Текст книги "Collateral Damage"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

2

Sicily

Senator Jeff “Zen” Stockard wheeled himself past the row of parked F–35As, admiring the creative nose art employed by the RAF. No traditional shark mouth or tiger jaws for them—the first, on an aircraft nicknamed, “Show Time,” featured a woman suggestively riding a bomb into battle, and they got less politically correct from there.

Zen was amused—though he also couldn’t help but think about his young daughter. She was still in grammar school, but the images convinced him she wouldn’t be allowed to date anyone from Great Britain until she was forty.

Pilots were completely out of bounds.

Zen pushed himself toward a pair of parked Gripen two-seat fighters. Their paint schemes were austere to a fault: the very respectable light gray at the nose faded to a slightly darker but still eminently respectable darker gray.

His interest was drawn to the forward canards, flexible winglets that increased the aircraft’s lift at takeoff and landing speeds, as well as increasing its payload. The airplanes had only just arrived on the island as part of the multination peacekeeping force; they had not seen combat yet.

“Peacekeeping” was something of a misnomer in practice, though the alliance was trying to get both sides to the negotiating table. A month before, several European nations had acted together to condemn attacks by the Libyan government on civilians, and in essence begun supporting the rebellion. The U.S. had been asked to assist. Publicly, its role was limited to support assets, more or less what it had said during the 2011 war to oust Gaddafi. And just like that conflict a few years before, the U.S. was heavily involved behind the scenes, providing the unmanned aircraft and sensors that were doing much of the work.

As Zen stared at the fighters, he was hailed by a short man in jeans and a leather flight jacket. Few people spotting the man on the runway would give him a second glance, but Zen immediately recognized him as Du Zongchen, formerly one of the most accomplished pilots in the Chinese air force.

Zongchen was a native of Shanghai, but spoke English with an accent somewhere between Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia.

“Senator Stockard, once more I meet you on a tarmac,” said Zongchen with a laugh. “I think perhaps you are considering flying one yourself.”

“Du! Not a chance with any of these,” said Zen brightly. “Though I wouldn’t mind sitting in the backseat of one of those Gripens. I’ve never been up in one.”

“Perhaps the UN can arrange for an inspection.”

“You’d pull strings for me?”

“For the greatest fighter pilot of all modern history, nothing would be too good.”

Zen smirked. Upon retiring as a general, Zongchen had entered government service as a representative to the United Nations. He had recently been asked by the UN General Assembly to inspect the allied air operation. As a neutral observer, Zongchen had considerable influence with just about everyone.

“If I were going to fly an airplane,” the retired general confessed, “I would ask to try one of those.”

He pointed across the way to a pair of F–22Gs, recently enhanced and updated versions of the original F–22 Raptor. The aircraft were single-seat fighters, which made it highly unlikely that Zongchen would get a chance to fly one—the Air Force wasn’t likely to entrust what remained the world’s most advanced interceptor to a member of a foreign government that still had occasions to act hostile toward the U.S.

“As soon as they get a two-seat version, I’ll personally recommend you get a flight,” said Zen.

“And then I will fly you in the backseat of a J–20,” laughed Zongchen. Not yet operational, the J–20 was a Chinese stealth aircraft, more bomber than fighter. It, too, was a single-seat only plane, at least as far as Zen knew.

“How goes your inspection tour?” he asked.

“Very interesting,” said Zongchen. “Much talk. Pilots are the same the world over, no matter who they fly for.” He smiled. “Very full of themselves.”

“Present company excepted.”

“You are not. I am another story,” said Zongchen. “I still think I am the best pilot in the world, no?” He patted his midsection, which though not fat was not as taut as it would have been a decade before. “The years affect us all. And the fine cooking. That is one thing I will say for NATO—good cooking. I hardly miss home.”

“This isn’t quite NATO,” said Zen. It was a sensitive issue, since for all intents and purposes it was NATO—NATO countries, NATO command structures, the squadrons NATO would call on in an emergency. But the complicated politics required that the countries use a separate command structure called the “alliance,” rather than admitting they were NATO.

“If you want to keep up the facade, that is fine with me,” said Zongchen. “But other than that, the air forces are very professional.”

“As good as Chinese pilots?”

“Chinese pilots are very good.”

“I can attest to that.”

“Senator?”

Zen turned and saw his aide, Jason Black, trotting toward him. Jason was his all-around assistant, in some ways more a son or nephew than a political aide.

