Turk’s attacker gave him one last squeeze, then pushed him away. Turk coughed violently as he caught his breath. Meanwhile, two men in black fatigues ran out from behind the hill and began attending to the man Turk had bloodied. The man was sitting upright, his entire face a thick frown. As soon as the medics saw he was OK, they started teasing him.

“Pilot beat the shit out of you good, Jayboy,” said one.

“The geek owns your ass now,” said the other.

“Fuck yourself,” said Jayboy. He was in green and brown digi-camo, like the man who’d been choking Turk. “Both of you.”

“I’d say you gentlemen are doing a good job.” Danny put his hands on his hips. “An excellent job. A Delta Force job.”

Jayboy grumbled a curse under his breath. Turk offered his hand to the man who’d been choking him. The soldier frowned and brushed past, joining the knot of soldiers who’d been trailing him and were just now catching up.

“Hey, Grease, no hard feelings,” Turk yelled after him. “You taught me that release. I almost got it.”

Grease—Jeff Ransom—didn’t answer. That wasn’t uncharacteristic, and in some ways was even an improvement: the six-six Delta Force sergeant first class was generally openly antagonistic. But it peeved Turk—in his mind, he’d fought to a draw against big odds. That meant he had gotten the better of his trainers, finally, and the soldiers ought to admit it. They’d sure ranked on him when they had the advantage.

Jayboy—his real name was Staff Sergeant Jayson Boyd—knelt with his head back now, clotting the bleeding in his nose. Turk went over to him and apologized.

“I’m sorry I bashed you,” said Turk.

“Forget it,” grunted Jayboy.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m getting better, huh?”

“Fuck you, Pilot.”

“Turk, you’re with me,” shouted Danny. “Everyone else, knock off for the day. We’re done.”

Finally, thought Turk. Playtime is over. Now I get to fly.

Tired and sore but floating on a wave of triumph, Turk fell in behind Danny. He walked as fast as he could manage but quickly lost ground. His clothes were sopping with sweat and every muscle in his body ached.

He’d considered himself in good shape until this week. The Delta trainers had ragged him about that: “Come on, Pilot. You’re in good Air Force shape. Now it’s time to live with real standards.”

Pilot.

It was the first time Turk had ever heard that used as a slur.

When Danny reached the Humvee, he waved the driver out of the vehicle and got in behind the wheel. He backed the Humvee into a U-turn and waited for Turk.

“I see you’re getting the hang of things,” Danny said as Turk climbed in.

“I didn’t mean to bash him so hard.”

“Hell no, hard is good.” Danny smiled as he put the Humvee in gear and sped away. They skipped the turnoff for the cafeteria—a barn that had been very slightly modified—and headed toward the county highway that divided the property in half.

Maybe we’ll get lunch someplace nice, thought Turk. But when they reached the road, they went straight across, driving along a scrub trail.

“Pretty country,” he told Danny.

“Very nice.”

“So I guess you’re going to tell me what’s going on soon, right?”

“We’ll be there in a few.”

Minutes? Hours? Danny didn’t say. Turk knew better than to press the colonel any further, and contented himself with gazing out the window, looking for the rabid coyotes the Delta boys had warned him about. The parched scrubland became somewhat greener as they drove south along the trail, the hilly land husbanding runoff in underground aquifers. About halfway through the pass, the road narrowed and the sides of the hills sharpened. A week before, Turk would have looked at the etched sandstone and thought how pretty it looked; now he saw it as a perfect place to ambush someone.

The Humvee kicked up a good cloud of dust as they came through the pass. Danny turned to the right, leaving the trail and driving through a flat piece of land. Boulders were sprinkled amid the thigh-high grass; Danny veered left and right to avoid them, navigating to a dry creek bed. Here he turned right, following up it a hundred yards before finding a trail on his left; the trail led to a road, dirt but hard-packed and relatively smooth. Finding the going easier, he sped up.

A sharp curve took them to the head of a valley. A house spread out along the crest of the hill ahead rested like a giant with its arms saddling the rocky top. The sun, now almost directly overhead, glinted off the massive window at the center, the rays pushing aside the massive wooden beams that framed the facade and held the green steel roof and its solar panels in place. The exterior was all glass and logs, though the place could not be called a log cabin without a great deal of irony.

The road stopped about a third of the way up the hill. Danny turned right across a stretch of rough rock bed, bumping his way up a slight incline and around another bend until he came to a driveway of red gravel. This led him toward the house in a series of switchbacks, until at last the back of the structure appeared. An immense portico shaded a cobblestone driveway that circled around the entrance.

Danny parked in the center and got out. Turk followed him into a wide hallway, where they were met by a man in black fatigues. Though imposingly large, the man had no visible weapons, not even a sidearm; he gave Danny an almost imperceptible nod as they moved through a small room and into a narrower hall, passing steps on either side and a pair of bathrooms before entering a large great room faced by the windows Turk had seen from the Humvee.

Four massive couches with attendant armchairs and tables failed to fill the room. The floor’s large flagstone tiles, irregularly shaped and each covering at least five square feet, were overlaid by hand-woven rugs. A pair of fireplaces, each large enough for a man to stand up in, flanked the sides of the room.

Ray Rubeo stood in front of the fireplace on the left, arms folded, staring at the tangle of unlit wood in the iron pit.

“Hey, Doc,” said Danny, walking toward him.

Rubeo turned slowly, apparently lost in thought. The scientist headed a private company, Applied Intelligence, one of the Office of Special Technology’s prime contractors. It was responsible for the AI that guided the Hydras, but that was far from its only contribution to either the command or its Whiplash subcomponent. Rubeo had personally worked on a number of projects Turk had been involved in, including the Tigershark II and the Sabre unmanned attack plane. He was an austere man, peculiar in the way geniuses often are. He was also, as far as Turk knew, rich beyond his needs. But the scientist seemed deeply unhappy, constantly frowning, and acerbic even when generous levity would have been more appropriate.

Rubeo stared at both of them for another few seconds before finally offering a greeting.

“Colonel.” He nodded. “Captain. Have you eaten?”

“I haven’t,” said Turk. “I’m famished.”

“We have a tight schedule,” said Danny. “Things have been pushed up.”

“Yes,” said Rubeo, in his usual withering tone. He was the only man Turk had ever met who could make yes sound like a curse word. “You can eat while I talk,” Rubeo offered. His tone was nearly magnanimous, certainly in contrast to what had come before. “Let’s see what Wendy can make for you, and then we’ll go downstairs.”

RAY RUBEO HAD ASKED IF THEY WANTED FOOD AS A way to delay the briefing, if only for a few moments, but now as he watched Turk Mako eating the turkey sandwich he couldn’t help but feel worse, as if he were watching a condemned man’s final meal.

At least in that case the man would have deserved his fate.

“How much have you figured out on your own, Captain?” asked Rubeo, walking to the side of the basement conference center, a secure area dug deep below the main floor of the house. The building belonged to one of Rubeo’s companies, as did the range where Turk and the Delta team had been practicing. Occasionally used by Special Technology to test out equipment, the property was mainly leased to Delta and SOCCOM, the U.S. Special Operations Command, for various training and practice exercises. It had once been three separate ranches; Rubeo bought them all and merged them to make a property large enough to keep the curious far at bay.