It was cold up here.
Wherever here was.
They were in the mountains of … well, someplace. Lots of trees. Lots of ferns and thick vegetation. A falling mist gave everything a weird sheen. Off in the distance, the sound of the wind and the cries of animals. Or at least they sounded like animals.
They were somewhere in the Midwest, maybe on the western fringes or very close by. But if a million in cash was put in front of Ryder, he still wouldn’t have been able to say exactly what state they were in. Maybe Missouri. Maybe Arkansas. He just didn’t know. And he never bothered to ask.
The stars overhead were shining brilliantly through the scattered patches of cloud. There was a lake in front of them and a lush field of tall grass behind. This was where the copter was now. It seemed in repose, hidden in the shadow of some gigantic pine trees, its rotor blades drooping, most of its systems finally shut down. The Sky Horse taking a well-earned nap.
It was almost a beautiful scene. There was just one problem: they couldn’t get a good TV or radio signal up here. The gadget left for them at the floatplane refueling island was the electronic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. It was a
combination radio and TV, flashlight, strobe light, heat lamp, panic buzzer, compass, and clock. But Puglisi had been screwing around with it ever since they’d landed and he’d been unable to pick up anything more than a lot of static.
They’d been encamped here, laying low, for the past 36 hours. This was not so much because they wanted to but more because the mooks had not made any moves, either. Bates had stayed glued to his Eyeball Machine the whole time; he got even less sleep than Ryder. And Bates had become very adept at reading the nuances of the monster he’d built. He routinely listened in on all the U.S. intelligence services, trying to ferret out any information having to do with suspected terrorist teams moving about the country. But truth was, there was actually very little data coming in on that topic. Most of the intell reports bouncing around Washington had to do with the TV coverage concerning rumors that some kind of WMD was going to be detonated soon, possibly within the U.S. capital itself, this and the government’s continued denial that a rogue special ops unit was hunting down terrorists inside the United States, despite so much evidence to the contrary.
Bates also continued tapping into the computers of the Greyhound Bus Company itself. He was still looking for anything—a tip, a clue, a strange report from another driver or just people on the U.S. highways, any mention of a Greyhound bus acting unusually. But nothing had come out of this, either. As far as Bates could tell, the company was still blissfully unaware that someone was sneaking around the country in two of its buses.
Most troubling, though, was that the next Al Qaeda missile team had been so quiet. The ghost team knew the general area where the soccer team was supposed to play but also feared that after the five unsuccessful attacks the remaining terrorist cells had readapted themselves and might be operating with even greater autonomy. There was a chance they’d been told not to have any further communication, no more phone rings, nothing. This would be a disaster for the ghost team. There were at least four more missile teams out
there, somewhere. How could the ghost team find them if they stopped talking to one another?
Time seemed to be running out, and with it some of the copter team’s spirit. It was hard to simply put the brakes on, to let the adrenaline stop pumping. That’s when things like sleep and memories and the need to eat properly began to sneak up on you. And the team didn’t need any of that right now.
But they were haunted by that one question: what if the mook phones never rang again?
It was now about 4.00 A.M. central time. They were drinking coffee around a fire when Bates finally climbed out of the helicopter, taking a rare break. He had Finch’s flag with him. It was no longer pristine and neatly folded. It was now battered, wrinkled, and embedded with dust and grime. They had hung it on the inside of the copter’s interior wall, where fumes and oil and all kinds of things were in the air. The flag had got dirty quickly.
Without saying a word, he passed the flag to Fox. He held it briefly in his hands, then began folding and unfolding it, nervous play, almost unconscious. Then he passed it over to Ryder.
Ryder held it to his face and thought of his wife. Then came the vision of all those killed on 9/11. The people on the first two planes. All the cops and firefighters who went into the towers and never came out. The people at the Pentagon. The people who fought with the terrorists on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. A lump came to his throat—this always happened. His eyes, already tired and bleary, misted up nevertheless. This was why they were out here, outlaws in their own country. They were fighting for the memory of Al Qaeda’s innocent victims, fulfilling the mission that Bobby Murphy had sent them out on so long ago. See it to the end, Ryder thought now. No matter what happens, just see it to the end.
“Let’s get a little more luck out of this thing,” he said softly. The team had come to think of the old Revolutionary War flag as their good-luck piece, responsible for their
not acquiring more than a scratch in their little undeclared war.
Puglisi put the TV/radio away and took his time with the flag. Only Gallant, stretched out nearby and asleep, missed out.
Uncertain if the little ceremony had raised the spirits of the ghosts, Bates took the flag back.
But it was strange—because the moment it went back into his hands, they heard a phone ringing … .
It wasn’t a mook phone. It was Ozzi. And he couldn’t talk very long because he didn’t have any code words with which to pass on some crucial information.
So Bates just listened very carefully, the rest of the team gathered round him.
First item, ghost team east had captured and liquidated Captain Ramosa. This news was greeted with a grim cheer. One problem solved, one less hump in the world, Ryder thought.
And while the D.C. people were still going through Ramosa’s captured laptop, they were already able to say that it contained just as much revealing information as Palm Tree’s PDA. Another cheer.
But Ozzi and the others had come across a very special piece of information for the copter troops. It was a message, just recently entered into Ramosa’s E-mail system, that said the first bus was going to make contact with a sleeper agent somewhere along a highway in the Texas panhandle area, 36 hours from now.
This excited the copter team greatly. Hitting the bus itself would save them from tracking down the rest of the missile teams one at a time.
But the D.C. crew had come across some more disturbing intelligence: that another missile team was going to attack an airplane at Denver International Airport later that very morning.
This was a problem. Getting a shot at the bus was a huge
opportunity. But the copter squad would have to stop the Denver attack, too.
Trouble was, Denver was at least 400 miles away from their current position, wherever that was.
“Can you do both things in time?” Ozzi asked Bates desperately.
Even in the darkness, the others saw Bates’s face turn pale.
“I guess we have to try,” he finally replied.