Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (29 page)

 
          
He
walked back to his V-ioo just as a large green M113 Armadillo combat vehicle
pulled up beside his. The back door swung open and two armed soldiers jumped
out and took defensive positions behind the ACV. Jacinto could see the roof
turret swing in his direction, the huge twenty-millimeter Browning cannon and
its coaxial 7.62-millimeter machine gun in the turret trained on the Stepvan
behind him.

 
          
“Five
Foxtrot, code two, report,” a voice blared through the Armadillo’s loudspeaker.

 
          
“Five
Foxtrot, code victor ten victor, all secure,” Jacinto yelled back. The security
crews had been given a code sequence and number for the shift. When challenged,
the guard would respond with the proper code to advise the response crew that
he was not under duress. If he had responded with anything else the snipers at
the back of the truck and the gunner on top of the armored vehicle with his
cannon and machine gun would kill anybody in sight.

 
          
But
Jacinto answered correctly. The guards behind the Armadillo raised their rifles
and slung them on their shoulders. Jacinto walked over to the truck.

 
          
“Pissing
off the munitions maintenance troops again, eh, Rey?”

 
          
“I
gotta do something to stay awake, Sarge. These guys have no sense of humor.”

 
          
“Yeah.
You gotta hit the head or what?”

 
          
“Just
let me refill my canteen and I’ll be okay.”

 
          
Jacinto
went to the back of the Armadillo and hacked around with the two assault troops
as he filled his canteen from the large water can and hooked it back onto his
web belt. He gave the shift-supervisor NCO a snappy salute as the ACV drove
away.

 
          
His
blood flowing once again, Jacinto did a quick walkaround inspection of the
hangar as the munitions maintenance troops punched in the number of the code
lock on the hangar door opening mechanism. As the senior NCO went inside, the
younger man hopped back into the Stepvan and pulled it around so that the rear
was facing in toward the plane. Jacinto moved toward the front of the hangar so
he could watch the rear of the truck and the driver. The young driver,
obviously nervous around the flight line, finally got into position after a
series of jerks and starts, maneuvering the missile trailer in beside the plane
as close to the hangar wall as he could. Jacinto decided to help him out, and
guided the driver in until the truck was ten feet from the nose of the plane
and the trailer was just under the left wingtip.

 
          
“Thanks,”
the young airman said in a high-pitched voice. He hopped out and trotted back
to help his supervisor.

 
          
“Better
chock the truck,” Jacinto called inside the hangar. The airman froze. Sergeant
Howard looked at Jacinto, then at Crowe, and finally at the Stepvan.

 
          
“Do
as the man said,” Howard yelled to Crowe. “You know all vehicles are supposed
to be chocked out here.” Crowe ran to the truck, pulled out a set of yellow
wooden chocks and placed them under the rear wheels.

 
          
“And
stop running around in the hangar,” Howard yelled once more. “You know better.
Or should.”

 
          
Jacinto
suppressed a smile. He remembered back to his first solo guard duties while he
watched the two technicians set to work. He was a million times more nervous
than this guy . . .

 
          
His
interest was quickly drawn to the amazing aircraft they were servicing. He had
never been any closer than this to the plane, even though he had been guarding
it for a year now, but he was still amazed by the sleek, catlike aircraft. It looked
even more deadly now with its two huge air-to-air missiles hanging on the belly
on either side of the large intake. Jacinto had read every scrap of
unclassified information on DreamStar and had repeatedly asked for permission
to look inside the cockpit but was always denied.

 
          
Sergeant
Howard had wheeled a maintenance platform around to the left side of the
cockpit and locked it into place, then scrambled up the steps and opened the
canopy. Meanwhile Crowe had started up an auxiliary power cart in the back of
the hangar and was hauling air and power cables over to the receptacles near
the left main landing gear. A few moments later Howard had flipped the right
switches in the cockpit— the battery and external power switches, Jacinto
recalled from his reading—and cockpit and position lights popped in all around
DreamStar.

 
          
Howard
stepped off the maintenance platform and walked over to the back of the truck.
Noticing Jacinto watching him from the front of the hangar, he waved him over.
Jacinto, and soon Airman Crowe, moved over beside Howard.

 
          
Over
the noise of the power cart Sergeant Howard said, “Want to take look inside?”

 
          
Jacinto
blinked in surprise. “Is it okay?”

 
          
“Don’t
see why not. Ejection seat’s been deactivated, half the black boxes in the cockpit
have been pulled out and the weapons are all pinned and safed. No better time.”

 
          
Jacinto
nodded enthusiastically. He pulled the clip out of his M-16, placed the clip in
a pouch on his belt, checked the safety on the rifle and leaned the weapon on the
Stepvan bumper. “All right, I been waiting to do this for—”

 
          
A
hand reached across his face, covering his nose and mouth and twisting his head
sideways. Jacinto tried to roll away from the arms holding his head, but Howard
had run up to him and grasped his chin, holding his neck fast. A split-second
later Jacinto felt a sharp, deep sting on his exposed neck.

 
          
Three
seconds later he was dead.

 
          
“Shto slochelosch?
What the hell is the
matter with you, Crowe?” the man named “Howard” cursed at his young partner.
“Crowe” was staring at the body, watching Jacinto’s death twitch as the poison
slowly destroyed the central nervous system. “You almost let him get loose.”

