“What did you do, Jeremy?”
“A laser isn’t like a shell. There’s no aim, fire, wait. Though there are problems of atmospheric blooming and energy usage from sustained firing, but we’re well within the performance envelopes of this weapon in the current environmental conditions. So, I can simply re-aim the beam. I didn’t want to expend energy burning through the garage roof, but I then spotted the fuel dump. Fifty-five-gallon drums aren’t designed to withstand hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt lasers. Ka-Pow! Bang! Boom!” He waved his hands in the air as he made exploding sounds.
Mike spoke up. “Just like a little kid, Jeremy. Jeffrey would approve.” They didn’t laugh, but they clearly enjoyed the shared memory.
Taz turned away, unable to watch. It hurt. She didn’t know why, but it did.
People were racing across the compound in every direction.
A lone vehicle roared out of the compound. By its look it was a very fast sports car, not some mere SUV.
“Hit it, Jeremy!”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t shoot people. That’s the deal.”
“How do I do it? That’s got to be Hector Vasquez. He loves his supercars. He’s got to go down.” She tried to aim the howitzer but it only had a very small range that must be aligned off the right wing. And Jeremy had told her that moving targets required techniques he didn’t have time to teach her.
Jeremy watched her closely as the vehicle bounced violently over the rough road but kept gaining speed.
“He’s got to, Jeremy. There aren’t many worse people in the world.”
For a long second he looked in her eyes, then reached out and took her hand. Rather than squeezing it with some unwanted but expected sympathy, he moved it to the laser’s joystick. “Get a feel for tracking the vehicle. It’s moving fast, so you’ll need to keep it steady in the crosshairs for longer than you’d think.”
At first she was veering side-to-side. Finally she had a feel for how to keep it steady in the crosshairs, reasonably.
Jeremy tapped in a quick series of settings, called in a correction to the cockpit, then pointed at a red Fire button.
He sat back to watch her carefully. His face totally unreadable. She glanced at Mike, who noticed the change as well.
She wanted Jeremy to think well of her.
But she wanted Vasquez dead. So much of the pain in her life—and Mama’s—had been his doing.
Why had a man who headed a cartel, a violent competitor of the one her father worked for, helped them out at all?
And then she knew what other price Mama had paid to Hector Vasquez for their safe passage.
Taz punched and held the Fire button.
His vehicle glowed brightly in the infrared as the supercar heated. It swerved left and right but she kept the beam steady. Finally, perhaps in desperation to escape or perhaps while dying of heat stroke, it swerved too far and rolled.
When it came to rest upside down, she held her aim on the car.
A second later there was the massive bloom of an explosion as the gas tank ruptured.
Jeremy had to tug a little to get her finger off the Fire button.
Together they watched Vasquez burn.
JJ rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it in sympathy. He knew what this kill meant to her. Perhaps had even made it first on his list to ensure that it was done before whatever shitstorm was coming their way landed.
“Ready for the next target,” JJ said over the headset.
The plane turned away.
Taz watched the fire for as long as it was in sight, and for a while after.
60
“I have a hard track on them that I’m feeding to your pilots,” Thorsen informed her. “Three targets down. Two in Mexicali. One halfway to Nogales. They’ve turned mostly toward you again, probably heading for number four.”
“How close?” Lizzy knew that they should have anticipated this better. Or sent the Raptors that could have been there, cleaned house, and gone all the way back to Lackland by now. A Super Hercules at four hundred miles an hour just didn’t compare with an F-22 ticking along at fifteen hundred.
She was banking everything on their own ability to stop JJ’s Ghostrider without either killing them or being killed.
“Under a hundred miles. And, General?”
“Yes, Thorsen?”
“I’ve got your mole. Colonel Cortez used the oldest trick in the book.”
“Sex?”
“Sex? The Taser? No way. Can’t even imagine that. She used the second oldest trick then. Money. O’Neil, one of former Director Patrick’s favorite colonels.”
“Have him arrested on my authorization. Strip everything. His files, his bank accounts, his goddamn Rolodex.”
“They use phone contacts now.”
“I don’t care. Down to the dirt. And make sure that it’s all documented and well-publicized. Do it by the book; I want a full court-martial, Captain Thorsen.”
“Already done,” he sounded very pleased. “All on your authorization, General.”
Lizzy considered if she should be pissed or pleased at his taking liberty with her authority. She had to think about three seconds. “Thank you, Major Thorsen. And I expect your promotion recommendation letter drafted and on my desk by the time I get back. And Thorsen?”
“Thank you, ma’am. Yes ma’am?”
“If I don’t make it back from this, you have my authorization to sign it on my behalf.”
His voice was dead serious when he finally replied. “Not a chance I’ll need to do that, ma’am. It will be there—unsigned.”
61
Rosa stood behind Pierre’s seat. For the last two hours in transit she’d drilled him in every advanced technique she knew.
Every challenge, every scenario, even ones that she’d barely survived, he found a way through. It wasn’t always pretty, but his solutions worked and his accuracy was exceptional. Speed was the only place she could still outperform him.
They were discussing implications of the far corners of temperature-humidity-air density diagrams—high altitude arctic-cold achingly dry, and low-jungle monsoon—when General Gray came back to their station.
“Is he ready?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I wanted to thank you both. I know that facing a renegade American unit is not within your typical mandate.”
“It’s our country and our honor, ma’am,” Pierre answered with a straight face.
Rosa tried to echo him. But she couldn’t. She remembered when the truth of her treason came out. The fear churning so hard in her gut that she was afraid she’d miscarry her six-week-old child right here on the cargo deck.
Pierre had told her secret to the NTSB agents, who had then vouched for her surety. It was wrong. It was all so wrong. What she’d done… What she was still hiding. And she knew she’d involved a good man in her own subterfuge.
“I…” She wet her lips, hung on to the back of Pierre’s chair with her one good hand, and tried again. “I need to—”
“No, Rosa,” Pierre was on his feet and in her face. “No, you don’t need to do this.”