“Well, no, I—”

“Is this what they teach you at Dreamland? I’m really disappointed in you, Captain. Really disappointed. I’ve seen your record—you’re supposed to be a mature pilot with a good set of decision-making skills. Quote, end quote.”

Turk wanted to shrink into the macadam below his feet. She was absolutely right to bawl him out, and he knew it. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground as she continued, giving him one of the sternest lectures he had ever received.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked finally.

“I was stupid,” he said. “I lost my head and acted like a jerk.”

“Get out of here before I do something rash,” she said. “Report to the maintenance officer.”

Beast took a step to leave. Ginella whirled toward him. “You and I are not done.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Beast softly.

Turk didn’t hang around to hear the rest. He practically ran to get out of his flight gear, then quickly made his way to the squadron’s offices.

“Colonel talked to you?” asked the major sitting at the desk when he came in.

Turk nodded.

“I assume the plane checked out.”

“Yes.”

They went over the flight quickly. Turk wanted to finish as quickly as possible, hoping to avoid seeing Ginella again.

No such luck, though. She was standing in the doorway when he finished.

“Give us a minute, Major?” she snapped. It wasn’t a question.

“Wanted to grab a coffee,” said the officer, who quickly slipped past her.

“I’m sorry,” said Turk, sitting back in his seat. “I know I was out of line. I know it.”

She frowned, but the quick admission of guilt seemed to take a little of her anger away. She went over to the desk the major had been using and sat behind it.

“I realize that I run things a little loose at times,” she told him. “On the ground. Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to act like a cowboy in my squadron. In the air, we are all business. Do you understand that?”

“I know. I was totally out of line.”

She stared at him. Her eyes were a light blue with small wrinkles of brown in them, as if the blue were tiny pages of a book arranged one on top of the other around the pupil.

“You’re a good pilot, at least,” said Ginella finally.

“Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t grin.”

“No.” Turk shook his head.

“All right, Captain. You can go.”

Turk rose and started to leave.

“Thank you for helping us,” said Ginella.

Turk turned around.

“It was my pleasure,” he said.

“Good.”

He left the room chastened, but unbroken.

12

Sicily

“It’s not possible that the Sabre didn’t know where it was.” Brad Keeler thumped his hand against the wall, tapping the map image projected there. “We have the GPS data all the way through.”

“And it functioned optimally?” asked Rubeo. “You’re positive of that?”

“As positive as we can be.”

“Was there interference through the control channel?”

Keeler pursed his lips. The one vulnerability of all unmanned aircraft systems was their reliance on external radio signals, for control and navigation. Much progress had been made in the area over the past decade but it remained at least a theoretical vulnerability.

“We don’t believe so,” said Keeler, weighing his words. “It would fail-safe out. Even if it were done very well, we should have a trace somewhere in the system.”

“The GPS?”

“GPS is trickier to track,” admitted Keeler. The Sabre got reads on where it was by querying the global position satellite system. In theory, the system could be fooled or even infiltrated. But it was difficult to do technically.

“Harder to catch,” noted Marcum.

“Absolutely,” admitted Keeler. “But there should be some trace of that.”

“Simple interference?” asked Rubeo.

“Again—it’s theoretically possible. But if so, they’re doing it in a way that we haven’t seen before. And the NATO sensors didn’t pick up any direct interference.”

“They hardly know what to look for,” said Rubeo. Interference in this case meant some sort of radio jamming, which generally was fairly obvious but could be done very selectively. In fact, Rubeo’s companies were working on a system that jammed only select aircraft—in theory, one could confuse a single UAV in a flight, turning it against its fellows.

Only in theory, so far. The Libyans naturally would be unable to do this on their own. But there were plenty of people who might want to take the chance to test their systems in the field.

Rubeo couldn’t control his agitation. He rose. “A virus?” he asked.

“So far, no trace. And it would have to be introduced physically. Which means by someone on the team.”

“Or someone who has access to the hangar,” said Rubeo. “Or the transports. Or one of the bases where they stopped. Or—”

“Point taken.”

“I want to know exactly what happened,” he said. “We need to know.”

“We are working on it,” said Marcum, rescuing Keeler. “We haven’t been at it all that long. Barely twenty-four hours.”

“I’ve been here less than twelve,” said Keeler.

Rubeo pressed his hands together. “The government planes? What’s the connection there?”

“At best, a diversion,” said Marcum. “More likely a coincidence.”

“Did they jam?”

“No,” said Keeler. “No jamming was recorded by any of the aircraft, including the Tigershark.”

“But there were ECMs,” said Rubeo. “They might have covered it. That would explain why the government attacked in the first place.”

Marcum looked as if he had just sucked a lemon.

“We’ve mapped all of the radars in the area,” said Keeler. “It’s possible there was another one. But if it was interfered with, we can’t figure out what the interference form would have been.”

“These are early days, Ray,” said Marcum. “We will get there. We have to build up slowly.”

“How well are you sleeping?” Rubeo snapped.

Marcum didn’t answer.

“We all want to figure out what happened, Dr. Rubeo,” said Keeler gently. “We will figure it out.”

“I can’t sleep at all,” said Rubeo.

13

Sicily

Though he headed Whiplash, the high-tech Department of Defense and CIA’s covert action team, Danny Freah was not in Sicily on a Whiplash mission per se. Officially, he was only here to work with the locals and Air Force and secure the Sabres and the Tigershark, which were Office of Technology assets on temporary “loan” to the alliance. He wasn’t even supposed to provide actual security, just make sure that the people who were charged with doing that did it.

Unofficially, he was here to find out what the hell had happened and to make sure that no one associated with the Office of Technology got railroaded.

Politics was a wonderful thing, especially in the military.

Danny had brought his figurative right arm, Chief Master Sergeant Ben “Boston” Rockland, along with two troopers, John “Flash” Gordon and Chris “Shorty” Bradley. He had a pair of Ospreys as well—one had come over with him on the Whiplash M–17, and the other had been part of a demonstration that Flash and Bradley were conducting in Germany when Danny got the word to get over to Sicily in a hurry. The Ospreys were available as transportation in the unlikely event he had to go over to Libya.

He doubted he’d need them. Nor did he anticipate needing more people. Most of his team was in the States on a training mission with U.S. Special Operations Command, and he decided to let them be for the time being.