Fallout (24 page)

“What?”

“I don’t think we got the straight story on why he left the Russian Air Force.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I finally dug into his records. They’re silent on why he left. They just stop.”

“How do you know?”

“I had the records he left with us retranslated. I didn’t want to just accept the version he gave us. The translator I found in Vegas used to be in the Russian Army. He said they would never just end like that. They always put the reason. Either discharge or retirement—whatever. Vlad has kept some pages from us. We don’t have the whole thing.”

Luke frowned. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.” Brian stepped off the StairMaster onto the deck and stood motionless while his legs regained their stability.

“Did I tell you that Dr. Thurmond said he smelled alcohol on Vlad’s breath when he flew with him?”

“Seriously?” Brian asked. Luke nodded. “What if he was grounded? What if he was dangerous? What if he’s got an alcohol problem? And he’s flying as an instructor?”

“The guy’s a good pilot. I’ve flown with him, Brian. He really knows what he’s doing. He’s a tremendous asset to us here.”

“He’s sure in tight with the Paks.”

“Tight?”

“Yeah. He’s given every one of them a flight in the two-seater. I’ve seen him out there showing them the MiGs. It just seems over the top.”

“He was supposed to. We agreed to that.”

“I know. But I was thinking about the missile shoot when you came in.”

“What about it?”

“It’s tomorrow morning. Vlad is getting MAPS to load them up this afternoon. Doesn’t it trouble you just a little that we have a Russian MiG pilot here, and Russian MiGs, and a bunch of foreigners who’ve just learned to fly them, and we’ll have four of them loaded up with live missiles? What if they decided to grab the MiGs and go shoot down an airliner?”

Luke froze. “Shit, Brian. Where’d you get that? You been staying up too late watching horror movies?”

Brian wiped the sweat dripping off his chin. “Probably. I’m just saying, if it were me? I’d move the MiGs with missiles off the regular flight line to the back hangars with security around them. Better to be safe.”

Luke tossed his towel on the seat of the biceps machine. “I don’t know, Brian. Sometimes I think you’re paranoid.” He thought as he prepared to begin his workout. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

“It would give me a little more peace of mind.”

“Fair enough.”

The young guard sitting in the large guardhouse behind the high chain-link fence had been there almost every night since the base opened. It had sounded like an easy, exciting job. A guard in the middle of the beautiful Nevada desert at a new fighter base with privately owned jets. It had in fact turned out to be quite boring. As he was the most junior guard, he’d drawn the worst duty. Since he’d started his job as the night watchman at the main gate three weeks before, not one car had come through the gate. Not one person, not one pickup truck, not even a coyote. He’d seen some deer cross the road in front of the gate on the second night, but nothing even as exciting as that since then.

He wasn’t allowed to watch television, so he spent most nights listening to the radio, to a show broadcast from a man’s house in the middle of the night, and transmitted to the world. His name was Orel Spellman, and he dwelled in the belly of the night talking in hushed tones of conspiracy to those who were still up, alerting them to the growing evidence of UFOs and the government conspiracies to hide them. Orel was really on a roll tonight. The guard was listening so intently to the radio that he was actually staring at it.

Four white trucks drove down the dark, deserted moonlit road just north of the guard. They hadn’t seen another car or truck for twenty minutes. It was the darkest, loneliest part of the night in the darkest, loneliest corner of the United States. The nearest Nevada Highway Patrol officer was 130 miles away at a rest stop investigating a pungent smell coming from one of the trash containers.

The lead truck stopped in the dirt on the side of the road until the other three trucks caught up, stopped behind it, and extinguished their lights. They knew exactly what to do. They’d practiced it so many times the plan had grown stale, but now that it was under way their enthusiasm returned. The driver of the lead truck, the one with the beard, watched the digital clock on the dash. They were five minutes early. The other drivers sat motionless with their hands on the steering wheels. Two more men sat to the right of each driver.

Several of the men put on night-vision goggles and adjusted the focus. They wore dark clothing and latex gloves. Each had an AK-47 in his hands.

