Return to Honor (8 page)

Delores played with the straw, ducking it in and out of the juice and keeping her eyes off Gould. After a moment she stood and pushed back her hair; her voice sounded shaky. “Okay, we’re crewmates, but you’re not making it easy. Especially when you come off like the world’s biggest jerk.”

“Oh, come on.…”

“Give me a break! Sexual innuendos … pointed suggestions … you’re acting like you’re in junior high. And what’s worse, you’re not the first jerk I’ve had to put up with.”

Gould stopped. “I, I didn’t know.…” He surprised himself with his concern. “Like…?”

Delores’ ears grew red. “Like my IP at Del Rio threatened to fail me on a check if I didn’t put out for him.”

“He actually
tried
.
…
”

She shook her head. “No, not explicitly. It wasn’t a threat.…but the invitation was there, and the consequences were as plain as day.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and looked away. “It’s hard to break in sometimes, being a woman and working in what used to be a men’s career field.” There was silence for several moments.

Gould struggled upright on the couch. This was
weird.
It wasn’t half as bad as the guilt trip that nympho he’d met at Nellis had tried to lay on him, but still.…

He managed to say, “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Sure. And … and I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him. Gould felt as though he should reach out and hug her, or just say something nice to comfort her, but the moment seemed too unreal.

The spell was broken when the other two pilots strode into the room laughing. They stopped abruptly when they noticed the silence in the room. “Everything all right? We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Gould didn’t even bother to wave him away. “Forget it. We’re just watching the tube.” He straightened and turned up the sound on the big screen TV, forgetting about their curious looks and losing himself in the mindless chatter of the television.

Washington, D.C.

The apartment was well-lit, but the furniture was sparse. The decor made the apartment look nicer inside than outside. To Aquinaldo and Sicat, it was much better than the barracks. They laughed shrilly as they snorted the last line of cocaine Hujr had carefully laid out with a razor blade.

Aquinaldo leaned back on the couch and chattered, answering a question thrown at him by Hujr. They spoke in Tagalog, which was incomprehensible to anyone who might have been listening.

“Sure, but when the President calls, he does not mind if you barge on in. Or at least, that is what they say. We have never been on a
real
crew—our background clearances haven’t come in.”

Hujr seemed to pale at this. He shot a glance at his companion. “When will the clearances come through, so you can accompany the President?”

“Any day now, I suspect. Foreign nationals are looked at very closely, you know.”

Hujr leaned forward and nodded at the traces of white powder remaining on the hand mirror. “And you’re not worried about this? What if they found out you were using drugs?”

Aquinaldo covered his mouth and giggled. The whole question seemed, well … so
absurd!
“Of course I am not worried. In my barrio you can buy anything if you are old enough to hold the money up to the sari-sari counter. And nobody talks about it. It is the same way here. There is no way they will find out. Was it not like that in your barrio?”

Hujr spread his mouth and showed white teeth. “Not on Mindanao. But what is the difference? I am enjoying so much the stories of your job.” He paused. “So you think you will have a chance to fly with the President soon?”

They broke out in another giggling fit. Dimly, through all the euphoria, a fleeting thought crossed Aquinaldo’s mind—why weren’t Hujr and his companion laughing with them?—but the thought flew away in another spasm of silliness.

Hujr waited with a smile painted on his face.

Aquinaldo shook his head. “Uh?”

Hujr repeated himself. “When will you fly with the President?”

“Oh, not until after he gets back from this Russian-Israeli trip. They only use experienced crews for the international flights.” Aquinaldo looked sly. “But I tell you what, my friend … my buddy Ramis and I are the alternate stewards for this next trip. We were given the honor because of our hard work.” He shook his head sadly, suddenly changing his mood. “But the chances of the primary stewards not going are small. There are just no good excuses for missing such a trip.”

“I see.” Hujr nodded toward his companion. “It is getting late, my friends, but before you go I would like to get rid of another line of this candy. Will you help me?”

