The Fall (23 page)

If this was a daytime ops, they would be able to zoom in using the Predator's high-resolution cameras and count the pimples on their asses, but at night they were limited.

But it didn't really matter. They had them, and as much as Virginia simply wanted to blow the bastards back to the land of a thousand virgins, someone with a higher pay grade had decided that they wanted the terrorists captured alive. Besides, the intelligence briefing indicated the possibility of a hostage aboard.

Although Virginia was Air Force, her current assignment piloting domestic drones placed her under the direct command of the Department of Homeland Security, which had limited her rules of engagement on this mission to locating and reporting their coordinates to the Coast Guard, while maintaining missile lock just in case the terrorists decided to fight back.

And that's where the AGM-114N Hellfire missile, the Predator's primary strike weapon, came into play. The Hellfire was considered a high precision asset—meaning it was ridiculously accurate. Although it weighed in at only one hundred pounds, placing it on the lighter side of air-to-surface missiles, it's thermobaric warhead was good enough to obliterate a truck or lightly armored vehicle.

Or a fiberglass Boston Whaler.

Virginia glanced over at Quinn, who gave her a thumbs-up. He was ready to fire on command.

She contacted the Predator Operations Center, letting them know she was in a holding pattern with missile lock active.

Engaging the autopilot, Virginia did something she couldn't do back in her F-16 days: she reached for a can of soda in the small cooler under the flat-screen monitors and waited for the cavalry.

As she popped the lid and watched Quinn grab a bottle of water, she zoomed out on one of the center screens and located the feeds from the other Predators, one of which showed the transponder signature of the USCGC
Margaret Norvell,
the Sentinel-class cutter cruising at twenty-nine knots to intercept.

She zoomed in on the 154-foot long vessel packing enough firepower to blow the Whaler to pieces if the terrorists decided to get naughty. On top of that, the
Margaret Norvell
would be backed by a pair of super-fast Defender-class speed boats, each doing forty-five knots along their own intercept courses but scheduled to arrive more or less at the same time as the larger but much closer cutter.

And literally hovering above all of that firepower, Quinn was just a push-of-the-button away from releasing a Hellfire, which being supersonic, would smoke the boat in less than five seconds.

She returned her gaze to the HVT, holding just twenty knots while maintaining zero eight zero about four miles out.

Don't these guys know we have eyes in the sky everywhere?
she thought, figuring that after all of the press the Predator and its big brother, the Reaper, had received during the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns, that Al-Qaeda would have gotten smarter about evasive tactics.

She frowned while staring at the Boston Whaler. Something felt wrong, but she wasn't sure what it was.

“Hey, Quinn, what's the top speed on those?”

“Close to forty knots,” he replied.

“Yeah. That's what I thought. So why is this one going so slow, especially if it's trying to get away?”

“I've already thought about that,” he replied. “Don't have a good answer.”

Virginia shifted uncomfortably in her seat and set her drink down. “I mean, wouldn't you be hauling ass if you had just blown away a bunch of soldiers in their home turf? And where is it headed? What's their range?”

“About four hundred miles fully fueled.”

“Any larger vessels in the vicinity?”

“I'm tracking a dozen freighters within their range. I'm getting their coordinates to the Coast Guard in case they make a run for any of them.”

They continued to follow it for another ten minutes, zooming in as much as possible to see if they could spot people moving about, but the signature remained steady, with the outboards painting the boat white.

The cutter finally approached it from starboard and turned parallel to the HVT's course keeping a distance of three hundred feet. A minute later the first Defender boat showed up and approached the Boston Whaler.

Virginia and Quinn watched the large center screen, where the infrared camera painted all of their respective heat signatures, including that of the second Defender boat, which joined the first, flanking the runaway—

Virginia blinked and leaned back the moment the screen went blinding white.

“What the hell's that?” she yelled.

She figured it out just as the screen returned to its normal resolution, depicting only three vessels now, the large cutter still cruising at normal speed plus the two Defender boats surrounded by flaming debris that rapidly vanished as it sank.

“They blew themselves up, Quinn,” she said, a heavy sinking feeling squeezing her chest. “The crazy motherfuckers blew themselves up!”

*   *   *

Inside the Predator Operations Center, Pete Flaherty, director of the Kennedy Space Center, watched the large center screen tracking the runaway Boston Whaler until it detonated.

“We have confirmation that none of the Predators fired, sir,” said Commander Heather Vickers, assistant to the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, standing next to Pete by the large screens in front of a row of POC analysts monitoring their workstations. She was dressed in a standard camouflage working uniform with a matching cap partially hiding her brown hair and sporting a silver oak leaf. “The boat exploded from within. Probably suicide.”

“Damn fanatics,” hissed the analyst sitting at his workstation in front of them, an Air Force lieutenant, as he replayed the video feed on the overhead monitors.

Pete exchanged a glance with Heather and asked, “Did the Defenders have eyes on the occupants before the explosion?”

“Negative, sir,” she replied. “Everything happened before they could train spotlights on the HVT.”

“I need the whole area combed,” he ordered.

“Agree,” replied Heather. “Though I'm not sure how much we'll find after that blast.”

“I know,” he replied. “Just want to be thorough.”

“I'll direct a pair of Predators to run a white-hot scan on the entire grid. And it'll be morning soon. We should be able to spot anything easily with the HD cameras the moment the sun comes up.”

Pete nodded. “Good thinking, Commander. I'll mention your cooperation in my report to General Hastings.”

“Thank you, sir. We're all on the same team.”

“I need to get back to the Cape now. Please keep me posted.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pete walked off and headed for the POC's exit, his mind exploring the possibilities, starting with his strong belief that Jack and Angela had not perished in that explosion.

