The Black Ships (14 page)

Mountain View, California

July 3
^rd
, 2026

F
rank finished his sub and rolled up the wrapper, throwing it in the
trash bin by the boardroom door. “Ready, Chuck?” The two men got up and put
their hardhats on before heading out of the room and down the stairs.
 Brecker, bristling with weapons as usual, joined them as they stepped out
the door. Frank pulled out his phone and opened the
Friend Finder
app.
“Looks like he’s over at number two,” Frank said as he led Chuck towards the
office and storage structure that stuck out from the side of the large hangar.

As they drew near the main door, it opened
and Lance stepped out with a clipboard. “Mr. Bender,” he shook Frank’s hand
with mock formality. “Chuckie!” He grinned and slapped Chuck on the back.

Frank watched Chuck grin back.
I don’t
think there’s another person on this planet that could get away with calling
him that.
He smiled to himself as he watched the contractor work his usual
magic, turning Charles Gray from a stuffy administrator into an affable old
pal.

Bender had been on site a couple of months
ago when the electrical sub-contractor was packing up and leaving the site,
claiming they were all too sick to work that day. He knew it was the
‘forty-ounce flu’ because they were all out celebrating the night before. He’d
tried to convince them to stay and tough it out but they were doggedly
insisting on leaving.

Losing them for a day meant losing the
concrete contractor for over a month because they insisted on proper lighting
before pouring the floor extension in the hangar. If they didn’t have the
required illumination, they would refuse to guarantee the
super-flat
specification for the job and they had another contract to get to.

Lance had shown up and spent two minutes
with them, joking, cajoling and confiding to them that he would consider it a
personal favor if they could help him out and finish the lighting. They not
only went back to work, but they did it cheerfully. They had finished a full
day’s work by noon and left the hangar extension with working lights. Even
though half the crew failed to keep their breakfast down as they worked, they
still did what was needed to keep the project on track.

“Before you two end up heading for Tia
Juana, maybe we should go through the deficiencies?” He interrupted the increasingly
bizarre banter between the two men. “You planning to use just a clipboard?”

“You ever see the batteries run out on a
clipboard?” Lance pulled out a pen and looked down at the list in his hands.
“Besides, I can write a hell of a lot faster with a pen than with a finger.”

Frank knew Lance had an aversion to
computers but his people-skills more than made up for it, and he had staff that
took care of the spreadsheets for him. “Let’s start with the landscaping.” He
pulled out a tablet from his shoulder bag and opened the architectural
drawings. The men crowded in and looked at the plan before orienting themselves
to the site.

“Yep, everything looks good here!” Lance
grinned. “Let’s go get a pitcher to celebrate.”

“The trees look to be in the right spots,” Frank
replied, knowing he didn’t need to challenge Lance’s last statement. He was
mostly
joking and a few pitchers of beer did sound like a good plan. “The trees are
all larger caliper than specified but I’m hardly inclined to complain about
that.”

“I managed to get a free upgrade from my
supplier and I figured I’d use it here.” Lance nudged Chuck in the ribs. “Gotta
take care of my best customer, right Chuck?”

“And I thought it was just because we’re
buds!” Chuck jostled him back.

Frank almost rolled his eyes but he knew it
would only help things if Chuck could stay in a good mood. They were in the
business of building airships and Frank couldn’t care less if the door trim was
the wrong spec or a tree was a spruce instead of a pine. He just needed the place
to look good for tomorrow.

The last thing he needed was to have Chuck
develop a sudden  interest in the trivial details because they were out of time
to have any of it changed. The big dog-and-pony-show was happening tomorrow.
After that, nobody important would be hanging around.

As they headed towards the path that led
from one hangar to the next, Frank came to a stop and enlarged that section of
the drawing. “OK, Lance, I don’t even care that these planters are the wrong
shape, but the cypresses in them are all turning brown.” He looked up at the
contractor. “I don’t need them replaced, I just want you to get them out of
here. The president would never notice that they aren’t here but he would sure
as hell have a bad impression of us if they were sitting here looking like
that.”

“Sure, bud,” Lance nodded. “Sorry about
that.” He pushed a button on the side of his phone. “Cal, meet me out on the
south path right away.”

The men continued down the path, looking at
the drawing as they walked, until a young man walked out of number three to
meet them.

“Cal, these trees are all dead.” Lance
indicated the row of planters that ran the length of the walkway. “I need them
loaded up and taken to our yard; we can take them back to Greenhand later but
we have to get them off the site pronto.”

Cal frowned. “Lance, I’ve got my hands full
right now; can I bring a couple of the boys back after dinner and pick them
up?”

“You’re a good man, Cal!” Lance grinned.
“Whoever you pick, buy their dinner and expense it and I’ll make sure to leave
a clearance at the gate for tonight.”

“Alright, guys, let’s take a look inside
the buildings next.” Frank led the way towards the office of number four.
Another
hour and we can get to the beer!

