Sleeping Giants (Themis Files #1)(5)

—I did not. May I ask what happened?

—I have a detached retina. It doesn’t hurt, but my vision is affected. I’m scheduled for surgery tomorrow. When I asked, they said there’s a reasonable chance I might be able to fly again…which sounds suspiciously like “no” to me.

What did you say your name was again?

—I have not.

—Then why don’t you? For the record…

—There are many reasons why, some more relevant than others. From your perspective, it should suffice to know that you would never be allowed to leave this room alive if I did.

—You could have just said no. Do you really think threatening me will get you anywhere?

—I sincerely apologize if you felt threatened in any way, Chief Resnik. It was never my intention to make you uncomfortable. I simply did not want you to think I was being coy.

—So you were concerned for my safety? How chivalrous. Why am I here?

—You are here to talk about what happened in Turkey.

—Nothing happened in Turkey. Nothing interesting, anyway.

—I will be the judge of that. You know that my clearance is several levels above yours, so start at the beginning.

—I’m not even sure what that means.

—How did you end up in Turkey?

—I was called on NATO duty. I arrived early in the morning and got some sleep. Mission briefing was at 16:00. They introduced me to my second, CW Mitchell, and we went over the mission. We would fly out at 02:00 on a modified stealth UH-60 out of Adana. We were to enter Syrian airspace at very low altitude and collect air samples about twelve miles south of the border, near Ar Raqqah.

—You said you had never met your second-in-command. It is my understanding that the Army likes to keep its crews together. It seems odd for them to break up a team just before a dangerous mission and have you fly with someone you barely know. Why not have your usual co-pilot come with you?

—He was reassigned.

—Why is that?

—You’d have to ask him.

—I did. Would it surprise you to know he asked for any post as long as it was with another pilot? I believe the words he used to describe you were: obdurate, volatile, and irascible. He has quite the vocabulary.

—He plays a lot of Scrabble.

—Is that why you did not get along?

—I never had a problem with him.

—That seems somewhat beside the point. You do not often see people willing to jeopardize their military career simply to avoid having to spend time with another person.

—We disagreed over a lot of things, but I never let it get in the way of our flying. I can’t help it if he wasn’t able to do the same.

—So it is not your fault if people have a problem with you. That is just who you are.

—Something like that. Look, you want me to say I’m not the easiest person to get along with? I’ll give you that. But somehow, I don’t think we’re here to discuss my charming personality. You want to know how I crashed a twenty-million-dollar helicopter into the middle of a pistachio farm. Is that it?

—We can start with that. You said you were supposed to collect air samples. Do you know why?

—NATO believes that Syria has been pursuing a nuclear weapons program for years and they want to put a stop to it. Israel bombed a suspected nuclear reactor back in 2007, but NATO doesn’t want to do anything that drastic on a whim.

—They would prefer to have some hard evidence before they take military action.

—They wanna catch them with their pants down. A source in the Syrian Military Intelligence told the US that underground testing was going on near Ar Raqqah, and since Syria is refusing to allow inspectors to visit suspected nuclear sites, we were to use a more covert approach.

—Did this surreptitious inspection involve anything other than collecting air samples?

—No. We were to fly in and out. They brought in some pretty big equipment with us to detect signs of nuclear activity from the air samples we’d bring back. We left Incirlik Air Base at 02:00 as planned. We went east along the border for about an hour and turned south into Syria. We flew nap-of-the-earth for about twelve minutes with an AGL of eighty feet. We reached the designated coordinates around 03:15, collected air samples, and headed back the way we came.

—Were you nervous?

—You’re funny. I get nervous if I forget to pay my phone bill. This is a little different. You’re ground-hugging at 160 miles an hour over possibly hostile territory, at night, with night-vision goggles. If that doesn’t get your heart pumping, I don’t know what will. So yeah, we were both on edge. You can’t see anywhere but straight ahead with the NVGs on. It feels like flying through a narrow green-lit tunnel at an incredible speed.

—Did everything go as planned?

—Like clockwork. We were back in Turkish airspace in less than twenty-five minutes. I climbed up to eight hundred feet while we put some distance between us and the border. We were approaching Harran when we noticed some light directly below us. It wasn’t city lights. We were over farmland, and the color wasn’t right. Then out of nowhere, the engine stopped, and the entire cockpit went dark.

We could hear the rotors slowing down, then nothing. There was this turquoise glow emanating from the fields below. Countless small bush-like trees planted thirty feet apart with nothing but dirt in between. We just sat there, staring. It was surreal, very…peaceful. Then we dropped like a rock.