“What?”
“Earth calling Erasmus Tull. Where the hell’d you go?”
Tull sighed. “Getting my head in the game is all.”
Aldo gave him a curious look, but said nothing.
As they unbuckled and gathered up their gear, it occurred to Tull that if he did try to run from M3, the governors would almost certainly send Aldo after him. It saddened him. Not that his friend would accept the hit, but the thought of killing Aldo. Tull had no other friends.
They opened the door, folded down the stairs and deplaned. Tull was pleased to see a car waiting for them when they descended from the Mustang. It was three-year-old black GMC Yukon. Clean but not gleaming, with visible wear on the bumpers and some scuffing on the sidewalls. Bumper stickers on the back from half a dozen family resorts where fishing was an attraction. Strip across the back window that said their kid went to Morgan State University. Trailer hitch. The kind of vehicle no one would look twice at.
Tull nodded his approval.
The key was in a magnetic box under the rear fender. They stowed their gear on the rear seat and went to the back. The spare was a fake and it opened on a hinge to reveal a flat steel safe. Aldo punched in the code and opened it to uncover the first layer of goodies. Two Sig Sauer pistols and multiple preloaded magazines, two microwave pulse pistols with one extra battery each, various small electronic gadgets, a spare battery pack for the Ghost Box, and leather wallets with ID, cash, and credit cards in six different names each. They lifted out the top layer and poked at the devices snugged into carefully molded foam-cushion slots.
Aldo whistled. “Holy rat shit fuck. They weren’t joking about the clean sweep.”
“Be prepared,” said Tull. “A million Boy Scouts can’t all be wrong.”
They replaced the top layer and studied the weapons. Tull had his personal .22 pistol strapped to his ankle, but he selected a 9mm Sig Sauer, dropped the empty mag that had been put in place for transport, worked the slide to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber. He removed a full magazine of hollowpoints, slapped it into place, set the safety, and snugged the gun in a shoulder holster. Aldo did the same.
They stuffed several gadgets into their pockets, closed the false tire into its compartment, and shut the rear door.
After they climbed into the cab, Aldo said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, why?”
“You’re making a face.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“What kind of face?”
“I don’t know. A face. Like something’s grabbing your balls. You sweating the fact that we have to take a run at your old boss?”
“No, it has nothing to do with that.” Tull gave him a short, bitter laugh and clapped Aldo on the shoulder. “I just think that it would be better for everyone if I’d stayed retired.”
“Yeah,” said Aldo, eyeing him dubiously, “well life’s a kick in the nuts sometimes.”
“Yes it is.”
“You really out after this?” asked Aldo. “For good, I mean. No more farewell tours.”
“Definitely. What about you?”
Aldo looked up into the dark blue sky. “You’re gonna laugh, but I always wanted to open a barber shop. Not a hair salon, nothing faggy like that. I mean a real barbershop. Old school, Brooklyn style. Two, three chairs. Red and white pole outside. Maybe me and my two cousins cutting hair and talking shit all day with the wiseguys.”
Tull stared at him. “Really? You want to retire and cut hair?”
“Better than cutting throats for a living.”
It was said as a joke, meant as a joke, but neither of them laughed, and the truth behind Aldo’s words darkened the day.
“If I had a time machine,” said Aldo, “maybe I’d go back and do that instead.”
“And miss out on serving your country?” Tull asked in a voice heavy with irony.
“Serving my country.” Aldo shook his head. “Man … I don’t even think I know what that means.”
They smiled at each other. One of those moments where what they were saying aloud was substantially different than the conversation they were actually having.
Then Aldo stiffened. “Shit—look.”
A bright blue jeep had just rounded the corner of a hangar a hundred yards away, between them and the exit. Even at that distance they could see the white shield on the hood.
“Security patrol.” Aldo looked at his watch. “Somebody screwed up. These jokers aren’t supposed to be here for another half hour.”
