31

“This is so sad,” Rhonda said a little over an hour later.

They’d settled in her living quarters. Coop had plopped onto his back on her bed, his arms crossed behind his head, his eyes closed. She sat at the small desk, her tablet plugged into a network port that accessed the main network, acquiring data on Corbet.

“He was born near Ukraine. Taken away from his family by the Russian government when he was only ten and sent to a state-run school when his aptitude for science and physics caught the attention of one of his teachers. It’s barbaric,” she said.

“That’s the good old USSR for ya.” Cooper was clearly as disgusted as she was.

“You already know all of this, though, don’t you? How he was rushed through accelerated classes, paraded around Moscow like some pet protégé? How he was running a government-sponsored weapons lab at the age of twenty-five?”

“Actually, the only part I knew about was the weapons lab.”

That uneasy feeling she’d had ever since seeing the missile in the “No Admittance” room raised its ugly head again.

“What else did you find out?”

She read on. “He fell in love with one of his research assistants when he was in his late thirties and was only allowed to marry her after he refused to continue working for the state. That was thirty years ago. Her name is Svetlana. They have a daughter, Anna. She’d be twenty-five now.” She turned in the chair to look at him. “I thought you said he didn’t have a family to go home to.”

“He doesn’t.” His face had hardened. “When he sought asylum and defected to the U.S., they didn’t make the trip with him.”

“How could you know that? I haven’t been able to find any more information. Everything ends with him defecting.”

His jaw clenched, and it was clear that he couldn’t or didn’t want to meet her eyes. And just like that, she knew.

“Oh, my God. You . . . you and the team. You made it happen. You got him out of Russia.”

His silence was her answer.

And suddenly, she understood. There had been a cost involved in bringing Adolph Corbet to the United States. The cost had been leaving his family behind.

“Months of work. Careful preparation. Precision planning. Everything was in place,” he said softly. “But the day it went down, Anna missed her bus because of a flat tire. For sixty-eight consecutive days, that bus had picked her up from her job at exactly three forty-five p.m. and taken her to the library, where her mother would meet her, and then they’d walk the rest of the way home. On the one day that it mattered, Anna didn’t make it to the library on time.”

Her heart fluttered wildly. “So you left them there?”

Guilt filled his eyes. “We had no choice. Corbet was already with us. It had taken months to make that happen, and other lives were on the line. Good people had stuck their necks out for Corbet and would die if we didn’t stay the course. We had to move him before he was missed. Uncle wanted him out of Russia as much as Corbet did. So we got him out.”

“And Svetlana? Anna?”

“Were waiting at home when the Soviet police went looking for them.”

Oh, God.

“We had a team on the ground that intercepted. They got them across the border and finally to Budapest and safety.”

This was no spy story. This was real life. Agonizing, terrifying, real life in a Communist country. “How long ago was this?”

He let out a weary breath. “It’ll soon be two years.”

Two years. How horrible. How sad. “Why haven’t they come to the States to join him?”

“Because there are eyes everywhere. They’re in hiding. At least, I hope they are.”

Her heart jumped again. “What does that mean?”

Again, he didn’t look at her. But his tone revealed his anger. “You know what it means. If they’re not hiding, then either they’re dead or the Russians found them and are holding them in prison.”

She was quiet for a long while, digesting it all, thinking of the suffering they’d been through. “Why do you think Corbet ended up here? At Area Fifty-One?” she asked. That, it seemed, was the million-dollar question.

“You saw the same thing in that room that I did.”

The missile.

“Whatever he had in the works when we got him out of there was big. We made sure he escaped the lab with most of his research, and what he couldn’t bring with him we destroyed. That’s why we had to get him out that day. That moment,” he added, and she knew he was again feeling guilt over leaving Svetlana and Anna behind.

He dug into his pocket, pulled out the zip drive with Corbet’s copied files, and stared at it for a long moment before tossing it to her. “Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s see what’s on this puppy.”

“Here goes everything,” she said, and plugged it into her tablet.

•    •    •

Corbet’s files were thorough. And shocking. Just as shocking as the title of the first document she opened up.

“Eagle Claw,” she murmured, not believing what she was seeing.

“Say again?” Cooper sprang off the bed.

“He’s working on Eagle Claw. My God, I thought that was a myth.”

“Scroll down. Let’s see the overview.”

Eagle Claw:

Hypersonic cruise missile

Speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 7

Range 500+ kilometers, the capability to reach any target on earth in less than an hour

Prototype includes advanced avionics GPS, radar terrain matching, and internal guidance

Semiautonomous terminal guidance, the ability to use heat signatures or radar to provide final targeting, results in extreme accuracy

Titanium alloy construction

Scramjet engine and a rocket booster power

Adaptable to conventional and nuclear payloads

Can launch from the ground, ship, or an aircraft

“Holy, holy hell,” Cooper swore. “Do you know what this is?”

“A doomsday missile?”

“I was going to say Armageddon, but that’s close enough.”

“No wonder the U.S. wanted Corbet and his research.”

“And what do you want to bet that the Russians would do just about anything to get it and their scientist back?”

“Let’s back up a sec.” She scanned the overview again. “These are merely specs. This doesn’t mean the project is anywhere near completion—or even operational, for that matter.”

“You saw it. It looked pretty damn complete to me.”

“Hold on. Let me check out some of these other files, see where they’re really at with the production.”

She quickly opened file after file. Most of them contained indecipherable equations and formulas, test runs, and databases. And there were hundreds of them.

“This is going to take a while,” she said. “Looks like I’ll be pulling an all-nighter.”

Cooper walked restlessly to the door. “I need to figure out how to get to Corbet. I want to talk to him.”

“What do you plan to do? Take out a guard?”

“It won’t come to that,” he assured her.

Yikes. She’d been kidding. “What if I find something here? Something you need to know about? How will I get a hold of you?” Cell phones wouldn’t work in this five-level underground bunker designed to shield against electronic eavesdropping.

He dug around in his duffel and pulled out a small case. Inside were two earpiece radios. “The latest and greatest technology Uncle’s money can buy.”

“They’re so tiny.”

“Which means they have a pretty short range. Not too sure how well they’ll work in reinforced concrete, but we’ll give it a go.”

He turned one on and handed it to her before carefully fitting his in his ear, making sure the appropriate tab lay against his cheek.

When she struggled with hers, he reached up and helped her. “This tab stays against your cheekbone. It’s a bone-conduction microphone. You don’t have to key anything to transmit—just speak as clearly as you can.”

“Pays to have spooky friends, huh?”

“Let’s hope so. Don’t wait up for me.”

As he headed for the door, she said, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Two minutes later, she heard his voice in her ear. “Hondo to Buttercup, do you read me?”

Despite herself, she grinned. “Burns to Cooper. Some nitwit intercepted our private line. If you see him, shoot him. Over and out.”