Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (62 page)

 
          
Everything
was going fine until the pilot, by himself in jthe Aerostar, decided to shut
off the electric fuel-boost pumps after turning onto the parallel taxiway.
Seconds later, both engines sputtered and quit, vapor-locked. He nearly drained
his battery trying to restart an engine. Disgusted, he braked to a halt, shut
his plane down except for the strobes to keep another plane from ramming his
Aerostar, grabbed his briefcase, locked up, and headed toward the terminal to
find someone to help him tow his six- thousand-pound plane to the ramp.

 
          
The
general aviation FBO and the Bar Harbor Airlines terminals were long closed.
The only other sign of life at the airport was Portsmouth Air, so he walked
over to the huge hangar complex. The complex was surrounded by a twelve-foot
fence topped with barbed wire,, but a Cypher- Lock gate near the parking lot
was not fully closed, so the pilot walked in. The front door to the main office
was locked. He walked around the offices to the west side of the hangar itself
and tried another door—locked too. But just as . he walked past it to find
another door, the steel-sheathed l door banged open, someone loudly hawked and
spit outside, then let the door go—whoever it was never saw the pilot behind
it. The Aerostar pilot caught the door before it closed and stepped inside the
hangar ...

 
          
.
. . and what he saw inside made his jaw drop in surprise—it was Air Force One,
the President of the United States’ plane!

 
          
The
huge Boeing 747 airliner completely filled the hangar. White on the top, light
blue and black on the bottom, with a dark-blue accent running from the upper
half of the nose section and sweeping along the mid-fuselage windows to the
tail, it was an awesome sight to behold. The pilot, a professor at Dartmouth,
knew that Air Force One used to come to Pease quite often when President Bush
would fly here on his way to his family retreat in Kenneb- unkport years ago,
but he never had the chance to see him or his entourage arrive—now he was
getting a good firsthand look at one of the most distinctive planes in the
world!

 
          
He
could plainly see the words
united
states of
America
on the side of the fuselage, although the
lettering looked . .. well, a bit sloppy, not even or symmetrical at all. He
was near the tail section, and he could see the Air Force chevron at the base
of the vertical stabilizer, and the . serial number 28000 and the American flag
midway up the vertical stabilizer, painted as if the staff side were forward
and the flag were stretched taut and blowing aft. The smell of paint fumes was
very strong—it looked as if Air Force One was getting a touchup or a good
cleaning. Funny—the pilot never would’ve guessed they’d do maintenance on Air
Force Ones up here in little
Portsmouth
,
New Hampshire
, although they’d obviously keep that kind of information se- i cret.

 
          
The
pilot began walking toward the front of the plane, under the right wingtip. He
passed a few workers, but they didn’t pay too much attention to him. He stood
along the wall of the hangar, watching a guy painting the Seal of the President
of the
United States
near the nose, and, like the lettering on
top, the paint job on the seal was passable but not very professional. It
looked okay from a distance, but up close it—

 
          
“Excuse
me, sir,” he heard. The pilot turned and was confronted by a tall, very
mean-looking guy with short- cropped hair, wearing a dark-green flight suit. He
looked like a Marine Corps aviator. He looked mean and nasty enough to kill
with his bare hands, but fortunately he seemed in a good—or at least a
forgiving—mood. “This is a restricted area.”

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” the Aerostar pilot said. “I’m Doctor Clemenz, professor of history at
Dartmouth
. “Clemens with a z, ” he added, as if often
asked how to spell his last name to make it jive with the unusual
pronunciation. “My Aerostar is stuck out there on the taxiway. I was looking
for someone who might give me a tow.”

 
          
“No
problem, sir,” the Marine said with a thick
Brooklyn
accent. “But I better get you out of this
area before we all get our dicks in a wringer.” He escorted the pilot along the
wall toward the front of the hangar. Workers saw the big Marine, wore shocked
expressions on their faces, and stepped toward him but retreated after a few
steps.

 
          
“You
guys actually service Air Force One here?”

 
          
“Not
much use in denying it, is there, sir?” the Marine said jovially. “But please
keep it under your hat, all right, sir? I’ve already got a lot to explain—like
how you got inside here.”

 
          
“Front
gate was ajar, side door was opened by someone wanting to get a breath of fresh
air . . . listen, am I under arrest? I probably shouldn’t say anything else if
I am.”

 
          
“I’m
not placing you under arrest, sir—unless you try to run.”

 
          
“I
assure you, I won’t . . . uh, I'm sorry, your name .. . ?”

 
          
“Captain
Cook, Dave Cook,” the big guy said, extending a hand.

 
          
Clemenz
accepted it. “Marines?” Cook nodded. “I always thought the Air Force took care
of Air Force One.”

 
          
“The
Air Force flies it—the Marines are supposed to guard it,” Cook said after a
short, uncomfortable pause. Clemenz nodded, accepting that explanation—the
Marines guarded the White House, why not Air Force One? “The operative words
here are ‘supposed to.’ ”

 
          
“Shit
happens,” Clemenz said, trying to console the soldier and sorry that his
trespassing was probably going to get the friendly Marine into big trouble,
maybe even ruin. his career.

