measurements — gender, height, weight — then moved on to the more esoteric, measuring the figure’s gait, the arc of his head movements. The computer could identify and sort over twelve hundred features, weighing each one according to a complicated algorithm. Using these data points, it then determined a “target match probability”; it would not strike unless that probability went over 98.875 percent.

It currently stood at 95.6.

Melissa watched the man on the ground reaching for the door handle of the vehicle. She could see the computer’s calculations in real time if she wanted, pulling it up on her main monitor.

She didn’t. What she wanted was for the operation to be over, to be successful — for Raven to prove itself. They’d been at this for over a month.

Nail him, she thought. Let’s go.

Suddenly, the main video feed changed. Melissa looked over at the computer screen — target match probability had dropped below fifty percent.

A decoy?

There was another figure moving from the mine, scrambling down the hill.

Mao Man?

Raven wasn’t sure. The computer learned from its mistakes, and having been hoodwinked just a few moments before, it would be doubly cautious now.

It was 87.4 percent.

Then 88.6.

It has to be him, she thought.

Nail him!

Come on, come on — kill the son of a bitch already!

Chapter 3

Li Han heard the aircraft changing direction, its engines straining. He had counted on more time than this.

The motorcycle was twenty yards away. There was no sense running for it.

He stopped and turned, looking at the UAV tracking him. Its black skin stood out clearly in the blue sky. Barely a thousand feet away, it looked like a vulture, coming for its prey.

There was another nearby. This one was more common, a Predator.

Two aircraft. There was some consolation in that, he thought. He warranted more than the usual effort.

Chapter 4

A warning buzzer sounded as the computer confirmed Mao Man’s identity. A missile had been launched from the interior of the mine he’d been using as cover.

The Raven immediately broke contact with its target. Flares fired from rear of the aircraft. The UAV shut off its engine and fell on its wing, sailing to the right to avoid the missile. Still without power, the UAV twisted on its back and folded into a three-quarter turn, clearing the area so quickly that the shoulder-launched SAM tracking it had no chance to react.

Instead, it locked on the heat signature of the flares. In a few moments it was past them, and realizing it was about to miss, detonated its warhead. Shrapnel sprayed harmlessly in the air.

Raven had already computed a course back to Mao Man. Interestingly enough, the hostile action had no effect on its evaluation of the target. It remained locked at 98.2.

Melissa turned to the Predator screen to watch the aircraft come around. There was a second SAM warning, this one from the Predator.

Then a proximity warning blared.

“Watch out!” Melissa yelled. “You’re too close!”

But it was too late. A black tail filled the Predator screen. Then the video went blank.

Melissa looked back to the Raven panel. It was off-line.

Chapter 5

Li Han threw himself to the ground, knowing he was dead.

There was a loud explosion high above him — the missile fired from the cave.

Then a second sound, closer, though this one softer and longer, more a smack and a tear than a bang.

Another explosion, farther away from the others. A loud crack similar to the first sound.

Li Han lay on the ground for several seconds. He knew he wasn’t dead, yet he didn’t entirely believe it. The aircraft had been so very close to him this time. Finally he pushed up to his knees and turned around. The sky was empty; the aircraft that had been following him were gone.

Once more, Li Han had cheated the Americans. Or God. Or both.

He took a few steps toward the car, then stopped. The aircraft must have been hit by the missiles. If so, their parts would be nearby. There would certainly be something worth scrounging or selling.

One of the Brothers ran from the cave, yelling at him in Arabic. The Brothers — they were all members of a radical group that called itself the Sudan Brotherhood — used Arabic as their official language of choice. It was a difficult language for Li Han; he would have much preferred English.

But the gist of what the man was saying was easily deciphered: Praise Allah that you are alive.

You fool, thought Li Han. It was God who was trying to kill me.

“Where are the planes?” he said to the man in Arabic.

The brother shook his head. Li Han couldn’t be sure if he didn’t know or couldn’t understand his Chinese-accented Arabic.

“The airplane,” he said, using English, and held his hands out as if they were wings. The brother pointed toward the hills.

“Let us take a look,” said Li Han.

The brother began to protest.

“Don’t worry. The Americans never send three planes,” said Li Han, starting away. “We are safe for a while.”

Chapter 6

Jonathon Reid frowned as soon as he entered the director’s dining room. Reginald Harker was sitting at the far end of the table, holding his coffee cup out for the attendant.

Worse news: there was only one other place set. When Reid had received the “invitation” to breakfast with CIA Director Herman Edmund, he assumed Edmund would actually be there.

As an old Agency hand, he should have known better. Reid’s official title was Special Assistant to the Deputy Director Operations, CIA; in fact, he ran his own portfolio of projects at Edmund’s behest. Officially “retired” and back on a contract basis, Reid was the grayest of grayhairs in the Agency.

“Jonathon.” Harker nodded, but didn’t rise.

Reid pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. Harker had been with the CIA for a little over twenty years. In the old days, he’d been a Middle East expert, and had done his share of time in the region. Reid wasn’t sure what he’d done in the interim, but at the moment he was a deputy in the action directorate, a covert ops supervisor in charge of restricted projects. Reid didn’t know what they were; in fact, he didn’t even know Harker’s formal title. Titles often meant very little in their line of work.

“Just coffee,” Reid told the attendant. “Black.”

“I was glad you could make it,” said Harker after the woman left.

“I was under the impression Herman would be here,” said Reid.

“Very busy morning,” said Harker.

“We have business, then?”

Harker made a face, then looked to the door as the attendant knocked. The woman had worked for the Agency for nearly forty-five years, and undoubtedly had forgotten more secrets than either man had ever been told. But neither Harker nor Reid spoke until she finished laying out Harker’s meal and left a fresh pot of coffee for Reid.

“I understand you’re working with the Office of Special Technology,” said Harker finally. “Heading our half of it.”

“Mmmm,” said Reid noncommittally.

“We need help on an assignment.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Harker put his elbows on the table and leaned forward over his untouched egg. This was all just show and posture — exactly the thing Reid hated about the Agency bureaucracy. The man obviously needed a favor. He should just come out and say it.

“I’ve been working directly under D-CIA,” said Harker, meaning Edmund. “It’s a special project.”

“So far you’ve told me nothing.”

Harker frowned, then changed tact. “I thought you were retiring, Jonathon.”

“I am retired. Back on contract. At my pleasure.”

Harker picked up his fork and took a mouthful of egg. Reid could now guess what was up: something Harker was in charge of had gone to crap, and he needed help from Whiplash.

“How is it?” asked Reid.

“Cold,” said Harker, putting down his fork.

“So what went wrong?” said Reid finally.

“Why do you think something went wrong?”

“Reg, I have a lot of things to do today.”

“We have a project called Raven,” said Harker. “Have you heard of it?”

“No,” said Reid.

“Well that’s good, at least.” Harker rubbed his face. His fingers pushed so hard that they left white streaks on the skin. “It’s a follow-on to the Predator program. In a sense. We lost one of the planes last night in Africa. We need to recover the wreckage. One of our agents is headed there now. We wondered — the director wondered — if it would be possible for Whiplash to back her up.”

Chapter 7

Captain Turk Mako stretched his arms back and rocked his shoulders, loosening his muscles before putting on the flight helmet for the Tigershark II. For all of its advanced electronics and carefully thought-out interface, the helmet had one serious shortcoming:

It was heavy, at least twice the weight of a regular flight helmet. And the high-speed maneuvers the Tigershark II specialized in didn’t make it feel any lighter.

Then again, the brain bucket did keep the gray matter where it belonged.

“Ready, Captain?” asked Martha Albris, flight crew chief for the test mission.

Though standing next to him, Albris was using the Whiplash com system, and her voice was so loud in the helmet that it hurt Turk’s eardrums. Turk put his hand over the ear area of his helmet and rotated his palm, manually adjusting the volume on the external microphone system. The helmet had several interfaces; besides voice, a number of controls were activated by external touch, including the audio volume. It was part of an intuitive control system aimed to make the Tigershark more an extension of the pilot’s body rather than an aircraft.

