A Question of Intent Read online

  "It doesn't concern you that he's on the board of a company that lost out on its bid to supply the nuclear, biological and chemical defenses for Pegasus?"

  "It did," Westfall confirmed with a nod, "until I decided there was no one more qualified to test that suite than Cody Richardson. If there's a flaw in Peg-asus's NBC defenses, he'll find it. I want him to find it. No way I'm going to send our troops into a situation where they might face chemical or biological agents unless I know the vehicle conveying the men will protect them."

  "How can you be sure Dr. Richardson won't manufacture a flaw to invalidate the system?"

  The captain's steel-gray gaze lasered into her. "Sabotage the project so Ditech will get the contract, you mean?"

  Jill didn't flinch. The S-word sounded flat-out ugly said aloud, but it had to be voiced.

  "Yes, sir, that's what I mean."

  "I can't be sure," Westfall admitted. "Any more than I can be sure you won't go berserk and crash your Humvee into Pegasus when we take him out for his first field test tomorrow."

  That possibility hadn't occurred to Jill, nor did the captain appear to take it all that seriously.

  "Since I put the doc through the same grilling I did you before I approved either of you for this project, I've got to go with my gut. Richardson isn't going to sabotage the project, and you aren't going to crash your Hummer."

  "Let's hope not," she muttered, considerably reassured by his prior knowledge of Cody's connection to Ditech. For the first time since their confrontation in the dining hall yesterday, she let herself relax.

  Kate's built-in antenna picked up the subtle change in her roommate almost the moment Jill and the captain came inside and rejoined the others. She arched a brow, but refrained from comment.

  Cody, on the other hand, appeared more tense than he had outside. He stood apart from the group, a cell phone glued to his ear. Brow furrowed, he nodded once before snapping the phone shut and making his way over to Captain Westfall.

  "That was the lab at Rutland Hospital. They've isolated the bug that attacked Ed Santos. It appears to be a new strain of flavivirus. "

  "And that is?"

  "A genus of pathogens that include the yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, and the hepatitis C virus. Kirtland is going to send the samples over to Decker Research Lab there in Albuquerque to identify the actual serological characteristics. Luckily, Decker is right next to the base. It's one of the few labs in the country that possesses the reagents from human volunteer studies required tor a specific diagnosis."

  "How serious is this bug?"

  "It depends on its serology. The Center for Disease Control maintains a database that lists more than five hundred registered viruses. Some, like yellow fever and dengue, can lead to death in severe cases. Others barely raise a rash or a sniffle."

  "Well, we already know this strain packs more of a wallop than that."

  "Yes, we do. What puzzles me is where Ed picked it up. Hepatitis C is usually spread through contaminated body fluids, but other members of the flavi-virus genus are usually transmitted by arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks. This dry, desert air breeds damn few of those."

  "Maybe Ed was infected before he arrived on-site."

  "Could be, although most symptoms usually manifest themselves within a few days of contact. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to have my folks spray the compound and test our water and food supplies for possible contamination."

  "Sounds good, Doc Let me know if you find anything that concerns you."

  "Will do."

  The impromptu party broke up not long after Cody's departure. Jill needed to make a final check with Rattler Control before hitting the sack but helped Kate and Cari clean up first.

  "So what's happening with you and the doc?" the irrepressible weather officer asked as she dumped empty cans into the trash. "I got the distinct impression you two have cooled your jets a bit."

  "There are no jets to cool."

  "Right. And I suppose that kiss you conveniently neglected to tell us about never happened."

  Jill turned to stare at her. "How do you know about that?"

  "I told you, sweetie, I have my ways."

  "The woman's a walking satellite dish," Cari put in drily.

  Kate accepted the backhanded compliment with a little bow. "Back to you and the doc. You aren't going to tell us you didn't lie awake thinking about that smooch?"

  "Nope, I'm not going to tell you that. Or anything else concerning the doc and me."

  Kate made a face, but accepted the rebuff with her sunny good nature.

