Sarah looked up at her mother. The woman was almost an older version of Sarah herself. Short at five feet, and with the same dark hair, only eight inches longer. She was thin and had none of the Arkansas homemaker demeanor about her. She faced her daughter with hands on hips and a frown on her pretty face.

"You tell me, is this any way for an officer in the army to act? I'm sure soldiers have lost friends before. Are you something special--the rules don't apply to you?"

Sarah looked from her mother to the far wall of her room, which hadn't changed one bit since she left home after joining the army six years before.

"Did it hurt you when Daddy left us?" Sarah asked, not able to look into her mother's eyes.

Becky McIntire half-smiled, sad attempt though it was, and then sat on the edge of Sarah's small bed.

"Oh, I hurt something fierce. Having you was what kept me from straying from the course of your upbringing. Without you, I doubt I would have been much good to myself. You were all I had." She smiled and touched her daughter's leg. "But you? Why, your letters to me tell of the people you work with, the way they all respect you, and the way you explained Jack in those letters, well, let's just say he didn't leave you like your daddy left me, honey. He was taken--and that is a world of difference. You know the folks you work with are hurtin' too. Maybe they need you back there at your base--just maybe they need help from you to make sense of this. You go on and hurt, but sooner or later you're going to get up out of that chair and do what your colonel expects of you."

"And what is that, Mother?" Sarah asked, knowing her mom's humor was about to be exposed for the first time in the week she had been home.

"To get your ass out into my garden and do some weeding, of course! Or get on a plane and go back to work. They need you more than I do."

For the first time since she awoke to find Jack Collins gone from her life, Sarah smiled, and then cried hard with her head in her mother's lap.

The next morning, Sarah boarded a plane bound for McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. She needed the men and women there because now she knew she could never heal without them. Second Lieutenant Sarah McIntire, with her arm still in a sling, was going home to heal among her friends at the Event Group.

TWO HUNDRED NAUTICAL MILES

OFF THE COAST OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

The room was dark and the man still slept his unnatural sleep. The doctor sat at his desk watching the comatose patient's breathing, and became worried at its shallowness. He heard the door to the infirmary open and then silently close with a pneumatic hiss. He knew who stood just inside the doorway, tucked into the shadows.

"We cannot keep him like this much longer. His breathing is shallow and his vitals, although stable for right now, are showing signs of deterioration."

"We will have need of him soon. He is vital for our assault; he will limit the possible response by their security for the second part of our response. You may start to bring him out of it if you wish."

"I read the file on this man that your spy sent us, Captain. You're right, he's a very dangerous individual," the doctor said as he finally turned his chair toward the darkness by the door.

"Yes," said the voice. "I will have security relieve you of him as soon as he is conscious. Is it possible to have him ready to travel within twenty-four hours, Doctor?"

"Possibly, with a shot of adrenalin and a vitamin B-12 booster after he's conscious, but I wouldn't recommend it." The doctor turned and saw the captain's eyes were heavily dilated. "Are you feeling all right, Captain? The prescription I gave you should have run out by now.... You ... you are not abusing doctor's orders, are you?"

Silence was his only answer. The doctor looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was only 0440. The combination of sleeplessness and her narcotic addiction worried him. In this condition she seemed docile and adverse to the harshness of her earlier orders. The captain stepped into the light, and he saw that she looked, at least for the moment, as if she were now more awake. Even the eye dilation was settling, allowing her pupils to shrink back to normal size. The heroin was wearing off.

"We are striking at the U.S. facility today--without a warning to the president being delivered beforehand." The dark shape of the captain's hand reached up and rubbed at the right temple area and then at the back of the head. "This will get the attention of the United Nations before we make our announcement to the world."

"Captain, let me at least give you something for sleep."

As he reached for the large bottle of pills he kept on his desktop, the door opened and allowed a momentary flash of light from the companionway outside the infirmary to enter. Then the door closed and the captain was gone.

The doctor looked at the bottle of sleep medication, then placed it back in its usual spot. He looked at his patient and watched his chest rise and fall.

After a few moments of thought, he opened the left-hand drawer of his desk and removed something that gleamed brightly in the dim light of his desk lamp. He stood, walked to the single occupied bed, and then snapped the handcuff to the man's wrist and looped the other end through the bedrail. As he did, he heard the first officer's voice on the speaker.

"Make all preparations for getting under way. Weapons Officer, prepare strike package Hotel-Bravo. Target: the Independence Oil refinery, Texas City."

The phone on the doctor's desk buzzed. The doctor swallowed and then picked up the receiver.

"Yes?"

"Why was the captain in sickbay?" asked the voice on the other end.

"Checking on her patient."

"You have failed to do what was asked of you?"

"I believe the captain has moments of clarity of what is truly happening. I cannot take the chance and kill this man. Right now, her only goal is consistent with your own--to find out what the outside world knows about us. She needs this man for that end."

"Have you any suspicions as to why she visits only in the early morning hours, or after she has been medicated?" the voice asked.

"No, and I will not make any assumptions. She is still the captain and I am still a part of her crew."

"Have you noticed any change in her aggressiveness during the times of her visit?"

"She seems ... more thoughtful at those times."

"That can be worrisome. I want those drugs out of the captain's system; they cannot be good for decision making."

The line went dead.

4

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX,

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

Levels seventy-three and seventy-four consisted of 372 vaults. Each of these held an artifact gathered from the past. Security was electronic in nature, and was administered by the Europa computer system. Designed by the Cray Corporation, it was deemed impenetrable by an outside source. Security clearance was low for these two levels, as the artifacts housed in the chromed-steel vaults bore no historical significance for the national security of the United States. Still, the only people with access to the levels were monitored by key card and pupil eye-scan through Europa, and she in turn reported every few seconds to the security department.