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was
motionless, the gurney chained to the floor at the back of the cabin.
    “How’d the transfer go?”
    Eric looked up from the paperwork. “Shouldn’t you
be flying the plane?”
    “Autopilot,” Nancy said. “With the updated
avionics, the plane can actually land itself. Or, fly remotely like a UAV.”
    He nodded. “One of the agents recognized me from
Afghanistan.”
    “Don’t worry,” Nancy said. “It’s bound to happen.
You’re going to come across people you worked with. Your cover is airtight. I
saw to it myself.”
    He grunted, then waved his hand at the files. “I
can’t believe we’re doing this.”
    “He’s a psycho and a traitor,” she said, her voice
rising. “We’re going to recycle this piece of trash and make him useful.”
    He shook his head. “It’s not that. I’m not saying
he shouldn’t pay for his crimes, but this is inhumane. It would be better to
kill him.”
    “This is inhumane, but a bullet in the brain is
better? Don’t overthink it, just do your job.”
    He glared at her. “I understand my job.”
    She glared back. “You better.”
    He squinted, frowning. “What’s your story, anyway?
I haven’t found a jacket for you.”
    “You won’t, either,” she said. “I don’t have an
official capacity. Unofficially, I speak for the Old Man when he’s not around.
You’ve got as much authority over me as you can make stick. Everybody else has
to follow your orders. Me, I’ll go along with it. Until I don’t.”
    “That could be problematic.”
    Her icy blue eyes stared back. “Yeah, but it’s not
your problem. There’s only one person I answer to and that’s the Old Man.
Because, unlike everybody else, he really is my old man.”
    His jaw dropped. “He’s your father? Your name is
Nancy Smith?”
    “Yes. Now that you have some idea of who the Old
Man is, you can imagine my childhood. He grew up in hard times, he’d seen a
lot. He wanted me to be prepared.”
    “Everybody has stories about their childhood.”
    “Not like mine. Stay out of my way and we’ll get
along just fine.”
    “So, this is the speech?”
    She raised an eyebrow. “What speech?”
    “Yours is bigger than mine speech.”
    She laughed, and the smile made it to her eyes.
    It finally hit him. She pinged his radar.
    It was eating away at him since they first met.
She looked through him, not at him. The thousand yard stare, they called it.
The eyes stared off, not focusing, giving a better view of an opponent’s hands
and feet. She had the stare. He knew what it looked like because a lot of men
in Delta had the stare.
    He had it himself.
    Her smiled faded. “I like you, Wise. Let’s keep it
that way. Don’t get on my bad side and we’ll get along fine.” She stood and
headed for the cockpit. “We’ll be landing in an hour.”
    Eric watched her go, and this time noticed the
bulge of the handgun in the side of her skirt. He turned to look at the
unconscious form of John Frist. “Between me and you,” he said to the
unconscious man, “I really don’t think I want to get on her bad side.”
    * * *
    Groom Lake, Nevada
     
    It was near dusk when they landed
and taxied off the runway. A truck and Humvee waited for them. Eric stepped off
the plane and gasped as the heat took his breath away. The dry air sapped the
moisture from his lips and tongue, and he struggled to spit, the dust tickling
the back of his throat. He knew that soon the desert would cool, quickly
radiating its heat, but for now it was a furnace.
    A pair of soldiers helped unload Frist and place
him in the back of the truck. Nancy motioned for Eric to get in the passenger
seat of the Humvee, and she drove while the soldiers followed in the truck.
    From the files, Eric knew that much of the history
of Area 51 was deliberately crafted misinformation. The real base was buried
deep within the mountains. They roared toward the mountain following a road
invisible to the eye, but one that Nancy managed to negotiate. She glanced