Turk gave her a thumbs-up.

They walked together to the boarding ladder. The Tigershark II was a squat, sleek aircraft, small by conventional fighter standards. But then she wasn’t a conventional fighter. She was designed to work with a fleet of unmanned aircraft, acting as both team leader and mother hen.

Turk went up the four steps of the ladder to a horizontal bridge, where he climbed off the gridwork and onto the seat of his airplane. He folded his legs down under the control panel and into the narrow tunnel beneath the nose of the plane, slipping into the airplane much like a foot into a loafer.

Albris bent over the platform to help him. As crew chiefs went, she was particularly pleasing to the eye, even in her one-piece coverall. Turk had actually never seen the civilian mechanics supervisor in anything but a coverall. Still, her freckled face and the slight scent of perfume sent his imagination soaring.

Maybe he’d look her up after the postflight debrief.

Turk’s fantasies were interrupted by a black SUV that pulled across the front of the hangar, its blue emergency lights flashing. The passenger-side door opened and his boss, Breanna Stockard, emerged from the cab.

“Turk, I need to talk to you,” she yelled. “There’s been a change in plans.”

Turk pulled himself back upright.

“Flight scrubbed, boss?” he asked. The helmet projected his voice across the hangar.

“The test flight is. But you’re still going to fly.”

“Really? Where to?”

“We’ll discuss it inside,” said Breanna.

Breanna watched Turk climb out of the plane and run over to the truck. That was the great thing about Turk — he was enthusiastic no matter what.

“Another demo flight for visiting congressmen?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said, turning toward the hangar. “We have to go downstairs to discuss it.”

The Office of Special Technology used a small area in the Dreamland complex to house Tigershark and some related projects. Besides a pair of hangars, it “owned” an underground bunker and a support area there.

The Office of Special Technology was an outgrowth of several earlier programs that brought cutting-edge technology to the front lines. Most notable of these was Dreamland itself, which a decade and a half before had been run by Breanna’s father, Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian. But the walk down the concrete ramp to the secure areas below held no special romance for Breanna; she’d long ago learned to steel herself off from any emotion where Dreamland was concerned.

“You’re flying to Sudan,” Breanna told Turk when they reached the secure area below. Once a medical test lab, the room was now used to brief missions. It was functionally the equivalent of a SCIF, or secure communications area, sealed against possible electronic eavesdropping.

Breanna walked to one of the computer terminals.

“Less than twelve hours ago, a UAV called Raven went down in a mountainous area in the southeast corner of Sudan, not far from Ethiopia,” she said. “I have a map here.”

“That’s pretty far to get some pictures,” said Turk, looking at the screen. “Going to be a long flight, even supersonic.”

“It’s not just a reconnaissance mission, Turk. Whiplash has been deployed. Our network satellite in that area is down for maintenance. It’ll be at least forty-eight hours before we get the replacement moved into position.”

“Gotcha.”

Whiplash was the code name of a joint CIA — Defense Department project run by the Office of Special Technology. It combined a number of cutting-edge technologies with a specially trained covert action unit headed by Air Force colonel Danny Freah. Freah had helped pioneer the concept at Dreamland as a captain some fifteen years before. Now he was back as the leader of a new incarnation, working with special operators from a number of different military branches as well as the CIA.

Unlike the Dreamland version, the new Whiplash worked directly with the Central Intelligence Agency and included a number of CIA officers. The head of the Agency contingent was Nuri Abaajmed Lupo, a young covert agent who, by coincidence, had spent considerable time undercover in roughly the same area where the Raven UAV had gone down.

Nuri had been the first field agent to train with a highly integrated computer network developed for Whiplash. Officially known as the Massively Parallel Integrated Decision Complex or MY-PID, the network of interconnected computers and data interfaces, the system allowed him to access a wide range of information, from planted bugs to Agency data mining, instantaneously while he was in the field.

The high volume data streams traveled through a dedicated network of satellites. The amount of data involved and the limitations of the ground broadcasting system required that the satellites be within certain ranges for MY-PID to work. The Tigershark II could substitute as a relay station in an emergency.

“You’re to contact Danny Freah when you arrive on station,” Breanna continued. “We’ll have updates to you while you’re en route.”

“All right, I guess.”

“Problem, Captain?”

“No ma’am. Just figuring it out.”

Turk folded his arms and stared at the screen. The target area in southeastern Sudan was some 13,750 kilometers away — roughly 7,500 nautical miles. Cruising in the vicinity of Mach 3, the Tigershark could cover that distance in the area of four hours. At that speed, though, it would run out of fuel somewhere over the Atlantic. He’d need to set up at least two refuels to be comfortable.

“The first tanker will meet you in the Caribbean,” said Breanna. She tapped a password into the computer and a map appeared. “It’s already being prepped. You fly south with it, then head across to the Med. A second tanker will come on station over Libya.”

“How long do I stay on station?”

“As long as it takes. We’ll find another tanker; you can just stay in transmission range if you have to refuel off the east coast of Africa. Obviously, you won’t be able to provide any surveillance, but we’ll have to make do until we get more gear there. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like it’ll even be necessary. The mission looks very straightforward.”

Breanna double-tapped the screen, expanding the map area of southern Sudan. Next she opened a set of optical satellite images of the area, taken about an hour before the accident.

“This satellite will pass back over that area in three hours,” she said. “It’s possible that they’ll find the wreckage before you arrive. If not, you’re to use your sensors to assist in the search. All right?”

“Sure.”

“Colonel Freah will have operational control.”

Breanna looked up from the screen. The frown on Turk’s face hadn’t dissipated.

“What’s wrong, Captain?”

“Nothing.”

“Out with it.”

“Tigershark’s unarmed.”

“And?”

“I could do a much better job with the gun.”

The gun referred to was the experimental rail gun. The weapon was undergoing tests in a second aircraft, which was also housed at the leased Dreamland base.

“The weapon’s not operational. And there shouldn’t be any need for it.” Breanna clicked on another folder. A set of images opened. “This is Raven. It’s smaller than a Flighthawk or a Predator. It’s armed with Hellfire missiles at the moment, but eventually it will be able to house a number of weapons.”

“Looks more like a Tigershark than a Predator.”

“It is. The contractor is the same for both systems.” Breanna closed the file, returning to the map. “It was flying with a Predator, which also crashed. Danny will be working out of Ethiopia. You’ll be able to land there in an emergency.”

“I didn’t think Ethiopia was an ally,” said Turk.

“They’re not.”

Chapter 8

Danny Freah stared out into the black night as the MV-22 Osprey whipped over the hills.

“Hasn’t changed,” said his companion bitterly. Nuri Abaajmed Lupo was sitting in the sling seat nearby, slumped back, arm draped over the canvas back.

“Maybe it has. Too dark to see,” said Danny.

“Never changes,” said Nuri. “It’s a shit hole.”

Danny was silent for a moment. He’d been here a few months back, on his very first mission with Whiplash — the new Whiplash. They’d pulled Nuri out of a tense situation, and nearly died in the process.

A good christening.

Since that time, the lawless situation in southeastern Sudan had gotten worse. Worried about violence spilling over the border, the Ethiopian government had declared its “neutrality” in the civil war, but was ineffective in keeping either side out.

At the same time it was engaged in an unrelated feud with the United States, Ethiopia had dismissed the U.S. ambassador a few weeks before. This made the existence of a secret American base in the northwest corner of the country even more problematic.

“Wish you were still in Alexandria?” Danny asked Nuri.

Nuri shrugged.

“We’ll wrap this up and get back,” said Danny. “She’ll remember you.”

Nuri frowned. “She” was a colonel in the state police administration, assigned as one of their liaisons. The sudden assignment had interrupted Nuri’s plans to take her out.

The Osprey dipped into a valley, skimming close to the treetops. As the aircraft slowed, the engine nacelles on the wings swung up. Danny cinched his seat belt, the aircraft fluttering down onto the landing strip.