Antioch California

July 3
^rd
, 2026

C
al smiled as the three men across the table gaped at him in
amazement. Sometimes it was best to let people get the wrong idea. They had put
a great deal of planning into penetrating the airfield’s security tonight. Cal
had spent a lot of time with the attractive young security guard, to the wry
amusement of his comrades. Though he had gathered the necessary intelligence
from her, he had been unsuccessful in moving their association beyond
friendship.

Now A.J. and Chris were picking up security
passes from the table where Cal had casually dropped them. They wouldn’t need
wire-cutters or blackened faces; they were going to drive in through the front
gate and straight over to the hangars. Callum told himself that he had invited
Kevin to dinner because he was the second in command and should know of the
change in plans, but he really just wanted to impress him with the passes.

“The cypress trees are dying,” he
explained. “Not a surprise, seeing as the soil’s been replaced with thermite.”
He chuckled. “Anyway, I asked if we could come in tonight and pick them up.” He
stretched casually, looking for the server and waving four fingers at him.
“Fitting,” he said grinning at the men, “since the
tree
of liberty must
be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” He
noticed the screen above the bar and leaned in to read the caption beneath the
video. “Euro-Zone announces a deal to protect the French banks,” he muttered,
squinting up at the screen.

He turned back to his friends. “It won’t
work, of course, and that means a run on the French banks.” They sat quietly as
the server reached the table, setting down four glasses of draft from his
heavily-laden tray.  “Paying the new UN debt is killing most of the
world’s economies. The rest of Europe has been teetering on the brink since
Germany went back to the Mark, and this will push them all over the edge.”

“Civil unrest on a continental scale,”
Kevin muttered as he watched the big screen. He looked over at Callum. “Just
what the UN wants, an excuse to occupy Europe and lock it down.”

Cal knew it was unjust for him to be
surprised. Kevin wasn’t stupid.
I probably underestimate him because he
lives with his grandmother.
He nodded in agreement. “That’s it in a
nutshell, Kev. And when the financial meltdown spreads across the Atlantic,
we’ll see UN troops in every damned town in America.”

Kevin looked absurdly pleased that he was
being recognized for his analysis.
I should do more to bring him along,
Cal
mused.
He might do all right here if we decide to open up a new cell on the
East Coast.
His thoughts drifted to what might happen after they were done
with Moffett Field.
If we get through the next twenty-four hours without
getting pinched, we can look at expanding.
He looked at Kevin in a new
light.
Can he run things here if I head East?
His operation here had
given him confidence and a taste for something bigger.

The real enemy was in New York.

He drained his glass and dropped some bills
on the table. “Kev, tell him to keep the change.” He looked at A.J. and Chris
with a wolfish grin. “Let’s go earn some overtime.” 

Mountain View, California

July 3
^rd
, 2026

C
huck belched in the empty boardroom, the heady scent of beer in his
nostrils. He would rather be back at his hotel room but, with Bender coming
back for a last look, he knew it would look bad if he didn’t come along. He had
fought against Frank’s changes at first, but he’d come to see they made sense
and had thrown himself behind the new program whole-heartedly. 

In response, Bender had brought Chuck back
into the circle, consulting him on the best way to get past problems rather
than simply going around him. The production of the first
Earth-to-Orbital-Station airships had moved faster than Chuck could ever have
imagined and the president had been keen on celebrating the Fourth of July at
Moffett to showcase a major part of America’s contribution to the global
project.

He caught movement out of the corner of his
eye and, looking out the window, he saw Frank coming down the stairs of his
Gulfstream. Both men had needed to use the washroom rather urgently after
several pitchers of beer with Lance followed by a circuitous taxi ride. Bender
had loudly insisted that the driver was ‘jacking them’ and the poor man, afraid
of Bender’s size and the heavily-armed Brecker, gave them a discount.

Their solution to the urgent washroom
logjam had been solved when Frank yielded the main office facilities to Chuck
and headed for his aircraft. “You use yours, I’ll use mine!” he had said in a
North Florida drawl that he only seemed to have after a few drinks.

Chuck joined him in front of the main
administration building. “Ready?” he asked.

Frank belched loudly. “Pardon me, Chuck,”
he intoned mildly. For such an imposing giant, he was surprisingly polite.
“Sure, let’s have a look at the place.”

They set off towards the hangars and
noticed as they came around the corner that the planters were already gone.
Good
thing Frank noticed those.
thought Chuck.
Little stuff like that does make
a bad impression, even when we have two EOS airships ready to go into service
at the end of the week.
He let out another burst of carbon dioxide as they
walked, Frank chuckling quietly.
I suppose working in a customer-oriented
business gave him an eye for the small details that we tend to miss in a
government agency.

The site looked good from the outside. They
walked to the press area where Chuck pulled out a remote. The podium had been
set up with the hangar door of number one behind it. The three men watched as
the huge doors slid back to reveal the rounded aerodynamic shape of Red Flag
EOS-1. The massive ramp was open showing the cavernous cargo hold.

