Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (19 page)

 
          
“I
still had a civilian position in my own laboratory. Much as I wanted to, I
couldn’t just leave or get reassigned to Dreamland. I started to work more
closely with General Brad Elliott and his group, but my home base was still in
Palmdale. I visited every chance I could, but Patrick and I were still apart.
When they announced the reactivation of the Old Dog project I saw my chance and
got assigned to HAWC permanently. What I didn’t expect was that Patrick was
going to shoot up like he did under General Elliott. Don’t misunderstand. I
knew Patrick was good, very good, but when I first met him he was, believe it
or not, thinking about leaving the Air Force and working his family’s business
in
Sacramento
. It’s hard to get promoted by just being
the best navigator around. And that’s all I thought he wanted to be. I was
wrong. In two years he went from being just another non-technical test-flight
crewmember to a project director. He got promoted so fast you’d think there was
a time warp. One year after becoming director of his first program he was made
chief of a full-blown flight-test development program with state-of-the-art
hardware. In another five or six years he’ll have his first star and probably
be chief of HAWC soon after.” Through most of this she’d been looking down into
her napkin. Now she looked up abruptly. ‘‘God, if I sound like I’m complaining,
I’m not. Or I don’t mean too. Just for the record, I happen to love McLanahan
even more than I respect him ... Okay, enough of me, what about you? There’s an
army of ladies in Vegas waiting to snag someone like you. When are
you
going to take the fall?”

 
          
He
laughed. “The right woman is hard to find, even in the sun belt.”

 
          
“But
you’re having a good time looking, right?”

 
          
“I
confess ... I’m not suffering.” It had gone well, very well, he thought.

 
          
The
waiter reappeared with the check and a message. “Helicopter’s on its way,” he
said. “We should head back.” As they waited on the helicopter landing pad a few
minutes later, Wendy took a deep breath of warm yucca-scented desert air and
looked out at the mountains surrounding the tiny base. “I enjoyed it, Ken. The
lunch and the talk. I haven’t gone on like this for a long time. Thanks.”

 
          
“We’ll
do it again some time.”

           
“I don’t want you to spend too many
weekends refinishing some chopper pilot’s boat.”

           
“Believe me,” he said, watching her,
“it’s worth it.”

           
Yes, she could be another source of
information ... on the new ECM gear, for example.

East
Las Vegas
,
Nevada

Wednesday, 10 June 1996, 2007 PDT (2307 EDT)

           
Maraklov
didn’t return to his condominium in the east
Las Vegas
subdivision of
Frenchman
Mountain
until late that night. The early start and
the intense flying had taken their toll, and the lectures he had received from
McLanahan and Elliott during the long debriefing didn’t help.

           
He locked his car in the carport,
took his briefcase, and trudged upstairs to his second-story entranceway. He
wasn’t able to get on the Dolphin helicopter back to Nellis and had to bump
along in the electric shuttle bus from Dreamland to Nellis. Then twenty hot,
steamy minutes on the freeway just to go four exits in bumper-to-bumper
traffic. Maybe a cold shower, a cold beer, a casino run.

 
          
He
punched his code in the lock’s keypad. The door was already unlocked. He pushed
it open a crack. No lights on. The lights were programmed to come on in the
evening when the door was opened. Someone had overridden the programming,
someone was inside his apartment . . .

 
          
All
he had for a weapon was his briefcase. Maybe he should have gotten out of there
and called the cops, but the less he had to do with them, the better. He
reached through the door and flicked on the lights. He strained against the
faint street noises behind him but heard no sounds from inside. He flung the
door open, letting it bang on the doorstep. Still no sounds.

 
          
He
slowly crossed the threshold, looked down the hallway into the living room.
Stereo, TV, VCR all in place. Of course, a burglar was the last thing he was
worried about—he’d almost welcome that. There were others more dangerous.

 
          
He
moved to the fireplace, picked up a poker and made a fast search of the
apartment. Nothing. No sign of forcible entry, nothing missing. One more place
to check.

