Dark Dragons (40 page)

Taggart looked down into the Ops Center.  “Soon.”

*

The NESSTC’s galley looked just like a high school cafeteria
Darren thought.  Colonel Towsley explained why they referred to it as a
“galley,” but Darren didn’t pay much attention . . . something to do with the
NESSTC being a naval base, as well.  He was too busy trying to decide among
the wide array of appetizing food choices to be aware of Towsley’s continuing
good cop act.  Darren’s growling stomach told him to settle on two
pepperoni pizza slices, a huge fudge brownie and a Coke.  Towsley picked a
chef salad with ranch and an iced tea.  Darren followed the colonel to a
table over by the pinball machines.  Their two armed escorts were not far
behind.

“The food here is excellent,” Towsley said, sitting down.
“The one true morale booster we have.  Steak and Shrimp Fridays, Pizza Saturdays. 
You name it.”

Darren was still in Wise Ass Mode leftover from Taggart’s
office, but quickly dialed himself back when he felt more backtalk coming
on.  Maybe it was better to just squash it and smile and nod. 
Besides, Darren could tell from Towsley’s many wispy facial expressions back in
the office that the colonel might be on his side . . . and ‘General
Strangelove’ wasn’t here pushing buttons, anyway. 
So be nice Darren.

“The Marine recruiter who interviewed me at my high school
gave me an MRE to take home,” Darren said.  “I’ll admit that was an
excellent beef and bean burrito.”

“Did you use the flameless ration heater?”

“Yeah, that was pretty cool.  It was hot in twenty
seconds.”

“Military chow has come a long way from cold spaghetti in a
can.”

The galley wasn’t too busy, being mid-afternoon.  A few
scattered personnel were picking at their lunches here and there.  One man
with captain’s bars had his elbows on the table, his hands to his chin, lips
moving with a silent prayer, eyes closed.  Darren spotted Major Carruthers
and four beefy guys in desert camo eating from trays snow piled with food on
the other side of the galley.  Carruthers caught Darren looking and gave
him a wink and a smile before returning to his mashed potatoes.

Darren and Towsley ate in silence, but not in an
uncomfortable way between two people who knew nothing of the other.  It
felt more like a playful contest to see who would talk first.  There were
no casual glances at one another either.  Occasionally, Towsley would
salute a passing non-comm or smile and nod to a civilian but do so without
uttering a single word.  After about ten minutes of this, Darren gave up
hope trying to win the contest.

“So what’s your back story, colonel?  How did you end
up chasing aliens?”

Towsley took a long time to answer his question.  He
shifted around in his seat and stared at the far wall of the galley. 
After a few more chews of salad, “Well . . . it’s a long, winding road,
Darren.”

“I got time.”

Towsley’s long hesitations gave Darren the impression the
colonel was having problems coming up with the right words.  He was
blinking his eyes a lot, tapping the side of his bowl lightly with his fork,
bitting his bottom lip——haunted by a troubled past?  “I used to be a
fighter pilot with the Thirty-Fifth Tactical Fighter Wing.  I flew the
F-4G Phantom in Desert Storm.  Wild Weasel.”

“SAM suppression,” Darren said, impressed.  Towsley
just went up a couple of points higher on Darren’s One-to-Ten Respect
Scale.  “That’s suicidal going up against surface-to-air missile
launchers.”

Towsley suddenly shot him a look that almost made Darren
slide his chair back.  He had struck a bare nerve.  The colonel
looked back to his salad quickly.

“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

“No, it’s alright,” Towsley replied with a reassuring grin
Darren knew was fake.  “My first ever combat mission was on opening night
of Desert Storm.  It was also the last time I ever flew again.”

“What happened?”

Towsley saluted a passing ensign and returned to his quickly
disappearing salad.  “I thought you were a mind reader when you said
‘suicidal,’” he murmured, so low Darren had to lean forward.  “My
electronic warfare officer’s name was Jack Mitchell.  We’d been friends
since the Academy . . . our families vacationed together.  The first
sortie was against an SA-6 air defense site west of Baghdad.  We took off
from Shaikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, Jack in the backseat, me in front flying
our bird . . .” Towsley inhaled deeply through his nose “. . . there was an
explosion in the backseat.  Our cockpit depressurized, I had no stick,
there’s fire and smoke everywhere.  I ejected.  Jack didn’t. 
For three days, I hid from the Iraqis until I was picked up by a British SAS
chopper looking for SCUD’s, but there was a court martial waiting for me back
at Shaikh Isa.  I should have walked north instead and let Saddam take me
prisoner.”