“I think I’m being called back to work,” he told Zongchen.

“Senator, I hate to interrupt you, but, uh, your wife was looking to talk to you,” said Jason, huffing from the long run from the terminal buildings. “She has a limited time window. Your phone must be off.”

“Guilty,” said Zen. “Talk to you later, General.”

He turned and started wheeling himself toward the building with Jason. When they were out of earshot, his aide whispered to him, “It’s not Breanna. I’m sorry for lying. It was the only thing I could think of.”

“Not a problem,” Zen told the young man. “What’s up?”

“There’s been an accident with the Sabres. You need to talk to Colonel Freah.”

Zen wheeled a little faster toward the building.

Ten minutes later, after negotiating the difficult bumps at the rear entrance to the building and then to the main corridor leading inside, the senator and former lead pilot for Dreamland entered a secure communications suite that had been set up for the American teams supporting the alliance. The room was literally a room inside a room inside a room—a massive sheet of copper sat between two sections of wallboard, which in turn were isolated from the regular walls of the Italian building. The space between the original room and the American inset was filled with nitrogen. Outside, an array of jamming and detection devices made it even more difficult to eavesdrop.

Two rows of what looked like ordinary workstations sat inside the room. All were connected to a secure communications system back in the States. Despite the high-level encryption, the system was so fast that the users experienced no lag at all.

There were drawbacks, however. Despite two small portable air-conditioning units, the room was at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of the building, and Zen felt sweat starting to roll down his neck practically as soon as he wheeled himself in front of the far terminal.

Seconds later Danny Freah’s worried face appeared on the screen.

“Hey, buddy,” said Zen. “What’s up?”

“One of the Sabre unmanned aircraft went crazy,” said Danny.

“ ‘Crazy’ in what way?”

“It attacked civilians.”

“What?”

“I know, I know.” Danny looked grave. He was aboard an aircraft; Zen guessed he was on his way over from the States. “We’re still gathering the details. Turk Mako is due to land in about twenty minutes.”

Zen had helped develop the original Flighthawks some two decades before at Dreamland. It was another lifetime ago, though he still felt somewhat paternal toward the aircraft.

“You lost the aircraft?” he asked.

“Negative,” said Freah. “At least we have it to pull apart.”

“How is it possible?”

“I don’t know.” Danny shook his head. “We have an incident team already being assembled. There’s going to be a media shit storm. I figured you’d want a personal heads-up, especially since you’re in Sicily.”

“I appreciate that.” Zen was planning to leave in the morning for Rome, but the heads-up would at least help alleviate some embarrassment.

“I was also wondering . . .” Danny’s voice trailed off.

“What?” asked Zen.

“Could you meet Turk when he lands? I talked to him a few minutes ago over the Whiplash satellite system. He’s a little shook up.”

“Sure.”

“I already talked to the White House,” Danny added. “They suggested it.”

“All right.”

“I know it puts you in an awkward position. I know you’re not there in an official capacity.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“I’ve seen some footage of the attack from the Sabre,” added Danny. “It’s not pretty.”

“I’ll bet.”

“There’s more out,” he said. “Posted on YouTube within the last few minutes. Supposedly by an outraged citizen.”

“Supposedly?” asked Zen.

“Well, it was put up awful quick if you ask me. But it was definitely taken with a cell phone, so I guess it wasn’t a setup. We’re going to figure out what the hell happened, I promise.” Danny took a deep breath. His face looked tired, but intent. “The Tigershark and the Sabres will be grounded until we’re absolutely sure what happened. And until it’s fixed. We will fix it. We absolutely will.”

3

New Mexico

War had always been a complex calculation for Ray Rubeo, one more difficult to compute than the most complicated calculus.

Rubeo had devoted himself to science from the time he was twelve, precocious and full of excitement over the possibilities knowledge offered. He had indulged his various interests, from computers to electronics, from biology to aerodynamics, for most of his life, first as an employee, then as a contractor, and finally as a businessman. Directly and indirectly, he had worked for various arms of the government, starting with DARPA—the Defense Department’s research arm—then the Air Force at Dreamland, then the NSA and, briefly, the CIA. For the past decade he had run his own private company, with the government and its various agencies its primary customers.

The arrangements had allowed him to do a great deal. Unlike many scientists, he was able to turn the results of his pure research into practical things—computer systems, artificial intelligence programs, aircraft. Weapons.