 
          
He
stood up on a stool and removed six books from the top shelf of the built-in
bookshelves in the living room. On the back wall of the bookshelf he pressed on
a board and a section sprang open about a half inch, revealing a panel hiding
the steel door to a small wall safe. He had installed the safe himself shortly
after moving into the apartment—one of the precautions he had taken years
earlier, along with carefully arranging things in his drawers to help detect
intruders, when he got his assignment to Las Vegas.

 
          
Instead
of opening the hidden panel fully, he reached behind the panel with one finger
and disconnected a wire leading from the door inside to the combination safe
behind the panel. The wire was connected to an incendiary device inside the
safe; if the door had been opened more than a finger’s width the device inside
the safe would incinerate the contents. The safe obviously had not been—

 
          
A
faint, lingering odor. Cigarettes, or an old stale cigar. He did not smoke. He
turned . . .

 
          
“Sloppy
of you, Captain James.” The voice came from behind him. He braced along the
wall. A quick leap, a hard push and—

 
          
He
heard the metallic
click,
and another
voice: “Come down from there, Maraklov, before you hurt yourself, or worse.”

 
          
Slowly
he replaced the trip wire on the safe’s hidden panel, closed it and stepped off
the stool. Turning, he saw two men, one standing directly behind him holding a
weapon, the other man seated on his sofa. He noted the weapon—not a pistol but
a taser, a gun that shot small electrified darts. The darts, connected to the
taser gun by a thin wire, were charged with twenty thousand volts at low amperage
with the press of a trigger, causing instant paralysis. The dart only buried
itself a fraction of an inch into the skin, but with a strong electric current
from the taser short-circuiting the victim’s nervous system, he was powerless
to pull or shake it free. A potent weapon—quiet, effective but non-lethal. That
last encouraged Maraklov. They wanted him, but they didn’t want him dead.

 
          
He
turned to the man on the couch. Henry Kramer was fiftyish, short, bulky but not
fat, thin dark hair and beady eyes. He was dressed in a dark ill-fitting suit
with a thin dark tie, looking too much a caricature of what he was—a conniving
Soviet KGB agent, far more serious and dangerous than he looked.

 
          
“What
are you doing here, Kramer?” Maraklov tried to control his anger as he also
looked at the younger man with the taser. “Put that away. Look, you people are
crazy to come here—”

 
          
Moffitt,
the younger agent, lowered the taser but did not put it down. “We were worried
about you, Captain James. And you should have locked your door before searching
your apartment. We not only were able to get behind you, but found out where
your safe is. You seem to be getting complacent . . .”

 
          
Maraklov
forced himself to answer. He locked the front door, closed the blinds and began
replacing books on the shelf. “Now what are you really doing here?”

 
          
“Captain,”
Kramer said, “people are displeased. The information stream you have been
supplying has become a trickle.”

 
          
“I
told you why in my last report. Perhaps you’ve not had time to read it. They’re
cracking down on security at HAWC like never before. Major Briggs has been
given the widest leeway to stop security leaks, and they’ve been promised full
cooperation from the federal judges in
Las Vegas
. That means not only searches of military
property at Dreamland and Nellis but legal searches of private non-military
residences too. They could even get, probably have gotten, authority for
wiretapping, no-knock searches and arrests at any time. I thought it was Briggs
in here already.”

 
          
“We
have connections at the federal courthouse,” Kramer said. “If there has been
cooperation between the military and the federal courts I’m sure an anonymous
tip to the
Las
Vegas
papers will stir things up. A report about widespread military authority to search
private residences? They go crazy over such things here. Especially the press.
Our
perestroika
caught some of it.”
Kramer studied Maraklov. “Are you saying tightened security is your reason for
not supplying one photograph of the XF-34A fighter plane or its components in
over three weeks?”

 
          
“They
haven’t let me be alone with the plane or its technical data since then. I was
able to be alone with a set of the aircraft’s technical layouts a week ago but
discovered an unusual change in the schematics that I didn’t understand ... a
dogtooth modification to the wings—”

 
          
“A
what?”

 
          
“A
special wing design that creates two dilferently performing wing structures on
one surface. On a mission-adaptive wing like DreamStar’s, the dogtooth might
increase its capabilities twenty percent.”

 
          
“A
significant development indeed,” Moffitt said. “Why didn’t you report this? If
they left you alone with the specifications why did you not photograph them?”

