The wind rattled against the sheet-metal walls of the small airplane hangar. It got so loud that Tucker had to move their chairs next to the Learjet in the middle of the hangar. There, at least, they could talk again. But when the opportunity finally came, they sat more quietly than before. The silence, louder than before. In that silence he could still feel her energy, a vibration tingling the hairs on his forearms. It was a familiar yet unsettling energy—one he never thought he’d feel again.

Could he say something now? Something to break the silence? But his throat was slowly closing up and choking off whatever he’d thought of asking his long-lost friend.

Could he just look at her to prove to himself that it was real, that she was real, and that they were both here in an Angolan hangar?

Tucker instead fixed his gaze straight ahead through the large open entrance, through a swirling cloud of dust to the dim orange glow of the air-control tower. It was the worst dust storm he’d seen, and he’d seen plenty in Iraq. Now and then, the wind would catch the side of the entrance and howl there like some agonized beast. Where there was sound, there would also be sand, a small clump of it building up at the entrance with the latest gust. It swept inward with a shift of wind direction, a low wave billowing inside along the floor of the hangar like ocean water fading across a beach.

A few minutes later, a tall figure emerged from the dusty darkness outside, a man walking into the hangar carrying two large bags over his shoulders. He wore a pilot’s tan-colored overalls and loud black boots as he strolled casually out of the storm and into the hangar. “Hello!” he shouted without accent, his voice echoing in the large open space.

Tucker stood and met him halfway with a firm handshake. It was a relief to have someone else join them, especially if it was the pilot that could take them out of this mess. “Think you can fly tonight?” Tucker said.

“Huh?” The pilot cocked his head to the side. “What?” And then he smiled like it had been a ridiculous question.

Tucker said, “This storm . . .”

“What about it?”

Tucker laughed with him and then stepped aside so the pilot could get to work.

Macy had stood from her chair, pacing around to the opposite side of the plane where the pilot had gone. Over the plane, and over the wind, Tucker heard her ask, “You’re gonna fly in this?”

A mumble in response. And then another shared laugh, this time nervous-sounding laughter from Macy.

When she walked around and met Tucker by the nose of the plane, her face had gone a little pale in the dim florescent lights. “What’s wrong?” Tucker said. “Scared of flying?”

“Flying through the air is fine,” she said. “I just don’t like flying through a sand dune.”

Tucker shrugged. “They get these all the time.”

“I know,” she said. “Sand storm. A haboob.”

“Ha-what?”

“Boob,” she said.

Tucker chuckled until she finally cracked a smile and then, finally, told him to shut up. He’d missed that, her daily teasing.

They walked back to the chairs and watched the pilot run through his checklist. He stood by an open engine panel, holding a clipboard, reaching into the panel occasionally to mess with something inside. Tucker had never seen a pilot do such work on a Learjet.

He was the pilot . . . right?

Of course he was. Of course he wasn’t a saboteur.

Tucker shook his head as if fighting back a shiver, a bad thought, a paranoia on top of everything else. He got his head right, and then turned to Macy, who seemed to be watching the pilot with the same suspicious stare. “So,” he said. “Will you miss Angola?”

“If we survive the flight, no.”

“Can’t be any harder than surviving Luanda.”

They sat next to each other on the chairs. “So I thought you were going to tell me what the hell you’re doing in South Africa?” Macy said.

“My assignment?”

“Sure.”

“Okay,” Tucker said before a long sigh. He needed a moment to get back into it. In the last twenty-four hours, his head had been so far away from South Africa and DARC Ops. So far away from anything he used to remember, except Macy. “We’re assisting the South African government, the outgoing government, in shipping a large quantity of enriched Uranium to the US.” He looked around to make sure he was alone, a habit that probably seemed a bit silly in the mostly empty airplane hangar in Angola—in the middle of a dust storm.

“Sounds exciting,” Macy said, her voice and face dead straight. She had most definitely been through more exciting times in the last twenty-four hours. A story about the shipment of metal across an ocean would likely put her to sleep.

“It’s not very exciting,” Tucker said.