“And yet…,” said Tull with mild exasperation. He jerked the door handle and got out, waving to Aldo is stay where he was. “I got this.”
Tull waved at the security patrol. He shoved his hands into his back pocket and began strolling slowly toward the approaching jeep, smiling a broad amiable smile.
The blue jeep rolled to a stop sideways to Tull and about eight feet away. Two uniformed guards stepped out. Aldo rolled down his window to try and hear the conversation. He needn’t have bothered. All he heard was the first guard say, “Is there a prob—?”
Tull stepped forward and from four feet shot them each twice in the head.
It was so fast that Aldo never saw Tull reach for his piece. The two guards lay slumped in their seats and the breeze blew the gun smoke away.
Tull looked from them to the gun in his hand. He sighed, turned and climbed in behind the wheel.
“Okay, brother,” said Tull, “let’s go save the world.”
He put the car in gear and spun the wheel. In seconds the airport was empty and as still as death.
Chapter Forty-two
Over Maryland airspace
Sunday, October 20, 9:55 a.m.
I stared out the window of the helo as we hurtled toward Elk Neck State Park. I don’t like Dr. Hu, but I respect his knowledge. Seeing how badly this stuff rattled him made me depressed and more than a little scared.
As if this was all possible.
As if it was real.
Once the call ended the image on my laptop defaulted to Junie Flynn’s pretty face.
“I hope you have some answers, sister,” I said.
Chapter Forty-three
Dugway Proving Ground
Eighty-five miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah
Sunday, October 20, 9:56 a.m.
Colonel Betty Snider touched the lucky coin in her pocket. The face on the coin was nearly worn away from the frequent rubbing of her thumb, a habit Snider fell into when things got dicey. Lately things were more often dicey than not.
There were twelve congressmen seated on bleachers erected under a canvas awning to protect them from getting their congressional brains scrambled in the unforgiving Utah sun’s glare. The rest of the bleachers were crammed with officers of every wattage, from captains on the rise to generals who wanted to catch a last dose of reflected glory before they mothballed their uniforms. And there was a moody little contingent of snooty-looking men in off-the-rack dark suits who perched like a row of pelicans. Defense department bean counters.
In an ideal world, Colonel Snider would have had three or four more months to run her shakedowns before a party like this, but Senate appropriations committees got to call these shots. Not officers like Snider who had risen to her rank quickly twenty years ago but had since managed only a lateral slide
Even if today’s test was successful, it wouldn’t step her up to a star. She’d retire a full-bird colonel and that was that, thanks for your service.
She cut a look at the gathered faces and stifled a sigh.
Fucking bureaucrats, she thought. Best thing for the whole country would be to have the jet crash into the stands.
Maybe that would get her that star.
Down on the field the jet was beginning to taxi past the stands. The Locust FB-119 was on the very cutting edge of stealth aircraft. It was the first generation of jets to use a radical new design philosophy that did not use faceted surfaces like the e
arlier stealth craft. Instead, the Locust could disguise its infrared emissions to make it harder to detect by heat-seeking surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. It also had fast-adapting cameras and display panel so that the skin immediately changed its underbelly colors to match the skies through which it flew, with a lag time of point zero nine three seconds. The design would put all existing stealth craft to shame, and very likely steal the thunder from tomorrow’s air show at the Shelton estate.
This test flight should have happened eighteen months ago, but the original testing facility out at Area 51 in Nevada had been totally destroyed along with all six prototypes, a victim of the Seven Kings terrorist campaign. The setback was tragic in a lot of ways, but the silver lining was that it allowed the design team to make some important tweaks and add a few new features.
A young lieutenant came hustling over and snapped off a salute. “We’re ready, Colonel. The spotter planes report all clear and the wind is down to two knots.”
“Very well,” she said. Snider held out a hand for a walkie-talkie and accepted it from the lieutenant. “Captain Soames, we’re green to go. Make us proud.”