“I think another line would help us through the night,” giggled Aquinaldo. It felt so
good
to let loose. He watched as Hujr carefully cut out a long, thin line of cocaine, then eagerly sniffed the powder after Sicat.

As the euphoria rolled over them they didn’t wonder why Hujr let them snort the last two lines alone, or why Hujr was talking on his cell phone in a low voice in the other room.

Chapter 5

0945 ZULU: WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER

Ordinary men—and, above all, peculiarly little men—experience a charm, a certain pleasure, in attacking great men. There is much of the spirit of revenge mixed up with this.

Ernest Hello

Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

Major Gutiérrez loved his job. As officer-in-charge of scheduling details on every presidential flight, he was responsible for everything from the crypto gear down to the meals. It appealed to him. Before he came to Washington he had served as commissary and MWR officer at Offut AFB and had so impressed the generals with his sierra hotel service that they had told the air force chief of staff that
this was his job.

And he could get things hopping.

As a mustang who had served nine years of prior enlisted service before coming up through OTS, Gutiérrez knew the ins-and-outs of how to get almost anything done. He couldn’t care less about the money he was making. LTU, the mammoth aerospace firm, had a standing offer to triple his salary if he ever decided to get out of the air force and work for them. He could get anything working anytime and anywhere.

So Major Gutiérrez didn’t panic when, the morning before the president’s flight to Russia was supposed to launch, the police called from Washington General with the news that two of his stewards had been severely injured in a hit-and-run car accident. Gutiérrez thanked the officers, made a memo for flowers to be sent, and looked up on the roster who the backups were for the sortie, all within a minute of the call.

Major Gutiérrez made the call to Petty Officer Yoli Aquinaldo himself. Since he had placed the two on standby, he wasn’t surprised in the least when the phone was answered on the first ring. He informed Aquinaldo to report, with a haircut and a week’s change of clothes, to the AMC terminal in the morning for the flight with Air Force One.

The only thing that disturbed him was that Aquinaldo sounded as if he had a slight cold … and if he had a cold, then why was there giggling in the background?

But the one thing Major Gutiérrez had learned as an enlisted man, and what had made him so successful in getting the job done as an officer, was that if he treated his people as mature individuals, they’d come through for him.

So he forgot the entire matter, but still made a note for his secretary to call the two in the morning, three hours before show time, to make sure they made it on time.

U.S.S.S.
Bifrost

Lieutenant Colonel George Frier pushed through the tunnel connecting the living quarters and the operations center. He floated through the middle of the complex, stopping only when he grabbed a handhold. His feet spun forward when he stopped, so he applied a little more torque with his hands to keep himself still. Below him floated southern India. The view rapidly changed to the soft blue stretches of ocean as BIGEYE sped toward Antarctica.

The view from BIGEYE’s main portal never stopped astounding Frier. Even after the year and a half of being BIGEYE’s commander,
any
view from the portal three hundred miles above the Earth’s surface still took his breath away. He loved it up there. His rotund features, remnants of the hard and athletic body he had years before coming to BIGEYE, were dangerously flabby from the extended period in zero-g. His heart was pumping much too hard, and calcification had started melding his joints, but it was all worth it to him. Especially because, for the first time since the crash, he was useful again.

The disintegration of his body was nothing compared to the satisfaction he felt working as commanding officer in the United States’ Space-Based Observation Platform—nicknamed “BIGEYE” by the press, for its primary purpose was spying.

The cameras and sensors aboard BIGEYE were capable of reading a license plate from three hundred miles up. And if Washington wanted him to collect the data when it was dark on earth, the IR sensors on BIGEYE were almost as good as the visual ones. BIGEYE circled the Earth in a polar orbit, passing over every point on the earth—or at least passing near enough to get information—every twelve hours. It was the United States’ ultimate in verification technology, and Lieutenant Colonel George Frier was the lucky son of a bitch who headed it up.