Outside, the air was cool and crisp, a welcome change from Egypt, where it had been oppressively hot. Danny zipped his jacket to his neck. He was dressed in civilian clothes, unsure exactly what to expect.

“They didn’t even send anyone to meet us,” said Nuri, surveying the field.

“We probably got here faster than they expected,” said Danny. He pulled the strap to his rucksack over his shoulder and started walking toward the low-slung buildings beyond the small strip where they’d been deposited. Ras Dashen, the highest peak in the Semien Mountains, rose in the distance, its brown hulk clearly outlined by the glow of the full moon. The mountain was a popular destination for adventure tourists, but this sparsely populated valley was more than fifty miles from the nearest route taken by tourists. Accessible only by a scrub road or aircraft, the CIA had been using the field for Raven for nearly two months.

The Osprey rose behind them, spitting sand and grit in every direction. The aircraft would fly back to southern Egypt, refuel, then go north to Cairo to wait for the rest of the Whiplash team.

Assuming they were needed. Danny wasn’t exactly sure what the situation was; Reid hadn’t given him many details, saying only to get there and find out what had to be done.

“Lonely place,” said Danny as they walked.

Nuri grumbled an answer.

“This place operational when you were here?” Danny asked. “Before Whiplash?”

“Not that I knew.”

A thick clump of clouds floated in front of the moon, casting the base in darkness. As they passed, a pickup truck emerged from the shadows near the building, riding toward them without its lights.

“Here comes our ride,” said Nuri.

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything the Agency is doing out here.” Nuri stopped. “Black projects have a way of becoming rodeos.”

The pickup arrived before Danny could ask what he meant. The driver rolled down the window. He was white, and spoke with a British accent.

“You’re Colonel Freah?”

“That’s right.”

“You can put your bags in the back.” The man didn’t introduce himself. He waited silently for Danny and Nuri to get in, then put the truck into reverse, made a slow-motion U-turn, and drove toward the buildings. There were five; two about the size of a small ranch house back home, and three slightly smaller.

“Which building?” Danny asked.

“You can wait in the one on the far right.” The building was one of the larger structures.

“Wait?” snapped Nuri.

“What do you mean wait?” asked Danny. “We’re here to meet Melissa Ilse.”

“I don’t know where she is.” The driver seemed almost offended that they would imply he did know.

“How long you been on contract?” asked Nuri.

The man looked at him. “That’s not your business.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Danny and Nuri got out and went into the building. It consisted of a single room. A set of tables formed two long rows in the center, with chairs running down one side. Dim red lights shone from overhead fixtures; there wasn’t enough light to read a watch by.

“Most of them bugged out already,” said Nuri, surveying the room. “Shit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Too few people. If they were running UAVs from here, they would have needed dozens of people. Even if it was just a skeletal crew. Even if they were flying from somewhere else. And the security would have been tighter. I’ll bet they had tents, and just took everything away. I don’t like this.”

Dubious, Danny looked around the room. It looked more like an empty Knights of Columbus hall than a command post.

“So where’s this Melissa, you think?” he asked Nuri.

Nuri pulled out a chair and sat down. “Damned if I know. I never even heard of her.”

He shook his head. Danny was used to dealing with Nuri — he tended to be a bit of a crank — but this was cantankerous even for him.

“There aren’t that many people who can deal with East Africa,” Nuri added. “I know them all. And she’s not one of them.”

“Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is a bullshit way to treat us,” said Danny. As he turned to go back to the door, it opened. A short, thin man with several days’ worth of stubble on his face entered.

“Colonel Freah?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Damian Jordan.” He reached out and shook Danny’s hand. He had a grip that could crush rocks.

“We’re supposed to meet Melissa Ilse,” said Danny.

“She’s not here,” said Jordan. He offered his hand to Nuri. Nuri just stared at him.

“Where is she?” asked Danny.

“She got a lead on the aircraft and she went to check it out.”

“By herself?” asked Nuri.

“Melissa is like that.”

“You’re in charge?” asked Danny.

“Melissa is.”

“Where’s the rest of your team?” asked Nuri.

“With the aircraft down, we were ordered to move to a more secure location. We’re pretty wide-open over here. So it’s just me, Ferny — who drove out to get you — and two Ethiopian nationals working as bodyguards.”

“You trust them?” asked Nuri.

“Only until the shit hits the fan,” said Jordan. “Then they’ll take off for the hills. Come on into the other building and we’ll get something to eat. I’ll brief you on the way.”

Chapter 9

It took Li Han several hours to reach the crash site, most of it on foot. A boy in a village allied with the Brothers had seen the aircraft fall from the sky. He showed Li Han the way himself, plunging down hillsides and scrambling over the rocks like it was a game. The Brothers who were with Li Han couldn’t keep up, and in fact even Li Han, who prided himself on his excellent condition, had a hard time toward the end. The moon kept poking in and out of the clouds, and he stumbled several times, twisting his ankle and knee, though not so badly that he gave up.

And then they were there.

One of the wings had broken off in flight, but the rest of the aircraft was nearly whole. It looked like a black tent, sitting in the ravine where it had landed. Li Han approached it cautiously, afraid that the Americans had booby-trapped it. They were capable of anything.

Li Han knelt down next to the fuselage, examining the strange-looking aircraft. It had landed on its back. A missile was attached to the wing.

Li Han caught the boy as he started to scramble onto the wing near the missile.

“No,” said Li Han. He used English. The child may not have understood the language, but the tone was enough to warn him away. Li Han pointed, telling the boy to move back.

Li Han rose and walked to the nose of the small plane. Its skin was covered with a black, radar-absorbing paint, obviously intended to lower the radar profile. He took an LED flashlight from his pocket and ran its beam over the wreckage. The antennas might be hidden under the wreckage; they would be on the top of the aircraft most likely, where they could receive signals from satellites. But where was the sensor pod with its cameras?

Integrated into the hull. The material seemed almost porous.

The two Brothers who’d accompanied him came over the hill, huffing for breath. They slid down the ravine on the sides of their feet.

“Careful,” said Li Han, forgetting for a moment and speaking in his native Mandarin.

They looked at him sheepishly.

“We must get the wreckage out of here before the satellite comes,” he said, switching to English. “Before it is dawn. We have only three hours. Do you understand?”

The taller one, Amara of Yujst — they all had odd, African names — said something in Arabic.

“Pick it up and carry it out,” Li Han told him, still in English.

“It will be heavy,” said Amara.

“Then get more help,” said Li Han.

Chapter 10

“We’ve been targeting him,” said Damian Jordan, pointing at the hazy black-and-white image of an Asian man on the screen. “Mao Man.”

“Sounds archaeological,” said Danny, looking at the face.

“Li Han,” said Nuri coldly.

“You know who he is?” asked Jordan. He cracked his knuckles, right hand first, then left. The sound echoed in the room. Except for a pair of cots and a mobile workstation, the room was empty.

“I never heard him called Mao Man,” said Nuri. “But I know who he is. He’s a technical expert, and a weapons dealer. A real humanitarian. You’ve heard of A.Q. Khan, right?”

Khan was the Pakistani scientist who had helped Iran — and possibly others — develop their own nuclear weapons program.

“This guy is similar, except he’s Chinese,” said Nuri. “He had some sort of falling out with the government and military. Probably over money. Anyway, he’s been in a number of places in the last few years, selling his services. He’s pretty smart. And absolutely no morals.” Nuri turned to Jordan. “He has a team here?”

“Not a team. He’s working with the Sudan Brotherhood.”

“Lovely.” Nuri turned back to Danny. “Muslim fanatic group. Gets some money and help from al Qaeda.”

“I don’t know about the link—” started Jordan.

“I do,” said Nuri flatly.

“Well you know more than me,” said Jordan. “All I know is we’re targeting this guy. It’s a noncontact situation.”

Nuri frowned. “How long?”

“We’ve been here almost five weeks,” said Jordan. “Most of that time was getting the aircraft ready, though. We only just started tracking him.”

Jordan began briefing them on Raven, an armed UAV they had used to track Mao Man. Its function was similar to Reaper — the armed Predator drones — but it was newer, more capable.