Macy looked at him, her pretty face looking increasingly bored and sleepy. For some reason Tucker wanted to touch her knee. Then Macy yawned and said, “And then what?”

For a moment Tucker had no idea what he’d been talking about.

“Tucker?”

“So they had an agreement worked out with the US, but the incoming South African government wants to hold onto it. Who knows why? They don’t even plan to restart their nuke program, but they want it for symbolic reasons. A national pride thing, maybe.”

“Or maybe worse.”

“That’s why we’re here, assisting.”

“So you’re afraid this new government will try to stop the process?”

“They’re already trying. But we can’t let them keep it. The way they’ve been storing the material is simply insane. Security breaches all-around. They’re just asking for one of Africa’s terrorist groups to come in and grab it. Then they can turn around and sell the uranium, or maybe even use it for themselves to make a dirty bomb.”

Macy was staring at him, unblinking. “You think street-level terrorists can make dirty bombs?”

Tucker looked around again, out of habit, and said, “Every terrorist group is backed by a major country. Come on, CIA, you know all about that.”

“So why can’t you just help the new South African government beef up their security?”

“No, it’s too late. Uncle Sam wants it. We made an agreement, and we’re getting it one way or another.”

“So that’s you, then,” she said. “You’re the ‘another way’.”

“Right.”

“How are you shipping it?”

“Ocean freighter.”

Macy suddenly perked up, her eyes flashing open like someone had just smacked her in the face.

Tucker asked, “Are you cluing in yet?”

And then her eyes returned to glazed-over. “Maybe,” she said. “So you’re assisting. And then what?”

“We’ll oversee the transfer.”

“With the guns and everything?”

“If it’s necessary,” he said. “But we’d rather use hacking. Intelligence. Stealth.” And then Tucker felt something nudge into his foot. He looked down, and scurrying between chair leg and shoe was some kind of wild, mangy cat. It had dirty, clumped fur. Tucker couldn’t see the front of it, but in behind the cat was a long worm-like tail, like a rat.

A rat!

Tucker almost screamed as he jumped up and tripped over his chair. He hurried backward, away from the chair, away from the rat, and away from Macy who was somehow laughing hysterically.

Tucker jumped again when someone grabbed his shoulder from behind.

“It’s okay,” said the pilot. “You’re more scared of it than he is of you.”

“Huh?” Tucker was panting. “What?”

“You’re not scared of heights too, right?”

“What?”

“We’re set to take off in about fifteen,” he said. “You good to go?”

“We’re good,” Macy said, smiling at Tucker.

The pilot went back to his work with the plane. Tucker looked around for the rat, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“So you were saying,” she said with a smirk. “Something about bravery and stealth?”

Tucker looked down, rubbing at a smudge in his pants. “I said nothing about bravery.”

“So what happens next?”

“What do you mean?”

“In your mission.”

Tucker laughed and combed his hand through his hair. “Long story short, we pack up the uranium and leave with it.”

“On the ship?”

“Yes, a few days from South Africa to the Eastern Seaboard. That’s phase three, in between, where we turn into a defense team against sea pirates.”

“I’m assuming you’re trying to lump me into phase three?”

“You don’t have to defend against pirates,” Tucker said.

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t want to be cargo.”

“You’ll be . . . personnel.”

“So I’ll be smuggled in with 250 tons of enriched uranium.”

“You’ll be safe.”

“Until I die of radiation sickness halfway across the Atlantic.”

“You’ll be safely separated from the cargo.”

Macy paused as if actually thinking about the dangers of radiation exposure.

“You’ll be fine,” Tucker said. “I’ll make sure.”

“What makes you think I want to return to the US? After all that country has put me through?’

“That country? You make it sound like it’s foreign, like it’s not yours.”

“It’s not mine. Not right now,” she said, color rushing to her face as she spoke. “They’ve been trying to assassinate me for two years. So yeah, it’s definitely foreign, even more so than Angola.

Tucker could see a look of horror on her face. She’d seen so much horror lately. Horror inflicted onto her, too, by her own people. It was hard to understand.

“Did you know that the NDAA act made it legal for American citizens to be assassinated on foreign soil? I mean, they were doing that already, but now it’s like some official thing. They can kill me without a trial and it’s fucking legal.”

