“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

Southeastern Sudan

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

Western Ethiopia

“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

Over the Sudan

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.”