Free Deep Black by Stephen Coonts; Jim Defelice

and stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the club.”
    Not sure if the kid was kidding or not—he seemed to be—Dean took Karr’s hand and shook it quickly, hoping he’d turn back around
     and pay attention to where they were going.
    “We’re one big happy family,” said Karr.
    “Pull-ease,” said Lia.
    “Except for the Princess. She’s a loaner from Delta Force.”
    “I didn’t know they let women in,” said Dean.
    “They don’t. She’s a transvestite.”
    “Hardy-har-har,” said Lia. “A lot’s changed since you were in the service, Charlie Dean. Who was your commanding officer,
     George Washington?”
    “I think it was U. S. Grant.”
    They had come to an intersection, the first Dean had noticed. Karr stopped the truck. “Okay, Princess, you need freshening
     up or what?”
    “No.”
    “Charlie, you got to take a leak?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Then we’ll go straight to Numto.”
    Karr threw the truck back into gear and kicked onto the road, spitting mud and gravel as he did. Dean had learned by now to
     hang on, and managed to keep his balance as Karr steadily and quickly brought the van to cruising speed. Dean couldn’t see
     the speedometer from where he was, but he figured they must be going eighty at least.
    And that was miles per hour, not kilometers.
    “What’s in Numto?” Dean asked.
    “We think a piece of our plane. Actually, it’s about ten miles beyond Numto,” added Karr. His voice had become subtly more
     serious. “We’ll stop in an hour or so and get some food. It will taste like shit, but you’re going to want to eat it. After
     that, you want to try and catch some sleep back there. We work mostly at night, except when we work during the day, so your
     body clock is going to be fried, if it isn’t already. Makes some people grumpy. Unless they were born that way. Oh, one more
     thing. I have a request.”
    “What’s that?”
    Karr turned around and grinned. “Don’t get bumped off, okay? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
    “I’ll do my best,” Dean told him.
    “Good man.”

9
    William Rubens shifted on the ornate seat in the White House Map Room, doing his best not to glance once more at his Rolex.
     This was the reason he hated meeting the president, especially here; overbooked, Jeffrey Marcke ran perpetually behind schedule.
    He had been summoned without explanation, though Rubens suspected it was for an update on the mission to check the Wave Three
     plane’s wreckage. Two senators had made a polite though terse request to the CIA for information on the Russian laser system
     that had been Wave Three’s target; the request had undoubtedly been kicked over to the White House, where the president himself
     would make the final call on what to tell the legislators.
    A mountain of projects awaited Rubens back in Crypto City; Third Wave was the most prominent but hardly the only one. To have
     to kill a half hour sitting across from ancient but nonetheless tacky furniture and shellacked maps did more than waste Rubens’
     time—it offended his sense of aesthetic balance.
    George Hadash entered the room, sweating so badly that he wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Decided to hold a press conference
     on the new Energy Bill,” said the National Security Director. “What a nightmare. Come on.”
    Hadash led Rubens around and out to the south lawn, past a cordon of aides and Secret Service agents, and down to the horseshoe
     pit, which was not far from the tennis court. The president had doffed his coat and tie but was otherwise still dressed in
     his standard work clothes: well-tailored suit and broadcloth shirt with sturdy-soled, rather plain black shoes. The pit dated
     back several presidencies, though it hadn’t gotten much publicity until Marcke remarked in a Time interview soon after taking office that tossing the iron around was as therapeutic as “punching a wall.”
    Which apparently he regarded as a special pleasure.
    “Naturally,” said Marcke