“Roger that,” was Soames reply.
Colonel Snider turned and gave a short address to the audience that was part hype and part sales pitch. They’d all heard it before, but they listened with varying degrees of interest, especially now that the engines on the Locust were spitting flame.
“I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” concluded Snider, “that you will see something you have never seen before.”
The flagman on the runway gave the signal and the Locust began rolling forward.
The jet did not look particularly aerodynamic. It was roughly triangular, with only a slight bump to indicate the cockpit. The surfaces were painted flat black and the engine roar was muted by a series of internal baffles—part of a hushed engine design that reduced burner noise by 67 percent. That alone, Snider knew, should have made the bean counters reach for their checkbooks—or would have if any of those pencil necks had ever worn a uniform.
The engine gave its soft, deceptive growl and the Locus began rolling faster down the runway. Again, this was deceptive. Because the tarmac was painted flat black and so was the plane, it was hard to judge its ground speed.
Then bang!
The jet’s nose lifted and as if shot by a cannon, the massive fighter-bomber bounded up and away from the ground, accelerating smoothly. Snider knew that by the time it leveled off at ten thousand feet it would already be at Mach 1.
“Go, baby, go…,” Snider said under her breath.
There was a sonic boom as the jet broke the sound barrier. Then the pilot put the pedal down and Locust seemed to fade into a blur that was too fast for the eye to follow.
Snider heard the first gasps from the crowd and wondered how much of her budget it equaled. Probably 10 percent. But that was okay, because the rubes hadn’t seen anything yet.
The Locust rose high and did a wide, fast circle around a big chunk of the eight hundred thousand acres that comprised Dugway. The broad, flat expanse of the proving grounds was bordered on three sides by mountains that created a lovely backdrop for the test flight.
Snider lifted the walkie-talkie. “Captain Soames, give me a low, fast pass. Take their hats off, son.”
“Roger that.”
The Locust came out of its turn at the far edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert, turned its blunt nose toward the bleachers that could not have been more than flyspecks to the pilot, and turned up the heat. The jet dropped low, scorching above the deck at one hundred feet, but punching through the still air at three times the speed of sound. It was far from the bird’s top speed, but this close to the stands it would be supernaturally fast to the spectators. Gasps turned to cries as the Locust ripped past at what appeared to be an impossible speed.
“Okay, Captain,” said Snider, “go high and go away.”
The jet rose and rolled and made an improbably tight turn. That was another of Shelton’s design breakthroughs—a combination of inertial dampeners and internal gears that allowed sections of the ship’s mass to pivot on gimbals in a way that sloughed off the stress. Snider had a masters in physics and it was voodoo to her, but damn if it didn’t work. In a high-speed pursuit, the Locust would be able to shake the tail and then whip around behind with the kind of dogfighting agility not seen since the days of the old P-51s in World War II. Agility was not considered possible for craft as big or as fast as the Locust.
Snider turned once more to the audience.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “we just scrambled four Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIs to pursue the Locust. For those not familiar with the F-35s, they are single-engine, fifth-generation multirole fighters designed to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air-defense missions with stealth capability. In short, these birds are capable of stopping anything with wings and they’ll do it with style and an awesome grace.”
She paused, watching confusion and doubt play over the faces of the bean counters and politicians.
“We’ve asked the F-35 pilots to pursue the Locust and get a missile lock. Naturally no missiles will actually be fired. Everyone is carrying dummy warheads today anyway. Now … statistical probability gives the Locust a six percent survival rate in a four-to-one confrontation with the Raptors. Lieutenant McMasters will be happy to take your money if anyone wants to bet on the outcome.”
There were a few smiles. Not many.
Fine, you humorless fucks, thought Snider, maybe I should take a bet on how many of you shit your pants in the next five minutes.
She raised the walkie-talkie, switched the feed to the main speakers so everyone could hear, and said, “Ground to Lightning One. Go get ’em, boys.”
