Which was probably pretty much what the Babylonian guards had said to Daniel right before they shoved him into the lion’s den, Flynn decided warily. He took a quick look around the room as he entered. Five men were seated behind a long table. Four of them were military. The fifth was a beefy, overweight civilian in a dark suit, a collared white shirt, and a red silk tie.

A couple of the Pentagon brass, a colonel and a major general, were from the Air Force. The other pair were Army, both of them brigadier generals. Oddly, and in Flynn’s view, ominously, no one else in the room had a name tag or an ID badge on his uniform or coat. That was totally against all regulations. What the hell was going on here? He took a closer look at the civilian at the far end of the table. Everything about the guy shouted high-ranking CIA executive. You could take the man out of Langley, but you couldn’t take the shadowy aura of Langley out of the man.

Definitely worried now, he came to attention. “Captain Nicholas Fl—”

“Take a seat, Captain Flynn,” the Air Force two-star said quietly, interrupting. He indicated the lone chair set in front of the table.

Working hard to keep any expression off his face, Flynn did as he was told. His mouth felt as dry as dust. Suddenly, this setup seemed a hell of a lot more like a trial than it did a routine intelligence debrief. More than ever, he thought, this was a time to be cautious.

As though he’d read his mind, the major general shook his head. “Relax, son. This is not an official UCMJ proceeding.”

Which was very cold comfort, Flynn concluded. Proceedings conducted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice at least had protections for those involved, including the right to legal counsel if necessary. He leaned forward slightly in his chair. “May I ask exactly what the purpose of this meeting is then, sir?”

The general glanced briefly at the men seated next to him before turning his attention back to Flynn. “Consider this more of an informal, interagency discussion, Captain,” he said. “Together with our colleague from the CIA here, we’re simply trying to find a mutually agreeable way to handle this unfortunate situation before it spins further out of control. And we’d appreciate your cooperation in that effort.”

Spinning out of control? How so? Flynn wondered. From the moment they’d landed back at El Minya, everything that had happened in Libya had been classified top secret. Under direct orders from higher up, he and all the other survivors had already signed mounds of official paperwork swearing to keep everything hush-hush.

“Maybe you missed the news out there in the back of Bumfuckistan, Flynn, but our bid to keep this quiet has failed. Some son of a bitch somewhere leaked,” the civilian behind the table growled. “So now we’ve got members of Congress and the media screaming their heads off—demanding to know why a U.S. aircraft crashed in Libya and exactly how so many Air Force personnel and other Americans ended up dead or badly injured in a firefight with the locals.”