Overlord (16 page)

“Mr. Director, that area is not secure enough to send anyone in. The Iranians would capture and execute anyone they catch. Even with their new moderate president they are still far from trusting,” Mendenhall said. Jack was appreciative of his pointing out the danger facet to the director.

“Enough said. Contact the lieutenant and get her people moving. Set up a meet point for Ryan and his team to join her and then Will, I want you and security to come up with a plan to get them into the eastern region where someone thinks they have found lightning in a bottle. Okay, Matchstick and Gus will work closely with Pete, Virginia, Charlie, and Europa. We need to get a line on how to get that engine out of there if it’s there at all. I’ll brief the president.”

“Request permission to join the Iranian team.”

All eyes went to Jack as he stared directly at the director.

“Denied,” Niles said matter-of-factly. “This meeting is adjourned for now. Alice and Colonel Collins, please remain behind.”

As the Group members filed out of the conference room, Matchstick held Gus’s hand as he approached Jack. To the colonel it looked as if the small green being was empathizing with him over the danger Sarah McIntire was now facing. Jack just winked at the two as they turned and exited.

When the room was cleared Alice placed her writing tablet down, then went to go get coffee for the three of them. Niles slid two folders down to Jack’s end of the table. Collins looked them over and saw that one was stamped with the seal of the United States Army, and one of the U.S. Navy.

“What are these?” he asked, feeling his heart sink.

“Yours and Mr. Everett’s orders. You have been transferred by the president for work on the Overlord plan. You’re being moved to the Pacific area of responsibility. Captain Everett goes to Texas. The president has refused to accept the captain’s resignation.”

Jack remained silent, knowing that if anything in the Overlord plan called for him and Everett participating in the highly secretive plan, it was placed there by the man who was looking at him right now. Niles Compton and Matchstick, along with the late Garrison Lee and a few others in Britain, had come up with the extensive defensive plan called Overlord. He knew the director found the orders distasteful but was doing it anyway, even though Jack needed time to try and find his sister’s killer. He now knew that task might have to wait—a thought that he truly hated.

“You realize that anything we do with Carl could be sending him to his doom in Antarctica two hundred thousand years ago?” Collins asked, refusing to even open the folder to see his new orders. “And all of this time-displacement theory from our little green friend points to Carl running into one of those exact scenarios.”

“The plan calls for you being somewhere else, Jack, I’m sorry. The president insists we stick with every detail of Overlord, and that means you and Mr. Everett have to go no matter what may happen. Hopefully the captain’s duties in Houston will keep him far from Matchstick’s wormholes.”

“What else?” Jack asked as Alice placed a cup of coffee in front of him. She glanced his way and gave him a sad twitch of her lips. He saw that Niles couldn’t meet his eyes as the lie about Carl was uttered. He was used to taking orders and obeying them to the last detail, but to knowingly send a man he respected and liked on a possible suicide mission was not something he would ever knowingly do. If it was the last thing he ever did he would warn his friend of the danger that Niles, Matchstick, and the late Senator Lee was sending him to.

“Jack, as much as I want and need my military contingent the president needs them even more. You see the rioting and protests over the military budget the president is facing. There is even impeachment talk from the Speaker of the House. He needs his people and I can’t fault him. All military personnel will be reassigned to new duties for Overlord concerns and any other military contingency that may arise. I’m sorry.”

Jack cleared his throat as he needed to ask one last question of the director. “Lieutenant McIntire? Where will she be assigned?”

“I don’t know, Jack. I really do not know.”

Collins looked away for the briefest of moments. He was about to do something he swore he would never do—interfering with another military officer’s career.

“Dr. Compt—” Jack looked into the director’s eyes. “Niles, I want you to insist that Sarah be formally discharged. I want her to stay at Group as a civilian department head.”

“Jack, I—,”

Collins held up his hand. “Please. She would be volunteering for any dangerous, stupid assignment the army saw fit to send her on. Please, Niles, pull whatever strings you have to, but keep Sarah inside the complex when all of this comes down. I need this one thing, Niles.”

