The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

out sounded like him, though slower, and with the ghost of a drawl: “November, hotel, one, four, eight, juliet, echo, oscar. This is a priority card from Trap Door.”
    The man on the other end took a quick breath, then spoke evenly. “Trap Door, I agree with authentication. Go ahead.”
    Travis felt his mouth open to speak again—but stopped. He turned his ear to the open bay door behind him.
    From far away came the sound of rotors. At the same time he felt the sphere in his hand tense somehow; the light flickered like a nervous twitch.
    Then he was drawn back to the phone, and spoke rapidly: “Relay the following EAM to USS Maryland. By order of the president of the United States and the chief of staff, Navy, set condition four-alpha, immediate launch of two Trident ICBMs against Target Package 3261, Nanjing ballistic missile complex, East China, Jiangsu Province.”
    The man on the phone didn’t reply right away, and Travis said sharply, “Commander.”
    “Yes, sir.” Another pause, not even a second, and the man said: “In accordance with protocols governing the release of strategic weapons, the senior controller will ask you for the president’s and the Navy chief’s nuclear launch codes. Those are the final authorizations required.”
    “Put him on,” Travis said.
    “Go go go,” Emily whispered in his mind. The light was strobing so quickly now it was almost smooth again, like a bad fluorescent bulb.
    The rotors were getting loud; the echoes off the valley walls made it hard to guess the distance.
    A soft-spoken man came on the line. “The president’s code first, please.”
    “Six, one, nine, three, three, three, two, eight.”
    “Now the Navy chief of staff’s.”
    “Four, nine, six, eight, five—”
    Suddenly the chopper sounded much closer; it must have just passed the last ridge and entered the airspace over the valley.
    “Sir?” the soft-spoken man said.
    “I’m sorry,” Travis said. “Starting over, four, nine, six, eight, five, seven, seven, one.”
    “Thank you, sir, EAM is authorized and will transmit about thirty seconds from right—”
    The man’s last word was cut off by a shriek of metal as autofire ripped through the Black Hawk. Instinct overrode Travis’s euphoria and he threw himself clear, toward the back of the troop bay. His wrist collided with the rear bench, and the Whisper broke from his grip. It hit the floor and rolled to the back corner.
    Travis cried out, not from pain but from a swell of anguish. Losing hold of it—her, losing hold of her—felt like losing a loved one. Like losing his only loved one.
    The chopper passed overhead with a turbine scream and a downrush of air that rocked the Black Hawk. The gunfire stopped and Travis saw the aircraft arc out over the valley, making a wide loop to come back.
    He got up on his knees and reached for the Whisper—
    Three inches shy, he stopped.
    Clarity filtered back in, like blood to a deprived limb. He withdrew his hand as if from a serpent. What had he done? What had he fucking done?
    A voice, tinny and just audible, issued from the phone unit behind him. “Sir? Are you still on?”
    The preceding minutes came back to him now, laid bare to his logic. Outside, the helicopter had completed its semicircle and was returning, ten seconds out.
    “Sir?”
    Travis spun, dove for the handset and screamed into it, “Call it off! It’s bullshit! Call it off!”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Call someone and check on it, it’s all bullshit!”
    “Who the fuck is this?”
    Through the window he saw the gunner’s muzzle flash overhead. He vaulted backward and fell from the bay door into the dirt, as the Black Hawk was shredded by a much more sustained burst than before. He got to his feet and—catching a last glimpse of blue light under the bench seat—sprinted into the trees.
    He was forty yards away when he realized the helicopter wasn’t following. The thunder of its rotors remained constant; it had gone into a hover, and now the turbine pitch dropped. Travis reached a grove dense enough to provide a screen and stopped. Looking back, he saw the chopper descend and set down beside the Black Hawk.
    The men inside had the look of the hostiles who’d tortured Paige. One of them, wearing heavy gloves that went to his elbows, jumped from the chopper and ran to the Black Hawk’s bay door, his face momentarily bathed in the Whisper’s glow. He reached in and took hold of the sphere, and despite his protection, he