 
          
Crowe
did not reply. Howard slapped the young man hard on the shoulder. “We must
hurry, idiot. Time is running out.” Pushed toward the still-quivering corpse,
Crowe began unbuckling Jacinto’s combat harness and webbing, jerking his hands
away as the last of the dead guard’s tremors left his body. Meanwhile Howard
swung open the back of the Stepvan, removed several pins from the sides of the
equipment racks along the inside walls of the van, then hauled the racks away
from the wall.

 
          
Out
from his hiding place inside the racks, wearing the ANTARES flight suit, was
Captain Kenneth Francis James.

 
          
“Nechyega syerchyanznaga, tovarisch.
It
is all clear, Comrade Captain. We are ready.”

 
          
James
raised the muzzle of the machine pistol and put the safety on. “Speak English,
you idiot. And help me out of here.”

 
          
Slowly,
carefully, Maraklov was helped to his feet. Moving as if his joints were locked
in place, he slowly walked to the edge of the Stepvan. Howard then lowered him
to the hangar floor, where he made his way to the maintenance platform still
set up beside DreamStar.

 
          
By
this time Airman Crowe—real name, long unused and almost forgotten, was Andrei
Lovyyev—had put on all of Jacinto’s combat gear and was just replacing the ammo
clip in the M-16 rifle. “Blouse your pants in your boots, Crowe,” James told
him as he crawled up the ladder. “And keep out of sight. You’re at least thirty
pounds smaller than Jacinto, someone is bound to notice.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
“Remember,
your call sign is Five Foxtrot. The duress code number is twelve and the duress
prefix and suffix is victor.”

 
          
“I
remember, sir.”

 
          
He
turned to Howard. “You both have been briefed on the pickup location?”

 
          
“Yes,
Captain. Good luck to you, sir.”

 
          
James
balanced himself on the cockpit sill of DreamStar and swung his legs inside the
cockpit. Then with Howard’s help, he connected the maze of wire bundles from
his flight suit to DreamStar’s computers, set the heavy ANTARES superconductor
helmet on his head and fastened it into place. By this time he was breathing
hard, he could feel drops of sweat crawling down his arms and neck. Howard’s hands
trembled slightly with excitement as he fastened the thick shoulder straps
around the metal-encased pilot and pulled them tight. “Tighter,” James said in
a voice muffled by the helmet. Howard braced himself and hauled on the straps
as hard as he could.

 
          
“Thank
you, Sergeant Howard,” James said. “You pulled this off very well.”

 
          
“Nyeh zah shto.
” Maraklov had been
James too long. He could barely understand a word, but the KGB agent’s soft
tone of voice gave him the idea. The man was obviously pleased by the
compliment. He rechecked James’ connections and climbed off the maintenance
platform.

 
          
Meanwhile
Crowe had climbed inside the armored vehicle outside the hangar, scanning the
flight line—Howard could see his head jerk at every crackle of the radio. It
had, he now realized, been foolish to bring such a youngster on a mission like
this—it was Lovyyev’s first full-scale job since sneaking across the border
from Mexico via El Paso and setting up residence under cover in Las Vegas three
years earlier. To put him in the lion’s den like this was taking a big risk.

 
          
But
it was too late for second guessing. Howard disconnected the missile trailer
from the Stepvan truck and moved it out of the way inside the hangar, closed
the van’s rear doors and moved it out of the hangar and clear of DreamStar’s
taxi path. Next he took several large orange-colored traffic cones marked
“DANGER HIGH EXPLOSIVE”
out of the van
and arranged them in a wide arc around the hangar doors. This was a normal
procedure—the cones were a warning to anyone else on the flight line that work
on live weapons was going on inside. But these cones were different. Each was a
miniature mortar-launcher, operated by remote control. When activated, each
would fire a high-explosive magnesium flash bomb a hundred yards away. The
concussions and blinding white light produced by the mortar rounds would slow
and presumably stop any quick-reaction forces from moving in until DreamStar
was clear of the hangar.

 
          
After
carefully aiming the disguised mortars at response roads and likely targets
around the hangar—being careful not to crater DreamStar’s taxi route or
exit—Howard stepped inside the hangar once again and rechecked that all safing
pins and streamers were removed from the aircraft and weapons. He then walked
to the truck, retrieved a M-16 rifle with a M-203 forty-millimeter
grenade-launcher under the barrel, a metal box full of grenades and a bag of
five thirty-round clips, and went back into the hangar to wait.

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
His
legs were aching, sweat was pouring into the metallic flight suit. Conditioned
air from the external power cart was trickling into the suit but was hardly
enough to change the temperature.

 
          
Through
the canopy he could see Crowe nervously fidgeting inside the armored car,
looking as if he was going to shoot himself in the face with his M-16 any
second. He could also watch Howard’s careful preparations for the massive
assault they knew had to come. Despite their plans, the moment they tried to
start engines the full force of Dreamland’s security forces would be on top of
them. Nearly fifty armed soldiers and two heavily armed tracked combat vehicles
surrounding the flight line would be let loose to blow DreamStar to hell.

 
          
Amid
it all James had to convince himself to relax, to empty his mind of all
thoughts, to clear a path for the sleeping ANTARES computer to worm its way
into his subconscious. Selfhypnosis, consciously forcing each muscle group to
relax, was the simplest and usually the most effective way of achieving
theta-wave state, but that seemed impossible. Muscles ached from the long climb
up the platform, and the lactic acid that collected in his muscle tissue from
heavy exertion would act like halon gas on a fire, blocking any conscious
efforts to relax those muscles.