“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

Over the Midwest

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.

Moral Dilemmas

Chapter 1

Southeastern Sudan, Africa

Danny Freah jumped from the Osprey just behind Ben “Boston” Rockland, the team sergeant, and John “Flash” Gordon, the second-ranking NCO. Melissa Ilse was huddled near the rocks.

“Flash, grab the bike!” yelled Boston. “Let’s go, people, we need to get moving!”

Danny trotted over to Melissa. She was crouched down, in obvious pain, holding her shoulder. Sugar—CIA covert officer Clare Keeb—was standing over her, her SCAR-H/MK-17 rifle poised, even though a scan of the area had shown no one nearby.

“Probably dislocated,” said Sugar, keeping her eyes on the terrain.

“It’s definitely dislocated,” said Melissa.

Danny knelt down. Melissa wasn’t what he expected. She was young—twenty-four, maybe, slim and tall, nearly five-ten, he thought, helping her up gently. Even in pain she had a beautiful, flawless face. Her skin was a half shade lighter than his; he hadn’t realized she was African-American.

“I’m all right,” she insisted. “We have to get the aircraft back. Do you know where they went?”

“We’ll take care of that,” said Danny. “Right now we have to get of here. The sun’s coming up. We don’t want anyone to see us.”

“That’s not important.”

“The hell it’s not,” said Boston gruffly.

“Come on, into the aircraft,” Danny told her. “Or do we put you on a stretcher?”

“Ow, my arm!” Melissa shrieked as Boston tried to help her on the other side. “Do you know how to pull it back into place?”

“Sure, but I ain’t doing that here.”

“We’ll treat it,” said Danny. “Get into the aircraft.”

Boston put his hand on her back. “Come on, sister.”

“I’m not your sister, asshole.”

Boston gave Danny a grin behind her back.

Just like Boston to start pushing buttons, thought Danny.

A half hour later they were back at the base in Ethiopia. The team had taken over one of the smaller buildings to use as a combination common area and command post. Sugar and Danny brought Melissa there and examined her shoulder. It was swollen, and seemed to have some ligament damage as well as a dislocation.

“Best place for you is up in Alexandria,” Danny told her. “They’ll put you out, get the shoulder right, and send you home.”

“What?”

“There’s a good hospital there. And—”

“I’m not going to a hospital,” she insisted. “There’s no need. It’s just dislocated. Just push it back in place.”

“This ain’t like the movies,” said Sugar. “You don’t know what else might be screwed up or broken. You need X rays, and really they oughta do an MRI on you. I’d guess you have rotator cuff tears—”

“Just can the talk and put it back in place.”