“It’s still your country. I know right now it’s hard to see that. But . . .”

“It’s a fucking conspiracy,” she said, finally looking away, looking down. “It’s evil as shit.”

Tucker looked at her, trying to catch her gaze, but Macy kept quiet and stared straight ahead. Fuck. By now she had probably learned not to get her hopes up for anything. Expect the worst and hope to live through it. “Macy . . .”

She stood, grabbing her bags, still not looking at him. “You’re hopeful. Great. I’m more realistic. I have to be.”

And she was absolutely right. Tucker said nothing, instead lifted the chair back onto its legs.

“Look, let’s not get into it,” Macy said, sighing. “Our relationship is strained enough as it is.

Tucker waved Macy through to the plane, following behind her. “It’s strained, yeah, but I’ve been . . .”

“What?” she said without turning around.

“I thought I was making big leap forward here with this daring rescue attempt. What’s been your olive branch?”

“Well, hey, I stopped pointing a gun at you. That should count for something.”

“You’re right,” Tucker said. “Baby steps.”

“That was a major victory for us.”

“Yep, baby steps. What’s the next one?”

“Those ones,” the pilot said, pointing to the five little steps leading up into the side of the jet.

Tucker boarded after Macy, out of politeness—and certainly not to see how the years had treated that shapely, athletic ass he’d remembered from police pants. But now that he was afforded the view, he couldn’t look away from how her worn and thinned jeans stretched with each step, how they strained to hold her in. And when they were both aboard the plane, and the visual had set in, the proof that her body had, if anything, improved with time, it was his jeans that struggled to hold something in.

He swung his laptop bag over the front of his shoulders, feeling it slide across his erection, hiding it safely from view. Now was not the time to complicate things.

It was all so muddled—their reuniting, as insane as it was, had been rushed, and then their rush to escape her attackers. He’d barely had time to process what it was he’d felt, and why that feeling seemed to grow. And then the growing of this sudden and utterly inappropriate erection . . . It was almost as absurd as the whole African mission so far.

Tucker, tired and half-delirious, tossed his luggage—except for his laptop bag—onto a bench in front of a fully stocked mini bar. He didn’t even glance at the Gin selection. His sleep deprivation had made him feel drunk enough. Certainly enough for a deep sleep once the jet took off. But when he thought about the dust storm, and the dangers of flying through it, a stiff gin & tonic for takeoff seemed fitting.

“Can I get you something?” he asked Macy, watching her lean her backpack carefully against his on the bench. She swung back around to look at him, her face a little flushed for some reason. In the opulent lighting of the jet cabin, she looked even prettier than he’d remembered—or perhaps realized. Seven years ago in St. Louis, when he had a girlfriend to keep happy and trusting, he’d forced himself, when he could, not to notice the obvious with Macy. It was a matter of self-preservation. But for Macy, it was probably what spurred her on more than anything. Rejection.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Tucker, suddenly no longer interested in his cocktail, inspected the seating arrangements. It was a nice jet. Nicer than his ride up to Luanda. Something for rich CEOs and celebrities to play around in. Something Jackson could afford, apparently. By the time he checked back to Macy, she had retreated to the darkened rear of the cabin, to where double-bucket seats were already reclined—and her body along with it, curled on her side, jeaned knees pulled up tight. Eyes already shut.

He moved back to the bar and looked at the back-lit bottles one last time before settling in at his own makeshift bed, the leather seats squealing quietly under him as he shifted for comfort, his eyes already feeling heavy.

In the darkness of half-sleep, he felt the rocking motion of a taxiing jet. It felt like he was on the ocean already, in the super freighter that would carry him and his crew and their precious cargo, and the enriched uranium—across to North America. Only this trip was a lot shorter, five minutes until the roar of twin engines. And then the G-force that pulled his eyelids back open, that made him hold onto the edge of the seat as the jet shot down the runway. There had been no flight attendant to convince him about sitting upright and buckled. Here, Tucker and Macy and who Tucker hoped was a great pilot, were on their own, lifting up through the night, through a thick cloud of dust, through the edges of sleep.