War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (31 page)

Jane put a hand on Tucker’s arm, seeming to be a step ahead of him. “They want to use Rex—an improved Rex—to sift through all that raw data and make some educated guess about Tangent’s next move.”

Frank nodded.

“It’s actually pretty brilliant,” Jane said, which drew a bashful smile out of Frank. She slid off the bed and joined the other two. “Let me see that code.”

Knowing he was outclassed by this discussion, Tucker grabbed Kane’s leash. His partner was immediately up on his paws, showing no hesitation or sign of being nearly suffocated to death hours ago.

“Looks like it’s just us,” Tucker said.

He headed out into the midday heat. This part of Texas was suffering through a scorching Indian summer. He had grabbed a ball cap before leaving and tugged the bill farther over his eyes. As usual, his gaze swept the parking lot of the Motel 6. With no one about, he didn’t bother hooking Kane’s leash and headed off with the dog to a neighboring park.

He spent an hour tossing a red rubber Kong ball for Kane, both entertaining the shepherd and reestablishing a bond that went deeper than handler and dog. He also assessed the shepherd’s physical health after last night. It took someone who knew Kane intimately to note how the shepherd began to favor his left hind leg—not with a limp, but by being a step slower if Tucker tossed the ball in that direction. Kane pivoted off that leg with less strength, more caution.

Tucker bent down on a knee, opening his arms as Kane returned a final time. He let off a small whistle between his teeth. Kane’s ears perked straight up upon hearing this and ran at Tucker. The shepherd dropped the ball, abandoning his favorite toy, and ran full tilt into Tucker, knocking him onto his back. They rolled in the cool grass under the shaded branches of an elm tree, whose leaves had begun to turn a golden yellow.

They play-wrestled for a few minutes, with Kane pretending to bite at his wrists or licking ferociously at his face. Finally, Tucker lay on his back, with Kane sprawled at his side, pinning down Tucker’s right arm. Tucker stared through the branches, while Kane panted happily. He could feel all the aches and bruises of the past several days—but also a deep well of contentment . . . especially with his best friend at his side.

He closed his eyes and came close to falling asleep when a shadow passed over him. His body tensed, instantly going alert. But Kane still lay on his arm, his tail wagging.

It wasn’t a threat.

He craned back and saw Jane standing there, smiling down at them both.

“Got room for a third?” she asked.

He flopped his left arm across the grass, and Jane dropped down beside him. She snuggled close with her head resting on his shoulder. He could smell the perfume of her honeysuckle-scented shampoo.

“How are Frank and Nora—?”

Jane sighed, sounding disappointed, but not apparently because the others weren’t getting anywhere. “I tried to keep up with them, but they moved beyond even my comprehension like twenty minutes ago. I only stayed longer to save face, then found an excuse to leave before they figured me out.”

Tucker smiled. “I know what you mean. I felt like a dinosaur in there, a dusty relic from another era. All this talk of a new battlefield—an information war fought with digital code and smart drones—I might as well be a knight facing an armored tank.”

She turned her head and smiled at him. “You’ll always be my knight.”

“Okay, that might be the corniest thing you’ve ever said.”

She laughed. “Maybe . . . but it’s true.”

Despite his discounting of her words, he recognized she was being genuine. Likewise, he couldn’t discount the warmth swelling through him. It was those damned eyes, aglow in the shade, so easy to get lost in. Memories of happier times played through him, rising easily out of the past, perhaps made even easier because he could never fully escape his haunted past. The two were entwined, part of the same fog of war.

Still, their lives had eventually pulled them apart. She’d had a family, a son, a whole existence beyond their shared history. He tried to picture her pregnant, raising a child alone, dealing with the grief of losing her husband. Even now, a familiar fear shone from her eyes, for Nathan.

“Listen, Jane, as your knight in shining armor, I think maybe we need to revisit your involvement here. After that close call at White Sands—”

“No,” she said firmly. She propped up to an elbow and looked down at him. “You’re not the only one who knows how to read people. You think sending me running back to Nathan will help protect him.”

