Enemy Invasion by A. G. Taylor Page B

said. “I’m just a little worried about my brother. He’s on his way back from a mission. Things went bad.”
    “Would you like to talk about it?”
    “I’d love to. But the mission details are on a strict need-to-know basis. I’m not sure you have the security clearance.”
    “Why don’t you like me, Sarah?” Lesley asked with a note of hurt in her voice. “You know I just have your best interests at heart.”
    Because you don’t have our best interests at heart, Sarah thought. You’re just a spy trying to get to the bottom of me and the others. She had understood this about
Lesley from the first moment they met. Although the psychologist reported directly to Colonel Rachel Andersen, Sarah sensed her real allegiances were to other groups within HIDRA. Shadowy figures
such as David Wisher, the suited observer who had flown in from the Paris HQ just a few days before. He was a man who made everyone on the Ulysses nervous. Sarah remembered her promises to
Rachel…
    Play nice with Wisher. Play nice with Lesley.
    “I like you just fine, Lesley,” Sarah said. “I guess all the trauma that I’ve suffered has made me a little prickly at times. There’s nothing I’d like more
than to bond with a big-sister figure like you. I think it could be really…good for me.”
    Lesley regarded Sarah with a look that said she knew very well when she was being strung along. An alarm echoed down the corridor outside.
    “Incoming flight,” Sarah said and rose from her chair. “The rescue choppers they sent to pick up Robert.”
    “We still have ten minutes in this session.”
    Sarah paused at the door. “Well, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. Should give you time to sneak that cigarette on the loading bay before your next appointment.”
    Before the psychologist could respond, she slammed the door and went running down the corridor.
    The HS Ulysses was cutting through the waters of the Pacific Ocean north of the Philippines as the three-hovercopter rescue party approached. Ignoring the protests of
    the deck commander, Sarah Williams emerged from the command tower and walked out onto the landing deck. The flight crew of the Ulysses ran forward as the three copters touched down. The
    door of the nearest machine swung up and Robert emerged. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief as her brother ran over.
    “You’re safe,” she said, putting her arms around him. “I shouldn’t have sent you alone.”
    “It was Major Bright’s men,” Robert said, pulling away. “They got the kid you sent me after. His name’s Hack. We have to find him!”
    “We will,” Sarah said. “Bright’s been in hiding for six months. Why has he resurfaced now?” It didn’t make sense to her: when a HIDRA sweep of the Spire
wreckage had failed to find any trace of Bright, they’d suspected he’d escaped the destruction somehow – then secret photos of the major meeting a weapons dealer in Indonesia had
confirmed those suspicions. Somehow he’d got out when Makarov’s tower came down. “And what does he want with a kid we’ve never met before?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think we just got an answer to that question,” Commander Craig’s voice announced behind them. They turned to see the fair-haired young officer standing in the open doorway
to the control tower. He was in charge of the military personnel on the ship, and second-in-command to Rachel Andersen, to whom he was unflinchingly loyal. “Come on. We’re in the war
room.”
    A meeting in the war room – both Sarah and Robert knew that meant something big was up. They followed the commander back into the ship and down two levels. Colonel Rachel Andersen, the
head of HIDRA Asia–Pacific, stood on one side of the giant computer table, studying a series of images as they entered. She looked up, the worry lines on her face illuminated starkly in the
LCD glow. Sarah thought that in the year the doctor had been in charge of HIDRA, she seemed to have aged ten. There