The man's a SEAL, for crying out loud,
he thought, which meant he had plenty of options—and the training to execute them—especially when surrounded by a dark ocean.

He frowned as he walked out of the building and stared at the predawn skies over central Florida, filling his lungs with cool, humid air, trying to keep his tired mind focused.

A car waited for him to take him back to the Cape, and he walked toward it, opening the rear door and settling in the backseat while contemplating the very surreal turn of events in the past couple of hours.

He shook his head. At first he thought it had been a hoax, but as far as he remembered, only Jack knew the detail about the carabiner failure during their Colorado rock climbing trip long ago.

As downright impossible as it sounded, Pete couldn't come up with another explanation to Jack's sudden return from the dead than the one he had offered over the phone. There was no way he could have survived Afghanistan. Pete had seen Jack take at least a dozen rounds fired at close range from those Taliban rebels before the SEAL team could secure the ridge. And although the rebels had taken the body with them as a trophy, the blood-soaked sand in the same spot where Jack had fallen just minutes earlier was enough evidence to call it KIA.

But then again, Pete hadn't actually
seen
Jack tonight. He had spoken to someone who
sounded
like Jack, and who even knew details about their rock-climbing trip … but he never had eyes on him, and neither did any of the surviving soldiers, who had just reported a dark figure escaping in the Boston Whaler along with Angela. And the Coast Guard wasn't able to get close enough to identify anyone before the explosion.

But Angela claimed it was him,
he thought, his mind still having difficulty swallowing the uncanny reality that had unfolded—and continued to unfold—right in front of him.

So, if he assumed for the time being that Angela actually knew who the hell her husband was, that meant that Jack had either survived Afghanistan and somehow made it back here, or …

Dimensional jumps are possible.

He shook his head again, having a difficult time accepting either possibility. But, if he assumed for the moment that the latter was true, then it meant that the technology existed to achieve that, and that further meant it had to be protected at all cost, including making sure the knowledge of its existence remained secret until he could unravel all of this.

And that technology likely resided in the carefully packed suit inside that oversized helmet he had retrieved among the smoldering remains of Angela's house—a suit he intended to thoroughly inspect the moment he got back to the Cape.

Aside from a few bullet holes, the suit had been protected from the multiple explosions by a helmet that on the surface appeared designed to survive the immense G-forces and heat of reentry.

He stared out the window as his driver approached the base's exit and turned toward the Cape.

Possession of the suit, however, wasn't enough to get to the bottom of this.

Pete also needed Angela—and even Jack—more than ever.

He continued inspecting the world beyond the tinted glass window, but in his mind he saw her hazel eyes.

Less than forty-eight hours ago, he had cooked dinner for her, and even brought up the subject of moving in together. He'd had feelings for the beautiful scientist from the moment he'd laid eyes on her years ago, during the early days of Project Phoenix, before Jack had entered the scene. But he had been too slow, too shy, and perhaps too damn professional to date an employee, allowing Jack to slide right in and steal her away. But destiny had given him a second chance after Jack was killed in Afghanistan. And he had been patient, probably far more than any reasonable man should, holding her hand, giving her a shoulder to cry on, supporting her during her long mourning period, being a friend while hanging on to the hope that one day their friendship would become something more.

And just when their relationship finally started moving in his desired direction, he had received the most bizarre phone call of his life.

He looked down and frowned.

The last thing Pete had wanted was to hurt his girlfriend and former best friend. But Jack had to be Jack, starting a firefight, attacking his men, forcing Pete's hand.

But then again, Jack probably wouldn't have gone SEAL on him if Pete hadn't appeared with soldiers and deployed them around the—

His phone started to vibrate. It was Hastings, his boss up in Washington.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Pete, I just got the DHS update. How are you holding up?”

“As good as can be expected. We lost a few men in the firefight.”

“That's a damn tragedy. Any word on the bastards responsible for this mess?”

“DHS is launching a combined effort to search the grid and look for any debris that might give us a clue, but I'm not holding much hope for that. The blast was pretty severe, and they were already in fairly deep waters with strong Gulf Stream currents.”

“How many terrorists do you estimate were involved?”

“We're guessing at least three or four to put up the fight they did at Angela's house.”

“So you think we lost her?”

“I'm afraid so, sir. They took her hostage, and we have every reason to believe she was aboard the boat when it went off. I think they were after our old Project Phoenix technology. Remember Al-Qaeda got its hands on that early suit version in Afghanistan.”

“Yeah,” Hastings said with a heavy sigh. “Hard to forget that one.”

“I'm thinking they may have wanted Angela to help them take the design to the next level. And as harsh as it sounds, given the options of her being captured alive or what just transpired, I guess from a national security perspective the latter is the lesser of the evils.”

Silence, followed by, “I know, but it's still a real shame. First we lost Jack and now her. I had high hopes for that program way back, you know.”

“I know, sir. So did I. They were also my friends. I only wished I would have brought more soldiers to her house after I got her distress message,” he replied.

“Don't beat yourself over it, Pete. You did all you could, including dialing 911 and even getting there faster than the cops. Who knew you would be walking into a terrorist ambush. It's Cocoa Beach, for crying out loud. And who the hell would have expected them to come after Dr. Taylor five years later?”

“I know,” Pete replied. “We kept a security detail on her for almost a year, finally dismissing them when we went through that project's budget cuts, plus she had already left NASA, so it became difficult to justify the expense.”

“I know,” Hastings said. “We had to mothball Project Phoenix and allocate resources to more promising projects. It was the right call then, and it's still the right call now. Look at how much progress we've made since on our other programs. And much of the credit belongs to you for helping us focus our limited resources to get the biggest bang.”