So when the buzzer sounded for Frier to check the alignment on the laser relay, he didn’t think anything of it. The message came in code, preceded by a puzzling juxtaposition of three lettered words, all different. Normal procedure was to store the message with the other clandestine codes beamed up by operatives and squirt the entire sequence to NSA headquarters in Maryland. The squirt compressed the messages into the on/off bit patterns recognizable to computers and could be transmitted to the ground in a tenth of a second.

A laser beam was locked onto the huge dish antennas at NSA. Any attempt at a tap automatically broke the loop and introduced random messages into the stream, confusing the intended interceptor and alerting NSA that the transmission was being tapped.

The computer screen lit up, acknowledging the message had been successfully sent. Frier hummed to himself and went about his duties, oblivious to the passage of time.

Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

“How’s the plane?”

The crew chief spun on his heel and saluted. “Super, Colonel. The avionics and maintenance people have all given her the green light.”

Colonel McGirney grunted and ran a hand along the nose section. “How about the GPS?”

“Major Laynam cranked it up half an hour ago, sir. The plane knows exactly where she is down to a foot and should get you to Russia with about a ten-centimeter error.”

“Great. Good job, Mac. Can I bring you anything from Moscow?”

“Just some more of that Russkie vodka, sir. And Colonel, if you’d pick up a catalog of Russian tea sets for me, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to get something for the little lady next time another one of our birds goes over.”

“No problem. Just keep the generals happy, Mac.”

“Yes, sir!” The sergeant pulled up to a salute. McGirney returned it and climbed the aluminum stairs to the flight deck.

His copilot turned in his seat as McGirney ducked into the cockpit. Major George Laynam twisted a dial above his head and said, “Howdy, sir. All set?”

“That’s a rog. Crew ready?”

“Everybody’s up for it. The only problem is that the primary stewards were in an accident late last night. Scheduling pulled two replacements from the pool.”

“Who are they?”

Laynam turned to a list and squinted. “Secret Service just okayed these guys: Aquinaldo and Sicat.” He put down the list and turned back to McGirney. “It’s their first trip with us, so things might be a little hectic.”

“Yeah, I think I met them the other day. Wish I could be there the first time one of them spills coffee on the President.”

“Right. You’d better keep it down, though, those Secret Service guys can hear through walls.”

“Good idea.” McGirney stowed his flight bag and moved to the pilot’s seat. They ran down the checklist, finishing up just as the President’s chopper landed a hundred yards to their right.

As the motorcade approached the plane McGirney jerked his head toward the back. “Let’s start the war—the brass has arrived.” He punched at the mike button.

“Tower, this is Air Force One requesting permission to taxi once the Frito Bandito is on board.” McGirney used the code word for President Montoya—Mexican cartoon characters, chosen by Montoya himself and his staff to put a little humor into the otherwise dry military procedures.

The President left his motorcade and trotted lightly up the stairs. A dozen aides, political appointees, straphangers, and Secret Service personnel followed him.

The radio cackled. “Permission granted, Air Force One. The runway is cleared for your use. Airways are cleared to thirty-five thousand feet, and choose your own heading going out. We’ve got a five-mile radius cleared for you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Have a good one, Frito.”

“Roger that.” Colonel McGirney clicked off the mike and grinned at his copilot. “Ready, George?”

“Yes, sir. Do you want to take it?”

“Sure. Make the announcement to the PAX and have the stewards strap in. We’re cleared.”

“Rog.”

Engines whining, the plane moved slowly down the taxiway and up to the end of the runway. The tarmac was deserted. They were the only ones around, as all other aircraft had been frozen in place until they had taken off. McGirney waited patiently until Laynam finished with his announcements.

Once complete, McGirney pushed forward on the throttles and edged the huge jet down the runway. Satisfied that the pressure was holding in the engines, he eased all four throttles forward. Still, the craft seemed to jump out of the starting blocks and bite at the onrushing air. The plane started vibrating, but once they passed eighty knots the ground effect eased the jolting.

“One hundred … ten … twenty, and rotate.” He pulled back on the wheel, and the plane slipped gently into the air.

The behemoth seemed to float upward. Laynam pulled up the gears in one fluid motion.