Sigma One (27 page)

Now as she stepped through the lobby, the dress molded itself to her every curve, and the way it did caused more than one man seated there to turn his head and stare as she glided past. The dress was elegant and cut very tight which was also very, very sexy. The neckline too, was rather low but not so low that it was vulgar. The single strand of pearls she wore added just the hint of modesty needed to make her stunning instead of steaming. Had she been a little more well-endowed, worn diamonds instead of pearls and been a brassy blonde instead of the brunette she was, in that dress she would have been steaming. But tonight, she was just stunning.

Burt puffed up his chest with pride as Amanda took his arm and the two left for dinner. Each man in the lobby drooled with envy as they left, each wishing he was in the company of such a lovely creature rather than whom she was with.

When they got outside it was dark and the sliver of a moon could just be seen over the hills. The air was still and brisk and Amanda began to get goose bumps, having forgotten a wrap.

"Here, Amanda, take my coat," Burt said quickly removing his jacket and placing it on her shoulders.

"Thank you, Mr. Grayson."

"Burt. Call me Burt."

"Okay, Burt, thanks. I guess it's a little colder out here on the west coast than I had imagined. Back east I would have never gone outside without some sort of a coat, or shawl or something, but I figured I wouldn't need one out here."

"You've been watching too much TV. Because San Louis Obispo is so close to the coast, it gets chilly at night. It's not the summer volleyball playground you see when they advertise. Most of the commercials are shot down either in LA or down in San Diego. There it's always ten to fifteen degrees warmer."

"I guess you're right. I did have visions of the beach and sun when packed. I forgot about the nights. Thanks again for the coat."

"My pleasure."

They got to his car and he drove toward Morrow Bay where he had made reservations at Chez Crotoun, a very expensive and elegant French restaurant tucked neatly away along the Embarcadero, nestled right next to and overlooking the harbor. Although he should have felt guilty reserving dinner there, a place Debbie had always wanted him to take her to but he had always refused saying it was way out of his price league, he didn't.

As they drove, Amanda studied the lines on Burt's face. In the moonlight, she noticed his strong jawline and his chiseled cheekbones. He was handsome, she thought, and she would enjoy getting to know him better.

Halfway around the world, Dr. Andre Kamarov was successfully finishing his last training session, and the computer screen in the control room displaying the results of the exercise was being watched by six high ranking KGB officials accompanied by Dr. Vladim. As they viewed the video screen in front of them, the simulated minuteman flight computer flashed its guidance commands for all to see. Dr. Vladim, dressed in his white lab coat stood out amongst the military uniforms as he pointed to the screen and explained what they were viewing. When the missile simulator indicated the missile had reached the pitch over point, each man huddled around the console to see what would happen next. When Vladim pointed to the screen and explained the numbers they were viewing indicated the launch azimuth was turning from a Southwesterly to a Northeasterly direction, each of them smiled. In a previous simulation they viewed only moments before, they could see the original program loaded into the computer instructed it to fly Southwest. That established their baseline. Now, the missile was indeed heading Northeast, and that indicated Dr. Kamarov, seated in the next room had indeed accomplished what he had been told to do--reprogram the missile in mid-flight.

In the next room, Dr. Andre Kamarov sat back in his chair and stared at the glass wall which separated him from the control room. He knew the exercise had been successful. In his mind he had seen the parameters of the guidance equations being fed through the CPU of the flight computer change as he directed them to do, and with the changes, he should have been ecstatic, but instead he was angry. He gritted his teeth. Had it not been for the fact that his parents were being held at gunpoint in a province of the Soviet Union hundreds of kilometers away, he wouldn't have been where he was at that very moment. He wouldn't have been forced to do what he had just done. He wouldn't be the pawn in the political games the KGB was playing.

Before his anger could overtake him, Andre reached over to the glass table on his right and grabbed the syringe full of blue liquid. He then quickly rolled up his sleeve and emptied the contents into the vein in his forearm and collapsed back into his chair. As he did, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and then he passed out.

On the other side of the glass wall, Vladim and his KGB cronies toasted straight shots of vodka to their success. No one, not even Vladim, took any notice of Kamarov, now slumped forward in the chair, head hung low. To them, he was just a tool to be used as he sat there and allowed the special fluid the KGB had prepared to rush him into oblivion and counteract the imbalance which had been set up in his brain as a result of such intense concentration.

While Burt and Amanda drove to Morrow Bay, twenty five hundred miles east General Kurt Lassiter turned his '89 Vette off the main road which led to the Dulles International Airport terminal onto a side road which led to the part of the airport where he kept Citab
ria, He was feeling very self-satisfied as he rounded the corner. He had Radcliff on the run as a result of the strategic moves he had made when he had devised his plan to get Kamarov, and then subsequently to dethrone the senator by divulging the details of his sordid affair with Cherisa Hunt.

Kurt pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine, and as he got out of his sports car, he looked up into the char, star-studded autumn sky. It was nearly 9:30 and the air was still and cold--perfect flying conditions for a little cruise over our nation’s capital. The city lights would be visible for miles and other air traffic would be easily seen. He liked that. Although the temperature was a chilly forty-two degrees and the upper air probably close to freezing, he smiled. He'd rather have clear and cold conditions where he could see what was coming at him, than to have to fly in clouds, or worse yet, go IFR. He hated flying by instruments, although it was by far safer. To him it was like sitting in a flight simulator, eyes constantly glued to the instrument panel, and like a puppet, constantly having to turn from one heading to the next at the direction of ground-bound air traffic controllers who were under-trained and over-worked.

