The members of Striker walked down the cargo bay ramp and onto the tarmac. Two of the Strikers lit cigarettes and stood together near an eyewash stand. Other soldiers stretched, did jumping jacks, or just lay back on the field and looked up at the blue-black sky. Brett August used one of the field phones standing off by the warehouse. He was probably calling one of the girls he had in this port. Perhaps he would bail on the team and visit her on the way back. The colonel certainly had the personal time coming to him. They all did.

Mike Rodgers wandered off by himself. He headed toward the nose of the aircraft. The wind rushed across the wide open field, carrying with it the familiar air base smells of diesel fuel, oil lubricant, and rubber from the friction-heated tires of aircraft. As the sun went down and the tarmac cooled and shrunk, the smells seemed to be squeezed out of them.

Whatever airfield in the world Rodgers visited, those three smells were always present. They made him feel at home.

The cool air and very solid ground felt great.

Rodgers had his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the oilstained field.

He was thinking about the data Friday had sent to the NSA and the files Herbert had forwarded to him. He was also thinking about Ron Friday himself. And the many Ron Fridays he had worked with over the decades.

Rodgers always had a problem with missions that involved other governments and other agencies within his own government.

Information given to a field operative was not always informative.

Sometimes it was wrong, by either accident, inefficiency, or design.

The only way to find out for sure was to be on the mission. By then, bad information or wrong conclusions drawn from incomplete data could kill you.

The other problem Rodgers had with multigroup missions was authority and accountability. Operatives were like kids in more ways than one.

They enjoyed playing outside and they resented having to listen to someone else's "parent."

Ron Friday might be a good and responsible man. But first and foremost, Friday had to answer to the head of the NSA and probably to his sponsor in the Indian government. Satisfying their needs, achieving their targets, took priority over helping Rodgers, the mission leader.

Ideally, their goals would be exactly the same and there would be no conflict.

But that rarely happened. And sometimes it was worse than that.

Sometimes operatives or officers were attached to a mission to make sure that it failed, to embarrass a group that might be fighting for the attention of the president or the favor of a world leader or even the same limited funding.

In a situation where a team was already surrounded by adversaries Mike Rodgers did not want to feel as if he could not count on his own personnel. Especially when the lives of the Strikers were at risk.