 
          
“Yes,
sir, it surely does,” the big Marine said. He led the doctor through a doorway
into an office, past more startled men. Most of them wore civilian clothes but
were very heavily armed. Cook waved them away before they could grab Clemenz,
dismissing them with a sharp shake of his head—Clemenz could easily feel the
daggers darting from Cook’s blazing eyes to the guards, silently admonishing
them for their miss. He grabbed one man tightly by his upper arm and whispered
something in his ear, then let him go. “Have a seat, Doctor Clemenz. Coffee?
Tea?”

 
          
“Not
unless I’m going to be here awhile, Captain,” Clemenz said with a wry smile,
afraid that’s exactly \yhat was going to
happen.                                                                     
‘

 
          
“I
don’t think so, Doctor Clemenz,” the soldier said, picking up a clipboard and
finding a pencil in a desk drawer. He copied Clemenz’s
Hanover
,
New Hampshire
, address, employment information, and names and addresses of any
relatives and friends nearby—no relatives in
Portsmouth
, only a few acquaintances. Clemenz enjoyed
fishing and lobstering and came to
Portsmouth
often, but he was fairly new to the area
and usually came only in the summer, so he knew few people in town. He said he
shared a house with another professor up in
York
Harbor
. “How were you going to get to the house,
sir?”

 
          
“Airport
car,” Clemenz said. “Airport lets us park a car here for fifty dollars a month.
It’s just an old beat-up Dat- sun. It’s parked right over by the DOT building
... is this going to take much longer, Captain? I left my strobes on so nobody
would run over my Aerostar. Can you help me tow it to the main parking ramp? I
don’t mean to rush you, since I was doing the trespassing, but it’s getting
late and I—”

 
          
“Of
course, sir,” Cook replied. “If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll follow you to your
house in
York
Harbor
, just to verify your destination. Will that
be a problem, sir?”

 
          
“No
... no, I suppose not...”

 
          
“Was
there someone you needed to call? Leave a message at the FBO about your plane?”

 
          
“When
they see the plane parked out front, they’ll know it’s, me.”

 
          
“Very
well. I think we’re done here,” Cook said. “I would like to take some pictures
for our files. Do you have any objections to that?”

 
          
“No,
I guess not.”

 
          
“Good.
And sir, I’ll probably say this two or three times before you leave, but you
must be absolutely clear on this: what you’ve seen tonight must be kept secret.
I’m sure you can easily imagine the danger if any terrorists, saboteurs, or
kooks knew that Air Force One is serviced here. Our security is usually very
good, but if an amateur can stumble into this place, imagine what a trained
terrorist squad can do.”

 
          
“I
understand perfectly,” Clemenz said earnestly.

 
          
“Good,”
Cook said. “Let’s get some pictures and we’ll wrap this up. This way, sir.”
Cook led the way through the door back out to the main hangar, allowing Clemenz
to pass in front of him . . .

 
          
.
. . and when the professor exited the office, he saw about three dozen men, the
workers that had been working on Air Force One, standing a few paces outside
the door, backdropped by Air Force One itself towering over them. They were
looking at Clemenz with a collective expression mix of surprise and . . . What?
Pity? until Captain Cook emerged from the office. Then their expressions
changed to one of downright, undisguised, genuine fear.

 
          
Clemenz
somehow knew he was a dead man even before he felt the hand grasp his hair,
yank his head up and forward, and felt the sharp prick against the back of his
neck at the base of his skull as the knife was driven up along the top of his
vertebrae and into the base of his brain. He gave a short cry, not necessarily
from the pain as much as from the surprise and the resignation. He did not feel
anything else after that.

 
          
Henri
Cazaux let the corpse dangle at the end of his knife for several seconds,
letting all the workers and security men get a good look. No one dared avert
his eyes, although one man mercifully fainted when he saw the body quiver in
its last throes of death. “This man just walked in here!” Cazaux shouted. “He
just
walked in!
No one bothered to
stop him, challenge him, even look at him, although he is obviously not wearing
an identification badge or the clothing code of the day. He is going to hang
here in front of. the hangar as a reminder to every one of you to keep
vigilant. Now get back to work—the timetable is going to be moved up.
Move! ”

 
          
Armed
guards were taking three men away in handcuffs as Tomas Ysidro and Gregory
Townsend came up to Cazaux. Cazaux tossed the dead professor off his knife
against the wall—the man had died so quickly that almost no blood seeped from
the knife wound. “Sorry about that, Henri,” Ysidro said casually, kicking the
corpse so the small trickle of blood from the wound dripped on the man’s
clothes and not onto the hangar floor. “If I would’ve gotten here earlier I
could have supervised these bozos better, but I can’t be at two places at
once.”

 
          
“Can
you be in position by tomorrow night?” Cazaux asked.

 
          
Townsend
thought for a moment; then: “I think so, Henri. We’ll need the Shorts to move
the guys and their equipment, but I think we—”

 
          
“Don’t think, Townsend,” Cazaux said
menacingly. “Can you be in position by tomorrow night or not?”

           
“I’d prefer two nights to get
everyone into proper position, Henri,” Townsend said, “but the answer is yes. I
can be ready to go tomorrow night.”