And unlike many scientists, his work had made him an extremely rich man. Though he professed to have little use for wealth, he was not a fool. While science remained his passion, he was also very much an entrepreneur, and had no trouble reconciling capitalism with the supposedly more lofty goals of science that involved knowledge and mankind’s quest to better itself.

Nor did he feel that there was an inherent conflict between science and war; he knew from history that the two pursuits were often necessary collaborators. Da Vinci was a pertinent model, but then so were the scientists who had unleashed the power of the atom on the world, saving hundreds of thousands of lives while killing many others.

Ray Rubeo could be cynical and hardheaded. More than one of his former employees would certainly swear that he was heartless. And in many ways he was and had always been a loner—a fact attested to by his home on a ranch of several thousand acres in the remote high plains of New Mexico.

But Rubeo also believed that science was, ultimately, a force for good. He had seen evil many times over the years, and in his heart he believed that science must fight against it. Not only in the vague sense of defeating the confusion and chaos of the unknown, but directly and immediately: if science was a product of man’s better nature, then surely it found its greatest calling in fighting man’s worst nature.

That was, for him, the simple reason that science and war coexisted: science opposed evil.

It was true, he conceded, that occasionally science was misused. Such things were inevitable. But they did not negate the fact that he counted himself among the good. He was not a religious man—at least from a conventional point of view he was arguably the opposite—but he was nonetheless moral.

And so, looking at the images he had just been sent, he felt his stomach turn.

It was not the destruction, or even the body of the child burned so badly that it was barely recognizable as human.

It was the fact that this destruction had been caused by his own invention, the intelligence system that guided the Sabre UM/F–9S.

Rubeo reacted to the video uncharacteristically—he deleted it. Then he flipped his tablet computer onto the table, got up and walked across the kitchen to the coffee machine. As it began brewing a fresh pot, he went out on the patio behind his house.

The sun was just rising over the hills. It was a brilliant sunrise, casting a pink glow on the clouds. The landscape in front of the rays brightened, the rocks and tall trees popping out as if they had been painted.

Rubeo walked to the far end of the patio, breathing in the air. He thought of the many people he’d known over the years, thought of the campaigns he’d been involved in, thought of the few people he regarded as friends.

Faces of those who were gone came at him. Jennifer Gleason, his assistant, his protégée—the only scientist who was truly smarter than he was, one of the few he’d turn to for advice on a difficult problem.

Gone, way before her time.

Too much nostalgia. Nostalgia was a useless sentimentality, a waste of time.

Back inside the house, Rubeo went down to his workout room and went through his morning routine quickly. The phones were ringing—his encrypted satellite phone, the work line, the private house line, and even the cell phone no one supposedly knew about.

He showered.

In the kitchen, he picked up the tablet and was glad to see that he hadn’t broken it. He brought up his messaging program and retrieved the deleted file. He forced himself to look at it again. Finally, he took his private cell phone from the counter and called Levon Jons.

“Pack,” he told him. “I need to leave in an hour.”

“Uh, OK,” said the former Marine.

Jons headed security for Rubeo’s wholly owned company, Applied Intelligence, doubling as his personal bodyguard overseas. Rubeo knew that Jons was barely awake, but that was immaterial.

“What kinda clothes and how long?” asked Jons.

“It will be a few days at least,” said Rubeo. He tapped the face of the tablet and got a weather report for Sicily. “It’ll be warm during the day, cool at night. Thirty Celsius, down to twelve.”

“English?”

“You are looking for Fahrenheit, Levon,” said Rubeo dryly. “Roughly 85 degrees down to 54.”

“OK. Where are we going?”

“Sicily, for starters.”

4

Sicily

After a seemingly endless series of debriefs and interviews with intelligence officers and command, Turk was “released,” in the words of the German colonel who was the chief of staff to the head operations officer, General Bernard Talekson. The colonel was not particularly adept at English, but the word choice struck Turk as unfortunately appropriate. More sessions were scheduled for the next day, and they would undoubtedly be more “rigorous”—another word used by the colonel with understated precision.

Turk was surprised when he left the headquarters building that it was only early afternoon; it felt as if he had been inside forever. Buses ran in a continuous loop between the various administrative buildings and the hangar areas. He hopped one and rode over to the area where the Tigershark and Sabres were kept. This was a secure area within the base; only personnel directly related to the mission were allowed beyond the cordon set up by the Italian security police.