Compton looked from Jack to Alice. Jack looked her way for a brief second and then lowered his eyes.

Niles studied Jack, then pursed his lips and slowly nodded.

“I’ll insist we need her at Group, maybe we can do it without discharging her from the army. The president may accede to my wishes, but with everything that’s happening, I cannot promise anything, Jack.” Compton stood and with Alice in tow walked from the room.

Jack Collins was stunned. He looked at the folders and knew that things had changed forever. How would he ever inform Sarah they would be separated for the war that was coming?

Collins gathered up his orders and those of Captain Everett and started to rise when his cell phone chimed. He looked at the patch-through from Europa and his eyes narrowed. He stared at the brief text message that Europa had allowed through.

KANSAS VENTURE PAID OFF JUST AS YOU HOPED. WE HAVE YOUR MAN.

Jack’s lips became a long thin line etched with hatred. He saw the signature at the bottom and knew the information was true. The killer of his sister Lynn had been found. He glanced at the message and glanced at the signature once more.

HENRI.

QONAQKEND, QUBA

AZERBAIJAN

Calling the small enclave of mud brick huts a village was a misleading statement, even by Azerbaijani standards. The five or six inhabitants tended herds and pastures that had long gone to seed a hundred years before the intrusion of the scientific teams from the United Nations. The few old men who remained watched as the invaders to their small mountain home packed up to leave after an exhausting six-week search for something that just wasn’t there. Every piece of modern equipment had been used but no sign of a crash had been detected in the mountainous region of the former Soviet Republic.

Sarah McIntire, barely recognizable as the scarf and hat covered most of her features, handed the last of the soil sample cases to the specialist in the back of the two-and-a-half-ton truck. She heard the Russian army sergeant curse as the weight of the case overbalanced him and he almost fell. Sarah wanted to laugh but was too tired to do so. She pulled the scarf down, shook her head, raised a water bottle to her dry lips, and drank. She looked around the rough terrain. Sometimes she swore she could smell the aroma of the sea in the high pass of the mountain. The Caspian Sea was only fifty-seven miles distant but she knew the smell was more wishful thinking than an actual aroma. She could not wait to get out of Azerbaijan. The saucer crash reported in 1972 just did not happen in this area, if at all. Matchstick had to be wrong about the location.

Most of the sixteen members of her team were made up of an international who’s who of geologists and crash specialists from all over the world, but Sarah still found herself far more comfortable around the Russian soldiers than she did the scientists. She smiled as she thought about it. Maybe it was only because as a soldier she could relate to the Russians wanting to be somewhere, anywhere, other than these godforsaken mountains in the middle of nowhere.

She was approached by a Russian lieutenant, who, like herself, was also a geologist. She thought about just how young a man he was and found it hard to believe the boy was a soldier at all.

“Lieutenant McIntire, we have company approaching from the south.”

Sarah heard the distinctive thump or rotors. She squinted her eyes against the sun, then placed her sunglasses on. She finally spied the chopper as it came in low over the small clearing between two large mountains.

“Thank you, Uri. Tell the scientists and men that we will be leaving within the hour.” She smiled at the young Russian.

The helicopter was a Russian navy bird, a Kamov Ka-27. At one time it was one of the most feared attack helicopters in the world, one that NATO always knew would be a threat in any conflict that would have arisen during the cold war between the two navies. Now it was relegated to scientific duties the Russian Navy conducted in the Caspian Sea. It could hold up to ten passengers and with its twin-boomed silhouette looked amazingly fragile. Sarah hated flying in the thing.

The helicopter slowly settled to the floor of the valley, making the few people still living there come to their doorways and curse the noise as their few goats and sheep ran off to the wilds of the mountain. The twin, counter-rotating rotors settled and the sliding door opened and out stepped a familiar shape. The man was small and dressed like Lawrence of Arabia, which was exactly the look he perpetuated around the international crew of searchers. Commander Jason Ryan, United States Navy, removed his scarf, shook out his bush hat, and smiled at Sarah.

“I find you in the strangest places.” He looked around the ancient village as he slapped away the dust raised by the helicopter. “Qonaqkend isn’t much to look at, is it?”

