The sailor handing the chow line in the mess tent saw Danny Freah approach. “More eggs, Captain? Be your third helping.”
“Problem with that?” said Danny lightly.
“No, sir,” said the Navy seaman, lifting the metal cover on the serving tray. “No, sir. Good to seem someone with a healthy appetite.”
“It’s good cooking, sailor,” said Danny, though truth was the eggs were rubbery at best. Most likely they were powdered or flash-frozen or whatever the hell they did to eggs these days. Still, he took another full helping, then went back to his table.
He was putting off talking to Colonel Bastian. He’d already put it off since last night, when he could have caught the colonel before he turned in. This morning he could have grabbed him before his briefing session. Danny could have—should have—interrupted him.
Powder was right about the girl. That was no reason, none at all, not to do his job. She wasn’t the same woman, and he wasn’t in the same situation.
But she didn’t present a threat, nor did her village. He knew that in his bones.
They couldn’t keep her in the med tent; he had to deal with her before Peterson went over his head, which he might already have done.
Or Stoner. The spook thought he was God, just about. Spy with attitude. He would get involved soon too.
Danny was trained to be cautious, to think about what he was doing before he acted. He was also trained to act, not to sit on something for a day — days, really, if you argued he should have moved the village right away.
He sure as hell wasn’t trained — wasn’t paid—to get caught up in emotions and buried memories. Maybe Jemma was right; maybe it was time for him to quit.
And do what? Run for office? What good would he do?
Right wrongs, like Jem always said.
That was what he was doing now.
“Hey, Cap, you probably want to get over to the med tent,” said Bison, leaning down next to him. “Stoner’s hassling the prisoner.”
“Shit,” muttered Danny, getting up quickly.
He found Stoner sitting across form the woman in a chair. She was talking in English, her face red. Danny started to say something to the CIA officer, but Stoner stopped him by putting up his hand.
“They burned the house first,” continued the woman. “The houses were huts, not even as sturdy as this. Two people we have never seen again. These are the people you call saviors.”
“I didn’t call them saviors,” said Stoner. His voice was flat, as unemotional as a surgeon asking for a fresh scalpel.
“We want only to live in peace. Is that too much to ask?”
“You’re not in a good place,” said Danny, taking another step toward her. Her cheekbones were puffed out and her hair brushed straight back; her anger made her seem more like a woman.
“Where would you have us live?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“If you turn us over to the government, they will massacre us.” She looked at Danny defiantly for a moment, then turned back to Stoner and began to cry.
“Mr. Stoner, a word,” said Danny. He turned and went out of the tent. When the CIA officer appeared, he walked a few feet away.
“She telling the truth?” Danny asked him.
“I told you there’d be a sob story.”
“Sob story — two people being killed is hardly a sob story.”
“What would you call it?” Stoner asked.
“A fucking massacre — an atrocity.”
Stoner shrugged.
“We’re not turning her over to the government, or the army,” said Danny.
Stoner said nothing.
“We’re not,” said Danny. “We’ll move them ourselves. Fuck those bastards — we’ll move them ourselves. Well? Say something.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Say you agree.”
Stoner shrugged.
Danny felt his anger rising so high he almost couldn’t control it. “What the fuck, man? What the hell — aren’t you human?”
“We can move them. But sooner or later, the Army will find them again. We won’t have control over what happened then.”
“You know.”
Danny clamped his hand into a fist, stifling his anger. Would it do any good to tell Stoner what had happened in Bosnia? Probably not.
It didn’t matter. He’d move them himself.
“You going against me on this?” Danny asked.
Stoner shrugged. “I’m not for or against it. It’s not really my business. There’s a communication network. I have NSA intercepts that are reporting on ship activity and transmitting.”
“From here?”
“They haven’t been able to pin down the location, which is pretty interesting. I guess. There are two kinds of transmission — radio, and something that goes underwater. Not all of it’s decoded.”
“And she’s involved in that?”
“I doubt it, but we won’t know till we look in her village.”
Danny frowned, as if Stoner were saying he should have done this before.
Which, in a way, he was.
“The gear’s pretty sophisticated,” said the CIA officer. “They wouldn’t be able to hide it.”
“Those atolls,” said Danny. “If there’s some sort of network, they’d have to be involved.”
“Probably.”
“All right,” Danny nodded. “We’ll go to her village ASAP. But here’s the deal — if what she’s saying checks out, we move her ourselves.”
Stoner shrugged. Danny took that to mean it was okay with him.
Dog figured he could sneak fifteen minutes away with Jennifer while the rest of the Iowa’s crew got the plane ready. He shouldn’t, of course — but rank had its privileges. Besides, Rosen and the others were fully capable of handling things on their own.
Now, if he were really taking advantage of the situation, he would ask someone else to fill in for him as pilot, which he wasn’t.
“Miss Gleason, if I could have a word,” he said as the others began filing out of the trailer.
“Miss Gleason?” she said, her face red.
“Um, Ms. Sorry.”
“Miss Gleason”
“Uh-oh, Colonel, you stepped in it,” said Zen.
“Hmmmph,” said Breanna.
“I had an idea about adding something to the com section of the computer,” said Dog. “A language translator. As part of the regular communication area. “We had—”
“Which communication area?” she snapped. “In the flight-control computer, or the master unit? Tactical or the mission-spree areas?”
She wasn’t angry with him, he told himself, she was just busting his chops.
She was, wasn’t she?
“Well here’s the situation,” the colonel told her, starting to explain how they had tried to talk to the Chinese yesterday.
“Important officers in the Chinese military all speak English,” she insisted, absentmindedly taking a stray strand of hair and pulling over her ear.
“They may speak it, but in the heat of the battle, they don’t understand it too well.”
“You can have language experts on call at Dreamland.”
Damn, she was being difficult. “In the heat of the moment, it would be easier if you could press a button and what you said was translated and broadcast,” said Dog. “It would prevent misunderstanding, and there’d be no time delay.”
“Mmmm,” she said.
“Can you insert some sort of translator into the communications sections?”
“I’d have to think about it.”
Busting his chops, definitely. He could see the start of a grin on her face, a slight hint.
Man, he just wanted to jump in bed with her.
“We should be ready to preflight in ten minutes,” said Rosen from near the doorway.
“I may be delayed,” the colonel said. “I have to check back with Dream Command.”