Predator One (14 page)

Colonel Douglas—then a captain—was flying an A10 Thunderbolt, and he’d been in the thick of it. He was returning to refuel when a call came in about a platoon that got trapped deep in the badlands when a Taliban push cut them off.
The soldiers were surrounded, low on ammunition, and taking heavy fire. No other resources were available to rescue them. Douglas’s bird was low on fuel, but he requested permission to make a run to lay down some cover fire for the platoon. Permission was denied, and he went anyway. There’s been a lot of debate in the press about just how badly damaged Douglas’s radio was, or if it was damaged
at all. He claimed that he heard only static and never received the recall order.

Instead, he peeled off and flew back, emptying everything he had: his last missiles, his last rocket, and a whole bunch of machine-gun rounds. He all but popped his canopy to throw his watch and shoes at the Taliban. His assault opened a very small, very narrow window, and in the last few seconds before he reached
the point of no return in terms of fuel, the platoon sergeant radioed that his men were clear.

The Thunderbolt limped home on fumes and set down on a secure strip in the staging area.

There were some who wanted to hang Douglas for insubordination and a list of violations a mile long. There were others, wiser and saner people, who decided that heroism should be rewarded, not discouraged.

Colonel
Douglas flew thirty-one subsequent missions. No one has a better record for doing damage to the enemy while protecting civilian and military lives.

I think the guy’s a frigging saint. If I had a daughter, I’d let her marry his son. Patrick thought so, too. He had friends who’d been part of Operation Anaconda.

So, having Colonel Roger Douglas step out onto the pitcher’s mound to throw out the
first ball? Oh hell yes. We toasted him with fresh cups of beer.

When they announced Douglas, the whole damn stadium went totally batshit crazy. He’s that kind of a guy. Tall and good-looking. Denzel Washington is going to play him in the movie. Huge white smile, and darn if he didn’t look good in his uniform with all those medals and ribbons. The air force color guard was with him, and Beyonc
é
was there to sing the national anthem.

On a day like that, no-damn-body needs to die.

The Goodyear blimp was overhead, and its whale of a shadow moved across the field. Douglas shook hands with the umpire, with the presidents of both ball clubs, with the mayor of Philadelphia, and with James Wolcott Ledger, who was the two-term mayor of Baltimore and its former police commissioner.

My dad.

For me, watching dad shake hands with Douglas was like watching Superman high-five Captain America.

I knew my brother, Sean, and his son would be watching the game on the big-screen TV I’d given them for Christmas. Top and Bunny would be watching, too. Probably most of my guys would be.

As the press swarmed around to take the photos that would lead the news stories around the country, I saw something
out of the corner of my eye.

At first I thought someone had jumped from one of the upper tiers of the stadium on the far side from where I sat. But that wasn’t it. The shape did not plummet but rather soared outward, and for an insane moment my fear of a man falling changed into a delusion that I actually was seeing Superman. It wasn’t that, either.

It was a plane.

As the plane soared over
the tops of the cheering crowd, I could see the long body and fixed wings, the bulbous cockpit, and the two barrels of the engines mounted high on either side of the tail.

It was far too small, though.

A toy plane.

A toy jet.

“Hey,” said Patrick, “look at that.”

The plane swooped down toward the field and then began a high, climbing turn around the mound. As it passed third base, I could
see that it was even smaller than I thought. Maybe forty inches across at the wings, thirty-five in length. Gray. Sleek. You see them in fields or over beaches where crowds of enthusiasts fly them. Perfect replicas of full-sized planes.

I heard people laughing. I heard Rudy laugh. Patrick, too.

Even Colonel Douglas looked up and smiled as a remote-controlled model version of his own A10 Thunderbolt
circled above him.

After a moment of surprise, Douglas began to applaud.

The crowd erupted into thundering applause.

The plane waggled its wings, and the audience laughed.

The plane buzzed the commentators’ skybox. It buzzed both dugouts. It circled completely around Beyonc
é
, who curtsied to it.

Everyone was clapping and laughing.

Except me.

