She’d ducked out of sight at the sound of running feet. Her escape had been discovered too fast. When she sorely needed the speed and agility of her youth, not even the shot of adrenaline, which still had her heart pounding, provided it.
The labyrinthine basement led her past offices unpeopled at this hour, dark storerooms, and mechanical utility rooms. The last made her smile—briefly. How many years had she squatted in the White House basement in Mechanical Room 043, like a spider working the many threads of information that flowed through the building?
Not like Moriarity, but rather Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. Collecting rumors, formulating plans, and implementing solutions through shadowed nudges, anonymous hints to others, and tips to his famous brother. All in defense of a country that had, in the foggy view of imperfect hindsight, abused her. Her own government had been willing to throw her life away by assigning her to the riskiest of objectives. Even decades later, she was an object still worth hunting.
Too many years buried in the darkness had taught her that everything was a conspiracy. Henderson’s Ranch had been too abrupt a change, but the small town of Choteau had reminded, no, re-taught her about sunshine and fresh air. She’d almost forgotten about those. Her past forays into the twisty streets and convoluted secrets of DC, typically under cover of darkness, didn’t make for a generally optimistic frame of mind.
Over the last few years, Dilya and her own eventual peregrination to Montana had turned that around.
Turned it around—and made her lower her guard.
She stumbled into a lunchroom. Big enough for a couple score of people. Not a full-on cookline, instead set up with a steam table line and rolling racks. The main cafeteria must deliver pre-made meals to here. A chalkboard announced the day’s specials—which were enough to make her stomach growl without bothering to read them. How long since they’d last fed her?
A scrounged energy bar and a box of orange juice made her feel much better. A banner told her, finally, where she was—RAF Brize Norton. It confirmed what she already knew but that didn’t make her feel much better. An interrogation black site, directly under the UK’s largest Air Force base, explained why she wasn’t dead yet. The Brits were too polite, too careful.
There was also a narrow window high on the wall. Too small to exit, but it showed hints of daylight—and the flashing blue of police lights.
Time to move.
She glanced again at the window. They weren’t converging on this building; they were passing by at speed. A crisis elsewhere on the base might buy her more time. She was almost out into the hall before her fogged thoughts wondered about what that crisis might be.
Praying she was wrong, she doubled back, scrounged a piece of chalk from the kitchen drawers, then moved to the menu board.
54
“I’ll take you there if it resolves this mess.” Captain Cutcher was looking back and forth between her and the three colonels.
Abby looked to Colonel Beale, but she shook her head.
“What?”
“Not a wrong step yet, Captain. Keep going.”
If Group Captain Cutcher and half a brigade of Royal Military Police weren’t gathered about, she’d… Abby didn’t know what. Scream? Shoot the colonel? In the foot maybe, but still! Keep going? Like that made any kind of sense.
Probably the same kind of sense as holding a Group Captain at gunpoint on British soil. It was more normal than finding an orange-and-black lobster—about one-in-fifty-million chance—but not by much. Yet here she stood in command of a team doing just that. She remembered one of Pa’s favorite sayings: Horse sense is what horses have to keep them from betting on people. Which was odd as the family had never owned horses that she knew of. At the moment none of this made a lick of sense but she couldn’t see any exit from the path they were on.
Derek offered an infinitesimal shrug and flicked a thumb’s-up of encouragement over the barrel of his rifle. Some big help. Yet he raised no questions. Made no complaints, instead stepping straight into the fray on no more than her say-so. Whatever else he was thinking, he trusted her and, at the moment, that was a prize of immense value.
Abby turned to the Brit. “Captain Cutcher. Would you be so kind as to lead us to that hospital bed?”
Cutcher was so calmly British that all she did was turn slowly to glance over her shoulder at Derek.
Abby waved for him to lower his rifle.
Once he did, Cutcher nodded. When she turned for her Land Rover, Abby shook her head. She had hanging-by-fingernails control of the situation and refused to give up any of her advantages. Colonel Beale had made it clear that this was Abby’s to solve.
Well, she couldn’t do that from the air. She was no ground pounder, but Derek was. She remembered his comments during the debrief from the second night’s exercise, making the hard choice to be the mission commander in the air rather than going in with his team. He’d stayed in the sky, now it was her turn to come to Earth.
“We’ll take my vehicle,” she pointed at the DAGOR. “Colonel Beale, you will board Charlene One and assist Captain Ethan Merced as copilot. I want you aloft inside sixty seconds and flying overwatch on us. Keep birds Two and Four on perimeter patrol. If the Tower argues, drop a Delta team on their roof. Derek, load ’em up. Dilya, you two are with us. But goddamn it, stay behind us this time.”
Derek must have been issuing his own orders. Just as she and Dilya finished herding Cutcher and Zackie into the DAGOR behind Hot Rod and Compass, Charlie Four grounded. One of the hybrid motorcycles was rolled down the rear ramp. Derek climbed aboard and Four was airborne before Abby could decide if that was an improvement. Misty climbed on behind him. Abby also noted that in addition to the carbine hung across the front of her uniform, Misty’s long sniper rifle now hung crosswise over her shoulder—its muzzle sticking a good foot above her head.
As they raced through the base with Derek and Misty as flankers, she wondered who would play her in the movie version. With her luck, probably some white guy over twice her age like Tom Cruise. No, he’d play Derek. She’d be replaced by a blonde with a massive cleavage—the kind who didn’t wear a t-shirt under her deeply unzippered flight suit.
Abby slapped her hand against her forehead and thanked God that Cutcher and Dilya sat in front of her and couldn’t see the gesture. She considered doing it again to knock the image out of her head.
Derek spotted it, of course. Only a few arm lengths separated them, and both his electric motorcycle and the DAGOR were quiet enough to speak over. However, her Chinook flying overwatch above them—without her at the helm, which counted as beyond weird—and the phalanx of RMP vehicles close behind them made speech impossible.
