The Breach

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Forty minutes later a cargo jet rumbled in out of the south and, from three thousand feet up, offloaded two dozen paratroopers. Travis went to the window-he was unwilling to leave Paige alone in the room-and watched them circle down in tight columns, landing within fifty yards of the building. They were dressed in black, their uniforms bulked out with body armor, their weapons slung on their shoulders as they touched down. By the time the last of them landed, the first had already taken positions around the lodge.

Four of them stood out. One, maybe ten years older than the rest, pointed and gave orders, his sharpness and efficiency apparent even from beyond hearing range.

The last three needed no orders. They were surgeons. They made straight for the building, waved in by the locals, and Travis called them to the room as soon as they entered. They carried packs and duffels loaded with all the equipment a modern ER would have, plugging in two power strips to create enough outlets for the monitors, lights, and other machinery they arranged around the bed. Travis got out of their way and watched them take command of the situation. The specifics of their technical speech went by him, but the meaning came through clearly. They could save her.

Moments later the commander came in the front door of the lodge, carrying a satellite phone like the one Ellen Garner had tried to repair. He was speaking to someone on it already, and as his eyes found Travis in the hall, he said, "I'm here with him now."

He strode to Travis, but instead of handing him the phone, he paused, listening to the caller. "Of course," he said. He looked past Travis into the room. "Dr. Carro, status."

The oldest of the surgeons, Carro, answered without looking up from his work. "She's stable."

The commander relayed the message into the phone, then said, "Yes, sir," and handed the unit to Travis. As he did, for just a moment his eyes held the same curiosity as the old man who'd unbound Travis earlier. Then he walked away down the hall.

"Hello," Travis said.

The reply came from the man he'd spoken to when he'd called Tangent earlier.

"We have a more secure connection now," the man said, "but we're still going to be careful about what you say on your end. Those first responders are military; they're not cleared for what we'll be talking about."

"Okay."

"First, thank you for intervening on behalf of Miss Campbell. We owe you a great deal. The following questions, I'll ask you to answer with a simple yes or no. Did you see an object the size of a cue ball, dark blue-"

"Yes."

"Is it in the possession of the people who were holding Miss Campbell?"

"Not exactly," Travis said.

"Did she hide it somewhere?"

"Yes. I can tell you where-"

"No," the man said. "Don't do that. Just confirm for me whether it's hidden near the encampment where you rescued her."

"Yes," Travis said.

"All right. The F-15 pilot verified that there's nobody left at that site. The hostiles must've all been aboard the chopper when it was hit. So here's how this is going to work. We have two Black Hawks coming to you, a little over an hour away. The pilots and crew aren't military; they're our people, and they're cleared for this. One of the choppers will evacuate Miss Campbell. The other will take you to the camp in the valley, where you'll show our people the Whisper's location. They'll have the means to contain it for transport. Once it's secured, you'll receive further instruction from them."

"Okay," Travis said.

"Do you have any questions?"

Travis was on the point of describing the strange attack in Room Three, but found himself unable to frame it in any way that made sense. He hadn't even done that in his own thoughts yet.

"None," Travis said.

The man thanked him again and hung up. Fuck.

It was all Karl could do to keep the curse to himself. The easy version of the plan had nearly worked.

From the open door of the fourth room off the hall, ten feet from where the hiker had stood with the satellite phone, Karl had watched the conversation.

He'd been in this room since just before the helicopter's demise, after using the sound of its rotors to mask his return down the creaking hallway. The room had proven a fine place from which to listen to the hiker's phone call, though Karl had been prepared to follow him elsewhere if necessary.

It really should have worked.

With the chopper down in flames, and the fighter pilot's word that the valley was clear of hostiles, Karl had been certain Tangent would ask the hiker where the damn thing was hidden. He'd even started to tell them, before they'd stopped him.

That knowledge would have ended the game. Karl would have easily taken the key back from the hiker-probably by way of a silent kill in the hallway while the doctors were preoccupied-and left the building. He'd stowed his own satellite phone in the drain trench beside the highway, three hundred yards south. A quick jog, and he could have sent his superiors the location of the hidden Whisper more than an hour ahead of Tangent's arrival at the site.

It would have been more than enough time. His people had already dispatched another chopper from their own staging point; it was screaming along the Brooks Range at this moment, below radar, toward the valley where the 747 lay in ruins and the Whisper lay hidden. The F-15 had long since turned for home, having spent its fuel inefficiently in the mad scream to reach Coldfoot.

One spoken sentence, and every tumbler would have clicked into place.

Fuck.

Karl waited for the hiker to wander back to the open doorway of the makeshift emergency room. The noise from equipment and voices inside provided ample sound cover. Karl moved past the man, down the hall and out the front door.

By the time he reached his phone, the lodge and the soldiers around it were distant specks, inaudible over the wind. He dialed and waited.

"Tell the chopper to land five miles west of the site and wait there," he said when it was answered. "It's going to be complicated."