  Jill went back to work scooping up crumbs. She wouldn't admit it, but Kate was right. She hadn't been able to get that darned kiss out of her mind. Mostly because she kept trying to decide why she'd derived such pleasure from the experience. Cody Richardson wasn't her type. He was too big, too sure of himself, the sort who usually raised her instinctive hackles.

  Maybe that was it, Jill thought as she crushed the tortilla chip bag and tossed it into the trash. Richardson kept throwing her off balance, first by their encounter out in the desert, then by ignoring the pro-ceed-at-your-own-risk signs she put out whenever a man got too close. Maybe she was confusing her cop's instincts with a prickly female intuition that Cody represented trouble.

  And maybe she should just put the man out of her mind and concentrate on the mission! The interior of their quarters restored to some semblance of order, Jill went back out into the stormy night.

  As Kate had predicted, the day of Pegasus's first field test dawned impossibly clear, as only mornings in the New Mexico desert can. The entire test cadre had converged on the hangar by eight. By nine, Pegasus had emerged from his stall into the dazzling sunshine and was ready to run. His wings remained folded back to form a narrow delta, the propellers tucked out of sight. With his tubular body, bubble canopy and upright tail fins, he looked more like a rocket on wheels than a racehorse.

  Jill and her troops would accompany Pegasus on his first run, but not in ATVs. With a supersecret, multimillion-dollar prototype to protect, she and her crews were going out fully armed.

  Sergeant Greg Barns was at the wheel of Jill's Hummer. Fully recovered from his tussle with the rattler, he positioned their Humvee behind and to the left of Pegasus. The second security crew angled their Hummer to the right. Both armored vehicles bristled with a full complement of arms. One was equipped with a roof-mounted TOW missile launcher on a rotating circular ring, giving it a 360-degree field of fire. The other had a 50-caliber machine gun. A similarly armed chopper would provide coverage from the sky.

  Heat rose from Pegasus's white-painted composite shell in shimmering waves when Major Russ McIver and Bill Thompson climbed through the side hatch. They both wore special fire-retardant flight suits in gray-green Nomex. An embroidered American flag patch was Velcroed to each of their left shoulders, the Pegasus test patch to the right. After a systems check and engine run-up, Mac gave a thumbs-up to the ground crew. The crew pulled the chocks, Mac throttled forward, and Pegasus began to roll.

  The Hummers rolled right along with it. For the first few moments, anyway. Then Pegasus kicked up his heels. With a whoosh that stirred a cloud of sand, he streaked off across the desert.

  "Whooee!" Sergeant Barnes stomped down on the accelerator. "Look at that baby go!"

  Clenching her teeth against the bone-rattling ride, Jill divided her attention between the vehicle ahead, continual sweeps of the landscape all around and the special test monitors installed on the Hummer's dash. The monitors tracked Pegasus' s speed, direction, radar profile, heat signature and exhaust emissions, among other variables. Larger, more precise monitors provided the same data to the cadre following the run back at test ops.

  With fierce concentration, Jill listened through headphones to the communications between Mac and the test engineers. Dr. Santos was still too weak to man the controls, but his backup was covering well.

  "We have you at forty percent forward thr
ust, Pegasus."

  Mac's reply crackled through the headset. "Confirming forty percent."

  Jill and Greg Barnes exchanged glances. He had his boot flat against the floorboards, and they could barely keep up, yet Pegasus hadn't even broken into a sweat.

  "Prepare to dispense detection countermeasures."

  "Roger, Control."

  Mac and his copilot ran through a short checklist and signaled they were ready to dispense the high-tech chaff.

  "Proceed, Pegasus."

  Eyes narrowed, Jill strained against her seat harness and kept her gaze locked on the swiftly moving vehicle some hundred yards ahead. Suddenly it disappeared, lost in a cloud of minute silvery particles that caught the sun's glare and threw it back in blinding flashes of light. According to the specifications, the tiny particles could suck light from the atmosphere even on rainy, overcast days and produce almost the same effect.

  "Damn," Barnes muttered. "I can't see a thing."

