about?â I demanded.
âBecause of what you did. You put your life on the line for that man. It just makes me realize what youâd be willing to do for the people of this neighborhood. With you this isnât just about empty words. You mean what you say; you believe in doing the right thing. That means a lot to me. Maybe more than I can express.â
âThanks. I guess that helpsââ Then I had another thought. âYou could just be playing me again right now, couldnât you?â
He gave a sad smile. âI could be, but Iâm not.â He paused. âAt least I donât think I am. Iâve played so many games in my life that sometimes Iâm not even sure anymore. What I am sure about is that we need people like me to help us survive. We also need people like you to help build something that matters once we do survive.â
âI think we each need to be part of both. Donât sell yourself short,â I said. âI know in the end youâll not just do what needs to be done, but youâll do the right thing.â
âI know Iâll do what needs to be done,â Herb said. âI just hope the right thing doesnât get in the way.â
I wasnât sure if I believed him or not. I didnât seem to know much for sure, but what I did know was that I needed to get away, and there was only one placeâand one personâI wanted to be with. Iâd find Lori. I didnât even know if Iâd tell her what just happened, but being with her, sitting beside her, would make it all feel better.
Â
6
Herb was beside me in the ultralight. We were cruising at slightly less than one hundred and twenty feet. Being up in the air, waiting for dawn to come, was eerie. As eerie as the fact that we were on our way to launch the attack. After not sleeping at all last night I needed to get my mind focused on what we were doing. I kept drifting back to yesterday and the way weâd fooled Quinnâthe way Herb had tricked me. Knowing it was necessary and being okay with it were two different things. There was no room for my thoughts about that. I needed to keep us in the air and on target and on time. Our arrival had to be timed precisely.
Flying in the dark was new and unnerving. Last night, Lori and I had sat on her porch, holding hands and talkingâwhile each of us wore a pair of night-vision goggles. I was trying to get used to them because I was told Iâd be wearing them in this flight. How romantic, looking at my girlfriend in shades of green, a shadowy figure. Usually, looking deeply into her eyes meant something very different.
From the first time Iâd laid eyes on her I knew how beautiful Lori was. Through school Iâd learned that she was smart. Now over the past months Iâd learned that she was smart in a whole different way. She understood what was going on, calmed me down, helped me understand. And behind those beautiful eyes she was strong, the sort of person I wanted beside me if things ever did go from bad to worse. But now I had other things to think about.
I could see just enough to make out landmarks below, and I was basically following a bright ribbon of road, using it for direction and the altimeter on my control panel to keep us at the right height.
We were heading for the compound, which was about thirty miles away. Ahead of us were over 240 of our people, evenly divided into four attack parties, aboard a number of trucks and cars. Each group was equipped with rifles, pistols, and an RPG launcher. Each group had departed at sundown the previous day, taking a different route, and had spent the night moving forward, getting in position, almost within sight of the compound but still away from where they could be seen by sentries on the walls or fences.
Weâd be the first in. Hopefully weâd sweep in, do our business, and be gone before anybody had a chance to react and knock us out of the
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