Riley leaned out the door, peering down as Barret brought the aircraft in. He heard Barret over the intercom. "Sweet Jesus! What the hell happened here?"
The helicopter settled down. Doc Seay raced over to the first body. Riley blinked in the cloud of grass blown up by the aircraft's blades. He leaned back into the helicopter and grabbed Barret. "Sir, I think you need to shut down here. Call Search Base and tell them to get their asses over here ASAP!"
Fort Campbell
7:55 A.M.
Powers heard the helicopter land and limped his way over to the battalion headquarters' back door. Four figures piled off the aircraft and the bird immediately lifted, heading west toward Sabre Army Airfield. Powers could make out the large form of Master Sergeant Knutz leading three other members of ODA 682 in his direction. Powers tenderly shifted his weight to the good leg and waited until Knutz came up. "Where's the rest of the team?"
Knutz shook his head. "Can't tell you that, Sergeant Major. We're on a classified mission."
What an idiot, Powers thought to himself. Obviously Knutz didn't even know that Riley was making commo back; Powers had just been waiting for the 0800 contact. "Then what are you all doing back?"
"Chief sent us back to dispatch our humvees and return."
Powers frowned. He'd hoped that this whole thing was over. "Anything else I'm supposed to know?"
Knutz shook his head. "Nope, Sergeant Major. We're under orders not to talk about this mission."
Powers stuck a large hand into Knutz's chest. "Wait one. If you all are drawing your humvees, are you also drawing your fifties?" he asked, referring to the .50-caliber machine gun that could be mounted on each vehicle.
Knutz obviously hadn't thought of that. "I guess so."
"What about ammunition for the guns?"
Knutz shifted from one foot to the other. "I don't know. I mean, can we get some, Sergeant Major?"
Powers pulled his hand away. He was disgusted at having to do the team sergeant's thinking for him. "Bring your vehicles around to the back of battalion after you draw them and I'll square you away. I'd also suggest that you dump some extra chow in the humvees."
"Thanks, Sergeant Major."
With that the team sergeant headed off for the three-story building that housed the battalion's team rooms to get the keys for the humvees.
The sergeant major limped back to his desk and put on the headphones for the radio. The burst came through and then the manual, very slowly. Since Carter had come back with Knutz, that meant a noncommo man was sending this second message. Good training, Powers thought absently as he checked the man's dots and dashes. When it was done, Powers took off the headphones and swiftly decoded the message.
ZEROTW
OXXODA
SIXEIG
HTTWOX
XSITRE
PXXNEE
DINFOO
NBIOTE
CHXXXB
IOTECH
ENGINE
ERINGX
XDOCTO
RSXXWA
RDXXXW
ARDXXM
ERRITX
XXMERR
ITXXAS
KKATEF
ORHELP
XXFOUR
DEADCI
VILIAN
SBYESC
APEDMO
NKEYSX
XTHISI
SCLASS
IFIEDT
OPSECR
ETNEED
TOKNOW
XXECHE
LONSAB
OVEXXM
ETOYOU
ONLYJU
STINCA
SEXXWI
LLMONI
TORALL
SCHEDU
LEDREC
EIVESX
XAMIGO
XXXXXX
Powers made sense out of the message groups:
ZERO TWO XX ODA 682 XX
SITREP XX
NEED INFO ON BIOTECH XXX BIOTECH ENGINEERING XX
DOCTORS XX WARD XXX WARD MERRIT XXX
MERRIT XX
ASK KATE FOR HELP XX
FOUR DEAD CIVILIANS BY ESCAPED MONKEYS XX
THIS IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET NEED TO KNOW XX
ECHELONS ABOVE XX
ME TO YOU ONLY JUST IN CASE XX
WILL MONITOR ALL SCHEDULED RECEIVES XX
AMIGO
Powers leaned back in his seat and sighed. He'd had a bad feeling about this mission. How could monkeys kill people? Powers hadn't heard anything on the news on the way in to work about any dead civilians, although he had seen the story on the escapees from Eddyville. Upon a moment's reflection, Powers realized that didn't mean anything except that the DIA was doing its job of covering up. Maybe even making up the Eddyville story as a cover for something else.
Powers knew that Riley sending this message, and the previous one, was a security violation. Which would mean deep federal shit for both him and Riley if they were found out. Now Riley wanted to bring Kate in on it. Powers didn't hesitate. He picked up the phone and dialed.
Kate Westland signed off on the memorandum of understanding between her Agency and the local FBI office on some minor drug case and threw it into her out box. Another challenging day of pushing paper. The most exciting thing she did here was read local FBI reports on domestic industrial spying and condense them for forwarding to Langley.
She hadn't been overly surprised at the reaction of her bosses upon her return from Colombia the previous year. Despite having successfully completed the assigned mission against one of the largest drug dealers in the world, and helping Dave Riley rescue Dan Powers after he was captured during a failed raid on a drug lab, her reception in the hallowed halls of Langley had been extremely chilly. They hadn't appreciated her technique, the Latin American station chief had explained. An acrimonious exchange between the Department of Defense and the CIA over the use of Special Forces soldiers in covert actions hadn't helped much either. In the end she'd been swept under the rug to Atlanta, where the only reminders of her days at Langley would be her signature on the weekly report from that field office.
At least Dave had been able to stay in his job, even though the army had moved him out of Bragg as quickly as she'd been exported from Langley. Kate leaned back in her seat and sighed. She was so tired of all this busywork. She even longed for the days when she'd been an analyst deep in the bowels of CIA headquarters; at least there had been worthwhile applications to her work. She thrived on challenges, and this job definitely wasn't one. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. Maybe with a change in administrations the Agency might be overhauled and she could breath some life into her stagnant career, but most likely not. The CIA still was an old boys' network and she was not only a girl, but a maverick one at that. She knew her own capabilities, and the fact that she couldn't use them fully in the present situation was tearing away at her day by day.
Damn! Her mind shifted gears. She owed the local DEA official a reply today on a routine request for information. She had typed it into the computer the previous afternoon but hadn't printed it out. She spun around in her seat and turned on the machine. As the main drive booted up, the phone rang.
"Westland, this line is unsecure."
"Kate, this is Dan Powers."
Kate smiled slightly. It had taken almost a year to get Powers to call her by her first name. She knew he had great difficulty accepting her as an equal, and she wasn't sure if his apparent friendship with her was based more on his relationship with Dave than on true feelings toward her. "What's up, Dan?"
There was a pause. "Uh, well, this is an unsecure line and — "
Kate's heartbeat accelerated. "Has something happened to Dave?" Even as she spoke the words she was surprised at the feelings that had coursed through her in that brief moment — feelings she thought had died months ago.