  Jill's glance whipped to the monitors. They showed nothing but green fuzz. Her jaw tight, she keyed her mike.

  "Test control, this is Rattler One."

  "Go ahead, Rattler One."

  "We've lost visual contact and our screens are blank. We're terminating chase immediately to avoid possible collision with the test vehicle."

  "Confirming termination, Rattler One. Pegasus, conclude countermeasures test and return to base."

  Jill didn't draw in a full breath until the blinding glare dispersed and she had Pegasus in her sights again. There he sat, a good half mile away. Heat shimmered off his hide and she could swear the damned thing wore a smug, just-try-and-catch-me grin.

  The entire test cadre was waiting inside the hangar when Pegasus ambled back into his stall. The engineers were jubilant. Kate Hargrave flashed her most brilliant smile. Captain Westfall gave Mac and Bill Thompson a grin and a hearty thump on the back. Even quiet, reserved Cari Dunn treated the marine to a nod of approval.

  Only Cody Richardson seemed to be missing. Jill removed her helmet, swiped back her sweaty bangs and searched the hangar. Climbing out of the Hummer, she made her way to Cari's side.

  "Where's the doc?"

  The Coast Guard officer threw a look around her. "Beats me. He was in the ops center with the rest of us for the test run."

  Kate joined them and, of course, supplied the answer. "He went back to the clinic to check on Ed Santos."

  Jill nodded and put the doc out of her mind while Captain Westfall conducted the initial post-run debrief. A more detailed review would follow after the test engineers analyzed the data they'd collected.

  The session concluded, she and her troops left the hangar and headed for Rattler Control, where Jill conducted her own debrief. Her security forces were both elated by Pegasus's success and sobered by the realization that they'd have to work like hell to keep up with him in the ensuing tests.

  "Particularly when he takes to the mountains," Jill emphasized, circling that run on the test schedule. The mountain ran was still some three days off, but the prospect of scrabbling after Pegasus when he charged up the steep, craggy slopes had her rethinking the deployment of his escorts.

  She'd have to position teams halfway up the mountain in advance, have them pick up the chase if Pegasus left the crews tailing him in the dust.

  "We'll put Rattler Four here," she decided, marking the spot on the map. "Rattler Five a little higher up."

  "We might want another team at eight thousand feet," her top sergeant suggested, studying the topographical map. "It's outside the test parameters, but after what we saw today, the engineers might just give Pegasus his head and see how high he can climb."

  Jill concurred, so preoccupied with revising the security annex to the test plan that it was some hours before she realized Cody Richardson wasn't anywhere on-site.

  Chapter 7

  Jill first learned Cody had left the site from one of the gate guards coming off shift His activity report included the information that Dr Richardson had passed through his checkpoint at 11 22 this morning.

  "He left the compound?"

  "Affirmative, ma'am. He passed through the second checkpoint a half hour after clearing mine."

  "Did he indicate his destination?"

  "Not to me."

  Frowning, she stuck her head inside the control room, "I need a lock on Dr Richardson's ID."

  The MP manning the desk pulled up an electronic map of New Mexico and entered the code for Cody's ID Assuming the doc had the holographic card on him, the sensor embedded in the thin plastic would pinpoint his exact location. If he didn't have the ID on him, Jill thought grimly, he'd have some serious explaining to do when he returned from wherever he'd gone. Her muscles cording, she waited while the MP zeroed in on a blinking red dot traveling north on I-25.

  "I read him just about fifty miles south of Albuquerque, Major."

  "Thanks."

  Jill raised Captain Westfall on her communicator. The tension seeped out of her when the CO confirmed he'd authorized the doc's trip to Albuquerque. Evidently the researchers at Decker Labs were having difficulty identifying the virus that attacked Ed Santos. It didn't match any of the currently known strains. Since Pegasus would remain in his stall for the next few days while the test engineers pored over the data from the first run, Doc Richardson had requested permission to drive up to Albuquerque and offer his expertise to the researchers at the lab.