Towsley tossed back a large gulp of iced tea as if it were a
highball of Jim Beam.  “They found Jack’s suicide letter in his
quarters.  He mentioned the grenade he was planning to take with us.”

“Jesus, why did he try to kill you, too?” Darren asked.

“Because he found out a week earlier that I was having an
affair with his wife.”

Darren was suddenly aware of every little sound in the galley:
the beeps and bells from the pinball machines, the banging of pans in the
kitchen, the banter of a weatherman on the corner TV, the hard breathing
through the colonel’s nose.

“I still hear the explosion, the screams, then him laughing
just before I ejected.  I used to get them every night, but therapy helped
reduce that to about one nightmare a week.  Now it’s about every . . .
month or so.  I’m pretty sure Jack survived the grenade——must have had a
couple of minutes with his thoughts before the impact.”

“What happened at your court martial?”

“I was charged with adultery and unbecoming.  For my
sins the JAG was kind enough to give me two choices . . . Dismissal, which is
just polite nomenclature for ‘dishonorable discharge for an officer’ or
Forfeiture of pilot’s wings.  I chose the latter and never flew
again.  They could have really thrown the book at me if they wanted, but I
had a divorce waiting for me when I got home which was worse than serving time
at Leavenworth.”

Towsley pushed a cherry tomato around in his bowl. 
“Couple months later, my daughter found my wife in the bathtub with an open
razor . . . she was barely alive when the ambulance arrived.”  He finished
the last of his iced tea.  “Dante says the Ninth Circle of Hell is
reserved for adulators and traitors so I got that waiting for me when I die.”

“Jesus, I need a drink,” Darren said.

This triggered a surprising chuckle from Towsley, and they
both wound up laughing pretty good, much to the obvious annoyance of the
captain who had been praying a couple of tables over.

“So then what?” Darren asked.

“A buddy of mine——one of the very few left——got me a job in
the Office of Special Investigations as a systems analyst in foreign threat
detection, and that’s where I began my career chasing aerial phenomena and UFO
crashes.  Which lead me here.”

The colonel could have begun his story at the Office of
Special Investigations and continued up to the present but had decided to start
with pain and suffering instead for some reason.  Darren thought he knew
why.  He didn’t mind playing attentive bartender to Towsley’s
whisky-sipping sad sack.  There was male bonding going on here.

“My Dragonstar is damaged,” he said.

Towsley stabbed the cherry tomato and popped it in his
mouth.  “I know.  Our engineers noticed the entry and exit hole in
the rear fuselage.  How bad is it?”

“Terrible.  I have no AMDS/laser-radar sensors.” 
Darren swallowed the last piece of fudge brownie.  “My fighter can’t see.”

“Wish we could help you, Darren,” Towsley said, his eyes
still aimed downward in his salad.

Darren pushed his tray away and took a napkin out of the
dispenser.  He unfolded it and laid it on the table.  “Can I borrow
your pen?”

Towsley took it out of his front pocket, and Darren
proceeded to draw an electrical diagram the simplest way he could.  “I
would like you to pass this onto your engineers.”

“What are you drawing?”

“The electrical schematic to my Dragonstar’s primary circuit
relay.  The one that’s damaged.”  Darren finished his crazy maze of
lines and scribbles and handed it over.  “Those lines are not copper
cables.  They’re flexible tubes filled with a superconducting gel that
changes its molecular structure in order to pass electricity.  They have
different voltage and amperage ratings just like electrical wires, so your boys
should be able to replace the damaged tube.  I would prefer a two-gauge
silver wire if you have one——the least resistance the better but copper or
aluminum will work.  Just make sure you use a higher wire gauge to
compensate if you do.  Don’t use Romex or bundled wire either. 
There’s too much heat buildup so you’re going to have to use spun glass
insulators at these points here and here.  The superconductor gel tubes
are also pressurized to eighty-psi, so the wire connections have to be tight. 
Somehow.”

“How do you know about all of this wire stuff?”

