Cronley took the telephone.
“Colonel, I can’t talk to you right now. I’ll call you—”
“Who the hell do you think you are, Cronley? You’ll talk to me whenever I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the hell is going on down there?”
“Sir, I’m interrogating . . . our guest.”
“At five o’clock in the morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The interrogation is over.”
Cronley didn’t reply.
“The answer I expect is, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll discuss that situation when I see you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How soon can you be at Eschborn?”
“Eschborn?”
“Goddamn you, Cronley, when I ask you a question, I expect an answer. How soon can you be at Eschborn?”
“Well, it’s about a three-hour flight, give or take. And I don’t know when daybreak is . . .”
“You can be there sometime around ten hundred hours,” Dunwiddie furnished softly. “Daybreak here is about oh-six-thirty. Plus three hours. Around ten hundred, maybe a little before.”
That means Tiny heard what Mattingly was saying. Which means Orlovsky heard what Mattingly was saying. Shit!
“Not until ten hundred hours?” Mattingly asked.
Which means he heard Tiny.
“Somewhere around ten hundred, yes, sir.”
“Why can’t you leave right now?”
“Colonel, I have to be able to see the runway to take off.”
“Why can’t you shine jeep or truck headlights on the runway?”
“Because I don’t want to kill myself, sir. Substituting headlights for landing lights is an emergency procedure. Is this some kind of an emergency?”
“Spare me your smart-ass lip, Cronley.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On that subject, when you get here, you will speak only when spoken to. Got it?”