All of the aircraft had been taken inside the hangars. The Tigershark sat alone, parked almost dead center in the wide-open expanse of Hangar AC–84a. The Tigershark was a small aircraft—it would have fit inside the wings of an F–35. It looked even smaller inside the hangar, which had been built to shelter a C–5A cargo aircraft. So small, in fact, that even Turk wondered how he fit in the damn thing.

Chahel Ratha, one of the lead engineers on the Sabre team, was kneeling under the belly of the plane, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

“Hey Rath, what’s up?” asked Turk.

Ratha bolted upright so quickly Turk thought he was going to jump onto the plane.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” said Turk.

“Then you should not sneak up on peoples!” said the engineer sharply. Even though he was American—born and bred outside Chicago—Ratha spoke with an Indian accent when he was excited. He blamed this on his parents, both naturalized citizens.

“Sorry,” said Turk.

“Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah. Sorry.”

Ratha waved his hand dismissively, then walked away, heading toward one of the benches at the far side of the office.

“Jeez,” said Turk.

“Hasn’t had his herbal tea today,” said Gene Hurley, another of the maintainers. “Don’t take it personally.”

An Air Force contract worker, Hurley headed the maintenance team. Because of the advanced nature of the aircraft, the technical people were a mix of regular Air Force and private workers. Hurley had actually worked in the service for over twenty years before retiring. He claimed to be doing essentially what he had always done—but now got paid twice as much.

“He’s freaking about the investigation,” said Hurley. “And on top of that, all the janitors are on strike. Toilets are backed up and there’s no one around to fix them.”

“Really?”

“Italians are always on strike.” Hurley shook his head. “Even the ones from Africa. If you gotta use the john, your best bet is hiking all the way over to the admin building. Or taking your chances behind the hangar.”

“That sucks.”

Hurley shrugged. “Third strike since we got here. I don’t know why. The service people are always changing. And they’re pretty incompetent to begin with. But at least the toilets worked.”

“I just came by to see if you guys needed me,” said Turk.

“No, we’re good for now. Maybe tomorrow after we finish benchmarking everything we’ll get down to some tests.”

“Any clue what happened?”

Hurley shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to guess,” he said. “But if I did, I would start by saying that it almost surely didn’t have anything to do with the Tigershark. But, you know—if I could guess about things, I’d be making a fortune betting on baseball.”

“I’m going to knock off. Probably go back to the hotel,” Turk told him. “You need me, hit my sat phone.”

“Sure thing.”

Turk started away.

“We’ll get it eventually, Captain,” added Hurley. “We’ll get you back in the air. Eventually.”

E ventually.

The word stuck in Turk’s consciousness as he rode the bus back toward the admin buildings. In his experience, “eventually” meant one of two things: never, and the day after never.

It was sick how quickly everything had turned sour. By all rights he should be celebrating right now—he had kicked ass and shot down four enemy aircraft in quick succession.

Four. He was still tingling about it.

Or should be. He could hardly even think about it.

The shoot-downs had been almost entirely glossed over in the debriefs. All anyone wanted to know about was the Sabre screwup.

Naturally. Stinking robot planes were the curse of the world. UAVs were taking over military aviation. The Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, Flighthawks, now the Sabres—in four or five years there wouldn’t be a manned combat plane in the sky.

The Tigershark was supposed to show that man was still needed. He was supposed to show that man was still needed.

And this accident showed . . .

Nothing, as far as Turk was concerned. Maybe it would demonstrate why UAVs were not to be trusted, but somehow he didn’t think that was going to happen. There was too much momentum, and too much money, for that to happen.

The bus stopped near the buildings used by the Italian base hosts, pausing for a few minutes because it was slightly ahead of schedule. Feeling antsy, Turk decided to get off and walk over to the lot where he had parked his car. It was a decent walk—about twenty minutes if he didn’t dally too much—but it was just the sort of thing he needed to clear his head.

“Ciao,” he told the driver, pretty much exhausting his store of Italian as he clambered down the steps.

They were miles from the sea, but the air was heavy with it today. The sun peeked in and out of the clouds, keeping the temperature pleasant. Sicily could be brutally hot, even in March.

Turk cut through the maze of admin buildings, zigging toward the lot. As he did, he heard something he’d rarely if ever heard on a military air base before—the sound of children playing. Curious, he took a sharp right between a pair of buildings and found himself at the back of a building used as a day care center by the Italian staff. A low chain-link fence separated a paved play area from the roadway.