I grabbed Rudy’s arm, and the face he turned
to me was one of the happiest and least stressful I’d seen on him since he was hurt a couple of years ago. It was uncomplicated and a million miles away from the hurt and harm that is our daily lot.

Except I didn’t think we were as far away as we needed to be.

When Rudy saw the look on my face, the joy on his crumbled into dust.

“Cowboy—what’s wrong?”

I pointed at the plane. “That shouldn’t
be here. Not here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Patrick, setting down his beer and getting to his feet.

“Stay here,” I said. “Keep your eyes open. I’ll be right back.”

“Why?” demanded Rudy. “What’s wrong?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, Ghost and I began fighting our way through the crowd. I dug my cell phone out of my pocket, punched in a three-digit speed dial, and immediately got the duty officer
at the Warehouse. Ghost barked at people, and those who didn’t move out of my way got immediately out of his.

“DeeDee, this is Joe,” I yelled and told her to check with the FAA and the baseball commission to see who authorized the use of a UAV at Citizens Bank Park.

Unmanned aerial vehicles were everywhere these days. More and more companies were winning their legal battles with the FAA to use
them to deliver food and products. But they were damn well not licensed to fly inside a packed arena like this.

Maybe I was being paranoid, but my tolerance level for drones had bottomed out back in October.

“DeeDee, get me whoever’s in charge of this field and patch in the head of security here. His name is Tom Rollins. He knows me. I want everyone on the line right now.”

I’d struggled through
the press all the way to the entrance to the inner corridors of the park. The noise was like thunder. The park seats nearly forty-four thousand people, not to mention staff, teams, and the press. Everyone was yelling. Everyone was clapping and whistling.

As I waited for the connection, I could feel my heart pounding. My dad was down on that field. My dad. Sweat popped out all over my face, and
I had to paw it out of my eyes.

Maybe this was a prank. A couple of guys snuck in the pieces of an F10, assembled it on the sly up in the nosebleed seats, and decided to launch it as a tribute to a great man. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were soldiers, or family members of soldiers who had been saved that day. It could have been that. I wanted to sell that to myself.

I tried real hard.

Tom
Rollins came on the phone. Head of security and an ex-cop. A good guy I’d known for years.

“Tom, are you seeing this?” I bellowed.

“Yes, I am,” he growled back. “We’ve got people working their way up to where we think it was launched.”

“You need to clear the field.”

“We can’t do that, Joe. It would cause a panic.”

Ghost stood at the entrance, barking at the buzzing plane, the white hair on
his back standing straight.

“C’mon, Tom, you know this isn’t right.” Through the open mouth of the third base tunnel, I could see the F10 take another spin and then head upward, coming toward home plate, rising toward the control box high overhead.

“Joe—it’s a prank. We’ll find out who did this and let them spend a couple of nights in jail. Then we’ll sue their asses and—”

That was as far as
Rollins got.

It was the last thing he said. The last thing he ever would say.

He was in the control center. I was in a corridor, so I didn’t see the actual blast.

I heard it, though.

I felt it.

And then I heard the screams.

Chapter Twenty-two

Seahawk Place

Del Mar, California

March 29, 12:54
P.M.

Junie Flynn stood on the balcony and looked out at the ocean. It was a deep blue, and it went on and on forever. The sky was flawless. Far out to sea, a flock of seagulls was settling down onto a kelp bed to hunt for the small fish that swam among the flowing plants.

“It’s perfect,” she murmured.

“Yes, it is.”

She turned to see two women come out onto the balcony. One was tall and pretty, with dark hair and pale eyes. Donna Strauss, a longtime friend of Junie’s and her travel companion for this house-hunting trip. Donna was a healer from Pennsylvania.

The other was a newer friend—Doctor Circe O’Tree-Sanchez. She was a lovely woman with a heart-shaped face and curly black hair pulled back into a loose
ponytail. A pair of glasses was perched on the end of her nose. She was shorter than Junie and of a different physical type. Circe was rounder, with more voluptuous curves and olive skin. Junie was tall and lithe, graceful in the way dancers are, with long, wavy blond hair that fell down her back and danced whenever she moved. Both women were beautiful but in such different ways that there was no
tendency to compare them.

