Fallout (13 page)

“Can she cook?”

Raymond nodded vigorously enough for the jowls on his cheeks to move. “Yes. She can cook very well.”

Luke couldn’t resist. “So, Raymond,” he said, “what’s up with the hat?”

Raymond looked at Luke intently. “
Area
51.”

“What?”

“Area 51. It’s out here. It’s
all
here.”

“UFOs,” Luke said, finally understanding. He glanced at Thud, who was trying not to snicker. “You follow UFO sightings?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve even written articles for
UFO Today
.”

“
That’s
what you meant by ‘here.’ ”

“This is one of the places that the UFOs have landed. It’s well documented. I’m thinking maybe I’ll see some.”

Thud turned in his chair and looked hard at Raymond. “Can you and Glenda do the work on the deli without that interfering?”

“Yes, sir. Extraterrestrial Highway is driving distance from here, but I won’t have to go there all that much. I think you can see more from here, frankly,” he said in a tone of secrecy. “I think more happens up here than over at that Groom Lake. That’s been picked clean. They know people are expecting things over there. I think I’ll be more likely to see something—”

“Thanks for coming,” Thud said, standing up. He shook Raymond’s hand.

Luke also stood and shook Raymond’s hand. “We’ll give you a call as soon as we decide,” Luke said.

“Look forward to it.” Raymond’s mind had started to work. “How big a deli you anticipate?”

“We hadn’t really thought about it,” Luke answered. “But the more I do, I think something with tables and chairs, maybe even an outdoor patio.”

“Maybe even a jukebox,” Thud said.

“That would be great.” Raymond nodded. “I can build anything, you know. I’d like to get right on it if you guys are ready. Just give me a call.” Raymond waited for one of them to say something, then realized they weren’t going to. He turned and walked out of the room.

When his footsteps died away, Thud turned to Luke. “Sorry. I had no idea he was off.”

Luke smiled. “He’ll be fun to have around. The students will love the whole UFO thing. We’ll have to make sure he keeps copies of
UFO Today
around the deli. Think he can handle it?”

Thud nodded. “My dad said he was a steady employee. He just has some weird ideas.”

“Put him to work. Sure hope Glenda can cook—”

Just then Hayes came into the office, breathless. “I’m going to forward a call. It’s important,” he said.

The phone rang, and Luke glanced at his untouched sandwich and picked up the phone. He was annoyed that he hadn’t had more warning of whatever it was that was so important. “Yes, sir,” he replied as Hayes and Thud looked on. He nodded, listening. “Where? Why there? Yes, sir. No, not a problem. Yes, I am, sir. Very much, sir. Thank you. Yes. Good-bye.”

Luke put down the phone and smiled. “We’ve got our first students,” he said. “That was the Undersecretary’s office. We have four students for the first class, four foreign students.”

“Where from?” Thud asked.

“Pakistan.”

Hayes frowned. “Pakistan? Why?”

“What’s the matter with that? They fly American airplanes. They face India on the other side of the border. They’ve had two wars with India, and they still kill each other over Kashmir about every day. And the kicker, probably the reason that we got the deal, is . . . what’s the front-line fighter for India?”

Hayes nodded. “MiG-29.”

“Exactly. So if you were Pakistan, where would you go for training?” Luke stood. “Now we just have to get the other twelve students lined up.”

Hayes wanted more information. “What were you writing? You wrote something down when you were talking on the phone.”

Luke turned around quickly, recalling just that. “Oh, yeah. He gave me the name of their OIC. Head pilot. A Major”—he looked at the piece of paper and tried to read his own writing—“Riaz Khan, of the Pakistani Air Force.”

“Khan?” Hayes said, frowning. “I hope he isn’t any relationship to the Khan who’s the head of the ISI.”

“What’s that?” Luke asked.

“Internal security division for Pakistan. Sort of their FBI and CIA rolled into one. They’re mean and nasty. And they’re deeply involved with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Thud was lost. “Who?”

“The Islamic ruling party of Afghanistan. They’re very dangerous. Plus, I don’t need to remind you, it’s the Taliban that hid and defended Osama bin Laden for so long.”

The humor had drained out of Luke’s face. “You think we ought to be worried about this?”

Hayes considered. The last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize the first class. “The Undersecretary is responsible for their security clearances. It’s not really our problem. But I sure as hell would have picked some other students if it had been up to me.”

“Does this go on your to-do list?” Luke asked.