“How?” asked Danny.

Jordan shrugged. “Faster. A little smaller. More robust.”

Nuri snorted.

“This was its first mission,” said Jordan. “Really more of a shakedown cruise. They picked a quiet area for a maiden flight. Afghanistan was too hot.”

“Yeah,” sneered Nuri.

“Have to try it somewhere,” said Jordan. “It wasn’t my choice. There was some sort of mechanical problem about a third of the way through the mission. There were temperature spikes in the right engine. My guess is that there was impurity in the fuel and something blew in the chamber. The power profiles were off, and we got a lot of ambient sound, kind of like you’d get in a car if there was a hole in the muffler. It may have been loud — that’s what may have tipped off Mao Man and the guerrillas he’s working with. Or maybe they heard the Predator, or saw something somehow. Anyway, they came out of the mine and fired a couple of MPADs — shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles. It was a Stinger Block 2.”

“An American missile?” asked Danny.

“Oh yeah.”

“How’d they get that?”

“Don’t know. They get a lot of stuff out here.”

“Sold by a friendly government,” said Nuri. “Allegedly friendly.”

Danny shook his head. “So they shot it down.”

“No, that’s the damn shame of it. Raven was flying with a Predator on overwatch. The two aircraft collided.”

“You know where it went down?” asked Danny.

“Roughly. That’s where Melissa went. We have transponders, but the accident knocked one of them out, and separated the other two. So it’s in one of two spots. At first there was no signal because of a sandstorm.”

“A sandstorm?” asked Danny.

“Happens all the time here,” said Nuri.

“The particles screw up the low-power transmissions,” explained Jordan. “It’s a trade-off — if you have a transmission that’s too strong, anyone can find you. At any rate, we can see them now. It’s over the border about fifty miles.”

Nuri whistled. “That’s not the best place for a woman.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Jordan. “She’s been out there before.”

“How is one person going to bring back an aircraft?” asked Danny.

“She said she just wants to locate it.” Jordan shrugged. “When they told us you were coming, she said she’d get there and you could follow.”

“Is she nuts?” asked Danny.

“Well yeah, actually, she is,” said Jordan.

“We’re getting about a tenth of the story here,” Nuri told Danny when they went outside. “No-contact mission. You know what that means?”

“No,” said Danny.

“That means they don’t have to ask permission to kill this guy,” said Nuri.

“Okay.”

“They’re out here testing a new UAV on a high-value target? CIA officer goes out by herself to locate it? Granted it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, but it’s still not Disney World. There’s a lot more to the story, Danny. A hell of a lot more.”

Nuri folded his arms. He didn’t know exactly what else was going on here, but it smelled bad. Predators had never been used against the rebels here, not even the Sudan Brotherhood, because they’d never taken action against the U.S. In fact, except for their religious beliefs, one could have argued that they were much friendlier toward America philosophically than their government was.

As for Li Han, targeting him made a hell of a lot of sense. But bugging out didn’t. The bureaucratic bs needed to authorize a strike was so immense that an operation like this would continue for years.

Unless they hadn’t gone through with the bureaucratic bs.

Which meant the operation wasn’t just black; it was unauthorized; aka illegal.

Nuri felt his lower lip starting to shudder. The cool air was getting to him.

“How long before we can hook into the Voice?” asked Nuri, using one of his pet names for the MY-PID system.

“Tigershark won’t be on station for a few hours,” said Danny, checking his watch. “I’ll find out — I have to tell Bree we’re here. Hang around, all right?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Danny took out his encrypted satellite phone — it used standard military satellites, not the data-heavy Whiplash network — and called in as they walked toward the airstrip, as much to keep warm as to avoid being overheard. Nuri put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth as he listened to Danny’s side of the conversation.

“Hey Bree, this is Danny. We’re here. What’s the ETA on Tigershark?… Uh-huh.”

Nuri felt a twinge of jealousy at how close the colonel and Breanna Stockard were. There was a level of trust there that he’d never had with any of his supervisors, and certainly not with Jonathon Reid. It wasn’t that he thought Reid or any of the men he’d worked for were less than dedicated, or would leave him purposely in the lurch. It was more a question of how far beyond their duty they would go. He’d already seen Stockard risk her career and her life for Danny.

For them. For the entire team. But it was personal for Danny in a way it would never be for Nuri.

“Nuri thinks there’s a lot more going on here than we’re being told, Bree,” said Danny. “Uh-huh.”

Nuri watched Danny listen to something she said, but in the darkness he couldn’t see his face well enough to interpret his reaction.

“She wants to talk to you,” said Danny, handing him the sat phone.

“Ms. Stockard, hello.”

“Nuri, what do you think is going on?” asked Breanna.

“I can’t say exactly.”

He explained that the Agency didn’t seem to be following its usual protocols when targeting a high-value terrorist like Li Han. On the other hand, he had to admit that because he had no direct information about either Raven or the particular mission, he simply didn’t know how suspicious to be.

The more questions Breanna asked, the less confident Nuri felt. And yet, things still seemed a little off, a little unusual in ways that made him believe the CIA wasn’t telling them everything.

Well, duh, he thought, handing the phone back to Danny. When did the Agency ever tell anyone everything?

“She’s going to talk to Reid,” Danny told Nuri after he signed off. “I don’t think Reid would lie to her.”

“Probably not,” said Nuri.

“You think Reid would lie?”

Nuri shrugged.

There were all sorts of reasons Danny didn’t particularly like the fact that Whiplash was a joint project between the military and the CIA, but they all came down to Nuri’s two words: probably not.

You never knew exactly what the CIA was up to. The Air Force and the rest of the military might have its problems and its politics, but these paled compared to Central Intelligence.

“Tigershark will be here in another three hours,” said Danny. Once the aircraft was overhead, they would have real-time surveillance as well as a connection with their computer system, MY-PID. The rest of the team was scheduled to arrive roughly two hours later. Assuming that Melissa Ilse had located the wreckage by then, they would fly in, retrieve it, and come home.

Danny noticed Nuri staring into the distance.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Just how lovely it is to be back in this stink hole,” said the CIA officer.

Chapter 11

Melissa Ilse cut the motorcycle’s engine, coasting in the dark as the indicator beeper became a steady hum. She was a mile from the UAV.

Hand-built by Ducati to CIA specifications, the lightweight motorcycle had a pair of oversized mufflers that kept engine noise to a low rumble. But sound traveled far in the desert foothills, and she couldn’t afford to take a chance of alerting anyone that she was near. She needed to locate the UAV and recover its brain, or her career was shot.

Harker had told her that in so many words.

Melissa glided off the dirt trail she’d been riding for the past half hour or so, letting the bike’s momentum carry her to a trio of rocks a few yards up the hillside. She put on her brakes as she reached them. Hopping off the bike, she set it down gently against the largest of the rocks. She pulled the MP-5 submachine gun from its holster on the side of the bike and trotted down to the trail, turning back to make sure the bike couldn’t be seen.

Her night vision goggles were heavy against her face. She pulled them off and rubbed her cheekbones and eyes. She was surprised there was enough light to see fairly well, and it was such a relief not to have the apparatus pressing against her face that she decided she would do without it for a while. She stuffed it into her rucksack, then examined her GPS.

The handheld device wasn’t coordinated with the UAV’s homing signals, but it wasn’t hard to get her bearings. The aircraft had gone down on the other side of the ridge. She could either climb directly over it or circle around parallel to the trail she’d been riding.

Direct was always better.

Melissa paused every few steps to look around and make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d been through this general area several times in the past two months, before Raven was brought in. She might even have been on this very hillside, though she didn’t remember it.

The chapped land and rugged hills reminded her of southwest Nevada, where her dad used to take her camping and hiking when she was a girl. He and her mother had divorced when she was only three; he had custody only a few weeks each year, and they always spent at least one week of that camping. She cherished those trips now, and looked forward to the next, not due for several months.