One difference, though, seemed to fill the air all around them. Circe was pregnant and close to her time. Donna had joined them on this round of visits to prospective apartments in case someone with medical knowledge was needed. And because she had a good eye for beauty and value.

This was going to be Circe’s first child.

It was an experience Junie ached to share but
never would, thanks to an assassin’s bullet that had done wicked damage to her uterus. The wound had healed; the ache had not.

Even so, Junie wanted to be happy for her friend in the most supportive and uncomplicated way. But it was hard.

It was so hard.

The bullet she’d taken last year had done terrible damage inside her. And though all the surgeries and physical-therapy sessions were done,
there was an ache in her heart that no amount of physical healing could ever remove.

Circe must have caught a flicker of something on Junie’s face because she frowned and touched her arm. “What is it, honey?”

“Nothing,” said Junie, dialing up the wattage of her smile. She knew full well that she had a great smile. She’d used it as both a shield and a distraction her whole life. She could stall
almost any man to a mumbling confusion with it. She could charm her way out of a traffic ticket or make a barking dog begin wagging its tail. Knowing one’s gifts and using them was a quality of controlled self-awareness, and Junie was very aware of who she was and how people were reacting to her. Even smart, perceptive people like Circe could be deflected by that smile. “I guess I’m dealing with
sticker shock,” she lied. “This place is not cheap.”

“Too pricy?” asked Circe, falling in line with the deception.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Donna. “This view is beyond price.”

Junie shrugged. In truth, she could afford the place pretty easily. She had quite a lot of money squirreled away in bonds and stocks, and there was still a big chunk left untouched from her father’s estate. She never
mentioned any of that to Circe. Like most people, Junie didn’t talk about money. Joe didn’t even know how much she had, and he’d never asked.

“No,” said Junie after a moment, “I think this is just right. Joe will love it. I can already see him and Rudy sitting out here with beers, watching the dolphins and talking baseball.”

“Rudy’s been making a slow change from beer to martinis,” said Circe.
“I think he’s trying to convert Joe.”

“Good luck with that. The only thing Joe likes more than beer is coffee. I sometimes think I should wear eau du lager perfume. He’d go wild.”

They laughed about it, and if Junie’s laugh was forced, Donna and Circe didn’t seem to notice. Or, if they noticed, they were too polite to call her on it.

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” asked a fourth woman as she came
out to join them. Slim and wearing stylish business clothes, she had a long fall of dark hair brushed back from her face. Irene McCann was a real-estate agent from the Coldwell Banker office in La Jolla and a longtime friend of Junie’s. This condo was the eighth property she’d shown Junie, and it was clear from her smile that she knew she’d saved the best for last.

Junie leaned on the rail and
looked down. There was a pool and hot tub below, nearly hidden among the green succulents and palm leaves of the sculpted garden.

“It’s really spectacular,” said Donna, and that was no lie. The place was perfect.

Irene smiled, and for a few minutes the four of them stood on the balcony watching the ocean and said nothing.

“Really spectacular,” Junie echoed after a moment. Almost to herself
she said, “I think we can make a life here.”

There was movement down on the bluffs as something broke from the bushes and darted along the footpath.

Half smiling, Circe said, “Is that a coyote?”

The other women looked. The animal was silhouetted against the glare coming off the waves.

“It’s too small,” said Donna. “Might be a fox.”

“Del Mar is a very dog-friendly town,” said Irene. “A lot
of mixed-breed rescue dogs. Could be anything. If you meet the owner, they’ll probably give you the whole story. A lot of them even do DNA tests on their dogs.”

The animal vanished into another patch of brush and did not reappear.

Junie nodded. “Joe’s dog, Ghost, is a big goof. He’s a white shepherd. He’ll be our ambassador of goodwill. He’ll help us make a lot of friends out here.”

Circe took
her hand and squeezed it, and for a moment Junie thought it was a girlfriend thing, a congratulations thing, an encouragement thing on the brink of a new and bold decision.