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

Chapter 6

CIA Headquarters Campus (Langley)

McLean, Virginia

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

Brown Lake Test Area, Dreamland

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.