As the digital clock changed to exactly 4:00 a.m., the lead truck pulled back onto the road. The other three followed carefully, swaying back and forth from their heavy loads. They turned south off Highway 6 at the missile with the sign underneath that announced the Tonopah Test Range Road.

They drove the twenty miles together with their lights off. The lead truck turned on its lights as it rounded the one curve in the long road, two miles before the gate, careful to control his speed. The other three trucks waited at the curve, trying to stay out of sight. The man to the right of the driver removed his night-vision goggles and scanned the base through a high-powered night-vision rifle scope, looking for any additional security. The security at the gate was obvious, but he could see no other movement on the base at all. He looked for the roving jeep security patrol he knew was there but couldn’t see.

In the guardhouse, as Orel warned of a growing conspiracy to combine UFO black programs with NASA, the guard was surprised and annoyed to see headlights approach the gate. Somebody was lost. Way lost. No one could possibly be on the road and on his way to the base at this hour. He had a sudden startling thought, that it could be the government working on one of the black programs he’d just been hearing about. This was, after all, where all these things were supposed to happen. He experienced a sudden surge of excitement as he felt himself being drawn into a mysterious event that would take away the boredom of the night.

He turned Orel down slightly and made sure his shirt was tucked in well. He stood up as the truck entered the spotlight beam that shone down from the top of the guard shack. It was a commercial truck, and he could see that the driver was alone. Both his hands were on the top of the steering wheel. The guard relaxed a little and waited for the truck to stop at the gate entrance.

The truck rolled slowly forward. The driver looked confused. He put his hand up to shade his eyes from the spotlight.

The guard stepped out of the guardhouse to speak with the driver. He stood with his hands on his hips, near the handgun in his holster, and looked at the driver through the ten-foot-high chain-link fence.

The bearded driver opened his door slowly, as if ashamed of having gotten lost. He left the door open and approached the fence, holding his hands out as if pleading, as if sorry for having bothered the guard.

Too late the guard noticed rapid movement on the other side of the truck. The passenger door had opened, but at first he couldn’t see anything. Suddenly he saw a man running in a crouch around the front of the truck, carrying an automatic weapon of some kind. The young guard unsnapped his sidearm and began to pull out his nine-millimeter automatic. The man with the AK was faster. He began shooting at the guard’s legs and feet, assuming he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

The first two shots sparked against the concrete, and the third and fourth hit the guard in the foot. He pulled his leg up in an automatic response to the searing pain and reached for the bleeding foot as he fell to the ground.

It was exactly what the attacker had wanted. He rushed the fence and shot through it at the guard from ten feet away in full automatic. Bullets riddled the guard’s legs and thighs, and he screamed out in horror and pain. Finally a bullet hit him in the head, and he jerked back and lay still.

The shooter rushed back to the truck as the driver quickly flashed his lights on and off twice and slid back into the driver’s seat.

The other three trucks turned on their lights and drove the two miles to the gate. They pulled up behind the lead, who had backed up to fifty feet from the gate. The driver floored the truck and smashed through the chain-link fence. It bent and then gave, finally springing away from the post as the heavy truck smashed through. The other three followed.

They had memorized the layout of the base from the diagram they’d been sent, right out of the welcome-aboard package by their fellow Pakistanis. They drove straight to the flight line. The other Pakistanis were waiting for them. The four Pakistani pilots stood by their airplanes in full flight gear.

The night was deathly still as each truck stopped in front of a single F-16. The driver and passengers in the cab of each truck jumped out. One passenger held an AK-47 and wore night-vision goggles. The driver climbed up on top of the back of the truck and unhooked the top while the movable crane was positioned by the first truck. The lid flew open as one of the ordnancemen scrambled down into the truck to hook the lift’s cables to the long bomb. The cables strained under the weight, but slowly, surely, the bomb was lifted out of the truck and lowered inch by inch to the waiting dolly.

Major Khan stood next to his F-16 watching the ordnancemen work feverishly to get the fin set and laser-guidance group out of the fifty-gallon drums in the back of the trucks. Men from the trucks stood guard, facing outward with their night-vision goggles on and assault rifles ready, waiting for the attack they expected at any moment.

