Collateral Damage (24 page)

“I saw kids. That's what I saw.”

She turned and walked away without saying anything else.

4

Tripoli

K
haron's collaboration with the Russians had brought him any number of complications over the years, and he knew better than to trust them any more than absolutely necessary. And so while he could have asked Foma to arrange for access to Russian satellite intelligence on the war, he decided it was much safer to simply steal it.

Russian hackers were arguably the best in the world at getting into secure systems, even better than the Chinese groups that tended to dominate news reports. But the security on the Russian government's own systems left much to be desired. The feed sent to certain Spetsnaz units in Chad and southern Libya used a common and easily defeated encryption. Getting past it was child's play.

Finding that out had taken a bit of work on Kharon's part, but now he enjoyed the benefits, looking at near real-time satellite images as they were relayed to the unit. He sat at the console in his university lair, flipping through the quadrants as they loaded.

Nothing much had changed in the past two weeks. The reinforced lines were still where they had been for days. The only exception was in the east, where a number of tanks were poised to strike near Sawknah, a small city liberated by the rebels early in the war. Wisps of black smoke drifted in the area.

Zooming in for detail, Kharon could see irregular troops lining the ruins at the southwest corner of the road. The buildings immediately behind them were badly battered. Many were heaps of rubble. The one three-story that remained intact on that side of the street had several men on the roof, obviously snipers.

It was impossible to predict the outcome of the battle from the image. But the fact that the government felt strong enough to fight back there surprised Kharon. Everything he had seen to this point had led him to think they were not only losing, but on their last legs. But launching an attack some two hundred miles from their strong point implied they were stronger than he believed.

The government leadership had just been shaken up as well. Maybe there was life left in them after all.

But Kharon was not really interested in the direction of the war; he was looking for Rubeo.

He delved into the Russian intelligence bulletins, searching out information. The name didn't jump out. Nor were there details about the UAV incident. The Russians seemed not to care about it—at least not tactically.

That made sense. It had little impact on anything the Russian special ops troops would be involved in.

One odd thing stood out—the government had fired antiair missiles overnight in the same area where the Sabre UAVs had operated. They had claimed they shot down two aircraft, but NATO had not acknowledged any losses.

A coincidence?

Kharon went back to the satellite imagery, examining the grids linked to the summary.

He spotted two large pickups parked well off the road behind a ridge of sand and rock. There were tents nearby.

He zoomed to the trucks. They were large American vehicles, unlike the small Japanese models common in the region.

Rubeo?

It had to be.

Damn, he thought. Right under my nose.

5

Sicily

“L
ooks like Dreamland isn't the superhero he's cracked up to be,” said Paulson when Turk walked into the squadron's ready room.

“What the hell does that mean?” snapped Turk.

“It means what it means.”

“That's enough,” said Ginella. She was at the front of the room, poring over a paper map.

“Excuse me,” said Paulson. “I didn't mean to insult teacher's pet.”

“Knock it off, John.” Ginella went to the coffeepot at the side of the room, walking between the two men. She poured herself a cup, even though the coffee was clearly cold. Everyone else took a seat.

They went through the squadron debrief mechanically. All of the squadron's pilots and a lot of the enlisted personnel, including Beast and the others who were still suffering from the flu, came in to hear what had happened.

Turk had always felt a bit like an outsider, but it was worse now, much worse. No one said anything, but he felt that they were all blaming him for Grizzly being shot down.

What could he say?

It wasn't his fault. But that sounded lame. Better to keep quiet.

He played the scene over and over in his head, trying to re-create what had happened. No matter how he tried, he couldn't see a missile, or any weapon for that matter—nor a shadow that looked like one.

The bastards had hidden it somehow.

“Grizzly will be back tomorrow,” announced Ginella. “I spoke to him right after I landed. He claims he's going to steal a helicopter off the Italians if they don't let him go. I'm sure they will send him back—it sounds like he's eating them out of house and home.”

The others began applauding. Somehow, that just made Turk feel worse. He slipped out the door, heading in the direction of his car.

He was already in the lot when his phone began to vibrate. Dreading talking to Ginella or anyone else, he hesitated before pulling it out.

It wasn't a call. It was his calendar, reminding him of the appointment he'd made to play soccer with the kids.

