Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (54 page)

           
He walked over to a metal case
sitting on the desk, unlocked it, and opened the lid. Inside was a series of
switches and a large red guarded switch. He flicked three of the switches, then
turned a key, which illuminated red lights on the panel.

 
          
“Uh
... sir? You’ve armed the explosives panel.”

 
          
“I
know that.”

 
          
“Those
Bulgarian soldiers. They are up there. They—”

 
          
“Shut
up,” Kazakov spat. He opened the red safety switch guard and pressed a button.
It suddenly seemed as if the ground was a carpet being shaken from two
kilometers away—the earth rolled and shook like an earthquake, with its
epicenter right under their feet.

 
          
High
up on the mountains above them, thousands of acres of forests suddenly
disappeared in a cloud of flying dirt and debris. Nine square kilometers of the
mountain was instantly leveled in a huge notch cut out of the mountains, as if
a huge ice cream scoop had swooped m and taken a huge chunk out of the earth in
one quick motion.

 
          
Kazakov
nodded to his bodyguard, then pointed out the w indow at the dozen Bulgarian
soldiers who had stayed behind to watch over Kazakov. The bodyguard smiled,
then walked out of the trailer. The soldiers were looking up at the tremendous
explosion that had engulfed their comrades, frozen in shock and fear, wondering
what to do. The bodyguard simply lined up behind them, set his MP5 submachine
gun to full auto, and mowed them down. He waved, and a huge front-loader moved
in, scooped up the bodies, then trundled down the access road to carry them up
the mountain and dump them within the carnage.

 
          
Kazakov
gave his aide a warning glance as he calmly shut off the arming panel and
closed and locked the lid. “Clumsy Bulgarians,” he said, as his other engineers
and technicians rushed into the trailer. “Those idiots must have set off some
of the charges and brought half the mountain down upon themselves. How
unfortunate.” The engineers stared openmouthed at their superior and wisely
kept silent. A moment later, as Kazakov was about to leave, his walkie-talkie
beeped. “What is it now?”

 
          
“This
is
Milos
up on the north ridge,” one of the project
engineers radioed, “There’s a problem. That explosion appears to have caused a
large fracture in the dam. It might give way completely. I sent a man down to
the village below the dam and to
Sofia
to warn them.”

 
          
“Fine,
fine,” Kazakov said. “Another example of fine Bulgarian workmanship.” He threw
the walkie-talkie on the desk in the engineer’s office and headed out to board
his private helicopter. How about that? he thought—maybe that Bulgarian Labor
Corps officer
did
know what he was talking about after all.

High-Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
, Elliott APB,
Nevada

Two days later

           
The C-141 Starlifter transport plane
arrived from
Ankara
,
Turkey
, shortly after sunset. Like most inbound
flights, it was told to taxi directly inside a hangar to unload its cargo and
passengers under cover. But there was a very different reason for this plane to
do so—it would have seemed strange for spy satellites to take pictures of a
welcome-home party.

 
          
Every
assigned person and employee of Elliott Air Force Base, almost two thousand in
all, were on hand, and they gave Captain Annie Dewey, Major Duane Deverill,
Lieutenant- Colonel Hal Briggs, and Master Sergeant Chris Wohl a thunderous
round of applause and cheers as they emerged from the crew door of the
Starlifter. First to greet them was Lieutenant- General Terrill Samson, along
with Brigadier-General Patrick McLanahan and Colonel Rebecca Furness. Furness
and McLanahan had arrived the night before to a more muted but equally happy
reception by the base personnel.

 
          
The
jubilant crowd surged forward, all wanting to reach out, touch, and
congratulate the victorious airmen who had successfully completed their first
assigned covert combat mission. Even though they had lost a plane and the
Intelligence Support Agency team had lost two men, the agent they’d been sent
in to get had been recovered safely, and most important, their fellow
Dreamlanders were all safe. That was cause for celebration.

           
“Welcome back, everyone, welcome
back,” General Samson said. “Thank God youTe all right.” He shook hands with
each one of them, then turned to the crowd and raised his hands to silence
them. “Folks, listen up,” he said. “Before we congratulate these men and women
from Aces High and from Dreamland on a job well done, let's first bow our heads
and ask the Lord to welcome the two ISA commandos into his home. We thank them
for their supreme sacrifice.”

 
          
After
a short pause with bowed heads, during which the hangar was as silent as a
church, Samson said to the newcomers, “I'm sorry to have to do this, but you're
going to have to do your celebrating as you make your way to another
intelligence, operational, and maintenance debrief.”

 
          
“Can't
we even take a couple hours to relax, maybe take a shower, sir?” Annie Dewey
asked. She kept on scanning the crowd, looking for someone. “I don't think
anyone could stand to be in the same room with me for more than sixty seconds.”
“I know you've had nonstop debriefs in two continents already,” Rebecca said.
“But we need to get the information dov\n so we can formulate even more
questions to ask you in the future. You guys know the drill. Every flight is a
research test flight. Welcome back. Good work.”

           
“You may spend the rest of your
careers debriefing,” Patrick said, as he shook hands with every one of them.
“We'll have food and drinks for you inside, and I promise we’ll make it as
brief as any military debriefing can be.”

