rebel groups that contested the area.
“Shoot them!” yelled Li Han. He turned back to the driver. “Tell them in the back to shoot them. Don’t stop! Drive faster. Faster!”
M elissa knew she was pressing it, pulling closer and closer to the truck. But it was alone, and while there were definitely men in the back, none seemed armed or particularly hostile. If she caught up, she could work out a deal.
A poke of white light from the back of the truck told her she’d miscalculated. They did have weapons, and they weren’t in the mood to bargain.
Melissa raised her submachine gun and fired back. The barrel of the MP-5 pushed up from the recoil harder than she’d anticipated, and the shots flew wild over the truck. She tucked the weapon tighter against her side. The road rose, then veered to the right; she shifted her weight, trying not to slow down around the curve. Tilting back, she saw the truck square ahead of her, fat between her handlebars and no more than thirty yards away.
She pressed her finger against the trigger. As she fired, the front of the bike began to turn to her right.
Starting to lose her balance, Melissa let go of the gun and grabbed the handlebar. But it was too late—she went over in a tumble, rolling around in the dust as a hail of bullets from the truck passed overhead.
Chapter 14
Room 4, CIA Headquarters Campus
J onathon Reid sat at the large conference table, staring at the gray wall in front of him. He was alone in the high-tech headquarters and command center.
The top of the wall began to glow blue.
“Open com channel to Ms. Stockard,” he said softly.
The rectangular window appeared in the middle of the wall. It expanded, widening until it covered about a third of the space. The outer portion of the wall darkened from gray to black. The interior window, meanwhile, turned deep blue, then morphed into an image of Breanna Stockard in a secure conference room in Dreamland.
She was alone, and she was frowning.
“Breanna,” said Reid. “Good morning again.”
“Jonathon, what’s really going out there in Africa?”
“I told you everything the director told me.”
“Nuri says there’s a lot more to the project than we’re being told.”
“I don’t doubt he’s right.”
“And?”
Reid said nothing. The Raven program was clearly an assassination mission, and clearly it involved top secret technology that the Agency had developed outside of its normal channels. But Harker hadn’t spelled any of this out; he had merely said the UAV must be recovered. All Reid had were guesses and suppositions, not facts.
“Jonathon, you’re not saying anything.”
“I know, Breanna. I don’t have more facts than I’ve shared.”
“Listen, the only way this is going to work is if we’re completely honest with each other.”
Reid nodded.
“Well?” prompted Breanna.
“Clearly, this is a CIA project that’s highly secret, and they don’t want to tell us any of the details,” he said. “And they haven’t.”
“I got that.”
Breanna and Reid had gotten along fairly well since the program began, despite the vast differences in the institutions they reported to, their backgrounds, and their ages. Cooperation between the military and the CIA was not always ideal in any event, and on a program such as Whiplash and the related MY-PID initiative, there was bound to be even greater conflict. But so far they had largely steered clear of the usual suspicions, let alone the attempts at empire building and turf wars that typically marred joint projects. Partly this was because they had so far kept the operation—and its staffing—to an absolute minimum. But it also had to do with their personal relationships. Reid, much older than Breanna, liked and admired her in an almost fatherly way, and she clearly respected him, often treating him with professional deference.
Not now, though. Right now she was angry with him, believing he was holding back.
“I can only guess at what
Douglas E. Schoen, Melik Kaylan