Dead tired, all he wanted to do was pour himself into the car and go home to the hotel. He walked to the car, unlocked it, and got in.

His key was almost in the ignition when he pulled it back, deciding he just couldn't blow off the kids. Ten minutes of running around—even twenty—weren't going to make him that much more tired than he was.

Hell, maybe he'd just call a taxi anyway. Get a ride to the hotel, grab a few beers and collapse.

Turk walked over to the day care center, where the children were just coming out for their recreation break. The boys' shouts cheered him up, and for the next half hour he forgot how tired he was, how depressed he was, how out of sorts he'd been. He laughed and joked with the children, lost in the game. When he was done, he told them he would be back, though this time he was smart enough not to make an exact appointment.

Turk went to the fence, preparing to hop over. Li was standing there, a big grin on her face.

“Playing soccer again?” she said.

“Uh, they're playing. I'm more of a spectator.”

“You seemed to be holding your own.”

“Thanks.” He put one foot in the chain links, then lifted the other over the top bar. Tired but determined not to fall on his face in front of her, he lifted his body over, sliding down slowly.

“I'm sorry about what happened with Grizzly,” said Li.

“Yeah.”

In an instant his spirits sagged. Not only did his fatigue return, but he felt depressed and defensive.

“I heard Paulson talking,” Li told him. “He was out of line. Everyone knows you did what you could.”

“I guess everybody thinks I screwed up. That I missed the missile.”

“No one thinks that,” said Li. “We all know you would have done everything you could.”

“I was—I flew right over that group, a couple of times,” said Turk. “I was close to them—there was no weapon there. I was close enough to see that they were kids, you know? Older than these guys”—he gestured toward the children in the yard—“but still kids. And there wasn't a gun. Let alone a rocket launcher.”

If he'd been in the Tigershark, the aircraft's AI sections would have ID'ed the weapon for him.

Maybe he'd grown lazy, relying on the machine to do his job.

“I really didn't see anything,” he said.

Li's eyes seemed to have grown larger.

With disbelief, he thought.

“I gotta go,” he said, turning in the direction of his car.

“Hey. Wait. Captain—” Li trotted after him.

“People are pissed because I took their slot, I guess,” said Turk. “I'm sorry—if I thought those kids were a threat, believe me, I would have shot at them. With or with permission.”

“You would have shot at children? Even with a launcher?”

Turk pressed his lips together. The truth was, he would have a hard time doing that, even with permission.

But if he'd seen a missile launcher, if he'd seen something capable of taking down a plane, he would have done it. Definitely. To protect a fellow pilot.

“I just . . . didn't see anything.”

“You have kids?” Li asked.

“I'm not married.”

“You don't have to be married to have kids,” she said.

“Duh,” he said sarcastically.

She frowned and started to turn away.

“Hey, no, I'm sorry.” Turk reached out for her arm. She drew back, but stopped. “I didn't mean—I'm just—I'm tired and I guess— I'm just tired.”

“I know.” She nodded.

“This, and the village before. I had nothing to do with that. I—I shot down those planes. Nobody thinks about that.”

“I think they do, Turk. I think you should lighten up on yourself.”

She had an incredibly beautiful face.

“You want to get a drink or something?” he asked. “My car's in the lot. We can go and—”

“I'm on duty,” she told him. “I was just taking a break to see what the day care center needed.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe later. You look like you could use some sleep.”

“Yeah. OK. Later.” He took a step toward the car.

“What time?” she asked.

“Time?”

“What time do you want to meet?”

“How's dinner?”

“Dinner would be nice.”

“Can you get to my hotel? The restaurant there's pretty nice. Or we could go into Catania. It's a nice little city. They look like they got a couple of restaurants and things.”

“Oh, Catania would be great. I haven't been there yet. But how do we get there?”

“I can borrow a car,” said Turk. “There's a bunch allotted to the personnel at the hotel, and there's always one or two open at night.”

“That would be fantastic.”

“I'll pick you up at your hotel around seven. OK?”

“That'd be great. Real great.”

U
p until the moment he drove into the parking lot of Li's hotel, Turk didn't give Ginella a thought at all. But as soon as he saw the lit lobby, he was filled with dread, worrying that he would run into her.

Would she be jealous?