She laughed, as she never expected to see Ryan all the way out here. The last she knew from her briefing was that the naval aviator was searching for another saucer crash site somewhere in Afghanistan.

“Are you kidding? This is the garden spot of Qonaqkend. The Marriott has yet to begin construction on the resort they envision.”

Ryan removed his gloves and hugged his friend. He pulled away and then looked around again. “It’s still better than Afghanistan.”

“Nothing there either?” Sarah saw the weariness in Jason’s unshaved face.

“No, and I’m beginning to think that little green bastard has all his facts mixed up about reported crash areas of the past. I’m surely tired of this wild-goose chase.”

“Well,” Sarah said as she handed Ryan her water bottle, “I guess the goose chase has ended because we haven’t found a damn thing anywhere in the world. Time to go home, I guess.”

With a sad look Ryan pulled out a sheet of paper from his flight suit and handed it to Sarah. He shook his head without saying anything.

“You’re kidding,” she said as she reluctantly accepted the note. She opened it and read. “Damn, where in the hell is this, Leschenko?”

Ryan smiled as he watched the activity around him.

“The
Leschenko
is not a place, it’s a ship.” He turned and shook his head. “You ground-pounder types should at least know your major naval combatants in the world’s oceans.”

“Okay smart-ass, you can just—”

“It’s a Riga-class frigate of the Caspian Flotilla. She’s Russian and she’s out there.” He pointed toward the distant sea. “And she awaits your lovely face, Lieutenant.”

“What’s happening?” she asked as she folded the orders from Niles Compton and handed them back.

“I haven’t the vaguest notion, my dear. But your new friends here aren’t invited. They are to pack up and go home. It’s only us and your Lieutenant Uri … Uri…” Ryan patted his pockets looking for another note he had written.

“Lieutenant Uri Petrovich.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Well, we’re to report to the
Leschenko
to meet with a Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Krechenko, a Russian Army type.”

“Who in the hell is that?”

“The director wouldn’t say. We are to report to the frigate, where all will be explained.”

Sarah frowned at Ryan, knowing the navy man never settled for surprises. She could tell by that evil smirk of his that he had other information.

“Okay, Commander Dipshit, what did Europa tell you when you queried her on this colonel fella?”

Ryan’s features twisted in mock surprise. “Would I do that? I mean, that’s a criminal offense, getting Europa to search for something without Pete Golding knowing about it.”

“Okay, so you placed a call to Pete and since the good Dr. Golding always kisses your ass, you found something out.”

“Well, yes. But it doesn’t explain anything—in fact, it makes it far more mysterious than before.”

“Jason, come on!” she said, grabbing his coat collar.

“Our Russian lieutenant colonel is the commander of an assault unit operated by the Russian Army, the 106th Guards Division.” Ryan saw the blank look on Sarah’s face. “It’s the Russians’ most elite airborne division. It seems that two thousand of them have been transferred to the Caspian Flotilla. As a matter of coincidence most were transferred to the very same Riga-class frigate where we’re now headed.”

“Oh, shit,” Sarah said.

Ryan winked. “My sentiments exactly, Lieutenant McIntire.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The president entered the Oval office with the thick file that had been sent over from the Event Group that morning. The briefing with the small green asset in Arizona had given them one hell of a pill to swallow and the president knew that pill could choke them all to death.

As he made his way to his large chair behind the Lincoln desk—nodding to acknowledge the five men who had been waiting for him—he paused momentarily by the window, tempted to glance out at the protesters who had grown in number even since that morning. There had been another leak to the press about information pertaining to the expenditures being mounted by the military. The president was close to crying “uncle” and telling the world what it desperately needed to know. He eyed the five men and motioned for them to sit. The faintest of protest calls entered the room from the outside.

“Gentlemen, we have a growing mess on our hands that can no longer be contained.” He opened the folder and scanned the front briefing page. Niles Compton had been direct and to the point with his old college buddy in explaining how important tracking down this possible lead was to the coming fight. He understood what the Overlord plan called for but to go to war over finding the engine they needed was the straw that would break this particular camel’s back.