 
          
James
turned to him. “Because I think it’s a fake. Or it could be. A plant. A trick.
They may want me to see the dogtooth wing—and then they want to see if the
dogtooth shows up on a satellite photograph of a Russian fighter at Ramenskoye
or in a supposedly secure telephone message to
Moscow
. The dogtooth looks like a notch in the
wings and is visible on satellite photography. It’s not just me. I’m sure they
showed something different to each of the key players—a tail modification
drawing to Powell, a nozzle mod to
Butler
... Major Briggs probably cooked up dozens
of these tests for security leaks. Mine was the dogtooth ...”

 
          
“You
are sure these are fakes?”

 
          
Maraklov
had to pause, even though he knew the hesitation, no matter how slight, would
make Kramer and Moffitt suspicious. Then: “No, I’m not sure. The dogtooth
design has been incorporated in numerous advanced fighters—it would be possible
for our designers to use a dogtooth wing without stealing the idea from the
Americans. But I’m sticking to my hunch: I think the dogtooth wing is a fake.
And
that's
why I didn’t report it.”

 
          
“But
if it is not,” Moffitt said, “our own designers will be that much farther
behind in our design. Don’t you think you should have at least reported this
finding? It would have alerted our agents that Dreamland has stepped up
counter-espionage and security effects. Don’t you think that is worth a
report?”

 
          
“You
people don’t seem to get it. If I report this stuff as soon as it happens it
makes it that much easier for Briggs and his men to hunt down the source of the
leaks. I won’t jeopardize my cover or anyone else’s over something like this. I
must be able to choose my own time, place and method of reporting activity and
transferring information.”

 
          
“It
seems you are becoming a bit squeamish, Captain James,” Moffitt said.

 
          
“You
work with Harold Briggs and half the military security police breathing down
your neck all day ...”

 
          
“That’s
enough. Both of you.”

 
          
Moffitt
pressed. “I think Captain Kenneth James is becoming comfortable in his
surroundings,” Moffitt said. “He makes a lot of money, he has a nice apartment,
attractive American women. Could it be he does not want to risk losing his rich
life for the Soviet people?” Moffitt suddenly switched to Russian. “Remember,
Captain?
Your
people? The ones you
swore to protect? The ones who gave you this mission—”

 
          
“Speak
English,
dammit,” Maraklov ordered.
Anger and confusion were in his voice. Moffitt looked at him with some
surprise.

 
          
“Is
it possible,” Moffitt said in Russian, “you don’t understand what I’m saying?
Or is this just a part of your little game, Comrade Maraklov—?”

 
          
“
Don
’
t
use that name.
” Maraklov lowered his voice, but the anger was in his face.
“My name is Kenneth James. I’m from
Rhode Island
. I’m an officer in the United States Air
Force—”

           
“You are Andrei Maraklov,” Moffitt
pressed in Russian. “You are a Russian KGB deep-cover agent assigned to the
top-secret Dreamland research laboratory in the
United States
. You—”

           
“I said speak English . . . neighbors,
they could hear you—”

           
“Can
you
hear
me?
What are you
... an American or a Russian—?”

           
“
I
don’t understand a goddamned word you’re
saying.
” He turned to Kramer. “You’d better get him out of here, Kramer,
before he ruins the whole deal.”

 
          
“You
can drop the act,” Moffitt said, this time in English. “This is not a test in
your
Connecticut
Academy
—”

 
          
“That
is enough,” Kramer told Moffitt, on his feet now. “Stop trying to bait him—he
is trained to deny any knowledge of his past.” He turned to James. “But our
North American Command is concerned,
Kenneth.
You give them less each contact. We were ordered to investigate. An immediate
face-to-face meeting was necessary—”

 
          
“Well,
you’ve had it. I’ll get the information, but tell them I’m the only one who can
control how and when I do it. It’s possible the level of security intervention
is so high they’ll be forced to terminate the extensive searches soon.
Otherwise no one will be able to get any work done. But we’ve got to take it
easy. We can score a major espionage coup if we stay patient.” He did not add that
it was no act, his not understanding their Russian. He really had lost it... He
hadn’t quite realized it himself until now . . .