“Ever been inside?” Chuck asked as he gazed
up at Humanity’s largest sub-orbital aircraft.

“Nope,” Bender replied. “I’ve been in the
smaller airships that travel between our shipyards and the transfer
facilities.” He looked over at Chuck. “Can we look at the cockpit?”

The three men wandered over to the open
ramp but Chuck stopped when they were about twenty feet away and frowned at the
wall of the hangar.
Yesterday, the walls and structure were entirely white
but now there are gray lumps on the columns.
“What
are
those?” he
asked as he walked over to the nearest column with Frank and Brecker in tow.

The lumps were concrete containers that
appeared to be made in two halves and then strapped together around each
column. The top surface was a waxy material and Chuck pulled out a pen and
broke through revealing a reddish powder. A pair of wires emerged from the wax
and snaked their way along the wall battens, leading to the next column.
“Frank, do these look like those planters you noticed earlier?”

“Now that you mention it.” He frowned at
the odd sight. “What the hell is going on here?”

Chuck had spent two years working for a
rail  company before starting his first degree and he’d used thermite to
weld dozens of rails together. He knew what it could do to steel. “Sabotage,”
he said in a tone of disbelief before pulling himself together.

“Frank, get to the other side and start
pulling the wires out of these damned things.” He reached out and put a hand on
his shoulder as he spoke. “These are thermite incendiary devices, the wires
probably lead to some kind of magnesium strip or flare so you can pull them out
without worrying about lighting the powder. If we don’t disable these, they’ll
put out enough heat to melt right through these columns and bring down the
roof.

“Shit!” Frank’s eyes were wide. “Who do we
call?”

“I’ll get Security on the phone before I
start on this side. Brecker, go check out the next hangar.” He pulled out his
phone as Frank ran under the belly of the airship, heading left to reach the
first column behind the twenty-foot-high bank of helium tanks. Sure enough,
there were devices planted on this side as well.

~*~

F
rank grabbed the first set of wires, turned his face away in a
futile gesture, yanked them out and jumped away like a scalded cat. Looking
down, he saw the wax cover dangling from the wire in his hands. Turning it
over, he saw a magnesium strip with a wire clamped to each end.

Feeling a little more confident that he
might live out the night, he headed for the next column and was just reaching
for the wires when he heard voices. He walked to the end of the tanks and saw,
to his dismay, that Chuck was facing the young man from Lance’s crew, the one
who had been given clearance to come in tonight and remove the planters.

The young man was holding a handgun.

~*~

C
al supposed that this new wrinkle might just be balance after his
run of good luck in getting clearance to openly return to the site. They had
just been finishing placement of the last charges in hangar four when they
heard the unmistakable rumble of one of the big doors. Opening one of the small
man doors and peering out, he had recognized the NASA administrator and the UN
project manager as they walked towards the hangar but had missed the black clad
guard.

He knew there was a good chance that they
would miss the devices and so he directed A.J. and Chris to finish with the
charges while he moved swiftly through the dark towards the wide spill of light
that came from the big door of number one. He couldn’t see them and so he
considered risking a quick peek around the corner.
No,
he thought.
Why
act suspicious when they know I’m working here tonight?

With that, he walked boldly around the
corner and saw the man from NASA standing to the right, pulling the wires out
of one of the concrete containers. “Is everything all right in here?” Cal asked
with a look of innocent puzzlement.

The man spun around. His look of surprise
changed to relief tinted with a hint of suspicion.
This is going completely
sideways,
 thought Cal as he assessed his situation.
These guys
would have remembered the planters from this afternoon and made the connection
to me during the investigation. I should have realized that before now.
“Can
I give you a hand with whatever you’re doing
?” If we can kill them both and
stash them behind the helium tanks, we can stack a few devices around their
bodies and make them forensically unidentifiable.

 “No, I’m fine,” the man replied
trying to look nonchalant.

Definitely knows I’m behind this,
thought Cal.
We can put them in the drainage sump behind the
helium tanks. That should contain the reaction and pretty much vaporize their
bones.
He pulled out a silenced Ruger .22 and pointed it at the man.
And
then there’s Lance,
he thought as he pulled the trigger twice.
We’ll
have to get to him before the investigators. After that, we’re in the clear;
the planters in Lance’s yard are the ones that the drawing specified so we can
claim that we just came in tonight, picked them up and took them to the yard.
No one else knows about our square ‘planters’.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound
of feet hitting the concrete at an increasing rate.
Shit, UN Boy is
rabbiting while I’m standing here thinking.
Turning around to scan the
large hangar, he was shocked to see the large man five feet away, hurtling at
him in full tackle mode. His arm raised on its own as years of training kicked
in. His finger pulled the trigger once and then Bender crashed into him with
surprising force. The world went black.