I was flying a dying aircraft when a voice came through a secret frequency—the brother I’d buried seven years ago whispered, “They needed you to take the blame.”
Chapter 13
The radio on the data channel crackled once, politely, the way a man coughs into his hand before delivering a verdict — and then the voice came through, and I had spent eleven years in the Air Force and seven years out of it, and I had never once been able to forget the sound of Lieutenant General Aris Whitlock clearing his throat.
“Falcon Two. Westbound at flight level three hundred and forty, seven years out of Morón.” A pause, weighted, almost amused. “You’ve been busy.”
I keyed the mic. My voice came out steady, which astonished me. “General.”
“Seven years,” he said, almost gently. “And here you are, back in the middle of my water, holding my aircraft as a courtesy, with my — hmm. My problem child has made quite the young museum of your cockpit tonight, Commander. I see the clock. I see the module you’ve just removed. I see a mathematician in row six and a cover story in 8A that appears to be held together with paper clips and prayer.” Another pause, longer this time, and I could hear it for what it was — not a threat, a location. “Interesting detail you’ll want to know before you do anything dramatic: I’ve read your file, the real one, the one that scrubbed your crash from the official record by hand. I know exactly how good you are. I’ve known since 2006. That’s why I never once worried about you, Commander — you were never the problem. Your wingman was the problem. You were always the woman I could trust to behave predictably.”
“Free advice, General,” I said. “Never use ‘predictably’ in the same sentence as my callsign.”
“Ah. She’s back.” There was warmth in his voice, and that was the worst part: it was genuine. “The woman who broke her wingman’s funeral in half with her bare hands. The woman who flew straight, kept her mouth shut, took the board’s verdict like a soldier, and disappeared into a flight school in Queens to raise a daughter away from my entire industry.” The pause that followed was shaped like a smile. “How is Matilda?”
The blood in my ears made a sound like the sea. I had not told a single person on this aircraft my daughter’s name. Her school was a state secret I carried in my wallet and never spoke aloud. And he said it the way you’d mention the weather.
“Touch my daughter,” I said, “and I will personally fly this aircraft through the rest of your life.”
“Now why would I touch your daughter? She’s the surety on a very profitable arrangement, Maeve.” The first name felt like a door opening. “You landed in my water, on my insured aircraft, carrying my problem child, with my clock under your screen. Here’s the only offer you’ll get tonight: divert to Santa Maria, my field, my people, my paperwork. You and the child I’m told you’re protecting walk off with your records clean — I’ll even sign a letter of reference for your flying school. The neighbor, the little family in row six, the wingman flying parlor tricks in a stolen jet — they all become someone else’s problem, which is to say no one’s problem by morning. I have built, Commander, forty years of a career on making inconvenient people no one’s problem by morning. You would not believe how ordinary that skill is.”
“And if I don’t?”
The channel was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, the warmth was gone, and I heard — under the years and the medals and the carefully maintained authority — the flat, honest cadence of the man who had ordered a second search wave called off over living wreckage.
“You ever see an aircraft burn, Maeve? I have. I’ve signed the requisitions.” A silence. “Lajes is not your field. Santa Maria is. Fly the schedule, Commander — your clock says you have an hour and fifty-two minutes to be early somewhere, and I’d hate for you to be late for a meeting you’ve been running toward all night.”
“Running toward you, General? Why would I run toward the man who—”
“— who buried your wingman.” The words landed like stones, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe, because I heard something in his voice I had not expected to hear: exhaustion. “Your wingman, whom I have kept alive for seven years in the most expensive boarding school in the North Atlantic, because a dead asset is a lost account and I hold what I pay for. Your wingman, the problem child, who escaped in a jet I am legally required to deny ever existed — and who is flying right now, at this speed, directly toward the only ground on earth where the man who owns him can’t reach him. Do you understand what you’re flying next to, Maeve? You’re flying next to my greatest liability, and mine. It was always going to end here. I just hoped we’d negotiate before the fire.”
Riko’s hands moved on the yoke, small, steady corrections, and his voice came to me like a life preserver: “Maeve. How do we know it’s him? The Gulfstream — the call sign is a civilian charter. The voice could be faked—”
“It’s not faked,” I said. “Nobody fakes that.”
But Riko was already reading the data block that had come with the transmission, and his face had changed. “Maeve — it’s not a military relay. Look. The aircraft off our right wing is a Gulfstream registered to a Swiss charter. The authorization code on this channel is from a private network. And ten seconds ago the tower at Lajes went off the air—”
“— because they’ve been told we’re coming in hostile,” I finished for him, “and because the man on the radio has friends at every frequency. He’s not a general tonight, Riko. He’s a man in a jet, talking to an aircraft he intends to drown, over a channel he owns.”
Behind me, in the gray dawn, the captain’s head moved.
It was the first movement out of Everett Barlow in three hours — a slow, sliding turn of the skull on the neck, like a man surfacing from very deep water. His eyes came open, glassy and wrong, found me in the jump seat, and then, horribly, with enormous effort, his mouth moved:
“The hold,” he said. The words came out dry, cracked, wrong. “…second clock. In the hold… it’s not a timer… it’s a key… she’ll take the drive… she’ll — ” His eyes fought to focus on my face. “— protect the doctor. Protect — the one with the drive. The drive is the only reason any of this — ”
His head lolled back, and he was unconscious again before I could reach him, and from the aft cabin, through the door I’d left ajar, came the unmistakable sound of a cargo hold’s access panel being opened — once, briefly, and closed again — by hands that were in no hurry at all.
The clock turned. 01:41:09.