Rage (2 page)

At one time Raine knew there had been plans for housing to go up here, to transform the field—the historic airfield that once saw Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post fly away to smash world records—into a development.

But the economy, and then the history of the place, saved it. No money for development, but enough for a National Landmark
designation that preserved many of the hangars and even kept a few airstrips in place. But nobody—military or commercial—used it.

Or so Raine thought.

They passed the Belt Parkway, to the beginning of the field. The fence on the side of the road showed the lack of attention. Weeds, debris. No money or nobody cared? Both probably.

“Why here?” Raine asked.

The driver didn’t say anything.

The escort did, though, turning around. “I don’t know, Lieutenant.”

Great help, that guy. Loaded with information.

He wished he hadn’t had that last beer. It would be nice to be totally clearheaded for whatever this thing turned out to be.

They stopped and turned at the entrance off Aviation Road. A pair of army soldiers stood guard, the wide gates swinging open just as the black car reached it, then quickly shutting behind them.

When they reached the runway, Raine leaned forward, looking for what he guessed would be a military transport. Instead, off at one end, he spotted the lights of a small jet.

As they got closer, Raine could see nothing military or commercial about it. Rather, it looked exactly like some fat cat’s private jet. A jet a businessman might use to run down to Palm Beach. Catch some rays in January. Play with the mistress. Rub in a rival’s face.

Not what he expected at all.

The driver pulled the car up to the side of the plane. On cue, the door of the plane opened, stairs gently tilting down to the tarmac.

The car stopped.

“Here we go, Lieutenant.”

The escort got out and Raine followed him.

T
he small jet seemed to leap into the night sky, then took a sharp angle that had it first racing out to the nearby Atlantic before banking and heading west.

Not going to Lejeune, then, Raine realized, thinking of the base in North Carolina he had been stationed out of before being sent home.
Interesting.

He looked down and saw the lights of Coney Island. Another abandoned project. Somehow, the planned renovation of what they used to call “America’s Playground” never happened.

When there’s no money, things don’t happen.

Still, in the reflected glow of the lights left on at night, he saw the tall, always imposing spire of the parachute jump. Inactive for, what … sixty, seventy years? The once breathtaking ride had long been an inoperative landmark, a skeleton, a monument to times when such thrills could be created.

A time of great amusement parks and world’s fairs. His father used to talk about a place in Coney called Steeplechase.

“Nicky, I tell ya—you kids would’ve
loved
it. Crazy rides. Horses that raced around the perimeter. Made your heart race. And safe? Fugeddabout it. But now? All gone. Everything’s gotta be so damn safe these days.”

All gone.

One of his father’s favorite sayings.

This restaurant, that movie palace, his favorite fishing boat in Sheepshead Bay.

All gone.

Then his wife—Raine’s mom—died, and he hit his ultimate “all gone.”

Became a changed man. Quiet. Stayed to himself. As if he had given up. And when Chris came home in a box? The military escort. The salutes. The flags waving, and Raine fighting to keep from breaking down. His father had sobbed uncontrollably, showing Raine another part of what it meant to be a man.

All gone.

Raine had made a pledge to his brother then. A promise to keep fighting—to make sure that he never had to say “all gone.”

I’ll keep on for both of us, Chris. I’ll go back. I’ll do what they sent us over to do. Don’t you fucking worry about that.

And he would keep that promise until someone decided that whatever we were doing to keep the world free and safe was over.

He had to.

What was the expression? Ours not to question why. Ours but to do—

Coney and the coast faded into the background, the jet still climbing sharply.

“Lieutenant Raine?”

“Just Raine, Mister …”

“Raine it is. I’m Jackson. The plane has sandwiches and beverages. Maybe a beer?”

“Got any of those little packs of peanuts, Jackson?”

The joke finally made the man in a suit smile.

Barely.

“Don’t suppose you can tell me where we’re headed?”

“Actually, my orders allow me to now that we’re airborne.”

Raine raised his eyebrows.

“There really
is
a need for all this security, Lieutenant. I imagine it will be made clearer to you soon.”

“I hope so. The destination?”

“Buckley Air Force Base.”

“Colorado? Really? Pretty damn far away.” He shook his head. “And what awaits me in Buckley?”

Jackson stood up.

“Let me check on those peanuts.”

The night deepened. A moonless night, the stars bright and nearly unwavering in the cloudless sky. And every now and then Raine saw
one.

A yellow-red streak in the sky.

For a week or so they’d been visible each night, this sporadic meteor shower connected to the asteroid—Apophis 96 … 95 … something—still way out there in space. Apparently a bunch of debris ran well ahead of it, hitting the atmosphere.

It was a big asteroid, too—nearly the size of the city. Good thing it was going to give them a miss.

There—another streak. This one turning fiery before it disappeared.

Giving us a miss.

Lucky thing. Because, after all … despite Hollywood’s mad plots of diverting a major asteroid, just what the hell would we really do?

Still—he had to wonder why we were getting so many of
these meteorites. Seemed strange. Then again, what he didn’t know about astrophysics could fill a lot of books. And had, he thought.

He put his head against the porthole window, wedging a pillow into the crack between the window and the seat.

The window—cold, but soothing.

He shut his eyes.

He felt a change in angle.

He opened his eyes, and for a moment didn’t have a clue where he was. Totally disorienting, waking up on a plane. He wasn’t complaining, though—traveling this way was a damn sight better than bouncing around on a military transport.

He looked over at Jackson, who was looking out a window on the other side. Raine looked out his own window and down. There wasn’t much out there. The dots of houses and lights on the roads took on an eerie yellowish cast when seen from a few miles up. After a few minutes he could see an airstrip ahead.

Had to be Buckley.

Jackson looked over.

“Seat belt on?”

