Cloud Invasion: R-D 2 (R-D #2)(13)

Now, the President worried that she-and they-may have unleashed something that couldn't easily be caught or contained. I had worries, too, and they included hers plus a few of my own. Mine were ultimately worse.

"What do you expect us to do with them, if we find them?" Auggie asked quietly.

"Kill them if you can," she whispered.

*

"We don't have much time; I hope this works," Auggie said as we trooped into a Denny's near the air base. Opal was with us; her luggage was now in one of our borrowed SUVs.

"Cabbage, what are you hungry for?" Rafe rubbed my back.

"Eggs, cheese, fruit," I shrugged. At least the day was fine and sunny. I ignored the hot part.

"Oatmeal, too?" Rafe grinned.

"Maybe. I'm hungry after toting you around," I wrinkled my nose at him.

"I can understand that," he agreed.

A waitress led us to three tables shoved together. We sat down and ordered drinks. An hour later, we were loaded onto another military transport heading to Nellis AFB in Nevada.

*

Notes-Colonel Hunter

Once I was seated on the plane across from Shaw, I opened the classified e-mail sent from the President. No pictures were included-not the important ones, anyway. I only saw photographs of the damage caused during the escape.

"What the hell can do that?" I placed my tablet in Leo Shaw's hands. It only took a moment before his grim gaze met mine.

"If that were Tokyo, I'd have a good guess," he said. "This isn't Tokyo, and I sure hope we're not dealing with something that size."

"Something that size would be hard to lose," I pointed out. "What if it's much smaller and much more difficult to locate?"

"Even scarier," he nodded before leaving his seat and settling on the empty one beside me so he could study the photographs easier. "Do we know if they acted together, or whether one or two got the others out?"

"I'm concerned that somebody else may have gotten them out," I muttered. "I think Cori is worried about the same thing, she just won't say it."

"If Corinne is concerned, then we certainly should be," Shaw said. "She hasn't been wrong yet. Whatever these survivors became, we should have been allowed to help. If there was any way to communicate with them, then Corinne might have reached them. I can't help but think we could have helped. Now, we have orders to kill them."

"That concerns me, too. Besides, the Joint Chiefs need taking down a notch or two over this. Whether the President will see the need for it is questionable."

"I believe Hal's clone may have advised her on this," Shaw jerked his head at the photographs on my tablet. "Therefore, he may have had a good guess as to where they'd be taken. I wonder if Madam President considered that."

"I think the CIA Director and the Joint Chiefs are so smug in their perceived invincibility, they may have advised her against moving these. Obviously, they thought them well-contained."

They had. Steel doors more than a foot thick, which had been ripped from their hinges, attested to that. "They're either on their own and can cause damage that way, or they're in the hands of the enemy, and we've all seen what he's capable of doing," Shaw said.

*

Corinne

"Cabbage, we're here." Rafe squeezed my hand to wake me.

"What? Oh." I'd been far away in my dreams and wasn't particularly pleased about waking in the extremely hot state of Nevada.

I blinked sleepily as I followed Rafe and the others off the plane, while our luggage was taken off the aircraft and loaded into three waiting SUVs.

"Cori, you look half asleep," James came to stand beside me while Auggie and Leo decided who was riding with whom. Rafe, Opal and I ended up with Auggie. Nick and Maye went with Leo; Jeff rode with James, Richard Farrell and Marcus.

I'd seen Marcus eyeing Opal-she was beautiful; an American Indian with long, black hair and dark eyes. I caught her eyeing him a couple of times, too, and I wouldn't want to be Marcus if he attempted to touch her without permission.

Just the thought of it made me smile.

"What?" she turned a lovely smile on me.

"Oh, just thinking about Marcus and how much trouble he might be in if he doesn't keep his hands to himself," I said.

That made her laugh. "You're right," she said. I knew without a doubt that Opal had no yearnings toward Marcus, and hoped he didn't learn the hard way just how dangerous she could be.

"We don't have much information on you," she said. "I saw dossiers on everyone else in the Program, with permission from the President." I could almost hear Auggie and Rafe's ears perking up at Opal's question. "The President said she wouldn't give your information to anyone-that you could tell us or not."

"I almost died in the terrorist attack on the Louvre," I shrugged. "The drug kept me alive."

"You were there?" Her dark eyes widened at the idea that someone actually survived.

"It's a long story," I said. "Do we have water in the car, Auggie?" He'd let Rafe drive and was sitting up front with him.

"Some in the cargo area-they sent a cooler," Auggie said.

"Okay." Unbuckling my seat belt, I reached over the seat to open the cooler. The minute I put my hand on one of the bottles I knew. Don't drink any of the water, I sent to everyone in our party. It's laced with ricin, I added.