but his disappearance almost more than Anna could take.
The CIA had continually refused to tell her what exactly had happened to her father. The only official information she’d ever been able to get was that he’d disappeared on a mission.
“I want to know what happened to my father,” she said to Brock.
“I’m going to tell you…on the way.”
“To Miramar?”
“No. Guam.”
Her throat tightened. She drank more water, staring over the bottom of the upturned bottle at Brock. The man never flinched. A real poker face if ever there was one.
She was unbelievably calm. Must be the exhaustion, she thought. Anna finished the bottle. “Why Guam? You said he was in Malaysia?”
“Guam’s the jumping-off point. We’ve got a camp there. What we call an isolation camp, or IC. You’ll be trained there.”
A sardonic smile broke across her face. This whole thing was beginning to reek, and she wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Trained for what?”
“Again, I’ll tell you about it on the way. We don’t have much time.”
Until she knew more, Anna refused to succumb to his time schedule.
“All this robotic dialogue isn’t going to work on me. Just tell me now, or you can get into your unmarked chopper and fly back to wherever you came from.”
“Your father’s situation is grave. We need to get to him. He’s requesting you to help us.”
“Why would he do that when he has the military at his beck and call?”
“We don’t know why, exactly.”
“You mean you won’t tell me why.”
“If I knew the answer, I’d tell you. We don’t know why he’s asking for you. We can only assume it’s because he’s trapped on a burning island and probably thinks you’re the world’s greatest smoke jumper. Personally, I don’t buy it. We have the best jumpers on earth working for us and he knows that.”
Anna hadn’t had decent sleep in weeks. She was tired and dirty. That she was standing in a foot of ash in a burned-out ravine listening to this guy tell her not only that her father was alive, but he was trapped on some burning island and requesting her to jump in and get him out sounded, quite frankly, preposterous.
But if this guy was lying, why make up a lie so outrageous?
Unfortunately, he had the hook in her now and she desperately wanted to know the truth.
“I’ll go to Miramar with you, but that’s as far as I go without a better explanation.”
“All right.”
They both turned to wave at the rescue chopper as it began its assent. Anna watched it slant off into the sky carrying four very grateful people back home and wished she was inside that chopper with them.
Anna followed Brock and the marine lieutenant to the unmarked chopper, its rotors swirling languidly. The pilot turned toward them, the dark sun shield of his face helmet giving him a Star Wars look.
The flight to Miramar was a quick twenty-minute hop and Anna dozed for most of it. They landed and got out next to a C-17 transport plane parked just across from a squadron of jet fighters.
“This way.” Brock motioned toward the C-17 as he walked. She followed close behind.
“Isn’t there an office we can go to?”
“Not enough time. You’ll be briefed on the plane.”
“What if I don’t like the story?”
“You can leave anytime you want.”
She stopped on the tarmac. “Why do I have the feeling if I get on board that plane, I won’t be able to get back off?”
He turned to her and pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “You saved four lives today at the risk of your own. That was no accident. I’ve read your file. When I tell you what’s going on, you won’t even think about getting off that plane.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because there aren’t just four lives at stake here, more like forty thousand lives. Including your father.”
What? She couldn’t think straight. Between the intense fatigue setting in and all the water she’d drunk, her bladder felt as if it was going to explode.
“I just really need a bathroom right now.”
“There’s a state-of-the-art bathroom on the plane.”
She hesitated, looking around for an alternative, but the nearest building must have been a quarter mile away. She made the decision to go for the plane.
There were several men on board the almost barren C-17, hovering around a few laptops. She realized that the seats were all backward. Brock told her that in the event of a crash passenger survivability would be greater.
“Has that been proven or is that some military theory?”
“That’s just what they tell me.”
She ignored him and the men and went straight to where Brock told her the bathroom was located. She found the privacy she was looking for, shut the door and struggled to get her fire suit down.
The state-of-the-art bathroom was a hard, cold stainless-steel ordinary toilet, much worse than she’d find on a commercial airliner. But she didn’t care. When she was finished she leaned against the metal wall, just to rest for a second—and fell instantly asleep.
She was jolted awake by movement.
Anna jumped up, struggled to get her fire suit on, fell back, but caught herself by grabbing hold of the sink.
Then, with her suit still around her ankles, there was a knock on the door. “We’re going to be airborne in a couple minutes. You okay in there?” Brock said.
“Yes, I’m fine. But this wasn’t part of our deal. I don’t want to go—”
“You need to get out here and get a seat belt on.”
Shit!
She pulled her suit up, then caught a look at her face in the tiny aluminum mirror. Somebody’s face anyway. It was more like a clown’s face with all the dirt and ash on it. She quickly washed as the plane rocked her back and forth. She wished she could strip off her grimy clothes and jump into a shower. Then when she was all clean again, she’d towel off and climb between silky cool sheets and sleep for a week. But she knew that vision wouldn’t be happening for a very long time thanks to John Brock.
Her father’s face flashed in her mind. She couldn’t quite believe that he was alive. It made her