Of course.

But maybe not. They were just having a flirty thing, nothing important.

Would she see it that way?

He pulled the car around to the far side of the lot, then took out his cell phone. He didn't have Li's phone number, but the hotel desk agreed to connect him to her room. She answered on the fourth ring, just as the call would have gone to voice mail.

“This is Turk,” he told her. “Are we still on?”

“Of course.” She sounded surprised that he would even ask.

“Are you ready?”

“I was just on my way down.”

“I'll be at the front door in like, zero three minutes,” he said.

“I'll meet you in the lobby.”

He hesitated, thinking of Ginella.

“OK,” he told her finally, deciding it was more important to keep Li happy. “I'll be there.”

Even so, he waited a full ten minutes before getting out of the car. He could feel his heart starting to pound as he walked around to the driveway, and by the time the automatic door at the front swung open, his pulse was approaching a hundred beats per minute.

Ginella wasn't there. Li greeted him with a smile, and they went out quickly to the car.

T
he Sicilian city was even nicer with someone to share it with. They walked around for more than an hour, checking out the menus posted outside the restaurants. Never picky about food, Turk would have agreed to go into the very first place, a modest-priced
ristorante
promising “Roman style” cooking. But Li was more of a foodie, and insisted on checking as many places as possible. She didn't just look at the menus; she glanced inside, and eyeballed the diners as well.

“You can judge a lot about a restaurant by who eats there,” she told him. “What we want is a place that the locals eat at.”

“How do we know that they're local?”

“You can tell if they're Italian,” she said. “Look at the clothes. The shoes, especially.”

Once she had pointed it out, differences became very noticeable. A lot of people wore jeans, just as they did, but they had different hues and washes, and tended to be fairly new. The shoe styles were very different, and even the way people walked could give them away.

“I was a psych major in college,” Li told him. “Reading people is more sociology—you can tell a lot by what they're wearing, and just the forms of how they interact.”

“Can you tell that much about me?”

“I can figure out a few things,” she said. “But it's no fair in your case—I already know you.”

“What do you know?”

“I know you're a good pilot. And a good person.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Could you?” Li laughed. It was a little girl laugh, innocent. Aside from the jeans, she was wearing a thick knit sweater that coddled her neck. She couldn't have looked prettier to him if she were wearing a flowing gown.

They circled through downtown, Li studying the menus, Turk studying her.

“How did you get from psychology to flying Hogs?” he asked.

“You don't think flying Warthogs takes a lot of psychology?”

“Seriously.”

“I was in an ROTC program. That's how I paid for college. But I was always going to be a pilot.”

“Or a psychologist?”

“Not at first. I was in engineering. You wouldn't believe the red tape switching.” The corners of her mouth turned up with a quick smile. “But I was also thinking that maybe I would use it, if I didn't make it as a pilot. And maybe down the road.”

“Are you going to psychoanalyze me?”

She laughed, a long, warm laugh. “I don't think so.”

They settled on a small restaurant whose menu was entirely in Italian. The waiter tried explaining the dishes, patiently answering Li's questions. Turk ended up with a fish dish, even though he thought he had ordered beef. He barely tasted the food, completely entranced by the woman he was sharing the meal with. Everything Li said seemed interesting—she talked about her hometown in Minnesota, about the fact that she had been adopted, about the grudging acceptance of other pilots because she was a woman.

She could have talked about differential calculus and he still would have hung on every word.

His phone rang during dinner. He pulled it out, and not recognizing the number, decided to let it go to voice mail. Then he turned the phone off.

Driving back to her hotel, he searched for some reason to keep the night going. He asked if she wanted to hit the bar. She said she was tired and wanted to turn in.

He let that hang there—it wasn't an invitation, and in the end he simply said good night.

When she hesitated for a moment before reaching for the door handle, he wondered whether he should kiss her. But the moment passed.

He rolled the window down and called after her. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“I hope so,” she told him, before turning and going inside.

B
ack at his hotel, Turk checked his voice mail. He'd missed three calls—all from the same number. Belatedly, he realized it was Ginella's.

She'd left only one message.

“Where are you?” she said, her voice raspy and tired. “I thought I'd see you tonight.”

Breaking things off wasn't going to be easy. He turned in, leaving it for another day.