Collateral Damage

The sun was just rising over the hills. It was a brilliant sunrise, casting a pink glow on the clouds. The landscape in front of the rays brightened, the rocks and tall trees popping out as if they had been painted.

Rubeo walked to the far end of the patio, breathing in the air. He thought of the many people he’d known over the years, thought of the campaigns he’d been involved in, thought of the few people he regarded as friends.

Faces of those who were gone came at him. Je

Gone, way before her time.

Too much nostalgia. Nostalgia was a useless sentimentality, a waste of time.

Back inside the house, Rubeo went down to his workout room and went through his morning routine quickly. The phones were ringing—his encrypted satellite phone, the work line, the private house line, and even the cell phone no one supposedly knew about.

He showered.

In the kitchen, he picked up the tablet and was glad to see that he hadn’t broken it. He brought up his messaging program and retrieved the deleted file. He forced himself to look at it again. Finally, he took his private cell phone from the counter and called Levon Jons.

“Pack,” he told him. “I need to leave in an hour.”

“Uh, OK,” said the former Marine.

Jons headed security for Rubeo’s wholly owned company, Applied Intelligence, doubling as his personal bodyguard overseas. Rubeo knew that Jons was barely awake, but that was immaterial.

“What kinda clothes and how long?” asked Jons.

“It will be a few days at least,” said Rubeo. He tapped the face of the tablet and got a weather report for Sicily. “It’ll be warm during the day, cool at night. Thirty Celsius, down to twelve.”

“English?”

“You are looking for Fahrenheit, Levon,” said Rubeo dryly. “Roughly 85 degrees down to 54.”

“OK. Where are we going?”

“Sicily, for starters.”

4

Sicily

After a seemingly endless series of debriefs and interviews with intelligence officers and command, Turk was “released,” in the words of the German colonel who was the chief of staff to the head operations officer, General Bernard Talekson. The colonel was not particularly adept at English, but the word choice struck Turk as unfortunately appropriate. More sessions were scheduled for the next day, and they would undoubtedly be more “rigorous”—another word used by the colonel with understated precision.

Turk was surprised when he left the headquarters building that it was only early afternoon; it felt as if he had been inside forever. Buses ran in a continuous loop between the various administrative buildings and the hangar areas. He hopped one and rode over to the area where the Tigershark and Sabres were kept. This was a secure area within the base; only perso

All of the aircraft had been taken inside the hangars. The Tigershark sat alone, parked almost dead center in the wide-open expanse of Hangar AC–84a. The Tigershark was a small aircraft—it would have fit inside the wings of an F–35. It looked even smaller inside the hangar, which had been built to shelter a C–5A cargo aircraft. So small, in fact, that even Turk wondered how he fit in the damn thing.

Chahel Ratha, one of the lead engineers on the Sabre team, was kneeling under the belly of the plane, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

“Hey Rath, what’s up?” asked Turk.

Ratha bolted upright so quickly Turk thought he was going to jump onto the plane.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” said Turk.

“Then you should not sneak up on peoples!” said the engineer sharply. Even though he was American—born and bred outside Chicago—Ratha spoke with an Indian accent when he was excited. He blamed this on his parents, both naturalized citizens.

“Sorry,” said Turk.

“Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah. Sorry.”

Ratha waved his hand dismissively, then walked away, heading toward one of the benches at the far side of the office.

“Jeez,” said Turk.

“Hasn’t had his herbal tea today,” said Gene Hurley, another of the maintainers. “Don’t take it personally.”

An Air Force contract worker, Hurley headed the maintenance team. Because of the advanced nature of the aircraft, the technical people were a mix of regular Air Force and private workers. Hurley had actually worked in the service for over twenty years before retiring. He claimed to be doing essentially what he had always done—but now got paid twice as much.

“He’s freaking about the investigation,” said Hurley. “And on top of that, all the janitors are on strike. Toilets are backed up and there’s no one around to fix them.”

“Really?”

“Italians are always on strike.” Hurley shook his head. “Even the ones from Africa. If you gotta use the john, your best bet is hiking all the way over to the admin building. Or taking your chances behind the hangar.”

“That sucks.”

Hurley shrugged. “Third strike since we got here. I don’t know why. The service people are always changing. And they’re pretty incompetent to begin with. But at least the toilets worked.”

“I just came by to see if you guys needed me,” said Turk.

“No, we’re good for now. Maybe tomorrow after we finish benchmarking everything we’ll get down to some tests.”

“Any clue what happened?”

Hurley shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to guess,” he said. “But if I did, I would start by saying that it almost surely didn’t have anything to do with the Tigershark. But, you know—if I could guess about things, I’d be making a fortune betting on baseball.”

“I’m going to knock off. Probably go back to the hotel,” Turk told him. “You need me, hit my sat phone.”

“Sure thing.”

Turk started away.

“We’ll get it eventually, Captain,” added Hurley. “We’ll get you back in the air. Eventually.”

E ventually.

The word stuck in Turk’s consciousness as he rode the bus back toward the admin buildings. In his experience, “eventually” meant one of two things: never, and the day after never.

It was sick how quickly everything had turned sour. By all rights he should be celebrating right now—he had kicked ass and shot down four enemy aircraft in quick succession.

Four. He was still tingling about it.

Or should be. He could hardly even think about it.

The shoot-downs had been almost entirely glossed over in the debriefs. All anyone wanted to know about was the Sabre screwup.

Naturally. Stinking robot planes were the curse of the world. UAVs were taking over military aviation. The Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, Flighthawks, now the Sabres—in four or five years there wouldn’t be a ma

The Tigershark was supposed to show that man was still needed. He was supposed to show that man was still needed.

And this accident showed . . .

Nothing, as far as Turk was concerned. Maybe it would demonstrate why UAVs were not to be trusted, but somehow he didn’t think that was going to happen. There was too much momentum, and too much money, for that to happen.

The bus stopped near the buildings used by the Italian base hosts, pausing for a few minutes because it was slightly ahead of schedule. Feeling antsy, Turk decided to get off and walk over to the lot where he had parked his car. It was a decent walk—about twenty minutes if he didn’t dally too much—but it was just the sort of thing he needed to clear his head.