Patrick Lee - The Breach

It would have been more than enough time. His people had already dispatched another chopper from their own staging point; it was screaming along the Brooks Range at this moment, below radar, toward the valley where the 747 lay in ruins and the Whisper lay hidden. The F-15 had long since turned for home, having spent its fuel inefficiently in the mad scream to reach Coldfoot.

One spoken sentence, and every tumbler would have clicked into place.

Fuck.

Karl waited for the hiker to wander back to the open doorway of the makeshift emergency room. The noise from equipment and voices inside provided ample sound cover. Karl moved past the man, down the hall and out the front door.

By the time he reached his phone, the lodge and the soldiers around it were distant specks, inaudible over the wind. He dialed and waited.

"Tell the chopper to land five miles west of the site and wait there," he said when it was answered. "It's going to be complicated."

By the time the Black Hawks arrived, the wind out of the north had hardened. Travis put his back to it and watched them come in, their shadows rippling over the landscape far behind them. They were still a mile out when Dr. Carro came to the door of the lodge and waved him back inside.

"She's asking for you," Carro said.

He followed Carro back to the room and found Paige with her eyes open, though unable to focus. He took her hand, and she dragged her gaze to meet his, like a child pulling a heavy weight. He wondered if this was all she wanted: just to see a face she knew, if only barely. Then she spoke, her voice so weak Travis had to lean close.

"If you have to wake it up," she said, "then do it. It's worth it, if there's no other choice. But let go of it as fast as you can."

The doctors traded looks, and Carro said, "Confusion is normal for someone under this much sedation. She'll be fine after-"

"I know I'm on ten milligrams per minute of propofol," Paige whispered. "Please shut up and let me speak."

Carro shut up.

Paige fixed her eyes more firmly on Travis and said, "I know Tangent is coming. I know everything seems safe. But we never assume. We can't afford to. If things go bad… if you have to use the Whisper… press the key against it to wake it up."

She faded for a few seconds, then drew a deep breath and said, "Just let go of it as soon as you can. If you wait too long, it won't let you."

Then her eyes closed, and her breathing stabilized.

Outside, the Black Hawks came in low over the building. Travis heard pebbles from the gravel parking lot scatter against the front of the restaurant. Then, through the window on the north wall, he saw both aircraft set down on the grass expanse outside. He held Paige's hand a few seconds longer, then left the room.

By the time he reached the front of the lodge, a man had disembarked from the nearer chopper. One of the soldiers on guard cocked an ear at something the man shouted, then pointed at Travis as he stepped from the building.

Travis had expected the Tangent operatives to ask exactly one question, and otherwise not speak to him. Instead, the man shook his hand, identified himself as Shaw, and thanked him with the same gravity as the man on the phone.

Shaw was outfitted the way Travis imagined Navy SEALs would be. His rifle, modified to the nines, drew looks from the nearest soldiers.

"We're ready right now, sir," Shaw said, indicating the open door to the Black Hawk's troop bay.

Travis followed him to it. It crossed his mind that, even a few days earlier, climbing into a military chopper full of commandos would've qualified as a strange thing. He pulled himself in and took a seat on a padded bench at the rear wall. Shaw climbed in beside him. In addition to the pilots, there were six men in the Black Hawk, all equipped for the end of the world. The turbines revved, and a moment later the chopper was high above the lodge and turning west, tinted shafts of sunlight swinging through the interior like spotlight beams. Travis looked over his shoulder through one of the small windows, and saw the surgeons bringing Paige out on a stretcher. He kept his eyes on her until the first ridgeline swept below the aircraft, blocking his view.

Facing forward again, he saw a squat metal shape in the center of the floor: a cobbled-together and much smaller version of the steel box that had contained the Whisper aboard the 747.

Outside, ridges and valleys that had taken hours to cross on foot slipped by like sections of sidewalk. The encampment had seen heavy traffic since Travis had left it. Staring down from the circling Black Hawk, its starboard door now wide open as the men scrutinized the valley for movement, he saw a broad patch of disturbed ground that had served as the hostiles' landing pad. Skids had dented the surface in all directions, and the comings and goings of the hostiles had turned the grass there to bare earth.

Satisfied that the valley was clean, the pilot set down on the torn earth, the clearest place in sight. As soon as the wheels touched, the men exited from both sides of the chopper. Travis was the last one out, glancing forward along the fuselage as he stepped from the door.

Something made him stop.

He knew the feeling, though he hadn't felt it in years.

A supplier he'd known had called it getting your whiskers flicked. A kind of intuition maybe only criminals-or bad cops-could feel, sharpened by years of doing things they couldn't afford to be caught doing. The slightest thing might trigger it: multiple cars tapping their brakes on the same stretch of road for no apparent reason, hinting at a police presence just out of sight.

As Travis stared forward along the side of the Black Hawk, something flicked his whiskers. Hard.

But he couldn't place it. He swept his eyes around, and for some reason he kept coming back to the front right wheel, extending down and away from the side of the fuselage on a foot-long strut. There was nothing wrong with it, as far as he could tell. The tire and strut both seemed fine.

Shaw saw him looking. "What is it?"

Travis had no answer for him, and shook off the sensation. He hadn't slept in over thirty hours-unless he counted the few minutes he'd been unconscious after getting knocked out-and had spent the last two of them wandering around a mass-murder scene. A little jumpiness should be expected.

"It's nothing," Travis said, and nodded ahead through the trees. "What you're looking for isn't far. Fifty steps past their camp, buried near the biggest tree in sight."

He took another glance at the wheel, then passed through the group of men to take the lead -and stopped again.

He turned back to the Black Hawk.

In the soft dirt on either side of the wheel was a footprint, each one facing outward-the prints a man would make if he were sitting right on the tire with his back against the side of the chopper, maybe holding onto the gun mount above it for balance.

Travis stared at it, part of him expecting the footprints to shift before his eyes. Then he became aware of Shaw standing beside him.

"Tell us," Shaw said. "I don't care if you think it's stupid. Tell us what you're thinking, right now."

The guy sounded more than just serious. He sounded scared.

"Look at the prints beside the wheel," Travis said.

Something like a second passed-enough time for Travis to imagine these men laughing when he was compelled to explain himself.

A second later, he understood that he was very wrong in that impression.

Shaw flinched-Travis was sure he saw it, though the movement was swallowed up by the blur that came next, as the man snapped his rifle up and opened fire, putting a burst of half a dozen shots through the side of the Black Hawk, a foot above the tire.