Day seven...? “You really think we’re going to be here that long?” she asked.
He sighed as he realized he’d walked right into that, and he shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Tash. But I do know this. The oatmeal’s not the prize. Winner gets twenty bucks, paid up after we get back home. Because we will get home. You can count on that. Now, come on. We’ll figure out what our rations are gonna be for the next few days, and then, if we need to extend, we’ll figure out full austerity mode for the next week or so after that. You’ll love this. This is just simple math.”
“I hate math,” Tasha said as she followed him back out into the kitchen.
“No shit, Martian Woman,” he said. “That was what we earthlings call a joke.”
The driving was almost fricking over.
They’d left the highway some time ago, following the state road that wound farther north to Maine through the winter-brown, worn-down New Hampshire mountains. It was so different from the sharply jagged, treeless peaks that seemed to stab upward like serrated knife blades attempting to escape hell through SoCal’s alien-planet desert-scape.
And yeah, Rio was New York City born and raised. He could still remember the first year he’d boarded the bus to attend summer camp, and how, at that time, these New England mountains had seemed alien-planet weird to him, too.
Now they kinda felt like coming home.
The slap of freezing air, however, was not as welcome a sensation.
He and Dave had just finished unhitching their traveling fuel tank and hiding it behind a small mountain of brush, when a call from Admiral Francisco came in.
Reception sucked out here. It was miraculous that the SAT signal had reached them at all, considering they were in a valley with steep hillsides rising around them.
“If we lose the connection, sir,” Dave told the admiral, “we’ll move to a more open area and call you back.”
“Where are you?” Francisco barked.
Rio read off their coordinates, and Dave added, “Not too far outside of town. We’re still about an hour from the site of the burned SUV, another... I’d say two after that from the Ustanzian compound.”
“Fuck.” Francisco was sharply not happy.
Rio met Dave’s eyes, because the admiral rarely used that language. At least not in front of enlisted men.
“I was hoping you’d be closer,” the admiral said.
And Rio suddenly and completely understood what was on the verge of happening here. They were going to be redirected. Now. When they were almost at their destination. Fuck was putting it mildly. “Sir, we are close,” he said. “In fact, I realize now that I read those coordinates wrong—”
“Nice try, Rosetti, but no. We’ve picked up your signal and with it your location,” the admiral said. “You’re significantly closer to the airfield. You need to go there. Now.”
“What’s going on, sir?” Dave asked.
“Prince Tedric took one of the family planes.” The admiral’s voice was grim. “He’s got a pilot license, so he’s flying back in—alone—to try to save Tasha, and instead he’s gonna get himself killed. We need you to be there, waiting for him—to take him to Burlington.”
“That’s all the way over in Vermont,” Dave told Rio, sotto voce as he checked the map.
But the admiral heard him. “It’s closer than Hanscom. He’ll be safe there.”
“Sir, can’t we ask the police or the sheriff’s department—”
“Until we know who’s behind the attack on the ski lodge, we can’t trust the locals.”
Rio took a deep breath and exhaled it, hard. “What’s the prince’s ETA, sir?”
“Unknown.”
“An estimate, then,” Rio asked. “When and from where did he depart?”
“Unknown.” The admiral was apoplectic. “The Ustanzians refuse to share any information that could compromise their location. Our best guess is anywhere from one to five hours.”
Un-fucking-believable. “Sir,” Rio tried, “Patterson and I could split up and—”
“I need both of you protecting the prince,” Francisco shot that idea down, hard and fast.
“Sir, can’t you intercept via air?” Dave asked. “Aren’t all flights still shut down? How did he get permission to—”
“He didn’t. He just got in the plane and left.”
“Fucking shoot him down,” Rio couldn’t stop the words from coming out of his mouth. “Sir.”
“We’re looking to avoid an international incident, Rosetti, not start one,” Admiral Francisco said. “Look, I hate this more than you, but the order is coming from above me. This is top priority. Just go there, wait til he shows, get him to Burlington, and then go find my kid.”