3
“That had to be a record,” Melissa groaned as she climbed out of The Company’s spiffy Cessna 560XL that bore no relation to her Cessna 172 back in Victoria. The 560 was a comfortable business jet that was a vast improvement over flying coach or military. The CIA didn’t have it so bad.
The mid-July heat and humidity of Florida’s central Gulf Coast hit her like a sucker punch, far harder than it had in Venezuela two thousand kilometers closer to the equator. She wanted to stagger under the weight of it—the soup they called air was so thick that it was painful to breathe—but if she staggered in her present condition, she’d be as likely as not to go down. It would help if she’d slept more than three of the last forty-eight hours, but she hadn’t.
“What record?” Richie asked as he climbed d