Melissa scolded herself. It was dangerous letting her mind drift. Crouching at the top of the ridge, she put one hand on the rocky crust, then folded herself against the hillside, peering over the top.

Shadow covered everything before her. She slid down a few feet, pulled off her pack and removed her night vision goggles.

A small settlement sat in the valley on the left, not quite two miles away. There was no sign anyone was awake.

So where was the plane?

From the signal, it should be to her right, maybe a thousand yards away.

Melissa surveyed the area again. The submachine gun felt heavy in her hands. She’d never fired it at an enemy. She’d never used a gun against a real person at all.

She took a slow breath, controlling her nerves, and started down the hill in the direction of the signal.

She came to the wreckage sooner than she thought. The aircraft’s left wing jutted from the rocks. It had sheered at the wing root, pulled off by the force of the midair collision.

Melissa took over, scanning the area. This was bad luck — she’d gone after the wrong part of the plane. The flight computer was in the forward section of the fuselage — the other signal nearly five miles to the northeast.

She cursed silently, then took the camera from her pocket. They’d want to know what the wrecked wing looked like.

Chapter 12

Senator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard looked up at the receptionist as he rolled into the rehabilitation ward in Building 5123 at the Walter Reed Hospital complex. They were old friends by now, so well-acquainted that Zen knew she took her coffee black with two sugars.

It was important, after all, to get those little things right.

“Luciana, you are looking very chipper this morning,” he said, rolling toward her. “How is my favorite receptionist and nurse in training?”

“Big test tonight,” she told him.

“Better hit the books.”

“I am.” She raised the textbook from behind the counter. Building 5123 was a special facility at the hospital complex, with the highest level of security possible — so high, in fact, that even Zen had to submit to a rudimentary pat down. His aide — Jason Black — couldn’t even go downstairs with him.

Which, in some ways, was just as well.

While the staff members were all medical professionals, they worked for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a special branch charged with investigating biology and medicine and their implications on the battlefield as well as society.

“Jay brought you coffee,” said Zen, glancing back at his aide. Black handed over the cup of Starbucks.

“You look like you’re still asleep, Jason,” said Luciana.

Jason blushed. “Naw.”

“I ride him hard, Lucy,” said Zen. “Twenty-four/seven, around the clock. How’s my patient?”

“They don’t tell me anything, Senator. But I haven’t heard anything bad.”

“That’s good to know.”

Zen rolled himself toward the security checkpoint a short distance away. Contrary to what she’d told Zen, the staff downstairs would have passed the word if there was a problem. Not that it would have kept Zen from going down to see their patient, Mark Stoner.

Stoner had been a close friend years before. They’d worked together at Dreamland; at one point, Stoner had saved Zen’s wife Breanna’s life.

Stoner had been lost on a mission in Eastern Europe some fifteen years before. Everyone, Zen included, had given him up for dead.

A recent Whiplash mission had discovered him still alive, though so physically and mentally altered, he was barely recognizable. Zen had helped rescue him. Now he felt obligated to help him back to health.

Mental health. Physically, he’d never be what he was. He’d always be much, much better.

Rescued from a helicopter crash by a scientist working with Olympic athletes, Stoner had been the recipient of numerous biomechanical improvements and a host of steroidlike drugs that had turned him into something approaching a Superman. While he had been weaned from most of the drugs the scientists had put him on, he still retained much of his strength.

A single nurse was on duty in the basement ward. Two guards with loaded shotguns stood behind her.

“Good morning, Senator.”

“Katherine.”

“Dr. Esrang is with him.”

“OK.”

Zen wheeled himself next to a chair, then waited as one of the guards ran a wand around him and looked over his wheelchair to make sure there were no weapons or other contraband. Cleared, he got back on and wheeled himself to the steel door. A loud buzzer sounded; the door slid to the side. Zen entered a narrow corridor and began wheeling toward a second steel door. The doors acted like an airlock; only one could be opened at a time, even in an emergency.

Two more guards waited on the other side of the door. Zen was searched once more. If anything, the second search was more thorough. Cleared, Zen went down the hallway to a set of iron bars. The burly man on the other side, dressed in riot gear but without a weapon, eyed him, then turned and nodded. The bars went up; Zen wheeled through. He said hello, not expecting an answer. He had never gotten one in the weeks since he’d been coming to visit Stoner, and he didn’t get one now.

Past the last set of iron bars, the place looked pretty much like a normal hospital suite again. It was only when one looked very closely at things, like the double locks on the cabinet drawers and the ubiquitous video monitors, that one might realize this was an ultra-high-security facility.

The hall turned to the right, opening into a large, glass-enclosed area. The glass looked into four different rooms. Zen pivoted to his left, facing a large physical therapy space on the other side of the glass. Stoner, dressed in sweats, was lying on a bench doing flying presses with a set of dumbbells. If the numbers on the sides of the plates were to be believed, he was swinging two hundred pounds overhead with each arm as easily as Zen might have lifted fifty.

Zen caught a reflection in the glass. Dr. Esrang was leaning, arms folded, against the glass almost directly behind him.

“You’re trusting him with free weights,” said Zen.

“He’s making good progress,” said Esrang, coming over. “He’s earning our trust.”

“Are the new drugs working?”

“Hard to say, as usual. We look at brain waves, we look at scans. We are only guessing.”

Zen nodded. They’d had variations of this conversation several times.

“You may go in if you wish,” said the doctor.

Zen watched his old friend awhile longer. Stoner’s face was expressionless. He might be concentrating entirely on his body’s movements, feeling every strain and pull of his muscles. Or he might be a million miles away.

Zen wheeled over to the far side of the space. There was a bar on the frame. He slid it up, then pushed the door-sized pane of glass next to it open. He made sure to close the door behind him, then wheeled around to the room where Stoner was working out.

Stoner said nothing when he entered. Zen wheeled about halfway into the room, waiting until his friend finished a set. Stoner, six feet tall and broad-shouldered, weighed about 240 pounds, nearly all of it muscle.

“Working with the dumbbells today?” said Zen.

Stoner got up from the bench and went to a weight rack on the far side of the room. He took out another set of dumbbells and began doing a military press.

“Enough weight for you?” asked Zen.

He hated that he was reduced to ridiculous comments, but he couldn’t think of much else to say. Stoner worked in silence, pushing the weights up with steady, flawless efficiency. These were the heaviest set of weights in the room, and he knocked off thirty reps without a problem. He was sweating, but that might have been due to the heat — the place felt like a sauna.

“I can stay for breakfast if you want,” said Zen. “Give me an excuse to blow off a committee meeting.”

No answer. Stoner put down the weights, then went back to the bench and started on a set of sitting curls. His face remained the same: no sign of stress.

“Nationals are doing well. They won last night,” said Zen. “They’ll be back home soon. Maybe we can take in a game.”

“Baseball?” asked Stoner.

“Yeah. You want to go to a game?”

Instead of responding, Stoner went back to his workout. During his treatment in Eastern Europe, he had been essentially brainwashed, his personality and memory replaced with an almost robotic consciousness. His old self or at least some semblance of it remained, but exactly how much, no one could say.

Zen had managed only a handful of conversations with him since he’d been here. Stoner hadn’t said more than a dozen words in each. But that was more than he’d said to anyone else.

Stoner did two more circuits, pumping the iron without visible fatigue. As he finished a set of standing presses, he glanced over at Zen.

The look in his eye frightened Zen. For a split second he thought Stoner was going to toss one of the dumbbells at his head.

He didn’t. He just glared at him, then pumped through another twenty reps.

“Man, you’re in good shape,” said Zen as Stoner racked the weights.

Stoner turned to him. “Need heavier weights. Too easy.”

“Did you ask the doctors?”

Stoner pulled his hood over his head.

“I can try and get more for you,” said Zen. “What weight?”

“Big disks,” said Stoner. “I need more.”

He started walking toward the door next to the rack.

“Feel like having breakfast?” Zen asked.

“No,” said Stoner. “Gonna shower.”

“OK,” said Zen. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, maybe.”

Stoner said nothing. Zen watched him walk down the hall, turning right into his room.