Earlier that day, he had taken the afternoon off and played golf with some of his cronies from the Pentagon, this, after he hand-carried his retirement papers to the personnel section, He was so sure he was in the cat-bird seat and that in a few short months he'd have Radcliff's job, that the day after he had met with Sgt. Rory Hatchett, he'd decided it was time to make a move. He already had his thirty years in the Air Force and, even if he didn't win the first election when he ran against Radcliff, he knew he had more stamina than the old bastard and would win eventually. Besides, he rationalized, his retirement pay would be more than enough to live off while he waited.

Had he not taken the day off, he might have reconsidered his decision for early retirement, for just twenty minutes after he left, his secretary took a phone message from the Senator's office. Radcliff had called after he decided he'd toy with the general by letting him know that he knew about Sgt. Hatchett being ordered to kidnap the Soviet. Even though Radcliff was going to have Lassiter killed, he didn't want the general to die without knowing that he'd been outsmarted. And although Radcliff didn't know it at the time, it was a good thing for him Lassiter never got the message. If he had, it might have given him enough time to put his own back-up plan into motion.

As a precaution, in the event things went wrong with Kamarov's kidnapping or with the way the senator cooperated, Lassiter had planned to take the video tapes of the senator and Cherisa to the press to begin his smear campaign which would make it that much easier for him to win the next election. The call, had he received it coupled with his dislike for the senator, might have been just the motivation he needed to act then. But alas, Lassiter never received the call so Radcliff never got the satisfaction of telling him, and the tapes remained in the portable camcorder locked in Lassiter's desk and not on their way to the Washington Post as they might have been. They still, however, did exist. Radcliff had become so involved in stopping the mad general from getting Kamarov, he'd completely forgotten about that. Even with Lassiter out of the way, he still wasn't entirely out of the woods.

Lassiter stretched as soon as he slammed the door on the Vette and mentally prepared himself for his flight. Before stepping out onto the tarmac, he looked back at the silver body of the car and admired its lines. He had gotten the car as a perk from a contractor who had needed a favor just six months earlier. How could he help it if the car had been seized by the DEA and he was the only one to give a sealed bid on it? At least that's what the ownership papers stated. He laughed to himself thinking how smart he was to have usurped his position for his own gain and not gotten caught. It had allowed him to get a thirty-eight thousand dollar car for only three hundred dollars. Still laughing, he turned and headed down the row of private planes toward his Citabria.

As he passed a Lear, his thoughts drifted back to his first flight in an airplane back to March Air Force Base where he, as an aviation cadet some 33 years earlier had taken his first training flight. It was during that flight, while he was upside down screaming at 300 miles per hour over the California desert that he’d decided to become a pilot. Fifty weeks later, he was a Lieutenant, and was doing just what he'd decided to do. He was flying.

Now the sight of the Lear made him angry. It reminded him of how the service had mistreated him when, some ten years earlier when he was still a Lieutenant Colonel, the Air Force had clipped his wings simply because his blood pressure was a little too high. Now, the only flying in jets he did was back and forth across the Atlantic in the coach section of commercial airliners as he skittered between continents during arms negotiations. That torqued him too. Once a jet jock, always a jet jock, and every bad landing he had to experience on one of those commercial jobs reminded him that he could have done it better. And he would have, too, if he had been allowed by the system to continue flying.

As he passed by the plane and touched the wing of the little two-seater airplane he had been forced to settle for instead of the jet he wanted, some of his earlier frustration and bitterness left him. Even though his plane wasn't as fast, nor as comfortable as a 1Par, it was still his and he could still fly; if not for the Air Force, at least for himself.

"Besides," he thought to himself as he slid his hand along the wing, "when I'm elected,I’ll get that Lear."

Putting these delusions of grandeur aside momentarily, Kurt completed his pre-flight, unlocked the cowling and stepped up into the plane. He then switched on the radio to get the local altimeter setting and catch any NOTAMS that might be coming in over the ATIS. While he was doing this, he clamped his lap clipboard which held his charts, to his right knee where it would be readily available in flight. Then he looked around in the cockpit for any loose objects. Since he was going to be doing aerobatics, he wanted to be sure a spare pencil or change hadn't slipped out of his pocket on any previous flights. A pencil in the eye in the middle of a barrel roll could be fatal. He searched under the front seat first and then leaned back and shined his pen light into the rear compartment directly behind him, and, finding nothing, put the key into the ignition and started the plane.

As the plane jumped to life, Kurt picked up the radio and contacted the ground controller at the tower for clearance to taxi, while a big DC-10 lumbered down the runway in front of him. Slowly the big hulk of metal began to accelerate and when it was nearly out of runway, its nose wheel lifted off the ground. Seconds later he saw it begin its climb out over the countryside.

"Citabria 5-7-9 November, cleared to taxi, runway 2-4."

"Roger," he replied and then pushed the throttle in and began steering the little airplane with his rudder pedals toward the end of the runway. As he moved forward, he watched the blue lights of the taxi way blink by, and in a little over three minutes he reached the turn off to the run up area where he stopped and checked his controls and engine idle to ensure they were operating properly. He switched to the tower frequency next and requested permission to take off.

The microphone crackled. "Citabria 5-7-9 November cleared for runway 2-4. Caution wake turbulence," the controller warned.