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Harvey stared up at Driver for a long moment then said, “You’re team leader. If there’s something you haven’t told me yet, then you must have your reasons. I’m taking it on faith you aren’t gonna get us into any situation we can’t handle.”
“You know I wouldn’t. If I think there’s something you need to know, I’ll tell you,” Driver said.
John put up a hand. “Then I have a question.”
“Yes?” Driver gave him a weary look. “What?”
“You wereaskedto make a detour. Which means youwerein communication with someone who…what? Did a flyby with a drone? Someone had to verify our signal.”
Harvey opened his mouth, but then Driver held up a finger and the other man zipped it. “Wepicked up your SOS,” Driver said, “because we were already in the general area. We relayed the information and then received orders to divert to this location and check it out. See if a rescue was warranted.”
“Without knowing who we were?”
“I guess someone knew your specific frequency or call signal.”
“I don’t know.” John made a face. “Ours is a pretty generic little satellite distress doohickey. Of course, it might onlylookthat way.”
“Man, I love it when you get all techy,” Davila said.
Okay, the man never would be Flowers, but Davila was growing on him. He also realized, with something almost like a pang, that he would miss Davila once they parted ways. Because, of course, there was no question now of their continuing on with the retrieval of Roni’s remains. Unless…he and Driver were two pieces of thesamemission but didn’t know it?
“Look,” he said, “we were to meet up with a contact who’d get us to Roni’s remains. Is it possible that the contact’s job was to hand us off to someone else? Because, Driver…what are the odds that we’re both in-country?”
Driver gave him a bland look. “What are you asking?”
“Don’t play stupid. Could you and I be part of thesamemission but not been told because of our history?”
“No,” Driver said. “Because we’re not here to retrieve remains. I don’t know anything about Roni or why her remains are so far from where she died. Our missions are completely different.”
Harvey scratched his head. “Yeah, but, Boss, you gotta admit it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“As in no coincidence.” John decided to press. “Driver, think of it probabilistically. It’s like that old one about the chances of two people sharing the same birthday.”
“That’s an easy one,” Harvey said. “The probability’s one in three hundred and sixty-five because that’s how many days there are in a year. Assuming no leap years and an even distribution of birthdays through a given year.”
“Yes, but how many people in a random sampling do you need to reach a fifty percent probability of finding someone withyour birthday?” After a moment’s silence and blank looks, John said, “Twenty-three people.”
“Get out,” said Harvey.
“No,” Davila said, “he’s right. Do the math. Increase the number of people in the room to seventy-nine, the chances jump to almost a hundred percent.”
“Actually, 99.9 percent,” John said.
“I was rounding up,” Davila said. “I didn’t want to confuse them. So, here you are.”
“So, here we are,” John said. “Driver and I in the same room, same region, same time. Given who we are and what we’ve done, there are only two reasons why that might be so.”
“Yeah, you already said that,” Driver ground out. “I told you, we’re not here for Roni.”
“I wasn’t going to say that. But I’d lay down good money that your mission is, at the very least, peripherally related. I’m willing to go even further than that. I bet your superiors figuredyouto be their ace in the hole in case Davila and I screwed up or couldn’t continue.”
“As, in some ways, we have and can’t. Well,” Davila amended, “Ican’t.”
“So, whoever thought of putting you in the same theatre of operations was pretty damn smart. Underhanded,too, not to give either of us the skinny. Think of all the stars that have aligned. First off, we know each other. Second, we were in the same place at the same time when things went completely FUBAR. And now, neither of us was told the other was in the area.”
“Until you guys needed to know, only that happened sooner rather than later because Davila here got hurt?” Harvey shrugged. “Can’t beat the logic. Except why not tell you two?”
“Man,” Davila said, “you got to ask? Why do spooks hold anything back? Because they figure it’s a need-to-know thing and youdidn’tneed to know. Neither did we.”