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followed. She’d been through this general area several times in the past two months, before Raven was brought in. She might even have been on this very hillside, though she didn’t remember it.
    The chapped land and rugged hills reminded her of southwest Nevada, where her dad used to take her camping and hiking when she was a girl. He and her mother had divorced when she was only three; he had custody only a few weeks each year, and they always spent at least one week of that camping. She cherished those trips now, and looked forward to the next, not due for several months.
    Melissa scolded herself. It was dangerous letting her mind drift. Crouching at the top of the ridge, she put one hand on the rocky crust, then folded herself against the hillside, peering over the top.
    Shadow covered everything before her. She slid down a few feet, pulled off her pack and removed her night vision goggles.
    A small settlement sat in the valley on the left, not quite two miles away. There was no sign anyone was awake.
    So where was the plane?
    From the signal, it should be to her right, maybe a thousand yards away.
    Melissa surveyed the area again. The submachine gun felt heavy in her hands. She’d never fired it at an enemy. She’d never used a gun against a real person at all.
    She took a slow breath, controlling her nerves, and started down the hill in the direction of the signal.
    She came to the wreckage sooner than she thought. The aircraft’s left wing jutted from the rocks. It had sheered at the wing root, pulled off by the force of the midair collision.
    Melissa took over, scanning the area. This was bad luck—she’d gone after the wrong part of the plane. The flight computer was in the forward section of the fuselage—the other signal nearly five miles to the northeast.
    She cursed silently, then took the camera from her pocket. They’d want to know what the wrecked wing looked like.

Chapter 12
    Washington, D.C.
    S enator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard looked up at the receptionist as he rolled into the rehabilitation ward in Building 5123 at the Walter Reed Hospital complex. They were old friends by now, so well-acquainted that Zen knew she took her coffee black with two sugars.
    It was important, after all, to get those little things right.
    “Luciana, you are looking very chipper this morning,” he said, rolling toward her. “How is my favorite receptionist and nurse in training?”
    “Big test tonight,” she told him.
    “Better hit the books.”
    “I am.” She raised the textbook from behind the counter. Building 5123 was a special facility at the hospital complex, with the highest level of security possible—so high, in fact, that even Zen had to submit to a rudimentary pat down. His aide—Jason Black—couldn’t even go downstairs with him.
    Which, in some ways, was just as well.
    While the staff members were all medical professionals, they worked for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a special branch charged with investigating biology and medicine and their implications on the battlefield as well as society.
    “Jay brought you coffee,” said Zen, glancing back at his aide. Black handed over the cup of Starbucks.
    “You look like you’re still asleep, Jason,” said Luciana.
    Jason blushed. “Naw.”
    “I ride him hard, Lucy,” said Zen. “Twenty-four/seven, around the clock. How’s my patient?”
    “They don’t tell me anything, Senator. But I haven’t heard anything bad.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    Zen rolled himself toward the security checkpoint a short distance away. Contrary to what she’d told Zen, the staff downstairs would have passed the word if there was a problem. Not that it would have kept Zen from going down to see their patient, Mark Stoner.
    Stoner had been a close friend years before. They’d worked together at Dreamland; at one point, Stoner had saved Zen’s wife Breanna’s life.
    Stoner had been lost on a mission in Eastern Europe some fifteen years