“I’ve already ordered more weights,” said Esrang when Zen met him outside. “We didn’t want to give him too much at first, in case he decided to use them as weapons.”

“You still think he’s dangerous?”

Esrang pitched his head to one side, gesturing with his shoulders. He was one of the world’s experts on the effects of steroids and other drugs on the human brain, but he often pointed out that this meant he knew that he didn’t know enough.

Zen glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid I have to go. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

Zen smiled. It was a nice thing for the doctor to say, but they both knew it wasn’t necessarily true.

Chapter 13

Li Han watched as the aircraft was lifted into the back of the pickup truck. It was a lot lighter than he’d expected; three men could easily handle it.

It would fetch a decent amount of money. The design was unique, the materials, even the onboard flight control computer, which had considerably more processing and memory chips than Li Han expected — the right buyer would pay a good price.

The question was finding the right buyer. The best price would come from his former countrymen, though there was no way he could deal with them.

The Russians were one possibility. The French were another. The Iranians, but his last dealings with them had turned sour.

The biggest payday might actually come from the Americans, who would want their equipment back.

Maybe they could make a deal.

He needed to find a place to examine it more carefully, and think. That meant going north, away from the area controlled by the Brotherhood. They would only complicate things.

The Brother holding the forward end of the aircraft slipped as they were placing it into the bed of the pickup. The fuselage fell hard against the truck.

“Careful, you idiots!” yelled Li Han in Chinese.

He ran over to the plane. It didn’t appear to be damaged, at least not any worse than it had been.

“Come,” he said, switching to English. “We need to be away from here before the satellite appears.”

Melissa was a mile and a half from the transponder when the signal went from a steady beep to a more urgent bleat.

The aircraft was being moved.

She squeezed the throttle on the motorcycle, hunkering down against the handlebars as its speed jumped. A second later she realized that was a mistake. Backing off the gas, she pulled her GPS out from her jacket pocket and got her bearings.

The transponder was in a valley roughly parallel to the one she was riding through. Both ran east to west. According to the map, a road that intersected both valleys lay two miles ahead. She could go to that intersection and wait.

Unless whoever had the UAV turned north rather than staying on the road. There were at least two trails running off the valley in that direction before the intersection. And sure enough, the signal soon indicated that the UAV was moving farther away.

It was starting to get light. Melissa went up the connecting road and stayed on it, speeding roughly parallel to whoever was taking the UAV away. They were about a mile and a half away, but the trail and road ran away from each other, her path going due north while the other gradually tailing eastward.

Finally she stopped and examined the map on the GPS to try and guess where they were going. The trail wound through a series of settlements, intersected with several unpaved roads, and finally ended at what passed for a super highway here, a double-lane asphalt paved road that ran to Duka, a small town that sat on a flat plain at the eastern foot of the mountains. She slipped the GPS back into her pocket. Who had the UAV? Mao Man?

She hoped not. The fact that it was being taken north argued against it: the Brothers’ stronghold was well to the south, where she assumed he’d been heading when attacked. He had only come this far north to arrange for a meeting with weapons suppliers.

Most likely either a government patrol spotted the wreckage and decided to take it, or some local farmer found it and decided to take it to the authorities and claim a reward.

Either could be easily bought off. A hundred dollars here would bring a family luxury for a year.

Melissa slipped the bike out of neutral and began following the signal once more.

Li Han felt his eyes starting to close as they zigzagged through the hills. He’d been up now for nearly thirty-six hours straight, long even for him.

Shaking himself, he sat upright in the cab of the truck, then rolled down the window, sticking his head out into the wind. He could sleep in Duka. He’d used a building there to house some explosives about a year and a half before; it was sure to be still unoccupied. And though the town was controlled by two different rebel groups, neither would bear him any malice, especially if he promised fresh weapons and ammunition as he had the last time.

But he had to stay alert until he reached the small city. The army occasionally sent patrols through the area. It was unlikely that they would meet any at night, but if they did, the soldiers would assume they were rebels and immediately open fire.

One of the men in the back of the pickup began banging on the roof of the cab. The driver slowed, then spoke to him through his window.

“What?” asked Li Han in English.

“Following. A motorbike follows,” said the driver.

A motorcycle?

Li Han twisted around, trying to see. It was too dark, and the hulk of the UAV blocked most of his view.

It wouldn’t be the army. More like one of the many rebel groups that contested the area.

“Shoot them!” yelled Li Han. He turned back to the driver. “Tell them in the back to shoot them. Don’t stop! Drive faster. Faster!”

Melissa knew she was pressing it, pulling closer and closer to the truck. But it was alone, and while there were definitely men in the back, none seemed armed or particularly hostile. If she caught up, she could work out a deal.

A poke of white light from the back of the truck told her she’d miscalculated. They did have weapons, and they weren’t in the mood to bargain.

Melissa raised her submachine gun and fired back. The barrel of the MP-5 pushed up from the recoil harder than she’d anticipated, and the shots flew wild over the truck. She tucked the weapon tighter against her side. The road rose, then veered to the right; she shifted her weight, trying not to slow down around the curve. Tilting back, she saw the truck square ahead of her, fat between her handlebars and no more than thirty yards away.

She pressed her finger against the trigger. As she fired, the front of the bike began to turn to her right.

Starting to lose her balance, Melissa let go of the gun and grabbed the handlebar. But it was too late — she went over in a tumble, rolling around in the dust as a hail of bullets from the truck passed overhead.

Chapter 14

Jonathon Reid sat at the large conference table, staring at the gray wall in front of him. He was alone in the high-tech headquarters and command center.

The top of the wall began to glow blue.

“Open com channel to Ms. Stockard,” he said softly.

The rectangular window appeared in the middle of the wall. It expanded, widening until it covered about a third of the space. The outer portion of the wall darkened from gray to black. The interior window, meanwhile, turned deep blue, then morphed into an image of Breanna Stockard in a secure conference room in Dreamland.

She was alone, and she was frowning.

“Breanna,” said Reid. “Good morning again.”

“Jonathon, what’s really going out there in Africa?”

“I told you everything the director told me.”

“Nuri says there’s a lot more to the project than we’re being told.”

“I don’t doubt he’s right.”

“And?”

Reid said nothing. The Raven program was clearly an assassination mission, and clearly it involved top secret technology that the Agency had developed outside of its normal channels. But Harker hadn’t spelled any of this out; he had merely said the UAV must be recovered. All Reid had were guesses and suppositions, not facts.

“Jonathon, you’re not saying anything.”

“I know, Breanna. I don’t have more facts than I’ve shared.”

“Listen, the only way this is going to work is if we’re completely honest with each other.”

Reid nodded.

“Well?” prompted Breanna.

“Clearly, this is a CIA project that’s highly secret, and they don’t want to tell us any of the details,” he said. “And they haven’t.”

“I got that.”

Breanna and Reid had gotten along fairly well since the program began, despite the vast differences in the institutions they reported to, their backgrounds, and their ages. Cooperation between the military and the CIA was not always ideal in any event, and on a program such as Whiplash and the related MY-PID initiative, there was bound to be even greater conflict. But so far they had largely steered clear of the usual suspicions, let alone the attempts at empire building and turf wars that typically marred joint projects. Partly this was because they had so far kept the operation — and its staffing — to an absolute minimum. But it also had to do with their personal relationships. Reid, much older than Breanna, liked and admired her in an almost fatherly way, and she clearly respected him, often treating him with professional deference.

Not now, though. Right now she was angry with him, believing he was holding back.

“I can only guess at what they’re doing,” Reid told her. “I have no facts. I know exactly what you’re thinking, but they’ve put up barriers, and I can’t just simply whisk them away with a wave of my hand.”

“We need to know exactly what’s going on,” Breanna told him.

“Beyond what we already know? Why? We have to recover the UAV. It’s already been located.”

“What we don’t know may bite us.”

“Granted.”

“God, Jonathon, you’ve got to press them for more information.”

“I have.”

“Then I will.”