A group of ten-year-olds playing a vigorous game of soccer caught Turk’s eye and he stopped to watch. The kids were good. He had played soccer himself through high school, making all-county at midfield. He admired the way the kids handled the ball, able to move up not only through a line of defenders but across dips and cracks in the pavement without tripping or looking down at the ball.

Suddenly, the ball shot over the fence. Turk leapt up and grabbed it, goalkeeper style, as it was about to sail over his head. He hammed it up, clutching the ball to his chest and then waving it, as if he’d just caught a penalty kick at the World Cup.

The kids stared at him. There wasn’t so much as a half smile among them.

“Here ya go,” he yelled, tossing it back.

The player closest to it ran over, tapped it up with his knee, then headed it back over the fence. This was a challenge Turk couldn’t turn down—he met it with his forehead, bouncing it back.

He was out of practice—the ball sailed far to the left rather than going back in the direction of the kid who had butted it to him. Another child caught it on his chest, let it drop and then booted a missile.

Turk jumped and caught it. He motioned with a mock angry face, pretended he was going to haul it back in the child’s direction, then meekly lobbed it over toward the kid who had headed it earlier.

The boy caught it on his knee, flipped it behind him, and tried juggling it on the heel of his foot. But that was too much, even for the little soccer star in the making: the ball dribbled away. One of his teammates grabbed it and flicked it back to Turk, who kicked it and managed to get it over to the kid who’d launched the missile earlier.

The back-and-forth continued for a while longer, and in fact might never have ended except for a van that pulled up at the head of the alleyway.

“Is that you, Turk?” called the man in the passenger seat.

It was Zen Stockard.

Turk bounced the ball back to the children and gave them a wave, then trotted over to the van.

“Bravo, il Americano,” yelled the kids. “Bravo!”

“You have a fan club,” said Zen.

“Just little kids—you see how good they are at soccer?”

“They look pretty good.”

“I wish I was half that good now, let alone at their age.”

“You seem to be holding up well,” Zen told him. “You want a lift to your hotel?”

“I have a car in the lot.”

“Rental?”

“There’s like a pool at the hotel. You sign for it. Some days there’s no cars, some days you have your pick.”

“Hop in, we’ll give you a ride.”

Turk reached to the rear passenger door and slid it open. Jason Black was behind the wheel.

“I’m not supposed to say anything to you,” Turk said. “Just, uh, just so you know.”

“Colonel Freah told you that?”

“No, uh, General Dalce, the Frenchman.”

“The intelligence chief, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Zen chuckled at some private joke.

“Thanks for meeting my plane, Senator,” said Turk. “I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem. I’ve been there.”

Turk liked Zen—a lot—and he liked his wife, Breanna Stockard, who as head of the Office of Special Technology was his ultimate boss. But he wasn’t entirely sure what he could or should say. Zen had been friendly and reassuring when he landed, but Turk hadn’t been in the mood to talk. And now the questions the investigators asked made him suspicious that they were going to try and find some way of blaming him for the accident.

If there was an inquiry, Congress would probably eventually get involved. Anything he said now might come back to haunt him.

“You flying tomorrow?” asked Zen.

“Planes are grounded. I don’t know—I’m sure I’ll have to answer a lot of questions.”

Zen was quiet for a moment. “I always tried to get right back in the air as soon as I could. Take a milk run or anything.”

“Yes, sir.” His options were pretty damn limited, Turk thought, but he didn’t say that.

“I can mention that you’re available, if you want,” said Zen. “I know General Pierce pretty well.”

“Sure.” Pierce was the head of the American flying contingent. He was a two-star general; Turk had met him exactly once, in a reception line.

“Nice flying in that encounter,” Zen continued. “Four shoot-downs in the space of what? Two minutes.”

“I think it might have been a little less, actually.”

“Damn good. Damn good.”

“Thanks.”

It was high praise coming from Zen, who had pioneered remote combat piloting with the Flighthawks and had several dozen kills to his credit.

“I just kind of, you know, hit my marks,” added Turk.

“I’m sure it was more than that.”

“Well. It’s what I did.”

Turk wanted to say something more, but wasn’t sure exactly what it should be. And so the conversation died.

Turk directed the driver to the car, which was near the front of the lot.

“Thanks for the ride,” he told Zen as he got out.

