CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At altitude, the big gray and green C5A flew smooth as silk, even filled with two tanks, five armored vehicles, tons of crated cargo and twenty passengers. Two military brats—a seven-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister—were running up the aisles between the seats, trying to play basketball with a tied-up roll of plastic bags. The constant throbbing low-level growl of the gigantic turbo-fan engines had lulled most of the other passengers to sleep.
Farrow had driven William Griffin to Andrews to join the flight from Georgia on its way to Washington state. The FBI had quickly wrangled an Air Mobility Command ticket.
William slumped in his seat. His eyes were heavy-lidded and he was fighting to stay awake, but he had refused coffee as the cargo officer had worked her way aft with a steel pot and a stack of foam cups. He did not want to sharpen his jagged emotions.
The basketball brats were now goggling at the tie-downs and chains that imprisoned two Stryker armored vehicles. William had flown AMC twice as a young boy, on much smaller aircraft. They had spent some time in Thailand and then in the Philippines. His father had been gone for much of the time, leaving them to fend for themselves in spartan base housing at Subic that dated back at least to the 1950s. All he remembered now of those years was his mother hoisting him up into a garishly decorated Jeepney and his father cleaning volcanic ash off their Subaru station wagon.
The cargo officer walked back down the aisle again and asked William if he was FBI. ‘We have a satcom relay for William Griffin,’ she explained, and handed him a wireless headset. ‘SCA Keller.’
‘SAC Keller,’ William corrected with a thin smile. ‘Special Agent in Charge.’
‘Right,’ the officer said, and stood back with her arms folded.
‘William Griffin here.’ He listened. Griff had been pulled out of the wreckage. Life Flight had transported him to Seattle. He was in critical condition, but he was alive.
‘Does my mother know?’ William asked. ‘They were divorced. She doesn’t live with him…she’s moved out of our old house, too.’
‘I’ve notified your mother,’ Keller said. ‘She says she’s not well enough to travel. You’ll have to represent the family.’
‘Thanks.’ William stared straight ahead again. Then he frowned. ‘How could he have survived? How is that even possible?’
‘They haven’t found your father’s partner, Alice Watson,’ Keller said. ‘Two State Patrol bomb techs were crushed in their truck. One’s dead. Another FBI agent, Rebecca Rose, was pulled from the back of the truck with minor injuries. She’s at Harborview with Griff. Luck of the blast. I’m stuck here in Washington until tomorrow. You will check up on your father, attend a courtesy briefing from the investigation team, and then you will immediately report to your probationary assignment, wherever that may be. Your creds are being shipped to my office in Seattle. Watch over your dad for me until I get there, will you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ William said.
He returned the headset to the officer.
The flight droned on.
The C5A was banking. The cargo officer told the kids to stop playing bag-ball and take their seats. ‘Strap in,’ she instructed as she walked along the short aisle. Behind and in front, the armored vehicles and cargo containers groaned under new stresses. It was like flying inside a long church, William thought. Strykers and boxes full of weapons filled almost all the pews.
But there were still the children.
For some reason, thinking of them brought tears to his eyes.
At the very end, William had aced Rough-and-Tough. In the simulated raid he had sent twelve bad guys to ‘God’s courtroom,’ as Farrow had called it—twelve swift and positive kills. Farrow had marked him down for some sloppy moves but had still checked his box.
William had behaved the way he thought his father would have, and that night, he hadn’t joined the others in the boardroom to drink a beer or two, and he hadn’t slept a wink.