“I don’t know that that will work,” said Reid. “I have a call in to the director. I am trying.”

Reid could already guess what Herm Edmund was going to say — this is on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know.

“Jonathon, I’ve always been up front with you,” said Breanna.

“And I’m being up front with you. It’s a UAV, it’s obviously an assassination program, though they’re not even saying that. Not to me, anyway.”

“If one of our people gets hurt because of something we should have known—”

“I feel exactly the same way.”

The window folded in on itself abruptly. Breanna had killed the transmission.

Reid sat back in his chair. One of the rock bed requirements of being a good CIA officer was that you stopped asking questions at a certain point. You stopped probing for information when it became clear you were not entitled to that information. Because knowing it might in fact endanger an operation, and the Agency.

On the other hand…

“Computer, show me the personnel file for Reginald Harker,” said Reid. “Same with Melissa Ilse. Unrestricted authorization Jonathon Reid. Access all databases and perform a cross-Agency search for those individuals, and all references to Raven. Discover related operations and references, with a confidence value of ten percent or above.”

“Working,” replied the computer.

Chapter 15

Melissa rolled in the dirt as the motorbike flew out from under her. She threw her arms up, trying to protect her face as the rear wheel spun toward her. A storm of pebbles splattered against her hands as the wheel caught in a rut; the bike tumbled back in the other direction.

Her shoulder hit a boulder at the side of the ditch. Her arm jolted from its socket and an intense wave of pain enveloped her body. Her head seemed to swim away from her.

My shoulder, she thought. Dislocated. Something torn.

I need the gun.

Get the gun.

Melissa pushed herself to her belly. Her eyes closed tight with the pain.

For a moment she thought she was still wearing the night goggles, and feared that the glass had embedded in her eyes, that she was blind. She reached with her left hand to pull them off, then realized she hadn’t had them on.

There was dirt in her eyes, but she could see.

Get the gun!

Her right arm hung off her body as she pushed herself to her knees. The bike was a few yards away, on the other side of the road. But where was her gun?

Melissa crawled onto the hard-packed dirt road, looking for the MP-5, then shifted her weight to rise to her knees. The pain seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, throwing off her balance.

Another wave of dizziness hit her as she got to her feet.

The gun! The gun!

Melissa turned back in the direction she’d taken. She started to trot, then saw a black object just off the shoulder on her left. After a few steps she realized it was just a shadow in the rocks. She stopped, turned to the right, and saw the gun lying in the middle of the road.

“The motorcycle has stopped following us,” the driver told Li Han.

Li Han twisted in the seat, looking behind them. The men in the back were clutching onto the wrecked aircraft, holding on for dear life as the truck flew over the washboard road.

One of the men leaned over the cab and yelled at the driver through his window.

“They fired at us,” said the driver. “One of our men is hurt.”

“How many were there?” asked Li Han.

“Two, maybe three. But they’re gone now. Amara says that we kill both. In the dark, hard to tell.”

Li Han considered going back to check the bodies. It might be useful to know which band they were with. The fact that they had motorcycles was unusual — perhaps they were future customers.

“The Brother needs a doctor,” said the driver. “He was hit in the chest.”

“Tell them to put a compress on,” said Li Han.

The driver didn’t understand. Li Han decided not to explain; they’d figure it out on their own eventually.

“Turn around,” he told the driver. “Let’s go find out who they were.”

“Turn around?”

“Yes, a U-turn.”

“There may be more.”

“I doubt it,” said Li Han. “Let’s go see.”

Chapter 16

“Colonel Freah?”

Danny looked over at the door to the building as Damian Jordan came outside. The sun was not quite at the horizon; gray twilight filtered over the base, making it look like a pixilated photograph pulled from a newspaper.

“What’s up?”

“Melissa is on the radio. She’s located the UAV. I figured you wanted to talk to her.”

“Exactly,” said Danny.

“Uh, she says she’s been hurt.”

“Bad?”

“Dunno. She’s crabbier than usual, so probably fairly bad.”

Jordan led Danny inside to the table where he’d set up an older satellite radio, a bulky unit with a corded handset. The console, about the size of a small briefcase, was at least ten years old. While it was powerful and had encryption gear, it was hardly state of the art. Nuri had pointed out that the operation surely had access to much better equipment; this was some sort of wrongheaded attempt to keep an extremely low profile.

“Here you go,” said Jordan, giving Danny the handset.

“Ms. Ilse, this is Colonel Freah. Where are you?”

“Who are you?”

“Danny Freah. I’m the person who’s going to get you and your UAV back here. Now where the hell are you?”

She grunted, as if in pain.

“Are you OK?” Danny asked.

“I dislocated my shoulder. I’m all right. Some of the natives grabbed the UAV. They’re taking it in the direction of Duka. I have to get it. If you’re going to help—”

“My team is going to be here in about twenty minutes,” Danny told her. “You’re roughly seventy miles away — we can get there inside an hour.”

“All right,” she said weakly.

“Are you OK?” he asked again.

“I’m fine.” She snapped off the radio.

Danny handed back the handset.

“She goes her own way,” said Jordan. He smiled, as if that was a good thing.

Chapter 17

The problem with flying the Tigershark, especially at very high speeds over long distances, was that it was boring.

Exceedingly, even excruciatingly, boring.

The plane flew itself, even during the refueling hookups. In fact, the Tigershark II had been designed to operate completely without a pilot, and very possibly could have handled this mission entirely on its own.

Not that Turk would have admitted it. He wouldn’t even say it out loud, especially not in the plane: he’d come to think of the Tigershark almost as a person. The flight computer was almost sentient, in the words of its developer, Dr. Ray Rubeo.

Almost sentient. An important word, “almost.”

Turk checked his instruments — everything in the green, perfect as always — then his location and that of the area where the UAV had gone down. The robot aircraft had a set of transponders that were sending signals to a satellite.

“Tigershark, this is Whiplash Ground. You hearing us?”

“Colonel Freah.” Turk reached his right hand up to his helmet, enabling the video feed on the Whiplash communications system. Danny Freah’s face appeared in a small box on the virtual screen projected by the Whiplash combat helmet. “Got good coms up here, Colonel.”

“One of the operators has been tracking our item in country. She’s hurt. We’re going to be en route in a few minutes to her location. We’re wondering if you can take a pass and check on her.”

“Uh, roger that if you give me a location,” said Turk. “I’m just about ten minutes from the target area,” he added, pointing at part of the virtual instrument panel where the course way markers were displayed. “Eight and a half, to be exact.”

“I have GPS coordinates,” said Danny. “Stand by.”

Turk waited while Danny uploaded the GPS tracking channel used by the CIA officer in western Sudan. He then increased the detail on the sitrep panel.

“Colonel, do you know that one of the transponders is moving?” said Turk. “It looks like it’s approaching her location.”

“Are you sure about that, Tiger?”

Turk double-tapped on the GPS locator and told the Tigershark to fly to that spot. Then he went back to the radio.

“Yeah, roger that. Affirmative,” he added. “Be advised I’m unarmed at this time.”

“We copy.”

“Operative got a name?”

“Melissa Ilse.”

“It’s a girl?”

“I already told you it’s a she, Tigershark. And that would be a woman, not a girl. Copy?”

“Roger that. I’ll do what I can.”

Chapter 18

Melissa heard the truck rattling toward her. She glanced around for cover, but nothing was handy. She decided her only option was to move up the nearby embankment, to get out of easy view.

If they found her, she’d have to make her stand.

Her right arm and shoulder screamed with every step and jostle. She tried to keep it from moving too much by gripping the bottom of her jacket with her hand. The pain was so intense that she couldn’t fold her fingers into a good grip, and had to simply hook her thumb around the cloth.

It was almost ironic. As part of her training for the mission, she’d been put into a rush course as a nurse so she could learn enough to use that as a cover. She had then treated two colleagues for dislocated shoulders during a particularly difficult survival refresher course she’d taken right afterward. Putting their arms back in place didn’t seem like such a big deal.

Being on the other side of the pain gave her an entirely different perspective.

