“Yes, Pierre, I do.” She brushed a hand over his cheek and then pushed him back into his chair.
The general was smiling. “It will have to be something pretty spectacular to surprise me today.”
Pierre hung his head. Rosa wanted to rest her hand on his shoulder for strength. But he was the innocent party in all this.
“I’m supposed to be the HEL-A laser operator for General Martinez. Not Miranda’s team member.”
The general just nodded. “Anything else?”
Rosa didn’t know what to say to that. She’d agreed to break her oath of service and commit treason. Only a kiss and Pierre leveraging her out a plane’s door had kept her from her sworn task.
“We found your name on the ‘Death List’ of the initial crash. Since then you’ve fully cooperated—but that’s not why I’m trusting you. Nor is it the man almost weeping with relief under your hand.”
He hadn’t been worried about her being sent down for this; he’d been terrified.
“You care about me that much?”
He nodded without looking up.
“And my child?”
This time he turned to look at her. “You think I’d hold a useless shit of a father against a kid?”
No. No, she didn’t. She looked back at General Gray. “Then why?”
“Okay, the baby counts as a surprise,” the general shrugged it off. “As to why? Miranda Chase recommended you—I heard both of you gasp in surprise in the background. It didn’t take much to figure out why. You both assumed you were going down. Damn well should. But you have no idea how hard it is to impress Miranda. She doesn’t know it, but she’s the best judge of character ever born.”
“She is…interesting,” Rosa managed.
“That she is,” the general almost laughed. Then she sobered. “I do have a suggestion as an Air Force officer that would make me more comfortable with the dropping of this matter.”
Rosa braced herself.
“It’s clear that you’re an exceptional trainer. You may wish to consider a transfer request from combat duty to a training corps. Your child might appreciate that as well.”
Before Rosa could even begin to think of how to thank her, the general looked at her watch.
“We’re five minutes to intercept. Please try not to kill…” The general had a puzzled look for a moment, then smiled radiantly.
“Please try not to kill my maid of honor’s teammates.”
62
“Crossing aircraft. Heading two-three-five at Flight Level Two-eight-zero.”
At the pilot’s announcement, Taz looked up at the ceiling of the C-130, then felt foolish. First, there were no windows there. Second, they would already be gone by as the flight was heading southwest to their own east. Third, two-eight-zero was twenty-eight thousand feet. Their own plane was almost four miles lower at eight thousand feet.
It was the third crossing flight of the night. Not important.
Except that Jeremy was also looking at their plane’s ceiling with a puzzled look on his face.
“What?” She didn’t know why she was whispering.
Jeremy shook his head.
“What?”
He glanced up again. Then over at Mike.
Mike sat in the corner where the hull met the aft bulkhead of the weapons control space. On the other side of the, only marginally, sound-insulating wall stood the rack of thirty-three pound, three-foot-long shells for the howitzer. At each target, the pounding thumps from the big gun had seemed to slam into him. He became somehow smaller with each round fired.
She then studied Jeremy. He too looked tired and his nerves stretched thin. She’d stopped taking over the laser controls. If someone got away from her howitzer now, they got to live. But she made damn sure their operation was blasted to hell.
“What is it, Jeremy?” His eyes had once again traveled upward. “Something about that plane.”
He turned to look at her. His gaze was rock steady, but his eyes were so sad. They weren’t the eyes of the young man who’d made love to her in a desert cloister. They were of a grown man haunted. She had done this to him—twisted him into helping her kill people.
These were bad men and this was a war that General Martinez had fought for years with no one listening to him.
Then she glanced aloft herself.
Something about that flight.
“What’s southwest of here?” His whisper barely reached her ears and they certainly didn’t reach JJ in the observer’s chair that Mike had abandoned to him an hour ago.
“From here there’s…” Sonora and Baja. But was there even a single airport big enough for a high-flying plane? Beyond that was…nothing. Hawaii was north of west from here. Australia and New Zealand were a world away. And weren’t passenger jets usually up in the high thirty-thousands, not twenty-eight? It was—
“They’re here?”
Jeremy nodded.
“Can we—” She glanced to the laser console, then hated herself for it.
“I. Will. Not. Shoot at Americans.”
Taz stared hard at the console. She tried to remember the good and the evil she’d done.
Putting down rapist dogs didn’t even count. Tonight she’d killed many more, and felt no regrets.
But she’d also wrecked the careers of men who’d blocked the general’s agenda, with the absolute confidence that the general knew what was right. That JJ led the Clear and True Way, whatever that was.
While such a path was welcome to use up people like her and the general, it should never use up people like Jeremy or Mike, or what was its purpose? Not even the Rosa Cruzes of the world should have been caught under its grinding wheel.
“What can we do?”
Jeremy didn’t shrug. Didn’t evade. “He’ll never surrender. Nor any of the other officers. You’ve all gone too far to turn back. I can only think of one thing to do.”
“What’s that?”
Jeremy brushed a hand over her cheek before smiling sadly.
“Nothing.”
63
JJ knew what was happening as soon as the pilot announced the errant flight over the intercom.
They’d be circling down to come in on his starboard side, away from the weapons. And from on high, because his weapons couldn’t be brought to bear on them—the laser and howitzer were built to fire down, possibly horizontal, but not up.
He recalled Jeremy’s earlier explanation to Taz of the possibilities of engaging in inverted flight. But he didn’t need to overhear Jeremy and Taz’s conversation to know the conclusion of it.
There was only one option left.
Pushing to his feet, he stepped up beside Taz.
She looked up at him warily.
All these years, she’d trusted him. Done his bidding without question, without hesitation. Had she been less loyal, would they have ended up in this same place? He expected that he would have, at least—though perhaps with even less success to show for it. Three major cartel headquarters had gone down hard tonight.
Now, the clear caution in her eyes, the wary loss of that trust. It cut almost as deeply as the loss of his Consuela.