around. Like insurance.’
Lynn nodded, knowing he was right. All of a sudden, she was extremely glad she had sent the email to Matt. He was always so sure, so strong. And despite her own strengths, she had felt so lost here, stranded and alone against the vast machine of the US government, or whoever it was that was after her.
She felt unfamiliar feelings in her gut, ones she had not felt since – well, since the last time she had been with Matt, she finally admitted to herself. Was it the stress? Or were the feelings real?
As she lay back on her bed and closed her eyes, giving in to the need for sleep, she had no answer.
Later that night, she awoke in a cold sweat, nightmares from the helicopter crash swamping her unconscious, disturbing her inner demons.
And then Matt was there with her, holding her close, whispering in her ear that she would be OK, everything would be all right.
He climbed in next to her, arms around her, and as she felt his strong embrace, she knew that he was right.
Eldridge smiled to himself as the aeroplane shot through the thin air of near-space at over four thousand miles per hour, one hundred thousand feet above the earth.
The Aurora stealth aircraft was a secret military project many thought was still years from completion, although it was in reality already mission-ready. Powered by a radical new pulse detonation wave engine, it could reach speeds once thought impossible. From the airstrip at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to the skies above Santiago would take less than an hour.
The only unfortunate thing, Eldridge reflected as he checked the harness on his chute, was that the aircraft wouldn’t be able to land – the risk of people seeing it was just too great. Instead it would take the lesser risk of slowing down and reducing altitude so that he could parachute out of it once it had reached its destination.
Eldridge was no stranger to parachute drops and was looking forward to liaising with his team. There were six members of the Alpha Brigade already on the ground in Santiago, who had been searching for Lynn Edwards in Punta Arenas since the email had been sent. More of his team would join them later; at the moment they were being recalled from other operations, and tasked to Eldridge in Santiago. They would have to travel by more conventional, slower aircraft, but they would be there by late the next morning.
And then the hunt would begin in earnest.
Jacobs rubbed his chin in contemplation as he relaxed in his private sauna. Sweat dripped from every square inch of his body, pooling on the Scandinavian pine-wood floor, and he breathed in deeply, then exhaled, expanding his chest.
The information had come in unexpectedly and had to be acted on fast, and he was pleased he had managed to arrange for the Aurora to get Eldridge there quickly.
Once there, Eldridge would capture Matt Adams and Lynn Edwards, and arrange for the pair to be delivered covertly to the base in Nevada for interrogation. It would be tidier if Adams and Lynn could just be taken out, executed on the spot, but it was vital that Jacobs knew what had been going on for the past week – who else Lynn had told, who
they
had told, ad infinitum until the situation was entirely contained.
And that was a definite possibility, now that the pair’s location had been determined. Computer power had defined a possible area that Lynn could have reached since the crash, taking into account various factors such as data from ports, airports, train stations and bus depots, credit card use, availability of cash, use of passport, feeds from CCTV units, and basic triangulation algorithms.
This area was then cross-referenced with every available scrap of information about the past lives of Matt Adams and Evelyn Edwards, and further computer searches had finally found a seventeen-year-old credit card bill for two train tickets from Lynn’s family home in Maine down to Mexico. Time-consuming manual labour had at last unearthed
Lynn nodded, knowing he was right. All of a sudden, she was extremely glad she had sent the email to Matt. He was always so sure, so strong. And despite her own strengths, she had felt so lost here, stranded and alone against the vast machine of the US government, or whoever it was that was after her.
She felt unfamiliar feelings in her gut, ones she had not felt since – well, since the last time she had been with Matt, she finally admitted to herself. Was it the stress? Or were the feelings real?
As she lay back on her bed and closed her eyes, giving in to the need for sleep, she had no answer.
Later that night, she awoke in a cold sweat, nightmares from the helicopter crash swamping her unconscious, disturbing her inner demons.
And then Matt was there with her, holding her close, whispering in her ear that she would be OK, everything would be all right.
He climbed in next to her, arms around her, and as she felt his strong embrace, she knew that he was right.
Eldridge smiled to himself as the aeroplane shot through the thin air of near-space at over four thousand miles per hour, one hundred thousand feet above the earth.
The Aurora stealth aircraft was a secret military project many thought was still years from completion, although it was in reality already mission-ready. Powered by a radical new pulse detonation wave engine, it could reach speeds once thought impossible. From the airstrip at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to the skies above Santiago would take less than an hour.
The only unfortunate thing, Eldridge reflected as he checked the harness on his chute, was that the aircraft wouldn’t be able to land – the risk of people seeing it was just too great. Instead it would take the lesser risk of slowing down and reducing altitude so that he could parachute out of it once it had reached its destination.
Eldridge was no stranger to parachute drops and was looking forward to liaising with his team. There were six members of the Alpha Brigade already on the ground in Santiago, who had been searching for Lynn Edwards in Punta Arenas since the email had been sent. More of his team would join them later; at the moment they were being recalled from other operations, and tasked to Eldridge in Santiago. They would have to travel by more conventional, slower aircraft, but they would be there by late the next morning.
And then the hunt would begin in earnest.
Jacobs rubbed his chin in contemplation as he relaxed in his private sauna. Sweat dripped from every square inch of his body, pooling on the Scandinavian pine-wood floor, and he breathed in deeply, then exhaled, expanding his chest.
The information had come in unexpectedly and had to be acted on fast, and he was pleased he had managed to arrange for the Aurora to get Eldridge there quickly.
Once there, Eldridge would capture Matt Adams and Lynn Edwards, and arrange for the pair to be delivered covertly to the base in Nevada for interrogation. It would be tidier if Adams and Lynn could just be taken out, executed on the spot, but it was vital that Jacobs knew what had been going on for the past week – who else Lynn had told, who
they
had told, ad infinitum until the situation was entirely contained.
And that was a definite possibility, now that the pair’s location had been determined. Computer power had defined a possible area that Lynn could have reached since the crash, taking into account various factors such as data from ports, airports, train stations and bus depots, credit card use, availability of cash, use of passport, feeds from CCTV units, and basic triangulation algorithms.
This area was then cross-referenced with every available scrap of information about the past lives of Matt Adams and Evelyn Edwards, and further computer searches had finally found a seventeen-year-old credit card bill for two train tickets from Lynn’s family home in Maine down to Mexico. Time-consuming manual labour had at last unearthed
Similar Books
