War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel by James Rollins, Grant Blackwood Read Free Book Online

moment. We’re working other leads. We’ll find her.”
    Pruitt frowned. He had read the dossier on Jane Sabatello. “Given her background, that might be challenging.”
    “We’ll find her,” Lyon repeated. “She vanished with her son. Should make tracking her easier.”
    “Make sure you don’t fail.”
    “For these last two, I assume you will want the same protocol as before?”
    Pruitt nodded. “Their deaths must look accidental.”
    The truth must never get out .

4
    October 12, 7:33 P . M . CDT
    Huntsville, Alabama
    Welcome to Rocket City . . .
    Less than a day after parting ways with Jane in Montana, Tucker found himself on the opposite side of the country, cruising in a rental Ford Explorer through the wooded outskirts of Huntsville, Alabama. The place had earned its nickname, Rocket City, due to its proximity to the neighboring Redstone facility, home to both the military’s missile program and NASA’s space flight center.
    Kane sat up front with him, his head out the window, taking in the scents of the surrounding Tennessee River valley. After being cooped up in a crate for the cross-country flight, his partner clearly appreciated the wind whipping through his fur, his nostrils drawing in the world.
    Tucker reached over and patted the dog’s flank.
    Wish I could learn to live in the moment like you .
    Instead, a nagging worry had formed a knot behind his eyes. He had hated to leave Jane behind at the motel, but she had insisted he go on ahead, wanting to get Nathan somewhere safe before rejoining him. Besides, Jane was too well known in this area. No one here knew his face. For now, he would have to take the lead alone.
    Still, he had promised Jane that he would keep her abreast of his investigation. To that end, she had given him two telephone numbers that she called safe. Leave a message on the first number—something anonymous about the birth of a baby or a family reunion or something , she’d instructed him, then wait ten minutes and call the second number .
    Though she had put on a brave face as he left for the airport, Tucker knew she was more frightened than he’d ever seen her.
    Up ahead, a sign glowed alongside the interstate, half buried at the edge of a swampy woodland: F ALLS V ALLEY M OTEL .
    “Almost home,” he warned Kane.
    He had chosen this place due to its remote location at the far western edge of Huntsville. Off to the left, the decaying remnants of an old concrete factory sat out in the swamps. Back in 1962, a levy had broken in a bend of the storm-swollen Tennessee River and flooded the shallow valley in which the factory sat. Rather than try to reclaim the already-abandoned factory, the state decided to make the best of a bad situation. Like the hulk of a sunken ship that becomes a reef, the factory had become the heart of a flourishing new ecosystem.
    But it wasn’t just the colorful seclusion of the motel that drew Tucker to rent a room here. Gate #7 of the Redstone Arsenal lay only two miles farther down the road. Whether this would make any tangible difference to his investigation, Tucker didn’t know, but having the post within eyeshot would help him focus.
    Reaching the motel, he pulled into the parking lot. The facility was made up of individual cabins spread through the neighboring forest. He checked in, asked for the most remote spot, and then drove to the far end of the lot to his room. Once inside, he found flowered wallpaper and an avocado bedspread straight from the 1970s, but everything was clean and smelled faintly of Lysol.
    As he unpacked, Kane did a full inspection of the room. After seeming to find it passable, he plopped down on the queen bed, but not without a long, disappointed sigh.
    “Yeah, not exactly the Ritz, is it?”
    Tucker crossed and pulled open the drapes at the back of the cabin. The window looked east toward Redstone. Above the tree line, he could make out two hills—Weeden and Madkin Mountains—that rose from the forty thousand acres