Langley nodded.
“He’s not gonna like it,” Raine said needlessly.
“It’s not going to be a walk in the park, Nate,” he agreed. “But, when’s that ever stopped you from doing something?”
Cautiously, as though it might turn around and bite him, Raine picked up the immunity deal and glanced through it. The presidential seal seemed to glare accusingly at him.
“How do I know Harper won’t just rip this up once I’m done?”
“You know how this works, Nate. Its all above board, signed and witnessed by the Attorney General. So long as you keep up your end of the bargain — you help the team, protect King and secure the mask — there is no going back on that agreement.”
Raine’s eyes darted back to the door, thinking, analysing, watching the movements of the guards, retracing his route through the prison to the cell.
If he tried to escape, Langley had little doubt that he would succeed. But then what? He would be a fugitive once more, and Benjamin King would be as good as dead. He might as well hand the Moon Mask over to an enemy state on a silver platter.
“What do you say, Nathan?” he asked, cutting into his thoughts, refocusing his attention. He held out a hand to his former student. “One last mission, then you can finally stop running.”
24:
Camaraderie
Despite being situated in the middle of one of their bases, an agreement between the City of Leavenworth and the U.S. Army meant that Sherman Airfield was open to civilian air traffic at all times. A mixture of commercial flights and DoD transports vied for the single runway and the services of the base’s refuelling teams, mechanics and aircraft accommodation.
Off to one side of the airfield, however, one of the normally unrestricted taxiways had been temporally shut off to corporate and private use. A string of armed soldiers patrolled the perimeter, idly watching light aircraft take off into the blue Kansas sky.
An open topped military jeep ploughed down the taxiway towards the hanger at the far end. Sat in the back of the vehicle, his ice-blue eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, Nathan Raine watched the activity around him. He had missed it, he realised now. The adrenaline as he prepared for the next mission, the envious glances new recruits gave the enigmatic men who headed towards the black hanger that was beyond their security clearance. Most of all, he missed the camaraderie that could only be experienced by men and women who had fought alongside each other, that placed their lives in one another’s hands.
With a screech, the jeep pulled up outside the hanger and, thanking the driver, Raine slapped him on the shoulder and jumped out without opening the door, hoisted his duffle over his shoulder and walked in through the massive bay doors.
“Whoa,” he breathed to himself as he laid eyes on the monstrous machine filling most of the hanger’s space.
Over one hundred feet long and thirty feet high, the Sikorsky CH-53K was the newest member of the United States military’s ‘Super Stallion’ helicopters. While having flown both the 53E and the navy’s equivalent, the Sea Dragon, he was still taken aback by the sheer enormity of the military’s newest helicopter. He hadn’t even been aware that any of them had yet come off the assembly line, let alone were in active service.
With a speed of almost two hundred knots, the new and improved Super Stallion was powered by state-of-the-art GE38-1B engines and featured a composite rotor blade system. It had twice the lift capacity of its predecessor and was almost thirty knots faster. Unlike the endless array of analogue dials and gauges found in most cockpits, the 53K was outfitted with a state-of-the-art ‘glass’ cockpit. Essentially, the interior looked like something ripped off of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise; LCD screens and touch-screen plasma panels scrolled through pertinent information while a sophisticated flight management system simplified the operation and navigation of the craft, allowing the pilot to concentrate on the mission objectives.
As Raine watched, a black, unmarked Humvee roared up the helicopter’s rear loading ramp and vanished into its cavernous interior. Like flies buzzing around a cadaver, dozens of technicians swarmed over the aircraft, seeing to its every need. Refuelling had been completed but the technicians ran their final operational checks, ticking off a long list on durable tablet computers.
Raine had only been out of the game for three years, yet he felt like a dinosaur surrounded by the military’s modern gadgetry.
Whatever happened to a simple clipboard? he wondered.
That was when the first soldier spotted him.
Laurence Gibbs frowned as David Sykes cut off his report in mid-sentence. He was just about to reprimand him when his eyes drifted in the direction the other man was looking.
An immediate swell of anger churned in his gut.
Nathan Raine stood just inside the hanger, slowly removing his mirrored sunglasses and looking just as cool and relaxed as ever.
After everything that had happened in that cursed jungle four years ago, he looked for all the world like a man with a clean conscience. And, indeed, why should he appear any other way? He had gone rogue, sided with the enemy and killed members of his own team. He had betrayed the men under his command as well as the United States of America. And, for all his troubles, he had been handed a big-fat presidential pardon. His crimes had been swept beneath a rug, swatted out of existence just like the lives of the soldiers he had taken. So, Gibbs realised, why should he look like anything but the smug bastard that he was?
I have learned to hate all traitors, he recited the words of the ancient Greek tragedian, Aeschylus, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.
Almost like a domino effect, Sykes’ silence spilled over to Gibbs and in turn to the other six members of his special operations group. Even the technicians, busy readying the mammoth chopper, seemed to sense the icy awkwardness and glanced in Raine’s direction despite being oblivious of his actions.
The shock of seeing Raine in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle had quickly twisted to fury, followed by a sense of pride in bringing in the traitor for a second time. For it was himself and his second-in-command, Rudy O’Rourke, that had apprehended Raine when he’d gone rogue. Gibbs was happy to put a bullet in his head there and then but O’Rourke, filled with the naive idealism of youth, had insisted they bring him back to America to face justice. In Venezuela, witnessed by the civilian scientist and waving the nansy-pansy flag of the U.N., he’d been forced to follow procedure again and apprehend the bastard.
If only he’d followed his gut instinct, he growled inwardly, filled with loathing. Raine would have been a rotting corpse, being picked apart by the scavengers of the Amazon. Instead, he was now a free man.
Sykes cleared his throat and continued his report, briefly outlining the team’s route. From the ‘Moon Mask Mission’s’ new jumping-off point, Fort Leavenworth — a site picked purely because it was where Raine was incarcerated — they would head south. After a brief refuelling stop in Gibbs’ home state of Texas, they would continue south-east across the Gulf of Mexico.
As the man spoke, however, Gibbs found his thoughts drifting back to that blood-drenched jungle. His vision darkened, his heart beat faster. He didn’t realise it, but his fists clenched at his sides.
The President himself had spoken personally to Gibbs, explaining Raine’s release. Just like Raine, his immediate predecessor, such direct communication with the president was common-place. As the CIA’s ‘flag-ship’ SOG team, their orders were often received straight from the Oval Office, hence earning the team the nick-name ‘The President’s Private Little Army.’ Some conspiracy circles had come to refer to them as the ‘Phantoms’ due to their seeming lack of existence. The scientists they were supporting on this mission had been given only the most limited information about their military escort in an effort to keep information about the Special Operations Group restricted.