Chapter 5 - The Basement and the Bridge
The den of the Whitaker family home smelled of old leather and damp encyclopedias that hadn't been opened since the Reagan administration.
Rowan sat at the heavy oak writing desk where her grandfather used to balance his tax returns. She had the Pelican case open before her, the amber glow of the CRT screen cutting sharp shadows across her cheekbones. Commander Miller stood by the door with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed on her hands.
Stellan was standing right behind her, his large hands resting on the back of her wooden chair, his fingers gripping the carved mahogany so tightly the wood was beginning to groan.
“Can you clear the static?” Stellan asked, his breath warm against the back of her neck.
“The static is fine, Stellan,” Rowan said without looking back. Her fingers were flying across the tactical keyboard with an uncanny, insect-like speed—clack-clack-clack-clack—the mechanical keys sounding like a woodpecker in a dead pine. “The static is just atmospheric noise. What we have to worry about is the routing table. Some idiot in Washington updated the main server router yesterday without checking the legacy bridges in the Mediterranean.”
“Can you bypass it?” Miller asked.
“Of course I can bypass it,” she said, her voice mild, almost bored. “It’s the same routing table they’ve been using since the Bosnian conflict. They just changed the password from ‘Balkans-99’ to ‘Liberty-2026’.”
She hit the enter key with her right index finger.
The high-pitched squeal of static from the speaker grille instantly collapsed into a clean, flat hiss, followed immediately by the unmistakable sound of a human voice breathing heavily through a wet cloth.
“—Control, this is Echo-Two actual. We are boxed in on the southern ridge. Repeat, we are boxed in. We’ve got two litters and twenty rounds of five-five-six left. Where is the bird?”
Stellan leaned down, his mouth inches from the receiver. “Echo-Two, this is Whitaker-Six. Hold your position.”
A brief, sharp silence on the line. Then a voice—younger, strained, cracking with exhaustion—came back through the speaker.
“—Six? Is that—is that Stellan? We thought you were rotated out to stateside leave!”
“I am,” Stellan said, his voice dropping into that cold, absolute authority that had nothing to do with family dinners and everything to do with survival. “And you’re lucky my aunt makes terrible coffee, or I wouldn't have been in the kitchen when the relay dropped. What’s your grid?”
“Grid three-four-niner... wait, the scanner’s jammed, we’ve got radar painted on our position—!”
“Don't look at the scanner,” Rowan said. She hadn't raised her voice. She simply spoke into the small desk microphone with the absolute certainty of a schoolteacher correcting a bad arithmetic problem. “The scanner is picking up a civilian fishing trawler twelve miles offshore that’s running an illegal diesel generator. You’re not painted. You’re just noisy.”
A pause on the line.
“...Who’s that?” the voice asked. “Is that... is that the Switchboard?”
“It’s Whitaker,” Rowan said. “And if you don't shut up and listen to me, I’m going to disconnect your radio and let you explain your position to the Yemeni coast guard. Now, take your secondary dial and turn it two clicks to the left. I’m pushing the extraction coordinates through the Rota wire right now.”
“Clicks... left... got it.”
“Good. Now tell the pilot of the Osprey circling forty miles north that he’s drifting into civilian airspace. If he doesn't drop five hundred feet and turn three degrees south-southeast, he’s going to fly right into a commercial shipping lane.”
Rowan’s fingers moved across the keyboard one last time—click-clack—and she hit the green execution key.
From the speaker came the distant, deep-throated roar of twin turboshaft engines biting into high-altitude air—the sound of an MV-22 Osprey banking hard over the Red Sea, its rotors shifting from helicopter mode to fixed-wing flight as it dove down into the valley to pull three wounded men out of the dirt.
A long, slow breath hissed out of Stellan’s lungs. He straightened up, his hand sliding off the back of the chair and resting on Rowan’s shoulder for a brief, heavy second.
“They’re clear,” Miller said, checking his watch. “Extraction bird is wheels-up. ETA to carrier deck: twenty-two minutes.”
May you like
Rowan reached out and flipped the main toggle switch down. The amber CRT screen flickered once and went dark, leaving only the smell of warm plastic and old dust in the den.
“Good,” she said, picking up her pencil again. “Now, if you gentlemen are quite finished with my morning, I have a crossword puzzle to finish before lunch.”