“Learn that in flight attendant school?”

Another small smile. Maybe this guy enjoyed knowing things that he didn’t. Something that security and spy types liked. Secrets. They were all about their damn secrets.

Raine wasn’t too big on secrets.

“We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“And my magical mystery tour continues.”

“Right.”

The smile on the man’s face had faded, replaced by something else, something in his eyes. Concern? Sadness?

Raine had led men into situations that could only be described
as hell. Into actual hell—no exaggeration—and he had brought a lot of them out again. In that time he had learned to check their eyes. To catch the fear sitting there. The concern. The telltale anxious signs that someone might crack. That someone might just freeze up.

And a few words—of support, of connection—could make the difference.

Humans are funny. They have a lot of needs. But maybe the one need they have above all is communication.

Does someone understand me?

Is someone listening?

The plane leveled off some. Slowed.

Raine stretched, arching his back to shake off the effects of hours sleeping crumpled up in a chair—albeit a fairly luxurious one. At least the beers and shots had lost most of their edge.

Good. Especially if he was going to get his orders.

He looked back out the window and noticed the planes on the tarmac getting bigger. The small jet circled hangars, some of them spilling out F-16 fighters into the early morning Still, it looked pretty quiet here, even if it was an hour or so before dawn.

He guessed the time.

About 4:30
A.M.

He looked at his watch: 5:07.

Not bad. Still, the sky should be turning light, no?

Then he remembered the time difference.
Mountain time here.

He pressed a button of his watch and moved it back two hours: 3:07 … 3:08
A.M.

He relaxed—he never could explain it, but it was strangely relieving to have the right time on his wrist.

•  •  •

The screech of the jet’s tires hitting the runway.

A tilt as the nose touched down.

The scream of the engines in reverse, brakes.

That crazy feeling of having your body pasted against the seat.

The jet slowed. As it taxied to wherever it was going to discharge Raine, he thought of something that hours ago hadn’t seemed too odd:

He brought
nothing.

No uniform. No change of underwear, no running shoes. No toothbrush, no personal effects. Nothing but what he wore to the bar, and a wallet filled with too little cash. The idea hit him full force.

It’s crazy. To fly out here with nothing. Sure, orders are orders …

But he didn’t have a clue what it meant.

The plane slowed some more. Raine unbuckled his belt while it still taxied. When the jet stopped, he listened to the small sounds of the engines slowing, quieting. Bright lights came on in the cabin.

Jackson stood up before him.

“Welcome to Buckley, Lieutenant.”

He went over to the small jet’s door and pulled a wide metal latch to the left, unlocking it. And like some magical portal, the door popped open, sending stairs down to whatever waited outside.

R
aine walked out into the cold mountain air, where an Air Force jeep stood by, engine running.

“I assume that this jeep is for us, Jackson?”

“Yes.”

Raine walked over and got in the back while his escort went around to the front passenger seat. The jeep pulled away fast, before Raine even had time to get settled.

“We late or something?”

No response.
Of course not.
Raine looked out at the quiet airfield, the hangars with bright lights inside showing massive bombers and jets as if on display. A few ground crew walked around, but other than their arrival, there didn’t seem to be much happening at the base.

He looked over his shoulder at the small jet. Already it had started taxiing, turning in the other direction.

Time for its next pickup?

As the jeep raced toward a distant corner of the base, Raine felt his apprehension—if that’s what it was—grow.

He had been thinking what this might be about. Being picked up in the middle of the night. Flown here. The private jet. Not getting anything from his apartment.

It would be as if he had simply vanished.

Not that there was anybody to notice. With his family gone, and his last attempt at a relationship crashed months ago on the reality of his steady deployments, who’d really be looking for him?

The landlord maybe. For rent. But even that was automatically sucked out of his checking account.

So what was this?

He didn’t know; but he knew one thing. Whatever this was about, he would be finding out shortly.

Raine looked down at his hands: clenched tight, resting on his knees.

Relax
, he commanded them.
Ease up.
Whatever the U.S. government had planned for him was—quite literally—out of his hands.

The jeep streamed on, and they’d soon left the main part of the base with its hangars full of expensive hardware. A massive building loomed in the distance, four, five stories tall. It looked like something NASA might need, but prefab and put up fast.

Raine leaned forward as the jeep went straight to that structure in the early Colorado morning.

The building was surrounded by a fence topped with concertina wire, and at the gate post, four soldiers stood with their M16s at the ready.

And inside the fence—in case no one got the point—an
Abrams battle tank, another soldier manning the .50 caliber from the open turret.

Probably more security inside the building itself.
Raine’s intrigue was growing. Something pretty important was happening there.

The jeep screeched to a halt, and he didn’t need to be told this was their next stop. He opened the jeep door.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said to the driver.

Following Jackson, he went to the gate. Jackson flashed something from his back pocket, one of the soldiers gave a signal, and the gate opened.

Raine came up beside him. “Y’know, stopping for a warm coat might have been a good idea.”

Jackson was dressed only in his suit.

“Tell me about it.”

A joke?
Interesting.

Jackson led the way to a side door. Raine could see this building had giant hangar-sized doors as well. Something big was going on in there.

Or was going to come
out
of there.

Another solider at that door, but he already had it open, and the two men walked in. Raine noticed that Jackson walked with the quick, direct stride of someone who knew where he was going.

He’d been here before.

He made a sharp right at entering and went down a long corridor with corrugated metal walls on either side. It seemed to Raine that there was no way to go deeper into the building.

But then the corridor turned left, and right again, like a maze. Jackson moved quickly, leading him down a warren of hallways before they came to an open service elevator. It was a wire mesh frame, designed to get big things up and down. Jackson slid it open, the elevator’s gate rattling.