Raven Strike

“Tigershark will be here in another three hours,” said Da

Da

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Just how lovely it is to be back in this stink hole,” said the CIA officer.

Chapter 11

Southeastern Sudan

Melissa Ilse cut the motorcycle’s engine, coasting in the dark as the indicator beeper became a steady hum. She was a mile from the UAV.

Hand-built by Ducati to CIA specifications, the lightweight motorcycle had a pair of oversized mufflers that kept engine noise to a low rumble. But sound traveled far in the desert foothills, and she couldn’t afford to take a chance of alerting anyone that she was near. She needed to locate the UAV and recover its brain, or her career was shot.

Harker had told her that in so many words.

Melissa glided off the dirt trail she’d been riding for the past half hour or so, letting the bike’s momentum carry her to a trio of rocks a few yards up the hillside. She put on her brakes as she reached them. Hopping off the bike, she set it down gently against the largest of the rocks. She pulled the MP-5 submachine gun from its holster on the side of the bike and trotted down to the trail, turning back to make sure the bike couldn’t be seen.

Her night vision goggles were heavy against her face. She pulled them off and rubbed her cheekbones and eyes. She was surprised there was enough light to see fairly well, and it was such a relief not to have the apparatus pressing against her face that she decided she would do without it for a while. She stuffed it into her rucksack, then examined her GPS.

The handheld device wasn’t coordinated with the UAV’s homing signals, but it wasn’t hard to get her bearings. The aircraft had gone down on the other side of the ridge. She could either climb directly over it or circle around parallel to the trail she’d been riding.

Direct was always better.

Melissa paused every few steps to look around and make sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d been through this general area several times in the past two months, before Raven was brought in. She might even have been on this very hillside, though she didn’t remember it.

The chapped land and rugged hills reminded her of southwest Nevada, where her dad used to take her camping and hiking when she was a girl. He and her mother had divorced when she was only three; he had custody only a few weeks each year, and they always spent at least one week of that camping. She cherished those trips now, and looked forward to the next, not due for several months.

Melissa scolded herself. It was dangerous letting her mind drift. Crouching at the top of the ridge, she put one hand on the rocky crust, then folded herself against the hillside, peering over the top.

Shadow covered everything before her. She slid down a few feet, pulled off her pack and removed her night vision goggles.

A small settlement sat in the valley on the left, not quite two miles away. There was no sign anyone was awake.

So where was the plane?

From the signal, it should be to her right, maybe a thousand yards away.

Melissa surveyed the area again. The submachine gun felt heavy in her hands. She’d never fired it at an enemy. She’d never used a gun against a real person at all.

She took a slow breath, controlling her nerves, and started down the hill in the direction of the signal.

She came to the wreckage sooner than she thought. The aircraft’s left wing jutted from the rocks. It had sheered at the wing root, pulled off by the force of the midair collision.

Melissa took over, sca

She cursed silently, then took the camera from her pocket. They’d want to know what the wrecked wing looked like.

Chapter 12

Washington, D.C.

Senator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard looked up at the receptionist as he rolled into the rehabilitation ward in Building 5123 at the Walter Reed Hospital complex. They were old friends by now, so well-acquainted that Zen knew she took her coffee black with two sugars.

It was important, after all, to get those little things right.

“Luciana, you are looking very chipper this morning,” he said, rolling toward her. “How is my favorite receptionist and nurse in training?”

“Big test tonight,” she told him.

“Better hit the books.”

“I am.” She raised the textbook from behind the counter. Building 5123 was a special facility at the hospital complex, with the highest level of security possible—so high, in fact, that even Zen had to submit to a rudimentary pat down. His aide—Jason Black—couldn’t even go downstairs with him.

Which, in some ways, was just as well.

While the staff members were all medical professionals, they worked for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a special branch charged with investigating biology and medicine and their implications on the battlefield as well as society.

“Jay brought you coffee,” said Zen, glancing back at his aide. Black handed over the cup of Starbucks.

“You look like you’re still asleep, Jason,” said Luciana.

Jason blushed. “Naw.”

“I ride him hard, Lucy,” said Zen. “Twenty-four/seven, around the clock. How’s my patient?”

“They don’t tell me anything, Senator. But I haven’t heard anything bad.”

“That’s good to know.”

Zen rolled himself toward the security checkpoint a short distance away. Contrary to what she’d told Zen, the staff downstairs would have passed the word if there was a problem. Not that it would have kept Zen from going down to see their patient, Mark Stoner.

Stoner had been a close friend years before. They’d worked together at Dreamland; at one point, Stoner had saved Zen’s wife Brea

Stoner had been lost on a mission in Eastern Europe some fifteen years before. Everyone, Zen included, had given him up for dead.

A recent Whiplash mission had discovered him still alive, though so physically and mentally altered, he was barely recognizable. Zen had helped rescue him. Now he felt obligated to help him back to health.

Mental health. Physically, he’d never be what he was. He’d always be much, much better.

Rescued from a helicopter crash by a scientist working with Olympic athletes, Stoner had been the recipient of numerous biomechanical improvements and a host of steroidlike drugs that had turned him into something approaching a Superman. While he had been weaned from most of the drugs the scientists had put him on, he still retained much of his strength.

A single nurse was on duty in the basement ward. Two guards with loaded shotguns stood behind her.

“Good morning, Senator.”

“Katherine.”

“Dr. Esrang is with him.”

“OK.”

Zen wheeled himself next to a chair, then waited as one of the guards ran a wand around him and looked over his wheelchair to make sure there were no weapons or other contraband. Cleared, he got back on and wheeled himself to the steel door. A loud buzzer sounded; the door slid to the side. Zen entered a narrow corridor and began wheeling toward a second steel door. The doors acted like an airlock; only one could be opened at a time, even in an emergency.