Hayes nodded. “I got a real uneasy feeling when I heard Pakistan. Khan’s a common name in Pakistan. Chances of him being related to the head of the ISI are pretty low. But still, I don’t know. I’ll give it some thought. Next time I talk to the Undersecretary’s office, I’ll remind him that we’ll need copies—
written
copies—of the clearances for all the students, including the Pakistanis.”

“Fair enough,” Luke said. “Guess what they’re going to do for jets?”

“Fly their F-16s from Pakistan?”

“Nope. They’re going to lease four F-16s from the California Air National Guard. How clever is that? Let’s put that on the agenda for the next department heads meeting. Maybe we can set up some kind of a pipeline so other foreign students can do that. Why don’t you get on the horn with the air national guard units west of the Mississippi to see if they’d be up for that. We can have a list.”

“You got it,” Hayes said. He was about to leave, then turned toward Luke. “You wouldn’t mind if I just did a little checking into this guy, would you?”

“How?”

“My brother.”

Luke nodded. “Good idea. Can’t have too much knowledge.”

Luke stood in front of the energy-charged room in his khaki flight suit. Russian pilot wings were embroidered on his nametag, with nfws and stick embroidered underneath the wings. He wore the newly designed NFWS patch on his right shoulder, with a black background and a gray F/A-18 in the foreground. Superimposed over the F/A-18 was a MiG gunsight. It was an F/A-18 caught in a MiG gunsight, a reversal of the TOPGUN patch, which has a MiG-21 caught in an American gunsight. Luke’s round patch read around the outside, nevada fighter weapons school. It was the same patch that would be handed out to graduates of his school. One patch for each graduate. It was Luke’s hope that this patch would be worn as proudly as the TOPGUN patch was worn by the few who earned it.

The newly completed ready room was on the second deck of the hangar. It still smelled of fresh paint. All except one of the newly hired instructors were there. They were all wearing their NFWS flight suits with Russian insignia. Each had completed the ground school and at least his introductory flight in the MiG-29. Several had completed the syllabus. For the first time the squadron was intact. All but one of the pilots were aboard, and all the administrative and maintenance people were in place.

The ready room itself was a study in aviation decor. On one wall it had silhouettes of every major fighter airplane in the world, in the same scale. Hanging underneath the silhouettes at the end of twelve-inch dowel rods were models of each fighter, built to perfection, all in the same scale.

Luke stood at the lectern, his hands on its sides, and got everyone’s attention. “Good morning,” he said.

They all smiled. “Good morning, Skipper,” one said loudly.

“Do we have to call you ‘Skipper’?” another asked.

“Absolutely. As each of you knows, this company will be run exactly as a Navy fighter squadron is run. We will have pilot duties, instructor duties, collateral duties, a chain of command, and thirty days of vacation a year. One big difference, though, is we will pay you exactly
twice
what your counterparts in the Navy are paid. Your pay is based on twice the published Navy pilot’s scale for the same rank. That makes it very easy to track. It should also make you want to write your congressmen to convince them that Navy pilots are underpaid. Feel free.” He smiled.

“Are we all here?”

“Everybody except Stamp and Lips,” Luke replied.

“Stamp’s coming?”

“Yep. And get this: Who knows what Stamp’s doing right now?”

“Some air show thing?” Pug asked.

“Yep. He’s flying a plane that has smirnoff vodka painted on the side. Anybody know what kind of plane?”

“Seventeen.”

“Yep. A MiG-17. He and his partner own
two
of them. They fly them in air shows. Hot deal, but not quite like flying as a TOPGUN instructor in MiG-29s. He’ll be here next week.”

“Is he quitting the MiG-17 thing?”

“Nope. He’s going to do that on the weekends. He’s going to live in San Jose, where he’s based, and commute here in his MiG.”

“What?” Sluf asked.

“As I told most of you when you checked in, including Sluf, if you want, you can commute to work here in your own airplane. We have plenty of ramp space, and it means you can live anywhere nearby that you want to,” Luke said. “You can commute here every day if you want, in your own biplane or Learjet. Whatever you want.” He watched them nod. “So now let me get going. Welcome! Thanks for agreeing to be part of this new school. I can’t tell you how excited I am about it, and after talking to each of you, I know you are as well. It is one of the most exciting developments in fighter aviation in twenty years.

