Page 77 of Gryphon

“Hol?” Mike asked.

“From my new best buddy in Hungary. The one who offered to shoot Tad for me.”

“He did what?”

They both ignored Tad. Mike hadn’t thought about that. Had Tad been trying to stop Holly from learning what had gone missing for the NATO warehouses?

Mike, at least, had recognized the Delta Force operator for what he was. Why was he suddenly up to his knees in Spec Ops: Holly, Delta, and now Max? The woman who hadn’t introduced herself didn’t fit the bill, but he was ready to believe anything right about now.

Holly held up her phone. “I hate when I’m right.”

Mike waited her out. He hated when she was right too and it took them both a moment to prepare themselves for whatever news she’d just received.

“Army’s missing an AH-6 ULB.”

Mike blinked hard, twice. No magic happened; he had no idea what that might be.

“The unmanned Little Bird helo?” Tad saved him. The Little Bird he knew. It was a small helo that could carry two pilots plus four special operators sitting outside on benches, or two pilots and a hell of a lot of weapons. In that latter version it was dubbed the Killer Egg. But he didn’t know it could operate unmanned.

“Worse,” Holly answered. “It’s a stealth-enhanced version. They didn’t note it was missing on the first pass because it’s kept locked up and out of sight—at least it’s supposed to be. And that’s the good bit.”

“What’s the bad?” Max’s arms bulged with muscle where he clenched them across his chest.

“Navy depot turned up missing a pair of Mark 46 torpedoes to go with it. They’re little, designed for air drop. Three meters long and two-fifty kilos with fifty of that being explosive warhead. They’d do a real nice job of downing a submarine. Plenty nasty against a ship too.”

“Holly, we’re air investigators,” Mike reminded her. “We don’t know crap about ships.” Felt as if his barstool sloshed about under his butt. Torpedoes?

They looked at each other for several seconds, then both turned to Max.

“No, do not be doing of that. I know nothing of ships and boats. In 2008 we had nineteen, total. The Russians, they sink seven and steal all the little ones. I was in South Ossetia, two hundred kilometers from nearest boat. You, from Australia. You are surrounded by water.”

Holly shook her head. “Big place, Australia. I grew up in the deep Outback, mate, a thousand klicks from anything bigger than a puddle. Our one river ran dry over half the year—on the wet years. Did my dance blowing up things, mostly planes and infrastructure.”

“Ha! Knew there was reason I like you.” He pulled up his t-shirt, revealed a jagged scar that crossed from his left belly to his right shoulder. “We captured Russian artillery, which blows up the third time we fired it. Piece of shit.”

“Max is my cousin,” the woman spoke up. “He’s why I want to be a nurse. I saw how hard his recovery was.” Her English was much better, though still heavily inflected in the Eastern European style.

“So, what do we do?”

Mike stared up at the ceiling for a while. He didn’t know quite what he’d been thinking, swept up in yet another of Holly’s leap-first plans. Sure, they would simply fly to Georgia, ask around to find out who had attacked Sweden to foment a war, and ask them to stop. Good thinking there, Mike.

“Where the hell is NATO General Kurbanov when you need him?”

61

Holly froze. That was a hell of a good question.

In fact…

“When did Kurbanov leave the plane? He flew in with us. When did he go?” Then she recalled. “He was off that plane close on Tad’s heels.”

Mike nodded. “I saw him grab his luggage and climb into a Mercedes SUV.”

“How big was that luggage?”

Mike shook his head, and she hadn’t seen it.

“I helped him load it into the cargo bay back in Stockholm,” Tad held up his hands to make a shape in the air two-feet square. “About like so. On the heavy side.”

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