Rain fell intermittently, and when it fell the twenty-knot surface wind pushed it in bunches against the vehicles and aircraft on the expansive tarmac. Notable among them were the C-141 Starlifter, black and green in stark contrast to the misty daylight background, and two dark green Humvees nosed away from the lowered stem ramp of the jet transport.
Around the two vehicles the Delta troopers stood. They wore fresh sets of the black assault gear they would wear in the event they got a go. That they had changed gear and were milling about behind a ready-to-go transport said something. They could feel it. Something was definitely happening.
“Troops, listen up.” It was Blackjack. He walked with purpose to where they stood. “Load the Humvees and follow on. We’ve got a go to get into position.”
“Holy shit,” Quimpo said.
“This is it, Major?” Jones asked.
McAffee’s face was stone. “If we’re there, and there’s an opportunity, then we’re going to take them down.”
Graber read the conditions more than the words. There were ‘ifs’ attached to everything, it seemed, in their line of work. He also read something in the civilian’s face. “You ready for some action, Captain Anderson?”
Joe nodded. It was a nervous affirmation. “Just let me at it.”
“Let’s get aboard,” Blackjack bellowed. The Humvees, driven by two Delta troopers from the slack squad, fired up and backed up the stem ramp into the Starlifter. Each vehicle had a strange, ungainly-looking raised platform mounted on its rear.
The big Italian lieutenant did his best John Wayne: “Saddle uuup!”
Within five minutes the Starlifter’s loadmaster checked the position and tie-downs of the vehicles. Delta was experienced at loading and securing their own gear. He gave it a thumbs-up, and the eleven troopers and the lone civilian settled into the suspended web seats along the inner fuselage. Five minutes later the C-141 throttled down the runway and nosed up into the late-morning storm.
Buxton leaned close to the major. “Where we headed, sir?”
“Tenerife. You ever heard of it?”
He had, but it wasn’t encouraging. “Yeah. Two 747s crashed there ten or fifteen years ago. One slammed into the other when it was landing. Nothing like flying into a place with a history.”
Landing wasn’t what concerned McAffee. The feeling in his gut overpowered that. This one felt like it was going to happen, and experience had taught him that, unlike most human endeavors, the act surpassed the prelude in terror by far.
The communication suite was worthy of its name compared to most areas of the giant carrier, which were comparatively small considering the ship’s massive displacement. It bristled on three of four walls with communications gear which impressed even Logan, who had seen many a pretender to such a capability.
“Over here, sir.” The petty officer directed Logan to a gray door on the far side of the rectangular room. “This is our secure room.”
He wasn’t joking. There were two locks on the door, one a combination type with a flip-up privacy hood. Whoever operated the dial had to be able to do so by touch; the numbers were not allowed to be seen. The petty officer completed the unlocking and opened the door. “Sir.”
Logan entered the five-by-five-foot room. A single chair was pushed up to a fold-down metal tray, attached to which was a normal-looking phone. Appearance was where the normalcy ended. The gear the phone was connected to was the most secure communications link on earth, identical to that used by the nation’s strategic forces. Also hooked to it was a high-resolution facsimile printer.
The door shut behind him. He sat down and picked up the green handset. “Logan here.”
“Dick…Greg Drummond. How are things out there?”
“How does it go? I’m getting too old for this shit, sir. A fighter ride out, and then the air group commander reads me the riot act. A real a-hole.”
Drummond hadn’t seen the case officer in over six months. He sounded different. “He’s a typical Navy man, and that makes him good at what he does. I’ve got some info for you. Watch the printer.”
The machine was a quiet laser-color model, able to reproduce pictures and documents in impressive detail. What was more amazing was that the condensed transmission that carried the digitized data to the printer had traveled over eighty thousand miles between Langley, two ground stations, and two relay satellites, before being received and decrypted on the carrier.
Logan waited for both pages to finish printing before pulling them out of the tray.
“The drawing is something — who knows what? There was no explanation with it. We’re going to have it analyzed. I wanted you to see it just in case you might be able to make some sense of it.”
The CIA case officer studied it. “From DONNER?”
“Yes. Just a short time ago. Anything?”
“I’ve seen his writing and sketches before. This is his. I’m sure. But there’s no labeling on it.” Why?
“It was just a stab in the dark. But if you’re sure it’s DONNER’s work, then the second sheet could be worrying.”
The single sheet of paper was slick. Logan read the message. “What?”
“That’s what we thought. He says he’s not going to transmit the final message; he says it will come out with him.”
“Christ.”
Drummond could now identify the feeling behind Logan’s words — apprehension. “We transmitted three requests to him. He was supposed to tell us (a) if there is a nuclear bomb on board, (b) if not, what it is, and (c) as much of the technical detail on the cargo as he was able to get. Now this diagram can only be a response to the last request, but what about the other two? He says he’ll give us the last response when we extract him. That leaves one unaccounted for.”
It wasn’t difficult to make an inference from the situation. Donner had broken his pattern, and worse yet, he wasn’t delivering as requested. Logan was instantly unnerved by it all. “This isn’t good. It doesn’t endear this mission to me.
“Could he have been turned?”
Logan pondered that. “I don’t know. This certainly isn’t like him. From what I know about him, though, it’s not likely anyone could turn him. He’d rather die.”
There was another possibility, the DDI knew. “Then maybe he’s deliberately leading us into a trap.”
Us? “You mean you think he might have been playing us all along?”
“Or recently,” Drummond responded. “It’s a consideration. Maybe part of this overall situation.”
“And what would his motivation be?”
“I don’t know, because I don’t know him. None of us do.”
That was a truism that hit Logan with force. DONNER was a mystery to them. Aside from his past performance, no one had any real sense of what the man was about, or what drove him. “So, we have a problem. What are our options?”
“We be prudent and call off the extraction, which means we don’t have a chance at the other message or messages.”
The DDI felt that would be the safest option. He didn’t want to send a case officer and a bunch of troops into a bushwhack. But then “safe” wasn’t always an acceptable prime objective of his line of work. “Or we go.”
That ‘we’ stuff again. “We go. I’ll just be taking in a few extra pounds of worry.”
“And a flak vest.”
Logan already had that ready and waiting on his bunk.
It was the moment after the terror, when one’s body tried to recover from the physical drain that came with the aftermath of an adrenaline rush. Captain Bart Hendrickson and First Officer Buzz Elkins were feeling that now. Buzz was flopped back in the seat, his head even farther back. The captain continued his grip on the stick, his eyes focused a hundred feet in front of the Maiden.