“We have six weeks to get ready for the first class. The demand from international Navies and Air Forces is enormous. We’ve received calls, letters, e-mails, faxes from all over the world asking for space in a class. Brian Hayes, our intel officer, whom many of you know . . .” He pointed. Hayes was sitting at the duty officer’s desk, and raised his hand. “Brian is also our acting admin officer. He’s the one in charge of school quotas, student enrollment, clearances, and the like. Ever since the Nevada Fighter Weapons School Web site went active, he’s been getting
thousands
of hits a day. Word is out.

“Another thing that has surprised me is the demand within U.S. forces. TOPGUN’s tough to get into. But an awful lot of pilots want to go, and an awful lot of squadron commanders want their pilots to go. We all know that. And since they changed the setup at TOPGUN, where squadrons don’t send their pilots through until they’ve completed their squadron tour, the squadrons don’t get any immediate benefit from sending anyone through the school. Well, here we’re going back to the old model, where squadrons send a pilot or two in a given year, and they return to their squadrons to teach the other pilots what they’ve learned. What I
didn’t
anticipate, at least not at the demand we’re seeing, was that the DOD would spring for the money to send them.”

He went to a slide in his PowerPoint presentation. It was a picture of their MiG-29s sitting outside the hangar with their new angular, choppy desert camouflage and the black star markings. “One thing driving the demand, frankly, is the fact that we fly MiG-29s. Everyone wants to fly against a MiG-29. Some of you may recall back in 1999 when the German Air Force brought six MiG-29s over to Red Flag, at Nellis. They were the prettiest girls at the dance. Everybody wanted to know everything they did, how they did it, their specifications, their maneuvering diagrams—everything. Demand has, if anything, increased since 1999. In six weeks we start meeting that demand.”

“You think we can actually be ready in six weeks?” Sluf asked. Sluf had joined them from the Forest Service. After his tour as a TOPGUN instructor, instead of flying for the airlines he’d gotten a job flying tanker planes to fight forest fires.

“Sluf, I really appreciate your participation in this meeting. As a reward”—Luke smiled—“I’d like you to be in charge of facilities. Hangars, foreign object damage walk-downs, roads—all that good stuff.”

Sluf put his head back and rolled his eyes. His black hair reflected the light because of the hair gel he always wore. He laughed. “I get it. The first dissent is met with the assignment of a shitty little job?”

“Welcome to the Navy,” Luke replied.

“This isn’t supposed to be the Navy!” Sluf protested.

“No, seriously, I really appreciate you volunteering for that difficult job. As to your question, we
will
be ready. We’re going to have to work eighteen-hour days six days a week. We’ll take Sundays off because I think it’s smart to rest. When September first comes around, we’ll have sixteen fully trained instructors, a syllabus in place, the airspace reserved, and we’ll be ready to go.

“We’ll take two weeks off before the second class, which, I am proud to report, is also full. We expect to fill up every class for the whole year before January one.”

Pug, one of the instructors who’d been flying 767s for Delta three weeks before, was troubled. “This whole thing turns on keeping these MiGs flying. What do you know about MAPS? Can they pull this off?”

Luke looked at Vlad, who was sitting in the back listening to every word. “Vlad, why don’t you talk about maintenance for a minute? Most of you have met him, but this is Vladimir Petkov, a former Russian MiG-29 instructor who now works for MAPS.”

“What’s his call sign?” Sluf asked.

Ted Bradley—Rain—jumped on that idea. “How about Commie?” He laughed.

Vlad did
not
laugh. He was angry. “I was not Communist. I was against Communist. To be called that would be insulting.”

“All the more reason,” Rain replied, looking around for support.

Luke was uncomfortable. He didn’t want a rift. “We may follow a lot of Navy traditions here, but call signs that insult people will not be one of them,” he said to Rain, who looked chastised. “How about we call him Vlad? That okay with you?” he asked.

“Vlad is good.”

“Good. Come up here and talk about the maintenance.”

“Good morning,” Vlad said awkwardly. His hair was plastered to his head, and those in the two front rows could smell him. They curled up their noses and looked at each other, wondering how someone who was such a hygienic wreck could know much about anything. “I’m Vladimir Petkov. We have six of the MiGs ready to go now. The other two will be finished within two weeks, and of course the two-seater has been ready. The ones that are flying are holding up good. The desert air is good for them, and everything is on schedule. They are durable airplanes, but we will certainly have failures. We expect eighty-five percent flying at any given time, and enough spare parts to have a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour turnaround for any airplane the breaks down. I do not think we will have a problem.”