Khan’s bomb was finally ready, with its ominous laser-guidance nose and large fins in the back. The ordies pushed the dolly under the belly of the F-16 and lowered the bomb rack to receive it. It was hooked up, and they cranked the bomb rack, now with its thousand-pound laser-guided bomb attached, back up to the belly of the F-16.

The Pakistanis pushed the heavy lift to the second truck, and the second bomb was slowly lifted out and lowered toward the dolly.

Suddenly a jeep casually rounded the corner of the hangar a hundred yards away. The senior guard, the head of the night security detail, was driving the jeep with two other guards in it. He was puzzled when he saw numerous men standing on the tarmac next to the F-16s. He stopped. The guard in the passenger seat stood up and began examining the group with his binoculars.

Khan immediately recognized what was happening and began shouting at his men who needed no additional encouragement. Several of them began running toward the jeep, firing.

The senior guard threw the jeep into reverse and reached for the radio transmitter as three bullets hit him. He jerked back and then forward and lay dead on the steering wheel as the jeep backed around aimlessly until it slammed into the hangar wall. The other two men in the jeep jumped out with their weapons and began returning fire. The fire from the eight men was too much, and the other two guards were quickly hit. The Pakistanis reached the jeep and ripped the radio out of the dash. They examined each of the guards to see if they were dead, then shot them again at close range to be sure. They turned and sprinted back to Khan.

Raymond stared through his binoculars into the dark sky. He’d bought them through a catalog. They were enormous, like something from the signal bridge of a Navy ship. They had hundred-millimeter lenses and were long, heavy, and black—the best binoculars he could find with “low-light” lenses. He’d rigged a camera monopod stand for them so that he could rest their weight on the ground as he sat on his knoll looking up into the sky each night.

Raymond was very pleased with the hill he’d found. It gave him a panoramic view of the section of Nevada toward Area 51 and Groom Lake, as well as a comforting view of Tonopah over his shoulder. He was three hundred feet above the airfield and a mile away.

The wire from an earphone descended into the large pocket of his jacket, where his portable radio was tuned to the lowest position on the AM dial for Orel Spellman. Raymond heard what sounded like sharp crackling over the radio, but he quickly realized he’d heard it in the ear that didn’t have the radio earpiece in it. It sounded like gunfire, but he couldn’t imagine what it really was.

The air base was always quiet in the middle of the night. There was no activity, very little maintenance, and virtually no movement. The pilots who lived off base were long gone before 10:00 p.m., and those who stayed on base had nothing to do outside after 10:00 p.m. Raymond was accustomed to seeing the security jeep drive around the base periodically, and the other lights here and there. But no movement except for the guards. And certainly not the sound of gunfire.

He turned to look at the base but couldn’t see much. He wanted to swing his enormous binoculars around to look in the other direction, but he didn’t want to move the monopod from the small indentation in a flat rock between his legs, which allowed him to gaze eastward toward Area 51. And the noise he’d heard might not have been a gunshot. It was certainly crisp enough and could have been a hunter of some kind somewhere in the hills—but at night? And multiple shots? Could be some kid shooting at coyotes with a night scope and an illegal automatic rifle. Wouldn’t be the first time. But it sounded as if it had come from Tonopah. He decided not to look. He continued to gaze into the sky and at the horizon toward Area 51, until he heard the unmistakable sound of several automatic weapons firing simultaneously. His heart jumped. He pivoted toward Tonopah, pulled his binoculars around and trained them on the airfield. He moved the lever in the middle of his binoculars to bring the air base into focus. He saw several men standing by the F-16s on the flight line near the hangar, then several others running toward the security jeep. He saw muzzle flashes in both directions. His mouth went dry as he realized that the guards were trying to stop someone near the F-16s, but those they were trying to stop were getting the better of the guards. He carefully focused his binoculars to see the shapes in the partial darkness. Most of the light was on the far side of the people, leaving him a view of shadows and darkness. He watched several men run over to the guards in the jeep and shoot them at close range. The sound of the final gunshots reached him long after the vivid picture of the guards’ bodies jerking in response to the close-range fire. He nearly vomited. His breath came in gulps.