They found the two of them moments later—sitting in front of each other, with Kelsey leaning up against one of the AL-52 Dragon’s huge main landing gear tires. “Kelsey!” Cheryl Duffield shouted. “Get away from that dog!”

“But she’s nice, Mom. . ..”

“Don’t move, little girl,” Sandy said. “Sasha, basta! Adesso! ” Despite her commands, however, the dog stayed right with Kelsey. “I don’t understand this.. ..”

“I think the dog likes Kelsey—and not as a snack, either,” Jon said with a smile. “Don’t take it personally— your dog didn’t rip a stranger to shreds.” Kelsey gave Sasha a big hug and a tickle on its head between its flattened, contented-looking ears before she was slowly, carefully taken away by her mother, and Sasha was led away with a string of sharp admonitions in Italian from Sandy.

Once they were back in the Suburban on the ninety-minute ride back to the airport, Cheryl Duffield finally asked in between a flurry of cell phone calls, “Okay, what’s going on, Jon? Who’s going to launch what?”

He looked at her, then at Kelsey, with a little apprehension. He then shrugged. “I promised I’d tell you everything at the appropriate time—I guess this is it,” he said. And he started explaining. The explanation continued well past the ride to the airport—in fact, it continued well after takeoff. Kelsey listened to each and every word, sitting impassively, her little hands folded on her lap as usual.

Cheryl Duffield, however, was not as patient. “Do you mean to tell me, Dr. Masters,” she finally stormed after Jon had finished his explanation, “that Sky Masters Inc. has been involving itself with unsanctioned, illegal military missions all over the world? You have been investigated and are currently under surveillance by the FBI because of these activities? And—let me get this perfectly straight— your vice president in charge of research, General Patrick McLanahan, is right now planning an operation in Libya, and you are going to help him—by sending an aircraft loaded up with experimental cruise missiles and launching them against Libya?”

“Cheryl, that’s not the half of it,” Jon said in response.

“This is outrageous! This is .. . this is unacceptable!” she thundered. “You didn’t reveal one bit of this in days of contract negotiations! This is fraud! This is criminal! This is a major breach of contract! We will not be a part of it!”

“Cheryl, I warned you each and every day of our negotiations that we are involved in things that you might not want to be part of,” Jon said earnestly. “You looked at our books. You interviewed our personnel... .”

“All except the McLanahans—they were the ones we wanted to talk with! Now we see why—they were busy blowing up missile bases in Libya!”