“Any time,” replied Zen. “You have the rest of the day off?”

“Oh yeah. I figure I’ll catch something to eat. Maybe do some sightseeing or something later on. I’ll be around, though.”

“If you need anything, you should let me know.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks.”

Zen watched the young officer walk to his car. He couldn’t blame Turk for being angry, even if he did hide it fairly well. The storm clouds were already thick and getting thicker. The Libyan government had picked up the images off YouTube and was circulating them far and wide. The casualty reports ranged from three to three dozen. A bevy of international journalists were en route, as evidenced by their Twitter feeds.

A tsunami of condemnation was sure to follow. Zen suspected that the matter would be brought before the UN General Assembly within twenty-four hours.

The only question was what effect it would have on the Western powers. Already there were rumors of a “pause” in the air campaign.

He turned to Jason. “We might as well go over to our hotel.”

“He’s pretty down,” said Jason.

“Yeah, I don’t blame him.”

“All hell’s going to break loose, huh?”

“Hopefully not on him,” said Zen. “He seems like a good kid.”

“Did he screw up?”

“Hard to say for sure, but I doubt it. Complicated systems.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s practically a modern ace. He got those shoot-downs. Nobody’s going to give him credit, though. They’ll think the computer did it.”

“But he was flying the plane.”

“Yeah, but they won’t think about that.”

As Zen knew from his own experience, there was a sometimes bitter divide between “traditional” pilots and remote pilots. Turk actually fit into neither camp, as he did both.

In fact, it wasn’t even easy to say where Turk fit in administratively. Technically, he was a test pilot assigned to the Office of Special Projects, doing temporary duty assigned to the allied flight command as part of a project to test the Sabres. He wasn’t even an official part of Whiplash—the DoD and CIA joint command, which temporarily “owned” the Sabre UAVs on behalf of Special Projects.

“I’m just glad I’m not in the middle of it,” said Zen. “What’s the latest on Rome?”

“Flight is still on tomorrow for ten,” said Jason. “You’ll get there just in time for the opening speeches.”

“Can’t arrange to miss that bit, huh?”

“I thought—”

“Just teasing. Come on, let’s go grab some dinner.”

“Did you call your wife?”

Zen answered by pulling out his cell phone. Breanna had sent him a text earlier that he’d forgotten to return.

“Well, speak of the devil,” she said, coming on the line.

“I’m the devil now? You must have been talking to the President.”

“She doesn’t think you’re the devil. Just not a dependable vote.”

“I wouldn’t want to be dependable.

Zen followed Jason toward the rented van. It didn’t have a lift; he had to crawl and climb into the front seat. It was undignified, but much preferable to being lifted, in his opinion at least.

“Danny told me you met Turk when he landed,” said Breanna.

“I did, but Air Force security shooed me away,” said Zen. “I tried to pull rank, but they said they were under orders from the Pentagon.”

“I didn’t issue any orders.”

“I wasn’t insulted,” said Zen. “I imagine you’re pretty busy, huh?”

“Up to my ears.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. We have some people heading out to see what happened. Ray Rubeo is going, too.”

“Ray himself?”

“He’s really concerned.”

Zen’s relationship with the scientist was a complicated one. While he admired his intelligence and his work, he found Ray an extremely difficult man to get to know, and an even harder one to like. He certainly wasn’t the type to hang out at the bar after work and have a few beers with.

“Congressman Swall is already calling for an inquiry,” continued Breanna. “He wants to know if U.S. assets were involved.”

“Well that’s pretty damn easy to answer.”

“Except that the general perception is that we’re not involved in this war at all. So it’ll be a firestorm one way or another.”

Breanna seemed worn-out. Zen wished he was there.

“Teri says hi,” she added, changing the subject. Her voice lifted a little. “You want to talk to her?”

“I thought you were at work.”

“I am. We’re having a video call. You want to talk to her?”

“Sure.”

Breanna punched some buttons, and Zen found himself on the line talking to his daughter.

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“Superintendent conference.”

“What is that?”

“Day off,” said Breanna.

“Cousin Julie is babysitting,” Teri told him. “I’m doing my homework.”

She was having a little difficulty with triangles. They talked about them for a bit, then Breanna cut back in, muting their daughter.

“I’m afraid I have to get going here,” she said. “Are you still heading for Rome?”

“In the morning. Why don’t you meet me there?”

“Oh yeah, right.”