Darren starred at his diagram for a few seconds then back up
at Towsley.  “Internet.”  He went back to his napkin.  “This is
how you get into the engine chamber where the circuit relay is.  There’s a
single button under this panel that opens the access doors to the internal
fuselage.  I’m the only one who can open the panel, so you’ll have to let
me down there to do it.”

“And I suppose this means using your thought-control
helmet?”

Darren leaned back in his seat.  “It’s the only way I
can open that panel.”

“You know that’s not going to happen.”

Darren tossed the pen back, and it bounced into the
colonel’s empty salad bowl, rattling around.  “What do you guys eat around
here that makes you so paranoid . . . huh?  I don’t care what your
commanding officer thinks, but I want
you
to know that we’re on the same
team.  And the team needs to achieve the same goal which is kill aliens,
but I can’t do that with a broken dragon.”

Towsley let out a slow breath.  “Let me see your
napkin.”  The colonel studied his electrical diagram.  Darren could
see just the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“I’ll let you down there, but I want you to understand the
first perceptible flinch you make that looks at all aggressive will be met with
a single round to the chest.”  Towsley gave a nod in the direction of
their armed escorts with submachine guns standing ten feet away.  “One of
them will be practically sitting in your lap in the cockpit.  Are we
crystal?”

“Yes, sir . . . clear.”

“I want you to know this doesn’t mean we’re going to repair
your bird or eventually let you out of here.  It’s only for our engineers’
benefit to get a look-see at the internal machinery.”

“Of course.”

“Quit smiling.”  Towsley stood up.  “Let’s go.” 

*

The colonel was right.  The guard from the Response
Team was practically sitting in his lap, a 9mm Beretta less than a foot from
his chest.  The guard had a face of granite, but Darren kept his smile on
the whole time.  After he opened the panel, another guard took his helmet
back to the electronics lab building in the hangar’s corner.  He spotted
Colonel Towsley talking to a group of engineers there, the man known as Jacobi
reading Darren’s napkin.

“I shut off the security feature I told you about,” Darren
said to Towsley.  “So your guys can fix my beast.  Which I would
appreciate.”

“Darren, you need to come into the lab for a moment,”
Towsley said.

“What is it?”

“Just follow us.”

The main electronics testing laboratory occupied the first
floor of the concrete building that looked more like a bunker than anything
else.  Here, Darren saw dozens of machinery and computers: electron
microscopes, laser spectrometers, gas chromatographs, tensile strength testers,
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machines, CAD stations, a wide assortment of tools
like diamond saws and soldering guns.  A nerd’s wet dream.  In the
center of the room, the scientists had the guys’ combat armor suits spread out
on a low stainless steel table that had to be fifteen feet long.  The four
PDAs lying next to each other were chirping for attention.  Darren
recognized the sound as the early-warning detection alert.

“What are they doing?” Towsley asked.

“The bad guys are on the move.”  He picked up his PDA
and highlighted the early-warning prompt.  A green, rotating hologram of
the solar system appeared above the device with telemetry data in Xrel script
spread across the display.  “We have two surveillance stealth satellites
that feed us early-warning, sub-space signals.”

“Sub-space?”

“Faster-Than-Light communication.  Real time. 
There’s our bogey.”  Darren pointed at a tiny red circle just inside the
orbit of Mercury about thirty million kilometers from the sun——the
moonship.  “Trying to hide in the blind spot are you?” he said.  He
highlighted the telemetry data above it.  “Radial velocity just under
twenty-three percent light-speed.”  A long, arced yellow line snaked out
from the red circle and stopped at the L2 Lagrangian point just beyond the
moon’s orbit around the earth, about 932,000 miles away——a perfect place to
park a 1,400-mile diameter spaceship.  “It’s on an intercept course for
Earth.  Nine hours.  If you’re still entertaining any notions of
letting us go, colonel, now would be a good time.”

Towsley did not respond to him.  He had his
walkie-talkie out.  “Tango Leader to Bird Nest.”

“Bird Nest, go ahead Tango Leader.”

“Medusa Stare needs eyes on Fire Sector for possible enemy
ingress.”

“Copy that, Tango Leader.”

Suddenly, klaxons began to wail throughout the Near-Earth
Space Surveillance and Tracking Center.  Voices began buzzing over one
another on the radios.  People out in the hangar began moving rapidly.