Blue Warrior

Ashley’s improved thirty-five-foot-long A-160X airframe could carry a 2,500-pound payload over 2,200 nautical miles at a speed of up to 165 knots. With a rotor diameter of just six feet, it was perfectly suited to land on flat decks and helipads, where wounded sailors or injured merchant mariners in the Mediterranean Sea could be loaded on — in theory — and transported back to almost any hospital in Europe, even London.

Ashley’s initial field tests were encouraging. She’d managed to fly seven consecutive Hummingbird missions fully loaded with life-sized dummies on missions over five hundred miles without incident. The AFM wanted only a three-hundred-mile mission capability, but Ashley wanted to push the performance envelope as far as possible. The United States Marine Corps had successfully tested the Hummingbird as a supply vehicle over much shorter distances. If human cargo was going to be put at risk, she wanted to be damn sure that the machine was capable of transporting them safely. As a former Navy officer, Ashley knew how important air-sea rescue operations were and she was proud to be pioneering one of the first drone programs that could save sailors’ lives at sea.

Ashley’s short-cropped hair was buffeted by the strong predawn coastal winds, but she didn’t mind. It was going to be another warm day beneath a brilliant blue Maltese sky, and the Hummingbird had just been prepped for its last test mission. If her luck held, she’d be heading back to Texas next week.

“Dr. Ashley?”

Ashley turned around. “Yes?”

“My name is Stella Kang. Ian sent me.”

Aéropostale Station 11

Tamanghasset Province, Southern Algeria

Pearce, Mossa, and the rest of the caravan crested the last of the small dunes. A decrepit air station shimmered in the heat down below them. It looked more like an abandoned Howard Hawks movie set than a failed airport. A two-story-tall cement tower was flanked by two squat buildings, a pump house, and a generator room. A third building, the largest, was the hangar. The three buildings all faced the cracked but serviceable concrete runway and stood on the north side of it. A rusted pulley clutching a shredded halyard tinked against the flagpole on top of the tower, buffeted by a nearly imperceptible breeze. Sun-bleached painted letters on the dusty hangar wall read “Aéropostale.”

“I wonder if he ever flew here,” Pearce said to himself.

“Who?” Early asked.

“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”

“Say again?”

“The writer. You know, The Little Prince? He flew airmail routes for this outfit between the wars.”

“Sorry, buddy. I skipped the Lit courses. But I can tell you all about my Aunt Bertie’s goiter.”

“What happened to this place?” Mann asked.

Mossa pointed to the crumbling pump house. “The French dug a well there, but it was shallow and dried up after the first summer, so they had to leave this place. My father saw his first airplane here, when he was a boy. But that was a long time ago.”

“Mossa gave you an airport, as promised. Where is your plane?” Cella asked.

Pearce checked his watch. “Still another hour. Judy will be here, guaranteed.”

Mann raised a pair of binoculars to his face. “Not a bad location, if you wanted to open up postal routes into central Africa.”

“Drug smugglers fly their planes into here sometimes,” Mossa said.

He ordered Balla and Moctar to scout ahead. They nudged their camels forward down the slope toward the airport, guns up, while the others waited and sweated in the late-morning heat.

* * *

The tower and the hangar were empty of drug runners, but decades of human detritus — crushed food tins, cigarette butts, empty paper oil cans — littered the hangar. The well in the pump room was dry as dust and the pump was long since removed from its bolted perch, as was the generator and any piece of valuable metal that might have been attached to it.

The tower building was no better. The first floor had served as some sort of lobby and office complex. The porcelain and plumbing in the two restrooms had been ripped out, save for the pan in the Turkish toilet, stained and vile.

The second story served as the observation tower. Whatever electronic equipment had been there had long been removed, and anything of value spirited away. The tower windows offered a 360-degree view, but they were wide open to the sky. Small shards of yellowed glass crunched beneath their boots, and the back wall was pocked with bullet holes.

“How’s the arm?” Pearce asked.

Early shrugged. “Never better.”

“Then you’re here on overwatch.” Pearce knew Early was lying, of course. If they were attacked, his friend would be in the safest position.

“You got it, chief.”

“You want one of the RPGs?”

“Nah, I’m fine with this.” Early charged his SCAR-H and flipped the firing-mode switch to automatic. The rifle had no burst mode.

“Stay frosty up here.”