“Just take it one problem at a time,” he told himself.
Taking a deep breath, he glanced at the altimeter. They were at thirty-five hundred feet and he knew the first order of business was to get the stricken bird on the deck before it took any more damage.
He pushed the yoke forward and to the left, trying to put the Provider into a banking dive, but the aircraft responded like a barge with a stuck rudder—the shake of the yoke in his hands and her sluggish response told Hayes that the control surfaces were shot to shit. He leaned forward, craning to get a look at the left wing where the sight of the bullet-riddled aileron confirmed his suspicion.
“C’mon, girl,” he begged, kicking the rudder pedals left and shoving the throttles to their stops.
Finally the Provider responded, and he twisted her into a screaming dive, jaw set as he plummeted through the spiderweb of tracer fire. But the rebels had him dialed in and opened up with everything they had, the bullets against the aircraft sounding like hail on a tin roof.
Hayes gritted his teeth and watched the altimeter spooling down—two thousand feet, fifteen hundred, a thousand—when a final burst found the port wing, the bullets shredding the engine cowling.
The port engine stuttered and backfired like a shotgun, a flash of orange, followed by the bright-red blink of the fuel gauge, oil pressure, and hydraulic warning lights on the panel.
He was reducing the power when the master fire light blinked red on the upper-left-hand corner of the copilot’s instrument panel. Hayes looked out the window to find the port engine smoking like a diesel train.
Shut it down.
It was the right call.
The only problem was he wasn’t sure if he could make it over the sandstone cliffs guarding the end of the valley five miles to his front with only one engine.
19
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
It was seven p.m. at Langley, and Carpenter was exhausted, his stomach churning from one too many cups of coffee. He logged off his computer, and after removing his ID card from the reader, opened the top drawer and retrieved the roll of Tums he’d bought earlier in the week. There were two left. He popped them into his mouth and got to his feet.
As a younger officer, the long days and short nights hadn’t fazed him. Like a toddler, he viewed things like sleeping and eating as a distraction, something that kept him from the work at hand.
But his days of being able to survive on vending machine food and four hours of sleep were long gone. These days all he had to do was look at a carton of takeout and he’d be up all night with heartburn.
Getting old is a bitch, he thought as he looped the lanyard connected to the ID card over his head.
Carpenter crunched on the antacids on his way to the door, grimacing at the chalky aftertaste they left at the back of his throat, and grabbed his coat from the rack. He was looking forward to a quiet ride home and maybe a beer or two before bed, but when he stepped out into the anteroom and saw the illuminated lamp at the corner of his secretary’s desk, he knew it wasn’t happening.
At its core, the CIA was a giant bureaucracy, a clandestine corporation run by pencil pushers—nonoperational administrative types who were more concerned with improving productivity than national security. While Carpenter and those under him were busy trying to keep the free world from imploding, the people above him were busy issuing memos reminding everyone to use the correct color coding for internal files and memos. The idea was to allow men like Carpenter to separate the important from the nonessential, but all it did was create more work.
He cursed under his breath, annoyed because he had to sort through the blue-and-white low-priority files to get to the reds.
“Damn folders,” he said, as he stuffed them into the outside pocket of his briefcase.
When he had everything he needed, Carpenter stepped out into the lobby and crossed to the express elevator that took him down to the parking garage, where his driver was waiting in a black-on-black Suburban.
“Rough night, chief?” he asked.
“Is there any other kind?” Carpenter answered, retrieving his AirPods from his jacket pocket.
He pressed the wireless headphones into his ears, unlocked his phone, and scrolled through the apps until he came to a white tile with an orange ball in the center. Carpenter launched the app and waited for it to load, remembering how skeptical he’d been when his wife, Erin, first introduced him to it.
The life of an Agency wife wasn’t for the weak or faint of heart. It took a special woman to put up with all the bullshit—the travel, long hours spent at the office, and even longer months away when Carpenter was deployed overseas, which was why most of his coworkers were on their second or third marriage.
But Carpenter had gotten lucky when he met Erin, which was why he pampered her and put up with the endless string of fad diets and hobbies she dragged him into. The latest was yoga, so he wasn’t surprised when she started talking about meditation.
“An app for guided meditation. You’re serious?” he asked.
“It helps with stress and sleep. You will love it, I promise,” she beamed.
She was right.
Carpenter hit the play button and settled back in his seat, listening while the soothing voice instructed him to “close your eyes and take a cleansing breath.” He was just settling into the meditation, allowing the stresses of the day to “drift past your conscious mind like clouds in the sky” when the voice was interrupted by the ding of his phone.
He cracked an eyelid and glanced down at the screen, any chances of achieving Zen vanishing when he read the text.
Found something you are going to want to see.
On my way home, can it wait? he replied.
No. Come to Site Tango ASAP!!!
This better be GOOD! he typed back.
Better than Christmas morning.
“Change of plans,” Carpenter said, fingers flying over the keys.
“What’s up, chief?” his driver asked, glancing up at the rearview.
“South Capitol Street Heliport,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Carpenter called his wife and told her that he wasn’t going to make it home for dinner. He returned the phone to his pocket, the last line of the text still sending a lightning bolt of exhilaration up his spine.
Better than Christmas morning. The code to drop everything and get here as fast as possible. But what had she found?
* * *
—
The Airbus H155 was sitting on the pad, rotors already turning and burning when the Suburban arrived at the heliport. The driver badged through the gate and pulled up beside the helo, tires still rolling when Carpenter threw open the door and hustled aboard.