  "I think you should make a quick trip up there, as well," the captain added. "I'm told the security forces at Rutland have specially modified their Hummers to give them more speed in this type of terrain. You might want to take a look at what they've done."

  After today's performance, there was no question the chase vehicles could use more acceleration.

  !

  "You can chopper up and back," the captain said. "Or drive back with the doc when he returns tomorrow."

  "I don't think I'll need that long to check out the mods."

  "Take the time, Major Have dinner at a good restaurant. Hit the mall. You haven't been off-site since you arrived with the advance contingent three weeks ago. A change of scene will do you good."

  Jill had to admit the prospect of chowing down someplace other than the dining hall held definite appeal. As good as the cooks here were, she'd kill for a plateful of spicy New Mexican green-chili cheese enchiladas or a big, greasy hamburger.

  "You can hook up with Doc Richardson at the Kirtland Inn and arrange transportation back," West-fall said. "He indicated he's staying there tonight I'll talk with you after you return, Major."

  "Yes, sir."

  A call to flight ops indicated they could have the chopper assigned to the site ready to fly by the time she arrived at the helo pad. She made another call, this one to Kirtland. The 377th Security Force Squadron's operations officer agreed to meet her at the flight line and give her a hands-on demo of his unit's equipment.

  Hurriedly she went over the schedule for the next twenty-four hours with her flight chiefs, deputized her top sergeant to stand in for her at any post-test meetings and threw a few things in an overnight bag.

  Forty minutes later, the chopper touched down at Kirtland. The sprawling base sat in the shadow of the Sandia Mountains. It was home to a number of organizations, including the Air Force Inspection Agency, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Nuclear Weapons Directorate tucked away on the far side of the base. Jill knew the security screens protecting the nuclear site were every bit as elaborate as those protecting the Pegasus site.

  With a word of thanks to the crew for a smooth ride, she grabbed her bag and jumped out. Ducking under the still-whirling rotor blades, she darted across the tarmac to the vehicle waiting beside Base Operations. All around her the busy flight line bristled with the aircraft assigned to the 58th Special Operations Wing—specially configured Blackhawk helicopters, the old, reliable H-1N Huey helos like the one Jill arrived in, fixed-wing C-130 Combat Talon aircraft, and the tilt-engine CV-22 Osprey.

 
Jill gave the Osprey a particularly intense onceover. The newest aircraft in the military inventory, it combined a helicopter's hover capability with the speed and long distance of fixed-wing flight. Pegasus took that unique technology and added the ability to operate on the surface of the earth and under the sea, as well. If the test vehicle proved itself, and the program went into production, several dozen Pegasus clones would no doubt sit on this same runway in the not too distant future. If it didn't—

  Jill cut that thought off at the pass. She wasn't going to think about the millions of dollars in research, development and test that would be lost. Not right now, anyway.

  Squinting in the bright glare of the late-afternoon sun, she greeted the major whose folks had responsibility for security and transport of the supersecret weapons developed, tested and stored at Kirtland.

  "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice."

  "No problem." He flashed her a grin from behind a pair of aviator sunglasses. "We love to strut our stuff. Hop in and I'll give you the twenty-five-cent tour."

  By the time the major pulled into the 377th Security Force Squadron's motor-pool area an hour later, Jill was practically salivating. She'd equipped her detachment with the latest, state-of-the-art equipment, but the sheer size and lethalness of this unit would turn any cop green with envy.

  She spent another hour with the wizards who'd modified the 377th's vehicles. She left with a computer printout of the tech order and a promise of immediate delivery of enough parts and equipment to take care of her small fleet.

  The slowly sinking sun was painting the mountains to the east a watermelon pink when the major dropped her off at the Kirtland Inn. The spectacular view riveted Jill for a few moments, until a glimpse of a midnight-blue SUV a few parking spaces over claimed her attention. Her gaze on the Lincoln, Jill started for the office and walked smack into the khaki-clad figure just exiting the building.

  Cody reached out, steadying her with a firm hand on her arm. Surprise flitted across his face before his black brows slashed down into a frown. "What is this, Major? Are you keeping me under surveillance?"