Free Dark Zone by Stephen Coonts Page B

inside. Another man stood near the aisle. There were a dozen seats in the plane, but no other passengers. Lia went to the second row and sat down.
    Why did the plane come?
    Where am I going?
    The bag—where is the bag?
    It was in her hand. She opened it and saw that her clothes were in it. She stared at them for a while; when she finally looked up, one of the men was standing over her with a cup of tea.
    You’re Chinese, she reminded herself, pushing her head down in a bow of gratitude. Stay in character.
    As she thought that, she noticed the symbol on the tag of tea, which had been left draped over the side of the cup.
    On the tag was the Chinese character jing: Quiet. Silence.
    A message?
    Lia fingered the tag, then took a sip of the tea, contemplating the bitter taste.

10

    Karr frowned at Stephens when he failed to leave the room with the encrypted phone. “Come on now. Play by the rules,” he told the CIA officer.
    “OK,” said Stephens. “But maybe I’ve bugged the phone.”
    “I wouldn’t put it past you.” He waited until Stephens had left the room, then got up from the chair. “Come on, Charlie.”
    Dean had just sat down in one of the swivel chairs in front of a row of computer terminals on the other side of the room. He seemed reluctant to get up.
    “Jet lag get to you?” Karr asked the older man. “Come on, we’ll walk it off.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Avoiding a half hour of trading put-downs with Stephens,” said Karr.
    “Is he supposed to debrief us?”
    “He’s probably supposed to try,” said Karr. “Don’t worry. He won’t get in trouble if we walk. He was parked here after some problems in Georgia. Basically he was shell-shocked and they go easy on him.”
    Karr led Dean down the hallway to a back set of stairs and then out through a side entrance. When they reached the driveway, Karr threw the guards a salute and strolled out onto the sidewalk. It was past 6:00 p.m. and starting to get dark. He took a moment to get his bearings, then started toward what he thought was the nearest tube, or subway, stop, Bond Street. He’d only taken a few steps when, turning to see if Dean was keeping up, he spotted an empty taxi.
    “Yo, cab!” he yelled, more like a New Yorker than a Londoner. He paused at the window, telling the driver that he wanted to find the best steak and kidney pie in the city. When the driver asked if he was a crazy Yank, Karr replied cheerfully that he was.
    “And a hungry one. I was going to have fish and chips, but I think I need something thick against these ribs. I’m in your hands.”
    Inside the cab, Karr reached to his belt and clicked on the communications system. A woman’s voice, raspy with a cold, reverberated against the bones of his skull.
    “Where have you been?” demanded Sandy Chafetz, their runner back in the Deep Black Art Room. “Why did you turn the com system off?”
    Karr did what he always did when a runner asked a stupid question—he ignored it.
    “Hey, Charlie, you got that room key?” he asked, digging into his pocket for his handheld computer and a small attachment that allowed him to send video directly from the unit. Snapping them together, he took the key from Dean and panned it for the camera.
    “Got it?” he asked Chafetz. Karr liked Chafetz—she was a lot easier on the eyes than Rockman—but she wasn’t quite as sharp as the other runner, nor was she as good at marshaling resources. Karr thought this might be because she was a little too chummy with the “backbenchers”—the analysts and mission specialists assigned to various duties who worked behind her in the Art Room. You had to whip some of those guys to get them to give you information that didn’t need to be translated from geekese.
    “I have it,” she told him. “We’re analyzing it now. What hotel is it?”
    Karr laughed. “Jeez Louise, if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.” He handed the key back to Dean and then leaned forward. “So, driver,