The sound of the truck grew louder. She dropped to one knee, then eased down to spread herself flat against the side of the hill. She was no more than twenty yards from the roadway, if that.

Her headset buzzed with an incoming call on her sat line, but she didn’t answer it — the truck’s headlights swept across the road ahead.

Maybe she could shoot them now. But she’d have to fire with her left hand.

She wasn’t even that good with her right.

God, what a mistake she’d made getting close to the truck. What the hell was she thinking?

The truck jerked to a stop near the bike.

Melissa tried to will away the pain, extending her breathing, pushing the air all the way into her lungs before slowly exhaling.

The men got out of the truck.

Her headset buzzed again. She still didn’t dare answer it.

Twenty thousand feet above, Turk switched to the Tigershark’s enhanced view, trying to get a good read on what was below. The UAV and its CIA operator were roughly twenty yards from each other.

The Tigershark had been designed to carry a rail gun, which could fire metal slugs accurately to twenty miles. It still had some kinks, but would have come in very handy now.

“Whiplash Ground — Colonel Freah, I’m looking at a truck with people getting out of it. Our contact should be nearby. Are these hostiles?”

“We believe so, Tigershark. But stand by. We’re trying to contact her now.”

There was no time to stand by — the men in the truck were spreading out, moving in the direction of the CIA officer. They were carrying weapons. That made them hostile in Turk’s book.

The only weapon he had was the Tigershark itself. He pushed down the nose, determined to use it.

Melissa watched as the men moved up the road. They moved quickly — too quickly. They’re scared, she thought.

A good sign, in a way: their fire would be less accurate.

She’d take the man closest to her, the one going to the bike. Then sweep across left, then back to the truck.

She’d have to reload before she took out the truck.

Her finger started to twitch.

I can do it.

I have to do it.

Melissa took as slow a breath as she could manage, then pulled the gun up. It was awkward in her left hand. She forced her right arm toward the front of the weapon, hoping to steady it. The pain was excruciating. She twisted her trunk, putting her hand, still gripping her shirt, closer to the weapon.

Steadying herself as best she could, Melissa raised the barrel with her left arm, ready to fire.

Suddenly there was a rush of air from above, the sky cracking with what seemed a hurricane. Dirt flew everywhere, and the night flashed red and white. A howl filled her ears. Melissa threw herself down, cowering against the force of whatever bomb was exploding.

Li Han had just started to get out of the truck when there was a vortex of wind and a hard, loud snap directly above him. It didn’t sound quite like an explosion, but the wash threw him back against the vehicle. Dirt and dust flew all around; he was pelted by small rocks.

“Dso Ba!” he yelled in Chinese, even before he got back to his feet. “Go! Leave! They’re firing missiles! Go! Go!”

He pulled at the door. There had been no explosion: whatever the Americans had fired at them had missed or malfunctioned.

“Wo-men! Dso Ba!”

The driver looked at him, paralyzed. Li Han realized he was speaking Chinese.

“Go!” he shouted in English. “Leave! Leave! Get the truck out of here.”

One of the men in the back pounded on the roof of the cab. It was Amara, yelling something in Arabic.

“Go!” he added, switching to English, though it was hard to tell in his accent and excitement. “Mr. Li — tell him go!”

“Go!” repeated Li Han. “Let’s go!”

The driver began moving in slow motion. The truck lurched forward.

“Faster!” yelled Li Han. “Before they fire again.”

By the time Melissa raised her head, the truck had started moving away. The men on the road picked themselves up and began scrambling after it.

What the hell had just happened?

Had someone fired a missile? Or several of them?

But there didn’t seem to have been an explosion, just a massive rush of air.

When the men were gone, she rose slowly. She’d forgotten the pain, but it came back now with a vengeance, nearly knocking her unconscious. She fell back on her rump, head folded down against her chest. The submachine gun fell from her hand.

In a mental fog, Melissa began to gently rock back and forth, trying to soothe her injured arm as if it were a baby. Gradually her senses returned, though the pain remained, throbbing against her neck and torso.

She swung her knees around and rose, trying to jostle her arm as little as possible. Finally upright, she walked down to the road. There was no bomb crater, no debris.

Melissa retrieved her gun. Her ruck was a few yards farther up the hill. She had no memory of taking it off.

The sat phone was on the ground as well, near where she’d been crouched. She picked it up and called Jordan back at the base camp. Instead of Jordan, however, a man with a deeper, somewhat older voice answered.

“This is Danny Freah. Melissa, are you OK?”

“Who are you?”

“It’s Colonel Freah again. Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay where you are. We’ll be at your location in twenty minutes. My Osprey is just taking off now.”

“What Osprey?”

“Listen, Ms. Ilse, you don’t know how lucky you are to be alive. Just stay where you are.”

“I’m not moving,” she said. She tried to make her words sharp, but the pain in her shoulder made it difficult to talk; she could hear the wince in her voice.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” said Danny, his voice softer. “Just stay on the hill, behind those rocks. You’ll be OK. The truck has moved on. I have to go — the aircraft is here. We’ll contact you when we’re zero-five from your location.”

The connection died. Melissa lowered herself to the ground, sitting as gently as she could.

Chapter 19

Breanna Stockard was never comfortable as a passenger on an airplane.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like to fly; on the contrary, she loved flying. Or rather, she loved piloting. She loved it so much that being a passenger made her feel extremely out of sorts. Even sitting in the back of a C-20 Gulfstream, she felt as if she ought to be doing something other than studying the thick folders of reports on her iPad, or tracking through the myriad classified e-mails related to her duties at the Office of Special Technology.

The Gulfstream was assigned to the Pentagon for VIP travel, and carried a full suite of secure communications. So she was surprised when her own secure sat phone rang.

Until she saw the call was from Jonathon Reid.

“This is Breanna.”

“Breanna, can you talk?”

Breanna was the sole passenger on the plane. The cabin crew consisted of a tech sergeant who was sitting in the back, discreetly reading a magazine.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ve pieced together information,” said Reid. “I don’t have everything. But I think what I have is accurate.”

“OK.”

“The UAV was contracted for about three years ago, an outgrowth of the same program that produced Tigershark, as we already know. The development was entirely covert; obviously I don’t have all the details.”

The CIA had a long history of developing its own aircraft, going all the way back to the U-2. At times it had worked with the Air Force, and in fact it might very well have done so in this case.

“But it’s not the aircraft that’s important,” continued Reid. “I think there’s a lot more to it.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about it, even over this line,” he said. “We’ll have to talk when you come back. I know you’re supposed to go directly to SOCCOM for that conference in Florida, but I’d like to speak to you in person as soon as possible. Tonight, in fact.”

“Can you meet me there?”

“I’d rather spend the time looking into this further, if possible,” said Reid. “How important is the conference?”

The “conference” was actually a two-day meeting with members of the Special Operations Command to listen to requirements they had for new weapons. It was starting the next morning at eight, but Breanna was due to have breakfast with the commanding general and his staff at 0600—6:00 A.M. sharp, as the general’s aide had put it to her secretary, noting that his boss was a notorious early riser with a packed schedule and an almost hyperbolic sense of punctuality.

Breanna didn’t want to cancel — informal sessions like that were almost always more valuable than the actual meetings themselves. But if she detoured up to Washington, she’d get almost no sleep.

So what else was new?

“All right,” Breanna told him. “I’ll meet you at Andrews.”

“Yes. Good.”

“Jonathon — do we have a problem here?”

Reid didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t know that it’s a problem specifically for us,” he said finally.

“All right. I’ll talk to the pilot, and text you a time.”

Reid stared at the blank virtual wall for several minutes after Breanna had hung up.

No, the UAV wasn’t the whole story, not by a long shot. The code word “Raven” didn’t even refer to the aircraft.

If he was right, Whiplash had just been inserted into the middle of a perfect storm: an illegal assassination program, an off-the-books CIA tech development operation, and an Agency screwup that had just made an unstoppable weapon available to anyone who happened to spot the UAV wreckage in the middle of the desert.