“If you get killed—”

“Then I get killed, and he lives.” She dropped onto her back, still nestled against him. “Once I’m out of the way, Tangent will have no need to pursue Nathan. He’ll be safe. And besides, it’s no life to be always running, always looking over your shoulder. If there’s a way to end this, then for Nathan’s sake, I’ll do anything and everything to give him that chance.”

He heard the fierceness behind her words. At heart, she was still a soldier. She refused to sit on the sidelines when it came to protecting her son. Still, he sensed the hesitancy, the doubt, even the guilt. He read it in the seismic tremble in her body. She wanted to be back at Nathan’s side.

“Tell me about him,” Tucker whispered.

She stared sidelong at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Like why did you pick the name Nathan?”

She frowned, as if trying to guess if he was teasing her.

“What’s his favorite cereal?” he pressed her gently. “Is there a bedtime story he likes?”

She started slowly. “Nathan . . . he’s named after my husband’s grandfather, who died of cancer a year before Nate was born. As to breakfast, that boy is a Lucky Charms addict, but he only wants it with warm milk, which I find disgusting. Still, I love stirring his milk on the stove each morning, reminds me of warming his bottle when he was a baby.”

Tucker heard the wistful smile in her words as she continued to share Nathan with him, building their lives together in bits and pieces.

“But he can sometimes be a handful, especially lately . . . he’s getting to be that age, trying to find his independence, which both makes me proud and breaks my heart a little.”

After a time, her words faded into a thoughtful silence. They continued to lie there. Finally, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For reminding me why I’m here.”

Her arm drifted across his chest and hugged him, drawing him tighter to her. He rolled up and stared down at her. Her eyes shone with a renewed determination, but also an ember of something warmer, of what might have been . . . and maybe what could still be.

“Tuck . . .” she whispered, slipping fingers through his hair.

He leaned down and kissed her, needing to feel the heat of her lips, to ground him in the here and now, knowing she needed the same. She kissed him back without hesitation. As their breathing grew heavier, passions rising, she pulled back slightly, enough to speak, her lips still brushing his.

“Tucker, I still need to tell you about—”

“Guys!” a voice called from the motel.

Tucker fell to his back, pondering ways to kill Frank.

Jane twisted to face the man as he came running up. He was plainly oblivious to the poor timing of his interruption. “What is it?” she asked.

Frank was breathless. “Nora . . . she found something!”

3:33
P
.
M
.

Back in the motel room, Tucker huddled with Jane and the others around Nora’s laptop. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What am I looking at?”

Frank explained, “Buried inside the brains of the Warhawks, Rex discovered an identical subroutine program, one shared by all the drones. It was sort of like . . . well . . .”

Nora filled in the blank. “Sort of like a
pending
file, for lack of a better term. It was deeply encrypted, but the newly improved Rex had no trouble ripping it open. The file contained a bunch of directives, basically a to-do list for the drones. Most of those seemed connected to operations at White Sands, but deeper in that file, we found a list of directives that made no sense, all dated three days from now.”

She pointed to the screen and the list that glowed there.

1868
TSTT
Opus Networx
WOWnet
Interserv
Carib-Link
Cablenett
110859 / 0604956
103543 / 0612014
IATA: TAB, ICAO: TTCP
IATA: POS, ICAO: TTPP

Nora scrolled further, revealing the list went on and on for several pages.

Tucker turned to her. “Okay, what does all of this mean?”

She returned to the beginning and identified what was listed on the screen. “These are a country’s calling codes. Here are its Internet service providers, airport coordinates, and Internet protocol addresses.” She pointed to a set of numbers. “These are emergency, military, and air traffic frequencies for the same country. And look here, this last section lists a bunch of local radio stations.”

“What is all of this for?” he asked.

Frank answered, “It’s everything someone would need to know to launch a cyber attack upon a country, to literally shut it down lock, stock, and barrel.”

Tucker remembered that in this new era of information wars cyber attacks were a critical component.

