|
Page 49.
 Ten minutes later, a casually dressed man, obscured by heavy sunglasses, stood by the chain link fence near the house on the D Ranch. He carried a small handbag with the San Diego Chargers football team logo on it. In a holster under his jacket, he wore his compact, Swiss-made U.S. Coast Guard special 9mm SIG Sauer P229R DAK semi-automatic, which carried a short clip of 13 .40 Smith & Wesson rounds. In the bag were his toothbrush, spare underwear, a tie he liked, and his backup with ankle holster. The secondary was a snubby, Hungarian-made blue-steel finish Walther PPK/E compact chambering the .32 caliber ACP round in a niner-clip. He hated wearing an ankle holster, and preferred carrying it in his trousers, under the belt, at the small of his back.
He waited at the chain link fence separating the D Ranch and other properties from the Federal reservation with its casinos and assorted defense facilities. He found the miles of coiled razor wire atop and along the bottom of the fence intimidating, as were the warnings about high voltage, sentry dogs, and shoot to kill orders. All that was as scheduled.
The next patrol was not a scheduled jeep or hummer. Instead, it was a dark blue sedan with U.S. Federal plates.
Jack showed his badge, and a scanner atop the car looked at his credentials. From experience, he blinked his eyes shut, without looking away. A light flashed over his features. His digital image was relayed to local security. He touched his fingers to a reader, and looked into a retinal scanner. Only then did a gate open in the chain link fence, and he stepped into a twenty-foot corridor between the outer and inner fences.
Jack got into the back seat.
As cameras recorded every move, the car sped up and took him deep into the reservation. With the windows tinted all around, including the bullet-proof safety glass over the front seatback, Jack never spoke with the driver—never saw him or her, and vice-versa.
They stopped at a round, black-top landing place, where got out and boarded a light Sikorsky S-434 chopper. The pilot, a civilian wearing a GS badge, flew him away toward the west. The pilot was a skinny little man of about 50, hiding behind sunglasses, a raised windbreaker collar, and a low-seated Navy cap weighed down with headphones. The flight to the federal air strip took about fifteen minutes over a maze of hills, canyons, casinos, public and private streets, and some suburban neighborhoods.
At a back runway on Palomar's secure airport, a curious maneuver happened.
A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows and California livery plates pulled up as soon as the helicopter landed. Jack, carrying his little hand bag, stepped from the chopper. The limo driver, in his black suit, held the rear door open as Jack got in. A minute later, the limo was rolling across the airport toward the main passenger terminal building.
In the back seat, Jack sat beside another man dressed similarly, except for the logo on the hand bag, the color of the wind breaker, and the baseball cap. Jack's double was the same size and weight as Jack—a member, in fact, of the security force at Camp Pendleton, the huge U.S. Marine Corps installation some miles north along the coast.
Jack and the other man switched places in the back seat. The double must exit on the same side that Jack entered, in case anyone were tailing and observing Jack. This was all part of Jack's deal with Rector and Claire—he worked for them, but his family life stayed top secret. Jack and the man switched caps, jackets, and hand bags. Jack transferred his weapons and other paraphernalia to the new handbag, while the other man would carry in Jack's old Chargers bag a half dozen oranges to equal the weight.
Minutes later, the limousine pulled up at the rear entrance to the main terminal. Without comment, the double stepped out onto the runway. He wore a San Diego Padres baseball cap and heavy sunglasses. His windbreaker was light blue, while his denim trousers were a darker blue. He wore a cowboy shirt and cowboy boots. The double carried Jack's San Diego Chargers hand bag, full of oranges the special security staff at Camp Pendleton would enjoy. The double walked smartly up the broad concrete stairs to the main lounge. There, he would walk around for a few minutes to check if he'd been watched. Then he would walk outside, step into a waiting taxi, and be driven back to the vast Marine Corps base, to be swallowed up amid its security.
Jack, meanwhile, was driven to a remote runway. There, he hustled on board a one-propeller Piper PA-28 Cherokee (one pilot, capacity three passengers, but dedicated to Jack alone) waiting with the engine running. As soon as he pulled the door shut, the plane began to taxi.
As he buckled up, the plane lifted him off on the next leg of his reentry into Compass News' and Sigma 2020's world reference. Jack was often the secret field agent of last resort. He was the hot dog when they ran out of hamburgers at life’s barbecue. He was their hot dog, period.
The aircraft flew for about fifteen minutes in the direction of Los Angeles, at an altitude of about 3,000 feet. Encountering a dense coastal cloud bank or marine layer, the pilot took advantage of the visual disruption—should anyone be watching from the ground or in a tailing aircraft—by spiraling upward to 5,200 feet or about a mile high. The pilot—again, anonymous—flew due north, northeast in the direction of Las Vegas. This was a distance of 330 miles, or 538 km—a good six or seven hours by car through heavy traffic and ridiculous heat, with drifting dust devils, on the alkaline flats at the edge of Death Valley. By air, in this craft, at about 140 mph (230 km/h), it was a little over 2.5 hours. Jack sat back, sideways, and dozed with his outstretched legs crossed at the ankles, his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his arms crossed over his ribs.
As the plane descended to a landing at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport, Jack awakened. He yawned, pulled open a compartment built into the back seat, and pulled out the clothes he was going to wear upon landing.
The Piper Cherokee flew into the same back strip from which the federal government flies top-secret passenger jets to desert locations including Tonopah Test Range, which includes such tantalizing installations as the fabled Area 51 of UFO fame, or its less famous but even more exotic neighbor, Area 52. Some of the most secret air and space technologies of the U.S. had been developed here during the 20th Century, including the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F117-A Stealth aircraft, and others. It would not be his destination, although the OST was the type of science that could easily have originated around Groom Lake.
Jack Gray's little one-engine plane taxied to a halt. It was lost among the giant aircraft standing around it on the tarmac at McCarran, one of the world's busiest airports.
Out of the plane climbed a man in a dark suit, white shirt, and merlot tie. He carried a charcoal suede executive briefcase that matched his soft shoes and gloves. That man was Jack Gray.
He walked briskly into a building, through a checkpoint manned by Air Force security personnel in fatigues, who held assault rifles. Nobody even looked at him, except Jack knew he was being intently watched by multiple special duty officers on closed circuit video.
His path took him out into the free air and sunshine of a low-security government services airport. There, he found a U.S. Navy Gulfstream G280 executive jet waiting for him. As soon as he was on board, the plane began taxiing. It had a crew of two, and seating for up to ten passengers, usually top GS civilians, Congressional delegations, or flag officers. Instead, there was only Jack—and one young enlisted airman to provide services. When the plane had reached its service ceiling at 45,000 ft (13,716 m, well over eight miles), Jack ordered from the menu—a tuna salad sandwich on toast with lettuce and tomato, pickle on the side, complimentary desert pack with chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream, and a chilled root beer along with a companion bottle of lightly chilled spring water. The tuna was mixed thickly with chopped celery to take away any excess fishiness, and to make the excellent tuna even more steak-like. The root beer was one of the wonderful range of crafted sodas produced in the U.S. these days, with a butterscotch richness added in; not too sweet or cloying, not too spicy or biting; just nice, balanced, and rounded without any edges to its flavor. A chasing drink of bottled spring water further smoothed its effect on the palate.
TOP
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
