Chapter 44

44

Aboard the Oregon

The Malacca Strait

Raven lay elevated in one of the Oregon 's clinic beds. She wore a pair of surgical shorts that exposed her muscled leg recently re-bandaged by Dr. Huxley. An antibiotic IV drip snaked into her jacked arm. She was as powerfully built as she was beautiful, but at the moment, she was in need of serious recovery.

MacD had gotten her back to the Film City base medical unit thanks to Colonel Piccinini's intervention. The base doctors conducted a full examination, then properly cleaned and sutured the bullet wound. After twenty-four hours of medication, rest, and observation, MacD and Raven boarded the Corporation's Gulfstream. They landed in Kuala Lumpur and were choppered back to the Oregon on the tilt-rotor.

Dr. Huxley insisted on her own thorough examination of the wound's progress and personally handled changing the dressing twice per day. The primary concern at the moment was infection. The prognosis was good.

Huxley was already arranging a physical therapy schedule for Raven as soon as she was able to participate. Until she was ready for PT, Raven was ordered to stay off her feet. She complied under duress, but insisted she was still on the job.

Huxley appreciated her devotion to duty, which was why she allowed the Kosovo after-action report to happen in Raven's recovery room.

"We examined the photos that you and MacD forwarded to us," Murph began. "The serial numbers are all from stocks of weapons we sent to Afghanistan."

"So are the night vision goggles you picked up," Eric added. "We're still trying to crack the encryption on those phones you guys snagged. We might get Vendor confirmation from one of them."

"Still no news on Juan and Linc?" MacD asked.

"Not yet."

"What are we doing to find them?" Raven asked.

"There's not much we can do that we haven't already done. Hopefully we'll catch a break when Murph and Eric crack those phones. Until then, we sit tight, and we wait."

"I can't stand waiting," Raven said. "It's the hardest part of this job."

Murph smiled. "Said the woman with the bullet hole in her leg."

"Do you think the thing jamming their transponders is also jamming Juan's satellite phone?" MacD asked.

"That's the theory," Linda said.

She didn't want to say that what she really feared was that Juan and Linc had both been discovered and were imprisoned.

Or possibly dead.

★

The Island of Sorrows

The Celebes Sea

Thanks to his excellent physical conditioning, the Frenchman recovered quickly from his fall. He had suffered mostly contusions, scrapes, and a mild concussion, which he shrugged off with a dismissive wave of his hand and a couple of Tylenols. Cleared for duty by the team's Turkish medic, the Frenchman eagerly rejoined the squad for the next day's drills—repetitions of the city and jungle exercises. It had gone far better than Plata could have planned.

He believed it was because of the shared bonding experience of rescuing the injured French commando. As a result, the team performed in absolute synchrony, like a murmuration of starlings in the evening sky. Each man was perfectly attuned to his partner, making precise, split-second decisions in a constant ebb and flow of movement over, under, and around any obstacle to reach their targets.

Plata knew their records well. These were dangerous and greedy men with no loyalties to any state, ideology, or religion. But they were soldiers, too, born and bred for war. Instinctively, they had submitted their individual wills to the collective whole for the sake of survival.

Outwardly, they shared the rare affection of men who risked life and limb in mortal combat, their fates intertwined by their mutual dependence upon each other's skill in war. They were a band of cutthroats and brigands, surely, but a brotherhood nonetheless.

For safety's sake, Plata canceled another mine operation. If his employer complained, so be it. He refused to show up to the assignment with less than a full contingent of these remarkable soldiers to accomplish his mission, whatever it might be.

Something told him he'd need every one of them if he hoped to survive.