Suddenly a flight of dark gray jets came screaming over the mountain ridge like a swarm of monstrous wasps. Snider was taking a bit of a risk using four combat-ready craft that had a flyaway cost of nearly two hundred million each. But she needed a lot of money to put the Locust into mass production. The Air Force had sixty-eight of the F-35s, with contracts pending for ten more. Snider wanted to piss on that contract and see Shelton Aeronautics get the big money for the next ten years’ worth of stealth fighters. If the F-35s were generation five, Snider personally regarded the Locust as an evolutionary leap forward. Generation ten at least.
The four F-35s tore across the sky, then split into two pairs, with one group flying a direct intercept with the Locust—which was coming out of its long circle—and the other group rising to come above and around for a drop-and-kill.
The Locust flew straight toward the first group and Snider heard the murmurs begin in the stands. Maybe they thought that the Locust pilots were so busy trying to figure out how to fly their new plane or maybe they thought the pilots didn’t realize the exercise began, but Snider overheard several derisive comments. The gist was that the audience thought this was going to be a very short exercise and one that was, in its way, every bit as much of a disaster as what happened at Area 51.
The four F-35s closed in like the snapping jaws of a crocodile. So fast, so hard, so certain.
“Lightning One to Ground,” began the team leader, “I have a missile lock on—”
And the Locust vanished.
It was there one moment and then it was simply gone.
Everyone in the stands gasped. They all froze for a moment and then jumped to their feet. The F-35 pilots all began jabbering at once.
“Lightning One, do you have the target on your scope?”
“Lightning Three, who has eyes on—?”
And on like that. The four F-35s split apart, turning and rising to check the four quadrants of the sky. One of them circled low to drop almost to the deck, looking for the Locust on the desert floor.
It was not there.
Then a voice shouted out in alarm. “Lightning Three, who has a missile lock on me? Who has a damn missile lock on me?”
There was a burst of s
quelch and then another voice said, “Locust One to Lightning Three. You’re dead, baby.”
Far above, there was a shimmer and suddenly the Locust was there. It seemed to melt out of the sky, shedding the dark blue like a chameleon stepping off a leaf. The Locust shot past the F-35 and did a neat little roll. A “fuck you” roll, thought Snider.
Lightning Two and Four abruptly angled down, driving toward the Locust with a renewed pincer attack.
The audience yelled and pointed.
At nothing.
The Locust vanished again.
The F-35s burst through empty air and parted, rising up and away to try and find their target.
Then Lightning Four’s voice broke from the speakers. “Showing a missile lock. Goddamn it…”
The Locust blipped into view again, right on Lightning Four’s tail, six hundred yards back, lined up for an easy kill shot.
“Sweet dreams,” laughed the Locust pilot. Then he was gone again.
The crowd was yelling now. No, Snider realized, cheering.
Two F-35s in under two minutes. It was so beautiful it was horrifying. Even the bean counters were grinning like kids at a World Series game.
The two “destroyed” F-35s flew out of the test area, and Snider could swear she saw their wings droop with frustration and disappointment. These pilots were combat pros who had seen action in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. They were the kind of pilots who killed what they hunted and always came home without a dent in the fender. Now they would have to put this on their résumé. The only consolation was that these were the kinds of pilots who might be in the first full class of Locust pilots. They would want that. They would burn for that.
The remaining F-35s were watchdogging each other, changing formation, doubling back, making random turns to shake pursuit. This part of it would sell the maneuverability of the F-35 to even a hardened skeptic.
But then Lightning Two announced that there was a missile lock on him. It sounded like the words were being pulled out of his mouth with rusty pliers. The laughter of the Locust pilot did not soothe his feelings one little bit, and the Locust appeared again, momentarily switching off its chameleonic disguise. One moment it was invisible against the far mountains, the next moment it was there doing its cocky little victory roll, and then it was gone again.