Brotherhood and Others Read Online Free Page A

up.”
    He held tight to the rack above him and lifted his feet. The bomb doors hissed and slid shut, leaving him in a steel sauna lit only by his headlamp. He grabbed one of the water jugs and drank as much as he could stomach, hearing the B-2’s turbines start and gather power.
    When the bomber began to move, Monarch removed the helmet. He took the mouthpiece and hose connected to the first oxygen tank and fit it over his nose and lips, then got the helmet back on.
    Using the handle given to Monarch back in the Special Forces, the pilot, a Texan, drawled over the speaker in his helmet, “Rogue, you ready to get up close and personal with a little ‘Shock’ and ‘Awe’?”
    â€œRoger,” Monarch said, then sat on the bomb doors and braced himself, the heels of his boots pressed against two nubs of steel on the doors, his back against the rear wall of the bomb bay, holding tight to the empty racks again.
    Given the sheer tonnage of the bombs above him, he was surprised at the power of the B-2’s engines, which roared and hurled the stealth down the Navy airstrip toward the ocean. The force of the acceleration pinned him against the fuselage, and they climbed steeply.
    Two minutes into the climb, Monarch became agitated. His muscles began to throb and his teeth began to ache.
    â€œThis is Rogue, are you pressurizing the bay?” he asked as the heat around Monarch became overwhelming, smothering, swiftly robbing him of consciousness.
    â€œThat’s a negative,” came the Texan’s response as Monarch plunged into darkness. “We are having problems with initiation. Rogue? Rogue, do you copy?”
    *   *   *
    His face blackened with dirt, Robin stood in the alley shadows beside the rear wall of the compound immediately north of the one where the party was taking place. Claudio had pointed out that several stout limbs from the ancient live oak tree in the darkened compound hung over into the shadows behind the revelers. The older boy had also pointed out that the alley wall of the dark compound doglegged slightly, a corner that could be climbed. That would be his route in. How he got out was his own problem.
    Robin felt in his pants pocket for the pocketknife and the three thin picks Claudio had given him as his only tools. Satisfied, he bowed his head and pleaded with the spirit of his late father to watch over him. The teen remembered when he was much younger, perhaps six, and Billy was coaching him as he climbed through a jungle gym at a playground in Germany. His father showed Robin how he could hang from things as well as a monkey if he just allowed his fingers, arms, and shoulders to rotate effectively. With that in mind, Robin began to ascend the alley wall, his fingers and rubber-sole shoes finding niches in the brickwork and mortar that he clung to or pressured against to inch his way ever upward.
    As Claudio had warned, there were glass shards embedded along the top of the wall, except in one small section, up at the top of the jog he now climbed. Claudio had been on the wall three nights before. He’d broken off the shards there and filed them down smooth.
    Still, Robin had to kip his way up onto the ledge with care lest he slice his feet and hands. He perched up there for three short breaths and then somersaulted forward off the wall and into a splayed position. He landed with an oomph in a freshly tilled flowerbed, just as Claudio had said he would.
    It took several seconds for Robin to catch his breath and another several to get to his feet, but then he was running across the interior of the darkened compound, praying that the older boy was right, that there were no dogs patrolling the yard.
    He reached the base of the live oak without incident and saw to his surprise that a children’s swing hung off one of the bigger limbs, one that could not be seen from that high spot in the flowering trees across the alley. Without hesitation,