“And here’s the kicker.” Frank put his finger on a line of data that read C
ARIB
-L
INK
. “All this data is tied to a specific little dot in the Caribbean.”

“Where?”

“The island of Trinidad.”

Jane frowned. “Trinidad? You’re talking palm trees, coconuts, calypso music. That Trinidad?”

Nora nodded. “One in the same.”

“So you’re thinking Tangent is going to orchestrate some sort of attack out there?” Tucker asked.

“Or maybe another test.” Frank looked to Nora, who nodded. “We think White Sands was a test of only
one
feature of Tangent’s new weapons systems.”

Tucker pictured the burning city, the slag of metal glowing outside of town.

Frank continued. “We believe something
different
is going to be tested in Trinidad.”

Jane raised a question in Tucker’s own mind. “What about all that Soviet military hardware we saw at White Sands? That island can’t have more than a few thousand military personnel and virtually no offensive munitions beyond light arms.”

Nora nodded. “I checked online. Trinidad buys its weapons from Sweden and the U.K. Definitely not Russia, let alone an arsenal from the Soviet era.”

“So what are you thinking?” Tucker asked.

Nora faced him. “I think Tangent is about to test the next phase of its weapons system, something tied to attacking the digital infrastructure of that island country. It’s scheduled for three days from now.”

Jane bit her lower lip, getting that determined look in her eyes. “We need to get out there before that happens.”

Tucker knew she was right, but first it would require taking another risk, one he had been avoiding until now.

All eyes turned to him, looking for guidance.

“Before we pack our sunscreen,” Tucker told them, “we’re going to need help.”

24

October 25, 10:17
A
.
M
. AST

Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean Sea

Tucker sat with his forehead pressed against the aircraft window as the pilot banked the private jet—a Citation Mustang—across an expanse of indigo water. The green mound of Trinidad slid into view below as they began their descent toward the island’s airport.

“I could get used to traveling like this,” Frank commented from across the leather-appointed cabin.

Seated behind him, Nora murmured her agreement, a crystal tumbler of Coke in her hand.

Even Jane was impressed. “Tuck, you’ve certainly made friends in high places.”

You have no idea
.

Before leaving Texas, he had finally broken down and placed an encrypted call to Ruth Harper, his contact at Sigma command in DC. Until then, he had avoided approaching the covert group due to Sigma’s direct involvement with DARPA, the Defense Department’s research-and-development agency. Since Tangent Aerospace’s work centered on advanced drone technology, he feared DARPA might be equally involved, especially considering the military’s cooperation in all of this, at both Redstone Arsenal and White Sands.

While on his home turf in the States, Tucker had preferred to go it alone, but now that the trail led beyond U.S. borders, he knew he needed additional support. When he finally called Ruth, she had not seemed overly surprised to hear from him—which made him wonder if Sigma didn’t have a way of tracking him all along. Either way, she had listened to his story, promised to make some discreet inquiries at her end, and arranged their new passports, along with concocting a cover story for their group’s trip to Trinidad.

She had offered to ship out a Sigma field operative to join them, but he had refused. The less commotion they made in Trinidad the better. But more important, he didn’t want anyone at his side whom he did not fully trust. Besides, the group’s goal on this island should be a simple one. After sundown, they planned on sending Rex aloft over Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. They were going to use the newly improved drone to perform the task for which it had been built: to collect and gather intelligence. If Tangent was planning something tomorrow, Tucker intended to find out what it was and hopefully stop them.

Tucker had also been prepared to request one other favor from Ruth. Over the past two days of traveling, he had noted the occasional haunted look in Jane’s eyes, a haze of worry, fear, and guilt. He knew her son was foremost in her thoughts. Tucker had suggested having Sigma gather up Nathan and get the boy somewhere safe, but Jane had soundly rebuffed him. She trusted those who were watching her son, and she didn’t know these unknown “friends” of Tucker’s. In the end, he hadn’t pressed the matter, recognizing a mirror of his own paranoia in her eyes.