 
          
Annie
Dewey wasn’t satisfied with just a handshake—when she got to Patrick and
Rebecca, she gave each one of them an unabashed kiss on the lips. “You guys
saved our butts,” she said. “I'll never be able to thank you enough.”

 
          
“Thank
Hal and Chris—they're the ones who really deserve it.”

 
          
“Keep
those two away from us, sir,” Master Sergeant Wohl said in his typical gruff
voice. “I can’t be in the same building with them anymore without one of them
thanking me, touching me, admiring me, or offering to do something for me. It’s
making me ill.” He endured another kiss from Annie to punctuate his complaint.

           
“Spoken like a true American hero,
Sarge,” Briggs quipped

 
          
Annie
scanned the crowd again. “Where’s David?” she asked in a low voice.

 
          
“Getting
ready for the operational debrief, I imagine,” Patrick said. “You'll see him
inside.”

 
          
“C’mon.
pilot, let’s
go,''
Duane Deverill said, clasping Annie by the waist and
arm from behind as if leading her in a tango through the crowded hangar. “Let’s
get the bleep-bleep debriefs over with so we can celebrate keeping our asses
for a few days longer!” Annie could do nothing else but let Deverill carry her
along through the throng of well-wishers.

 
          
The
debriefings went smoothly and quickly. Both Annie and Dev knew the real work
was ahead of them, so they tried to relax, be as helpful as possible, and as
clear and concise as their patience and level of weariness would possibly
allow. Each aircraft continuously burst-transmitted encoded data via satellite
back to Dreamland during every sortie, so there was no lack of hard
information; but the aircrews’ testimony was necessary to match the raw numbers
with the operator’s input and perspective. It would be even more valuable when
it came time to begin designing new and better systems to avoid any
deficiencies encountered during the mission. As long as humans flew war
machines, they would always need as much, perhaps more, data from the humans as
they did from the machines themselves.

 
          
After
many hours of wave after wave of engineers coming into the conference room to
ask questions, Annie realized that it was over—and that David Luger had never
shown up. She collected her notes and checklists and took a last sip of water,
crestfallen.

 
          
“What’s
up. AC?” Dev asked. He was still as pumped up and animated as he had been when
he got off the C-141—he had the strength and stamina of a cheetah. “You look
down. Tired?”

 
          
“A
little,” she said evasively.

 
          
“What
can I do to cheer you up?” Dev asked. He began to gently massage her, starting
from behind her ears and moving down her neck to her shoulders. “I must warn
you, my hands are licensed.”

           
“Yeah, right.”

 
          
“It’s
true—I’m a licensed doctor of chiropractic and a licensed massage therapist,”
Dev said. “You think there’s any money in being an Air National Guard B-l radar
navigator? 1 work singles’ resorts six months out of the year, make ten times
what I do in the Guard, and I get to put my hands on beautiful women all day
long. It’s a great racket.”

 
          
Annie
felt her body tense up when Dev first touched her, but after only a few
seconds, it was obvious that he did indeed have very skilled hands. He seemed
to know precisely where to rub hard and where and when to do it softly. In
moments, her body was relaxing in the grasp of Deverill’s warm, powerful hands.
“That feels so good, Dev.”

 
          
“Thank
you,” he said softly. He continued to caress her, now expertly working the
myriad of knots out of her spine and back muscles. The tension was rinsing away
under his fingers like a torch to ice. “I know I’ve said it already, but I want
to say it again: thank you for digging me out of the snow and rescuing me,”

 
          
“You
would’ve done the same for me—only better. I hope,” Annie said. “Thank you for
supporting my decisions, as half-assed as they were. I know you didn’t agree with
all of them, but you backed me up anyway. It meant a lot.”

 
          
“You’re
the aircraft commander—it’s my responsibility to back you up and offer my
opinion, and your responsibility to make the decisions,” Dev said. “You did
everything you were supposed to do, and more. You saved my life and the lives
of many others. You should be proud of yourself I am very proud of you.” She
felt his lips on the back of her neck, and the touch sent high-voltage electric
currents throughout her body.

 
          
“Did
you know,” he said, suddenly breaking the mood change between them, “that the
muscles of the body build up huge quantities of lactic acid during periods of
stress and fatigue—a by-product of anaerobic respiration, where the muscles bum
glucose in the absence of oxygen? Lactic acid causes fatigue and can even cause
cramps and muscle deterioration. The acids will eventually work their way out
over time, but a properly done massage helps the lactic acid move out quicker.”

           
“Is that why it feels sooo damn
good?” Annie cooed.

           
“Exactly.”

           
“Mmm. Well, it does,” she said. She
let him continue his work. Normally she was extraordinarily ticklish, but he
was even able to massage her sides and ribs without her reacting at all. His
hands moved down to the base of her spine, almost to her buttocks, but there
was no way she was going to let him stop. “So tell me, Dev—why did you feel the
need to tell me the technical reasons for a massage? Do you think I’ll respond
better if it’s done in a more scientific atmosphere? Once a test pilot, always
a test pilot?”

 
          
“It’s
working, isn't it?” he responded. When he felt her body stiffen in protest, he
added quickly, “No, no, that’s not why. Only kidding.”

           
She gave him a humorous sneer, but
relaxed and let him continue. “Maybe I told you the technical theory behind
massages to distract you from the fact that I’m touching you—and loving every
last second of it.”